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Part One

Mrs. Churchill – 3/5/2017 – Sunday – 3:02 pm

At a rented auditorium in El Cerrito, California, the world's strangest competition was nearing its beginning. The guards at the door were burly, armed, and unwilling to entertain questions from anyone. The list was inviolable and if someone showed up and wasn't on the list, they were being turned away with the strongest possible discouragement short of physical violence.

(The physical violence would follow if they didn't fuck right off, it was made clear.)

The auditorium had only one entrance that people were being allowed in. Perhaps 'people' was the wrong word, though. Other than the guards, everywhere the eye looked there were only women, gorgeous, unbearably beautiful women, each of whom was looking at the others with competitive, almost catty eyes. None of them knew much about why they were here, but it was clearly important, and an insane amount of money had been involved in bringing them all together. Was it a scholarship? A contest? A competition? An endless number of Uber and Lyft drivers had asked the women about it today, and all any of them had responded was, “I'm not quite sure, but they're paying quite a lot of money for quite a short amount of my time.”

The women were all checked at the door, each presenting their invitation in turn. The person manning the door – the only other woman around, but completely unlike the others, much older and sterner looking – was checking to make sure each woman's test results had come back clean, and then nodded to the guard at the door, who opened the singular door to the auditorium like it was a bank vault, letting that one woman through, and her alone. She'd been doing this for almost an hour now.

Her name was Mrs. Churchill, and she was in charge of this circus, not that she minded. The job offer had involved compensation enough for her to buy a small country, and the premise, well, the premise was so earth shatteringly insane that she found herself unable to say no. It would be the story of a lifetime, when she was eventually able to tell it.

She could've let someone else man the door, but being there personally gave her a chance to see each and every woman face-to-face before she'd even entered the auditorium. Sizing them all up beforehand would help her spot potential troublemakers early on. Her instincts were a large part of why she'd been offered the gig.

Mrs. Churchill turned a couple of women at the door - their test results had come back that they were carrying a venereal disease, they hadn't passed the psychological evaluation and/or they hadn't passed the IQ portion of the screener, although Mrs. Churchill didn't say those reasons aloud. She simply handed the women an envelope, although she did remove a very key piece of paper from the envelope first. Nothing was said about what was on that sheet of paper, although everyone in line was suddenly very interested in what might have been on it. Then the rejected woman was escorted to the door, where an Uber was waiting to take her back to her AirBnB. Only one of the women tried to put up a fuss, but a single withering glance from Mrs. Churchill silenced the woman almost immediately.

It was evident violence would've likely followed if the woman hadn't simply left.

Everything was being done very discretely, as Mrs. Churchill had instructed.

The people who managed the auditorium had been told it was for a talent search that they were keeping very hush hush. Mrs. Churchill's team had even brought their own technicians and security, all flown in from out of town, or in some cases, out of country. No local people allowed, other than the 'talent.' The security was from Maryland, her assistants mostly from LA and New York. The talent, though, the endless assortment of insurmountable women, they came from all over.

The women, the beautiful women all completely in the dark as to why they were there, were impatient to find out what this was all about, but seeing as many of them had traveled quite sizable distances for this, they could afford to be patient just a little longer. Several were from the Bay Area, but those who passed the screening exams and adhered to the rather strict beauty and intelligence standards the interviewers held, had been given all expenses trips to Oakland Airport, and had an Air BnB rented for them in or near Oakland for up to two months, as well as having access to a DoorDash account that they were encouraged to use reasonably, but not sparingly.

It had been presented to the women that they should consider it like an all-expenses vacation for a few months, although the screener had made it very clear that if the girls wanted out after hearing the initial pitch, they could have their return flight home immediately. Almost half of the girls entering the auditorium were from at least out of state, a handful from out of country. The client had made it clear that the pool couldn't be made up of more than 10% non-US citizens, and what the client wanted, the client got. The screening teams had even helped getting passports pushed through quickly.

What the actual pitch was however was completely unknown to all the women. All of them had asked, pestered, threatened, cajoled and tried to flirt their way into more information, but the response was always the same – it was a paid trip for a competition that involved money, and was related to something they'd expressed an interest in at some point in the last year or so. What that thing they'd expressed interest in was, however, no one would tell them. They'd signed an endless number of NDAs and all of them were attributed to something called The Brand Game. Searching for that had turned up an endless number of things, but nothing useful.

Whatever was going on, it was clear the girls knew there was a lot of money involved. Some of them were chatting with one another while they sat in the auditorium. A couple of them guessed that maybe this was the audition process for some reality show like "The Bachelor" or “Love Island,” although the level of secrecy was insane for shows of those standards. There were many microphones in the auditorium, as well as a few planted members from Mrs. Churchill's team, to make sure nothing got out of hand, and to ensure they didn't get blindsided by any surprises they hadn't personally prepared. The entire thing was batshit crazy enough without the women making more problems.

When the last girl in line was ushered into the room, Mrs. Churchill glanced down at her laptop for the check-ins. The screeners had invited 106 to the local testing process, which had been done over the last few days. Of those, 2 had failed the blood work, 1 had been found to already have a child, 2 failed the psych eval and the last one had failed the IQ test, which left the game with a nice even 100 people. Mrs. Churchill nodded to the guard, who let her into the room and then closed the door behind her, leaning his muscular back against it. None of the men on security were even allowed inside of the room. The last thing she needed was their asses getting involved. As soon as the auditorium meeting was done, most of the security would be dismissed, except for a small team to keep Mrs. Churchill and her employees safe. Those men would be let in on the secret, but there wouldn't be a need for crowd control again. After this briefing, it would be unlikely that more than a handful of these women would ever again be under the same roof at the same time.

Mrs. Churchill looked over the crowd as she walked through it, all of the girls looking back to watch her walk down the aisle and towards the stage. There were a couple of college sweatshirts and hoodies in the crowd - Stanford, UC Santa Clara, UCLA, Berkeley, etc - but there were far more interesting attires to be had as well. Business suits, OR scrubs, military fatigues. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, a few shock dye jobs. Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Southeast Asian, even a Native American. It was a veritable cornucopia of beauty.

All talking stopped when Mrs. Churchill started moving towards the front of the auditorium, because it was clear the Head Bitch In Charge was about to let them know what the hell it was they were doing here. She walked down the center aisle to dead silence, women on both sides of her looking up at her, trying to glean some bit of information, but Mrs. Churchill was inscrutable. Besides, she was about to answer all their questions anyway.

She was a matronly woman, in her late 50s, and she was taking a great deal of amusement at all of this. She'd dressed sharp and business like, much like a high-powered attorney. Suit, no skirt. Her white hair was cut mercilessly short. Her ice blue eyes swept across the people closest to the front of the room, the most eager of the women. She didn't want any of these women thinking of her as a woman first, otherwise they might try and implore her for an edge in the game, and when it came to that, Mrs. Churchill had no favorites.

People had often complimented Mrs. Churchill by saying she resembled Dame Judy Dench, and she had always taken that compliment in stride, even though she was from Chicago and not England. She'd grown up tough, and only grown tougher over the years. Mrs. Churchill wasn't, of course, her real name, but it was the only name any of these people were going to get. Most of them would never be able to afford the kind of high-end services she provided. Her staff were to use pseudonyms in front of the women as well, if they needed to interact with them.

Mrs. Churchill wore flats, no need to be bothered with heels. It also made climbing the tiny wooden steps up onto the stage easier to navigate. She moved to the podium and tapped the microphone, just once, to hear a loud thump. It got the entire room's attention, and a couple of the girls in the crowd were startled by the sudden noise, as the PA system squealed just a fraction of a second longer than was comfortable.

She smiled, wicked, in control and indisputable.

“Good afternoon, ladies. Thank you for coming, and accepting our invitation. We apologize for all of the cloak and dagger, but you'll understand the secrecy in just a moment. Let me start by saying that there is an envelope for each and every one of you with twenty-five thousand US dollars waiting for you when you exit this room, whether you decide to take us up on our offer or not. Note, that's the American dollar, not pounds sterling or Euros, for those few of you who came from the other side of the pond. We've all been following your currency problems with some amusement, what with Brexit thing you're all talking about. Sounds like a dumb idea to me, but it's your fucking country, I guess.”

There was a tittering of laughter in the crowd, and Mrs. Churchill paused to let it quiet down before talking again.

“So, at this point, you're probably wondering why you're all here. Each and every one of you either told your physician that you wanted a baby... but that you didn't want a husband, or, in some cases, you answered one of the various ads we placed around the world offering to help with that, and then were rejected by our program, although you weren't really rejected. Some of you were considering sperm donors. Some of you were considering the more old-fashioned 'get drunk and get knocked up' approach that women in my generation preferred, and might have mentioned it to a girlfriend who mentioned it to a coworker who mentioned it to us. Oh, don't look so shocked - that's why you're all here. All of you want a child without the drag of having some useless man in the child's life. I respect that, I truly do. And I'm here to answer that wish, assuming you're good enough and smart enough, and also willing to play the game a little bit. You see, we've been looking for beautiful, intelligent women who want to be single moms for several months now, in preparation for the event you're all here for, if you want to be.”

There was a hush of whispers before Mrs. Churchill tapped the microphone again bringing the room back to quiet again. It truly was like herding cats, keeping this many gorgeous alpha women in line. Every single one of them wanted to control the room, and the only one with any real control was Mrs. Churchill.

“Thank you. Now, shall we?”

She picked up a little clicker from the podium and pushed a button. Behind her, a giant white screen popped to life. On the screen was a picture of a slightly doughy looking man in his early 40s, long salt-n-pepper hair drawn back into a little rattish pony tail, a six o'clock black with white streaks beard shadow on his face. He was a little pudgy, but also decently muscular, with arms that looked like they spent most of their day in motion. Those arms were also completely sleeved in tattoos, swarms of Japanese koi fish, tornadoes of color and ink, covering his flesh from his wrists up to what looked like his shoulders, although they disappeared beneath the stained and faded button up red shirt he wore. He wore large wire-rimmed oval shaped glasses in front of his brown eyes that looked like he might have been trying to emulate John Lennon a bit. He was Caucasian, but well-tanned, as if he spent a lot of time in the sun. In the photo, he was standing behind a counter of some kind, a laugh on his face, standing next to a register with a sign on it that read “Tips, phone numbers and nudes welcome for good service.” Below that, in the corner, a post-it note had been slapped on, and in smaller letters it read, “If our service sucked, you probably deserved it, you asshole. :) -staff”

“This is Maximilian 'Max' Brewster. Decent looking enough, right? He's no George Clooney, obviously, but I think most women would rate him a solid six out of ten. Don't worry that you've never heard of him. He's not someone anyone would know on a national level. Hell, he's not particularly famous even at a local level, unless you have a love for excellent food truck cuisine. That is, of course, all going to change. By this time next year, our Mr. Brewster will be incredibly well known.”

She pushed the button and the screen clicked to a new image, a man in at least his late 90s, gleefully flipping off the camera, but not in good health at all. He was decrepit, frail and withered, but the man's ego and force of will still somehow came through the picture. His eyes looked as though they had broken the backs of thousands of adversaries over the course of their lifetime. He was seated in an insanely expensive looking armchair, with a tank of oxygen just to the side of him, a plastic breathing mask resting on top of his lap, which was covered in a tartan blanket. To the right of him, there was a small end table with a preposterously expensive bottle of scotch and a single crystal Tom Collins glass. Standing behind him, partially out of frame, was a very buxom woman, dressed quite scantily in a candy striper's outfit, although the skirt was dangerously high. The man's skin was covered in liver spots, cracked so much that the cracks had cracks of their own, and looked like if it wasn't for sheer determination, his entire body would collapse into dust at a moment's notice.

“Now this one I'm sure you all know. This is, or was rather, Mortimer Brand the Fourth. For those of you who don't keep up on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Mr. Brand was 4th wealthiest man in the world, and he died about three months ago at the ripe old age of 102. He was my employer, and I am currently acting in regards to the will he left behind. You see, Max here doesn't know it, but Mr. Brand was his grandfather, and Max is the last remaining member of his bloodline. Max's parents are both dead, and he's an only child. Max is 42, never married, and hasn't been dating with any seriousness in the last six years. This presents Mr. Brand, and us, with a unique problem, one that we have come up with a rather unorthodox solution for. I'll let the late Mr. Brand tell you about it.”

Another click and the image of the horrifically wight-like Mr. Brand on the screen sprung to life, a video file that had been waiting paused for its cue.

“Good evening, ladies. Mrs. Churchill has hopefully told you who I am, and who my great-grandson is, and why he's so frustrating to me. Can you believe the Brand family lineage, which has raised empires, has toppled governments, has paid for wars, defined history for generations...” Morty broke off mid-sentence, coughing sickly, anger more in his face than his voice. “Can you believe all of that could be ending because Max can't knock up some girl? Any girl? Jesus, when I was his age, I was banging every skirt I could see, but we lost so many in the wars over the years. The Brands have never been afraid to fight. And while I'm too old to fight wars, I can still fight one from the grave for the legacy of my family.”

