Sherry collapsed bonelessly on top of me, her heart thundering against mine as I surfed through the aftershock of such a gigantic climax, and her trembling and twitching on top of me brought me back to my senses, restarted my nervous system, and now I could feel her, her body trembling in her own aftershock as both of us slowly recovered our senses after such a huge adrenaline rush. Her closed eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t open her eyes, she just mewed softly as I rolled sideways so she’d be more comfortable, but her eyes flew open as I slowly withdrew from her, and she smiled contentedly.
“Danny, I never guessed it would be like this, I just wish…” as two large tears welled up in her perfect eyes and spilled down her satin cheek.
“You wish what, sweetheart?” I whispered, mopping her tears with a corner of my coverlet, and she reached up to once again run the tip of her forefinger over my lip.
“I wish I’d been strong enough to do this with you years ago, baby; we’ve lost so much time, Danny, how do we make it up? I love you so much, for so long, all the time we’ve lost, when we could have…”
I stopped her with a kiss.
“We still have all the time in the world, Sherry, and we can do anything we want now; there are no rules anymore, no one sitting and judging us, just you and me. I love you Sherry, I have for years, I always will, so it’s our time now, you and me and the life we choose.”
She looked into my eyes, doing that thing she used to do when we were younger, checking my eyes to see if I was serious.
“So if we, I don’t know, decided to get married, for instance, would you go along with that?”
I kissed her again, enjoying the look in her huge, beautiful eyes.
“In a heartbeat, Cherie, in a fucking New York second! There’s nothing I’d want more than to be your husband, I dreamt of nothing else when I was a boy; nothing’s changed, believe me!”
“Then promise me one thing, Danny,” she said; “When you qualify, will you marry me?”
I kissed her as tenderly as I knew how, dragging out each kiss as long as I could.
“I’d marry you tomorrow, Sherry, you should know that by now, but yes, the day after I graduate, I’m making you Mrs. Daniel Forbes, so Sherry-baby, will you marry me?”
Sherry grinned and stroked my lip with the tip of her finger.
“Yes Danny, I will, that’s all I ever wanted!”
“Wait there!” I grinned, kissing her quickly, before jumping out of bed so I could rummage through my dresser drawer while Sherry watched in puzzlement. When I found what I wanted, I headed back to the bed, and as she watched with that irresistible ‘lip-biting’ grin of hers, I got down on one knee and offered her my great-grandmother’s antique diamond, sapphire and ruby engagement ring.
“Mum told me to give this to the girl I married, to the girl of my dreams, so once again, Cherie Morrison Young, will you marry me?”
Sherry giggled happily as she offered me her left hand so I could slide the ring on her finger, a perfect fit.
“Danny, of course I’ll marry you, I dreamed about this moment so many times since I was a girl, I just never dreamed we’d be so naked when it happened!”
****
We made love again, and again, all though the night, as many ways as she wanted, in every position I could think of, slowly and gently, and banging her like a maddened machine, but always only the way we wanted, the way she was ready to explore, but always, in the back of my mind was the sheer thrill of knowing I was with the only girl I’d ever loved.
I stirred sometime in the wee hours, a little disoriented at the feel of someone in bed with me, her arm thrown back and her beautiful face in cleat profile, her small, perfect breasts rising and falling as she slept so peacefully next to me. My heart swelled at the sight of her so innocently asleep, and memory flooded back, memories of making love with my beautiful lost sister just a few hours earlier, the girl I wanted and for whom I lusted. She’d left a huge hole in my heart when she’d disappeared, pain I thought I would never recover from, but the flip-side of that jumble of emotions was the fact that now I knew why she’d run from me, and now I had her back, my Sherry-baby, my dream girl, my sister.
