“Mmm, I like waking up next to you, I must do this more often!” she smiled, wriggling sensuously while her hand gently rubbed me in the small of my back.
I could have lain there like that all night and through the next day, but Nimmie had other plans.
“C’mon you, we need showers, you need a shave, get a move on Ro, you’re taking me to dinner, so get weaving!”
I reluctantly let go of her, but not without having a reflex grope of her sexy bottom first, making her giggle and wriggle sexily.
“Oi, less of that, you, we don’t have time! Later, I promise. Right now, though, get in there and get showered. You need a shave, and bed-hair is not a good look for you…”
So saying, Nim disappeared into the dressing-room, presumably to get her dress sorted out for this dinner. I had my dinner jacket (actually, it was my a shit of a father’s DJ, but we were the same size, and he’d left it behind, so Nim had decided it was mine now) and a white shirt, so my dressing arrangements were sorted.
Nim joined me in the shower, probably to save time, but she made it clear that hanky-panky was not going to happen, we were under the gun, so a quick shower, a thorough shave, and I was good to go.
Nim disappeared into the dressing room while I got into my dinner jacket; she’d bought me a pleated-front formal evening shirt with wing-collars, and a set of studs, and I had to admit, I didn’t look too bad. The black tie defeated me, though; I’d never actually worn one, and no matter what I did with it, it just looked like something limp had tangled itself around my neck and died there.
“Having trouble?” asked Nim as I tried once again, and when I turned to her, I was flabbergasted, literally lost for words; gone was my cute, adorable, playful sister, and gone also was the sexy little water-nymph who’d played and sported with me so nakedly in that forest pool; in their place was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen.
She was dressed in a figure-hugging, scarlet dress of some stretchy, sparkly material, strapless and backless, almost indecently short, the hem only just covering the curve of her bottom, with long sleeves that left her smooth shoulders bare. Her shoes were the same shade of red as her dress, with slim, elegant, five-inch stiletto heels, and the lace tops of her nude stockings were just visible under the hem of that sexy, sexy dress. Lip-gloss the exact same eye-searing scarlet as her dress finished the ensemble.
Her hair was brushed and curled, shining and golden about her shoulders, with a peek-a-boo curl in front to accent her lovely face and beautiful green eyes. A black velvet choker, with a brooch set with a single green stone accented her long, white neck and complimented her eyes.
I was stunned speechless at the perfection of the picture she presented; her physical beauty hit me like a hammer-blow, as did the realisation that this beautiful girl was mine.
Nim posed artfully for me, winking sexily and giving me a quick twirl and shimmy so I could admire her smooth back and the curve and ripple of her flanks under that clingy dress as her hips switched.
I tried to say something, to tell her what a goddess she was, but I was truly struck dumb; I’d always thought my sister was a hottie, but this was the first time I’d ever truly seen her as the beautiful woman she really was, and I was speechless, trying to say so many things at the same time that nothing came out except a series of ‘uh-uh-uh…’ noises.
“Like it, baby? It’s all for you, Roly-poly!” she asked, and smiled happily when I nodded dazedly, like a dumb-struck idiot, still too shaken for words.
Nimmie grinned and took the mangled black tie from me, turned me around so I was facing the dressing mirror, and deftly re-tied it for me from behind, adjusted the knot, and patted me on the shoulder. She looked pensive, almost sad for a moment, and when I looked enquiringly at her she smiled sadly.
“Dad used to make me tie this for him; he could never remember how it went, and mum’s left-handed, so she always did it wonky; it’s been a long time since I tied a black tie, Roly, but it suits you; now you’re dressed to kill! Just remember one thing, Agent 007; you’re with me tonight, so no swanning off with some exotic beauty, you got that?”
As if I could ever look at another girl when I already had perfection by my side! I eventually managed to haul my jaw back up off the floor and click it back into place, and a sharp, pleasant, almost ecstatic thrill shuddered through me as she slid her arm through mine and patted my hand.
“C’mon Roly, take me to dinner,” she smiled, her smile broadening when I tried to say something coherent, and she pulled my head down to gently rub noses with me.
