- 4 -
The Vaught Plantation - July 30th, 1952 - 12:10pm

Elizabeth greeted her daughters as warmly as she knew how. Amanda and Lydia Vaught arrived at midday along with a flurry of boxes and suitcases. Their father and Christie, the girls’ maid, oversaw the dispensing of the luggage while Elizabeth tried to summon up enough motherly warmth to at least bring the twins into the house. She embraced them each in turn, kissing their cheeks and biting back her opinions on their attire. They were dressed for travel after all. She also made a decent effort to ignore how they wistfully looked back to their father. For all his faults, the man had proved to be a much better parent than Elizabeth had ever managed.

She brought the twins into the main parlor for tea. It did please her to see them. She reminded herself that her parents had left her at boarding school for years without once visiting or bringing her home for the holidays. Letters from her childhood nanny were more common than ones from her father, until he put a stop to them.

The young, blooming women settled down beside one another on the small sofa. The pleats of their dresses crushed together as they whispered to one another. Elizabeth sat on the opposite side of table, watching them with the repose of a sated cat musing on whether or not to toy with a pair of mice. The girls had been inseparable since even before birth. They pulled together like magnets, a fact that made Elizabeth dread her prospects of getting them both married. It also shocked her to see such familial affection happening right in front of her. She didn’t recall ever sitting so close to Abby and didn’t understand why her daughters weren’t preparing venomous barbs of insults to hurl between them.

“Girls,” she said, “stop that chattering to one another. Lydia, serve the tea. Amanda, stand up I want to have a proper look at you.”

They parted as they remembered their mother’s presence. It wasn’t sulk in their movements, but their best effort at hidden resentment. An effort not nearly sufficient to escape Elizabeth’s gaze. Amanda stood and smoothed out her dress. The twins were fraternal, but it was a mostly academic distinction. Except for the color of their hair, they were nearly identical. Amanda had tresses of golden curls while Lydia’s straight locks were raven black with a lustrous sheen. They had their father’s features. His eyes, nose, cheekbones, and chin. None of which were a bad thing for their prospects. Benjamin didn’t manage to fuck every woman he met by sheer charm. He was an irritatingly handsome man, and his daughters benefited from it.

All the more to Elizabeth’s chagrin, as they bore nearly no resemblance to her. If she hadn’t experienced their birth, she would question whether she was their mother at all. If any Vaught resemblance existed, then it was to their aunt. The way Abigail’s sardonic smirk played in her eyes was the exact same as what appeared on the twins’ faces when they were giggling over some silent joke with one another.

“You’re too thin,” Elizabeth said. “Did they not feed you well enough?”

Amanda didn’t know how to respond. She lifted her shoulders in a mix of agreement and resignation. “I was not underfed,” she concluded.

Elizabeth suppressed a frown. To her eyes, the girls looked like waifs, but Amanda’s confusion at her question called into doubt Elizabeth’s intuition on the matter. She tried to think back to her wedding day. Elizabeth had always been blessed with a large bosom, but the rest of her had been thin and spindly on that day. Her wedding dress had cinched tightly at her midsection and slipped easily over narrow hips. She accounted some of her filling out to her age and motherhood, but knew deep down that wasn’t all. She rarely saw others in the twins’ generation. Almost all of her social experience consisted of men and women who visited the club at least regularly. Which meant they likely enjoyed the benefits of Abigail’s work. Beyond that, the world at large seemed a little on the more buxom side. It wasn’t something she’d ever had reason to think about until looking at the young, unspoiled women sitting across from each other. “What type of milk did they serve?”

“Pardon?” Amanda said.

“At the school. Your meals surely included some kind of milk, did they not?”

“Yes, mother. I, uh, never thought to ask.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went to the small jug sitting among the tea. Perhaps they’ve lucked into avoiding the stuff almost entirely, she thought. But, the world won’t care. Prospective husbands will not take a second glance at them if they’re standing around like slips of torn paper. They’ll need the same assets as their competition. “Have milk with your tea,” she said with a smile. “It’s absolutely delicious. Sit down, Amanda.”

The social season was still a few weeks away. She hoped daily Milktec milk would flesh them out. Otherwise, she would need to talk to Abigail about some speedier alternative. Elizabeth didn’t wish to speak with her sister at all, but she would make an exception for her daughters’ sake. “It’s a joy to have you both back,” she said. “We’re going to have dinner tonight as a family for the first time in years. I’m quite looking forward to it. The kitchen is preparing something wonderful as I understand it. After tea, you’ll have time to go up to your rooms and get settled in.”

“Rooms?” Lydia asked.

“Of course, dear. Did you think you’d be returning to the nursery as grown women?”

The twins exchanged a worried look as their fingers knit together. “No,” Amanda said. “We’re only used to staying together. We shared lodging at school. We expected to room together here as well.”

A knot of worry formed so quickly in Elizabeth’s side that it caused a severe stab of actual pain. She knew the way sisters could latch on to one another like a barnacle to a hull. If she’d known how close they were at school, she would have sent a letter demanding they be separated for their own good. Such bonds were a quick path to being spinsters, and Elizabeth had no intention of allowing the Vaught family to end with her children. “You must put such ideas out of your heads. You have been well educated and come from an upstanding family. Your father and I have made extreme sacrifices to ensure you were raised as women of quality. This summer will end with at least one of you engaged if it kills the rest of us to make it happen. In the meantime, you must both grow accustomed to spending time apart from one another. Did you think you’d spend your whole lives joined at the hip?” Elizabeth knew the tone in her voice was the same raking condemnation that her father used, and she saw the way it landed on the twins. It physically drove them apart to hear their mother say such things, their entwined hands slowly pulling away from each other.

“We understand, mother, but it does come as somewhat of a shock, after all,” Lydia said. “We are strangers in this house, and what few memories we have of the place are not fond ones.”

“Grandfather…” Amanda added. She quailed, and her eyes drifted to the corners of the room as if expecting the long dead man to emerge from the shadows.

Elizabeth tried to brighten, “The house has changed greatly since your last visit. It was not only for your education that we kept you at school all these years. Your father and I have fully redesigned the house. All the old furnishings have been thrown out, and the place has been renovated from top to bottom. Outside of the library, I believe you won’t find any evidence of your grandparents at all.” She didn’t know if their visible relief pleased her or not. “After you freshen up, you should go around and see it all. This is your home, even if it doesn’t feel like it. When we come to negotiations for your marriages, it will play an immense role.”

“Marriage?”

“Of course. Don’t be silly. Mariette Hutchens is hosting a luncheon next week, ladies only. It will be a chance for the matrons to size up everyone and start seeing the pecking order of things. I have no doubt you two will be at the top. The Wednesday of that week, we are expected at a dinner party at Mr. Otis Graves’s town house in the capitol. It will be a bit of a drive, so we may go up the night before. Mr. Graves isn’t exactly in government, but he may as well be. His wife, Sylvia, is a key proxy for all the young men who find themselves in the District and in need of a wife. While I certainly have higher hopes for you both than a Congressman, the war has left eligible men in scarce supply. At the same time, it has opened up many avenues for substantial occupation that once would have been limited. Serving in Congress is more a stepping stone these days than it is a lifelong occupation.” Elizabeth saw the distress in her daughters’ eyes, and she did not want to give them an opportunity to speak over her. Unfortunately, she did not have unlimited breath.

“Mother, what if we did not wish to marry right away?”

