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Closer Than Cousins Ch. 01

By: Sabledrake



Author's Note: this story is a sequel to "The Neglected Son, Ch. 01-05," set eighteen years later. Feedback is always appreciated. 

Swan luxuriated in the bath, chin deep in scented bubbles while the light strains of Vivaldi wafted through the air. Her long fawn-brown hair was pinned up in a bun and the only other part of her that could be seen, besides her head, was one foot resting on the edge of the deep, roomy tub. 

It was a dancer's foot, a ballerina's foot, not really all that attractive unless it was encased in a pink satin slipper with little ribbons that tied in criss-crosses up to mid-calf. The toes were knotted, the bottoms bruised and callused. 

Someone tapped on the door. "Swan? Are you in there?"

"Yes, Kit," she called back, dipping her foot back into the water. "Come in."

"Are you decent?"

She looked down at herself and saw not a bit of skin peeping out anywhere. "Yes."

The door opened and Kit's dark, tousled head stuck around the edge. His vivid turquoise eyes widened when he saw her. A scarlet blush climbed into his cheeks. 

"You're in the tub!" he said. 

"I'm covered. We used to take baths together all the time, when we were little."

"When we were like three." Kit, still red, looked everywhere but at her. 

The bathroom, palatial with its double-sink vanity, separate shower stall, seating area with long white couch, and private curtained-off alcove for the toilet, gave him plenty to look at. It was all done in white marble, gilded chrome, and rich magenta. Roses covered the wallpaper and the oval rug on the white tile floor. The deep pink curtains were tied back from the frosted windows with hanks of gold braided cord. 

It was one of Swan's favorite rooms in all of Pinewood. Only her bedroom, and the detached dance studio that used to be her mother's, gave her more pleasure. 

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Goodness' sake, Kit ... we're cousins and we've lived together all our lives."

"I know," he said. "But we're not kids anymore, Swan. We're, you know, grown up."

She eyed him with impatience. "Come in or go out, but either way shut the door. You're letting in a draft."

He edged in. "Um, so, how was school?"

Swan reached for a loofah sponge on a long stick. "I'll be so glad when it's over. Only a few more weeks and then I'll be free. You're the lucky one."

"I don't know about lucky," Kit said as he sat on the far end of the couch. "It's no fun being sick all the time, missing out on everything, and having to put up with one tutor after another."

Uncle Chet said Kit had been born with a "weak constitution." Even now, at eighteen, he could still turn what would be a three-day cold to an ordinary person into six weeks' worth of walking pneumonia. Because he'd spent most of his life indoors, either coming down with something, sick with something, or recovering from something, he had a pale, lean sort of face. 

Those eyes, though ... the color of tropical shallows off some exotic beach ... wow. Swan envied him those eyes. Hers were nice enough – large and limpid and as soulfully brown as those of a doe, fringed with sooty lashes – but his were really amazing. 

He was smart, too. The tutors never lasted long. Uncle Chet always fired them as soon as he realized Kit knew more than they did. Even if he had been well enough to go to school, the other kids would have hated him for his good grades and picked on him for his lack of athletic ability.

Swan herself had almost been turned out of school more than once. The teachers said she didn't have the temperament or the attention span for hours of classroom lessons. She was a month and a half younger than Kit but she had learned to read almost a full year later, and never cared for spending so much time in Pinewood's library.

"Why would you want to go to school, anyway?" she asked, extending one leg to scrub it with the loofah. She might have been self-conscious about her feet, which bore the brunt of long effortful hours of ballet practice, but she was awfully pleased with her long, sculpted legs. Water and foam ran tickling down her thigh. 

Kit, staring as if transfixed at her leg, didn't answer.

"You don't need to go to college, and you don't need to get a job," she added. 

That much was certainly true. A host of family tragedies around the time they were born had left them with massive trust funds. Those same tragedies had also left them without a relative in the world except Uncle Chet and each other ... unless you counted Uncle Chet's mother. But she was strange, and had only visited twice that Swan could remember, so Swan didn't count her as part of the family. 

"There's more to it than that," Kit said. "At least you've been able to get out and meet people."

"You mean obnoxious boys who only care about sports and cars? Or girls who are so spiteful and mean that you wouldn't believe it?" She switched legs.

He was bright red again, and shifting around on the couch like he was uncomfortable. 

"If you need to pee, it's all right," Swan said. 

"What?"

"You're squirming. All flushed and shaky, too. You're not getting sick again, are you?"

"I don't need to pee and I'm not getting sick!" He wiped his hand over his brow. "Never mind. I should go and let you finish your bath."

She leaned forward, bubbles popping in soft crispy little kisses on her chest. Water sloshed back and forth, lapping at the sides of the tub. "Wash my back first?"

"Come on, Swan! I'm not even supposed to be in your room, let alone your bathroom. Mrs. Reilly would have a fit."

"Mrs. Reilly is an old frump," Swan said. "She's always telling me to put on more clothes." She mimicked the housekeeper's voice. "'Swan, a young lady your age should never go without a brassiere.' 'Swan, that skirt is much too short.' "

"She says it's not right, us spending so much time together. Especially now that we're not kids anymore. That it's ... inappropriate."

"She's not my mother, or yours. Now, are you going to wash my back, or not?"

"Okay." Kit got up and took the loofah-stick. He knelt at the edge of the bathtub and rubbed its soapy, scratchy surface against her back. 

"Mm, that's nice," Swan said. "Harder. Anyway, was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Yeah. Do you know Marianne Devereaux?" His voice sounded odd, almost strained. 

"I do, but why?"

"Well ... Uncle Chet thinks I should ask her to the spring dance at the country club."

"What?" Swan sat up straight. The sudden movement knocked the loofah out of Kit's hand and it splashed into the water. She spun to face him, her rump squeaking on the tub's slick bottom. "Marianne? She's horrible. She's the most horrible girl I know."

Kit did not seem to have heard a word she'd said. His jaw hung slightly open and he looked like he was having trouble breathing. His wide-eyed gaze was fixed on her torso. 

Swan glanced down at herself. She had reared up partway onto her knees at the shock of the very idea of Kit having anything to do with the likes of Marianne Devereaux, and was only sheathed in bubbles to the waist. The rest of her body, pert pink-tipped little breasts included, was out of the water and being revealed more and more each second as the foam coursed its way downward. 

"Oh, man," Kit said. 

"Stop it," Swan said, and threw a handful of bubbles at him. "You act like you've never seen a girl before."

"Not like this, I haven't. Not in real life. You're ..." He shook himself, and shame flooded his face. "Sorry. I'll go. I really better go." In getting to his feet, he stumbled on the bathmat and fell headlong into the tub. 

There was a huge splash, and a tidal wave sluiced out onto the rose-patterned rug. Swan yelped in surprise and shied back from the splash. Kit thrashed his way upright, covered in bubbles and sputtering. 

Swan burst into giggles. "Oh, poor Kit, look at you, you're soaked! I'll get you a towel." 

She hopped out of the tub with a grace that made a mockery of what had just happened to her cousin. Kit pawed foam from his face. He stood up, grimacing and flinging drops from his fingertips. His shirt and pants were stuck to him in soggy, wrinkled folds. 

"Oh," said Swan. "That's why you were squirming. You have a stiffy!"

Kit gaped at her. He sat down fast, sending up another tidal wave, and crossed his arms over his lap, hiding the prominent bulge that she had noticed. "Swan!"

"What? It's nothing to be ashamed of. I understand, now." She offered him a fluffy pink towel. "You saw me in the tub, and it turned you on."

"Don't be ... it isn't ... I didn't ..." He turned his face away. "Could you please put on a robe or something?"

"A robe?" She looked across at the full-length mirror mounted on the back of the door. Her nude body was shining-wet and rosy from the warm bath. Water and bubbles slowly ran down to form a puddle on the floor. More bubbles were caught and glimmering like jewels in her navel and on the sparse silkiness of her pubic hair. 

"Please," he said, putting a hand over his eyes. 

"There's nothing wrong with being naked," Swan protested. "I like to feel the air on my skin. And so you saw me and got excited, so what? You're an eighteen-year-old boy. It's a perfectly natural reaction."

"Would you please put something on?" he cried in a tone of real misery.

"All right, all right." She wrapped the towel snug around herself. "There. Better?"

Kit grimaced again, like it wasn't exactly an improvement to have her standing there in a towel, but he said, "Yeah. Thanks."

"You really should get dried off," Swan said, getting another towel for him. "If you catch another cold so soon after the last one, it'll be all my fault. Here, take those clothes off and give them to me."

"I'm not taking off my clothes," he said, still crouched in the tub. "Not with you here."

"Don't be silly. You saw me, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but ..."

"You can't go to your room like that. You'd leave a dripping trail all the way down the hall, and what if Mrs. Reilly saw you?"

"I can't go running down the hall in a towel, either."

"I do it all the time."

"That's different."

"Because of your stiffy?"

"Cripes, Swan!" he wailed. "Quit talking about it."