The man broke off into another coughing fit and the video jumped suddenly, as it was clear some time had been edited out from it. Once it resumed, though, it seemed Morty had regained his composure, and he continued.

“You see, if Max doesn't spawn some children soon, the Brand bloodline could disappear overnight. That cannot fucking happen! I will not allow such a travesty to occur! So we're going to change that,” he laughed, although the sound was deathly and deeply disturbing. “Me, and all of you. I want him to be more like my father was, fucking absolutely everything that was pretty, willing and squirming. Most of my father's bastard offspring died in World War II. Most of mine died in Vietnam. Max's mother, Rachel, my youngest daughter, fled from the family when she was sixteen, and died ten years later, giving birth to Max, in 1975. Max's father, John Brewster, died about ten years later, never having known anything about Rachel's real family history, so he never could've told Max about any of it. Because Rachel didn't trust John! And rightly so! He was a prick! But he's long dead now, so fuck him. The dead are only obstacles in our way if we allow them to be. Max spent the rest of his childhood in the foster care system, bouncing from home to home, never quite settling. Maybe that's what fucked him up. I don't know. We need to focus on now, though, on this, on Max, on how we're going to change his life. It's a game, perhaps the most expensive, insane game you've ever played in your life, that anyone's ever played in all of history maybe! But most of the moves pay decent prizes, and obviously, the grand prize is on the table too. Mrs. Churchill will fill in the details. Good luck! And get fucked! We're counting on it!”

Brand started to cough between laughs once more, gesturing frantically towards the screen and the video file ended. Mrs. Churchill smiled again at the crowd.

“Do we have your attention now? So here's the game - the 100 of you will have 90 days to get Max to get you pregnant. But here's the first hurdle. It can't just be you. In fact, it's going to have to be a whole lot of you.”

Another quick whisper of noise flared up in the crowd.

“Now now, it's not all that bad. Up until a few minutes ago, most of you were adamant that you wanted a sperm donor without the father getting tangled in your life, and that's what's available to you here. Mr. Brand wants to ensure that their genetic lineage spreads wide, and he has the money to guarantee that it does. He wants Max to be a modern-day Genghis Khan, spreading the family's bloodline far and wide. One or two of you getting pregnant simply isn't enough.  Max is virile and all of you have been tested and confirmed to be fertile without any major health complications. If only a few of you get knocked up, none of you get any additional money. You'll have your baby, and your twenty-five grand for showing up, but that's it. The payout is structured so that the more of you that spread the Brand genetic lineage, the better it is for all of you. So, if ten or more of you get pregnant from Max in those ninety days, the minimum number needed for any of you to get anything, each of the pregnant women will get a thousand dollars a month, U.S., for the next twenty-five years, to take care of their child. That's over a quarter of a million dollars. That figure will grow with inflation, once a year, to match whatever a thousand dollars will buy you right now. If you're from overseas and also want to relocate to the US, we can also make sure that happens. I know a few of you want to raise your child in some country other than where you came from, and that's fine as well. But if you want to go home after you're pregnant, and get as far away from Max as you can, well, that's fine too. The money will simply be wired to you via an account in your name wherever you are.”

The room was struggling to keep the murmur down to a quiet rumble, but clearly all of the women were somewhat taken aback by this, so Mrs. Churchill tapped the microphone then carried onward.

“If the number of women in this room Max impregnates is 20 by the end of the ninety days, the amount paid out to each pregnant woman doubles. If it's 30, it double again. If 50 or more of you women can get pregnant from young Mr. Brewster within the next 90 days, each of the pregnant women will get twenty-five thousand dollars each and every month. Those of you quick on math will know that ends up to seven and a half million dollars each, over the course of twenty-five years, before you factor in inflation. If, in the unlikely event, all 100 of you get pregnant, there's an additional bonus, a one-time lump sum payment of one million dollars. A piece. But consider that aspirational rather than a real goal.”

The sheer amount of money being thrown around had the room in a tizzy, but they were attempting to keep quiet, because no one wanted to miss out on any details. More than a couple of women had early on gleaned the fact that if all 100 of them were pregnant, that was close to a billion dollars being paid out among all of them.

“And of course, there's the final piece of the puzzle. The grand prize of the contest, if you will. If one of you likes Mr. Brewster enough that you're willing to change your mind about raising your child alone, you can try and convince him to stay with you after the 90 days is done, but only, and I want to stress this, ONLY if he's gotten ten more more women pregnant by that point, and you must be one of the pregnant ones. Also, only after the game itself is done, and we've had time to debrief Mr. Brewster about his entire experience. You don't have to do it alone, either. If, say, two of you can convince him that you want the three of you to be a unit, one of you as wife, the other as mistress or fucktoy, well, that's between you and Mr. Brewster.”

More nervous laughter filled the room, but at this point, Mrs. Churchill was certain there were at least a dozen women trying to decide which was more important to them – their morals or the life they could live paired up with a billionaire.

“Polyamory's not so uncommon here in the Bay area, so people wouldn't bat much of an eyelash. Hell, all 100 of you could decide you want to stay with him if you want, although I imagine that might get kind of crowded. With the kind of money he stands to inherit, though, maybe not. You'd be amazed how far that much money goes. I've seen the Brand family estate's local home here, and let me tell you, it could fit quite a lot of you bitches. And Max Brewster stands to inherit about forty such homes, mostly here in the states, but about a dozen abroad. In downtown London, he's going to own an entire two-floor luxury penthouse, and when I say two-floor, I don't mean it's got an upstairs and a downstairs, I mean it takes up the entire top two fucking floors of the building. Think that's enough of an empire that you could stand sharing some of it instead of losing all of it?”

She glanced around the room, noticing how many of the women were sizing each other up now, looking for enemies or allies or partners. At this point, they were all realizing they were in this together, but that they weren't likely to stay that way the entire time.

“Now, you might be asking why that's such a prize to have, if Mr. Brewster isn't famous or well known. The answer's pretty clear, but in case you need it spelled out for you, let me erase all ambiguity. When Mr. Brewster has impregnated at least 10 women, and ensured that the Brand bloodline doesn't disappear from the earth, he will inherit his grandfather's entire fortune, currently valued at around $146.9 billion, give or take. That's billion with a big fat B, ladies, not to mention all of the companies and corporations that come with it. You've probably heard of a few of them - Big Brand Department Stores, Brand TelCom, Big Brand Real Estate, Brand Media Conglomerate, Brand Brothers Energy, Brand Manufacturing... the list goes on and on. Getting to be his wife, hell even his girlfriend or mistress, is quite a catch, and one of you could be living the life of luxury for the rest of your days. The term 'whore' is thrown around a lot, but if I was cuddling up to a hundred billion dollars every night, he could call me whatever the fuck he wanted - slut, bitch, cunt, fucktoy, whatever - and I'd say thank you and more please.”

There was a ripple of laughter through the crowd, but it was tinged with that hint of excitement, hunger and an undercurrent of lust. Money did strange things to people, and this was more money than any of these women had ever dared to dream of.

“At this point, you're all wondering what the big catch is. There are two. Let me tell you them now, because they are doozies, and I want to stress how important this is. First, you cannot tell Mr. Brewster, or anyone else outside of this room, about any aspect of the game. Max does not get to know about the contest his grandfather put forth for him or his inheritance until after the 90 days is done, otherwise you and everyone else in this room get nothing. In addition to that, we will rain down hell upon whoever breaks the silence. You can only imagine how many horrors a few million dollars dedicated to completely ruining someone's life can generate. And I assure you, we will find out. His house is bugged, his car is bugged, and he himself is bugged, in addition to being surveilled. It is part of the terms of the will that Mr. Brewster does not know or understand why he is being overwhelmed and assaulted with women trying to get him to fuck them and knock them up. Our Mr. Brand took Max's lack of children rather personally, so this is a sort of punishment for him.”

There was another round of nervous laughter, but Mrs. Churchill could see at least a few of the women thinking that if this was the kind of punishment the man had planned for his own grandson, what could he possibly do to women who interfered with his game?

“Yes yes, I know, it doesn't seem like much of a punishment for him right now, but think how exhausted our Mr. Brewster is going to be at the end of these 90 days, not understanding why it feels like his entire life is consumed with sex. He'll be pretty much fucked out by the end of it, which is exactly how Mr. Brand wants him to be. I know you're all smart enough to have read the confidentiality agreement you've already signed thoroughly, and there are a few of you out there with legal degrees who understand just how badly fucked you are if you break it. I'm sure they'll be happy to share with the rest of you. Don't do it. If you break it, we will own your life, your house, your car, your job and your goddamn pet, and you'll likely spend the rest of your lifetime in jail, hearing stories about how we ruined the lives of everyone you ever called a friend. Mr. Brand hired me because I am a ruthless, brutal cunt who you do not fuck around with. If you don't want to play, that's fine, just walk away with your twenty-five grand, and keep your fucking mouth shut. Don't you dare fuck it up for the rest of the girls in this room, some of whom desperately need this more than you think.”

There was another rush of whispers, which Mrs. Churchill let go for half a minute before she cleared her throat into the microphone.

“The second big thing is this. You will have an audience if you decide you want to do this. Not a large one, only about a hundred people or so, but they will be watching you much of the time you are with Max. There are cameras and microphones in Max's apartment, in his food truck, in his office and also in all your AirBnBs. None of the footage will ever get out to the general public or be seen more than once, and if it does, you stand to earn one hundred million dollars.”

Many of the girls began to gossip, so Mrs. Churchill thumped the mic again to quiet them down.

“You see, there are a number of very wealthy individuals who wanted to watch their own version of 'Big Brother.' Friends and colleagues of the late Mr. Brand. The ultra-ultra-ULTRA rich. They will be getting, or rather, buying streams they can watch at any time, but all of those streams are individually watermarked. The streams are secure and self-deleting, so even if someone tries something low tech to try and record it, the watermarking will tell us exactly who it is, and they will be fined a two hundred million dollar fine, half of which is yours. You might be asking how we can ensure they pay up. The truth is, they already did. The streams are costing these people a hundred mil each, and we charged them the two hundred mil up front before they even saw a frame. Six months after the game is concluded, assuming they haven't broken our trust, the remaining hundred mil is refunded to them. Oh, and we likely have blackmail against these people that would also come out should they try and violate your privacy, so you needn't worry, but you should know there are eyes on you, even right now.”

Mrs. Churchill pointed to a number of cameras that were set up around the room, something none of the women had given any consideration to until right now, and yet, instead of shirking away, most chose to ignore them, and a few even preened for their audience.

“We control the feeds, and the only time the cameras will be broadcasting to your small audience, other than this, is when you are actually with Max. Talking to him, seducing him, fucking him, the minute you're in Max's orbit, assume you're on camera. These rich fucking perverts,” she said, giving a playful wave to one of the cameras, “are helping fund this little endeavor, so try and put on a good show for them when you're getting Max to knock you up. They want to watch our poor Max try and keep up with you crazy bitches, as every single one of you tries to fuck that hapless man, who won't see it coming. They've even organized their own betting pools around some of you, but I wouldn't let yourself think about that too much.”

The murmurs among the crowd made it clear that while all of this was uncomfortable, it was by no means a dealbreaker for anyone. That was part of what the psychological screenings had been for – to make sure the women involved would be game, and also capable of keeping their mouths shut. They'd gone through some five thousand people to whittle it down to this 100 person cast. Mrs. Churchill decided to wrap it up.

“Alright ladies, if you're not interested, you can take the twenty-five grand, and enjoy as much of your vacation here in the Bay Area as you like for the next 90 days on us, or even just fly home tonight if you really want out. The rest of you, inside the envelope with your check for twenty-five grand you get for just showing up, you will find a sheet of paper with a phone number and a URL, as well as your login and password for that web page. That web page is a tracker, where we'll keep an updated tally of the number of women who are pregnant. It's a nice, simple page, which reads 0% now. Each percentage point is another person pregnant. If you want to be tested for pregnancy, you simply need to call the number on the sheet of paper, and we will send an Uber to drive you from your location to our testing lab, where we will verify that. Our tests are generally good enough to detect pregnancy about a week or so after conception. The child will also be given a blood test shortly after birth to confirm it's Max's kid, so if you were thinking about trying to do a run around, think twice. It's also a violation of your NDA, under the section 'Attempting to skirt the rules of the game,' so don't think we didn't plan ahead for you crafty cunts. If it's not Max's kid and you claim it is, you know what happens.”

She clicked the device in her hand and an image of another man sprung onto the screen, an Asian American man with a rounded face, thick framed glasses and bulging cheeks, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that seemed like it was vomiting all the colors of the rainbow at once. He was laughing in the image, his arm around Max, the two sitting at a bar of some kind.

“This is Max's best friend, Francis Yen, better known as Frankie. He's also Max's business partner. Frankie is the one and only person outside of this room who you can talk to about this. Let me repeat that, to be perfectly clear about this. He is in on the game, and is meant to be your inside man. Our on-staff psychologist suggested that all of this might be significantly easier if we had someone Max already trusted in our corner, so Frankie has been convinced to help us in all of this. He will help you when he can, but you need to rely on him very sparingly. There are a hundred of you, and if you all inundate Frankie at once with endless questions, he won't be able to help any of you. Frankie is being paid very handsomely for this, though, so be sure to use his assistance at opportune moments, if you need to. Frankie's also single, but keep in mind, that's likely a double-edged sword. The last thing you want is Frankie's kid and not Max's. Still, throwing Frankie some attention might be enough to bump you to the top of the line. Your call to make. I pass no judgment on you either way.”

