A Forbidden Love Prologue

Prologue: One Night’s Decision

Rene and I were always closer than normal siblings and we always will be. Never did either of us expect to walk down this road as kids. Destiny had other plans and maybe we knew even before we understood how wrong society thought it, but how else could we explain it?

Our road started in the womb. For nine months, we shared the same womb and we grew next to each other, crowded each other. Or, as my sister likes to put it, held each other. When finally we came out, our parents knew within a matter of days, they said, we needed each other. Mother would try to bathe us separately at first, since she had a small infant tub only one of us could fit in. She’d wash one, but the whole time the two of us were in other rooms, we’d both fuss and cry. Eventually her nerves gave in, keeping us together. It was the same growing up. Mom and dad wanted us in separate bedrooms from the start, and so they prepared two bedrooms. He used to tell us it took only one very long and tiring night to convince them to wait. Each time they tried putting us in separate bedrooms afterwards, as Rene and I grew older, always met with failure, until we turned 10 and they felt they had no more time.

Growing up, we did everything together, had the same friends, everything. We had friends who were boys and friends who were girls, but since the two of us linked our little group, we’d play war as often as we’d sit down for tea time. When we weren’t playing with our friends, we played with each other, forgetting the entire world in our innocent activities. Back then, when we played just the two of us, we liked imagining we were grown-ups, married with teddy bears and glass eyed dolls for kids, though mixed in with fanciful things like space adventures or knights and dragons. All innocent, except only to our parents.

Our little family lived this old farm house in the middle of a wooded country, with a huge area of land for the two of us to play on. Mom got it when her father died, shortly before me and Rene were born. Our friends lived on neighboring farms and we mostly met all of them at school when we started going. Though they wanted to play the overprotective parents, mom and dad let us have the run, letting us explore the grassy fields and amazing woods. The biggest of the two barns had been fixed up by dad before we even turned 1, but he restored the second, though smaller, barn for just us kids, a house for his little girl and a fortress for his big boy, shortly before our fifth birthday. It took him awhile longer, but he eventually built an enclosed causeway between the barn and the house, so whether it rained or snowed, we could go and play with ease.

They always tried to get us apart, to do more gender-based things separately than do things together, but they never told us why. We’d always thought, from what the kids at school told us, that girls did girl things and boys did boy things and not the other way around. But we still did these things, even mimicking our parents as much as we knew when we pretended to be married. We always pretended that back then, even when we played with our friends.

When the split in our rooming came, mom took Rene to her room and dad dragged me out to his workshop in the big barn. There, he told me quite frankly all he knew about sex, as much as he would tell his ten year old son, then added something I could never forget afterward, that brothers and sisters would go to hell if they did have sex together. He didn’t call it incest, but he did most definitely ensure I knew it was wrong. At the time.

Before the Big Talk, we had both been into a lot of active endeavors. We both played in the local little league, even on the same team, and what a dangerous pair. I could catch okay but my strength lay in hitting the ball, and no one could hit it further in the league. Rene had long legs even then, and boy, did she use them when running the bases, stealing more often than anyone on the team and getting away with it most of the time. Then we had martial arts classes together, and we weren’t the best but we both tried. Of course, when Rene wanted to do gymnastics and dance classes, our parents enrolled us both in them, at our insistence.

After the separation, we both still tried to keep doing things together despite the stern disapproval of our parents, but separate rooms was the rift that might one day have torn apart our bond. We were determined to remain the best of friends, the best brother and sister anyone knew. Our closeness transcended merely playing together all the time or taking the same classes or even sharing the same room. To us, it was like we knew what the other was thinking even without any indication, what we were both feeling even when no one else knew. Neither of us hid anything from the other, even when we’d tell no other person. Through our innocent curiosity, we knew everything about each other, inside and out. We’d explored each other’s bodies enough to know the difference between boys and girls, but we’d never let anyone else see us, except maybe our parents and even then we tried to hide. Maybe our parents had the right idea, maybe they were just fighting fate.

