Naughty Nubile Niece Ch. 02

Naughty Nubile Niece Two: Mother's Day!

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~~ All characters in this book are over 18. ~~

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Chapter One

It's a good thing I've had a lot of practice being patient with my brother. Because otherwise I might be tempted to kick his rich, sexy, well-meaning ass.

Jessica's lips twitched into a smile that was half-sardonic, half fond, as she drove out to the lake house where her brother and her daughter had been staying for the past few days. It had taken all of her considerable powers of persuasion to convince her boss to give her the time off she had asked for, and she had paid for it by working the equivalent of back-to-back sixteen-hour days. But she was finally going to have time to talk with her brother. And they would clear up things he had been carefully avoiding for the better part of the last twenty years.

It had been an accident, those many years ago. At least, Jessica thought wryly, it had been an accident by the standards of incestuous sex. She and her brother had both been young, horny, lonely, and starved for affection. Jessica because she was going through a bitter breakup with her then-boyfriend. Jason because even back then he never truly opened his heart to anyone but those he trusted the most.

But after that one time, that hurried, frenzied fuck in her tiny little bedroom on Walnut Street, he had cut her off, completely and utterly, so terrified of what they had done he refused to even talk about it. Jason had run back to college, only coming home when he absolutely had to, and leaving as soon as he could. After his sophomore year, he didn't even come home for summer break - opting to stay in Champaign in a crummy apartment and take summer school classes so he could graduate early. And when he graduated, he had fled to New York, returning maybe once or twice a year, if that.

He was back home now, though, glory be to whatever god of second chances had given her this opportunity. And this time, Jessica didn't intend to let him get away. She would use whatever weapons came to hand. And to her smirking delight, her daughter had already breached Jason's first defenses. Emily had told her what they had done, her breathless voice coming over the phone late at night while her brother slept the deep, dreamless sleep of the freshly-fucked.

There was a car she didn't recognize in the driveway, bearing New York plates, and Jessica grimaced. Probably Jason's. No. Definitely Jason's. Her brother went through luxury cars like some women went through boyfriends - getting rid of them as soon as the shine wore off. She opened the screen door. "Anyone home?"

"Out here, Mom," a light, female voice called, and Jessica walked through the huge front room that took up most of the ground floor and out the back door to the deck. Emily and Jason were sitting on the steps that led from the deck to the long, sloping sward of grass that led down to the lake and the property's strip of narrow, muddy beach. Crab Orchard Lake was a lot of things, but even its most ardent supporters couldn't pretend it sported Hawaii's crystal water or white-sand beaches.

Jason stood, a bottle of his disgusting diet soda in one hand as she crossed the deck. Jessica stopped a few yards away and looked at him.

Her brother looked good. He always looked good. It was almost annoying, how he could turn her on with only a glimpse. Black hair, like hers. Blue eyes, like hers. Belly still flat, shoulders still broad, the mobile face that could close like shutters or open like a book, depending on how much he wanted you to see, still unlined by the years.

It was closed now, and wary. "Hello, Jessica."

"Hello, Jason. You jerk."

"Mom..."

"No." Jessica shook her head at her daughter. "This has been a long time coming. If you don't want to hear it, you can take a walk."

"Okay." Her daughter, Jessica noticed, was wearing loose shorts, an emerald-green bikini-top, and very little else. "How long are you planning to ream him out?"

"We'll be done by suppertime. But if you want to be useful, I brought some groceries out here. They're in the trunk."

"I already..."

She cut her brother off. "Here, Emmie. Keys."

Emily caught the tossed key-ring. "You know you two are just like a couple of kids, right?"

"Am not," Jessica and her brother replied. Immediately and in unison.

Jessica almost, almost giggled, as Jason caught her eye.

Emily snorted, her point made, and stalked inside. A few seconds later, they heard the screen door on the other side of the house bang open.

"That girl," she sighed. "Did she tell you about that hare-brained idea of hers to take a break year?"

"Yeah."

"What do you think?"

A corner of Jason's mouth tucked up in a wry smile. "I think that you're her mother, I think Emily is old enough to make her own decisions, and I think whatever opinion I have, I'm going to be accused of taking someone's side. Better to keep my mouth shut."

She narrowed her eyes. "Candy-ass."

