The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“In short,” the vice-president of Sales Division, Michael Halderan, was saying, “as we would expect, profits are steady, and we are probably going to make our numbers for the quarter. We’re steady. We’re growing where we want to grow, and holding steady where we are saturated.”

Patrick Dee sighed, only making a thinly veiled attempt at hiding it with a conspicuous yawn. He found quarterly meetings boring. Which was not surprising, since he found meetings simpliciter boring.

And Halderan was not done. “Our latest analysis does unfortunately predict that we won’t be able to keep this up for long. Frankly, our existing clients are asking for more, and we cannot offer it to them given our current development plans. And we cannot grow our customer base for obvious reasons.”

George Clayton, Vice-President of Investigation and Enforcement Division, more commonly known as Control, nodded. He had quit smoking a few years earlier, after a scare with lung cancer. But a life-long habit of smoking had left him with a tic that made his finger rise up to his lips at regular intervals, like clock work. It drove Dee crazy.

Neither Halderan nor Control needed to spell it out. All ADCorp executives around the table knew the words: critical mass.

Critical mass was the boogeyman of the company. It was the notion that some of the in-house analysts had advanced that the secrecy that was vital to the more ethically questionable activities of ADCorp—the adjustments—could only be maintained if the number of people that knew of its activities, including clients, was kept under a threshold. This was so even if the company’s activities were camouflaged through subsidiaries and middlemen.

Those same analysts were busy constructing models and updating them in real time to ensure that ADCorp remained ahead of the revelation curve, by constantly estimating the threshold and affecting it through misinformation seeded over social networks and conspiracy sites to divert attention whenever possible. One could hide real data in a mass of suitably designed fake data. But only so far. Only until critical mass was reached.

Dee looked around the room at the ADCorp executives responsible for the Adjustment branch of the company—ADCorp had a bona fide pharmaceutical and agroprocessing component that did reasonably good business, with an independent executive directorate. Beside Halderan and Control, present were the vice-presidents of Operations Division and Finance Division, as well as the vice-president of Public Relations Division, dubbed Ministry of Truth by some internal jokester. The nickname stuck.

Dee stopped paying attention to the discussion about whether critical mass had been achieved, whether there were still opportunities for expansion within the constraints that Old Man Davenham had put down years back. The discussion was fluid and pointless, a play in which all the actors knew their lines too well.

Dee looked at them all, and wanted to yell at them. Old men holding the reins of power. It was so clichéd he wanted to gag. They were old and they were gutless. They were all gutless. Old Man Davenham first and foremost. Old, gutless, and unable to steer the responsibility that had been thrust upon their shoulders.

“Well, Patrick Dee can tell you about one potential solution to the problem,” Halderan was saying.

Dee snapped to attention. He had zoned out.

“Are you awake, Dee?” Control was looking at him, with a sly grin, happy to have caught the younger man in a reverie. Asshole, thought Dee.

“Of course.” He looked at Halderan, trying to determine what he must have been talking about. There were few options.

He leaned back in his chair, cleared his throat. He was Vice-President of Advanced Research, the youngest executive by far at thirty, and he had nothing to prove to anybody.

“Thanks Mike. Yes, there is a solution to the problem. It’s an old solution, of course. I propose we reinstate Project Perennial.”

There was a murmur around the room. Dee ignored it. “I’m sure you’ll remember the initial goal of the project: to develop a way to make activations long lasting, even permanent. Right now, when an adjustment is activated, it can remain so for a period between twelve and twenty hours, with variations depending on several factors, not all of them controllable. Small adjustments can be made deep inside to affect memory and attention that are indeed permanent—that’s what we use to control whether a subject remembers their activations, as well as their activation codes, and to foster a bonding between the subject and their owner. Project Perennial would allow for more high-level behaviors to be permanently modified by adjustments, a permanent activation.”

“That’s what Cargyle was working on before he ran away, wasn’t it?” asked Control, who know full well the answer to his own question.