It was a customary thing for us, on those nights something scared one of us or the house became too cold or just felt like we needed each other, to climb into each other’s bed and sleep with our arms around each other. The idea never sat well with our religious parents, who thought it bordered too far on the incestuous, but when we still shared a room, they couldn’t do anything more than scold us. It changed when a wall stood between our beds, though, and we knew it. In keeping with the need to comfort each other at night, we quickly discovered the wall separating our closets held a secret door, one that only a hidden switch would open. We kept the secret to ourselves and at night, when we needed each other, would sleep together. That first winter, not a night went by we didn’t end up in one bed or the other, but always in the morning, like clockwork, the other of us disappeared into the closet and into the appropriate bedroom before mom or dad caught us together.

Then, we entered puberty, and things started to change. Not really between us, not yet, but mostly in our bodies, and in our parents. Any little sign of sibling affection threatened to turn us into outlaws in our own home, as they started cracking down on our behavior and activities. At eleven, we started attending separate activities, Rene dancing and gymnastics and baseball and martial arts for me. Still, our resolve against our parents still held and we went secret, keeping any signs of brotherly or sisterly love out of sight of our parents and coming up with little codes and signals when they were around. When we started to act more like their image of siblings, with rude nicknames and shoving and hitting between us, we both understood the message and also felt the playfulness in it. If either of us had known back then where it’d lead, I wonder if it’d have continued or not.

By the age of twelve, we both started feeling other things and saw just looking at each other things would change. She, after all, started to turn from a girl into a woman, and I found myself becoming a man. Still, we mustered on, revealing ourselves body and soul to each other without fear of each other, only our parents wrath. How fortunate we were, never to find our parents walking in on us, and if anyone could guess, it could only be described as fate at work.

One cold winter’s night, I heard the floorboards in the next room creak and then heard the closet door in my room open. Throughout the house, only the strong gusts made any other noise, rattling the windows, even as creaking floorboards told me of Rene’s presence creeping to my bed. I lifted the heavy comforter for her and slide over enough for her to climb in next to me. In a moment, I felt her own comforter on mine and felt the side of the bed sink a little under my sister’s weight. “Hold me, Ricky? It’s really cold tonight,” she whispered in the dark of the room, only a cold winter half-moon outside providing any illumination. Without hesitation, I dropped the cover on her and held her close to me, sucking the cold from her and heating her with my own body.

But something else awoke in me to provide heat, something that only came out now when I thought about sex or something sexual aroused me. She dressed now in soft nighties that came down to her knees, but it occurred to me with her closeness the fabric was too thin, as I felt her budding breasts up against me, hard nipples poking me in the chest. She felt it, I knew, but we laid there for awhile awake, not saying anything, or moving.

The tension eventually reached a level neither of us could let go and I sat up, pulling one of the spare quilts around my shoulders to keep me warm. The hard-on still poked out of my pajamas and only the fact the quilt needed to cover my legs did I bother to hide it. She sat up opposite and turned on the lamp next to the bed. I saw her look of plaintive dismay, not sure of what was happening between us, but her eyes betrayed fear too, the same fear I felt. Two years still hadn’t stopped our father from reminding me how wrong incest was, and she’d heard it enough from mom to know the feeling running through my mind, as well as the constant voice. She pulled the comforter around her, and it looked like any moment, tears would drip from her eyes.

Feeling suddenly very bad, I moved towards her, tenderly pulling her close to try and comfort her like when we were younger. She leaned herself into me and put her arms around me even as mine circled her body. “You heard mom and dad, we shouldn’t be having sex with each other. How many times have they told us this?”

“But...but it just happened. You didn’t mean for it to happen, did you?” she almost whimpered. “We’re still like we were, still brother and sister.”

Some part understood the logic at the time. “If it happens, it happens. As long as we don’t actually do anything, it’ll be fine.” Inside, we both mentally added, “I hope,” an unspoken sentiment. With that, we laid back down and hugged each other close, huddling for warmth. The moment had, thankfully, brought an end to the hard-on, but not the worry of the cause and the source. And possible discovery by my parents. We fell asleep, but the sleep didn’t help, not with the weight now on us.

In the morning, a Saturday morning, we both went out to our barn after breakfast and cartoons, needing to talk. Though we desperately wanted to hold each other or touch each other or any of a number of things to try and show affection, the implications now kept us apart and soon we’d agreed our parents were right in what they were doing. We both held each other the last time, at least for some years to come.