The Family Room Ch. 11

Julie took a deep breath, steadying herself in the doorjamb. As she stepped out of the bathroom the chill of the air conditioner raised the tiny hairs of her arms. She cleared her throat, wanting his opinion, doubting that even her brother would want to be seen swimming with a girl who looked like the manatee in black.

His naked back was to her. The fire engine red swimming trunks climbed over his long legs and pale butt, settling around a hopelessly slender waist. He turned around and wolf-whistled.

"Baby, you look hot," he said.

She couldn't decide if he was being charming or charitable. "Hot!? I look like a beetle."

Rick had gathered a pair of clean bath towels from the closet. She snagged the purple one and wrapped it around her figure.

"Julie, don't be ridiculous. You're the most gorgeous---"

"Look at this blubber, Rick." She opened the towel and pinched the shallow layer of extra padding that had settled over her inner thighs. If he mentioned anything about there being more of her to love she would smack his handsome face.

"You've been under stress, with a new job, a strange home and everything that happened with Mom and Dad. A few extra pounds and some gray hairs are only natural."

"Gray hairs?!" she exclaimed, grabbing a fistful of her long brown locks. "I'm only nineteen."

"Julie, I was joking," he said, combing through her hair with his fingertips. "See? Still a perfect little brunette.

"I wouldn't care if you weighed three-hundred pounds and had hair whiter than Grandma's bed sheets. You will always be a living, breathing goddess." He put a hand over the chest of Julie's swimsuit and squeezed a pendulous breast.

She huffed as her nipple hardened behind the black Lycra. At least there was one part of her body where she knew he would appreciate the weight gain.

She stroked his forearm as it traveled from breast to breast, delivering his fingers to her flesh. "Rick, would you still love me if my boobs withered away to nothing?" she asked.

"I'm your brother, not a saint," he said. The corner of his lip lifted in a smirk that promised he would love her no matter what. She would put that smirk to the test in a very short while.

He squeezed her breasts again and stared deep into her eyes. His blue, her green, mixing, melting.

"You're still gorgeous and you'll always be gorgeous, so stop worrying."

Before she could respond, the straps of her suit twisted over her shoulders until they were halfway down her bare arms.

"We should probably delay our swimming for a bit." He pinched her stiff nipple as soon as the suit was out of the way. The jolt born in her sensitive pink nub flowed through her body, producing another jolt between her legs.

"Why?" she asked. The word was partway between a whisper and a gasp.

"I can't go into the water for at least an hour after I finish eating you."

He pulled the crotch of the black suit to the side. Her short pubic hairs were already matted; they glistened with salty sweat and the musky proof of her arousal. The aroma was headier than usual today, but he didn't seem to find it any less desirable.

Rick extended his tongue, collecting the dew from her petals in a gentle upstroke. He smacked his lips in satisfaction before sending his tongue to fetch another taste.

God! If he received half the pleasure from her mouth that she received from his, Julie would never again hesitate to suck Rick's penis. Maybe she would even try swallowing his semen again. Maybe.

Julie parted her thighs as his tongue stopped lapping and started probing. She surrendered to the wet, warm, bumpy, invader, chewing her lip as his pink stroked her pink. A sharp intake of air collided with a muffled gasp deep within her throat, creating a high pitched moan that served to welcome and encourage the conquering hero.

He disengaged from her pussy. Without his warm breath and tongue at the apex of her thighs she felt empty. A feeling that disappeared the moment his rigid finger replaced the absentee tongue.

Julie pinched her eyes closed as her brother touched mysterious places, places only he could find.

She opened her eyes to find two pools of blue staring back at her. They kissed, he shared his tongue, shared the spice he had harvested from between her legs. Julie was not put off by the flavor, a phenomenon owing more to the fact that the vessel from which she sipped was her brother's sweet mouth than to any Sapphic tendencies.

Like the teasing tongue before, the finger too abandoned her vagina, replaced by something thicker, hotter and even more alive. A definite upgrade.

Rick narrowed his eyes, gritted his teeth and stabbed her flesh with his own. He impaled her repeatedly, deliciously, with motions designed not to take life but to create it.

Create life, something they had already done that. Would he be here right now if he knew? Would he be ravishing her naked flesh, panting and thrusting on top of her body? She didn't know, and it was not knowing that drove her mad.

In her fantasies he was perfect, so caring and understanding; Rick would take the news in stride. He would squeeze her hand and kiss her belly, then they would go out to celebrate by purchasing cribs and strollers and beautiful, tiny, little clothes from the baby section of the department store. Their only disagreements would be blue or pink.

A cessation of the wonderful feelings brought Julie back to reality. Her brother still filled her but the movement had stopped. She felt the dull throbs of his stilled penis, blood as it rushed through every vein in that wonderful bar of life-giving flesh. Rick's blood, it was the same blood that flowed through her veins and the same that flowed through the veins of their child.

His body shifted, forcing the penis a fraction of an inch deeper. The movement gave her the tiniest twinge of pleasure. "You're being awfully quiet," he said. "Is there something bothering my Mrs. Martin."

