Spoiled Forever Pt. 02

Author's Notes: This is a slow-burn story. Part 2 takes its time building the tension between Susan and Dennis as they work toward being together properly in the most delicious way.

This part introduces and heavily focuses on the taboo of sleeping sex while trying to make it as consensual non-consent as possible. Further content warnings: sibling incest, breeding themes, voyeurism, manipulation and brattiness.

Story so far: Susan (24) and her brother Dennis (28) have been each other's whole world since their parents died when she was sixteen. He raised her, spoils her however he can, and she adored him for it. Then a billionaire named Victor Hale offered them ten million dollars each to have sex in front of him. They took the deal. Now Susan wants more from Dennis than just a brother, and instead of taking her Plan B, she flushed it. Part 2 picks up the next morning with everything between them unspoken.

*****

Susan

I woke up before six and started refreshing my banking app, one hand on my phone, the other low on my stomach. By seven AM I'd checked maybe forty times. When the nine million dollars finally showed up I ran down the hall and banged on Denny's door.

"It's there!" I said when he opened it, squinting and sleep-rumpled, hair going in three directions. "Dennis! It's actually there!"

He took my phone, stared at the screen, then looked up at me.

"Holy shit!"

I squealed and grabbed him and he hugged me so hard he lifted me off my feet and swung me around in the hallway like I weighed nothing.

We ordered breakfast from the expensive place we'd never let ourselves try. Ate it at the kitchen table, giddy and talking over each other, planning out loud, and neither of us said a word about how we'd earned it. We just talked about what to do with it, like the money had appeared out of nowhere instead of out of us having sex with each other while a billionaire watched.

Victor had paid us a million each upfront, a good-faith gesture before the real number landed, and we'd used it to pay off our debt and order Denny a fancy new laptop, but nine million more each was a different universe. I told him I was done with apartments. I wanted a house. A real house, with a yard and a kitchen that had an island and closets I could actually walk into.

"And I want to go shopping," I said, pointing my fork at him. "Real shopping. Prada, the whole thing."

He grinned at me over his coffee. "This weekend, baby. We'll go wherever you want."

"I want a lot of things," I warned him, and my hand drifted under the table to my stomach. I reached for the coffee instead.

By Tuesday we'd both made our calls. I quit and handed Janet my badge without giving two weeks. Denny called his boss from our kitchen table and by Wednesday he owned fifteen percent of the company, with a corner office and executive title on the way. He kept saying it was surreal, same people treating him differently overnight, but money does that.

We stopped setting alarms, stopped looking for deals. We could actually breathe for the first time since our parents died.

But I kept counting days on my phone when Denny wasn't looking, checking my body for signs I hoped I wasn't imagining.

*****

There was no way I could have waited until the weekend. Denny took me to Prada on Thursday. We'd window-shopped here once, months ago, laughing at the prices. The saleswoman gave us a look when we walked in, the kind of look you give people you assume are browsing, and I smiled at her and said we'd need a fitting room.

"Try this one."

I tried the black one first, a sleeker version of the dress I'd worn to Victor's gala at ten times the price, and he barely looked up from his phone. "Nice. Try the red one too."

The red one was different. Tighter, clinging to everything, and in the three-way mirror I could see every curve and every jiggle when I moved. There was nowhere to hide in this dress.

"This one makes me look ridiculous," I said, checking the back. "My ass looks fat in this. Like it's eating the dress."

Denny looked up from his phone. His mouth opened and nothing came out and then he cleared his throat. "You look incredible," he said. "That dress looks amazing on you."

"You always say that." I turned back to the mirror, frowning. "Be honest, Denny. It makes me look fat, right?"

"It doesn't make you look fat." Fast, almost sharp, like the suggestion offended him. "You look... you're beautiful, Susie. Really beautiful."

His voice had cracked on "beautiful" and he was already on his feet.

"We're getting it," he said, heading for the counter. "Both. We're getting both."

I watched him hand over his card. His fingers fumbled it slightly and he laughed at himself and the salesperson smiled. I could tell he'd never spent three thousand dollars on anything in his life, let alone on two dresses for his little sister whose ass was testing the structural limits of Prada. I went back to change, and as I pulled the red dress over my head I kept thinking about his face in the mirror.

That's what good brothers do, I told myself while buttoning my jeans. They tell you you're beautiful when you feel like shit about yourself.

We hit two more stores after that, and the second one was his idea. His card was out before I could reach for mine. He was having fun too, I could tell. He held bags without complaining, gave opinions when I asked, and made fun of a hat I tried on. By the time we got home I had six shopping bags and I'd had more fun with him than any date I'd ever been on.

"Thanks for today," I said as we set the bags down.

"Of course, anything for you, baby." He was smiling.

Then he was heading for his room. "I need to catch up on some work."

He owned fifteen percent of the company and could work whenever he wanted, and somehow he needed to work right after three hours of shopping with me.

*****

Our first weekend as millionaires was amazing. Saturday we stayed in pajamas on the couch arguing about which streaming services to get, and after twenty minutes of him making cases for each one I grabbed his laptop and subscribed to all of them. He scratched his head. "That's one way to settle it."

Sunday we drove to open houses in neighborhoods we had no business being in, places with pools and gardens and more rooms than two people could ever use, and I took pictures of bathtubs that could fit four people and sent them to Mia without context. She sent back: "Ok a million does NOT buy houses like this ???????? What else did Victor pay you for?? ????????????"

I sent back a single smiley face. She sent five more texts trying to get details and I ignored all of them.

I dove into a king-size bed in a master suite with a walk-in closet bigger than our apartment, and Denny came and lay down behind me and wrapped his arm around my waist.

"What?" I said, because I could tell something was on his mind.

"Nothing. Just been a while since I've seen you this happy." He hugged me tighter. "I missed it."

I could feel his chest against my back and his breath on my neck and I wanted to stay like that forever, which wasn't new, but it was getting harder to ignore. I threw a decorative pillow over my shoulder into his face because if I stayed like that any longer I was going to do something stupid. He laughed and we kept looking at houses until the sun went down.

That was the last good day for a while.

Monday he went to the office and didn't come home until nine. By Wednesday he was leaving before I woke up and coming back after dark, heading straight for his room. I guess the new role was eating him alive, going from mid-level to executive overnight, all that pressure and all those hours.

Stupid Denny. What's the point of being rich if you can't spend time with me?

I started going to hot yoga every morning since I didn't have a job to blame for skipping it anymore. No excuses left for this chubby body. The instructor was annoyingly positive and the room smelled like feet but I went every day because what else was I going to do, sit around waiting for my brother to come home?

But the small things kept showing up even through the distance. My coffee waiting in a travel mug every morning, three sugars and a splash of cream, made exactly right. Designer clothes in bags by my door with notes in his handwriting: Thought you'd like this. -D

I asked him what was wrong a couple times. Same answer basically every time, tired, work, busy, like he'd practiced it. That fake-fine smile was getting a workout.

Then one night I woke up to find him on the couch holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey.

"You're still up, Denny?"

He looked up. He'd been drinking enough that I could tell.

I sat down next to him and leaned into his side. He put his arm around me and we just sat there.

"I was supposed to protect you," he said finally, aiming it at the coffee table instead of at me.

"You did. You have been. For eight years you've-"

"Don't." He pulled away and stood, grabbed his glass and drained it. "Just don't, Susie."

He poured another with shaking hands and I watched him and waited.

"You should be out there, Susie. Meeting someone. Getting married, having kids with a..." He waved the glass at nothing. "A normal guy. You deserve that. Not stuck with me."

I wanted to say I don't want normal. I don't want some guy. But he turned to look at me and the look on his face stopped the words in my throat.

"It won't happen again." He said it like a warning to himself, not to me. But he'd hesitated before he got there, his mouth open with nothing coming out, and I'd heard everything in that gap. "I'm your brother. That's all I'm ever going to be."

I didn't say anything.

He grabbed the bottle and disappeared into his room. The door closed and I sat alone on the couch we'd picked out together when we could barely afford anything, ten million dollars in my account and nowhere to put it that mattered.

But I'd heard that pause. Felt his arm tighten around me before his brain overrode it. He was saying no because it scared him. It had to be.

*****

After that night on the couch he pulled away even further. He left early, came home late. I left dinner on the counter and he ate it alone. We became roommates who used to be close and I hated it.

Then one afternoon I was doing yoga in the living room in loose shorts and a thin tank top. I moved through my routine but I was listening for sounds from his room. When his shower turned off and I heard footsteps in the hall, I settled into a stretch, sitting with my legs spread in a wide V, leaning forward between them. The shorts rode up. I'd known they would.

"Denny, can you help me with something?"

He stopped in the doorway behind me. I could feel him there, pausing longer than he should have.

"What do you need?"

"I'm trying to get deeper into this stretch but I can't on my own. Just push down on my back?"

Footsteps, then he knelt behind me and his hands settled on my upper back, warm through the thin fabric. He pushed gently and I sank lower.

"More," I said. "I can go deeper."

He pushed harder, leaning his weight in, hands sliding lower on my back for leverage. His thumbs pressed into something, lingered there, and then his hands jerked away.

He stood so fast his knee cracked.

"You need to change." He was looking at my face, only my face, hands clenched at his sides. "I can see your underwear. Go change into something else."

"I was just doing yoga, Denny. These are my workout shorts. I've worn them a hundred-"

"Go change your clothes, Susan." His voice was flat. "And stop. Whatever you think is happening between us, it's not. It can't."

"I don't know what you-"

"Yes you do." He cut me off. "You know exactly what you were doing."

My cheeks went hot. He'd seen right through me.

He walked to his room. I heard the door close and the lock turn.

He'd been right, I had been trying to seduce him, and it had half-worked judging by how he froze the second his thumbs hit my lower back.

The lock clicking hurt more than the rejection. He'd rather deadbolt himself in his room than just talk to me about it.

*****

Days became weeks, and every morning I woke up wondering if today would be different.

I tracked everything obsessively on my phone. Sore breasts, or was I imagining it? Nausea that felt real at seven AM and vanished by lunch.

We barely spoke. We moved through separate routines and some nights I lay in bed and wondered if I'd trade all of it back, every dollar, just to have things be normal between us again.