A single breath was all it took for such a rotten idea to worm its way into Elizabeth’s plans. “Nonsense, you’ll marry as soon as possible under the best circumstances possible. We have enough of a problem wrangling the concept of inheritance between twins into the negotiations that —”

“But, there is so much to do in the world,” Lydia protested. “We have only seen a small part of Virginia, but they are rebuilding Paris and London. They send out calls for commerce and investment and travel to help share the burden of cost. And that is only a frivolous interest of seeing sights. They showed news reels at the cinema whenever we went. The things being done in Europe. The war against Hitler was one thing, but this one is a slog worse than the Great War. All of it over what at this point? Control or the lines of government philosophy? We cannot focus on such a small thing as marriage in a world like this.”

A deluge of objections clogged Elizabeth’s thoughts. She managed to say, “A small thing? Marriage is what you are for! The continuance of this family, of this family name.”

Amanda shook her head, “No, mother. There are so many more opportunities for women now. Most of our classmates are carrying on, going to university like Aunt Abby.”

Invoking their aunt was a mistake all three women saw immediately. Elizabeth set her cup down with a loud click that tested the strength of the porcelain. “Abigail is not something to aspire to,” Elizabeth spat at her daughters. “Whatever ideas are in your heads need flushing out, and I intend to have a word with your former headmaster. You will go to your rooms. I will send Christie up with the books I’ve prepared for you at great effort. They contain the names and photographs of many of the people you will meet during the season. Put your wandering minds to memorizing them and their families so you don’t make fools of yourself at events. I plan on taking you to the club for a light introduction at the end of the week, and once we begin it won’t end until you both are married. Finish your tea and off you go.”

Neither of them bothered to finish anything. They returned their cups to the tray and gathered themselves up. They managed to make it to the door before their accursed whispering began anew only to be cut short by their father’s voice, “Off already my doves?” The conversation dropped to a murmur which caused Elizabeth to stiffen further. Benjamin had not been the neglectful or distant parent at all. He made regular visits upstate to see the girls, and to visit his various mistresses. Elizabeth consoled herself that he did the former as a reason to do the latter, but a nagging part of her worried that it might be the reverse. That he might have been more hesitant to show parental affection than infidelity. The girls were his doves, and he was their “papa”. The pleibian form of address appalled Elizabeth’s sensibilities as much as anything. The idea of addressing her own father with such an affectionate term mortified her.

Benjamin swept into the room brimming with as much anger as he ever managed. If the man had a backbone, it only went rigid for his daughters’ sake. It was the one point of agreement they had in their marriage. “What did you say to them?” he asked in a clipped tone.

“Did they not tell you?” Elizabeth hissed after savoring the sweet taste of milk in her tea. “They have flowers for brains, it seems, despite the extreme cost of their education. I hope you haven’t been encouraging their ideas of world travel or humanitarian aide.” She watched a small shift of his jaw. “You knew, then. God, Benjamin, you might have hoped to get better at lying by now.”

He moved into the room and snatched a small biscuit from the tea tray. “The education we paid for is precisely what will make them a high value on your marriage altar. If you spent less time at the club, perhaps you’d know the way trends have changed. The war tore down the old world. You will see it soon enough, I bet. Once all those handsome faces in your macabre little books aren’t at these luncheons or dinners.”

“Are you now the people’s champion?” A thought caught in her mind and sent a shock down to her chest. “Benjamin, this talk of jobs and travel. Is there something more insidious behind it? What have they been reading? You know how feverish they get in Washington about communist sympathies. It could ruin them.”

He gnawed a bite of the biscuit and moved to peer out of the window. “I wouldn’t concern yourself about that. The girls have a different idea of how they might be able to help society.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Lydia came right out and said it. They’ve been researching Milktec’s contracts.”

Elizabeth shot up from her seat. She didn’t know why, but standing seemed a better option. Perhaps she could go lock them in their rooms, that was the type of thing she heard about. “They wouldn’t dare,” she said.

“I talked against it,” he said, not looking at his wife. “They knew you would object, but I think they thought I would be an ally for them. I told them flatly, no. Christie has as well. They’ve both come to rely on her opinion in our absence, so that’s in your favor. And no, I’m not fucking her before you accuse. Still, even with a united front on the subject, they haven’t forgotten the idea entirely, but they’ll need time to regroup. I meant to bring it up with you later. In light of the option, perhaps you would be more open to the idea of allowing them to travel or even attend some classes. Meet them halfway.”

“Or they’ll turn themselves into leaking sluts?” Elizabeth’s fear and worry fractured quickly into anger. She lowered her voice to a knife’s whisper, “I will not be blackmailed on my family’s future, even by my own daughters. I swear if they so much as mention the idea of joining a fucking hucow farm, I will chain them to the walls until I find a man happy to take them as a prisoner as much as a wife.”

Benjamin turned around with a look on his face that caused Elizabeth to gasp. “We will work together to dissuade them from the idea,” he said. “Beyond that, you will do nothing to impinge their freedoms, and you will certainly not force them into a marriage to be kept as a prisoner. I won’t allow it. And if I’m not enough, Greg won’t allow it either.”

Their shared interest became an atom in the room alongside the gargantuan of disdain Elizabeth felt for Greg and whatever alliance her husband had with the man. “Get out.”

“With pleasure,” he said. “I came to inform you, well the girls really, that I have an appointment in town, that’s all.”

He was headed to the door when she replied, “Be back for dinner. Preferably with time enough to wash off the stink of whatever cunt you’re going to fuck.” She watched him pause and thought he might turn and fight her again, but he flicked a hand in the air and left.

The Vaught Plantation - July 30th, 1952 - 8:03pm

Elizabeth sat in the dining room staring coldly at the empty chair on the opposite end of the table. Seated on either side of the table, the twins kept their gaze on their plates, clearly feeling scolded by their mother’s mere presence. The table had been laid with the twins sitting side by side, apparently at their behest, but Elizabeth corrected the error. They made an effort to ease the growing tension in the room by offering news of their own. Elizabeth let them talk, prompting them on with nods and benign questions as the clock in her mind ticked along. The staff milled in the adjoining room, cautiously peeking through the door every few minutes.

Twenty minutes late, Elizabeth ordered the meal to be served. The twins ate eagerly, but mostly used the arrival of servants and food to avoid their mother’s simmering malice. Elizabeth brimmed with angry questions. What reason could he have to spite me so? Of course we squabbled, but not enough to show me up in front of the girls. He knew this dinner was important. I even bothered to have them make his favorites, and how am I repaid? He clearly would rather spend his time in the bed of whatever hussy he's with than having dinner with his family. Thoughts of regret for her cruel words to him earlier prodded at the edge of thought, but she swatted them away like no more than buzzing flies.

She ate little, but insisted the girls continue on as normal. As the meal progressed, conversation awkwardly returned. They did, at least, humor Elizabeth with questions about a few of the men in the books she’d left for them. The mood had even lightened a great deal until Lydia made the error of asking, “We thought Aunt Abigail might come for dinner tonight?”

Elizabeth dressed her answer in a light tone, “Why would you think that? You know your aunt and I do not see eye to eye.”

The twins exchanged a glance between one another. Elizabeth recognized it as their strange little way of communicating. A mystic might have insisted it was the sharing of a single soul through birth. Their mother knew it to be nothing other than the mischievousness of sisters who were too close. “Then, why did they move here?”

An uneasy stillness filled the room. The servants were suddenly absent. With the same vapid tone, Elizabeth answered, “To be close to her family home, obviously. Your aunt, despite our differences, is as much a Vaught as the rest of us. It only made sense for her to return home after her time away.”

“Away at school,” Amanda threw out, the challenge blatant in her tone.

