A week has passed since I saw Cate and I’m at my limit.
At the very least, I need to hear her voice.
I miss it. To an uncomfortable degree.
This week has been filled with campaign rallies and on-air interviews. Meeting constituents and doing appearances at fundraisers. I threw myself into every activity with a single-minded focus, but she loomed in the back of my mind all the while—and now that I’m home in the silence, there is nothing to keep me from reaching for my phone.
Even through the mayhem, I’ve been checking in with her instructors regularly and I’m told she’s buckled down and started trying harder. No more running off into the park to fly kites or climb trees. And while I’m the one who asked her to remain indoors and focus, a fissure forms in my chest when I think of her stuck inside, dreaming of the glen.
The phone rings against my ear and I stop breathing, waiting for her to answer. It takes her until the sixth ring to do so. “H-hello?”
One word out of her mouth and a hot simmer starts in my belly. “Cate. It’s Tristan.”
“Oh.” She exhales and the sound bathes my ear. “Sorry, I’m still figuring out how to work this thing. How…how are you?”
Her accent is still there, but slightly less noticeable.
Why does that make me frown?
“I’m well. And you?”
“Very well, thank you,” she answers formally.
I swallow pins and needles. “Are you happy with the new instructors?”
“Yes. Especially the one who brings popcorn. The kind you heat up in the microwave. When she leaves, the whole apartment smells like it.”
“Will work for popcorn?”
She hums. “Oh yes.”
I sit down on my bed and toe off my work shoes, a mixture of calm and urgency inside of me. Calm because I’m finally speaking to my stepsister. Urgency because I want to do so much more. Want to be there with her, feeling her with my hands. Tasting her with my tongue.
I have been working around the clock, because any time there is a quiet moment, I hear her whimpering. I feel the soft, wet petals of her cunt on my fingertips. I feel the twist of her grip on my pants, how she yanked me into the cradle of her thighs. Needy and horny. Perfect. If her mother hadn’t knocked on the door when she did, I would have spent the last week sneaking into that apartment to fuck her. Again and again and again. I would be obsessed.
You are obsessed.
You think of nothing but her.
Every. Waking. Moment.
“Tell me what else you’re learning,” I choke out.
“Pronouncing my words. How to cross my legs like a lady and make small talk about things like vacation spots and holiday plans.” I hear her pacing around the apartment, close my eyes and try to see her. “I’m also learning a lot about local history and how to weave it into conversations. That’s usually when I start to fall asleep.”
I chuckle. “I don’t blame you.”
“You don’t? You must need to know everything about Connecticut history to be the governor.”
“I know more about policy and law. How they pertain to the current residents, as opposed to the past ones.”
She fakes a snore.
I bark a laugh, unable to remember the last time I laughed when it wasn’t specifically for the cameras or humoring a potential donor. “Am I boring you? Fine. Dazzle me with your local history knowledge.”
“Yes, sir,” she says primly, and those words almost make me growl. “I’m told that girls my age will be very interested to know that the woman who wrote The Hunger Games and the woman who wrote Twilight are from Hartford, so I should try and bring it up to engage them, if given the chance. And if I’m speaking to someone older, perhaps they might be more excited to know Katharine Hepburn is from this town.” She sucks in a breath. “If I’m speaking to a man, I should quote Mark Twain and let him take the conversation from there.”
“Why would you be speaking to a man?” I snap.
“I…don’t know. It has to happen sometime, doesn’t it?”
Not if I have anything to say about it. I just manage to keep those words from rolling off my tongue and blurring the lines between us even more, but they’re a vow made in my own head. A solid one. “You’ve managed to remember a lot, Cate,” I mutter, massaging my eye sockets with my thumb and forefinger. “That’s very impressive.”
“Especially considering I don’t know who any of those people are.”
“You will.” I stare up at the ceiling. “This must be like learning a new language for you.”
“A little. But…Mama seems happy. She’s been coming to see me almost every day.”
Not for the first time, discomfort stabs me in the gut. These lessons shouldn’t be about making us happy. They should be about making Cate happy. Are they? “Sweetheart…”
“It’s been kind of weird seeing her all the time,” she half-whispers, derailing my train of thought. “I can’t tell if she’s really interested in me…or if she just feels guilty for walking out when I was in high school.”
A pang catches me in the chest. God, this poor girl, left all alone. Every time I think about it, the whole thing threatens to drive me mad. “I can’t speak to her guilt, but I know she’s glad to be part of your life again.” I pause, knowing I should keep this conversation from going too deep. From bringing us closer when a barrier has to remain in place. But in the end, I can’t deny my thirst to know everything about her. To be her confidant. To be her…everything. “Were you angry with her all this time? Are you angry now?”
