'Can I come in?'
'You can if you're good with a mop,' she said, closing the door behind him.
But Eric was so distracted he didn't seem to hear her. He stalked into the living room, nervous, jumpy. 'Have you got anything to drink around here?'
'I think there's some Scotch in the kitchen. And maybe some wine.' Fawn pulled off the shower hat and shook her thick mane of hair back over her shoulders, knowing now it would be a while until she got to her bath.
'I'll take the Scotch.'
'What's the matter, Eric?' With him following her, she went into the kitchen and poured him his drink, which he grabbed and gulped thirstily.
'Danika,' he growled. 'She's been… making it with another guy. For nearly two months. But I only found out about it tonight.'
'Oh no.' With instinctive sympathy for her brother, Fawn reached out a hand and stroked his forehead tenderly. 'Oh, Eric, I'm sorry.'
Eric gave a bleak shrug. He drained his glass and handed it back to her, and she refilled it with the pale golden liquor. 'Aren't you going to have one with me?' he asked. 'You don't want me to get drunk all alone, do you?' He gave her a forlorn wink, pretending toughness to mask his misery.
'I don't want you to get drunk at all.' But as she looked into his eyes and saw the pain there, and then thought of her own foolishness moments ago in the bathroom, she was very tempted to join him. Not to get drunk, but just to have a few drinks and forget about everything for a little while. Help him forget. She know he probably wanted to talk about what a bitch his wife Danika was to do this to him, and she wouldn't have any trouble agreeing with him there. Long ago she had suspected something like this would happen, for her woman's instincts told her that Danika was a prick-happy little flirt who could never be happy with only one man at a time. Danika was a small dark-haired girl with flashing eyes, long natural eyelashes, lovely high cheekbones, a full sensual mouth, and a sexual aura that filled any room she came into with mysterious, murky invitations. For her small size she had a beautifully curvaceous body, and stunning long legs, and from the beginning Fawn had thought Eric was in for trouble in marrying her. Now that Danika had finally gone and betrayed him, maybe it was time for Fawn to play straight with her brother. She would try not to say 'I told you so,' but it wouldn't hurt to listen, to give him some support, and it would get her mind off that silly fiasco she'd been performing in the bathroom.
'Come on,' Eric joked again, winking through his sadness. 'What kind of party is it with only one drunk?'
Fawn smirked at him. 'Why not.' She took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with ice and Scotch, then clinked it against his and drank.
They took the bottle with them into the living room and sat down, Fawn on the sofa, Eric in one of the easy chairs, and he began predictably to tell her about Danika's bitchiness, how she had not only been fucking around behind his back, but doing it with one of his best friends. He launched into a long, morose, bitter, increasingly tipsy tirade, and Fawn listened dutifully, drinking along with him and nodding at the right moments. The Scotch made her warm and tingly, but as time wore on she began to wish that her bathrobe was made out of some other fabric than satin, because it was so slippery. It was hard enough to keep the skirts over her thighs and knees, but even worse was the constantly loosening sash. Whenever she moved it loosened more, and her firm outthrusting breasts pushed against the front part of the robe until the neck-lapels were gaping wider and wider, revealing more and more of her smooth tanned upper chest.
Her feelings were complicated even more by the delicious sensation of the cool slippery satin against her warm, tingling skin, rasping softly across her sensitive nipples, rustling smoothly against the skin of her inner thighs when she modestly tucked it there. She contemplated making an excuse and getting up to change, but it felt so good and she was so warm and tingly, she really couldn't decide. In front of her brother she felt very modest, but at the same time remarkably relaxed, especially since he was so obsessed by his wife's betrayal of him that he hardly paid Fawn the slightest attention.
After a while, as Eric droned on and on about Danika's infidelities, Fawn didn't really hear him anymore. Instead she simply stared at him, feeling pleasantly giddy and warm, and soon fell into a sort of trance in which she found herself dreamily remembering herself and her brother as kids, as teenagers, swimming, laughing, dancing, playing tennis together, dating each other's friends. The warm, happy feelings and images bubbled through her, and she yielded to them totally. It all seemed so long ago.
