- 3 -
March 1933 - Charlottesville

Greg had seen the girl before, though he didn’t know exactly where or when. It wasn’t unusual to see the same faces in this part of town. His dealings with the university boys made for small circles. At the moment, she sat at a small table reading. A stack of books waited beside the one open in front of her. Greg walked along the circuitous path with Richard Balding beside him. Soon to be Richard Balding, Esquire. “This business in Germany is getting troubling, Greg,” the man said. “It’s not a coincidence the February incident left Adolf holding all the power.” Richard leaned back as they continued their walk. “I’ve never asked your political persuasions have I?”

“No,” Greg answered as he looked Richard in the eye. He liked Richard as much as he liked anyone. He didn’t want things to go sour between Richard and himself due to politics. Greg had already run afoul of a few German immigrants with the wrong ideas, but Richard didn’t seem the sort. He was as American as they came. Greg wouldn’t have been surprised to find the name Balding on the Declaration, but that didn’t stop folks from having the wrong ideas. The two men stared at one another, having a silent conversation that concluded on the idea that perhaps politics weren’t polite conversation between criminal conspirators. They resumed their walk’s normal pace, and Greg’s attention returned to the reading girl. After a while Greg thought to resume the conversation, “Troubling politics can be good for business.”

Richard nodded sagely. “More than a few made their fortunes in The Great War. America seems to have a wonderful interest in watching Europe tear itself apart before offering to build it back at a premium. Not that we don’t have problems of our own. Opportunities are thin these days. How have things been faring for you?”

“Well enough. It’s not like the old days. Strange to say I miss sitting nights in a dank cellar with a rifle across my lap, but a man likes to know his place. That was mine.”

“Man, hmph. We were boys. Remember when we met? Or saw one another, I suppose. My father and Dahl sitting in an empty warehouse. I stood over my father’s shoulder staring across at you behind Dahl. How old were you then?”

“Can’t remember,” Greg said honestly. “No more than nine, I reckon.”

“Sounds about right. Father wouldn’t have brought me along before I was thirteen. He was decent about that at least. God rest his soul.”

Fuck him, let the bastard rot in hell. Greg had been the one to finish off Kenneth Balding after Richard put a round of shot through the old man’s cheek. Things had been bloodier back then. “Reminiscing is always a delight, but we’re busy men.”

“Of course.” Richard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. He handed it over. “Names, addresses, and numbers that might be helpful. Have you heard of a company called Milktec Industries?”

He thumbed through the slips of paper inside the envelope before sticking it in his own pocket, “Can’t say I have?”

“You will, I think. Everyone will before long. They came about recently as a result of a merger between a large dairy company and a drug manufacturer. Their goal, at least in public, is to develop better medicines for livestock. Get one of their acolytes to corner you somewhere, and they’ll talk your ear off about the importance of a robust and healthy food chain. From what I hear, though, their scientists are working on something else. Something from an H.G. Wells story.”

“Who?”

“Ah, a science fiction writer. Thinks up strange worlds. Little green men from outer space sort of thing.”

“That’s what this company is working on?”

“Not exactly. More in the sense of science gone mad.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“They need chemicals. Lots of them. Nothing that’s illegal, per se. I put a list in with the other names. Those are potential suppliers or people who could refer you to other suppliers. These chemicals, well think of them like dynamite. The government and other companies are fine with a new company having one stick of dynamite. They might need it for something, right? On the other hand if they start buying up all the dynamite they can find, that’s going to cause people to get a little nervous. This Milktec company needs six different kinds of dynamite in quantities that would make Caesar nervous. Metaphorically, that is.” Richard dug into his pocket again, offered Greg a cigarette, and lit one of his own. “The people in charge at Milktec understand the importance of good logistics, and I can’t think of a better person to help them out than my old pal Greg.”

“What’s your cut?”

“Nothing. Well, not nothing. I’ve got my hooks in the company itself. If they succeed, I become a very, very rich man. You’re reliable, Greg. That’s what makes you valuable. Whatever business you’ve been running since the repeal, it’s going to turn into small peanuts once Milktec goes large. I’d offer you a stock interest if I could, but they would rather pry off their own fingernails before giving me the chance to buy in. Even if goes bad, we can cut and run long before the axe falls. Now, how long before you can start spinning up deliveries?”

Greg had the envelope out again and stared at a list he found at the front of the cards. “First step is to figure out what the fuck this stuff is. Then I can tell you.”

They talked for a while more as they continued to loop around the park. Greg had many questions, and Richard had few answers. But, the more they talked, the better Greg felt about the idea. Building out a network of suppliers, legitimate suppliers, from his current stable of thugs and strongmen was a brilliant idea, one he cursed himself for not having. By the time he decided he’d worn the wrong kind of shoes, Richard had other business to hunt down and bid him good day. Greg returned all the cards but the one listing the different kinds of chemicals to his coat pocket. He read through them for the fiftieth time in hopes that some new meaning might peek through the convoluted names. As he finished sounding out the list in his head, he noticed the girl standing in front of him.

Up close, her beauty actually startled him. He’d seen his share of pretty women, but never seen one so subdued. The clipped hair and boy’s clothes were a lie he didn’t understand. Or maybe they were in place to keep the world from worshiping her. Because beneath them, Greg saw the embers of something akin to a goddess. The clothes and haircut drew away attention, but nothing could hide it around her eyes. No one had ever looked at Greg so closely. In fact, until that moment, he didn’t think anyone had ever looked directly at him at all. For fifteen years, he’d been happy to let every glance slide off of him. When he was small it was easy, and when he got big, it got easier. No one wanted to meet the eyes of a man who might take an interest in the inside of their skull. And yet, this strange woman looked at him as though she could see down to his soul.

“I didn’t thank you,” she said.

His mind turned slowly. He didn’t know why she should thank him at all.

“Unless you put those goons on me in the first place,” she added. Her head cocked to the side. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

This question was easy, at least. “Can’t say so.”

“A week ago, at Liana’s. Three guys wanted to talk about my hair, and you called them off. I remember you, and I’ve been wondering why you and your pretty friend have been circling around me like a starving buzzards.”

Greg’s mind raced back to the last time he’d gone to Liana’s. It was a diner downtown. He’d stepped in to have a word with the owner, Mama Carol, the supposed granddaughter of Liana herself. She was having trouble with a few strangers loitering near her corner and wanted Greg to sort it out for her. Easy enough. It was done by merely having the conversation. There’d been some of his other associates in Liana’s, too. They’d been ganging up around some kid sitting at a back table. Bad for business to have thugs of any kind in a place people went to eat. Greg called them off and never gave the kid a second glance. But the hat, the shirt, and that small frame of a body in clothes meant for someone else suddenly clicked. “That was you?”

“It was. Guess you did it out of blind benevolence.”

“Were they bothering you?” Greg called up the faces of the three men who’d been at that table. Each name scrawled in red on a list inside his head that was dangerous to be on.

“No more than anyone else. They didn’t get around to the nasty parts,” she said. Her voice was strangled, as though she were suppressing an accent. “Anyway, thank you.”

She turned to leave, and Greg’s mind leapt for something to keep her talking, to keep those eyes on him. He saw the books piled in her arms. “You know science?” The stupidity of the question was enough to give her pause. “Chemistry, I mean. Those are chemistry books.”

“Inadequate ones,” she muttered. “Yes, I’m studying to be a chemist.”

His body, acting more on its own than at any suggestion of his mind, handed over the card. “Recognize these?”

The girl read through the list, and her gaze flicked back up to him. “Yes,” she said, a drawl in her voice for the first time. “What would Richard Balding want with all this?”

