Carmella Decesare

The events of the night went by in a stupor, and it was well into the early morning hours when the two stepped out of the club, away from the pressing mass of people that still partied inside.

"I need some water," Carmella was fanning her face; a healthy flush of red betrayed her heated state. Tommy must have felt that way to, but later he confessed to feeling hot from the moment he noticed her in the sunset. "I have some bottles in the trunk of my car," she pulled Tommy along to follow, "I can't drive back to my cabin," she was saying, the reaction was almost primal, instinctive,

"I can walk you back, make sure you don't puke in you hair."

"It's okay," Carmella silken laugh conjured visions of movie starlets and sex symbols, "I'm not that drunk. But I would appreciate the company. Strange places and all that."

It was for the first time then, as they found her car, that he noticed her dimples, and how they always seemed to appear when she turned to look at him, and he couldn't control himself anymore.

He kissed them, not surprised to find them grow deeper as Carmella realized she had driven him beyond what any other boy or man could endure. She had flirted, felt and teased him in everyway since the moment she had found him topless on the beach, so overcome with her beauty he forsook the sunset to watch her. She had known in certainty that he was fighting everything his male nature urged just to remain civil.

It was a sign of respect she had rarely seen before, and she knew a reward was what he deserved. So she kissed him back, her lips were no strangers to other lips, but on Tommy's they felt different. She could tell he was trying to be soft, non-threatening, as it made her lips curl into a smile, one he surely felt against his. She allowed him to press his body against hers, trapping her securely against the side of her car, his hand lingering on the generous curve of her slender hips. They drank each other in for quite some time, unable to find their thirsts sated in any easy measure. Carmella relished the soft touch and almost found herself tearing into him with a romantic passion uncommon to her. He had found something inside her she had never know she wanted, after all the men she had been with, why was this kid, after all, he was a kid, different?

For Tommy control was coming more easy now, he found responses to his gentle touch, just as he had imaged she would like to be touched the moment he heard her voice on the beach. It was natural, to be this gentle with her, for some reason.

"Your water," Tommy reminded her after a long gap in the kisses where their foreheads rested together and their hands played idly with each others bodies.

"In the trunk," Carmella whispered, touching his face softly with eager fingertips.

Tommy didn't want to break the contact, but he did, and he went to grab the water when something dreadful caught his eye. The gravity of the discovery almost caused his legs to buckle, but his hand found purchase on the doorjamb of the car. There, tucked neatly into a corner of the window was a UCLA parking pass made out to Carmella Feldman. It wasn't my mothers' maiden name, but it was her sisters' first married name.

It felt like God had slapped his chest with his awesome hand and sent him hurtling into a never-ending abyss of humiliation. God was doing this to him, taunting him, teasing him with unattainable dreams. Why!? Was it because he had such a gift for throwing a baseball? Tommy swore it was not true, that he would give up the show if it meant having Carmella.

But this was no game with god. Carmella was born to from his aunt's marriage, and Carmella was his cousin.

"What?" She grabbed onto his waist, helping him stand back up strait. To her it looked as if he was about to heave, but he hadn't even drunk that much. "Are you okay?"

"No..." Tommy's emotions were in a typhoon of confusion, physically, emotionally, everything was set off like a counter haymaker to his face. His rhythm was gone. His finger tapped the sticker on the glass, "Is your mother Denise."

Carmella's eyes were blank with confusion, she nodded but wasn't sure how he could have known.

"Now I wish I had gone to every family event instead of faking baseball injuries." Tommy didn't want to say it, to tell her she had just shared an incredibly intimate kiss with her cousin. He didn't have to...the severe look of shattered disappointment told him she had figured it out. She touched her lips with the palm of her hand, not as if she was going to throw up, but rather as if to keep them hidden.

What had she done? Carmella couldn't look anywhere but the ground, fighting down wells of shame and horror with the simple fact that despite everything...she still wanted him. Something completely feminine craved the way he touched her, the way she made him feel. It was not as if she could undo the past hours, not that she felt she wanted to...it was taboo, incest, illegal. Well, not the kissing part, but everything else she had planned on was. It was unexplainable in any rational sense why she still craved after Tommy; she knew she'd have to fight every ounce of social conditioning to get what she wanted. Nothing in life was easy; Carmella knew that as well as any human being. So before she could talk her self out of it she kissed him again, eagerly, passionate, in a way she had never kissed a man before.

