Romance: TOXIC (Forbidden, Pregnancy, Taboo Romance, Stepbrother Romance, New Adult Short Stories) (3 page)

“It’s big, but not that confusing,” I said.

“I dunno, I kept getting the blue and yellow hallways mixed up for the longest time--and I was born there.”

“They both have pictures of some glowering ancestor, right?”

He snorted.  “Yeah.  You could put it that way.”

“Well, as long as they’re glowering, we may as well have done something to earn it,” I said. 

And it was strange, how knowing that this was not supposed to be made it all that much more.  His put his hand on my thigh--a proposition.  I looked back at him. 
Fuck 'em,
I wanted to say.  
Fuck 'em by fucking me. 
I reached across the seat, and found his cock, already bulging against his jeans.  We didn't need to talk. 

I hadn’t realized how much I longed for his hands on me until his fingers were flicking away at my clitoris, while I straddled his lap, nibbling at his lips, feeling his cock pulse against the inside of my thigh in time with my mouth.  Any man could touch a woman the way he touched me, but I wanted
him
, precisely because I wasn't supposed to have him.  I licked his ear, feeling him shudder beneath me.  His hips pressed against mine, working like a slow bass, and I could feel his body tremble with desire.  Slowly, as we kissed, as my pussy got slick and wet and as I felt him get harder and more insistent, I also began to tremble. If this was wrong, why did it feel so good, why did we need each other so badly? 

He reclined the seat, and while I stripped off my dress he worked himself out of his pants.  “Turn around,” he said hoarsely.  "I want the world to see you when we do this.  I want the world to be jealous of how beautiful you are."

I straddled him and he took me from the back, thrusting upwards.  The idea that someone walking by could see all of me excited me, and I reached behind me, grabbing onto his forearms so that every thrust could expose me more. I felt that familiar ache as he slid deeper inside me, the spasm of pleasure arching my back, driving him ever deeper, while his hand continued to fondle between my legs, teasing the urge for more to ever higher levels.

The sex we’d had in Hawaii was tender, gentle, born of love.  This was different--it was born out of defiance, and in the final moments, the hardness emerged--he pinched my nipples until they tingled with pain, and in that pain I found and ecstasy that welcomed the pounding he gave me.  For the first time in my life, I realized that I was feeling the raw power of pure lust.  It touched something deep inside, a little spark of electric desire that grew stronger with each thrust, and I shivered to my soul when he came inside me. 

***

There wasn’t anything to do afterwards--by which I mean two in the morning, because after that we both fell asleep in each other’s arms--but put on our clothes and drive back. We considered stopping at a 24-hour diner for breakfast on the way back, but we decided that my mother was probably having apoplectic fits by now, and it would be a kindness to get back as soon as possible. 

When he pulled into the driveway, though, we immediately realized that there was something far worse happening than "just" step-siblings-banging-each-other.  All of the lights were on.  A quick look at the garage revealed that Isadora and Dorian had both left.  Altogether, none of it boded well for either of us. 

He left the car parked in front of the house and together we went in, clutching each other's hands--me to support him in his stand against his father, him to support me for defying taboo and loving him as someone other than a brother. 

It seemed as if nobody was home at first, but then Bryce emerged from one of the hallways.  He pretended not to see Blake.  "You owe your mother an apology," he said.  "She's frantic."

"You owe him one, first," I said, forcing the words out even though my body was quivering.

He shook his head.  "Do you know what the last words he said to me were?"

"That doesn't matter," I said, but he spoke over me, saying, "'I don't need you or your money or your love.' Mark my words, girl--he'll spit those words at you someday."

Blake's jaw was clenched, as he fought his temper to keep from rising to his father's bait.  "I'm not that boy anymore," he said, as evenly as he could manage.  "Hard work makes a man--"

"Hard work, my ass.  Tell me, how many men did you have to whore yourself to in order to get back on the right side of the border?"