I took a test at five AM on a Tuesday, sitting on the bathroom floor in the dark with my phone timer counting down three minutes. It was probably still too early to mean anything. Did it anyway, because staring at a test strip felt more productive than staring at the ceiling. Single pink line. I shoved it under the sink where Denny wouldn't find it and went back to bed. I took four more after that, one every few days, same results.

About three weeks after Victor's, the smell of coffee made me gag and I barely made it to the bathroom.

Denny was at the door in seconds, knocking hard. "Susie? You okay?" A pause, then quieter: "Should I get you a pregnancy test?"

He'd been counting too, probably, just hoping for the opposite result.

"Just bad takeout," I said through the door, wiping my mouth. "I'm fine."

He stood there a while before his footsteps moved away, slow and reluctant, like he wasn't sure he believed me.

I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at myself in the mirror.

*****

A few nights later I dreamed I was running through empty hallways calling his name. Every door opened to another empty room, dust and sheets over the furniture, and I could hear his voice ahead of me, fading.

"I can't do this anymore, Susie."

I turned a corner and saw him at the end of a long corridor, back to me, walking away. I ran but my legs wouldn't work right, each step impossibly slow while he got further until the dark swallowed him and I was alone. Sixteen again, no one left. The corridor was our old kitchen now, the one from the house where we grew up, and it was shrinking around me until I couldn't breathe.

My eyes flew open and I was gasping, heart slamming.

Denny was sitting on the edge of my bed looking down at me, face creased with worry.

"Hey. You're okay," he said, soft and urgent. "You were having a nightmare."

My face was wet. I'd been crying in my sleep and the dream still clung to everything.

"You're here," I said, relieved it was just a dream.

He hesitated, then his hand went to my shoulder. "You sounded scared, baby. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

His hand was shaking slightly. His face looked flushed in the dim light, like he'd come running when he heard me. I reached out and gripped his wrist just to make sure he was real and solid and not disappearing down some corridor.

"It was just a dream," I said, more for me than him. "I'm fine now."

"Want to talk about it?"

"No." I shook my head. I'd die before telling him how thirsty I sounded in my own dreams. "Really, I'm okay."

He tucked the blanket around my shoulders. "I'm right down the hall if you need me. You know that."

"I know." I caught his hand before he stood up. "Hey, Denny? Love you." It came out before I knew I was going to say it.

He was quiet. "Love you too, Susie."

His voice choked up a little when he said it.

He squeezed my hand and pulled the door closed softly and I lay there in the dark with my heart still going.

But he'd come. Even now, after all the distancing, he'd heard me scared and he'd come running. And I realized I couldn't remember the last time either of us had said love you. We showed it every day, the coffee, the checking in, eight years of taking care of each other. But when was the last time we'd actually said them out loud?

I rested my hand on my stomach and closed my eyes.

I'd watched that little white pill swirl down the toilet the morning after we had sex, because if I was pregnant with his baby, he couldn't lock his door and pretend we were just siblings anymore. He'd have to face it. Face us.

Please.

*****

Three days later I woke up and knew before I turned on the light.

A dull ache low in my belly and wetness when I sat up. I went to the bathroom and looked at the tissue and it was bright red. Not spotting. Full fucking flow.

I sat on the toilet, staring at nothing.

I'd spent four weeks tracking every twitch in my body, imagining his face when I told him, so sure that flushing the Plan B that night would be enough, that biology would do what I couldn't. My period was just a week late.

I cleaned up mechanically, pulled on sweatpants, and went to find him.

Denny was in the kitchen making coffee. I walked straight into his arms and buried my face in his chest.

"Susie?" His arms came around me immediately, hand going to my hair. "What's wrong? You look pale."

"Just cramps," I mumbled against him. "Period came."

His hand paused on my back.

Then he held me tighter and I felt the relief go through him.

"Thank God," he breathed into my hair. "I love you, Susie. I'm sorry you're hurting."

I closed my eyes and held still until I could breathe again. You have no idea why I'm hurting, Denny.

He pulled back and he was smiling, really smiling, for the first time in a month. Then he kissed my forehead and I had to close my eyes against it.

"What a relief, right?" He kissed the top of my head. "We're okay, Susie. Everything's okay now."

He went back to making coffee, humming under his breath now, pouring two cups and moving around the kitchen lighter than I'd seen him in weeks, like our night at Victor's had never happened.

I stood there with one hand pressed flat against my empty stomach, watching him hum.

"Yeah," I said. "Such a relief."

He smiled at me over his coffee and kept humming.

*****

I barely left my room for four days.

The blackout curtains stayed drawn. I ordered expensive takeout I didn't eat and let it sit on my nightstand until Denny quietly removed the containers while I pretended to sleep. The cramps were brutal and every trip to the bathroom was a reminder of what hadn't happened. My body clearing itself out, resetting, going back to normal like it had never even tried.

Thanks for nothing.

One afternoon I scrolled through designer bags I used to leave sitting in my cart for months and bought three of them without even checking the prices.

They showed up two days later and I sat on my bed and opened the first one, a Hermès I'd been dreaming about since I was nineteen. I pulled it out of the tissue paper and held it in my lap and stared at it and felt absolutely nothing. I put it back in the box and didn't open the other two.

Mostly I lay in bed staring at my phone, reading forums I had no business reading, about women who'd wanted something so badly their bodies tricked them into believing it was real, phantom symptoms and false hope. That had been me for the past month, weeks of convincing myself I felt pregnant when I was just desperate for something that would bind us together so he could never leave.

The nightmare kept drifting back in pieces, Denny walking away down a corridor and the kitchen shrinking and being sixteen again, completely alone. I'd wake up and remember the emptiness, and I couldn't tell if the ache was about the baby or about him.

Denny knocked around noon on the fourth day.

"Susie? You need anything?"

Yeah, Denny. You. But thanks for asking.

"Just cramps. I'm fine."

He didn't leave right away. I heard him set something down outside the door, probably tea, then his footsteps going back down the hall slowly, like he was hoping I'd change my mind.

How could he not see it? I'd practically thrown myself at him during yoga and he'd told me to stop. In my defense, I'd never actually had to seduce anyone before. Guys just showed up. I smiled, they came running. But Denny wasn't guys and apparently bending over in short shorts wasn't enough for him.

I could just tell him. Walk out there and say Denny, I want more than this. But absolutely not. He was supposed to come to me. I wasn't going to beg my own brother to want me. I had some pride left.

Which left me with exactly zero ideas and a cup of tea outside my door.

My phone buzzed.

Mia: "Babe you've been radio silent for days ???? You okay?"

I thought about ignoring it. But four days alone in my room with nothing but my phone and my thoughts was starting to make me stir crazy. And Mia was good at this stuff, at figuring out what men actually wanted under all the bullshit. At the very least she'd make me laugh.

Me: "I'm alive I promise ???? Can we meet today though? I need your take on something."

Mia: "Ooh mysterious. Rosie's rooftop? 1pm?"

Me: "????"

I forced myself out of bed. The shower helped. I put on enough makeup to not look like I'd been crying into my pillow for four days and pulled a sundress out of one of the boxes still sitting by the door.

The tea was still warm outside my door. I stepped over it and headed out.

*****

Mia was already at Rosie's when I got there, sunglasses pushed up on her head, mimosa half-gone. She looked me up and down as I sat.

"Is that new? That's cute." She rubbed the fabric between her fingers. "That's really cute. Okay, things have clearly changed since the last time I saw you."

"Yeah." I pushed the menu aside. "But not the stuff that matters. Guy trouble, Mia. I'm stuck."

"Oh shit, is this the Victor Hale thing?" Mia leaned forward. "Did sugar daddy get clingy? I knew it. Babe, men with that kind of money always get weird after-"

"It's not Victor."

Mia tilted her head and squinted at me over her mimosa.

"Sure it's not. A million dollars doesn't just show up in your checking account because someone liked Dennis's 'business pitch.'" She made air quotes. "You told me it was nothing and I let it go because you obviously didn't want to talk about it, but come on, Susie-"

"Mia. Can we please focus on my actual problem?"

She studied me, then sat back. "Fine. Mystery guy. What's the problem?"

"He wants me. I know he does. But he won't let himself." I shoved the menu to the side of the table. "I've tried being direct and he just shuts it down. Tells me it can't happen, that I deserve better, all this noble self-sacrificing bullshit."

Mia raised her eyebrows and tapped one long nail against her glass.

"I've seen how he looks at me when he thinks I'm not paying attention. He wants me, Mia. I know he's just scared, and he's decided he knows what's best for me and I'm supposed to just like, go along with it."

"That's like, really annoying," Mia said, flagging down a waiter and ordering me a mimosa without asking.

"It's so annoying."

"Have you checked his phone? His browser?" She said it like it was obvious. "That's how you figure out what someone actually wants."

"That feels like a violation of privacy, Mia."

"It's research." She took a long sip. "You remember Kyle?"

"Which Kyle? The one who was obsessed with you or the whipped one?"

"The obsessed one. The sex is fine, whatever, but there's always this thing I can't figure out. He keeps asking me to wear my hair down, keeps buying me these little plaid skirts, and I'm like okay, you have a thing for schoolgirls, I guess it's a Japanese thing or something." She paused to finish her mimosa. "But then one day he's at work and I need his laptop for something and I find this folder right on his desktop. Titled, I shit you not, 'Redhead Brats Get What They Deserve.'"

I nearly choked on my drink.

"I open it and there's like forty videos of redheads getting fucked." She waved her hand. "And suddenly all these weird things he'd say during sex made sense, all the little requests. Turns out he wasn't dating me, he was dating his porn folder."

"Please tell me you called him out."

"I did better. I got my hair done, sat down in front of him, and sent him links to his own bookmarks with a note that said 'just so we're on the same page.'" She grinned. "You should have seen his face. He just sat there staring at his phone like I'd hacked the Pentagon. But then, the sex that night was amazing, and after that it just kept getting better."

I was laughing, but I'd stopped hearing her.

"Check his shit, Susie." She said it casually, reaching for the bread basket. "His browser, whatever he looks at when nobody's watching. Men are not subtle and whatever he actually wants is all right there."