“You know him?” Greg asked. Jealousy reared inside his chest, and any good will he had toward Richard evaporated. Greg could break the man’s nose or ruin his finances or simply dump him the woods without much trouble. Without much immediate trouble anyway. The fallout would be loads of trouble.

“Everyone knows him. He’s a Balding. These are organically reactive chemicals. Depending on how you mix them, you could create some interesting things. Extremely dangerous ones, too. They didn’t figure out mustard gas and stop working on creative ways to kill people.” She handed the card back to him. “The fifth one is weird. I’ve only read about it in books.”

“Would any of them have something to do with milk?” he asked. The idea of trafficking chemicals for better cows was one thing. The idea of being a chemical weapons supplier was another. Greg didn’t mind a bit of blood on his hands, but he liked to know whose blood it was. Richard wasn’t the type of fellow to set up someone for war crimes, but he was exactly the kind of fellow who would be hoodwinked into committing war crimes.

“Milk?” The woman’s eyes peered into the distance as she turned over the idea in her head. Greg thought it was like watching flint kindle straw into a roaring blaze. Her lips moved as she spoke silently to herself. He watched them in a trance wondering what his lips would feel like on hers. She wasn’t standing very close to him, but the breeze had died down. He felt her presence, the warmth of her body pushing back against the chill in the air. “I don’t know,” she said. The words didn’t sound defeated, but inspired. A giddy smile was on her face, and her body language filled with eager energy, like a wolf catching the scent of a hare. “I’m Abby, short for Abigail.”

“I’m Greg,” he replied. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

Late September, 1933 - Charlottesville

Abby slept in a half curl. Her nose pressed to her left wrist while her right arm tucked tight against her bare stomach. Above it, her breasts rested in a perfect slope, rising and falling with the slow roll of her breath. Greg leaned on a pillow propped up beside her. They’d been together for the first time four months after they met. Since then, they’d fucked nearly every day, sometimes twice or more. One weekend, they escaped the city for an abandoned church. Greg cleaned it up and added some lanterns and other soft amenities to keep them comfortable for the weekend. They didn’t wear a stitch of clothing for two full days and left the place considerably holier in their eyes than they found it. Leaving at all was a miracle unto itself. Greg could have stayed there forever, lost in Abby’s wonder like a templar lost in the fervor of religious zeal. Somehow, even through that splendor, seeing her so at peace in their bed thrilled him an equal amount.

He pressed closer to her back while his hand trailed down her hips to the soft cushion of her ass. Abby stirred, knowingly stretching one leg forward as a smirk danced across her face. It was a familiar invitation, and Greg felt honored to receive it. His fingers moved slowly, sliding around the curve of her ass to gently probe between her legs. He wondered if he’d been dreaming of last night, or maybe of the church, or maybe of their first time, pressed together in an alleyway outside of a bar. She’d nearly dragged him into those shadows. He still remembered the first touch of her hand on the lump of his cock as it tried to escape his pants to find its way inside her. He hoped she had a similar memory of the first time his fingers or his tongue slid between her lips. And he hoped this time would rival it.

A gush of a sigh pushed aside the smirk as he rubbed two fingers along her wet lips. “You’ve been playing possum,” he whispered. “Daydreaming of fingering yourself while my cock was right here for the taking.” She responded by wiggling her ass back and wedging the leaking head of his dick between her ass cheeks. Her face turned, and her sparkling eyes looked into his own. Even such a small glance was enough to turn his heart into a puddle, and for him to make a puddle of his own. His precum smeared down the inner sides of her ass cheeks as she grinded back more enthusiastically. Their lips met in a deep kiss, one he punctuated by pressing two fingers inside of her. He denied her gasp by smothering it with his tongue in her mouth.

She tried to roll over and face him, but he held her in place. His other hand snaked under her body and pulled her tight against him. His spare hand found her breast and gently rubbed circles around the outer ring of her areola while his fingers locked in a steady rhythm inside her. Abby turned her face away from him, burying her moans in the pillow instead of his lips. He put his mouth to work on her shoulder, her neck, the turn of her cheek, and anywhere else her delicious skin came close enough. He drew in huge gulps of her scent and nuzzled his face into her short hair. The hand inside of her spread out, his palm pressing into the bottom of her ass. He grinned as her inner walls responded on their own to his touch. The slight twitches in her body told him she was close, but he wanted to feel her cum while he was inside of her.

His hand came away, slid around her thigh and returned to its place between her legs. Moving down slightly, he positioned his cock at her entrance and timed the gentle strokes of his wet fingers with the prod of his cock until she raised her leg and let him inside her. The sheet slid off of her as his cock slid in. Greg pulled her against him to hide his desperate groan as her heat took hold. Her pussy greeted him with an imperceptible squeeze. It was nothing more than a physiological response, and yet it felt as familiar as a loving embrace, the same as if she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. He sheathed himself fully inside of her and finally let his fingers flick across her nipple. Her prolonged, stifled silence ended as a high squeak escaped her.

The roll of her hips against him stirred a low growl in his chest. He pressed hard against her body, almost trying to draw her into him completely. Everywhere their skin touched was alive with tingling excitement. His hand roved over her chest, stroking along her collarbone before tracing down the curve of each breast. His thrusts grew more forceful as she mewled and twisted under his touch. The other hand remained between her legs, enticing her to grind against it as much as the presence of his cock inside her drew her back. Finally, she found enough presence of mind to speak in a hoarse, needful voice, “Deeper, fuck me deeper.”

Greg kicked away the rest of the bedding. He slid out of her as he rose up in the bed. She didn’t waste any time either, rolling over to her knees and thrusting her ass up for him. He paused long enough to appreciate the glorious spread of her rear and the soaked pussy between her thighs before he sidled between her legs and returned his cock to her molten warmth. They both sighed heavily as he pushed into her. His hands held her ass. They slid around to her hip and up to her waist where they grabbed hold as he prepared himself. Hunching against her, he thrust hard. A wet thwack and a slight squeal of pleasure echoed through the room. He grinned and drew himself out all the way to the head, teasing her with the feeling of emptiness he left behind in his wake before shoving back inside. Again and again, until she was a grunting beast in desperate need to cum, and him little better. Greg wrapped both arms around her stomach and pulled her tight against him as he thrust wildly.

Abby was lost in an incoherent ramble of pleasured noise. Her front half sagged into the bed while she allowed her bottom to be ravaged. Greg knew as she took each fractional step closer to orgasm, and he drew it out as long as he could, until she was agonized and begging to cum. He pushed fully into her and let his cock pulse against her walls as his hand slid between her thighs to rub the bundle of nerves at the crest of her lips. She snapped into rigid tension, entire body quivering as she rode the rising tide of pleasure, stoked by Greg’s subdued, languishing thrusts. She turned her head enough to meet his eye and give him an unspoken command. She wanted him to finish, too. So, he did, compelled into orgasm by nothing more than her half wink. He abandoned the teasing strokes and fucked into her blindly as his orgasm’s needs overtook any other thought. They devolved into moaning and gasping as he came, spraying his seed deep into her as she bucked and wailed with orgasm.

When the last of his cum squeezed out of his cock, he remained buried inside of her while she shivered with aftershocks. As she finally let go of the tension in her body, he eased her down to the bed and slid himself out of her. He laid down, and she turned into him. She kissed his cheek before his lips. The kiss was long and sensuous, enough so that his cock responded valiantly. She ended it with a few punctuating pecks against his lips. He wrapped his arms around her, and she burrowed into his broad chest. Greg brimmed with emotion he didn’t exactly understand. He knew it must be love if only because he’d felt it for no other person, and the ideas of what he would do to hold on to it frightened him. He held her tighter and wondered if they would drift back to sleep or simply linger in the glow long enough for the fire to take them again. He certainly wouldn’t mind having her astride him, breasts dragging against his lips as she squeezed his cock inside her.

