Incest Inc Ch. 01

"Jason and Angie were close. Closer even than most twins. Best friends for years, right?"

He nodded.

"Then Angie starts having sex. Which is what teenagers do. And she's fairly...I won't say promiscuous. But it's obvious she likes sex a lot, and it's just as obvious that she's a lovely young woman.

"Under the circumstances, it's not surprising that Jason would be jealous."

"So you're saying that Jason wants to have sex with Angie? I'll kill that kid," he growled.

"You won't say a damn word," she contradicted flatly. "Because Jason probably doesn't even realize it himself. And if you say anything, he'll be absolutely furious with you. How would you react if your father had ever accused you of wanting to make love with your sister?"

"I don't have a sister," he replied testily. "And Dad was dead by that time, anyway."

"Imagine you did."

He was silent for a long moment. "Okay. I see your point."

She nodded. "Deep down, Jason knows how attractive his sister is. And being a normal straight male, it drives him crazy to see everyone get what he can't."

He frowned at his wife. "Angie doesn't sleep with everyone. Not even close."

She shook her head at him. "To a man his age, any number higher than zero is too many, where his sister is concerned. So he's jealous, and confused, and covers it up by lashing out."

She stood up. "Come on. Let's clean up and then talk over this offer we have and how we want to tell the kids about it. Then we can go to bed." She let her voice grow seductive. "Maybe you'll get a treat tonight."

"Wait. What about you?" he asked as he followed her into the dining room.

"What?"

"You've analyzed the rest of us. What about you?"

She smiled at him, her expression hiding the terror she had experienced when she realized just how close she had come to losing him. "I'm a psychologist, honey. We're all nuts. Ask any of us. We wouldn't spend all of our time digging around in other people's minds if we weren't all a little bit weird."

*****

"So what do you think this is all about?" Angie asked the next morning.

The three children were sitting in the family room. The TV was on, but none of them were watching it. Shannon, as usual, had her nose buried in a book. Angie and Jason were sitting on either side of the couch, putting as much distance between them as possible. The three of them had woken to identical text messages on their phones, ordering them to be downstairs at ten o'clock.

"Don't know," Jason muttered. His mouth opened again, possibly to say something snide, but he closed it slowly, looking troubled.

Angie understood. The way their father had blown up at them last night was almost scary. He was usually so calm. Even when they were kids, he had hardly ever raised his voice. For him to just...blow up like that made her feel sick to her stomach, as if the world had started to wobble on it axis.

"You don't think...you don't think they're getting divorced or anything, do you?" she asked, hating the thin, frightened sound in her own voice.

Shannon shook her head, then, incredibly, actually put her book aside, closing it on one finger. "I think he just had enough of you two," she said quietly. Her dark blue eyes cut to her younger brother. Especially you, Jason."

"Me?"

"You. You've been acting like...like a little shit ever since you got home from Champaign." Her fair skin colored a delicate pink as she cursed. Angelica frankly stared. Her older sister never swore. Or did anything else that would embarrass the family.

Sometimes she got tired of being compared to Shannon. Her older sibling (she was older than Jason by nearly half an hour, so hah!) was cheerleader-gorgeous, a brilliant linguist, and a snap to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Chicago and get hired at an outrageous salary somewhere. Angie had her bets on Shannon becoming a translator for some multinational corporation, her job to make sure that CEOs didn't shit the bed when they were trying to talk to their European counterparts.

Meanwhile, she'd had to be content with Northwestern, and journalism school. It would do, for now. She hadn't told anyone, not even Shannon or her father, about her dream of becoming a writer. A real writer, not some hack like Baldacci or King. She didn't want to punch out cookie-cutter books every nine months, comfortable that her name alone would make them best-sellers. She wanted to make people think.

And working for the journalism school came with some perks, however, foremost among them the opportunity to work for the student newspaper and cover the sports teams. She smiled at the memory of a long weekend with the golf team at a tournament at Purdue while she was writing a feature on one of the seniors. Six young studs in their prime, all to herself. She hadn't had to do more than wiggle her ass a bit, and they had been all over her.

