by Bronwyn Sell
‘I’m the barrel, you’re rolling over me. Gotcha.’
Her chest rose and fell quickly. She gripped his hand tighter, skipped away a step, skipped toward him and spun across his shoulder. His arm bent awkwardly, pain flashing through his elbow, and he tore his hand from hers with an unmanly yelp. Her back—he assumed it was her back—smacked into his and she thumped onto the sand behind him.
He turned. ‘Are you all right?’
She arched her back, wincing. ‘I forget to tell you to let my hand go. Maybe we should have watched a video on the internet first. That was harder than I thought.’ She looked up, shielding her eyes with a sandy hand. ‘Did I break you?’
He straightened and bent his arm. She watched, her lips parting in an expression that didn’t look like mere concern. Stop imagining things. She’s your sister. ‘All good. Try again?’ He held out a hand and she studied it for a few long seconds before tentatively taking it and letting him pull her up. She stumbled in a dent in the sand and he caught her shoulders. ‘You sure you’re okay?’ he said, sliding one hand down her spine. ‘You landed pretty hard.’
She shuddered under his touch and lurched into his chest, then away again, like he’d done earlier when she’d patted his back, but not for the same reason, surely? And what had that reason even been?
‘My back’s fine,’ she said. ‘But, ah, could you put on a T-shirt or something? For grip.’
‘Grip?’
‘So you’re not all … slippery.’
She was right, he was sweating, though the move hadn’t required much effort on his part and it wasn’t even that warm—mid-twenties at the most. Was that why she’d come over all wary? She didn’t want to touch her sweaty almost-brother. And fair enough.
He, on the other hand, was enjoying the contact far more than he should be. Not cool. Literally.
‘Give me a sec,’ he said. He jogged to the water, surged in and dived under a wave, welcoming the salty sting on his face. There was no temperature shock—it was like the air merely turned liquid. He did a long breaststroke pull and surfaced. Better. When he returned, she was watching him with that cagey look again. Last night she’d seemed so cool and uncomplicated. Or was that just wishful thinking?
Time to put Mission Instant Family on a go-slow before he screwed it up.
11
As Josh reached the towel he’d draped over his windsurfer boom, his phone beeped. He dried off and located it.
MA: Who’s the babe? Yours?
Crap. He should have left Amy out of the photo, but she’d given the shot life—a beautiful woman on one side of the frame, a yacht in the cove.
My new stepsister.
He deleted it. Better not rub it in that he was here to brazenly recruit a family.
Geoff’s daughter.
No. Somehow that was worse. He deleted it and stared at Amy, who was springing into perfect barrel rolls in the air. Did she even need him for this lift?
Just some random.
He pressed send, slid the phone into his backpack, and pulled out his T-shirt.
Was it normal for a guy to worry about making his mother jealous? She wasn’t used to sharing him with another woman.
‘Step one: T-shirt,’ he said, returning to Amy and pulling it over his head. She’d swapped the sarong for the shorts that cupped her arse like—Shut up. ‘And step two?’
‘Let’s walk it through standing up. But crouch a little so we’re about the same height.’
‘Roger that.’ Thigh workout, part two.
She placed herself back-to-back with him, their spines grazing through his T-shirt, which evidently came as a surprise to his spine because it shivered. As she breathed in, her back expanded against his. ‘This is the middle of the move. Link your arms through mine, as if you were trying to pin me in place behind you. But don’t.’
They played arm hockey before coming to rest with her elbows hooked over his upper arms. She rolled to one side of his back, then another, their arms still linked. ‘Feel that? That’s the basic movement, except you’ll be bending over and I’m briefly in the air, with my legs splayed. You support me with this arm on the way up …’ She pulled on his right arm, still hooked through her left. ‘And then this one on the way down,’ she said, pulling on the other, ‘letting go in between. The momentum should ease any need for weightlifting.’
She untangled their arms and stepped to his right. ‘Let’s walk it through, if your thighs can take it.’
