Chapter 3: Mistress-Daughter

My brother Jim and his wife Cheryl were joining us for dinner again that evening, as they would for all three nights of my short visit home. The conversation was somewhat more subdued than he might have expected and that was understandable, at least to me. I'd played the Dominant for both our mother and father now, exposed their long secret desires for me, and positioned myself as their Mistress-Daughter.

My brother couldn't know any of that, of course, nor even suspect it, but he felt some of their tension, I thought. That was the problem with secrets. They are unnatural to us, unhealthy in any family, and I had sense enough to realize my father was unhappy withholding the truth from his wife. I thought I detected some guilt in him, pangs of conscience which only endeared the man to me all the more.

Our mother handled herself somewhat better, but she'd been dreaming of being my slave, while my father had merely dreamed of fucking me. Mom was burdened with guilt less than she was saddled with desire. She didn't shower me with attention, but Mom was certainly focused on me, sitting close and watching me as Jim and I carried the main course of our dinner conversation.

I wondered if their fantasies had ever extended to my brother. I had a hard time imagining Dad sexually interested in James, but I'd seen much stranger things than that in my young life. Our mom could certainly have had fantasies about fucking her son. He was a good looking man, tall with broad shoulders and a tapering waist. Strong and healthy and handsome in the face beneath his short brown hair and soft brown eyes.

I wouldn't have minded fucking him myself, actually, which was a new thought and guaranteed to make me excited as I sat across from him at the dinner table. Cheryl was beside him, his lovely new bride, not yet ripe with her pregnancy being just eight weeks along. It was a pleasant fantasy and I did try to share it with him, staring into my brother's eyes as we spoke about his new career, smiling softly and nodding. It wasn't a true seduction, it was just attention the way a woman will give it to a man she's sexually interested in, and truthfully I don't think my brother really noticed.

That was only mildly disappointing.

Cheryl and I were alone in the kitchen, everyone else on the back lawn enjoying the warm summer evening. We'd insisted that my mother take a rest after she'd prepared our dinner and this gave Cheryl and me a chance to talk.

"Your brother's quite a man, isn't he?" Cheryl asked me, but I caught her tone and it wasn't really a question.

She'd seen the looks I'd given Jim and understood them immediately, which surprised me for some reason, although I'm not sure why. I suppose it's because I'd imagined Cheryl to be the docile housewife, barefoot and pregnant. She was very pretty, and even intelligent with a dry wit, but so perceptive? I hadn't been doing anything provocative, just looking, and I wondered why she'd picked up on that.

Either she was a highly jealous woman or perhaps she'd been hurt in the past; probably both, I thought. She didn't trust Jim around any woman it seemed, even his own sister. And it was interesting that she'd picked up on my interest, but hadn't come right out with a condemnation of it. That would have seemed a more natural reaction, I thought. Most people would find even the suggestion of incestuous curiosity distasteful. Normal people.

"I love him," I smiled at her innocently. The last thing I wanted was my brother's wife for an enemy. I wanted very much to be her friend.

"I can tell," Cheryl was trying to pick a fight, her voice tainted with just enough sarcasm that I'd get the point, but not so much she couldn't deny it if she had to.

The woman was baiting me and I wasn't angry with her, just disappointed more than anything else. Something was bothering her, something other than finding my incestuous blue eyes fixed deliberately on her man. Cheryl should have been confiding in me. Instead she was blaming me for doing nothing more than finding Jim attractive. That was hardly a crime in my opinion, but I wasn't my brother's wife either.

"What's wrong, Cheryl?" I asked her gently, pausing as I dried the dishes and looking at the woman.

She looked at me sharply, perhaps thinking I'd taken up her challenge, but when Cheryl saw my face she knew I was only concerned for her. The realization made her blush slightly and she was perhaps chiding herself inwardly for being so foolish. Her hostility disappeared suddenly, as if it had never existed, and that was a symptom of something, but I wasn't sure what. Depression maybe?

"I'm sorry ... I..." Cheryl gave me a wan smile.

"It's okay," I said seriously, "You can tell me." I put a hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her.

Something was bothering Cheryl, that much was immediately clear, but she'd been hiding it well. The young twenty year old needed to tell someone because that too is the nature of secrets, they aren't really very good if someone else doesn't know. Keeping whatever was wrong bottled up could only make it worse and she was smart enough to know that.

"I think..." she took a deep breath, turning her hazel eyes away for a moment and then bringing them back to look up into mine.

"What is it?" I nodded slowly.

"I think Jim is cheating on me," Cheryl said and then her whole body seemed to sag, like she was tired of holding herself up and now that she'd said it, Cheryl could let herself relax finally.

"I see," I narrowed my eyes a little, trying to understand why my brother would do that.