His smile widened. "I know better than to get between a couple of Chapel women." A mock shudder. "I saw what you did to Dad when you and Mom or Ashley got into one of your spats."

Jessica grimaced. "Just...talk to her, okay? She has a chance to get out of here, Jase. Like you did. I don't want her to stay here, get knocked up by some loudmouthed redneck, and spend the next fifty or sixty years of her life playing 'what-if' with herself, like I have. She looks up to you. She'll listen. And she doesn't pay much attention to what I say anymore."

"Familiarity breeds contempt," he murmured.

"Yeah. Maybe if you were around more she wouldn't put you up on a pedestal. Two years, Jason," she hissed, taking a step closer and jabbing a finger into his chest. "Two years since we've seen you. Two years of nothing but five-minute phone calls and e-mails. Or texts. A text to Ashley on her birthday. She's your sister. What the hell were you thinking?"

Jason looked at his feet. "I was thinking that I was in Singapore and I was thirteen hours ahead of Illinois. And that Ashley probably wouldn't want me to call and sing "Happy Birthday" at seven in the morning."

"Why not?" Jessica folded her arms across her chest, fuming. "She's your sister. Do you really think she cares about what time the phone call comes? Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she was worried about getting older. Maybe hearing your voice would have sent her off to work in a good mood. God, Jason. Sometimes you're thicker than a slab of lard. And don't even get me started about Mom. Do you know what she asked me, back last Christmas? When you didn't show up for the third year in a row? She asked me if she had done something to make you mad, and if that's why you never came home anymore."

That finally got a reaction. Jason's head rocked back as if she had slapped him. "What?"

"You heard me." She dropped her voice so her daughter couldn't hear. "You want to punish me for what happened back when we were younger, that's fine. I think you're a fucking gutless coward for being afraid to be in the same room with me for the last twenty years, but fine. But Mom isn't going to live forever. And Ashley has a brother she might like to see more than six or seven times a decade. And she has kids who could stand to see their uncle as something more than a bunch of FedEx packages at Christmas.

"You're wrong, Jason. I don't care if I'm the reason you never come back home, or if I'm just an excuse. But you're wrong." She glared up into those dark blue eyes, remembering a hot summer afternoon, not completely unlike this one. "We deserve better. And so do you," she added softly. "Are you going to live this guilt trip for the rest of your life?

"Thanksgiving," she said, poking her brother in the chest with one pink-tipped fingernail. "Christmas. By God, you're going to be home for the holidays this year if I have to drive to New York, slap a pair of cuffs on you, throw you in the trunk, and drive you back to Illinois."

"All right!" Jason threw up his hands in surrender. "All right. God, between you and Loretta, I'm going to have the two of you running my life before long."

"Loretta?" Jessica frowned at the mention of her brother's executive assistant.

"Yeah." Jason scuffed his bare foot in the grass. It was really unfair. The man even had sexy feet. "She's why I'm out here."

"Oh?" Attention arrested, she cocked her head encouragingly. "Do tell."

She dragged the story out of him in bits and pieces. By the time Jason was finished, Jessica was nearly choking on her own giggles. "You kicked him out of the meeting? Like you were sending a kid to the principal?"

He glared at her. "I was having a bad week."

"Sounds like you were having a bad case of PMS." Emily, who had rejoined them and was listening quietly, sniggered at her tart reply. "No wonder Loretta sent you out here to chillax."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Chillax, Mom?"

"Blame the job," Jessica said. "I'm around kids all the time. Birthday parties and first communions and weddings and bar mitzvahs. I can't help picking up slang and talking like all the cool kids do."

Jason gave her a long, steady look. "Bar mitzvahs. In Marion."

The look was uncomfortably like the ones her father used to give her when she came back late from a date. "Sure. There's at least three Jewish families in town. We're getting downright cosmopolitan these days, being so close to SIUC."

"Right." The tone registered patented disbelief.

"The groceries are all put away, Mom," Emily offered. "You brought a lot, don't you think?"

"Your grandmother and your Aunt Ashley and your cousins are all coming out Friday night," she said. "And you know how Jackson can put food away. I swear that kid has a hollow leg." She slanted a teasing look at her brother. "Reminds me of your uncle, when he was Jackson's age."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." Jessica sat down on one of the deck chairs and crossed her ankles. "Did Ashley ever tell you about the bet your great-grandpa Chapel made with Jason one Thanksgiving?" She looked up at her brother, who gave a long-suffering sigh. "How old were you, Jase? Fourteen?"