"I don't see why you're so embarrassed."

"Because you're here, and you're beautiful, and sexy, and naked!" Kit said in a sudden, startling outburst. "If that wasn't reason enough, I'm sitting in a full bathtub with all my clothes on. And if that wasn't enough, I've never been out with a girl in my whole life and I probably never will, because even if I do ask Marianne Devereaux to the dance, she wouldn't go with me. She'd laugh in my face and then tell everybody, and they'd all laugh at me and --"

He broke off in a coughing fit that turned him from red to an alarming shade of purple. Swan rushed to him, scared, and helped him out of the tub. She was sure he'd slip and she wouldn't be able to hold him, and he'd crack his head on the rim or break his neck, but seconds later he was standing on the bathmat, gasping for air and only batting feebly at her as she undid his shirt buttons. 

"Hold still," she said. "Let me help."

She peeled the shirt off and threw it into the corner. It smacked to the tiles and lay in a sodden heap. He stood there shivering. His undershirt followed, but when she moved to undo his pants, Kit came back to life and pushed her hands away. 

"Fine," she said, stepping back. "You do it."

"Can't you just go in the other room for a minute?"

"You've got to get over this ... this nakedophobia."

Despite his evident distress, he smiled. "That's not a real word."

"I don't care. You still have to get over it."

Kit ran his fingers through his wet hair. "Look, Swan, this is ... this is crazy. You're my cousin. I can't be undressing in your bathroom with you standing right here. I shouldn't have been in here in the first place while you were in the tub."

"I didn't mind."

"That's part of the problem."

"What is?"

"Swan, look," he said, wiping his face with the towel and then meeting her eyes with those amazing turquoise ones. "There's something you need to understand about ... well, about guys. If you let a guy come into your bathroom like this, he's going to get ... ideas. He's going to have thoughts. He can't help it. That's just the way guys are. And sometimes, if a girl is pretty enough, and he really likes her, then it doesn't matter if she's his cousin. If she's practically like his sister. He still has those thoughts and ideas, even though he knows it's wrong."

"You mean ideas about sex," Swan said. "That's why you had a stiffy."

"So you see what I mean? I wasn't thinking about you as my cousin. I was thinking about you as a girl."

"I am a girl."

"Damn it, Swan, don't you get it? I'm stuck in this house all the time with nobody around but Mrs. Reilly and the maids, and they're old and ugly. You're the only real girl I ever see. And now that we're not kids anymore, it's ... sometimes I wish you weren't my cousin at all!"

"Kit, you're making too big a deal out of this," Swan said. "And you are going to catch cold. I'll go in the other room if that's what you want. Or, here! I'll go to your room and bring you back some dry clothes. How's that? Then you won't have to panic that I might see your penis."

He choked. "Don't say that!"

"What would you rather I called it?"

"I'd rather you didn't talk about it at all."

"It isn't like I've never seen one before, you know. I've been to lots of museums, and we have a Greek statue right out there in the garden."

"Please just go get my clothes?" Kit begged. 

Swan tossed him the other towel, picking it up from where she'd dropped it when she hurried to help him out of the tub. With the first one still wrapped around her, she went out into her bedroom. Like the bathroom, it was spacious and airy and done in shades of white, rose, and gold. An authentic Degas hung on one wall, and framed posters from famous international ballet companies hung on the others. 

Hanging her towel on a chair, she got a pair of panties from her drawer. They were so sheer and wispy that it really was like wearing none at all, so she didn't see why it should make such a big deal to Mrs. Reilly whether she wore them or not. 

She crossed to the closet, rummaged, and found a summery little sleeveless dress in a floral print. It had an elasticized bodice that hugged her small breasts and supported them without the necessity of one of those hateful, binding bras, and it had a breezy skirt that fluttered high around her thighs. 

It occurred to her that she'd better ask Kit what he wanted her to bring, and she pushed the bathroom door open without bothering to knock. 

An alarming sight met her eyes. He had removed his pants and underwear – they joined his other clothes in that sodden heap – but instead of swaddling himself in the towel and waiting for her to come back, Kit had fallen to his knees on the rug and was panting harshly through clenched teeth. 

Her first thought was that he was sick after all. Then she saw what he was doing, what his hands were doing, and Swan blinked in astonishment. She could see his penis after all, and it most undoubtedly was a stiffy indeed. 

One of his hands was pressed firmly to the base of his stomach, splayed with fingers around the root of his penis. The springy coils of dark pubic hair stuck up around his fingers. His other hand was curled around the rigid length and worked rapidly up and down. 

Kit's eyes were squeezed shut, and his brow was furrowed, but Swan knew that these were not signs of pain or illness. She tipped her head to the side and watched him masturbate. She'd never seen anything like it before. It was certainly nothing like the modest marble endowment of the Greek statue in the garden. It was, in fact, quite large and interestingly shaped. 

And it was ... nice, really. Watching him like that. A pleasant warmth tingled through her, centering in her breasts and between her legs. Her nipples pushed hard against the nubby elasticized fabric, the pressure and friction making her very aware of them. 

Funny how she'd never much thought about this kind of thing before. There had been a few boys at school who'd asked her out, and she had even gone on dates with a few of them, but their pawing and their slobbery kisses had only annoyed her. They talked about passion and love, but passion and love were what she equated with dancing. That soaring, uplifting thrill as the music began ... that was passion. 

Except, feeling her own pulse and breathing quicken as Kit's did, she realized that this was similar. This was almost the same as dancing. 

Kit uttered a drawn-out groan, and pumped his hand harder and faster. His penis lurched and twitched, and thick jets of creamy fluid shot from the end of it. These jets splattered all over the damp towel she'd given him. 

He fell forward, bracing himself on the hand that had been pressed to his belly, and hung his head, breathing heavily. His other hand continued to rub and squeeze in a slowing rhythm. 

Swan was uncomfortably aware of how tight and binding her panties felt. Again, it was strange that such a little nothing piece of fabric could be so much in the way. Moving with supple stealth, she raised her skirt and slipped the panties down her legs, then kicked them away into her bedroom. 

Without them, she was more conscious than she'd ever been of the naughtiness of being bare beneath her skirt. Her labia felt plump and tender, and when she moved her hips she felt a delicious sliding sensation as they rubbed against her clitoris. 

She raised her skirt again, just enough to allow her fingertips to play gently over her pubic hair. Her flesh was the same, her own ... familiar ... and yet at the same time it was somehow new. As if she'd never experienced her body in quite this way before. 

At that moment, Kit, his breathing still labored, raised his head and shook himself, as if unable to believe what he'd done. He grabbed for the towel, flipped an unstained part of it over the evidence, and shot a furtive glance at the door to make sure it was still closed. 

But of course, it wasn't. Swan stood right there, nipples erect and skirt bunched up, her fingers only just in the process of sinking into her moist heat. 

He froze, still on his knees, penis dangling spent between his thighs. She saw a succession of emotions flicker across his face. Disbelief, shame, lust, mortification, fear, desire. 

Swan met his gaze and did not say a word. She stepped her legs a bit wider apart and rocked her hips toward him, so that he had a clear view of what her hand was doing. With the other, she tugged down the top of her dress and cupped a breast, gently teasing her nipple with thumb and forefinger. 

Kit's throat and mouth worked. He licked his lips and tried again to speak. Before he could, Swan shook her head silently at him. 

As she continued caressing herself, a sweetly melting tremble threatened to undo her balance. Still not taking her gaze from Kit, she sank to the floor in the doorway, a few yards from where he remained spellbound on the bathroom rug. She sat leaning against the jamb with her knees up and her thighs braced wide apart, so that he could see everything as her fingers stroked the soft pink folds of flesh. 

And she could see him ... could see his penis rising again, lengthening, turning stiff and hard. 

She made the first sound she had since peeking through the bathroom door, a breathy little cry, and Kit echoed it.

"Swan ..." he whispered. 

"Oh, Kit ... Kit, it's so nice," she whispered back. 

"We really shouldn't ..."

"Ssh," she hissed. "I'm about ... oh, there!" 

Closing her eyes and biting her lip, she sank her first two fingers deep inside. There was no hymen to interfere; one of her ballet instructors had told her that most dancers lost that early on through the exertion and degree of their movements. The walls of her vagina clenched and clasped at her fingers. 


Closer Than Cousins Ch. 01



A rippling orgasm turned her limbs to butter and left her whimpering. She had never known anything like it, not even in the throes of the dance. 

When at last she had recovered, she opened her eyes to see that Kit had taken his erection in hand again, staring hungrily at her and pulling so hard that she feared he might hurt himself. 

"Kit, wait," she said. 

"Sorry ... I have to ... you're so ... I'm sorry," he said as his hand moved faster. 

Swan crawled hurriedly over to him. "Let me."

That stopped him, stopped him in his tracks. He shook his head, but at the same time his hand fell away, leaving his penis to poke out at her like an exclamation point.

"Lean back," she said. 