Mrs. Churchill pushed the clicker again and the picture of Max popped up again.

“Also on that sheet of paper is a link to another web page, behind the same password firewall, that contains everything you will need to know about Mr. Brewster here to get started. When and where he works, where he lives, his hobbies, what regular appointments he has, places you can find him, friends of his and people you may need to watch out for. We've also pieced together as much of his sexual tastes as we can, but it's pretty sparse on the ground there. Frankie has helped fill in the blanks where he can, but Max can be somewhat private. He hasn't had so much as a second date in six years, so who knows if his tastes of changed, but what we have, you have. It's as much information as we can get with six months worth of detective work, as per Mr. Brand's dying wishes. Max isn't a bad looking guy, and each and every one of you said you wanted to have a baby with the father out of the picture, but that you wanted financial help for it. Kids are expensive. Believe me, I know. I've got four of my own, and they cost me a fucking fortune.”

That seemed to put the women a bit more at ease about it, and they laughed once more. She pushed the button and a picture of Max building houses with Habitat For Humanity appeared on the screen.

“All the money aside, ladies, Max Brewster is a good man. I mean, he's a bit too passive and soft for my liking, but he gives his time and money to charities regularly, even though he can barely afford it, he's well-educated, he's resourceful, he's a feminist, and for the last five Christmases, he's turned his food truck into a mobile soup kitchen, cooking meals for the homeless of Oakland. But the man has endured some truly shitty relationships in his life, and has been more than a little burned by that. The exes he's still on good terms with all used the exact same phrase to describe him. They say he's a 'nice guy.'  I'm sure a lifetime of hearing that over and over again has probably gotten on his nerves. You might be able to use that to your advantage. My instincts tell me that once some of you get the ball rolling, much of the time he's going to be too caught up in the rush of it to try and slow it down, but do not underestimate how hard this man may be to get to make emotionally vulnerable. You don't have to just bring your A-game to picking this guy up; you're gonna have to make yourselves simply irresistible. And you cannot go it alone. Again, if he doesn't get at least ten of you knocked up, then everything's for naught. You won't even be able to try and hook up with him afterwards. We'll see to that. So make sure that at least ten of you get this done.”

There wasn't a consistent look or type to the women in the audience, other than they were all stunningly beautiful, but each in very different ways. Max's dating history, while sparse, had been completely all over the map. He'd had seven major relationships between the ages of 15 and 35, and the only common thread between all of them was they were all smart. He'd dated the spectrum in terms of looks, from a skinny redheaded girl to a hefty and chesty Latina to an athletic black girl to plump Korean girl to a very heavily tattooed and pierced biker chick to French model to his last girlfriend, the most prototypical blonde surfer girl Mrs. Churchill had ever met. In building out the profile, it was almost as though Max had gone to a dating website and said “Give me one of everything” and then suddenly stopped, for no rhyme or reason. Most of the big train wrecks in his dating history seemed to have come early. The last relationship had simply run out of gas, and the two had remained friends, but apparently felt no sexual chemistry for one another since. Mrs. Churchill looked back to the screen and continued once more.

“At the end of all of this, I'll personally tell Max all about the game, as well as his inheritance, and any women who want to remain in contact with him from that point onward will be able to, and any women who want to disappear from Max's radar, well, we can ensure that as well. The conditions of Max's inheritance is that he has to respect the wishes of all the women who were involved in this game, or he gets nothing. If you want to have his kid and disappear into the night, he's going to respect that, eventually. We expect him to be angry, but not so angry that over a hundred billion dollars can't make him see reason. He's not a violent or a jealous man. He's just... some average guy, you know?”

All of the faces around the room had started distracted, but were all extremely focused on Mrs. Churchill now. Whatever lingering doubts and reservations they'd had about this had melted away by some combination of the money or just the very bloodsport nature of it all.

“Lastly, you'll also see you've been given a start date and time, with you all being divided into ten groups. That is when you can first go and meet up with Max. You don't have to do it right when your time starts, but you can't do it before. We can't simply throw a hundred beautiful women at Max all at once right up front. The poor boy's head would explode, and it would certainly give the game away. And the game is everything.”

The room was filled with a big burst of laughter.

“The event actually runs a hundred days in total, with ten of you getting access to Max starting tomorrow, ten the day after that, and so on. Do not try and get in early. It's a violation of your NDA, and we're back to the life of misery and lawsuits. Being first is not necessarily the advantage you think it is. The first batch of you girls have to convince Max that it's okay that he's having unprotected sex with dozens and dozens of women he barely knows. That's going to be a hell of a challenge. And each of you women is guaranteed a 90-day window. At the end of your 90 days, you'll be sequestered away from Max, to let the rest of the game play out. But don't worry – we'll let you all watch the streams during your 100 days, so you can see what he's up to during the remaining time, or during time when he isn't with you. Studying what other women do right or wrong may give you a hell of an edge. After the hundred days is over, there will be a two-week period where none of you will be allowed to talk to Max at all. Don't worry – we have a plan for handling it so that it won't be a problem for any of you. You can all go home at that point, if you want, or continue to hang around the Bay on our dime, while our Mr. Brewster will be isolation. At the end of that two weeks, the whole thing will be revealed to him. The game, the inheritance, all of it. The day after that, we'll give you information on how to contact Max again, if you so choose.”

It was a lot of information to keep track of, so the web page also had a link to a reminder of the rules, in case anyone forgot, and every single section of the website had the link prominently displayed.

“You will also find that the web page with all the information on Max has three chat rooms in it – one for your subgroup, one for the entire lot of you, and one where you can submit a question for us to answer. All questions and answers will be posted to that public channel, so everyone's on the same level. We will have an answer for you within ten minutes, day or night, but don't overload us with questions if you don't have to, alright ladies?”

The women were looking around at each other, but it was clear to all of them there was no way they could remember all of the faces sharing the room with them.

“You can and should collaborate with one another, at least to some extent. The web page with info on Max also includes a headshot and name for each and every one of you, as well as a link so that you can private message or videocall each other through the website, although keep in mind, the audience has the ability to see those messages and calls, both the ones in the chat rooms and the ones you're privately sending to each other. So do we. That's mostly for the safety of the game, but our subscribers like to feel like they can get as much insight into what's coming as they can.”

A couple of girls in the audience were holding hands, like they were trying to form some kind of bond before the whole thing started, and Mrs. Churchill noted it with amusement. The game was going to bring out both the very best and the very worst in these women.

“You can lie as little or as much to Max as you want, just as long as you don't tell him about the game, or that you're trying to get him to knock you up. You can completely be yourself, or you can be someone entirely different than who you really are. You can pretend to be related or long-time friends with your fellow contestants. You can pretend to be tourists here. Or you can tell Max nothing but the complete and total truth about yourself and your life, other than how it relates to the game. Whatever you want. We don't give a shit what you do with or say to Max, as long as it doesn't reveal what's going on here.”

Many of the women had been taking notes throughout Mrs. Churchill's speech, and the older woman had her eyes on a few of the contestants in particular. Much like any reality show, she was already casting some people for roles in her head. Innocent. Villain. Loose Cannon. Gold Digger. Idealist. But no one right away screamed Protagonist to her. Exactly as she wanted it to be. One of the members of her team, Sharon, had been a producer on shows like The Bachelor and Bachelor In Paradise, and her insight in planning all of this had been invaluable.

“That's the game. I'm managing the process, and I have a couple of assistants, but none of us are in the running or trying to bang Max, so you needn't worry about us playing favorites. If you start to feel like you're seeing the same four or five women around you all the time who aren't anywhere on the website, no, you're not being paranoid. That's probably just some of my staff. If they approach you to talk to you about the game, they will tell you a personal piece of information that you normally keep secret about yourself first, so you can identify them as one of my crew. As long as Mr. Brewster impregnates at least ten women by the end of the game, myself and all of my team will be compensated more than fairly, so it's in our best interests for you to succeed. If you fail, we don't get paid either, and that means my team and I will have to make a second go at this with another bunch of women, which means we'd be working twice as long for the same amount of pay. We're on your side, ladies. We promise. Alright?”

She leaned forward and smiled at them, looking over the sea of beautiful faces.

“Happy hunting, ladies. May the best women get knocked up, may that be lots of you and may the most ruthless bitch win.”

*   *   *   *

Max Brewster – 3/6/2017 – Monday – 5:15 am

Just because his phone's alarm was set to play “You're The Best Around” didn't mean he liked the song any – it was just something designed to make Max get his ass out of bed. Mondays were, essentially, his Fridays. While there was a constant demand for food trucks in the Bay Area, Max had found he did the best business on the weekend for people out for the afternoon, about to head out on their night of adventure, or post bar crawl, so he always made sure he was manning the truck on those days. There were decent crowds most of the rest of the week, but Tuesdays and Wednesdays always seemed to be the slowest, so on those days, he let his employees Carlos and Joey man the truck. But Monday mornings and lunch shifts always seemed to have high demand, as if people needed his food to get though their first day back into the work grind.

While there were some people clamoring for food even earlier than he started, Max had found his particular sweet spot was to be available just before six until about eight for breakfast, and then back again for lunch from eleven until two. Then he had two blessed days off, when his second stringers would tend to his business, and while they hadn't fucked it up yet, they also hadn't done much to impress him either. They were, for lack of a better word, merely adequate.

As he hopped into the shower in the bathroom of his tiny studio apartment, Max remembered, not for the first or last time, how it had come to this. He'd been a very popular chef for a number of Bay Area restaurants, but in 2012, he'd decided to open his own restaurant, a place he called Plan B.

The name hadn't been one of his better ideas.

While he'd gotten a decent amount of clientele, the rent on the location in downtown Berkeley was astronomical, and there wasn't enough room for him to seat enough people to keep the business afloat. He struggled for a while, but one night the place next door had an electrical conduit fail, and it burned out the inside of Plan B. Through an annoying loophole, the insurance hadn't paid out, and the building owner hadn't been liable. It had been written off as “an act of God,” and Max had just shown up one morning in 2013 to see a half a million dollar investment burnt to ashes.

Max had spent the next few months struggling to figure out how to pick up the pieces when his friend Frankie came to him with a suggestion – Max should just open a food truck. It would let him build an audience, save up some money, control his own hours, and several food trucks in the Bay had eventually done so well that they'd graduated to having permanent locations in addition to the food truck. This, Frankie told him, could be what he needed to get back on his feet.

That had been four years ago, and the truck had been doing good business since then, but the debts he'd been in from Plan B had been deeper than expected, so he was keeping his head above water, but saving enough to open a new location didn't seem likely again any time soon.

Max had done everything he could to keep his overhead costs down, which was why he was living where he was, in the loft apartment above the garage of his best friend Frankie Yen's house. Frankie, his brother Charlie, Charlie's girlfriend Laura, Laura's friend Thuy and Thuy's brother Will shared the partially run down Oakland home. When Frankie had invited Max to live with him to save money, originally he thought he'd be moving into one of the bedrooms in the house, but despite the terrible insulation and awful water pressure, living above the house's garage had mostly worked out okay, and the driveway was long enough that he could keep the food truck close at hand nearly at all times. He had his lifeblood invested in the truck.

The name of his food truck was Constant Rotation. It wasn't just a play on words on the fact that it was a truck; it was the concept for the entire truck itself. While the truck was always guaranteed to have five key items available – currently a basic bacon cheeseburger, a carne asada burrito, a cheesesteak sandwich and jambalaya as well as Max's signature Max Chili – the rest of the time, each week brought with it a dozen new items that would only be available for that week. Once a season, he'd let subscribers to the food truck's email newsletter vote on one item to be removed from the key items list and one item to be added to the list in its place. The carne asada burrito had replaced his chili dog, the cheesesteak had replaced his salad wrap and the jambalaya has replaced his lobster roll.

As he hopped out of the shower, he could hear Frankie downstairs stocking up the truck from the freezer they kept in the garage. Frankie really didn't have to work for a living – he owned the house, and charging rent to everyone who stayed there brought in more than enough money for him to live off of, but he liked working with Max, and found that manning the register of the food truck kept him from sitting on his ass around the house all day. It also gave Max someone to talk to while he worked, which was the most important part.

In the beginning, Max had run the truck entirely by himself, and he'd been struggling to keep up with both taking orders and filling them, so when one day, Frankie had come by to get lunch, Max had offered Frankie a job just tending to the register, and a partnership was born.

Max tugged on his clothes and was in the process of tying his hair back when Frankie softly knocked on the door to his apartment. “C'mon, Max, did you oversleep again? We don't want to miss the breakfast rush!”

After grabbing his cell phone, he opened the door to see Frankie's smiling face waiting for him. “I was literally seconds away from opening the door, Frankie.”