“Yes. Doctor Cargyle was a member of Project Perennial at its inception five years ago, but—“

“More than a member. The head of the project. Its brain. Cargyle was the only one who had any chance of making it work. Do you really think you can make progress on the problem without him?”

Dee smiled. He wanted to kill the smug bastard. “Of course, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it, would I? Ten minutes ago, my assistant emailed all of you our preliminary proposal for the renewal of Project Perennial, with planned milestones and estimated costs and revenue, established with Sales Division. We have been learning a lot from the Specials with Doctor Sarah MacKenzie’s research at the CWI Advanced Research facility. She believes they are the key for not only permanent adjustments, but also deeper adjustments that can reverse the morality compass.”

Control looked dismissive, but the other executives all wore an interested look. Idiots, Dee thought. When I run this show I’ll fucking fire you all.

“No,” came the voice through the conference phone sitting in the middle of the table. Everyone just stopped moving, stopped breathing.

The green light on the phone was blinking green, indicating as it always did that Adonai Davenham, founder and Chief Executive Officer of ADCorp, was listening in on the call. But he never spoke. He only ever listened. When Old Man Davenham wanted to say something, he sent memos, emails, or went through his personal assistant. When he wanted to tell you something, he called you into his office. He never spoke during meetings.

Until now.

Dee stared at the conference phone in shock. “Huh, I’m sorry, sir?”

“I said no.”

“To what exactly?”

“Project Perennial is off the plate. No research into permanent activation.”

Dee’s shock, unbelievably, increased.

“But—”

“No but. No Project Perennial. No permanent activation. Nothing beyond what we already provide to our clients. This is the final time I will hear about the topic.”

Dee opened his mouth and closed it. Everyone around the room looked pale. Even Control, who should have enjoyed Dee being verbally slapped by Old Man Davenham, was staring not knowing quite how to react.

“Very well, sir,” Dee finished, and sat down. Halderan looked dejected.

An awkward silence settled over the table.

“Well, that’s that, then,” said Control. And then proceeded to describe the challenges that Investigation and Enforcement Division faced during the quarter—an increase in the number of Specials identified, as well as an increase in internal contract violations from clients over the predictive models estimates.

Dee forced himself to look as attentive as the other executives around the room, but inside, he was seething.

Gutless fucking morons.

By the time Patrick Dee emerged from the meeting room, he had calmed down, but he was feeling the beginning of a headache trying to hack its way out from behind his eyes.

They were all old. As far as he was concerned, that was their problem. they were old, and did not want to risk whatever comfortable little life they had built up. Old and conservative. He was the only one below fifty at the meeting, the only one with the vision to see the venues open before them, the only one willing to take advantage of both globalization and the destabilization of old regimes.

It was a new world, had been for a while, and none of them could see it. Neither the executives, nor Old Man Davenham. As he did whenever he thought of the Old Man, Dee could feel his body tense and yearn to lash out.

Of all the executives, Old Man Davenham was the worse. He was the source of all of Dee’s frustrations. Old Man Davenham had blocked every single plan to push ADCorp past its current rut, as if he were trying to keep the company to what it had been when he had started it two decades earlier.

It boggled Dee’s mind.

He wondered whether any of the other executives felt the way he did, whether they thought like he did that it was but a matter of time before someone started their own business with technology like ADCorp’s and took it into those new directions that ADCorp was not following. Somehow, he doubted it.

Idiots, the lot of them. Blind idiots. He was the only one who saw the future for what it was.

But was he ready to take the plunge?

He was still musing those thoughts when he made it back to his office.

“Good afternoon Mister Dee.” His personal assistant greeted him, her smile luminous, her black hair framing her beautiful face.

He nodded by way of response, and hesitated when he reached out for the doorknob. His assistant was talking. “You have a conference call at two thirty with Doctor MacKenzie team, and at four there is—Mister Dee, is everything okay?” There was genuine concern in her voice.

Dee shook his head. “Yes, sorry, I’m fine. Just thinking. Please reschedule the call with MacKenzie. I’ll be busy.”

He needed to relax and think. And he knew just how.

