The Quaranteam Universe is the creation of CorruptingPower, used with permission.

  —-

  Chapter 17: Human Sexuality

  25 September 2020

  One quiet word escaped Adam’s lips in response to the sudden voice and knocking at the door. “Allison?”

  Adam practically leapt up from the couch, moving towards the front door that was about the fastest the others had ever seen out of him. It was Shannon who yelled out “who?”

  “Old student of mine from my second year teaching!” Adam got to the door, barely paused long enough to get a paper mask on, and opened it. Behind the door was a striking woman only slightly shorter than him. Her hair was bright blonde and long enough that her ponytail reached mid-back, her eyes an icy blue, and her features were sharply attractive. She wore a long sleeved shirt and yoga pants, but both were hugging her body closely enough that they weren’t concealing anything. Her build was attractively fit and a bit on the thin side, her breasts and hips rge enough to draw the eye. She was also clearly braless, nipples poking at her shirt’s material. “It is you! What are you doing here?”

  What she was doing was panting hard, her eyes dited. “Can… can I come in?”

  “Of course… oof!”

  She had practically tackled him in a huge hug, the door closing now that she was inside. “I’m injected. I want to be yours. Don’t make me go back to where they were going to send me!” her voice was rising rapidly through this, until she was practically yelling by the end.

  Esther was suddenly there. “Adam! I need your help keeping her calm. Ma’am, I need to make sure you’re okay.”

  Allison was practically shivering in Adam’s arms as she whimpered “I was okay five days ago, when I got my shot.”

  Both Adam and Esther said a few words which would have gotten them severely censured in school. “Esther, I thought the symptoms get worse the longer you go.”

  “They do! If she’s been stewing in it for five days, that expins everything but how she’s still coherent.”

  Shannon was there. “I don’t see much of a choice. We can figure things out ter, but we have to help her now.”

  Adam nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. Help me get her to the spare bedroom we just set up.”

  All three of his dies hopped to it, Esther helping with Allison herself. Shannon and Callie ran to the bedroom they’d intended for Kaipo and prepared the bed for use. They got out of the way JUST in time for Adam to get their new guest there and close the door. As soon as it clicked shut, Allison’s control broke. She tore off her clothes, revealing that she had indeed been wearing nothing underneath. She then tore off Adam’s clothes when he took too long, and given that they were basically pajamas the “tear” part of that was quite literal. He wasn’t hard yet, the strangeness of the situation and his recent encounter with his new Hawaiian partner slowing things down, so Allison decided to take things into her own hands. Or mouth, as it were.

  Callie was an extremely skilled feltrix. Allison showed that she was very nearly on the redhead’s level, and was desperate to the point that she valued the cock and what it could give her more highly than oxygen. Adam tried to control things, to slow it down, but as the first tiny drop of his essence hit her tongue she seized up in an intense orgasm, shoving him down her throat until her nose was directly in his crotch. With a strength borne out of need, she practically threw him on the bed and mounted him, bouncing on his body as quickly as she could.

  She was wet and ready, she knew what she was doing, and her fitness meant that she was deliciously tight on him as she moved. He’d had a lot of good sex recently, but this was different. He felt for the first time like he was in a porn shoot, and she was the actress trying her hardest to make it a show as she moved on his body. She was unduting constantly, moving him in and out and shifting his angle within her, the feel of it ever-changing and never in a routine. Despite everything, it didn’t take long before he felt that growing pressure once again, letting loose within her. Her voice rose again “yes, yes, YES” as she came. She suddenly stopped, and fell onto her side like a particurly erotic puppet whose strings had just been cut. From her lips came the same refrain he’d heard barely an hour earlier. “Imprinting… imprinting… imprinting…”

  Adam stood and sighed. Just like before. He arranged her on the bed so that she could sleep it off properly, then tucked her in. He put the remains of his pajamas back on and went back out to the living room, tired and sore from two energetic encounters. It was a good thing he had recovered significantly in the st month and a half. That encounter might have killed him on his first day out of the hospital. As he walked up, Shannon took a look at the state of his clothing. “I hate to pry, but is Allison a pair of scissors, or perhaps a werewolf? Your pajamas are SHREDDED.”

