The Surrogate Master

by Ben Boswell

  But Rachel worried about how she’d deal with being a stay-at-home mom. She’d always been a hard charger. Graduated at the top of her high school class, prestigious college, a Wall Street internship for a year, then business school. Being primarily a homemaker would be quite a change of pace.

  As it turned out, Rachel really enjoyed it. She brought the same kind of energy to childcare as she had to everything else. Play dates, educational activities, trips to petting zoos, museums. But she also let the kids have the opportunity to be kids. She was a natural.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I can’t say I was really surprised when Rachel told me she wanted to go back to work. She’d been out of the workforce for a little over five years since we had the twins, but with Brent and Allison now in all-day kindergarten, I knew she’d be feeling restless.

  “Are you sure? We don’t really need the money.”

  “Well, but we could always use more money.”

  I nodded. We’d talked about maybe buying a vacation home at some point. We were saving toward that, but it was slow going.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it’s not about the money. It’s more that I can’t see just sitting around the house all day eating Bon Bons.”

  “I doubt you’d do that.”

  She laughed. “No, probably not. I could write one of those idiotic mommy blogs or pester our school board about something. But it’s time to get back out there unless I want to give up on a career.”

  “Whatever you want is fine with me. Just tell me what I can do to help.”

  She had a prepared list of action items. Of course. But I was happy to makes the calls and send around her resume. As it turned out, she got a job through her own efforts.

  It wasn’t a great job. Or even a good job really. She was offered a position as an Executive Assistant to the CFO of a tech startup. She’d worked on that sector back at the mutual fund, so it was a match to her experience. It was a step down from where she’d been, both in terms of salary and responsibilities, but after five years, she needed something to get back into the workforce.

  She was so excited her first morning, even nervous.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll do great,” I offered. “I’ve already let Taylor know that you’re going back to work, so he knows I might have to leave early some days to cover the kids. Knock ‘em dead.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you! You’re being great about this.”

  -----

  We’d already arranged for me to pick up the kids the first few days so that she wouldn’t be stressed about getting out of the office as she settled in. I picked them up early and took them to the park for an hour. We were sitting at the kitchen table, the kids eating pizza, when she came home.

  It was obvious things hadn’t gone well. She looked shaken and immediately poured herself a glass of wine.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Later,” she mouthed in reply, nodding toward the kids.

  She drained her glass and then plastered a smile on her face. She sat down with us and proceeded to ask the kids all about their day. They babbled happily. Brent, in particular, is a big talker, though at five years old, he often doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or more accurately, he often doesn’t make any sense. But he was happy and enthusiastic about school. Then Allison broke in and spent a good twenty minutes talking about the class hamster, Noodles, who she had signed up to take home this coming weekend.

  After the kids’ dinner, we did their usual bedtime routines: Baths, reading, cuddling. We finally got them down around 7:30pm, with Rachel doing the final tuck-ins.

  I made a chicken and pasta dish for us. I poured us some more wine.

  Rachel sat down heavily at the table and took a big gulp of Chianti. She dug into the meal.

  “You okay?” I asked again.

  She smiled wanly. “I didn’t have time for lunch.”

  “Oh?”

  She shook her head. “And my boss is an asshole.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “First thing he says to me is, I quote, ‘who the hell are you?’”

  “He didn’t hire you?”

  She shook her head. “No. That was through HR. I just got assigned to him. I guess I should have reached out and introduced myself before today, but it never occurred to me.”

  “Well, he could have reached out as well.”

  “Um, that doesn’t seem to be Mr. Stewart’s style.”

  “You have to call him by his last name?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I called him Jack to begin, which was another mistake. I made a lot of mistakes today. Or at least, he seemed to think so.”

  “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. You don’t need this. You can just...”

  “Quit? After five years out of the workforce, I can’t see that quitting on my first day back is going to do much for my resume.”

  “No, but –“

  She cut me off. “I know, Max. We don’t need the money. And this job is not quite what I wanted... which is another thing that got me in trouble.”

  “You didn’t say that to him?”

  “No, of course not. He asked me about my background, and when I told him, he rolled his eyes and said, quote, ‘so you think you’re too good for this job?’ So I had to reassure him that I just wanted to do a good job for him.”

  “He does sound like an asshole.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll make the best of it.”

  -----

  Things got worse. Every day Rachel seemed to come home with a new story of abuse and humiliation. He made her get him coffee, and snapped at her if it wasn’t right -- too hot, too cold, not enough sugar, too much milk.

  He demeaned her about her work, especially if she had the temerity to ask him for clarifications on his expectations. He’d sigh, roll his eyes, then respond in baby talk as if it was all too obvious to misunderstand. Yet, he nitpicked at everything. Her work, according to him, was too slow, too sloppy. Nothing was right.

  She tried to say it didn’t bother her. But I could tell the constant negativity was wearing her down.

  There are two different types of assholes in the business world. The first is the get-things-done, doesn’t-suffer-fools-gladly type of asshole. The second is the drunk-on-his-own-power, bully-for-fun type.

