The Truth About Jake

He sat back up and looked at me for a long moment. "Yes, she does."

Oh god, I thought to myself. This is going to be painful. I shook my head with sad eyes. "Jake—"

"What the hell do you know?" he said with a sneer.

"I know how she would treat you if she did." My hatred for Trina was beginning to soften into tenderness for Jake—tenderness that only someone who knew him as well as me could feel.

"And how would she treat me?" he asked condescendingly.

Suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, I choked back tears. "She would be...thinking about you all the time—the same way you always think about her."

"How do you know she doesn't?"

"She would touch you sometimes when you weren't expecting it."

The sharp anger on his face began to soften.

"She would whisper things to you that surprise you. She would kiss you uninvited. She would return the 'I love you's.'"

His face elongated as the tension began to leave his body. He mercifully took his knees off my arms, freeing the constricted vessels to again deliver blood to my extremities. He remained on top of me, and I didn't attempt to escape.

"How do you know she doesn't do all that?" he asked in more of an inquiring tone than contempt.

"You're always indicating it—by the way you treat her, by the way you always need her validation."

"Why do you even care?"

God! He had me there. Why did I hate her so much? Who cares about Jake's' love life? I have my own problems; why the hell do I want to waste emotional energy on the happiness of a dweeb like my brother? I suddenly realized that my panties were wet. My crotch was drenched and I was getting wetter. My mind was focused on my brother's immovable weight constricting my chest, holding me in his power, dominating me with almost no effort.

I reached out and touched his face. I gently caressed his cheek as I studied his pale green eyes. He was so....different now. He wasn't just good looking; he was more than that—sexy even. It wasn't what he was wearing. It wasn't his cute tousled hair. It wasn't even that I knew he had a firm body under that shirt. It was that he was sitting on top of me, completely in control, and casually wondering how to dispose of me, like an orca toying with a baby seal. I continued touching him, caressing his cheek with my thumb. I could do nothing else but answer his question.

"Because you're my brother. And I love you." God! Just saying it made my clit get hard in my underwear. What was happening to me? "Are you going to hurt me?" I heard myself ask.

He looked at me, confused, as if the question was asked in a foreign language. I gently tugged his face down. He responded by bending down toward me, allowing me to direct him with almost no physical effort.

I brought his head all the way down so my mouth was near his ear. "I'm sorry," I pleaded in a high, thin voice. I kissed him gently on the cheek. "Please forgive me. I'll be good." I exhaled the remainder of my quivering breath into his ear.

He pulled back slightly and looked at me, still a little confused. "I know you will," he said abruptly, still trying to hold on to that last bit of bitter anger, even though it was rapidly evaporating.

"I promise," I whispered, gently turning his face toward mine. I kissed him—on the lips. The last time I'd kissed my brother on the lips I was six.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

I didn't even know. I felt like he needed it. Although I did it for him, I suddenly felt like I needed to do it again—for me. "I'm just trying to be a good sister."

He studied my face, no doubt trying to comprehend what was happening between us. He took my hands from his face and held them down on the bed. "It's about time you were a good sister," he said quietly, sternly. He held my gaze for a few seconds. The look in his eyes was different. I swallowed nervously and attempted to look away but my eyes were immediately drawn back to his. He scanned my torso and looked back at my face. What was he thinking?

He let go of my hands and unbuttoned the top button of my shirt. I instinctively grabbed his wrists to stop him. He put my hands back down to the bed.

"What are you doing?" I asked, a wisp of fear in my voice.

"I'm not being a weenie," he stated.

"Well, go 'not be a weenie' with somebody else!"

Slowly, he slid his hands from my wrists along my arms and eventually across my breasts until they found the next button on my shirt. I'd like to say I shoved him off of me at this point, which is what I would have done to any man who was so bold as to think he could cop a feel without my consent. But Jake wasn't just any man. I let him unfasten two more buttons before I grabbed him again.

"You...better not hurt me," I said in a tone that I'm sure was anything but assertive. I let go. God, I let him continue! I found myself wanting, needing him to get a thrill from seeing and touching me. I tried to remain indignant. "I hope you're enjoying yourself," I said sarcastically.