“Calm down, sweetie, it’s still me, you know!” she grinned, and straightened my lapels. “OK Roly, you ready?”
I swallowed a couple of times, then nodded, grinning back at her when she smiled at me, and so, my balance restored, I escorted the most beautiful girl I’d ever known down a long and sumptuous hallway, to another set of dark polished doors.
As we approached, the doors swung open, just like before, only now the room was, if anything, even more lavishly appointed than anything we’d seen so far; the long table in the centre of the room was set for a magnificent dinner, crystal goblets and mirror-polished silverware throwing sparkles, glints and glitters everywhere I looked, while huge silver vases, urns, and pedestals held gorgeous sprays of flowers all along the length of that magnificent banqueting table.
Nimmie gasped at the sheer opulence of it, her eyes shining at the knowledge that she was attending a banquet in such a lavish setting, that the two of us, ordinary people from an ordinary family, with ordinary lives, could be here to share, if only for a short time, in this world of privilege and entitlement.
Everyone else seemed to be already there, but the last couple to come in was the spectacular raven-haired couple I’d seen that first day. Nim stiffened, and I thought something had happened, perhaps she’d changed her mind, but then I saw that she and the dark-haired girl were stock-still, their eyes locked together, and both had little half-smiles on their faces.
I suddenly realised that there was some kind of communication going on. Her strange conversation with me in the cabana earlier that day came back to me, and then I understood; this was the girl she’d shared her epiphany with, the couple she’d connected with so profoundly, the couple she believed were just like us.
*
Dinner, and the entertainment that followed, are just a blur in my memory; I remember how lavish, how wonderfully presented the banquet was, but it’s only brief flashes; my full attention was taken up by Nimmie. All through that evening I watched her, absorbed in the interplay of her sparkling eyes, her beautiful, kissable, rosebud lips, her smile, her every expression as she talked, laughed, giggled at a silly pun, or gasped in amused shock at a risque comment or spicy joke.
I barely tasted that marvellous meal. How could I when the most desirable woman in my universe, my perfect goddess in a pantheon of one, was sitting close enough to me to smell her hair, taste her perfume in the air between us, and thrill to the feel of her smooth, perfect thigh every time it brushed against mine?
My next clear memory is dancing with her, feeling her curve and undulate so perfectly against me as she held me close, and of the lights glittering deep inside her emerald eyes and glinting in the glossy golden hair tumbled so artfully about her white, perfect shoulders.
Everything before that is a blizzard of half-remembered images: a club of some sort, flashing and flaring lights, thumping dance music, girls dancing on a podium, but I didn’t really register any of it; my head was too full of my golden goddess in a red dress. When she gently kissed me, and led me from that dance-floor and back to our room, the last vestiges of our old life fell away, and the start of the second half of my life was begun.
Now, and at last, I was no longer Naomi Redman’s older brother; now I was finally, fully and irrevocably her husband, she was my wife, my source of joy and my sole reason for living, and we were never going to be parted.
Naomi
That final evening at that incredible house, resort, call it what you will, is burned into me forever; as we danced, after the best, most spectacularly lavish meal I’d ever had, funny things were happening inside my head; any feeling I had for Rowan my brother was draining away as Rowan, my husband, flowed in to take his place.
I could feel him changing too; something was happening to him, I could feel it pulsing through him, in the way his arms tightened around me and his hands caressed me. Roly had changed, something had changed him, I could see it plainly in his eyes and in his smile when I gazed up at him.
That was when I knew we had to leave; I needed my husband right then, and I knew he needed me, and so we walked in silence back to our room. My head was too full of what had just happened to fill the silence with empty chatter, and I could tell Roly was the same, his fingers knotted in mine like he never intended to let go.
Walking back to our room, along those plush, hushed corridors, holding hands so tenderly with Rowan, is one of the most vivid memories I keep to this day; something inside me knew for sure we were walking to our new lives, and I was bubbling inside with anticipation, ready for mine to begin.