Her Ex-Sister-in-Law

And to think Amanda hadn't even liked Karen very much when Peter had first brought her home!

Back then Amanda hadn't quite come to see how chauvinistic all three of her brothers were -- Peter, the eldest, most of all -- and she'd looked up to him. His almost constant surliness around boys her age ("You touch my sister and you'll be breathing through your ears, man!"), even when they had done nothing to deserve it, had always made her feel special and loved back then.

Now, in her mid-20s, it made her feel infantilized and condescended to. But at least Peter paid her some mind. Their two other brothers, James (two years older than Amanda) and Andy (the baby, two years younger than she), had taken after Peter in just about every way including that one -- they talked down to her, but at least they talked to her. Not like their father, whom the whole family had come home to honor as he had survived a heart attack a few months before. Though he'd welcomed her with a kiss on the cheek and a "There's m'girl!" on her arrival, an hour or so later he hadn't said another word to her. Nothing about her new job in New York or how the train ride had been, not even any annoying questions about any special man in her life. But Amanda welcomed that omission. In the mood she was in, she just might have come out to Mom and Dad, and that would most likely mean they'd never speak to her again.

Which honestly didn't sound so bad right now, as she found herself flanked by James and Andy on the couch. They were enjoying a long stroll down memory lane at her expense. "You never even knew we used to use your bras as a slingshot in the backyard, did you?" James said between slurps of beer.

"What?!" Amanda looked at him in outrage, angrily clutching her diet cola (she never drank with her family; the risk of loose lips was too high).

Andy spewed a mouthful of beer, only just catching it on his hand, which he wiped on his pants. "Guess that answers that question, Jimmy."

"That's not funny!" Amanda looked back and forth at them both in outrage. "You had no right --"

"Oh, let it go," James said with a patronizing chuck on her shoulder. "If you didn't even know, then there's no harm done."

"And it's not like you even really needed a bra back then or anything," Andy snickered.

"You guys are disgusting!" Amanda stood up and marched off towards the stairway.

She was almost there when she felt someone grabbing her arm to spin her around. It was Mom. "Amanda, you get back there and you join us until lunch is ready! This is for your father!"

"My father who's literally only said hello to me in the past hour?" Amanda retorted. "Besides, James and Andy, I mean..."

"Your brothers tease you because they love you, Amanda, you know that."

"No I don't! I know they tease me because you raised them to think they didn't have to have any respect for me whatsoever, and I've had it! I'll come down when lunch is ready, not before then." She wrenched her mother's hand off her arm and made her escape up the stairs.

"Ungrateful little bitch," Mom said from the foot of the stairs, loud enough for Amanda to hear from near the top, and for Peter to overhear it from his perch on the hassock next to Dad's chair, where he'd been regaling Dad with his latest stories of dating since his divorce from Karen.

"Eh, she never did like family get-togethers, Mom," Peter said.

"I wish she'd at least tell me why," Mom grumbled, and she returned to the kitchen. The living room, now all-male but for Peter's two-year-old Jane asleep in a corner, returned to talk of childhood glories and recent dating conquests.

Amanda's room was the smallest, but as the only girl at least she'd always had it to herself. Mom and Dad had left it more or less the same for the first couple of years after she'd gone off to college, but somewhere along the line they'd refurbished it to what they undoubtedly thought a girl's bedroom should look like. Gone were Amanda's basketball and Wonder Woman posters and the snapshots of her pals from school and the racing car quilt she'd had on her bed for as long as she could remember, in favor of pink chintz everywhere, a satin bedspread and an ornate canopy that she vaguely recalled Mom trying to interest her in as a child. The corner where her stereo had been was now occupied by a regal floral print armchair. She sat down on the chair and tried to rekindle the sense of safe-and-secure that the room had so often offered her back in the days when no other place in the world would.

It didn't happen. Her room was no longer her room.

Amanda did not mourn that very much. Now that she had a life on her own in New York, there was no need to still have a sanctuary back in her hateful little hometown, which she'd just as soon have never visited again. But it did mean there was no use holing up in the pink purgatory her old room had become.