  He shook his head. “Just desperate, I think, though I didn’t get that good a look at her fingernails.”

  “If you say so. I’ll still be listening for any ‘awoo’ from you two in a few days when the full moon hits.”

  Callie shook her head. “As entertaining as this is, we need information. I mean, I know I do. Who the heck is she, and why were you willing to take her into our home and screw her onto the team with no notice?”

  “Especially looking like that!” Esther agreed with Callie. “I thought she was under the influence of at least one, and possibly several, illicit substances. Until you came out and confirmed she was imprinting, I did not know if she was telling the truth.”

  “Alright, cards on the table. Allison Grant was a bright student in high school, really popur, and she’s always looked that good. Got a lot of people into a lot of trouble trying to impress her, but she knew enough to get help when she needed it. Lost track of her after she graduated a year or two after she had my css. I’ll say that she definitely used that influence to point people at what they needed. Not always the nicest way, but she did.”

  Shannon chewed on that for a moment. “And she just turns up hot for teacher after running away from who she was supposed to be assigned to… why?”

  “Without knowing who she was running from I can’t even guess. And wow, what a time for a call.” Adam’s phone began ringing in his pocket, seated comfortably between Shannon and Callie, he didn’t bother standing. Just pulled out the phone and swiped. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Mr. Jeffries!” The voice on the other side of the line was deep and sounded like it should be saying “bro” instead.

  “Chad! This is random, but gd to hear from you.”

  Shannon leaned over and cheerfully added “Hi Chad!”

  “Hey there!” There were other sounds on his side of the line, but no other voices. “So, I called because I had to tell you about the wildest thing ever. I don’t even know what to think about it, but Jessica says it’s all good.”

  Adam’s expression was curious. Chad calling something “wild” could mean a new bar-bending personal best deadlift, or it could mean something that shook the foundation of what he thought he knew about humanity. No telling which. “What could be that wild?”

  “Oh, man, you know the company I got hired by, right?”

  Callie chimed in from the side. “Superior Economics and Expansion?”

  “That’s us! Well, they were going to hire an eighth girl to be their secretary. She got vaccinated and came over, met me and liked me, but then she started talking to Monica and Rita and just ran for it!”

  Adam closed his eyes, the cheer repced by an icy kind of prescient terror. “What was her name?”

  “Uh, been a couple of days. I think it started with an A? The others said I shouldn’t call anyone to talk about it until the proper channels were notified and they did their thing, but that just finished. Hold up.” He yelled something off to the side, and a woman’s voice responded. “That’s right. Allison Grant was her name. But anyway, you have a wyer on your team, right? Any chance she can help us out with the legal fallout?”

  Callie looked at Adam, Adam looked back, and both of them decided in that instant to shut ALL the way up about who exactly was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Callie spoke up, voice not changed at all from before. “That’s me, Callie speaking. I’m not exactly focused on contract and corporate w, but if you need a wyer I can help. For normal fees, of course, we can’t do this kind of thing pro bono. Do you have a signed contract?”

  There was a shuffling sound on the other end of the line. “Hello, Callie, I’m Monica of Superior Economics and Expansion. We don’t have a signed employment contract, just two NDAs. One for our operations, one on the Oracle delivery form.” Her voice sounded strained. Someone who was used to talking from the position of power, but equally someone who needed to be polite for one rare occasion while also being at her wits end.

  Callie rubbed both her temples. “I’m familiar with the tter. Neither of those is going to do you any good unless she’s both found and found to have bbbed about something she shouldn’t to people she shouldn’t. Consider that piece of advice free of charge. If you need more detail, as I said before, I can send you my rates. Will I need to consult with medical doctors who are read in on Serum and Oracle?” This st was said while staring Esther in the eye and making a shushing motion. Esther, for her part, was having a difficult time holding in riotous ughter.

  “You have access to them? That is impressive.”

  “Contacts are everything in this business, ma’am. Expensive, but well worth it for her expertise and research in this rare and emergent field.” Callie’s face and tone indicated exactly nothing was unusual. Esther was, at this point, holding her sides and nearly convulsing with her suppressed ughter. She had to stand and go to the other room, followed shortly by Shannon. Callie exchanged contact information with Monica not too long after that.

