It wasn’t a shotgun wedding, as far as I could tell, but their relationship had been, shall we say, a little stormy, for as long as I could remember. When Dad left us I don’t think it was a surprise to anyone really.

He went after a particularly nasty row which I managed to avoid mostly by playing loud music through my earbuds and putting a pillow over my head.

It wasn’t too long after that when she started dating Peter and the change in her was dramatic. It was lovely to see her happy after so long in an apparently loveless relationship, and I loved Peter simply for the joy he brought her.

Peter had an eighteen-year-old son Hugh who I was very nervous about meeting for the first time, but I needn’t have worried, he was a really nice guy. He was from much the same mold as his father, and we got on really well from the outset. He actually properly listened to me and he was so funny, and at times even flirted with me a little. Oh, and did I mention he was very easy on the eye. He was really hunky without being all ‘roid pumped up - lovely.

In fact, the only disappointing thing about Hugh was that he had a girlfriend, Olivia. She was at the same school as us and I thought she was a bit, well, slutty. She was pretty enough but I’d often see her flirting with other boys, and I kind of hated her for that.

After a whirlwind romance, our folks got married and we all moved into a new house bought from the proceeds of each of our properties. It obviously wasn’t quite that simple, but the end result was that we were all living pretty happily under one roof together.

Although I fancied Hugh there were a lot of other boys at school that I liked the look of, and I tried not to obsess about him. Not too much anyway.

There was this one boy, Paul Jones, who particularly caught my eye. He was two years above me but I could tell that he was interested by the way his eyes always followed me whenever we ran into each other.

After much batting of eyelids and coy messages passed between friends, he eventually asked me to meet him under the bleachers after school.

I was so excited when I went there and saw him waiting. After a little chat, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. It was my first ever open mouth kiss and I loved it, but his hands were everywhere and I had to fight him off constantly from getting inside my clothes.

Then he did it. He grabbed both of my hands in one of his and then pushed his other hand up my skirt. I couldn’t move, I just froze. I tried to scream for him to stop but he still had his tongue down my throat. Then he got into my panties and shoved a finger right up into my vagina.

I was dry and it hurt like hell. It felt awful and I fought like crazy to get away from him and eventually somehow managed it. I ran home, crying all the way and constantly looking behind, terrified that he might be chasing me.

When I got home I threw myself onto my bed and cried my eyes out. I couldn’t believe that he’d been so mean. If he’d just been nice...

That was when I heard Hugh.

“What’s wrong Keira?” he said softly to me. “What’s happened?” The bed dipped as he sat on it and then I felt his hand stroking my back.

I threw myself at him, burying my face in his neck and throwing my arms around him. I clung to him desperately and I could feel my snot and tears all over his neck, but he didn’t seem to mind, he just held me tightly, stroking me so, so gently.

“It was so awful,” I told him, through my sniffles when I could finally speak. “We were kissing and then... “ I could feel his body stiffen as he imagined the worst. “And then he just forced his fingers inside me and it really hurt! I couldn’t stop him!” I broke down and again he comforted me patiently until I’d recovered enough to carry on.

“Who was it?” he asked, and I could hear an anger in his voice that I’d never heard from him before.

“Paul Jones,” I said, looking up at him, and I saw that his face was like thunder. Then he softened it when he saw me looking, and there was nothing but fondness and concern in his expression. He stroked the hair, that was matted with my tears, away from my face.

“Did he do anything else?”

“No, eventually I managed to fight him off, otherwise... “ I felt myself losing control again but his strong arms around me made me feel so safe that it passed. I was so incredibly grateful to him for the way he was looking after me.

“Why can’t other boys be more like you?” I asked him and, without even thinking about it, I kissed him. The effect on me was extraordinary: my whole body lit up with a wonderful warm glow and my heart seemed to falter. I couldn’t speak and just gazed at him, very confused but very, very happy all of a sudden.

Then the moment was broken as I looked at his neck and saw the mess of my tears and worse there.

“God, I’m so sorry!” I said and tried to wipe it away but he took my hand in his.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said, carefully wiping the remaining tears from my face. “Are you going to be OK?” I nodded and he kissed me, his lips barely touching mine, but even so it made me tremble all over.

When he left me alone I couldn’t stop thinking about him and the way he’d made me feel. I wanted desperately to run to him and to have him hold me again, kiss me, and ... so much more.

I wasn’t even sure whether it was legal for me and Hugh to be together so I Googled it. It was a huge relief that legally it was OK and most people didn’t seem to think it was a problem at all.

That was all very well but I didn’t really know how he felt about me ... and there was Olivia ... and our parents. I was very confused.

At school the next day I was in constant dread of seeing Paul again. Eventually, after lunch, I saw him coming towards me in the corridor and my stomach clenched in fear. Then I saw the expression on his face and he looked even more frightened than I was. He was walking with a limp and he moved as far away from me as he could. When we passed I could see that he had a black eye, a cut and swollen lip, and scrapes on his cheeks.

