Author's note:
This story involves themes of incest (brother/sister) and light dominance / spanking. Please skip if these things don't float your boat.
For those that rate women on the traditional 10-point scale, my younger sister, Rachel, is a solid 8.
I've told her this many times over the years. Never in a leering way or with any ulterior motive, but because she's always had a crippling insecurity about her looks and is extremely body-conscious.
Her low self-esteem and anxiety has been the major reason that most of her previous relationships have failed. She's making a go of it now with Aiden, but she's been left with the scars of various broken hearts, including a failed marriage from nearly two decades ago, that lumbered on stubbornly for 4 years, but had at least given Rachel a child, Mica.
She'd worked hard on building her resilience and her mental health had improved, but her anxieties still reared their head now and again. She's 39 now, some 6 years younger than me, and has been in a happy relationship with Aiden for 3 years. Though both of them refuse to consider marriage - "been there, done that" - they welcomed little Alice into the world a couple of years ago. She's Aiden's only child, but Rachel's second, with Mica having just turned 19 - a fact I still struggle to get my head around.
I've always been close with Rachel and it bothers me that she can't see herself the way I do. That's why I'm happy telling her, truthfully, that I think she's beautiful.
Again, there's no 'angle'. I just tell her that everyone apart from her can see she is very pretty. And in a world where 'tens' don't really exist outside of photoshopped magazine pictures or airbrushed Hollywood movies, the most desirable women are somewhere in the 8 - 9 region. And she's easily up there, with the potential to go higher with the right outfit and make-up.
She just blushes profusely and tells me I have to say that, as her older brother. And no amount of reassurance ever makes any difference so eventually I stopped trying, letting her brush me off whenever I gave her a compliment.
There was a time for a couple of years, when we'd become so busy with our own lives, working and raising kids, that we didn't see each other outside of birthdays and Christmas. That had eventually seen us getting all soppy after drinking too much at a Christmas house party, and we vowed that we wouldn't let 'being busy' get in the way of us spending time together. So began our fortnightly Sunday fun-days, where we could do family stuff. They became monthly affairs and then bi-monthly, but in their place, we started up our weekly Friday night curry nights, where Rachel, Aiden and I would stay up late - at theirs' so little Alice could be in bed at a reasonable hour - and we'd eat curry and talk about grown up stuff.
In short order, these Friday nights had become the highlight of my week. I'd log-off from work, jump in the shower and make my way to Rachel's for about 7pm. I'd play with Alice for about an hour before she went off to bed and this would usually coincide with Mica heading off for whatever Friday night fun she had planned with the girls.
I'd see her whizz past in a blur of make-up, coiffed hair and exposed flesh, as she dashed out the door with a belated, "Hi Uncle Seth; by Uncle Seth".
Then we'd order three-times more food than we needed and put the world to rights over a few bottles of wine.
It wasn't unusual for us to nod-off and wake up in the early hours of the morning, often being roused by a returning Mica, trying to sneak off drunkenly to bed.
Our bodies would be aching from awkward, upright sleeping positions on the settee, and inevitably, Aiden would start cleaning up, no matter what the time was. I think there was a touch of OCD hiding under the surface but as far as I knew, he'd never had any type of diagnosis.
It became clear that Aiden didn't enjoy the late nights and we could sense his frustrations. He was stuck between not wanting to call an early halt to proceedings, but not wanting to leave us to it and risk waking up to a messy house in the morning.
After a few weeks of this awkwardness, I bit the bullet and told him that if he wanted to get off to bed, I'd make sure I tidied things up before calling my taxi. He'd made a half-hearted attempt to tell me it wasn't necessary, but sure enough, that's the routine we settled in to and it soon became the norm for Aiden to head up to bed at about 11 pm-ish, and for Rachel and I to polish off another bottle of wine between us before eventually calling it a night somewhere between midnight and 1am. Obviously, after making a semi-concerted effort to clean up after ourselves.
It was one particular evening that changed everything. Aiden was in an unusually talkative mood and midnight had come and gone before he decided to surrender to the comfort of his bed. No problem there... other than the fact that we'd already gone through all the wine - including the bottle that Rachel and I normally shared between us after Aiden had left us to it. Rachel was far from ready to call it a night and wasn't in the mood for my warnings that she'd probably already had enough.
"Nonsense," she said, slurring slightly. "You're my brother, not my dad... just grab something out of the cupborad will you?"
She gestured to where she kept the hard liquor. I was in no rush to get back, so I duly acquiesced, grabbing a bottle of Jack Daniels that was still around a third full.
We chatted about the usual stuff, moaning about the price of everything, lamenting the latest political scandal and swapping Netflix recommendations. Noticing she was empty, I poured the last of the bottle into Rachel's glass.
"You'd better be quick with that, you know." I told her.
She looked at me quizzically.
"You still need to clean up. There's cold curry all over the place and all these bottles and glasses to wash up before the morning."
She huffed. "Don't worry about it."
For a split-second a look of anger flashed across her face.
"He'll only be on your back about it in the morning if we don't sort it out tonight," I said.
Again, she huffed. There was an uncomfortable pause.
"If only!" she said, after a moment.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
She shook her head and looked away.
"Rachel?" I asked.
She took a swallow of her whiskey. "I wish he would get on my back about it," she said.
She read the confusion on my face and gave an awkward smile, before continuing.
"He won't be happy.. but he won't shout. He'll just sulk." She paused for a moment.
"He's just so... limp!" she said.
"I'm not following you Rach," I told her.
She swirled the whiskey in her glass, deftly grasping the rim between her fingers. Exhaling in a deep sigh, I could tell she was fighting to find the right words. Her tone was a mixture of frustration and annoyance and the 'old No.7', combined with the wine, was loosening her tongue and freeing her inhibitions to allow this out of character confession.
"Sometimes..." she hesitated a little. "I wish he would just take me by the shoulders and TELL me what to do."
My face flushed and I glanced at my glass, wanting the liquor to be the reason for the sudden temperature increase.
"Is that weird?" Rachel asked. "Do you think I'm some kind of freak?"
