It started out as another case of me-and-my-big-mouth. I was down at my parents' and had wandered into the livingroom in time to catch the last snatch of a conversation. My sister Ria was saying stuff about closing up her cottage for the winter. Figuring that to be a pretty tough sport and feeling full of false magnanimity, I volunteered, "Well gosh, Ria, I'd certainly come out and help, not that I could get time away from the kids or afford the airfare." I really would have been just as satisfied with myself if I'd just thought about offering. Unfortunately there was a roomful of family to witness my words.

I hadn't seen Ria in a couple of years and didn't expect to see her again for a couple more. That was the standard schedule since we'd become adults. Ria and I were not at all close. As children we had fought like monsters all the time. Sometime in our early teens came a cease- fire, both of us independently deciding it would be less hassle to simple ignore the other. Now that we'd both crossed the threshold into our thirties, things between us were civil enough. Though neither of us felt obliged to words if we wound up alone in the same room.

It was like some sort of conspiracy. Less than a month later my wife announced that she and the kids were driving for a week's stay at her parents a state and a half away. Instead of being torn between desire and duty--can I stay or should I go?--I was directed towards a third choice. She and them were off to her parents, while mine had mailed me the plane tickets out to Ria's. Somehow I didn't feel much in charge of my own destiny.

I boarded my airplane, found my seat and sat down. I pulled the in-flight magazine out from the pouch on the back of the seat ahead of me. It was not a far reach. I thought to myself This is insane! My sister was a virtual stranger. There was this cottage, out in the country, up in the mountains, something like that out in one of the western states. I had no clear idea what she did with her life. I had not even seen a photograph of this cottage. I didn't know if she owned or rented or just somehow inhabited this cottage. There was something about a roommate going abroad for some long stretch of time. My sole knowledge of this person was her gender. Were they roommates or friends or lovers? As for my sister's sexuality, I could state with some certainty that she was female. All the sorts of details that make up a life, and so few did I know. It was all information I didn't care about. I could see no reason in the world why I would be on my way to help her out. Blood isn't that thick.

The pleasure of my flight was mitigated by the circumstances of having been booked on the cheapest airline still up in the air. The only refreshment they offered was water, and for that you had to go back and suck it from the bathroom spigot. Carry-on luggage was restricted to purses and briefcases because there were no overhead bins, so my similarly sized duffel had to go into the belly of the beast. I didn't really need the book I'd neglected to retrieve until I discovered that all the magazines were actually thickish catalogues of cheap goods. My favorite was the catalogue catalogue, a huge lavishly illustrated catalogue of all the catalogues you could possibly want to order. I did a total tally. For only almost $1000 I could have many hundreds of worthless catalogues I didn't want delivered to my doorstep. The prospect was thrilling. The exercise got me past those first ten minutes when the plane is suddenly rumbling into the air, going up steep fast. My fear of flying is restricted to these minutes, and their companion ones at the other end of the flight, when, statistically, most planes tend to crash and burn.

During the descent I silently waxed poetic about the grand old days of air travel. When your plane landed, by god you were where you were going. And you had to worry about dying only twice. My modern flight sort of hopped across the landscape. Each subsequent airport was smaller than the one before. And at each we as well traded down for the next smaller aircraft. It got to the point that as we were once again nosing back down to earth, all I could really imagine ahead was a sort of lawnmower with wings. Out the window all I could see us approaching was what looked like a failed subdivision out in the middle of nowhere. The sad lines of merrily named streets leading to nothing, making tracings in the bulldozed mud sea surrounding. The roads anchored to a small solitary building, the model home/sales office. We landed there, and it didn't look much different from the ground. The building was the tiniest terminal that was ever built. Luckily it was the end of the line. I was where I wanted to be, or rather, where I was supposed to be.

Amazingly, the flight arrived on time. Nothing else did. I spent the hour Ria kept me waiting trying to locate my duffel. She finally caught up with me at an out-of-the-way counter where a gleaming young woman was filling out a missing tracer for me. Well, she was noting the information on the backside of a napkin with a snapped pencil. "So just come back in ten days to check," the woman was telling me with a winning smile.

"I'll be back in four," I snapped, "That's when I leave. Preferably with the duffel."

Ria came up and greeted me. She stopped ten feet away and barked, "Where's your bag?"

I turned back to Miss Perfect Career Choice and asked, "How many cities does your fine airline serve anyway."

"Thirty-eight," she gave a cheery chirp.

I turned back to Ria. "Take your pick. Now I sort of know why my bag is late. What's your excuse?"

"I'm here now," she shrugged. "You ready to go?"

The cottage, when we got there, wasn't really much of a cottage. It wasn't a shack, but it wasn't a cottage. It was a house in the way a cave can be called a home. It could be called a cabin, except cabins generally aren't clapboard with little trims around the rims. It didn't look at all new. Thank god, I thought, it wasn't some listing double- wide trailer dragged up the hills.

It was really rather nice inside. One big central room, the livingroom, with vaulted ceiling and a wide stone hearth. A hallway led off to a pleasant little bedroom opposite a full bath, ending in the kitchen at back. I retraced my steps and headed for the great room. In the middle of the room, facing the fireplace, there was one of those frame things that folds a futon up into a sofa. I was on it in an instant.

