My Brother Tied Me to the Bed and Nothing Was Ever the Same

I still remember that night with a knot in my stomach. Not from remorse, but because it changed the way I look at myself in the mirror. Years have passed since then, but sitting down to tell it, I realize it is still the thickest secret I carry inside me.

There are two of us, my brother Mateo and me, the only children of a couple who were always more out than in. My father is called Esteban and works as an architect in a downtown studio; my mother, Rosario, runs a small bookstore that opens on Saturday mornings. The house where we grew up is in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts, with a long patio and a huge TV in the living room that nobody watched anymore. Mateo is two years older than me: when this happened, he was twenty-two and I was twenty. I have called him Mati ever since I learned to speak.

My parents had traveled to a conference in another city and wouldn’t be back until Monday. On those weekends Mati and I almost never crossed paths: he went out with his friends, and I stayed home or went to the gym. That Saturday I had spent an hour pedaling on a stationary bike and another hour with weights; I got home around six with my body aching and my back wet with sweat. A long shower, water almost boiling, coconut-scented soap. I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and confirmed what I already knew: the house was empty. Mati hadn’t come back yet.

I put on a white cotton shirt that reached halfway down my thighs, with nothing underneath. It was one of those shirts my father no longer wore and that I had stolen from his closet a long time ago. I turned on the TV in my room and started flipping channels. Nothing. Repeated series, news, a movie I had already seen three times. And then I remembered that Mati kept movies in a box under his desk. When we were kids he used to hide them behind the books. Now he couldn’t even be bothered.

I crossed the hallway barefoot. His room smelled of his cologne and old tobacco. I opened the box and looked through it until I found a sleeve with no label. The cover was a close-up of a woman’s neck and a drawing in red ink. I went back to my bed with the movie in my hand, feeling a little like a thief and a little curious.

I put it in and pressed play.

What I saw was not what I expected. It wasn’t an erotic film like the ones they play late at night on cable channels, with sugary romances and soft lighting. It was hard porn, unfiltered. A woman tied to a bed, legs spread wide open and her shaved cunt gleaming under harsh light; another woman kneeling between her thighs, whispering in her ear while she shoved two fingers in to the knuckles and pulled them out dripping wet. I had never seen anything like it. The camera zoomed in close on how the fingers went in and out, on how the woman tied down writhed and begged to be fucked harder. Then a guy appeared with a huge, veined cock, and the kneeling woman took it into her mouth all the way, choking, saliva running down her chin and dripping between her tits.

I twisted in the sheets trying to relax my shoulders, but after ten minutes I felt my face burning and something much lower. I let my hand rest on my belly, then a little lower, until the tip of my finger brushed my already swollen clit. I was wet, soaking wet, the cotton of my shirt clinging to my thighs. I started stroking myself in slow circles while on the screen the guy fucked her from behind and yanked her hair. I felt a moan slip out and got scared by my own voice. I stopped my hand. It wasn’t the time. I turned the movie off before it ended and went to the kitchen to get water, my legs still trembling and my panties —well, I didn’t have panties— my thighs shining with wetness.

***

I went in and out of the kitchen in silence. I went back to my room barefoot, turned on the bedside lamp, and opened the drawer in the nightstand. I took out a short gray silk slip, also with no panties underneath, and slipped between the sheets. I needed to sleep. I needed to shut everything off. But beneath the silk, my cunt was still throbbing, heavy, stubborn, asking for more.

It was eleven-thirty when I heard a key in the front door. I recognized the footsteps instantly: Mati. I heard him go straight to the bathroom, flush twice, fumble awkwardly with the doorknob. Then he walked down the hallway and stopped outside my room.

“Cami?” he asked. “Are you awake?”

“I’m watching TV,” I answered.

He came in without asking. His hair was messy and his eyes glassy. His shirt half open, a kiss mark on his neck. He smelled of white wine and cheap cologne. He sat on the edge of the bed with a smile I had never seen on him before.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, dragging the words a little.

“You’re drunk.”

“A little. Just a little.”

I looked at him. The bedside lamp threw light on his jaw. When we were kids he would sleep with me when there was a storm, squeezing my hand until the noise passed. It had been a long time since I sat looking at him like that.

