A Short but Fulfilling Ride

Head Games

By HUMBLE

This is the introduction to a multi-part story.

I had heard so many times over the years that truth is stranger than fiction, but I had always thought that was crazy. Surely imagination was far weirder than anything that happened in the real world. That's why dreams seemed so fantastical to us when we awoke, while they seemed perfectly normal in our sleep. I experienced something recently that shook that conviction.

I was hanging out for a few hours after work one Friday, enjoying the Happy Hour prices while killing time before heading home for the weekend. Stacy was working a bit late and would not be home until 7:30, so I had plenty of time in front of me to get a little loose. I only wish she could have been there too, not so much because I was lonely, but because if this was one of those rare weekends where she felt like drinking there was a chance for the evening to be a little more interesting.

Stacy was thirty-five, with long black hair and the same figure she had when I first met her ten years ago. She was what many people would call full-figured, with large breasts and the kind of hips that let you get a nice grip and ride in bed. I don't want to give the impression she was overweight, nothing could be farther from the truth, but she was not one of the skeletal model types that seemed more and more common in her peer group, women who should be proud of their womanly, mature bodies, but chose instead to work out like fiends to try to look like a skinny high school girl. I couldn't understand their motivation, but thanked my stars that Stacy worked full-time so did not have a lot of free hours to become one of the workout bunch.

The truth is, her naked body was far more exciting than anything I could see online, and I would have been a happy camper if she had just allowed more access to it. With her, sex was like a chore you checked off the list on Saturday afternoons, an errand that had to be done every week but which was not all that important. There were no more than two or three weeks a year where we had sex more than once, and probably twice that number where we didn't have it at all for one reason or another. It was really the only flaw in our relationship so while it was annoying, it wasn't a deal-breaker. 95% of our time together was wonderful, of the 5% left over...that was divided between the rare disagreement and the regular frustration I felt at having our prime years pass us by without feeling like we should be tearing each other's clothes off.

It wasn't that she didn't enjoy sex. She had powerful orgasms nearly every time we went to bed, and she was not averse to indulging my penchant for fantasy stories, though it had taken me several years to get her comfortable with that. Now she would entertain me with stories of threesomes, secret assignations, solo vacations to Jamaica where she picked up local guys, etc. There was no chance she would ever do such things in real life, of course, but she was perfectly willing to spin erotic tales to make the lovemaking more intense.

I was just about to start on my third beer when I heard my name and turned to see Bob Esson, one of my old college buddies. I had not seen him in perhaps two years and immediately waved him over to the empty chair on my right. We exchanged the one-armed bro hug men did when they saw an old friend and started catching up. Bob had been a psych major, something I always teased him about. I said he'd never make any real money and would spend his life as a high school Guidance Counselor.

"How's school going?" I asked, our old joke.

"Funny, Bill," he grinned back. "But as a matter of fact, I am sort of at school, just that it's a long-term research project at the University on using the power of suggestion to steer normal behavior without the use of drugs. It's being sponsored by one of the big New York ad agencies and I think they have plans to put it to use online or something."

"Sounds interesting," I commented.

"It pays the bills," Bob laughed. "It's a two year study and I get well over six figures each year so I am not complaining."

We began telling each other our life stories since the last time we met, and I was in the middle of another beer by the time we were finished that conversation. "Still with Stacy, eh?" he laughed.

"Of course," I said a bit sharply. Bob was a confirmed bachelor and he always claimed he'd have the happier life.

"Must be getting a little routine by this time."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"One, it's been...what, ten years or so since you got hitched. I can't imagine what that must be like. And second, it's a Friday afternoon, about to be a Friday night and you are sitting alone in a bar drinking."

"Stacy works late tonight," I said defensively.

"Is that so? Happen a lot?"

"A couple of weeks a month, I guess. What's your point?"