“Yes, that’s right,” her mother replied, as sweet as candied sugar.

The younger women exchanged another meaningful look. “Julia Ottermark came to the school two years ago.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said after knocking her ring against the wine glass. A hesitant woman entered the room and refilled it before scurrying back through the staff door. The Ottermarks were landowners in a neighboring county. They often attended the club parties. Elizabeth had once watched Susan Ottermark take her husband’s serum-fueled, gargantuan cock up the ass. “I wasn’t aware Susan sent her away. I always thought her to be an unremarkable girl.”

Lydia ignored the comment, “She sought us out due to our family name, and we became friends.”

“Honestly, Lydia, you could do better.”

“She told us things. Our own family history. We asked papa about it, but he refused to say anything. So, now we’re asking you. Is it true?”

Elizabeth moved her glass back and forth on the table. Nothing was going right. “Is what true?”

“That Aunt Abby is a genius chemist who makes Milktec serum. That Uncle Greg is a chemical supplier for them. And…that you sell or give away modified serum in exchange for favors at the club.”

Elizabeth felt a strange pride for her daughters for being brave enough to outright ask about those questions. The sensation died in the cold of her displeasure. “Your aunt is a scandalous madwoman who was disowned by your grandfather. Whatever she plays at in her laboratory is irrelevant to us. Her husband is a former criminal who has barely scraped the dirt from under his fingernails, but puffs himself up because he’s found ways to be more clever than the dullards around us who have money. As for your last point, it is entirely too distasteful to even address it. How could you think of speaking to your mother of such a thing?”

“The world is changing. Mothers and daughters alike are having to confront the reality that Milktec is —”

“Enough!” she snapped. “You are both excused.”

For the second time that day, her daughters drifted out of the room in a disquieted huff. Elizabeth called in the staff to clear away the meal and bring her more wine. They worked dutifully, avoiding their brooding mistress’s gaze as best they could. She let her eyes linger near their gaze not to seek out a conversation, but to dare each of them to speak at all. She wanted a firm reminder of where she stood in things. These were her employees, slack witted and under bred men and women of the lower class. If her daughters were forgetting that, then perhaps the people she paid were forgetting it, too. Do I pay them? No. The money comes from my accounts, but it’s not mine. The thought bit at her and worsened her already dark mood.

She wondered where her husband was. Dead, maybe. Finally found by a husband with a temper too short to be charmed. In the early years of their marriage before the open secret of his affairs, she worried about him being absent from home so much. After she accepted her husband’s nature, she worried less, but it still rankled her to consider his untimely death. For one, it would upset her daughters. For another, even with how much she loathed him at times, Elizabeth still considered Benjamin to be on her side in most things. Being a widower would mean losing the one partial ally she had in the world. And, somewhere deep down, she still held an affection for him or, at least, for the people they’d been when they married.

These were the thoughts that prevented her from hurling her glass at Benjamin when he finally walked into the dining room. He looked up and down the length of the table before standing beside his chair and resting his arm on the back. “Elizabeth, I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

“What’s this one’s name?” she asked.

Her husband had the decency to look ashamed. “It doesn’t matter. I really, truly intended to be on time. You have to believe me. If only because I wouldn’t want the girls to suffer alone.” He tried to twist up the end of the statement to make it sound like a playful joke. But, too much truth threaded the idea, and it landed horridly in the air between them.

“Is that what I am? Suffering? The hawk to your little doves?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

She did throw the glass after all. It shattered against the chair, exactly where he would have been sitting if he’d been on time. When he turned back to her, she was standing at the head of the table with eyes full of silent fury. “Tonight was meant to be a new start for us. Some foolish part of me believed we all innately understood that. For twenty years, we’ve paraded around this house sharpening knives to slice at each other, and tonight we had a chance to put all of that behind us. We had a chance to exist as a family, but no, you were too cunt drunk to find your way back on time.”

Benjamin moved behind the chair as if it would protect him from her rage manifesting into more wine glasses. “You didn’t really believe any of that, did you? It’s simply another way for you to unload all the responsibility of your hatred onto me. Maybe you did think tonight would offer us a fresh start, and so you’ve been building a brand new cross for me to bear so that you could strap it onto my back the second I stepped out of line. I’m not having it any more, Elizabeth. The girls are done with school, and if you have your way they’ll be chattel wives to some thin brained buffoon with an old name. Or if I have mine, they’ll escape the name you cursed me with. And so will I!”

Elizabeth staggered back, nearly falling over her chair as she clutched her hand to her chest. “What did you say?”

Her husband realized the thought had escaped him unbidden and considered his next words for a moment before giving a mirthful chuckle. “Why not,” he said to himself. “I plan to leave you.”

No. If he died, that would be one thing. But if he leaves, if I am divorced, then all of it will have been for nothing.

“The woman who got me ‘cunt drunk’ is in love with me. And I love her. Actual love, not this hate filled corpse of a marriage. I planned to wait until the end of the season, to spare you the embarrassment, but if you can’t be civil to your own daughters than I see no reason to delay. I can arrange for apartments for them. Greg and Abby would —”

“You will do nothing,” Elizabeth said, her voice dead. “Greg will not help you because he does what my sister says. And Abigail, for all they may allow you to run around like a feral dog, does what keeps me happy. Test that, if you want. You will be penniless or worse. And whatever slut you think is in love with you will be shipped off to an experimental Milktec lab where she takes fifty cocks the size of your arm up her grail-like quim every day.”

“Not her,” he said, dismissively.

Elizabeth’s eyebrow raised slightly, “Oh? Is she so special?” It was always Benjamin’s flaw, his relentless pursuit of some saving grace in his failing arguments. It left something exposed every time he tried to shield himself. For once, though, he seemed to realize his mistake and closed his mouth before saying any more on the subject.

“I am going up to check on the girls. We can continue shouting at one another tomorrow, if you like.” With his miserably consistent charm, he gave her a slight nod and ducked out the way he came.

She let him go as the anger surged out of her, leaving her hands trembling. She went to the side table and poured herself a glass of bourbon. The smell of it made her think of her brother-in-law, and she began to consider what he would do in this situation. The rat will try to leave. If he’s worked up enough nerve to say it to my face, then he must have some actual idea of doing it. He knew enough not to tell me the woman’s name, and he seems to think this mystery woman would be immune to Greg’s usual threats. Which means I’ll have to do it myself. Amid the vapors of alcohol in her mind, she formulated a wild idea. Gulping down the rest of the bourbon, she slid out of the dining room and headed off to her sister’s lab.

When Elizabeth was a girl, the warehouse had been essentially abandoned, passed over for newer facilities more equipped to accommodate the larger machinery. Or perhaps it was simply ignored due to its long history, like hate and pain had soaked into the timbers that held it up. Gregory gutted out enough of that to change it into something new, but not necessarily less ominous. Elizabeth knew the short little romps her sister’s formulations enabled weren’t the only types of modifications being done to Milktec’s serum. It seemed a new scandal emerged every day where some poor woman or man was turned into a full blown monster by modified serum. Elizabeth told herself none of those formulations came from her sister’s lab, but it was harder to believe that Abigail’s work didn’t somehow contribute.

Elizabeth trekked across the grassy path. She’d allowed it to be made by the gardeners only because it drew a line between the structures. While Abigail’s house was thankfully hidden behind a row of trees, the warehouse was as much a fixture of the plantation as the manor house. Even with the updates and modifications, the building remained a fixed part of the landscape. Once it was operational, the path was a natural addition, the landscaping equivalent of an umbilical cord connecting the Vaught family to their financial savior’s endeavors. Or a noose, if Elizabeth was in a particularly grim mood. It would have been a pleasant evening for a walk if not for the heat of liquor around her neck and for her destination. The last time she’d visited the lab had gone poorly. She still remembered the sight of Gregory and Abigail in the throes of passion as vividly as if it were happening right in front of her. This time, anger or not, she would knock.