She recalled one time when she was sixteen and had lost her skimpy bikini bra while diving into the family swimming pool. Embarrassed and panicky, she had surfaced squealing, splashing, searching for it, but Eric, laughing outrageously, had jumped into the pool and scooped it up before she could reach it. Still laughing, he had climbed out and sat on the edge of the pool, dangling it from one hand, refusing to return it until she emerged half-naked from the pool, her arms crossed nervously over her bare young breasts. She could still recall the look in his eyes as he boldly tried to peak through the angles of her elbows and forearms for a glimpse of her nipples. And it gave her a sharp butterfly tickle in the pit of her stomach to remember how, just before snatching the bra back from his extended hand, she had flung her arms to the sides, giving him a full shot of what he wanted to see. Poor Eric's eyes had flashed as big as saucers.
And that scene made her recall another. She remembered what a beautiful man's body Eric had, all bronzed and hard and muscular, his hair bleached red-gold from the sun, his arms and legs sinewy and strong, his shoulders broad and powerful. She remembered how, when swimming with him, her eyes were constantly, shamefully drawn to the bulge made by his penis and balls in his tight swim trunks, how she always tried to look at his crotch when he was looking somewhere else. She had told herself it was only natural curiosity, and mostly tried to conceal her desire to look from herself as much as she did from him, but apparently he had once or twice caught her gazing with hypnotic adolescent fascination at his crotch. For one afternoon when she walked past his bedroom, there he was, sitting on the edge of his bed, facing the open door, his naked thighs spread and his long thick tube of penis hanging there in all its glory for her to see. And she had stopped, raising her fist to her mouth in delighted surprise, and stared at his prick until of its own accord it began to swell and rise and thump with blood.
Then, with a nervous giggle and a very hot face, she had turned and fled down the hall.
Nothing more than these two incidents had ever happened between them, but now as Fawn remembered it all she felt the same guilty flutterings and sharp tremors of heat in her body that she'd felt then. She squirmed and felt dazed and too warm, and she drifted back toward conscious awareness and noticed that Eric's droning voice had stopped.
Then she saw his eyes, saw that he was sunk in some kind of trance, too, saw him staring at her, but not at her face, no, lower, lower, at her body, and she glanced down and saw that the sash of her bathrobe had come completely undone, probably because of her unconscious squirming. The robe had fallen open, and her body was exposed from her throat to the top glistening fringe of her pubic hair.
Flushing with embarrassment, trying to regain quick control of her wits, she pulled the robe shut. 'Oh, I… I don't know what happened to me!' she said breathlessly.
'Don't,' Eric croaked quietly, his eyes briefly pained as the satin closed across the naked delights of her body.
'Eric!' she said, as if to shame him. But her voice was not convincing.
'Please don't.'
'Eric, I'm your sister.' Across her mind flashed the image of his thick ropey adolescent penis thumping and filling with blood. What must it be like now that he was a man? The thought horrified her. What am I thinking like that for! I've got to stop it! He's got to stop it!
Eric shook his head, as if to clear it, as if to wake himself up, and grinned at her. 'That's right, you are. I guess I almost forgot. For a minute there I think… well, I was remembering that time I stole your bikini top.'
Fawn blushed hotly. 'You were?' she said, her voice quivering beyond control.
'I'll never forget it. You were beautiful even then, but now… now-'
'Eric. I think we'd better change the subject.' Fawn's blood was thundering against her ears, her skin was hot and prickly, her mind in a confused whirl. She felt so close to something dangerous that she didn't know quite what to do. The best thing, she figured, was simply to take charge right now, not to let it happen again. They were both a little drunk, but he more than she, so it was up to her. Acting firmly, she tightened the sash of her robe and stood up. 'I think I'd better change, get into something else. Don't you?'
'No.' He grinned, his eyes murky, friendly but dead serious.
'I mean,' Fawn's voice faltered, 'we'll both feel better if there isn't any chance of…' But she couldn't go