He gently backed away from her. She instantly looked up at him, eyes clear and bright. “Marry me,” he whispered.

“Of course,” she said, without even a moment’s hesitation. “We can go today. But it will require leaving the bed.”

They kissed again, Greg biting back the joyous laugh in his chest. “Great sacrifice for great reward.”

They laid together a while longer talking about the logistics of things. Eventually a loud click from the adjoining room broke into the dream. Greg’s good mood vanished as he slid from the bed, wrapped a robe around himself, and pulled a revolver from the bedside table. Through nothing but nods, he ordered Abby into the bathroom. She went, entirely silent. He forced himself to ignore the silky curves of her body as she walked out of the room. Greg pressed his ear to the bedroom door, heard movement, and went out to deliver a hard lesson to whoever thought it a good idea to rob him while Abby was in the building.

Three men waited in the sitting room of Greg’s apartment. At first, the one by the door gave Greg the most concern. The man clearly had a gun and a face that told everyone he knew how to kill. The two men sized one another up quickly and came to a mutual understanding that yes, this was a rude affront and normally it would end in abrupt, brutal violence, but perhaps hear it out for a moment since no one wants to leave with blood on them. This thought was reinforced by Richard Balding standing at the side of the old sofa.

Greg’s old friend was visibly sweating and on the verge of a painful fit of nerves. He tried to smile at Greg, but the gun in Greg’s hand made it difficult. Richard nodded to the third man sitting on the couch. Greg took in the other stranger. He was young, not much older than Greg. Broad shouldered and tall, but gaunt, resulting in a thin, pinched sort of man. A cane rested against his crossed legs, but it was almost surely an affectation rather than aide. Greg did some quick math and guessed the man might be old enough to have seen the trenches in the Great War, but doubted someone who looked so refined would have been subjected to that conflict out of anything other than choice. The man was groomed perfectly, every hair on his head in the exact right position. His posture gave the impression of an adder ready to strike. The hat sitting on the sofa beside him was likely worth more than the whole room’s furniture combined. He didn’t smile or feign a polite greeting as he returned Greg’s evaluating stare. Only when he had completed his assessment did his brow slightly knit, “I understand we’ve been rude, but I wasn’t going to wait in the hall.”

Richard coughed, “Uh, Greg, this is Stavos Clairmont. He’s one of the lead researchers for Milktec.”

“You’ve been instrumental in aiding that work, Mr. Smith,” Stavos said. “You are owed a great deal of gratitude for your discretion. I hope my intrusion doesn’t sour our business relationship, quite the opposite, actually. I would feel quite the fool if my visit ended our work. But, as I said, I was not going to wait in the hall.”

Greg lowered his shoulders, easing the tension out of his body. The three men running the company Richard had such faith in were ghosts. Stavos was the only one Greg had even managed to get a name on. Putting a face to it was the biggest leap in his knowledge of Milktec’s inner workings since Richard first told him about the company. “It’s fine,” Greg muttered. “It’s a cramped hall. Too many people. Too many eyes. Has its uses to keep track of who comes and goes. What can I help you boys with?”

“We’re here to see Miss Vaught.”

He thought of killing all three of them right away. Well, maybe not Richard. Richard he would draw it out to pay him back for ever telling a man like Stavos where he could find Abby. “Why?”

Stavos finally smiled. It was like someone had distilled every jot of Richard’s charm and draped it over the face of a devil. It was a politician’s smile, one that came too easily and left too quickly. “Your lover is brilliant, Mr. Smith,” Stavos said. “I doubt more than a few dozen chemists in the world could rival her brilliance. At such a young age, no less. And a woman. It’s remarkable where genius chooses to find purchase. I doubt you’ve read her papers. They wouldn’t make any sense to you, after all, but believe me when I say that I rarely complement the minds of others, and Miss Vaught is more than a credit to her gender. Left to her own devices, I have no doubt that you would be fucking her while a Nobel prize swung from her neck. Unfortunately, those are much less profitable than one might think, and I understand you two to be a couple that understands the importance of finance.”

Gall bit at the back of his throat, but he settled as a small hand twisted into his own. Abby appeared beside him wrapped in a deep red robe. The weak, vulnerable kindness in her face that he’d adored moments earlier was gone. She met Stavos’s gaze with that unending flame in her eyes that almost brought Greg to his knees. It had the opposite effect on their guest. Stavos stood, and bent his head slightly in greeting. “It’s amazingly arrogant to come to someone’s house and offer commentary on how they fuck,” she said.

The goon at the door remained impassive, but showed a slight curl in the corner of his mouth. Richard might have fainted if not for how it would lower his standing in Stavos’s eyes. Stavos himself tilted his head every so slightly, assessing a new opponent on a field of battle Greg didn’t understand in the slightest. “I’m here to offer you a job. We’re interested in spinning up a new lab at Milktec. We’re on the verge of something incredibly important, and we need a little extra oomph to get us over the line.”

“Not interested,” she said with a squeeze of Greg’s hand.

“We can make it extremely lucrative for you.”

“Faustian bargains usually are. How many minds have you gobbled up already? Restwick? Linton? Pulhman? Did they all get a little visit like this so you could drag them into your gravity well of corporate shackles?”

Stavos tightened. “You are the first that I have deigned to visit in person. You are a bit of a pet project of mine, Miss Vaught. My colleagues passed over your papers because of your youth and gender. After that, I have been coveting your work. Every scrap of musing that I’ve been able to find, actually. I, no doubt, enjoy the largest library of Abigail Vaught’s work that currently exists. With a little more focus, you could be revolutionary. Why not contribute that mind to Milktec? Academia won’t suit you. It will fight you the entire way. Government labs aren’t interested in chemistry any longer. They’re grinding their minds to powder chasing physics. They think the future is in the stars and the center of atoms, the dead gears of creation. No, chemists like us know the future is in manipulating what we already have. Taking control of the biological components of life and putting them to work to suit our needs.”

Greg saw how easily a man could be swayed by Stavos. Which made him burn with pride as Abby hardened her scowl. “Working with a company chained around my wrist isn’t my goal, whether I have my biggest fan as my employer or not. You’ve wasted a trip, Mr. Clairmont.”

The smarmy smile returned, “I rarely approach things with such a rigid expectation. Perhaps you would consider contracting with us. Your insights are too valuable to abandon over a squabble of paperwork, after all. We would agree to share resources so long as you agreed to share results. You already have access to many of the components we use. We could give you access to considerably more complex resources. And I know you’ve been terribly curious to know exactly what we’re cooking up. You don’t have to decide now, but think it over, won’t you?”

And that was it. Stavos didn’t linger a second more. He swept out of the room with the goon hot on his heels. Richard lingered long enough to apologize several more times before hurrying to follow them. Once they were certain they were alone again, Greg said, “That all went over my head, didn’t it?”

“Maybe,” she said. She’d already loosened the robe, taunting him with her curves. “It’s not a bad idea to remain close to them. They have things I need, whether I work for them or not.”

“I can get you chemicals,” he said, feeling lost as she drew closer to him.

“Test subjects,” she answered. “And other things. To solve the problems I want to solve, we need more than what we can get for ourselves. But, at the same time, I won’t be selling my soul to Stavos Clairmont.”

“What do you want me to do?” Greg asked.

“First, I want you to fuck me again. Then, I want you to marry me. And then, we can worry about ruling the world.” Her smile drove away any doubt in him. He scooped her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as they went back to the bedroom.

Spring 1935 - The Vaught Plantation

The man sitting behind the desk looked like a ghoul from one of novels Abby made Greg read. She had a certain way of getting him to do things. It involved a distinct lack of clothing and the spreading of her legs. He used the same method to get her to do things as well. Sometimes they got lost in a wonderful cycle of convincing one another to do things. On this occasion, Abby’s nimble use of her tongue had put him in a new suit and a dark room inside the Vaught plantation house.

