Birds and Bees

"Oh, hey," I said to her, "what were you saying before?"

She reached over and took my hand in hers.

"Let's put that off a bit longer."

I nodded a silent agreement and returned to my silence, finding infinite comfort in the feel of her hand holding mine.

*

Later that morning, Rhiannon and I stood in the kitchen together, staring at the cheap urn on the table that held our daddy's ashes.

"So what d'ya wanna do, Ben?"

"I dunno. I guess throw them somewhere."

"Right...that much we kinda already knew."

"Maybe I should have just thrown them out the window on the way home like he said I could."

"No! I know he wrote that in his letter, but we can do better for him than that."

"Yeah."

Rhiannon took my hand in hers and just stood with me in silence. Almost instantly warmth spread over me, and I knew what to do

"The bees," I said.

"The bees?" she reapeated.

"Yep. Dad loved to eat their honey with his biscuits. Actually he loved to have a side of biscuit with his honey, to be more accurate. There'd probably be twice as many jars stored in that pantry if it weren't for him. I think he'll be real happy being back there with the bees."

"That's a sweet idea, Benji."

She squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek. I had so much to sort out inside myself between saying goodbye to Daddy and figuring out my relationship with my sister. So many feelings, so little time.

Just then, Emma Jean walked into the kitchen.

"Aw, hey girl," I said to Emma Jean. "You wanna say goodbye to him before we take him out? I know he'll miss you so-Emma Jean no!"

Before I knew it, Emma Jean had hopped onto the table and knocked over the urn. A huge cloud of my father filled the room.

"Oh shit!" I coughed out, scrambling to get the chicken out of the room.

We were able to get most of his ashes swept up and back into the urn, but trace amounts of him got wedged into crevices that we just couldn't get out.

"Well that was a shit-show," I said to Rhiannon as we walked out the door and started making our way towards the bees.

"I think Daddy would have thought it was hilarious," she replied in a comforting tone.

"Really?"

"Definitely. In fact...nah, nevermind."

"What?"

"Well, I wonder...how often does Emma Jean jump on the table like that?"

"Never. She knows better than to do that."

"Hm. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"Makes me wonder, what?"

"Maybe Daddy...sent...Emma Jean into the kitchen to do that. Maybe he thought it'd be funny. Or maybe he thought you were stressing too hard about what to do with him and wanted to make a point. Or maybe he wanted a little part of him to stay in the house."

I started to respond with skepticism, never being one to think much of the idea of an "after-life", but decided against it. If nothing else, it was a really sweet way of looking at it, and I didn't want to taint the gesture with my negativity. Hell, for all I knew she was exactly right. It sure did sound like something my daddy would do. I took her hand in mine as we continued to walk. I was really enjoying this whole hand holding thing we had going on.

Once we got to the clearing with the bee hives, I sat the urn down on the ground, then sat myself down. Rhiannon sat down beside me.

"You wanna say anything?" she asked.

"I'm not sure yet."

"Okay. Mind if I say some stuff?"

"Oh," I said, feeling kind of surprised at that. "Of course, go ahead."

She took a little while longer to just sit with me quietly before saying what she wanted to say.

"Daddy, I never understood why you let Mama take me without any kind of fight at all. It hurt me that you seemingly didn't want to be a part of my life anymore. I missed you. Did you miss me? I think maybe you did. Maybe it was just easier to give up on me than fight for me. Maybe you just felt that strongly about never seeing Mama again, and you knew that if you tried to get me back you'd have to deal with her again. Whatever your reasons, I just want you to know that I forgive you. Life is full of hard choices, and nobody makes all the right decisions all the time. One day I hope to see you again. I hope you are at peace. Goodbye. Daddy."

I had buried my face in my hands and shed a few tears during Rhiannon's speech. When I looked up, I saw that she, too, had a couple tears falling down her face.

Once I had composed myself, I took a deep breath and started to talk.

"Daddy, I...I guess all I wanna say is...thank you for taking care of me. I'll never forget you. Rest in peace."

Rhiannon and I looked at each other and nodded. We stood up and I grabbed the urn. I opened the lid, turned it over, and poured out my daddy's ashes.

Wind can be a gift on an overly hot day. Being outside for hours at a time while working in a hot garden bed has always made me appreciate a nice breeze.

