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Galen was dumbfounded by Helen's behavior. Turning to his housemates, he remarked in an offhanded manner, "Wow. She's pretty upset...
Both women gave him that time-honored look that only a woman close to a man's heart can give, the one which carries the non-verbal message: I can't believe I love such a total idiot!
"Yeah, it's almost as if her boyfriend dumped her!" Justine replied, dryly.
After a short, but uncomfortable silence, Angel softly began, "Master, I think he just did..."
"Hmmm? What do you mean?"
"Well, you just told her you were moving away, and that Justine is having your baby...'
"So?"
"Master, we think she had plans for you, of which you were unaware," she replied carefully, "plans which were based on your continuing to be nearby, and didn't allow for your having relationships with other women." Justine vigorously nodded her agreement
Galen stared at her uncomprehendingly, but soon the light dawned. He sat down and rested his head in his hands.
"Shit! I never saw this coming... what do I do now?"
"Do you want her?"
"I don't know... it never crossed my mind that she might want me!"
"Master," Justine interjected, "you should at least talk to her..."
"What if she does want a relationship with me? I can't do that now... I have both of you..."
"That's right!" Angel declared, "You have us! We belong to you... not the other way around. There is nothing about your relationship with us that precludes your have other relationships, with other women... even intimate relationships."
"You mean you would be okay with the idea of me... er... dating other women?"
"Absolutely," Angel replied.
"No problem," Justine echoed earnestly. "Date them, sleep with them, fuck them, make babies with them... hell, marry them if you want. Just please don't forget that we belong to you! If you decided you didn't want us anymore, it would break our hearts..."
"... or worse..." Angel added soberly.
Galen was stunned. He understood, conceptually, what the ladies were saying, but couldn't really wrap himself around it emotionally. It was foreign to his entire experience with interpersonal relationships.
There was an awkward silence as he tried, and once again failed, to understand women. He threw up his hands and declared, "I still don't know what to do about it!"
Angel shrugged and asked, "Putting aside the question of whether you want to possess her, do you really want her out of your life forever? Didn't you say she was a good friend? Are you willing to lose her altogether?"
"No.. yes... no... hell, you know what I mean!"
"I'm not sure we do..." Justine ventured, "but I still think you need to talk to her, and pretty quick, too. If you don't, I believe that you will lose her, not just as a lover!"
"She's not my lover!"
"Maybe not," Angel retorted, "but she wants to be."
"You two are impossible!"
"No Master," they responded in unison, "we just see the situation a little more clearly than you right now."
It was nearly impossible for Galen to get angry at them, or stay that way, and he knew he was losing the... argument. Since when do slaves argue with the Master?
The two girls continued their gentle urging until he gave in, so only minutes after Helen had fled his apartment, he found himself standing alone, in front of her door and ringing the bell.
"Are we still friends?" he asked, quickly, as soon as she opened the door. He held out his arms and walked toward her. She didn't move, but she allowed him to enfold her.
The moment she felt herself cocooned in his arms, she burst into tears and buried her face in his neck. It took Galen many long minutes of soothing words and stroking her back before she calmed down enough to breathe normally. Even then, there were occasional sobs, gasps, and sniffles.
He walked her over to her sofa, and looked around for some tissues. Finding none, he went to her bathroom and retrieved the box that she kept on the vanity. Returning to the sofa, he sat with her, and handed her tissues as she dried her tears, cleaned her face, and blew her nose.
When she seemed more in control of herself, he asked "Do you want to tell me what's going on? I don't understand what you're so upset about..."
She stared off into space, refusing to meet his eyes. Taking a deep breath, and heaving a sigh, she said, "I'm sorry. I'm just being silly. I... I've just had a crush on you since we first met... I know I never told you. I guess I thought I had time...