Yes. That was the witty, cool woman he’d met last night. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe his sister—and, mate, that word sounded weird, but he just wasn’t used to it—maybe his sister was more complicated than she first appeared. Which was all good. You couldn’t grow up with a mother like his unless you accepted that people had different sides to them.
‘My thighs can take it,’ he said with a start, realising he’d left her hanging. He stood and shook out his legs before resuming the position.
‘I take your hand,’ she said. As before, she slid her hand into his, swung out slowly and spun back in, pressing his arm into her—what did you call that part between her belly and her tits? And why did he keep thinking about her tits? You probably weren’t supposed to notice your sister even had tits. She kept spinning, in slow motion, until she’d rolled right over him, their hands releasing this time, their arms hooking on the way up and then the way down. As she spun away, she found his left hand with her right and ended with one leg elegantly pointed, her posture tall, her free arm straight with the hand flicked up. Ta-da. And she’d insisted it was her mother and sister who were the dancers. No slouching among the women in this family. In his family. The curves and dips between her shoulders were muscular and toned and shiny with sunscreen or sweat or both—right through her collarbone, the dip at the base of her neck, her cleavage …
You definitely weren’t supposed to notice your sister’s cleavage, even if it was right there, and pushed up by her top into an intriguing—
‘Uh, Josh?’
He released her hand. ‘Sorry, just putting it all together in my head.’ Putting too much of her together.
‘Do you get a feel for where you have to hold me? Uh, I mean, where you have to support me?’
‘Sure. I’m a barrel with arms and legs and I bend over while you have your way with me.’ Shut. Up.
Her eyes widened. ‘Um, something like that. We’ll be done in a few minutes and then we can go back to the resort.’ She sounded relieved. He was too. He’d expected this to be a laugh, a bonding exercise with his fun new sister. He wasn’t sure what it had become, but it wasn’t that. ‘Let’s run through it a few more times standing up, if those thighs are coping.’ A devious smile stamped a dimple in her cheek. Noticing your sister’s dimples was probably acceptable.
‘My thighs can cope with a lot,’ he responded. A blush crawled up her neck. Wait—did he just try to … Was he flirting? With his sister? ‘I mean … I mean, I’m fine with this. I do a lot of lifting and weights and stuff—at the gym, at the station, at home. For the job.’ Real smooth, mate. She looked briefly at his biceps, and then his chest. Things were suddenly so charged when everything had been so neutral.
‘Let’s do it standing up,’ she said. ‘The dance move,’ she added quickly.
With another woman, he’d make a joke of the tension. Hell, with another woman, he’d make a night of it. But this was his sister. And no way was he ruining his one chance at happy families. He should think of her as, say, the girlfriend of a good mate. You could joke around and get along, but she was off-limits and there were never undercurrents. You did not go there, ever.
Unless they broke up.
No. Not even then.
They ran through the move several more times, and with each repeat he became more aware of the contact—her hand in his, her ribs pressed against his arm, her back rolling over his, their hands connecting again as she spun to a stop on the other side, their gazes meeting at the end because that felt right, like a c
ompletion. Aside from her occasional instructions or corrections, they remained silent. His throat felt too dry for speech anyway. His chest was heaving way more than the exertion warranted. Had to be the midday heat. Dehydration, maybe. Tiredness, definitely. Lucky they weren’t doing a tango.
As they finished their third or fourth run-through, she slid her hand from his, broke eye contact and glanced at the cove. At some point, the catamaran and its family had left. Several sails cut across the horizon, though who knew what breeze they were catching. None of those famous trade winds today. Even the waves seemed listless, brushing the sand rather than crashing onto it.
‘Swim?’ he said.
‘Definitely.’
He was out of his T-shirt and in the water in seconds. He set out for a mooring about a hundred metres out—he needed a good physical blowout. He made it just ahead of her and held the buoy, riding the slight swell up and down. Her swimming stroke was as strong and graceful as her dancing. He’d pay good money to watch her own the dance floor at a club, hair whipped and wild and sweaty, skin glistening, smiling as she lost herself in the music.