“Talk about what?” I said.

“About when we were little,” he answered. “About when we played in the patio.”

“That was a thousand years ago, Mati.”

“Not that many. It’s just that now you’re not a little girl anymore. You’re something else.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to go.”

Something in his voice changed my temperature. I told him to leave, without much force. He came closer. He leaned his head toward my chest, over the slip, and kissed my nipple through the fabric. It was a slow kiss, almost stubborn, with his mouth open and his tongue tracing the silk until my nipple hardened and showed through. I felt the heat before the fear. I tried to push him away and my hand stayed limp in midair.

“Mati,” I said. It did not come out like a warning. It came out like a question.

He took that as an answer. He slid the strap of my slip down and sucked my nipple directly, no fabric between us, while with his hand he hiked the hem up to my waist. When the air touched my naked cunt I let out a long breath. He ran two fingers over my vulva, very softly, from top to bottom, and found me completely soaked.

“You’re dripping, Cami,” he murmured against my breast. “What were you thinking about before I got here?”

I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t find the words.

***

What happened after that I remember in pieces. I remember the silk strap slipping, the sheet falling to the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs as if it wanted to get out. I remember him getting up, going to his room, and coming back with two long cotton scarves, the kind he used for running. I didn’t move. Not because I couldn’t. Because something inside me did not want to move.

“Really?” he asked.

I nodded without opening my mouth.

He tied my wrists to the iron headboard of the bed, one on each side. He tightened until the fabric was taut, not to hurt me. He tested with a finger to see if there was room to slip in a pinky. There was. He kissed the palm of my hand, then my elbow, then the hollow of my throat. He had been drinking but he wasn’t clumsy. He was focused.

“If you want me to stop, tell me,” he murmured.

I told him I didn’t want him to stop.

He started with my knees. He moved up the left thigh with his mouth, then the right, then stopped halfway up, where the heat was strongest. He blew lightly over my cunt and I arched. He laughed under his breath and parted my lips with two fingers, looking at me as if he were studying something. My slip had ridden up to my navel. When his tongue reached where it was supposed to reach, I arched against the scarves and felt the cotton bite into my wrists, and that, far from bothering me, gripped me inside in a way I had never known.

He licked me slowly, from bottom to top, stopping at the clit to suck it with his lips sealed tight. Then he pushed his whole tongue in, as far as he could, and moved it in circles while two fingers searched for my inner spot. I pulled against the scarves until my wrists burned. I felt the two-day stubble scraping the inner sides of my thighs, felt my brother’s nose buried in my pussy, his tongue working me without rest, his fingers curled upward pressing on something I did not know existed. I came like that, mouth open and soundless, squeezing his head between my thighs until he had to jerk back to breathe.

We didn’t talk. Neither of us said a word. The only voice was mine, and it wasn’t even a voice, it was a broken moan with no name. He climbed up, licked the nipple he had left behind, and made me taste my own flavor by running two fingers over my lips.

“Suck,” he said.

I sucked his fingers. He pushed them down my throat and pulled them out slowly, watching me.

Then he unbuckled his belt unhurriedly. I heard the click of the buckle, the sound of his pants falling. When his cock came out, I let out a gasp just seeing it: thick, hard, with the vein marked along the side, the tip already shining with precum. He brought it up to my face and ran it over my lips. I opened my mouth without thinking. He pushed it in slowly, placing his palm on my forehead so I wouldn’t move, and started fucking my mouth calmly, looking me in the eyes. At the back of my throat I gagged and he eased up, let me breathe, then pushed again. My mouth filled with saliva, it ran from the corner down to my neck. With my tongue I searched for the vein underneath. When I felt him tremble, he pulled his cock out of my mouth with a wet sound.

“Not yet,” he said, voice rough.

***

He settled himself between my legs. He spread my knees, pushing them outward, and grabbed his cock with his hand to drag the tip through my slit, soaking himself in my fluids. When I felt him above me, he had to cover my mouth with his hand so I wouldn’t scream. Not from pain. For the other reason. He entered slowly at first, asking permission with his hips, learning me an inch at a time. I felt my cunt stretching around that cock, which was thick, much thicker than I had expected, and each centimeter pushed something deeper inside me. When he reached the bottom, he held still, biting my shoulder, and I felt him throbbing inside me.

