No That Ind of Cucold

I expect this story to disappoint you. It features a cuckold relationship with the male completely agreeable. There is no sex.

When he first walked in George had to admit his wife looked good napping on his leather couch, her chemise a deep, eggplant-purple color. He'd never seen this lingerie before. She didn't follow fashion, she had her own idea of what looked good, no black or red nightgowns for her, and pastel colors rarely. She looked good in what she chose.

George had nearly caught up on work e-mails when Beth stirred. He'd arrived home half an hour earlier than usual to find her sleeping on the couch in his home office. He sat at his desk, facing the couch, opened his company computer and went back to work.

She stretched, her fingers reaching up to trace a line along the back of the leather couch. She turned her head and gave him a smile. "Hey, how was your day?"

He closed his laptop without hesitation. "Some days you make suggestions, some days you give orders, some days you just kick butts. I don't like it much, but I kicked a few butts today."

"Mmm." Beth's eyes were half closed. She hadn't moved anything but her arm yet. He waited patiently.

After a moment she sat up, stretching her arms. "A few of the boys took me to lunch today."

"Did they?"

"They want me to host party here for them. All weekend long. There wasn't much agreement on the details, and I'm not sure -- I'm not sure..." She hesitated. It was a long pause. "They didn't agree on what you would do. Charlie wants you away for the weekend, Pat and Ryan want you to serve as a butler, Art and George want you as, as-" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "As a maid."

George managed to not react much. He gave her a smile. "What's the difference between butler and maid?"

"Well, the butler serves drinks and food. The maid takes care of refreshments, but also takes care of the needs of the men who aren't with me." She flopped back against the couch. "Don't blame me, you know how they get when they're together."

George came around his desk, sat beside his wife and took her hand. "What do you want?"

"I want them to leave you out of this. They don't understand we're just open, they think somehow you're into watching, participating. Why else would you let me have all these men, that's what they ask." She shook her head. "You are an amazing man, George, to let me go out for casual sex. I appreciate your tolerance."

He pulled her into his embrace. "You are the love of my life, and I want you to be well and be happy." He grimaced. "Right now I'm worried about the well part."

They went to the kitchen for dinner, Beth seemingly comfortable in the slinky chemise with most of he back visible as she led the way. Before this year, she'd at least have worn a robe to cover it, he thought. Two years ago she'd have not even owned something so sensual, so revealing, and she certainly wouldn't have worn it while napping on the couch in his office. If nothing else, playing the field had made her far more comfortable with her own body. George had always thought her beautiful, it was only recently she believed him.

He'd carried out chicken tikka masala from the new Indian restaurant she wanted to try. Only a few minutes after they began eating her phone chimed to signal a text message. She rose to retrieve it from the living room.

She walked back into the kitchen reading her screen. "It's Charlie. He says you threatened him."

George chuckled. "What I said was not a threat. I just said that, in Apulia, where my grandfather comes from, it was common for a husband to castrate a man who was pimping his wife."

Her eyes went from the screen to George, the hand with the phone going down.

"It wasn't a threat. I am quite willing to castrate to him. Oh, and I fired him. Charlie is done. In fact, the boys are done. They're bad for you." He held up a finger. "That reminds me."

He took out his phone, tapped just a few times and put it to his ear. "Tony? Hi, my name's George Russo. Charlie told me to ask you about a woman, Elizabeth something? Oh, it's Easy Lizzie? Isn't that interesting." He winked to Beth. "Listen, Tony, you know Patrick Markham, right? Did you hear what happened? Look, give him a call and ask what happened to him."

George didn't look to Beth like he was really listening to Tony's reply. His easy smile to her was unnerving. He was calling her prospective new boyfriend but friendly to her at the same time. And what happened to Pat? His next words to Tony were even more unnerving. "You need to know what happened to Markham because I'm Easy Lizzie's husband. Find out what I did to him because you're next on my list. I'm thinking Tuesday evening, that's when your whole family is home for dinner, right? No, no -- you just talk to Markham. And think about asking Charlie for your money back."