He glanced at me with a brief glare as he reached the last button. Pushing my shirt apart, my naked upper body was revealed, save for the bra. His hands went to my breasts, feeling them over the silky fabric. My nipples immediately grew erect under his touch.

To my consternation, I felt electricity travel from my nipples, up through my armpits and down my torso, straight to my clitoris. I'd been forcibly felt up before, but it never lasted more than a few seconds before I threw a fist, and it never got a physical reaction from me.

He slid both hands off my bra and dug his fingertips underneath the bottom support wire, pushing the bra off of my breasts and up to my chest. The look on his face told me this wasn't something he was familiar with doing. He was genuinely turned on. His fingertips played with my nipples, coaxing them to rock-hard turgidity. As fearful as I was under his power, my libido was even stronger. My back arched off the bed in reaction to his erotic touch, although he took the response to be struggling. He put more of his weight on me.

"What are you doing to me?" I asked in a poorly faked angry tone. My breasts are small, but not non-existent. They were clearly enough to turn Jake on, his unwavering gaze and audible breathing now betraying his arousal. He squeezed them and palmed my nipples, smashing them down to the areolas, getting a nice long feel. Looking down at his jeans, I could clearly see the outline of his erection. It was clearly much larger than I would have given him credit for. I couldn't remember ever being more turned on in my life!

"LeAnn!" my mother yelled from downstairs. I gave a short breath with a start and looked at Jake. I felt as guilty as he looked, like we both had our hands in the cookie jar.

He stared at me for a moment. "LeAnn!" my mother impatiently yelled again. Climbing off the bed, he released me from my captivity and backed away.

"Yes?" I hollered down.

"Help me with the groceries, honey!"

Jake grabbed his phone off the floor and headed for his room. I sat up on the bed and let my head clear for a moment. Oh my god! What the fuck just happened? Did I really just experience an uncontrollable attraction to my brother?

It was as though the veil shrouding his sex appeal had just been thrown off him, torn and shredded like a wet paper bag. I had no idea he was under there. And I got the feeling he still didn't know. After fixing my bra and buttoning my shirt up, I checked my hair in the mirror and ran down to help Mom with the groceries.

"What's Jake doing?" she asked, pulling cans of soup from a bag.

"Not helping," I said in a snarky tone. My panties were uncomfortably wet. I looked down once just to reassure myself I wasn't showing through.

"Do you have any plans tonight?" she asked.

"Not really," I answered truthfully. Just then Jake walked into the kitchen.

"What about you, hon?" she asked him.

"Apparently I'm going out tonight," he said very sarcastically. The tone was lost on Mom, but I secretly smiled to myself.

"Where are you going?" Mom asked innocently.

"Wherever Lee decides to take me," he answered, grabbing some frozen items and carrying them to the back porch freezer.

"Aww," she said, looking at me. "Anything to keep him away from Trina," she whispered to me with a wink.

"I'll do my best," I said quietly. Inside I was jumping for joy that he wanted to go out with me.

Mom grabbed a bag full of shower gel and other toiletry items and headed for her bathroom.

"You're crazy," Jake said to me, returning to the kitchen.

"Why?" I asked.

"I would never use the word 'whatevs.'" I had almost forgotten what I'd done with his phone. We both conveniently ignored what had just happened between us.

"Did you tell her it wasn't you?" I asked, fearing the answer.

"No."

"Good! Don't."

"She probably thinks I'm a jerk," he lamented.

"Why, because you didn't beg her to be with you instead? Because you played it cool? Because you weren't your usual weenie-boy self?"

"I know how to treat her; you don't. You were meddling."

"Well, maybe she'll give you some respect now. You just need to be more confident in yourself."

Jake looked at me for a long moment before grabbing a cookie out of the jar and heading back up to his room. I leaned back on the counter, feeling my face go flush from his extended eye contact. I was still reeling from the encounter upstairs in my room. He'd attacked me, maybe deservedly so. I'd never been so afraid of him—or so turned on. My brother never before "did it" for me—ever. He wasn't even my type. He was the kind of kid I would pity in school, not be attracted to. I was torn between my usual contempt for him and my sudden and unexplainable urge to please him, to make him feel like a man. There was no question he needed that from somebody. I felt my heart rate increase again just thinking about his body being on top of me, controlling me. It was so out of character for him. It was so out of character for me to tolerate such a thing. But it was more than just tolerable. It was much more.

