I had come home that afternoon with my bag slung over my shoulder, with stories and weariness to share with my father about grad school. He, my mother and my sister had gathered around the table and eaten dinner together for the first time in ages, and there was no awkwardness anywhere. I told them about Pam, the girl I was seeing, and Monica asked about her like any disinterested sister would. My mother was glad I was finally dating someone again.
That night my dad and I drank beers on the porch and talked about the companies that were open. He’d been in the business for years and I’d already put in several years of my own. I’d be fine. I was on the right track, and in a couple years I knew I’d be designing the buildings I’d always dreamed of.
I retired late that night, book in hand, in bed. The hours crept by and, near midnight, there was a knock at my door. Monica, in nothing provocative (a simple shirt, simple shorts, no makeup), softly smiled and asked if she could sleep on my side of the bed. I laughed, and without thinking, scooted over to let her lie down. I continued to read, and the minutes crept by, and softly I heard her stir.
“It’s too hot in here,” she said. And without turning, her eyes closed, she hooked her thumbs into her shorts and slid them down her shapely ass. And then, her hair falling over her shoulder, she batted her eyes at me. “You want to put it in there?”
I didn’t think. My cock was hard and ready before the book fell out of my hand. She was ready too, and we both hissed as I slid it in.
We kissed like we’d been separated by ages, by uncountable miles, as I fucked her from behind and reached into her shirt to clasp her heavy breasts – the breasts that swayed so hypnotically whenever she didn’t wear a bra. Like tonight. Like at the dinner table. Like when she came so innocently into my room. I pulled her hair. She bit my lip. She grinded against me. I touched her everywhere, and she moaned into my mouth as I came in her. Then she, with a strength I scarcely recognized, forced herself down against me so she could cum with my full length inside of her.
As if we’d saved the foreplay for reverse, I pulled her shirt off and kissed her then, kissed her a hundred times as she wound her naked limbs through mine and collapsed with me on the bed. The two of us, our tongues tangled, giggled softly at each other as we shared the reunion we’d both been waiting for.
But I was seeing someone. Wasn’t I? Didn’t that mean something? Or did it mean nothing next to the jungle lust I stoked for my sister. I woke later in the night to read, and to think about that. And after an hour of thinking and reading Monica turned her eyes up to me, told me not to be mad, and we’d done it all over again.
Now, gazing down at her as she told me her little plan, I didn’t know what to think.
“My love for you is complicated,” I said.
“Yeah, no shit,” she muttered. “But I know a good thing when I fuck it.”
“You do fuck it very well.”
She gave a chivalrous little nod. Then she coughed, and said quietly, “I slept in here a few times, after you left…”
“I missed you, too.”
“Good.”
I looked at the clock. It was no longer the wee morning hours. It was almost the normal morning hours. Almost time to go back to the world where we were just brother and sister. No benefits.
“I just don’t want us to pretend this never happened,” she said. “Don’t do that thing where you take the moral high ground. That’s bullshit.” She gave me her best little sister glare, so I shut up. “I just want us to agree this is part of who we are.”
“For better or worse,” I intoned.
“I’m not asking for more than that,” she said.
“So, if I’ve got this straight, we’ll try to live normal, productive lives as normal, productive siblings… who occasionally sleep together.”
“Not so much sleeping,” she amended.
“Who occasionally rut like stoats.”
“Sure,” she said. “There’s no way that can go wrong.”
Well, I probably don’t have to tell you this, but it went wrong all over the place.
This is how it happened.
It was my last year of grad school and I was working my ass off. Sure, I was tense, but I had a great sense of purpose. My professors, on the whole, liked me, and as hard as their courses were I always did pretty well. Of course, blowing off steam was an integral part of that. Without that safety valve, I might have exploded – or imploded from the weight of all the things on my mind. But I was happy to discover that grad students, most of us, are on the same page where dating is concerned: Either you’re looking for a hookup or you’re looking to mate for life; someone to help reduce stress or someone who wants to make that their permanent side gig. It made things a lot simpler.
Pam had originally been the former, but whether through her machinations or the tricks of time she’d begun to slide into the latter. When I returned to school, I told her it was over. She wasn’t happy about it, but she knew how we’d begun, and we hadn’t been together long enough for it to sting so bad. At least that’s what I thought.
I was running across campus one day – not out of panic; I was doing cardio – when I nearly passed by the most impressive set of legs I’ve ever seen. I was just about to turn the corner of the chemistry lab when they caught the sun in my periphery. I glanced to the side and saw them, the way the light clung to their toned musculature, the way the tight buttocks rose up into a pair of even tighter shorts. The legs belonged to Stephanie, and she was bent at the waist and standing in the grass. She was also running, or about to run, and was stretching for all the world to see. I decided to investigate.