  I couldn’t imagine Mr. Stewart was of the first variety, mainly because I knew Rachel was better than he deserved. Yes, she’d been out of the workforce for five years, but even still, the idea that she was some simpleton unable to perform basic office tasks was laughable. No, he was a bully, pure and simple. I imagined he might even have felt threatened by Rachel and her background. Or maybe he just hated women.

  I advised her to quit at least a dozen times when she came home in tears or close to them. But each time she rebuffed me. It became like a trial she was determined to overcome, dealing with his bullshit a mark of pride.

  And slowly things got better. Rachel didn’t seem to need a glass of wine first thing after getting home as often. Then she started referring to her boss as Jack rather than Mr. Stewart. Slowly her confidence returned. She still had Jack stories. He was still an asshole. But she increasingly seemed wryly amused by him rather than frustrated.

  -----

  With us both working, we had less time for each other. So we were determined to have regular date nights. Her mom came to visit, and Rachel and I decided take advantage of it to go out to dinner at a trendy restaurant downtown. I got there early and sat at the bar to kill time. I ordered a martini and checked out the “scenery.”

  I wouldn’t say I have a roving eye. I don’t. I don’t look for hookups. But I like women. I like looking at them. Some people like art. For me, I’d rather check out a little taste of cleavage, a pair of big blue eyes, even a nicely done set of painted nails.

  I had just sat down when, out of the corner of my eye, I sensed rather than directly observed a sexy girl walk by. As she passed me, I turned to check out her ass. Yummy. A perfect
heart-shaped ass, moving with a sexy shimmy, encased in a charcoal grey pencil skirt. I watched the girl reach the end of the bar and then turn back toward me. I glanced up at her face and was met by Rachel’s smile.

  It marked the return of was her world-class ass. Not that it had ever really gone away. She lost the baby weight almost immediately. But for the next five years, she usually dressed pretty casually in sweat pants or mom jeans.

  There is something weirdly exciting about lusting after a random woman in a crowd and having it turn out to be your wife.

  “Hey baby,” I said as she approached. “You look great.”

  She grinned. “Were you checking out my ass?”

  “I didn’t know it was yours,” I admitted

  “Are you telling me you look at other women?”

  “Every chance I get. Because, you know, I’m a man. And that’s what we do.”

  “You’re telling me,” she said with an amused sigh.

  It was the same tone she’d taken to using when describing her boss’s latest outrageous behavior.

  “Jack?”

  She nodded. “He liked the skirt too.”

  “What? Did you catch him looking?”

  She shrugged. “That would have been okay.”

  “He said something?”

  “I’ve learned to ignore two-thirds of what he says. Maybe even three-quarters...”

  “What did –”

  She cut me off. “Do we have to talk about my asshole boss? Shouldn’t you be offering to buy the girl with the nice ass a drink instead?”

  “So now that you’re back at work, I need to get you drunk to get laid?”

  She shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”

  She was right. After a nice, boozy dinner, we went back home and had a very pleasurable night in bed. Rachel was particularly sensuous. She sucked my cock longer than usual, her technique wetter, sloppier than normal. She pulled me on top of her, raised her legs to the ceiling and with her hands on my ass urged me to fuck her harder, harder, until we both came hard, gasping.

  -----

  Rachel’s grey pencil skirt was a harbinger of things to come. Over the next few weeks, I noticed that she was dressing sexier. She was digging through her closet, pulling out and wearing clingier, more provocative outfits. She was also shopping a lot, buying clothes that were professional, yet stylish and sexy.

  At one level, I got it. Most of her wardrobe dated from before we had kids and was as much as ten years old... an eternity in women’s fashion. And it wasn’t an issue of money. She wasn’t breaking the bank. And it wasn’t the clothes themselves. She wasn’t dressing like a hooker or anything, just contemporary and attractive.

  It seemed to make her happy. I liked looking at her in her new outfits. So what was the problem? It was one word: Jack.

  By her description, he was now more of an incorrigible rogue rather than an abusive asshole. But she’d told me that he’d noticed her figure, commented on it even, and it was hard to avoid thinking about how he might be responding to her new, sexier attire.

  Having an attractive wife results in complex emotions. I liked seeing Rachel dressed up, confident, appealing. And yet, I also knew that although she might only doing it for her own self-esteem, or even my enjoyment, she was out in public and other men were benefitting as well. As a man who likes watching women, I knew that all too well.

  Whatever nagging concerns I had were routinely swept away by the fact that our sex life was better than it had been in years. She seemed to be in the mood more often than ever. She was again on the Pill, but I wondered if subconsciously she was pining for another baby. Or maybe it was instead just that the confidence boost of being back in the workforce turning her on. Whatever was going on, we were banging like newlyweds again.

  Rachel was still the primary instigator. It wasn’t real subtle. If she wanted to fool around, she’d often climb into bed naked. She was often amazingly responsive, her body hot like a furnace as I pulled her close. Foreplay seemed almost superfluous, not at all required to set the stage, but just a way of building our intimacy, drawing out the pleasure.