She was overwhelmed with disappointment as he pushed her away and took off down the street, leaving her reeling in her own shame and humiliation. She didn't chase after him. She had lost and that was it.

It was Marcus that stirred to wakefulness when Tommy stole silently into his sleeping bag minutes later, the hot rush of blood still pumping in time with his ragged breaths. Never had he ran so hard away from something he truly wasn't afraid of.

"Where have you been?" Marcus quizzed, Tommy ignored him.

"Hey," Marcus repeated, "Where ha-,"

Tommy turned and cut him off with the coldest glare he could muster, even in the dim light Marcus blinked in surprise at the hostility.

Marcus turned over and mumbled a couple unsavory comments. Tommy didn't fall asleep until well after sunrise when his body shut down despite the cries from his brain. As he fought his way to stay awake he could only think that he made the wrong decision, though about what he couldn't determine. Maybe he should have stayed with Carmella and let her take him to where she wanted to go, or maybe he regretted running away so violently. Whatever the case, he regretted something.

************************************************

"Pass the beer," Tim was holding his hand out, Tommy fumbled through the ice filled cooler until his hand clasped around the cold, slender neck of the bottle.

"You know, this week could be great," Tim nodded his thanks as he took the brew, "I mean, next year we are all off to college, maybe now was a good time to see each other off."

"Yeah," Tommy said softly, "I guess, even though were not close or anything I do like hanging out."

"Maybe in a couple years we'll be watching you on Sport Center or something."

"Starting Pitcher Tommy Perezzi," Tommy allowed himself a selfish smile at the sound of his name, "Has a ring to it."

"As long as we get dug-out tickets," Johnny said after another swig of Corona.

The three settled back into their silent reverence of the sun, the distant cries of frolicking kids and the sounds of swimmers in the surf settled away from Tommy's mind. At the breakfast he hadn't seen Carmella, but he had deduced why her name never rang any bells.

He had always vaguely known her as Carmi, Denise's first daughter from her first marriage. Carmi spent most of her weeks in her fathers' custody because Denise's job as an investment banker required her to travel quite a lot. Now that he thought about it the connection between Carmella and he was so vague as to be almost non-existent, but he had to admit that it was apparent enough to be cruel. As far as he could determine she was a compatriot in his dislike for family gatherings. But still...all this time...why had he never seen a picture of her in a holiday card or family album.

He had been fighting with his moral compass ever since he woke up after his fleeting four hours of slumber, battling off constellations of erotic notions, trying to free images of Carmella's wildly playful maple colored hair, her touch...his body let out an unconscious shiver despite the comfortable heat.

Tommy was startled from his recollections by Johnny's movements to his right,

"Hey," Johnny said as he sat up, "Carmi's coming."

Tommy opened his eyes and tilted his head in the direction both brothers were looking. Indeed, Carmella was walking towards them from the public beach, dressed in a pair of short surf shorts and a pink bikini top underneath a damp white tank top. Her dark skin was a stark contrast to the white garments and only served to extenuate an exotic look she must have obtained solely from her father. A pair of oversized sunglasses in fat white frames sat comfortably on her narrow, perfectly arched nose so Tommy could not see if she was looking at him upon her approach.

A sink feeling of disappoint came over Tommy as he realized the very thing he regretted was not kissing her back after she had offered.

"Hey boys," her voice sounded somewhat raw, as if she had just woken up, "Waters great, really woke me up."

"Big party last night?" Tim smiled, offering her a water bottle from the cooler bag at his feet. She didn't look at Tommy as she nodded and took the bottle. She stood there; draining the bottle half ways then dumped the rest over her face,

"Have you gone for a swim yet?" She asked, "I heard there is a sand bar a ways out." She looked out at the calm water and its cascading nature knowing full well that she was making Tommy very uncomfortable. She could tell by the way he kept his head turned just slightly away that the event of last night were still fresh in his mind. It was not as if she had forgotten either, but she had come to terms with it in her own expedient way by blaming it on the moment and the alcohol and their ignorance.

