He braced his forehead on his hand, elbow propped on the windowsill, for the last twenty-five miles off the interstate back to his dad's. The radio played softly, but he wasn't listening. A tight knot of annoyance sat low in his middle at having to go back.
Really, though. Something like this always happened when he visited. It would go so well until the last day, then his dad would say something cocky that he took as an insult. The house vibrated silently on a tense frequency only they could feel until he left following an awkward round of goodbyes.
His father's new wife was oblivious to it, making niceties that caused the two of them to sink deeper into reticent sulking. Their children were too young to understand the tension that lead to these terse, one-sided conversations, but he suspected they felt it too, and were silently relieved when they stood outside the house with their mom and his dad, waving him off.
It wasn't that he begrudged his dad for moving on in a way his mom hadn't. It wasn't that his new wife was even younger than his mom had been, or that she was content to ride the carousel of PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences for the twins while his dad ran the shop. She was nice, for heaven's sake. There was nothing to dislike about Melissa.
She just wasn't his mother.
He shrugged to himself as he threw the wheel over and rolled slowly up the twisting, wooded drive. His parents had bought this house together when they were expecting him, and he'd spent roughly half his life here, and half his life at his mom's across town.
Why he had to leave his stupid laptop here, instead of there, was probably something his therapist would want to talk about.
The living room lights were still on as he cut the engine and rolled up to the garage and set the e-brake. He could see the blue light of the television reflecting on the wall behind the couch. If he was lucky, maybe he could just sneak up to his room, grab the computer, and leave without even having to talk to them. Without having the awkward walk back out to the car with his dad at his side, hands shoved deep in his pockets as he chewed over some apologetic thing that he'd never, ever say out loud to his son.
He entered through the garage, and his heart immediately sank to see the bay for his dad's classic car empty. Melissa's Toyota SUV was parked crookedly in its spot.
Shit, so who was here watching TV? The twins weren't old enough to stay by themselves yet.
He slotted his key into the entrance from the garage, only to find the lock open. He twisted the knob and opened the door, waiting for the give-away squeak of the hinge at three-quarters open. No matter how many times he had oiled it, this stupid door had gotten him in trouble for sneaking in past curfew.
He cursed silently as the hinge groaned.
"Oh hey, you're back early!"
The young, female voice stopped him dead in his tracks. He would know her voice anywhere.
Of course she would be here tonight. Because of course.
He stepped around the corner and shoved his hands into his back pockets.
"Surprise."
Rey startled as she looked up at him from his family's couch, looking for all the world like she had grown up there herself. Her feet were propped up on the coffee table, an afghan thrown across her bare legs to keep them warm in the air-conditioning. A can of Diet Coke with lime sat sweating on a magazine.
"Ben," she brightened considerably in recognition. "I thought you were back at school already?"
"I should be," he shrugged, "Forgot something upstairs." He gestured lamely at the ceiling.
She smiled and stood up slowly from the couch, the crocheted blanket puddling at her feet. "Your folks are out at a fundraiser dinner. They probably won't be back until late," she explained without his asking. "The twins have been asleep for awhile."
He was trying to look anywhere but at her. He knew she babysat once in awhile, but shouldn't she be off to college already, if she was going? He looked at the painting of a stern sea captain in a yellow Macintosh behind the couch as if it were the most interesting thing. As if he hadn't seen it a thousand times. Like it would keep him from staring at her long, coltish legs where they protruded from her rather-short shorts.
He didn't get it, but all the undergrad girls in his sections had suddenly begun wearing these shorts that were so small, the pockets hung out the bottom of the leg. It wasn't really safe to look at them when they were seated. He'd gotten very good at pretending to look at them when he lectured, but instead looking somewhere just over the top of their heads, at the back of the room. Things would be safe by October when the weather turned cold and they had to retreat to jeans.
But now, here she was in those infernal not-pants.
"Uh huh," he finally replied, and cringed inwardly. He was a highly verbal person, but somehow being at home for even three days caused him to revert to sullen, monosyllabic communication. But then, he'd always been at a loss for words around her.
When she'd shown up five years ago to live with her great-uncle, the weird hermit down the way, his father had offered her a job sweeping up at the shop. That was before they realized she was handy, and before he knew it, she had replaced him as a surrogate child who was better at fixing engines than he would ever be.