Emmanuel Vaught was possibly the oldest man Greg had ever met. Behind him loomed two portraits, one of a man that looked like a younger version of the skeleton sitting at the desk, and the other of a man who looked nothing like either. Abby had told him before about her father’s office and how her grandfather, Obidiah Vaught, and their great-great-grandfather, George Arnold Vaught, watched over the family business from behind Emmanuel’s bald head. The former had guided the plantation through the Civil War with minimal damage. Abby’s extensive knowledge of her family history wasn’t something she enjoyed, and it set Greg’s teeth on edge to hear plenty of reasons for letting the plantation’s slaves go but not one that neared a condemnation of slavery itself. Political expediency freed the Vaught’s slaves, nothing else. Obidiah replaced his lost workforce with sharecroppers and freed men who he paid next to nothing and worked doubly hard for the nuisance of having to track their wages. Greg hadn’t known his parents other than their profession as farmhands, and it sat poorly with him to stand beneath Obidiah’s portrait.

The other, perhaps kinder, portrait of Abby’s ancestor showed no family resemblance to Emmanuel or Obidiah, but strongly resembled the fourth person in the room. Elizabeth Vaught, Abby’s elder sister. She stood at the far right side of her father’s desk. She’d met them at the door with an icy introduction, insisted on calling her sister by her full name, and had the gall to lengthen Greg’s to Gregory out of some sense that the longer the name the more prestigious the person. He doubted it would raise his standing much in the sister’s eyes.

Elizabeth shared some of the terrible beauty he saw in Abby, but none of the alluring warmth. All of Abby was roaring, hot flame that consumed Greg in every moment they spent together. Elizabeth had the flame, but not the heat. He didn’t doubt she would burn him with ice if given the chance. Not that he would mind terribly. Abby told him her sister was a prude obsessed the family name. He didn’t doubt the second part, but wondered how a prude could wear a dress that showed so much of her tits to a complete stranger.

Well, brother-in-law.

“This is him?” Emmanuel croaked. The old man’s eyes had a milky film over them. If he saw anything, it was a blurry shape.

Elizabeth answered him, “Yes, Father. This is Gregory Smith, your new son-in-law. Abigail is here, too.”

Somehow the man frowned more. He wore a suit of gray wool that made a scratching sound when he moved. Or maybe because his body was being picked over by rats underneath the fabric. “My wayward daughter finally returns. Elizabeth, it’s at times like this that I miss your mother. I never raised my hand to you girls, but Tabatha would have slapped the teeth out of your mouth for ever coming back here.”

Anger flared in Greg’s chest, and he took a step before Abby’s hand grabbed his. Apparently the old man’s hearing was flawless, “And bringing this mongrel with you. Think we haven’t watched you? Think you ran away to live in sin and escaped my eyes and ears? Bah, so long as you drag my name around, I’ll always know. Every one of those little simpering fools you spread your legs for found their tongues shorter when they wanted to bad mouth my name, I can tell you that. This one, oh we know all about this one, and his attachment to that devil worshiping cult. I suppose you’ll be the first to volunteer for one of their little experiments, won’t you girlie? You’ll drag your sister along, too. That’s the fate of having daughters. You’re cursed to live long enough to see them whore themselves out to the first fool who gives them a rub. Nothing would make you happier than to see my name turned into a joke. I should have fucking drowned you the second you crawled out from between your mother’s bloody —”

Elizabeth’s hand snapped against the side of the old man’s face. The life in his body dissipated, and he sunk in on himself like a puppet that lost his strings. Elizabeth leveled her gaze at the couple across the desk. “He has his moods. The doctors give him pills, but they do less as time goes. He might remember your visit. Come, we can leave him here. I’ll send the nurse in.”

Abby squeezed Greg’s hand as they looked over the husk Elizabeth left behind. The man had terrorized Abby. From the first time she told Greg about him and how he’d done everything he could to stifle her brilliance, Greg had fantasized about throttling the bastard. But, he had no experience with fathers. He envisioned a man in his prime, bullish and leering. The kind of man Greg liked to knock down a few pegs. Instead, he was presented with this living corpse, a man born when slaves still worked the fields outside. Their mother had it worse from what Abby remembered. Married off to a man in his late fifties for the sake of societal politics, Tabatha Vaught had been a pretty woman turned to ash by childbirth and marriage. She died not long after Abby’s birth, though Abby didn’t know from what. To Greg, who had lived on his own wits since he was five, family seemed horrible.

They left Emmanuel in his tomb of an office and followed Elizabeth through the house. Greg followed along at half his usual pace. Abby was tall, but walked with a short, contemplative stride. Elizabeth was even taller, but carried an air that indicated walking too fast might be considered improper. They passed a few servants, none of which were much younger than Emmanuel. The house aged everyone in it, dragging them down in decay somehow. Even Abby’s glorious vivacity was dimmed, and that was reason enough to burn the whole place to the ground. He pitied Elizabeth for living in it, but also wondered why she would allow a senile old man to continue to rule. Enormous windows lined the hallway, but thick, dusty curtains blocked out any hint of sunshine. They might as well have been walking through a cave.

A short man with a charming smile waited for them in the parlor. He wore a pinstripe suit and held a drink in his hand. His easy good humor struck Greg as out of place as they entered. “My husband,” Elizabeth said, “Benjamin Vaught.”

Greg and Abby exchanged a glance as Benjamin crossed the room. “The long lost sister,” he said as he spread his arms out for a hug. Abby didn’t move to reciprocate, but Benjamin took it in stride. “And that’d make you Gregory.” He shifted his posture to an easy handshake. “Can’t say I’ve heard much about you, but it’s nice enough to meet new folks. How’s the old man?”

“He was barely lucid,” Elizabeth said. “Drinks?”

“Please,” Abby said.

Benjamin gestured for them to sit. Greg kept his eye on the man, admiring the smoothness of his charm. It was oily, but not overpowering. He knew right away how easily Benjamin could have someone eating out of the palm of his hand. It was tragic then, that the poor sap had managed to wind up in a room with three people who saw straight through his bullshit. “Where are the girls?” Abby asked.

Abby thought her nieces must be about three, but she’d never met them. Everything she told Greg about her family’s current state came from what she learned in letters Elizabeth sent. Abby didn’t know why her sister bothered, but they came regularly since slightly before Elizabeth shared the news of getting married. The pregnancy came a year later, and the twins had been born without issue. Abby continued to wonder why the letters sounded so kind and gave so much information. Greg thought it endearing that the love of his life couldn’t see the petty attempts to make her jealous. The letters might as well have said, “Look at my successful marriage, beautiful daughters, and expansive fortune. You have none of that. That’s what you get for living life by the rules as you should and not running off to marry some goon with no parentage or property.” Abby shared little of her own life in return, perhaps to make the slow reveal all the more punishing.

“They’re upstairs with Eloise,” Elizabeth answered as she handed them the drinks. “The nanny.”

Greg saw a flicker of something cross Benjamin’s smile. “They’ll love meeting their aunt and uncle.”

“We don’t want to interrupt their routine,” Elizabeth said. Greg noted she didn’t take the spot by her husband, but remained standing behind a wingback chair in the opposite corner of the room. “They do get flustered at that age. They can meet Abigail some other time. Change can alarm them. I’m not sure how they’ll take it when Eloise leaves.”

“Leaves?” Benjamin asked. The tone was one of banal disinterest, but Greg knew he heard a wound in the question anyway. The man’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and Elizabeth’s coldness filled the room. “I wasn’t aware we were replacing her.”

