A Bet Between Aunt and Nephew by the Sea

The cards were dealt, the sea sounded outside, and Marina had on a tight top and green eyes fixed on her hand with a concentration Tomás found completely out of proportion for a game of UNO. He was also looking at his cards with more attention than was necessary. The two of them knew perfectly well they were not thinking about the cards.

Tomás had been sleeping for six days in the small room of the apartment. Marina was his mother’s older sister, his aunt all his life, the one who had sewn his carnival costumes when he was a child and taken him to the pediatrician on the afternoons when his parents couldn’t. She was thirty-seven; he was twenty-two. They had traveled to the coast separately, she going ahead a week to supervise the builders who were finishing the kitchen, he to help with the heavy boxes until Roberto arrived with little Lucas the following Saturday. It had been a practical, convenient idea, and neither of them had anticipated what the heat and the isolation were going to do to the notion of practical and convenient.

Marina won the first round. Tomás didn’t know whether to blame nerves, bad luck, or the fact that part of him had been more attentive to her neckline than to the colors, but the fact was that Marina laid down her last card with a smile she didn’t even try to hide and looked at him with those green eyes that in the apartment’s dim light seemed even more impossible to ignore.

—The shirt —she said, simply.

Tomás took it off without drama, trying to project an indifference he did not feel. He had the body of a boy who played soccer on Sundays: lean, well-defined shoulders, flat chest. Marina looked at him one second longer than was strictly necessary before shuffling again. She dealt the cards without saying anything.

Tomás won the second round. No argument, no extraordinary luck, he just won. He laid his cards on the table and looked at her. Marina held his gaze, and something passed over her face that Tomás read before she spoke.

—I can’t —Marina said.

—Why not?

—I’m not wearing anything underneath.

Tomás processed that in silence. He processed it with all the blood still available to his brain, which at that moment wasn’t much.

—A deal is a deal —he said.

—Tomás.

—It’s fair. And you know it.

Marina looked at him for a moment. Then she gathered the cards slowly.

—Then we’re canceling the game.

—No, no, wait. —Tomás raised a hand—. No need to cancel anything. I’m just saying a deal is a deal. If you don’t want to honor it, fine, but then the game makes no sense.

Marina looked at him with that expression of hers, the one that seemed to be evaluating something with more seriousness than the situation apparently required. In her head, things were happening she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine too closely. She thought of the months she’d spent being invisible to Roberto, of the nights she got into bed beside him and he didn’t even turn over, of the silent wetness between her legs when she turned off the light knowing no one was going to touch her. She thought of how no one looked at her the way Tomás looked at her, with that total inability to hide it that produced in her something she preferred not to name, a low heat in her belly, an involuntary tightening of her cunt she had learned to ignore during the day. She also thought about how Tomás was her sister’s son, and that the sentence should weigh on her more than it did at that exact moment. She told herself it was a prank and nothing more, that pranks have reasonable limits, and that this limit still wasn’t even close. Part of her knew she was lying to herself. The other part decided not to listen.

—This stays between us —she finally said—. I’m doing it for the game. We’re people of our word. And it’s never mentioned again. Ever.

—Ever —Tomás said, with a sudden seriousness that would have been comical in other circumstances.

Marina breathed in. And slowly, her cheeks flushing in a way she couldn’t control, she took off her top.

Tomás said nothing. He couldn’t. His aunt’s tits in the warm dimness of the apartment were the most perfect thing he had ever seen in his life, with no possible comparison to any previous reference, real or on a screen. They were not too big, but exactly what they had to be: firm, shaped in a way that defied gravity with a naturalness porn video tits had never quite managed. Pink nipples, perfect, the areola just the right size, already hardened by the air or by shame or by something neither of them was going to name. Marina’s white skin took on in the coastal heat a slightly warm tone Tomás registered with a clarity he knew he wasn’t going to forget. His cock got hard immediately, with that direct, incontestable force, pushing against his shorts with an insistence that was physically uncomfortable, and he silently thanked God he was sitting on the floor with the cards in his lap. He couldn’t look away. He physically couldn’t.

Marina noticed, blushed harder, tried to cover herself with the cards in a maneuver that was geometrically insufficient and that they both knew was insufficient.

—Eyes on the game —she said, in a voice that intended to be firm and didn’t quite manage it.

Tomás dropped his eyes to his cards. He raised them again almost immediately.

—Tomás.

—Sorry. It’s just difficult.

—Then make an effort.

—I am. —Pause—. It’s not working.

Marina let out a brief laugh despite herself, and that broke something in the air of the room, made it more breathable, though no less charged.

They played with considerable difficulty, at least on Tomás’s side, who at that moment would have been incapable of saying what color the card in his hand was. He won again. Marina looked at him with an expression somewhere between resigned and amused.

