by Mia Carson
It seemed strange to me, lying there with him, that I had been pretending not to feel what I was feeling right now. I had been pretending that everything was fine, that I didn’t care about him, that I was just a stepsister and he was just a stepbrother. But as we lay there, not saying anything, just listening to each other’s breathing, I knew I couldn’t do that again. Not to him, and not to me.
We had crossed a line now that couldn’t be uncrossed. Before, we had been a wolf and a lion. We hadn’t known what we were doing. It was a forgivable accident. Now, we had known full well what we were doing. We had done it on purpose, because we wanted to. And if my heart quickened at the thought, if my palms sweated—if my body told me that later, when the ache of sex had worn off, I would regret this—I didn’t have to think about that right now. Right now, it was just me and Eli, and that was all.
No shame, I thought. No regret. No anxiety. Just a sexy man and the smell of our sex.
Eli
I really thought that this would be it, that after that sex, that night—after we fell asleep together on the couch—that the time for games was over. We could face up to what we felt, and what we felt was sudden and crazy and frightening, but most of all, it was real. But when I woke, the sunlight on my face, still naked, Jessica was gone. I got dressed quickly, pulling on my clothes from yesterday. It was strange to think that, as I pulled on my pants, Mom and Andrew were in Malta, enjoying their honeymoon, completely ignorant of what their children had just done. Maybe I should be ashamed when I say it excited me, but I am not.
I walked through the house and came to Jessica’s room. I thought then that she’d simply been uncomfortable on the couch and didn’t want to wake me. I expected her to call out when I knocked, if she was awake, or to not reply if she was asleep. What I didn’t expect was what happened.
I knocked on the door, and almost immediately her voice answered. “I can’t, Eli,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded mechanical, stilted, like she was doing a bad impression of herself. “I just can’t.”
“Jessica, you sound odd,” I said. Odd was an understatement, but I didn’t want to freak her out more than she clearly was. “Is something wrong?”
“You know what’s wrong!” she exclaimed, but still in that mechanical voice. She raised her voice, hinted at emotion, but there was always something lacking in it, something vital I couldn’t quite figure out. It was like what I heard was an echo of her voice, without real life in it.
“You regret last night,” I said, keeping my voice calm. It wasn’t particularly difficult to figure out, not in the light of the morning. She had enjoyed it when it was happening, but now she’d awoken next to me, looked at me (maybe looked down at me, for all I knew), and then retreated to her bedroom.
“I—”
She stopped there, and that gave me hope, at least. Maybe she didn’t regret it. Maybe she wanted to regret it and, the fact that she didn’t bothered her. Or maybe she loved me. Or maybe I was wrong to think I could read her and it was something I hadn’t considered. I didn’t have all the answers when it came to Jessica. I think she was too beautifully complex for that. All I could do was try.
“We can talk about it,” I said, “if you let me in. I know you’re upset, confused, but we can talk about it. If you open the door, we can—” I stopped, realizing I was repeating myself. But what else could I say? “You’re going through something right now, I get that, but I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
“I can’t see you right now,” she said. “If I do, I’ll—” She paused, and then went on in a voice more like her true voice. “If I do, I’ll want you again. Please, Eli, just for a little while, leave me alone.”
I would be lying if I said part of me wasn’t stung by her words. I cared for her, a lot, but it was because I cared for her that I left her, walked down the hallway, to the stairs, and to my bedroom. I had no clue what she was feeling in there, I realized with an ache in my chest. We hadn’t known each other for that long. I could make good guesses, but I couldn’t actually know unless she talked to me.
All I could do was hope that she would.
I ignored the voice in my head that whispered that she would never talk to me again.
Jessica
I knew that if I let him in, I would fall into his arms without thinking about it. It was a strange problem, one I had never encountered. I wanted to talk to him about the problem, even though he was the problem. I wanted to tell him about how anxious and scared I was, even though it was our connection that was making me anxious and scared. My emotions vacillated second by second, it seemed. The strength of last night was gone; the foreboding I had felt was vindicated. I sat perched on the edge of the bed, my book forgotten on the floor, my fists clenched atop my knees.
I wanted so badly to leave the bedroom and go to him, wanted desperately to feel him against me again, but he was my stepbrother. One second, it excited me, and the thought of sneaking out there and fucking my stepbrother until we both came, hard, made my nipples erect and my clit tingle. And the next, I saw the judgmental faces of hundreds of strangers, shaking their heads, spitting at us—and Dad and Annabelle, crying loudly and forcefully (and of course they would be judging us, spitting at us, too). I made to touch myself, thinking of last night, and then was angry with myself for the impulse. I made to cry, but then realized that there was nothing to cry about . . . We just want each other! There’s nothing wrong with that! So why did I feel the tears on my cheeks?
“Dammit!” I muttered, clenching my fists harder. The fidgeting was back, like a thousand creatures trying to wriggle out of my body. “Dammit.”
I thought about the masked ball, about the lion, about the lovemaking, and wondered if I would rather have never met him. Even now, as my body fought to drive me into a panic attack, I knew that I would not. Then irony was that the man who caused the anxiety was the only one who could alleviate it. Eli held the poison and the antidote. His power over me was startling; I wanted to run toward and away from him at the same time.
