She needs time to process

Alice shook her head, "I appreciate what you went through and are going through, but I'm not quite ready to share my husband with another wife without talking about it first. And I need to get to know you better too, Vavnagal."

"Of course, Alice. Master, is that your will?" Vavnagal asked.

"Yes, I need to have an in depth discussion with you both. This is not a decision to enter into lightly, or swiftly. And I need to get to work, I'm a little surprised my emails haven't blown up asking for updates yet." Seamus replied. "Vavnagal, could you please create a skirt and blouse combination for Alice and transport her back home? Along with replacement undergarments? Assuming that you can create, not just transport..."

"Certainly Master, do you have any preference for style?" Vavnagal bowed.

"Something flowing and easy for her to move in. Alice, you have permission to get dressed in the clothes she provides, I need to get back to work. Love you!" Seamus said in a rush.

"Master, I have slowed time, before you open the door, please let me speed it back up to full speed." Vavnagal said.

"Okay. Wait, you have time manipulation abilities? Oh, never mind, why am I surprised about that." Seamus laughed and then looked at his pants. "And Vavnagal, mind?"

"Not a problem, Master." Vavnagal walked over and leaned over, touching his pants with her hand and his pants dried in a heartbeat. Then his pants suddenly changed materials to extremely thin, ultra soft, worsted wool.

"Wow, that feels nice. Thank you!" Seamus said, running his fingers along the pants seam. A moment later, after Vavnagal touched his shirt, it turned into a linen shirt, that then sprouted a pants matching suit jacket from it. The shirt had the top two buttons undone, and his ID had attached itself to his suit pocket with a lightly weighted system inside balancing the ID outside. It was much nicer than he usually wore and his eyebrows quirked as he looked at Vavnagal.

"It will help you feel better being dressed well, Master." Vavnagal said simply.

"You're right, it does, thank you." Seamus told her.

Bowing, Vavnagal replied: "Of course, Master."

Seamus was just about to walk out when he remember something important: : "why was it important for Susan to not have any sexual impacts from my selecting her as a Custom Girl but not the others?"

"She's engaged to be married, Master." Vavnagal responded.

Sighing in frustration, Seamus hit his head against the door slowly, repeatedly. "How long until they're married?"

"Six weeks, Master."

"I have until then to earn up enough gem capacity to discharge her as a Custom Girl but even then, she would still get that other app, right?" Seamus asked.

"Gem Ladies, yes, Master. But, Master, we could arrange for her husband-to-be to be the recipient of his new wife as a Custom Girl, otherwise she would always be at risk of being claimed by someone else very easily and her tasks would be more likely to encourage her to engage sexually outside the marriage, which I know you don't like, Master." Vavnagal said.

Nodding, Seamus said, "that's my goal then. How do I get to a five hundred cap at least in six weeks?"

"Typically the simplest means, Master, is acquiring more Custom Girls. Master, every ten Custom Girls increases your cap by a formula that reads: (Total Number of Custom Girls/100)*(Random Number between Total Number of Custom Girls and n-1, where n is the current number of average times you've had sex with each of your Custom Girls since they last became your Custom Girl)." Vavnagal said.

Running the formula in his head, Seamus said dryly, "so if I get ten Custom Girls now, and depending on how you qualified it, assuming sex is sexual penetration, I could increase the cap by somewhere between 1 or 0.03? And then I'm still adding more women to the growing list attached to me. How is this going to help me?!"

"If you have sex 5001 times with your wife, Master, and then every ten Custom Girls after that point you have a small chance of getting enough of a cap raise." Vavnagal stated, without a hint of humor in her voice, which made Seamus wonder if that number of sexual encounters was low or high for what succubi were used to. "Master, this whole enterprise is designed to increase succubi energy intake, which requires increasing numbers of people feeding the system. Master, you will be increasing the number of Custom Girls in your stable, the only question is whether you choose who gets added or the system chooses."

She paused at his frustrated look but he waved her off from checking in with him. "Alternatively, Master, you can get cap raises of five per Gem Lady you add to the Gem Lady game."

Shaking his head the moment he heard it, Seamus said: "not doing that. I'm loathe to make anyone else a Custom Girl, much less give out even more problems in order to remove Custom Girls from my list." Sighing, Seamus said further: "I'll just have to figure out some way to become the Energizer bunny with my wife then..."

"Master, you can purchase perks for yourself if you need." Vavnagal said.

Stunned into silence, "why didn't anyone tell me this before?! Never mind, don't answer that. How do I purchase perks for myself?" Seamus asked.

"Master, in most iterations, you could spend gems or diamonds, or user points that are earned on level ups but in this iteration the only way is to add one perk per ten Custom Girls added if each Custom Girl in your stable has at least two non-group changes. Master, you have three right now that you can use." Vavnagal said.

