Epilogue

I enjoyed the tactile sensation of my sister's naked flesh beneath my fingers. It had been a long time since I had last caressed her like this. Three years had passed since my sister and I had last made love, two and a half since she had become Mrs. Cartright. Now I was home from college for the weekend specifically because she and Paul were visiting.

If my parents or her husband could see us they would probably disapprove, even though none of them would have even a spark of an idea of what we had once been - of what had once gone on between us. And though Amanda was in my old bedroom semi-nude, it wasn't like we were about to renew the incestuous relationship we had once had. Instead she sat on the foot of my bed in a pair of white cotton panties, a bath towel covering her ripe breasts and the front of her body. She had just finished a shower and was now getting a neck massage - reclaiming the use of a skill that she had taught me during the days when we had been lovers; a skill I now used to relieve the ache in her neck, shoulders, and back that the pull of her body and the baby growing within her was causing. She was beautifully and gloriously into her eighth month of pregnancy, her swelling abdomen barely hidden by the towel she held. Her breasts, ample when she wasn't pregnant, must have increased from her normal 36D to 38DD, and the nipples, preparing for the day a infant would suckle from them, were as large as I had ever seen them, their shape discernable even through the terrycloth curtaining them.

"Oooo... Oh God, Ken. That feels so good." Amanda cooed.

"Always glad to be of service." I replied, kneading the knots out of her neck.

"Just keep doing what you're doing. You're making me feel so much better." she sighed.

"How about now?" I teased, slipping my fingers down across the sides of her swollen mammaries for just a second.

"Now stop that. You don't own those anymore, you know."

"Bummer!" I retorted with a laugh.

Amanda responded with a laugh of her own. "And stop pressing your hard-on into my back like that. That's not the way BROTHERS are supposed to act."

I feigned indignation. "I am not pressing my hard-on into you. You're the one who keeps leaning back against me. That's not the way SISTERS are supposed to act."

"Point taken," she agreed, her laughter continuing. "Still, you are a pervert, Kenneth."

I chuckled. "And what makes you say that?"

"You know EXACTLY what makes me say that!" she shot back at me. "You're getting all excited over touching your pregnant sister. Doesn't that strike you as being just a little warped?"

"Which part?" I retorted. "The pregnant part or the sister part? Because if you're talking about the pregnant part, there's nothing perverted about it. Pregnant women are a real turn-on. It's just simple biology."

"Really?" Amanda said, amused. "What makes you say that?"

"Just think about it, Sis." I said, taking on the role of lecturer. "The whole goal of sex for the male is to pass on his genetic heritage, so when he sees a woman swollen up in pregnancy like you are - a woman who is obviously fertile - then what else can you expect him to do but to be turned on by her. It's just evolution in action."

My sister pondered the information I had given her. "You might have a point there," she conceded. "Paul seems to be turned on all the time ever since I began to show. I thought he would see me as fat and not be interested in sex, but that doesn't seem to be the case." Amanda blushed a deep shade of pink. "In fact, we seem to make love more now than we did before I became this way. Which is just as well, since I seem to be horny ALL the time."

I smiled at my sister's candid admission. "That's just hormones at work in your case. But as for your husband, take my word," I assured her, "pregnant women are very sexy."

"I'll keep that in mind." she answered, leaning her head back as I continued massaging down across her shoulders. She sighed softly.

I continued working her neck and shoulders for several minutes until Amanda gave a sudden little yelp.

"What's wrong?" I inquired with concern. "I didn't pinch you, did I?"

"No," she replied softly. "The baby just kicked me. Here, give me your hand."

I did as she asked, placing my hand into her smaller feminine one. She brought it under the towel covering her breasts, placing it on the rounded swelling of her belly.

She positioned my hand. "Right about there," she instructed. "Just wait a bit. There's usually more than one kick."

I only had to wait about fifteen seconds before I was rewarded with the sensation of not another kick, but of the movement of the baby's foot across the inner surface her womb as it shifted position. It was a completely new experience for me - an intimacy as profound as but totally different from the sexual one we had once shared. Amanda was reveling in the sensation of her baby moving within her. She had that glow - that aura of well-being that pregnant women sometimes seem to radiate.

