The Night I Went Into My Brother’s Room

The house breathed that thick silence that country houses have in the middle of January, when the day’s heat gets trapped between the walls and everything seems to hover halfway up. Outside, the crickets never stopped. Inside, every closed door held something we were going to pretend didn’t exist by morning.

I couldn’t sleep.

I’d been tossing and turning for more than two hours. The sheet had tangled itself between my legs, my hair stuck to the back of my neck with sweat, and my mind, far from easing up, was going faster with every minute. I was thinking about him. Thinking about the way he’d looked at me that afternoon, sitting on the edge of the pool while I dried my hair and turned my back to him. A look that wasn’t a brother’s. Or, worse, a look that was a brother’s, and yet had lasted too long.

Mateo. My older brother. Twenty-four years old. Three years older than me.

We’d grown up together the way siblings do in any house: shared bikes, fights over the bathroom, an undercurrent of closeness no friend could ever match. Until that summer, that had been all there was to it. Until that week my parents went to a conference in another city and my younger sister stayed with a friend. Until the two of us were left alone in the house.

And now I couldn’t sleep. And it wasn’t just in my head. It was my cunt. I’d had my cunt wet for hours, throbbing between my legs every time I remembered that look by the pool, every time I imagined my brother’s hand pulling down my panties. I’d touched myself twice that night, lying on my side with my face buried in the pillow so I wouldn’t moan, and both times I’d come thinking of him, biting the fabric, squeezing my thighs around my own fingers. And even so, I was still hot. Even so, my cunt wanted more.

I sat up in bed. Moonlight came filtered through the blinds and laid stripes across the wooden floor. I stayed there for a moment staring at those stripes, barefoot, listening to my own breathing. My hands were cold, my nipples hard against the thin fabric of my T-shirt, and my stomach was tight, like when you know you’re about to do something you can’t take back because it’s already done.

I got up.

The floor was cooler than I’d expected. I walked slowly down the hall, without turning on any lights, guided by the memory of so many years in that house. The door to my parents’ room, closed. My sister’s, closed. His, half open, like an invitation no one had signed.

I pushed it with my fingertips.

The dimness in the room was denser than in the hallway. Mateo was sleeping on his side, his back to the window, the sheet fallen to his hips and his torso bare. The light slipping between the blinds outlined his shoulders, the line of his back, the faint hair at the nape of his neck. I’d seen my brother sleep a thousand times. But that night I was looking at him like never before. I looked at the bulge under the sheet at his groin, and everything inside me clenched.

I went closer without breathing.

Every step cost me. I felt my heart in my throat, in my wrists, in the soles of my feet. I sat on the edge of the bed, barely putting weight on it, as if I wanted not to wake him and at the same time wanted exactly the opposite. For him to open his eyes. To tell me, “Go away.” To say nothing.

I watched him.

He had long eyelashes, like mine. A faint pillow mark on his cheek. His mouth slightly open. For a second I hesitated. For a second I thought I still had time to get up, go back to my bed, and forget everything. But I didn’t get up.

My hand moved on its own.

At first it was barely a touch on his arm, two fingers sliding over the warm skin of his biceps. I tested it. I waited. He didn’t move. But his breathing changed. Barely. Just enough for me to know he wasn’t asleep anymore.

That little detail was enough.

I moved my hand down his forearm, his wrist, the back of his hand. When I reached his fingers, I laced them with mine. He answered. He closed his hand around mine without opening his eyes, without saying a word, as if we had signed a silent pact: whatever happened now would have no name.

I leaned in a little more.

My hair brushed his shoulder. He smelled of the shared soap, that house smell, mixed with something else, more intimate, hotter, that was only his. I stayed there, suspended, my forehead almost touching the back of his neck, listening to his breathing grow deeper and faster at the same time.

—What are you doing? —he murmured.

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. And yet he didn’t move. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t turn on the light.

—I don’t know —I said—. I’m wet. I can’t sleep.

I said it like that, without filtering it. It slipped out of my mouth the same way it had slipped out of my body. I felt everything under my hand tense, felt him swallow in the darkness.

He rolled over slowly.

Now we were face to face. His eyes were half open, shining in the dim light. He looked at me for a long moment without saying anything, without touching me. He looked at me as if he were measuring how much of this could still be undone. And then, just as slowly, he lifted a hand and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

—You’re going to regret this —he said softly.

—You will too.

