My Stepbrother's Secret

by Annabelle Winters

  “Yeah?” comes Caleb’s voice.

  I don’t answer him, but instead I just push open the door and step into his room. I close the door behind me, now feeling some nervousness rise up when I see Caleb lounging there on the bed. He is in those low-cut blue jeans, no shirt on, and I try not to stare at his broad, rock-hard chest, his flat stomach, those muscular arms with veins running down the center of each bicep, those long fingers that have brought so many women to wild orgasms.

  I don’t even remember what I was going to say to him, and I just swallow as he looks up at me and raises his eyebrows, an aloof expression on his face, like he is asking me, “What do YOU want, little girl?”

  And his look breaks me, turns me into a self-conscious child again, and I know I don’t have the guts to confront him. I can’t tell him that I watched him spank that blonde yesterday. I can’t tell him that I saw him spill his seed all over her ass, all over my bed.

  So I just gulp and blink and force a smile and say, “Hey, Caleb. So your mom told me that my new room used to be your studio.”

  He just looks at me. “Yeah,” he says. “So?”

  I blink again. “So . . . um . . . well, if you ever need to use my room for . . . um . . . whatever . . . you can do that. I mean, I’m at school all day anyway, and so if you need to use it—”

  Now I think I see his expression change for a moment, but I can’t tell if he is panicked that I might know what he does in there or if he is somehow amused that I’m so fucking timid and self-conscious about implying that I know what he does in there.

  But now he smiles for a moment, and in his smile I see a glimmer of that warmth, maybe even some sort of relief. I don’t understand it, and I just stare back at him, trying to figure out if he’s trying to tell me something with his eyes, communicate something that he’s finding it hard to say in words, reach out to me in some way.

  Now his smile is gone, and again I feel like I am just imagining signals that aren’t there, fantasizing about emotions that don’t exist, living in some fantasy world where my stepbrother really is that sweet, warm person I thought I saw in those innocent evenings we spent together. And I feel like a fool again, a silly little lovesick girl. Doesn’t every lonely girl think she can “fix” the brooding, moody, sexy guy next door? Am I just acting out a childish cliché in my mind? Hoping that I, me, little Allie, will be the one to save this hot weirdo from himself? Help him find the best parts of himself? Bring out the best in him? That part of him that likes me? That part of him that wants me?

  That part of him that might love me?

  Now I realize I am standing here quietly like a moron, and I just shake my head and back out of the room like a fucking peasant girl leaving the king’s chambers. Caleb doesn’t bother to reply, and now he has reached across the bed for his phone and is scrolling through it, completely ignoring me, almost making a point to ignore me.

  And I just go back to my room, my legs feeling weak again as I wonder what the fuck I was thinking, feeling angry with myself for being such a coward, questioning everything about myself, my feelings, even my sanity.

  But later, as I start to calm down, I realize that I still have some control in a way. I have implied that I know what Caleb does in my room, but I didn’t really say it. So Caleb is probably thinking about it right now. Maybe he’s even worried about it. He’s wondering what to do next. Whether he should admit it to me, admit that he’s been tying up women in his little stepsister’s bed, spanking them, slapping them, controlling their orgasms as he shoots his own cum all over their trembling naked bodies and my clean sheets.

  And as I slide under the covers again and close my eyes, I smile as I feel a tingle go through my body, and suddenly I get that feeling like my body is talking to me again in its own secret language, telling me to let go, to trust my body’s intelligence, to follow my body’s instincts, to stop feeling guilty about my desires, to indulge my urges. Yes, it is like my body is once again trying to overrule my mind, trying to tell me that I just need to follow my instincts a little bit longer, because perhaps my destiny is right around the corner, waiting for me to get there and seize it.

  Yes, perhaps my destiny is indeed right around the corner . . . or maybe just down the hall.

  13

  Over the next few weeks I find myself getting bolder and bolder. Now I am cutting class at the end of the day two or three times a week, riding my bike home furiously, running into the house, tiptoeing up the stairs, listening at my door, pushing it open a crack and peeking inside like a twisted sex-freak.