She reached the warehouse door and flung it open. The man waiting inside at a small desk looked up at her and frowned. “Mrs. Vaught,” Maddock grunted.

Elizabeth knew little about Gregory’s right hand man, and they didn’t start out on the right foot. The first time she’d barged into the laboratory, Maddock had been at the Vaught plantation less than a week. Presumably, he’d not figured out the power dynamics or what sort of behavior would be considered unusual. So, when his boss’s sister-in-law demanded to see her sister, Maddock defaulted to the natural assumption that the sisters didn’t loathe one another and pointed to the door of Abigail’s lab. Since then, Gregory’s guard dog had been significantly more austere in allowing visitors. He squared himself behind the desk, filling up the area with his presence in the manner that a bouncer at a dive bar makes his presence conspicuous to the drunkard getting a little too rowdy.

Elizabeth tried to find a smile, but for fear that it would come out as a sneer, kept her face as neutral as possible. For all she detested Gregory for being above his station, ruining her sister, and burdening her family name, she actually didn’t mind Maddock all that much. She considered it silly to hate the dog for its master, and Maddock was ultimately Gregory’s dog. She didn’t know where they found each other, but from what she’d gleaned through servant gossip, the two had been inseparable since childhood. Some stories bubbled to the surface. They were both in an orphanage before it burned down, and Gregory saved Maddock from the flames. Or the other way around. Another said that Maddock’s family died of Scarlet Fever, and Gregory, already a wandering orphan by then, found the boy’s home filled with the dead and saved him from a macabre fate. The one Elizabeth thought most likely attributed the pair’s origin to being the bastard children of two different men born to the same whore. Half-brother was still family, and loyalty to family despite extenuating circumstances was a thing Elizabeth could understand. “I’d like to speak with my sister.”

“Social or business?” Maddock asked, no hint of humor or mockery in his question.

“Family business, if you must classify it.”

He shrugged, and said, “Wait here.”

She hated waiting, but had little recourse to argue with him. The alcohol urged her in both directions, to argue and to stay silent, and a third, to lower her dress and let him take in the sight of her cleavage. As he stood, she wondered how often he took Abigail’s special cocktails and what he would look like seething with change as he hovered over her body. Elizabeth tutted at the thought, chastising herself as he walked to the stairwell at the back of the room.

Maddock was strangely compelling in his own way, alike to Gregory in their shared unconventional attractiveness. While Gregory maintained a reserved power that made him alluring, Maddock was the epitome of the gentle giant. The man often slouched to make himself less threatening, but at his full height, he towered over everyone Elizabeth had ever seen. That a man could be so tall seemed irresponsible, and for the rest of him to be proportional seemed unfair. Most tall people, at least those taller than six feet, seemed stretched out and thin, like a wad of taffy pulled out to a string. Maddock wasn’t thin at all, but broad shouldered with hips wide enough to be considered haunches. The man had a dark complexion that helped him blend into the background. He wore his hair longer than fashionable, but it wasn’t lank or greasy like one might expect, or how Elizabeth expected anyway.

He went up the stairs, leaving Elizabeth to idle in the warehouse. Doubts plagued her, particularly because she didn’t know exactly what she wanted. To find Benjamin’s new love and ruin her? To turn Benjamin himself into a buffoon that was little more than a walking cock? Not that he wasn’t already. She wondered if she told Maddock to throttle him, would the man do it? Of course not, he would ask Gregory first. The man was dangerously loyal. Elizabeth wished she had someone like that.

As he returned, an idea popped into Elizabeth’s head. She buried the thought quickly and waited for Maddock’s instruction. Maddock didn’t say anything. He only nodded to the stairwell. Elizabeth straightened and proceeded up to the lab. Pride overwhelming her sense of decorum, she didn’t bother knocking before entering, but she did hesitate slightly while rattling the knob.

Even though she’d seen the lab before, she always imagined it as something more akin to an apothecary than a place of science. In her mind, the room contained bubbling cauldrons, bats and spiders loitering in the corners, and jars of odd animal bits and eyeballs sitting on decrepit shelves. Somewhere behind the shelves, always partially out of sight, a different version of Abigail muttered strange incantations to herself. It seemed only fair to Elizabeth that some price should be paid for Abigail’s brilliance. Her work should have scarred her or twisted her into a deformed hag. To Elizabeth’s consternation, none of this was true.

The lab looked like a hospital ward. Every thing in its exact place, gleaming with clean light. Small machines dotted the various tables and counters. The little devices might as well have been cauldrons for all Elizabeth understood them. While they were all silent at the moment, she knew each of them could make a series of clicks and beeps that would tell Abigail all the secrets of the universe. For everyone else, they were glorified noise makers, and egregiously expensive ones at that. The tables were all empty, noticeably absent of dripping vials or steaming beakers. Only the desk at the back of the room, the same desk Elizabeth saw Abigail and Gregory fucking on, lacked the austere sterility. It was strewn with books, notebooks, slips of paper, and spooled charts. Abigail sat at it as well, but it took a moment for Elizabeth to even see her. Her sister looked as much a part of the lab as the machines or tabletops.

Abigail did not look up as Elizabeth entered the lab with as much noise as possible. She leaned on her folded arms peering over the spread of notes in front of her. Abigail retained every bit of her youthful beauty, but in the years since moving to Farrs Post, she had gained substance. When their father still lived, Abigail had been slender and reedy. Since then, she’d not aged, but taken on a more matronly build. If not for Milktec’s existence, a knowledgeable woman would have expected to find Abigail mother to several children. On closer inspection, they would not have found any of the normal wear and tear associated with motherhood. Milktec freed the ladies of Farrs Post from that as well, Elizabeth not being an exception. A small part of her resented Abigail achieving such a luscious form without having to endure nine months of child bearing.

“Is something the matter, sister?” Abigail asked, still not moving her eyes from the desk.

Elizabeth’s skin heated again, anger fueled by alcohol. How dare Abigail not look at her? Had she not been humiliated enough already by her daughters and husband? Had that not been what drove her to come groveling to her sister in the first place? “No,” Elizabeth lied.

Abigail bleated out a laugh and finally looked up. “I doubt that. You clearly want something, otherwise you wouldn’t have debased yourself by walking here. Or soiled your good name by stepping into a room where thinking happens. Get on with it already, I’m busy. If you want more money, you’ll have to wait until Greg is back.”

“He’s gone, is he?”

Abigail dropped her pen and leaned back in her chair. “Yes. Off arranging the deals that keep you in all that luxury, you’ll be glad to hear. So, what is it? I know the girls are back. Do you want their chains gilded?”

The mention of her daughters caused fury to well in Elizabeth’s eyes, but she bit her tongue. Relaxing her stance, she eased herself against the ends of one of the tables. “Do you ever wonder what other sisters say to one another? Whether they sit sharpening their tongues on the off chance that they might have an opportunity to hurt their sibling. Why is it that we are so constantly cruel to one another?”

“You’ve been drinking,” Abigail declared and picked up her pen. “We are cruel to one another because you believed our parents’ lies, particularly our father’s. You still believe them.”

“And what lies would those be exactly?”

