Nikki Kim: A Secret Between Sisters

Aesthetically, Nina seems to like intricate, monochromatic designs featuring objects from the natural world mixed with abstract, geometric themes. She has one on her shoulder blade that I particularly like, a radially-symmetric bonsai tree that grows in all directions, kind of like an MC Escher sketch. She tends to use color sparingly, so it really pops when she does.

I remembered Johan's earlier comment about her tattoos because she seemed to be pointing at them, twisting her arms at various angles, showing them to Johan. I could see her lips moving, but because of the soundproofing that Steve had installed, I couldn't make out anything that she was saying.

As I watched her pointing at the different designs, I felt my panic recede every so slightly. Nina didn't look particularly nervous or afraid. And Johan was mostly just sitting on the bed, occasionally taking a sip of his beer. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that the two of them were just... talking.

Watching them from the window, I felt a little rush of adrenaline, the thrill one gets from seeing something private. I felt a little guilty to be spying on my sister, but I reasoned that this was for her own good. I was just looking out for her, the way that she would have looked out for me.

Weirdly, though, I also felt a little bit left out. I knew this emotion was totally silly, because I absolutely did not want to be in Nina's place, alone in that room with Johan. But it still felt odd to see them talking like this on their own, without me.

More than anything, though, the fact that I couldn't hear what they were saying was making me crazy. Johan seemed to be acting so differently towards Nina than he had towards me. He had pursued me so aggressively, so doggedly, dating all the way back to our first encounters in Australia. I shuddered, remembering how physical he'd been, pulling me into an empty conference room, backing me against the wall, groping my tits and forcing me to my knees, face-fucking me like my throat belonged to him.

Johan had been so rough with me, right from the start, even before he knew that he could get away with it. But now, he was just sitting back and drinking beer, chatting with my sister about her tattoos. Was the difference something to do with me? Was there something in me that turned Johan into an animal? Or was it something to do with Nina? Did he see something in her that curbed his basest male instincts?

I had to know what they were saying to each other. I just.... I needed to know.

Reluctantly, I tore my face away from the window and crept around the side of the in-law unit, padding silently over to the door. Thanks to Steve's soundproofing, this was the one part of the structure that let sound escape. I sat down gingerly, careful not to make any noise. Then, I put my ear covertly against the door and closed my eyes.

"Are they all by the same artist?" I heard Johan ask.

"A lot of them are, yeah," Nina said. Her voice was a bit muffled, but she sounded calm and measured to me. "There's a guy here in LA that I've been going to for years. It's rare to find somebody who knows your style and can grow with you."

"Sounds like a relationship," Johan said.

"Oh, it definitely is," she said. "If you're going to let someone make a permanent change to your body, you better trust them."

"Is that hard for you?" Johan asked. "To trust people, I mean."

"It depends on who they are," my sister responded.

"What about me?" he asked. "Do you trust me?"

"Ha!" Nina laughed. "You're funny."

"Have you ever gotten a tattoo for a guy?" he asked, changing subjects.

"I got one when Danny was born," she said. "And another one for Riley."

I knew the tattoos she was talking about. They were two sunflowers, standing side-by-side, growing together on her right shoulder. I was so touched when she did that.

"Those aren't the kind of guys that I'm talking about," Johan chuckled. "I'm talking about guys like me."

"Oh really?" Nina asked. "And what kind of guy are you?"

"I think you know," Johan said. "Your sister told you about me, didn't she?"

"Afraid not," Nina said. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"That's odd," Johan said. "Because she told me about you."

I felt my heart-rate jump.

"What does that mean?" Nina asked.

"Can I see the tattoos on your back?" Johan said, ignoring the question.

There was a pause.

"Why do you want to see them?" Nina said.

"Because I'm an appreciator of great art," Johan replied.

"Weak answer," she said.

"Okay," he countered. "Because I think you have a tattoo you're afraid to show me, and I wanna know why."

"You think I'm scared of you?" Nina laughed. "I have ink on my back that's older than you."

"Then show me," he said. "I know you have a tattoo back there that's meant for guys like me. And I think you're afraid that I'll know what it means."