"I never had to scrape that low," Blake said.  "Which you'd know if you ever did a lick of work in your life."

"Stop it!" I shouted.  "Please.  Where is my mother?"

Bryce stood to one side to let us pass him.  As we passed him, though, I could sense that Blake was spoiling for a fight.  This wasn't the last of it, not by a long shot. But it would have to wait. I could hear the sounds of someone sobbing down the hall.  I ran to what they called the parlor--it was too big, in my opinion, to be anything other than a living room, so why they insisted on calling it a parlor was beyond me--where I found my mother, sitting on the couch, weeping.  "Mom," I said, giving her a hug. 

"Lila, oh thank God," she said.  "I was trying to convince Bryce to let his son stay--"

"That doesn't matter now," I said.

"Did he change his mind?" she asked.  "Hello, Blake.  Where are my manners?  I'm sorry that we had to meet the way we did--"

Blake managed a half-hearted smile. 

"Mom, I have something to tell you," I said, taking her hand and guiding her back to the sofa.  "Please don't be alarmed."

She took the news a lot better than I thought she would--I had to give her that much--listening in silence as I explained how we'd met and that we loved each other.  "Physically?" It was her only question at the end of my retelling of our Hawaiian escapade. 

I took a deep breath.  We'd never had "The Talk"--she'd left sex-ed up to the health class of my public school system.  She was one of those old-fashioned people who think that a girl should save herself for marriage, that getting to know someone sexually was tantamount to getting gang-banged.  I never told her that I used to let Tom Whittaker (high school) touch my breasts, or that I gave blow jobs to Shawn Abrams.  "Yes," I said, finally. 

"Oh.  So.  What now, then?" she asked.  "Surely you're going to get married soon, right?"

I looked at Blake.  "Well ma'am," he said.  "It's a little too early to say for sure, but I, for one, would like to marry your daughter.  With your blessing, of course."

"But I can't," she said, and she began sobbing again.   "You're brother and sister now!  I know you're not related, but you are now.  Don't you see how wrong it is?"

There was nothing we could say, or do.  Bryce, who had been watching from the entrance, hissed at me, "Go get your things, you hussy.  Leave."

"That's not what she said," I retorted.

"My house, my rules."

"Fuck your rules."

I was on the floor before I even registered that he'd slapped me.  Even Blake had been caught off guard.  He helped me up, his fists clenching in futile rage.  He wouldn't hit his father, no matter what Bryce did, and they both knew it.  Even as terrible as Bryce was, he was still Blake's father.  "Come on, Lila," he said, leading me back down the passage.  "We should go."

"I can't leave my mom like this," I said. "She's still crying."

"You still don't get it, do you?" he asked. 

"Get what?"

"She's not your mom anymore.  She's his wife."

***

The next few days passed in a dissociative fugue for me.  The back-and-forth, between having everything and nothing, being someone and nobody, was too much and the only way I could cope with it was by becoming numb to everyone and everything.  We ended up staying with Isadora for the time.  Isadora lived in the middle part of Pennsylvania, in Amish country, though she and her family weren't Amish.  But they had a lot of visitors, and the Amish children and her children played with each other quite happily.  "I like the simple life," Isadora confided to me, "but not enough to give up Orange is the New Black!"

It was a bit of a shock to Isadora and Dorian--more to him than to her--to realize that we were step-brother and step-sister, but after a little gentle arguing from Blake, they came around.  "If I'd met her under any other circumstances you guys would be cheering us on," Blake said, and they had to agree that he was right. 

I suppose we had sex, too, but if we did it was because he had to and not because I wanted to.  I couldn't want to.  My mother, who'd been my constant companion and friend growing up, had been torn from my life.  We were as good as dead to each other, for all the communication that Bryce would allow--and I had been completely unprepared to let her go.
It's not fair,
I wanted to whine, but Blake had been disowned at seventeen--he'd had years to get used to the ache.  I couldn't expect him to understand.

