by Lexi Aurora
I was sitting on the beach, staring at the horizon when someone came up behind me. I shivered, knowing it was Travis before I even turned around. He sat down next to me, a few feet away. We were still within view of the house and couldn’t risk getting too close to each other. It made me feel desperate and needy; I wanted him as much as when he was touching me.
“Hi,” I said, looking over at him. He looked back at me, a small smile on his face.
“Hi, baby,” he said.
“Where have you been all day?” I asked him. “I thought—I thought you were avoiding me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. “I had work to do. I thought about you all day.”
“You crossed my mind, too,” I said teasingly. His eyes flickered to my lips, then back to my eyes.
“I wish I could kiss you right now,” he said in a soft voice.
“Me too,” I said, holding his eye. He looked over his shoulder then, gazing at the house for sign of anyone. Then he leaned in and took my mouth in a soft, brief kiss. I gave him a stern look.
“None of that,” I said. “Not out here.”
“I’m not sorry,” he told me. He stood up then, taking my hand to help me out of the sand. Our palms lingered against each other for a moment before he let go and we started back toward the house, both of us wishing that we could just be alone.
Chapter 16: Travis
“Are you ready for this?” I asked Jenna as we followed my family to the tarmac at the edge of the island. We lingered behind them, walking close together, occasionally brushing our fingers together in that private way of sending messages that we had developed. One finger along the palm meant I want you, a thumb against the back of the hand promising that the best was yet to come. We broke apart when Casey looked over her shoulder, staring at each of us as we made our way to the helipad. I exchanged a glance with Jenna as we approached the helicopter, then I helped her and Casey climb up while my parents followed us on. The pilot and I helped everybody strap in and then we lifted off, flying over the crystal clear water. I looked at Jenna’s face and saw awe there, and contentment too. It was the same contentment I felt knowing how she felt about me—that she was as interested in me as I was in her.
“What do you think?” I asked Casey, who was staring out the window.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, with little inflection to her voice. By then, I was almost convinced that Casey knew about Jenna and I. She had never been this distant and cold with me, not even when we were squabbling teenagers living under the same roof. She was behaving the same way toward Jenna, who would try occasionally to make conversation with my sister. Casey would only give her short answers above the roar of the helicopter.
We landed on the mainland after a couple of hours of circling over the water, gazing at the clouds and the sea life below the surface. There was a Chinese restaurant there that I’d been to once and loved, and when we got there we were seated at a booth in the corner. Jenna slid in first, but as I went to sit down next to her, Casey jumped in front of me and took my spot. I sat down next to my sister instead, trying not to look over at Jenna. My parents sat across from us.
Dinner was stiff and silent, with only my parents talking. I felt guilty—this was my mother’s birthday celebration dinner, and none of us were really focused on anything but each other. I tried to smile and respond to my parents, but in my head all I could think about was Jenna and the possibility that Casey knew about the two of us.
After dinner, Casey excused herself from the booth and disappeared. She came back after a few minutes and we heard the band strike up. The tune was familiar, one my parents had always danced to in the kitchen when we were kids. They had danced to it at their wedding, and though it always made Casey and I gag to see them so in love and affectionate, now even hearing the song made me feel a longing for the kind of romance my parents had.
“This is our song,” Alice gushed, looking over at Bruce and kissing him. He got up and took her by the hand, pulling her onto the dance floor. Casey cleared her throat then and looked at Jenna, then at me.
“I know that you two are together,” she said, her voice cold. I felt my stomach drop at her tone. I looked at her face to see that her eyes were brimming with tears despite her determination to stay distant from her emotions. “I—I saw you coming back this morning, wearing the same clothes from last night. And I saw you kiss today on the beach.”
“Casey—” Jenna said, but Casey cut her off.
“I thought we were friends, Jen. I thought you were interested in being friends with me. And you just wanted my brother?”
“No, it’s not like that,” Jenna insisted, her voice pleading. “Travis and I, we just couldn’t help it.”
Casey snorted. “Okay, Jenna.”
“Casey,” I said. “We’re really sorry. Both of us. But we didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Sure, you didn’t,” Casey said sarcastically. “You just so happened to invite my best friend to this private island and you just so happened to hook up on the very first day you’ve seen each other in years. Or have you been in touch since then?”
“I haven’t seen Travis since that phone call,” Jenna said to Casey. “This is the first time—”
“You know what? I don’t care,” said Casey, her voice like steel. “I really don’t. I hope you two are happy together.”
“Sis…”
She put her hand up to stop me. “Don’t even say anything, Travis. Just don’t.”
I went quiet. It was silent until my parents returned and silent after, though Casey immediately became chipper when my parents sat back down. She was pretending that nothing had happened, and everything was fine between the three of us when really my relationship with my sister had been shattered by the fact that I’d fallen in love with her best friend.
