"Let me call you Kate."
Strange Love, Part One: After a beloved woman's funeral, grief leads to an incestuous role-playing game between father and daughter.
This introduces a keeping-it-in-the-family saga. If you are less interested in literary exposition, I've used asterisks to mark the beginnings of literotic passages. The more there are, the hotter it's gettingโฆEnjoy tous mes amis et amoureux...
Everyone at Kate Glass' funeral told Raine that she was a miniature replica of her mother. She couldn't envision herself- ill-tempered and full of shadows- being anything like her mother. Kate had been an angel in life and was most certainly a guardian angel in death: a gregarious and selfless mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend. But people seemed to have reached a consensus contrary to Raine's opinion of herself. Even Gabriel clung to his youngest daughter as though she was his wife reincarnate.
William and Patrick, Kate's eldest sons, stuck together as though conjoined by grief. They gave Raine only the slimmest benefit of their empathy. Deirdre and Cole, Gabriel's twins from his first marriage, attended only as observers, mediators and kerchief distributors. They gave Raine only their tolerant pity. Levi, closest to her in age though a decade her senior, stayed aloof for fear of betraying their taboo history.
Raine's siblings had come in pairs, in respect to coloring and temperament as well as age. Deirdre and Cole, eldest of all, were both dark of hair and skin, with strong Celtic features and sharp attitudes. They looked so alike, that Deirdre felt it was God's cruelty that made her a girl instead of Cole's identical twin. She didn't envy his anatomy so much as she did the freedom it ensured him.
Liam and Patrick, the middle sons, had red hair and bronzed skin, hazel and blue eyes respectively, and a patient nature. As children and adults, they were happiest when around one another. But they weren't opposed to solitude, rivalry even. When playing with neighborhood boys, they often split apart into warring factions- sabotaging one another's forts and breaking into fist fights.
While Cole and Deirdre were observant and cold creatures of logic, Liam and Patrick were naรฏve, charismatic children of faith. Leaving Raine and Levi to be the brilliant storms of the family; blunt and elusive at once, dedicated to the freedom of mutability. Part of this was because they were indulged as the youngest child, in their separate times, and encouraged to be free spirits instead of obedient souls. But part of it was, they were convinced, the result of a gene that bonded them body, mind and destiny.
No one had ever made the other feel so exquisitely
worshipped, completed, mirrored
. Yes, each a mirror, reflecting the golden locks, cobalt eyes, long limbs, light skin and discerning half-smiles they'd inherited from their mother. Yet each was an enigma at the same time. Levi was darkly preoccupied, as was his father, with the music of silence, the chaos of stillness and the creativity of death. Raine was thoughtful and intelligent, much like her father, but was rebellious and adventurous; preferring a double life when one would have sufficed.
**
During the service, Raine sat between her grief-wracked father and abjectly stoical sister. Holding their hands at the same time was like being tempered by a pot of boiling water and a chest of ice. Unable to look forward, where her maternal half-brothers stood around the lowering casket like forlorn models, Raine examined the six limbs in her field of vision. Gabriel's long, athletic legs were clothed in black and navy pinstripe pants. Deirdre's shapely, tan legs were covered to the calf with a charcoal plaid skirt and were punctuated by pointy dark kid-leather brogues.
Raine's own knees were practically bare but for a spattering of provocative lace. Her glossy black skirt revealed the whole lower half of her fit, stockinged legs and her black lace blouse was unbuttoned enough to frame her creamy dรฉcolletage. Looking down, she noticed it also gave a peak at her cleavage and the push-up bra that held up her pert breasts.
The wake had been full of suggestive comments โ "You look as beautiful as your mother did at your age. And Kate was always being chased by the gents," โ and felt trapped by awkwardly long hugs โ "If there's anything you need, lass, anything at allโฆ" Kate's first husband, Rafe, looked at Raine for such a long time that Liam and Patrick shoved him elsewhere in the crowd of mourners. Raine didn't particularly mind the sexual attention- she enjoyed the benefits of youth as any other attractive nineteen year old might. But so close to the untimely death of her mother, the tension around horny mates was a little too much.
***
As everyone bowed their heads for a final prayer, all Raine could think about was getting pissed, lamped, snoggered, officially ossified. Not at a bar either, where anyone would see her drunk and lonely and try to pick her up. Looking down the aisle as casually as possible, Raine saw the prime candidate for a drinking partner- Levi. Raine fondly remembered the many times, before she'd turned eighteen, when he would sneak her glasses of undiluted wine and mugs of poitin (this bootleg Irish whiskey was his drink of choice). Besides which, the two had always been closer to one another than they'd care for others to know.
It wasn't just that Levi'd given Raine her first kiss; he'd also brought Raine to her first non-manual orgasm and (most happily) instructed her on how to
tailler une pipe
(translation: give a killer-wicked blowjob). Their trysts had never gone beyond oral sex, but as the limos began to refill with ebon-clad people, Raine speculated on how good it would be to have him screw her brains out with his sizable cock.
"Are you coming back to the house, Levi?" she asked. They were standing next to one of the family cars, surrounded by the rest of the Glasses, preventing them from saying what was on their minds. "Pat and Liam asked me to hit Shaunessey's with them," he said, carefully touching her face to remove a tear. Raine was about to ask if he'd like her company when she felt two strong hands clasp her slim shoulders.
"You lads drink a round for your mum," Gabriel told his step-sons. "What about you, Cole? Deirdre? Are you joining them?" he asked his children. "I have to get back home with the babies," Deirdre said, her youngest set of identical twins asleep in her arms.
"Do you want me to bring Maddy and the kids over, Da?" Cole asked dutifully, though reticently. Gabriel squeezed Raine's shoulders before shaking his head no. "It's been a long day for you. But you'll have to help get rid of the food the neighbors have brought sometime this week. It's just me and Little Lorraine now," he reminded everyone.
Wilting under the pressure of her father's palms and her siblings' concerned eyes, Raine felt palpably uncomfortable. "Don't worry,