"Now you have a new girlfriend... no, two new girlfriends! ... and they're both so beautiful, and I'm so plain... and one of them is going to have your baby! Time ran out for me... and now you're going to move away and leave me all alone!" She burst into tears again, and for the briefest of instants, Galen simply sat there dumbfounded. Very quickly, he regained his composure, and gathered her into his arms again.
"I'm so sorry, baby... I just didn't' know... and you're just as desirable..." he murmured.
He held her for the longest time, silently stroking her hair and her back, until she calmed herself again. As she did, she began to feel somewhat uncomfortable in his embrace, and gently pushed against his chest. He understood her wish, and easily allowed her to move away from him.
"So... are we still friends... or not?" he challenged.
"Yes," she sniffed, looking at him balefully. "I guess so. Not that it'll matter a whole lot, with you moving away..."
"Of course it'll matter," he snorted, "I don't have so many real friends that I can afford to lose one!"
She dropped her gaze to the floor again, and observed, "You've got those girls, and a baby on the way. You already said that you're moving, as soon as you can find a house. When are you going to have time to spend with friends? I know you're a good guy... I just don't see where Mark and I could fit into your life... or your schedule, for that matter!"
He reached over and tilted her chin up, so that he could look into her eyes.
"Helen, I'm not sure at this point what I should want, in terms of a relationship with you. I've avoided looking at my own feelings on the matter, because I always thought you wanted to keep things at the friendship level..."
"And now it's too late for anything else," she interrupted.
"Maybe," he answered, "and maybe not." He held up his hand to forestall a hostile rejoinder, and continued. "However that may work out, I still need friends. I'm not prepared to let you disappear completely from my life, and I'm not prepared to give up the time you've let me spend with Mark. What I am prepared to do, is commit to making time to spend with you both, regardless of where I live."
"You're going to have responsibilities as a father, and I'm not going to be just one of your girlfriends," she declared haughtily. "Even if I were willing, what would your women say about that?" she demanded.
"Why don't you just ask them?" he challenged. "I'll even let you talk to them right now, by yourself... Yes! Let's do that! I need to go to the office anyway. Come back to my apartment with me. You'll know if I say anything to influence them. I'll get my stuff, and head out, and you can talk with them, while I'm gone."
He stood and walked to her door. Looking back, he said "Well?"
"I don't know..."
"You won't know, until you act. Let's do it now! Let's dispose of any obstacle to our continued friendship!" Returning to her, he took her hand and looked her in the eye. "Is it worth it or not?"
She sighed and said, "Yeah, I guess it is," as she let him pull her along.
Entering the apartment, he didn't see either of the girls, so he shouted "Front and center!" Fairly soon thereafter, both of his concubines came barreling out of the bedroom, breathing hard.
"I need to head for the office," he told them. "I'll be gone for about two hours. Helen wants to visit with you some more, while I'm gone. She's been my best friend for as long as I've lived here. Answer truthfully any and all questions she may have."
Having said his piece, he left the room to collect his briefcase and laptop. When he passed through on his way out, all three women were still standing where he'd left them, looking mystified.
He gave Angel and Justine each a quick kiss, and hugged Helen's unresisting form on his way out.
After Galen left so abruptly, Helen found herself at a loss. She faced two women with very expectant looks on their faces, and she was near-terminally embarrassed about the questions she wanted them to answer. Never having backed down from a confrontation before, however, she decided that she didn't want to establish any new precedents, so she just plunged in.
"I suppose that the most important thing I want you to tell me, is how you would feel about Galen and I continuing our friendship."
Justine looked at Angel, who gave a small nod, then she turned back to Helen and said, "No. You are wrong on two counts." As her target reeled in shock, she continued, "First, it's not important how we feel about it. You and Galen will have whatever kind of relationship you mutually agree upon, and we will accept it.
"Second, it's not his friendship you want, nor does he look at you as only a friend. You both want to become lovers, and so, in some fashion, you should. How you go about it will define your relationship." Having said her piece, she fell silent, and held a steady gaze upon Helen.