He tapped his phone off while Elizabeth could still hear Tony angrily demanding more information. "What the hell have you just done, George? You promised I could date other men."

"I promised not to stop you from dating other men, but I made no promise about what would happen to the men you date. I keep my word, but I put some care into how we framed the commitment."

His voice was calm, he seemed the gentle George he'd always been, a contrast to the behavior of her boys at lunch. They tended to compete with each other when she let them get together around her.

"What happened to Pat?"

"I bruised his ego a lot. I bruised his body a little."

Her phone chimed, she glanced at it, then read a text. "This is Pat, he says you beat him up."

"He underestimated me."

Feeling unsteady, she went back to her chair and sat. "Tell me the whole story."

"I served Pat with a cease and desist letter, personally. I'm timing so that each one is served with the wife present. I chose to serve Pat personally because he's the tough guy of the group. They all got a message from me out of how my visit to Pat went. As I expected, he got angry real fast. He said you were hosting a party for him, that I'd be a sissy for the weekend and he would give it to me in the ass a few times during the party. Right in front of his wife he's saying this. I told him he could give it to me in the ass right there if he could get me on the floor. That's when he underestimated me: he tried to put me on the floor. I put him on the floor, and I managed to not kick him once he was down."

"George, he's like 40, and you're 54."

"He doesn't spend any time on fitness, I work out and I take self-defense classes in the fitness center." He leaned back. "I gave his wife my business card and my attorney's business card. Oh, and I gave her the legal notice. I asked her to make sure none of their security video got deleted. I was in plain sight of the entry camera when he threw the first punch."

"George, why are you doing this?"

"These guys are bad for you. Beth, I don't mind you having a boyfriend, but not these assholes."

"Give me an example."

"How does it make you feel when they just command you to host all of them over a weekend at your house, as though you don't have a choice? That four of them want me to play a role in the party? That two of them want to see me in a dress for the party? They've been watching bad porn, real life isn't like that." He gestured toward her, hand open. "Our agreement was I didn't have to do anything except ignore you and your guys."

She nodded. What he'd said was true. It made her realize she really wasn't in control of the situation.

"Tell me this. How many of them have called themselves a 'bull' to you?"

She nodded. "Today at lunch, three of them argued over who was the bull. I have no idea what that means."

"It means I'm submissive to you, and you're submissive to another guy, the bull, who decides who else you have sex with. To a certain extent the bull decides what you do with me, and might want to do things to me himself."

She tilted her head. "For not wanting to be involved, you suddenly know a lot."

"I've had to get educated. I asked about bull because I knew the answer. Honey, here's the thing: who didn't speak up? Who made no claim of being your bull?"

"Um, Charlie was pretty quiet. Pat was being the tough guy like you said. It was him thumping his chest and asserting I belonged to him first." She frowned. "That turned me off pretty good, I don't want to belong to any of them."

"Good for you!"

His words were reassuring. Then she frowned. "In fact, two of them were arguing about how big they wanted my breast implants to be, and they all liked the idea of piercing my nipples."

"You see what they're doing there? They don't care about you as a person. You're a sex object to them, a Barbie. They have plans to make you more Barbie, a caricature of a real person. Can we agree they're presumptuous about you, treating you as more like property?" He snorted. "Including your house and your husband in the package deal."

He watched her face as she evaluated what he'd said, waiting until she slowly nodded.

"Listen, Charlie was quiet because he knows he's not the bull. He's what I called him earlier. He's your pimp."

"My what?"

He reached across the table, putting his hand gently down. Beth was happy for the contact he was offering and put her hand in his,. "Darling, he's making money on you. He was your first affair, but how many men has Charlie introduced to you in the past two years?"

She thought. "Eight maybe?" A few of them hadn't lasted.

"You're right, and those eight men have paid Charlie a total of at least $15,000 for the introduction. I can't be sure I've seen all the payments he's collected. For reasons unclear to me, Pat alone has paid $4,500." He frowned. "He claims to be the bull, but on the video I heard his meaning: he's already bought you."

"Video? Of that lunch today? What's that about?"

