This story is the stand-alone continuation of the
Pixie, Joy and Me
, and expands on several of the characters featured in my story
The Loving Porn Queen
-- specifically, Mel -- the Pixie, and Doug, her husband. The dedicated reader may notice a few details differ between this and the earlier story (Porn Queen, especially Chapters 4 and 5). I invite you to see if you can find them. The concept of 'love languages' in Chapter 1 of this story comes from Gary Chapman's book,
The Five Languages of Love.
My thanks to Jeriscol for his editing.
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"I'm pregnant -- again!"
These earth-shattering words came from my lover and wife of four years, Melissa, otherwise known as the Pixie, who stood in the doorway of our kitchen with a grin on her face from ear to ear. She stopped waving the wand from a pregnancy test kit around just enough so I could see the positive indication.
I went and hugged the Pixie, celebrating our joyous moment. We had wanted another child and, with very little effort, had apparently been successful in our quest. In that hug I thought back to the moments that brought us to this happy day.
The Pixie earned her nickname in high school, even earlier, when she ended up being the smallest person in the school and also developed mischievous and mysterious ways about her. Later I was to find the nickname was well deserved.
Somehow she had adopted social standards that varied widely from what the rest of society called normal behavior. She was a rebel. She'd over dress; she'd under dress. When hair was in, she cut hers. When short hair was in, she got hair extensions. A streak of color in her hair as a youth was not at all unusual, but at a time when only the most daring did such a thing. When her classmates wore sneakers, she wore high heels. Those were her expressions in dress.
Mel was a rebel in her thinking and actions too. She found Thoreau and Emerson fascinating, a unique stance amongst her four hundred classmates. She excelled in every one of her classes, yet exuded a devil-may-care attitude. She chose friends irrespective of whatever social clique they might belong to, her criteria being a feeling of rapport and empathy with the person. When asked, she said she belonged to her own clique and no one else was allowed in.
She lost her virginity years before most of her classmates discovered sex. She wasn't the least bit promiscuous, yet she confessed a number of liaisons before we met that honed her skills as an outstanding lover.
I'm Doug, her husband and devotee. I worship the ground the Pixie walks on and never fail to tell her how much I love her and how glad I am she chose me as her 'soul mate'. I'm a hunky guy, I'm told, and together we make a rather striking couple. I'm a six-footer, standing tall and proud to have the Pixie beside me. I have dusty blond hair, a muscular body, a square jaw, deep set eyes that I'm told lures other females into my reaches, a grand sense of humor, and a disposition that allows about anything at all to happen around me, particularly by the Pixie -- and now a two year old named Ashley that may end up owning more of my heart than the Pixie does.
Melissa -- a.k.a. The Pixie - stands five feet even and, when not pregnant and bulging with child, weighs in at a trim one hundred pounds. Mel is a gorgeous blond with an unusually shapely body that turns male heads when she walks by. Her greatest asset is -- no, not her ass -- her breasts. Yes, the Pixie is blessed with a pair of tits that even today, after nursing one child, still amaze all within sight of her beauty. Her breasts are perfectly shaped and erect -- even alert -- as they sway gently to her natural body motions.
Mel knows she has been greatly blessed with these resources, and has always used her body to entice and sometimes tease others she's come in contact with. She's a bit of an exhibitionist. Thus, she dresses mostly in tops or blouses that show her cleavage and cling to her upper body. I was one of those individuals she caught, being drawn into her lair and eventually captured, although I still think I was more the pursuer and wooer of this wonderful woman.
Mel and I started dating from her first day on campus as a freshman. I was a junior. I fell in love with Mel immediately; it was love at first sight. As our initial dating progressed she fell for me too, but then I learned about her unique philosophy about relationships. One result of that was that Mel kept dating other guys, even though we seemed to be building something permanent. The other result was that she set me up to date her roommate, Joy. Mel, Joy and I were a threesome for almost four years; a time period that changed my views about life, love and relationships forever. Not surprisingly, Mel was the thought leader of our threesome when it came to defining what our relationship would be like.
I lucked into a wonderful summer job the year before I graduated from Ohio State. I became the property manager for the complex of apartments where I lived and it turned into a part-time job for all of my last year. The apartment became the base not only for me, but also for Mel and Joy, my two girlfriends at the time, right up until they graduated. I got to hire both of them to work as painters, decorators and handymen for the company. We all worked hard and made a lot of money, but more importantly we made some real positive changes on the place we lived and later on many of the properties the company we worked for owned.
That first college summer job at the apartments, and then my part-time work during the school year, turned into a job as property manager for over twenty similar properties around Columbus owned by Steele Property Trust or SPT. They paid well and the bonuses and shares in the real estate investment trust were outstanding. Further, I was given a lot of encouragement to take risks and be creative in how I approached the job of managing and marketing the properties I was assigned.
After only two years with the company, I'd been promoted and given responsibility for all of the property the REIT owned, not just residential but also commercial. The honor was amazing for someone my age; I was only twenty-four. Gray Steele, the CEO of the REIT, told me I was a boy wonder and wanted to keep me happy. He liked me and rewarded me generously with titles, salary, bonuses, cars, perks, and promotions.
