Merry Christmas, Baby Sister

She couldn't fool me.

I fell on top of the bed beside her, grabbed her by her wrists and pinned her down under me. She didn't resist my hungry kisses. She closed her eyes and quivered and moaned quietly. Her entire body felt so soft, the flesh of her thighs like hot velvet against my crotch.

Like an arrow of the compass, my cock was stretching itself towards the sweet nest between her legs. My heart was racing. I was simply mad with desire, uncertain whether to kiss or to bite.

"But let's try be quiet, ok?" she whispered breathlessly.

I would've wanted to tear off her clothes, enjoy the entirety of her full woman's body, but the danger was too great. God, the danger was already unbearable but also exciting.

Instead of taking off her underwear, I merely moved the fabric on the side, and thrust my cock inside her. A voiceless gasp formed on her lips, as if I had impaled her on a spear. Despite the shock there was no horror. Her eyes gleamed, her irises having turned to liquid from pleasure.

The fever inside her shot through my body like an electric wave. My fingers dug into the mattress, my hips rhythmically beating against hers, my cock harvesting her honey. Her arms having escaped my constraint, they were running over my body, the fingers scratching my back and aiding me in finding the right rhythm.

Her face was pained from the ecstatic feeling her body was burning in. There was a part of me that really wanted that orgasmic moan to escape her lips and to give us away. Why? Perhaps because then I could no longer be her dirty secret. She would be bound to me in shame.

As the orgasm ebbed over her, I had to place my hand on her little mouth. Her moans were violent, the type that get the neighbours to call the cops. I prayed that Mom's Christmas music would dampen the noise out.

She looked so fragile whenever she had an orgasm. Her eyes always had this miraculous wonder in them, as if she'd discovered Santa Claus to be real after all. This expression of hers was often the last nail on my coffin, and this time was no different. The climax made me collapse on top of her, breathless. I wondered now if my body was still wet from the shower or if it was all just perspiration.

She kissed me sweetly on my mouth.

"Love you," she whispered with a thankful smile.

"Love you too," I replied.

We got dressed and entered the living room one after another. Pops was reading the newspaper while Mom was already busy preparing the Turkey. It seemed as if our playtime in bed had gone past unobserved.

Playfully she ran to her father and gave him a peck on the cheek. The places those lips had been to, I thought to myself.

"How was your nap, sweetie?" Mom asked her.

"Perfect. Just what I needed," she replied with a sincere smile.

My jaw almost dropped to the floor. She was an astonishingly good liar. How could I have not discovered this earlier? Had she planned it all out? Had she waited for me in the bedroom in order to have sex with me? Maybe she had more cunning that I had ever given her credit for.

The suggestion that she may have played me hundreds of times before unsettled me. Some of her behaviour was unquestionably suspicious, especially her habit of not allowing me to visit her new home in Vancouver.

I tried not to think about it too much. I didn't want to end up moping on Christmas.

"May I help you with supper?" Ellen offered to Mom, who was in the middle of preparing a stuffing for the turkey. By the looks of groceries laid across the kitchen island, there was plenty to do.

"Thank you! There are some vegetables in that bag that need to be cut." Pops looked at me lazily.

"Well, if they're going to be occupied, how about you and I go pick up a tree?" he suggested unenthusiastically. He wasn't exactly an active man but even I knew that he wouldn't want to go through a Christmas without a tree. It was traditional for us to go buy a tree together. While I was putting on my winter coat, Mom was shouting last-minute instructions down the hall for us to get a blue spruce.

Sitting on the passenger seat I looked out of the window at this neighbourhood that was still quite foreign to me. I remember having checked on the map that we were in the South-western parts of Regina. Still it didn't look too different from the town I grew up in. It seems all the Canadian suburbs are inherently the same.

"I'll let you pick the tree this time," Pops told me. "Your mom thought the one we got last year was too skinny."

"Think there are any decent ones left?"

He chuckled. "Think they put up all their best merchandise a week before Christmas?" he asked glancing at me.

"I suppose not," I shrugged.

"So," he went on awkwardly, "how's my baby girl doing in the big city?"

It seemed odd of him to ask. I looked at him uneasily.

"Alright, I suppose," I said slowly, "But I'm sure she could tell you a lot more than I could."

