For The Greater Good 1

Beginning at an early age I heard the old adage that "life is strange." It wasn't until I was thirty two years old before I gave it any more thought than any other adage, such as "a bulldog can whip a skunk but it's not worth it," and "a clear conscience is the sign of a bad memory." Maybe I should have.

A little background is necessary before I tie the old adage to my life.

**************

I'm Kurt Bronson. I had a typical suburban America childhood, the oldest son of a fireman and a teacher. I had a younger brother, Tom, and an older sister, Jill. We had a strong family unit, we all got along, we did all of the things that normal families do, and we had better relationships with each other than most of my friends and acquaintances did with theirs. I was especially close to Tom and Jill – we always had each other's backs throughout school, and even afterward.

Tom got married to his High School sweetheart Melinda when he was twenty and I was best man and Jill a bridesmaid. Unfortunately my father died a painful death from a rare form of cancer called HDGC before Jill got married so I gave her away when she married Bill, and Tom was a groomsman and his wife Melinda a bridesmaid. After Jill's wedding Mom regularly asked when I was going to meet the right woman.

I wasn't any smarter than my siblings, but luckier (and the sport I was good in had more money), so I got more education. I got a football scholarship to one of the best universities in the Midwestern part of the U. S. I was a six feet three inch, 245 pound tight end. The college was more famous for its journalism, business (both undergraduate and graduate), biomedical engineering, and medical schools, than it was for football, so I started my freshman year. I still fantasize that I would have made it in the NFL were it not for the knee injury my sophomore year that ended my playing days. It ended up working out fine, for me, however, since I still had my scholarship and enough free time so that I did well enough in my business major to get admitted to the graduate business school. I probably had an average social life, with a couple of reasonably long romantic relationships once I was no longer playing football, but I didn't meet the "right" woman. That is until my last year of graduate school.

Ashley Bronson – yeah, the same last name as mine when I met her, though no relation – maybe that should have clued me into "life is strange" – was getting her PhD in biomedical engineering. When I first ran into her – literally, sprawling her books and laptop but fortunately not harming either – I thought that she was the most intriguing looking woman I had ever seen in my life. When instead of getting pissed at me she made me buy her a coffee to apologize I was shocked to say the least.

During perhaps the most bizarre first twenty minute conversation I had ever had with anyone in my life, while we sipped lattes, I was shocked even more that she didn't have a steady boyfriend. She had an exotic face, a smoking hot body, and a regal bearing, but was as witty as any woman I had ever met in my life. It was also clear that she was smarter than anyone else I had ever met before. Her vocabulary almost required her listener to have a dictionary at the ready, I didn't understand more than five words of the roughly thirty word description of her PhD thesis topic in biomedical engineering, and she knew more about Keynesian economics than I did even though I was a graduate business student.

I asked her out on a date. She wrote from memory the next five four hour windows she would have available (none of them, like a Friday night, conventional) and asked me to pick one. I picked the one from 10:35 p. m. next Wednesday until 2:35 a. m. Thursday. She held out her hand for me to kiss, gave me her address, and smiled broadly as she sashayed away conspicuously wiggling her consummate ass.

I spent the majority of my waking hours in the four days before our date researching Ashley, doing enough schoolwork just to keep my head above water. Some of the "milder" comments I got from guys – and gals – who her knew Ashley were: "she's hot as hell but flakier than strudel pastry;" "she's so smart that she's on planet Venus, not earth;" and my favorite, "some people are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them; Ashley embraces all three!"

From a graduate assistant in the biomedical engineering department I confirmed that not only was Ashley legitimately a genius, but that she won an Intel Innovation Medal as a fifteen year old senior in High School, got full academic scholarships all through college, was the highest performing student every year at the universities that she got her B. S. and M. S. degrees from, and was now the star of the PhD program. She was already being recruited by every major biomedical engineering company and research facility in the country. Even though I thought that she was older than me because she was near completion of her PhD and was so worldly and elegant, because of her meteoric rise through educational institutions she was actually a year younger than I was.