  Chad got back on the call. “I guess that’s everything. Have a good evening, Mr. Jeffries!”

  “You too, Chad. We should talk more often.”

  “Definitely. Bye!” He hung up, and just as the phone told them he had neither could control themselves. Both Adam and Callie hit the ground ughing so hard they could barely breathe. As soon as the others heard them ughing, Esther and Shannon also burst out uncontrolbly from the other room. One of them, likely Shannon, squeaked a couple of times before they could get a hold of themselves. Esther walked back, leaning on a wall to do so and still gasping for breath. “That. Was evil.”

  “I’m a wyer, Esther. They teach Evil as a 101 course in all the good w schools, didn’t you know?” Callie’s smirk was amazing.

  “And I am certain you got extra credit.”

  “Top of my css for a reason.” Callie stood and stretched. Her weight loss was more and more noticeable every day, and the motion looked good.

  Adam stood as well. “Alright you two. I’ll take that as my own motivation. Let me go take care of some emails and then we can have dinner. Whose turn is it to cook?”

  Callie nodded towards Esther. “As soon as she recovers, Esther said something about bulgogi.”

  “Even better. See you in a minute.” He walked over to the bedroom door, secure in the knowledge that the others wouldn’t bother him for a bit. They knew by now that when he was focused, he wasn’t going to be particurly more responsive than the chair he was sitting in.

  Perfect.

  His phone rang, and he answered. “I figured you’d call me, sir.”

  “It does seem the thing to do when you so thoroughly upset the data we are carefully collecting.”

  “For what it’s worth, it wasn’t my idea for her to show up. Then again, you know me by now. I wasn’t about to shut her out.”

  “I wasn’t surprised, just disappointed. I looked her up, Allison Grant was being honest when she told you how long it had been. Remarkable how she managed to get to you, but it means that we cannot use her as a control group.”

  “Then use her as another data point. How a system under duress reacts to whatever it is I’m doing to these women.”

  “Something like that. I should warn you that she is now a member of your Team, and will be bound by that nice contract you signed. Make sure she is told about it and holds to it.”

  “I understand. Is there anything else we need to know?” The only answer Adam got was a click and the tone of a call ended.

  Adam scowled. The call had, like st time, been less than helpful. Then he looked over at the sleeping form of the tiny Hawaiian woman on his bed and sighed. He shook his head. There was a lot he needed to wrap his head around, and a lot to arrange going forward. There wasn’t a lot of information on the ground to pn it from, either. All he could do was finish what he sat down to do, step back outside, and help make dinner.

  Morning came fast, and Adam jerked awake on the couch. He looked around, disoriented for the moment, then remembered. Of course he was on the couch. His bed was occupied, and even though it normally held two people easily enough (or four with effort) it felt wrong to do so when Kaipo was unconscious and had not had time to talk about that kind of thing. Even if he’d pounded her to two screaming orgasms on said bed.

  He stood, stretching until a surprising number of pops came from various joints around his body. Adam had never been a very fit man, but keeping up with his new family was pushing him hard. Shannon was using the cot over in the room with Esther and Callie. After dinner st night he’d told the others that he was spent and slept on the couch at least in part to stop them from getting ideas. He looked over at the kitchen. “Guess I’d better start the coffee.”

  “That sounds good.”

  Adam nearly jumped out of his skin. Of all the people on this Earth to be almost completely silent, the one he least expected was Kaipo. And yet, there she was, standing at the door to his room. “Good morning, Kaipo, sleep well?” He walked over and started getting things together to start the day.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Is it always like that?”

  Adam shook his head, poured water into the coffee maker, then remembered he had more people and added a couple of cups to it. “I don’t have any direct experience from that side of things, of course, but from what the others have told me the answer’s no. Still amazing, better than before, but no. Mind getting the mugs down? They’re right next to you in the cabinet.”

  Kaipo stepped over, opened up the cabinet, and reached up to get the mugs. “How many do we need?”

  “Five… wait, no, six.”

  She had to stand on tip-toe to reach the st couple. “Forget to count yourself?”

  “Not quite. Let’s just say that the introductory conversations are going to get complicated. How are you feeling?” Adam pulled out the sugar, milk, and creamer, setting them on the table.