Kit stretched out his legs, his torso propped up on his elbows. Now the exclamation point jutted straight up toward the bathroom ceiling. Swan ran her finger along the underside, and Kit hissed in a breath. 

"Swan," he said in a brittle, tense voice. "We can't. You're my cousin!"

She shushed him again and took his length between her palms. From the instant she'd seen him like that, a burning curiosity had been awakened in her. She had to touch him. Had to know what that part of him felt like. 

He was softer there than she had expected, smooth velvety skin all over a hardness like stone. Kit threw his head back and moaned, then looked down again as Swan gripped him. She mimicked the motions that he'd used himself, up and down, in firm and sure strokes. 

His bottom bumped on the rug as he thrust up to meet each downstroke. "Ah ... oh, Swan ... yes, oh, yes!"

"What is it like?" she asked, leaning close to watch his expression. It looked like agony, but she knew it wasn't. "What does it feel like, Kit?"

"So good," he moaned. "I'm ... ah!"

Kit writhed on the rug, any further words lost as his penis convulsed in Swan's grasp. More of the thick white fluid spurted from him, slicking her hand, spraying in milky drops over his thighs and stomach. 

At last, the flow ended, and Swan sat back in pleased amazement. She rubbed the back of her hand, noting the slightly sticky, slightly creamy texture of the fluid against her skin. She sniffed it, wrinkled her nose a little – not a bad smell, but one she thought would have to take some getting used to – and ran out the tip of her tongue. 

A strange flavor. Not unpleasant, but different. She had heard Uncle Chet refer to some kinds of alcohol as an acquired taste, and the thought made her smile. 

"Swan?" 

She looked at Kit quizzically. "What?"

"We ... we really shouldn't have ..."

"Oh, stop," she said. "You already said so, and I know. But we did, and it's done, and we can't change it. Besides, didn't you like it?"

He nodded, but seemed to have trouble now meeting her gaze. He'd retrieved the towel and draped it over his loins. "But it can't ever happen again. If anybody knew ... if Uncle Chet found out ... think what he'd say. He's been like our father, taking care of us when our mothers died and nobody else would. He'd ... Swan, he'd be ... horrified."

"I wasn't going to tell him," she said. "And there's no harm done, Kit. You worry too much."

"It can't ever happen again!" he said in what sounded like heartfelt anguish. 

"All right." She adjusted the top of her dress and smoothed down her skirt, and went to the sinks to wash her hands. 

In the mirror, she saw him pass a shaky hand over his face. He really was making too big a deal of something that was, in her mind, quite natural and harmless. Everybody had to find out these sorts of things sooner or later. They were cousins, they'd grown up together, and cared about each other. What was so wrong with that? Better Kit than some stranger. And for him, better Swan than some girl like Marianne Devereaux. 

She turned back to him and held out a damp washcloth. "Here, Kit. You clean up, and I'll go and get you those dry clothes."

**



Closer Than Cousins Ch. 02



Author's Note: this story is a sequel to "The Neglected Son, Ch. 01-05," set eighteen years later. Feedback is always appreciated. 

Kit lay restless in the dark, unable to get comfortable in his own bed. 

A single sheet felt too heavy, scratchy, and hot. But without the sheet, he was cold, his skin hunching up in goosebumps. One pillow left his head too flat on the mattress, making him feel like he was tilted backwards. Two pillows gave him a crick in his neck. 

With pajamas, he was stifling and constricted. Without them, he was too vulnerable to relax and go to sleep. Music from the small bedside radio irritated him, even when tuned to the normally soothing classical station. Silence, though, was oppressive and forbidding. 

Arousal stiffened his loins, but he could not seek relief. Whenever he tried, the fantasy images he conjured turned to scenes that left him guilty and ashamed. He tried thinking of Marianne Devereaux, his dream girl for as long as he could remember. 

For a moment, he saw her in his mind's eye. Marianne, blonde and beautiful, her clothes falling away to reveal full rosy-tipped breasts and a puff of downy gold barely hiding the pouting pink lips of her sex. Marianne, opening her arms to him, sapphire eyes both an invitation and a challenge. 

And then it wasn't Marianne at all. Another face, another body. Taller, slimmer, graceful, a swirl of long fawn-brown hair, pert little breasts …

Kit groaned, and snatched his hand away from his groin. He wasn't supposed to think about that. He was supposed to ignore it, the way she did. To act as if it had never happened. That was their unspoken agreement, after all. 

At the window, distant light flared briefly behind sheer curtains at his window. Several seconds later, the flash was followed by a low, muted rumble. 

A thunderstorm. Rolling nearer to Pinewood. 

He knew, with a sudden sinking dread, what that could mean. What it usually meant, or had meant for most of his life. But things were different, now. Things had been different for weeks. 

Since that day. The day they had never talked about. The day he wasn't even supposed to think about. The day that should never have happened. The day everything in his life had changed.

It didn't show on the outside. Oh, no. On the outside, his life was the same as ever. He seemed to be the same Kit, too smart for his tutors, too sickly for school. Accepted by the country club crowd because he had the good Hollister name and the better Hollister fortune backing him, but at the same time never quite accepted because he was not really one of them. Not in the ways that mattered. He didn't play tennis or polo. Didn't go yachting or sailing. Wasn't bronzed, fit, and athletic. 

Despite a lifetime of poor health, he knew that he wasn't ugly. But he was a pale, strange Phantom of the Opera compared to the rest of them. Golden girls like Marianne Devereaux preferred to be seen with the likes of Brad Vandermere, who could have stepped living and breathing out of a sports car commercial. 

Of course, Kit was sure that when the time came, he wouldn't have any trouble getting one of those golden girls to marry him. He lived at Pinewood. Half of the Hollister fortune would be his someday. Hell, for all he knew, his sickly nature might even count as an added attraction to a marriage-minded gold-digger. He'd be much more likely than Brad Vandermere to die early, and leave a wealthy young widow. 

Love didn't have anything to do with it.

At least, that was how he thought it worked. What did he know? He'd never had parents to provide him an example. His mother had died shortly after Kit's birth, and he'd never even known a father or grandparents. 

There was only Uncle Chet, who had stepped in when tragedy struck the rest of the family.

Uncle Chet …and Swan. 

She danced into his mind like a vision. Gauzy white skirt fluttering around her long ballerina's legs, the contours of her lean body outlined by the snug white second skin of a leotard. 
Swan. 

His cousin. His mother's sister's daughter. They had been born bare weeks apart. Both fatherless orphans. Adopted and raised by their uncle, who had cared for them as if they were his own dear children. They'd been more like brother and sister than cousins. 

Right up until that day. 

That terrible, wonderful, damning, unforgettable day. 

He never should have gone into her room. He should have known better. 

Swan didn't care about modesty. She never had. She was a nymph, always flitting through the house in as little attire as she could get away with. Uncle Chet and the housekeeper lectured her again and again, but never to any avail. Swan didn't do what she did out of any sort of rebellious pushing-the-limits. She only did what she did to feel free, unfettered. Spritelike, she hated to be confined. 

Innocent, lovely Swan. 

She hadn't known it was wrong. Kit was sure of that. The very idea that it might not be proper to let her cousin see her nude in the bath had simply never occurred to her. Nudity was as natural to her as breathing. She couldn't have known the effect it would have on him. 

Kit himself hadn't been prepared for the effect it had on him, either. He still couldn't get over it. He couldn't stop seeing her there, hair pinned up, gleaming teases of skin peeking through sudsy foam. 

Thunder rolled again, a muttering sound like the crowd in a theater waiting for the house lights to dim and the curtain to rise. It was coming closer. Kit clenched his fists. He thought about locking the door. But getting out of bed and crossing the room seemed like too much work. Besides, even if he did, he'd have to get up again anyway when she knocked. 

And she would knock. She'd call to him. He'd hear the anxious tremor of fear in her voice, and his resolve would blow apart like so much spun sugar. He couldn't be that cruel to her. Leave her to face the storm alone? What kind of cousin was he?

No … he would leave the door as it was. If she came to him, she came to him, and he wouldn't turn her away. 

Swan was terrified of thunderstorms. She always had been. It was the only thing he had ever known her to be afraid of. It was an inexplicable thing, the way some people feared heights, or closed-in spaces. 

He knew that whenever lightning stitched the sky with jagged white, and thunder crashed, and hail pelted down in stinging torrents, Swan would seek him out and huddle in his arms. Her head would press into his chest and he would hold her, feeling her shivers, hearing her whimper with fright at each loud blast. 

Eventually, exhausted from her fear, she would fall asleep in his bed, still clinging to him. 

But how could he do that now? How could he welcome her into his room, into his bed? After what had happened between them the day of the bath? Like nothing had happened?

As far as Swan was concerned, though, it really was like nothing had happened. She hadn't mentioned it since, hadn't so much as given him a funny look. There were times when Kit wondered if it really had happened, or if he had dreamed it in some fevered delirium. 