I had to comment. "That must really be weird feeling that movement inside you."

"Well, yes and no," she answered. "Its different from anything I had experienced before I became pregnant, but I've only felt it happening gradually as the baby has grown, so I'm used to it."

I felt a kick - a fairly sharp one.

"There's a good one," I told her.

"Like I might not have noticed?" she laughed. "Did you feel how strong that one was? I can't even guess what I'm going to be feeling in another month."

"You'll be fine," I assured her, cradling her in my arms, both of my hands caressing her pregnant stomach.

We continued like that for several minutes, her snuggling back against me with her head back against my shoulder, my fingers touching her, feeling the occasional movements within her womb.

"Is this what you do with your husband?" I queried. "Have him hold you while he feels his child within you?"

"Sometimes," she confirmed. "Or sometimes I press myself into his back at night and let him feel the movement inside me." She smiled, the glow upon her still. "But my favorite is when he lays his head on me while he caresses the baby within me. He says he can hear the baby's heartbeat when he puts his ear on my tummy."

"That's sweet," I told her as I enjoyed our embrace.

We remained like that for several minutes before Amanda reluctantly pulled away for me.

"I'd better get into some clothes before Mom and Dad get home from work," she explained.

"Probably should," I agreed.

Amanda lowered the towel she had been holding as she rose from the foot of the bed, allowing me a good look at her semi-naked pregnant body. She did so without embarrassment, casual nudity between us remaining unremarkable after our previous torrid affair. She picked up the white terrycloth robe she had left across the back of my chair.

I returned to more mundane concerns. "So," I inquired, "How is Paul doing lately?"

Amanda slipped her arms into her robe. "Busy as always," she assured me. "You know how it is every time Microsoft releases a new version of Windows."

Actually, I didn't know, but I could imagine. Amanda's husband Paul was one of the three head programmers for a small Silicon Valley software company that made security and firewall software for the server market. His job was to find vulnerabilities in Windows and plug the security holes. Normally it is steady Monday to Friday work as hackers are always finding new ways to trick and/or attack the Windows family of operating systems, but when a new Windows version or Service Pack comes out it becomes sixteen hour days and seven days a week for weeks at a time until the inevitable bugs are discovered and fixes created.

"Sorry to hear that. Will things be back to normal before your due date arrives?"

"Long before that, I hope. The hot fixes for the current version are supposed to go out next week, and the new version of the software should be on the market by the end of the month, so we should be back to an almost normal life at the beginning of my ninth month. Don't worry. Paul has promised me that he will be right there with me in the delivery room when the baby arrives."

"I certainly hope so," I agreed. "And what about your job? How is the advertising world treating you?"

"Really well. I'm doing the artwork for a new vacation website account, plus updating the graphics for several of our previous accounts. And I have a special little project I'm working on. There's this indie Hollywood producer that has noticed some of my work. I'll be doing some storyboards for his next project. The pay's shitty, but it does get me into the movie business. Should be fun and I don't even have to quit my day job."

I was glad to hear that my sister and her husband were successes. Amanda had joined one of the larger L.A. advertising firms as an apprentice and had advanced rapidly, her raw talent propelling her along. Although her salary would never make her filthy rich (even with performance bonuses), it was above average for someone in her position and would only increase over time. On the other hand, her husband's salary (WITHOUT performance bonuses) was twice Amanda's, and he probably already possessed a half-million dollars worth of stock in a company that had not only survived but also prospered through the dot.com debacle (I guess plugging holes in Microsoft's software remains a growth industry). And if the worst ever happened to his present employer, he would still be all right. Head programmers would always be in demand - there just weren't that many people around like Amanda's husband Paul who possessed the witchlike ability to look at raw code and see the bugs in it BEFORE they made their presence known in various unpleasant ways. He would always have a job, and she would probably be a junior partner in her firm in a couple years and a full partner ten years after that.