As I approached, she rose up and I caught a glimpse of her cleavage. Her breasts were small, not much more than a handful each, but they moved with a fluid softness – even despite the sports bra. Her nose was a little sharper than I like, but it fit her face well: Brown, contoured eyebrows, an oval face, and cold eyes: Blue and hazel when she was relaxed, kind of green when she was mad or excited. Her long brunette hair was up in a ponytail, but it shined under the afternoon sun, which was currently spearing the two of us from between the trees. She was tall. Those legs.
“Hey,” I said.
She gave me a look of passionate disdain. “What?”
“You run around here often?”
Her forehead crinkled as she tried to figure out if I was for real. She had the ‘bitch face’ down pat and it was going into tiger mode. If I was a smart man, I would have run rapidly in the other direction. But I was a horny man, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what those legs would look like in high heels. (I have since seen those legs in high heels, and let me tell you – this bullshit was totally worth it.)
“What do you want, John?”
I was taken aback. “You- Have we met before?”
Once again, the forehead crinkled, this time accompanied by her knuckles on her hips. “I’m Pam’s roommate.”
Ah. Right. I am not an observant man. In my defense, the few times we went back to Pam’s place Stephanie was either out or in her room (and we didn’t spend a lot of time socializing, if you take my meaning).
“Of course,” I said, trying to recover. “How you doing?”
“Are you seriously hitting on me right now?”
Her stomach was toned, there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead and, I’ll be totally honest, the more her sharp nose and sharp eyebrows turned down, the more turned on I got. Maybe it’s the masochist in me, or maybe I just have a thing for angry women with great legs. All I could think of now was her insulting me while we did it on top of Pam’s kitchen table. True, it’s an odd kink, but once you make peace with the fact that you’ve fucked your sister a few hundred times, you’ve made peace with most of your kinks.
So I said, “Yes, I’m definitely hitting on you. But I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
And here’s where Stephanie’s personality shines through, because at this point she could have easily walked off – or, more appropriately, run off. She didn’t. She planted her heels, swayed back on one hip, and frowned and smiled at the same time. “Stephanie,” she said, as if even she couldn’t believe we were still having a conversation.
“Right, Stephanie,” I said. “Stephanie, what’s your major?”
“International relations,” she said. “Marketing, really. You’re an engineer. Pam cried about you for a week.”
Ooh, tough to come back from that one. I tried to look sincere (but not so sincere that I wasted my shot, if I had one) when I said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t think Pam was that into me.”
“You mean you thought you guys were just fuck buddies.”
Yes. Probably shouldn’t say yes, though.
I shrugged and opened my hands in a gesture of conciliation. “She’s great. We went on a few great dates, but I just didn’t feel that connection.”
“Uh-huh,” said Stephanie, not buying that bullshit at all. “Sounded to me like you felt that connection pretty regularly.”
Oh man, Game Over. If this was Independence Day her little aliens would be blowing the shit out of my air force right now. And yet, she hadn’t turned away. Her furrowed brows had relaxed and now she was wearing a look of amused disgust. I shrugged again and took a casual step forward. “I didn’t realize you were listening.”
“Whatever,” she said, and I thought she was about to make her exit, but instead she let out a little laugh. “I’ll admit it doesn’t take much to get Pam to cry, but whatever you think is happening here,” she gestured between the two of us, “it is most certainly not.”
“No, I didn’t think anything was happening here,” I said. “I was just saying hello.”
“Uh-huh,” she said again, her tongue working the inside of her cheek. She turned towards the chemistry lab (this is how bad I had it: even the way her ponytail whipped her neck turned me on) and then turned back to me. She narrowed her eyes. “Were you staring at my ass?”
“Hm?” I said, all innocence.
“You were running, and then you stopped. While I was stretching. Did you come over here because you saw my ass and… I’m sorry, what was your plan coming over here?”
Oh shit. I really liked this girl now. “Babble at you,” I said seriously. “Babble at you until I got your number.”
I watched her gnaw at the inside of her cheek, her mouth closed, while she weighed me with her eyes. She’d folded her arms against her chest now and I was fascinated just watching her mind work. Tried with all my might not to look down at the way those thighs slid down into those tight calves.
“You don’t care how Pam feels at all, do you?”
“Sure I do,” I said.
“What would I say to Pam, ‘Hey, your ex was checking out my ass so I think we’re going on a date tonight?’ That’s pretty shitty.”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I probably wouldn’t mention it. But you’d definitely get a good meal out of it. I mean, there’s no fooling you, so I’d probably overspend on the date like crazy to get in your good graces. And you know how it is at grad school – you take those fancy meals where you can get ’em.”
“Oh my God,” said Stephanie, her mouth wide, her eyes flashing. “You’re a creep.”
“Is that a no?”
She laughed all the way through her jog, and it seemed like she was still laughing when she rounded the chemistry building. I had half a mind to chase her, but I don’t think that would be the feminist thing to do. Instead, I brushed up on my international relations.