Every time I'd tried to get close to him he shut it down. But Mia had a point. His browser wouldn't know how to be noble.

"You went quiet," Mia said, smiling. "I knew you'd get it."

"I'm getting it."

"Good." She clinked her glass against mine. "To research."

"To research. And to questionable privacy violations in the name of love."

"Now you sound like me." She finished her drink and waved for the check. "Oh, and Susie? Screenshots. Good research requires multiple reviews."

"You're so nosy."

"I'm practical." She reached for her card but I put mine down first.

"I've got it."

Mia raised her eyebrows. "Oh, look at you. Miss money bags." She looked at me. "Wait. If you got a million, did Dennis get one too?"

I squinted at her.

She laughed. "Relax, I'm not going after your brother. I like breathing." She leaned back. "But seriously, you know you get crazy when he dates someone."

"I do not."

"Rachel? Senior year? You cried about your parents at his birthday dinner so she had to leave early. Then you did it again at hers."

"That was real."

"Twice, babe."

I opened my mouth and closed it. She wasn't wrong. I'd never liked any of Denny's girlfriends and none of them had lasted and I'd never really asked myself why.

We finished and I signed the check and we walked out together. Walking home, I was already thinking about Denny's laptop sitting on his desk.

I couldn't do it today because he'd be home, but tomorrow was Tuesday and Denny always went to the gym on Tuesdays. Two hours minimum, three if he hit the sauna.

Tomorrow I'd have the apartment to myself.

*****

Tuesday evening, Denny grabbed his gym bag.

"Want me to pick up anything on the way back?"

"No, I'm good. Have a good workout."

The door closed behind him. I waited ten minutes, then went to the living room.

Denny's laptop sat on the desk by the window, the one I'd borrow sometimes. It didn't have a password and never had. I opened it and went straight to browser history.

It took me about ten minutes to get the picture. His porn was pretty boring. Curvy girls, thick thighs, the usual stuff. I scrolled through a few pages of it and it was all the same. Okay, so he liked curvy women. I could work with that.

I was about to close it when I noticed the dates. The most recent search was from over three weeks ago. He'd stopped using this laptop completely.

Because he had a new one. The one he'd been talking about at breakfast that first week.

I stood outside his bedroom door. He never locked it. I pushed it open. His new laptop was right there on his desk, lid closed.

I sat down at his desk and just stared at the laptop. Eight years he'd spent taking care of me and I was about to snoop through his private laptop like some kind of stalker because my best friend told me to.

But I was already here. And I needed to know.

I opened it and got a password screen. Of course he'd locked this one.

I tried his birthday, mine, our parents' names. Nothing. Then I tried our old address, the house where we grew up, and the screen unlocked.

Of course it did. Brand new computer and he'd locked it with an address from a decade ago. That was so Denny.

I went to the browser history and started where the other laptop left off.

The first few days were just setup. Work emails, stock prices, YouTube. Then the porn started, same curvy-girl stuff as the other laptop.

Then about a week in, something else.

"Brother sister first time." "Sister seduces brother."

I stopped scrolling.

And I'd felt guilty snooping five minutes ago. Felt like a terrible sister for invading his privacy. Meanwhile, Denny had a password-locked laptop full of brother-sister fantasies he'd started searching for right around the time he stopped being able to look me in the eye.

I kept scrolling. The searches got more specific as the days went on. "Accidental creampie sister." "Brother and sister no condom." And then they shifted again.

"Brother touches sleeping sister." "Sleeping sister no memory." "Somnophilia incest." "Brother fucks sister while she sleeps."

What the fuck, Dennis.

I sat there staring at the screen, reading the search terms again because the first time hadn't felt real. My brother. My actual brother who made me coffee every morning. This was what he searched for when nobody was watching.

I clicked on a few of the links. Literotica stories, Reddit threads, video thumbnails with titles I couldn't believe anyone would type into a search bar. He hadn't just glanced at this stuff. He'd been living in it, every night, for weeks.

I closed the last tab and realized my thighs were pressed together. I shifted in his desk chair and felt it, the slickness, and my face went hot because I hadn't even noticed it happening.

All of it on a password-locked computer he'd bought with the money we earned by fucking each other.

And I'd almost missed it. Ten more minutes on the old laptop and I would have left thinking he just liked thick girls, bought a push-up bra, and called it a plan.

I pulled up his bookmarks. He'd organized them into folders. Stories. Videos. Reddit. Some of the titles made my stomach flip: "Breed My Sleeping Sister." "She's Mine Not His."

I clicked into Stories and picked one at random. Literotica. Some brother touching his sister in her sleep, whole thing dripping with guilt. The girl doesn't remember anything. In the comments, a username I recognized immediately, the same handle he'd used for everything since high school. A comment from a week ago: "the best part is she wakes up the next morning and has no idea. he just goes back to being her brother like nothing happened."

His username was scattered through the other stories too. He'd been telling strangers on the internet what he wanted to do to me.

The video bookmarks were more of the same, "sleeping" in every title, mixed in with stuck-stepsister stuff. That porn cliche where she's somehow stuck in a washing machine or wedged under a bed. I laughed at those. The most ridiculous premise in porn and he'd saved five of them.

I closed the laptop and sat on his bed, face hot, heart going fast. While he locked his door and poured whiskey over his guilt and lectured me about what I deserved, he'd been right here in this room every night jerking off to fantasies of me unconscious and helpless.

Hypocrite.

My first instinct was to throw it in his face. Pull up the bookmarks when he walked in and turn the screen toward him and just watch. But the corridor flashed behind my eyes, Denny walking away, the kitchen shrinking, being sixteen and completely alone. If I confronted him he'd be so humiliated he'd disappear into himself. Start looking for his own place, probably. And I'd lose him for real.

I knew what he wanted now. He didn't want me awake and choosing him. He wanted me asleep so he could creep on me.

My brother was a perv. A noble, self-sacrificing, whiskey-drinking perv who wanted to touch his sleeping sister and couldn't admit it to himself, let alone to me.

I grabbed my keys and left.

*****

By the time I heard his key in the front door I'd already changed into the tiny black sleep shorts I'd bought months ago and never worn. They barely covered anything and I'd always felt too self-conscious to put them on, but after what I'd seen on his laptop, self-conscious wasn't really what I was feeling.

I was standing in the hallway outside my bedroom holding a small brown bottle. I turned it in my hands like I was reading the label. Didn't look up when he came in.

"Hey."

"Hey." He dropped his gym bag by the door and stopped when he saw the bottle. "What's that?"

"My sleeping pill refill." I kept my eyes on the label. "I first got them after the nightmares. They really help."

"They working?"

"Oh my god, yes. They knock me out completely for the whole night." I shook the bottle lightly. "I don't remember anything once they kick in. Like I just stop existing until morning."

I watched his face without looking at his face. His throat moved.

"Well, that's good. If it helps."

"It does. I just took one, actually." I opened my door. "Night, Denny."

"Night, baby. Love you."

I closed the door behind me and stood there in the dark, smiling.

I set the bottle on my nightstand where he'd see it if he came in, then looked at myself in the mirror. The shorts, the thin tank top. I'd been planning this since the first search result loaded on his laptop. I just hadn't admitted it until now.

I got into bed and turned off the light.

*****

Dennis

I stood in the hallway staring at where she'd been.

The tiny shorts. The pills. She'd told me she'd be unconscious all night, completely unprompted, standing there in shorts that barely covered her ass.

The thought tried to form and I killed it before it finished.

I went back to my room and sat on my bed. Rubbed my face with both hands.

Unconscious all night. Just like the stories.

It had started after Victor's. I couldn't get her out of my head, her body bare against mine, that heat, her eyes looking up at me while I was inside her. I couldn't unfeel it. And I couldn't do anything about it, obviously, so I went online instead. Started with brother-sister stuff, vanilla at first. Then touching her while she slept. Then fucking her while she slept. The appetite kept growing and I kept feeding it until it was all I looked at.

And then I'd started visiting her room.

The first time I told myself I was just checking on her. One AM, couldn't sleep, opened her door and stood in the doorway watching her breathe. She was on her side, blanket pulled up, one leg sticking out. My sister was sleeping fine.

But standing there watching her chest rise and fall, the stories kept looping in my head. Her shape under the covers, the curve of her hip in the dark. I got hard standing in my baby sister's doorway and the shame hit so fast I nearly tripped backing out of the room.

A week later I was back. Just checking on her again, same as I'd done her whole life.

She was on her back and her tank top had ridden up and I could see a strip of her stomach in the moonlight. I was hard before I even registered it happening, and this time I didn't leave. I reached for myself through my pants and that's when her face twisted. She made a small scared sound and started thrashing.

She was having a nightmare.

I jerked my hand away and felt sick, like she'd sensed what I was about to do while watching her sleep and her body reacted to the wrongness of it. I know that's insane. Nightmares don't work that way. But standing over my sister with my cock hard while she cried out in her sleep, I couldn't shake it.

I sat on her bed and put my hand on her shoulder and told her she was okay, and she grabbed my wrist and looked up at me with wet eyes and said love you, Denny, and I wanted to fucking die.

I swore I'd never go back.

That lasted until tonight.

I got up and went to the kitchen. The whiskey was on the counter. I poured myself water instead and stood there in the dark drinking it, staring at nothing.

The pills changed everything. She wouldn't wake up. Wouldn't remember. And everything I'd been fantasizing about for weeks was suddenly real and sleeping twenty feet down the hall.

I put the glass in the sink. Went back to my room. Sat on the bed again.

By ten I'd been staring at my door for an hour.

I stood outside her room with my hand on the knob. Just to check on her, that's what I told myself, same as the other two times.

I turned the knob.

*****

Moonlight from the window cut across her bed. She was on her back, breathing slow and deep, and the blanket had slipped down past her hips.

Those shorts.

Black. Short. Loose cotton that had ridden up in her sleep, one leg opening gaping enough that I could see bare skin underneath, the crease where her thigh met her hip.

I'd never seen these before. Three years of living together and she'd never worn these to bed, and tonight of all nights she was wearing shorts that made me forget how to think.

I whispered her name. "Susie?"

Nothing. Just that slow breathing.

"Susan?"