Ria was on me before I could get comfortable. "What do you think you're doing? Come on! get up!! We got a ton of work ahead of us."

"Coffee," I groaned. "First comes coffee."

"Coffee?" she gave me a queer look. "I don't drink coffee."

"Well I do. You could be nice, or just tell me where everything is and I'll make my own."

"I said I don't drink the stuff. The closest coffee you'll find is down in town."

"Then get your butt down to town and get me some!" I cried. "I'm not moving 'til I've had my fix. Get me a pound, ground, and something to brew it in."

Ria took my look of exasperation and multiplied it. She went off in a huff, but she did go off. Without another word she was out the door and in her truck. I guessed it to be at least a twenty minute trip each way, nestling my head languidly down into a pillow.

In fact I got to snooze for well over an hour. But then my nap ended with that terribly disorienting sort of jerking way. It was like my body shivering awake at the presence of a cat sitting on my chest staring at me while I slept. The cat was Ria. "Wake up and smell the coffee," she gently cooed. I couldn't imagine how she had gotten into that position without me waking straight off. She was straddling me and half lying atop me. It was a familiar posture from childhood, but any adult interpretation tended to involve complete lack of clothing. Of particular embarrassment for me was that she'd caught me at some stage of sleep where I had an absolutely throbbing erection, a condition complicated by being twisted up in my underwear. The warm soft pressure of her crotch was hardly the dash of cold water I needed. I tried to think of all the most horrifying things I could to make my tide subside. What more wilt-worthy material was there than the thought that your own sister might feel your accidental erection? But it was my own sister on top of me and there was no way she could mistake what she was sitting on, and Ria really was doing nothing to abate the situation. If we'd been naked, the sweat alone would've sent me filling her to the hilt. Her breasts hung unhampered in her shirt, sometimes swaying against my chest. The view down her shirt was always excellent. I of course could not linger on the scenery without appearing quite obvious. It really was much harder on my neck to keep my gaze up at her eyes. Ria's smile seemed to be quietly laughing about my quandary. She crushed them against me as she swung her leg back over me, pushing off me to stand up.

"Coffee's ready," she tossed off. "Drink up!"

It was the worst cup of coffee I'd ever had. It was like she had gone to the clandestine and unscrupulous open coffee market and been suckered into buying a bag of dried used grounds disguised as freeze- dried instant. The best course of action seemed to me to be stoic and obey orders.

The first order of the day was to put in all the storm windows. There weren't all that many windows, but it didn't sound like an interesting chore to me. But if I was going to do any griping, I should have done it by keeping my yap shut weeks ago. It was a great time-saver that Ria already had the logistical end figured out. One of us would climb up the ladder, while the other would hand up the big panes of glass. We took turns which helped vary the task. And either way, I had a great view. Divorcing the sights from the fact that it was my sister. It gave my mind something to do while the rest of me hefted away. I mean, I'd be a liar to deny that Ria's got a luscious ass, and there it was, sort of pushed out, just a few feet from my face. Or else I was looking down deep into some mighty fine cleavage. Looking down there because that was where I had to look down to reach down and grab the glass. I mean, Ria's my little sister but she's a big girl now; she can dress herself.

The problem that arose was that due to warping in the frames, it was stupidly difficult for the person on the ladder to hold the window fast while reaching up to secure the fasteners. I was up top when Ria decided the best thing was for her to follow up the ladder, reaching around me to hold the window steady while I busied around with the latches. She couldn't help but mash her breasts against me a few times while she got set. In all my wriggling around there were some contortions that required I brush back against them. I was hoping Ria wouldn't notice how much I was blushing as I tried to avoid the touch. I let my manner be matter-of- fact, and thought it best to mention not a word of it. But it was driving me crazy, every now and then, that brush of hot breath on the back of my neck. And then back down the ladder. Next was the worse way. I followed her dancing ass up the rungs and then had to become a true contortionist. Leaning in enough to hold the glass flat while keeping my pelvis kept cocked way back. Maintaining that posture, and affecting it as natural, required true talent. If I'd been in a calmer state I wouldn't have minded nestling on up when the job required it. But really, my idlings had left me with a big hard thing in the front of my pants which I really did not want to be rubbing up against my sister's ass. On several occasions, exactly that did happen. I was flooded with self-mortification, a weird sort of fluid in my veins and stuff which served to push even more blood into the offensive member.

I was so relieved when the job was done and it was time to go in and make sandwiches.