Nothing I heard discouraged me from our date.

When I showed up at her apartment at 10:31 she said "You're four minutes early; have a seat while I make a little more headway with the very difficult calculation that I'm into."

I had never heard of someone being "into" a calculation before; but then again I'm not a biomedical engineer.

I intently watched as her pencil flew on a page of an engineering notebook with a thick textbook open in front of her. At exactly 10:34 she threw her pencil down and said "No luck," but with a smile on her face. Then she ran into her bedroom and when she came out a minute later – almost exactly 10:35 – she had exchanged her jeans, tank top, and sandals for a slinky dress and four inch heels, and her hair went from a bun to loose – and almost styled – hanging down to her shoulders.

"Let's go dancing," she chimed with an enormous grin.

There was only one problem dancing with Ashley; all eyes were upon her. At least half a dozen guys tried to cut in, especially during the slow dances, but she shot them all down (I think that my penetrating stare precluded any arguments) and glommed onto me. She moved like a cat and looked like a work of art – a vision of Aphrodite to be exact. She was a cheap date – she drank only club soda, no booze.

About one a. m. she asked "Do you have a roommate?"

"No," I chuckled, "why?"

She ran her forefinger over my chest and said "Don't you have any etchings that you want to show me?"

While funny and playful on our way to my abode when we got inside she was all business. It was only minutes before I was naked on my back in my bed and she was waving her big beautiful honkers in my face while stroking my flagpole with her hand. When she mounted me it was with feverish purposefulness. Her snug pussy squeezed my cock as she bucked up and down and swore as I manipulated her soft boobs and hard and proud nipples. It was the best first fuck I ever had with any woman in my life.

However, the first fuck paled by comparison to the second fuck, which was with me sitting on the edge of the mattress and she facing me with her sculptured thighs wrapped around my torso.

At 2:20 she lifted her head off of my shoulder as I lay with the most contented feeling of my life and said "I need to be home in fifteen minutes. Escort me, stud!"

I complied, got a big kiss when I delivered her to her apartment at 2:34, and she gave me her next three four hour openings to choose from. I chose Sunday morning, 7:20 – 11:20.

When I awoke Thursday morning I immediately noticed two texts from Ashley. The first one, sent at 2:40 a. m. said "I had a great time stud – you may actually be relationship material." That made me smile because I was thinking the same thing myself. The next, sent at 3:51 a. m., said "You so cleared my mind that I finished the most difficult calculation of my life in less than an hour after you dropped me off. Thanks," followed by a winking and smiling emoji.

The Sunday date could not have been more different than the Wednesday one. We ate breakfast at IHOP, bicycled through a park, skipped stones at a pond, joined an impromptu volleyball game, went to an art exhibit as soon as it opened, and seriously discussed that anatomical and psychological aspects of the correct blocking and tackling techniques in football.

At 11:10 we sat on a bench near her apartment. She exhibited her characteristic candor in our short but very sweet conversation.

"I'm starting to seriously write my thesis, Kurt. I have no time for dating or pretense, but I need intimate human companionship. Are you interested in a relationship that could go on for at least a year, maybe forever?"

"Will it include sex like our first date culminated in?" was my toothy reply.

With only a hint of a smile she responded "It should be much better than that – we were just getting used to each other."

"Where do I sign up?" I retorted.

"A verbal commitment is all that is necessary. I have to warn you, though; I keep unusual hours and sometimes have pressing needs, so you'll have to be flexible to accommodate me."

"As long as you're flexible when I'm accommodating you," I laughed, "that won't be a problem."

"I'm also weird, you know – can you take weird?"

"Since you're witty, smart, sexy, vivacious, and beautiful, I can take weird," I chuckled.

Ashley got a big smile on her face, gave me a kiss that touched my soul, then skipped away with the proclamation "I'll email you all the dates the next month when I'm available for recreation, meals, or fucking, although you'll have to expect some spur-of-the-moment visits too."

And so my relationship with Ashley Bronson started in earnest.