"So what about this neck of the woods?" Amanda said. "Anything interesting happening in your life?"

"Well, I ran into Sandy Morris the other day." I replied casually.

My sister made the connection. "The girl who took your cherry?"

"The same," I affirmed. "She got religion, you know. Quit sleeping around."

"I hadn't heard that," Amanda commented. "I wouldn't have expected it of her. So how is she doing?"

"Conversion seems to have taken in her case. She's married to one of the men in her church. Even has a baby girl now."

"That's nice," my sister sighed sympathetically. "I'm glad she found somebody. There were enough other guys around who treated her like shit." My sister gave me a pointed look, "And I'm including you as part of that group."

I blushed, embarrassed at the memories of my own callousness. "Not my finest moment, I have to admit. Still, I did have enough decency to feel guilty when I dumped her. I'm glad that she's happy."

"And what's happening with you, Little Brother? How are you and Cindy doing lately?"

I had been expecting the conversation to turn to that subject - it always did when my sister and I got together. Amazingly, and completely contrary to my own expectations, Cindy and I had been going together for almost the entire time since Amanda's wedding. My sister always displayed a kind of bemused sense of wonder at this development. Though she had been the first to see the possibility, it wasn't something she would have predicted would ever REALLY happen.

Neither Cindy nor I had gotten together looking for anything permanent. Maybe that was why we had hit it off so well - because we had possessed no expectations toward each other. We had been under no pressure to get along or make things work. Hell, we had even gone out on dates with other people, but when nothing had developed with those others, we had always seemed to get back together - two people between relationships killing time with each other until someone else more suitable came along. We had both expected that that "someone more suitable" would arrive for one or both of us within a relatively short time.

Only "someone more suitable" had never shown up.

In the meantime, I had discovered that we meshed quite well with each other. We shared similar tastes in most things - music, literature, movies - you name it. We enjoyed doing the same things. But primarily, I enjoyed just being in her presence, spending time with her, conversing with her, listening to her talk. And she seemed to feel the same way toward me.

Even so, I had never even realized how much was happening between us until one day when Cindy asked me up to her little apartment and, in an uncertain stumbling voice, had confessed that she thought she might be falling in love with me and had asked me how I felt toward her. I had seen fear in her eyes when she made this revelation. She had seen all the reasons that a real relationship between us might not work. She was three years my senior. She was my sister Amanda's best friend. During the entire time we had been going out with each other we had never discussed any kind of commitment. That hadn't been part of our relationship - or so I had thought until confronted with Cindy's confession.

"Are you sure?" I had blurted out, and then had wanted to kick myself almost immediately at the sheer stupidity of the question.

"Yes... ," she had replied, tears welling up in the corners of he eyes. I had been able to read her like a book. She had fully expected me to reject her overtures, and had braced for the hurt she could feel was coming.

But she had STILL told me what she felt. Cindy had taken that risk. It had to have been a big one.

Looking at her in that moment of vulnerability, I had suddenly realized that this casual companion - this stop-gap girlfriend that I had never really paid too much attention to - was someone that I didn't want to lose. I had told her that.

I HADN'T told her that I loved her. Her revelation had been too sudden, too new. I had found that I didn't know exactly WHAT I felt and I hadn't wanted to lie to her. Still, she had smiled at my response, not seeming to notice that I hadn't said the words. Instead, she had hugged me, clinging to me, holding me tightly.

And though I hadn't said the words at that time, everything between us became changed. It had taken only a very short time before I WAS thinking of Cindy as my girlfriend. I soon found myself imagining what she would look like undressed, and this time it wasn't the casual speculation that I had indulged in at Amanda's wedding after Cindy had pressed up against me when we danced. This was much deeper - this time I wanted her - wanted to make love to her. I wanted to feel her body pressed up against mine as she surrendered her very essence to me.

I had also remembered my sister's warning - that I had better not touch Cindy unless I was willing to commit to her. That sex was not going to be something casual for her. Amanda had warned me that if I ever told her I wanted to sleep with her, I would HAVE to also be saying to her that I was in love with her. And my sister had notified me sternly that if I were ever to say those words, I had damn well better mean them.

