Richard

I felt like my throat had sewn shut, and no matter how much I swallowed to try and say something back to my stepbrother, nothing came out. I wanted to yell at him, I wanted to scream and slap him across his stupid perfect face. I wanted to press my body against his and kiss those gorgeous lips until he ripped my clothes off.

I hated him and I wanted him all at the same time. My panties were soaked, my eyes barely able to turn away from him every time he prompted me to answer, prompted me to tell him the one thing that I knew that I could never let him know. I wanted to give myself to him so badly—the last few years of our lives had been torture, knowing that only a room away my sexy stepbrother lay sleeping. He was my Adonis, and I hated him for being forbidden from ever knowing how I worshiped him.

“So, Jessica, what’s it going to be?” Richard asked again. “Which person in this room do you want to fuck the most?”

I swallowed, feeling a bead of nervous sweat slowly make its way down the side of my face and down along my cheek. I hated the way he looked at me, the way he talked and asked me things I could never answer. Most of all I hated the way that my eyes answered him whenever he’d ask me, always looking at that gorgeous form that could have made gods weep.

“I can’t…” I whispered, my voice strangled in my throat.

I looked at Richard again, pleading with him not to ask me again, not to make me say the one secret that I’d kept from everyone save for my best friend. He was my one true desire, the thing I could never have no matter what, my forbidden love. But as I let my eyes rest on him, I noticed the way his legs parted as he shifted his weight, and there between his thighs was a bulge the likes of which I’d never seen before in my life.

I marveled at it for a moment, doing my best to contain my reaction, though inside my mind I was almost crying. If I’d been soaked before, I was drenched now, so wet that I felt like I’d just come in from a rainstorm between my thighs. I was quivering, shaking with the effort of turning away from that briefest hint of what my brother carried between his legs.

Is this turning him on? I wondered, finally able to tear my eyes away as his legs once again closed and he got himself comfortable. But as I looked away, my eyes were drawn into his, into a stare so intense that I could have sworn he’d caught me looking at him. All he did was grin, that cocky, overconfident grin that infuriated me in way that only a hand between my legs could resolve.

“How about we make a deal?” he asked, looking up toward the ceiling in thought. “If you don’t want to spill your secret crush, then just this once, I’ll let you change your option. If you don’t want to tell us who you’d rather fuck, you can do a dare instead.”

I swallowed hard, my face draining of color as I stare at him in disbelieve.

“But I have to warn you,” he continued, “I’m going to make sure that it’s a really good one.”

“I fucking hate you,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Oh, c’mon, Jess!” he said, though despite his supposed displeasure he seemed to take enjoyment from pushing me so far. “It’s just a little dare. What could go wrong?”

“You need to go fuck yourself,” I spat, turning away from him and pushing my way out of the room. I needed to leave and I wasn’t going to let anyone stand in my way.

“Jess!” I heard from behind me as I made it to the front door. It took all my resolve not to turn and look into my stepbrother’s eyes. Thankfully my anger was more than enough to keep my legs moving as I pushed through the crowd of still gyrating bodies and made for the door. Bursting into the open I was hit with the cool air. I was glad for the low heat as I set off for home at a jog, even as my tears stung on my cheek.

How could he have done something like that to me?

I knew that Richard had always loved to torture me, and for a time I thought that maybe it was his way of showing me some odd form of brotherly affection. But this had reached a level that bordered on pure sadism that I never imagined possible from even him. He’d come to my own party, with my friends for my graduation, and proceeded to transform it into what had practically become an orgy.

I choked back a sob as I felt the weight of my party’s failure crashing over me. Everything had been perfect until my stepbrother had shown up, everyone was talking and having a good time. It was just the way I’d planned it, down to the very last detail. But the one thing I hadn’t planned for—the one person who I never imagined would show up—came in and completely turned my whole get-together upside down.

“Jessica! Come on! It was just a game!” I heard him calling from almost a block away. But the sound of his excuses and half-assed apology only served to make me angrier.

Bastard, I thought as I rounded a corner and headed toward me parents’ home.

Everything had gone from polite conversation to people fucking in the closets in the blink of an eye, all thanks to my own personal Dick. I hated him with every fiber of my being. If I had a say in it, he’d stay at Yale and never come back, living out the rest of his life across the country where I could never again be bothered by the thought of his perfect, delicious existence.

I didn’t stop until I was more than a few blocks away from Becky’s house, my own only a few streets away. I crumpled into a heap beneath an oak tree, my arms wrapped around myself as I mourned the one party I’d ever throw in my entire life, the only time I’d dare to even think of having a semblance of a social life. It had crumbled to pieces before my eyes.

“I never want to see him again,” I whispered to the cold stillness of the night around me, my eyes closed as I pleaded with whoever was up above to grant me this one request—to take my stepbrother out of my life forever so that I’d never have to grieve over what I could never have. “I just want him to go away.”

_ FOUR _

Dick

“Jess!” I called out into the warm summer air. “C’mon! It’s just a game!”

The night was only just now beginning to cool down after the merciless assault from the sun. I breathed in the cool air as I scanned the street for any signs of Jessica, hoping that I’d be able to catch her before she got too far.

“Jessica! Come back to the party!” I called out again, though the only sound that came in answer was a celebratory shout from inside. I glanced back, looking in through the living room window as I watched one of Jessica’s nerdy friends get what might have passed for a lap dance from one of the girls. I shook my head before turning my attention back to the search for my stepsister.

She couldn’t have gotten too far, I thought as I made my way through the car-packed street, on the lookout for Jessica’s lithe silhouette. I knew I’d upset her, and that really was the whole point, but watching her run out of the house like that brought about a twinge of guilt in my stomach—something I rarely felt. Life was too short to waste time feeling guilty over things—better to get over it and move on than dwell on the things that we regret. But even so, I at least owed Jessica an apology.

“Jessica!” I called again, my hands cupped on either side of my mouth. “Come back!”

But the only sounds that greeted me were the soft chirp of the crickets in the summer air. She was gone, and though I knew she would only have gotten a few blocks by now—especially since our house was only so far away from Becky’s—it still made me uncomfortable to know she’d completely taken off.

She didn’t have to take it so seriously, I thought, shoving my hands into my pockets. It was just a game, after all.

But was that totally true?

I looked back toward Becky’s house, the sounds of the growing revelry rolling out from the open door as a few of Jessica’s friend’s spilled out onto the front lawn. The way Jessica had looked at me in there was like nothing I’d seen before, not from her. Her eyes never left me after I’d asked her that question.

Out of everyone in this room, who do you want to fuck the most?

I saw something in those eyes, something beyond her frightened deer-in-the-headlights stare. It was almost

immediate, the way my body responded to that look, the way she stared into my eyes as if to answer the question in her stunned silence. I knew the look behind those eyes, the feeling she was too scared to express deep down, the one that I knew she wanted to tell me despite all of the fear.

My stepsister wanted to fuck me.

I gave some thought to running after her, to confronting her about the way she’d reacted, the things that it implied. But the idea of putting her through that was just too much. There was a difference between teasing her and torturing her in public and going after her on her own, making my little jabs personal. I might not have been the nicest brother in the world—heck, I’d heard Jessica and Becky refer to me as the “stepbrother from hell.” But there was one thing that I never was, and that was cruel.