*************

The next year was a whirlwind. While there were, in fact, a large number of planned communications and activities with Ashley, the spontaneous ones seemed to define our relationship more than the prearranged ones. Typical would be a call at 10 o'clock on a weeknight. "I've got writer's block on the transition portion of my thesis between the data and conclusions. Come clear my mind."

I'd show up at her apartment twenty minutes later and fill her snug pussy with cum as I fucked her doggy style, or while I sucked and massaged her fabulous boobs. After an intense hour of intimate contact I'd go back to my place a truly happy and fulfilled man, and Ashley would go back to her laptop. In fact Ashley was right when she made her "relationship proposal;" when we got used to each other the sex went from "best ever" to "other-worldly."

One odd thing, though, that I noticed but never focused upon. The only time that she wanted to (or would allow) doggy was when I got one of her "emergency" calls; otherwise she always wanted only face-to-face positions. "We're making love more than fucking, dude," was her only comment about it.

Our relationship wasn't solely defined by sex, however. We had numerous intellectual discussions, went to cultural and sporting events, had just plain silly time together, and did everything together than a couple could aspire to. I was completely in love with her after the first month of our relationship and my feelings only deepened.

Fortunately I had gotten my MBA before her thesis and dissertation were due so that I had significant free time to cater to her. I made a big hit when I read every word of her second draft of her thesis, corrected a half dozen grammatical errors, and actually – by pure luck – found an error in one of her equations. She had used the Greek letter lambda where a rho should have been. Her look of surprise turned into a sly grin. "I didn't know that you were an expert on boundary layer problems," she snickered. "Let's see what the boundary layer between my mouth and your cock feels like," see continued before pulling down my zipper and giving me the most powerful blowjob of my life.

My major contributions to her PhD were two-fold, however.

The first contribution was that I told her that she needed to patent a piece of equipment that she designed to take advantage of the conclusions that she came to. Since we didn't have any real disposable income at the time, I used the negotiating skills that would later serve me well in business to get a local patent attorney to handle the case pro bono with the promise of the future business of Ashley, the genius biomedical engineer. The patent was obtained easily, and eventually led to a significant royalty stream.

The second contribution was to fuck the shit out of her doggy style before her final completion of her thesis and just before her oral presentation to defend her thesis. The oral presentation was supposed to take two hours. It took three and one-half, and the faculty universally regarded it as the best dissertation defense that any of them had ever experienced or heard of.

The night after her oral presentation she got me up twice as many times in an eight hour period than I had ever experienced before, and the next morning suggested that we move in together.

Ashley and I were married three months after she got her PhD. It was a simple civil ceremony with only our immediate families attending. Since we already had the same last name there was no reason to have what could have been an unpleasant discussion about any name-change as a result of the marriage.

My family loved Ashley, especially my sister Jill who treated her like a sister, and Ashley was equally fond of both my blood relatives and Jill' and Tom's spouses.

Ashley took one of the dozens of jobs she was offered in the same city where I got my best job offer, and it wasn't long before we were pulling in some significant cash – especially from royalties for her seemingly continuous stream of patented inventions. It seemed like every time that we had a marathon fuck session she came up with a new one.

**********

A significant dark cloud appeared in our happy existence when Tom was diagnosed with HDGC, the same cancer that my father died from. Ashley immediately found out everything possible about HDGC, researching it for twenty hours straight. She insisted that Jill and I be promptly tested to see if we had genetic markers that might indicate pre-disposition to HDGC since there was a hereditary component to it. Jill and I immediately did get tested, and fortunately neither of us had those markers.

Ashley was far from done, however. In less than a week she had identified an existing organization [acronym "RCA"] that was doing research for a related cancer, had arranged funding for that organization to switch gears to research a cure or treatment for HDGC, and had taken a leave of absence from her job to join that organization to lend her expertise, intelligence, and passion.