* * *

"Turn here," I directed. "No, here!"

"Okay!" Jake defended. "How about a little lead time?"

"Okay, so it's one of these houses at the top of the hill," I said, ignoring his protest.

"Do you think maybe this is slightly desperate and pathetic?"

"No, it's extremely desperate and pathetic," I responded. "But desperate situations call for desperate measures. There's Katy's car! Park behind her."

The houses on this end of campus all looked the same—once spacious and magnificent dwellings for well-to-do families were now low-rent student housing. Walls once adorned with paintings of still life and meandering streams now bore posters of guitar gods and sports heroes. Inside the house, the thump of a kick drum and the flashing and dancing beams of a band's stage lights told us this was the place. A bunch of kids in the back yard could be heard laughing at someone performing unnatural, inverted acts on a keg of beer. People were milling around out front, most with a beer in their right hand, some with a cigarette in their left. Katy had the hots for a soccer player that lived here, so I felt invited by proxy, not that a girl like me needs an invitation.

We went to the back yard to look for Katy. I was immediately offered a beer by the guy that had just been doing the keg stand. He must have figured out Jake was my brother. Either that or he didn't care that I came with someone. Regardless, I took his beer. I didn't offer one to Jake. Even though I knew he drank sometimes, he was still my little brother; it just felt too weird.

Jake nervously pulled me aside. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Hang loose. Just be cool and try not to look like a high schooler. She'll show up. It's the only place to be tonight; every party will end up here." He looked around at the college kids talking in groups and drinking. He seemed fidgety. My evil plan of making Trina jealous by seeing him out with other people was going to fail if he stood there looking like the weenie that he was. I walked over to the keg and poured him a beer.

"Here. Don't tell Mom I gave you this."

He took the cup and smiled at me. A beer wouldn't hurt him. He needed to relax. To my surprise I watched him down the whole cup in less than five seconds. He went to the keg and filled it up again. "Okay, now I'm good," he announced. I shook my head in feigned disappointment and led him into the house in search of Katy.

The band was covering The Cure—loudly and well. Katy stood talking to some dude which I assumed was the soccer player. "Why don't I know any of these songs?" she yelled to me as we approached.

"Because your parents only listened to crap," I loudly answered back.

She rolled her eyes at me. "This is Glenn," she said, introducing the tall guy next to her.

"My parents pretty much only listened to Rick Springfield, so," he said in a heavy Australian accent as he offered his hand.

"And probably Men at Work," I said, giving Glenn a flirty glance.

"So what's Jake doing here?" Katy asked me discretely.

"He's on a recon mission," I said cryptically. He caught us both looking at him and immediately looked self-conscious, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, "What?"

"I may need you to do me a favor," I said to her, not looking away from Jake.

"Sure," she answered without knowing what the favor would entail. "What?" she asked.

"There's going to be a girl here that needs to catch Jake flirting with a hot little piece of ass. That would be you." There I went, meddling again.

"You want me to flirt with your brother to make some girl jealous?" she asked, an evil smile creeping onto her lips.

"Glenn won't mind, will he?"

Katy shrugged with a smile. "Oh, well," she said in my ear. "Your brother's cuter."

Her attention turned back to Glenn but my eyes stayed on Jake. I suddenly imagined feeling his hands on my breasts again, forcing a cheap feel from me. Why was I thinking about that? Why didn't I smack the shit out of him for doing that? I would have done that to any other guy. I shuddered silently, thinking about his hands on me.

Someone had kicked the lights off and the only illumination in the big room was from the band's stage lighting. They had moved on to playing newer stuff, which definitely pleased Katy and my brother. They stood and chatted while I scanned the rapidly growing crowd for Trina.

As if on cue, I spotted her and Anissa meandering toward the stage. Another guy followed them, and it wasn't Anissa's boyfriend. As they emerged from the crowd I could tell Trina was holding the guy's hand. I discreetly waved to Katy in order to get her attention. She looked at me and I gave her a head gesture toward Trina.

