Chapter 3

I was greeted at the airport by a valet, of all things, a real first for me. The sign read Harrison Jackson, which was the name that I ended up picking for myself, at least for now. It flowed well and was two last names, so it sounded like old money to me. I also used the aliases Vanderbilt Cooper, Alex Cooper, Sanders Harlan (with apologies to the Colonel), Sanders Martin, Martin Sanders, Compton Williams (did nobody watch True Blood in the circles I traveled lately?), Jackson Michaels, Cooper Anderson (due to a crush on a certain openly gay CNN reporter), Vanderbilt Anderson, Hilton Parrish, Alois Cooper (a little fun at my uncle’s expense), even Howell Thurston (how did NO ONE catch that one?) etc. I had balked at a formal name change, at least for now. Somehow, I just couldn’t pull that trigger yet. An alias worked well enough for me.

“You’re Harrison Jackson. I thought that you’d be ... older,” the man grinned at me as I got into the van with my stuff ... wait, who does valet driving with a VAN?

“I hear that a lot, mostly because I’m loaded,” I shrugged, “you are?”

“Marten De Groot. Nice to meet you. That’s Marten with ‘e,’ not with an ‘i.’ I’m Belgian, Flemish to be precise. My wife, Nicole, is a Walloon, a Francophone Belgian. Hence part of why we’re here in America. Nobody here gives a crap about the old feuds that way. Our lovely daughter, Anne-Marie, is really going to love you, I can just tell. She’s ... sorta our ... Mistress, as in Domme, as in wielding a whip and cracking it. We love submitting to our princess!” the driver explained, “by the way, we’re pretty affluent ourselves, in case you missed it.”

“That’s pretty fucking wild and kinky, but hey, I’m cool with it. I just don’t like it when incest turns ugly, as it did in my family. Well, I don’t know how much you know of it, but it ain’t pretty,” I told my new companion.

“Yes, I’m well-aware. The congregation is well-aware. The reapers will get into action soon enough, and trust me, they don’t fail. If you doubt me, look up the case of a missing man known as James Adams. He violated our trust in a very grave and grievous way, and let’s just say, if there is a Hell, it can’t be hot enough where I’m concerned. I’m far from the only member with such sentiments. In fact, they’re basically universal. He is even loathed by his surviving sister, Jessica, who is still with us,” Marten confirmed much of the information that Cam gave me earlier.

“Do you know Judge Elizabeth Maitland?” I asked, changing the subject.

“You could say that, yes. I’ve fucked her halfway into next year a time or two. The whole group has. Well, except for Felix. He’s as gay as they get. He’s slept with every man in the tribe, but doesn’t do the ladies. But, yeah, Lizzie’s a real treat. Put it this way. She’s a switch. Likes to take charge one minute, surrender rather eagerly the next. With me ... and Nicole, she’s always in control. We’re subs. We wouldn’t have it any other way,” Marten smirked as we kept driving toward the compound, which was very palatial, in fact.

“This is even bigger than the one that I used to own. It’s a massive, customized complex, dwarfing most old antebellum plantations, in fact. It needs to be. We’re a church, after all, as well as a family. We have living quarters for a fuck-ton of folks, believe me. This is a lot like an ashram in some respects, less so in others. We even have a summer camp.

“Aside from the nursery, which is closely guarded and protected, most of this place is to house people aged fourteen years of age and upwards. There are pretty sound reasons for that. Which is part of why we have a judge and a lawyer permanently ... and dare I say, intimately involved in this project?” Marten told me as a woman rushed out to kiss him very fiercely on the lips and the very familiar body language told me that she was his wife, Nicole.

Another, much younger lady, but still clearly of age, obviously related to both of them, ran out to help me unpack my stuff and lead me to my own quarters. She had stunning, strawberry-blonde curls, freckles, mesmerizing eyes, pale skin that no amount of Kentucky sun could tan, and just a little baby weight on an obviously petite figure. She also kissed me and didn’t skimp on the tongue, either.

“Word of warning, monsieur, pretty much everyone here, everyone of age, unless you state bluntly to the contrary, are presumed to be sexually active and willing to fuck everyone else of age. By ‘of age,’ we mean fourteen years up and older. No diddling the younger stuff, okay? We aren’t pedophiles.

“We do not tolerate rape here, either, and if for some reason, you don’t want to fuck a particular person, that is your right to refuse. It is not broached again except by you after that. Even if you hurt their feelings, they will accept it. They will get over it, okay? It’s mostly just sex being denied and they can get plenty of other partners here. No one here goes without sex unless they wish it.

“It’s an important precedent, you see. We have one homosexual here and one lesbian and we want their rights respected, so we do not wish to set the bad precedent of ignoring disinterest. From what we’ve been told, your own consent or lack thereof was regularly disrespected by your own family, so we would naturally trust that you grasp the importance of this.

“I am Anne-Marie De Groot, or de Groot, depending on whether you choose to capitalize the ‘d’ there. Back home in Belgium, it’s de Groot. Here in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky, of course, it’s De Groot. I’m fine with it either way. I’ll be more than happy to sleep with you, but there is a key precondition in my case. You must first ... pass the Parent Test,” Anne-Marie told me as she lifted her sundress just enough to show me some tempting flesh.