She didn't stir. The pill had her under.

I stood at the foot of her bed. I could still leave. Could go back to my room, close the door, jerk off to the memory of those shorts riding up and hate myself in the morning. That's what I should have done.

I knelt on the bed beside her instead.

My hand went to her hip first. Same place it always went. In crowds, parking lots, the gala. Except I'd never done it kneeling over her in the dark with my cock getting hard.

My hand slid along the curve of her waist, over her tank top, feeling her warmth underneath. Then down past the band of her shorts.

Back to her ass.

My hand was just there, cupping her through the cotton, and my whole body locked up.

So soft. So fucking soft.

For a few seconds I wasn't thinking about anything. Not Victor, not the stories, not what kind of person this made me. I was just feeling her under my hand, warm and perfect, and it was the first time in weeks that my head went quiet.

I squeezed through the cotton and the give was hypnotic. I spread my fingers wider, trying to hold as much of her as I could, and she was softer than I'd ever imagined. Three years of yoga classes I'd paid for flashed through my head and I wondered, for the first time, if some part of me had always known why I kept paying.

She didn't react. Just kept breathing, slow and steady, her body soft and open under my hands like it was letting me.

My other hand joined. Both palms on her ass through those tiny shorts, gripping and kneading, and I couldn't stop. Every hug I'd ever given her and my hands had never gone where they wanted. Now I was gripping her like I was starving.

My cock was so hard it ached. I needed to touch myself, needed relief, but that would mean taking a hand off her ass and I couldn't do it. I literally could not make myself let go of her long enough to pull my cock out.

So I pressed myself against her instead. Her ass was big enough that even on her back it curved out to the side, soft flesh spreading against the mattress, and I pushed my cock against that curve through my sweatpants. I kept one hand gripping her, kneading while I rocked, feeling her give under my fingers every time my hips pushed forward. Grinding into the soft outer curve of her ass with my cock while squeezing it with my hand.

It felt incredible. I was fully clothed grinding against my sister in the dark and it was the best I'd felt in weeks. I didn't care.

I didn't last a minute. My whole body shook and I bit down on my own arm to keep quiet.

Jesus Christ. I hadn't even taken myself out.

I'd come in my pants grinding against my sleeping sister's ass.

I grabbed tissues from her nightstand and nearly knocked the box over. Froze. Listened.

Nothing. She didn't stir.

Most of it was in my sweatpants but some had soaked through where I'd pressed against her. I blotted the side of her shorts carefully, pressing hard. I'd slid a condom across the kitchen table when she was seventeen and told her to always be safe, and now I was wiping my cum off her shorts while she slept.

When I was done I pulled the blanket up over her.

She made a soft sound. Almost a whimper. Her hips shifted under the blanket.

My heart stopped. I stood there not breathing.

Her face stayed slack. Breathing even. Still under.

I ran.

Back in my room I sat on the floor with my back against the door, hands shaking.

I'd touched her. Come in my pants against her. And she had no idea.

And all I could think about was going back.

*****

Susan

His door closed down the hall and my eyes opened.

I lay there smiling in the dark.

The pill bottle sat on my nightstand, unopened. I hadn't taken anything. Why would I? I wanted to feel every second.

And holy shit, had I.

I knew from his search history that he wanted me. I hadn't expected him to want me like that, like he'd been holding back for years. I replayed it. Where his hands went.

Not between my legs. Not my chest. His hand went to my hip first, the same spot it always went, and it was just Denny. Just safety.

Then it drifted. Along my waist, down, and back to my ass. And I felt him freeze and then give in, felt his fingers spread and grip and stop pretending.

My ass. The thing I'd spent three years trying to shrink. Too big, too soft, too much jiggle, every fitting room and mirror since I was sixteen.

He's an ass man.

I almost broke when he started kneading. Both hands, fingers sinking in, trying to hold all of me at once. My first thought was embarrassment, this ridiculous reflex of he can feel how big it is, how soft, he's going to think it's too much.

And then his grip tightened and I wanted to arch into it so badly my whole body ached, and I held perfectly still. Barely breathing. Playing dead while my brother worshipped my body in the dark.

Then I felt him press against me. Not my hip, my ass, pushing his cock into the side of it through his sweatpants. Hard, desperate, grinding, and he came almost instantly. I felt the heat through the fabric and felt him shudder against me.

He still thought I was asleep. Cleaned up the damp spot on my shorts with shaking hands, pulled the blanket over me, and I let a small sound slip out just to see what he'd do. He froze so hard I could feel it in the mattress. Then he ran.

I slid my hand between my legs. I was soaked, and not from him. That was all me, getting wetter the entire time he touched me.

I came fast, quietly, replaying his hands on me and how fast he'd lost it grinding against my ass.

I'd called him a perv when I found his search history, but watching him afterward I wasn't so sure that was the right word. He'd touched me like I was something precious. My big brother, who loved me as a sister my whole life, had just worshipped my ass in the dark like it was everything he'd ever wanted.

I could end this right now. Walk into his room, climb into his lap, tell him I was awake the whole time. He'd break. He would give into anything I wanted.

But that would be the easy version, and the easy version meant he'd spend the rest of his life hating himself for giving in. This way was better. This way he got to want me on his own terms, in the dark, without anyone making him choose.

I pressed my face into the pillow and smiled.

Got him.

*****

I woke up in a better mood than I'd been in weeks. Showered, took my time, picked the tight yoga pants and his hoodie on top.

I got to the kitchen before him and made his coffee. Three sugars, splash of cream, the way he always made mine. Set it on the counter where he'd see it.

Denny came out of his room looking like he hadn't slept. He stopped when he saw me, eyes dropping to the yoga pants before snapping back up.

"Morning," he said, and went straight for the coffee maker without looking at me again.

"I made you one already." I nodded at the cup on the counter. "You've been working so hard since the equity deal, figured you could use it."

He picked it up without saying anything. "You, uh. Sleep okay?"

"Like the dead." I stretched my arms over my head. "Though I woke up with my shorts all twisted. Must've moved around more than I thought."

His jaw clenched and he turned to the sink.

"You seem really tense this morning. Something wrong?"

"Just tired. Work stuff."

"You should take a day off soon. You've barely slept since you got that promotion." I said it gently, like I was worried about him. And I was worried about him, that was the thing. I just also knew exactly why he wasn't sleeping.

I walked to the fridge and grabbed juice. When I turned back, his eyes snapped up from my ass.

"Did you check on me last night? I thought maybe I heard my door."

He went pale. "I, yeah. Just making sure you were okay."

"Aw." I smiled at him. "You're sweet, Denny."

He relaxed a little. I let him.

"I'm thinking we should go out tonight," I said. "That Italian place you mentioned? I'll make a reservation."

"Yeah. Sure. That sounds good."

I headed to my room and opened my closet. My eyes went to it immediately and my stomach did that familiar clench, the one I got every time I looked at something I wasn't sure I could pull off.

But after last night, after feeling his hands on me, I reached for it.

Denny was going to lose his mind.

*****

Dennis

Susan showed up in my doorway that evening wearing the red dress. The one from Prada, the one she'd said made her look fat, which was insane. She'd let her hair down, actually put on makeup when she never needed any, and the heels made her legs look impossibly long.

She did a little twirl in the doorway. "So? Do you still think this looks good on me?"

Everything moved when she spun. Her ass bounced and settled under the red fabric in this slow, heavy way that made my mouth go dry. The jiggle she was always complaining about, the thing she'd spent three years trying to fix with yoga. She had no idea what it did to me.

"Yeah," I managed. "It looks good."

Understatement of the year. She'd gone all out, the dress I loved, hair down, makeup, heels, and the effort was for dinner with me. I didn't know what to do with that.

"Ready?" she said. "Our reservation's at seven."

"Give me ten minutes." My voice came out rougher than I'd planned.

I put on the charcoal suit, good shoes, the watch I'd bought with the first real money I'd ever had.

And then I waited a few minutes before I finally calmed down.

When I came out she looked me up and down and smiled.

"We should walk," I said. "It's nice out."

What I meant was I wanted to watch her walk in that dress.

*****

I fucked up.

Two blocks in and the sunset light hit the dress at a different angle.

The fabric was sheer. Not how it had looked inside the apartment. Out here, in that warm golden hour light, I could see through it. Her skin underneath, the outline of her ass. I could clearly see she was wearing a thong, black lace waistband disappearing into her pale ass. Everything shifting and bouncing with each step.

I'd told her that dress was perfect. Insisted she buy it. Swiped my card without flinching. And now I was walking behind her seeing everything every other guy on this street could see.

The first gawker was maybe thirty, coming toward us on the sidewalk. He slowed down as we passed and his head turned to track her, eyes locked below her waist and not even subtle about it.

I shot him a look. He caught it and glanced away.

Two blocks later a couple came toward us from the other direction. The guy's head swiveled as Susan walked past, nearly spilling his coffee. Just openly stared at my sister's ass through that sheer dress while his girlfriend kept talking to the side of his face.

I wanted to say something and almost did before I realized how insane that would be, the guy who came grinding against his sleeping sister twelve hours ago starting a fight on the sidewalk because someone looked at her through a dress.

But the hypocrisy didn't make the anger go away. If anything it made it worse because I couldn't tell if I was angry that these men were looking at her or angry that they were seeing something I'd started thinking of as mine.

My hand went to Susan's back. She leaned into it. She'd gone quiet after the couple.

"Ouch." She stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk and I caught her by the hip before she went down.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, my ankle just twisted. These heels." She winced.

I kept my hand where it was, right over the thong. "I've got you, baby."

The lace straps cut across her hip bone through the thin dress. I spread my fingers wider, covering more of her, just blocking the view so those guys couldn't see. That's why I was doing it. Obviously.

We walked like that for the rest of the way, her body warm against mine, her ass brushing my forearm with every step. She started talking again, something about the restaurant menu, whether they'd have that pasta she'd seen online. I made sounds that passed for responses.

*****

Susan

I'd felt stares the whole way. Denny's I didn't mind. It was everyone else's that got under my skin.