“Yes, dear. She was never meant to stay on past their third birthday. The remainder of the girls’ upbringing will require other, more suited tutors and disciplinarians. Until they are sent to boarding school, that is. You remember. We’ve discussed it.”

“Ah, of course.” Benjamin took a long drink and let his gaze drift to the only unblocked window Greg had seen in the house.

The room would have grown uncomfortable if it hadn’t been steeped in it since long before Greg arrived. He sat beside his wife with his unerring placidity waiting for her cue to do something. Abby had been subdued since they drove through the gates, but he still sensed the keen intellect at work behind her eyes. “Liz, why are we here?”

The air grew thick with tension. The fact that Elizabeth even responded to the name surprised the two men. She didn’t scowl or frown. Her head tilted back ever so slightly, and she glared down at her sister until she remembered the answer to Abby’s question and her gaze turned on her unfortunate husband. In that moment, Greg stopped believing Benjamin had ever been enough of a man to sate the hellcat he called his wife. No matter what else Benjamin would manage in romance, Elizabeth was as beyond him as Everest. Fathering the twins must have involved some great sacrifice from both of them to bear each other’s presence. The husband diminished. Much like Emmanuel, but without the physical blow, Elizabeth managed to steal away every drop of life in the man. “Ah,” he grunted as he put down his drink. “Of course it’s left to me. Understandably, as I’m the man of the house.”

“And it’s your error that put us here,” Elizabeth added.

“My error,” Benjamin laughed. He tried to muster himself, but failed. “I’ve made some unfortunate business arrangements lately. We, that is the Vaught family, find ourselves in a hard spot. Elizabeth thought it would be advisable to speak with you on the matter, Greg. From what she’s learned, you’ve gobbled up the luck of ten poor fellows like myself. I didn’t realize the vulnerable position we were in until Elizabeth told me about the old man’s books. I suppose I’ve earned the Vaught name by being as much a fool in business as him. Every inch of this place is in debt. We were hoping that, seeing as how we’re family, you and Abigail might see about shoring up our finances. Mainly for the sake of the twins.”

“How much?” Abby asked.

Elizabeth said a number that caused the tension in the room to seize around everyone’s middle and yank. Greg considered burning the place down again. His face stayed blank as Abby leaned in to his ear and whispered. As she spoke, his mind turned, and his skin grew hot. Her breath on his ear, no matter the circumstance, provoked him. It dared him to drag her out of the room and claim the house by fucking her on every surface in it, starting with the old man’s desk. He listened carefully to her whispers, running numbers in his head at the same time. When she stopped and looked to him for confirmation of her idea, he nodded. So it had been with every deal of the past two years. Whispers and nods had built a small empire where everyone believed Greg ruled and his wife obeyed, but they had no idea. Greg bent for one and only one person, and she insisted the world never know it.

“Of course, we’ll help. What’s family for?” he said.

Summer 1938 - Farrs Post

Greg didn’t like plantation homes. The Vaught manor house was no different. He thought it was strange people still lived in them, like living inside a rotting carcass, Greek columns like bleached bone and the surrounding green fields like encroaching rot. He and Abby took the plot beside the ancestral Vaught home. A wall of high oaks screened them from the gloomy house, but Greg felt it, festering and malicious, whether he could see it or not. They built a new home, sparing few expenses in the process. Abby designed the whole thing herself. For all the leeway he gave his wife, Greg found himself shielding the construction workers from her. It took a good deal of effort to keep her away from the place as well, otherwise she’d have been scrambling around the half built walls with a hammer.

In the interim, they stayed in the warehouse that sat on the dividing line between the plantation plot and Abby’s claimed space. The building had evolved over the last century from a drying house for tobacco, to general storage for other crops and machinery, and back to tobacco. The smell of the crop had soaked into the old timbers enough to taste the stuff from simply being nearby. They stored their meager belongings on the first floor and threw a mattress and a desk upstairs. While their new home was built, they created a new office as well. Greg took over the first floor as an office and storage facility for his various enterprises. Abby deemed the upper floor as an adequate space for her new laboratory.

While trusted tradesmen and local labor built their home, another group took over the construction of the lab. Milktec had already earned a notoriety for quickly and secretly building research facilities across the country. They worked with eerie efficiency and little conversation. The machines and instruments they trucked in apparently cost small fortunes unto themselves. Abby would tell him all about each device, but she was effectively speaking a different language. He satisfied himself with the fact that she apparently needed them.

Greg settled into Farrs Post with the same ease that he’d relocated to anywhere in his life. After less than a month, it was like he was a fixture older than the Vaught plantation. Abby helped. Her disdain for her upbringing aside, she had a near endless knowledge of the gossip plaguing the little town. Gossip was easy to turn into leverage. Greg didn’t consider himself a criminal exactly, not any more at least, but he saw no harm in gaining an advantageous negotiation position through knowledge.

Mostly, though, it was contempt from the pompous men and women that assuaged any guilt he might have felt at their financial misfortunes. They cared so much about presentation and good breeding that they often ignored basic functions like communication. Most of the families had contrived ways of hating one another based on grudges with forgotten origins. The community of business men called themselves friends and spoke well of one another in public, only to viciously betray lifelong allies the second a more lucrative offer presented itself.

Worst of all was the tangle of affairs and shame of sex pervading every aspect of their lives. Greg didn’t believe sex held so much power over people until he saw it for himself. One of the first men Greg sought to control, Roy Carter, headed a local lumber company. With superficial digging, Greg learned about the man’s ongoing interracial affair that had resulted in two children. Greg informed Roy of this knowledge and sent his right hand man, Maddock, to follow up. Maddock found Roy wandering around his office with a noose around his neck trying to find a chair of suitable height. Greg was astonished. He’d made no threats of violence or consequence at all, but the man was ready to kill himself because one other knew of his indiscretion. Abby explained how revealing it would cause the man’s death in any number of ways, some literal, but Greg didn’t think he would ever understand. They calmed the fellow down, agreed to keep his secrets, and even help make sure they never got out. And that was how Greg grew to operate. In other places, it took threats and violence to get things done, but the people of Farrs Post lived such fragile existences that they valued a thug willing to enforce the keeping of their secrets more than their own lives.

Four months after their arrival, Abby’s father died. Elizabeth orchestrated an elaborate service at the chapel on the plantation grounds. Plenty of local dignitaries came to pay their respects. Abby didn’t go, and so Greg didn’t either. Later, they buried him in the family plot on the far side of the manor house. The sisters, a pair of servants who looked older than Emmanuel had at his death, and a gravedigger saw the old man go into the ground. Abby told Greg not to go, and he assumed Benjamin got the same advice from Elizabeth.

When she returned, Abby took him to bed. He didn’t mind, of course, knowing an exuberant expression of life to be a normal method of coping after death or shock. A while after midnight, she shook him awake, asked him if he had to piss, and told him to get dressed. She walked Greg across the plantation in a half stupor. They crossed the iron fence around the small cemetery and went to the grave. She didn’t say what to do, but pointed at the fresh turned dirt. Greg obliged, giving the old man a better farewell than he likely deserved.

With Emmanuel dead, Elizabeth took over the house. She did open it up and breathe some life into the place, if only for her daughters’ sake. Most of the staff was sent off with retirements funded mostly by Greg’s generosity. He didn’t mind it, especially as he viewed it as liberating them from the Vaught’s mausoleum more than ending their employment. Elizabeth hired new, predominantly male, staff to oversee the functionary aspects of the plantation home. Few of the women she hired were under fifty, and not one of them could be described as having a warm personality. Greg had no idea where Elizabeth found such a collection of miserable women, but their purpose was more than clear enough.