"Who's coming?" She asked again, tossing the empty bottle beside the cooler with a flick of her slender wrist.

"I'm in," Tommy stood up and kicked off his sandals and taking off his sunglasses.

"I'm not swimming," Johnny shook his head, "I'm not moving until this fucking tanning butter starts to work."

"Me too," Tim shrugged, "We have to have good tans before we go to college."

"Fine," Carmella smiled, unsure how awkward the following swim would be, but determined in her own strong minded way to make it work. Never before had she let an obstacle derail her from having a good time and she trusted Tommy to act civility about it (despite his frantic departure from their kiss the night before).

She tucked her sunglasses into the pocket of her shorts and peeled off her tank top, instantly realizing her mistake as every eye her three cousins had where instantly rivet to her breasts and dauntingly flat stomach. She ignored their lustful gazes and took off into the water. Tommy caught up to her a dozen meters out, the water still shallow even then.

"Do you want to talk?" He asked her, blinking away the spray of water his hurried movements created. Carmella nodded without looking at him,

"Farther out," she stepped on until it was finally deep enough to swim. Tommy followed her with a lazy breast stroke, admiring at how easily her lithe frame cut through the water, like the bow of a slender cutter ahead of the wind. He watched the bob of her ass and the strong kick of her powerful legs, finding himself an unwilling participant of the hypnotic show. They found the sandbar eventually, just before lunch and they climbed to the opposite side, relieved to find it deserted and quite private.

"I don't know where to start," Tommy began as Carmella sat down, the fine sand clinging to her wet skin like sugar crystals on a dampened finger.

"You could apologize for pushing me," Carmella took out her sunglasses and put them back on, pulling her wet hair away from the lenses and wringing it out.

"I'm sorry,"

"Then you could tell me what you're afraid of." Her eyes, even underneath the dark lenses, carried a deeply moving expression that was not lost on Tommy. The implications of the expression also confused him, was she implying... no, he must have misunderstood.

"Afraid of?" he echoed, "About what? Last night?"

"Yes." She never turned his head, even as he looked away in embarrassment.

"Nothing really," he was off balance, he had envisioned himself asking these questions, but now he was unsure. He took a hollow gulp and looked his gaze, "But mostly I'm angry."

"At me?" Carmella asked.

"No, God."

She was quiet as he explained.

"I have never met someone quite so," he paused to find a word that would not incriminate his inner thoughts, "unique, as you. And I have to admit to feeling a little bit cheated by this whole situation. I feel as if God threw me a knuckle ball I thought I could hit."

"Knuckle ball?" Carmella tiled her head in such a purely pedestrian way it made her seem even more alluring.

"It's a pitch," Tommy explained, holding his hand out and gripping an imaginary ball, "The pitcher holds on to the seams of the ball with his fingernails so that when he throws it, well, perhaps shove is a better word, the ball takes almost no spin. As the ball travels the wind changes the spin of the ball, causing it to dart around, teasing the batter with what looks like a slow, easily hit pitch. But it cuts away just as the swing starts, falling into the mitt just out of reach."

Tommy let Carmella maul over the analogy for a while. "I'm the knuckle ball." She nodded. Silence again.

"Can I tell you what I'm afraid of?" She wanted to take his hand but didn't, still unsure if they were both in the same lane of thought.

"What people would say if we had gone all the way?" Tommy guessed, thinking it the safest answer.

"No," Carmella shook her head, "I'm afraid of missing out on what I felt was a special connection. So what if we're fucking cousins, I've never met you before and on that beach, when you watched me I knew we shared something special."

"What?"

"An independence we can both respect, a desire for what we want and an ability to get it."

Tommy squinted down the lake while he thought about her words. Of course it was true, he had told Brad the very same thing just two days before.

"You don't see a future in this do you?" Tommy asked. Carmella let out a sweet laugh,

"I don't care right know," she sat up onto her knees reached out to grab Tommy's shoulder, relieved when he didn't pull away. "I just want..."