The couple with the coffee had been the worst. The woman had looked at me with this disgusted expression, like I was ridiculous for wearing this dress in public, like I should have known better with a body like mine. I'd wanted to pull the dress down and disappear. I was so rattled I missed a crack in the sidewalk and stumbled, and that's when Denny caught me and pulled me against his side.

His hand settled on my hip and suddenly none of it mattered. Just Denny's hand, warm and steady, covering me. I pressed into him and let him hold me up.

This was why I'd worn the dress. His hand on me, both of us walking together, and it hit me that we already had everything. The apartment, the dinners, taking care of each other like it was the most natural thing in the world. We were already a couple. He just wouldn't call it that.

*****

Dennis

The hostess led us to a corner table with white tablecloths and candles and good wine, a place we'd walked past a hundred times and never gone inside.

Sitting across from her I didn't have to watch her walk and for a while I could just be her brother taking her to dinner.

She did her impression of Janet's face when she'd quit and I nearly spit out my wine. She had Janet's voice perfect, the pinched tone, that thing Janet did where she said "potential" and somehow made it sound like a threat. I told her about my first executive meeting where I'd accidentally called the CFO by the wrong name for twenty minutes and nobody had corrected me because I owned fifteen percent of the company. She laughed so hard the couple at the next table looked over.

It felt like us. Easy and comfortable, before any of this happened.

And I realized I was happy. All the guilt and the regret and the shit I'd been carrying for weeks, just gone for a while. Just me and my sister in a nice restaurant, laughing at her stories.

She was happy too across the table, animated, telling stories with her hands, and her eyes kept catching the candlelight. Not the dress or the makeup. Just her.

She's going to make some guy very lucky someday.

The thought hit hard. Some faceless normal guy who'd take her to dinners like this and touch her without guilt. Someone who wasn't her brother.

"Denny?" She was looking at me. "You're holding your wine glass like it insulted you."

I looked down. She was right, I was strangling the stem. I loosened up and she grinned at me and I had to smile back.

We split dessert and she ate more than half, eyeing me the whole time like she was daring me to say something. I didn't know what to do with her sometimes. If I told her to slow down she'd call me controlling. If I didn't, she'd blame me tomorrow for not stopping her. I kept my mouth shut and watched her scrape the plate clean and couldn't help smiling. She'd find a way to make it my fault either way and honestly I didn't mind.

*****

I called an Uber for the way back. The thought of another six blocks of her skipping ahead in that dress, giddy from wine, everything bouncing with every step, was more than I could handle.

In the car she leaned against my shoulder.

"That was so fun," she said. "We should do that more."

"We should."

She was quiet for a moment. "Do you think people tonight thought we were a couple?"

I glanced down. She wasn't smiling. She was actually serious.

I laughed. "Susie, people have always thought that. Remember the landlord? The guy at the bank?" I shook my head. "So yeah, probably."

She snuggled closer and didn't say anything else about it.

"Good thing I'm already on those pills or a night like this would keep me up for hours. Those things knock me out so hard."

My grip tightened on my knee.

*****

Back at the apartment she kicked off her heels with a sigh and headed to her room. I watched her go, the dress moving with her, and the whole evening replayed in my head.

I went to my room and closed the door.

Her laughing at dinner. The walk, the dress clinging, every man staring. My hand on her hip covering what I'd decided was mine even though she wasn't.

She'd taken her pill, mentioned it between yawns like nothing. She'd be out by now. All night long.

But the dinner kept replaying alongside everything else. Her grinning at me across the table, scraping the dessert plate clean with her fork, daring me to say something about it. Two hours of just being us, easy and good.

And I was about to ruin all of it.

I sat on my bed and stared at the wall. I could let the dinner be enough. Hold on to how good it felt just sitting across from her and making her laugh. That could be enough.

It wasn't.

*****

The door opened without sound.

She was on her side tonight, facing away from me. The blanket was bunched at her feet and she was wearing one of my t-shirts, the fabric hanging loose off her hip.

I knelt on the bed behind her and whispered her name.

Nothing. Deep steady breathing. The pill had her under.

I reached for the hem of the shirt and lifted it. Slow, inch by inch, up her thighs, over the curve of her hip.

I stopped breathing.

The black thong. The one I'd been staring at through her red dress for six blocks. Black lace framing her bare ass, thin straps disappearing between her cheeks, and now it was right here in front of me.

I bunched the t-shirt above her hips and just looked.

Then I traced the lace with my finger. Slowly, following the thin strap across her hip, down between her cheeks, feeling where it pressed into her soft skin. The lace was warm and slightly damp from being wedged against her all night. I ran my thumb along the strap where it disappeared between her cheeks, pressing gently, feeling the heat of her through the fabric.

Last night I'd touched her through shorts and underwear. Tonight there was nothing. Her ass bare except for thin lace straps, pale skin in the dim light.

My hands settled on her. No fabric. Just warm skin, smooth and soft, giving under my palms. I squeezed and felt her flesh directly and my cock throbbed against my sweatpants.

At Victor's I'd barely let myself touch her here. Too much guilt, too much happening at once. But now it was just us in the dark and I could actually feel what I'd been fantasizing about. Both hands full of her, warm and heavy and impossibly soft.

I couldn't believe she'd ever wanted to change this. She was perfect. Every curve, every inch of give under my fingers.

I gripped and spread and kneaded bare skin while she breathed and didn't stir. So smooth under my palms, pressing and releasing, watching her skin give and bounce back.

My fingers hooked under the lace and I stopped. I could just stay here. Just her ass, just this.

But I was already pulling the thong aside.

I pulled the thong aside and spread her cheeks apart. Slowly. I needed to see her.

Her pussy peeked out from behind her cheeks, already wet before I'd even touched it. Why? Had those guys on the street done this? All those eyes on her ass through that dress, had she liked it? The thought hit me ugly and fast and I didn't want to think about it but I couldn't stop.

I reached between her legs and ran one finger along her slit. Slick and hot, and it all came back, being inside her, the heat of her bare around me. I circled her entrance and then pushed inside.

She was tight. Warm and slick and gripping my finger, and I just held it there feeling her pulse around me.

Then she stirred. Made a small sound and shifted in her sleep, curling her top leg forward, opening herself up. My heart slammed but she settled again, breathing deep and steady.

The shift invited me to push deeper, and then I felt it, a ridged spot along the front wall, slightly different texture from everything around it.

Her g-spot. I was touching my sister's g-spot while she slept and had no idea. The thought made me throb so hard I had to press my cock against her thigh just to feel something.

I added a second finger and started pumping slowly, rubbing that spot on every stroke, my other hand still gripping her bare ass while I fingered her from behind.

My face was close to her body, close enough that her scent hit me full on. Sharp and musky, way stronger than I remembered from Victor's. That night I'd been too overwhelmed to really register it, but now in the quiet of her room it was all I could smell. Just her, just Susan, wet and warm and asleep and all over my fingers.

I was straining against my sweatpants with every pulse of her body around my fingers.

Her hips gave a small roll. Subtle, barely anything, but I felt it. Her body chasing my hand.

I wanted more. Pumped deeper, faster, greedy for the feel of her clenching around me. Her walls started to flutter.

Then she did it again. A sharper roll, her ass pushing back against my hand, and a tiny sound escaped her throat.

I froze. Stared at her face, peacefully asleep. She had to be asleep. People moved in their sleep, made sounds. The pills had her under.

I started pumping again. Slower this time, watching her face for any change, and she stayed perfectly still and I told myself the roll was nothing.

But my cock was screaming at me. Harder than I'd ever been, leaking through my sweatpants, and I could feel my control thinning with every stroke. I wanted to pull my sweatpants down. Wanted to push her legs apart and press myself against her, feel that wet heat directly against my cock. The thought of being that close to sliding inside my sleeping sister made me realize I was about to do something I could never take back.

That scared me more than the hip roll.

I wasn't afraid she was awake. I was afraid of what I was going to do to her if I stayed.

I told myself to pull out. My fingers didn't move. She was so warm and tight and her pulse was beating against my fingertips and every part of me wanted to stay inside her. I had to force my hand back, one finger at a time, and even then I almost pushed back in.

I pulled the thong back into place. The lace was drenched, and I couldn't tell how much was her and how much was from me touching her.

I eased her shirt back down. My whole body was shaking, not from shame this time but from need. Walking away from her felt like pulling against something physical, every part of me wanting to stay and finish what I'd started.

I left.

In my room I sat on my bed with my cock still hard, fingers slick with her. I could smell her on my hands.

I didn't jerk off. That was the rule I made right there, sitting in the dark with her scent on my skin. No jerking off, no porn. The porn led to fantasies, the fantasies put me in her room, and look where that had gotten me.

If I starved it, maybe it would stop.

I lay there in the dark, hard and desperate, until the ache finally faded enough for sleep.

*****

Susan

I didn't move until I heard his door close. Then I pressed my face into the pillow and wanted to scream.

He'd almost gotten me there. I'd felt it building, his fingers curling inside me, my whole body winding tighter, and then he just stopped. Pulled out slowly, carefully, and left me like that. Wet and aching and so close it hurt.

He hadn't stopped because of anything I did. My hips had moved once, twice, and I'd actually moaned, but he'd kept going after that. He'd stopped because of something in himself, some line he wasn't willing to cross, and I didn't know if that made me want to scream or cry. Nobody had ever wanted me that badly and still chosen to stop. That should have frustrated me and it did, but underneath the frustration was something else I wasn't ready to name.

Now I had to finish it myself.

My hand went between my legs and I was soaked.

I'd expected his hands to go straight to my ass. They didn't. He paused, and then I felt his finger on the lace instead, tracing the strap along my hip and down between my cheeks, slow, like he was fascinated by it. Then his thumb pressing against the thong right between my legs, holding there, feeling me through the fabric, and I'd almost lost it right then.

It was just what I wore under that dress. I didn't understand why he'd spent so long on it before touching me, but his hands had been shaking against the lace and whatever it was doing to him was intense. Something about feeling him tremble against me, this man who'd carried me through everything since I was sixteen, shaking because he was touching my underwear. That undid me more than the actual touching.

My fingers found the thong where it still sat between my legs, soaked through, and I pressed against the lace where he'd traced it. The damp fabric against my skin sent a jolt through me and I rubbed through the thong for a while, replaying his thumb following the strap between my cheeks, before pushing it aside.