“That greatness is inherent in a name. That a person is valuable because of their lineage, and not because of anything else. Those that try are trumped up above their station, which means it’s your job as the proper upper class to knock them back down. Or that intelligence is a mark of effort, and life should be entirely effortless. Therefore learning or betterment is akin to a cardinal sin. And so on and so forth in that manner. All of it the most basic dreck of classist mentality that is overly rote to the point of being a bore.” Her eyes snapped up again, and she poinedt her pen accusingly at Elizabeth, “If I could wish one thing, dear sister, it would be that if we are forced to remain at eternal odds with one another, then you would at least have the decency to have less transparent motivations so that I wouldn’t be so fucking bored by having to deal with your psychological defects. Now, what do you want?”

No one could take Elizabeth’s skin off so neatly or cleanly as her sister. Disdain for Abigail’s life choices wasn’t the only reason the two rarely visited. “If you despise me so much, then why are you here? The twins asked me that, today, you know. I told them you came back because of Father’s death, that half of this place belonged to you, but you don’t care a whit for it, perhaps even less than you care about me. So why?”

A thin, predatory smile spread on Abigail’s face. “Because it was profitable. Now what do you want?”

Elizabeth raised her chin and dropped any emotion from her voice. “I need more of the serum. Four additional doses.”

Abigail’s eyebrow rose. “Planning a festive evening for yourself?”

“Yes,” she answered, curt and defensive.

The other Vaught sister’s eye’s narrowed. “Very well. Perhaps you’d be interested in guinea pigging for me. Obviously you’re rather desperate for a fix. Maybe you’d like to try out a few of the more experimental versions. How about one that gives you a tail and horns, turns you into a real rutting cow. Or one that gives you an actual udder. A big, milky sac right about those perfectly dignified pussy lips of yours. Of course, it changes them, too. Engorges them, flares them up into big puffy cushions that cause every dick in a fifty meter radius to ache and leak. Those are only the top of the list. Such wicked things can be made once you unlock the secrets of the human body.

“I could fix you permanently, sister. Flood that prickly mind of yours with an unending deluge of hormones that cooks what little intellect you have down to a lean need to fuck. We’re calling that the life-term contract solution, you see. Give it to a gal on her eighteenth birthday, and you’ve got a cow for life who will never ask to read a book or watch a play or have a conversation. If she can still walk upright, it would only serve to get her from one cock to the next. Wouldn’t that be a simpler life for the twins? Much easier to marry them off if they’re nothing but cum sucking sluts that leak delicious milk.

“Or maybe it’s truly a solution to your other problem that you want. Time to finally put Benny out to pasture? We could do that literally, you know. One of the other branches of serum development is working on changing human digestion systems to more efficiently utilize cellulose. If that works, you could have Ben turned into a fat dicked bull and leave him in a pasture to munch grass between munching pussy and fucking every hucow in the county. Or take him the other way. A few of the upper level executives, the sort who invested early and now think they’re kings, are having problems with a few of their acquisitions having pre-existing husbands or other relationships. Murder is too plebeian for them, you see, so they want us to cook up something that turns those problem-causing spouses into eunuchs. I think they just want to humiliate them a little more. It’s power, of course. That’s what really gets them off.

“But why stop there? We can rewrite a human from the ground up and keeping ratios is important. You need one bull to every eight cows for an optimal genetic breeding pool, so long as you rotate them. Right now, even with all the wonders of war depleting the world population, we’re operating at a two to one ratio of men to women. As it turns out war is pretty indiscriminate on whether it kills soldiers or not. Well, maybe that’s not true. Soldiers move and fight and survive. The women they leave in the war zone don’t fare so well. Maybe the way we reward our valiant heroes on their return home is to erase all those war horrors and battle hardened bodies. We give them dreams of pleasantries like fat tits and thick cocks while we soften their bodies into pliable, fuckable cushions that will never stop leaking milk. But, they’re really not anything other than stress relief from the testosterone fueled bulls who can literally never stop fucking or their balls might explode. God knows the women they knock up won’t be able to fuck them twenty four hours a day when their bellies are too overripe with their calves, so they need some feminized men to fill in the gaps. Give them a pussy if you can manage it, but if not just loosen up their ass enough for them to enjoy it!”

Elizabeth listened to her sister rant. She knew Abigail was responsible for bizarre work, but she’d not once considered how terrifying that work could be. Elizabeth liked the smallness of her world. It had an order to it that made sense. The war, the social upheavals, the revolutions, and the insidious changes to innocent young men and women across the country — it had nothing to do with the Vaught world, to the point that it might as well have been a bedtime story from an old fairy tale book. Elizabeth’s anger from her family dinner and her outrage from having her sister talk so brazenly and crassly about things shrank down inside her mind as dangerous concepts of the outside world pressed in from all sides. It caused a flush of adrenaline near her kidneys, the bitter sensation of panic threatening to grab hold of her body. How often had she been cavalier about what Abigail and Gregory were capable of? How had she forgotten they actually were capable of such things? Abigail the mad scientist, and Gregory the man who would do anything his wife told him, even turn his sister-in-law into a full blown hucow if only to be rid of her demands. Elizabeth swallowed, wincing at the bitter taste at the back of her tongue. She kept her face blank and resolute and took the one path which made the most sense, “I think you may be overworked, sister. You sound taxed.”

Neither Elizabeth’s jab or Abigail’s clear stress from work rankled the younger Vaught. She leaned back in her chair with her smirk wider than ever. “Perhaps I should join you on the little jaunt. Found a particular lower class man that you fancy, sister? Keen to turn his cock into something worth your time? Or do you worry he might not have enough interest in those tits of yours without a little extra oomph. Surely, whoever he is, he wouldn’t turn down the chance to taste the snatches of both of the lauded Vaught sisters.”

Anger won out, “How dare you suggest such a deplorable thing? Have you become so corrupted by your work that you would joke about such depravity?”

“No,” she answered. “Not corrupted. Liberated. I’m not offering to fuck you, Liz. But what are sisters for if not twinning their tongues around the same cock. C’mon, you’d finally have the chance to see who really is the bigger woman.” Abigail pushed her arms together to jut out her breasts.

Elizabeth would have struck her sister if she had been closer, but as it was, she spluttered incoherently as her face turned scarlet. When she finally composed herself enough, she turned on her heel and prepared to stride out, having entirely forgotten her first humiliation due to this fresher one. She stopped with her back to Abigail as reason reasserted itself. “I only came for the serum, not to fight or bicker or listen to the filth you spew. Mother and Father must have found a way to enjoy spinning in their graves by now, but I have run out of shame for you or myself, Abigail. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

She made it another few steps before Abigail called for her to wait. Elizabeth regained as much of her dignity as possible as she waited like a commoner at the lab door while Abigail went through one of the several doors at the far end of the lab. When Abigail returned, her hand clutched tight around several vials which she took to a small box and placed them inside. Even with their spiteful words between them, it took all of Elizabeth’s restraint not to snatch the box from Abigail’s hand. Worst of all, she dreaded the idea that it might be offered and pulled away with a cruel laugh as she reached for it. Thankfully, Abigail put it down on the counter nearest Elizabeth. She tapped it, “Four doses, to use for whatever you like. Believe it or not, without judgment.”

With that, Abigail walked away. Elizabeth expected more argument or snide remarks, but, worse than that, it was like she no longer existed at all in Abigail’s world. She had been a diversion, a way to blow off excess steam, and now Abigail would return to work. The serum wasn’t because Elizabeth asked, she realized. It was payment for being a punching bag.

She grabbed the box and stormed out, not looking back.