My whole family was amazed at Ashley's take charge attitude, and the fact that part of the funding RCA received was from her patent royalties. RCA had a staff that – with the addition of Ashley – seemed capable of success. Since HDGC is more or less an "orphan" disease there had never been a truly top notch effort aimed at curing it before, but now with Ashley's lead they had a chance. The other employees of RCA were the director, Dr. John Paxton, a man in his late 50s who had an MD and a PhD in "Cancer Immunology" (I had never heard of that science before) and was renowned as an expert manager; Dr. Hwa Lee, a Korean-American woman in her late 40s whose PhD was is some form of pharmaceutical science that I couldn't pronounce; Dr. Chad Beltran, a guy about my size in his early 40s who had an MD and a Master's in biochemistry; four technicians all of whom had at least B S degrees, and two who had Master's degrees, in some sort of biological or chemistry-related science; and of course Ashley.

There was one major drawback to RCA. It was located 150 miles from where Ashley and I lived, and I was at a point in my career where if I moved it would be disastrous. If there was any way that I could have actually helped the research at RCA I would have, but I didn't have any expertise. However, I was tireless in my non-work hours in attempting to raise money for the research.

I didn't like living apart from Ashley; it was the joy of my life to be with her, and having her two and a half hours away by car, while she worked twelve hours a day, was painful. While Ashley and I talked on the phone every night for a half hour, and while I went to visit her at the apartment she rented just a mile from RCA from Friday night to Sunday night, it was really hard on us. Friday night she was wiped out, although she greatly enjoyed me servicing her orally and a straight missionary love-making session. Saturday she worked from about 7 a. m. until about 2 p. m., and Sunday evening she went into work as soon as I left for our house.

Although it was painful to be away from Ashley there was no doubt that RCA was making progress, and my entire close family was so buoyed by the effort that Tom was not deteriorating as quickly as my father had. Of course this was especially good news since Tom and Melinda had two young children at the time that he was diagnosed. In fact, after just a month RCA came up with a drug that it was certain would delay the disease for months. Of course the drug was not approved by the FDA and I had to smuggle it from RCA to Tom to take it on the "QT." Ashley assured me that it would have no significant side effects and Tom was anxious to use it.

***************

Then came the phone calls that put me in the worst dilemma of my life and demonstrated clearly to me that "life is strange." On a Tuesday night Ashley told me about how they had hit a serious road block; and then the next night told me that they had a Eureka moment and got past it. When I enthusiastically inquired as to how they had gotten past it she gave a bullshit answer, changed the subject, and then during the rest of the conversation she sounded different.

After I hung up I started to think back on her PhD days when she'd call me for an intense doggy fuck to get past some mental block, and an uneasy feeling came over me. I tried to put it out of my mind, but couldn't. When I saw her that weekend she seemed to be "trying" too hard to act normal, although there was no doubt that she was completely into our love-making.

When the next Wednesday night she told me again about another impediment that was holding up their research, I became pro-active. Early the next morning I left for RCA's office, with a well-thought out ruse for why I would be showing up. I got there about 10 a. m. I asked for Ashley at the reception desk – it was a secure facility in view of the materials that they worked with – but Ashley didn't come out to greet me, the director, Dr. Paxton, did.

I had socialized with all of the researchers at one point or another during my weekend trips over the previous three months, and knew Dr. Paxton well enough to call him "John." One thing that I had recognized about him soon after I met him was that he was very honest, and devoid of subtlety.

"Uh, how nice to see you Kurt," was his awkward greeting. "What do we owe the honor of your presence to?"

"I had a meeting with an important customer in your neck of the woods that came up suddenly, so I thought that I'd stop by to say hello to my charming wife. Where is Ashley?"

"Uh, well, uh, you see," he started out. John is an extremely intelligent and articulate guy – his unease and stumbling on his words confirmed in my mind what I had been thinking. "Uh, well she's not here right now," he concluded as sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Really, John? Then why is her car in the parking lot? Let's talk in your office, John."

He reluctantly led me to his office. I could see the lab from his office and Dr. Lee and the four technicians were busy at work, and I could see from his normal lab station that he had been too before I showed up.