“Then you're dragging your ass this morning! Let's go!” Frankie was an impossibly positive human being, unflappable and optimistic under any circumstances. “I tossed yesterday's batch of chili into the reheating pot so you can use it this morning.”

“Good. Those Huevos Maximos breakfast burritos seem to be a very big hit this week.”

“Who'd have thought chili and eggs breakfast burritos would've been the week's top seller?” Frankie said, as Max relocked his apartment, before the two men headed down the rickety wooden stairs along the side of the garage.

“I mean, people love the chili, so I've been trying to think of other ways to use it. I wouldn't mind if the breakfast burrito wins the spring bracket and gets added to The Hit List,” Max said, as he hopped into the back of the truck. In addition to manning the register, Frankie also drove the truck to and from their stops, and set it up and broke it down, so Max could spend almost all of his time cooking.

For lunch and dinner, Constant Rotation was normally part of the Off The Grid food truck collective, but for breakfast, they were entirely on their own, and Frankie had found a great spot just off to the side of the subway entrance near 12th St. They were able to make food for people heading into the subway as well as those coming off it. Technically, people weren't supposed to be eating on BART, but lots of people tended to eat quickly on the platform, snarfing down his food as quickly as possible.

Constant Rotation wasn't a large truck, but Max had found ways to make every inch of the inside count, between having multiple grills, two separate fry baskets, a prep area, three slow cookers, not to mention the coolers they used to keep meat and veg, so they weren't constantly having to run out for resupplies. The truck itself was crimson and black, with a small section of fidget spinners nailed into a board just below the window for people to order. Despite the fact that profit margins on sodas and other beverage were excellent, Max had long ago decided not to sell any, because it ate into the space in which he could keep supplies. Telling people they were sold out of something was a sure fire way to irk a customer, so Max constantly struggled to make sure they did so as little as possible.

The breakfast rush went by in a blur, with Max constantly whipping out food for people, as the money kept rolling in. By 9 am, though, virtually no one was coming back, and the two packed it in, although while Frankie was closing the truck up, Max was brewing up yet another batch of Max Chili. Then they were rolling across the Bay Bridge to head into San Francisco, to put in a lunch shift at the Off the Grid stop on 9thStreet downtown.

Off the Grid had about thirty different food trucks in their network, and each day, they sent different trucks to different locations, so Max and Frankie never really knew where they were heading in a given week until a couple of days before. Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Sunnyvale, Mountain View – the list of possible locations went on and on and on, and each area, people had different demands.

For the lunch rush on this particular day, the Cuban Submarine Sandwich (ham, pulled pork, bacon, mustard and pickles on a hoagie) seemed to be extremely popular, so much so that they had to write “OUT” next to it for the last hour or so before they packed it in for the day. That one surprised even Max, who'd seen good numbers on the sandwich for the previous days, but nothing like the demand it had shown today. He made a mental note to warn Carlos and Joey.

All in all, it had been a pretty good week, as Max counted the money while Frankie drove them back across the Bay Bridge to Oakland just an hour or two before the three hour “rush hour” traffic would clog up the major roadways. After the lunch run on Tuesday, Max and Frankie handed the truck over to two brothers, Carlos and Joey, who stuck strictly to the recipes that Max left for them, although a couple of Yelp reviews had pointed out that Carlos wasn't as good a cook as Max was, though those complaints came less and less in recent days.

Frankie pulled the truck up in front of the brothers' parents house, and Joey was already on the porch, vaping, as he often did. It was one of the few things Max had been forced to scold them about a number of times, that Joey wasn't allowed to vape inside of the truck. The vape juices that Joey used tended to have overpoweringly strong scents that lingered for days after they were gone. Max had threatened not to let the brothers man the truck any more, and since then, Joey had always made sure to go outside of the truck when he needed to scratch his itch.

Joey was a scrawny Hispanic man in early 20s, his brother Carlos four years his elder. The two brothers had worked for him at Plan B, and when he'd started up the food truck, he'd asked if they wanted to man it two days a week, and while Joey had been a little hesitant, Carlos had insisted they were all in, simply because the older brother had been learning so much about cooking from Max that he wanted to continue studying, any way they could. The two brothers were also planning on opening their own restaurant at some point, and had never moved out of their parents' place, so as to save as much money as possible. It was a common story in the Bay area.

“Anything super crazy on this week's menu, boss?” Joey asked Max, as he and Frankie locked up the truck before heading towards the porch. Max opened a locker on the side of the truck to get his leather jacket out before closing it back up again. The menu, with all the week's recipes, was waiting for Carlos on the little iPad mini they kept inside of the food truck, which doubled as their register.

“Not really, although make sure Carlos keeps more chili prepped than normal, especially for the breakfast shifts. The Huevos Maximos breakfast burrito's been crazy popular, so we're going through the Max Chili pretty fast, faster than normal. Also, maybe double up on supplies for the Cuban Submarine Sandwich,” he said, as Frankie tossed Joey the keys. “No idea why the sudden rush today, but we actually had to put up a sign saying we were out of them today, and you know how I fucking hate to do that. Other that that, you two know the rules: No vaping in the truck, no banging in the truck, no drinking in the truck.”

Joey nodded. “Yeah yeah, got it, boss. See you Wednesday night?”

“Yep yep yep,” he said. “As per usual.”

The week's menu was decided by Max on Wednesday afternoon, started on Thursday and ended after Wednesday evening, so the brothers were making things based on the recipes he'd had a chance to refine over the course of five days. People who came to the truck on Thursdays knew they were beta testers, and that the dishes were a little wild'n'wooly, and weren't shy about offering suggestions on ways they thought things could be better. A lot of times Max would simply write it off, but his regulars mostly knew how to offer valid and constructive feedback, so that definitely affected how the menu looked going into the weekend. Hell, a handful of his regulars had even made requests for things they'd like to see him try from time to time, and Max wasn't above a challenge. But he certainly didn't want to let the brothers experiment around with his cooking – they weren't ready yet.

As Joey headed back inside to get his brother, Max and Frankie headed over to Max's motorcycle, which they always made a point to leave over at the brothers' house on Sunday nights, so they could ride back to Frankie's house, where both Frankie and Max kept their cars. For a while, Frankie had bitched about having to ride on the back of the bike, so last year for Christmas, Frankie had given Max a sidecar for the Yamaha bike, which was fine. Any night Max wanted to take the motorcycle out by himself, he could just detach it, but mostly he used the bike just to ferry him and Frankie back and forth from dropping off the food truck.

“Back to the house, get showered, then out to Cato's for trivia and beers, as per the usual?” Frankie asked him.

Max groaned a little. “Shit, man, I dunno. I'm fucking tired. We were busy today. I know it's a tradition and all, but...” He suspected Frankie was going to try and talk him into going out, but really, Max just wanted to crawl back into his studio apartment and throw on Netflix while he passed out on his shitty couch.

“You're fuckin' A right it's a tradition, motherfucker, and as soon as you get in the shower, you'll feel all your energy come back and we can have a great night out drinking and relaxing,” Frankie said, getting his helmet out of the locker on the back of the sidecar. “Ever since Cato made trivia night also ladies night, they've been getting more and more hot chicks in there.”

“You've already got *three* girlfriends, Frankie,” Max said, shaking his head, putting on his own helmet, before flicking on the internal radio's power. “What the hell do you need more for?”

Max had never met anyone who actually had a polyamorous relationship before meeting Frankie, and he still wasn't entirely sure how to wrap his head around it. But Frankie, pretty much at all times, had between three and five girlfriends, all of whom knew about each other, and were okay sharing his time (and, on rare occasions, each other). Frankie had once joked around that one day a week was about as much as any woman could tolerate him, and seemed a touch hurt that Max hadn't disagreed with the joke. Max didn't bother to learn most of the girls' names, but two of them, Caroline and Abigail, had stuck around long enough that Max could recognize them on sight.

“Not for me, man,” Frankie said, as Max climbed onto the bike and Frankie climbed into the sidecar, slapping Max on the shoulder. “For you! We need to get you laid again, man. That way you won't be jealous of me and all my special lady friends.”

“You know that if they hear you referring to them as your 'special lady friends,' they're all gonna dump your ass so fast it'll make your head spin, right?”

“That's why I don't let'em hear me call'em that, big dude.”

Max shook his head and started up the bike. “Fine, but as soon as trivia's done, I'm probably coming back to the house. You wanna stay longer, you can Uber home.”

“Will you stay if I get a hot chick for you to join us for a few more drinks?”

Max rolled his eyes as the motorcycle pulled out of the driveway and onto the dirty Oakland street. “Tell you what. We'll take our usual corner table, and if you can get more women at our table than any other table in the bar before trivia's over, I'll stay until at least ten o'clock.”

“Hot damn, late night drinkin' on a Monday!” Frankie cheered, rolling his fist in the air. “Imma make it happ'n, Cap'n!”

“I'll believe it when I see it, Frankie.”

“My dude, you have no fucking clue what you're in for tonight... There is no way you could be prepared for the chaos we're going to get up to starting tonight.”

Not only was Frankie right, he was underselling the case.

Part Two

Zoe Hitchens – 3/6/2017 – Monday – 10:30 am

It had been most of a day since the meeting, and as of yet, no one had posted in the day one chat area yet. There had been a number of one offs in the all-chat board, mostly women making sure to reconnect with people they'd actually met at the event yesterday, but as of yet, no one had suggested an approach on how to make any of this work, which was for the best, Zoe thought to herself, because it meant she wouldn't have to tell some girl that her plan sucked before Zoe presented her own.

Zoe had spent much of the last day studying the website, taking notes and trying to strategize an approach that would be open ended enough that later girls could piggy back onto it, and not so open ended that it wouldn't be believable.

The approach, she reckoned, was going to be everything.

At the age of 36, Zoe was the oldest in Alfa Group. (The ten groups were named alphabetically using the NATO phonetic alphabet – Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India and Juliett.) That meant she was going to have to organize this clusterfuck of women into some sort of reasonable approach that wouldn't blow their cover, but would also have a snowball in hell's chance at succeeding.

The very notion of the Brand Game was lunacy, but Zoe had made an entire career out of learning how to spot a winnable wager when she saw one. She was a business analyst for a thinktank just outside of D.C. It was an insane idea, but it was a doable insane idea.

One of the things she'd noticed immediately was that the website, which Mrs. Churchill had said would only have their headshot and name, in fact had a lot more information on all of them. Their home towns, their ages, their heights and their careers were all on open display for all the girls to know, so that they could come across as people who at least sort of knew one another.

Next to her laptop, Zoe had a yellow legal pad that was covered with notes, ideas and thoughts. There were also at least two dozen ripped out pages, crumpled and discarded into the bin alongside the bed in her AirBnB bedroom.

The initial approach was going to have to be something that would hold up against a basic level of scrutiny, and yet, something just outrageous enough that it would feel like the kind of thing someone would want to keep secret.

Late last evening, she'd started to zero in on a concept that was simple and elegant at the start, and would leave them loads of room to rotate other people in and out, but it was going to take a few leaps of faith, and she was going to have to get multiple women from Alfa Group to go along with the plan. Zoe wasn't entirely convinced she could get them to do that, even if it was in their best interests, but the only way to do it was to try.

She logged into the Alfa Group chat, and decided to break the ice, and be the first to chat. The names she'd written down that she needed to get on board with her plan were Michelle Stenson, Rachel Munroe and Jenny Westinghouse. Getting one or two of the others, Kelly Coleman or Blake Brown, would definitely be helpful, but she needed those three for this to have a solid chance at success.

Rachel Munroe was a local psychiatrist, who specialized in dealing with extremely successful business people in the middle of crisis. She was 27, a redhead (although Zoe suspected it was bottled red, rather than natural) and would have a good foundation of local knowledge. For the plan to work, having a couple of people on the initial team with roots in the community was going to be vital. She was also a psychiatrist, meaning she had a solid understanding of what motivated people and how to channel that towards a goal. They were going to have to do some manipulation of poor Max at first, and having someone who could help the rest of them understand what was working and what wasn't would be endlessly beneficial.

Jenny Westinghouse was another person who would fit that bill nicely. She was 33, a strawberry blonde and also a Bay Area native. She was a cop from Oakland, more specifically a detective with experience working undercover (UC). In addition to what she'd found on the website, Zoe had done a little bit of her own research and found that it was likely Jenny was part of the undercover team that had been responsible for the heroin smuggling ring bust that had made headlines just a month or two ago, although Zoe couldn't confirm that. If so, however, Jenny would be adept at taking on a part and playing it to a tee, something they were going to need right from the start.

The most important person, however, was Michelle Stenson, even if she might be one of the more challenging people to deal with. Michelle was 24, dark blonde, and an all-American midwestern ex-cheerleader vibe. Most importantly, however, was her job. She was a pharmaceutical rep.

Zoe's brother was a doctor at Mt. Sinai, and the one thing he had told Zoe over and over and over again was that if she ever needed to do business research on a shitload of overly beautiful and highly sexual women, the place to start would be with pharmaceutical representatives. Zoe had asked him what he meant, and instead, he'd simply invited her to come to lunch with him at the hospital.