"About that," he admitted grudgingly. But he accepted the peace offering and sat down in his own chair.

Emily looked from her mother to her uncle. "Well? Aren't you going to tell me?"

Smiling, Jessica spun out the tale, paying no mind to her brother's increasingly irate interjections. It had been hilarious at the time. At least to her, if not to her parents. Grandpa Chapel had been a crusty old fart, safely retired from a horrible factory job in St. Louis and doting on his grandchildren. On that particular Thanksgiving, he had bet his oldest grandson twenty dollars he couldn't eat both legs off the holiday turkey. Jason, skinny and perpetually ravenous, had taken the wager instantly. His parents had been less than amused as their son proceeded to make a pig of himself at the dinner table. Jason had won the bet, but had been violently, spectacularly sick later that night, as the sins of the day came back to haunt him. Jessica could still remember the acid tone of her mother's voice as she asked her son through the bathroom door if twenty bucks was really worth it.

"In the long run, it kind of was," Jason offered, as the tale ran down to a snickering conclusion. "I learned what my body could handle. I hardly ever drank so much that I ended up barfing, when I left for college. Unlike some guys I went to school with."

"So what have you two been doing out here all day?" Jessica asked brightly. "Swimming? Fishing?"

"Just...you know. Hanging out, Mom," Emily said. Though the look she gave her under her lashes told her more than words ever could. Jessica stifled a sudden spasm of envy. Her daughter was getting laid. Her daughter was fucking Jason. They were lovers, and had been for nearly two days. While Jessica, the woman who had given her brother her virginity, and had taken his in turn, was left with nothing.

"Yeah." God, her brother was as transparent as glass. At least to her eyes, even after all these years. No one else might notice the guilty drop of his eyes, the faint flush that stained his suntanned skin. But she did. "Just...you know. Hanging around. Enjoying the nice weather. Talking."

"Oh," she said, not fooled in the least. After all, Emily had already told her the truth. Jason could try to hide it, but Jessica knew. Her brother and her daughter were screwing. And when the time was right, she would use it to her advantage. "Good."

Chapter Two

Jessica had brought t-bones. And she grilled them herself, disdaining Jason's offer to do his manly duty as the only male present.

"Don't tell me you've got a grill at your place in Manhattan," she told him. "Because I know you don't. The place you live is way too exclusive to cater to the sort of people who would barbeque pork steaks out on their balcony on a Friday night. You probably can't grill worth crap anymore."

"It's not that," he protested. "I'm twenty-three stories up, for the love of God. Can you imagine trying to cook out in the kind of wind you get that high? Sometimes I'm scared to even go out on the balcony, even when it's a nice calm night."

"You never could deal with heights," his sister observed, slathering marinade over a steak. Grease dripped onto the flames and flared up, sending up gouts of aromatic steam. "But this is a lot better than some of the meals we used to get from Mom. Especially when Dad was on night shift. Remember that? Those bargain-basement fish-sticks on Friday night?"

Banished from the grill, Jason was stripping husks off ears of corn, helped by Emily. "Oh, God. And we weren't even Catholic. I swear, it was better once I got a job at Hardees. I used to look forward to working a late shift, because then I could get a half-price meal on break instead of dealing with whatever crap Mom could cobble together for supper."

"Grandma's not a bad cook!" Emily protested.

Jason plucked corn silk from his ear and shook it off his fingers, watching idly as the breeze blew the strands toward the lake. "No, she's not. She's a damn good cook, actually. Better than me. But back then, my last couple years of high school, money was really tight, Emmie. My dad...your grandfather..." He sighed. "He just wasn't good with money. So your grandma was cutting corners and pinching pennies wherever she could. And that made for some...interesting...meals."

Emily looked at her mother, who gave her an affirmative nod. "Tough times. Especially after your grandfather passed, God bless his heart. If Jason here," a nod his way, "hadn't hit it big, Mom probably would have had to sell the house. And that might have killed her. She loves that place."

Jason shrugged uncomfortably. "I was lucky. If the economy hadn't done a face-plant, I would have lost everything. I made a gamble. It paid off. That's all. Luck, like I said."