Bob took a swallow of his beer and indicated to the bartender he was ready for another one, pointing to me as well for a refill. "My point is that a woman who would rather work on a Friday then meet you here, or be out already having fun, is already deeply in a rut. Which means you are as well. Let me guess, sex once a week, probably Saturday because on Friday she is "too tired"?" It was annoying that he was accurate, and even more annoying that he used air quotes to make his point. But I had to sheepishly admit he had hit the nail on the head.

"Why don't you do something about it?" he asked. "Tell her you want to spice things up, try going to a nude beach, or switching partners with another couple, or watching her in a threesome or something. Hell, anything to get the motor revved up again."

"I've tried that and it went nowhere," I confessed.

"Tell me what you said," Bob ordered.

I had, in fact, tried convincing Stacy of all of the things he had just suggested, telling her that it was just sex, not love, and that it would spice up the relationship. She turned each idea down flat, and after a few heated discussions that made it clear she'd never consider it, I gave up.

"There's your problem," Bob explained, speaking just like he was teaching a seminar. "You tried logic on her. Of course it won't work. Women do not respond to logic, men do. Women respond to emotional stimuli, and furthermore, she would never do anything like that if it requires her to make the decision. If she did that, she'd have to be accountable, and if there is anything modern women avoid like kryptonite, it's accountability. But if she thinks something happened that she couldn't control, then she's in. It's why women eat up all those books about the handsome guy who forces her to have sex, and then she responds with passion unlike anything she's done before. Do you know the number one women's fantasy?"

I admitted I did not.

"Rape fantasies. Intruders, pirates taking over their ship, being kidnapped off the street and taken to a secret clubhouse, that's what they gravitate to. The men force them to respond and they do. Note that I said rape fantasies and not rape. The way they see it in their little scenarios, the men are forceful without being violent, taking them to some sort of sexual arousal peak without actually using any sort of painful force."

"Great, how does that help my situation?" I asked.

Bob spread his hands to make his point. "Well, it doesn't directly, but the principle does. Don't you get it? The thing that turns them on is what is happening in their heads, their imaginations take over and in their minds, they have no choice."

"Is this just your theory, or is it part of your study?" I said sarcastically.

"Actually, it is a small subset. Not the rape fantasy aspect per se, though we did discover a huge percentage of our test subjects that are female harbored that exact fantasy. And the age group most responsive? Thirty to forty-year-olds. But we did discover that if you set up a situation where the woman thinks something happened that she didn't instigate herself, but just got caught up in, you can literally manipulate them into doing what you want them to do. We ran some field tests and got something in the neighborhood of an 87% success rate, far too high to just be a coincidence. The phenomena is real."

"How does that get me laid more often?"

He said nothing for a few minutes, staring dreamy-eyed at the mirror behind the bar. I knew that look from college. It was the one he got right before he came up with some clever solution to a problem. "How willing are you to go along with what I suggest?" he asked.

"You really have a plan? Hell, I'll do anything at this point."

"Don't get too overanxious," he cautioned. "I don't know if it will work or not, but I think it would be an interesting test all the same. It will take a while, probably months, if not half a year or more. You still in?"

"Damn right I'm in," I said. I wondered later if it had seemed good because it was a four-beer idea. Maybe, but it was right on the money all the same.

"Let me think it over for a few days and figure out how to put it into place," Bob said. "I need to get another female involved for it to work correctly. Does Stacy make friends easily?"

"Easier than me," I told him. "She's pretty good at responding to other people in a conversation."

Bob nodded as if the last part of a puzzle had just clicked into place. "I'll give you a call early next week, after I talk to my assistant. She will play a huge role in the success or failure of this. Now be sure you are onboard before we start. I think I can access her buttons, but once those button are pushed, there is no real way to know what will happen. It might go to places you can't imagine."

"I don't care, let's do it."

"Okay, I'm off for the night. Got a young lady that needs tending. I'll call you Monday."

As you can imagine, I had no idea what he was talking about, and pushed his call to the back of my mind all weekend. It only surfaced once, on Saturday afternoon when Stacy asked, "Want to go upstairs?" That was her normal euphemism for sex. God forbid she ever say anything like, "I want to fuck, meet me in the bedroom." We had a normal session, enjoyable but just like hundreds we'd had before, and like the hundreds awaiting us in the future.