But I never wanted to run away from him because of something he had done. It was always when I imagined other people’s reaction that I felt a stab of guilt in my belly. Nobody else would understand. They wouldn’t care that we had met as lovers before we were brother and sister. All they would care about is that we were different, that we had done something which society agreed people did not do. Every time I thought of the hordes and hordes of sneering people, laughing, pointing—that was when I wanted to end things with Eli.
But when I only thought about him, in isolation, and didn’t allow other thoughts to color my feelings, I didn’t want to run from him at all. No, when I thought like that, my body ached for him, my nipples ached from wanting to be grabbed and my pussy ached from wanting to be fucked. There was a warm orb in my belly when I thought about his hands on me. The anxiety did not go—only being with him, in person, seemed to do that—but it lessened when I relived our sex.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting at the edge of the bed, pacing up and down, wringing my hands, staring out of the window, until there was another knock at my door. “I’m making some dinner,” Eli said. “Do you want some? Pizza.”
“I’ll eat it in here,” I said.
I knew I might be hurting him, but the idea of seeing him again for any long period of time, the idea of exposing myself to that kind of lust, didn’t bond well with the images of sneering bystanders. Once the food was cooked, Eli knocked on the door again. I walked across the room and put my hand on the door handle, my other hand on the lock. I turned the lock (holding my breath, but hardly realizing it, excited to see him again even after just a day), but when I opened the door he wasn’t there. The plate lay on the floor. I bent down, picked it up, and retreated into my room.
This wasn’t healthy, of course. I couldn’t stay in this room forever. I had to get out, lest I go completely mad. The last thing I should have done was just sit in there, thin
king, overthinking, dwelling, going over and over our sex, reliving every passionate breath and thrust. I was continually shocked by myself. Even as I knew it was wrong, I wanted to fuck him again. Sometimes, I wanted to do it because it was wrong.
You’re a slut, my mind whispered. That’s all it is, Jessica. You’re a slut and you’re hungry for cock. That’s your problem. You’re dirty. People at college would ridicule you if they saw you now. You should be ashamed of yourself. But those thoughts didn’t stop the others; if anything, they enhanced them. As if rebelling against the traitor voice, my mind conjured up more and more images of Eli, naked, muscular, rock-hard . . .
Again, my thoughts seemed to make time go faster. What had I done all day? I had just been pacing, worrying, and now when I looked out my window I saw that the sun was beginning to set, and that shadows were thrown across my room. I walked to the door and clicked the light switch, my room lighting up with pale yellow light. Part of me was sure I was going crazy, but another part knew the real reason for this behavior. I was fighting feelings that could not be fought. I was fighting a losing battle. I wanted Eli, I wanted him bad, and fighting my lust was only making it harder for myself.
I was like an alcoholic who spends his first cold-turkey day thinking about the consequences if he were to take a drink, thinking about the people he would disappoint, thinking about the pain he would cause, until evening came and he couldn’t resist anymore. I was the same; evening was here, and I couldn’t resist anymore.
I unlocked my door and made my way to the stairs. That strange calm had started to descend upon me the second I decided on my course of action. That calm was something I craved almost as much as I craved Eli. The two—the calm and him—were linked in a way I could not fully understand. It was not just that he made me comfortable (though he did), but more than comfortable. He made me feel strong, as though I could do anything, if only I tried.
I hesitated outside his door for only half a moment. Images of Dad and Annabelle flashed across my mind. But my body was too excited to care. I was outside Eli’s room, every nerve in my body prepped for what was about to happen. It was a strong force, and the paltry images of the people I would hurt by allowing it to take action were no match for it. I turned the handle.
Eli was on his back, reading. He turned to me when I entered, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t know how grateful I was for that. When I was standing over him, I reached down and rubbed the front of his shorts. His cock hardened in my hand, and I rubbed it harder, harder, and then pulled his shorts down. I pulled down my panties, hiked my skirt up, and climbed atop him.
Stepbrother or not, I couldn’t fight this lust. Today had proved that. I had tried white-knuckle sobriety, and I had failed. I placed my hands on his chest as I rode his cock, moving my hips, feeling more confident than I could believe.
“I think I love you,” I whispered, locking eyes with him.
What the hell! I knew that was a crazy girl thing to say . . . a crazy girl thing to do . . . and yet, I said it anyway. We kept fucking, and the only sign that anything had changed was a tiny pause in his thrusting. Then he reached up and touched my face. He pulled me down, thrusting into me the whole time, and whispered in my ear. “I know I love you.”
Eli
When I woke, I reached out immediately. My first concern was that Jessica was still in my bed. She was beautiful, intelligent, funny, unique—and she was also hard to predict. She was like one of those spin tops I’d played with as a kid. Sometimes, they’d spin in place. Other times, they’d suddenly veer off without warning. I think this was one of the reasons I loved her so much. Yes, loved her. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it to anybody at the time. It was mad, of course. We hadn’t known each other long enough. We were too young. There were all the usual reasons why it didn’t make sense. And yet, I did love her.