But it had! He was sure of it! He had gone to her bathroom, and she had been there, naked and soapy. 

Remembering it only made things worse. He couldn't stop thinking of the way she had looked. Or what she had done. 

Kneeling there on her rug, spent from his urgent masturbation … only to look up and see her there … watching him. And not just watching him. Touching herself. Knees drawn up and apart, letting him see everything. 

Kit threw himself onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow, trying to blot out the memories. His erection was pinned between his body and the mattress in a maddening friction. 

Her hand on him … 

He bit the pillow. His hips stirred of their own accord. Pushing against the firm surface. rubbing. 

It had been wrong, damn it! It was still wrong, thinking about her like this! But he couldn't stop thinking about her. He saw her every day, Swan, so carefree and happy, not a worry in the world. Like there had never been anything untoward between them. Oblivious to the way her very presence sent blood rushing to his loins. Swan, chattering brightly and unaware of Kit barely able to keep a coherent thought in his head for wanting her so much. 

Nights were no better. Nights were worse, in fact, because there was no escape. He tried reading from Pinewood's selection of erotica. He tried looking at magazines. He tried thinking about Marianne and other girls. But always, fantasies of Swan took over.

There was nothing he could do to stop it. No one he could turn to for help. Kit had no close friends to confide in – not that this was the sort of thing he could have confided even to the closest of friends. He certainly couldn't talk to Uncle Chet about it. The very idea made him cringe. 

Kit flipped himself onto his back. He swallowed. His mouth and throat were dry. His eyes stared unseeing into the darkness, blinking only when the brightest-yet flash lit up his window. The thunder now was a rolling boom. 

Any second, Swan would be tapping at his door. Then opening it to let herself slip, wraithlike, into his room. 

He couldn't let her find him like this! Not with the sheet tented up around a rock-hard erection. 

But the damned thing wasn't about to go away on its own. Some perverse part of his mind was whispering that Swan would be here, Swan would crawl into bed with him and snuggle up. Swan would probably be wearing hardly anything. She'd be soft, supple, cool, limber. 

What was he thinking? He couldn't let that happen! Couldn't let her get in his bed when he was like this. He'd go insane. There would be no stopping it. He'd snap. He'd grab her, attack her. 

Which was a joke, really … Swan was fitter than him, stronger. One kick with those dancer's legs, and she would leave him broken on the floor. It was absurd to think that he could possibly force himself on her. 

Even so, he couldn't very well have her come in here while he was like this. He had to do something about his erection. It was to the point of being painful, now … a stiff throb that almost did not even seem a part of his body. 

He gripped it, and sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. It'd be quick, so quick, over in a matter of seconds as keyed-up as he was. 

No! 

If he did that, she might walk in on him again. And even if she didn't, there would be the musky scent in the air, the stickiness on the sheets. 

Kit lurched from the bed. He'd take a cold shower, icy cold. He'd probably get pneumonia; Mrs. Reilly, the housekeeper, always warned him never to go to bed with damp hair or he'd be sure to get pneumonia. 

Right now, though, pneumonia seemed a small price to pay to put an end to this torture. 

He flicked on the lamp. In the mirror over his dresser, he saw himself and recoiled. His face was pale but marked with hectic red blotches. His eyes, vivid turquoise, were wild. The eyes of a psychotic killer. His dark hair stood up in twists and snarls. 

The room suddenly lit up, far brighter than any radiance given off by the single bulb. Almost at the same instant came a horrendous crashing of thunder. 

Ears ringing in the aftermath, Kit nonetheless heard light footsteps in the hall. He cursed in agonized despair and struggled into the pajama bottoms he'd previously discarded. The fly was unbuttoned. His cock, as if with a malicious intent of its own, stuck out through the hole. He tucked it back inside, did the button, and just had time to jump into bed and yank the sheet up into his lap before the door opened. 

Swan hadn't knocked, and she didn't ask if she could come in. Her breath was quick and shallow, her velvety brown eyes wide. She saw him, and swept the door closed behind her. 

As he'd suspected, as he'd dreaded, she was hardly dressed. A white stretch-lace camisole top clung to her breasts and ended midway down her flat belly. Her nipples, rigid from either fear or cold, poked against the lace. A pair of sheer white panties, the kind that were cut high on the hips, barely concealed a silky vee of fine brown hair. 

"The storm," she said, with a faint, apologetic smile and shrug. 

"Swan, I –" Kit said. His throat was still dry, his voice a croak.

Thunder slammed again. The windows rattled. Swan all but flew across the room. A lithe bound, and she was on the bed, crowding against him. 

"You don't mind, do you?" she asked. 

"I …" He couldn't talk. The words jumbled senselessly. He knew that he needed to tell her to go. She'd cry. She was so scared. But she couldn't stay here. Not like this. 

The lamp went out, but the room was hardly plunged into darkness because a series of blue-white forks stutter-flashed across the window. 

Swan yelped. In one smooth motion, she snatched the sheet, blanket and comforter up to her chin and shot her legs down alongside his. She hid her face against his bare shoulder. 

Kit gritted his teeth. He angled his body so that at least the offending bulge was pointing away from her, with less chance of any accidental bumps. An accidental bump, or brush, would be the last straw. 

He held himself rigid as a statue. Not moving. Not daring to move. Each time the thunder sounded, Swan whimpered and squeezed closer against him, as if she was trying to meld her flesh into his to escape the storm. Each time, he eased away from her, until he ran out of bed and had to stop at the edge or else tumble to the carpet. 

A colossal blast ended with the rending crack of what had to be a tree being split asunder by lightning. Swan flinched and slid down, pulling the covers all the way up over her head. Her breath blew a warm draft over Kit's skin. He relented – she was so scared, and it hurt to see her like that – and curled his arm around her.

She was trembling. He could feel the jut of her nipples through the thin, stretchy lace of her top. The long smoothness of her bare legs, separated from his only by the fabric of his pajama pants, was maddening. 

He thought he would pass out from lack of blood to the brain. It all felt clogged in his groin, throbbing there with the pressure of a blocked geyser. 

What would he do if Uncle Chet came to check on them? Or Mrs. Reilly? How would he explain? What would he say? Oh, they knew about Swan's fear of thunderstorms, sure they did. Everyone in Pinewood knew. But at eighteen, they were a little too old for her to seek comfort from her fears in his room. It could hardly be construed as innocuous, even though it was innocuous as far as Swan was concerned. 

Thunder, and she almost climbed into his lap. Kit bent his left leg at the knee and raised it, successfully fending her off. His body quivered with the effort of restraint.

After what seemed like hours, the duration between the flashes and the crashes grew longer. The storm had passed over Pinewood and was moving on. 

Swan gradually stopped shaking, but remained hidden. Her face was pressed to his chest. Her voice, when she spoke, was muffled by the blankets. 

"What's the matter, Kit?"

"Nothing." He could barely get the word out. 

"You're so tense."

"I'm … I'm fine, really."

Again, the lightning and thunder grumbled distant in the night. Swan cringed, but stirred. 

"Something is the matter." She clawed the blankets back and surfaced, blowing a strand of hair out of her face as she did so. "Pff. What's wrong, Kit? Are you mad at me? Lately, it's seemed like you're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you."

"Then what?"

"Swan, look … this isn't right. Okay? We're not kids anymore. You … you shouldn't be coming into my room, my bed, like this."

He could feel her gaze on him, trying to study him, and was glad for the concealing darkness. 

"Is this about what happened the other day?" she finally ventured. "In my bathroom?"

She did remember! But then … what? Had she been ignoring it? Acting like it didn't matter? Did it matter? That was dumb … of course it mattered. 

"We shouldn't even talk about that. We should just pretend it didn't happen," Kit said. 

"I thought you liked it," she said in a small, meek way. "I thought it made you feel good. I'm sorry. I didn't realize I upset you."

It tore his heart in half to hear the hurt in her voice. "No, Swan … I did like it … I mean, it did feel good … but it was wrong. Don't you get it? What we did was wrong. You're my cousin. I never should have been in your bathroom. I never should have … done what I did, you know, when I thought you'd left."

"Really, Kit, I didn't mind. I liked watching you. Didn't you like watching me?" She flinched again as the window briefly brightened. 

"That's not the point!" he said. 

"Why's it so wrong, anyway?" she asked. "We're eighteen years old. We're grown up. It's only natural to have those kinds of feelings."

"But not for each other. We're cousins!"

She tipped her head to the side. He felt the whispery tickle of her hair trailing across his chest. "So?"

"So? So, it's wrong. It’s … it's incest."

"All I did was touch you." She giggled. "It's not like you put your penis in me."

Kit's fingernails sank into the palms of his hands almost hard enough to draw blood. 

"And even if you had," Swan continued blithely, "we are only cousins, remember. In the olden days, people used to marry their cousins all the time. Especially in the royal families."

"This isn't the olden days, and we aren't royalty." 