Still, I didn’t leave.

He kissed me first. Slowly. Carefully. As if we were both crossing a bridge that would collapse behind us as we went. His mouth was warm, tasted of sleep, of the wine we’d had earlier. His fingers gripped the back of my neck with a firmness I had never imagined in my brother, the same firmness I’d always seen in other men but never in him. I shoved my tongue into his mouth without thinking and he bit it. He bit my lower lip and tugged a little, and I moaned against his face, a small, filthy moan that woke him all the way up.

And then there was no more hesitation.

I slid onto the bed, over him, my thin summer T-shirt clinging to my body. He pulled it off over my head in one clean motion, without breaking his mouth from mine any more than necessary. I stayed on top in my panties, my tits bare, and my brother stared at them like he had never seen breasts in his life. He lowered his mouth to one nipple and sucked hard, with tongue and teeth, while his open hand squeezed the other breast. I dug my nails into the back of his neck. A “fucking hell” slipped from between my teeth that I didn’t even recognize.

—Shut up —he whispered against my chest—, you’ll wake half the house.

—There’s nobody here —I gasped—. We’re alone, dumbass. Alone.

I grabbed his head and pushed it against my other breast. He sucked that nipple too, slower, longer, and I started moving my hips over him without realizing it, rubbing against the bulge already hard under his briefs. I felt the full shape of his cock through the fabric, thick, hot, and another moan escaped me.

He rolled over and I was underneath him.

Moonlight fell over his shoulders and face, and for an instant he was my brother again, the boy I had known all my life. It scared me. Then he ran his hand down my chest, my stomach, under the waistband of my panties, and he stopped being my brother. Or it was both things at once. I couldn’t tell the difference.

I closed my eyes.

His fingers opened my pussy lips with unbearable calm. I was drenched. I felt his fingers sliding through my folds, finding my clit and starting to circle it, first barely, then with more pressure. I arched against his hand. A long gasp escaped me.

—You’re soaked —he said in my ear, his voice rough—. Little sister, look at how wet you are.

—Shut up.

—No. Say it. Tell me what you want.

He shoved two fingers into me at once. I screamed into his shoulder. He drove them deep and curled them inside me and I closed my legs around his wrist on pure reflex, as if I wanted to trap his hand there forever.

—I want you —I told him, and it was the first time I’d said it like that to him—. I want your cock inside me.

He looked at me for a second, his fingers still buried in my cunt, and gave the smallest smile. It wasn’t a pretty smile. It was the smile of a man who has just found an open door and knows he’s going in.

I felt him kiss my neck, my collarbone, the hollow between my breasts, and he kept going down. Each kiss was slower than the last. Each kiss tore a sound from me that I tried to smother against the pillow. He kissed my stomach, the bone of my hip, the inner part of my thigh. He took my panties off with his teeth, pulling them down slowly, keeping his eyes on my face the whole time. The pillow smelled like him. The sheets smelled like him. The whole room smelled like him, and I was drowning in that smell.

He spread my legs with both hands and put his mouth on my cunt.

The air left me. My brother was eating my cunt, his tongue broad and flat, licking me from bottom to top like he was thirsty. He closed his lips around my clit and sucked it, then moved lower and pushed his tongue into me, and I lifted my hips against his face without being able to stop myself. I grabbed his hair with both hands and pulled. He growled against my pussy and the vibration went through me whole.

—Mateo… Mateo, for God’s sake…

I was coming. Fast. Too fast. I started shaking and he noticed and sucked my clit harder, not letting go of my hips, forcing me to stay against his mouth. I came screaming into the back of my own hand, my thighs clamped around my brother’s head, my cunt spasming around his tongue.

I was still trembling when he came back up.

He kissed me on the mouth and made me taste myself, salty and thick, on his lips. I bit his tongue. I pulled his briefs down with my heels, clumsy and desperate, and finally felt his cock against my thigh. It was hard as stone, hot, and the head was wet. I reached down and took hold of it. It was thick. Thicker than I had imagined. I squeezed it and he let out a gasp into my mouth.

—Fuck me —I told him—. Now.

—Wait.

—I’m not waiting anymore.

I opened my legs for him. He settled between my thighs and gripped his cock with his hand, and I felt him drag the wet head over my pussy, up and down, smearing it in my own juices before he finally decided. He put the tip at my entrance.

—Look at me —he asked.

I looked at him.