"Wow," Nina said, followed by a pause. "You're really reaching, aren't you?"

"I'm really right," he shot back immediately. "And now you're stalling because you know it."

There was another pause, longer than the last one. I wondered what was happening on the other side of the door. I wondered what my sister was thinking.

"You seem fun," Nina said, a certain lightness entering her voice. "But it's too late to play games."

"I agree," Johan said. "So let's not."

I waited for several seconds for the conversation to continue, but all I heard was silence. Ten second of terrible, heart-stopping, nerve-racking silence. Then ten more.

I felt another surge of adrenaline, the panic of knowing and then suddenly not. What was happening inside? Was Johan about to leave? Would he open the door and discover me, crouching outside? Should I try to hide, or should I open the door and confront him? Was my sister okay?

Frantically, I stood up and crept quietly around the house, tip-toeing back up to the window. Then, my heart began to sink. Because it didn't look like Johan would be leaving anytime soon.

He was still in the same spot as before, perched on the edge of the bed. But now, he had set his beer down, and both of his hands were on my sister.

Nina had moved from her post by the bathroom door. Now, she was standing at the edge of the bed, Johan's long legs dangling on either side of her. But that wasn't the part that stopped my heart.

My sister had taken her top off.

She was facing away from Johan, which meant that she had her back to him and to me. I couldn't see the look on her face, but she had gathered up her long, silky black hair, resting her glossy mane over her left shoulder. This meant that her entire back was exposed, to me and to Johan. Alongside her tattoos, I could see the thin black line of her bra cutting across the middle of her back.

I couldn't believe my eyes. How was this possible? I had listened to their entire conversation through the door, and my sister had sounded a bit standoffish, seemingly unimpressed by Johan's charms. Just hours earlier, at the baseball field, I had watched two grown men each hit on my sister, and she had rebuffed them both without batting an eyelash.

So what had happened? What dark incantation had Johan uttered to crack her cool, well-mannered facade? Was it something he said, or had something unspoken passed between them?

I felt sick with a kind of terrible, grudging admiration. How was this 19-year-old white boy so insanely deft at disrobing attractive Asian women? On his first day in LA, I'd watched him pick up a pretty Filipina college girl, whom he had talked into bed the very same night. Then, over the next three days, he'd managed to talk me out of my wedding ring and into a leather bondage collar. Now, he had somehow talked the top off of my stunning older sister mere hours after they first met.

Nina looked exceptionally vulnerable to me, standing there like that, exposed in front of him. But her posture was impeccable, her back ramrod straight, even as Johan touched her.

His fingers seemed to be moving lightly over her back, barely grazing her skin, moving gingerly from one tattoo to the next. I was shocked by the gentleness of his touch, which looked almost clinical, as if he were handling some fragile, expensive instrument.

Where was the brute who had pinned me to my bed? Where was this tenderness with me? How could Johan degrade me, denigrate my husband, and debase my marriage, only to handle my sister with such softness?

I had come down to the in-law unit in a panic because I feared for Nina's safety. I was terrified that he would do to her what he had done to me. I was horrified by the thought that if he did, it would somehow be my fault for letting it happen.

But now, watching Johan's fingers move across my sister's back, I was starting to feel different emotions: jealousy and want, envy and shame, loathing and arousal. I still had an awful knot in the pit of my stomach, but now I could also feel a keening warmth growing between my legs.

As Johan's fingers traced the lines inked across my sister's back, I said a silent prayer inside my heart, hoping beyond reason that this was still some kind of game, that my sister was only toying with him. I could see them from the window, but I couldn't hear them, which made it possible to imagine that this wasn't what it looked like.

But before that prayer could leave my chest, both of Johan's hands moved to the center of Nina's back, converging on the thin black strap that cut across it. Then, with a simple motion that sent a chill through my heart, he gently unhooked the clasp.

This was the moment for Nina to leap up, shocked, and back away from him. This was the moment for her whirl around, fury in her eyes, and slap Johan across his impudent face. This was the moment for my sister to reassert herself, to let this teenage boy know that their game had gone too far.

