by Krystle Able
I looked past the outbuilding where Carter made his art to the storage shed. The door of the metal ten-by-ten was open, which meant that Carter was doing precisely what I asked him to do. My big brother was still taking care of me, but something was tugging at my mind, telling me to look deeper. I didn’t want to. That’s when Carter stepped out of the storage shed and looked high up in the sky, past his art studio, straight to my window.
He was far enough away that I couldn’t read his face, but I saw the quick motion of his head drop down. I glanced down and saw my nipples had hardened. I ran my hands over my breasts to warm myself and wondered if Carter looked away because I was his sister or because he wanted me. Something told me it was the latter.
Chapter Seventeen
The bathtub was filthy. I stood above the large, white soaking tub that had once been my favorite spot in the entire manor and frowned at the grime covered porcelain. Everything was dusty, and cobwebs were thick in the corners and over the fan blades. I reminded myself not to flip any switches accidentally unless I wanted to contend with spider nests flying through the air—which I did not. I was happy to butcher the chickens Mama Ester kept out back or filet the fish we caught down at the creek, but when dealing with spiders, the only answer was always a ‘hard no.’
I wasn’t going to get a bath in this part of the manor, that much was clear. I left the bathroom and headed back downstairs. The kitchen was warm, but there was no oven on. I was grateful for the warmth as I was walking around in the nude, something Dr. John and Mama Ester would never have allowed. Carter hadn’t done a great job of taking care of the manor; however, and there were no clothes in the house, so I had no choice. The way Carter had reacted to my nudity in the window had me feeling a little naughty, and I was interested to see how my foster brother would react to my naked body now that we were all grown up.
The more I thought about Carter, memories, and feelings began to resurface from the last ten years involving my feelings and constant need to find him and the McCourts. The memories were hazy though like I remembered a dream. Bits and pieces were vivid, but there were many more gaps than details. One thing I knew was that whatever I felt for Carter in the past, was not what I felt now, but it did intrigue me that my foster brother might have an attraction to me. I don’t remember ever having an attraction to anyone but then again, remembering anything other than who I was and my childhood with the McCourts was rather difficult. The flashes and feelings were only making everything more confusing and the more I tried to sort everything out the more agitation I felt.
I heard a loud bang, like a door slamming shut coming from the basement. Carter was back with a gown, I figured. I leaned against the kitchen breakfast bar where remnants of an uneaten morning feast were scattered about and waited for Carter to come upstairs. My stomach growled as I wondered about the food. I was so hungry. I found it hard to believe I had eaten any of what was before me, and I couldn’t remember cooking it. I picked up a piece of cold, rubbery bacon and remembered when Mama Ester used to make this kind of Sunday morning breakfast for Carter and me.
I finally heard his boots clomping up the stairs. I dropped the bacon, and when the door to the basement flung open, and Carter stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed in the doorway, I sashayed toward him as seductively as I could manage for a woman who hadn’t ever tried to seduce anyone before.
“Lucky, what are you doing?” He said with a gulp as I ran stood just inches from him and looked up at his face.
“Don’t you want me?” I asked him in a childlike, teasing voice as I placed my hands on his chest and fluttered my eyelashes at him.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard and looked down at me.
I could see how women would find him attractive. He had long, lush, wavy brown hair that fell into his matching brown eyes, a strong jaw, thin lips and a crooked smile that created a dimple in his left cheek. He was positively kissable. The only problem was that my body was betraying my mind. I didn’t want him. He was my brother. I grew up with him, but the more he looked at me with warmth in his eyes, and the more he licked his lips as he decided what to do, the more my body responded between my legs which worried and shocked me.
I pushed back from him to his surprise and grabbed the clothing he had set on the counter.
“You should go put those on,” he said as he cleared his throat and unbuttoned the coat he had on.
“What are these?” I asked him as I shook out the old, faded jeans and a long-sleeved, silky white blouse.
I frowned and looked up at him, but he was turned away from me, deliberately trying to avoid looking at me even though I could remember him having no problem staring at me when I watched him work from the bedroom window.
I walked around his body to face him and held up the clothes right in front of his face.
“Carter?” I pressed again.
“They’re clothes,” he said while keeping his eyes looking over the top of my head.
“I wanted a gown. We are supposed to wear gowns at home,” I insisted.
“You can wear whatever you want now,” he told me tentatively.
I paused for a minute and thought about what he said. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. The program was over, Dr. John wasn’t even alive anymore. The thought made me sad and lonely.
“The washroom upstairs is filthy,” I told him. “I can’t bathe in there.”
Carter scratched his head and glanced down. He caught sight of my perky breasts and looked up with a beat red face immediately. “Uh yeah,” he responded. “I don’t clean up there since no one uses the patient wing anymore.”
“Except, you put me up there,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t know you were…you,” he shrugged. “I still don’t understand why you told me your name is Ivy. Where have you been all this time? Robert told me you were in witness protection,” he interrogated.
“Robert?”
“My foster father,” Carter explained.
“You were in foster care?”
