...Family...

As Jake wondered how this could possibly get any worse, Leah was hard at working proving she could make it so.

"Next up, we have someone very special to the sexual development of our master," She said. "The very first woman that he ever found himself attracted to."

"Oh. Is it that one cheerleader in our class?" Ryan asked. "Whatsherface. The redhead."

"He always told me his first crush was his childhood babysitter," Hannah chimed in. "Because that's a very normal thing to tell your fiance about."

"You literally asked me!" Jake objected.

"Guys, cut him some slack," Emily said, "It's probably some actress or chick on the internet or something."

Leah continued, ignoring them.

"Please welcome to the show, Farra Jones-Ali."

"My Mom?!" Ryan erupted.

"His Mom?!" A.J. said simultaneously.

The woman of the hour walked out, relief on her face when she saw the boy who'd vanished right before her eyes. It took her longer to make her way across the stones than it did the other contestants, no doubt owing to the fact that she was pushing 60, which left plenty of time for the members of Jake's "harem" to debate its newest addition.

"You seriously wanted to fuck my Mom?" Ryan asked.

"I didn't...No!" Jake protested, exasperated. "She was just...you know. The first woman I..."

A.J. was cackling.

"How did you not know?" She asked Ryan. "He's made so many hot Mom jokes at you."

"Yeah. Come to think of it, I think he did admit that to me once," Hannah agreed. "When he was very, very drunk."

When Farra finally got there, she took a seat, clearly out of breath.

"What kind of monster designs that walkway?" She asked.

Ryan, who was at this point beside himself, turned to her.

"Did you know about this? That Jake...looked at you like that when we were younger?"

Farra, who had not been present for the conversation, nonetheless seemed to take his meaning.

"That he had a crush on me? Yes, obviously." Farra said, dismissively. "Most of the boys you brought around back then did."

"We were all thinking it," Jake muttered petulantly.

"Boys will be boys," Farra said with a shrug. "And they're never as subtle about it as they think they are."

"Hello Farra," Hannah greeted.

"Hannah. A.J. Good to see you both," She said, pleasantly enough. "Though I do wish the circumstances were less strange and ominous."

"Hey Mrs. J.A." A.J. greeted, reciting a gag as old as her and Ryan's friendship.

Jake was so embarrassed that he barely paid attention to Leah's next introduction.

"Moving right along, since this opening ceremony is starting to take bloody forever," She said "Our next contestant is a 25 year old student studying English Literature and biochemistry at the University of Colombia."

That snapped him out of it.

"Leah...no...." He moaned. "You can't mean her..."

"Ladies and gentlemen...Megan Cooper."

*****

The girl looked around the Colombia Library stacks for the third or fourth time, just to be extra sure she was actually alone. She was pretty enough, but very slender, with willowy legs in dark stockings and a cord skirt that she wore with a sleeveless white turtleneck tucked into it. A pair of dark rimmed glasses were perched on her button nose, her dimpled face framed by a mess of auburn waves that mirrored those of her brother.

Megan breathed a sigh of relief. The only students around this time of year were those taking summer classes, high schoolers attending various conferences, and the odd psycho like her to whom continual education was as sacred as most people's religion. She'd even buried herself way back in the references section, where nobody really loitered around anyway.

Still, this was New York, where even a relatively small crowd was still a pretty big one, especially by the upstate country standards she'd been raised in. And in any case, the very thought of getting caught doing what she was about to mortified her. Which was precisely what made it exciting.

Megan was, by all reasonable (and admittedly outmoded and somewhat sexist) standards, a "good girl". She didn't drink or do ****, and her idea of a "party" was a late night movie binge with her small handful of girlfriends. She was studious, so much so that she was well on her way to not one, but two degrees, one an English bachelors, the other a masters in Biochemistry. She prided herself on a GPA that never dipped below a solid 4.0. She had ambitions, too; perhaps not for money, at least as much as Jake. But she had a plan (and a serious one) to be a biochemist at a major pharmaceutical company by the time she was 30. And while she wasn't opposed to the idea of dating boys, her attempts at doing so in practice always rendered unflattering comparisons to the Seattle Mariners: inept, fumbling, and so unlikely to get past second base as to represent an improbability.

That part was a bit of a mystery. She was certainly pretty enough, but for some reason it never seems to click. Still, it made her safe by traditional standards; focused and uncorrupted.

She had only two abiding vices; a love of English literature soon to culminate in a useless second degree, and the thing she was about to do right now.