The wind on this particular day was stronger than average. Not crazy, but strong enough to carry the ashes away with it, which was a nicer aesthetic than dumping then all out into one heaping pile. The downside of that, however, was that we were standing a little bit closer than we should have been to one of the hives.

A thick cloud of ash poured into the slitted opening of one of the bee hives. I immediately could tell that this was bad news. I heard the roar of an angry swarm of bees raging inside of the box.

"Oh shit...run Rhiannon!"

She looked at me, clearly very confused.

"The ashes!" I continued. "They got in the hive. We have to go now before they come after us!"

"Oh my god!" she screamed. "Where do we go!? Which way?"

"To the pond!" I said, grabbing her hand. "This way!"

Just before I took off running, I felt a single bee buzz very closely beside my face. This confirmed for me that they were planning on attacking us, so I led Rhiannon full speed towards the little pond in the woods.

"We're going to jump in when we get there," I said to her as we ran.

"Shit, of course we are," she replied.

When we reached the pond, I ran straight for its nearest edge, planted my foot firmly, and hurled myself in. When my head came up from underwater, Rhiannon's emerged right beside me.

"You and your fucking animals, Ben," she said while treading water and catching her breath.

"Hey, I never had any issues until you got here."

"Oh yeah, blame the helpless city girl."

I playfully splashed a small amount of water at her and laughed. Then I looked back in the direction of the hives.

"You don't think..." I began.

"What?"

"You know...what you were saying earlier about Daddy? How he might be toying with us?"

"Oh! Yeah, maybe..."

I looked towards Daddy's final resting place for a while longer, not just thinking about him, but contemplating life in general. I thought about our fragility as humans. I thought about missed chances, poor decisions, and love.

Then I looked at my sister in the water beside me. I swam across the small stretch of pond that separated us. I positioned myself in front of her, put my arms around her submerged body, and pulled her body tight up against mine. Her mouth met mine halfway between us, and we sank into a tender, but passionate, kiss. Her lips locked themselves firmly against mine, soft moans escaping her mouth as I kissed her with more and more rigor.

We made out right there in the water for a solid ten minutes or more, our lips smacking and tongues dancing. It felt like I couldn't kiss her hard enough, even with both of our hands pushing on the backs of each others heads. I lowered both of my hands to her waist, and when she lifted her legs and wrapped them around me, it made it real easy to pull her groin up against mine. I had no shame whatsoever in pushing my insanely hard cock right up against her crotch, and when I did, she responded by driving herself into me hard. I lowered my hands down to her ass and, gripping her firmly, helped her glide her vagina up and down against my dick.

I opened my eyes for the first time during this interaction. Watching my sister's gorgeous face as she pushed her tongue deep into my mouth made everything that much hotter. It turned me on so much to tell myself that I was grabbing my sister's ass, rubbing my dick against my sister's pussy, Rhiannon's pussy, while watching her face. I intentionally broke our kiss just so I could pull back and watch her face as she pleasured herself against me. She returned her gaze on mine, and we stared each other down, never breaking our stride.

"I think I'm gonna cum, Benji," she moaned softly.

I pulled her even harder against me to help her along. Her mouth opened wide and her eyes closed as she thrashed hard against me at an ever quickening pace, water splashing violently around us. Watching her face as she climaxed sent me over the edge myself. I felt the hot, sticky liquid against my skin as it shot out inside of my shorts. The heat was quickly extinguished by the surrounding water.

Rhiannon pulled my face back to hers, and we kissed each other very softly for a little while longer. Finally, still not having said a word to each other, we swam the short distance to the edge of the pond and climbed out. We lay down beside one another in a soft, grassy area that wasn't too far away.

"We just dry humped," Rhiannon said, "underwater."

"So...we wet humped, then?"

We laughed too hard at that very lame joke.

"You don't think we contracted any diseases from that pond water, do you Ben?" she asked jokingly.

"Only time will tell, I guess. Now, one thing I do suggest we do is strip down and check each other for leeches."

"Yeah, I bet you do."

We didn't move for a while after that, both of us dozing off for just a bit. But eventually we walked back to the house, hand in hand, as I silently anticipated the possibilities of the night ahead.

*

I actually had a lot of work to do that afternoon. The farmer's market was going on the next day, and after the week that I had, I really had to play catch up if I was going to present my usual stock. I spent the rest of daylight, and then some, outside getting my produce ready for the next day.