Benjamin, or Benny as he liked to be called anywhere other than around his wife, was a notorious philanderer. He’d slept with every maid, cook, and nanny who had ever worked at the plantation. He’d also dabbled with a half dozen wives of other men and an unknown number of supposedly virtuous women. His own wife hadn’t shared a bed with him since the twins were conceived. Elizabeth wasn’t ashamed to admit it, and she clearly wasn’t ignorant of her husband’s wandering eye.

It wasn’t long after Greg and Abby’s first visit that Elizabeth outright told Abby that her husband was fucking the nanny. Oddly, it didn’t upset her to have a cheating husband, but it did alarm her when the nanny started to make a fuss. Eloise left abruptly and moved back to town with a generous severance and good wishes from Benny, who never wanted to see or speak to her again. More rules to keep the peace, Greg soon understood. Elizabeth didn’t care who her husband fucked, so long as it didn’t disrupt their veneer of marital bliss.

Greg thought it was an awful amount of trouble just to remain married to someone you hate, but Elizabeth wouldn’t suffer the shame of divorce. Benny, on the other hand, simply had no where else to go. Greg learned from Benny himself about the downfall of the Nicholson family during a night of drinking. “Bad investments, same as everyone, I suppose,” Benny told him, “Everyone’s drowning, and everyone’s grabbing hold of lifelines, but only some of them are actually attached at the other end. My father’s wasn’t. The marriage to Elizabeth had already been arranged. We thought it lucky because at least I would be marrying into a fortune. Almost choked on the irony when she told me after our wedding night that the plantation was nearly bankrupt. If I ever loved her, truly loved her, it stopped right then. I remember exactly where she sat, not a stitch of clothing on her, still red in the cheeks from our first fuck. I’m sure some husbands and wives would have found their partner comforting in that moment, knowing they at least shared the same doom. Not us, though. We both realized we were trapped with one another.” Benny drifted into sleep not long after his confession and politely chose not to remember ever saying anything.

Otherwise, things continued on in Farrs Post mostly unchanged. Outside of the small bubble was a different matter. The whole world was braced, jaw clenched, and ready for impact. A sudden increase in people very much not wanting to be in Europe fueled Greg’s rapid rise to control. Most people immigrated normally or border hopped within Europe itself. The rich, though, knew when to scurry like rats. Greg didn’t mind forcing them to pay a premium for the quick and unnoticed passage out of one country and into another. With the influx of cash, he bought ships, hired crews, leased warehouse space, and stockpiled goods. It was all about ledgers, he realized. It was a lesson banks learned centuries earlier. The amount of money didn’t matter nearly as much as the owing of it did. The smallest favors often led to the biggest payoffs, and Greg swelled his fortune from meager to substantial in a few short years. War was certain, everyone agreed. America was committed to getting plenty of supplies to its European allies, and Greg just so happened to have the means to help.

Of all his business interests, Milktec remained the most profitable. The premium on certain chemicals kept rising as growing tensions disrupted supply. Milktec remained almost feverish in their demand, paying through the nose for everything even when Greg didn’t insist. Their reason for their generosity became clear one afternoon in mid July when Abby received a message via courier. She spent the remainder of the day decoding the message. At that point, she burst into Greg’s office waving about a piece of paper and periodically running her hand through her hair. Greg looked up from his books with a warm smile at his insane wife. “They cracked it,” she said, half confounded and half disbelieving. “The formula they’ve been working for a decade. They solved the Bernal issue with fucking water dissolution. Can you believe that? The fucking simplicity of it is galling. Some twit of a lab assistant probably choked on an ice cube, got saved by someone with more degrees than fingers, and shot the lodged cube into the nearest compound where it melted and, poof, resolved the reaction.” She stopped and read back through the note again. “I don’t know if you can choke on an ice cube,” she muttered. “Not enough to kill you anyway.”

“Beloved,” Greg said. “I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”

“Milktec. They’ve solved the last hurdle for their formula. They’ll have it available in a serum in less than a week. Fuck, they probably already have it and waited to tell me. Arrogant pricks. As if they’d have gotten this far without me.”

Greg never understood exactly what Milktec was pursuing or why they needed Abby’s help to do it. Richard hadn’t been entirely clear on it either other than claiming it would change the world. “A serum for what?”

She gave him a look that would have made a lesser man ashamed. Greg knew his wife was a goddess and felt no shame when she talked down to him. “For manipulating homeostasis within the body. Think of a combustion engine. Every piece of it has a purpose. All of it works together to make pistons move and gears turn and create momentum. We designed it like that, to take in certain fuel and create energy that transfers to propulsion. When that design was made, it was given certain parameters. The engine had to have a certain weight, it had to have a certain distance between movable parts, or it had to have a precise type of metal. Our bodies are the same. Infinitely more complex, but ultimately the same principle. We need a certain amount of salt in us, for example, otherwise we’ll be ill. We need our hearts to pump blood at a certain speed, our kidneys to flush that blood at a certain efficiency, and so on. You can go further down, though. We have things in us called hormones. They control how our bodies do things, even what we feel. If you could manipulate those, safely, the human body could be redesigned however you wanted.”

“Isn’t that God’s business?” he asked.

“Yes. And humanity’s destiny is to wrangle our reins away from God.” She said it off hand, barely aware she was speaking. Her eyes sparkled as her brilliant mind rolled over the possibilities, “They’ve worked out a coding system. Pick and choose traits like pulling cards out of a deck. Fuck it, create your own cards and put them in. And do you know what they want to use it for? Inducing lactation.”

“Like a mother’s milk?”

“Sounds perverted or insane at first, sure. But it’s even more brilliant than the serum itself. First, design a chemical factory inside of a human. Then create something new in the human which is expressed through milk, our built in nutrition system. The milk will still be milk, but filled with biosynthesized enhancement. Does that make sense to you? Because it’s as close to mad scientist as you’ve always wanted to get. If Milktec goes through with their plan, they won’t be giving this serum to cows. They’ll give it to women. Women whose breasts will swell up and begin lactating, producing milk that has tons of the same bio-reactive compounds in it as the stuff that turned the woman into a dairy cow in the first place.”

At the best of times, Greg thought he understood a third of his wife’s scientific mumbo jumbo. On this occasion, he recognized only the things about lactation. It seemed strange, but he’d once known a man who enjoyed strangling himself while a woman jerked him off. Women with large breasts, milk or not, weren’t a huge leap in understanding. As for the rest of it, it might as well have been magic. He only really needed to know one thing, “Is this good or bad?”

Abby fixed on him with a curious slant to her jaw, “I’m not sure.” She giggled, a sound that still caused Greg’s chest to flutter. “Whatever they choose to do with this, it will be hell getting the public to understand it. Maybe that’s why the milk thing. People drink milk, human or cow doesn’t make a huge difference. They’re used to it. Maybe that’s key. The public will focus on the sexual side of it. They’ll want a moral panic, but it’s just milk in the end. So while the world bickers about whether it’s right or wrong to get it from women instead of cows, the milk will still exist, and no one will want to talk about what is in it.” Her eyes lost focus again. “We need to make sure they don’t poison everyone.”

She said nothing else as she went back to her lab. Greg wondered what he should do before deciding that doing nothing until she told him was probably the best.

Winter 1942 - Farrs Post

Greg went up to the lab with a wrapped sandwich, a slice of pie, and a fresh bottle of Milktec Milk. Even with all his open mindedness and Abby’s extensive testing, he had been initially squeamish about drinking the stuff. That was behind him as much as it would soon be behind the rest of the country. Milktec was better than safe to drink. The company had gotten backing from the government not long before Pearl Harbor, cementing their place as a fixture of the war effort. The next goal had been scaling up production. To feed an army, Milktec needed an army. They launched discrete campaigns to recruit women volunteers, but nothing about their new factories was discrete. Greg was happy to contract on supplies, and an egregious but unquestioned markup.