Realizing the other problem, Seamus ran a few more calculations and smiled tiredly: "Alice? Ready to have sex 20,000 times in five weeks?"

"I thought it was 5,000, dear." Alice said.

Seamus explained: "Only to get a low chance of getting the cap raise needed. Even that much sex won't get us what we need to have a high shot."

Looking somewhat queasy, Alice turned her knees together unconsciously, squeezing her legs tight together. "I don't think I could handle quite that much dear, but it is up to you."

Seamus shook his head, "I'll need to add a few perks for myself and find some changes for you that can allow us not to have severe rug burn..."

Alice looked at Vavnagal, then back at Seamus, then her shoulders slumped. "You need to increase the average across your Custom Girls, otherwise it's going to be increasingly hard to keep up with just one wife."

"Vavnagal could slow time, we have six weeks and shouldn't need to make the decision in a hurry." Seamus debated.

"Master, I can slow time, but not indefinitely. Master, I do have energy reserves and time manipulation is one of the more draining." Vavnagal said.

"Seamus, I love you, but this is one occasion where you're going to need to move quickly. I'm going to need to move quickly." Alice quirked an eyebrow,"besides, weren't you saying the other day the only reason polygyny died for us as a faith from Old to New was due to the Romans joining the faith?"

Rubbing his face vigorously, Seamus asked peevishly, "why do you always need to remember my points of view at the most awkward moments?" Finally nodding, Seamus stated: "you've convinced me. All right, let's do it. How do we go about this whole marriage thing?"

A little surprised by the swift change, Vavnagal paused for a long moment pointedly but Seamus forgot what that meant so she responded slowly: "Master, if you truly wish you make me your wife this exact second, in this exact moment, in this exact place, at this exact time, then you..."

Finally sinking in, "hold! Tell me when it will be the right time to tell me how to make you my wife." Seamus said. Shaking his head, "if we are done with this, then, I really do need to get back to work."

"Certainly Master." Vavnagal caused both Alice and herself to disappear in a cloud of smoke and left Seamus alone in the bathroom.

Shaking his head, Seamus stepped out of the bathroom to run smack dab into Jill. "Jill! I'm sorry, I wasn't expecting to see you there."

"You don't know where the new office is yet, so I'll need to escort you." Jill reached under her skirt, removed her panties, and stuffed them into his coat pocket. "It's one of the new ones that is still being kitted out with wiring but I told them that was fine, we could make the office our own then."

Opening his mouth, then deciding discretion was the better part of valor, Seamus said nothing of the newly placed used article of clothing in his pocket and acceded, reluctantly, to her next move which was to hook her left arm in the crook of his elbow and started fast walking towards their new office.

Rounding the corner and entering their new space, he tried to gently disengage but she tightened her grip and pulled him to their new desk. It was a set of glass topped partners desks, set with those infernal exercise ball chairs back to back to each other, and the office had mirrors everywhere, from nearly every angle. Less than three feet separated the two desks, and Seamus wondered how Jill had managed to get this arrangement past facilities.

"Do you like the space? It took a lot of work last night but I finally got everything moved into the right places from where facilities had placed it originally." Jill asked.

Ah, that's how, she ignored facilities entirely. Typical. "Seems...cozy." Seamus said. Longing for his old comfy chair, antique wooden desk, and old setup, Seamus sat down at the desk and fired up his computer, noting the cables snaking everywhere in the office to make this system work. This was a tripping hazard and electrical violation all in one. Logging in, he leaned back like he always did while waiting for the system to start up and felt his back press against Jill's. "Pardon me."

"I'm good." Jill kept her back pressed against him as Seamus tried to right himself but then he realized his dilemma. If he sat up, Jill would overbalance and fall backward. His only option was to wait for her to sit up on her own, or push back harder.

Seamus looked at the mirrors, trying to see if one would show her face. Finding yet another unwelcome surprise, he saw one mirror had a direct upskirt shot between her spread knees, fully showing her current lack of undergarments.

Hearing his little cough of surprise, Jill turned around and patted him on the back. "Are you okay, Seamus?"

"Yes, I'm fine." Seamus cleared his throat and returned his focus to his computer. And promptly had to reply to HR with words to the effect of: 'All is well. Everything has been taken care of and no need to pursue further. ' Yet, Seamus knew that this would not be the end of this situation with HR.

Wondering how long this process might take, Seamus looked up who was the HR representative in their location. Ah, the previous HR rep had retired last week and they'd hired someone to replace him, and the new person was: 'Eloise Nordholt'. Looking up Eloise in the directory, she was a new hire. In fact, just graduated from the local school that they sponsored for HR degrees. Crap. She'd be high on rules and procedures because it'd be the only thing she knew, and she'd feel indebted to the company to follow the letter of the procedures to the end because we'd sponsored her education. Sighing, Seamus groaned and shook his head as he tried to figure out how to handle this.