I'd been wet before he even got there, and that surprised me more than anything. All that kneading, all that gripping, just him playing with my ass for what felt like forever, and apparently that was enough to make me dripping wet. I didn't know my body could do that from someone touching my jiggly, too-big ass. I started rubbing myself and thought about his hands and how they'd felt, rough and callused, fingers sinking in like he was trying to memorize every inch of me.

At one point his face had been so close I could feel his breath on my skin. Warm and slow, like he was breathing me in. I rubbed faster thinking about that, about how close he'd been, how I could feel him inhaling me while his hands gripped my bare ass in the dark.

Then his fingers. God, his fingers. My big brother's thick, rough fingers inside me, reaching places I couldn't reach on my own. The best part was when I curled my leg forward in my "sleep" and he didn't even question it, just pushed deeper like I'd given him a gift. I curled my own fingers trying to match the angle and couldn't get it right because his hands were bigger. I'd felt him hard against my thigh the whole time, pressing into me while he touched me, desperate and not even trying to hide it.

I came hard, face pressed into the pillow, thinking about his fingers inside me and his cock against my thigh, and the moan I'd been choking back all night finally came out.

Next time I wouldn't move. Next time I'd be perfect, and he'd finish what he started.

*****

I woke up still feeling his fingers. Not a memory exactly, more like a ghost of the pressure, this phantom sensation of being touched from the inside that wouldn't fade.

I was still wearing the thong from dinner. It was still soaked, wedged deep from a whole night of Denny's hands and my own reaction to them, the black lace practically swallowed by my ass.

He'd put it back into place after he was done, careful as always. He always put everything back, fixed the blanket, smoothed the shirt. Like he was trying to undo what he'd done, restore me to the version of myself that existed before he touched me. But he couldn't unfeel me any more than I could unfeel him.

I peeled it off and the smell of my sex hit me, and my face went hot. I dropped it in the hamper.

I stood in front of my mirror in a tank top and fresh underwear and for the first time in years I didn't flinch at my reflection. Same body, same hips, same ass. But I could still feel where my brother's hands had been, could still feel how he'd gripped me like he was afraid I'd disappear. Hard to hate something when someone worships it like that.

He'd walked away last night with his cock so hard I could feel it through his sweatpants. That wasn't a man who was done. That was a man barely holding on, and all he needed was a push.

I turned to check my profile. Reached for the oversized hoodie I usually threw on before leaving my room, then put it back. Pulled on the fitted leggings instead, the ones that showed everything. If he was going to spend all day trying not to think about last night, I was going to make that as hard as possible.

I had a few ideas.

In the kitchen Denny was at the counter with coffee, looking wrecked. Dark circles, shoulders tight. He glanced at me and looked away fast. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

"Denny, can you do me a huge favor?"

He looked wary. "What?"

"Laundry? I'm literally out of everything and I just really don't want to do it." I smiled. "Please? I'll owe you."

"Yeah, sure, baby. Where is it?"

"Hamper in my room. You're the best."

My phone buzzed on the counter between us. Mia: "did you check his browser yet?? ????"

I swiped it away so fast I nearly knocked the phone off the counter. Denny was two feet away. He glanced at me and I smiled and he turned toward my room for the hamper. I couldn't tell if he'd seen the screen.

He had it done before lunch. Left the basket of clean laundry folded outside my door. I brought it inside and sorted through everything.

I sorted through it again.

Then I broke into a grin.

The thong was missing.

He'd kept it. The soaked thong from the ass he'd spent all night worshipping, kept it like a trophy. And the thing I'd always wanted to shrink was the thing he couldn't let go of, literally.

I held the thought. If he wanted to see me that badly in the dark, I wondered what it would do to him if he saw me in the light.

*****

Dennis

That afternoon I came around the corner and Susan was standing in the hallway outside the bathroom. One towel wrapped loose around her body, another in her hands, scrunching her wet hair.

She hadn't seen me yet. She was focused on her hair, head tilted, wringing water out of the ends, and the body towel was barely holding on.

Then it slipped. Dropped to the floor and pooled around her feet.

She didn't notice. She was still working her hair with the other towel, arms up, completely naked in the hallway in full afternoon light, and she had no idea.

I couldn't breathe.

Her breasts were full and round, nipples pink and hard from the shower, and with her arms raised they lifted slightly, everything on display. Her waist curved inward to a flat stomach and then flared outwards to those hips, the ones I'd been gripping in the dark for two nights.

And her ass. The other nights the room had been barely lit. Now I could see it in full daylight, heavy and round, even from the side, and it was better than anything I'd built in my head. I was never going to unsee this.

She lowered the hair towel and turned slightly and saw me.

For a second she just stared. Then she looked down and realized she was naked and her whole face went red and she dropped to grab the body towel so fast she nearly tripped.

"Oh my god, sorry!" She laughed, flustered, clutching the towel to her chest. "I didn't even feel it fall off."

She rushed to her room and the door clicked shut.

I stood in the hallway for a long time, replaying the way everything had jiggled when she bent down to grab the towel.

*****

Susan

I leaned against my door and pressed my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.

He'd frozen. Just completely frozen, staring at me like his brain had shut off. And I'd given him a good long look, standing there with the hair towel like I had no idea the body towel had dropped. Arms up, everything showing, just drying my hair in the hallway like nothing was wrong.

The old Susan would have been mortified, would have died of embarrassment baring her chubby body to her brother in daylight.

But I'd felt his hands on my body two nights in a row. I knew what my body did to him. And standing there naked with his eyes on me hadn't felt embarrassing at all. It felt powerful.

The best part was catching his face when I finally "noticed." He'd been staring so hard he didn't even try to look away. Just stood there while I scrambled for the towel like I was mortified.

I took a breath and got dressed appropriately. Left my hair wet.

Then I went to find him.

*****

Dennis

I was in my room staring at my computer when she appeared in my doorway.

Loose tank top. No bra. I could tell immediately because her nipples pressed against the thin fabric and they were the same nipples I'd just seen bare and hard from the shower. Her hair was still damp, pushed to one side, and she smelled like her shower and like everything I was trying not to think about.

"Hey," she said, leaning against the doorframe. "You scared the crap out of me in the hallway and now my shoulders are all tensed up. So you owe me a massage."

My mouth went dry.

"That's... that's not how that works."

"It's exactly how that works. You made it worse, you fix it." She walked past me and straight to my bed and flopped face down on it. Then she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. "Pleeeease?"

I melted.

She pulled her damp hair to one side and settled into my pillow. The tank top rode up, showing the curve of her lower back and the top of her sleep shorts sitting low on her hips. She was lying face down on my bed. The same bed I'd been lying in every night thinking about her.

I was fully hard before I even touched her.

I sat on the edge of the bed beside her and put my hands on her shoulders. Warm and bare and soft. I'd watched water droplets run down this exact skin ten minutes ago, seen these shoulders completely bare, and now my hands were on them and my brain couldn't separate the massage from the hallway.

"Mmm," she breathed into my pillow. "That's really good."

I tried to focus on finding knots, working the tension out, being clinical about it. But she couldn't see where I was looking so I looked everywhere. Her bare lower back where the tank top had ridden up. The dimples above her ass where her shorts sat low, the same ones I'd pressed my thumbs into in the dark. The loose tank top gaping at the sides, her breasts spilling soft and heavy against the mattress. Her ass in those thin shorts, shifting every time she adjusted her weight. I took all of it in because she was face down in my pillow and for once I didn't have to pretend I wasn't looking.

I dug my thumbs into the muscles at the base of her neck and she made a sound into my pillow that was close enough to the sounds from last night that I froze.

"Don't stop," she murmured. "That feels so good."

My hands moved down her spine, thumbs working along the muscles on either side. Her skin was smooth and warm, still slightly damp from the shower. The tank top kept riding higher and I kept finding more bare skin and I kept not asking her to fix it.

My hands drifted lower. Past her ribs, past the curve of her waist, down to her lower back where the dimples sat just above her shorts. I pressed my thumbs into them, the same spots I'd gripped in the dark, and my whole body tensed at the recognition.

"Hey." She turned her head slightly. "My shoulders are up here, perv."

I quickly snapped my hands back to her shoulders.

"Sorry. Sorry, I was just following the muscle."

"Uh huh." She sounded amused. "Shoulders, Denny. Focus."

My face was burning. I prayed she couldn't feel how hard my heart was pounding through the mattress.

"Mmm... harder."

I pressed deeper and she groaned and shifted her hips against the mattress and I had to clench my jaw to keep from making a sound myself. I shifted how I was sitting, angling away from her.

"You know what would work way better?" she said, turning her head to look at me over her shoulder. "If you just straddled my back. You could really get your weight into it."

My stomach dropped.

"No, this is fine. I can reach from here."

"Come on, it'll take like two minutes. Just sit on my butt and really dig in."

"Susan, I'm not sitting on you."

But God damn, do I want to.

"Why not?" She grinned. "I won't break. I've got plenty of padding back there."

I swallowed hard. "I said I can reach from here."

She sighed. "You're so weird sometimes."

She settled her face back in my pillow and I exhaled. I'd barely managed to hide it when she turned around earlier, and I wasn't going to get that lucky twice.

After a while she started humming. Soft and low, some song I didn't recognize, completely relaxed under my hands. I watched her shoulders loosen and her breathing slow and I forgot I was supposed to be giving a quick massage. My thumbs kept working down her spine and back up and I lost track of how long I'd been touching her. Just her warm skin and her humming and the smell of her shampoo and the afternoon light on her bare back and her hips against my sheets and the shape of her ass in those shorts. I was hard and calm at the same time and somewhere in that trance the decision made itself. I was going to her room tonight.

"That feels amazing," she said, and the sound of her voice snapped me back. She stretched her arms above her head, the tank top riding up to show most of her bare back, and I pulled my hands away like I'd been caught.

"Better?" My voice came out rough.

"So much better." She rolled onto her side and looked up at me and her eyes dropped for just a second, fast enough that I almost missed it. Almost. "Thank you, Denny."

She stood and walked out and the smell of her shower-damp skin stayed in my sheets and I sat there on my bed, hard and aching, with her humming still in my ears.