Her desires were never fully voices as Tommy broke to the undercurrent of desire, fighting the rip tide of the moment. They were together again, under the shifting transparent clouds, a gentle water breeze playing across their moist skin. Her classes fell to the sand as her deceptively powerful arms pushed him down so she could mound his torso. He turned his head at first, letting her attack his neck with her wanting lips, feeling the length of her body, the definite swell of her breasts beneath the skimpy bikini and the smooth length of her thigh between his. Then he turned at let her touch his lips. She licked at them timidly, almost testing their responsiveness. Tommy was fighting his stiffness, fighting the humiliation that waved up inside him. He was immobilized by her fast grip, unsure whether he wanted to fight it or not. Now that the moment was upon him his regrets started to make more sense.

However, as Carmella sucked at his mouth and nibbled on his lips he couldn't fight the smoldering fire in his loins. Suddenly she stopped kissing him and hallways rolled off to the side, her cheek pressed against his and her mouth still dreadfully close to his.

"That wasn't so bad was it," her hot whisper sent a

Rolling waves of energy through Tommy's spine, it was all he could do to keep staring at the sky. AT this distance, Carmella's skin, which had looked like dark ivory, felt soft as a down feather against him, ah, all of her seemed a soft doll made of luscious and magical materials far more yielding than flesh and blood, yet utterly on fire with both. A passionate heat came out of her in a rhythmic throb, emanating right from the coolness of her fingers stroking his chin, and then the heat of her tongue as it shot into his lips again.

He could not fight it...he didn't want to fight it. She lay against the very evidence of his desire.

When his lips first parted to accept hers she smiled and was secretly proud of herself for winning the battle. As he kissed her, her fears began to wash away as well until she found herself giving herself fully to him in such an impassioned way her lip was cut on his teeth.

They barley broke their kiss as Carmella dully scraped her fingernail down his chest to the clasp that held his shorts on, drawing like an artist a blazing trail of white hot heat all the way. She needed no help in disrobing him, it was a practiced motion.

"Are we really going to do this?" Tommy said, taking a glance down at his slow roaster of an erection.

"Are you going to stand in the batters box all day, or are you going to come out swinging."

Tommy didn't bother to correct her confused sports analogies. They had gained the momentum they needed to break through to the next level...their tepidness had gone the moment their passion drew blood. The supremely shaped young lady was then atop him, her hands splayed out, fists grasping at fleeting handfuls of sand while she let Tommy explore her slender back and waist, surprised at just how large his hands were. He could undoubtedly connect his pinkie fingers along the nape of her spine and touch the edges of her back with his thumbs. He surely could grasp her waist as if it was a glass vase and move her about with little effort. She felt so small draped over him, though completely safe. Through sneaking glances she saw the coiled muscles of his arms and shoulders move under his olive skin, his abs were not sculpted into a six pack but she didn't lament the fact. It was enough for her that his stomach was strong and flat. With a last, tender kiss she slid down his body, gliding her lips and hands down the contours of his chest and belly.He watched Carmella's face for any hint of disappointment, even surprise or shock. He was no stranger to women, yet the last time he had been with one was on his graduation night, so he was glad when Carmella didn't put her mouth on his cock. He had no desire to shoot prematurely without giving her a fair taste of what he knew he could offer.

One hand left its purchase on his pelvic bone and pulled from her back pocket a condom. The little scamp had planned this, Tommy realized, struck by another wave of remorse.

"I'm just going to suck you enough to get you hard," she said after noticing Tommy's apprehensive look, "I promise you won't regret this."

She had a smile on her lips as she bobbed down to take his penis, admiring the thickening shape of it. It was a well built rod, even in its unflattering state. He was uncut, the skin on the tip just beginning to spread apart to reveal the bulbous head. She sucked the unit down into her mouth and swished it around, the deep sucking causing deep wells in her thin cheeks.

She didn't have too much time to spend there, once she darted her tongue out under the folds of skin Tommy's rigidity became complete. The throbbing erection assembled itself so fast in her throat that Carmella could feel the hefty pulse like a blood pressure machine taking a pulse. It was impressive enough, long and dark completely smooth of all veins save for the large one, the breadth of her middle finger, running parallel with the shaft. She slid her mouth off and attacked it from the side, letting the sparse pubic hair tickle her smooth chin and nose, from every angle the cock looked enticing...non threatening yet with an air of pleasurable promise.