"I think you're making way too big a deal out of it," she said. "Is that why you've been so strange? Because you're all worked up about what happened? Kit, that's silly. It's harmless. Perfectly natural and harmless."

"No, it isn't! You're my –"

"Cousin, I know, I know! But I love you, Kit. I know you would never hurt me, and I don't think anything we do together can be wrong. Not when we care about each other."

He was having trouble breathing. "Swan …"

"I mean, I've been out with other guys," she said, turning her head so that her chin rested on his shoulder. "They're all rude and awful, and not one of them has ever made me feel the way I felt that day, when I was watching you masturbate."

"Swan, don't!"

"It was so exciting," she went on. "I've never been excited like that before. And I never wanted to touch any of them the way I touched you. It was good, and right, and wonderful."

"But it can't be right," he said.

"Don't you feel the same way? I think you do. I think that's why you never asked Marianne to the dance. We love each other. We always have. And I don't think there's any reason why we shouldn't show it."

"I do love you," he said. "Of course I do. But we're talking about two different things here, Swan. What we did the other day, that was … sex."

"They go together," she said, and gasped as another far-away thunderclap growled. 

Now that light and dark weren't playing strobe effects with his vision, his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. He saw the breathtaking line of her jaw as she turned her head anxiously toward the window. She wore an expression of wary trepidation, as if she thought that the storm might only be waiting for her to let down her guard before it pounced in renewed force. 

"You're so beautiful," he said, the words wrung from him like some painful confession. "Just being around you … it's … I want to …"

"What?"

"All sorts of things."

"Kiss me?"

"Yeah," he admitted. 

"All right."

"No! Swan, damn it, we can't!"

"You keep saying that, and I keep telling you, it's silly. Why shouldn't we be able to kiss if we want to?"

"Because … because …"

She leaned over and kissed him, sealing her mouth to his. He felt like the lightning had struck again, not outside in the blameless sky but sizzling through him in a white-hot bolt. He tried to pull back and Swan wouldn't let him. She rose up in the bed, the covers falling down around their waists, and held the sides of his face in her hands. 




Closer Than Cousins Ch. 02



When the kiss finally broke, she did not let go of him. She sat back a little on her heels, still holding onto his face. 

"See?" she whispered. "Was that so horrible?"

Kit caught his breath. "I … never said … it was. That's the … problem. It's too good. I can't stop thinking about you. Can't stop wanting to be with you. I know it's wrong, but I still want to. It's … Swan, it's driving me crazy."

She didn't say anything. Her hands gently released his face, and her body shifted, moving away from him. He could only see her as the vaguest of shadows, but he could hear the covers rustling as she moved. 

"Swan?" he asked. 

She still didn't say anything. 

"Are you … are you leaving?" He was sure that she must be. He'd finally talked sense into her, gotten her to see that they couldn't go on this way. It would be torture to see her go, but this was how it had to be. 

"I think there's only one thing to do, Kit," she said. 

"What?" He rolled onto his side, facing her, up on one elbow.

The mattress settled as she moved again. Somehow, unerringly in the darkness, she found his wrist and placed his hand on something warm and smooth and rounded, something with a puckery nub that pressed into his palm. 

Her breast. He was touching her breast, cupping it in his hand. 

"Swan!" He tried to pull away, but again, she was too strong for him. 

"Touch me," she said. "All over. It's all right, Kit. It's what we both want, and it isn't wrong."

As she spoke, her free hand groped under the bedclothes and came to the elastic waistband of his pajama pants. Her fingers traced the jutting fly, then released the button. The cloth sides parted and his cock sprang out, stiffer than ever. Swan took hold of it. Kit's hips bucked helplessly toward her. His hand on her breast closed in a firm but gentle grasp. She arched her back. 

Again, lightning flickered, dim and distant now, but enough to show him her face. Her eyes were half-closed and blissful, and for once the thunder did not bring so much as a twinge of fear. She guided his hand so that he could caress her other breast, and made a soft sound of pleasure. 

"We really shouldn't," he moaned, almost to himself. 

Swan's only reply was to fall slowly over onto her back, and pull him with her. Now he was lying half atop her, and they kissed again, all moist probing tongues. It dispelled any last thoughts of putting an end to this. He still didn't quite agree with her that it wasn't wrong, but he could no longer think of a coherent argument. All that mattered was the feel of her, the taste of her. 

He kissed the side of her neck, inching downward, leaving a trail of kisses until at last he could draw one of her nipples into his mouth. Swan sank her fingers into his hair and cooed softly. 

As he continued lavishing attention on her breasts, she found his wrist again and moved his hand down her body until his fingertips brushed over the silky strands of her pubic hair. Now Kit froze, some rational part of his mind shouting a warning that this had gone too far already. But the rest of him only wanted to surrender and go along with it. 

Swan parted her legs and he settled his hand between them. She twitched her hips up, welcoming his touch. She was warm there, too, deliciously warm and slippery to his slow, probing fingers. 

"Oh, Kit," she murmured. "Oh, that's nice."

She let go of his cock, which was just as well because he was on the verge of erupting into her palm. The lower half of her body rose and fell in a languid wave-like motion. He let his first two fingers delve in and out of her, plunging deep then withdrawing almost completely. His thumb circled the nub of her clitoris. Her breath came in quick little gasps. She clawed at the sheet, untucking it in fistfuls. 

"Swan, oh, God!" Kit moaned. He kissed her again, then bent his head to her breasts while his hand moved faster, stroking her, rubbing her, fingers slipping through wet clasping heat. 

"Ah, oh, oh yes," she cried in a high, breathless voice. 

He felt it happen, and her climax nearly triggered his own, just as if it had been his cock buried in her instead of his fingers. She bucked against him. Her thighs clamped together, pinning his wrist. He couldn't have taken his hand away even if he'd wanted to. Again, she quaked and whimpered, but this time fear had nothing to do with it. This time, the storm was sweet as it thundered through her body. 

Swan relaxed all at once and sank bonelessly into the mattress. She took long sips of the air, her head lolling side to side. Her sigh was long and drawn out. Her arm floated up like something in a dream and went around his neck, pulling him down to kiss her again. 

As he did so, his erection jabbed her hip. He felt her lips curve in a smile. 

"Poor Kit," she whispered against his mouth. "We need to take care of that."

"You don't have to –"

"But I want to," she interrupted. "It's only fair. How, though?"

"How what?"

"How do you want me to do it?" she asked. "With my hand, like before? Or with my mouth? I could suck you. That might be nice."

Kit tried not to groan, and failed. 

"Or," Swan continued in her blithe, carefree manner, "you could put it in me. I think I'd like that. Wouldn't you like that, Kit? To put it in me?"

"I know I'd like it," he said huskily, as his cock surged with eagerness. "But … Swan … we really –"

"Don't start with all that we-really-shouldn't stuff again," she said. "It's too late for that."

"I mean … what we've done … it's not …" Kit floundered for words. 

What they had done? What they had done was wrong, was incest, but it wasn't anything too irrevocable yet, was it? They hadn't actually … well, they hadn't actually fucked. That would really be wrong. Touching like this, third-base kind of stuff, wasn't so bad. Even using their mouths on each other – and the thought of feeling her take him into her mouth, licking and sucking, was enough to make his mind reel with lust – wouldn’t be the worst transgression. 

"I want to make you come," Swan said, and just hearing it almost did the trick. "Please, Kit."

He nodded, realized she couldn't see him in the dark, and managed to rasp out, "Okay."

Swan rose into a kneeling position over him. Her thumbs hooked into the waistband of his pajama bottoms. She lowered them, baring him to the cool air, and tossed the garment aside to join her camisole top and panties. Now they were both utterly naked, and as she swayed her long hair trailed like feathers over his stomach, his thighs. 

She touched him, ran the tip of her forefinger around the head of his cock and then traced the vein on the underside. Kit clenched his jaw and dug his own fists into the sheet. He thought for a moment that it was all over, that her single caress had pushed him over the edge.

With no warning, the power came back on. The single bedside lamp flickered to life, shedding a pale glow over the rumpled bed. Kit blinked, then saw Swan bent over him with her fawn-colored hair spilling over her small, saucy breasts. Saw her smile, saw the fond twinkle in her eyes. 

He saw himself, too, his body stretched out on the bed and his cock standing straight up from the dark brown nest of his pubic hair. He looked enormous, swollen bigger than he'd ever been before, and a dark dusky reddish-purple. 

Gripping him in a circle formed of her thumb and forefinger, Swan lowered her head and darted out her tongue. She lapped a pearly drop of fluid from the end of his cock, smiled again, and slicked her lips. They parted. She pressed a wet, lingering kiss on his cockhead. 

Kit instinctively thrust up with his hips, bumping at her mouth as if begging entrance. But Swan suddenly sat back and regarded him with her head tilted to the side and a slight grin bringing even more of a twinkle to her eyes. 

"I know," she said. "Like this, Kit. We can both do it."