When I finally went inside that evening, there was a large sausage, mushroom, and black olive pizza on the table, and a six pack of my favorite beer in the fridge. Not only that, but Rhiannon had spent that whole time cleaning my house, and it looked better than it had in...well, ever.

"So tell me about your wildest fantasy," Rhiannon asked me out of nowhere.

I almost choked on the mammoth-sized bite of pizza that I had just taken. I swallowed it down quickly, much sooner than I should have, so it kind of hurt a little.

"Where the hell did that come from!?" I asked.

"Eh, I dunno. I've just been in here cleaning all day, all by myself. The mind wanders, you know. I was thinking about how hot our little rendezvous was today in the pond, and I got to thinking about other scenarios that could be fun in the future. So how 'bout it? Got any fun kinks you wanna share with me?"

"You mean something more taboo than, say, hooking up with my sister. That not quite doing it for you, anymore? Has the novelty already worn off?"

"Oh, no! Of course not, Benji. I just thought it'd be fun to talk about, is all. I didn't hurt your feelings just now, right? I didn't mean to imply anything, I swear."

"Oh, you're fine, sis. I was just teasing you."

"Okay, well good. Because you should know that, in addition to cleaning up around your house this afternoon, I spent a considerable amount of time in bed today, thinking about you."

I felt a distinct twitch in a certain area of my body in that moment.

"You are just the best sister a guy could ever have, Rhiannon."

Rhiannon cocked her head to the side and smiled proudly.

"Seriously, though, you wanna share something that you've fantasized about before? Hell, if it's doable, it could be something that we could look into in the future."

"Uh, I dunno..."

"Please? How about this: I'll share one of mine, then you share something. Deal?"

I thought about it for a moment, but just a short moment.

"Yeah, alright then."

"Swear you'll share?"

"Promise."

"Cool, here goes then. You ever seen the movie Marie Antoinette?"

"Of course I haven't."

"Well there's this scene in the movie where she and-"

"Who?" I interrupted.

"What?"

"You said 'she'. Who are you talking about?"

"Whoopi Goldberg."

"Really?"

"No, dumb ass. Fucking Marie Antoinette, Ben. Stop ruining my special story!"

"Sorry, continue."

"Anyway, she and a whole bunch of other people are playing hide-and-seek in this enormous house, and her and this other guy end up stealing away into a dark room and...well, you don't actually see what they do in the movie, but it's implied that they do it."

She stopped talking for a bit, and I waited as she took a bite of her pizza and a sip of her beer. Eventually she looked up at me and continued talking.

"Okay, so now you go," she said.

"Wait...what?"

"That was the deal, Ben. I shared a fantasy, so now you share. You promised!"

"That wasn't a fantasy! All you did was talk about a scene in a movie that turns you on!"

"Oh, come on, that totally counts! A lot of times when I'm, you know, pleasuring myself, I 'fantasize' about myself and some dude in the same scenario, and it's really hot. Boom, fantasy."

"Ugh, fine. Although, that feels a little cheap, if I'm being honest."

"Get over it, your turn."

"Alright. Well, you know how I'm outside a lot, right?"

"Ooh, I think I can see where this is going."

"So sometimes when I'm working in the garden, I imagine that I have a girl working for me, you know, as my 'employee' or whatever, and every now and then, we steal away and fool around and stuff. She takes me by the hand, drags me into the chicken coop, and lets me have my way with her. First, I remove her...are you okay?"

I had glanced up at Rhiannon's face to find her in a completely different state than I expected. She looked as though she had just been force fed an entire bag of moldy lemons.

"Is something wrong? You look like you're in pain."

"The chicken coop?"

"Oh god."

"The chicken coop, Ben?"

"No, wait! It was a joke!"

"You fantasize about having sex in the chicken coop!? Oh my god, Ben! That is so disgusting!"

"I was kidding, I swear! Really!"

She looked at me skeptically, but thankfully started to calm down.

"You sure?"

"Of course! Come on, Rhiannon, the chicken coop? As if!"

She clearly wasn't convinced, but thankfully eased up on her accusations.

"Alright...but if I see you getting an erection in the morning when you're collecting the eggs, I'm gonna freak out again!"

"Just. A. Joke. I promise."

Yeah, it wasn't a joke. I dunno...I can't explain it.