While they were there, her brother, Adam, had let her witness for herself, and it was 100% true. The drug companies hired mostly good-looking female reps, encouraged them to dress provocatively without being scandalous, to flirt with the doctors and to encourage them to recommend their products to patients, over and over again.

A doctor's typical day was, on the whole, relatively shitty. People were sick, or depressed, or depressed about sick, or sick of being depressed, or genuinely ill and despondent. That meant that doctors were surrounded by bleakness much of their days. When drug companies were no longer allowed to pay doctors to recommend their products, the drug companies had gone a different route.

Now, it wasn't legal for them to exclusively hire only beautiful women, but the common perception that a lot of men got was that this was what they did anyway. So the reputation was that all drug reps would be hot. The truth of the matter was these women exuded confidence more than anything, and they were young professionals who weren't afraid to be slightly more openly sexual in a professional environment, and that, in essence, let doctors fetishize and create their own fantasies about these women. It was more projection than concrete, more fantasy than reality.

But the perception existed, and the notion that drug reps were unbearably hot, openly sexual women was still a myth that floated around the zeitgeist every now and then, and it was something Zoe intended to capitalize on.

She decided just to lay the plan out in the chat room, and see what the others thought of it, and if it could work. All ten women in the group contributed to the exchange, but Zoe decided not to worry about anyone other than the three she needed to focus on for now.

Zoe: Good morning ladies. I think I have a plan that might get the ball rolling, but I will need some of your help, and will also need some of you to stand by for a few days.

Cara: I will stand by.

Dana: I will also wait. Being the first in seems like it carries the most risk.

Rachel: What do you need in terms of help?

Zoe: My current plan would require me, Michelle, Rachel and Jenny to work. I would actually suggest the four of us consolidate down to just one Air BnB that we all share, to better sell the story.

Kelly: the rest of us should still know the story in advance shouldn't we?

Mai: I do not like being left out of this planning, but I will not be at an optimal time to get pregnant for at least a week, so I can simply choose to bide my time until then, and take no risk.

Kelly: the risk's the fun part, tho ;)

Michelle: What do you need me for?

Jenny: Or me?

Zoe: We need to sell this guy a story, pretend we're introducing him to a secret world he's never been part of, that could be behind any door, if only he knows which doors to look in.

Jenny: … go on

Zoe: DC has a hidden nightlife that most people never see, hell, most people don't even really know about, because it's very exclusive. Swingers clubs, sex clubs, play parties, orgies, hell, even key parties, so I'm going to assume there's something like that out here. Even if you're not part of that, Jenny, can you confirm something like that exists here?

Kelly: what's a key party?

Jenny: I'm not part of that life around here, but yeah, you could very easily say there's a hidden world of sexuality happening behind closed doors all around the Bay area, if you know where to look or who to talk to. But again I'm not really part of that world. I wouldn't know how to get us in, or even where to look for it.

Zoe: We don't need to actually get in. We just need to create the illusion that we're in, while we stack the deck. We get him hooked on the fantasy of getting taken down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, and all the while, everything we're showing him, everyone he's seeing, it's all an act, it's all us, all girls in the game. If we can piggyback onto the real hidden world around here for part of it, all the better, but for the most part, he's in our world the entire time, a little bubble where we're constantly parading women in front of him, all eager to get a spin on his wheel.

Zoe: That could work, but you're going to need someone to organize all of this, and, more importantly, locations to make all this happen.

Dana: I can provide access to plenty of unused locations where we could stage 'events' and bring Max along to.

Zoe: Good. This is good. We're starting to work as a team already.

Kelly: I, uh, I've got a few connections into that kind of thing here in Berkeley that I could probably trade in a few favors on, to get us into play parties near or on campus, although we'd probably have to keep Max away from getting too handsy with anyone who isn't one of us. And some people might call him a tourist, but hopefully you can think of some way to spin it.

Zoe: Anyone who's just visiting a circle is always called a tourist by people who started as tourists themselves. It's fine. If anything, it just reinforces our story's credibility.

Esme: With the number of us just in the first day alone, we can probably get a lot of the others on board with this plan for the coming few days, and after he's been surrounded by dozens and dozens of beautiful women, I imagine he's going to have a hard time telling some women apart.

Blake: Yeah, there's a couple of houses up in the hills not far from campus that the rich kids are known to rent out for parties, keggers and such. I could probably hook us up with their hustle.

Michelle: That still doesn't explain why you need me.

Zoe: I want us for our first impression trading on the myth of being a hot group of drug reps out blowing off some steam after a day schmoozing with doctors.

Michelle: OK. It's not really true, but I guess he's not going to know that.

Zoe: I figure me, you, Rachel and Jenny can pose as drug reps and meet up with him and his friend tonight at their pub quiz. From there, we get flirtatious, maybe even a little handsy, then invite them back to our AirBnB, where four of us are sharing a house while we're in town for a convention or whatever.

Michelle: I don't think there's any conventions going on here right now.

Zoe: But you're not sure and you actually are a drug rep, so what makes you think he's going to think to check?

Michelle: k fair

Zoe: Based on who he gravitates to, one of us becomes his sort of tour guide through the hidden sex world of the Bay area, well, our vision of it anyway. We're all good looking gals. We know how to get a guy to come along with us to things, and then we just keep exposing him to opportunities, and encourage him to take them.

Mai: You're assuming he won't get attached to anyone right away.

Zoe: Rachel, you're the headshrinker. What does his profile say to you?

Rachel: He's trying to come off as laid back, but he's actually quite high strung. Getting him over the first hurdle is the real challenge, but the kid in a candyshop approach might work. His last relationship ended because they ran out of gas, but in reading between the lines, it seems more like the two of them simply grew bored of each other, because there was no surprise left in their relationship. We can exploit that.

Zoe: Exactly. Out with the old, in with the new. But he still needs a tour guide to get him into all of this. And as the game gets more and more women into it, we can pass the tour guide torch around. I'm sure there will be a few people in each group willing to take on that responsibility.

Jenny: And in our group, that's going to be you?

Zoe: Actually, I figured it would be you and/or Rachel.

Rachel: Why wouldn't you want the job yourself?

Zoe: I'm not from here. I don't have the base level knowledge about the Bay I would need to sell it convincingly to someone who's lived here his whole life. I'm a bad choice for the job. You two both grew up here. You're far better qualified than I am to carry the story.

Jenny: And what's your job going to be?

Zoe: Coordinator. And I'll be the person selling the legend upfront.

Cara: Legend? I do not understand this use of this word.

Jenny: A person's 'legend' is the backstory someone going undercover makes up, all the details and frills to their fake identity that they're presenting as true.

Jenny: You figured out I'm UC, didn't you?

Zoe: I made an educated guess.

Dana: So Zoe is the coordinator, I'm in charge of buildings and logistics, Jenny and Rachel are the tour guides.

Kelly: You aren't going to forget about us, are you?

Zoe: Not at all. In fact, I imagine you might be a good tour guide for the younger stripe of the hidden world, the part that lives on or just around campuses, the collegiate version, but I think we want to wait at least a few days before we try and get him into that, don't you?

Kelly: Totes. A bunch of college girls circling him like sharks would make him hella sus if it was the first move.

Blake: as long as we don't get forgotten about. mayb I should be part of the first group in

Zoe: You're 19, Blake. You aren't even old enough to go into the pub for trivia night. You'll have your chance, I promise. Stick with me and my plan, and I'll get us through this, and everyone will get at least two or three shots at getting him to knock you up.

Kelly: For those of you who've banged older dudes before, how many times a day can he get it up and get it off?

Dana: They make pills for that, darling.

Kelly: Which won't help if he's jizzing dust.

Dana: How very colorful.

Rachel: From what I remember from my physiology classes, the average man can safely ejaculate between three and five times a day, depending on their physical condition and diet.

Blake: Wide range there. You're a doctor. Shouldn't you know that kinda crap?

Rachel: I'm a psychiatrist, not a reproductive specialist.

Jenny: Diet's important?

Rachel: I think it helps, but I'm not entirely certain.

Zoe: There's a dietitian in Charlie Group. I can contact her one-on-one and see what we need to getting this dude to eat to be as fertile as possible.

Jenny: Let's not start at five times a day, otherwise dude's going to get incredibly suspicious. Even three times a day is probably pushing it to start.

Zoe: Well tonight we're going to throw him a hell of a party, and get him more than a little drunk.

Kelly: Make sure he doesn't get whiskey dick.

Blake: wut u mean?

Kelly: Tell u l8r.

Esme: So if you, Michelle, Rachel and Jenny are going to start us off tonight, what should the rest of us do?

Zoe: Help coordinate with Dana and Mai. Get us some sort of central sex house that we can use somewhere up in the hills, with enough space around it that it feels like it's something exclusive and private, an estate that could double as a club. You know, something with mystique.

Dana: I think I have a building in mind, and I can make sure it won't be used by anyone other than us for the next three months.

Zoe: Then start getting the place into shape. It needs to feel like a sex house, or, more specifically, like a private sex club, someplace where refined adults of high end taste can go and have a good time away from prying eyes.

Esme: What do you mean get it into shape?

Jenny: Decorate it so that it doesn't feel like someplace we just rolled into. Give each room a personal touch, some character. Make sure the fridge is stocked. Make sure there's a bed, a mattress or a couch in each room. Get a stripper pole for at least one room. Give another a look like a dungeon, restraints and all. Deck one out as an office. Think of every porn you've ever seen, and start making sure we have at least one room that could double as a set for it. Every bit of it needs to be working, too, because we still don't really know what gets this dude's motor running, so we gotta be prepared for a little of everything.

Zoe: And make sure you get in touch with Mrs. Churchill, so her people can get their cameras set up there as well. Let's not forget about the people funding this shit.

Kelly: We're really gonna do that?

Zoe: It's part of the rules of the game, and if you don't like it, you can always quit. Do you want to quit?

Kelly: I ain't no quitter.

Zoe: Okay then, cameras for sexy time it is.

Dana: We can use the house as a base of operations and even just a lounge whenever Max isn't there, so if he decided to slip out of the tour guide's pocket for a bit and wanders up on his own, there will be beautiful women just lounging around, and it doesn't feel like a set that's only doing things when he's there.

Zoe: Good thinking, Dana.

Cara: Are the rest of us going to have to pretend to be drug reps?

Zoe: No no, just us starting four.

Blake: o i c. the rest of us are gonna be people already in the lifestyle

Zoe: You got it.

Blake: Any of you bitches looking to try and keep Max after he's put the bun in the oven?

Zoe: Not me. I've got no interest in sticking around.

Dana: Nor I. I simply want to have someone with good DNA for my child, and the Brand bloodline are notorious for their will to see things through, as all of this has only proven to me further. And you saw how old that codger made it to. That's hardy stock.

Michelle: Just here for a good time, not a long time.

Rachel: I haven't decided yet.

Kelly: He's too old for me.

Blake: Like that matters when this much cash is on the line.

Zoe: So I take it you're trying to keep him, Blake?

Blake: Probs not, but mayb, if he seems into me.

Mai: I have no need of a husband.

Jenny: I guess I'm with Blake – I wouldn't say no, but I'm not trying for it.

Cara: I don't ever want to speak to him.

Zoe: That's going to make this trickier, Cara. Most men don't fuck people they can't talk to.

Cara: You are selling him sex fantasies, yes? Then I am certain we can sell him one where he fucks me without talking to me. Men like to be in control, yes?

Zoe: I'll put a pin in that.

Esme: I don't want to stay here in California, so I guess I'm not angling for marriage either.

Zoe: That makes us an excellent first group, then. Nobody's focused on the long game, so we can set up all the later girls for success, and not get greedy.

Jenny: That should make the drop-in, drop-out nature of all of this go down a little bit easier. Sell him the fantasy of introducing him into a secret world where people always want to have sex with him, and he just didn't know it existed.

Blake: You solved the condom problem yet?

Dana: What condom problem?

Esme: The more someone insists that you don't need to use a condom, the more you should definitely use a condom, and that makes all this sex completely moot for our end goal.

Zoe: The idea of the sex club will help a lot with that, although basically every woman who meets him is going to have to tell him she's on the pill or got an IUD or is on some other form of contraceptive.

Jenny: If he asks.

Zoe: Oh yeah, if he doesn't ask and just goes along with it, fuck it, don't mention it. The last thing we want to do is draw attention to it, so calling it out might be weird.

Jenny: The first rule of being undercover, ladies, is that you do not break cover, not in any way, shape or form. If you are confronted with evidence that you've been untruthful, play ignorance, say you were mixed up or got some detail wrong, but you do not, under any circumstances, come clean. Ever. Got it?

Blake: yes mom

Jenny: That rule may just save you from losing a couple million dollars, so maybe hold onto it.

Blake: whatev

Zoe: Oh, also for this to work, someone in the foursome's probably gonna have to take one for the team.

Rachel: I don't think I like the sound of that.

Zoe: To sell the fantasy of a group of hot women throwing themselves at this guy, we're going to have to send one of us off with the guy's friend, Frankie. You don't have to fuck the guy, but it would probably be helpful, especially if the timing's bad for you to get pregnant.