Carter paused for a few seconds before he replied, “Yes, just like you.”
“Not just like me,” I insisted.
“No,” he started slowly. “I suppose not just like you, but I was in foster care after they took you away and put my dad in jail. I was with Robert for two years then came back here to the manor after I turned 18. It was only for two years, nothing like what you went through,” Carter explained.
“What I went through?” I asked him.
“Yeah, what you went through here, with my parents and me, you know, we did terrible things to you for years…” Carter trailed off, and I crossed my arms in front of my breasts even though he still hadn’t looked at me even with all the talking he was doing.
“You didn’t do anything to me. Your father made me strong. He helped me to push the darkness down and be good for once,” I reminded him. “Mama Ester gave me a family. You gave me a friend,” I poked him in the chest.
“Come on,” he took me by the elbow and guided me out of the kitchen and through the front part of the manor.
I rarely got to play in this part of the house, and I knew that Dr. John’s study was down the hallway on the west side of our home, I had spent plenty of time in there, but I hadn’t been to the back of the house where the family bedrooms were located. Carter pushed through the large french doors that opened into another foyer area with three other doors—one on each wall.
“I still sleep in my old room,” Carter said and pointed to a door with peeling blue paint.
“The room over there,” he shifted his point to another blue door, “That was my parents. Don’t go in there. You can use my bathroom,” he offered and walked across the small sitting area to the third and final blue door.
When he turned around this time, his gaze landed on my breasts and slowly shifted lower until he had taken in the entirety of my nakedness. He licked his bottom lip, shut his eyes and took a deep breath before he addressed me again.
/> “Come on; it’s clean. I promise,” He gestured into the bathroom.
I locked onto his eyes as I approached. I could tell he wanted me; I wanted to know why he was going out of his way to not look at me. Perhaps he was embarrassed, or maybe he just wanted to respect his little sister, but either way, I enjoyed the power my body seemed to have over him.
As I passed by him, I let my hand rub up against the zipper of his jeans. I got my answer. Carter McCourt wanted me, and I wanted to let him have me. He reached down and snatched my hand away from his pants and held my wrist up so I couldn’t reach back down.
“Don’t,” he warned me with glazed over eyes.
“I want you,” I leaned in on my tip-toes and whispered into his ear while he held my wrist tight.
I wasn’t toying with him anymore. I couldn’t suppress the intimate thoughts that kept creeping into my head about my foster brother. I didn’t have romantic feelings for him; although it would seem whoever I’ve been the last ten years did, every time I looked at his mouth, I wanted it pressed against mine. The way he grabbed my wrist made me wish he had them pinned above my head while he was buried inside me.
I took his earlobe gently between my teeth and softly bit down. A groan rumbled from his throat as he grabbed my bare ass and lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his torso and my arms around his neck. I ran my tongue up his neck from his shoulder to just below his ear and bit gently. He pulled his head back so that he was looking at me and I saw something almost ferocious in his darkened eyes. A second later his tongue was snaking its way in and out of my mouth as I moaned into his. Each sound of pleasure I made drove him to kiss me hard and faster. I felt his cock growing under my ass and reached down to feel him.
He throbbed in my grasp, even through the denim. To reciprocate the tease, he moved one hand from my ass, which he held so tightly I knew I would have bruises and positioned his palm between my legs. I gasped as his thumb began to massage my clitoris and one of this long, slender fingers entered me.
“Oh, fuck Carter,” I groaned against his neck as I squirmed against his hand.
Carter turned and slammed my back up against the wall. Pleasure rippled through my body as he inserted another finger into me, almost sending me over the edge. I clenched around his fingers and threw my head back as he took one of my hard nipples in his mouth and gently bit.
“Harder,” I begged him and grabbed the back of his head.
He bit down harder and moved his fingers faster in and out, deeper each time. I could feel my climax mounting and groaned loudly. Suddenly, Carter’s fingers were out of me, and my feet were on the floor. I opened my eyes and watched him undo his zipper and let his jeans fall to his ankles. He wasn’t wearing any boxers, and I barely got a look at his cock before he was picking me up again.
I smiled and him and wrapped my legs around his waist as he positioned me over his cock. With one quick thrust, he was inside of me. Everything blurred and fell away until there was nothing. I could see his eyes gazing deep into mine, and I knew, finally, that I was home for good this time.
Chapter Eighteen
Carter’s room was much different from the patient bedrooms upstairs. While our walls and décor were dark and gloomy, just like our insides, Dr. John had explained, Carter’s room was cream with grey trim and large, south-facing windows that let sunlight in throughout the entire day. The four-poster bed reminded me of the first bed I had at the manor. My childhood bed was much smaller than the king-sized one that was Carter’s however, and I knew I could spend every night sprawled out in bed with Carter and never miss that tiny, purple, princess bed.
“Good morning,” Carter said as he rolled over in the bed and tried to plant a kiss on my forehead.
I dodged him and got up, taking the sheets with me to wrap around my naked body. I was sore from the night before. I knew I had sex in the past but couldn’t remember who with or when the last time was and now all I wanted to do was shower and eat.
