I’d challenge him if I could get a word in edgeways, but he just keeps talking and talking, his eyes lighting up and his biceps bulging.
God knows how he managed to get any sex in at all with any of those hundreds of women if all he did on those dates was the same. Maybe he just fucks them all from the room next door, just far enough out of earshot that he can go on and on about how brilliant he is without them even having to hear him.
“I was that far away from MVP. That far.”
Finally he sits down.
“They only gave it to Sands because he’s PG.”
“There is always next year”, I offer, my voice lilted to be intentionally sarcastic. “You know, if they let you back on the team.”
“I am the team.”
I rest my case. Landon Maddox is an absolute douchebag.
“What’s MVP?” Mom asks.
She must be being polite, because I can’t believe she’s this interested in the NFL. She certainly never showed this much interest when Dad used to watch it on TV, and she hasn’t ever shown this much interest in anything I’m passionate about.
“It’s kind of like the best player of the year award”, Landon explains. “I was a shoe-in and then they gave it to some running back from the Colts.”
Please don’t ask what a running back is.
“Well, I guess we ought to start thinking about getting to bed.”
This is the interesting life Marvin and my mother live. They eat dinner and then they go to bed. At 9pm.
“It’s 9pm”, I say.
“Early start tomorrow. I’m going to get out on one of those walks, see if I can spot some of the wildlife. You guys stay up, I’m sure you’ve got a whole lot of stuff to talk about.”
When I look at Landon, he’s smiling at me.
“I might see if the jacuzzi works.”
I shake my head. I cannot believe he’s looking at me and suggesting what I think he’s suggesting. I am struck briefly by an image of Landon and I in the jacuzzi, as naked as the day we were born.
“Not tonight you won’t”, Mom says. “Those things make a hell of a racket and I’m the world’s lightest sleeper. You can make it a project for tomorrow if you like. It might be nice for us all to sit in there one evening.”
Ewww. “I don’t think we’ll fit”, I’m quick to warn her.
“Course we will, Tilly. That’ll take six that thing. Right, I’m leaving you to it, Marvin and I are off to bed.”
“Six”, Landon whispers to me and I have to stem a giggle.
“Good night kids.”
“Wait”, I shout, immediately aware that they are leaving me on my own with The Donkey. This wasn’t in the plan. I wasn’t meant to be alone with the enemy, certainly not this early in the holiday. I don’t know what to do.
“I’m going to bed too.”
“Ok”, Mom says. “You do what you like dear, it’s your holiday too.”
This set up is so awkward that Mom and Marvin will be literally sleeping two metres away from where we are. The only thing between us is a door and what I expect to be a very thin wall. Going to bed doesn’t involve climbing up a flight of stairs, a long discourse or a drawn out series of stages, it involves stepping two strides into a different room, changing into an embarrassing set of matching pajamas, cleaning teeth and urinating loudly in the bathroom, while desperately trying to squeeze enough to not make any noise and then returning again to the same bedroom that’s no bigger than a walk in closet.
While they do this, I drag the mattress from what should be my room and is now Landon’s, into the lounge to try and find a space big enough to construct a makeshift sleeping area.
While I do this, and Mom and Marvin, who, short of a pair of matching sleeping hats could be cartoon characters, get themselves ready for bed. Landon does absolutely nothing but watch me. Not his dad and my mom, but me. He doesn’t lift a finger to help me, despite the mattress being so heavy I have to drag it along the ground, and nor does he get up from the two seater sofa he has effectively turned into an armchair because of his bulk.
All he does is watch me with those sexy eyes.
“Good night guys, see you in the morning.”
Mom has an eye mask on and earplugs in. She looks ridiculous but it doesn’t seem to bother her. Both of them look like comedy parents from a made up show. They better not even think about fucking.
“Good night.”
When the door shuts, Landon and I are on our own. The Donkey and, well, me. Fuck this is awkward. What do you say to someone you know so intimately, and have never been alone with before. I know every muscle definition, every hair, every mole. I’ve spent hours tracing the lines his penis make into the fabric of the boxer shorts he wears. Embarrassingly, I probably know almost as much about his football career as he does, and even more about what they’ve said about him in the papers.
I haven’t seen his weapon, but I’ve read it being described so many times I feel like I know it intimately. I can shut my eyes and see it, which is why I try not to.
“I’m going to bed.”
“I know, you already said that.”
“That means you have to go to bed as well.”
“It’s 9pm, Tilly. Are you telling me that you are going to dump that mattress on the floor, get on top of it, close your eyes and go to sleep, at 9 pm, like Wee Willie Winkie and his little mistress?”
“Yes.”
“At 9pm? On holiday? In the middle of nowhere with a jacuzzi outside? On our first night together getting to know each other?”
“Yes.”
“Ok then, just don’t mind me.”
He’s not moving. Why is he not moving?
“You know.”
Now he’s talking at me. Whispering actually.
“I reckon your mom and my dad. It’s not normal. I reckon they’re in there doing some weird assed BDSM shit. Did you see the matching pajamas? Real freaky.”