She twisted herself around, long legs flexing with that ballerina grace. One of them swung over Kit's head and came down so that her knees were to either side of his ears. Looking up, in the dim lamplight, he saw the slick, rosy folds of her sex. Opening, offering, poised just inches above his face. 

He reached up and grabbed her buttocks and drew her down. His tongue teased along her cleft, tasting the sweet, tangy flavor of her. He found her clitoris again and prodded it with the tip of his tongue, then licked in long hungry strokes.

Swan cried out, her thighs tensing. She stifled herself by dropping her mouth onto his cock, engulfing him to the root in a warm suction unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Better than anything he'd ever felt before. 

Kit clung to her, lapping and nibbling, trying to concentrate on what he was doing. It was next to impossible, with her lips gliding up and down his shaft, her tongue slurping at him. But he didn't want it to end yet, not yet, not when it was so good. 

What he wanted, though, didn't matter. The coiled urgency at the base of his loins was unbearable. He shoved his cock up into Swan's mouth, thinking incoherently that he should warn her somehow, but she was busily grinding her hips down into his face, rubbing herself all over him so that his chin and cheeks and nose were sopping with her juices. He couldn't extricate himself in time to speak. 

His cock convulsed, his balls tightened, and all of his nerve endings seemed to light up. Gouts of creamy fluid pumped from him, splashing into Swan's mouth. She sucked fervently, swallowing in gulps. But the flood was so forceful and copious that she couldn't catch it all, and Kit felt it trickling down into his pubic hair, dribbling over his thighs. 

He had lost track of everything else in the intensity of that moment, but as soon as the crisis passed, he became conscious again of the position he was in. Swan, still above him, still presented to his mouth. He applied himself with renewed energy, rolling her clitoris between his lips, burrowing his face up between her legs. 

Swan shook all over. His cock, still halfway erect, slid out of her mouth as she tossed her head. Her hair flew. Her hips shimmied. Kit sank his tongue deep when he felt her start to climax, and she had to press her face against his leg to keep from screaming. 

For a moment, he thought he might suffocate. Didn't care – what a way to go! Smothered in her lovely flesh, drowning in her honey. But she fell sideways onto the bed, raising her leg as she went to avoid kneeing him. She curled in a fetal position, head resting on his hip, both of them shuddering and gasping for breath. 

They sprawled there, sweat slowly cooling their bodies. Kit could hardly move. Could hardly think. Occasional aftershocks fluttered through him. 

Swan recovered first, rising in a sinuous motion and turning so that they were side by side, sharing the same pillow. She dragged the covers with her, spreading the sheet and blanket over them both.

She kissed him lightly on the cheek, then more fully on the lips. He mustered the strength to move his arm, draping it around her.

Kit dimly knew that he should send her back to her own room. But speaking seemed like too much of a trial right now. He was too comfortable, too utterly relaxed and at peace to worry about anything else. 

His other hand fumbled for the lamp, found the switch, and turned it off. A soft, enveloping darkness descended on them. He pulled Swan close, and his lovely cousin cuddled against him with a sigh, and they drifted off to sleep as the last fading drumrolls of thunder marched away into the night. 

**



Closer Than Cousins Ch. 03



Author's Note: the "Closer than Cousins" story is a sequel to "The Neglected Son, Chapters 1-5," set eighteen years later.

Outside the mansion, he watched from his hiding place in the shadows. His eyes burned with a long-smoldering hate. 

Pinewood. 

It hadn't changed. Places like this rarely did. Behind the ivy-covered walls was a world frozen in time. Pinewood had been the same a hundred years ago as it was today, and would likely be the same a hundred years in the future. 

Polished oak paneling and silver. Crystal chandeliers and antique furniture. Discreet servants. Money. Murder. Madness. 

Family secrets. 

**

Swan's lips glided like wet satin up and down the stiff length of Kit's erection. She rolled her tongue around him, relishing the salty taste of his arousal. He moaned soft and low, in time with her movements.

Maybe today would finally be the day. 

As much as she loved to do this, and as much as she loved to feel his fingers and mouth doing such deliciously wonderful things to her body, she was tired of waiting. 

She eased his cock out of her mouth and rubbed it along her cheek. "Kit," she murmured. 

His eyelids fluttered open, revealing the stunning turquoise of his eyes, a color that made her think of tropical beaches. He was flushed, his dark hair glued to his brow in sweaty curls. 

"Please," she said. 

He knew what she meant. She saw that in the sudden change in his behavior, the pleasure turning to wary distress. 

"Please, Kit!" she said, kneeling there between his splayed legs. "We've waited long enough."

"It … it isn't a … a matter of waiting long enough," he panted. "Swan, we can't!"

"Yes, we can! It'd be so easy, Kit, so easy! All you have to do is lie back and let me …"

"Stop, Swan. What we do already is bad enough. If we … if we actually …"

"Fuck," she breathed, not meaning it as a curse word at all. "Yes. Yes, that's what I want. I want us to fuck, want you in me, all the way in me. Why is that so bad?"

"Because you're my –"

"Cousin, I know, I know!" she said for what had to be the thousandth time. "And I don't care. You don't care. Not really."

"Yes, I do."

"If you really cared," Swan said, "you wouldn't let me suck you. You wouldn't lick me. You wouldn't let me come into your room at night when Uncle Chet and Mrs. Reilly and everyone else is asleep, and spend the night naked in your bed."

Kit covered his eyes and groaned. "I know I shouldn't."

"But you do."

"I can't help it. You're so beautiful … and … and I love you!"

"I love you, too," she said, sealing it with a tender kiss to the tip of his cock, which still rested against her cheek. His guilt had begun to make him droop, but the kiss got him swelling and twitching again. "That's why I want us to do it."

"I want it, too," he said. "God, I want to … but we can't!"

"Why not? And don't say because it's wrong. What we're doing already is wrong, and we don't let that stop us. Would it be so much more wrong?"

"If anyone found out –"

"If anyone found out about this," she said, running her tongue up the underside of his shaft in a firm stroke that made him shiver, "what would happen? It's a silly argument, Kit. Either we can't do anything, or we can do everything."

"What are you saying, Swan?"

What was she saying? She didn't want to hold him hostage with threats, not her beloved Kit. They had been together all their lives, orphans growing up in this big house, their mothers dead, their unknown fathers gone. Uncle Chet had been too busy with managing the Hollister fortune to ever be more than a guardian, and the staff weren't family. They really only had each other. 

She had grown up loving Kit like a brother. A few months ago, that had changed, and now she loved him in ways she had never thought possible. She loved him as she loved music and dance, the ballet that was the center of her life. 

"I just want us to be happy," she said. "I don't care what's wrong or right. I don't care that our mothers were sisters. I certainly don't care what people think. You know that. I've never cared much what other people think."

"Neither do I," he said, but she knew that was a lie.

"What do you think would happen?" she asked again. "What if someone found out? The servants wouldn't dare say anything, not if they wanted to keep their jobs. Most of them aren't even here today, so how would they know? And it's not like you or I would go to jail. We're almost nineteen. We're adults. There's no law against it."

"I think there is."

"Only if we wanted to get married." She pouted. "Which is a shame, because if you married me, you'd have to fuck me. That is the law. But it might not apply. We're only cousins. That's allowed."

"I wish I could marry you," Kit said. "But we have to face reality one of these days."

"I don't like reality," Swan said, still pouting. "Reality is about school, and work, and misery. Reality belongs out there, outside Pinewood's walls. In here, we have our own world and it should be the way we want it."

She turned from him, giving him the long line of her back as she sat on the edge of the bed. They were in his room, the walls covered with bookshelves and framed photographs of exotic places where Kit had never gone, and with his chronic ill health, might never have the chance to go. Paris. Ireland. Australia. Japan. 

"I wish it could be the way we want it," he said. 

"Then quit wishing, and let it be."

"And what? Forget the rest of the world?"

"Yes," she said. "To hell with the rest of the world. I love you. I know you love me, too. We want to be together, always. So why shouldn't we be?"

Kit sighed. The mattress dipped as he moved to the edge of the bed beside her, and put an arm around her. She leaned into him, her head fitting so naturally into the cradle of his neck and shoulders that she refused to believe it could be wrong. 

"You deserve more," he said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. "Remember what the doctors always said, Swan? That I'd be lucky to see thirty?"

"That was a long time ago," she said. "You're better now. You're not sick anymore."

"But I might get sick again."

"And I might break my neck doing a jeté," Swan said. "Or I might choke on a bite of apple, or fall down the stairs, or drown in the swimming pool. Or a meteor might flatten Pinewood. To hell with all that! What matters is right now!"

"Oh, Swan …" He sighed again, and rested his head against hers. 

"You know," she said with sudden gaiety, "I have never heard of a man arguing so much to get out of sex."

"I don't –"

She put her finger over his lips. "No, Kit. Shut up, Kit. We've had this same silly argument over and over, for months and months. I'm bored with the argument."

"All right," he said. 

"It's ultimatum time."

"Oh, no," Kit said. "What are you doing?"