We spent the next couple of hours or so drinking beer and chatting some more, the mood thankfully returning to normal after the chicken coop fiasco. At some point we had gotten out a very old, and very cheap bottle of whiskey that my dad had forgotten about in the back of the fridge. It tasted better than rat piss, but not quite as good as expired hand sanitizer. Either way, it got the job done.

"You ain't got nothin' sweet to eat, have you Benji?" Rhiannon asked.

"'Ain't got nothin''? Heh, listen to you with your accent! Guess all it took was a few days back home and some old liquor to pull that out of you. Must be true what they say, you can take the girl out of the country..."

Rhiannon looked at me with expectantly.

"Go on," she said.

"Uh, but you can't take the country out of the girl?"

I watched as she took several seconds to process the whole thing that I said, then lost her shit and fell on the floor laughing.

"Oh my god, Ben, you're so funny! Did you just make that up on the spot?"

She looked so cute staring at me with her big, gorgeous blue eyes.

"Yep!" I said proudly.

"Seriously though, Ben, I want dessert! You got anything?"

"Nah, I don't think so. I've never been big on sweets."

"Well, shit. Oh, wait, I know!"

She disappeared into the pantry briefly, emerging with one of my jars of honey.

"This'll do the trick, I think," she said as she opened the jar. "I need to taste this stuff, anyway, if I'm going to be helping you sell it."

She barely skimmed the surface of the honey with her pointer and brought it to her mouth.

"Mmm...that's delicious, Ben! You did a good job on this!"

"Thanks! Although I guess I should give a little bit of credit to the bees."

"Ha! You're so cute...hey, you wanna taste?"

"Nah, like I said, I'm not really big on sweet stuff."

She dipped her finger into the jar once more, this time submerging it down to her second knuckle. She pulled it out and held it out in front of her.

"You sure?"

My mouth immediately began to salivate.

"Well, if you're having some, I guess I will too."

She came right up to me and moved her finger towards my face. At first, she just lightly traced her fingertip across my bottom lip. I lightly took hold of her wrist and held her hand in place, allowing me to take my tongue and lick all the honey off of my lip and her fingertip. She pushed her finger inside of my mouth, little by little, until just about the whole thing was in my mouth. I had to admit that it truly was delicious honey, although I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the vessel.

"Good?" she asked.

I sucked her finger clean as she slowly removed it from my mouth.

"Delicious. I kinda want some more, though."

"Oh really?"

She pulled her hair back with one of her hands and lowered her face to the opening of the jar that still sat on the table. She cut her eyes up at me as her tongue extended out of her mouth and scooped up a generous load of the amber substance. I swiftly moved in front of her as she stood back up, put my hand around the back of her neck, and guided her tongue straight into my mouth. I sucked her tongue clean of honey, then took my own tongue and ran it along the length of hers, just for good measure. We kissed hungrily, sweetness still coating the inside of our mouths.

"You had enough yet, big brother?" she asked, our mouths barely a centimeter apart.

"Almost...I think I want just a little bit more, though."

"Okay. Well how 'bout you serve yourself this time."

I was a little confused by her meaning until she hoisted herself into a sitting position on the table. One by one she unfastened the buttons that ran down the length of her shirt until it was completely open. I hadn't noticed before that she wasn't wearing a bra, but I sure as hell noticed then. Her breasts were exposed almost to the nipple. I moved forward, placed my hands on her torso, and slowly pushed her shirt aside until they came into complete view. Her nipples were sticking out extremely far, just begging to be sucked on. I dipped my own finger in the jar of honey and brought it to her chest. I first made a line down the center of her tits, then lightly moved my finger around and on each of her nipples as she made soft moans of pleasure.

"My god, Rhiannon, your body...your everything, is just perfect."

"That sounds so good coming from you, Benji."

I pushed my face in between her breasts and slowly ran my tongue up the line of honey, all the while lightly squeezing her boobs. I immediately turned my attention to one of her nipples, gingerly circling my tongue around the protrusion before finally sucking her whole nipple into my mouth. I spent a considerable time making sure I had cleaned up every atom of honey before moving on to the other side.

I decided that I simply wasn't finished with having my mouth on her just yet, so I guided her further back onto the table until she was laying completely flat on it.

"There's something I'd like to do for you...to you," I said to her, looking purposefully between her legs. "I just wanna make sure you don't think we're moving to fast."