Chapter 13

"You're working on budgets already?" Patricia said, looking over my shoulder at the spreadsheet on my computer, "That's not 'til November."

"I know," I nodded, "but I need to be ready. I've already got next year's budget firmed up, and a presentation ready for the board, but I want to try to project it out five years in advance. That's what I'm working on now."

"Normally we just do Product Strategy, and Revenue projections out that far." she said, "Why do you want to go to all that trouble?"

"To show where the numbers in those other projections are coming from," I answered, "and what they're leading to. I need to take a loss over the next five to seven quarters to get development in shape and prepare our new product strategy. I don't want to push our current products during that period, because I don't want customers who buy them feeling left out when we launch the new stuff. That's not to mention the fact that we'll save on support costs, since that stuff was produced with such poor quality. For that reason, I'll be cutting back on sales and marketing for the next three quarters. Marketing will be busy preparing the campaign for the launch while development implements their new process and builds the new product line. Sales will be limited to phone and web response staff. That will give me an opportunity to clean up that mess that Monroe left behind. I'm still not sure how many of them were in it with him, and a general RIF will clean out the whole lot. Then, in a year or so, we'll ramp up hiring in sales to be ready for the new product lines."

"Why do you have to create new products? Why can't you just modify what you've got?" Patricia asked.

"I asked the same question." I said, "Sanjay's reply, though painful, made sense. There's just too much baggage in that system and it's not easily modifiable. If we're going to interface with all the products we want to, and entice other vendors to use us as the standard conduit between P2P apps, we need to go to object libraries instead of the monolithic code structure we've got. That will give us the flexibility we need, while allowing us to re-use a lot of the code. To be successful, though, we really need to pay attention to quality. A bug in our code will appear to be a bug in the application code, and if there are too many of those, nobody's going to want their products associated with ours. Hence, the development process rework. We're going to fasttrack it, but that means a lot of handholding and dealing with subversives who don't see the need for the new process and keep trying to do things the old way."

"Can you have it ready for launch in that time frame?" Patricia asked, being no newcomer to what passed for Project Management in tech companies.

"I looked over the schedules, had them do worst case and best case scenarios," I said, "and I give us an eighty percent chance of coming in within that time. They've actually done risk analysis and management scenarios for the predictable risks, and built in cushions for the unpredictable. I had to twist some arms to get them to do that, since they wanted to go with the best case schedule."

"Eighty per cent?" Patricia's eyebrows went up, "That's unprecedented!"

"We're learning," I said, "and I've had to do more hand-holding with Sanjay than I'd like, but he's a quick study, and is beginning to like what he sees coming out of it, so it's taking less of my time as it goes along."

"So why the five-year budget cycle?" she asked.

"I don't want to go to the board with a one-year proposal that shows a big loss without showing them what it's going to do for us down the road." I replied. "Would YOU pass a proposal like that?"

"Hmmm," she agreed, "You'd have to be the greatest salesman in the world, and unless I'm sorely mistaken, that's not your strong point."

"... So I give them supporting facts," I said, "which is what they should be making their decisions on anyway, not some patent-medicine show cooked up by a salesperson!"

"You know," she said, smiling "you may be onto something there! I'll twist arms, if need be, to get it passed."

"Actually," I said, "I'd rather you didn't. In fact, I don't even want YOU approving it if you don't believe in what I'm doing. I'm a novice at this, Patricia, and the only short term checks and balances I have on my performance come out of the Board. If this is a hare-brained scheme, then let them tell me so, so I'll learn. Building confidence is what you do for pre-schoolers so they won't be afraid to face Kindergarten and 'real' school. People's lives and livelihoods are at stake here, and while I THINK I'm doing the right thing, nobody should rubber-stamp my decisions. It's not my confidence that's important here, it's the company's success. It's too important to too many people!"

She gave me a long, penetrating stare, then bent and kissed me tenderly.

"I KNEW the Board picked the right person when they chose you!" she said, affectionately, "Now, put that away, and let's get ready to greet our young lady, shall we? I've got Mary on standby in the playroom, and Walt just called to say he's almost here."

We had Edgar bring Brenda to the playroom, knowing the effect the house and being greeted by the butler would have on her. When she entered the playroom to find us naked and putting the finishing touches on Mary's bondage, the young lady gasped.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, trying to take in the playroom, us, and our bound slave all at once.

"Hello, Brenda!" Patricia greeted her warmly, "So nice to see you again!"