“I heard that, Landon.”
It’s Marvin’s voice, and it sounds like it’s in the room with us. I hear him turn over and the bed creak.
“Didn’t deny it.” Landon holds his hands up and eases back into the sofa. “Just saying. We might have to watch them. You and I are in this together. You know, like a team.”
“A football team?”
“No, nothing like that. Just a two man team. A quarterback and a wide receiver. A brother and sister team.”
“Step brother, step sister”, I remind him.
“Exactly.”
I hear Marvin and Mom’s bed creak again, and Landon looks at me as if to say “I told you so.”
Again I have to stifle a giggle. If he saw me laughing at one of his jokes he’d never let me live it down.
“Landon?”
“What?”
“I’m going to bed, seriously.”
I can’t let him get me, not this early, not this at all. I can’t risk it, not now we are what we are to each other. I hate him, I must remember that. I hate Landon Maddox. I hate his everything that he does and his everything that he is. I hate him and I’m not going to change the way that I feel just because he’s right here in front of me right now.
“Come on, Tilly. This is boring. I’m bored. What am I going to do if you go to bed? I was bored at home, I don’t want to be bored here too.”
“Can’t you amuse yourself?”
I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that but I certainly don’t want my eyes to go where they do. It’s the last place I want them to go.
“That’s always more fun with two.”
Now I’m going red. Great.
“Alright”, Landon says eventually. “Go to bed. Amuse yourself, see if I care. I thought we could get to know each other, you know, have a beer, chill out. Throw the football around.”
“It’s dark outside, I don’t drink beer, and I’m already perfectly well chilled out, thank you.”
“You look so tense you could snap.”
“I’m fine,
thank you for your concern.”
“You look cute when you’re angry too.”
I don’t know how to respond to that so I just do a sort of nod and grunt combination which must come across as completely unappealing based on the look Landon gives me.
“Are you going to get undressed?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“You know, just so I know. I don’t want to accidentally come out of my room for a glass of water and see you standing there in the nude playing with yourself. You might get embarrassed.”
“Just stay in your room and you won’t have to worry.”
I have to squeeze myself against the edge of the dining table to let Landon pass. If the mattress wasn’t between us providing a barrier, his cock would be rubbing right up against me. As it is, I can see the dent it’s making in the foam, curving the edges away from me.
“Maybe I’ll take a look through the keyhole first, just to make sure I’m not about to disturb you.”
“Landon.”
“You look like you’d probably like that though.”
There is a moment that passes between us in which I am completely unable to say anything at all.
When Landon gets to the door to his bedroom, and he stands there casually with his hands above him so he’s kind of half leaning, half swinging, I still haven’t moved a muscle.
“You know”, he says. “You don’t have to be embarrassed to admit it. It happens to everyone.”
“Admit what?”
“You’re starstruck.”
“I’m what?”
Landon smiles. “There you go, I knew it. Goodnight sis. See you in the morning.”
And with that, he turns, walks into the room and closes the door behind him. I flop down into the armchair behind me, the mattress tilted against my legs.
“Step sister”, I say, and I hear Landon ease his triangular frame into the bed that sits only a metre or so away from me, our lives separated by a thin partition wall less than a couple of inches thick.
***
At first I think it’s raining. There is a thunderous sound of water splashing down into water, so close it could be the same room. It wakes me, and while I allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I realize the light I think I’m focussing on isn’t a light at all, it’s the moon like shape of Landon’s buttocks.
He’s there, in the bathroom, the door wide open, and his boxer shorts inexplicably lowered so his perfect ass is hanging in the air, pissing. Pissing thunderously like a fucking race horse.
“Landon, what the fuck?”
I sit up in bed, unable to comprehend exactly what’s going on, while Landon looks casually over his shoulder.
“Oh, hey.”
“What are you doing?”
What he’s doing is evident, but that’s not exactly the point of the question. This fucking adonis has woken me up in the middle of the night to take a mammoth piss. A piss that is still going. What the hell has he been drinking? More importantly, why the hell is the door open.
“Taking a leak.”
“With the door open?”
“Yeah, I guess, I hadn’t noticed, sorry. Did I wake you?”
Did you wake me? What a question. As my eyes grow more accustomed to the failing light, more of his perfectly chiselled body comes into view. Naked from the waist up, the tail of a tribal tattoo sweeping across his back, boxer shorts pulled down, I expect to give his mammoth cock air, and socks, jesus, he’s still wearing socks. Hang on a minute, is that?
“Landon, the door!”
“Don’t worry, I’m finishing now.”
There are at least twenty more seconds pissing, and a good ten seconds making sure he’s got it all out. After that, he gives a long sigh, pulls his boxer shorts up and flushes the chain, all of which creates a noise loud enough to wake the whole house. When he turns to face me, pausing briefly for no apparent reason other than to allow me to take him in, I feel like I’m front row in one of his catwalk shows, or eyes deep in a particularly well printed magazine. He is, even in the thin light, absolutely unquestionably huge. Mouth wateringly huge. Pussy wettingly huge. Pantie meltingly huge. Eye wateringly-.