I sighed, glancing over at Jenna, who looked on the verge of tears herself. I could tell that she was fighting hard to hold them back in front of my parents, and she didn’t want them to see how upset she was and ask questions about what happened.
We left about an hour later, heading back to the house. I sat next to Jenna on the helicopter, our bodies pressed together, but I didn’t dare touch her as I wanted to. I would keep my hands to myself until later—though we didn’t really have to hide anything anymore, it would only make things worse to demonstrate any affection with Jenna in front of Casey. It would be like rubbing salt in the wound, and that was something I would never do to my sister.
We got back to the house and Casey went straight to her room after our parents went to bed, leaving Jenna and I alone together in the living room. There was a look of despair on her face that made me want to kiss her better, although I knew there was nothing I could do in this case to solve the problem.
“Jen—”
“Stop,” she said in a quiet voice that was nearly a whisper. “She hates us.”
“Baby,” I said, going to her, taking her arms in my hands. “She doesn’t hate us. She’s just upset. She’ll be okay with it eventually.”
“What if she’s not?” she asked, looking up into my eyes, desperate for comfort. I kissed her softly on the lips.
“She will be,” I promised her. She stared at me for a moment before nodding with a sigh.
Chapter 17: Jenna
“It’s going to be okay, Jenna,” Travis said. “Please don’t worry.”
I couldn’t help but to worry. Casey was my best friend and one of the most important people in my life. I loved her and I didn’t want to hurt her. I had seen the look in her eyes when she’d confronted us—she had felt betrayed and angry, so hurt, and the expression had put a lump in my throat that still hadn’t gone away.
“Come into my room to sleep,” Travis said, leaning into me, taking my mouth in a kiss. I shook my head no but he took my hand anyway, leading me up the stairs to his room.
“We don’t have anything to hide anymore,” he said as we went inside, closing the door behind us. He
pulled me into bed, though he didn’t try to take my clothes off or touch me beyond wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me against him. He could sense that I wasn’t in the mood for sex. What I really needed from him was comfort, and I felt that the moment he took me into his arms. It didn’t matter how comforted I felt, though; my heart was still racing, the knot still in my chest. I couldn’t stop thinking about Casey.
Travis kissed my forehead, stroking my cheek with his thumb.
“Tell me what you’re thinking. Let me make it better.”
“I think—I think I ruined my friendship with Casey.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “I know Casey. You know Casey. She probably just needs some time to sort out her feelings. She knows that we love her.”
“But did you see the look on her face?”
He frowned as he remembered it. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Yeah, I did.”
“I just hope she’ll forgive us. I don’t know what I would do if she didn’t.”
“She will,” he promised. “How about you come out to LA with me this weekend? Just you and me. We’ll get away from all of this.”
I thought about it, a little hesitant to say yes. On one hand, I didn’t want to show off my relationship to Casey. On the other, the chance to get to know Travis’ world was tempting.
“It would save me from having to sit next to her on the plane all the way back,” I said. That would be a nightmare, I knew. I didn’t think I could take that many hours of stony silence from my best friend. “Okay.”
“Okay?” he asked, grinning at me. I smiled back at him, leaning forward to kiss him. He responded by slipping his tongue into my mouth. I found my body rubbing up against him, desperate for some relief from the tension that was building up inside of me. It wasn’t only the situation with Casey that was getting under my skin—my desire for Travis was overpowering. The two combined created a nervousness in my body that could only be soothed by Travis and the way he touched me.
Travis wrapped his hand around my hip and pulled me close, his cock pressed against my pussy through the fabric of our clothes. I wanted him so bad that I tried to undress him, but he took my hands and held them still as he grinded against me instead. I felt like a teenager going to second base for the first time; even touching him like this outside of our clothes was a wonder to me in how good it felt. He took my mouth in another kiss, the length of his cock taunting me. I squirmed out of his gasp, taking my dress off before he could stop me. I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t wanted to stop me, anyway. I hadn’t worn a bra and my breasts were bare under my dress, firm and heavy in his hands as he cupped them and stroked my nipples with his thumbs.
He pinched them between his thumbs and forefingers, tugging on them lightly while I wiggled out of my panties, kicking them off so that I was naked. Every time I tried to undress him, he stopped me. I wanted our skin pressed together and hated every bit of fabric between us.
“Travis,” I whimpered, his cock grinding against my clit. “Please don’t do this.”