Our threesome dissolved just before the girls graduated. Joy, our partner and lover, had found someone else with greater chemistry that she felt she needed to be with. With regrets but support, we wished her well. Mel and I married in an unusual wedding ceremony, of course, shortly after her graduation.
Mel distinguished herself early on, first as a painter and erstwhile decorator and then as the decorator and designer for all of SPT. She shined in her new position and everyone in the company loved her and respected her advice and decisions, even when many of them were extreme and unheard of in real estate circles. She transformed property after property, often on a lean budget, and occupancy rates went right up to one hundred percent and stayed there. After her graduation Mel became a full-time employee of SPT and she too started getting a generous compensation package and benefits.
Two years later, when Mel was pregnant with our first 'spin-off' Pixie, we cashed in our savings and all of our units or shares we had in SPT and built an unusual, beautiful and large modern home halfway between Columbus and Delaware, Ohio on two acres of land. We were able to put a lot of sweat equity into the home as well as get our special SPT discounts on many of the building costs, appliances and finishes for the home. We ended with a multi-million dollar home on a fantastic site that hadn't cost anything near that much to build.
A few months after the house was completed Mel and I settled into young adulthood as a devoted and idyllic 'couple' with a new baby, home and mortgage, two cars, and a couple of great jobs.
I'd love to be able to say our marriage was idyllic and that we never argued or had a fight, but I'd be lying. We had our disagreements and several of them became rather heated and lasted many weeks. The major source of discord was how I spent my time and how I apparently was or wasn't devoted to my new family.
Mel wanted quality time and attention, not only for herself but also for Ashley, the youngest Pixie in the family at that time. She'd rant and rave about how I'd forgotten how to romance her and how attentive I'd been during our college years and courtship. She contended I'd fallen out of love with her and that our marriage was doomed. She told me often how empty she felt. Our sex life went to zero -- nil -- nada. I barely noticed.
I suffered the pangs of high tension between family -- who I loved dearly, and the need to meet monthly mortgage payments as well as credit card payments that were becoming staggering, as our family's needs rose. I felt under great pressure and kept looking for relief in some way, either through making more money or by drastically cutting our family's expenses. I felt I had to put in long hours, usually seven days a week, to meet the demands of my job and to earn the generous bonuses that came our way periodically. I also carped on Mel constantly to stop using her credit cards in such a reckless way. Besides all this, I started to experience a wide range of stress effects none of which, fortunately, that were irreversible; I had a constant cold, sore muscles all the time, a nervous tic in my eye, and a love for wine that exceeded even what I knew made sense. Over time, I avoided going home since I knew Mel would just attack with criticism and condemnation.
Fortunately, we sought professional help but at first I wasn't that convinced outside help would work for us. We started weekly sessions with a marriage counselor, who also gave us homework in between these meetings such as reading and discussing a book and then reporting the results back to the counselor.
At first, the counseling added in one more stress factor to my life. Somehow, I now had to find not only the two hours it took to get to and go through the one-hour counseling session, but also had to find time to read a book and then discuss it with Mel. I couldn't duck any of this without being the ultimate bad guy that submarined my own marriage. Not only that, my parents got wind of our difficulties and sided with Mel; they got on my case about 'working at the relationship' and correcting my errant ways.
I have to admit that I felt better about our marriage after only two weeks of counseling. Moreover, our sex life started to revive. The counseling experience was transformational and changed how Mel and I interacted and communicated, and it ultimately changed how I worked.
The counselor was amazed at the unconventional viewpoints about relationships that Mel and I had, particularly Mel. He told us frankly that he'd never seen a couple like us. I can still remember his mouth hanging open in near disbelief as Mel and I told him about the four years that Mel, Joy and I had been a threesome. She never said one word in judgment of how we'd lived, and in fact, I think she empathized with the emotions we shared with her.
Early on, the counselor had us prepare a family budget and start to allocate our funds on a monthly basis to the areas that were important to us. Mel agreed to hold to the budget and this relieved a lot of my stress aimed at reducing our debt.
After some rational thinking about my job, I hired a 'Number Two' to help me manage the properties at SPT. Gray Steele, the CEO of SPT, supported 'un-stressing' my life and welcomed Jake Hardisty, the guy I hired, into the company with enthusiasm. Jake struggled to get on board, and gradually over the next couple of months I could feel a lot of the tension and stress from my job easing as he assumed many of my duties. Soon, I had our weekends back with only an occasional telephone call dealing with some minor crisis somewhere amidst our holdings.
Mel and I also discovered that we had different ways we wanted to be loved. I needed to be loved in two primary ways: first, through our physical relationship and second, through supportive words.
Physical touch is too easily laughed off as sex, particularly from a guy's point of view. Yet what I really needed was physical gestures from Mel that signaled she loved me; for instance, a touch on the shoulder, a hug, a passionate kiss, or a snuggle in bed by her warm, naked body.
