Chapter 2

It took two more days.

Her friends seemed to get over it sooner than she did. By that, I mean that the next day they were right back at the house, trooping in without knocking, like they lived there. Of course it wasn't their pussies that I'd gawked at, so I suppose that wasn't surprising.

The afternoon of the second day, Emma had to leave early for some kind of family get together, and Ashley left with her, saying her parents were going out to dinner that night and she had to babysit. Ashley invited Caitlin to come with, of course, to keep her company while she did that, but Caitlin declined, saying there was something else she needed to do that night.

It turned out what she "needed" to do was talk to her uncle.

I didn't know what was up until after supper, which she prepared while I worked on a project. We had hamburger helper, carrots and fresh bread from the bread machine.

"What are we doing tonight?" I asked, knowing the other two were out of commission for the rest of the day.

"I'm ready to talk," she said, simply.

I sat back, looking at her. For the two days since "the incident" she'd spent most of that time with her friends. Both evenings she'd stayed busy, the first with a long run and the second out at the mall with the other musketeers. I had a credit card I'd gotten just so I could save a hundred dollars on my first purchase, and had intended to cancel it later. But she had arrived for the summer before I did that, so I gave her the card, along with some limitations on its use. That had been the previous year, and she hadn't abused the privilege, so I kept the card for her. I mention this because she brought it up.

"I used the credit card last night at the mall," she said.

"Yeah?" She was supposed to tell me when she used it, and I thought that's what she was doing. "What'd you get?"

"I'd rather show you than tell you," she said.

"Okay."

"And then talk," she added.

"I'm yours all night," I quipped.

She looked startled, and then tilted her head, examining me in a way that made the hairs stand up on my arms. I'd never seen her look at me like that. It's sort of what you think of when you imagine the tiger, in the jungle, peeking through the vegetation at its intended dinner.

She stood up.

"You do the dishes and I'll go get ready to show you what I got."

"Deal," I said.

It didn't take long to get the dishes taken care of. She liked to do them by hand, but I put everything in the dishwasher and wiped down the table and was done in ten minutes.

"I'm ready when you are," I yelled up the stairs.

"Watch TV for a little while," she called back. "I'm not ready yet."

I yelled okay, and went into the den, where I had a big flat screen TV. There were no windows in the den, so I turned on a few lights and sat down on the couch, beside the table I kept the remotes on for all the stuff in there. I was still flipping through 119 channels when she came into the room, wearing my big, fluffy bathrobe.

"You got yourself a bathrobe just like mine!"I grinned at my own ability to make such a clever joke.

"I got what I'm wearing under your robe," she said.

"Okay," I said. I stopped smiling. That's because she wasn't smiling. I realized she was being pretty serious, and then remembered that she'd said she was ready to talk.

That meant this was serious business.

"But I want to talk first," she said.

"I'm all ears," I responded.

"No ... you're not," she said, quite seriously. She said it so seriously, in fact, that I started to get a little worried.

"Sit down, Kat," I said, adopting the nickname her friends constantly used. I only used it rarely, but I wanted her to feel she was with friends.

She did, sitting at the other end of the couch, facing the TV. She turned her head to talk to me.

"Why did you look at me like that?" she asked, without preamble.

I'd thought about this, and what I might, or should say whenever the subject came up. She hadn't seemed freaked out by the whole thing, other than the fact that she'd steered pretty clear of me for two days. I had decided that the truth was the best policy.

"I didn't actually mean to do that," I said. "Stare, I mean. It surprised me. I've heard of girls who ... um ... go without ... but I didn't expect you to be one of them."

She spoke before I could say anything else.

"That was the first time we ever did that," she said.

"We?"

She blushed." All three of us. We left our underwear off after our showers ... to see what it was like. Then we started jumping up and down to see what that looked like." She looked uncomfortable, but went on. "It was to see if it looked sexy or gross," she said.

"I see," I said. "Sounds like a reasonable thing to experiment with. I know trampoline videos are very popular, if that helps."

She blinked and then got it, but didn't smile.

"That's why I was jumping on the bed when I got hurt."