"How can you say that?" Helen flared. "You're carrying his baby! Of course it's important how you feel about his relationships with other women!" Whirling and pointing at Angel, she continued "And you! You sleep with him too! Not to mention doing his housework and cooking. How can you not care? How can you not feel that you have a right to object?"
Angel smiled and said gently, "He has problems with that too. As we keep telling him, we are his, not vice versa. Our relationship with him, is that he takes care of us, and we do what he says. It is just good fortune that we can love him too, and know that he loves us."
"But how can you be sure that he'll give you the time and attention you need, when he shares himself with others? I don't understand how even two of you can feel that it's okay, much less how you might be willing to share with others..."
"It's pretty simple," Justine said with a giggle. "We all know that even one horny woman can fuck any ten men into the ground... and might do so under the right conditions, but we also know that she doesn't really need to. It's not even a desirable outcome, because she ends up sore for so long afterwards. Unless you're an unusual person, you probably don't actually want intercourse more than two or three times a week, but you need cuddling a lot more often. Fortunately cuddling can be a very satisfactory group activity, not to mention that there are some fun forms of sex that can involve more than one woman!
"Most men, on the other hand, are usually able and quite willing to give a typical woman far more sex than she needs, or even wants, so sharing that part of their life isn't as big a deal as you imagine. If you ask for what you want, and make yourself available for what he wants, and you're both happy. It's actually more likely to be satisfactory, if he also has someone else to take care of.
"The more important issue to us, isn't the sex," Angel interrupted. "It's that he is here to protect us and tell us what to do. I don't mean in nauseating detail, but in general, what needs to happen, and when. When he does that he removes tons of stress from our lives. When we satisfy his needs and meet his demands, it makes us feel that we are important and valuable to him. When he is pleased with us, it reassures us that he will remain here to be our Master."
Justine paused a moment before concluding, "That's not to say we don't like or want the sex... we do! It's wonderful, but it isn't the main thing... and like Angel said, it's just our good fortune that he loves us, and that it's so easy for us to love him. None of that will change just because he continues a relationship with you, even if that relationship changes to something more intense."
The trio fell silent for a while, Helen wrestling with her own thoughts, while Angel and Justine waited patiently for a response. Eventually Helen broke out of her reverie to say, "I'm beginning to see your point, and you both seem to be sweet girls, but I have to tell you: if Galen and I were to become lovers, I don't think I could be happy with him having you two as well, and it's hard to accept that you wouldn't have the same issues." Pausing first, she continued dejectedly, "I don't see him giving you up either, so I guess I'll have to settle for his friendship."
"Your choice... and your loss!" Justine shrugged. "But friendship is better than nothing, and I hope we can be your friends too." Angel nodded her agreement.
With the conversation flagging again, Helen felt compelled to keep things going.
"So how do you... arrange things... so that you each get a fair share of attention?" she asked.
"Well, first of all," Angel responded, "we don't 'arrange' things. We each do our best to please him, in the ways that we know how, and we are always on the alert for new ways. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't any different from what any woman does for her man, if she loves him."
"His response to that," Justine said, picking up the lead, "is that he lets us know he is pleased, in a variety of ways, very few of which actually involve sex. As far as the sex is concerned, he's more concerned about equity and fairness than we are, so there's no reason to squabble over time in the sack with him. Of course, when he's been away for awhile, we both get impatient... but he's very good at reassuring us and meeting our needs."
"Yes," Angel added. "He actually pays each of us more attention, that way, than either of us needs. He also helps us manage our lives, by making the hard decisions, but his concern with our happiness and well-being won't let him exclude us from the process.
"It is very difficult for a submissive, like we are, to live on our own. We are always concerned that any decision we might make could be the wrong one. We know there are consequences to our decisions, but we can't predict them, or know whether they are positive or negative, nor how severe they might be.
"Having a Dom to make those decisions frees us to simply live our lives, without stress, without fault, without regret - our only responsibility is to do as we are told, and there is great freedom and peace of mind for us in that."