She'd only slept with three of them. She sighed. The fourth one...there just hadn't been enough time. And he had some sort of phobia about sex on the night before a tournament.

Unfortunately, it had been that little indiscretion which currently had Jason's dick in a twist. How was she to know that one of the golfers had a friend who went to Illinois, and that he would send pictures of her topless to his buddy? And that Jason and this guy were on the same floor in the same dorm? And that this jerk would show everyone her pics?

Let that be a lesson to you, she thought morosely. Jason was now, thank to the pics and the lurid descriptions, convinced that she would spread her legs for anything that moved. She snorted indelicately. She had standards, unlike most of the men she had met, who would screw a cow if it was reasonably well-groomed. She'd never go to bed with a guy (or a girl, for that matter) if they weren't clean, good-looking, and smart. But Jason seemed to think she was some sort of insatiable cock-whore.

He opened his mouth, as if to continue to defend himself. But under the weight of Shannon's stare, he slowly shrank. "Sorry, Angie," he muttered at last.

"I-" her response was cut short as their parents came down the staircase and entered the room.

"Turn the TV off, please, Jason," her father said, and her brother immediately raised the remote. The low babbling of the morning news was quickly cut off.

"All right," he said. Angie studied his face anxiously. He didn't look sad, or angry, which she would have expected if he and Mom were going to announce they were splitting up. Instead, he looked incredibly uncomfortable, as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world.

"You're going to have to spit it out sometime," her mother remarked.

Her father muttered something inaudible. To Angie's ears, it sounded suspiciously like that's what she said, and she muffled a giggle. "All right," he repeated himself. He stood up straight.

"I've received an offer from the foundation. Your mother is going to pass out a packet in a few minutes, which has all the details." He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered, just loud enough for them all to hear.

"Right. So here's the deal. The company I work for apparently isn't just about helping people in impoverished areas of the world get better educations. Its true goal is to raise the collective intelligence of the human race.

"To do that, they wish for people of superior intelligence to become attached to each other. To mate, for lack of a better term, and to have as many children as possible.

"They are prepared to offer financial incentives." His mouth twisted. "Quite generous incentives, to be honest."

"Wait," Jason interrupted. "So these people want to pair us up with total strangers? That's not going to happen."

For once, Angelica found herself agreeing with her twin. "Yeah, Dad. Hell and no."

"Oh, you haven't heard the best part yet." Once he had heard their opposition, he seemed to relax. "The best part," he continued, as her mother went around, handing out a packet of stapled pages, "is that you already know the people who the foundation wishes you to breed with."

"Who?" Angie asked, her brow furrowed. She thought furiously. Someone from school?

"No." There was no humor in his smile. "Each other.

"And your parents."

*****

It was as if a bomb made of pure silence had exploded inside the room. No one could react. Angie found herself looking down at the fistful of crumpled pages in her hand. Words leaped out at her from the jumbled mass of print.

Payment of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000.00) to be made to the parents in question, divided equally between father and mother, upon delivery of a healthy, disease-free child, determined to be the pure genetic offspring of said parents. Payment will be made in full on the first day of the calendar month following birth.

"They're crazy!" a voice shouted. She looked up to see Jason on his feet, his face red with outrage. "They're out of their minds!" His hands were clenched in fists at his sides, the tendons in his arms standing out in sharp relief with the corded muscles of his forearms. Even in her shocked state, Angie took a moment to appreciate the sheer physical beauty of her twin. "Do they think they can get away with this...this crap?" Across from her, Shannon stirred uncomfortably in her chair, her book forgotten. While seemingly not as angry as their brother, she was blushing as well, her face and arms a rosy pink. She was breathing rapidly, her breasts rising and falling with every inhalation.

"It's...it's obscene," her brother hissed angrily. "Or..." He paused as a thought struck him. "Do you think it might be some sort of trap, Dad? A blackmail or extortion scam? They give you this...this...this bullshit," he snarled, one hand smacking the sheaf of printout in his hands, "then have you over a barrel when you don't laugh in their face.