It was a short walk to the Human Resources department. Even though it was in a different building—executives were kept separate, as a general rule, to avoid security breaches—all the buildings were connected through internal tunnels in case the weather outside was inclement, a not uncommon occurrence in Northern Maryland.

He nodded to people as he passed them, recognizing a few, not particularly caring that much, but it cost nothing to put on a polite pleasant front. He knew he had a reputation as the one cool approachable executives, and it tickled him.

He rounded the corner and approached the office of Elizabeth Parkinson—Betty. She was with a new employee, walking her through some orientation material, answering questions about vacation days. Drudgery, Dee thought. Useful drudgery, he might have admitted reluctantly, but drudgery nonetheless. ADCorp had ossified into a large bureaucratic organization.

He poked his head through Betty’s door, and made eye contact with her. She smiled back at him. As he watched her finish with the new employee, a pretty brunette with a shy look and glasses that looked too large for her face—an analyst, Dee guessed—he wondered how Betty rationalized his visits. She genuinely seemed to like him, and she probably thought he liked her back. Some harmless flirting, fun and rejuvenating.

“Well Debra,” he heard Betty tell the new employee, “you know where to find me if you have any more questions. Please feel free to drop by anytime, or call me or email me. Whatever works best for you.”

He looked at them stand, shake hands. Betty, accustomed to social interactions, her grip firm, her body language self-assured. Her blonde hair, cut in a bob, called attention to her perfect face with its high cheekbones. The new employee, Debra, was more reserved, more careful. She seemed to have a touch of social anxiety, not uncommon amongst the analysts ADCorp hired. Not that he interacted much with them.

He walked toward them when it was clear they were done.

“Debra, this is Patrick Dee, head of Research Division,” Betty introduced him. “A lot of what he does we’re not cleared to know. Well,” she laughed, “maybe eventually you will. But he’s forever a mystery to me.” There was no trace of bitterness in her voice.

Debra flashed her eyes at him, shy, innocent. Dee put on his best smile. “Debra, nice to meet you.” He idly wondered what she looked like naked—those mousy types sometimes hid fantastic bodies—even though she was not his type. But she might be fun to try out. Once she was adjusted, of course.

His smile worked on her, and she blushed, and mumbled, “Thank you, sir. It’s nice to meet you too.”

Elizabeth ushered Debra out of the office, and came back toward him. “Mister Dee. Fancy meeting you here.” She grinned.

“Betty,” he said, “adjustment code C014, override authorization 9000021.”

Betty’s eyes widened momentarily as her brain, hearing his words, rerouted them past the higher-order function areas and sent them straight into the hypothalamus, along the way closing off some sections of her mind and opening others, a process that had been explained to him several times by some of his researchers but that he did not fully understand because at some level, there was nothing to understand. It might as well have been magic.

The Serum. The discovery that Adonai Davenham had made so many years earlier, the keystone of ADCorp.

Every girl reacted slightly differently when she was activated, and Dee had gotten to know Betty’s reactions quite well. She shivered, and a moan escaped her lips. “Mmm…” As if they had a mind of their own, her hands were running up and down her body, up her sides and over her breasts. She wore a fashionable blouse with tight dark trousers, and Dee from experience knew that her bra and underwear were a light pastel color—either green or peach, her husband’s favorite colors.

She grinned to Dee before stepped up to her office door. She closed it and locked it. Dee, meanwhile, pushed the chairs in front of the desk out of the way, and arranged one so that he could sit in it and face the now cleared area.

Betty walked to her desk, and pulled out a box from a bottom drawer. She then walked to the center of the room, and her eyes on Dee—she still had not said a word—she unfastened her trousers and pulled them down her shapely hips. Underneath, she wore a pretty pair of panties, light green with a lacy pattern.

She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off, exposing a light green bra with the same lacy pattern. Wearing only her underwear, her light body exposed, her skin pale, her curves generous, Betty winked at Dee and pulled out of the box a thin flesh-colored dildo made to resemble a human cock, complete with fake texture and a bulbous glans. She kneeled on the ground, and her eyes still on Dee, she slid the rubber dildo into her mouth and sucked on it.