—Not the pants —she said, before he could open his mouth.

—I wasn’t going to ask for the pants.

—Oh, no?

—No. —Brief pause—. Let me touch.

Marina looked at him.

—No way. I’m your aunt, Tomás.

—It’s equivalent to taking off a garment. It’s fairer than nothing.

—It’s not equivalent at all.

—It’s the closest thing to equivalent there is in these circumstances.

—Are you hearing yourself?

—I’m being very reasonable, honestly.

Marina looked at him for a long moment. He looked back with that mix of determination and something more like pleading that, against her will, was hard to ignore completely. He was her sister’s son. She had watched him grow up. She had taken his temperature when he was nine and had a stupid camp fever. And now he was there, sitting on the floor of her apartment, looking at her as if she were the only thing in the world, with his torso bare and the bulge of his hard cock pressing shamelessly against the fabric of his shorts, a bulge neither of them pretended not to see and that made Marina clench her thighs with involuntary force.

—One —Marina said at last—. Just one. And then we keep playing as if nothing happened.

—As if nothing happened —Tomás confirmed.

Tomás slowly extended his hand, as if sudden movements could break something fragile no one had said out loud. He placed it on Marina’s right breast with a softness she didn’t entirely expect. He felt it warm and firm and perfectly real under his palm, the nipple hardening more against the center of his hand with immediate insistence. Tomás didn’t move at first. He just held it like that, feeling the exact weight in his palm, the warmth of her skin, the soft texture nothing had prepared him to receive with such clarity. Then, slowly, he closed his fingers, squeezed, felt the flesh give under his hand, and his thumb found the nipple on its own and rubbed it in a slow circle that drew from Marina a gasp she tried to swallow and couldn’t.

—You said one —Marina whispered, her voice no longer firm at all.

—It is one —he murmured, not stopping kneading her breast—. One hand.

—Cheater.

But she didn’t take his hand away. Tomás’s other hand rose on its own, as if it had a life of its own, and took her left breast, and now there were both of them, both of his hands on both of his aunt’s breasts, his thumbs drawing slow circles over the stiff nipples, Marina’s breathing becoming short and uneven. Her eyes were looking elsewhere and her cheeks were completely flushed and her lips were slightly parted and she had the expression of someone trying to keep her body from having an opinion and failing at it miserably. Between her legs, the heat was a thick, wet thing soaking her panties, and she knew that if Tomás lowered a hand and checked he would find her completely soaked, dripping, and that certainty, instead of frightening her, excited her with a precision that scared her.

Tomás leaned forward without letting go of her tits. Marina knew what he was going to do one second before he did it and didn’t stop him. His mouth closed over her right nipple, warm and wet, and his tongue passed over the whole thing, and Marina let out a low, hoarse moan that came from a place in her chest that had been closed for months. Tomás sucked slowly, hungrily, his tongue working the nipple against his palate, the other hand squeezing her left breast with a force that was no longer gentle. When he bit her nipple with his teeth, very slowly, very measured, Marina arched into his mouth without being able to stop herself, her hand in his hair before she realized she had put it there.

—Tomás —she said, and the word came out like a plea and a reproach at once.

He switched breasts without answering. His mouth left the right nipple, shiny with saliva, and found the left, and started again, sucking, licking, biting, while his right hand slid down Marina’s side and found the waistband of her shorts and slipped inside with a slowness worse than any rush. Marina didn’t stop him. She had to stop him. She didn’t stop him. Tomás’s fingers found the elastic of her panties, slipped beneath it, and moved down her flat belly until they found the soft hair and behind it the full wetness, the hot, slippery flesh of a cunt that had gone weeks untouched by anyone but herself.

—You’re soaked —Tomás murmured against her nipple, in a new voice, deeper, and the words ran through Marina like a jolt.

—Shut up.

—You’re dripping, auntie.

—Shut up, shut up.

His fingers found the clit with a ease that humiliated Marina and made her hotter in the same breath. He started rubbing in small, precise circles, and she stopped pretending she was playing some other game. She opened her legs a little more, leaning back on her hands, head thrown back, nipples shining with saliva pointed at the ceiling, and Tomás looked up at her from below with his mouth still near her breast and an expression of pure amazement. Two of his fingers sank into her without meeting the slightest resistance, slid all the way in, to the hilt, and Marina let out a long moan that bounced off the room’s walls.

Marina’s phone vibrated on the table with an insistence that shattered the room’s atmosphere like a bucket of cold water.

The two of them looked at each other.

On the screen: Roberto.

Tomás slowly withdrew his fingers, with a small wet sound that brought color to both their faces, took his hand out of her pants, put his shirt on in three seconds, gathered the cards from the floor, and stood up with his cock still outlined against the fabric.

—Answer —he said quietly.