  There is literally nothing more enticing than a woman ready for sex. Her hot, moist breath. Her erect, sensitive nipples. The wetness, tenderness between her legs. Feeling a woman responding to your touch... it is the ultimate in positive reinforcement. And that it what it was like almost constantly with Rachel. She was suddenly so ready, so eager, and sometimes even surprisingly kinky.

  One night, after an early dinner, the kids had begged to watch some cartoons before bedtime. I was standing in the doorway to the family room, checking my email on my phone, listening to the kids singing along to the SpongeBob theme song.

  Rachel reached out and grabbed me by the forearm and pulled me back into the kitchen. She pushed me back against the fridge and without a word, squatted down in front of me, grinning at me lewdly.

  I went wide-eyed as I realized what she had in mind.

  “The kids,” I hissed, nodding toward the family room.

  “We have eleven minutes,” she replied, referring to the run time of an episode.

  “Rachel, no,” I said without conviction. My sweats were beginning to tent.

  She rubbed my crotch and then firmly seized the waistband. She yanked down, freeing my cock. She locked eyes with me and began stroking my shaft up and down. She leaned forward and licked my prick, starting near my balls and trailing all the way the underside of my shaft. She swirled my cockhead with her tongue and took me deep into her mouth.

  “Oh God, baby,” I moaned.

  I ran my fingers through her hair, letting the silky strands brush against my hands, feeling her head bobbing up and down on my prick.

  It was amazing, but I was too anxious to come. With every sound from the next room, I worried that the kids were about to burst in on us. But despite that, it was incredibly hot -- furtive, sudden, unexpected.

  We heard the episode end. Rachel let my cock slip from her mouth with audible plop. She stood quickly and I jammed my erection back into my sweats just as the kids rounded the corner, asking for dessert and anticipating the beginning of their bedtime routine.

  -----

  She came to bed naked that night, her body blazing. I had planned to question her about the impromptu hummer, but her passion was just too urgent to resist.

  I slid beneath the covers, the scent of her excitement almost overpowering. Her pussy was drenched, swollen. I licked her slit up and down, my face quickly becoming coated with her juices. She grabbed my hair and pulled me against her as she began to gasp. She came hard, humping my mouth with her sex.

  She released me and I moved up between her legs. We kissed wetly. She licked me, seemingly eager to taste herself on my lips.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet,” she sighed.

  She reached down and wrenched off my PJ bottoms. I was rock hard. I stabbed wildly between her legs with my erection, plunging deep into her drenched, steaming cunt.

  She grabbed my ass, urged me to fuck her harder, even as she continued to kiss me so passionately that it felt like she was trying to swallow my tongue. If she hadn’t been so wet, I would have come right away. As it was, I started doing multiplication tables in my mind to keep from finishing too soon.

  It was a hopeless effort. She was just too hot. She wrapped her legs around my waist, sucked on my ear.

  “Oh fuck,” I cried out as I climaxed.

  I collapsed on top her, both of us breathing hard.

  “That was fun,” she said with a giggle.

  “I’ll say. You were on fire.”

  We kissed and I rolled off her. We lay side by side on our backs, holding hands.

  I hesitated. As quick as it was, it had been the best sex we’d had in years. But I couldn’t help looking the gift horse in the mouth.

  “So, Rach? What’s going on? Why the sudden outburst of passion? In the kitchen I mean.”

  “I don’t kn
ow,” she replied. “I was just thinking about how great you’ve been recently, what with you picking up the slack around the house with me going back to work. I just thought I’d give you a treat.”

  “It was definitely a treat.”

  “I liked it too. It felt so dirty, you know. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after. I couldn’t wait to get you into bed.”

  “So, that’s it?” I pressed on gingerly.

  There was a half-second pause, just barely noticeable. “Yeah, what else could it be? Am I not allowed to show my appreciation to my wonderful husband?”

  I forced a laugh. “Of course, baby. You just took me by surprise.”

  But there was something weird about it. Something that made me uneasy. I’d been quietly wishing for a little more passion for years now, but when it happened, it somehow felt wrong, out of place.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My firm was involved in a major acquisition. I was crunching the data. Every day seemed to bring a new mass of numbers to examine, so I had a little less time to help with the kids.

  Happily, Rachel’s work situation had improved to the point that she was a bit more flexible on her end. I was a little surprised. Jack hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who’d be willing to show that kind of consideration, although, in truth, it had been a while since she’d complained of his abuse. Indeed, in our conversations, he often now came across more as a jokester than anything else.

  He still had a dark side, though. Rachel told me of a crisis at work. One of their significant projects was coming in way, way over budget. Or so it seemed. As it turned out, the project manager, a young techie named Dave, in his first management role, had miscoded a tracking spreadsheet.

  Rachel found the mistake quickly and informed Jack. But they decided not to tell Dave. Instead, they let him spend the day thinking he’d fucked up, that he might have to fire half his programmers, that his future was screwed. It struck me as a cruel prank. But Rachel giggled through the story as she described him coming by the CFO suite over and over, apologizing and bemoaning his fate.