She kept her eyes on Dee the whole time, her face bearing a look of wanton desire. She was one of the best examples of exactly what the adjustment process that Davenham developed could do—turn a perfectly respectable well behaved life-loving woman with happy romantic life into a depraved slut ready to do anything at the drop of a hat. Dee stroked himself through his trousers, languidly. He had no desire to come—he needed to think.

“How do you want me?” Betty asked him after pulling the dildo out of her mouth, a thin film of drool hanging at the corner of her lips.

Dee considered her question seriously. “On all four,” he said. “Ass in the air.”

“Yes sir,” she said breathlessly, and acted to obey him.

As he watched her turn around and get on her hands and knees, her perfect tight ass outlined by the green panties she wore and did not take off because she liked to push them to the side when she fucked herself with her dildo, the act forcing her to use both of her hands which meant that her face was pressed down into the carpet. It was an extremely submissive position, which was why she craved it. Dee marveled at the way the adjustments worked. Even though he knew the theory, seeing it in action always fascinated him.

Betty was naturally submissive. As near as he could tell, she hid it perfectly in everyday life. He never bothered to investigate her private life, see whether she and her husband enjoyed kinky role play in the bedroom, when she was activated she put a submissive spin on whichever adjustment was chosen.

Adjustment C014, for instance, one of the standard ones that came prepackaged with a subject’s processing—standard adjustments had been optimized over the years to minimize any possible internal cognitive tension that might break the programming—only ensured that the subject would pleasure herself for the pleasure of whomever activated her, forcing an exhibitionist craving into the subject. There was no mention of submissiveness. One could easily be an exhibitionist with a dominant streak. But Betty also approached it submissively.

She was looking at Dee over her shoulder now. “Where… where do you want me to fuck myself? In my pussy, or in my ass?” She had such a cute way of asking that question.

“Pussy,” he said. He wanted to think, and the way she groaned when she rammed a dildo in and out of her ass always was loud and distracting.

Betty dropped her head down to the floor and used one hand to push her pretty panties to the side, baring a slit slick with juices, and used her other hand to slide the long thin dildo inside her. Dee noted with pleasure that she curled her toes as she did so.

“Oh,” Betty moaned as the dildo entered her. It seemed to slide in without any difficulty, as if her pussy was so wet that even the hard rubber dildo met no resistance. He wondered idly what it might feel like to slide into her, whether she was tight, whether her pussy gripped you as you fucker her.

Betty was fucking herself slowly, her pace regular, the dildo sliding in and out, her pussy lips hugging it on the way out, the sounds of slick suction heavy in the small office, the smell of her arousal distinct. She settled into a rhythm punctuated by soft moans as the dildo pushed in and pushed out, her ass shifting up and down with each thrust.

Dee watched, his cock getting hard, his mind wandering, his immediate attention occupied by the beautiful woman at his feet fucking herself purely for his pleasure. She was clearly enjoying herself, if her increasing rhythm was any indication.

“Let me know when you’re about to come, Betty.”

“Yes, sir,” she moaned as the frequency of her thrusts increased. She loved it when he told her what he wanted. It turned her on.

His mind wandered. As Betty fucked herself for his benefit, he thought back to the group of old men around the conference room earlier, arguing old ideas and never getting anywhere, because Old Man Davenham was the stodgiest of them all, unwilling to take risks, unwilling to think outside the box. ADCorp was headed toward obsolescence. The only reason why they had not been taken over by some other group, some other more agile company, was luck, pure luck.

There was a short window of opportunity. Dee had to seize it.

Betty was getting louder, her movements more frantic, her hips shifting higher. She was sliding down to the rug, her legs spreading wider and wider. Even her moans had changed pitch, and she had given up pushing her panties to the side to free her hand to play with her clitoris, and the material was sliding in and out with each thrust of the dildo.

“I’m going to come, sir,” she growled, her face against the rug.

“Are you close, Betty?”

“Soooo close, sir.”

“Are you about to come from fucking yourself, Betty?” He liked to egg her on.