"Oh! I know her! Ooh, she hates me... We hired her for HR?" Jill said.

Seamus stilled. "Hates you? Why?"

Jill laughed: "I stole her boyfriend. Then I dumped him and stole her next boyfriend. Then dumped him too."

"Why did you do that?" Seamus asked.

She shrugged. "She beat my score in track and field."

"You weren't the same year in college, were you?" Seamus asked.

"No! She's four years younger than me. Still single too. Apparently she swore she was done dating until she could steal my next boyfriend." Jill said. "Didn't help her that I didn't really care about dating and only dated her boyfriends to dump them after I was done stealing them." Jill frowned. "Although I don't entirely know why I'm telling you all of this."

Deciding it was high time to get back to work, Seamus buckled down and examined the next set of configuration change proposals that would be going before the board in two days.

Muttering to himself, Seamus noticed that someone wanted to shift from welded 5083-H116 aluminum plate to welded grade 5 titanium due to the potential for galvanic corrosion and need for thinner parts in that space along with increased heat resistance. He ran the numbers, and determined that while technically superior, and with the thinner part it wouldn't add much weight, the added weight factor in this spot was enough to be a critical safety factor that would require too much other support material or bracing.

Thus while a worthwhile option to examine, the added safety risks due to titanium welding in a confined space with reduced access to required specialized fire fighting gear, the added cost due to titanium vs. aluminum, and the minimal added costs for hard coat anodizing and GFRP spacers along with increasing the number of sacrificial anodes in serviceable areas should appreciably alleviate the valid concerns.

There! One CCB item had to fall, ninety-eight CCB items on the wall to go. Chuckling at his old, tired joke, Seamus dove into his next item for the board.

Ah, trickier item. COTS part vs their long lead time part. Not a form, fit, function replacement, COTS country of origin? China. Okay, not so hard, client refuses Chinese made parts. *Rejected*. However, long lead time. Seamus put that in his pile to research alternative replacement form fit function parts...hold up, quick AI search...ah! Found one, country of origin: USA, lead time: 90% shorter, ergo: send off to be added to the engineering change notice list and changed his *Rejected* mark-up to *Rejected-Modified* and sent that forward to the CCB.

"Isn't finding alternate parts the job of procurement?" Jill asked.

"Yes, but lately for this project, engineering has been doing it more and more because procurement hasn't been doing it. And IT has been cracking down on our use of AI search tools which just makes my job ten times harder." Seamus groused.

Jill reiterated: "but that is the job of procurement. That is billable procurement hours, not billable engineering hours."

"Then procurement needs to actually do their job and stop saying they can't find things." Seamus responded.

Jill argued: "I get that, but we can't bill the client for you doing that work. You need to send the request to procurement and have procurement fill out the paperwork, find the part and then send it back to you. Then we can bill the client for the time spent finding those parts."

"Except that this is going to be a cheaper, faster to source part with less shipping costs. The end result is that the engineering change proposal is going to be a net zero and we won't be able to bill the customer for the difference due to the fact we are saving the client money on the parts. Our reasoning on this one isn't billing the client for the time, because we can't, it's doing production on time, even ahead of time which gets us bonuses for faster delivery, which gets everyone more money." Seamus argued back.

Jill opened her mouth, then closed it. Then said: "you know the contracts part of this project too? How are you not the PM?"

Seamus looked at her in shock and couldn't help himself: "didn't you essentially sabotage me getting the position?"

Jill looked embarrassed and angry, and struggled to keep her mouth tightly shut, but then her mouth opened and the words tumbled out: "yes, I lied. I did sabotage you because I wanted this job. And why can't I stop telling you the truth?!" She put a hand on his chest and leaned against him. "Tell me Seamus, why can't I stop thinking about you? Every time I close my eyes, I see you kissing me, pushing me against a wall and tearing my clothes off, bending me over a desk and spanking me for being a bad, oh so very bad girl. I can't get you out of my head, Seamus. I can't lie to you. I'm obsessed with you. I think I'm in love with you because that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Why else would I bare my breasts to you and have you grope me at work?!"

A knock at the door thankfully interrupted them and Seamus didn't have to answer.

"Come in!" Called Jill as she looked up at Seamus from where they were now standing after they had gotten up to answer the door simultaneously, but had gotten temporarily stuck between the desks. Jill still had her hand on his chest where she had yet to remove it, something Seamus quickly moved to rectify but was too late before the person at the door walked in.

"Jill! How...nice to see you again." Eloise said, noticing Seamus trying to remove Jill's hand and Jill bring slow to respond. "I see that you are both working in the same office now. I do need to talk to both of you, separately, please."