She wanted to buy a spiral notebook and scribble that name hundreds of times on every page.

"Take me." Her voice was louder and sadder than she intended it to be. "Take me away from Saratoga Spring, Rick. I want to get away from friends who aren't friends anymore and parents who are ashamed to call me their daughter. Make love to me Rick, and take me away, just for a little while." Away from Saratoga Spring. Away from the memories, both good and bad.

Rick nipped her chin with his teeth. He licked and sucked the smooth skin under her jaw while his long fingers cupped her warm cheeks. His lower body moved again, pressing hard, shifting both the bed and the bed sheets with his motion.

She opened her mouth and surrendered to the pleasure. Such enormous pleasure, it numbed her body and her mind.

Julie came first, curling and stretching her body beneath his. She writhed, seized by the enormous pleasures of climaxing with the man she loved.

When the sensations faded she once more found herself staring at Rick. His handsome face was scrunched in a mask of bliss. His nose wrinkled and his lips puckered, as they always did in the moments before his release.

Seeing his immense pleasure brought her immense pleasure. If only he knew how much he was adored, she thought as she touched his cheek. A stream of sticky warmth injected deep within her body.

Rick muttered a cussword and pulled out, shooting ropes of whitish goop at her groin and thighs.

Abandoned again. Julie wanted to protest but figured the effort outweighed the gains; it was too late to make a twin. She struggled to regain her breath while Rick's sperm cooled on her thigh. Lovemaking on an air mattress had been a unique experience. She imagined it was like having sex on a heavenly cloud. Sex with an angel, she thought, as she snuggled against her brother's heaving chest.

"Rick?" she said, rolling on her side to face him. "Why don't we move into the new apartment right now? We don't have much to pack."

He snickered. "I don't think the couple that still lives there would appreciate our intrusion. Besides, we need to find some furniture first. You'd feel pretty silly living in a big empty room."

"Not after living in this pigsty. Look at this mess: garbage bags, clothes everywhere." Her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, "and that naked couple who are always doing it."

"I like that couple," Rick said. "Especially the girl, she's hot."

"She thinks you're pretty hot too." Julie leaned against his chest, kissing the muscle of one shoulder. His body responded predictably, with the spent penis regaining some semblance of an erection. "She also thinks you have amazing recuperative powers."

Julie closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against Rick's body, reveling in his masculine scent. She purred like a contented kitten. "Rick, have I ever told you how happy you've made me."

He stroked her naked back. "Practically every day, baby."

"This summer, with you, even when it wasn't so perfect, has been the happiest time in my life but do you ever wonder what our lives will be like a year from now, or two years? I keep seeing us in that beautiful apartment at Shade Tree."

Rick snickered. "And what are we doing there, besides working three jobs apiece just to pay the rent."

"You're trying to make me dinner. Mm, it smells like spaghetti red. Unfortunately you used too much red and not enough spaghetti." She could see everything behind her closed eyelids, as if there were a second set of eyes transmitting pictures to her brain. She wanted Rick to see too.

"And what is my beautiful Mrs. Martin doing while the culinary disaster lays waste to her kitchen?"

"I'm fixing the baby's room."

Julie realized what she had said. Her eyes fluttered open.

Rick's eyes were already opened and they were studying her. "That's some wild imagination you have, a pricey apartment and an even pricier baby on two Video Hut salaries."

"You make it sound like children are luxury items."

"Well, they probably are. It's not like you can get clothes, food and diapers for free. Not to mention the doctor and hospital bills. Julie, raising a baby is a serious commitment; it's a living, breathing, little human not some Cabbage Patch doll you can dress up and stuff in a box."

Her eyes burned. Rick Martin, a month away from twenty-five and working his first full-time job, had the gall to lecture her about responsibility. He was treating her like a little girl who wanted to keep the stray dog that followed her home.

She decided to tell him the truth. He would be made to understand, whatever the consequences.

***

"Food, clothes, bills, money, those are just things, Rick. How can you compare things with a life, especially a life that we created."

I wondered why she couldn't understand, why she insisted on arguing. "We have no business creating life at all."

"What...? What do you mean?" she asked.

"Don't be dumb, Julie. You know what we are."

She scooted away from me, just a foot or two, but there was something ominous about the distance created. "What are we?! Goddamn it, tell me what we are, Rick!"

"We're brother and sister. It's dangerous enough that we're... that we're..." Together, in love, why had those words suddenly become so difficult to say? "Have you forgotten what happened with Erin? With Mom and Dad? What do you think would happen if you pushed around a carriage full of our fucked-up babies. Showing everyone I've ever known the three-eyed nieces and flipper-handed nephews that their own aunt gave birth to."

She rolled on the mattress, showing her back to me. I grasped her shoulder and forced her little body to face me. "Look at me, Julie! I promised we'd talk about this, so let's talk. Let's talk until we both turn purple, hopefully by then you'll get it through your thick, stubborn skull that we are not going to have any babies!"

"What if it was too late, Rick?" The words were hollow. It was like her mind and her mouth were in two different places. "What if I was already pregnant?"

To be concluded...