“Yes, sir. Oh god!…” The dildo was pounding in and out with loud wet sounds.

“Very well then,” he said. “Don’t come yet.”

She moaned in frustration but the dildo kept at a steady pace, and her hips bucked hard. She seemed to hold her orgasm at bay, though he could see her feet start to shake every time they left the ground.

He went to kneel by her head. She was beautiful, her face red because of her position, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Her short blonde hair—he loved her bob, always had, and would make sure that she never grew it out whatever her husband said—was wild.

He presented two of his fingers to her mouth, and she sucked on them, making sure to wet them as sloppily as she could. The dildo went crazy.

When he pulled out his fingers, he asked her, “What do we say?”

“Please…” she swallowed, and looked up at him from beneath heavy eyelids. “Please stick your fingers in my ass, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to come.”

“So you’re going to come when I stick these two fingers you sucked on deep in that tight little ass of yours, Betty?”

“Yes, sir… please…” Her plea was a moan.

Without saying another word, he reached behind her and without warning, after pushing her soaked panties out of the way, slipped his two wet fingers in her ass, and they slipped in easily because she had managed to spread her own juices all the way up there, and when his fingers entered her she pressed the dildo as deep as it would go inside her and her whole body stiffened and with a wail that she tried to contain Betty came, and came hard. Her ass squeezed his fingers rhythmically, and he guessed her pussy was doing exactly the same think to the thin dildo inside her.

When she had finished, Dee stood up and fixed his clothing, giving one last glance at Betty, who had collapsed into a fetal position on the rug with a satisfied grin on her face, her hands between her thighs as if to keep them warm. She was definitely fun to play with.

It had been a successful session. When he left Betty’s office, Dee had a game plan. He pulled out his phone, and texted 2am via an encrypted messaging application to a drop box number he had memorized.

He was ready to speak to Doctor MacKenzie now, and deal with whatever new crisis she was facing.

On his way back to his office, he saw Agent Eve Shawbank—Old Man Davenham’s little bitch—with her new partner, the young Daniel Malcolm.

Daniel Malcolm.

Dee almost snorted out loud. Rumors among the executive sphere was that Old Man Davenham himself had asked Control to recruit him. Why was anybody’s guess. And mysteries of that sort made Dee nervous.

Old Man Davenham was interested in Daniel Malcolm. And Dee wanted to know why.

He had been obsessed with Malcolm since learning why he had been recruited, and he had found nothing in his file that suggested a reason for Old Man Davenham’s interest. Nothing.

He had been recruited in the aftermath of Operation Cargyle, Shawbank’s operation to scrub the world of the impact of Doctor Thaddeus Cargyle’s foray into independent research. Shawbank had eliminated everyone involved, including Cargyle. Everyone except Malcolm.

Because Old Man Davenham wanted Malcolm.

But why?

Dee was surprised by what he was feeling. Resentment. Toward that kid, Daniel Malcolm. Here he was, Patrick Dee, youngest executive at ADCorp, about to embark on the most promising step of his career, and he was resentful of a kid barely out of college, barely out of diapers.

By the time he reached his office, Dee’s hard-won good mood had evaporated, and he was brooding again.

Patrick Dee did not drive himself home. The company provided him with a town car and a chauffeur. He did own a car, of course—several, in fact—but commuting was a pain most days. He did take a sportster out for a spin once in a while when the weather allowed it, getting to work in style. But most of the time, he was happy to rely on Steve to drive him from his home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. to ADCorp Headquarters in Northern Maryland and back.

Dee liked Steve. He was quiet, reliable, and a skilled driver. The kind of driver with whom Dee could actually get work done in the back seat without worrying about anything.

Steve, being a company man, was also discrete, veering on non-talkative. Which had turned out to be useful for Dee, and more than once pleasant to Steve. Steve was too low on the totem pole to have access to adjusted subjects. But once in a while, Dee shared. As far as Steve was concerned, Dee was an exceedingly successful ladies’ man. Or a frequenter of high-class prostitutes. And a twisted sicko to boot. Steve seemed to have no problem with any of that.

