Chapter 3

After refilling our glasses I brought out the chocolate-dipped crostini, drizzled in maple, sea salt, and finely chopped cashews. Violet groaned and held up her hand in a stop gesture, then flipped it to open her palm while she turned away and dramatically covered her eyes in shame. “Just one.” She peeked back. “Maybe two.”

“Next time I’ll make salted butter caramel ice cream.”

She groaned again. “Brother, you’re going to kill me.”

“Never.” I kissed the top of her head. “Another movie?”

“Sure.” We carried our dessert and wine to the lounge. “Like before?” she asked quietly.

“Okay.” I figured that she needed a little more comfort at the end of the day. I dragged the occasional table close to the sofa and slid onto the leather. Violet sat happily between my legs, pulling the blanket over her thighs. “What were you thinking of?”

“Not sure.” She brought up the remote and flicked through the offerings while nibbling on the crostini with her small white teeth. Her thumb paused. “Oh. The Handmaiden. Have you seen it?”

“No. I intended to. Subtitled?”

“Yes, you Philistine.” She elbowed my thigh.

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Yeah. But it’s a great movie, and it’s been awhile.”

“Okay.” I settled back, took a sip of my wine, and wrapped my arms around her. Violet snuggled back against me, her head resting just under my chin.

It turned out to be a very good Korean movie, lushly shot, the plot full of twists and turns. It was also intensely erotic.

A half hour in, the titular handmaiden was washing her mistress in a copper tub, checking the sharp edge of a tooth with the pad of her thumb. There was something deeply sensual about the fully dressed girl kneeling next to her naked, beautiful mistress, her thumb pushed inside the red painted Cupid’s bow of a mouth, stroking back and forth...

I felt myself growing erect.

This is ridiculous, I thought.

I’d been aware of the tension in my body well before arriving in Vancouver. It had been a long time since I’d had a partner: constant travel made maintaining any kind of relationship almost impossible. I’d given up on sex for the past eighteen months, devoting myself to work.

But after my initial grief and the formalities of my father’s funeral and bequest, I’d found myself constantly horny. There was just something about the nearness of death that made me desperately want to fuck, some ancient atavistic impulse to reproduce before the threatening face of doom.

None of this was helped by the fact that, under the blanket, quite unconsciously, Violet’s fingers were slowly stroking against my ankle as she watched the movie.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. I wanted to move, but I feared that any motion might bring my erection against my sister’s back. The movie went on. I grew harder.

Underneath the blanket the hem of Violet’s black cotton tank top had ridden up, exposing a tiny area of warm skin to my fingertips. I could feel her stomach rising and falling with each slow breath.

I gritted my teeth, trying to think of anything else. I couldn’t shift away: there was no place to move.

Violet reached for her glass and took another sip of wine. Her fingers stopped moving for a moment, then resumed their slow strokes against my skin.

I was aching, throbbing hard. Violet wriggled on the sofa, making herself comfortable, pushing back against me. She had to be able to feel me. Had to.

I swallowed. “Um, Vi?”

“Uh-huh?” Her voice was quiet, calm.

“I need to...” Orgasm like there’s no tomorrow, my brain filled in for me. “Um, I need to use the bathroom.”

“Oh. Okay.” She shifted forward a little. Holding back a gasp of relief, I slipped off the sofa.

Shutting the bathroom door, I gripped the edge of the vanity and shook my head, staring at myself in the mirror. What the fuck, man. My reflection did not provide any answers.

I thought about jerking off to relieve myself, but that felt weird, and Violet would expect me back in moments. Instead I ran cold water over my wrists until my fingers throbbed, splashing a little on my face for good measure. I felt my self-control return by degrees.

“Sorry for the timing.” I apologized as I returned.

“It’s okay.” Violet picked up the remote. We watched the last five minutes with me sitting beside her.

“That was very good,” I concluded.

“It’s one of my favourites.”

I picked up the wine bottle and sloshed it from side to side; there was maybe a glass left.

Vi, lying blissfully on the couch, raised her empty glass and wiggled it in her fingers. “Split it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yep. Two glasses is unlucky. Says so in the Talmud.”

How could she possibly know that? Maybe she’d picked up from the terrible supernatural thriller she was in two years ago.

Filling her glass, I noticed that Violet’s cheeks were flushed. She’d never been a big drinker, and the antidepressants had meant that she’d been unable to have any alcohol for years. Violet was tiny; no wonder she had zero tolerance to the wine. But I figured a half glass couldn’t do any harm.

I poured the lion’s share for myself, sitting in the space between the sofa and the table. We sat together in silence for a while, drinking. Violet pulled the blanket up closer to her shoulders.

“I was imagining,” Violet said. “How different things might have been if we’d grown up together.”

“Vi, we did.”

“I don’t mean that.” The level of wine in her glass swayed precariously as she waved her hand back and forth. “I mean as teenagers. In the same house.”

“That ... would have required very different circumstances.”

Violet nodded and fell into silence for a moment. “You saved me, you know,” she said quietly.

I looked up. “Vi...”

“Those late night talks. You were always there, no matter what.”

The internet, in a sense, had saved us both. It had been the medium that had kept us together through the madness and chaos of our separated lives.

I tried to lighten the tone a little. “You helped me too. A lot. I wasn’t the most confident kid. You convinced me to try.”

She grinned. “I remember. Your first date ... who was that?”

“Avery. Avery Johnston.” I couldn’t ever forget that name. Or her incredible hourglass figure when she finally taken off her bra in the passenger seat of my car on our third date. The paleness of her skin glowing in the moonlight above False Creek. The heat of our bodies filling the car.

I took another swallow of the wine.

“That’s the one. The way you rehearsed everything with me. What you’d say. It was so cute.”