No, there was only one place in the house that held any joy for her now, and that was Peter's old room. Diagonally across the second-floor foyer, the second-largest of their four bedrooms after Mom and Dad's, it had been Peter's room from the earliest days Amanda could recall. James had moved in after Peter had gone off to college, but then when Peter had arrived home just a year out of college with pregnant Karen on his arm and a job that didn't pay enough to support two people, never mind three, it had once again become his room, and Karen's too. Seeing as the room was now no-child's land -- it now had an ancient double bed and chest of drawers and nothing else -- Amanda was free to go in there and reminisce.

Amanda couldn't recall just why she hadn't liked Karen at first. Maybe she'd been attracted to Karen and hated herself for it, as she hadn't yet been even out to herself back then; but Amanda doubted it. With her short hair and strong features and almost-masculine build, Karen wasn't Amanda's usual type. Maybe she'd taken after her mother, who of course resented any and all women who stole her precious little boys away. But Amanda doubted that too; then as now, she and her mother hadn't seen eye to eye on much of anything. Her best guess in retrospect was, as an angst-ridden teenager the first time Peter had brought his then-girlfriend home from college for Thanksgiving, she resented anyone else in the family being happy. Peter, back then, most definitely was happy with Karen, who had been unfailingly friendly with Amanda and the others. To Amanda's relief later on, she didn't appear to have noticed any resentment on her part. She still wasn't sure how she'd hidden it or even why she had done so, but she certainly was glad she had.

As Amanda closed the bedroom door most of the way (she wanted to hear Mom's call for lunch -- after coming all this way she was at least going to eat!), smoothed her skirt out and sat down on the bed with one foot tucked under her, she found the lamp of memory that had burned out in her own room was still shining brightly in the now-anonymous looking guest room that had once been Peter and Karen's.

Mom and Dad still called it "the summer Peter and Karen stayed here," but it had really been well over a year. Amanda recalled she had just turned eighteen, because the knowledge she'd be off to college that fall was a constant balm in the huge fights James had had with Mom and Dad about having to move back in with Andy for the summer.

"But I waited forever for that room!" he'd whined over breakfast on the morning he was to go back to campus after spring break. "Peter had it to himself forever!"

"He won't have it to himself now, sweetie," Mom had admonished him. "He's got a wife to take care of, and soon a baby too."

"Great, so if I want my room back, all I've got to do is get a girl knocked up," James had grumbled.

Dad had shoved James' head down into his cereal bowl. "I won't have you talking about your brother like that!" he'd roared. "He did the responsible thing and married Karen, and you will respect them both or else!"

And somehow, Mom and Dad had still managed to be surprised a few weeks later when James informed them he'd found a summer job at his college's library and wouldn't be coming home. Amanda had not been, nor had she been dumb enough to express her own feelings about Karen. Dad would probably have gone easier on her, she knew, but Mom might well have been even more vengeful.

So Amanda had kept her contempt for her sister in law to herself when she moved in, larger than life in her seventh month, later that same week. She'd looked the other way on Karen spending so much time in their only bathroom, and had even been grateful Andy had someone other than her to tease about how often she had to pee. She'd managed to feel a bit of solidarity with her over Dad and Peter's condescending remarks about what a true lady she was and blah blah blah, though that was tempered by the fact that Karen seemed to bask in their sexism and maybe even enjoy it. Of course, what else would she expect of a woman who married her brother?

For all that, Amanda had been delighted for both her and Peter when she'd come home from school to learn Karen had given birth to Peter Junior, and that she was resting comfortably at the hospital. Her joy had not been feigned at all when Karen and Peter Junior had come home three days later. If she still hadn't liked Karen then, Amanda recalled now, she had at least come to respect her.

Now, Amanda lay back on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling, and let the memory of when she had come to like Karen wash over her. It had only been a few weeks later -- she wasn't sure if it was right before or right after she graduated, definitely in the same month either way.

Peter's room didn't look anything like Amanda remembered it from way back when. It looked even less like it had looked as James' room. With a double bed at one end and a crib at the other, nearly every inch in between was strewn with diaper bags and baby clothes, and with Peter and Karen's own dirty clothes piling up in one corner. Assorted baby-friendly posters of cute ducklings and bears had been tacked on the walls.