When I reached out, my hand found her shoulder. I moved into her, wrapped my arms around her, pushed my groin into her ass. We were both naked and aching from last night. I closed my eyes, and I must’ve slept, because when I opened them she was facing me, and sunlight filtered into the room.
I smiled at her. It was the nicest thing to wake up to. “Are you watching me sleep, you freak?” I laughed.
“No,” she said, with the cutest smile I ever saw. “Don’t be a weirdo. Why the hell would I want to watch you sleep?”
She looked so beautiful and cute as she laid beside me, her cheeks slightly red, her lips parted, her eyes seeing everything. I brushed her hair from her face and kissed her on the forehead. Then I pulled the blankets over us and made it so we could pretend that the outside world didn’t exist. Even in this perfect moment, traitor voices whispered. They whispered about how wrong this was, about how what we were doing would cause other people pain, about how we were evil.
You are related! the voices whispered. This is wrong! Stop it! Stop it now!
But they couldn’t convince me that waking up next to a beautiful woman whom I loved was wrong. They would never be able to convince me of that. “Let’s go somewhere today,” she said, sitting up.
“Where?” I asked.
I would’ve been happy to simply lie in bed with her all day, to hold her, maybe make love later, but if she wanted to go somewhere, I would gladly go with her, too.
“For a walk,” she said. “I saw some woods on the drive here. Let’s go there.”
She was right. The Leigh Woods were just outside Clifton, toward the city, near Brunel’s Clifton suspension bridge. I think I’d been there once, when I was young, but I couldn’t remember. “Okay, let’s do it.”
That morning it felt like we were boyfriend and girlfriend. It was in the simple act of getting ready to go out together. First, Jessica told me to take a shower, kissing me on the nose. After the shower, I found her in the kitchen, making a lunch for us, and then she asked me to get my backpack to carry it. It was a mundane conversation, and yet I couldn’t help but feel pleased at the whole thing. It felt like we were becoming a couple over the simple act of her making a few sandwiches and me agreeing to carry them.
We could’ve driven or caught the bus to the woods, but it was a sunny day, and we decided to walk. The walk there wasn’t exciting or picturesque in any way. Leigh Woods were city woods, the kind of woods that are surrounded on all sides by roads and motorways and buildings. We walked through an industrial estate and more houses than I cared to count on our way to the woods. It was a boring, plain walk. And yet, when Jessica reached down and took my hand, when she turned and smiled at me, I felt like the luckiest man alive to be the one taking this mundane walk today.
Maybe I’m cheesy. If so, I don’t care. When I looked at her I felt happy, happier than I’d thought it was possible to feel with a woman. We hadn’t said anything for half an hour, and that was the part of the magic. We didn’t need to say anything. We could just walk, in silence, and not feel compelled to fill the silence with random small talk. No, I was content to feel her hand in mine, and when we waited to cross the road, to feel her lips on my cheek.
Jessica
We entered the woods through Leigh Court at the east entrance (the entrance furthest away from the city and Clifton suspension bridge, as I understood it). There were a few people in the woods, I saw. Mostly they were couples, and when one older woman, holding her husband’s hand, smiled at me, I thought the world might not be so bad after all. All she saw was a young woman and her man, nothing more. And maybe, I thought, that was what today could be. Eli and I could just be a woman and man who had been struck by love, who had been tackled by it, who had been utterly captured by it without expecting to.
I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed mine.
We walked down a path called Old Carriage Drive, with trees bordering us on both sides, over a small creek, and then (the sign told me) toward Paradise Bottom. We walked hand in hand to Paradise Bottom, and then, without needing to discuss it, we turned off the stone pathway onto the dirt one that led deeper into
the woods. We walked underneath thick layers of foliage and into a clearing at the side of which was a wooden bench. There were no people this far into the woods, in this clearing. Far away I could hear the sound of cars on the road, but closer were the sounds of the woods, of birds tweeting and hidden insects making their small background noises.
We still hadn’t said much as we sat on the bench. Eli laid his hand on my leg, and we sat in silence listening to the wood’s noises. And then Eli yawned and stretched his arms, turned, smiled at me. The smile was casual, the kind of smile a longtime lover gives to his girlfriend, and I couldn’t help but smile back. The woods, Eli, the atmosphere . . . all of it combined to make me calm. I hungered for calm, and here it was. For now, thoughts of the consequences were banished. I pushed Dad and Annabelle from my mind almost violently; they weren’t welcome here, not right now.
“I’ve realized something,” Eli said.
“Hmm?” I replied. I was watching a blue-colored bird hop from branch to branch.
“We’ve skipped the first date. It was that first night which did it. When we met, we already felt close to each other. We’d already tasted each other. I know that sounds odd, but do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I said. I knew exactly what he meant. When I first saw him—the dagger-tattooed man—I had been immediately attracted to him. He was right. We’d skipped the first date entirely. “Do you regret it?” I asked, turning away from the bird to look at him.
“Not at all,” he said, smiling that contented smile. “It’s just—” He laughed, and then leaned forward and kissed my cheek, just under my eye. “Let’s talk. God, I sound like a cliché. But we should talk, don’t you think?”