I don't know why Amanda had looked at Cindy and me and seen a possible pairing there. I know I hadn't seen us as a couple. Maybe my sister had seen something we had both missed. Maybe she just knew both of us better than we had known ourselves. Or maybe it had been just wishful thinking on her part - a hope she harbored but didn't ever expect to see take place. Whatever it was, the unlikely possibility that my sister had foreseen had come to pass.

It wasn't very long before I HAD said the words - that I had informed Cindy of what I felt toward her - that I had told her that I was in love with her. It had been shortly after THAT confession that we had first slept together - and we had remained lovers since that time. My sister had told me how things would be if Cindy and I were to ever find ourselves sharing a bed. And she had come pretty damn close to predicting what Cindy and I had become over the last year.

And I was almost certain that Amanda knew or had guessed what had happened between Cindy and myself.

I responded to my sister's question. "I wanted to talk to you about that," I confided. "I've kind of gotten tired of Cindy being my girlfriend. I think it's about time to move on."

My sister stared at me with a shocked, stricken look upon her face. "You want to what?"

"I want to move on," I repeated dryly. "It was nice having Cindy as my girlfriend, but now I need something else."

"You need something else?" my sister inquired, acting like she couldn't quite comprehend my words.

"That's right," I affirmed. "This girlfriend thing with Cindy has been going on two and a half years now. Is there something wrong if I want things to be different?"

My sister looked at me harshly, her upset barely contained. "You want something different? Do you have any idea what that might do to Cindy?"

"I like to think I know how she'll react," I replied. "I don't think you have to worry about her. She'll be alright."

"I don't think so, Kenneth." Amanda argued. "I don't think Cindy will be alright." She looked at me intently, holding me with her gaze. "Do you remember what I told you when you started dating her?"

I nodded my head in response to her question. "I remember."

"I told you back then that you'd better treat her carefully - that she was pretty frail and that you'd better leave her alone unless you were ready to make a commitment to her."

I protested to the implication of Amanda's statement. "And I did. I've been completely faithful. There hasn't been anyone else in my life these last two and a half years."

Amanda was not satisfied with my answer. She proceeded to lecture me, "And there hasn't been anyone else in Cindy's life EVER. You were the first, in case you didn't know." My sister pressed the issue. "Cindy is my best friend, Kenneth. Do you think she hasn't told me what she feels? She tells me EVERYTHING. I even know when the first time you two slept together was."

I blushed at that little piece of news. "I thought that was between just her and me," I said sheepishly.

"Well, maybe it should have been, but it wasn't," my sister replied sharply. "I know that you two have been intimate with each other for over a year now. I warned you in the beginning that you'd better not take her casually as your lover. It certainly wasn't casual for Cindy. She's in love with you, Kenneth. Hell, she doesn't just love you. She adores you. She worships the goddamn ground you walk on."

"Are you sure?" I asked, trying to suppress the elation Amanda's words had caused me.

"I'm sure," my sister solemnly affirmed. "It would just kill Cindy if you broke up with her."

I lowered my gaze, quietly avoiding eye contact with my sister.

I spoke softly to her, "Can I show you something, Amanda? Something that will let you understand why I NEED to move on?"

I could feel my sister's discomfort, but I knew she wouldn't refuse me. After all that we had been through - all the confidences we had shared - she wasn't about to turn away from me now.

"If you insist," she agreed reluctantly.

"I want you to understand," I explained softly.

She didn't reply. Rising from where I sat on my bed, I went to the top drawer of my computer desk and removed a small cardboard box. Placing it in her hands, I continued, "You might want to examine this."

Amanda turned the box over in her hands, finally catching a hint of the fact that there was far more happening here than I had previously let on. She glanced at me, and then, turning her complete attention to the task at hand, she removed the cover from the box and removed its contents - a small case covered with Burgundy velvet. She gave me another glance, and then opened the case to reveal the treasure within - a half-caret diamond ring in a solitaire setting.