She reached into a bag and pulled out a copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula, turning to the page she'd earmarked before coming here. She read the fairly banal text leading up to it, until it finally began to get steamy.

The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck.

Megan's breathing quickened, and she moved the book to her left hand, leaning up back against one of the stacks. Her free hand, meanwhile, slipped beneath her skirt, and the plain black panties beneath it.

She really was a good girl. But something about touching herself where she could get caught while reading literature that could only be classified as risque in a period where petticoats were still in fashion, really got her going. It was, in fact, the only thing she'd ever found that really could. While she was sure some cocktail of odd psychological issues lay at the heart of that, she scarcely found it worth exploring. She'd get her little exhibitionist fix, or whatever it was, and then knowing her libido, would be good until winter finals.

"Eeep!" She cried with a jump as she felt movement against her butt. She dropped the book.

She stumbled backward, her hand getting caught beneath her skirt as she belatedly realized it was her phone, buzzing away in her back pocket. Half bent over as she tried to extricate her arm, she pulled it out with her free hand to see that her mother was calling.

"Not noooow..." she pouted.

Then thoughts went through her head. What if her Dad had been in a car wreck? What if her brother had been in a car wreck? What if her mother had been in a car wreck - though, on quick evaluation, the idea that she would be her mom's first call in such an eventuality struck her as exceedingly unlikely. These disastrous scenarios replayed in her mind until she finally freed her hand, briefly weighed whether the finger to phone contact might constituted a pink eye risk given where she knew it had been, and then hit the answer button only a moment before it would have turned over to voicemail anyway.

"Hi Mom," She breathed. "Is everything okay? Was there a car wreck?"

She was silent on the other end of the line before answering flatly.

"Yes, honey, everything is fine," She said "I was just calling to see if you'd had a chance to speak to your brother."

"Oh. Uhm...yes. I saw him last week," She said, straightening her glasses. "Is he okay?"

Her mother barked a laugh.

"Who knows with him? I guess he's fine as far as I know, but he's barely called since...you know."

She nodded. Their parents had really liked Hannah, and were devastated about the breakup. Heck, she had liked Hannah, and while mostly nonplussed about the breakup, would definitely miss having her around.

"Oh. Well, yeah. I mean, he seems fine, I guess. But you should really talk to him," She said. If they didn't know he was dating someone younger than her, she certainly wasn't going to tell them; least of all now.

A pause from the other end of the line.

"Megan, are you okay? You sound a little out of breath."

At this point, had Megan been capable of observing herself, she'd have found her own face turning an interesting and slightly alarming shade of crimson.

"Yes. Definitely. Absolutely fine." She squeaked. "Just working out a little."

Pause number three.

"Really? Because that seems kind of unlike you."

Oh dear lord, she couldn't do this.

"Sorry Mom, I'm at the library. It's quiet hours. Gotta go!"

She had just enough time to hear her mother squawk "I thought you were working out" over the phone before she ended the call.

She stood in the stacks contemplating what a wet, guilty mess she might look like, and what the best avenue of escape would be in order to minimize human contact, when she began to feel the drowsy, drowning sensation familiar to the show's other contestants. Slowly, she slumped to the floor.

*****

When she finally stumbled out into the sun, Jake's worse fears had been confirmed. The pale skinned girl trotted across the sidewalk, carefully navigating the step stones. He fell to one knee.

"Leah, I am begging you to take her out of the game." He said.

"Sorry, love. I don't make the calls." She said indifferently.

"Oh," Megan said on arriving. "So is this Ryan's thing?"

"Come on, it's not fair to her, and it's not fair to me," Jake pleaded.

"But if it's Ryan's thing, what's Jake doing here?" Megan continued, sounding in the background as if this was some sort of logic problem.

"The deed's done, Jake. She's already here," Leah said

"Is it A.J.? No...because that would preclude both of them..."

"Ohmygod," Emily said, "It's Jake. We're in Jake's harem."

"But he's my brother!"

"But she's my sister!"

Leah raised her hands, shutting them all up.

"Sit. Down," She said crossly, turning to Megan, "You don't want to have to seduce your brother, I don't want to have to deal with introducing this bloody many people. Life's not fair for any of us. So let's just get through it, okay?"

"Yes ma'am..." Megan said, drawing her legs together and resting her hands on them.

"Very good," Leah said. "Now, obviously our master has interests that go back a long way. So let's introduce a pair of his early crushes who shaped his sexuality for years to come. We now move onto..."