But then afterwards we filled the back of her pickup with tools and drove down the drive to the road. Down there a big gate could be swung closed and locked, blocking the drive. Apparently some errant rural postal carrier had swerved bad and knocked the gate posts to their current strange slants. Ria had the new lumber ready. We weren't righting the posts. We were there to replace the old 4x4s with 8x8s, sinking them about a yard down and setting them in concrete. I'd used a post-hole digger before in my life, and wasn't exactly thrilled at the repeat. Again, the labor was equitably divided. Down there, the ground revealed itself to be about three inches of top soil covering an unending bed of large rocks glued together with clay. It was hard, hot work, and soon enough Ria finished off the buttons on her shirt and hung it on one of the tilted old posts. Ria's breasts were now covered by only the pale lacy pink wings of a giant butterfly. I couldn't tell if it was a sorry sort of halter, or bikini top, or more intimate upper apparel. Whatever the function, the material made the contents sway as easy as a sweet summer breeze. They jiggled quite smartly when Ria plunged the digger down in the hole, repeatedly, seeking purchase. The whole scene seemed orchestrated, choreographed really. She'd move halfway around the hole so that by the time it came to bend low and take the big bite, well, I would want to bend low and take a big bite myself. Hey, that's your sister, I had to keep reminding myself, and she doesn't particularly like you in the first place. Like she'd be terribly thrilled to turn around and catch me drooling over her ass. Keep your eyes on the concrete and your hands stirring the shovel, I made that my motto. But not soon enough, for as soon as I took over on the digger, Ria bitched at me for not attending to the concrete.

"You let it start getting hard," she snapped. No doubt! "You should have stirred it more." No doubt!!

Her remonstrations did act nicely as a bucket of cold water, leaving me in much less of a state when we got down to the tugging and grunting of getting the posts set in place. Difficult though it was, I kept most of my mind on the job holding the posts steady while Ria twisted and turned, shoveling the concrete from the wheelbarrow into the holes. The posts stood up straight and tall and proud. "See," I said as we cleaned up, "everything worked out fine. They're poking up like poplar trees." Ria, I swear, blushed. And it was that that made me decide that her nipples really were erect. Well, we'd been working pretty hard and gotten hot and sweaty, and now as we loaded up the truck the afternoon was fairly done and the air was taking on the chilly cast of evening. Something else was starting to poke up again as well, but I was feeling pretty cocky having discovered that, come untucked during our labors, my shirt was plenty long enough to keep all that quite hidden.

I couldn't figure out why I was so blasted horny. It probably was some bizarre combination of a good honest day's work and the vast lungsful of clean mountain air. At any rate, I figured once I got my turn at the shower just the mild touch of soaping myself up would take care of the problem. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do about the matter of my sole set of clothing being soiled.

As to be expected, Ria seized first shot at the shower. Only there wasn't a shower, just a bath. She was off in the tub splashing away for hours like a child. When she emerged she was flushed from the heat, trotting to the bedroom in just a towel. "Woo! It's chilly in here," she squealed. "Why don't you hop in the tub while I get some dinner going, and then we'll attend to the fireplace."

Actually, the thought of a long hot soak held great appeal. It'd been a long hard day for all of us, and even my penis was pretty tired. I turned on just the hot tap and started taking off my clothes. It didn't occur to me until I was nearly done that Ria had left her clothes exactly as she'd shed them. They lay on the floor like land-mines. I wasn't about to touch them. Maybe she'd arranged them just so to know if I had. I didn't need to bend down to know how fragrant the panties would be so I didn't. It was enough to see that they were these tiny sheer lacey lavender things that I seriously doubted any woman would wear as everyday. I resisted the temptation wholly, except for the old letch between my legs, who certainly rose up for a good long look. I decided that at my imminent and immediate leisure I might start feeling rather sexy. I was working out the logistics of not splashing too obviously when I realized the only washcloth around was Ria's, flung atop the soap unwrung out. The bath, as I shut off the tap, didn't seem inspired to steam the window much less the mirror. I stepped in and it was absolutely tepid. Ria's bath had been no doubt very toasty. Mine hardly had the warmth to make soap work. I sat down in the water and nearly burst into tears.

Almost immediately Ria burst through the door. There wasn't any time to grab the washcloth. She paid me no real mind, "Just thought I'd throw your clothes in the wash while dinner's going." She stooped to gather the laundry and I got a very clear view that under her not- very-long t-shirt Ria was barely clad in a pair of panties that did indeed make the pair on the floor look like everyday wear. Her hair all tucked into the turban of the towel completed her exotic look.

"So yeah and hey thanks for leaving me so much hot water hey okay?" I was feeling pretty cocky having snagged the washcloth.

Ria gathered up the bundle, turning back to me as she paused in the doorway, "Looks to me like you're about to make all the hot water you need."

I couldn't believe my ears. Then again I couldn't believe my eyes. While I was covered, the washcloth hung down limp from some point in the air as if I was performing some trick of levitation. I stayed in the tub as long as I could stand it, which wasn't long at all. My next dilemma was that in all of the bathroom there was just one very small hand towel. It wasn't even big enough to wrap around my middle. I just sort of held it around the front of me, hovering at the cracked doorway calling, "Hello? hello?" I kept up my cry as I skirted around the room and scooted up the hall to the kitchen, where Ria finally acknowledged that I was talking to her. "Towel? towel?" I cried.

"Oh?" she answered. She stayed at the stove and gestured to the back of a chair at the table. "Use mine. Everything else is packed away. Sorry." She made no move to fetch it, leaving it for me to get clear across the kitchen. I sort of danced my way there doing a modified hula. She turned to watch the whole show. "Geez you goof," Ria snickered, "I'm busy with dinner, I'm your sister, and I've seen it all before."