Michelle: Not it. I'm in the sweet spot for the next few days.

Rachel: Fine, I'm not in prime position for at least another four or five days, so I guess I'll fall on that sword, but I'm definitely making him wear a condom.

Blake: make'm double bag dat shit.

Zoe: Hell, you can probably just get him drunk enough and then blow him if you want.

Rachel: I'd rather fuck him, given the choices, especially since it will sell the legend more.

Jenny: Good thinking.

Zoe: So my AirBnB is big enough to fit the four of us, and is within walking distance of the pub they're going to tonight, so I can PM you three the address, and you can come over here, and we can get our collective legend straight, pick out our clothes and discuss how we want to make our approach.

Jenny: One of us should probably reach out to his friend, Frankie.

Rachel: I'll do that. If I've got to fuck him, I might as well lay down the ground rules in advance.

Jenny: Think he'll play ball?

Rachel: I read his profile. I think his type is “says yes.”

Zoe: Harsh, but fair.

Jenny: What are we dressing for?

Zoe: Like we're girlfriends going out for a good night on the town and don't want to pay for drinks but don't want to be constantly hassled all night.

Jenny: Low cut tops, short skirts, but only borderline slutty, not slutty slutty. Got it.

Zoe: I'm going to put on a sleeveless top so I look like I didn't even pay attention to what they weather's like, but Jenny, you and Rachel should definitely remember that you're playing locals, so don't give any fake names and it's okay for you to know where shit is around here.

Jenny: I've been UC way more than you have, Zoe. I know how to do my damn job.

Rachel: I think she's more worried about me than you, but I'll be fine, trust me.

Zoe: Also, I hope most of you are good with a little gay for play. Nobody needs to go beyond their comfort zone, but girls making out for fun is almost always a guaranteed short cut to turning guys on, so we may have to do some of that, and you're all cute enough for my tastes.

Jenny: I can make it work.

Michelle: Me too.

Rachel: And me.

Dana: We should also give this sex house we're building some sort of legend of its own. Something classy but with a hint of risqué to it.

Blake: Poke Peak

Dana: A hint, not a gallon, dear.

Cara: Sunset Villa?

Jenny: Too generic, and sounds like a retirement home anyway.

Esme: Ironwood Estates.

Zoe: Winner winner, chicken dinner. Ironwood Estates it is. Maybe even make up a little sign for the gate out front, “Ironwood Estates, est. 1975, members only.”

Mai: Why so old?

Dana: Gives it a level of prestige and respectability.

Michelle: Don't we have to make sure the legend goes back that far?

Dana: It's easy enough to create the illusion of it being around that long, so you needn't fret. Besides, private clubs are just that – private clubs. There are plenty of them here in the Bay, and nobody knows what goes on behind their fences.

Blake: sex stuff?

Dana: Not many of them, but yes, on occasion, 'sex stuff.'

Blake: knew it

Zoe: What's the address for Ironwood Estates?

Dana: 16 Bay Tree Lane. It's right up by Tilden Regional Park, in the Berkeley Hills. The neighbors are snobs with high fences and heavily soundproofed walls, since it's right by the fire station, but it's off any main streets, so the building will give us our privacy. Perfect for our needs.

Zoe: And if he talks to the neighbors?

Dana: My dear, the people in that neighborhood do not answer their own door, and certainly do not answer questions about their neighbors, whom they most certainly do not know anyway.

Zoe: All I wanted to make sure of.

Dana: Naturally. I am just as invested as all of you in making sure we aren't breaking any rules or getting caught.

Zoe: Someone's also going to need to be a bridge to Bravo Group. We'll post all of this into the All Chat, but it would definitely help if we have a point person in both Alfa Group and Bravo Group who are in contact with one another, and it probably shouldn't be someone in tonight's incursion team.

Jenny: Incursion team? Are you sure you're a business analyst and not some Navy SEAL, Zoe?

Zoe: Business and military ops really aren't all that different from each other, other than their weapons kill faster than ours. So anyway, who wants that job?

Esme: I'll do it. I spent some time talking with Zelda, one of the people from Bravo, at the big briefing, so there's already a bit of a relationship there, and she strikes me as someone who can get shit done.

Zoe: Great. That'll make life much easier for us. The first few days of this are going to be the roughest, but once we have him sold on the legend, it'll get easier to sort of rotate women in and out of his orbit.

Esme: You really think a guy who's barely fucked in years will turn into some dick-swinging Lothario just because we give him the option?

Zoe: Rachel?

Rachel: Look, without doing some serious talking to him, I can't get too deep into his usual thought processes, but I've seen people like him before. They have abandonment issues. They have confidence issues. They're constantly overcompensating because they feel like they're inadequate, and they don't like to let people in. But the secret to people like that? They want someone to push their way in, someone to show that they give a shit. So we'll have to lay it on a bit thick at first, but the lure of being desirable to women, it's impossible for any man to resist forever. He might be a little suspicious or paranoid about it at first, but if we hit him with the shock and awe treatment, he's going to be reeling too much to stop and think about it. Men want to be wanted, and usually us girls play the passive “come and get me” card, so when we as women set out to take a man by showing him we're very much into him, they're practically defenseless. I think it can work.

Zoe: It will work. Now, anybody have any further questions before you three head over here and the rest of you start getting things together for Ironwood Estates?

Esme: Just one. We need some sort of item that we can have a bunch of made quickly, like a pendant or a ring or something, that'll be the badge of admission that people use to get in and out of Ironwood Estates. If we're going to sell the story, it needs to be something classy but distinct.

Dana: There's a local metal worker in Delta Group, Sunshine White. I was sat next to her at the briefing. I can reach out to her and have her get a cast with some sort of symbol together, but I don't know that she can pump out a lot of these in a short time.

Blake: there's a girl named Sunshine White? it sounds like a street drug

Zoe: We're only going to need like five or six rings or necklaces or something, and we don't need the first one until tomorrow morning, but by then, we're going to need two good quality copies of it. One for our tour guide, and one to give to Max. We can get more of them made and distributed as she has time.

Dana: What are we offering her to get her to do work for us?

Zoe: Prime placement in day 4? I mean, we can do what we can, but we are playing so much of this how it lies, and completely off the cuff.

Dana: That would likely be enough. I'll reach out.

Zoe: Great. I'll also send you the address for my AirBnB. She just needs to come by some time tonight and drop it off on the front porch. There's a potted plant she can hide it behind. One of us can sneak out and get it in the morning before Max is awake.

Dana: You're sure you can keep him at your place for the night?

Zoe: Three women fighting for his attention should be more than enough to make sure he doesn't want to go home. We're going to show him a hell of a good time.

Jenny: Wait, all three of us? At the same time?

Zoe: Probably. Is that going to be a problem?

Jenny: … I guess not. I just hadn't thought about it.

Michelle: We just need to make sure we show him a damn good time, and he won't wanna go anywhere. I know how to make sure a man doesn't want to climb out of bed, and usually it involves making sure he's too tired to move.

Zoe: Okay, I'm PMing Dana and Esme my cell number, so if anyone needs anything, contact one of them and they'll contact me while I'm at the pub with the rest of the incursion team. Let's do it.

Blake: game on bitches

An hour or so later, Jenny was the first to arrive. The Oakland detective was gorgeous, but all the women in the Brand Game were. Her strawberry blonde hair drawn into a tight bun at the back of her head, and Zoe had to admit it was a cute color on her. She was a little taller than Zoe was, and certainly more muscular. She was dressed in denim, jeans and a jean jacket pulled over a faded Def Leppard t-shirt that had certainly seen better days.

“You think we can do this?” Jenny asked her, as she brought her two suitcases into the AirBnB. “I mean, it's a good plan, but with so many people involved, at some point, this is gonna be a dumpster fire screaming down a highway.”

Zoe shrugged a little. “I'll do everything I can to give it a good start, but in a few days time, Max is going to be the fly in the ointment, and any one of these crazy bitches could fuck it up,” the blonde analyst said, helping Jenny bring her things into one of the open bedrooms. “It's all going to be about risk management.”

“Michelle seems like she might be a big risk,” Jenny said, grabbing one of the suitcases, setting it up on top of the bed and she opened it. “I'm worried she's gonna say something stupid.”

“I agree that of the four of us, she's the least reliable, so we get her knocked up first and then rotate her out of play. All of the hard work for her will be done and gone within the first few days, assuming his seed takes hold early on.”

“That's the crazy part about all of this, isn't it?” Jenny said, taking out a low-cut red top from her suitcase. “Just because we can get him to fuck us doesn't mean he's gonna knock us up for sure. Basic biology's a bitch.”

“Well, I've done some back of the envelope calculations, and assuming we can ramp him up on how many times a day he's fucking, we've got somewhere between 150 and 400 opportunities to distribute between 100 women. Circling back around to people who it didn't take for the first time is going to be the real challenge, especially if we're constantly giving him an endless cavalcade of new women to have sex with. I haven't figured all that out yet.”

The doorbell rang again, just as Jenny was setting her skirt for the evening down on the bed next to her top. “You don't have to be the only one planning this shit, Zoe,” she hollered.

“I know,” Zoe yelled back, “but I have to get it started right, at the very least.” She opened the door and was greeted by Michelle, the tiny blonde Texan ex-cheerleader who'd been working for one of the top five drug companies since she'd graduated college two years ago. “Hey Michelle, c'mon in. Pick a bedroom, then get changed for tonight.”

“Yeah, okay,” Michelle said, dragging in three suitcases with her. Zoe was certainly glad that each room in the house had its own attached bathroom, so that nobody would need to share. After a few weeks, Zoe planned to send them all back to their own individual AirBnBs, but for now, they needed to feel like a cadre of girls who traveled together on the regular.

Rachel arrived a few minutes later, and before long, all four women were decked to the nines and ready to head to the nearby pub, as all of their phones beeped simultaneously.

“You are now eligible. Good luck!”

Mrs. Churchill – 3/6/2017 – Monday – 7:04 pm

“Mrs. Churchill, how many cameras do you think we need to set up at this Ironwood Estates of theirs?” her head assistant, Jacinda, asked her. Jacinda was Mrs. Churchill's planner, the woman who she relied on the most to keep all the plates spinning. She was a 29-year old Spaniard event planner who Mrs. Churchill had plucked from a team in Madrid that hadn't deserved her. Since she'd joined Mrs. Churchill's team six months ago, Jacinda had gone from losing her shit on the nightly to having her shit on total lock down. “I think we want at least one in every room, but we might need two or three for some places.”

“How's our stack of excess cameras?” she asked her. “I know you thought something like this was possible and made sure we were properly supplied.”

“There's plenty of spare cameras in the supply box,” Jacinda said, taking off her glasses to rub her brown eyes. “For at least the next few days, if they bring him to that place, we're going to have to manage which cameras are actually streaming very carefully though, at least until we can get a bit of heavy cable laid up there. There's only so much bandwidth to go around in those neighborhoods in the high hills. I told you they were going to try and go the sex club angle, at least at first.”

“I trusted you to organize the ten groups, and based on how this first group of ten is getting along, it feels like my trust isn't misplaced. Do you think this Ironwood Estates idea of theirs has legs?” Mrs. Churchill knew going into this that it was going to be a wild ride, and they were simply going to have to corral it, to do their best to keep everything on track.

“It's a good start,” Jacinda sighed, “until someone does something to fuck it up. But it should hold for long enough to get him down the rabbit hole a bit. I tried to put most of the real shit starters in the last few groups, so that early days, we throw him off the scent a bit.”

“And the real firestarter?”

“In Juliett Group,” Jacinda said, shaking her head. “I'd like to say yet again that I think she's a bad idea, but I know you're dead set on having her in there. I'm just not sure why.”

“Because one of the things Mr. Brand insisted upon was that during this little game he'd prepared for his grandson, he made sure to stick his dick in crazy at least a few times, so we've got a handful of batshit bitches in it.”

“Sure,” her right hand said, “but I don't even know how Isabella passed the psyche eval. She's nuts, and she's going to be dangerous in keeping the game in check.”

“We've got over a week before we need to worry about it, Jac, so let's focus on what's on our immediate horizon and getting us through the next few days. Where is he right now?”

“He's back at the loft, getting showered.”

“We've got boots on the ground over at Cato's, doing their best to sort of help manage the environment,” Jacinda said. “The pub is a good environment, and it's usually fairly busy, so Zoe's little strike team should have a good chance to make an excellent first impression.”

“Okay then, let's make our bets,” one of the analysts, a woman named Maia, said. Maia's role in Mrs. Churchill's team was to run their various covers and smokescreens, and to keep both the police and the press off of this little game of theirs. There wasn't anything illegal about it, but the less attraction they drew, the better. “I've got my twenty on Michelle. The Texan Tornado's gonna insist of being first.”

It was something Mrs. Churchill had entirely expected. Her team of nine women would each need to keep themselves entertained, and so they were going to make side bets among each other. Who would he bang first? Who would get knocked up first? Who would spend the most time with him in the first week? Who would spend the least?