"H-hello, uh, Patricia!" she stammered.

"Hi, Brenda!" I greeted, then swept my hand around the room, "as you can see, we're fully equipped for pleasure in many forms here. Why don't you look around and decide whether you want to join Mary, here, in her bondage, or join us in playing with her!"

Brenda, wide-eyed, hand at her mouth, wandered around the room, occasionally fingering one well-worn piece of equipment or another.

"A little overwhelming, isn't it?" I asked, smiling.

Still enthralled by the rack of whips and straps on one wall, Brenda only nodded, caressing the oiled leather coil of a bullwhip, gasping when she realized what the brown stains on the leather must be.

"What IS this place?!" she finally asked, anxiety raising the pitch of her voice.

"This is our playroom, dear," Patricia said, putting a maternal arm around the young lady's shoulders, "This is where we come to let off steam, and to entertain our very special guests."

"B-but, who is SHE?" she waved nervously at the suspended, spread-eagled body of our slave who, at the moment, was moaning into her gag due to the tremendous length and girth of the dildo socketed in her pussy.

"That," I said, "is my ex-wife, Mary. But before you go thinking what a sadistic, vindictive bastard I am to do this to her, you should know that she's our slave because she wants to be. If you don't believe me, ask her."

Brenda looked up at Mary's gagged face and asked, "I-is that true?"

Mary did her best to smile around the gag, without much success, but it showed in her eyes as she nodded.

"So you LIKE this?" Brenda waved her hand to indicate Mary's predicament.

There was no mistaking the enthusiasm in Mary's vigorous nod.

"Man!" Brenda said, hands on hips as she once more surveyed her surroundings, "I don't know where to start!"

"Here." Patricia said, handing her a well-used flogger, "The little bitch likes to be beaten while we abuse her nether holes, so make yourself useful and maybe it will give you some other ideas!"

Brenda stared at the flogger in her hand in disbelief. "You can't be serious! You want me to HIT her with this?"

Patricia nodded, "Hard and frequently! I suggest starting on her back and working down to her legs, then when you've got a good feel for it, move around and work her breasts over. When you've got her worked up nicely, a couple of lashes between her legs will usually send her off into space!"

"Oh my God!" Brenda gasped, "You're serious!"

"Just take a few swings." I coaxed, "You'll see! She loves it, and you just might find that you do too!"

Casting a doubtful eye in my direction, Brenda drew back and laid a tentative slap across Mary's back, barely turning the skin pink.

"You've really got to lay into it for her to enjoy it, dear." Patricia coached.

The young college student glanced doubtfully at the bound slave, only to get a vigorous nod in response.

Shrugging, Brenda let fly once more, this time putting a little more 'elbow grease' into it.

Mary cried out and her muscles tensed. I could see from Brenda's face that she worried she had hurt the slave.

"Check her pussy, Brenda. Look how the juice is running down her legs!" I said.

The huge dildo was still embedded deep in Mary's stretched cunt, thanks to the even larger bulge at its base, but now, fluid not only ran down her thighs, it dripped from the dildo's bottom flange, as well.

"This time," I said, "Really let her have it! No holding back!"

With an explosive "UMPH!", Brenda put her whole body into the next stroke, and the gargantuan dildo shot out of Mary's spasming pussy to thud on the floor as she had her first orgasm of the session!

"She just came!" The young college student exclaimed, "I can't believe she did that!"

"Keep going, dear," Patricia said, "that was just a warm up!"

Brenda was getting into it now that she knew Mary was enjoying being beaten, and really started to lay into her. Patricia and I backed off, stroking each other's shafts and poking fingers at each other's orifices as we watched Brenda work herself and her victim into a frenzy. Finally, gasping for air, after having painted Mary's body red with the flogger, especially her tits, Brenda laid one mighty underhanded blow in Mary's crotch and watched in awe as the slave went ballistic.

Every muscle on Mary's slight frame stood starkly outlined for several long seconds as her final spasm overtook her, and she vibrated like a guitar string in her chains, finally falling limp as she passed out.

"Awesome!" Brenda gasped, struggling to regain her breath.

Patricia took her gently by the shoulders and turned her toward a mirror.

"Look!" she said softly.

Brenda's hair was in wild disarray, her face flushed, her top half-unbuttoned, and there was a huge, wet stain spreading in the crotch of her pants!

"I think it's safe to say you enjoyed that." Patricia said, "Now, would you like to see what it feels like to be bound and used?"