“Tilly?”
“Huge. Fuck.”
I slap my hand across my mouth but the word has already escaped.
“I knew it”, Landon says, shaking his head. “Naughty, Tilly. I might let you see it if you play your cards right.”
“Wait, I didn’t mean that.”
But it’s too late. Landon is already back in his room and I can hear him laughing like a hyena through the walls. This isn’t right. I hate Landon Maddox, how many times do I need to tell myself that? I. Hate. Landon. Maddox. Maybe if I go to sleep this will have all been a dream. He’ll forget about it in the morning, right?
Fuck.
Two.
Landon
This is going to be hilarious. I knew there would be a good reason to bring my kit, and this is it. It’s just gone six am, I’ve already slept far more than I ever usually do, mostly because I’m sleeping alone, and even though no-one else is awake yet, I’m going to give them all a little ten-hut alarm clock to start the day. If Rachel wants us to act like a family, I’ll show her I mean to. This is exactly what a brother would do to his sister.
Tilly is half in the bed, half out of it. One long, slender leg curls around the duvet, while the other hides inside it. I can see the thin fabric of her panties clinging tightly to a nicely shaped ass although I can’t quite make out the color of them. Light is already creeping in through gaps in the drapes to the French windows, but not enough to pull her awake.
The house is silent. It’s practically the middle of the night still in some people’s worlds, and here I am, crouched over my brand new stepsister, my helmet and shoulder pads on, and dark lines painted carefully underneath my eyes. In the weird half light, I look like some kind of sports monster.
We used to do this to rookies at training camps, just to see how they’d react. If they took the joke well, you knew they’d fit in. I want to see if Tilly’s got the same kind of bottle. That, and I want to spook her out for making such an issue out of sleeping in here in the first place. I mean, what’s wrong with sharing a room anyway? It’s not like I’m some kind of sex addict or anything that finds any nubile girl irresistible. If she can’t handle being in the same room as me because of some crush, that’s her issue not mine. She ought to know I’m out of the game, and anyway, like I said already, I’d have to be totally desperate to do my own step sister, no matter how much she pretends she doesn’t want it.
I get my face as close to hers as I can, crouched over so when she wakes she’s going to be practically trapped in beneath me. I can feel her breath cooling on my lips, and a heat rising off her body that feels like an invitation to join her.
She’s sleeping so deeply I’m going to have to be noisy to wake her. I begin to breathe through my nose. I tense my shoulders and I count down from three. She’s going to freak when she works out what’s going on.
“Omaha! Ten-hut, ten-hut, red eighty ten-hut.”
Tilly wakes up with a snap, smashes her forehead violently against my helmet and flails at me wildly with swinging punches of sleep tired arms. When she’s just about caught her breath and worked out it’s me, not some ax-murderer from the countryside, she’s pressed up against the far wall, and shaking like a leaf. I can’t stop laughing. It hurts so much I have to hold my sides.
A moment later Dad comes in and throws the room into light. Rachel is seconds behind him, her eye mask slid up on to the top of her head.
“You fucking ass-hole.”
In her haste to get away from me, it seems like Tilly has forgotten she’s almost naked. She looks good in her nearly see through, naughty little red panties, and I wonder if she’s put them on for me especially. There is absolutely no sign of her timidness now.
“What on earth is going on here?”
Dad looks at the scene with a face twisted by
confusion. Tilly up by the wall, obviously pissed off, me standing in the middle of the room dressed for a game, laughing like I’ve just been told the world’s funniest joke. It’s kind of a weird thing to see first thing in the morning.
I compose myself as best I can, but tears are streaming out of my eyes and it takes me a moment to speak without stuttering.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Oh man, I was just heading out for some practise. I didn’t think you two would be here to be honest. I thought everyone would already be up eating breakfast or out looking for animals.”
I hold my hands up to apologize, but Tilly’s having none of it. I didn’t expect her to get this scared to be honest, but she looks like she’s seen a ghost. The whole thing has worked perfectly.
“Practise? Are you serious? Since when is waking people up in the middle of the night, dressed like some fucking cartoon character part of an American football game?”
“Tilly, language.”
I decide now might be a good time to take off my helmet.
“I’m sorry, I was trying to be quiet. I guess I got a bit excited. I didn’t mean to wake anyone up.”
Rachel looks more concerned by her daughter’s somewhat erratic appearance than mine. “Tilly, are you alright?”
All eyes go to Tilly.
“No, I’m not alright. He woke me up. On purpose.”
All eyes come to me.
“I must have tripped over the bed trying to find the door handle. I guess it’s kind of hard not to wake someone up if they sleep in the living room.”
Tilly narrows her eyes at me. “You asshole.”
“Right, that’s enough.”
This is like some kind of contemporary American Mexican stand off. It’s a weird scene - me in my team kit, Dad and Rachel in matching pajamas, Tilly like some rising star in a barely legal porn film. We could all be extras in a kind of odd theatre production.
SWOLLEN: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 12