He was fresh out of college, where he'd met Cheryl. I wasn't sure how long they'd dated, but they'd been married only six months, and the woman was already pregnant with their child. My brother and his wife were still newlyweds really, and she wasn't unattractive by any means, they made a very lovely couple. I just couldn't see a reason for Jim wanting to fool around in those circumstances. But maybe there was no reason. We each have our faults and Jim's logic might make sense only to himself.

It could also be that Cheryl was mistaken. She was a new wife and pregnant for the first time. And she was worried about changing, probably. Gaining weight, getting a big tummy, swollen breasts, stretch marks and all that happy stuff. Not to mention the hormonal changes, the chemicals in her head getting out of balance as she tried to cope with the biology of it. Cheryl could imagine all sorts of bad things as her self-confidence was challenged.

I never wanted to get pregnant, personally. I'd leave that for Katrina when the time came and play the role of sympathetic male. I was definitely not mommy material.

We sat down then; the dishes could wait and this was much more important. I liked Cheryl and I thought she liked me, despite her warranted paranoia about my love for my brother, which she seemed willing to forgive and forget. He was my brother, after all, and her perceptions may have been wrong.

"I don't really know for sure," Cheryl spoke softly, sitting close to me and touching her flat stomach subconsciously.

"But you suspect something," I nodded. "Has he..." I made an apologetic gesture, " ... cheated on you before?"

"Jim?" Cheryl frowned. "No, I don't think so, but he had girls, a lot of girls before me. I know that."

"Yeah," I smiled slightly. "He always had a lot of girlfriends."

"I know," Cheryl pursed her lips. "I've met some of them. By accident, you know?"

"Really?" I looked a her, not quite understanding.

"I mean, we'll be in a restaurant or at the mall, and a woman will say hi to him," Cheryl shrugged. "He'll introduce us. You know Jim, he's a nice guy so ... I have to smile and listen to them for a minute, catching up."

I nodded thoughtfully. Cheryl wasn't from our city, she'd grown up in a smaller town and so I hadn't appreciated some of the difficulties she'd faced moving here with Jim. Meeting her husband's old flames couldn't have helped settle her in very much, I was sure. No woman wants to be reminded that she wasn't her husband's first and only love. I knew some of those girls too. I'd been a couple years ahead of them in high school and they could be real catty bitches, a few of them.

"Maybe I'm just ... scared," Cheryl laughed weakly and she looked so pretty sitting there, so small and vulnerable suddenly. She was going to cry.

"Hey, come on," I stood up, moving close to Cheryl as she sat there. I put my arms around her shoulders, hugging her as her own arms encircled my waist.

That was what she needed, a real friend, some genuine warmth and compassion from someone who cared, that was the biggest thing. Cheryl cried a little, but for herself I think more than any real disappointment with Jim, or anger or anything like that. And it wasn't self-pity, it wasn't a bad cry, it was just a release and a welcome one.

I held her for a long while like that, stroking her shoulders and back, kissing her silky auburn hair as a sister should, and feeling her flushed cheeks against my tummy. I didn't know if my brother was cheating on Cheryl or not, but I did make the woman a silent promise to find out. My personal opinions on fidelity notwithstanding, the woman didn't deserve or need such doubts at that point in her life.

An hour before I couldn't have cared less if James fucked around. I might even have found it amusing, but not anymore. It's funny how quickly our opinions can change.

"Hey," I smiled at my brother, catching him alone finally.

It was an hour after Cheryl's little cry and she was feeling better, sitting in the family room with my parents. My brother and his wife would be going home soon as it was approaching nine o'clock already. None of my family were in the habit of staying up late, a fact which made me very happy I lived in Vegas.

I didn't usually get out of bed until eight at night.

"Hi," Jim looked down at me as I cornered him against the wall. We were in the hallway just outside the upstairs bathroom.

"We haven't had a chance to talk, have we?" I said quietly.

I was standing close to him, close enough so my braless breasts were very nearly rubbing the man's chest. I was wearing an old college sweatshirt, soft fleece and not oversized the way they usually are, this one was smaller and tight around my tits and Jim couldn't help but notice.

"Uh, not really," he chuckled softly and licked his lips. "How have you been?"

"Shut up!" I laughed. "Seriously though, can we have lunch tomorrow? I'll come by the station."

"Uh, sure," Jim shrugged. "How about I meet you someplace? I know a good..."

"No, Jim ... I want to see where you work!" I twisted my hips, swinging my breasts back and forth slightly and he was trying not to stare. "I'll come by around eleven, okay?"

"Okay," he swallowed hard and then laughed. "I'll give you the tour, but there isn't much to, uh ... Not much to see, sis."

"Oh, I'm sure there's a lot more going on there than most people think," I giggled, really teasing him hard and he was plainly confused by it.