It was the first time I looked him in the eyes knowing what we were doing. Something in my chest broke and reassembled at the same time. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t exactly desire either. It was recognition. As if all my life I had been circling this moment without knowing it was waiting for me.

I let him in.

He pushed in slowly and I felt myself opening, felt him filling me centimeter by centimeter, until I ran out of breath. It was a lot. It was too much. I dug my nails into his back and he stayed still there, all the way in, breathing with his mouth against my neck.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—Move. Please. Move.

He moved. He came almost all the way out and pushed back in slowly, measuring me, reading me. Then not so slowly. The second thrust was already deeper, and the third made the bed creak. I hooked my legs around his waist and asked for more. I asked for more with my voice and my hands and my cunt, tightening around him every time he was inside me.

—Harder, Mateo. Harder, come on.

—Dirty little sister —he panted into my ear—, look at how you’re begging me for my cock.

—I’m begging for it, yeah. Fuck me hard.

He fucked me hard. He grabbed my hips with both hands and drove his cock to the hilt with dry, loud thrusts that knocked me against the pillow. The wooden headboard started hitting the wall and neither of us cared. The house was empty. The crickets covered whatever needed covering.

He turned me over.

He put me face down, grabbed my hips, and lifted my ass. I felt his cock enter me again from behind and a long, obscene moan slipped out against the sheet. From that angle it went in differently. Deeper. It touched a spot inside me that made me clench my fists in the fabric. He started fucking me fast, his hand braced on the small of my back, driving me into the mattress with every thrust.

—Like that, like that, like that… don’t stop, don’t stop…

He put his thumb in my mouth and I sucked it. Then he pulled it out, wet, and ran it over my ass. He traced a circle with the pad of his thumb, pressing just a little, not pushing it in. Everything in me spasmed. I screamed into the pillow. I came again, with my brother’s cock all the way in my cunt and his thumb pressing against my ass, shaking from head to toe.

He didn’t let up. He kept fucking me, faster, more ragged, until I heard him growl my name through clenched teeth.

—I’m coming —he gasped—. I’m coming, where…?

—Inside. Inside, all the way in, come on.

He drove into me three more times, brutal, and emptied himself inside me with a hoarse groan against the back of my neck. I felt every hot spurting shot inside my cunt, felt him stay throbbing inside me, felt him slump against my back without pulling out, exhausted, breathing as if he’d run miles.

***

When it was over, I stayed a long while lying against his chest without speaking. His hand stroked my back in a slow, almost absent-minded motion, as if he were thinking of something else. The sheet had slipped off us. I could feel his cum leaking between my thighs. Outside, the crickets kept doing their thing, indifferent.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—Yeah.

It was a lie and the truth at the same time. I was okay and I was wrecked and I didn’t know which feeling would win the next day.

I got up carefully. I picked up my T-shirt from the floor. I put it on backward and didn’t care. I went to the door. Before leaving, I turned back. Mateo was propped on one elbow, watching me, his hair tousled and an expression I had never seen on him before.

—And tomorrow?

—Tomorrow we pretend —I said.

He nodded.

I went back to my bed. I lay down with my body still hot, still throbbing, still leaking my brother’s cum between my legs, and I stared at the ceiling until the light started coming in through the window. I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I thought about him, about the way he had looked at me, about the “You’re going to regret this” he’d said before kissing me. I thought about my mother, my father, my sister, the face any of them would make if they knew.

At eight I heard him get up.

At eight ten he went downstairs.

At eight thirty, when I went down, he was in the kitchen making coffee. He said good morning without really looking at me. I answered the same. He poured me a cup. He asked if I wanted toast. I said yes. We ate in silence, looking out at the garden through the window, as if everything were normal.

And for a moment, I almost believed it.

My parents came back the next day. My sister the day after. The house filled with noise and routine and we didn’t talk about it. Not that week. Not the next month. Never.

Four years have passed.

I still don’t sleep well بعض nights in January, when it’s terribly hot and the crickets are singing too loud. I close my eyes and I’m back standing in that hallway, my hand on the half-open door, knowing that on the other side is the version of myself that hadn’t done anything yet.

That version no longer exists.

Sometimes, when I go back to the family house and pass him in the living room, he looks at me a second longer than normal. I hold his gaze. Then one of us changes the subject. And we go on.

I don’t regret it. I didn’t choose it completely either. Both things are true.

And that, I suppose, is what I came to confess.