"But she wouldn't," he muttered gravely. Suddenly he looked exhausted. The worry was weighing his entire being down, aging him by ten years.

You rarely saw him this solemn. Ever since my childhood he had always seemed to put an extra effort to smile a lot, perhaps just to show me that he was there for me too. He was an easy-going man. But now it was obvious that something was troubling him.

"What is it then?" I asked, wondering if he knew something I didn't.

"It's just... I don't know," he tried, carefully trying to consider how to put it all into words. "She never talks about any issues that she might have. At least in high school she was living with your Aunt Karen and could open up to her if needed to but... Now she's out there by herself. And what's worse, she's all grown up now!"

I listened to him quietly, realizing I had had the same thoughts echo through my head numerous times. I didn't quite know how to console him.

"The only insight we get in her life is in the form of some silly Facebook pictures," he complained.

"She definitely likes her privacy," I admitted.

"So, she doesn't talk to you either?"

"Not really. Her friends seemed quite nice when I visited her. Outwardly it doesn't look like there's anything wrong."

"At least you are there," he sighed. "If there was any trouble she should get into, at least there's someone she can go to."

I considered it. Last February already felt like a lifetime ago but I could still remember Ellen's cold, blunt words, asking me to come pick her up from a party gone wrong. The worry that I had felt back then, I wished Pops would never have to suffer it.

"She knows I'm there for her." I forced the words out of my mouth. It felt like a half-truth. I would always have Ellen's back. But with all the secrets she seemed to be keeping from me, her opening up to me, her brother and lover, seemed unlikely.

"That's good. That's all I ask."

We drove slowly around the icy streets of Regina, spotting signs advertising for Christmas trees. We saw many dealers selling trees by the street, some having even put up garage sale styled stands in front of their homes, but many of them didn't have the much-coveted blue spruces. I ended up checking Google for any large retailers in the area.

With some help from the internet, we ended up driving to the completely other side of town, not that I could tell a difference. However, on a school parking lot, there was big market set up for Christmas trees. There must've been at least a hundred or two to choose from.

"This looks promising."

They did have all kinds of trees. To our surprise they even had a few plastic ones for sell. Many types of buyers were comparing the trees, inquiring the sales men for prices, haggling. Some were green, some were silvery blue. Broad and short or tall and skinny. "What do you think about this one?" I asked Pops as we stopped in front of a majestic blue spruce. It was perfectly symmetrical.

He inspected the tree, measuring it with his mind's eye.

"Might be a tad too tall," he said, snorting. It was beginning to snow again, the flakes slowly falling off the sky. His nose was red from the cold. "Not sure we wouldn't have to trim it from the top. And it might look a bit stubby if we do."

I nodded in agreement. No point in getting a tree that's too big. The next one we turned down for being too small. There was a beautiful white spruce that Pops was absolutely enamoured with, perhaps because of the lower price tag.

"We could just tell your Mom there were no blue ones left," he suggested innocently. Perhaps skilful lying ran in the family. But in the end, we both knew he was only joshing. He adored Mom and wasn't too stingy in issues relating to her happiness. As a divorce child, it was something I admired and respected.

But there was a blue spruce, more handsome than the one we'd looked at earlier. It was slightly shorter, each of its branches reaching wide with a bountiful wing of needles. It wasn't quite as symmetrical, but Pops argued that we could have that side of it facing against a corner. He pulled one of the branches lightly and nodded approvingly.

"I think this is the one."

"Yeah I like it," I mused, "It has character."

Pops chuckled and gestured the salesman to come hither. Like all customers, Pops tried to haggle, with awful results. The salesman shook his head, saying he would find a customer to pay the full price if Pops wouldn't do it.

"It's 5 pm on a Christmas Eve, how many of these trees do you still expect to sell?" I broke in.

The salesman shrugged.

"$80 is our last offer," I said bluntly. "Otherwise we will go elsewhere."

The man looked at me thoughtfully. I could almost hear the gears turning inside his head.

"Fine," he said finally. "But you will come buy from me again next year."

"If the price is right."

The man broke into a laughter.

"With me you pay for quality. And I have a memory for faces. Ask anyone here, they will tell you I make good deals," he snickered.

He seemed like a good-spirited businessman, although a bit cunning. Pops was more than happy with the freshness of the tree, so we happily agreed to see him again next year.