"Have you been in the sherry again?" he grinned at me, reminding me of the time my best friend and I had gotten drunk after school one day when I was fifteen.

"Not me," I shook my head. "I'm a tequila girl, Jim."

"Ah, tequila," he nodded like that made sense.

"I like to eat the worm," I laughed.

"Uhhh ... Okay, Susan," he made a face. "What's up? What did I do?"

We'd been very close growing up, my brother and I, and being separated the past few years hadn't really hurt our relationship. There'd never been anything sexual about it, at least on my part, except for the one kiss I'd given him. I'm sure all brothers and sisters do that though, just once in an unguarded moment of happy curiosity.

I'd been almost 18 years old and Jim 16 then, and we'd kissed. A real one, a deep French kiss and it had made us both laugh nervously and blush a little, and we'd never taken it farther. I hadn't even considered it. It had been a kiss, that's all; just an experiment and it hadn't hurt us in any way, or driven us to uncontrollable incestuous lust. Far from it, that one kiss had told me all I needed to know: Jim was my brother and I loved him, but not like that. Not right then.

And now here I was teasing him like an old girlfriend and he knew it was a tease. Jim knew there was a reason for it because he understood me well enough to know that I liked to use my sexuality as a weapon, even with him. I'd done it before and there was no promise in it, not even a suggestion really. It was just a way to make him uncomfortable and vulnerable, distracted so that he'd be unprepared for what I really wanted to ask. It was my personal version of a lie detector and it worked amazingly well.

But now he was suspicious and I rolled my eyes, wishing that he didn't know me so well. My questions would have to wait for the next day and I'd try something different. I wouldn't just come out with it, ask Jim if he was cheating on his wife, although I'd probably be able to tell if he was lying anyway. That just wasn't fun enough. It was so much better to make a game of it for that was a part of my nature, for better or worse.

I liked to manipulate people.

"Make love to your wife tonight," I told my brother. "She needs you."

"Uh-huh," he sighed. "What did she say?"

"She's just lonely, a little confused," I said seriously. "She's pregnant, Jim. She's ... a little insecure about it."

"Yeah, I know," he nodded. "I'll talk to her."

"Don't talk to her!" I laughed. "Just make her feel good. Make her special, okay?"

"She is special," Jim smiled at me.

"Well. Then we're agreed," I nodded, giving my loose black hair a little toss.

"Thanks, Susan."

"Just doing my sisterly duty," I giggled, letting James hold me in a soft hug for a long minute.

It felt nice, real nice and I rubbed his back as my breasts pressed against his chest. My nipples were hard and I felt a little tremble in my tummy and I suddenly wished I'd fucked him all those years ago, just once, just so I'd know how it felt making love to my own brother. And that wicked thought warmed me nicely all over so that I took a deep breath when Jim let me go.

It was a hypocrisy, I know, considering my professed concern for Cheryl, but he was my brother. My blood. And it was all just in my head. I wasn't fucking him, not yet.

I looked in his eyes, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking and I tried to discern if I'd felt Jim's penis hard against me or not, but I hadn't noticed anything and so I felt some small pang of disappointment. A girl could get used to this incest thing; I smiled, thinking of my parents waiting for us downstairs. My brother may or may not have been interested in me, but at least I knew my mother and father were. That was enough for the moment.

"Let's play a game," I said lightly.

My brother had left twenty minutes before, taking Cheryl home and soon making love to her, I hoped. My parents and I were sitting in the family room, which was where we lived really. It was large and overcrowded with books and photographs and the everyday things which make up twenty years of family life. My parents had bought that house when I was three and I'd known no other until I'd left for college.

"A game?" my father grunted, holding a tumbler of scotch. He didn't drink a lot, but he had a glass once in awhile and he'd been nursing it for some time.

"What do you mean, Susan?" Mom licked her lips.

"It's called, I have a secret," I smiled. "And it's really easy."

"I'm a little too old for games, honey," Dad chuckled and swallowed the rest of his drink.

"Not for this one," I promised him. "I'll start."

"Uh..." my dad shrugged and put his glass down on the end table near his leather recliner. Mom and I were sitting together on the sofa.

"I have a secret," I giggled. "I'm bisexual, Daddy. I have a girlfriend named Katrina and I love her, very much..."

"Susan, you don't have to..." my dad cleared his throat.

" ... and I wanted to bring her here to meet you both," I gave a little sigh. "But Katrina was worried about how you guys might react."

"You should have!" Mom smiled at me, touching my knee. "We'd love to meet her, wouldn't we?"

Mom was looking at Dad and I knew she'd be happy, this wasn't a secret from her. It was my father's reaction I was interested in and I turned to see him shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

"I guess if uh, well..." his brown eyes were soft. "I've never tried to tell you what to do, Susan. It's your life and..."