"Do you want something to drink?" she asked, crossing one foot over the other and pushing up to the balls of her feet expectantly. "The Tonight Show was just starting."
"I'll get it," he moved into the kitchen and opened the fridge. Melissa kept it surgically clean, and organized by food type. He had to fight the childish urge to miscategorize the cheeses into the meats and the fruits into the condiments every time he visited. He grabbed a regular Coke and headed back to the living room.
She was back under the afghan, legs curled to the side. She looked mildly amused at the opening monologue, and he flopped next to her and braced one foot up on the coffee table.
"How've you been," he asked. "I thought you'd be off to school by now, too."
Rey shook her head as she took a slow draught on her Coke and swallowed. "Not yet. I have a late birthday, so not until next year."
He glanced at her profile, backlit by the lamp behind her on the side table. "Did you turn 18 yet?"
She was the same age as some of his students. Younger, even.
"Week before last," she grinned.
"Happy birthday," he smiled back.
He stole glances at her as she giggled and openly laughed, her dirty fingers curled around the sweating, silver can. She was still terribly slender, but it didn't escape his notice how she'd filled out since the last time he'd seen her. She seemed oblivious to him. She always had; and really, why wouldn't she be? He was the gawky son of her part-time employer, the friend of her uncle's. He was enough older than her that he had already started college when she'd started hanging around the shop.
But how could he not notice, with the way she was dressed? He closed his eyes against the thought. The required, day-long seminar at the beginning of grad school about sexual harassment and proper conduct swam dimly through his mind. It didn't matter how a woman dressed. That was not an excuse, or an invitation.
He pulled one of the throw cushions over his lap, and shifted to cross his legs loosely. He bumped his shin on the heavy wood table and swore under his breath.
She glanced over and a wash of sympathy crossed her face. "Ouch," she remarked.
"It's fine," he said gruffly, but his shin was smarting. He'd felt too big for the house since he turned 16 and got a growth spurt. He'd been taller than his mom for years, but he was suddenly taller than his dad, too, and with it, he'd detected a subtle shift between them. Everything was too small: his twin bed was too short, the desk chair he'd built models in cramped his legs, the shower head blasted water at his chest instead of over his head.
"So, what did you forget," she asked when the commercials came on. She shifted the angle of her body towards him, sitting sideways against the back of the couch. He mashed the cushion protectively against his groin, trying to ignore the heat that was pooling there as she looked at him.
"My, uh…. my laptop."
"Yeah, that's important," she nodded, looking down at the cushion. She bit the corner of her bottom lip, and her front teeth protruded ever so slightly from between them.
He shifted again to turn towards her a bit more. "Do you know if you want to go to college? Or where?"
"I've got my apps in at state and a couple private schools, small ones," she replied. "I can't decide what to study, though."
She had been hell-bent on environmental science, the last time he'd known anything about it. His father and uncle Luke had been trying to convince her towards some sort of engineering as well.
The program returned and she twisted her head to gaze blankly at the TV without moving her body. He held his breath and counted to ten when he noticed he could see down her shirt from this angle. He tried to think of Latin nomenclature for dinosaurs, the order of elements on the periodic table, of anything to distract him from how seeing the small swell of her breasts made his cock throb.
"Did you hear the joke about the dinosaurs Valentine?" She said this without looking away from the screen.
"I don't think so, no?"
"This girl sends her boyfriend a Valentine's card. It says, 'If you were a dinosaur, it would be a Tyranna-gorgeous Rex.'"
He stared at her until she turned back to him, a smile quirking her lips. "It's stupid," she said sheepishly. "You probably knew that one."
"No, I didn't," he admitted. "Did you make that up?"
She shook her head. "I heard it from your dad."
Of course she had, it seemed like a dad joke. Something ugly twisted in his middle at the thought of them laughing together.
"Did I ever show you the dinosaur models I made?" He hated himself as soon as he asked. It was a wonder he had ever lost his virginity. What kind of a line was that?
But the models were up in his room, and he had to go up there anyway. For the laptop, of course.
"No, you didn't," Rey replied, "Do you want to?"
Oh, God, he wanted to.
"You first," he gestured towards the stairs and waited until she had sloughed off the afghan and her back was turned before he rose from his pathetic crouch on his parent's couch.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs, steadying himself with a hand on each of the handrails. She padded silently up the carpeted steps ahead of him, and he knew, he knew as he stared up at her pert, heart-shaped rear waggling in front of him, that he was going to make a terrible mistake tonight.