  Kaipo stretched. “Really good. Hard to not after st night, you know? Sore, though. All over. I might have overdone it.”

  Adam pulled an opaque bottle down. “Thankfully, we have medicine for that. What do you normally have for breakfast?”

  Kaipo’s stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly. “Whatever’s avaible. Apparently, a lot of it.” Shannon, Callie, and Esther chose that moment to turn up, drawn by the smells of coffee brewing and bacon just starting to render. Kaipo saw them and took a deep breath, seeming to try to get herself ready. “Looks like some more real introductions are in order?”

  All three started chuckling. Shannon shook her head. “You have a few more minutes to pn out what you want to say. If I know Adam, and by now I think I do, we’re waiting for one more person to come to the table.”

  Kaipo spun to look at Adam then counted the mugs. “Wait. Oracle said you had three women on your team. Three, plus me, plus him makes five. Why did you ask me to pull down six mugs?”

  “That’s probably my fault.” Allison was still remarkably sexy even as tousled as she was, walking up from the hallway to the room she’d been using. The bathrobe she was wearing did very little to conceal it. “I thought I smelled someone else on him when I jumped him, wasn’t exactly in a state to care. Let me guess. You actually got assigned here by Oracle?”

  “Yep, Kaipo’s the name. Just flew in from Hawai’i.” The tiny woman was coming towards the blonde bombshell, whether for a hug, a good handshake, or something else was unknown.

  “I’m Allison, looks like we’re in this one together.” Allison took two steps forward and swept Kaipo up into a hug. One which put the shorter woman’s face in a rather enviable position between her boobs. “Now, I smell coffee and bacon, need any help with the rest?”

  About five minutes ter they were seated around the table enjoying breakfast. Allison turned out to not be the fanciest cook out there, but was eminently practical. And enthusiastic, when she heard Kaipo’s stomach growl she was the first off the mark to get the first pte of food in front of her as the rest finished cooking. Which was good, because Kaipo’s second pte joined it shortly.

  None of them seemed to want to talk about awkward things like their pasts, but Adam wasn’t one to let the elephant in the room stay unaddressed. “At risk of being blunt, you two are both members of this Team, now. There’s no going back. We need to know more about you so that we can help.” He looked at them both with a face that reminded everyone present sharply of the teacher he was. “Both helping you integrate and helping with any personal issues you have. Kaipo, you can start.”

  She looked at the others. “Is he always like this?” Four nods came back to her, Allison included. “Okay. Guess I said most of it yesterday, but we have someone new. Hello, I’m Kaipo Aikau, and, like I said, I just arrived from Hawai’i.” She closed her eyes and steeled herself to go on. “I was a resort masseuse. The government set up a vaccination site in the area, for the type.” She practically spat that word out, and the acid in it would have burnt a hole in the floor if it had been physical. “I got to watch every random rich haole in the resort get jabbed right across the street before one kanaka working there got theirs. Like me, but only after a wave of Halo hit my home encampment.”

  There was absolute silence at the table. Shannon looked down at her bacon. Callie coughed. It was Esther who spoke up. “DuoHalo is nasty enough before taking a tent city into account.”

  “I’m the smallest person in my family by a long shot. My brother is… was… eight inches taller than me, and he was short compared to the rest of the family. It took four trips to retrieve the bodies, then I had to work the next day. I had to get away.”

  “That… expins a lot.” Adam closed his eyes to take in the new information. “You have a new family here, Kaipo. We might be a strange one, but we make it work and you are more than welcome. I’m not too sure how you’ll do your job in this area, but we’ll figure it out.”

  She shook her head. “I need some time. If I can, mind if I just help around the home? You all need what I do, so I promise I’ll massage and pop you guys into puddles whenever I can.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  “I do. We believed in everyone pitching in, and I still do. No point in looking back, gonna move forward and you all came up as my best chance when I took the survey.” She grinned a bit. “So, Allison? Think you can beat that?”

  “Yes and no.” Allison thought for a second. “I had Mr. Jeffries for Junior year Social Studies. He called it Civics.”

  Adam looked pained. “Please call me Adam, or maybe AJ. It feels vaguely disgusting to hear you call me that after you rode me like you were being filmed st night.”