*****

Susan

I went to my room smiling.

His hands had been shaking at first. And when I'd asked him to straddle me his face had gone so red I'd almost broken character and laughed. But after that his hands had stopped shaking and started wandering, slow and deliberate, like he'd forgotten this was supposed to be a massage.

He'd been hard. I'd felt the mattress shift when he adjusted himself, heard the tension in his breathing every time I made a sound. And when I'd rolled over at the end and glanced down, quick, there it was. I'd kept my face neutral but inside I was grinning.

Tonight he'd be out of his mind.

I picked out what I'd wear to bed. Not the tiny shorts or the thong. Just a thin oversized shirt and simple cotton panties. It didn't matter what I wore. After the towel and the massage, his head was already full of me.

I set the pill bottle on my nightstand and got into bed early. Left the small lamp on, turned low, instead of the total darkness of the first two nights. He'd want to see me this time. After the hallway, after the massage, he'd want to see everything.

I closed my eyes and waited.

*****

Dennis

I locked my door and told myself I wasn't going.

The lock held for about an hour.

Her lamp was still on. I could see the warm glow under her door from the hallway. The thought of her in that light, wearing whatever she'd worn to bed, was enough to break every promise I'd just made.

I opened her door.

She was on her back. Thin oversized shirt, cotton panties, legs slightly apart. The lamp cast warm light across her body and I could see everything through the thin fabric, the shape of her breasts, her nipples pressing against the cotton, the curve of her hips.

After the total darkness of the first two nights, this was different. This was her body in warm light, almost like the hallway this afternoon except covered. Almost.

I whispered her name. Nothing. She was under.

I knelt beside the bed. My hands were already shaking.

I'd been thinking about her breasts since the hallway. Her arms up, drying her hair, everything on display in the afternoon light. I'd spent the whole massage wanting to see them again, and now her shirt was the only thing in my way.

I reached for the hem and pushed it up slowly. Over her stomach, over her ribs, and then there they were again and the air left my lungs.

They looked so soft lying down, spreading gently to the sides with their own weight, completely relaxed. Her nipples were soft too, pale pink and smooth, not hard like they'd been in the hallway after her shower. She was deeply asleep and her whole body was at rest and there was something about that softness that made me want to touch them more than anything I'd ever wanted.

My hand was trembling when I cupped one breast. Warm and soft, heavier than I'd expected, fitting my palm perfectly. My sleeping baby sister's breast in my hand in lamplight, and I squeezed gently and watched the flesh give under my fingers and felt my cock throb.

I brushed my thumb over one nipple and watched it harden, then did it again. Rolled it between my fingers, gently, then firmer. She didn't stir, just breathed slow and deep while I touched her breasts and memorized everything.

I used both hands. Cupping, kneading, pressing them together and watching them bounce slightly when I released. Pinching her nipples and watching her breathing change, just slightly, getting a little faster, a little shallower. Her body responding even while her face stayed peaceful.

I could have stayed like this. I could have spent all night with her breasts in my hands.

But my eyes kept dropping lower, to her hips, to the cotton panties stretched across her pussy.

Last night I'd denied myself. Gone back to my room aching, desperate, tasting her on my fingers and smelling her on my skin and not letting myself finish. After the towel and the massage, after her breasts in my hands, I was past the point where touching was enough.

I needed to taste her.

The thought had been building since last night, since I'd had my face close enough to smell her, since her scent had been so strong it made my head spin. I'd gone to bed and thought about what it would be like to put my mouth on her and I'd wanted it so badly it physically hurt.

I pulled her panties to the side.

In the warm lamplight she was beautiful. Wet already, glistening, her lips slightly parted. The scent hit me stronger than any of the other nights, musky and sweet, and my mouth watered.

I positioned myself between her legs and lowered my face until I could feel the heat of her against my lips and breathed her in. Up close the scent was overwhelming, rich and dense and filling my head until there was nothing else. I stayed there for a long time just breathing, feeling the warmth radiating against my mouth, knowing that once I tasted her I was never going to be the same person.

Then I licked her.

One long slow stroke up her center and the taste flooded my mouth and I groaned against her before I could stop myself. Sweeter than the scent, with a salt edge underneath, and nothing like what I'd expected.

I pulled back and stared at her. My sister. Asleep. Legs spread, panties pushed aside, my spit glistening on her pussy in the lamplight. This was where a decent brother would pull her panties back and tuck her in and go to his room and never do this again.

I leaned back in and licked her again.

And again. Long slow strokes, tasting every inch of her, letting it coat my mouth and my chin. Each stroke the taste deepened, got richer, and the guilt that should have been building was dissolving instead. I couldn't hold onto it. Not with her on my tongue, not with last night's denied release still screaming through my body. I'd touched her with my hands and refused to finish and now I was finally tasting my baby sister and it was the best thing I'd ever put in my mouth and I hated myself for how much I loved it.

I found her clit with my tongue and circled it and her hips gave a tiny involuntary twitch. Just a small movement, barely anything, but I felt it against my mouth and it sent a jolt through me because her body was responding to me even in sleep, opening up, pulling me closer. I circled again, slower, and felt another twitch.

My hands gripped her thighs, spreading her wider. I buried my face in her and stopped being careful. Tongue pushing inside her, circling her clit, sucking gently, then harder. She was soaked, getting wetter as I went, new wetness coating my tongue with every stroke.

My hands slid from her thighs to her ass. I couldn't help it. I gripped both cheeks and squeezed while I ate her, the familiar weight and softness filling my palms while my tongue worked between her legs. Her taste in my mouth and her ass in my hands. Everything I wanted at once.

I glanced up. Her face was still peaceful, breathing just slightly faster. I went back to her.

I remembered the spot from last night. The ridged spot inside her that made her body clench. I pushed two fingers in while my tongue worked her clit, curling to find it, and felt her walls squeeze around me when I hit it.

Having my fingers inside her while my tongue worked her clit was something else entirely. I could feel her walls clench every time I circled, feel her clit swell against my tongue when I curled my fingers. I was learning her.

My cock was so hard against the mattress I could feel myself leaking through my sweatpants.

Her breathing changed, faster and shallower. Her hips started giving small rolls, pushing up into my mouth, and the part of my brain still working knew what that meant. But I couldn't pull away. I was starving for this and she was feeding me and the warning signals were getting quieter with every taste.

I sucked her clit and pumped my fingers and felt her thighs start to tense and tremble against my ears. Her whole body was tightening, pussy fluttering around my fingers in a rhythm that kept getting faster, hips rolling harder, wetness running down my chin.

She was close. I felt it building, her walls gripping my fingers, her thighs trembling, her whole body winding tighter around the point where my tongue met her clit. And I wanted it. Wanted to feel her cum on my tongue, wanted to taste it, wanted to know what my sister's orgasm felt like against my mouth.

I didn't slow down.

Her back arched off the bed, sharp and sudden, and a moan came out of her that was way too loud. I froze.

*****

Susan

I lost it.

I'd already been slipping. My hips kept wanting to move, my whole body trying to push toward his mouth, and I'd barely held it together. But I was not prepared for what came next.

The orgasm hit so hard my back came off the mattress before I could stop it and a moan ripped out of me, loud and broken, and I couldn't clamp it down. My thighs locked around my brother's head and my hips ground against his face and I was cumming so hard I forgot the game, forgot everything except his mouth on me and his fingers inside me and the waves crashing through my body.

Stop. Stop moving. You're supposed to be asleep.

I couldn't. My hips kept rolling, pushing against him, chasing every pulse, and I heard myself moaning and knew it was too loud and too real and couldn't make it stop. His tongue was still on my clit and his fingers were still inside me and I was still cumming and some distant part of my brain was screaming that I was ruining everything.

Then I felt him freeze, tongue and fingers going completely still.

He felt me cum.

I made my breathing slow down. Made my face go slack, my eyes stay closed, my body stop grinding even though the aftershocks were still rolling through me. Every muscle wanted to keep moving and I held myself still through sheer will and prayed it was enough.

I felt him pull back. Pull his fingers out. I was still trying to get my breathing under control, forcing my face into something that looked like sleep, when I heard him stand up.

He didn't give me time to convince him I was still sleeping. He was already moving, already leaving, and I could hear the panic in how fast his footsteps were. No tucking me in, no careful cleanup. He'd never left me exposed before. He'd freaked out so badly he forgot to take care of me on the way out.

The door closed quietly and then I was alone.

"Next time I'd be perfect." That's what I'd told myself last night. And instead I'd scared him away.

I pressed my face into the pillow.

I could still feel what he'd done to me, still feel it in my body. His mouth on me. His tongue. Nobody had ever done that to me like Denny just did, desperate and hungry and thorough, like he wanted to consume me.

And the strangest part was that I'd felt safe the entire time. My brother thought he was doing this without my consent, thought I had no idea, and even then I'd never once been afraid of him. Even with his mouth between my legs and his fingers inside me and him believing I was completely helpless, I knew he'd never actually hurt me. He'd spent eight years proving that and nothing he did in the dark could erase it.

And I'd ruined it.

I rolled onto my side and pulled my knees to my chest. The lamp was still on and the room felt too exposed, too visible, and I reached over and turned it off and lay in the dark.

He'd have to be really dense not to figure it out now. Nobody moans and grinds like that in their sleep, pills or no pills. He'd lie in his room running through it and the math wouldn't add up and then what? Would he confront me? Would he never touch me again?

I pressed my hand against my stomach and felt the familiar ache. Empty.

So much for being perfect this time.

Is the game over?

*****

Dennis

I stood in my room with the door locked, still tasting her on my lips.

Her hips had been grinding against my face. Not twitching, not reflex. Grinding. And that moan, trailing off into breaths she'd forced steady.

But she hadn't opened her eyes or reached for me or said anything.

Maybe the pills let her body respond while her mind stayed under. Maybe everything I was reading as conscious was just stimulation and reflex.

But the maybe was enough to make me sick. Because if she'd been awake for all of this, then everything I'd told myself about it not hurting her because she didn't know was a lie.