“Do you cook? Can you make breakfast, or should we go to a diner?” I asked from the doorway.
Carter stood from the bed not bashful in the least about his nakedness. I had to admit the physical attraction was hard to deny. Carter’s body was lean and fit, his face was strong and handsome, and he knew how to make a woman feel good, that was for sure, but the feelings were bubbling under the surface of my sexuality felt far away and foreign to me like they were someone else’s feelings entirely.
“Can you make the French toast breakfast? We didn’t get to eat it all the other day,” he asked as he yawned and stretched before pulling on a T-shirt.
I scoffed at him and laughed. Me? Cook something? I didn’t know how to cook, and it wasn’t something I was interested in learning to do.
“Uh, yeah. I don’t know how to cook. You can take me to a restaurant,” I suggested.
Confusion was plastered across his face. He cocked his head and stared at me for a full minute before I turned around and walked out of his room and to the bathroom. The upstairs washroom had only a sink, mirror and soaking tub in it, but the McCourt’s bathroom downstairs had a walk-in shower, whirlpool tub, large marble vanity with his and her sinks, and marble flooring that was kept warm by the kiln radiating heat just underneath. The bathroom was mostly clean—much cleaner than the one upstairs at least.
I turned on the shower and sat on the edge of the whirlpool tub to allow the water to warm up. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. I needed to dig deep within myself to make sense of the last ten years. Dr. John had always encouraged us to not think about the past and focus on the future—the bright future we had ahead of us if he could teach us to release the pain and channel our darkness. However, I didn’t see how I could go on like nothing was wrong, or different when the last decade of my life was a hazy blur, and everything felt like De Ja Vu.
Steam gathered around me and clung to my skin. I drifted back to the night before and remembered the way that Carter had clung to me and begged me to stay with him forever as he made love to me.
Love.
My stomach jumped, and my body became aroused when he smiled at me, touched me, or sometimes even just when he spoke to me, but warning bells were blasting through my brain telling me the feelings were lies.
They didn’t seem like lies at the moment when my legs were wrapped around him, and his cock was inside of me. The thoughts and feelings felt real but thinking back on the hours we spent in bed almost felt like an out of body experience. I didn’t know what I was doing or how I was feeling. I just wanted to be normal again, but what was normal? Being the patient of who most people thought was a killer? I was living in a half-way house that I had an only vague recollection of? Spending numerous birthdays in juvie and eventually jail?
I stepped into the shower and let the warm water wash over me as I imagined all the doubt, confusion, and haze falling from my body and swirling down the drain. A black loofa hung on a hook, and I grabbed it down, not caring that it didn’t belong to me. I saturated the loofa with body wash that was supposed to smell like “Alpine,” and reminded me of the woods behind McCourt Manor. As I washed my body, I pretended that Carter’s touch and all my buried feelings for him were washed away as well. I needed a fresh start, a clean slate, without feelings, like I used to be.
Everything was so different now; I wasn’t sure if anything could ever be the way it was before again. Dr. John was dead, Mama Ester wasn’t here, and Carter hadn’t mentioned her yet. And Carter…Well, Carter was all grown up and had something going on in this house that I desperately wanted to know more about. He wasn’t the boy who was my friend and snuck me outside to play in the leaves or the teen who tried to convince me to run away when he found out how close his father was to break me finally. I wasn’t the same person anymore though either. I wasn’t sure exactly who I was or what I was going to do next.
I was dismayed when the water ran cold, and I had to get out of the shower. I felt cleaner than I had in weeks, but I was anxious to
see my brother. I wrapped myself in a fluffy green towel hanging from a towel bar and wiped the steam away from the mirror.
I stared at myself in the mirror except the person in the mirror looked nothing like me. My eyes were supposed to be bright blue, not hazel grey. My nose was far too large and pointy, and my ears were pierced three times each! My blonde hair was darker and stringy now. My skin was pale, but most of all, the scars were all gone. The welt on my cheek had vanished, and so had the cut on my arm. I whipped around and looked at my back over my shoulder in the mirror. Only two faint lines—like fingernails scratches, were still present on my back.
I swallowed hard, and my hands trembled. I needed the pain to stay focused. By enduring and overcoming pain, we could be strong enough to endure holding back the darkness inside of us. Dr. John had been training me for years to try to keep the darkness at bay, but now I didn’t have my doctor, or the pain to meditate through when the evil thoughts rose.
A knock at the door startled me.
“Lucky? I have some clothes for you,” Carter announced from outside of the bathroom.
“Come in,” I told him.
My voice cracked at the end, and when Carter came inside, he looked concerned.
“Are you okay?” He asked as he walked towards me.
“I’m fine,” I lied and sidestepped the hug he leaned in for.
Carter frowned and took a step back.
“I don’t understand what’s going on with you,” Carter started.
“I don’t even understand what’s going on with me!” I snapped at him. “My entire life makes zero fucking sense to me and let’s not forget I woke up in a cage just yesterday!
“But you woke up in my bed this morning,” Carter teased with a smile and tried to step into me again.