  Caleb has been bringing women home every day now, whereas previously it was maybe three or four times a week. There are women I haven’t seen before—white women, black women, Asians, Latinas. He ties them up, pulls their hair, slaps them, spanks them. He touches their assholes, rubs their swollen clits, pushes his fingers into their wet vaginas. All of them fall under his spell easily, and they groan with pleasure as he spanks them, howl with delight as he fingers them, scream with ecstasy when he cums all over them in my bed.

  There is a rage in him that seems to be increasing in intensity, and I see it in the way he works these women, never really hurting them but coming close. Sometimes he holds their throats as he comes on their tits, pulls their hair as they shudder their way through their orgasms, gathers his cum with his fingers and makes them taste it. It is twisted, filthy, perverted . . . and wildly arousing.

  By the third week of this I am regularly touching myself as I watch my stepbrother, and soon I am masturbating myself all the way to orgasm while watching him with these women. Sometimes I even come at the same time as they do, and once I swear all three of us came at the same time. I am ignoring all my feelings of guilt, of disgust at myself, and I push those feelings down into my subconscious as I give in to the strange desires of my body, succumb to the erotic feeling of watching in secret as my brother fights his personal demons through sex.

  And then, one day, about a month into this, it happens.

  He sees me.

  14

  Caleb is with a new woman, a dark-haired beauty who comes so hard she almost passes out. I am standing there outside the door, my hands down the front of my cotton shorts, my panties soaked with my juices, my eyes almost closed as I flick at my clit and massage my wet crease. I have become used to the fact that Caleb and his women are so absorbed in themselves that I am almost invisible as I stand there peeking into the room, and I am starting to shudder as I feel my orgasm begin to roll in like an avalanche building up in the mountains, slowly gathering force as it starts its descent into the valley.

  Caleb has his back to me, like always, and his body is tensing up in that familiar way, and I can see that he is about to come. I smile slowly when I realize that today is one of those days when I will come at the same time as my stepbrother, and I furiously rub my clit, play with my dripping pussy lips, and my mouth is hanging open, my eyelids fluttering, my vision blurring, and I feel my orgasm tear its way through my body like a train-wreck, and I gasp and grab the side of the door frame as my body starts to shake, and I close my eyes tight and take in the feeling of ecstasy, those waves of pleasure, and I am lost to the world for a moment, for a long moment, and it is only after I open my eyes as my orgasm winds down that my heart almost stops when I see that Caleb is now standing in the middle of the room, fully naked, staring at me.

  Staring at ME!

  He does not seem surprised. He does not seem shocked. He is just standing there staring, and even in my panic I cannot help but glance down at his cock, and it looks thick and swollen, almost fully hard, but I can tell he has already come, because there is a long trail of thick semen dripping down from the swollen tip of his throbbing cock, and I just gasp when I look into his eyes again, see a strange smile on his lips, a smile of superiority, a smile that suggests that he saw me finish my orgasm, that he somehow knows that he caused my orgasm, that he controlled my orgasm without ever laying a hand on me.

  I just slam the
door shut and stumble into the bathroom next door, locking the door, turning on the faucet so the sound of flowing water fills the room. I put down the toilet seat cover and sit down hard, burying my face in my hands, not sure whether to scream or burst into tears. What have I done? What must he think?

  And as I sit there in shock, it occurs to me that what if Caleb has never felt any attraction to me? What if he really just thinks of me as a little girl, his little stepsister? And now, after he’s seen me with my fingers shamelessly down the front of my shorts, my face twisted with ecstasy, what must he think? What kind of girl stands there and masturbates while watching her naked stepbrother jerk himself off?

  So now I am the sick one. I am the freak. I am the one with the twisted mind, the fucked-up morals, the screwed-up urges.

  Which means he is in control.

  He is in control.

  He is in control.

  And a feeling of deep powerlessness and vulnerability passes through me as I sob into my hands in that bathroom. And all I can think of is what now, what now, what now?

  Yes, what now? How do I even look at him again? How can I even live in this house another day? How can I live with MYSELF another day?