"Jesus," he shook his head. "You have to take this back, Dad. Right away. Tell them you're on to their sick little game and-"

"I'll do it," a soft voice said.

"-and that if they breathe a word of it, you'll see their asses in court," Jason continued, mindless of the interruption. "They can't get away with this. They-"

"Jason." Their mother's voice was firm and implacable, overriding his sputtering fury. "Your sister was talking."

"I said I'll do it," Shannon said, rising to her feet. Her low voice throbbed in the suddenly silent room. Her knee-length skirt and light sweater, her usual attire, even in summer, clung to her body, making her seem, in Angelica's stunned eyes, as if she were a Greek goddess, descended from Olympus. Perhaps Aphrodite or Diana. Her eyes shone, glittering with hectic excitement.

"What?" Jason's face was adorably confused. Even through her own shock, Angie was inclined to laugh. Her twin looked as if one of their cats had started writing poetry; something so far off the wall that the only response was to stare. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm in the middle of my fertile phase," Shannon said quietly. "And I've never gone on the pill or an IUD. I've always made the men use a condom.

"I could get pregnant today," she said quietly, "if I got lucky."

"Shannon," her brother breathed. "This is nuts."

"Nuts for you," she replied, her low voice the only sound in the room. Her mother watched her, an unreadable expression on her face. Dad, Angie thought, looked like he wanted to say something. But his wife's hand on his wrist forbade an outburst. "Not for me. This is...this is a dream come true. I could have a baby, stay at home or move out if I wanted, and not have to worry about money. I could do all the research I wanted and publish all I needed. And I wouldn't have to deal with a lot of stupid people all the time."

"By taking money for sex? And I thought Angie was the embarrassment to the family. I guess I was wrong."

In five quick steps Shannon marched across the room and dealt a ringing slap to the side of Jason's face. His head rocked back from the force of the blow, and he cupped a hand over his reddening cheek, staring in utter shock.

"You don't have the right to judge what I do," she hissed at him. "It's my body, my choice, and my child, if I decide to have her."

"Or him," Angie said, irrepressible.

A tiny smile crossed her sister's lips. "Or him," she agreed before turning back to Jason. "But at least you've made my choice simple. There's no way I'm going to go to bed with an ignorant, close-minded, sexually repressed...man like you. I'd sooner get a sperm sample and take my chances."

"Can't do that," her mother said. "Not part of the deal."

"Oh, I know." Shannon stood for a moment in the middle of the room, seemingly unaware of how the rest of them were staring at her. Slowly, she turned and walked over to their father, who was looking at her in an uneasy mixture of confusion and terror.

"Daddy, will you put a baby in me?" she asked, as she lifted her arms and settled them around his neck.

Before he could respond, she pulled down his head, raised up on her toes, and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

For a long, long, moment, her father did not respond. His hands hung slack at his sides. Then, slowly, his body began to answer Shannon's. His fingers twitched, once, twice, then his hands rose and settled around her slim waist. His mouth softened, his lips parting, and Angie could see the precise moment when her sister's tongue began to probe her father's mouth. His eyes closed, and an almost-inaudible groan was torn from his body, to be matched by a similar moan from Shannon.

In seconds, they were pressed up against each other, mouths exploring feverishly. Her sister's hands roamed down his back, settled on his rear, and squeezed his buttocks firmly, pulling him closer and closer to her trembling body.

When they finally parted, Shannon's eyes were gleaming, wet with unshed tears. Her father looked stunned. "Shannon, I-" he cut himself off and looked guiltily at his wife, who was watching with a bemused expression.

"Didn't we say it was the quiet ones you had to look out for?" She shook her head. "But even I didn't expect this."

"Are you..." he shook his head. "It seems idiotic to ask if you're okay with this."

"Not idiotic, no, sweet man," she said. She moved closer to them, smiling at her oldest daughter, and the way Shannon moved closer to her husband, as if she was going to protect him from his wife. "Take it easy, sweetheart," she murmured. "I'm not going to eat him. Or you. Yet."