"I-I don't know!" Brenda replied, barely noticing that her top was coming off, "I think I'd be too scared!"

"But that's part of the fun, dear." Patricia said, removing the soaked pants and panties. "Not to worry. We'll come up with a safe-word - a word that will tell us you've had enough."

As if in a trance, the young brunette followed Patricia's lead. In short order, my lovely wife had the pretty brunette bound over a punishment horse. Her legs were shackled to one pair of the horse's legs at one end, it's padded top supporting the length of her torso. Her wrists were cuffed to the legs at the other end. Brenda's head hung, momentarily, off the end of the horse. Patricia fixed that by putting a halter on her head, then attaching a lead from the back of the halter to a broad leather belt cinched around her waist and the horse, forcing the girl's head up, at right angles to her body.

"Comfy?" Patricia asked when she finished.

I doubt that anyone would find that position comfortable for long, but the brunette nodded as best she could in her harness.

"Okay," the sexy blonde said, stroking her erection lightly, "I need you to choose a word, something you're not likely to say during sex, even if it gets rough, but that you can remember easily. That will be your safeword. If you use that word, we stop whatever we're doing, okay?"

"Um, okay." Brenda said, having difficulty closing her mouth, because of her position. "How 'bout 'Market Share'?"

"Can you remember to say that if things get too rough?"

"Uh huh," she replied, "I'm, uh, studying Marketing."

"Okay, 'Market Share' it is." Patricia said.

"Your safeword is 'Market Share'." I repeated, so everyone would know that I heard her, too.

"Now," Patricia said, "the last time you were with us, you seemed pretty compliant with whatever we wanted to do, so I want to explore that a little more. We're going to 'Play' with you, using your body for our pleasure, and just see what effect that has on you, okay?"

"Oh, one more thing." I said, "Since we're likely to be using your mouth as well as other parts of your body, I'm going to put this scarf in your hand as a back up signal. If you can't use your safeword and need to stop, drop the scarf, okay?"

"Okay." Brenda replied gratefully.

"Well, then!" said Patricia, "Shall we begin? These will add a little stimulation, dear!"

She hung weighted nipple clamps from each of the brunette's pink little nipples, causing her to moan loudly. I noticed, too, that her pelvis gyrated as best it could within the confines of her bondage. Once the clamps were in place, Patricia inserted her cock in the brunette's mouth and began the process of opening her.

Mary was coming around, and, out of Brenda's line of sight, I released her from her suspension.

"I know Maria and Gwen have been training you for this, slave." I whispered in her ear, "Now let's see how good you are at eating pussy!"

I cuffed her hands behind her back and made get on her knees behind the bound brunette. Mary's pink little tongue flicked out eagerly to lap at the college student's weeping pussy. Brenda, halfway down the length of Patricia's shaft, moaned at the unexpected sensation.

I knelt behind my former wife, and without so much as a 'By your leave', rammed my cock up her pre-lubed ass! Mary, by now accustomed to such treatment, took it in stride, and thrust back to meet me, her ministrations to Brenda's pussy growing more passionate with every slam of my cudgel into her colon!

Brenda, having caught our reflection in the mirror as Patricia screwed her throat, apparently got turned on by the idea of my ex-wife eating her while being brutally sodomized by her former husband, and started a series of small orgasms.

I uncuffed Mary's hands and handed her a long, flexible plastic rod that had balls molded around it every couple of inches. Each ball was about the size of a golf ball. Mary knew what it was for, having had it used on herself numerous times, and eagerly took it from me as she continued lapping at Brenda's pussy. Now, though, she lengthened her strokes and began dragging saliva and pussy juice up to the unsuspecting girl's winking anal ring.

Brenda, lost in the sensations bombarding her from mouth, breasts, pussy and ass, was totally unaware of what was about to happen. When the first ball slipped greasily into her ass, she gave a surprised 'yip' around Patricia's cock. Mary swiveled the rod around in her ass before slipping in the second ball.

Brenda's eyes flew open and stared at our reflection in the mirror, and at the length of ball-rod still to go! I feared for a moment that she would drop the scarf, but she closed her eyes, and with a moan, tilted her pelvis upward in invitation!

Mary slipped the next three balls in quickly, bringing the first one up against the girl's inner sphincter. Brenda gave a muffled cry and came again! Working slowly, Mary gradually forced the remaining balls into the brunette's ass, eliciting climax after climax as both sphincters were forced repeatedly to open, then clamp down again!