  15

  Somehow I find the courage to step out of the bathroom. I must have been in there an hour, and I am petrified as I go back to my room. But the room is empty, and I just lock the door and sit there in silence for the rest of the day. I do not have the courage to even go down for dinner, and I just shout through the door and tell my dad that I’m feeling sick and I’ll probably make a sandwich or something later at night if I’m hungry.

  I spend two days in absolute misery, terrified that I will come face to face with Caleb in the house, maybe on the street. I try to delay coming home as much as possible, but I don’t really have any good friends here, and so I go to the mall sometimes and just hang out on my own. I go to the park and take long walks or bike-rides. Sometimes I just sit at McDonald’s with a Coke and pretend to play on my phone.

  And then, the next week, at around ten at night, when I am finally feeling safe in my room, I hear a knock at the door and I freeze up.

  “Yeah?” I say, feeling blood rush to my face.

  “It’s Caleb,” comes the voice, that deep, resonant voice, and I can barely breathe as I listen. “I’m coming in,” he says.

  He doesn’t ask and he doesn’t wait for an invitation, and I just draw my legs up into my body and hug myself hard as I stare at the door swing open.

  Now here is Caleb, outlined in the doorway, looking tall, handsome, confident, in control. He walks into the room smoothly, closing the door behind him. Now he looks at me all huddled up on the bed in my red flannel pajamas, my old t-shirt with no bra underneath, my unpainted little toes sticking out from the ends of my pajamas,

  He smiles for a moment and then turns back to the door and locks it. He stares at the closed door for a moment, reaching out and touching the soundproof panels that line the wood. Now he turns back to me, still smiling.

  “Hello, little Allie,” he says in a low voice. “How are things?”

  I just shrug, still hugging my legs, looking up at him as I sit there on my bed, my back against the headboard. He walks up to the bed, looking down at me, holding my gaze. I cannot look him in the eye any longer, and finally I blink and look away, only turning back to him when I hear him speak.

  “So, little Allie,” he says now. “Did you like what you saw that day?”

  I feel a chill go through me as I look into his blue eyes. I cannot read him right now, like there is a wall behind that stare of his, a wall that is maybe holding back something dark, something secret, something he doesn’t want to admit to me, perhaps not even to himself.

  I shrug again. What can I say? There can’t be any doubt as to what I was doing. So what can I say?

  So I shrug again, looking up at him. “What can I say?” I finally mutter.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he says now, stretching his torso and reaching into the front pockets of those low-cut blue jeans. “Good,” he says, and now his voice wavers for just a second. “Because I liked what I saw too, little Allie.”

  Now that chill has spread to my entire body and I am almost shaking. What is he trying to say? Oh, God, what is he saying?

  “Really?” I say, the words coming out softly, almost catching in my throat. I’m not sure whether I can let myself get excited or not. I’m not sure if I SHOULD be excited or not.

  Now Caleb slowly pulls his hands out of his pocket, and I almost faint when I see that he is pulling out two long strips of thick black lace. The same black lace I watched him use to tie all those women up over the past month. The same black lace.

  He holds up the bindings now, letting them unfurl in front of me, and I stare at the black cloth as it sways gently in the stillness of my room. I am feeling dizzy now, completely overwhelmed, terrified at some level, incredibly excited at another level.

  “You liked watching me tie those women up, little Allie?” he says now, still holding those lace bindings up. “You liked hearing them scream as I spanked them? Howl as I pushed my fingers into them? Moan as I brought them to orgasm?”

  I just stare at him, completely paralyzed right now as I feel hypnotized by those swaying strands of lace in front of me. Somehow I manage to speak, and I whisper out a single word, surprised at how thick and husky my own voice sounds.

  “Yes,” I say. It’s all I say.

  Caleb’s face hardens now. “It didn’t bother you, to see me tie up those women, slap them, pull their hair, spank them so hard they cried out? That didn’t bother you?”

  “No,” I say, still in that whisper. “No,” I say again, trying to speak louder, to speak with confidence, to speak like a grown-up and not a little girl even though I feel like a little girl right now. “No, I understand it. It was fine. I understand.”