Angie choked back a giggle as the import of her mother's words struck her, though it was obvious by their sappy expressions that Shannie and her father didn't catch them.

"It was obvious, if you would have thought it through last night," she told her husband. "By giving the choice to the kids, we were accepting the same choice for ourselves. It would be cruel to dangle this in front of them, and then if they accepted to pull it away if it turned out that Angie or Shannie wanted to have a child with you. Or if," she continued, slanting a disapproving eye at her son, "Jason could throw off his hang-ups and decided he could go to bed with his old, wrinkly mom."

"Wait a second," her brother protested. "I didn't...I wasn't trying to...you're not old, Mom! Or wrinkly."

Hah. So Jason finally starts to get what he might be throwing away. Well, tough dice, bro. You made your bed. Is it anyone's fault but yours that it's cold and lonely?

"No offense, Mom," Shannon said, turning. "But I don't give a single solitary shit what the rest of the family thinks. Or what they do."

Angelica couldn't help but notice the way she kept one hand possessively on her father's rear. Or, her eyes going to her father's groin instinctively, the sort of package her soon-to-be lover was carrying around. The erection was undeniable, tenting his shorts lewdly. She closed her eyes against a tingle in her own pussy, suddenly wondering why she hadn't beaten Shannon to the punch. Her eyes strayed to her brother, then just as quickly flicked away. No. Jason had been acting like an ass for weeks. And he wasn't doing himself any favors with his attitude today, if the steely look in her mother's eyes had anything to say.

"I understand," her mother replied. "Go on upstairs, darlings. I am sure that I can keep Jason and Angie occupied down here.

"And no," she continued, catching Jason's glance at her body, "I'm not going to do a three-way with you two. Especially you, Jason." Her lips thinned. "You've burned a lot of bridges over the last few days. You're going to have to do some work to rebuild them."

"Fine." His voice was sullen. "I'm going downstairs to the basement."

"Oh, and Jason?" Her voice was sweet but her eyes were hard. "Just in case you had any silly thoughts about telling someone about this, check out paragraph thirty-seven. It's on page nine. The penalties for breaking the non-disclosure agreement are...ferocious."

He flipped through the pages of the handout and read it. His face turned white. Catching his expression, Angelica did the same thing. She looked up, horrified. "They can't be serious!"

"Oh, they are. How do you think this has stayed a secret all these years? These people are deadly serious, Angie. They have a cause they believe in and the money to back it up.

"So if you want to be a pariah, Jason, as well as destroying your parents' careers and killing your own before it starts, go ahead and mouth off. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut." The last words were hammered home with steely force.

"Right. I will." Much subdued, he left the room. In a few seconds, they could hear his feet descending the staircase that led to the basement.

"And you two," she said, turning to Scott and Shannon. "Shoo! What's the point in trying to get knocked up if you have your clothes on?"

A smiled crossed Shannon's face, turning it incandescently beautiful. She tugged on her father's hand. As if in a dream, he followed her out of the room.

*****

"Mom?"

"Yes, honey?"

She collapsed into a chair, her head spinning. "What's going on?"

"Well, I thought it was obvious. Your sister and your father are going upstairs to make love and to try to conceive a child." As if in punctuation, the soft sound of a door closing came down from upstairs. "Your brother is in a self-righteous snit, because he thinks he's suited to be some sort of moral arbiter for the rest of us.

"And we're right here, hanging out. Just us girls." A smile flashed across her face.

"Not that! I know what's happening. What I mean is, what's going on?" She felt small and young and very confused.

"Ah." Her mother leaned back, smiling. "What you mean is, how can your father and I suddenly declare that what society as a whole thinks is unacceptable is just fine within our own family?"

"Well...yeah." Trust her mother to cut right the root of the issue. "I mean, would you have gone to bed with Jason if he had asked you? And made a baby with him?"

"It doesn't seem like I'm going to have the chance."