Okay, so she wasn’t really my sister, she was my aunt, and I didn’t know if that made what we had done better or worse, but I didn’t care. The one girl in the world I’d idolised and wanted all my life had finally given me the one thing I’d always wanted: her love and commitment and the emotional groundswell inside me was impossible to ignore. It wasn’t the sex so much as who it was I’d had sex with; Shel was my sister, but she was also my aunt, my mother’s half-sister and family no matter which way you cut it; what did we do now that we’d crossed the Rubicon, taken that one, irrevocable step?
Pandora’s Box was open, Humpty-Dumpty had fallen off his wall, and no amount of rationalisation was going to disguise the fact of what we’d just done.
And yet, surprisingly, I couldn’t care less. I had seen and remembered in my Sherry-girl’s eyes the exact same resolve. Too much had happened, we’d already lost too much time together, life had made some serious choices for us, and what we’d done didn’t matter now, because everything had changed; now we could take those choices back and make new ones, choices that made sense in our new reality, and that reality was that we were together, and we were staying together.
I’d asked her to marry me, and I’d made that commitment not because she was hot, and naked, and with me; not because it was a spur of the moment thing driven by lust and the heat of the moment, but because I knew all the way through me that marrying her and pledging my life to her was what I wanted, that was all I wanted and she’d made the same commitment to me.
Satisfied that I had no regrets, and only excitement for the life ahead for both of us, I settled down again, drawing Sherry closer to me. She turned to me in her sleep, her arm sliding across my chest to hold me, breathing “Love you, Dannee…” as she snuggled down against me. I kissed her forehead gently, revelling in the feel of her snuggled tightly against me and pulled the covers over both of us, happier than I’d ever been in my life before.
*****
The sound of knocking finally roused me from the complicated dream I was having about Mum, school, Sherry when she was a teenager at home while rain drummed on the windows. I looked blearily at my bedside clock: 9:30 in the morning. Who the hell could that be? This was my only free Saturday; the one day of the month with no lab, no rounds, no lectures, no ICU, just me-time, and someone was disturbing it. At that, I suddenly realised I was in bed alone. For a single panicked second I thought she’d gone again, changed her mind or regretted what we’d done, and done a runner, but then I saw her clothes still slung carelessly over the back of my chair, and I slumped back in relief. So where was she?
As the knocking resumed, I finally clocked the sound I’d been hearing in my sleep: the shower was running, and had been for a while, judging by the humid feel of the room; obviously old habits die hard. I grinned as I recalled when the family was all still together, how we’d all be queuing outside the bathroom grumbling and complaining while Sherry took one of her epic eons-long showers. I clambered out of bed, reflecting that I needed a shower, too, and padded over to the door. I opened it on the chain, to see Sam waiting impatiently, dressed in shorts and a hooded top, with battered Converse trainers on his feet.
“Come on, Fatty!” He grinned. “Running time is here, you need to get some of that Lab-flab off your porky little belly, old son! Time’s a-wastin’, Danny-boy!”
I stared blankly at him, then memory crashed in; Saturday, I was supposed to be running a 10K with him! How the hell did I get out of this gracefully; Sam was a fitness fanatic, and we’d been planning this run for three weeks now, but I had my heart’s desire taking a shower ten feet away, and right now I didn’t want to run; I wanted climb in there with her.
Fortunately, Sherry made that decision for me, waltzing out of the en-suite shower wrapped in a brief bath-towel, with her naked shoulders and endless, flawless legs on display for all to see, only to pull-up short as she saw Sam standing in the doorway, a thunderstruck expression on his face.
Sam took his time looking away, I noted, not that I blamed him; in the morning light, Sherry looked even more delectable than she had the previous night. Her pale skin glowed in the golden-white morning sunshine, and she looked delicious, delightful and definitely more than I deserved.
Sam finally tore his eyes away from her to look at me, a rueful grin on his face, tinged with no small amount of envy, as Sherry smiled and slipped up behind me to slide her arms around me and kiss my neck before grinning at him and winking. I felt I owed him some kind of explanation, but when I tried, he waved it away with a good-natured grin.