Amanda paid none of that any mind as she crept into the room. Karen was in the shower, Peter was off on a job interview, Mom and Dad were working, and Amanda was officially supposed to be keeping an ear out for Peter Junior if he cried anyway. He hadn't cried out, but Amanda -- despite her own utter lack of any maternal instinct -- had wanted a closer look at him for quite some time now. With Mom and Dad and Peter and Karen always fussing over him and even Andy wanting a good look now and then, she'd never had any chance to really admire him on her own. Until now.

He was adorable, nestled in the baby blankets with his eyes shut tight. Amanda felt like she could admire him all day. She soon lost all track of how long she had been admiring him, and she didn't think to keep an ear out for when Karen turned the shower off. And so she was caught flat-footed when Karen appeared in the doorway in her bathrobe.

"Oh!" Amanda looked up as if she'd just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

But Karen looked delighted to see her. "Hi, Amanda. Getting to know your nephew?"

"Sorry!" Amanda whispered, mindful even in her panic of waking little Peter up.

"Don't be silly, Amanda!" Karen put an arm around her. "I always have wished we were closer, you know. And especially now that we'll be staying here for a while."

"I'd like that too." It seemed the only appropriate thing to say, and as Amanda said it, she was surprised to realize she really meant it. Karen's arm had felt quite nice around her. As usual she tried to tamp those feelings down, and as usual she couldn't quite do it. "I feel like I could gaze at him all day," she confessed.

"I know just what you mean," Karen said from behind her. "Sometimes I think I could just take pictures of him all day long and never get bored."

"That's sweet," Amanda said. "I sure hope you and Peter --" As she turned around to face Karen, she instantly forgot just what she hoped, for Karen had removed her bathrobe and was stark naked. "Eeee, sorry!" Amanda whipped back around and stared at the wall, telling herself she hadn't liked what she had just seen, and once again failing.

"Amanda, it's okay!" came Karen's voice from just behind her. "We're sisters! I mean, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. But I've already told Peter, I want our son to be comfortable with his body, and that starts with me being comfortable with mine."

Amanda very warily turned back around. "Well, if you don't mind..."

"I don't!"

Amanda allowed herself an unimpeded look at her sister-in-law, who was wearing a welcoming smile and nothing else. Her breasts looked so heavy Amanda wondered how she could stand up straight, and her bush looked big enough to swallow Amanda's own.

But she showed no sign of discomfort with Amanda's fascinated gazing. "This is what pregnancy can do to your body, if you're wondering," she said, reaching for her nursing bra. "Never thought putting this on would be a relief, but then I've never been this big before!"

"It's...it's great that you're thinking of how to make Peter happy with his body," Amanda said. "I mean Peter Junior!" she burst into nervous laughs.

Karen, still naked but for her bra, laughed and surprised Amanda with a hug that felt absolutely delightful. "I hope I'm not oversharing to say your brother is pretty happy with his body, too. And he's learning to love mine."

"Learning to love it!" Amanda was outraged on behalf of her new friend. "If he didn't think you were beautiful, why'd he ever want to marry you?"

"Well, he wanted to marry me because I was pregnant," Karen reminded her. "But that's not quite what I meant. What I meant was the way my body changed, and not just these," she said, touching her engorged breasts. "I meant this." She patted her huge bush.

"So you haven't always been so hairy?"

Karen shook her head. "Pregnancy can do that to you too. Something about hormones. My doctor says some of this will probably go away, but I'll still be somewhat bushier than before."

"I think it's beautiful," Amanda could have smacked herself once the words were out, but it was too late.

But once again Karen didn't mind. "Well, thank you!" she giggled. "I'm kind of enjoying it myself, although I wonder how I can ever go swimming again." Then, on a more serious note, she dropped her voice to a whisper. "No offense, Amanda, but the way you're looking at my body...are you gay?"

Amanda's finger flew to her lips, and she leaned in and whispered in Karen's ear. "Please don't tell anyone! I'd be kicked out of the house, and just when I'm about to escape! Besides, I'm...not really sure. I mean I think I am, but I've never kissed a girl or anything. But I've wanted to more than once."

"Your secret's safe with me," Karen whispered. Then she put on a pair of panties she'd had at the ready on the bed, and took Amanda's hand. "Let's go talk in your room, where we won't have to worry about waking the baby!"