He groaned softly at my words, pulling back slightly to strip himself of his clothes and put on a condom. When he was naked, he pulled me against him again so that we were lying face to face on the bed, our bodies pressed together. I wrapped my leg over his hip, parting my legs for him so that he could slip his cock inside of me. The moment he filled me up, I sighed, feeling relief from the pressure that had been building inside of me. He held onto my leg, digging his fingers into my hips as he rode against me, sliding his cock in and out of my pussy in a tantalizingly slow way.
“You fit me so perfectly, Jenna,” he said. “So tight and wet on my cock. Your pussy was made for me.”
I kissed him in agreement, wrapping my leg around him tighter to pull him deeper. The way he was moving against my hips was making me feel out of control, my eyes rolling back as I took his cock over and over. He pulled out of me then, leaving me empty and bereft, and I pouted at him as he grinned and kissed my throat.
“Turn around,” he said, twirling his finger so that I knew to flip over. I turned on my other side so that my back was to him, pressing my ass back against his cock and wiggling it against him. He growled and I gasped in surprise when he brought his hand down on my ass to spank it, sending a surprise sting of pain through my skin.
“You trying to tease me?” he asked. I wriggled against him again, reaching back between my legs to take his cock and pull it forward. I rubbed it against my pussy with my hand as he lifted my leg up, then guided it into my pussy from behind. The angle filled me with a new sensation, especially when I realized that his every thrust in this position hit me in such a sweet spot that it made me moan aloud, even though I was trying to be quiet. He reached around me and put his hand over my mouth as he rode against me.
“That’s the spot, isn’t it?” he asked. “Does that feel real good, baby?”
I nodded, my mouth still muffled by his hand. I was grinding back against him, taking him deep inside of me.
“Oh my god,” I moaned as he started to rub my clit with his hand. The sensation of pleasure was too much and I tried to close my legs, but he was grasping me tight so that I was forced to keep them open. With him fucking me in all the right ways, hard but slow and deep, I forgot every worry in my head and could focus only on the pleasure in my body. “Oh my god.”
“You can come,” he said. “I’m not going to keep you from coming tonight. I want you to do it for me over and over.”
“Thank you,” I breathed as he sped his hips up. I turned my head to the side and he lifted his face to kiss me as I came for the first time, squirming against him. He kept going, rubbing along each side of my clit when it was too sensitive to touch it directly, teasing it with the tip of his finger once I was ready again. I came again, shuddering, crying out in his mouth. Still, he kept going, until I shattered with pleasure for a third time and was breathing heavily, my body slack and exhausted. He came a little while later just grinding inside of me, his fingers stroking the outer lips of my pussy. When we were finished, he pulled out of me and I cuddled back against him again, pulling his arm around my waist.
“Are you sure it’s going to be okay with Casey?” I asked him a few minutes later. Now that I was coming down from my ecstatic high the worry began to fill my mind again that I might have lost my best friend forever, all because I couldn’t keep myself from falling for her brother all over again. I couldn’t help what I felt for Travis and I didn’t feel like I could change it no matter how Casey felt, but I still felt an almost physical pain when I thought the possibility of us never being close again. He brought his hand up to stroke my hair away from my face.
“Yes,” he said, kissing my neck. “Go to sleep, baby. It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said, though I hesitated to believe it. I closed my eyes and found myself dozing easier than I thought I would, warm and comfortable with Travis in his bed.
When we woke up in the morning, we couldn’t help but to have lazy, hot morning sex, wrapped up in each other for as long as we could be before we knew that we had to go downstairs for breakfast. Afterward, we got in the shower, and Travis took his time lathering my body up with soap, washing every inch of my skin. I wished in that moment we could stay there forever under the hot water, and I would never have to worry about Casey or school again. I could be happy with Travis just like this for the rest of my life, but I knew that we had to face our responsibilities sooner rather than later.
We went downstairs for breakfast, and Travis’ parents raised their eyebrows when they saw us coming from his room together. I was worried about what they would think at first, and for a split second when they didn’t respond, I was worried that they’d feel the same way as Casey—like I’d betrayed and lied to them in a way, even though I was just doing what my heart told me to do. But then Alice beamed at us.
“Finally,” she said, and Bruce nodded in agreement.
“What?” Travis asked. “What
are you talking about?”
“Everybody knows you two have been in love forever,” Alice said as we took our seats at the table. I sat next to Casey, feeling uncomfortable and awkward at the thought that it had been obvious the whole time how interested I had been in Travis.
“Hey,” I said to my friend, hoping to get some kind of response from her.
“Hi,” she said shortly. She didn’t look up from her food, but stabbed at her pancake with more force than was needed, shredding it with her knife.
“Are you ready to go back yet?” I asked her. She shrugged, not answering. I almost felt like crying sitting there beside her. I felt like I would never see the real Casey again, happy and bubbly.
“We’re going to head to LA for the weekend today,” Travis said.