Author note - this started out as a single chapter short story, and is now expanding into a longer story as two siblings explore their desires and boundaries. Many thanks to readers for feedback which motivated this expansion. For myself, I find the story both arousing and moving.
*
It was hot. Or at least I felt hot. Warm. Sweating under the sheet, the blanket thrown down past the foot of my single bed, a bed now too small so that my feet pressed against the wood rail. A tangible reminder of what had changed - and what hadn't. Yes I had moved on to first year at State, but was now back for the summer in the same family, same house, the same bed even. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe it would be different if I had won that track scholarship, but as it was...I needed to save every dime I could.
And maybe something else hadn't changed since high school - my confidence, or rather lack of it, with girls.
I lay remembering my date that evening with Alison. One of the few connections I had run across this summer from a year earlier, from my last year of high school. Memories of her helping me struggle through Chemistry homework. Maybe that's why I had been confident enough to ask her out when I had seen her checking into the Rec Center.
Amid these memories, my right hand squeezed tenderly around the soft cloth nestled in my palm. My left fingers stroked my length. Hot alright. A hot evening. But incomplete.
Oh, everything had gone right, at least in the version I would tell Mom in the morning. "Thanks for loaning me the car. We found parking downtown no problem. Both of us liked the movie. And we talked a lot about classes now - she's been Biology herself out of state."
What I wouldn't be telling them about was me laying here past midnight with a raging hard-on under the sheet, and wondering...what Alison really thought of me. Did she feel about me like I did about her? Or did she think I was 'nice'. Groan. A good enough date for a Friday movie, but not bold enough to be a real boyfriend? What did she really want when she eventually brushed my hand aside in the car, parked in the dark under the trees. I could feel her sweet breath, the pulsing of her chest, her squirming and twisting back and forth in the passenger seat beside me...
I had wanted her so badly. I had wanted to keep undoing those cute little white buttons all the way down the front of that dress that had been driving me crazy all evening, and press aside her thin-looking bra until I could finally feel her breasts. Oh yes, I had wanted it so bad. But when she whispered "no", when she brushed my hands aside, even as fluttering as her movements were, I froze. What had she really wanted? Had I earned her trust by listening to her outer words? Or was she annoyed with herself for wasting an evening on a foolish kid, not bold enough to press for her prize?
The memories were visceral - so recent, so vivid - of Alison squirming and soft and possible in the seat next to me, physically close and yet so distant; what with the steering wheel and the handbrake and my own virginal lack of confidence. I agonized. I knew that a few strokes of my left palm right now could have me biting on my lower lip in suppressed groan and squirting my pent-up release into the forbidden silky-smooth cloth in my fist. But wouldn't I feel all the lonelier afterwards? And surely I had to be careful, protective despite my frustration, and not let even a drop of my boyhood stain her sweet, innocent little...
Just then I heard a creak at my door, and saw a ray of light cast across from the corridor. My breath checked. Was Mom checking in on me?
"Hey, bro, it's only me...are you still awake?"
I let out a half-whispered laugh of...relief?
"Yeah, apparently".
Mandy ghosted into the room, clicking the door closed behind. I was surprised by her confidence, her quickness. Soothed by her fresh scent. For a moment I didn't think to be self-conscience. But then she was perched on the side of my bed, legs crossed in a short nightie, one of the clingy satiny ones she had switched to at her recent 18th birthday, moving on, she said, from her favorite giraffe pajamas. In the angled light from the streetlamp at the end of our street, I could see how it clung to her newly swelling curves. Still girlish, they were more upward pointed than large. More about the early ripeness of spring berries than the fullness of summer fruit. If the length of my bed hadn't changed in the last year, some other things sure had. I caught my own thoughts. And surely...I must be as obvious under the single sheet? I thought of trying to slide my left hand to the side, but wouldn't that be a give away? And leave my hard-on all the more singled out - in the same singled-minded way it was burning a self-conscious hole in my brain?
But my innocent younger sister was, of course, totally unaware. She flicked aside a long strand of hair.
"How'd it go? With Alison?"
I liked to think we kept few secrets from each other. Beyond, well, this one thing in my hand. Obviously.
"Umm. Good. It's a pretty good movie, for a sequel..."
"Oh save that for the breakfast table, please. How did it go with Alison? Come on - don't hold out on me..."
My sister recrossed her legs, shifting on the side of my bed, so that I could feel the mattress move under me, even from her light weight. I watched the edge of her nightie slide higher up her young thighs. We had always been close, but tonight she seemed, so...almost intimate. I was awkwardly aware of how she was growing into a woman's body. And yet also how close we might still be, just brother and sister. She had said it so beautifully, once, several years earlier, and the phrase had stuck like a talisman in my mind.
Allies against the rules, solace in the tumbles, there for each other on the sick days.
And right now I so wanted that ally, someone to unburden my thoughts with.
She slid closer to me, her scent strong and yet still fresh. Was there even a hint of that secret spice that I clenched..? No! I mustn't let my mind drift toward that. If there were two secrets that I was keeping from her, the less important to hide right now was how I really felt about my date with Alison. And about that I was already on the edge of spilling out my anguished thoughts.
"Please, bro...I'll never tell anyone, I promise."
I knew she was telling the truth on that. Total trust. That we surely had. Her hand came to my left arm, and even through the sheet I felt a little electric shock, more emotional than erotic, though I think my cock pulsed even harder at the same moment. I couldn't continue to hold back from her.
"I, I don't know...I think I screwed up. I think I was too boring. Not confident enough. She probably wants someone more like one of the real jocks..."
I could feel my sisters sweet breath, her large eyes on me. "Did you kiss her?"
I paused. But I so wanted to share with her. "Yeah. I mean God, yeah. Are you kidding. We were, like, kissing for fifteen minutes or something. She was half-way out of the passenger seat toward me. I wished I hadn't put that stupid parking brake on, just wanted to look super careful with her I suppose. Probably she thinks I was so clueless..."