My sister gave me an extremely annoyed look. "You're an asshole, Kenneth."

"Probably true," I had to agree.

"This is for Cindy, isn't it?" she continued.

Again I had to agree. "If she'll have me."

The look my sister gave me could have burned holes in my skin. "I should kick your ass from here to next week for leading me on like that," Amanda admonished me in a pissed-off tone. "I swear, sometimes your flair for the dramatic just drives me up the wall." Then, looking me straight in the eyes, her expression softened. "Still, I'm going to forgive you this one time for Cindy's sake. So congratulations - you're getting a very special person in her - the best."

"So you think she'll accept?" I asked, pressing her. I was pretty sure of what Cindy was going to say when I asked, but that little bit of nervousness still remained. I wanted to hear encouragement from a source other than my own wishful thinking.

"Do you really have to ask?" my sibling asked. "I told you that she loves you. You have no idea how long she's waited for you to ask her to marry you."

"Really?" I inquired, intrigued. "You've never mentioned this to me before."

"And I never would have if you hadn't shown me that you had bought her a ring. That was something she told me in confidence - a private discussion between best friends. I know that she'll say 'Yes' when you ask."

I smiled at my sister's answer. "That's encouraging."

"Just don't mention to her that I told you about the things she's confided to me."

"Don't worry," I assured her, "your secrets are safe with me."

"And we do have some secrets to hide, don't we?" Amanda quipped, grinning.

I had to grin myself. "That we do." I continued, now that my sister had given me an opening. "Speaking of secrets, I need to ask you a question."

"What kind of question?"

"The personal kind. Do you remember the little mementoes you left me when you got married?"

"Mementos?" she inquired, before the answer dawned upon her. "Oh..."

"You do remember?"

"You mean the videotapes?"

"The same." I hesitated to ask the question. "Would you mind if I got rid of them? It's not that I don't like them or that I'm ashamed of what we did or anything. It's just that... ," I continued, failing to find the words. "Well, you know... "

My sister looked at me with a smile and, interestingly, a hint of relief on her face. "You don't have to explain. I understand. I felt the same way when I married Paul. That's why I left the tapes with you. They were still part of your life then, but not mine. I was ready to move on."

"That's it exactly" I agreed. "I've moved on from them, Sis. In fact, I hardly ever look at them any more. I still love you Amanda, and I love what we had back then, but it's not like I'm going to be able to watch them with Cindy, and if I have the choice of jerking off while I watch us on video tape, or engaging in the real thing with Cindy, you know which choice I'm going to make every time."

"That's understandable," my sister agreed. "Anyone would choose being a participant over being just a watcher."

"Besides," I continued, "What I have with Cindy is a different kind of love - as different as what you and Paul have is from what we had together. That's what I want NOW."

Amanda was quick to second my desire. "That's what you should want. You and Cindy belong together. Even back when we were fucking each other's brains out we knew that what we had wouldn't last - that it wasn't the future. This," she explained, placing both hands on her pregnant stomach, "is the future. You and Cindy getting married is the future."

"So you don't mind if I destroy the tapes?"

"Mind? You have got to be kidding!" My sister looked at me intently. "Those tapes are dangerous, Kenneth. They always have been. I've never lied to my husband, and he knows most of my secrets, but I've never told him about the relationship we used to have, and I don't ever intend to. Those tapes are the one thing that could possibly destroy my marriage were Paul to ever learn of their existence. And they would probably be just as dangerous for you were Cindy to ever discover them. I'll be glad to see them gone."

I smiled at my sister's reaction. "I'm glad to see you agree with my thinking on this. Would you like to help do the honors? You were here at the creation of these mementos. It's only right you be there at their demise."

"What did you have in mind?" my sister queried, curiosity present in her voice.

"Just watch. I plan on doing this right," I confided. I went over to my closet - to my old Boy Scout uniform that was all the way against the wall. I removed it and handed it to my sister. "Take the dry cleaning bag off," I instructed her.