And yet, as I watched him work--to keep himself busy, and to "earn our board", he took care of all the gardening for Isardora--I had the feeling that, while he might have gotten used to the ache, he still wanted, against all common sense, to be his father's son. 

"Do you think you'll ever forgive him?" I asked. 

"That's the wrong question," he said.  "Forgiving him isn't the problem.  It's that we've been at loggerheads with each other since the day I was born, practically.   I don't think we would know how to be civil with each other even if we tried."

"Really?"

He shrugged.  "Izzy will tell you all about our epic fights," he said.  "Some would go on for days.  One lasted a month." 

"That sounds...unhealthy."

"It is," he agreed.  "But there you have it--he always thought I was a spoiled brat and I always thought he was an absentee landlord.  It was a relief, to be honest, when he disowned me."

"How could a father not realize what he has in you?" I wondered aloud.

"How could a mother let you go?" he asked. 

Slowly, the wounds healed, as wounds do.  Between Blake, Isadora, and Dorian, they managed to chip together enough money for both of us to go to Hawaii, and for the next month I waited tables and went to night school to get my teaching certification, while Blake kept on giving surfing lessons.  He became a trainer at his buddy's gym.  Life went smoothly, for the most part--our biggest daily quibble was who got to sleep next to the door of the van.  We eventually paid back Isadora and Dorian.  I got a teaching job at a nearby middle school. 

And then, one day, even the joy in our lives came back.  It was just another day, and I was on my way to work when I saw a wooden longboard on sale in the window of a shop.  Right then and there I decided to get it for Blake, but even the sale price was above what I had in my bank account.  That was the day when I received a $500 tip from one of my customers.  I bought him the longboard, and arranged to have it delivered to the van.  When I got home that night, though, he showed me a pamphlet--there was a cute little bungalow, a fixer-upper, that we'd been eying, but the asking price was head and shoulders above what we could afford--and said that he'd been approved for a mortgage.  "I just asked if they'd be willing to take something I could afford, and they said yes," he said.

One year to the day that we first met, we woke up and packed a picnic lunch to take to the beach.  The part of the coast had huge, flat boulders, and we picked our way across them to find one that was large enough to sit on, to lie down on.  It was just us, and the world, again.  "I love you," he murmured, as we finished the lemonade.

"I love you, too," I said.  "Do you remember..." I began, but he pressed a finger to my lips. 

He leaned in for the kiss.  I closed my eyes, feeling his lips go soft against mine, tasting him.  His fingers brushed against my shoulders, my neck, and my back, searching for the knots that held my string bikini on.  First my right side, then my left, but he didn't stop until I was completely naked, completely exposed--completely his.

I pressed my body against his, and that feeling of one-ness with him, from our first date, came rushing back.  My tears of ecstasy mingled with the sweat that ran down his body, and the rush of our breathing fell into the same rhythm as the rush of the ocean around us.  The world was a wave breaking, splashing us with a million little spears of icy cold, sending both of us gasping for breath, and little stars shooting before our eyes. 

We fell asleep, warmed by the sun and the rocks, wrapped in each other's arms.  He awoke first.  I could feel his hands caressing my body, and his touch seemed to linger after his hands had moved somewhere else.  Slowly, his hands began to hover, to concentrate, to linger, on my breasts, where the buds stood firm with the chill from the spray.  "You're so beautiful," he said, touching his tongue to the tips.  It was like being touched by glass, cold and smooth.  My back arched with pleasure, but his weight kept me down.  He smiled and stroked the inside of my thigh with his other hand, teasing me by brushing the soft skin, and then taking his hand away, just when I was expecting more. 

"You keep saying that," I murmured, as he slowly worked his hand closer and closer to my pussy.

"Because it's true."

"Would you keep saying that if I got fat?"

He stopped, taken aback.  "Wait, what do you mean?" he asked.  His hand dropped, resting between my legs.