"You make your own luck, in my experience," Jess said. She flipped a steak. "Emmie, these are going to be done soon. You should probably get the water boiling for the corn. And I brought some baked beans, too. Or we could do baked potatoes in the microwave?" She looked at Jason, who shrugged.

"As long as it's not deviled eggs, or something hideous like that." Jason mocked a shudder of disgust. "I can deal with a lot, but not that."

"Why do you hate eggs so much, Uncle Jason?"

"Why? Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why is the grass green?" He raised his hands to the heavens as Jessica rolled her eyes. "Why are the Cardinals superior to every other baseball team? Why are eggs horrible?" Jason shook his head at his niece. His lovely, sexy niece, with whom he had been having red-hot incestuous monkey-sex for the last two days. "Because they are. What I really find incredible is everyone else has somehow been brainwashed into thinking that eggs are actually edible, instead of something that should be scraped into the garbage. And that their inherent awfulness can be disguised by changing their shape. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, deviled eggs, quiche, egg salad, omelets, poached eggs!" He made a face. "Gah! The opportunities are infinite and universally awful!"

"Mom uses eggs when she makes hamburgers," Jessica pointed out, as Emily went inside to turn on the stove. "And meatloaf. And potato salad."

"That fact is as irrelevant as it is true," Jason said, reaching into the cooler at his feet and opening another beer. "Besides. The inherent goodness of potatoes and red meat is able to cancel out the lingering evil of eggs. The eggs are purified. It's their superpower."

Jessica tilted her head at him as his rant ended. "You know what, Jason? I almost kind of forgot just how weird you were, back when we were kids. How you read every single fantasy book in the library, and then pestered Mom to get a membership in the Science Fiction Book Club, just so you could get something new to read."

"Boy, was that a waste of money," he grumped. "They never had shit that was any good, mostly. I had to drive to St. Louis to find a bookstore that sold anything decent. Like Tad Williams. He's a freaking genius. And Lois Bujold. And Jim Butcher. And Jacqueline Carey. Christ. If Mom had ever found out I was getting books like hers, she would have done some serious face-punching."

"Hold on. Can you repeat those names? I might need ammo for later." She leered suggestively. "Are they sexy books? I bet Mom would be so, so interested."

"Smart-ass. And no." Jason pursed his lips and looked up at the heavens. The long summer twilight was fading, and the stars were springing to life, unfiltered by light pollution. God, he had missed this sky. Almost as much as he had missed Jess and the rest of his family. "Well, Carey, yeah. And Butcher, once or twice. But not Bujold. Or Williams. Sure. They admit guys and girls do fun, naughty things with each other. But they don't really describe it."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." His mouth curled up in a half-grin. "You know what the difference is between porn and not-porn?"

"What?"

"Nipple. You say show nipple in a movie, or say nipple in a book, then it's porn. If you don't," he grinned at her boyishly, "then it's literature. Or erotica."

"Good to know." Jessica looked down at the grill. The steaks looked like they were almost done. But Jason knew that if he tried to interfere, he would get slapped down hard.

"I never wanted to hurt you," he said. The words seemed to come from his mouth without thinking. "I'm sorry."

Jessica turned to him. Her eyes were wet. "Really, Jason? Now?"

He took a deep breath. It was time to abandon cowardice and fear. "Yes, Jess. Now.

"I love you. I have always loved you. Since we were kids.

"And when we did...what we did. I was afraid. Of what would happen, if we were caught. If everyone knew."

Jessica turned away and sighed. He could see it in the way her shoulders settled. "You know what, Jason? I just can't deal with this crap right now. If you had bothered to tell anyone you were coming out for a visit, I could have set up some vacation time in advance. But instead, I had to damn near pull a couple of all-nighters just so I could take the next few days off. Do you think it's easy to get away in the middle of wedding season? I thought Helen was going to strangle me, when I told her I needed some time. And then she told me I could, just as long as I had everything lined up to go for the Whitman wedding on Saturday." She rubbed the sides of her nose. "If that gets jacked up, I might not have a job on Monday.

"What I want right now is to eat a meal with you and my daughter without having to deal with a lot of drama. Can you do that? And then I want to hang out and have a drink and watch the stars and just talk like we're normal people."