She seemed to be finished with her explanation of why they had been acting like ten year olds, so I went on with my own excuses.

"Anyway, I was surprised. But the thing is, I've seen that sort of thing before and ... well ... yours is really very pretty. I think that's why I stared. It wasn't polite, and I apologize."

"Do you mean that?" she asked, staring at me.

"Yes," I said, seriously. "I'm very sorry that I took advantage of you and stared."

"No," she said, shaking her head. I noticed her hair was down, instead of up in the ponytail she normally kept it in. Her hair went clear to the middle of her back, and when it got tangled it was a pain in the ass to get straight again. So she rarely let it down. She even slept with it in a ponytail. "I mean did you mean it when you said my..." she swallowed before saying the word, "pussy ... is pretty?"

Honesty is the best policy, right?

"Gorgeous," I said, staying serious. "You're going to make some boy very, very happy some day when you let him see it."

"And these?" She cupped her breasts which, even under that thick robe, were a handful.

"Honey, you're what we used to call a stone fox," I said, gently. "You turn men's heads every day, even if you don't know it. I can't imagine what it's like when you're surfing. That bikini you were wearing shows you off nicely. I suspect it looks like a battle field on the beach when you saunter out of the surf, with men dropping like flies, right and left."

"I wear a one piece wet suit when I surf," she said. "That bikini wouldn't last ten minutes in those waves."

"I doubt if that matters," I said. "You look good even sitting there in my robe, and it doesn't show anything. Caitlin, honey, you're just a vibrant, beautiful young woman, and the time is coming when you'll own any man you set your sights on, just by being yourself."

She blushed again, but said, "That's what I don't get. I've seen you look at me hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. But you never looked at me like that. Not like that. You looked ... I don't know ... hungry, maybe? I've seen other guys look at me like that, but not you."

"I know, Baby, and I'm really sorry I couldn't control myself," I moaned. "Like I said, it surprised me. I wasn't ready to see you like that. You're all grown up, but I don't think I realized it until then."

"So it was ... good?" There was hope in her voice that was the quintessential example of a young woman looking for a compliment she didn't think she really deserved. It almost broke my heart, because she deserved all the compliments I'd given her already, and many, many more.

"Understand that when I say it was good, I simply mean I recognized you were desirable and beautiful as a woman," I said. "And yes, I got an erection, but that was just male instinct. I don't want you to think I'd ever try anything with you or anything like that. I was just caught as a man, admiring a beautiful woman at that moment," I said.

"Oh," she said, and her shoulders slumped, like she was disappointed.

"It was a good thing!" I said, agonized that I had somehow hurt her feelings. That feeling of mild panic might have influenced what I said next, as I tried to assure her she was in the upper percentile of beautiful women. "Most guys would have fallen all over themselves to get you naked after seeing that."

She didn't perk up like I had hoped.

"But not you," she said.

"Of course not me," I said, confused. "You're my niece, for Pete's sake. I'm not supposed to have feelings for you like that."

"Oh," she said again, just as dismally as the first time.

"What is with you?" I asked, getting frustrated. "It almost sounds like you want me to have improper feelings for you!"

"Of course I don't," she said, suddenly standing up. "Don't be silly. I know that's not normal. I just don't know what to think about it all. That's all. I'm going to bed. Thanks for the talk."

You know that tone in a woman's voice that, no matter how banal her words are, you get the feeling that her anger is like a crocodile just under the water, and its tail is swimming madly, propelling it toward its prey, and the prey has no clue what's coming?

Well if you don't, you need to learn it, because knowing how to recognize that tone of voice could save you a great deal of anguish some day.

"Wait!" I said, using my grown up voice. I knew she was unhappy, but not why. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong," she said, her voice light.

"Don't bullshit me, Caitlin," I said. "Something is wrong and I want to know what. This was a big deal. At least I think it was a big deal. And I want us to get this worked out so that it doesn't harm our relationship. Now sit back down and let's talk about this."

"We've been talking about it," she snapped. "And you made it very clear how you feel. I understand that. It was an accident, and it didn't mean anything to you, even though you leered at me like some slavering beast! I'm just your little niece and that's all I'll ever be. Fine! Now, can I please go to bed?"