Swan rose and pirouetted nude in front of him, her long fawn-brown hair swirling down her back. She danced prettily in a patch of daylight filtered green by the ivy at the window, loving the way he adored her with his eyes. 

She stopped in front of him, took his wrists, and brought his hands to her breasts, which were small but perky and upswept, raspberries and cream. He cupped them, gently rubbing his thumbs over her nipples in the way they both knew she liked. 

"Either we do it now," she said, "or we never do this again."

His breath rasped. "Swan …"

"I mean it, Kit. If it's too wrong for fucking, it's too wrong for anything."

"You know how much I want you!" He let go of her and rose, standing in front of her, and if she hadn't already known, the rigid length poking at her navel would have been a good clue. 

"Then prove it." She wrapped her fingers around his cock. "With this. Right now."

"But it's wrong!"

"I don't care." 

It hurt her to be so cruel to him, but she could think of no other way. Goodness knows, she had tried to be subtle about it before. Had tried to be tricky. 

A few times, they'd been embracing, legs entwined, and his cock had been right against her, and she'd squirmed and worked her hips, thinking that if it happened to slip inside, then it'd be too late and they might as well take advantage of such a happy accident. But Kit had always caught on and pulled away before more than the barest inch could penetrate. 

On other occasions, she had foregone subtlety and just tried to take him, by straddling him in a swift motion after she'd been sucking, so that his cock was standing up straight and tall and slick with her saliva. It should have worked. She was quick and lithe, fitter and stronger. Just … up and over with the leg, and sink down, and she should have had him all the way up inside before he realized what she was doing. 

Yet this, too, he had always sensed in time to prevent her. For a while, she'd viewed it as a game, a challenge. Now it was a source of exasperation. And she desperately feared that if she didn't do something about it now, exasperation would become irritation. Then anger. She never wanted to be irritated with Kit, or angry at him. 

He looked at her with a vaguely wounded little-boy expression. Like she had offered him a plate of cupcakes, but then whisked it away before he could taste more than the frosting. Which was the exact opposite of what she was doing … he had already sampled the frosting and now it was time for the entire sweet treat. 

"You really mean it, don't you?" he asked. 

"Yes! What else do I have to do to convince you? Honestly, Kit! Fuck me already!"

She threw herself across the bed, bouncing the mattress. With her knees up and apart, her dancer's belly flat and taut, she opened her arms to him. 

Kit stood over her, his gaze traveling slowly from her face down her body. When he reached the fine silky triangle of her pubic hair, and the pearl-pink labia peeking out, she saw his throat move in a convulsive swallow.

"Oh, God, Swan," he whispered. 

"Don't think about it," she said. 

He knelt on the bed, between her legs. His mouth worked, as if he sorely wanted to say all the same old things he had already said, the same old things that didn't make a bit of difference. 

Swan tingled all over with anticipation. She was more than ready for him, she ached for him. A smooth flex of her lower body lifted her hips, presenting herself to his ready cock. 

"Do it, Kit," she said. 

The tip made the barest brushing contact, and it was as if the last of Kit's resolve finally crumbled away. As if he realized that it was no use fighting her, that it was stupid to fight her when they both wanted and needed it so much. He surrendered with a loud cry, falling on her and plunging deep.

"Yes!" Swan shouted. "Ooh, Kit, yes!" 

There was of course no pain, her hymen having been lost through ballet exercises long ago. Instead, she felt only a wonderful slick and slippery fullness. She crossed her legs at the small of his back and threw her arms around his neck, holding him trapped in case he was shocked back to his earlier objections and tried to withdraw. 

For a moment, Kit didn't move. He lay atop her, blinking those lovely turquoise eyes in hazy, blissful astonishment. Then he rocked back, but not as if he meant to pull out, and thrust into her again. He called her name over and over, raining kisses on her face, pumping his hips. 

Swan clung to him, meeting each thrust, hurtling toward orgasm. It was the fact of it – Kit was finally fucking her! – almost as much as the feel of it … though the feel of it was nothing short of exquisite. 

But then Kit's entire body stiffened, not just the part of him buried so deliciously within her but every muscle. Swan voiced a wordless, cheated protest, thinking that he must have been too excited, must have come already, while she was still on the verge. Except Kit didn't come … she still felt him thick and hard and pulsing. 

From outside came the revving snarl of an engine, a sound they both knew. Uncle Chet's car. He had left after breakfast, planning to spend the day in the city on a variety of errands, and hadn't been expected back for hours yet. 

Kit looked horrified. He started to lever himself up, but Swan held him tight. 

"He won't catch us," she said. 

"He will!"

"Don't stop, Kit, please! I'm so close." She writhed, grinding her hips up at him. 

"If he sees us like this –" But he thrust again, despite his agonized expression of fear. "Oh. Oh, God."

"When has he ever barged in on you? Mmm, yes, faster … Kit, yes, just like that!"

The engine stopped. A car door swung shut. Footsteps grated on the gravel driveway. 

"He'll disown us," Kit said, sliding his hands under her buttocks to pull her more firmly into each stroke. "Swan, oh, you feel so good!"

Swan arched her back, gasping. "He … won't … ooh, yes, I'm going to … ooh …"

Distantly, the echoing hollow boom of Pinewood's great front door closing …

Kit drove into her harder than ever. She muffled her ecstatic howl against his shoulder as the throes of her orgasm picked her up and tossed her like a skiff on a stormy sea. She bucked wildly up at her cousin as he pounded in and out, both of them frantic. 

The bedsprings creaked and the headboard rattled on the wall, and Kit was moaning her name again and again. He came explosively, crushing her against him so hard that it almost hurt, but Swan welcomed it, straining to get every last sensation, every last moment of pleasure and passion. 

Then it was over and Kit lay sprawled on top of her, their bodies soaked with cooling sweat. She could feel his heart thundering behind his ribs. 

He raised his head and looked at her with numb incredulity, the realization now settling in on him of what they had done. Before he could start in with the remorse, Swan kissed him. 

"I love you," she said, and nipped the end of his nose. "No going back now."

"We shouldn't have –"

"I said no going back!"

"All right," Kit said. "If that's what you want."

"Of course it is, silly. It's all I've ever wanted." 

They kissed again, and began the process of disentangling their limbs and moist flesh. Kit stood shakily, clinging to one of the bedposts for support, as Swan, feeling revitalized and fresh, sprang from the bed. 

"Oh, shit!" Kit said, abruptly remembering. "Uncle Chet!"

"He would come home early," Swan said. "But maybe we should just get it over with."

"Get what over with?"

"Telling him."

Kit gaped at her. 

"Well," Swan said, "don't you think we should? What can he do? Kick us out? I don't think so. You've read our grandparents' will. Uncle Chet's really only our half-uncle. Sort of. How does it work again?"

"Uncle Chet is Grandfather's son by his first wife," Kit said. "But his first wife was Grandmother's younger sister. So that makes him a little more than a half-uncle."

"Whatever," Swan said, unconcerned. She perched naked on the corner of the bed, watching as Kit scrambled around for his clothes. "But the estate – Pinewood – belonged to Grandmother. So it's ours. He's only our guardian, right?"

"Until we're twenty-one," Kit agreed.

She smiled as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and realized that clothes alone weren't going to hide the rumpled flush, let alone the musky scent of sex that surrounded both of them like an aura. 

"So," continued Swan, "doesn't that mean we can do what we want?"

"But … tell him?" Kit hurried into the adjoining bathroom, and water began to hiss from the showerhead. 

"We could just ask for his blessing," Swan said. She stretched, feeling sated and luxurious … but not so sated that she would have passed up more. 

"Let's not rush this," Kit said. She heard him get into the shower. "I need to think."

"Oh, no you don't," Swan said. She followed him, stepping into the clouds of billowing steam. "Whenever you think, you get feeling all guilty and don't want to love me anymore."

"Nothing could make me stop loving you," Kit said, embracing her under the hot spray. 

**

If looks could have killed, Chet Hollister would have been dead the moment he emerged from his sleek little sports car. The eyes of the man watching from the shadows would have been twin sniper rifles, dropping him in his tracks. 

But looks alone could not kill, and the gun that the man did have might not be accurate at such a range. 

So the man had waited, and watched, and hated, as Chet Hollister strolled toward the front steps as if he hadn't a care in the world. 

Hollister was in his early forties but could have passed for half that age, disgustingly fit and tanned, gleaming with country club good health. He was dressed in clothes expensively styled to look casual. 

It was, the man thought, like looking at Dorian-fucking-Gray. The soul inside that athletic frame was black and rotten, teeming with corruption. If Hollister's sins had been reflected outwardly, people would have run screaming from his haggard, hellish visage. 

The only screams that mattered, though, were Hollister's own. 

**

"There you two are," Uncle Chet said. He glanced at their damp hair. "Been swimming?"

"You're back early," Kit said. 