Dee pressed the intercom, never raising his eyes from the report Doctor MacKenzie had sent him during their phone conference. “Steve,” he said, “drop me off at MacMillian Consulting, will you?”

“Going to visit Mrs. Dee, sir?”

Did Dee imagine the tone of expectation in Steve’s voice? He must have, for Steve was too good to slip up that way.

“Indeed.”

The rest of the trip he spent in silence, looking out the window unable to get Daniel Malcolm out of his mind. He grabbed his tablet and ran through the young man’s file once more. There was nothing in it that looked out of place. The kid grew up in Connecticut, raised by a single mother, Kathryn Malcolm-Brown, after the death of the father in a laboratory fire at Columbia University when Malcolm was three years old. Uneventful childhood. Good grades in school, but not extraordinary. Typical teenager part-time jobs—grocery store clerk, some office work. Went to Darnell University to study Political Science. Ran into the Delta Iota Kappa fraternity which at the time—unknown to all—was harboring Doctor Thaddeus Cargyle. Having stolen a small vial of Serum and sensitive research documents when he disappeared, Cargyle had ensured that Investigation and Enforcement Division would never let him off the hook until that vial was recovered.

Dee had access to Agent Eve Shawbank’s report of her investigation and her termination of Cargyle, including the mess that he had caused by giving access to the adjustment technology to those stupid fraternity boys. That Cargyle had managed to achieved so much with so little astonished Dee, who would have much preferred that Cargyle had been returned alive. Part of him believed that Cargyle had made progress on Project Perennial—he had said he was on the verge of a breakthrough. But no, Shawbank had terminated him, and torched the fraternity house after recovering the adjusted girls.

Agent Shawbank had also documented how Daniel Malcolm had discovered that Cargyle was adjusting girls for the fraternity. In fact, Malcolm had been the one to lead Shawbank to Cargyle. Malcolm’s fiancée, Jennifer Hansen, had been taken, the catalyzing event from which everything else unfolded. According to Shawbank, Malcolm had been in the fraternity house when the Special Ops team from Investigation and Enforcement Division stormed it, but somehow he had escaped unharmed but for a broken arm.

And instead of terminating him, Shawbank had received the order from Control to recruit Malcolm. But Dee knew that the order had come from Old Man Davenham. But why? Why recruit him and not eliminate him? What sort of connections did the kid have?

“We’re here, sir.”

Dee looked up. Steve had stopped by the side of the building that towered on K Street: MacMillian Consulting, a medium-sized lobby group in Washington, D.C.

“Thanks Steve. You can go. I’ll hitch a ride with my wife back home.”

“Very well, sir,” said Steve, and now there was a definite note of disappointment in his voice. Dee did not comment upon it, but noted it. Steve might need to be reined in if he was becoming too eager.

Dee entered the lobby of MacMillian Consulting, nodding to the receptionist, who recognized him. “Good afternoon, Mister Dee.”

“Do you know if she’s busy?” There was no need for more precision.

“I’ll let her know you’re here. You can sign right in.”

Dee looked at her, appreciating her beauty. Whatever one though of MacMillian Consulting lobbying activities, they certainly hired the best eye candy.

“Have a pleasant day, Mister Dee.”

“Thank you.”

Dee’s wife was Chief Financial Officer at MacMillian Consulting. The bulk of her work was compliance with federal tax regulations, a topic that was guaranteed to induce drowsiness in the hardiest of people. Yet his wife could navigate that terrain with ease, if not pleasure. For her, numbers sang, she liked to say. And she found their music soothing.

He could hear her voice as he exited the elevator. She was screaming at someone. Dee grinned. His wife Samantha was the sweetest woman in the world until she was confronted by incompetence, usually in the shape of one of her employees.

“And next time I catch you messing up the accounting,” she was screaming, the door to her office open on purpose, “you’ll be out on your ass faster than you can say ‘my boss bitch-slapped me!’ You got that? Even if it’s on the smallest crappy unimportant account, even if it’s on a catering bill for the department’s lunch. Got it?” A pause. “I said, GOT IT?”

