Obsession

“Tilly!”

“Not all of them, some of them had small tits, and others even had tits as small as yours.”

“That’s enough about breasts, thank you.”

It makes me laugh that Mom can’t even say it.

“Maybe you’re just looking in the wrong place.”

“Maybe the wrong place is exactly the place I should be looking.”

I am determined not to be the first one to let my eyes drop, but Landon starts pulling faces and I can’t help but laugh. I silently tell him he’s an asshole and he gives me a look that tells me he likes being told so.

Three hundred may be an exaggeration, but it’s got to be somewhere close to that figure. Sometimes two at a time, at least one time up to three, but even though there have been countless stories over the couple of seasons he’s been in the limelight, not a single person has come forward and accused him of cheating. Landon Maddox may be a womanizer, but he’s a chivalrous one at that.

I guess if you don’t do proper relationships, you don’t have anyone to cheat on.

After dinner we sit for a while on the decking, before the drop in temperature pushes us all back inside. We have the same problem as before, too many people for not enough seats. This time I push Landon over and squeeze myself into the sofa next to him. I think he’s surprised, and a little bit pleased that I seem to have gotten over my fear of closing the physical gap between us.

I can feel his leg twitch nervously next to mine, before he rearranges himself to try and give me a little room, then changes his mind and opens his legs fully again, squashing me into the armrest.

“Landon.”

“You’d be more comfortable sitting up on the arm.”

“I’d be more comfortable if you moved up a bit.”

“Why don’t you just sit on the floor like you’ve done up until now. I know you want to be close to me, but this is pushing it a little too far.”

Sat next to him like this, and looking at our two bodies together, I realize for the first time how big he is. I’m a petite girl anyway, but Landon is like twice the size of a normal person. I don’t mean he’s fat either, or all that muscly, or even all that tall, but the combination of all those things, and perhaps the illusion of a smaller than average sofa, makes him look enormous. Naturally, I can’t help but think about his dick and immediately start to go red.

“It’s hot in here, isn’t it?”

Landon gives me the side eye.

“No.”

Any more tightly packed in and that T-shirt would rip. With arms like that around me I couldn’t fail to sleep well. You know, right after.

“Are you feeling alright, Tilly, you’ve gone quite red.”

Trust Mom to pick up on it.

“Fine, just a bit hot, that’s all, you know, squashed into the corner here I can hardly breath.”

Landon makes a token effort to move to the side, but to be fair there isn’t much else he can do.

“Why don’t you take a cold shower, that ought to cool you off.”

I need to stop thinking about him like I am, you know, in that way that will never happen. I guess it must be because of the close proximity, and the several months of detailed study of every aspect of his persona. Then there’s the subtext of course, and the looks he gives me, and the things he says to me in passing, and the outrageous flirting masked as something else entirely. Unless I’m just seeing things I want to see that is, but that would be ridiculous. No one gets Landon Maddox for keeps, I know that. Especially not his step sister. Especially not the girl that hates him more than anyone else in the whole world. I mean, why would I want him anyway?

I hate his sexy face, his thick arms, his perfect smile and his big, swinging dick more than anything. I hate that I can’t have him, and I hate that he thinks I want him in the first place.

Why did I have to end up with God’s gift to women squeezing me out of space on my vacation sofa, and making me sleep underneath a dining table in the living room on a mattress as thin as a roll of toilet paper? What did I do to have to put up with the way he makes my body gooey, my panties soaking wet and my pussy throb? That wasn’t in the script at all.

I was supposed to hate him, not the other way round. Oh, fuck, is this what this is? This ridiculous fucking sensation that feels like it’s crippling me, either when he’s here or when he’s not? Is that what this is?

If it is, what the hell do we do? Ignore it, is the best advice I can give myself. Ignore it and it’ll go away. I must be sick or confused from lack of sleep. It, this, it can’t be real.

Thank God he’s sworn off it, thank God we’re step siblings, and more than anything else, thank God we aren’t here on our own. God knows what would happen if the matching bird-watching nerds weren’t around to keep an eye on our every move. I might even be tempted to jump in that jacuzzi, bathing costume or not.

“I think I’m going to be a little sick.”

“Dad?”

Marvin politely excuses himself from the small cluster of confined space that makes up the living room, takes the short journey across to the bathroom, never seemingly in a hurry, before emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl in systematic fashion.

Landon and I look at each other. I look at Mom. Mom looks at Marvin.

“Mom?”

“Marvin?”

Yeah, alright, he looked a little bit peaky at dinner time, but I didn’t expect this. Not the first session, nor the three that come after it. When he’s finally done, he returns to the living room as slowly as he left it and takes his place again in his armchair. It must be half a minute before he speaks again.

“Sorry, it must have been something I ate.”

No shit.

When the shock has finally melted away, Mom swings into action. Tylenol are found, offered and refused, paracetamol too. Marvin accepts a glass of water, but refuses to go to bed. He insists he is ok, but Mom, Landon and I are all concerned. It’s come out of nowhere.

“You’re going green”, Landon says, standing above him.

“You are a bit green, Marvin”, Mom agrees.

“I’m fine. It must have been what we ate at lunch. Maybe the eggs.”

“I ate eggs and I’m fine.”

“Maybe the tuna then.”

“It could be the sun.”

“It could be the sun, it has been hot today and we were out for quite a while in it.”

“Why don’t you go to bed, you’ll feel better in bed.”

Marvin checks his watch. He holds it up for us all to see. The time, quite clearly, is not the time he usually goes to bed. It’s barely nine o’clock.

“I’ll go to bed at nine thirty. I’m fine, really, I’m better now.”

This seems like the most Marvin has said all week.

“That was some effort back there. I hope you’ve left that sucker clean.”

“I hope it wasn’t the tuna.”

Mom goes instantly to check it, throwing out what remains just in case.

“Well, that was a bit

exciting, wasn’t it? Who needs TV with Dad painting the bathroom with his barely digested food.”

“Thank you, Landon. I don’t think we need a reminder.”

“So, what are we doing tomorrow?”

What other excitement have I got to look forward to? Another close encounter with Landon, or a masterclass of his in how to be a douchebag?

“We could try and find a bar or something.”

“Not with Tilly you won’t, she’s not old enough.”

Landon and I catch eyes and smile at each other.

“She can have a coke.”

“Ass-hole.”

“Anyway, we have to see how Marvin is in the morning. That might limit us on what we can do.”

“I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Mom doesn’t look all that convinced, and Marvin isn’t all that convincing.

I take the opportunity to drag my mattress from Landon’s room during the lull in conversation that follows. It takes me a few minutes to ease myself out of the chair, a feat that is complicated because Landon wants to see me struggle, and eventually I have to put my hand on his thigh to lever myself out.

He’s sniggering when I finally manage it, somehow satisfied he’s got me to work for it.

After two days barely sleeping, the last thing I want to do is wrestle through another night here in the living room, especially if Marvin might be passing through to empty himself in the bathroom, no matter how politely he does so, but I’m scared of what might happen if I choose the other option and sleep in the same room as Landon.

“Going to bed already?”

“Thinking about it.”

“At quarter past nine?”

“I don’t know if you have realized this yet, but we are in the middle of nowhere. There is nothing to do after the sun goes down.”

“There is nothing to do when the sun’s up either.”

I take to the armrest like Landon suggested before. It is just as I expected, extremely uncomfortable.