Why was he so obsessed with his stepsister’s sweat? Especially the little bead that had trailed into her—
What is wrong with you?
She did a dolphin dive and surfaced, her hair trailing behind her.
‘This is insane,’ he muttered.
‘Stunning, huh?’ She treaded in a three-sixty, taking in the sweep of granite cliffs, hills covered in a rug of deep green, pale gold sand, big granite boulders, the ocean. She got a hold on the other side of the buoy and it stabilised. Stunning, all right.
When she’d caught her breath, she released the mooring and floated face-up, her eyes closed, surrendering to the current. He shouldn’t notice how the water curled around her curves.
The slap of a wave across his cheek brought him back. Well deserved. They’d strayed way past brother–sister bonding. At least he had. A private beach, dancing, swimming, flirting, blushing. A real brother would swim with his sister without checking out her (objectively excellent) tits. A real brother would tease his sister without every word coming out loaded. Undercurrents to lose a battleship in. He had a lot to learn about insta-brotherhood.
‘I love starfishing out here,’ she said as she righted herself and grabbed the mooring. ‘Nothing better in the world. I could do it for hours. I did once, as a kid. The sunburn was something else, but it was worth it.’
‘I’d love to do that.’
She frowned, her nose wrinkling. ‘Get sunburned?’
‘Starfish.’
‘Come again?’
‘I’ve never been able to, not remaining perfectly still, like you. Well, maybe as a kid, but I can’t remember. Watch.’ He let go, leaned back and relaxed, but in seconds his legs sank, then the rest of him, and the water closed over his face. He stroked up and caught the buoy, flicking his hair off his forehead. ‘I’ve never been able to float—and it’s worse in fresh water. Too heavy.’
‘Ohhh, I get it. You’re one of these unfortunate people who are just too, too muscly and have a way too low body fat percentage. I feel so sorry for you. I’m one of these people blessed with abundant natural buoyancy and I hadn’t stopped to think of how deprived you sinkers are.’
He splashed her and she ducked, her broad smile visible even underwater. That was more like it—exactly the sort of thing a sister teased a brother about. He’d love to reassure her—if she needed it, and maybe she didn’t—that her body was abso-fucking-lutely perfect the way it was but that was doomed to come out very wrong. Stepbrotherhood had a whole set of rules he hadn’t studied up on.
‘Race you back,’ he said as she surfaced. ‘To make it fair this time, I’ll wait until you’re in the shallows, and just standing up, and then I’ll start.’
‘Oh, were you racing earlier? I was just taking my t—’
Mid-sentence, she launched into a strong freestyle. He laughed, turning away to avoid getting a face-full of spray from her feet. He gave her a fair head start then let rip, enjoying the burn in his muscles. He reached the shallows just ahead of her and mimed a slow-motion sprint onto the sand. See? He could nail this brother gig.
She commando-crawled to the lip of the lapping water and flopped over on her back, panting. ‘I wasn’t even trying.’
‘Oh, was that supposed to be a race?’
He held out a hand, and this time she didn’t hesitate to let him pull her up. Maybe it was the swim, maybe it was the perfect day, the perfect cove, the perfect woman—the perfect sister—but his chest felt like it might pop like a balloon.
‘Right,’ she said, brushing sand off her butt. He was starting to notice that she did that a lot. ‘Let’s do it bending over. I mean—’ She gave him a panicked look, then averted her eyes.
‘I know what you mean,’ he said quickly.
And there it went, sliding downhill, right back to awkwardly sexual. But her reaction right there, that blush spreading up from her cleavage …
Oh shit.
This attraction was not one-sided.
As they resumed practising, she didn’t pull her shorts back on over her bathers, so he guessed he had permission to ditch his sweaty T-shirt. Which meant he became hyper-aware of her hands brushing his shoulders and back, and the bare skin all the way up the sides of her legs to her hips—athletic legs dusted with sand, a sexy combination of rounded and strong and toned, like her shoulders. Not that he trusted himself to look at her shoulders or her legs, or all the more obvious places a brother didn’t go near. Even her dimple wasn’t safe. Eyes. He could look at her eyes, now a brilliant pale green.