She’s silent a moment. “I was angry at first, because we needed her help. I couldn’t care for Daddy and go to school at the same time. But over time…I don’t know, I became glad for her, that she found what she wanted. I decided the anger wasn’t useful. And now…”
“What?”
“I think I see her as more of a long-lost friend, rather than a mother,” she whispers. “Is that terrible?”
“No, baby. Nothing you think or feel is terrible.”
She sighs in relief. “I just don’t much have the need to tell her secrets or ask her advice. I learned how to do everything on my own and stopped needing her. I don’t know how to start again, even though I can tell she wants me to.”
“Cate.” I sit up, wishing more than ever before that she was sitting in front of me. Better yet, in my lap. So I could rock her, hold her tight. “This situation is hard for you. You’re the one who gets to decide how to handle it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers. “I’m sorry for talking your ear off. You’ve probably had a really long day and here I am clobbering you with celebrity factoids and girl feelings.”
Mainly the day was long because I couldn’t see you.
“I love talking to you,” I say gruffly, against my better judgment.
Listening to her soft inhales on the other end of the phone, my cock starts to harden and I have no choice but to reach down and massage myself, like a depraved bastard. One who can’t stop lusting after his stepsister.
“I love talking to you, too,” she says breathily. “Tristan?”
“Yes, Cate.”
“That show came on again,” she whispers. “With the kissing. Remember?”
Jesus, just hearing her say the word kissing out loud has me lowering my zipper and reaching inside, tracing the thick line of my erection. “What about it, baby?”
Several beats pass, her breaths sawing in and out in my ear. “When I watch them kissing and t-touching, it makes me feel funny. For a long time after I see it.”
I press the phone face down on my bed, so the receiver won’t pick up my groan. But this is the point of no return, isn’t it? I’ve already been pushed past the edge. No way to stop myself from guiding us deeper into forbidden territory. “Do you know how to touch yourself?” I ask. “Until that funny feeling goes away?”
“No.”
My head falls back, lust beating like wings in my loins. “FaceTime me, baby. I’ll help.”
Cate
Am I crazy admitting these things to Tristan?
He’s already stayed away for a whole week. If this pushes him further away, it would kill me. But I need someone to talk to about this. This…torturous tickle between my legs. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to broach the subject with my mother. She already looks at me like I’m some kind of science project.
Tristan told me to FaceTime him and thank goodness I learned how to do that yesterday. I press the button now and his face comes up, handsome, unshaven and painted in shadows. Eyes heavy lidded. Behind him is a headboard. He’s in his bedroom? That fact alone brings that tickle back with a vengeance, makes me feel flushed and overwrought. The way I felt when we kissed on the couch, his large body pressing me down.
“Hi,” I murmur, as if we haven’t already been talking for ten minutes.
“Hi.” His tongue travels along the seam of his mouth. “God, Cate, you look gorgeous.”
“Thank you.” My cheeks heat at the compliment. “How are you going to, um…help me from there?”
“Christ, I shouldn’t be doing this.” He laughs without humor. “But if the alternative is driving over there and fucking you in person, this is the lesser of two evils, right?”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I hold my breath and wait, praying he doesn’t decide to end the call. Praying he doesn’t think better of helping me.
“Go to the bedroom,” Tristan rasps. “Take off your panties and put the phone somewhere I can see you. All of you.”
I’ve been sitting on the couch and I shove to my feet now, breathless to reach the bedroom. Once I’m there, I turn in a circle, looking for a place to put the phone. After a failed attempt to balance it against a pillow, I prop it against the lamp on my side table. I can see myself in the small rectangle on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
I peel off my panties to the tune of my stepbrother’s groan. Without underwear, I’m wearing nothing but a loose crop top that doesn’t even reach my belly button and he leans forward, his breath turning shallow while he inspects me on the screen.
I notice a fleshy smacking noise for the first time, coming from Tristan’s end of the line, but I’m too balanced on razor wire, on his next move, to address it.
“Lie down on the bed, Cate. Make sure I can see that pussy.”
Excitement goes from humming in my blood to vibrating my every nerve ending. Making it hard to think or breathe or swallow. I walk forward on my knees on the bed toward the camera, then sit, stretching my legs out in front of me. And I lie back, opening my thighs slightly, shocked by what I’m doing. What I’m showing him. By his strained growl. All of it.
“Good girl. Such a good girl.” Again, I hear that sound, moving faster now. Flesh on flesh. I don’t know what it is and yet it arouses me, slicks the flesh between my thighs. “Now lift your shirt up and give me a look at those tits.”
I pinch the hem between my fingertips and draw the shirt up to my neck, baring myself to him completely, exhilaration rushing from my head to my toes. Freedom like I haven’t known since the last time he was in my apartment, all that intense male focus directed on me. My heart is racing and it’s partly because of that rapid smacking sound. Somehow my brain and body know it’s sexual. “What’s that n-noise?”