  “I can barely remember it right now, but I’ll get there. Did the college thing, got a business analyst degree, but halfway through I started doing escort work to pay down my loans and get some spending cash. Then I realized just exactly how much some people were willing to pay to spend a night with me, stuck to it, graduated debt-free and didn’t bother going for more traditional work.”

  Shannon and Callie nodded. So did Kaipo. Esther was the one who had to ask. “What do you mean by ‘escort work’ exactly?”

  Shannon and Callie both facepalmed but did not intervene. Allison looked back at the doctor levelly. “I had sex. For pay. Sometimes I’d go pces with people to make them look good, sometimes we’d have a long talk, but ultimately I had a lot of sex. I liked doing it, too. I was always the kind of girl who put out, I just made it work for me. My final project for college was an anonymized case study; I used my little side business as the subject, and that is what convinced me to keep at it afterwards.”

  “Was that…”

  “Legal? No, we held to some little fictions to pretend we weren’t breaking the w every night, but we were. Safe? Also no, until my clientele got more exclusive. Profitable? Extremely. I had a good savings going until we got to 2020 and a couple of diseases hit.” She looked at Adam. “No offense, but men can be stupid.”

  Adam shrugged. “None taken. I taught high school.”

  “You’d think that someone with three or more women literally dependent on getting good sex with you frequently wouldn’t even have time to think about side chicks. Turns out, the fact that I was someone different kept pulling people to me more and more. The fact that they were breaking the rules, and not only getting away with it but orgasming about it, meant it all settled out on my end.”

  “You seem to know a lot about how the Serum works for someone who wasn’t in the program.” Callie’s eyes were narrowed.

  Allison maintained that little grin. “I mentioned that men can be stupid? Well, pillow talk is a heck of an information source. Here’s the thing, most of the people paying me don’t see escorts as human. Just toys that happen to dress themselves. So they talk, and they say things that they shouldn’t. Then add in the actual reading materials I got from the vax site in Seattle once I got with the program, and it let me put a lot together.”

  Adam nodded. “You were never stupid. With enough information like that, you can figure out a lot of things. That doesn’t expin the st couple of parts. How did you end up getting hired for Superior Economics and Expansion, and how did you end up here?”

  She looked off to the side. Adam kept his look on her. There was no doubt to any of the other four that this was not the first time such an exchange had happened. Just not in this context. It took a moment, but she finally relented. “I got wind of the think tank a few times. Bunch of women doing their thing, go them. My degree was even appropriate. Then a client had a pretty nasty coughing fit as he was getting dressed to go home, and I got scared enough to try to go into something that might be a bit safer. Applied, got a position as an intern or secretary, whatever they were calling it, they got me my jab, then I went to meet them for the first time in person.”

  “And let me guess. You met Chad, decided he was a nice guy, then saw their actual internal politics and ran for the hills?”

  “How do you know about Chad?”

  “Long story.”

  “Well, you’re right. I didn’t want to be stuck with Monica as a boss, but I knew I was on a clock. Did some online mentorship stuff on the side during the day, and one of them said you were still around and where to find you. Girl by the name of Athena.”

  Adam’s hands came up to his mouth, eyes wide, breathing hard. “I… she’s one of my students.”

  Allison’s head tilted a bit in curiosity. “I hope you expin that more ter. Anyway, the rest is history. I got here, the rest is blurry other than a couple of remarkably good orgasms, then I woke up.” She ate the st couple of bites from her pte. “Like… seriously good ones. I still feel all warm on the inside.”

  Adam nodded and made several decisions. “Esther, you aren’t going to get the baseline you want, but Allison needs a check-up and a talk about what to expect on your side of the house. Callie, I need you to go way harder than you thought you were going to have to before. I don’t know what this is all going to mean. Either way, you need to expin the contracts.”

  “What about me?” Kaipo could have sounded petunt with those words, but was obviously sincere.

  “I got you. Life’s going to be interesting.” Shannon was already standing up and picking up ptes. “If I know AJ, and I hope I do by now, he just needs to get past the crisis things.”

  Adam stood to start helping. “That’s right. We need to make sure this family moves forward together. Thank you both for being willing to share. Wish I could promise it will calm down, but I’m not willing to make any bets at this point. Any questions? Good. Let’s go.”