Amanda let Karen guide her across the hall, loving the sensation of her hand in her own every step of the way. Once they were safely shut in Amanda's room, Karen said, "I'm bisexual myself, and my family doesn't know either. Neither does Peter," she added, anticipating Amanda's next question correctly.

"I can just imagine how he'd react," Amanda mused.

"Exactly," Karen said with a sad laugh. "For what it's worth, I don't think anyone suspects anything, although I kind of did."

"You did? Why?"

"Well, you're obviously kind of a tomboy at heart, but you wear skirts most of the time. I know that feeling, trying to convince yourself you really are feminine at heart."

"You've got me there," Amanda admitted. A lipstick lesbian before she knew there was such a thing, that was Amanda all right. Looking down at the sundress she was wearing that very day, she went on. "I just...knowing what Mom and Dad would say, here I've been hoping for some sign that I'm not really, you know. And no offense, but, seeing your body just now...it's hopeless!" She was near tears, and more than a little bit afraid her words would hurt Karen.

They didn't. "Your secret's safe with me, Amanda. As long as you need to stay in the closet, I'll guard the closet door, all right?" Then she grinned. "And I'm glad you liked what you saw. Do you want to be alone to think about it?"

"Alone to do what?"

"Oh, that's sad," Karen said. "Don't tell me you don't masturbate!"

"I don't...really know how, I guess," Amanda said. "I know how guys do it, of course, but..."

"Oh, Amanda!" Karen slid her panties back off. "The way you looked at me had me wanting to do this anyway. She helped herself to a seat on Amanda's bed, and then lay back, leaving plenty of room for Amanda to do the same. "Join me if you like."

"Is it even safe for you to do that? So soon after giving birth?" Amanda desperately wanted to join in, but something was still holding her back.

"I can't have sex for another couple of weeks at least," Karen said. "But yes, this is fine."

Amanda was dying to ask just how she knew that -- had she actually asked her doctor about it? But watching Karen's fingers frolicking in her thick bush was even more irresistible, and she gathered her skirt up and let her panties join Karen's on the floor.

"There's nothing to it," Karen told her as she clambered onto the foot of the bed, facing Karen and with a delightful view of her wet, dark pink pussy. She spread her legs to return the favor, and mimicked Karen's playful explorations with her fingers. "You might not want to rub your clit directly, that's really intense," Karen explained, and Amanda noted that she did indeed avoid rubbing it. Amanda's own tentative strokes had her inclined to do the same -- it was just a bit too much yet. "But you'll find how close you are comfortable with just by rubbing around it." Karen's breath had grown husky and short. "That's what I'm doing now, this is as close as I like it!" she was rubbing in wide half circles, and wriggling in pleasure at her own touch.

Amanda was nearly catatonic at the beautiful sight, and the deliciously forbidden nature of the whole scene. Her fingers ached to explore Karen's bush and to caress her pussy, but finding her first pleasure in her own body was a welcome consolation. She found her own comfort zone was a little closer in, and was soon rubbing in circles in rhythm with Karen's. Having finally admitted her preferences, she lost no time trying to imagine men. Instead she gazed between Karen's thighs and imagined she were rubbing her into an orgasm. It was easy to do, as Karen was soon moaning heavily and thrusting her heavy breasts out.

Amanda longed to feel them, but her own touch was heavenly in its own right. She also longed to make eye contact with Karen as they both came, but Karen had her eyes shut tightly as she approached the big moment. When Karen came, her intense gasps and yelps helped Amanda along into the home stretch herself. As she felt the wonderful tickle building up, Amanda closed her eyes and let herself imagine she was causing Karen's beautiful loss of control. Scarcely thirty seconds later, she enjoyed her first-ever orgasm.

They had never touched each other, and there wasn't even much time to talk about it before Peter Junior's cries had split the beautiful silence. But Amanda had never again had any complaints about Karen's presence, and from the day she arrived at college she'd been out and proud. Now, seven years later in the exact spot where Karen had opened the door to being herself in the sweetest way, Amanda found herself with the most intense arousal she'd felt in quite some time. She sat back up and looked out at the familiar view of her darling hometown, which would hate her if it knew the truth, and she reached under her skirt and stroked herself gently through her panties. What was the harm?