On the screen, I can see the fine sheen of sweat on Tristan’s upper lip, forehead, his gaze riveted on my body, my sex, my breasts. “I’m touching myself, baby. Damn me to hell, I’m going to get myself off looking at my stepsister. And that tight looking cunt.”
“Show me,” I breathe, going up on one elbow. I’m a shameless creature, yes. I know. I’ve proven it by wondering what that big, cumbersome part of Tristan looks like up close. Been thinking about it way more than is proper for a girl studying to be a lady. “Please?”
His face leaves the screen. It’s replaced by his masculine hand, the wrist surrounded by the white cuff of his dress shirt, a gold cuff link. That hand moves up and down his magnificent shaft, his thumb swiping over the purple head, his knuckles bleaching of color every time he strokes. My lord, it’s so much bigger than I could have imagined. Thicker. I’m looking down at the male ritual taking place from his point of view and the sight is raunchy and beautiful at the same time. “You like that, baby? You wish you could give it a kiss?”
My pulse is loud in my ears. “Yes.”
His hand pumps faster. “So do I. You have no idea how bad.”
Keeping the screen of my phone in view, I lie back down on my back, my palms skimming everywhere. Across my breasts, down my ribcage, along the insides of my thighs. My touch naturally arrows inward, my fingers teasing the folds between my legs, shocked and embarrassed and proud at the abundance of wetness. “Tristan…”
“I’m here, sweetheart,” he says raggedly. “Trying to keep from coming already. God, you’re so fucking sexy. Going to burn up just looking at you.”
“You’re sexy, too.”
His laughter is strained. “Tell me what you feel between your legs.”
I use my middle and index finger to part my sex, rubbing down toward the bed and back up, sucking in a breath when I travel over my entrance. “I feel smooth and wet.”
“I bet you are,” he pants. “Go higher, Cate.”
My fingers move again, closer to the apex of my slit and my fingertips encounter a spot that makes me mewl, makes me feels dig into the mattress. “Th-that feels nice.”
His harsh, electronic breathing fills the room. “You’re only brushing the surface, baby. Keep rubbing, press harder. Get deeper. Find that pretty little pearl.” As I do what I’m told, I watch his hand charge up and down his stiffness, a white bead of moisture pooling on the tip. He catches it with his thumb and uses it to lubricate his palm. And it makes my hips shift excitedly, that early sign of his release—oh!
I scream behind my teeth, my lower body arching off the bed.
Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord.
“Ahhh, look at you. So sweet.” He stops stroking, squeezing his shaft almost violently. “That’s your clit, Cate. That’s where I’d love to lick you. I’d love to plant this dick between your thighs and tease that precious little thing until you’re strangle the come out of me.”
“Come here and do it,” I babble, my fingers busy exploring that ultra-sensitive nub, something quickening in my loins, my belly. “Come here, Tristan. I need you.”
“Stop.”
“Tristan,” I whine. “Help me.”
That fleshy smack is back, faster than ever, nearly drowned out by his grunts. “Keep rubbing yourself, baby. Just like that. Open your legs a little wider so I can see.” He breaks off on a moan. “Yes, good girl. You make my cock so hard. All fucking day.”
“Good,” I breathe, feeling bad. Feeling decadent and coveted.
His next inhale and exhale are stuttered. “I’m close. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
“My tummy hurts, but it feels good, too,” I whimper, my heels restless on the bed, back arched, trying to anchor all the sensations, but having no luck. There’s a tug under my belly button and it intensifies, robbing me of sight. I’m rubbing furiously now, grinding my fingertips down on that spot, that cursed, glorious spot, and then a tumult locks up my muscles, carries me away. The pleasure. Oh lord, the pleasure. It’s release. It’s vulnerability. It’s life.
I call my stepbrother’s name hoarsely.
He calls mine, too, and I force my eyes to cooperate so I can watch those thick, messy ropes of white spurt from his tip and drip down his knuckles. His thighs flex and his hips thrust into his tight grip. Knowing he’s getting pleasure at the same exact time as me fills me with satisfaction. Relief. Rightness.
For long moments afterward, there is nothing but the sound of our slowing breaths. My heartbeat becomes a longing throb in my chest. I ache for his arms around me, his mouth on mine, his heat up against me. But when his face appears back on the screen, I do my best to fight the selfish need for more—and I smile.
“Good night, Cate.”
“Good night,” I whisper.
The screen goes white.
That night, I dream of the glen. Of Tristan riding up on a white horse to collect me.
But when I climb up behind him and move to circle him with my arms, he vanishes.