But my sister didn't do any of that. Instead, she barely moved as Johan parted his hands, the tiny black line separating to reveal her bare back. Then, almost imperceptibly, Nina rolled her shoulders back, giving Johan all the encouragement he needed to slide the remaining straps off her shoulders.

Back in high school, I had often wondered what my sister did when she snuck out late at night to go driving with boys. Now, I was going to see for myself, if I could actually bear to watch.

I turned away from the window, my heart beating out of my chest, my breathing so shallow that I thought I might faint.

I wasn't going to watch this. I couldn't. This wasn't porn, or even just peeping. This was my sister, my flesh and blood, with a man... a man who had exploited my children, tarnished my marriage, and broken me as the woman I thought I was. To watch the two of them together, after I'd brought them both to the same place, felt wrong beyond perversion.

But I couldn't walk away, either. Because I'd never been more desperately, uncontrollably, irresistibly curious about anything in my entire life.

I'd known Nina since before I could remember, but this was a side of her I had never seen. I had known of it, of course, but it had always been like the dark side of the moon. It was there, but always beyond the horizon, forever hidden from my field of view.

We had so much in common as girls, she and I, but as teenagers we'd formed such vastly different attitudes toward sex. I'd sometimes wondered how that had happened. Did Nina's natural confidence make her more open to sex? Or did her experiences with boys give her the confidence that seemed to come so easily?

I knew what my sister was like, but I didn't know what she was like with men. I knew what she said about them, but that was hardly the same thing.

But this... this was my chance to find out. After all these years, I could finally see the dark side of my sister, the invisible wavelength that traveled through her, the secret she had always kept from me. Now, suddenly, it was right there, just through the window, made visible to me for perhaps the one and only time in my life.

I just had to know. It was shameful and perverse and immoral, but I had to know. It might be agonizing and masochistic, but I had to know.

So I turned around, stood on my tip-toes, and pressed my face against the glass.

Johan still hadn't moved from his seat, but Nina had turned around, so she was now facing towards him. Her bra was completely off now, discarded on the floor next to Johan's forgotten beer. Her jeans had become unzipped, so the waist now hung loosely around her hips, exposing just a peek of the black thong she had on.

Looking at her, I felt a heartsick pang of envy so raw that I almost lost my balance. Standing there topless in front of this much younger white man, my sister looked insanely hot, almost unbearably sexy.

Her body had barely changed since we were in high school. Her stomach was still flat and toned, a hint of muscle definition yet invitingly soft. Her honey-golden skin tone was flawless, smooth and unblemished, untouched by the stretch marks of pregnancy. Her breasts were the same modest, perky B cups, but they were perfectly proportioned to her delicate frame.

Nina cut the kind of lissom silhouette that most Korean women covet, the kind that keeps personal trainers and plastic surgeons flush with customers. Accompanied by her long, glossy black mane, Nina's willowy body had retained a girlish quality that mine had mostly lost after the kids, when my boobs got bigger and my hips got wider.

She was older than me by two years and almost twice Johan's age, but looking at them, they could have been university classmates. If you ignored the expensive leather jacket hanging on the bathroom door and the Jimmy Choo boots sitting beside bed, this scene could've been playing out in a dorm room at USC or UCLA, and a version of it probably was. Across LA, how many other rooms held beautiful Asian women standing topless in front of tall white men?

The only indication of Nina's maturity was in her dark, smokey eyes, which sparkled with sardonic irreverence. Most girls of Johan's age might feel self-conscious in such an exposed, vulnerable state, but Nina's expression showed no signs of embarrassment. To the contrary, she seemed more at ease than ever, the glimmer of a smirk hovering on the edges of her bright red lips.

Johan's hands were around her waist, but then, Nina took a step backwards, moving beyond his reach. She folded her arms across her bare chest, her tits still on display despite the defiant pose, a note of challenge gleaming in her eyes.

Had Johan said something to her? I couldn't hear anything, and he was facing away from me, so there was no way to know. The ambiguity was making my imagination run wild, my entire body sizzling with feral, unhinged thoughts.

Then, with the flick of a single finger, Nina summoned Johan to his feet.

They were both standing now, and Johan was several inches taller than my sister, but she hardly seemed intimidated. Instead, she just shrugged, seemingly indifferent to the tall white college boy in front of her.