As we were packing the tree in the back of car, Pops congratulated me: "Well done, over there."

I shrugged, trying to appear modest. But the wide grin on my face made us both burst out laughing.

The radio played Christmas songs on our drive back home. It was like there was a ban on non-seasonal pop songs. Some of the songs I recognized, others sounded like they came from some forgotten era that the DJ had rediscovered. It made me fantasize about the evening: the delicious food that Mom had spent hours preparing, the boardgames that Ellen insisted on, us all gathered around the TV to watch Die Hard as was the tradition.

"One more thing about Ellie," Pops said, shaking me out of my daydream. He was trying to sound casual. "She, eh, seeing someone?"

This caught me off guard. "Oh."

"Just she seems changed," he explained. "A father knows, you know? You see her humming to herself in a way she hasn't before. She seems more content. I thought there might be some chap in her life."

"I..." stammering, "I... couldn't say. Perhaps." Perhaps I should take a lesson or two on lying from Ellen.

"I just hope he is a good lad," he said. "Someone who wouldn't break my baby girl's heart. Someone who cares for her just like you and I do."

I simply stared blankly at the road ahead of us, uncertain what to say.

"She's hiding him from us for some reason. But as long as he makes her happy, she has no reason to."

I wondered if he would've still been saying this had he known that I was the young man, her brother. Yet there was this odd sincerity in his voice, that made me wonder if he was telling me this for a reason. I looked at Pops, trying to decipher from his face whether he knew more than he let on.

He parked in the newly cleared parking spot where a fresh layer of snow had already landed. As we carried in our purchase, Mom exclaimed in delight: "Oh, you did get a blue spruce!"

"Wait until she comes out of her wrappers." Pops handed me the scissors. "Will you do the honours?"

With one neat snip I freed the spruce out of its plastic constraints, the fat leaves bouncing from gravity.

"Gosh, isn't it pretty," Ellen whispered, her white slim fingers lightly caressing the shiny needles.

"I'm sure you can make it prettier," I told her, offering the box with Christmas decorations. "Why don't I take over in the kitchen? You are the artist in the family anyway."

"I will need help with the top branches though," she replied cheekily. "The dinner is slowly preparing itself in the oven anyway."

"Is that so?"

"Only dishes left to be done," Mom said. "But we have a dishwashing machine for a reason. Anyone want a glass of Merlot?"

We all did, safe for Pops who would rather take a can of Bud.

The evening played out much like I had daydreamed or reminisced earlier that day. Die Hard was on, as it was every year, except that one time when it was Die Hard 2 instead. There was some pie left from yesterday, but none of it was allowed before dinner so we tried spoiling our appetites with chocolate pralines instead.

Then it was time for games. Life, Candyland, Trivial Pursuit, we had them all. But instead Ellen picked the achingly long-taking Monopoly as the pre-dinner game. I was actually winning for once, for I knew where to invest, and with a bit of luck I was already collecting high rent. However, Mom had to interrupt the game so that the table could be cleared for dinner. Perhaps the turkey was a little drier than ideal, but it was nothing that gravy wouldn't fix. We laughed and spoke of old friends and relatives. Mom's Michael Bublé album was played to death.

Throughout the evening, each of us would find a moment to steal off to our rooms and bring out our presents under the tree. Mom was the first to sneak out while we were occupied over the game of Monopoly. Then Pops as we were setting up the table. Then me and, finally, Ellen. It's rather humorous how we would all try act inconspicuous and how everyone pretended to turn the blind eye. With curiosity, I watched Ellen place her set of prettily wrapped presents under the tree. Which one was mine, I wondered. And would it be something silly, like an ugly t-shirt, or something that reflected her feelings about me as romantic interest?

And would she find my present for her too cheesy and on the nose? Not long after dinner, Pops announced that he'd be ready to call it a night. He kissed goodnight to Mom, who took another glass of Merlot and positioned herself in an easy chair with a suspense novel.

Ellen and I took our places on the sofa to watch some TV. Ellen was in charge of the remote, switching through channels in a rapid speed. Many of the films and shows that aired we had seen many times before. Finally, her trigger finger relaxed. There was a dance performance on the screen. The stage was dark and a young girl in a light blue dress was dancing in bold fanciful moves. It looked like a ballet.