While under different circumstances, Mrs. Churchill might have considered it a distraction, in this case, it was a necessary one. Her girls needed to let off steam, to vent some of the weird frustrations that were bound to build up from watching this guy who didn't know what was happening to him go on a run of pussy that would put Wilt Chamberlin to shame. After a few weeks, the novelty of seeing this man constantly having sex would wear off, but for at least the first month, keeping her team on task would have its own challenges.

“Bullshit,” Mrs. Churchill said. “My twenty's on Zoe. She's done all of this work, so I'll put my money on her not letting anyone else get the first crack out of him. They may be in the room with them, but she's gonna damn well take that first load herself. That's where my twenty goes. Jac?”

Jacinda smirked a little bit. The planner was a good looking woman, almost model pretty, with a slender build and a face that turned more than its share of heads, those that weren't enraptured by her toned ass. If she'd wanted to, Jac could've easily been one of the women in the competition, but she was Team Churchill all the way. “You're both idiots, but I'll happily take your money,” she said, reaching into her nearby clutch to fish out a twenty. “Zoe'll hit him up in the morning, and Michelle will get the second load, but the person to get the first one's gonna be Jenny here,” she said, tapping Jenny's photo on their digital wall.

“How do you figure?”

“Zoe knows that Max has to get attached to the one who's going to be his introduction and his tour guide into the secret sex world fantasy they're selling him. Michelle's not from around here, so she can't carry that, and besides, she's a shit liar. Zoe was smart in making sure she wouldn't let Michelle's legend deviate too far from her actual life story. That's why she won't do it herself, and Rachel agreed in that chat to take one for the team and fall on Frankie's sword, which leaves only our little deep cover all star here. My twenty's on Jenny.”

“Okay, I'll hit up all the others and take bets while we're waiting for the show to start,” Maia said. “Although I feel a little sorry for Danny, having to watch all of this sex and getting none of it.”

Danny was the only male member of Mrs. Churchill's nine-person staff, and the one they hoped to have to use the least. He was ex-Special Forces turned private military operator. Danny was the one tasked with running security on everything, although his mandate was incredibly narrow and included only three things – 1) protect Max Brewster, 2) protect Mrs. Churchill's team, and 3) protect the secrecy of the Brand Game – in that order. When he'd heard the project pitch, he'd laughed, but he'd also taken it deadly seriously, and for the last two weeks, he'd been shadowing Max without the man having spotted him even once.

“Danny's exceptionally well paid for what he does, just like all of you are, so no need to feel sorry for him. Besides, I've seen the smokeshow that Danny's hooking up with,” Mrs. Churchill laughed, “and while I'm not gay, I'd be willing to make an exception for her, and Mr. Churchill wouldn't have a single complaint, as long as he was allowed to watch. The man's doing just fine.”

The three women laughed.

“Okay, game faces on, bitches,” Maia said as her phone buzzed. “That was Odile, and she said that Max and Frankie just left the house headed for Cato's pub, and Danny was safely following, which means we should expect first contact in just a little over twenty minutes.”

Mrs. Churchill mixed herself a cocktail then raised it to the room. “All right, ladies. Game on. To the game.”

Max Brewster – 3/6/2017 – Monday – 7:47 pm

The Uber dropped them off in front of Cato's only a a little bit before trivia started, but Andrea, the event's weekly host, knew that Max and Frankie had been coming regularly for a couple of years now almost every week. Supposedly trivia would start at 8pm sharp, but never in the history of the time they'd been attending had the trivia actually begun before 8:15.

Normally, Max would drive the two of them over, but Frankie had been insistent that he'd be able to get Max to drink tonight, and was so confident of it that he'd offered to pay for the Uber to and from the pub, so Max felt like he really couldn't turn him down.

Cato's was a nice little hole-in-the-wall pub that got a decent number of people, but it never felt like the joint was overwhelmed. The effort of making pub trivia night also ladies night hadn't really done much in the way of trying to get more people in, at least until tonight apparently.

Tonight, the place was more full than he'd seen it in a long time, although thankfully their usual table in the far back corner was still empty, as it always was. The back table wasn't particularly well lit, and the floor near the fire exit tended to be sticky, as if it just couldn't get fully cleaned up every time somebody spilled a beer. Also, it was near the back window, so it tended to be a bit drafty, as the window was always left open, to allow some of the insane heat of a poorly ventilated bar to dissipate.

“Looks like there's a lot more people than usual, Frankie,” Max said to his friend, “but not so many that you're gonna be able to convince people to come share our table with us. And that table's got three girls at it already, so I doubt you're gonna win your little bet.”

“Give it time, man,” Frankie said, confidently. “Give it time. Give ol' Frankie a chance to work. I'll go grab us drinks. You want the usual?”

“Yeah, no reason to fuck with a good thing.” The burgers were pretty good at Cato's, as long as Frankie remembered to tell them not to put those horrible mushrooms on them. The one time Frankie had forgotten, Max had been convinced that it had mostly just been mushrooms with a suggestion of beef beneath them. Frankie, on the other hand, always seemed to order the curry, unless the special of the day tempted him, which it rarely did.

As Frankie went to the bar to place their order, Max took the opportunity to look over the sea of faces that lined the walls of Cato's tonight. Sure, the regulars were all there – Lumberjack Tommy was holding court at the bar itself, with Ancient Punk Perry sitting right next to him; the Lawyer Trio were huddled together at the table right in front of the bar's front facing window, as they always were; Lacey, Albert and Ingrid were holding yet another tense band meeting (like every other week) – but there were also a handful of new faces. There was a muscular guy in mostly black leather at a table half way back with his partner, an Amazonian Asian woman who had to be at least 6'6” even without those heeled boots she was wearing. At another table, there were three UC Berkeley students he'd never seen before, all of whom looked like they were decompressing and just wanted to get a decent distance from campus. He could tell because a couple of them had on Berkeley sweatshirts.

Max had been paying so much attention to the room on the whole that he hadn't paid any attention to Frankie at the bar. So when Frankie returned with not only their drinks, but four women in tow, he was taken a little aback.

“So I was at the bar, and these four ladies were looking for a place to sit, so I thought I'd invite them to join us,” Frankie said. “I know the table might get a little crowded, but I figured we'd be okay if we tuck in a bit.”

The table was really only designed to fit four people, but Max knew that trying to discourage Frankie was like yelling at the wind to stop blowing, so he did his best to make sure there was room for the group to pull up a couple of additional chairs from other tables that weren't using them while looking over the four women his friend had with him as they introduced themselves.

“Hey, I'm Zoe.” The blonde woman looked like she was the de facto ringleader of the women, based on the confidence with which she introduced herself. She was in her late 30s and had very Scandinavian features, with pale blue eyes behind refined glasses that reeked of money. In fact, her whole outfit was a little high end for the bar, but who was he to judge, he decided. Her handshake was firm, but her skin was soft, someone who didn't use her hands for a living. She had on a blue skirt and a loose black silk blouse through which Max was fairly certain he could see the impression of expensive lingerie. “Thanks for letting us crowd in on your table.”

“Not a problem, I guess,” Max said as Zoe slid into a chair just to his left.

“I'm Jenny,” the tallest of the four women said, shaking his hand next. Her hands were far more calloused, although certainly not to day laborer standards. She had fine strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a bun, although Max suspected she probably preferred to wear it in a ponytail when she could. She had a kind face and faded jade green eyes that had a hidden strength of will behind them that Max recognized, although he usually saw it in a mirror. Jenny's black skirt was a bit shorter than Zoe's, though not so short as to be scandalous, and the gold top wasn't too low cut, but it certainly was tight around her chest. She was also better tanned than the others, and Max suspected she might be the only native Californian in the bunch. She slid in on the other side of him, a little closer than he thought was necessary, but she smelled of lilacs, so he didn't mind. “Much appreciated.”

“Michelle,” the third girl said, easily the youngest of the four. She had chocolate-colored eyes and dark blonde hair, but Max was fairly certain it was dyed, as he thought he could see the beginnings of darker roots close to the skin. She was almost half a foot shorter than Jenny, but more buxom by far, and she certainly knew it, as her outfit was designed to draw eyes to that exposed platform of titflesh she had pushed up by her top. It certainly reflected a bit more modern and youthful style than Zoe or Jenny were sporting. “Me and Zoe are in from outta town, but Jenny and Rachel are from 'round here and said y'all know how t' have a good ol' time in the honky tonk.” The accent was pure and unadulterated Texan, loud and proud. She moved to sit to Zoe's left around the circular table.

“So I'm sure you can guess that makes me Rachel,” the last woman said. She was easily the shortest of the four, with hair the color of a deep red wine cut into a cute bob that made her look like a younger version of a Pixar mom, with a playful smile that invited the eyes to linger on it as long they wanted. Rachel had on a black'n'white spaghetti strap top that certainly was drawing the eyes to her cleavage, but also the most relaxed skirt of the four, like she was the member of the group who had decided to relax the most tonight. She looked to be older than Michelle, but certainly younger than Jenny or Zoe, and she moved to sit down between Jenny and Frankie, who sat directly opposite of him, like he usually did.

“Four women, at our table, before trivia has even started!” Frankie howled triumphantly. “Get comfortable and start drinking, Max. You are going to be out late to-night!”

Normally Max and Frankie were on a team together, and the two of them usually did alright, but there were six people at the table, and teams were required to be no larger than three people each. That meant they had to divvy up, so Zoe and Jenny partnered up with Max while Rachel and Michelle teamed up with Frankie. Andrea wasn't pleased to see six people at a table, but when they huddled in a bit and separated from each other, she seemed to relax a little bit, mostly, Max suspected, because there were women around him. Andrea had always bitched and moaned that Max being single fucked up the vibe of her trivia night.

Max was a little thrown off at first when Zoe and Jenny crowded in around him, but there was something relaxing about Jenny, something friendly and natural. He was also fairly certain he felt Michelle's foot rubbing against his leg on and off, although maybe it was Rachel's, he couldn't really tell. It did seem like Rachel was focusing more intently on Frankie, though.

Trivia was a sheet of paper with thirty questions, and during the half hour for trivia, no one was allowed to look at their cellphone. Max had a pretty deep well when it came to musical knowledge, and usually he leaned on Frankie for the sports knowledge, but Jenny filled that in for him tonight, and Zoe seemed to know everything about current events, so they ended up finishing first, and winning their meals and drinks comped for the night.

The minute their drinks were comped, Frankie intended to make sure they used that to their advantage. Max was trying to keep his pace slow and in check, but between the four women egging him on and Frankie taking sips from all the glasses, Max lost track of how much he'd actually been drinking until he could start to feel his balance falter a little bit.

Around the point when he decided to just stop drinking entirely, the sentence came out that started it all.

“I wanna keep drinking,” Zoe said, “but I'm worried if we keep drinking here, we won't be able to walk back to the AirBnB, so you guys wanna just come back to our place and carry on?”

Jenny Westinghouse – 3/6/2017 – Monday – 10:22 pm

Getting Max back to Zoe's AirBnB had gone easier than Jenny had expected it would, but she felt like her rapport with him had helped. He'd been a little resistant when Zoe had suggested they come back to the AirBnB, but his friend, Frankie, had helped seal the deal, pointing out again and again that he didn't have to work tomorrow, and that it wasn't just one or two women who wanted to keep drinking with them, but four, hammering home on the number until finally Max had relented.

The walk back, all four of the girls had kicked off their shoes and walked barefoot, although Michelle had stepped on a sharp stick and had needed Max to carry her the remaining two blocks on his back. It was clear she was making a play for him, but Max seemed to dodge taking the bait, not getting handsy in his grab in keeping her on his back.

Zoe had been right – Max had fallen right for the pharmaceutical rep story hook, line and sinker, and Michelle had pinched off all the questions that had come about it with complete, concise answers that left no easy avenues to follow up on. And once the initial shine wore off, Max mostly lost interest in following up on the pharmaceutical life, mostly because the girls had kept him talking about himself and the food truck, which he'd been strangely hesitant to talk about until Jenny had admitted she'd been to his food truck before, and that she loved his chili. From that moment on, Max let down his guard a lot more, something Jenny made a mental note of that she was going to pass on to at least some of the other girls.

They'd spent at least an hour messing up the place to make it look like the four women had been staying there for a few days instead of a few hours. It had taken some doing, as it turned out all of the girls were generally kind of neatness freaks, but they'd all agreed it was important to sell the image, so they'd done their best to emulate any horrible roommates they'd ever had and hoped it was enough.

Max hadn't said anything, so either it had been natural, or it had been too much, but Jenny felt like if they kept up the charm assault, they could keep him from trying to peer too much behind the illusions they were presenting.

After seven major undercover operations, Jenny had learned that it was important to keep the mark focusing on the next thing over the horizon, to never let them have too much time to dig in on any one particular point or detail. The last op, she'd given the criminals a bit too much time to focus, and that had gotten everything completely off the rails. It wasn't a mistake Jenny was going to allow herself to make a second time.

As soon as they'd gotten into the house, Zoe had made sure to have drinks out for everyone. She'd known in advance that Max was a Guinness man, so she'd picked up a couple of six packs for him, so they had one at the ready for him.