A few minutes later my friend Sue came running up to me.

“Did you see Paul Jones?” she asked excitedly, and I nodded. “Your brother did that! I saw it all. He was awesome!” My first thought was to worry about my brother.

“Is Hugh OK?”

“He’s fine, I don’t think he’s got a scratch on him. Do you know what it was about?””

I felt elated that Hugh had taken it on himself to make sure Paul wouldn’t hurt me again, but I didn’t really want to explain it all to Sue.

“I guess they had an argument.” I offered, a bit weakly.

“Well, I hope it was worth it,” she replied. “he’s got a week’s detention for doing it.”

That evening I sat impatiently in my room, waiting for Hugh to get back. When I heard him go into his room I ran straight in and threw myself into his arms. I was intending to give him a peck of a kiss but I just couldn’t stop kissing him.

“Steady on Sis,” he said laughing, as he held me at arm’s length.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I told him sternly and then broke into a grin. “But thank you so much.” I grabbed him round the neck and pulled him in for another few kisses.

“He’s lucky I didn’t kill him, the little shit,” he said, and I could tell that he meant every word.

“I love you so much.” I blurted out, and in that moment realized that I meant it with all my heart.

“I love you too short-stuff, but I’ve got homework to do,” he said and steered me out of his room with a hand on my bottom that made me quiver with excitement.

Later in bed, I masturbated to the memory of those kisses, imagining his hands on my breasts and then working their way slowly down to my pussy. When I imagined his lips on my pussy I came harder and longer than I ever had before.

From then on I was constantly thinking about him and imagining what his cock would feel like inside me.

Whenever we were apart I longed to be near him and I spent more and more time in his room, generally lying on his bed and rolling around, flashing my prettiest panties at him and chatting about mostly nonsense: boys or homework or TV or whatever.

I could see that he got hard and he laughed at all the right places and never asked me to leave.

At the end of those sessions, I kissed him to thank him for his patience and for being such a good brother. The kisses turned me on just as much as showing him my underwear and I often wanked afterward, always to fantasies about him.

I thought the trouble was that he was still seeing me as a little girl. I needed him to see me as a young woman, with a young woman’s needs and desires.

I was pondering the problem one night, idly stroking myself, when I heard Hugh go past on his way to the bathroom. I opened my door about six inches and then got back into bed. I took off the nighty I was wearing, pushed down the covers, and lay on my back in what I hoped was a natural position, with my legs slightly bent and my hand resting on my inner thigh. From where I was lying I could see the doorway reflected in the mirror on my dressing table.

I only really intended to let him see my body and hopefully start him thinking about me sexually, but as soon as I saw him stop in the doorway I got incredibly excited knowing he was looking at my naked body.

When I saw his hand go to his groin and rub himself, my own hand crept along my thigh and came to rest on my pussy. My heart was pounding in my chest: it was so incredibly exciting playing with my pussy while he watched me and rubbed his cock.

Then he started to come into the room. I shut my eyes and waited, desperate for the first feel of his touch on me. But what I actually felt was the covers sliding up over my body. Fuck! He was covering me up. Didn’t he like what he saw? But he’d touched himself! Then I felt the lightest of kisses on my lips. My pussy clenched and my fingers thrust inside my pussy as I hoped with all my heart for more kisses. But none came and when I finally risked opening my eyes he was gone and the door was shut.

He must have been convinced that I was asleep and his noble fucking personality wouldn’t let him take advantage of me! I cursed him and loved him desperately all at the same time as I wanked myself silly to the memory of his eyes on me and that lovely, tiny kiss.

A couple of days later Mom and Peter went out for the night. I went to Hugh’s room as soon as they were out of the door. I couldn’t really bring up that night without admitting I’d been awake, so I decided to try a different tack.

“Do you have sex with Olivia?” I asked him as I sat down on his bed. He looked at me for quite a while before answering.

“I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you Keira.”

“Ha - so you do have a sex life!. I’d love to have sex but I don’t trust boys at school anymore. Not to be mean. Not to hurt me.”

“Yeah,” He said sympathetically. “I can understand that after ... you know.”

“I trust you though...”

“Keira, we --” He started to say, but I wanted to say my piece first.

“I love you and I want us to be together,” I told him earnestly, looking directly into his eyes. He said nothing so I plowed on. “When I kiss you it feels ... it feels like my heart might burst with happiness and my whole body tingles.” I went over to him, bent over, and kissed him long and hard and I could feel him trembling.

“Does it feel like that when you kiss Olivia?” I asked him softly.

“I like her a lot and she’s great fun...” he replied, looking a bit confused.

“But...?” I encouraged him.

“But, no,” he confessed quietly. “it doesn’t.”

I pulled him to his feet and kissed him again, slipping my tongue into his mouth for the first time. Our tongues entwined and I absolutely loved it. My pussy was throbbing like crazy and I pushed myself against him and was overjoyed to feel his hard dick pressing against me.