She knew the way to his bedroom and he followed her, pausing only for a moment to pull the twins' bedroom door fully closed down the hall.
Rey switched on the lamp on his bedside table- regrettably, still a ceramic racecar base, and leaned expectantly against his desk. She brushed one foot over the other and eyed him. The room felt terribly small with them both in it, and he wished fervently that he had removed some of the sci-fi film posters before he'd gone off to school years before. His laptop sat closed on his desk, the cord neatly bundled on top. He'd been so aggravated at his father that he had packed the empty case in the car without double-checking the contents.
He pushed it aside as he sank into his chair and pulled one of the skeletal models from the shelf above his head.
"You're studying anthropology, right?" Rey asked. He couldn't tell if she was genuinely curious or just being polite.
"Paleontology," he corrected gently. "Anthropology is the study of humans and their behaviors. Archaeology is the study of their objects, and paleontology is concerned with everything but humans. Fossils of all other kinds- plants, animals. Dinosaurs…." He trailed off, taking off his glasses to peer more closely at the hind hip joint of this particular model. It looked to be in need of regluing.
"I see," Rey crossed her arms and cocked her head at him. Without warning, her grease-stained index finger shot out to poke at the ivory-colored plastic. "What's this one called?"
"This is a brontosaurus." He grasped her hand lightly and pulled it away from the delicate plastic. "And it needs to go to the hospital to get its leg set."
Her hips were maddeningly close to his arm, and her stupidly-short bottoms had ridden up to a dangerous level, curling into the crease of her thigh where it met her hip. He wiggled the model's leg to test it, sighing as though he were upset at its condition and not the fact that he could see a tiny bit of her underwear poking out from her shorts. They were red and black striped.
"And what's that one?"
He followed her finger to the shelf. "Stegosaurus."
"And this one?" Ben replaced his glasses and pushed them up his nose. She pointed to a winged specimen suspended on a thread from the ceiling.
"Pterodactyl."
"And that one?"
He straightened up slowly in his chair and leaned back, lacing his fingers over his head. She was pointing at his lap. She was trying to keep a straight face, but her eyes danced with amusement at how he shifted uncomfortably, trying to decide how to respond.
He cleared his throat before he said, "Currently unnamed. Rights usually go to the person who discovers the fossil first."
She giggled and curled her fingers against her lips. "You didn't really bring me up here just to show me your dinosaur bones… did you?"
He reached over and gave the door a small push with his fingertips until it latched closed with a muffled click. He locked it for good measure.
"No."
His confession wiped the teasing grin from her face, and for a second he thought she looked very young, and perhaps a little scared of him. He wondered briefly what was wrong with him that it aroused him beyond measure.
"Do you have a boyfriend?" He didn't really care what the answer was. It wasn't going to stop them if it had gone this far.
"Not right now," she replied, chewing her lip again. She pushed away from the desk and stood over him. He freed one hand to trace his knuckles up her bare thighs, slowing at the apex where the fabric of her shorts knotted together. She swayed slightly against the pressure of his hand and her eyes fluttered closed as he reached for the button.
"Take these off," he said. He tugged the zipper of the infernal things down with a sharp jerk that pulled them open and partway off the side of her hip. The tight denim dragged one side of her panties down with it, and he heard her gasp as he leaned forward to place a sloppy kiss on the point of her hipbone where it protruded from under the hem of her t-shirt.
She obeyed him without argument, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops and shimmying out of her shorts. She dropped her head back and huffed as he grasped her hips and kissed her belly, just above the line of her underwear. Her fingers were tangled in his hair, first pulling like she was fighting him, then trying to keep his mouth on her instead.
"I- oh!" she gasped softly as he stripped her of her panties. "I've thought about this- about you- a lot."
He was eye-level with her beautiful snatch, and didn't look up at her to reply. "Me too."
He stared at the thatch of dark curls like his life depended on it. And he wasn't lying, he had thought about her. Too many times to count. It made no sense. She should've been like a sister to him. He desired and resented her in equal measure. He wasn't sure that he didn't desire her just because he resented how his father treated her.
"You're a bad babysitter," he huffed, standing to draw his t-shirt over his head. She made to mirror him, but he caught her wrist. "Leave that on."