He'd been a little resistant to it, but when Jenny pushed him down onto the couch and slumped in right next to him, he hadn't voiced a single word of dissent, so Jenny was pleased to see that the things she'd learned about manipulating men over the years still held true, even if she'd been out of the dating scene for a while.

After everyone had got another round of drinks into them, Michelle threw the hand grenade into the room that Jenny was absolutely positive was going to backfire.

“Let's all play Truth or Dare!” she giggled sitting down in a chair by herself. “I know! I know, I know what you're all gonna say, that we're too old for it, but fuck! That! Y'all! Let your hair down and live a fucking little, you know?”

Frankie went into it, though, and that seemed to help sell it to Max. “Shit yeah! Let's have ourselves and old-fashioned game!”

Max rolled his eyes a little, but he didn't say no, and the minute that rejection wasn't there, Jenny gave Zoe the nod, like it was a moment of weakness they needed to exploit, and get Max right where they wanted him. “Let me go first,” Jenny said. “I'll take truth, and from Zoe.”

Zoe giggled a little bit. “Okay then, lemme think for a second.” Jenny didn't doubt for an instant that Zoe didn't really have to think for even the slightest of moment and already had her question in mind, but she played it incredibly well, selling him the image of girls slowly letting their guards down. “Have you ever been in love?”

Jenny grinned a little, trying to do her best to evoke a blush response, before she nodded. “I have, once, when I was younger, my sophomore year in college, but eventually he broke my heart, and I've been a lot more protective of my heart since then.” She looked around the room and then focused in on Frankie, wanting to wait a bit before centering in a Max. “Okay, Frankie, truth or dare?”

“Dare!” Frankie said immediately, not hiding the eagerness all the girls knew he would be sporting. Jenny wasn't sure, but she thought she'd seen Rachel whispering into his ear, so hopefully he knew that Rachel was going to take one for the team, but not to get attached to her, because she was going to want to climb onto Max when the time was better for her.

“I dare you to kiss Rachel,” Jenny said, escalating it just the right level.

Frankie got up from his chair and moved over to the tiny redhead, placing one hand on the back of the chair as he leaned down to press his lips against hers as the girls cheered in encouragement, but Jenny kept an eye on Max's reaction. It looked like a good kiss, but Max seemed a little discouraged by it. Jenny knew, having done her homework, that Frankie was polyamorous, but Frankie hadn't said as much to the girls tonight, so she suspected Max was worried about that appearance.

Rachel laughed some as Frankie pulled back. “That seems like you've had more than your fair share of practice.” Thata girl Rach, Jenny thought to herself, give him the set-up line so we can sooth Max and let him know everything's just fine.

“Well, I am in a polycule, but we're open to new people,” Frankie said. “My partners know I can be a bit of a dirty dog from time to time, but I never do anything to disrespect them. We're not exclusive and if there's a bit of fun here and there, that's fine, as long as we don't catch feelings, or if we do catch feelings, we tell each other. Just to be completely transparent.”

“Honesty is the best policy,” Zoe said, and all the girls had the self-control to not laugh, considering none of them were being at all honest about who they were or what they wanted out of the night. “Anyway, it's your turn, Frankie.”

“Jenny, truth or dare.”

She stopped to think about it for a bit. If she took truth, it would be the chance to open up and say something that would get Max turned on, or she could let Frankie throw hew a dare and see what the man's best friend thought he could get away with. “Fuck it,” she sighed then smirked. “Dare me, bitch.”

“Okay... I dare you to kiss the person you'd fuck, given the chance.”

Jenny's smirk widened a little bit, as she slipped up to her feet. She knew exactly what Frankie had been suggesting, but she had eyes on a bigger prize. So she leaned over and pressed her lips against Max's, and made sure she took control in the kiss before pulling back and before anyone could say anything, she leaned forward further across his lap, only to kiss Zoe, who was sitting right next to him, and with just the same level of intensity.

They'd made the decision that they needed to get a little risqué with one another, but Jenny knew the game was go big or go home now, so while Frankie was cheering and the girls were clapping, she got up from the couch and moved to grab Michelle's head and pulled her into a kiss, as the room started whooping and hollering, and the room was practically in howls as she finally moved to kiss Rachel. As soon as she pulled back from the redhead, Frankie looked at her with optimistic eyes, but she rolled her eyes at him with a smile and strutted back over to the couch. “Sorry, Frankie. You've gotta spread the wealth around.” She moved to sit back down in her spot on the couch, but draped her legs over Max's lap this time, making herself perfectly comfortable. “Zoe. Whatcha want, girlfriend?”

There was a surprised look on Zoe's face, which Jenny had expected. The strawberry blonde was certain that Zoe figured Jenny would go straight to Max, but by giving Zoe a chance to be more visible, and ensure that nobody became the center of attention, they would keep him from getting too attached to any specific one of them. “Uh, well, after that, let's cool things down a bit, so truth.”

Jenny flashed her a saucy wink. “Not that cool, Zo,” she said, hoping the nickname would make them sound more familiar with each other than they were. “What's the craziest thing you've ever done, sexually?”

Zoe gasped a little, maybe even a little too much, before she giggled. “Oh god, you're gonna make me actually tell this story, aren't you?” The Nordic looking blonde rolled her eyes and then took in a deep breath before letting it out. “Okay, look, long story short, I broke up with my boyfriend on a transatlantic flight back from an Italian holiday where he'd just been hitting on anything with tits. I'd caught him cuddling with the daughter of the owner of the little bed and breakfast we'd stayed at, right before we headed to the airport, so we were fighting in the taxi all the way over. By the time we got on the plane, I was fucking done with him, and so I dumped his ass before we'd even left Italian airspace. So somewhere over the ocean, I picked up another passenger, lured him back into one of the bathrooms on the plane and fucked his brains out while my ex-boyfriend was asleep in his seat.”

“Oh god, that is bad!” Michelle giggled, as the other girls started laughing as well.

“No no no, wait wait wait! I haven't even said the worst part of it!” Zoe said, waving her hand in the air. “I never learned the guy's name! He didn't tell me before hand, and I never saw him after we landed!”

“Girl, that is so bad,” Rachel teased. “Did you tell your ex-boyfriend?”

Zoe flicked her blonde hair back over her shoulder with a scowl. “Fuck him. He didn't understand what loyalty meant, and I could tell by the way he was so defensive about it that he'd done more than flirted with that girl in Italy. I mean, if he wanted to be open and have multiple partners, that's fine, but it needs to be out in the open and not hiding it as a secret. Does that make me a slut?”

“Only in the good way,” Jenny said, tapping her bare heel atop of Zoe's exposed thigh. “Only in the way we'd say it affectionately. And only if you'd like it.”

“Oh, I felt the heat from that kiss, Jenny,” Zoe said with a wink. “So I think I would like it. A lot. Max, truth or dare?”

“Good lord, I feel like no matter what I choose here, I'm going to be in hot water, so let me try the safer option and say truth,” Max said. His smile told the real story, though – he was comfortable with the escalation, and the alcohol had done its job. There were large cracks in the man's resistance.

Zoe trailed a fingertip along Max's neck. “I need to make sure that whatever I'm asking is worth you passing on a dare.” She considered for a moment before she nodded. “Got it. Tell us about your hottest sexual experience.”

For half a second, Jenny worried that Zoe had pushed too hard too fast, but as soon as Max started talking, she knew it was hitting exactly the sweet spot. “God, I hate to kiss and tell, but I gotta respect the rules of the game. Okay, fine. The best sexual experience I ever had was my freshman year of college.”

“Wait, before we met?” Frankie said.

“LONG before we met,” Max said. “Just after spring break, I came back from vacation and found that my roommate, Marcus, was packing his things. He dropped out. Like, dropped out of college entirely! And he was gone within the day, which left me with a dorm room entirely to myself. That got me down a bit, and I felt like I was spiraling out of control for the next month or so, but like three weeks before the end of the semester, at two in the morning on a Thursday, there was a knock on my dorm room door. I opened it and standing on the other side of the door, there were two girls, an Asian girl named Sara from my Geology 101 class and her blonde pocket rocket roommate Freya. They were dressed in their pajama shorts and big baggy t-shirts, definitely like they'd been sitting up around their room a few floors down below mine.”

“This really happened?” Rachel asked.

“You want me to tell you the truth, or you want me to make something up?”

The redhead raised her hands in amusement, a broad smile on her face. “No no, by all means, if it's true, keep talking.”

“It is. Anyway, Sara and Freya weren't friends of mine. I wasn't dating either of them. Hell, I didn't really know them that well. I didn't know why they were at my door, waking me up in the middle of the night. But they were standing there, neither of them wearing any make up, and both of them looked like they might have been crying earlier. I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't want to leave them out in the hallway, so I stepped to one side and let them both into my room, even though I knew I wasn't supposed to. They came into my room and I closed the door behind them, and I still hadn't said a word. The two of them sat down on my couch while I sat in the chair for my desk, and waited for them to speak.”

“You're a mean storyteller, Max,” Jenny teased back, rubbing one of her calves over his lap. “Why were they there?” All the them were intensely curious, because neither of these girls fit into the timeline they had been provided with. Whatever this was, it was information even the private detectives hadn't been able to find out.

“So it turned out the two of them had found out about six hours earlier that they were both dating the same guy. They were both furious, and had spent a couple of hours crying. After they'd gotten past the sadness and into the anger phase, they decided they needed to settle which one of them was better, and that was why they had some to see me, to decide for them, something I told them I wasn't going to do. No man can ever say one woman is better or worse than any other. That made them laugh a bit, and they said I was full of shit. Then they both stripped naked and told me to shut up. They said they'd chose me because they both thought I was hot, but I wasn't the type of guy either of them would normally go for. Hell, they insisted they didn't ever chase boys, but they wanted to have me, just for the night. The best way to get over someone, Freya said to me, was to get under someone new. I thought they were kidding, but there were two very naked, very hot coeds in my dorm room, and when I said I didn't believe they actually wanted me, they decided to show me how wrong I was. I'd had a couple of relationships in high school, but when I graduated, I was single, and I hadn't really done much dating over my freshman year, so to go from zero to threesome without any warning was intense. I was so inexperienced, but the two of them were adamant that we were going to try a little of everything, so before dawn, I had sex five times, and they made me try everything.”

“Everything? What's that mean?” Michelle asked. “You need to spill the tea!”

“You did promise the truth,” Zoe said.

“Manual, oral, vaginal and anal, girl on top, doggy style, even me at the bottom of a triangle while they made out. I learned a lot about what I liked and didn't like.”

“That's a lot a lot. So which one did you end up with in the end?” Jenny asked.

“Neither of them,” Max answered. “In the morning, they pressed me to say one of them was better than the other, and I still wouldn't do it, because all women are different, and comparing them is a shitty thing to do. Then they pressed me to say which one of them was better for me than the other, and I had to tell them that I didn't really know either of them well enough to make that call. They were both beautiful women, but I'd barely had a conversation with them, and to make an emotional connection, I would've needed more time. Neither wanted to give me that, but they said I'd given them a lovely night. After that, I didn't have any other sexual encounters in college until my senior year. So I guess I got the whole college experience in one night.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Max, but that sucks,” Jenny giggled. “Not the sexual experience itself. That sounds gangbusters, but not getting to keep either of the girls. You should've tried to keep'em both. Anyway, it's your turn.” She was hoping Max would get them started in activities, but if he didn't, the girls were going to get on it soon enough.

“Michelle, truth or dare,” he asked the Texan tornado.

“Dare,” the pint-sized ex-cheerleader said. “And don't go easy on me. Give me something with some bite!”

“Give a lapdance to the person least prepared to get it.”

Michelle smirked a little bit as she stood up from the chair and moved across the room. She reached the couch and pulled Jenny's legs aside, and for a moment, the cop thought she was going to climb into Max's lap, but as it turned out, Michelle was turning around to slide her ass into Zoe's lap right next to him. The dark blonde ran one hand up and into her own hair as she wriggled against Zoe, as she looked over at Max, her eyes widening, biting her bottom lip in a playful pout, although Jenny suspected it was mostly just for his benefit.

The dance wasn't great, but Michelle made sure to grab Zoe's hands and pull them onto her plump tits through the silk top she had on. Zoe's face blushed, and Jenny wasn't entirely sure it was faked, as Zoe seemed to let a sigh of relief as Michelle slipped off her lap and strolled confidently back to her chair. “Weren't prepared for that, were you Zoe?”

“Didn't think you'd actually be good at it, 'Chelle!” Zoe teased back.

Michelle looked around the room with a sly smile. “Rachel, truth or dare.”

The pint-sized redhead grinned slyly. “Dare. Gimme your worst.”

“I dare you to take your top off.”

“Psssh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Kids these days, thinking that's edgy.” She reached down and pulled her spaghetti top off, and wasn't wearing a bra underneath, so her firm C cup tits were on prime display. She didn't cross her arms over her chest, going to far as to fold her arms behind her back for a moment, to make her chest display even further. “But alright now, let's take the kids glove off.”

Jenny grinned, because now they were about to get into it. And before Max knew it, he was going to be giving all of these girls the loads they so desperately wanted.

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