The burn of anger and alcohol had receded to a malaise by the time Elizabeth reached her room in the manor house. She clutched the case in her hand and wondered if she’d gone far enough already. Her thoughts went back to Benjamin’s face as he admitted to his affair — that he was in love and would leave her — and her resolve solidified.

She took the case to her dressing room and removed two of the vials, sliding them into a small pouch. The others remained in the case for her future purposes. Two for balancing the scales of infidelity in her marriage, and two for Machiavellian revenge. She changed her clothes. The expensive dress of a wealthy woman of grand social status was cast aside. Elizabeth went to a small room at the back of her closet and drew out one of several plain dresses. She didn’t know the secret compartment’s original purpose, but she used it for hiding the clothes of the lower class, like a shameful man hiding dirty magazines.

Picking through the small selection, she chose a blue dress with a low bust line. It was the type of thing a young woman wore to a dance. Elizabeth collected the secret wardrobe by asking discrete questions of the staff. She didn’t want anyone to see her shopping at the cheaper stores, so she went in to D.C. where she could get lost in the crowd. She actually envied the other women their ability to dress so loosely and comfortably. The dress sat on her body naturally, aggressively advertising her curves and bust whereas her normal attire restrained her voluptuous body to cultivate an aura of alluring seduction.

She left her hair down and removed most of her makeup before applying a bright shade of red to her lips. All her jewelry went into the small box on top of her dressing table. The woman who looked back from the mirror was not Elizabeth Vaught. No one in her life had seen her in such a state of ease. Not her husband in the first years of their marriage. Not even her doctor when the twins came. Even then, she’d been fully dressed in the role of Elizabeth Vaught. It wasn’t a relief, exactly, to leave that persona aside. No more than it would be a relief to step out into a blizzard without a coat. But, it was brisk and refreshing.

The small pouch went into a handbag with a few other essentials, and she went down the old staircase to escape the notice of her daughters or husband. The staff knew if they saw a familiar woman in servant’s clothes to simply ignore her. Elizabeth went to the garage, picked out one of the shoddy trucks ostensibly used for farm work, and headed off to town.

Farrs Post’s small downtown was nothing compared to the country’s capital only a few hours away, but it was growing. Near the end of the war against the Germans, it experienced a flourish of growth as the country readied itself to welcome home thousands of war heroes with money in their pockets. That was cut short by the new war against the Soviets and new buses full of young men leaving. Through it all, several places maintained a steady business. Among them was a bar, Charlie’s.

Charlie’s was once a juke joint, the only place in Farrs Post worth going for music and dance. The upper class never slummed it at such a place. It was meant for the servants, factory workers, and farmhands that populated the countryside. For Elizabeth, it was a hunting ground.

She slid in through the door, drawing a few eyes right away. They didn’t look because a wealthy woman of note entered, but because a gorgeous woman entered by herself. The inside of the place was always hot. It smelled of sawdust, sweat, and stale booze. A trio of musicians plucked away at the far end of the single room, making a raucous noise that had drawn about two dozen people in to dance. Elizabeth scanned the crowd as she made her way to the bar. She recognized no one, and no one recognized her. As she settled in place at the end to wait for the bartender, she let her eyes scan again. This time they met the gaze of others. All of them were roughly her age. They gave her polite nods, nudged their drinks, or simply smiled, each an invitation to a slightly different form of conversation. On other nights, she might have taken them up on the offer.

The bartender came over in a huff. She was a middle aged woman who had a reputation for not caring one damn thing about her customers. The bartender was the one person in the place who had seen Elizabeth often enough to know her over the years. And still, she demanded a drink order from Elizabeth as though she’d never spoken to a human before in her life. Elizabeth asked for a gin and tonic. It was slapped down in front of her a few seconds later. At about the same time, a young man plopped down, pushed his empty glass across the bar, and asked for another beer. Elizabeth sipped her drink, wincing slightly at the bitterness, and watched the newcomer.

Sweat crept up his brow, soaking into the roots of the long hairs at the front of his head. His eyes were green and vibrant, as though seeing the world for the first time. He wore a factory made shirt and a pair of dark trousers. No overshirt or suspenders. He was handsome, Elizabeth thought, or at least youthful and unrepressed. He smiled easily and moved with the careless grace of someone who hadn’t grown up with every step watched and measured. When he saw Elizabeth, who had postured herself to put her breasts on full display, a tinge of red sneaked into his cheeks, and his mood became furtive. She knew when the fish had taken the hook, “What’s your name?” she asked.

He choked on his beer. “Marcus,” he spluttered after recovering. He looked up and down the bar as if she had been addressing someone else, and he’d made a fool interrupting. When no one else presented themselves for her attention, he relaxed and the natural charm returned to his body. “Marcus Bradford. May I ask yours?”

“Bess,” she answered. The name clanged in her head, but it wasn’t as crass as Liz. She’d often imagined a husband or lover who called her Bess affectionately. A name shared only between them. Instead, she used it as a hollow moniker for one night stands. “Are you celebrating?”

“Sure am, uh, miss.” He stole a glance at her hand to save him from the awkwardness of bringing attention to their age gap. He was better suited to one of her daughters than to Elizabeth. She wanted that, after all. “Got my ticket this afternoon. Ship off for basic in two weeks.”

She nodded and smiled, leaning a little more on the bar. “So, you knock around for two weeks doing what? Saying goodbyes to sweethearts? Doing all the things you haven’t done?”

“Ain’t got no sweetheart,” he answered in a voice that sounded like an embarrassed lie. “And I reckon I’ve done pretty much everything I can do around here. Thought about going up to the city, maybe. My brother did that and uh…well…”

“Went up to the city? What do they have that we don’t here in Farrs Post?” Elizabeth watched him squirm under her gaze. Poor dress or not, she still had the air about her of someone who demanded attention and accountability.

Marcus took a big gulp of his beer. “He met some girls up there, that’s all. You know around here we know everyone.”

“You don’t know me,” she purred, moving close enough to him for her warmth to lure him further. “And I promise I’m better than any call girl you can find in the city.” His face turned bright red. “I know one thing you haven’t done in Farrs Post that you could if you wanted. Want to know what it is?” She waited for his hesitant nod before leaning close to his ear and whispering. “Fuck me raw over the side of the bed until we both cum.”

The moment hung between them. Its potential thrilled Elizabeth in every possible way. As much as she enjoyed having a dosed man fuck her brains out, she enjoyed the moment where her proposition was considered even more. It held all possible outcomes in it. If Marcus said yes, she would give him the night of his life. If he said no, she would boil with anger and take it out on some poor soul at the club. Maybe he wanted to talk more in hopes of easing his nerves. Or maybe he would suddenly take charge, throw her on the top of the bar and suck her tits for everyone to see before dragging her to the bathroom and pulling her hair while rutting against her ass.

“Yeah, I haven’t done that,” he answered in a low whisper. “I would…if —”

She didn’t let him linger in the thought any longer. She grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him out of the bar.

They went down an alleyway, stopping a few times to keep the fish on the hook. The bashful, inexperienced youth didn’t disappear entirely from Marcus, but a lurch of lustful enthusiasm suppressed it well enough. His hands grew bold quickly, encouraged by Elizabeth’s responsiveness, the beer in his belly, and likely the prospect of facing a more than a few Russian winters.

She took him to a hotel in town that kept a discreet operation off to the side. In a town known for its wealthy landowners, having a neutral place for all their affairs worked out well. The rumor was that husbands and wives often shared walls between the rooms where they fucked their lovers. Elizabeth didn’t know for certain that Benjamin had ever used the hotel, but she figured it was likely enough that half the maid staff had seen the size of his dick long before whatever trollop currently worshiped it. Elizabeth slipped her calling card and payment to the front desk man and received a room key in return.