Then, I saw her lips move. I couldn't hear a word, but it didn't take a lip-reader to know what she'd said:

"Okay, then. Show me."

As my heartbeat pounded in my ears like a bass drum, I watched from the window as Johan reached for his waistband, loosed the drawstrings of his running shorts, and pulled them down from the front. With his back to me, I couldn't see what he was showing my sister, but I knew. Of course I knew.

I knew its length and its girth, the way it curved slightly upward when he was fully hard. I knew its color and its shape, the way it pulsated with need as it filled with blood. I didn't need to see it in order to picture it, because it was burned into my brain, its every sensation--the look, the feel, the smell, the taste--seared into memory. I didn't need to see it. I already knew.

Instead, my eyes were locked on my sister's face. I could barely breathe, watching from the window, waiting for her reaction as she beheld him for the first time.

For a moment, the world stood completely still, all three of us frozen in time. Johan, motionless, with his waistband pulled down. Nina, topless, her questioning gaze cast downward at Johan's pride. Me, breathless, the warmth between my legs now fully aflame.

We were all waiting on Nina, hanging on her expression, the entire world balanced on the tip of her tongue. And she must have known that, because she let the moment linger, keeping us all suspended in midair, reveling in the fact that she alone could see the future.

Then, slowly, her expression changed. It was subtle, but I could see her eyes softening, a sort of pixie slyness hovering at the corners of her mouth.

First, she cocked a single eyebrow. Then, she sighed, her bare breasts rising and falling gently. Then, she lifted her gaze, those dark eyes darting back to Johan's face.

Finally, I saw her lips move, forming muted words that rang in my ears:

"Fuck, I knew it."

Casually, Nina reached down to her wrist and gracefully peeled a stretchy black band from the wrist opposite her golden bracelets. Then, reaching behind her head, she gathered her long black hair into a youthful, voluminous ponytail.

This could've taken her only a second, but Nina was taking her time, her movements languid and lazy. She was fussing with the hair tie in one hand and stroking her long black mane with the other. With both hands behind her head, her back just happened to arch, pushing her chest out seductively, her bare breasts lifted and on display.

Rolling her eyes for effect, Nina parted her lips. Then, the tip of her tongue slipped out, sliding slowly over her full, soft lips one at a time. The fresh wetness made her red lipstick come alive, brightening the color as if it had just been applied.

In that moment, as Nina licked her lips, I knew that my sister was ageless. The air of maturity was gone from her face, replaced by the carefree, mischievous smile of a teenage girl who had a naughty thought on her mind. This was the Nina I had always heard whispers about but had never actually seen.

But before I could process the look on her face, it was gone. Because then, Nina dropped gently to her knees, disappearing from my view.

I gasped out loud, my brain sending urgent signals to the rest of my nervous system, desperate to see what my sister was doing. But she was invisible again, blocked from my view by Johan's much larger body.

All I could see now was Johan's back and his head, which had already rolled backwards onto his shoulders, as if his neck had turned to jelly.

Suddenly, I couldn't see anything, and I couldn't hear anything. Starved of these stimuli, the reward center inside my brain was screaming at my body to do something, anything to bring them back online. Without even thinking, I raced back around the corner of the in-law unit, crouching down beside the door once more.

With my ear pressed against the wood, I could hear Johan's muffled moans:

"Ohhhh yessss... ohhhhh fuuuuuuuuck yessss..."

But these sounds only stoked the fires burning inside me. My brain wasn't satisfied with such sounds, not anymore, not after what I had seen. I needed more.

And so, with my fingers trembling, I grasped the door handle. I turned it slowly, so slowly, forcing myself to move with agonizing care. Then, as quietly as I could, I cracked the door open a fraction of an inch and pressed my face into the gap.

I knew what I was going to see, but that doesn't mean that I was prepared for it. I had taken such pains to open the door silently, but from the looks of it, I could have thrown the door wide open and no one would have noticed.

Because my sister was too busy down on her knees, topless, mouth-worshipping Johan's huge, uncut, 19-year-old cock. And Johan was too busy getting his dick sucked by a 36-year-old Korean sex goddess.