She'd yelled most of that, and screamed a word or two. It had all sounded pretty normal except for one little piece, which was something about her never being anything more than my niece, but I could have been wrong about that. All I knew right then was that she was still trying to run away from some conflict, and I wasn't going to let her do it.

"No!" I yelled back. Then, feeling stupid, I tried to change the subject to give us both time to calm down. "You never showed me what you bought at the mall. Let's do that now."

"Let's not," she said, her teeth firmly closed.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because you won't want to see it, that's why," she said angrily.

"Of course I want to see it," I argued.

"Oh yeah?" She put her hands on her hips. "Oh yeah? Well you asked for it, buster. This is what I got, and I got it just for you!"

She untied the belt of the robe and shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor in a heap behind her. The image of what she looked like is still burned into my brain, even after all the years that have passed. Still, it's not easy to describe, because words just don't do it justice. I'll start by saying it was all black, but in differing thicknesses.

I'll just go from the top down.

Her shoulders were bare except for two spaghetti straps that held up the bra, which was half fancy patterned lace set on a see through foundation. Her nipples were clearly visible, and yet teasingly covered at the same time. From the bottom of the bra hung more of that see-through veiling material, which fell to cover her flat, athletic stomach and the thong panties that hugged her mons below that. The front of that thong was exactly as wide as the gap between her legs, and I would find out, later, that it hid nothing at all. Rather, it framed those bulging pussy lips while denying a man the ability to touch them directly. She had a garter belt on over and above the waistband of the thong, which held up some kind of thigh-high stockings I'd never seen before. There was a lacy pattern to them that wasn't net, and wasn't geometrical in the classic sense of that word, though the pattern did repeat down her legs. She wore no shoes, and among the tumult of things that flashed through my mind was how I hadn't noticed she was wearing black stockings underneath that robe, which only came to her knees.

If it had been white, it would have been the absolute perfect thing for a bride to wear on her wedding night. Being black, with her long, pale, blond hair hanging down, it suggested she was a woman who didn't feel she had the right to wear white any more ... and didn't want to anyway.

It was devastating, because, even mad, she oozed the kind of sexuality that went with her twenty-six-year-old pussy lips. I knew she was seventeen, but I was also convinced that she had as much, if not more sexual experience than I did, and I'd never tumbled to that fact prior to this night.

I felt like a country bumpkin on his first night in the city, facing a thousand dollar a night call girl.

And all I came up with to say was, "Why'd you get that for me?" I think I might have whined it.

"Because I love you, you jerk!" she wailed. "I've loved you since I was ten, and when you got a boner for me, I thought you loved me too!"

She burst into tears and fled.

I confess I noticed her naked ass bouncing up and down as she ran out of the room. That film flew up in the wind of her passage and left nothing to the imagination from behind her. But I only told you that in the interests of honesty, because the next thing I thought about was that she was in pain, and it was the worst kind of pain. It was the heartache of being rejected.

Which was insane, because no man in his right mind would reject her while she was wearing that getup.

I followed her upstairs. I always knocked and, even though her door was open and I could hear her crying, I still tapped my knuckles on the door frame.

"Can I come in?" I asked.

"No!" she sobbed.

"Thank you," I said, as if I'd been invited.

I went to sit on the edge of the bed. She was curled up, facing away from me, which put the pale globes of her ass beautifully on display. I noticed the tan lines left by her bikini and admired them shamelessly.

Sorry. More honesty.

I started to reach to put my hand on her hip, but as naked as it was, I was afraid I'd do something stupid, like caressing it.

"I'm sorry," I said, opening with the line my mother said was the first thing any man should say when a woman was crying, whether it was his fault or not that she was crying. I followed that up with an excuse. "I didn't know."

She looked over her shoulder at me with tearstained cheeks.

"Then you're an idiot. Em and Ash have known about it for years!"

"Let me ask you a question," I said, trying to figure out a way to salvage things. "Do you consider me to be an average kind of guy?"

She stopped crying and looked over her shoulder at me again. This time she pushed her hair out of the way.

"Yes."

"How about you? You about average?"