Marina pulled her top back on with clumsy hands, ran a hand through her hair, breathed twice, and answered in a voice she hoped sounded normal.

—Hello.

Roberto’s voice on the other end was the usual one: direct, without preamble. He gave her the number of the electrician in charge of the lights they would install the next day, asked about Lucas with the brevity of a man who goes through the motions of asking, and hung up in less than two minutes.

Tomás, from the hallway with the cards in his hand and his fingers still shiny with his aunt’s wetness, managed to hear the tone of the conversation without understanding the words. When he heard Marina say good night in that normal way of hers, he knew it was nothing. He went into his room, closed the door, and stood in the dark for a moment with his heart racing more than was necessary for a call about an electrician.

***

He lay back on the bed without turning on the light. He still had the warmth of Marina’s skin in the palm of his hand and the nipple hardening against his fingers with a clarity that wouldn’t fade, and on the tip of his index and middle finger the wetness of his aunt, which he brought to his mouth without thinking too much about it. The taste went through his head like a short circuit. He yanked down his shorts and underwear, his cock springing hard against his stomach, the glans shiny with pre-cum, and he grabbed it with the hand that had been inside Marina and started jerking off with total concentration.

He thought about his aunt’s tits in his hands, the exact weight, the nipple against his tongue, the way she had arched into his mouth when he bit her slowly. He thought about the wetness of her cunt, how easily his fingers had slipped all the way in, the long moan she hadn’t been able to swallow. He moved his hand fast, hard, squeezing the glans with his thumb on every upward stroke, biting his lip to keep quiet. He came with brutal intensity, his cock throbbing in his hand, semen spilling hot over his stomach and chest in long streams, and he kept stroking for a few seconds more, wringing out the last drop, gasping with his mouth open against the pillow. He wiped himself with the T-shirt lying beside the bed and fell asleep with that specific lightness of someone who has resolved a tension building for days, even knowing perfectly well that tomorrow it will start again.

Marina lay down in the main bedroom with the portable fan pointed at her face and the heat stuck to her skin and the sheets warm. She thought about what had happened with the honesty she had with herself, one of her strongest traits and sometimes an uncomfortable one. There was a list of reasons why that was a terrible idea, and she could recite them all without effort. The first was that Tomás was her nephew. The second was that Roberto was her husband. The third was that her sister was Tomás’s mother, and that on the list of people she could do something like that to, her sister came first of all. She recited them softly, in order. They were useless.

She pulled her nightgown up to her waist, dragged her soaked panties down to her ankles, kicked them away with one foot, and slipped her fingers slowly between her legs, with that solitary familiarity that had been the only available thing for months. She was still completely wet from before, dripping onto the sheet, her cunt swollen and throbbing with an insistence that had not calmed with the interruption. She stroked her clit with two fingers, in the same small circles Tomás had made, imitating them without meaning to, and thought about him and the way he had looked at her when she took off her top, that absolute inability to hide it that was the exact opposite of the way Roberto looked at her —or didn’t look at her, which was more exactly the case—. She thought about his hand on her breast, warm and firm and no longer so still, his mouth closed over her nipple, the wet, hot tongue, the measured bite that had drawn the moan from her.

She pushed three fingers into herself, all the way in, pulled them out and pushed them back in, searching for the angle, while with her other hand she squeezed a breast and pinched the nipple, imitating the way Tomás had pressed it with his teeth. She thought about her nephew’s hard cock outlined against his shorts, the bulge she had seen without wanting to see it, about how it would have felt inside her, filling her, if the phone hadn’t rung. She thought about his face if she had spread her legs all the way, how he would have driven his cock into her to the hilt, without care, with that six-day hunger, and that thought undid her.

The orgasm came with an intensity that surprised her, genuine and complete, the first like that in a very long time, her cunt clamping down on her fingers in long spasms, her legs trembling, a low moan she bit back against her shoulder so she wouldn’t wake anyone, though there was no one in the apartment. In that heat and that silence and that half-finished apartment facing the sea. When it was over, she stayed still, fingers still inside and the ceiling above, the fan moving her wet hair, her hand shining between her legs, her breathing slowly returning.

She didn’t want to analyze it. She didn’t want to think about what it meant or where it could go or the reasons it shouldn’t go anywhere. All those reasons had proper names: her sister’s, Roberto’s, Lucas’s, who would arrive on Saturday with his sleepy child’s face in the back seat of the car.

But she thought about Tomás. About his warm hand and the way he looked at her, and about how there were still nine days left before the rest of the family arrived and the outside world existed again and, with it, all the reasons this was a terrible idea.

For now, the outside world did not exist. Only the heat and the sea and that apartment and Tomás on the other side of the wall, surely thinking about her with the same hard cock with which he had looked at her before.

She closed her eyes. And she knew, with the same honesty as always, that tomorrow she was going to take out the deck again.