Unfortunately, Milktec’s success brought them closer than ever with his wife. Abby negotiated a new deal to acquire samples of the serum for her own experiments. These small vials came in steel boxes chained to armed guards and escorted by a man called Hoyt, a spindly fellow in thin wire spectacles that gave the impression of being too jagged around his edges. Hoyt brought new vials whenever Abby requested it. When he made the deliveries, he only stayed long enough to unchain the boxes from his goons and ask Abby to reconsider full employment with Milktec. She always declined, thanked him, and shooed him out before diving back into her work.

Greg never worried about the soundness of his wife’s mind. However, when consumed by a problem, Abby would often forget things like sleep or food. It was the one area Greg did not allow his wife free reign, even if he had to drag her out of the lab by force. On this occasion, she was wearing a summer dress and a pair of thick welder’s goggles that had the lenses replaced with magnifying ones. The result was a polka dotted bug eyed version of his wife staring at a dropper in her hand. “Hello, love,” she said.

“You’ve finally done it,” he said, moving around to the long worktable where she sat. “You’ve perfected the sexy mad scientist look. I want to see those eyes bulging at me when I’m fucking you on this table.” He greeted her with tight hug and a kiss on the top of her head.

“You can, if you want,” she said into his chest. The dropper remained in her hand, and Greg realized she was still looking at it with her face pressed against him. “You will if you or I take this.”

“Is that serum?” he asked. It was a taboo question in many homes already. Would a woman take Milktec serum if it was freely available? Greg didn’t think Abby’s body could get better, and if her mind did, it would be terrifying. She’d told him what the serum did to men, and he’d said he would take it if she wanted him to do it. He kept himself fit and never had any complaints about the size of his manhood. If it would please her, though, he would happily dose himself. She declined, but promised something better once she worked it out.

“No,” she answered. “Well, yes, but also no. I’ve modified it.” She pulled away from him enough to show the dropper. “I just finished testing it. The serum Milktec has developed works by fundamentally altering, uh, blueprints in the body, right? The stuff that tells the body what to feel, what to change, and so on. The serum sort of puts a new blueprint over the existing blueprint, and your cells build or take away based on what the blueprint says. The problem they haven’t figured out is how to turn the blueprint back without introducing a second version of the serum that erases the Milktec blueprint and lets the body go back, mostly, to the old blueprint. Follow?”

“Close enough to it,” he said as his hands moved down to her hips. He did keep a wary eye on the dropper. In her enthusiasm, his wife wasn’t particularly careful with sometimes dangerous chemicals.

“The goal has been to allow the serum to naturally expire over a fixed time frame. Working it out has been a fucking goose chase, but I did it.” She pointed to a beaker on her work table and smiled. “That cuts the serum’s activation time down to three years. After three years, shot or no shot, the serum expires.” She moved her hand to another beaker. “That one cuts it down to one year. The one beside it, sixty days.” She held up the dropper again. “And this one? Between eight and twelve hours.”

Greg’s mind raced. “You’re saying you have a full activation Milktec Serum in these that lasts less than a day?”

“It’s the stable version. The one they use for testing. The effects are much milder than the full hucow version. I tweaked it a little, too, if I’m honest.”

“And you’re certain it works?”

“One way to find out.” Her mouth opened, and her tongue stuck out. Greg caught her wrist as the dropper moved. In response, she pressed her body closer to him. “You can go first if you want.” She raised the dropper higher. Greg looked from it to her and back again before opening his mouth.

The bead of liquid hit his tongue and sent a numbing feeling jolting down his throat. He swallowed, unimpressed by the bitter taste as Abby let another single drop fall in her own mouth. She gently placed the dropper back in one of the vials and tried to assuage the bitter taste by pressing her lips to Greg’s. Soon enough, the taste of her won out. Greg’s blood thumped in his veins as the serum spread. For a horrible moment, he thought Abby was watching him like one of her experiments, waiting for his eyes to pop or brain to liquefy. Instead, her hand pressed against his chest and slid down until her familiar touch on his cock drove out any other thought. She kissed him again before saying, “It will feel uncomfortable at first. Watch me and enjoy.”

She pulled him with her back to a more clear corner of the lab where a large desk sat mostly unused. With a squeeze of his swelling dick, she ordered him to remain in a spot a few feet in front of the desk and to take off his clothes. Greg didn’t worry about being found. The only person in the building was his lieutenant, Maddock, and he knew better than to interrupt a conversation between Greg and Abby for anything short of FDR himself banging at the door. Greg unbuttoned his shirt and pried off his shoes. He tried to keep his eyes on his wife, but a nagging feeling kept his mind searching up and down his body for any sign of something wrong. This lasted until he saw what Abby was trying to show him. She rested her ass on the edge of the desk with her chest jutted forward such that her dress strained against her breasts. It was a loose thing, held upon her shoulders by small straps knotted behind her neck. On a bustier woman, like Elizabeth, it might have shown cleavage. Abby was happy with the small bulge to show femininity when it was pulled tight.

Except she wasn’t pulling on it any more. She was relaxed, barely holding herself up at all, and she had cleavage. With each heaving breath, more of it appeared, shoving out the polka dotted dress in slow, almost imperceptible waves. She didn’t have on any type of bra, and as Greg gawked at his wife, her nipples showed through the white parts of the fabric. She let out a small grunt as her breasts pushed fully against the confines of the dress. She opened her eyes, looked at Greg, and soaked the front of her dress with a sudden spurt of milk.

A feeling clawed at the back of Greg’s brain. Something primal and wild. His muscles tightened, straining against the tissues holding them in place. His breath quickened, and energy pooled in his limbs. Remaining still was torture, and yet as quickly as the tide of energy rose in one spot, it moved to another. He watched, wide-eyed as Abby untied the strings holding up her dress and tugged. It moved unwillingly, strained against her skin as it was. But, it did move, peeling off her body slowly and allowing her breasts to flow into full view. They weren’t the enormous dugs of a Milktec hucow, not yet anyway, but they were huge in their own right. Her nipples stuck out, small droplets of white milk pearling on them before dripping down to roll along the perfect curve. She kept wriggling until the dress fell off her hips.

She planned this, he realized. She knew I would come with lunch. She took off her underwear. She wore that dress on purpose. Because she wanted me to watch her. She saw the understanding in his eyes and strode to him, brazen and glorious in her plumped body. Her hand went to his cheek, as gently as approaching a feral dog. As her hand touched him, he pressed his lips into her palm. It took every ounce of his strength not to throw her to the ground and fuck her like a madman.

Abby finished unbuttoning his pants and yanked them down. As they came away, his cock sprang free with force enough to fling a tendril of precum across Abby’s body. She smiled and rubbed it into her skin before leaning over his cock, positioning her nipple over it, and squeezing. A stream of warmth splashed across the length of his engorged manhood. She moved aside enough to allow him to see his cock covered in her milk before she opened her mouth and slurped his cock into it. It popped free a second later as he groaned, clean of milk but wearing a sheen of her saliva. She took him in her hand as she leaned back and jutted her breasts out. “Taste me,” she said.

He dove on her, mouth hungrily searching for her nipple. His tongue swirled around the swollen bud before he clamped his lips tight and sucked. Milk poured into his mouth. It was distinctly her, but with a rich sweetness. It belonged to her in the same way of her scent, or the feel of her kiss, or the taste of her pussy. It spread into him, infusing him with more lust than he thought he could bear. Her hand felt small around his cock as she gave it an encouraging squeeze. A moment later, she was in his arms, legs wrapped around his waist as he carried her over to the desk. Enough of him remained in control to ease her down rather than throw her. Shock stopped him from shoving into her with one stroke. As he backed away, his cock slid down her naked stomach, resting its length from the top of her lips along her midsection. It was almost twice as big as it should have been. Abby giggled like a maniac as her hand rubbed the top side of his cock, creating a steady flow of precum oozing onto her stomach. “C’mon then, fuck me with your bull dick. I can take it, I promise.”