Once they stepped into the small room, the reality set in for Marcus. It was too late, Elizabeth knew. He’d come too far into her web. She excused herself to freshen up and disappeared to the restroom. She lingered until she heard the room service arrive with the drinks cart. They knew exactly how to accommodate Elizabeth, and she paid them well for their service. Emerging, stripped to her underwear, she asked. “Would you like another drink?”

Marcus fumbled, the bulge in his pants entirely noticeable. “I can…yeah, yes. Please.”

Elizabeth walked to the cart, plucked the two glasses up and put two ice cubes in each. She uncorked the bottle of whiskey and poured a half glass for each of them. She did every step as slowly as possible, letting him drink in her body, even if it wasn’t the version he would be fucking. She handed him the drink and clinked her glass against his. “To your ticket.”

The feral look in Marcus’s eyes dimmed. He seemed to resolve some inner turmoil and downed the large amount of whiskey in one long gulp. Elizabeth worried he would spoil everything by emptying the liquor right back out, but he maintained his composure. “I have a confession,” he said. “When I said there were things I hadn’t done, I was including being with a woman.”

Elizabeth feigned shock, “Really? I thought all the young men had three girlfriends each these days.”

“I had some girlfriends,” he confessed. “None of them went far, though.”

“You do know how it works, though, don’t you?” Elizabeth said with a coy smile. She took the empty glass from him and put it on the side table. Standing up, they were nose to nose, so she pushed him down onto the bed and knelt between his knees. She grinned at the bulge in his pants. “Is that for me?”

“I’ve never even seen a naked woman before…”

“Oh, then you’re in for a real treat.” She pulled the small chemise off, letting her breasts swing full and free. Biting her lower lip, she let her hands move up to Marcus’s crotch, rubbing it hard against his contained cock. She moved her fingers deftly to his buttons, prying them open easily. He seemed to be going through an out of body experience as he watched her work. Her fingertips danced up underneath his shirt while he gazed blankly at her naked breasts. With a quick motion, she hooked her hands into the sides of his trousers and yanked them down. His cock sprang free, flinging an arc of precum across Elizabeth’s waiting lips.

“God, I’m — oh fuck.” She silenced any awkward complain by sheathing his cock inside her mouth. It wasn’t her favorite method, but still she found it enjoyable enough when playing out the role. Her tongue swirled around the head of his throbbing dick, eeking out more of his precum. It was tasteless and uninteresting, nothing like a bull’s. She pulled off him with a wet pop. She backed away and gestured to the pants pooled at his ankles and the shoes beneath him. Taking the hint, Marcus scrambled to undress.

Once he was fully naked, he resumed his position sitting on the side of the bed. Elizabeth knelt in front of him the entire time, her thoughts lost in a complex series of raunchy scenarios, making her panties wet and her breasts ache to be touched. With her evening’s enjoyment back in position, she rose up to her knees and hefted her breasts onto the tops of his thighs. He groaned and reached out to cup one of them, pawing recklessly at her nipple. She bowed her head again, sucking the tip of his cock into her mouth and letting her saliva coat the rest of his length. His touch faded away as he tried to concentrate. She felt the familiar twitch that let her know he was getting close and pulled back.

“Easy,” she said in a sultry voice. “If you get too carried away, you’ll cum and spoil all the fun. What if this is the only chance you get before you go off to the war? My mouth is warm and wet, but think of how wonderful my other offerings will be.”

He grunted, clearly unaccustomed to hearing a woman speak so openly about sex. Elizabeth was genuinely surprised that such an uncorrupted young man could exist in the modern world. She scooted closer to him, pushed her tits around his cock, and squeezed them together. He made a whimpering, shuddering sound, and she ruthlessly bounced her breasts up and down until his hips fell to instinct. Marcus fumbled on the bed, body tensing, and sounds rattling out of his throat unbidden. “Nmmm, slow down I’m —”

He came. His cock throbbed hard between her breasts as she stroked up and down his length. Hot ropes of thick cum shot up and splattered back down on the top of her breasts. Marcus’s body hunched toward her, his hand unabashedly gripping her shoulder to hold her still as sensitivity overwhelmed him. She slowed, but didn’t stop, happy to see him squirm as the last few drops of cum oozed from the tip of his cock. When he finally recovered enough to understand her, she sat back on her heels with his cum oozing over her nipples and frowned. “Aw, that’s what I didn’t want to happen.”

A nervous grin appeared on his face, “That was just so amazing. I’ll be good again in a little while. I can probably keep you entertained.”

She roughly grabbed his half flaccid dick, “You think this will entertain me?” Adopting a frustrated attitude, she stood and went back to the bathroom for a towel. She wiped her breasts clean as she returned. “You should get dressed. I thought you’d last longer.”

Panic grabbed hold of Marcus by the back of the neck and flung him around, “What? I’m sorry! I told you I was a virgin. You could have gone slower…or whatever. Hang on a minute, here. I can still get it up. Don’t worry about that. All I need is a few minutes. Look, we can have another drink. Now that the first one is out of the way, I can last all night if you want.”

“I don’t have patience to waste on someone’s empty promises, Marcus,” she said as coldly as she could. She grabbed her clothes and went to put them on, but hesitated. Elizabeth often wondered if she’d missed a career in the theater. “Unless you’re open to other ways.”

From the look on his face, he would let her fuck him in the ass if it meant losing his virginity properly. The soothing afterglow of his orgasm had been cut short by her brusque change of mood. “What do you mean?”

She paused long enough to let him doubt her willingness to humor him before going to her handbag. She pulled out the two vials. “You know about Milktec serum, right?”

“Course, everyone does. Holy shit, is that it?”

“No. These are modified versions. Normally, I don’t use them, but I carry them around in case someone finds me lacking.” She let him get far enough along to form the thought of objecting to the idea that any man would find her lacking before continuing. “If you take one, you’ll have the stamina of ten men.”

His eyes traveled from the vials to her breasts. “And you’ll take the other?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Feeling thirsty?” She held out her hand and celebrated a silent victory as Marcus plucked one of the vials without hesitation.

“Will it change me?” he asked while glancing down at his half flaccid cock.

“Not permanently, but yes. For tonight, you’ll be a hucow’s stud.” She opened the small cap on her own vial and held it out. “Cheers?”

The two vials clicked. Elizabeth hesitated long enough for her new acquaintance to swallow before she allowed the stuff down her throat. She returned the vials to her bag while Marcus watched his hands as though they might pop off and scurry away. When she returned to the bed, she stepped close to him. As he was seated, he was level with her crotch. She waited for his hands to move to the back of her thighs before she pushed down the underwear. Marcus’s eyes widened as he came face to face with his first pussy. “Lick it,” she ordered, posturing herself to give him access.

“I’ve never…”

“I know, but you’ll learn. It’s more natural than you expect. Long licks, sometimes push in if you can, search for the button at the top.” With no more instruction, she pushed his mouth onto her slick pussy. His hot breath thrilled her. Then his tongue slid between her lips, probing and licking blindly. She lifted one leg up to the bed, spreading her lips open for him. The serum in his veins aided his enthusiasm as his cautious licks turned into a ravenous need. He even managed to elicit a pleasured gasp by the time the first wave of change hit Elizabeth.