On about the eighth repeat, she spun into his arm but stopped dead just as he braced to take her weight. ‘Eek. Stop. Stop.’
He turned and grabbed her shoulders. ‘What’s up? Did you pull something?’
She looked up toward the track that wound down the hill, not that you could see much of it between the trees. ‘No, it’s not that. I thought I heard something—someone. Voices.’
They waited, listening over the wash of the water and the clucks and chirps and warbles and caws and screeches of dozens of invisible birds. It was noisy, now he thought about it. She blinked up at him, her face inches from his. ‘Must have been a cockatoo,’ she whispered, ‘or flying foxes.’
‘Must have been,’ he said, his voice gravelly. He could probably let her go now.
Her eyes dropped to his lips, and then—he couldn’t help it—his eyes dropped to her lips, just in time to see the tip of a pink tongue shoot out to moisten them.
Okay, that undid him. He released her arms and cradled her jaw instead. She inhaled shakily but didn’t move away. He froze a second, staring at those lips, the bottom one fuller than the top. Would they taste of salt and sweat? His mouth watered. And there he went again with the sweat fetish. Her lips parted. Don’t think about it. Just do it.
He tilted her head up and went in for a taste, which was hands-down the wrong thing to do and the right thing to do.
12
Before Josh’s lips could connect, Amy lurched away. He stumbled, the world doing a barrel roll of its own.
‘Our dads!’ she hissed.
‘What?’ He swung around. A mountain bike was bouncing down the track above them. Sanjay, in clear view. Amy’s dad emerged from the canopy behind him, his eyes on the trail.
Amy frantically looked around, as if hunting for someplace to hide. ‘They can’t know what we’re doing. It’s supposed to be a surprise.’ She gave a little gasp. ‘I mean, the dancing, not the…’
Oh shit. He’d nearly kissed her. And she’d nearly kissed him back. And one or both of their dads might have seen.
As Sanjay navigated his bike onto grass, muting the rattling, Josh tried resetting his expression. Couldn’t be good if he looked as saucer-eyed as Amy.
‘Hey, Dads,’ he said as Sanjay slung his leg over the bike and came to a stop, and Geoff puffed to a halt behind him. Josh wen
t to stick his guilty hands into his pockets. Turned out he didn’t have pockets. They slid right on past. He settled for planting them on his hips. ‘What are you…? Why are you…? You’re biking.’
‘Geoff wanted to go for a ride, stretch our legs.’ Sanjay looked from Josh to Amy and back, his brow wrinkling, then at Josh’s T-shirt and Amy’s sarong huddled together on the grass like damning evidence. The rest of his expression was hidden by sunglasses, but Josh could piece it together.
‘In hindsight, not my best idea.’ Geoff glanced at his shirt, which looked like it’d been hit with a fire hose.
‘Bit hot for a shirt,’ said Josh’s guilty conscience.
‘We were just … just …’ Amy gestured vaguely at the ocean, like the answer was written on it when, in fact, it was written on her face, in twin red spots on her cheeks. What were they—teenagers?
‘Amy stood on something sharp,’ Josh said. ‘I was helping her.’
She raised her foot and rubbed it. ‘Yeah. Yeah. Seems all right now.’
‘What are you two on about?’ Geoff looked at Sanjay with one eyebrow raised, as if seeking a translation but Sanjay was still eye-balling Josh. Geoff rubbed his hands together. ‘I’m calling it swim o’clock.’ Was he playing peacemaker or was he really unaware? Not that anything had gone on. But what would it have progressed to if they hadn’t been interrupted?
Well, thank fuck they had been.
‘I’m definitely ready for a swim,’ Amy said, though her bathers were still wet and clingy from the last one, or maybe that was just sweat. She must suspect he had a medical condition, the way he kept resolutely pulling his focus back to her eyes.