Bob called early the next week. "Okay, I think I have the preliminary part of it set up. I talked it over with Roxy yesterday to plan Part One."

"Roxy?"

"My assistant, Roxanne. She is going to play a big role."

"What did you mean by Part One?"

"There are three parts, or stages to this whole thing," Bob explained. "Part One is Roxy getting close to Stacy, to become her friend. If that doesn't happen, the whole thing is off, at least temporarily. Part Two will involve the two of them doing things together. Normal bonding activities like shopping, meeting for lunch, that kind of thing. Usually this is the longest part and the one that might take weeks or month. Depends on how quickly Stacy and Roxy an bond, of if they can bond at all. Part Three is the activation stage. Roxy will introduce sexual talk plus the little twist we have in mind and at the end of it you should have a much more sexually responsive wife."

"I hope I am doing the right thing here," I said.

"Don't worry," Bob assured me. "We aren't going to drug her or anything, just re-adjust her attitude a bit. Actually, I have to thank you for bringing this to my attention. Both Roxy and I think this may have some real-world applications if we can pull it off. We'll have the entire operation on either tape or video or both so we can go over very last interaction. We might get a nice lucrative new grant and you'll have a sexual dynamo. I might even cut you into the grant as a consultant. Win-win, buddy. Don't worry."

"So what now?" I asked

"Can you arrange to get back to the bar where I met you on this Friday night, say around 5:30? We'll come in around 6:00 and you can greet me as an old friend. I'll introduce my girlfriend, you invite us to join you, then simply sit back and enjoy the evening. Believe me, Roxy knows her stuff. She will be able to tap into Stacy's behavioral pattern and I'll bet you she has a lunch date set up with her before 10:00. After that, we'll do most of the heavy lifting. If anything really interesting occurs, I'll loop you in on it, but I think the next time you hear from me will be when I call to check on her progress in the bedroom. Sound good?"

"Yeah, it does," I replied. It did, in fact, sound pretty innocuous and there did not appear to be anything for me to do other than make sure Stacy and I were in Breaker's Tavern at the appointed time.

I worried that Stacy might put up a fuss, but when I pointed out that we hadn't been out in awhile, she quickly agreed. We were just finishing up our first round when Bob and a young woman I presumed to be Roxy entered the bar. Roxy was a looker, about my wife's height but with the slender look of a runner, long legs that were firmly trim. Bob came over to our table and we made a show of just running into each other after a few years. I asked them to join us, all perfectly innocent, then watched in awe as Roxy used her skills in behavioral psychology to quickly form a bond with Stacy. Soon they were chatting and laughing, Bob and I forgotten. Roxy would lean close to whisper things in Stacy's ear that would send them both off into bouts of giggling. Roxy often touched Stacy's arm and made sure my wife was comfortable with her inside of the normal three-foot comfort zone.

Bob leaned over to me at one point and said quietly, "What did I tell you? They'll be lifelong friends inside of the week."

"It's almost like watching a seduction," I answered back.

"A lot of the same techniques, but with a different end in mind. The body contact is to establish a connection, the whispering to establish communication, and the close proximity to establish Roxy's dominance. Notice how Stacy allows her to steer the conversation? It's very important that Roxy be perceived as the dominant and Stacy as the submissive for this to work, but I have to say it is working faster than I thought possible. I think Stacy might have a hidden submissive side, something you should keep in mind."

"I don't know about that," I said skeptically. "I've never seen her exhibit that before."

"A lot of people aren't aware of their true identities," Bob assured me. "Society tells them to act a certain way and they do, then wonder why they're so unhappy. It's because the are denying something in their true natures. But Roxy is definitely bringing it out and that will speed things up considerably."