It came on like a slow shiver, the body working out tension it couldn’t understand. Next came the feeling of warmth spreading through her body. Everything rose slowly until the heat focused on her breasts. She often wondered if she imagined the swell or if it was actually something she could feel. This thought distracted her again as the same wave of change hit Marcus.

Feasting on her flowing juices was no longer enough. He braced her thighs against his shoulders and slid his hands underneath her ass. Eager to demonstrate his growing strength, he lifted her straight up, keeping his face between her thighs as her body flailed to keep balance. With a spin, he dropped her on the bed. His cock stood out, thick and erect. He stroked it, marveling at the new sensation of a serum enhanced erection. The rest of him had filled out, muscle managing to press through his thin frame. He stretched his arms out, wiggling his fingers to get a new sense of his own self. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was focused on the ooze of precum from the tip of his swollen prick and the heavy droop of his swollen balls. “Come on, stud. Fuck me so my milk leaks.”

She knew it was coming. The feeling of her skin rippling sent thrills of pleasure up the back of her neck. Marcus moved between her open thighs, cock probing blindly for her opening. Elizabeth pressed her hands against his chest to feel the strained muscle under his skin. He looked at her like a wolf staring at a lamb, hungry and feral. The ache in her breasts grew stronger. She pulled her hands back to squeeze them, pressing out the tension in her flesh as it changed. Marcus’s arms thudded down on either side of her. He hesitated as if unsure of whether he was allowed or not. She wanted to taste his lips and pulled him down into a hard kiss.

Her legs wrapped around his straining body pulling him closer to her. The head of his cock pushed against the upper part of her pussy before sliding up her stomach. The thing pulsed with growth again and again, wriggling itself along her body as Marcus pressed against her for any type of friction. Their tongues slid together coaxing each other to new levels of intimacy. A sudden burst of pleasure flooded through Elizabeth’s body, and she felt the shift of fluid in her breasts. Pulling back from his hungry mouth, she guided him down until he took the hint.

His hands came up and roughly mauled her breasts. It was the touch of a near maddened and inexperienced youth, lacking any delicacy or tantalization. He wanted to feel her flesh beneath his fingers, to grope and handle something that had been forbidden to him. When his thumbs found her nipples, the pleasure outweighed any discomfort. The normally small buds had engorged to thick nubs surrounded by puffy, sensitive areolas. The burgeoning bull’s fascination with them doubled as his thumbs came away wet and Elizabeth mewled for more.

Unwilling to endure his learning curve, she pushed his mouth down onto her nipple. His instinct took over as his tongue swirled around the nub, and he suckled. She groaned deeply as a rich stream of milk flowed into his mouth. She heard the moment when he experienced her taste for the first time. His body hunched over her possessively, and he cradled her breasts more gently with his hands as he drained her of the rich nectar. Every eager mouthful caused her breasts to swell a little more. She reveled in the feeling of her breast stretching its way free of his lips, her skin pulling against the press of his fingers. But she hadn’t done all this work merely to have her tits sucked.

Her hand moved between them and wrapped around the cock. It had grown three times its size since her tits and mouth had made him cum in only seconds. The light touch drew Marcus out of his milk induced trance. With a grunt, he shifted his hips to rub his cock between her hand and stomach. With gentle insistence, she pushed him back until finally the head was clear of her body enough to slide down between her sopping lips. Like his growth, she’d changed, too. She felt it less than the swell of her breasts, at least until his cock pressed against her pussy lips. They had swollen, engorged by the serum and her arousal. A continuous flow of slick lubrication trickled down the crease at the bottom of her thighs. His cock pressed into the warm, wet entrance and finally drew his attention back to fucking rather than sucking.

His head rose from her breast. His eyes focused into the middle distance, and he nudged into her. The head slipped inside with a quick rush, flaring open her entrance. She drew in a sharp breath and moved her hands up to his back, fingers digging hard into the muscled shoulders. He slid into her as slowly as he could. She felt his body tense and shake as her blazing warmth took hold of him, as each inch of his enhanced cock pressed into her wet, tight depth. He made it halfway before pulling back and sinking in fully. As the root of his cock nestled against her, they both let out a low, satisfied moan.

His arms wrapped around her, pulling her tight. He moved in short strokes, staying entirely inside of her. The feeling for Elizabeth was glorious. She was entirely full, stretched to her limit, and feeling him press against a wonderful spot at the deepest center of her core. Angling herself properly, she rubbed her clit against him, punctuating his jerking stokes with her own to send bolts of pleasure shooting through her body. After only a minute or two, he pressed his mouth into an awkward kiss against her neck and held her still as his cock spasmed inside of her. More cum than he’d ever experienced flowed out of him, pouring into Elizabeth’s womb. She clutched him tight, riding the surge of his orgasm to her own, gasping and sputtering as she let a stranger fuck her raw for nothing more than base pleasure.

As he finished, she felt a slight softening of him inside her. “Oh no, there’s a lot of time left.” One practiced move later, she rolled them over. She allowed him to scoot back further onto the bed before mounting his stiffening cock. With it once again fully sheathed inside of her, she drew him up to her other breast. His mouth went to it gently, sucking hard while the other breast leaked onto his chest. Rolling in the waves of pleasure, Elizabeth guided her hips back and forth as she rode him. His hands moved to her ass, exploring that part of her for the first time. His hands prodded between her cheeks, exciting her to wonder what it would be like to have this virginal young man’s cock in her ass. She considered whether crossing that barrier would finally enact revenge on her husband.

Her thoughts disappeared entirely as her pussy spasmed around him. She was lifted nearly out of her body by pleasure. Aching, shuddering joy in primal rutting consumed her entirely. She was lost in him as he was lost in her, and the hours bleed past in a blur. They changed positions. He came again and again until the sheets were stained with the stuff. She offered him her mouth again, and he obliged, pumping cum into her stomach with the same fervor as his first minuscule orgasm. In the final hours before dawn, they came to a stop, resting against one another.

The change back was less noticeable. It happened gradually from about an hour after taking the serum. Sometimes the decline lasted hours, others it happened with the same eerie speed as the initial change. Marcus and Elizabeth were halfway to normal as they dozed together on the partially dry half of the bed. On the brink of dreaming, Elizabeth wondered if she could find a life like this, warm and safe with a man. The thought no more than budded in her mind before reality rushed back, clipping away all the warmth. She pulled back from him, revolted that she would sink so low as to consider a man like Marcus worth her attention. He was a tool, she reminded herself.

She left him in an exhausted stupor while she dressed. She never bothered to shower when coming home from her trysts. She wanted to pass her husband in the hallway of their home so that he could smell another man on her. Maybe even glimpse her moving to the bath and know the odd texture on her skin was the dried cum of someone she’d given her body to.

Once more in the disguise of Bess, she hesitated at the door. She went back to the bed and placed a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, snapping him out of a dream that likely consisted of fucking every woman he’d ever met. “You’re leaving?” he asked, the sound of heartbreak trembling at the corners of his voice.

“Of course. You will fill your head with nonsense over the next few days, telling yourself you love me and only me. But you do not. You do not love me or even know me. And you will never see me again. I stayed this long only to tell you…that ticket for the draft. Ignore it. Run. Skip town, change your name, and find a new life. It’ll be a life, at least. I’ve paid for everything, leave when you’re ready. You will be back to normal in a few hours.”

She rose to leave. He reached out and grabbed her wrist, “Bess.”

“Isn’t my name. None of this was real. You were a good fuck, that’s all.”

His grip went slack, and Elizabeth walked out of the room. By the time she reached her car, the dress was stained with the last of her milk. She hoped Benjamin would be awake to see what he’d caused.