  Now a wave of emotion, dark emotion, passes across Caleb’s face, and suddenly he is sneering almost, staring down at me like he is disgusted. “You understand? You UNDERSTAND? What the fuck does that mean? What do you understand? You’re a fucking kid. A clueless little girl.”

  I sit there staring up at him as he goes on, spouting curses, insulting me even. But somehow I am not upset, not freaked out, and there is a strange calmness flowing through me now as I look up into his eyes, into his soul almost, and now I feel my instincts pushing me onwards, telling me to trust myself, to trust my own insights, to go ahead and start talking, tell him what I think I understand, what I think I’ve seen in him during all those times I watched my brother bring these women to orgasm with his fingers even though they were begging to get fucked.

  “I understand that doing what you do with those women gives you a feeling of total control,” I say now, shocked at how clear my voice suddenly sounds, like it is not even me talking. “That’s why you never fuck these women. You take delight in giving them pleasure, but you want complete control over that pleasure, control over their bodies, control over their orgasms. And at the same time you refuse to give up control of yourself, of your own body, your own pleasure, your own orgasm. You refuse to let anyone have a hold on you. To find a vulnerability in you. To get under your skin. Because if that happens, it means you’ve lost some control, given someone else a little bit of control over you.”

  Caleb looks at me with an expression that tells me I have hit home. For the first time I see true fear in his eyes, fear that someone might have broken through his wall, found a weak spot in his defenses, penetrated his tough shell.

  And my instincts are pushing me onward even though at some level I am scared and unsure of myself. And so I summon up the strength to continue, feeling my confidence grow as I hear myself speak, feeling a strange warmth flow through my body, opening me up. Is this what love feels like, it suddenly occurs to me. Chilling but warm, terrifying but sweet, scary but exhilarating.

  “I know your secret now,” I say to him. “And so we might as well talk about it.
”

  He scoffs out a laugh now, trying to put on that sneer again, but I can see that I’ve gotten to him now. I am under his skin. I know it. I fucking KNOW it.

  “Nobody knows my secret,” he says, blinking hard as he tries to maintain that cold stare. But it isn’t working, and I can see him start to break before my eyes, and I feel a chill now as he comes up to the bed. There is hesitation in him, a vulnerability that I have never seen in him before. And now I feel weak as he takes a deep breath and reaches out and touches my shoulder, gently pushing me aside so there’s space for him. Then slowly, carefully, delicately, he lays down next to me.

  And he just turns to me as I sit there with my knees still pulled up into my chest, and he touches my bare foot, gently pulling at my toes until I straighten my leg, and now he pulls me down until I am flat on my back, and he pulls me into him, pulls me into him, pulls me into him, and I can smell his scent, feel his warmth, and that tingle in me has risen to a fever-like level, like there is electricity raging through my body, and I slowly allow him to pull me closer, and we are so close now, so close, wrapped up in each other, just holding each other, and it is like the world around us has faded into nothing and it is just the two of us, perhaps floating on a cloud, drifting on a raft, swinging in a hammock in the woods somewhere.

  We hold each other for a long time, neither of us saying a word, like there is no need to say anything. I can literally feel my body bonding with his at a deep, profound, almost cosmic level, like our bodies are communicating with each other even though we are just lying here completely still, and the feeling is something I have never experienced before, and for a moment I wonder if this is what love feels like, if this is love.

  I listen to Caleb breathe as I rest my head on his chest. I listen to his heart beat. I think it is beating fast, just like I know mine is. He runs his fingers through my hair, gently caressing my head with his rough hands, pulling me closer into him, like he wants to bond with me, like he wants the two of us to merge into one person. I can barely think about anything, and I am completely taken by the sheer bliss of the moment, the pure beauty of this contact with him, the absolute certainty that my body was right, my instincts were right, that this is my destiny, right here, right now, in my arms, in his arms. There are a million fucked-up questions to answer, a million complications about family and all that, and eventually I know my brain will kick in and force me to address those practical matters. But right now our bodies are in perfect harmony as we lie pressed up against each other in my warm little bed, and I’m not going to question it.