“Yes m’am,” came a sheepish voice from her office.

Dee exchanged a glance with his wife’s assistant. The older woman—matronly, but the most effective organizer Dee had ever met—shrugged as though Samantha Dee screaming at incompetence was a daily occurrence. Which it was not, thankfully for MacMillian Consulting.

Dee watched a red-faced young man emerged almost running from his wife’s office. Everyone studiously avoided looking at the young man, and he himself kept staring downward.

Dee looked at his wife’s assistant. “Do you think it’s safe?”

She shrugged, her face unreadable. “Depends. Did you screw up today?” He could never tell when she was joking.

“Let’s find out,” he said.

Samantha Dee, née Bingham, sat behind her desk with a satisfied look on her face, staring at her computer screen. She did not look up when he walked in with a cheesy “Hello honey.”

“I’m surrounded by idiots.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he replied, thinking back to the over-the-hill executives from his meeting earlier that day. “Though I haven’t tried to rip anyone a new hole yet.”

“With some of them, it’s the only way to get through.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She finally looked at him, her bright blue eyes a beacon of light in her soft face. Thinking of her—slim with short blonde hair and an easy smile—screaming in anger at a subordinate was always a difficult exercise, unless one had witnessed it in person.

“I just need a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go,” she told him.

“No problem.” He walked to the bookshelf and picked up her copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He continued from where he had left off the last time. He read it in five minutes spurts, whenever he found himself waiting in her office. Which was perfect, because that book was best digested in small increments. He was actively trying to find ways to apply its precepts to his role at ADCorp and his plans for the future.

Eventually, Samantha Dee stood up and walked around her desk and Dee glanced at her, appreciating as always the way her sharp power suit enhanced her already astonishing figure. She did not dress to be sexy, but there was no way to avoid it. She hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks. “Did I ever mention how I love when you come here and pick me up before we go out?”

“Only every other time I do it.” He smiled.

Dee admired his wife’s ass as she bent down to her desk to pick up some files to bring home. She did not use a tablet or a laptop. She liked hardcopy. He felt a stirring in his groin. He wondered whether any of her reports—especially those she took pains to berate—ever fantasized about trussing up her skirt and fucking her from behind.

“Sandra thinks you’re the greatest for doing that. Or the time you brought flowers. She thinks you’re the greatest husband ever,” she grinned. “I don’t have the heart to disabuse her.”

Dee made a face. “Sandra—she’s one of the accountants, right? Maybe I should bring her chocolates, next time.”

“You do that, and she’ll be eating out of your hand. And I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Maybe that’s my devious plan,” he said, arching his eyebrows theatrically. “Get someone else to sing my praises for me. Doing it yourself gets tiring after a while.”

Which elicited the laughter he was hoping for. He loved his wife’s laugh. “Shall we?” She lead him out of her office.

“Have a good night, Meave,” she told her assistant. “And don’t tell me what happens on Knights of Freedom tonight. I’m recording it since I won’t be able to watch it until this weekend.”

“I make no promises.”

Samantha grunted, but smiled at her assistant. Dee saluted her. On their way out, Samantha wished good night to everyone she met, with a personal touch for most of them. She was an excellent executive, and she was well-liked. She was tough and she expected perfection from everyone, but she expected the same from herself first and foremost.

“So where are we going?” she asked him in the elevator.

“I made some reservations at Pan’s.”

“Really? I’ve been wondering about it every since I walked by two weeks ago.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Did I? Completely forgot. Great, I’m going senile.”

“Huh, that’s not the lesson you were supposed to get out of that—you were supposed to go, ‘Wow, Patrick really does listen to me when I talk.’”

“But I already know you do.”

“Reinforcement, honey. Reinforcement.”

The doors opened on the parking garage. “Steve’s not giving us a ride?” she asked.

“Not tonight, no. I thought we could take your car. If you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s okay. But you drive. I have no wish to navigate D.C. traffic tonight.”

“Happy to.”