Greg didn’t think any man had ever before felt so much absolute need and affection in a single emotion. His hands grabbed hold of her thighs as his own hips moved back. The head of his cock went to her lips as though it knew its own way. Abby merely purred and spread her legs wider as he slid into her. As ecstatic warmth greeted him, he soon thought he would hear her protest that she couldn’t take more. Inch after inch of him slipped inside of her, welcomed by the molten hug of her pussy. Somehow, the root of his cock pressed snugly against her outer lips as his balls pushed against her ass. She cooed, grateful and filled, and he knew she could take more. Slowly, he pulled back and thrust in again. The need gained the upper hand over his affection. He tightened his grip and started moving with more determination. They both devolved into growling, hissing moans. Greg craned his neck forward and slurped at her nipple. Abby clawed at his back, dug her heels into his ass, and called his name to urge him on in fucking her until she came.

From nearby, a noise punched through the haze. It took Greg a moment to understand what he’d heard and for his eyes to process what he was seeing. When a higher functioning area of his brain clicked on, he realized he’d heard a woman utter the word “oh” at a high, alarmed pitch, and he realized that woman was his sister-in law.

Elizabeth stood in the doorway of the lab. Her normally bloodless, alabaster skin was flushed red, and her eyes flared wide. She held her head back, ever so slightly looking down her nose as she clutched a small handbag to her midriff. Questions of what she wanted or why she was there limply rebounded off Greg’s mind. He locked eyes with Elizabeth as he rammed his cock into her sister. Her face warped between horror, shame, and lust. Greg smiled at her and lowered his mouth back to Abby’s breasts. His wife let her head loll back over the edge of the desk, giving her a view of Elizabeth’s indignant posture upside down. Abby’s moans grew louder, and Elizabeth rushed from the room as the rutting pair came together.

A while later, they laid in a tangle on the floor of the lab. Their bodies had not yet reverted, but the feral haze of lust had passed. Abby was cradled in her familiar place in the crook of his shoulder, and his hand rested on her ass, albeit slightly higher than usual. They were a mess, but neither of them cared. “Bottle it, sell it, and we’ll rule the world,” Abby mused. “What won’t people give to feel that?”

Fear cut through the warm glow of holding his wife, “Nothing. Which makes it dangerous. Too dangerous for me to handle right now. Think of a man like Stavos, a man not on our side. Such a person would turn Farrs Post into a crater before they let you manufacture that serum.”

She considered his advice with a low hum as she thumped her fingers across his muscular chest. “You’re right. It’s too big for us. For now, anyway.”

“Milktec has the apparatus to keep us out of harm’s way. It’d mean letting them in a little more.”

“I need them anyway. I can’t synthesize the original serum without the work they’ve held back. It would take me years to figure it out, and I doubt it would win me any favors from the monolithic company bent on world domination.” She sighed, “I guess we’ll settle for a smaller empire for now.”

Another few minutes passed before Greg asked, “Reckon what your sister wanted?”

“Other than to watch us fuck? Money, I’m sure.”

“Should I give it to her?”

“The money?”

“Something else you want me to give her?”

Abby playfully slapped his cheek, licked his nipple, and gave him the pleasure of watching her walk away.

The Vaught Plantation - August 5th, 1952 - 10:28pm

Greg watched her reaction to the story, enjoying the slight tinge in her cheeks. When it happened, the dynamic between the family certainly changed. Elizabeth must have thought catching him and Abby fucking held some leverage over them. Whatever she thought, she tried to use it to her advantage. Her demands for money grew more outrageous by the week, sent on notes down from the plantation house. Elizabeth sent the twins away to boarding school early, paying a premium for their admittance. Benny later confessed that he was forbidden from leaving the house for three months, as though he might spot Greg and Abby and get an idea of what a happy marriage looked like. The house itself was thrown back into upheaval as a full remodel began. Every new dress, every new bit of furniture, and every poor artisan leashed to Elizabeth’s whim by the prospect of payment meant a new note sent down to the other house or to the lab. After growing irritated by the constant knocking at their door by servants, Abby finally felt obliged to go and talk with her sister.

“Abby told me what you wanted, and I didn’t believe it at first. All that hubbub up here for months to force your sister to come to you when you could have easily come down to the house. That’s always been your problem, Liz. Too proud for your own good.”

Elizabeth remained rigid and half scowling. She clearly hadn’t enjoyed the history lesson’s vivid details. Or seeing how others saw her prudish, territorial bullshit. “I am the eldest,” she said. “I have a responsibility to keep this family together, however much I detest the choices of those in it. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the twins.”

She flung the statement at him, but it was a familiar barb thrust against a well calloused wound. “And that’s why the first thing you asked for was the serum?” He knew she couldn’t see his smirk, but she could hear it. Her lips parted with a retort on her tongue, but she snapped her mouth shut. She wouldn’t tell him without prompt. Abby warned him that her sister would put up a strong resistance right up until the last, that he would have to pull every single confession out of her bit by bit. “Tell me why you asked for the serum,” he said. He didn’t know how it worked exactly. He thought of his voice as commanding and that’s how it came out. Abby tried to explain it to him with some overly complex analogy, but it didn’t stick. The why didn’t matter nearly as much as whether it worked. From the way Elizabeth shifted in her seat and the sudden bloom of her scent in the air, it worked flawlessly.

“I deserved some joy,” she said. “By then, Benjamin had been fucking other women for years. I knew about it, of course. It was hard not to know about it. Some times I dreaded the thought of finding him, not in our bed with a woman, but standing at the foot of it with one asking if I wanted to join. That was before the serum, before my thoughts on fidelity evolved. I wanted the serum because when I saw the two of you, I didn’t see my sister or you. I saw animals, nearly feral. I wanted that level of abandon. I needed it so that I could be with another man. I knew Abby would find a way to twist it against me. I wasn’t shocked when I became a peddler for sex drugs. I wasn’t shocked when you connived to make me some kind of madam at the club. I took pleasure where I could find it, to preserve my sanity. So that I could do what is best for the Vaught name when it mattered.”

“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself all these years?” Greg said. “I knew you lied to yourself, but I didn’t think you actually believed them. You begged Abby for serum because you like to fuck. Simple as that. Everything else you contrived was bullshit to cover up that dirty little truth about you.”

Her sneer returned twice as fierce. “Believe what you wish.” Her tone clanged in his head. Having taken his money for more than a decade, she still found a way to infuse every word spoken to him with pure disdain.

Not for much longer, he thought. “So, what changed? Ten years of peace between the Vaught sisters, and you suddenly break the agreement. You haven’t darkened the door of that lab since you saw me sucking milk from Abby’s tits. Then, a week ago, you wanted more serum badly enough to come to the lab. Why?”

“Because I wanted to really fuck for one weekend. Toss all of it back with a glass of gin and let a line of strangers suck my milk while they took turns using my fattened pussy as they saw fit. Is that what you want to hear?”

Begrudgingly, Greg was forced to shift his position to accommodate a sudden movement of his manhood at her words. He’d never heard Elizabeth say anything improper, let alone filthy. The tide of lust swelled at the back of his mind, but he pushed it back down. “No, I want to hear the truth. Tell me why you needed more serum.” He wished she would cooperate. At least it would surprise him. But, if she insisted on resisting every step of the way, he would enjoy pulling the truth out of her.