"Didn't know you're into..."

She shushed me quiet and turned up the volume, her eyes glued onto the screen. Another character appeared, the camera zooming in on him. It was a young man with an obvious fake moustache and a red tailored suit and a top hat. He hands the girl a present which she hastily unwraps in excitement.

"It's The Nutcracker," I realized as I saw her open up the box and draw out a tiny wooden doll.

The young child turned into a young woman as the mice attacked.

I was so enchanted by the performance on the screen that I didn't even notice that Ellen had crawled under my arm, her head resting against my chest.

"Isn't she beautiful?" she mused mesmerized.

Perhaps a little too skinny to my liking, I thought. Her ash blonde curls bounced with each pirouette like mechanical strings. Everything about her functioned with precision. "I suppose she is," I admitted, nonetheless.

"She moves so... fluidly. It's looks like it's easy for her to be flawless."

I chuckled. Perhaps the wine was too much for poor Ellen.

"Easy? Years of training and discipline are the result of that flawless performance."

"Stop mocking me," she groaned.

We watched the entire ballet, the whole 100 minutes that were left of it. I expected Ellen to fall asleep, but she had her huge eyes marvelling at the colours of the fantastic dresses flowing across the screen.

"That was pretty awesome," she sighed, as the dancers returned on stage to bow to the unseen audience. Roses were being thrown at their feet.

We were alone. Mother had bid us goodnight almost an hour ago. The last log of wood had turned into charcoal, the miniscule red sparks shining defiantly on the blackened surface like stars.

"How late is it?" Ellen wondered, sitting up from her nest.

"Sometime past midnight. It's now officially Christmas," I smirked. "Merry Christmas, Ellie."

A dimple formed on her cheek as she quirkily smiled back.

"Merry Christmas, Andy," she wish me and placed her hand on my knee.

She squeezed, and a part of me wondered if we should kiss. It was Christmas after all, and no one was around to see. I could feel the awkward silence growing between us. Ellen stared blankly into the distance.

But then a cunning grin showed up on her lips.

"I have a naughty idea," she whispered, as if it was going to be something truly dirty.

"You do?" I asked curiously.

"What if we," she said carefully, as if what she was about to say might upset me, "take an early start with the presents."

I considered her idea and quickly decided that it was brilliant. What better way to get an honest reaction without the presence of parents muddying the waters?

"I say, why not!"

"Alright, where's your present?"

I ran to the tree, where a tiny red present with simplistic golden detailing and a green ribbon was hidden deep under the branches. For some reason I had felt a little embarrassed about it, perhaps knowing it looked suspiciously like a jewellery box, for that's exactly what it contained. It was awkwardly obvious I hadn't done the wrapping myself but had allowed the salesgirl to do the job for me. "Is it for someone special?" she had asked knowingly. I had answered with a stiff nod. "Yes. For my sister."

Ellen didn't comment on the wrapping. She was aware I had no skill or patience for folding. There was a reason why I had chosen a rack to store my clothes on in my apartment.

"Somehow I'm quite nervous," she giggled.

It can't bite," I sighed, hoping she would hurry up. I was feeling uneasy. If only she would like it.

When the burgundy red box was finally visible, she seemed genuinely surprised. Whatever suspicions she had, now she knew that there must be something valuable inside.

"You've wasted money on me," she whispered.

"I never waste money on you. Just open it. I can't bear it anymore," I chuckled nervously. Biting her lip, she finally opened the lid. Immediately a hand flew on her face. Her eyes began to water.

"Ellie?" I asked a little worried.

Her finger touched the gold resting on a bed of white silk.

"I hope you like it," I said, a little concerned. "I thought it would be just your style."

She waved a hand in front of her eyes, desperately trying to blow-dry the tears that were building up on her dark lashes like morning dew.

"Hey, it's just a piece of jewellery..."

A smile broke on her face.

"It's... wonderful. I feel I should say something more original but it's wonderful," she laughed in between the tears.

I got her face between my hands and kissed her. Through her lips I could feel the tension that had been building up inside her being released. As I let go of her, a sigh escaped her lips and her big eyes rested on my face. I wiped the trails her tears had left on her round cheeks. She sniffed.