Swan crossed the breakfast room, which was on the sunniest side of the house, and chose a tangerine from a bowl of fruit. She was ravenous. Digging into the peel with her fingernails released a fine mist of citrus droplets that only further inflamed her appetite. 

"Forgot my wallet, and by the time I got home to retrieve it, I'd decided that it was too nice a day to spend in the crowded, smelly city."

Sectioning the fruit and popping a wedge into her mouth, Swan gazed idly out the window at Pinewood's lush grounds. She could just see the roof of the detached dance studio that had been her mother's and was now hers. 

She saw a man out there. A stranger. Standing in the bushes behind the studio, staring at the house. Swan didn't recognize him. Not one of the usual gardeners. All she could tell of him was that he was tall, and had the saggy look of someone who had once been well-built, but who had lost a great deal of weight and muscle tone. As she watched, he started walking purposefully toward the house. 

"Uncle Chet," she said, turning from the window and sucking the sweet juice from another wedge of tangerine, "Kit and I want to get married."

Kit dropped into a chair as if someone had kicked him in the solar plexus. Uncle Chet choked on a bite of croissant and had to hammer his chest with his fist before he could cough up the offending piece of pastry. 

"I beg your pardon?" he asked, eyebrows arched high. 

"We're in love," Swan said. 

"Swan!" Kit shot her a panicked, pleading look. 

"Well, we are," she said, daintily licking her fingers. 

"Kit?" asked Uncle Chet, eyebrows still high. "Is this true?"

With a deep breath, and a sort of fatal resignation, Kit said, "Uncle Chet, I know what you're going to say. I know all the objections you're going to have. I've had them myself. But it is true. I love Swan."

Uncle Chet carefully folded his newspaper and set it aside. He took a sip of coffee while he studied them both. Kit squirmed under that scalpel-sharp scrutiny, while Swan ate another bit of tangerine. 

"Oh, my God," muttered Uncle Chet. He passed a hand over his eyes. "I should have known."

"I can explain," Kit said. 

"How long has this been going on?" he demanded. 

"A … a few months," Kit admitted. "But not what you think! We …"

"Made love for the first time today," Swan finished brightly. "So you see, Uncle Chet, we're sure that we want to be married. I could be pregnant already."

If Kit hadn't already been sitting, that would have knocked him off his feet. His jaw came unhinged and the color drained from his face. 




Closer Than Cousins Ch. 03



Uncle Chet's face underwent a bizarre series of contortions, and Swan suddenly had the impression that he was trying with all his might not to burst out laughing. 

"Cousins …" Kit said in a feeble squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Cousins can marry. Even first cousins."

"It isn't that simple, Kit," Uncle Chet said. "I'm afraid there's much more to it than that. Marriage is out of the question."

"What?" Swan asked. 

"I suppose I should have been truthful with you," he said. "But I never expected anything like this. I don't know why. Inevitable, really. Cooped up in this house with no one but each other, and … well … I should have foreseen it."

"Truthful about what?" Kit asked, pale with dread. "Why can't we get married?"

"You're not cousins," Uncle Chet said. "Not … not just cousins, at any rate."

"You'd better explain," Kit said. 

"It starts with your mother, Kit. With Mindy. Nineteen or so years ago, she brought her college boyfriend home for the holidays, to meet her family. Mindy was already carrying you, though no one knew yet. Well, as it happens, her boyfriend …" Uncle Chet looked down, drummed his fingers on the table, then looked back up, his gaze moving from Kit to Swan. "Her boyfriend seduced Mindy's sister, Renee. Your mother, Swan."

Swan's mouth made a small O as comprehension dawned. 

"No," Kit said. "No, you're not saying what I think you're saying."

"He fathered both of you."

"No!" Kit shouted. 

He threw a helpless, appealing look at Swan, but she could only stare back at him in surprise. Memory and recent sensation sent a rush of color to her cheeks. The tender parts of her, which had been aching in pleasant recollection of the morning's love, now throbbed like a shameful reminder. 

"So you are cousins, yes," Uncle Chet said. "But you're also half-siblings."

"Kit … is my brother?" she whispered. 

"We can't be," groaned Kit. "She can't be my sister. She can't!"

"Oh, why don't you tell them all of it, Hollister?" growled a harsh, strange voice from the doorway. 

It was the man Swan had seen in the gardens. Up close, he proved to be near Uncle Chet's age, with a mass of unkempt curly hair that showed considerable grey through the brown, and a build that made Swan instantly certain that he had been, long ago, a dancer. But his face was lined, his cheeks sunken. That proud dancer's build was diminished, but an intensity of emotion blazed in his dark eyes. 

He wore gardener's gloves, and held a pistol. It was pointed at Uncle Chet. 

"Who in the hell are –" Uncle Chet had leaped up from his seat despite the gun, but faltered and peered closely at the intruder. 

"You're him, aren't you?" Kit extended a trembling, accusatory arm. "You're our father!"

A humorless bark of laughter escaped the man. "I could have been hers," he said, jerking his head in Swan's direction. "I loved Renee. I would have married her, if her family hadn't been so opposed to the idea. I was only her dance instructor, not nearly good enough."

"Gregor Parks!" Uncle Chet said. "Of course! But what are you doing here? I thought you were in prison."

"You thought so because you put me there," Gregor said. "It's amazing what enough money and influence can do. It can even get an innocent man sent to jail on false charges. But now I'm out, Hollister. I'm here."

Bewildered, Swan and Kit moved to hold each other like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods. Kit recoiled at first, as if his skin couldn't bear the touch of hers, not now that they both knew the truth. 

Cousins, yes … but also brother and sister. In blood as well as in spirit. 

"All right, you're out," Uncle Chet said. "What are you going to do? Kill me?"

"I spent almost twenty years in prison," Gregor said. "The way I see it, fate owes me at least one. That's you, Hollister. But before I shoot you, I want you to tell them the rest of it."

"No."

"Tell them!"

"Go ahead and shoot me."

"Don't think that I won't," Gregor said. He cocked the pistol and leveled the barrel at Uncle Chet's face. 

"The staff –" Uncle Chet began. 

Gregor laughed. "Most of them have today off. You forget, I worked here. My father was Pinewood's butler, until you destroyed him by what you did to me. Wednesday is traditionally the servants' day off at Pinewood. It's been that way for over a hundred years. Some things never change."

"Uncle Chet –" Kit said. 

"Is that what they call you?" Gregor asked. "Uncle Chet. Go on. Tell them."

"You … you mean you aren't our uncle?" Swan asked. 

"Oh, he's your uncle all right," Gregor said. "He's also your father."

"That's impossible," Kit said. 

"How did you know?" Uncle Chet asked. 

"Renee wrote to me," Gregor said. "I didn't bother showing the letter to anyone else, since by then you'd convinced them she was insane. But I believed every word. You seduced her sister, you raped her, and you killed their parents – your own father and aunt. Then you let them die but kept their babies to raise as your own. Am I leaving anything out?"

Uncle Chet grinned. "Actually, yes. I seduced Aunt Paula, too. And I even got my father to fuck Mindy. But I didn't rape Renee. She enjoyed it. You should have heard how she moaned and whimpered when she came."

The gunshot was a colossal flat thunderclap in the enclosed space. Swan didn't hear her own scream, or Kit's shout. But she saw, in relentless clarity, Uncle Chet's skull blown apart. 

His lifeless body toppled to the floor. One eye was obliterated. The other was fixed on the ceiling. 

Gregor lowered the gun. "There."

"Are you going to kill us?" Kit asked evenly, doing his best to shield Swan. 

"I should." He looked at them with mingled pity and revulsion. "You'll turn me in to the police."

"You wore gloves," Swan pointed out. 

"But it wouldn't be the first time they listened to a Hollister over me," Gregor said. "Think about this, though. With him dead, I'm the only one who knows about you two. If I go to jail, I'll tell the world. It'll be in the papers. It'll be on television."

Kit closed his eyes and shuddered. 

"And … if not?" asked Swan. 

"If you let me walk out of here," Gregor said, "I'll never say a word."

"All right," Kit said. "But leave the gun so we can claim he shot himself."

"I'm glad to see that you're not as crazy as your father." Gregor set the gun on the table beside the fruit bowl. 

As soon as he turned to head for the door, Kit snatched the gun up, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The thunderclap shattered the day again. Gregor was pitched forward in a loose, bloody tumble. He hit the wall, rolled, and ended up on his back. His expression of utter shock slowly relaxed into the vacant, slack-jawed mask of death. 

"Kit!" cried Swan. 

"You heard him," Kit said. He looked at her, and there was a light in his eyes that now made her think of wild sun-dazzle on tropical waves. "He was the only other one who knew. He would have talked. Or blackmailed us. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life with that kind of a threat hanging over my head."

"You shot him!"

"We'll say that he came in here, raving, and killed Uncle Chet. Then tried to kill us. In the struggle, I got the gun away from him and it went off."

"Will anyone believe it?"

"It's like he said. We're Hollisters. We're Hollisters twice over. Of course they'll believe us."

**

The End