"Aren't you afraid that such a person might take advantage of you, or treat you badly?" Helen asked, amazed.
"It would be foolish to ignore that there are such people in the world," Justine answered, "but one has to weigh the possibility of abuse against the certainty of self-doubt and stress, brought on by having responsibility for making your own way in the world. Some of us are only marginally capable of the latter, and others are not at all.
"In submitting to a Master, you do the same thing that women have to do all the time - you make a decision and pray that it's the right one. If it is, then all your problems pretty much go away. If not, you're in big trouble. Either way, you only have to make the one decision, and everything else is taken care of.
"Angel and I were very fortunate to have been found by Galen, rather than someone more predatory. We'd have had no defense against them."
"You certainly were," Helen observed, shaking her head. "And it's certainly a different outlook from what I'm used to." she sighed. "But if we're going to be friends, I think we should get to know more about each other..."
In general agreement on this point, they spent the remainder of the afternoon, until Mark returned home, doing just that.
I hope that wasn't a huge mistake! Galen observed, as he guided the rental car through the tangled streets of Atlanta, worried mainly that Helen might decide to cut all ties with him.
Arriving at the drop-off location, he checked in and requested a ride back to his office. His driver was a twenty-something female... first impression indicated a college girl, underclassman, trying to make some spending money. A pretty face, but the uniform did nothing for her figure. Where did that come from? he wondered. Have I become a complete horn-dog?
Despite his internal self-flagellation, he managed to keep up with the banal conversation that she offered. No doubt she'd been trained that it was necessary for good customer relations. Dropping him at the front door of his office building, she gave him a dazzling smile, and said, "Hope to see you again soon!"
Taken by surprise, he responded with his own smile, "Perhaps you will. Have a good day." Then he turned and entered the building.
Once inside, he began to form a mental checklist of the things he needed to accomplish there. First on the list was the need to corner his supervisor about several issues that had suddenly become important. Bruce wasn't at his desk, but the evidence suggested that he would not be far away.
After considering the probabilities, Galen decided that his best chance of finding his quarry was in the secretarial pool. The company had hired a new girl, just before he left on assignment, and she was cute! Knowing Bruce as he did, it seemed likely that he'd be hanging around, trying to impress the new hire.
Rounding the corner of the hallway into the secretarial pool, Galen knew he'd gotten it right in one guess. His target was facing away from him, probably flirting with the secretary, but was identifiable by the loud shirt he wore. As he strode up, Galen announced presence by loudly asking, "Hey Bruce! How's the wife and three kids?"
Bruce whirled on him, and if looks could kill, Galen would have been cold on the slab. "You know very well I only have one kid!" he retorted. "Is there something you want, besides making my life difficult?"
"Actually, there are several things. Let's go to your office so that we can settle them without interruption."
"Why bother? You're gonna play hell convincing me to spend any money. Right now, I don't know why you might think I'd care what you want!"
"All right. Fine! I'll just fill out my trip report and turn it in. Then Monday, I'll go directly to Charlie about things."
"You'd go over my head?" Bruce screamed.
"You bet your ass I would, if you don't give me the consideration I feel I deserve! I don't even know why I bother trying to talk to you. I should have just gone straight to the partners, first. I'd bet that they're interested in an extra quarter million dollars a month, in net profits. If not, then perhaps their competitors would be!"
"Let's not be hasty," Bruce replied, calming almost instantly. "Come on into my office and tell me what's on your mind..."
It had ultimately taken a repeat of the threat to take it up with the partners, before Bruce agreed to introduce the concept at the next senior staff meeting.
Galen had to threaten him yet again, in order to get acceptance for his demand to be at the presentation. Galen's idea wasn't earth-shatteringly new, but it did involve a major paradigm shift in the way the company did business.
