I was hired to be the test manager for a very large public sector project to design, build and implement a new city government court case management system. The system was to be an end-to-end software application configuration, starting on one end with the software processes behind officers issuing tickets, warrant checks, through the entire judicial process, jail, release, and everything software in-between. A large team of consultants, myself included, teamed with dozens of subject-matter experts from the city in a co-development effort to design the software architecture and applications. The project was located on an entire floor of a city office building. Every inner wall was removed to promote an open project collaboration. The project was scheduled to last 5 years and it proved to be the most fun, most interesting, and greatest learning experience I've had in my career.
I became engrossed in the project, truly loving every minute of work during the lengthy 2 year architectural design cycle. Once software development started, code being slung, new faces were brought into the project to assume various key roles. Since I was the test manager, I needed to know every single aspect of the immense system functional behavior, as it was being built. All of the functionality needed to be documented from end to end, so a team of documentation experts was brought in. I was elected to work with the documentation team, since I knew the most about what they needed to capture. I was to spend 2 hours every morning with the 4-person team, then we would split up and do our stuff for the rest of the day. They would produce the documentation, I would work with my team of testers in validating the system behavior.
The docs team was made up of two men and two women. They were professional, courteous, very sharp, and seemed to be extremely good in what they were hired to do. We made a good, dynamic group for the time we spent together. I would walk them through a piece of system functionality that I projected onto a smartboard screen, showing them all the possible routes a user could take through the system, answering their questions, and they would go off and create the user manuals and technical manuals and whatever else they needed to document. We got along great together. We worked hard but we also joked around, had fun, kidded, and really enjoyed our working relationship. Of course we got to know each other personally too.
One of the guys, Lawrence, was married for a long time and although he was deeply religious, still shared some risqué humor. The other guy, Tavares, was younger and engaged to a lovely young lady. He was kinda quiet. The team lead was Gretchen, who was in her mid 50s and obviously very much in love with her husband; pictures of the two of them scattered around her desk. She talked about him, their children and grandchildren every chance she got. I envied her for her life happiness. And then there was Kelly.
I felt a physical attraction to Kelly almost right away. Where I was tall, 6'2", she was short, barely 5'0", if that. The top of her head was well beneath my chin. I'm not skinny but more lean than muscular, with broad shoulders, around 205 lbs. Kelly was not thin but not at all unappealing, weighing around 140 very sexy lbs. Lovely shoulder-length auburn hair, big beautiful blue eyes, a gorgeous round face, plus-sized derriere that looked so sensual when she moved, and really large boobs that stood out on her short frame. She wore pretty dresses that displayed just a hint of cleavage, enough to make me wonder what the rest of her looked like. Kelly, like me, was married, but her home was 200 miles away. She took the job on the project because it paid nearly twice as much as she'd ever earned before. She rented a small apartment downtown that was a quick cab ride to our project office and took the 'superbus' home after work on Friday late afternoons, returning Sunday evenings. Kelly was around 10 years younger than me, but her spouse was a dozen years older. She spoke fondly of him although I could tell something was missing in their relationship. She could probably see something absent in my marital relationship too. I think we're both emotionally transparent.
Everything on the project was picking up steam. It might have been running a little bit behind the projected timelines, but that wasn't due to lack of anyone's effort. I'd been on the project for around 3 years by this point. Still a devoted family man but becoming increasingly frustrated in my marriage, primarily sexual frustration. Intimate moments with my wife Janet had just about completely disappeared. In the past 3 years it felt like we'd had sex at most a dozen times. It was probably less than that. Nothing spontaneous at all. She just wasn't interested. I didn't suspect her of having any extracurricular bedroom activities. She had entered menopause, complete with frequent hot flashes that made her at times truly physically miserable. My heart went out to her in her misery, but I was still very much alive, with strong physical urges. We were down to what I like to call milestone sex: birthday, father's day, anniversary. It was obvious that she didn't even enjoy the experiences anymore. She did it for me, a sense of wifely duty. I appreciated it but at the same time felt empty and hollow, unfulfilled.
So here was Joe, now entering his early 50s, still with a very robust libido. Not exactly a perfect bedroom match with the wife anymore. Oh, but we used to be. A dozen years ago we still had sex 2 or 3 times a week. Spontaneous. Sometimes crazy. But those days were gone and likely never to return. I still loved Janet and would not leave her. She's a good person, a loving and caring mom, just not into sex anymore. I still had my desires, and frequently found myself fantasizing about Kelly during my moments alone. I wondered how soft her lips were, what her touch would feel like, how her large breasts would feel in my strong hands, how hard her nipples would get if I paid attention to them, her big beautiful ass, how wet did she get when she was aroused, if she moaned when a stiff erection slid between those gorgeous globes on her chest, oh yeah I fantasized about Kelly every chance I got. This was not healthy considering we worked so closely together. She made it even more difficult on me because she came over to my workstation often to ask questions for which she needed the answers to plug in gaps in her documentation. She'd lean against my desk and I'd look up into her big blue eyes, notice the sensual swell of her breasts, get teased by her cleavage, smell her tantalizing perfume, and had to fight back inner desires to just grab her and kiss her. Fortunately Kelly's desk was on the opposite side of the floor from mine. I was really grateful for this because the distraction of having her nearby all the time at the office would have been more maddening than it already was.
I knew that Kelly smoked sometimes, even though she used mints after to mask the smell. It wasn't too noticeable so it wasn't particularly displeasing to be close to her. And we worked closely together. Every morning when we had our knowledge sharing sessions, she sat next to me. A teeny bit closer than might be appropriate but not too close for anyone else on the team to notice or gossip about.
The city project office was located in a part of the downtown district that wasn't exactly upscale. A large homeless shelter was just a couple blocks away. At just about any point of the day, if you looked outside you'd see anywhere from 1 or 2 to several homeless folks milling about or briefly resting under the large covered area in front of the office building, seeking shade from the often sweltering sun. One afternoon Kelly came over to ask a couple questions. She seemed tentative, unhappy, which was really unusual for her. When I asked if anything was wrong, she said that she had to visit the building security office earlier that day because a couple of homeless men harassed her during a smoke break outside at lunchtime. This got me pretty riled up, so I told her I would be her 'bodyguard' on her smoke breaks if my schedule permitted. Just swing by and get me and I would join her outside. This is when the business relationship between Kelly and I started to turn into something more than just that.