She did as I said, pulling the bag over the coat hangers holding the uniform shirt and pants. She placed the now-empty bag on the bed.

"Now check out the inside of the shirt," I continued.

Once more she did as I said, slipping her hand under the bottom of the shirt. I could see her eyes widen a bit when she made contact with the contents hidden inside. She removed the pants, placing them on the bed. She then laid the shirt on top of them, button side up, and proceeded to undo the buttons and folded back the lapels to reveal a plastic bag taped to the bottom crossbar of the hanger.

Four eight millimeter videotapes were visible through the plastic package - almost eight hours of irrefutable evidence of the incestuous affair we had engaged in for over two years, starting with Amanda's original indiscretion with one of her college professors and running through to just before our final session in our parents' bed.

"So that's where you keep them," my sister mused. "I would have thought you'd have someplace more secure," she continued as she opened the zip-lock on the bag and handed the tapes to me.

"Actually, I thought about that," I confided as I received the cassettes from her. "That's probably about as secure as you're going to get. You know Mom and Dad wouldn't dream of poking through our belongings without a good reason, so I only really had to keep them from stumbling over them accidentally."

"Well, maybe so, but I'll still feel a lot safer when they're gone."

I could understand my sister's feelings. I had been telling the truth about my parents not snooping through our things, but even I had to admit that there was some small risk. After all, shit happens. My stash had never given any guarantees of providing the videotapes with perfect safety.

I placed the four cassettes on my computer desk and, picking up a jeweler's Phillip's screwdriver, I sat down and commenced operating on the first plastic case, removing the screws that held it together. I explained as I worked, "I think just throwing them in the trash isn't enough to get the job done properly." I lifted the back off of the plastic cassette, revealing the two reels of tape within, which I then removed from the cassette. "This will ensure that no one will ever watch these again," I promised, holding the tape for her to see and snapping the top of the reel off, exposing the actual videotape. Placing the open reel back down on the desk, I took a razor blade and cut down through the rolled tape. The Mylar strip disintegrated into hundreds of smaller strips, none of them greater than several inches in length. I dropped the entire mess into the wastebasket.

I turned to my sister. "Satisfied?" I asked.

"Perfectly," she agreed. "No one's ever going to put those back together. You do good work, Little Brother."

"Thank you, Big Sister. Do you think you're ready to do the next one?"

"Just let me in there," she affirmed.

I got up from the desk and let Amanda slide in, her pregnant stomach preventing her from pulling the chair up to the desk. She picked up one of the remaining videotapes and the screwdriver and began the disassembly of that cassette. She was soon slicing through the second reel of videotape, reducing it to pieces. I felt a sense of loss as my memento was destroyed, along with an even greater sense of relief. I had never realized until that moment how much the existence of those tapes had worried me. Amanda had been right. Those tapes HAD been dangerous.

I let my sister do the remaining two tapes. When nothing remained but a wastebasket full of plastic scraps and assorted empty cassette cases and odd pieces, we picked up the remaining junk from the desk and disposed of it.

Amanda looked at me carefully. "Well, we did it. No more reminders of what we once did."

"I beg to differ," I countered. "I'll always have reminders of us. They just won't be physical ones."

"That's true," she agreed, "There are always our memories. Still, won't you miss those tapes?"

"I probably will, sometimes," I had to confess, "but not very much. What you and Paul and Cindy and I have now is more important to me. I just wanted you to understand that there was no rejection of you involved. I still love you and I always will."

"I know, Little Brother. I feel the same way about you. Just remember, the memories I have of our affair are all good ones." My sister suddenly became very serious. "I needed you back then, Kenneth. Our becoming lovers was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Before you my choices about men were totally fucked-up. Just look at the people I was screwing around with. The guys I dated in high school that just wanted to get into my panties, the guys who did get into my panties that I slept with to build up my ego, the professor, and of course there was that asshole Rick who took my virginity. Compared to that string of losers you were a knight in shining armor. You were willing to love me unconditionally. Do you have any idea how much that meant to me?"