"I am a bad sitter," she looked at him out of the tops of her eyes. She backed away from him towards the bed, pulling him forwards to her by the tension of his grip around her arm. He resisted and let her fall unceremoniously onto the mattress ahead of him.
They wrestled momentarily, ending up with one of her hands pinned above her head. She arched her back and ground against his thigh. He pushed her shirt up and ducked his head to suck her nipple through the scratchy, black lace of her bra. She hissed and moaned softly when he dared give her the barest scrape of his teeth.
Her free hand was trying to reach his jeans and he twisted away from her reach, capturing her other wrist and forcing it up now to expose her middle to him. He was grateful for once for his long ape arms when he heard how her breathing hitched to realize she was caught.
"I want to see you," she whimpered. "Please?"
He looked up at her then and she pouted dramatically. He rose to all fours over her and released her hands. They flew to his waistband, undoing his jeans and a look of of bewildered admiration twisted her features.
"Oh," she breathed, her clever fingers finding their way into his underwear to stroke his hard length. "You're really…. hard." She sounded incredulous. "I want you in me."
He stared down at her, grinding against her palm. If she had any idea how many times he'd imagined this…
"Turn over," he motioned with his chin. Something about the way she was looking up at him made him feel merciless, and bossy.
Her eyes widened a touch at his order, but she obeyed him. She presented her smooth, bare bottom to him and he wasted no time in pulling her up onto her knees in front of him. He shucked his pants and let the tip of his swollen, leaking cock trace indecently in her slippery folds. To his surprise, she leaned back against him, trying to catch him inside her.
He grasped her tiny waist and guided her back onto him, biting his lip to keep from groaning as he sank into her. He noticed distractedly that she had a tan line from a bikini bottom, and had to hold still for a moment to keep from finishing at the thought of her lounging topless by a pool.
She squeaked and shifted on her knees beneath him then, trying to force him to move. She hollowed her back and wriggled in his grip, her sweet cunt making an obscene wet sound.
He was glad she couldn't see his face as he snapped his hips viciously against her, each stroke knocking a surprised breath from her that ended in a whimper. She felt too small for him, just like everything else in this house, and he let himself build quickly to his peak. He was being disgusting, and he knew it, but he wanted to ruin her a bit. It was one part biology and two parts psychology that made her a forbidden fruit he could finally pluck, something of his father's to take for himself.
Her breathing was quick and shallow as he spent himself into her, over before she'd barely begun. He knew by the way she half-heartedly reached between her legs that she wasn't even close, and a pang of guilt struck him in his gut. He was suddenly so sleepy, but he rasped, "Show me how you think of me."
He let her turn over once more and he spread her legs with his hands on her knobby knees, pressing them up to her chest so he could see her better. She reached awkwardly around her leg to press hesitantly at top of her slit. He huffed with satisfaction to see his milky cum was beginning to seep out of her folds. She was watching him cautiously, as though waiting for his approval.
"Is that what you do?" He whispered hoarsely, watching her finger circling around and around the tiny bud. She writhed under the pressure but shook her head, no.
"Do you want help?"
"Yes, please," she struggled up onto one elbow in an attempt to capture his lips where he hovered over her, but he sat back on his haunches out of her reach.
He let her leg go and slotted his fingers into her dripping cunt, setting his teeth in barely-repressed triumph as she let her head loll back. He pushed against her hard, both of them working her roughly up to her breaking point. She picked up her pace, and so did he. She flopped back and her other hand found its way to her chest, rubbing and tugging at her nipples through her bra until he could see them through her t-shirt.
"You're a-" She was breathing open-mouthed, panting for air as he squeezed a third finger into her. "You're a monster!"
He chuckled at her accusation, undisturbed by her revelation about his character.
"You seem to like it."
Her face screwed up with pleasure and she stilled, her cunt fluttering around his thick fingers. He held them in her hard, wringing a few more waves from her that made her arch her back and twitch wordlessly beneath him.
He lay beside her, sweaty and languid, listening to her breathing return to normal. The streetlight outside the house shone through the Venetian blinds, making a striped pattern on the wall. The room was small and oddly shaped.
"I'm sorry you forgot your computer," she said at last. She turned to look at him, lacing her fingers loosely over her ribcage.
"I'm not."
A shy smile twisted her lips until her whole face radiated happiness. "Neither am I."