"Meaning"

"Meaning I had budgeted two weeks for this part before Roxy would have established the proper connection. Now it looks like two hours is going to be more than enough. I'll make you a little prediction...when you go home tonight, Stacy will be gushing about her new friend and will tell you they are meeting tomorrow for lunch, or shopping or something. If that happens, get in touch with me as soon as she returns and let me know what she said. Understand? It's going to be important to how this operation proceeds."

"Got it," I promised.

The rest of the evening would have looked to an outside observer like nothing more than two couples having a good time, which was true as far as it went. But I could not help trying to figure out what subtle techniques Roxy was using on my wife. Whatever they were, they were surely working. By evenings' end, Stacy was allowing Roxy to compliment her hair, even going so far as to let her run her fingers slowly through it, almost as if she were grooming her. "Primate behavior," Bob confided to me in a whisper. "Hard-wired in our DNA. Submissives allow dominants to do things like that without hesitation. Once it secured a person's place in the group, now it's just an unconscious behavior."

Finally, at closing time we split up and went our separate ways, but not before the two women had exchanged long, full-bodied hugs, Roxy holding Stacy's forearms in a firm grip as she looked into her eyes and said in what almost sounded like a command, "Call me tomorrow."

"I will," Stacy promised, as I caught Bob's eye over her shoulder. He smiled, his expression clearly saying "I told you so". They walked off towards their car and we got into ours.

"Looks like you and Roxy hit it off," I said as we pulled out of the parking lot.

She's great," Stacy gushed. "There's just something about her that makes me feel like we've known each other for years. I'm going to meet her for lunch tomorrow, if that's okay with you."

Bob, you're a fucking genius, I thought as I drove happily home.

That set the pattern for the next few weeks, with Stacy and Roxy getting together to shop, or go somewhere together. They even met once or twice during the week. I didn't press for details, partly because I was too focused on the end result I wanted, and partly because under normal circumstances I would not be asking for details of what Stacy was doing with a friend. Bob had cautioned me to be hyper-aware of not doing anything out of the ordinary, to just let the process unfold.

Then Stacy asked if I minded if she went out one night with Roxy. "You don't mind if I have a girl's night, do you?" she asked. There was a definite tremor of excitement in her voice as she asked, an anticipation I had not seen her have for her previous meetings.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I don't know, Roxy said she had some cool places we could hang out and get a few drinks. I'll text you if you want once we settle in somewhere."

"You can check in if you want, just to let me know you got there. Don't feel like you need to keep me in the loop, just have fun."

The truth was, I already knew what was going on because Bob had given me a heads-up that morning. "Roxy will be wearing a microphone that will let us hear everything, if you are interested," he said on the phone. "You know where my office is, right? Jut come down there after Stacy leaves and you can listen in whenever you want. Bring a couple of six packs and we can shoot the shit while we're there. I'll warn you ahead of time, most of the evening is going to be nothing but small talk, might not even get to anything good. On the other hand, I have to tell you that Roxy is convinced there is a hidden side to Stacy that she has been suppressing for years and if Roxy finds the right trigger, the night could be pretty interesting for you. Typically when people get these hidden sides exposed there is a strong reaction and they tend to do and say things that is very out of character, at least the character they've been presenting to people. Also, just to warn you, Roxy took Stacy shopping for some new clothes If you make any comment, make sure it is positive when you see her."

When Stacy came downstairs for her evening a few days later, it was all I could do to keep my jaw from dropping. New clothes indeed. Whenever we went out, Stacy dressed very conservatively, but this was something else altogether. She had on what almost looked like a fancy sports bra, leaving perhaps two or three inches of midriff exposed. Her nipples were clearly visible through the top and it was cut low to expose the swell of her breasts. Her hair was teased out a bit, and she was wearing light make-up, something she almost never does. She had on tight slacks, so tight that you could clearly make out the juncture of her thighs and I had to bite back my comment about camel-toe so as not to put a damper on the evening. She had topped it off with black shoes, and I was shocked to see that she was wearing an ankle bracelet, something she had never done before.

"I've never seen that before," I commented, pointing to the bracelet.