The company operated a customer service office that provided for technical support in the event of an equipment or software failure at the customer site. The weakness of the program was that it depended upon the customer to follow industry-standard best practices in operating that equipment and software. Almost none of their clients actually made any effort to do that. As a result, the technical support staff was often required to travel long distances and spend inordinate amounts of time, under emergency conditions, in order to restore a customer site to service.
Galen's intention was to implement a pilot program, wherein the company would assume the entire responsibility for operating and maintaining the equipment at the customer's site. In doing so, the company could provide on-site technical expertise, implement a reasonable level of system redundancy, and enforce best operational practices, including sufficient offline and offsite system backups to assure continuance of operations.
The advantages to the client were obvious. Rather than having to continue supporting their own staff and facilities (who weren't doing the job well, anyway), the client would simply pay a flat annual fee for the service. In return, they got a guarantee of system security and availability, for the duration of the contract.
Such a program would, of course, increase the company's liabilities, but the increase in profits would more than make up for it. By integrating itself more tightly into their clients' business operations, the company would become indispensable, as well; assuring continued future revenue from those clients. Furthermore, if the program were a success, it would allow a reduction of resources dedicated to the current technical support program, and thus a reduction in costs associated with that program.
Bruce didn't really like the idea, because it would erode the importance of his position in the company food chain; none the less, he knew that if he balked, he would be left out in the cold, when the decision was made. He would, in fact introduce the idea, but Galen would have to watch him like a hawk, to insure that he didn't try to sabotage it.
Having finished his business with Bruce, Galen filled out and turned in his travel report and expense claim, then signed out for the day. He proceeded to the parking garage, to reclaim his assigned vehicle, and found his space occupied by an interloper, another junk heap. Returning to the office, he ran Bruce down again and demanded an explanation.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," he answered, grinning. "Motor Pool decided that repairing the heap you were driving wouldn't be cost-effective. They scrapped it."
"So is the piece of crap in my space a replacement?" Galen growled.
"No, your replacement won't be here until Wednesday. That car belongs to the new secretary. Since you weren't going to need the parking space, I let her have it."
"She knows it's a temporary arrangement, doesn't she?"
"Well... I didn't actually make a point of that..."
"Bruce, you're a slime bag. You know that, don't you?"
"Well, if you piss me off, it could be permanent..."
"Don't make yourself look like a worse idiot than you are. You know that company cars get parking spaces before private vehicles."
"I don't suppose you have to have a company car, then."
"Yeah, and I don't suppose I have to go out on any more service calls, either, asshole! Now do want to continue this conversation over in HR, or do you just want to call it done?"
"Okay, Galen, you win this one, but I'm going to be watching your ass..."
"Bruce, when haven't you been watching my ass? I'm beginning to worry about your sexual preferences! Never mind. I'm going to catch a cab and spend what's left of my weekend at home. Good bye!"
When Galen arrived, Angel and Justine were in a pretty good mood, having defused the ticking time-bomb of, first, their neighbor's righteous indignation, then her jealousy and despair. Helen, herself, had long previously concluded her visit with the ladies, and returned to her apartment to care for her son.
As he entered the apartment, his stomach noisily reminded him that breakfast had been long ago and far away, and that he'd also missed lunch. Angel laughed, and grabbing his hand, drew him into the kitchen, where she proceeded to prepare him a large sandwich of roast beef on foccacia with the works, and a large glass of iced tea. As he ate, he remembered his responsibilities to the women.
"Have you and Justine eaten?" he queried.
"Yes Master, we both had a nice meal at lunch time. We waited for you, for awhile, but when you went over half an hour late, we agreed that your orders meant that we should go ahead and eat," she replied, nervously.
"You did well," he grinned. "That's exactly what I wanted." Taking her hand, he drew her in for a quick kiss. Noticing Justine hanging out by the door, he motioned her over, and kissed her too.
"Now, what do you think about us finding a new car?" he ventured. "I'm thinking about something large enough to hold all of us, and safe enough to trust with my most precious possessions..."