I was still hard. My face was wet with her and the taste was in my mouth and my cock was throbbing and every cell in my body wanted release. I could have jerked off in thirty seconds. But I knew what I'd think about when I came, and I knew that thinking about it would make it real, make it something I chose to want instead of something that just happened to me in the dark.

Not touching myself meant I could still pretend I wasn't the person who did those things. Getting off to the memory would end that pretending for good.

I washed my face and hands and lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and let myself ache.

Never again.

I meant it this time.

*****

I left before she woke up.

Drove to the office, bought coffee from the place across the street, and sat at my desk with the door closed while the taste of my sister stayed on my lips no matter how much coffee I drank.

If she'd woken up and opened her eyes and seen me there between her legs with my face soaked in her. Disgust and horror and the end of everything.

Or worse. What if she hadn't looked disgusted at all? What if she'd said she knew? What would that make us?

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

*****

Susan

I'd spent all day alone in the apartment terrified I'd ruined everything. The walls felt like they were getting smaller by the hour. I wanted to be anywhere else, wanted the house with the yard and the walk-in closets, but twenty million dollars doesn't help when you can't house-hunt with someone you can't look in the eye.

He'd been gone since before I woke up. No note, no text, just gone. I kept thinking about his mouth on me, how desperate he'd been, how good it had felt, and then the moment I'd ruined it by moaning and grinding like an idiot. Every version ended the same way: he'd figured it out and he was never coming back.

So I didn't push. I made pasta because he liked pasta, because becoming a millionaire hadn't changed that about him. I put on the biggest sweater I owned and sweatpants and pulled my hair up. No leggings, no games. If he came home I wanted him to see his sister, not a trap.

I told myself I was being strategic. Giving him room to breathe. But the truth was simpler than that: I was scared, and when I was scared I cooked.

*****

Dennis

I heard her in the kitchen before I saw her. Pots, running water, humming. I stood in the hallway with my keys still in my hand and thought about going straight to my room.

But I couldn't avoid her forever.

She was making pasta, barefoot, wearing a sweater that was too big for her with sweatpants and her hair up in a messy bun. She looked normal and comfortable and nothing like the body I'd been worshipping in lamplight twelve hours ago.

"Hey." She smiled at me, normal and easy. "I made enough for two. You hungry?"

She'd cooked for me. Made dinner and waited for me to come home, just like she'd made my coffee after the first night. She kept doing small kind things for the person who was sneaking into her room and touching her while she slept.

"Yeah. Thanks."

We ate together at the kitchen table. She talked about a show she'd been watching, some drama with a ridiculous twist she explained. I listened and nodded and watched her gesturing with her fork and it felt so normal, so completely ordinary, that the previous nights started to feel like something I'd imagined.

This was Susan. My baby sister. The person who talked with her mouth full and rolled her eyes when I worried about her and demanded I take her shopping like it was my civic duty. I'd never been able to say no to her for long and I'd never once wanted to. She made me coffee and made me dinner and worried about whether I was sleeping enough.

And I repaid her by putting my mouth on her while she was unconscious.

"You okay?" she asked, noticing me staring. "You've been quiet."

"Long day. Tired."

She studied me, then smiled. "Come watch something with me? I've been alone all day."

We ended up on the couch. Some show she'd been bingeing, something I couldn't follow because she was leaning against me with her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled like shampoo. Her body was warm against my side. I was using every ounce of focus I had to stare at the screen.

After two episodes she yawned and stretched and turned to face me.

"I'm heading to bed." She paused. "Taking my pill. Check on me if I have a nightmare?"

My jaw tightened.

Then she leaned in and hugged me. Not a quick goodnight hug. She pressed her whole body against me, arms around my neck, face buried in my chest, and held on. Her breasts against me through the thin sweater, her hips against mine, her breathing slow and warm against my throat.

I was hard. Instantly, painfully hard, and her hips were pressed close enough that she might have felt it. I shifted slightly, trying to angle away without breaking the hug, but her arms tightened and I couldn't move without making it obvious.

"Thank you for tonight," she said into my chest. "I missed you today."

My arms came around her before I could stop them.

She pulled back and looked up at me, close enough that I could see the flecks in her eyes. Close enough to kiss.

Just lean down. Just do it.

"You know you're the only person who's ever made me feel safe, right? Love you, Denny."

Her voice snapped me out of it. She meant it. I could tell she meant it and that made it worse.

She waited for me to say it back. I could feel her waiting. We'd been saying it to each other for weeks now, ever since the nightmare, and it had become as easy as goodnight.

I couldn't get the words out. Not tonight. Not with the taste of her still in my memory and my cock hard against her hip and everything I'd done to her in the dark sitting right behind my teeth. She loved me and I didn't deserve a single syllable of it.

My throat closed.

She kissed my cheek, soft and slow, her lips staying close to my mouth before she pulled away. If she noticed I hadn't said it back, she didn't show it. Then she was gone. Her door closed. The apartment went quiet.

I put my dishes in the sink. Went to my room and sat on my bed and stared at the wall. I was still hard.

*****

Susan

I closed my door and pressed my back against it.

I'd planned the day, but all of it had been real. I'd mentioned the pill casually because I always did now, it was part of the routine, and then I was supposed to just say goodnight and go to bed.

But I couldn't. He was right there on the couch and he'd spent all day avoiding me and I just needed to feel him. So I'd hugged him. Pressed my whole body against him and held on, and the words came out before I thought about them. Thank you for tonight. I missed you today. You're the only person who's ever made me feel safe.

All of it true. Every word.

He hadn't said it back. We'd been saying love you to each other for weeks and tonight he couldn't get it out. I'd felt him trying, felt the silence where the words should have been.

And when I'd pulled back and looked up at him his eyes were wet and his arms had come around me like they couldn't help it. I'd felt him hard against me during the hug, pressing into my hip, and he'd known I could feel it because his whole body had tensed. But he hadn't pulled away.

I kissed his cheek and let my lips stay there, close enough to his mouth that one turn of his head would change everything.

I smiled in the dark.

He was coming tonight. After that hug, after what I'd felt pressed against me, there was no way he wasn't coming.

I changed into a thin shirt and panties. Positioned myself on my back. Closed my eyes.

And waited.

*****

Dennis

Check on me.

Her words kept looping. I could hear her brushing her teeth, the water running, then her door closing.

I sat on my bed and I could still feel her against me. The hug, her body pressed to mine, her breasts and her hips and her face in my chest. That cheek kiss close enough to my mouth that I'd almost turned my head. She'd told me I made her feel safe and I'd been so hard I couldn't think straight and I didn't know if she'd felt it or not but the way she'd smiled made my stomach drop.

She wanted me to come.

I rubbed my face with both hands.

But what if she didn't? What if the hug was just a hug and the pill was just a pill and I was reading desire into everything she did because I'd lost all perspective? Maybe she hadn't felt anything. Maybe the smile was just a smile. But if she had felt it, she knew I was turned on by my own sister, and if she was awake when I came to her room tonight, she'd know exactly what I was there for.

Three nights. I'd groped her, fingered her, eaten her out, each time going further than the time before. If I went tonight I wouldn't stop at my mouth. I knew that, and there was only one place left to go.

But she was right there. Twenty feet down the hall, under the pills, wearing whatever she'd worn to bed. Warm and soft and mine in the dark, and nobody would ever know.

I got up.

Check on me. That's all. Just check on her.

I walked to her door and stood there.

My hand came up to the doorknob. Hovered there.

The hug replayed. Her arms around my neck. The warmth of her against me. Her looking up at me, open and trusting and beautiful, telling me I was the only person who made her feel safe.

I stood there with my hand on the knob and the apartment was silent and I could hear her breathing through the door.

*****

Susan

I heard him. Footsteps in the hallway, then a pause outside my door.

This was it. I'd felt his erection pressed against me. I'd felt his arms around me. He was right there and all he had to do was turn the knob.

Tonight is the night. I can feel it.

But the silence kept going. He was right outside my door and he wasn't opening it. I lay there listening to nothing, waiting, and the seconds dragged on so long they stopped feeling like seconds.

Then I heard him step back. His footsteps moving away down the hall. His door closing. The lock clicking.

My eyes opened.

No.

He was supposed to come in.

But I'd heard his door close. Heard the lock click, as if to lock himself inside.

I didn't move. He might come back. Sometimes people changed their minds, walked away and then couldn't stay away, turned around in the hallway and came back. He might.

I lay there and waited.

An hour passed. I heard the apartment creak and settle and every sound could have been footsteps and none of them were. My eyes were open in the dark, staring at my door, willing it to open.

He didn't come back.

I kept waiting anyway. Adjusted my position, smoothed the shirt, kept my breathing steady in case he was standing in the hallway again and I couldn't hear him. In case he was right outside listening for me the way I was listening for him.

My eyes were getting heavy. I blinked hard and stared at the door. Stared at the thin strip of hallway light at the bottom and willed a shadow to cross it. My eyelids kept dropping and I kept forcing them open because if I fell asleep I'd miss him, and if I missed him I'd never know if he came back.

I woke up to morning light.

I'd fallen asleep. I hadn't meant to. The last time I'd checked the clock it was past one and I'd still been listening.

The first thing I did was check myself. Shirt in place. Panties undisturbed. The blanket was pulled up to my chin, which was strange because I didn't remember doing that. But I'd been exhausted, tossing and turning for hours before I finally passed out. I must have pulled it up without thinking.

No sign that anyone had been in my room.

He hadn't come.

I'd been so sure.

Was it the moan from last night? Had he figured it out, decided I was awake, decided I'd been playing him this whole time? Or was it something worse. Had he just decided he didn't want me enough to risk it?

I didn't know which answer scared me more.

I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket over my head and lay there in the gray morning light and let the ache have me.

Then I got mad.

I kicked the blanket off. It tangled around my ankle, which felt personal, and I had to sit there untangling it while glaring at my door.

He'd come to my door. He'd stood there for what felt like forever before he walked away. That wasn't a man who'd given up. That was a man who'd barely talked himself out of it.

Fine. He wanted to play it that way? He wanted to lock his door and pretend he didn't want me after everything he'd done?

I'd run off every girl he'd ever brought home without even trying. Imagine what I could do now that I was actually trying.

He'd been spoiling me my whole life. He thought he could just stop?

(To be continued.)