Like a trained double agent, Katy took my brother's hand, interlocking fingers with him. She gently grabbed his head, pulling his ear to her lips and whispered something to him while standing unnecessarily close, eliciting a smile from Jake. She touched his firm abdomen and gently caressed it while she kept talking to him.

I kept my eyes on Trina. She saw Jake. Yes! She saw the strange girl flirting with him. She stopped in her tracks and stared for a moment, dropping her date's hand and trying to assess what she was seeing.

"Jake?" I watched her lips say.

Jake and Katy turned toward Trina. I couldn't hear what Trina was saying, but her angry and confused expression said it all, as though castigating Jake for letting himself out of his cage without permission.

"Hang tough, Jakey," I thought to myself. It looked like my evil plan was going to work. A few more words exchanged, and then Trina walked away. Perfect! But then to my despair, Jake pried himself away from Katy and followed after Trina. It was time to intervene before he did something stupid.

I moved quickly to step into his path. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Get outta my way, LeAnn," he ordered sternly.

"What did she say to you?" I asked.

"Why the fuck do you want to know? You told Katy to do that didn't you? You're just screwing things up for me!" He moved to jostle past me in the crowd and I held his hand tight and pulled him back to me.

"I'm trying to help you," I said.

"I don't need your damned help; I need her to understand I'm not interested in Katy."

I was so angry I nearly spit on the floor. "So what if you were?" I asked indignantly. Even though Trina had reacted exactly how I predicted, Jake was not going with the flow. This was Trina's out, her reason not to bother with him anymore. Jake was supposed to just let her go—to let Katy's flirting be his diversion. Katy had already treated him better in three minutes than Trina had in three months. He was such a moron.

He turned to go again and I continued to hold his hand, gentler this time, barely holding on. If he wanted to go I wouldn't hold him back. To my surprise, he allowed me to restrain him.

"Let me ask you something," he said, no longer shouting but loud enough for me to hear him over the music. I said nothing, but continued to look up at him expectantly. He ran his fingers through his hair and leaned down to me so I could hear him. "Why is this so important to you? You're on a mission, like you care or something. I'm just your brother; you don't have any stake in my love life. What gives?"

The question was phrased more bluntly than I was prepared to deal with. I had believed my worries for him to be purely sibling care and concern. I thought I was just keeping him straight, because he needed a watchful eye. But standing there in the crowd, holding his hand, feeling foolish for having manipulated the situation, I couldn't deny that I had an ulterior motive. I floundered with my words.

"Jake, you're just...boys like you are...I don't want you to..." I could feel my face getting flush. I paused for a moment.

He squeezed my hand and prompted me to continue. "You don't want me to what?"

I was at a crossroads. I was hiding my true feelings from both of us. What the fuck was I doing? I had to face facts. I was jealous. I was insanely jealous of Trina! She had him stepping on his own dignity to gain enough traction to keep her interested in him and it was killing me! She wasn't worth a single hair on his beautiful head. I could treat him so much better. I chastised myself for conjuring such a ridiculous notion.

"I...don't want you to...lose your sense of self-worth."

He cocked his head sideways and gave me a confused look. I knew I wasn't being clear.

In a desperate move I urgently pulled him by the hand through the crowd in the opposite direction of Trina into an adjacent room. I paused to talk but it was still too noisy. I saw the staircase and went for it, hoping the house's residents didn't see us heading up to their private area.

At the top of the stairs I found a short hallway and several doors, one of which was ajar. Pulling him into the room, I closed the door and leaned against it, gathering my thoughts. We were in some dude's bedroom. A single lamp on the nightstand barely illuminated the walls.

"Okay," I began guiltily. "What I'm trying to say to you is, you're so much more..." Oh god, I thought to myself. Here it comes, whether I stop myself or not. The words tumbled out in a kind of slow-motion, multi-car pileup of unintended truths, suddenly exposing my naked vulnerability to him. "You're so sexy, Jake. You're way hotter than she deserves. Shit, you'd be better off trying to get in my pants; at least I'd know how to treat you."

I felt a shortness of breath as I finished the revelation. I had never felt so mortified and relieved at the same time.

"Lee?" he uttered in disbelief.

"Oh god," I mumbled under my breath. I stood there and tried to comprehend the Pandora's Box I had just flung open, already formulating a damage control plan.