"I hired an investigator a few months ago. I have a thick file on each of your boys. My investigator hasn't pried into hotel rooms, but I have three videos of you at lunches with a group of them. I was wondering why they got together as a group."

"Why do they?"

"They are an association, the men who pay to date Easy Lizzie."

"No one pays me anything. I see them because I have a good time. I lunch with them in groups because they tend to be fun, they compete to entertain me." She paused, looking down. "Today was less fun, they didn't really talk with me."

"Beth, listen: I am convinced of your innocence in all this. You really are innocent."

"What's in your thick files?"

"My biggest concern is how many other people you're sleeping with. Pat has two other women on the side and I have reason to believe he's hit his wife a few times. Tony is seeing another woman, who in turn dates four men regularly and also does the occasional hookup. In addition to you, Art sees both women and men. George lives with a girlfriend, but it looks like that won't last since they're both spending time with other people."

He tilted his head. "Darling, I want you to go get tested for STIs. I know you had one a year ago."

"Have you been prying in my medical records?"

"No, but the health insurance paperwork comes past me." She was withdrawing her hand, he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze as they left. "I'm not mad at you, I just want you better protected."

She looked up to see the man she'd married looking at her with just as much love as the day he proposed.

"So... Charlie? What about him?"

"I'd have been comfortable just telling him to lay off, but my investigator follows leads wherever they go. It turns out my Asset Manager has been skimming. I told him today he no longer has any access to my accounts. I didn't tell him I discussed my evidence with the Managing Partner in his office. I'm expecting him to lose his job. His employer returned nearly $100,000 to my account, that I could show he'd skimmed." He sighed. "It's up to his manager if criminal charges are filed."

"Wow, that's harsh."

He grimaced, tilting his head. "So is stealing that much money. If it was $10,000, I'd have just fired him. The timing suggests once he slept with you, he figured he could steal from me, too."

"Where do we go from here?"

He gave her a smile. "We start again, but I'm going to help you find boyfriends you and I can both trust."

***

"May I?"

George looked up in surprise when a woman put a hand on a chair at his table. She was holding a glass, it seemed she'd come over from the bar. He'd thought about many possibilities, but this was not one of them.

She seated herself, not waiting for him to answer. "You know, you could just go up and talk to her like the other men have. She seems like she's open to advances."

George's discomfort changed shape. She wasn't coming over to get acquainted. How on earth to explain this to a stranger?

The woman filled the silence again. "I'm Carole, by the way. I can see it's none of my business, but I must say I'm curious. When I travel, I sit in expensive hotel bars, people-watching. Just for my entertainment, and watching you has been interesting." She tilted her head toward the pretty woman the bar. "And her, too. Not on a business trip, are you?"

She'd surprised him by coming over and offering her advice. George decided he could surprise her with the truth. He smiled. "I'll speak to her in a few minutes. I'm about due to take her home."

She frowned. "So you're sitting over here while men chat her up." George could see her expression change. "God, you're pretty calm about this."

"This time I'm calm. We've made some corrections recently, well, you could say limits."

Carole sipped from the glass of white wine she'd brought with her. "You give her limits? That's not the usual arrangement."

"We're a real couple, not a trope from bad porn." While the words he chose might have been harsh, Carole saw his voice and face were still calm, an interesting contrast. "I shut down the trope and we've restarted with a different set of assumptions."

"You seem to know what you're getting into."

"This is much better than what I got out of." He glanced at his watch and stood. "Excuse me, I'm due to give a ride to the woman I love."

For the first time in the hour Carole sat at the bar, with Beth and George part of her people-watching, he made made overt eye contact with the pretty woman at the bar he'd been watching from a distance. She responded with a slow, subtle tilt of her head. George left the bar for the hotel lobby. Carole stayed at the table for a few minutes to pass, watching the man's wife collect her coat and purse and walk, showing no hurry, to the lobby door.

Her path took her right past the table where George had been sitting, where she paused. She saw the questioning look on Carole's face. She smiled "It's a complicated story. But he's the love of my life, I couldn't ask for a more generous, more understanding husband."

She continued into the lobby and disappeared.