Then he stopped asking and started taking. He drove into me once, twice, three times, each one harder, until the iron headboard started banging against the wall. He kissed my neck with a strange fury, bit my collarbone, buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, still, waiting for me to squeeze him from the inside. And I did, without really knowing how, because my body was already doing things on its own. With one hand he grabbed a breast, with the other he held one cheek to lift my hips and get deeper. The bed creaked. My pillow had fallen to the floor. My wrists were tied and I couldn’t touch him, I could only take him, and that helplessness was making me come again.

“Cami,” he said in my ear. “Cami, look at me.”

I looked at him. He looked at me. And then something changed: he was no longer my brother and I was no longer anything that had a name. We were two bodies finding each other as if they had been putting off the moment for years.

“Tell me I’m your brother,” he asked, driving all the way in.

“You’re my brother,” I told him.

“Again.”

“You’re my brother, Mati, you’re my brother and you’re fucking me, don’t stop, don’t stop, keep going.”

He drove into me harder, his jaw clenched. He changed position: let go of one leg, put it over his shoulder, and from that angle began slamming into my deepest place with every thrust. Every time he entered, a wet sound filled the room. I heard my own moans as if they were coming from someone else.

He came twice. The first time inside, gripping my hips and burying himself to the hilt, and I felt the hot spurts filling me, so many that they started leaking around his cock and running down between my ass cheeks. He stayed inside until the trembling passed. Then he pulled out, dropped to his knees between my legs, grabbed his still-hard cock, and kept stroking himself with two fingers rubbing my clit at the same time. He made me come with that, with the sight of my brother jerking off over my body, and when I was finishing he spilled again, warm, thick, splashing from my navel to my tits. He stayed there breathing hard, watching the semen slide over my skin. Then he lowered his head and licked some of it off me, and with two fingers he smeared the rest over my nipples, as if marking me.

I lost count of mine. At one point I cried without knowing why. He wiped my tears with the back of his hand and kept kissing my forehead, my temple, the lobe of my ear.

***

After that he untied me. He asked me to turn over. I said yes before he finished the sentence. He tied me again, this time with my hands crossed over the headboard, and spent a long time kissing the back of my neck, my back, the curve where the waist becomes hip. He bit one ass cheek, then the other. His tongue went lower, much lower, and returned to a territory I had not shared with anyone. He parted my cheeks with both hands and ran his whole tongue over my asshole, slowly, wetting me, then pushed just the tip in. It tasted like vertigo. A strangled cry slipped out against the pillow.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he repeated.

“I don’t want you to stop,” I said.

He prepared carefully, patiently, with a cream he took from my own drawer. He rubbed it on his cock, then on me, putting in one finger first, then two, opening me slowly while with his other hand he stroked my cunt to keep me wet. When he felt I was ready, he got behind me. He pushed gently, pulled back, pushed again. I felt my body opening and closing at the same time, as if I had to relearn it from the inside. The tip went in and burned, then gave way, and he worked his way in little by little until I felt his hips against my ass. He stayed there, breathing against my nape, waiting for me to get used to it.

“Breathe,” he told me.

I breathed. He started moving. He pulled back almost all the way out, then went in again slowly, and with each turn he got a little faster. With his hand he found my clit from underneath and started rubbing it in circles at the same rhythm. It wasn’t all pleasure. It was a mix. It was an intensity that wouldn’t fit inside me. I felt my ass full, felt my cunt pushing for more, felt my wrists tug uselessly against the scarves. I bit the pillow and said his name, and the name I used to call him when we were kids, and words I had never said out loud. I told him to break me, I told him filthy things I didn’t know I had in me, I told him, Mati, fuck me like that, harder, deeper.

He obeyed me. He grabbed my hair, not hard, just enough to lift my head, and started pounding into me without pause. The bed shook. I came again, with my ass clenching his cock, and that finished him: he buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, moaning against my back, while he filled me for the second time that night.

When he was done, he stayed pressed to my back, breathing into my hair, with his cock still inside me, until his chest calmed down. He didn’t untie me right away. He waited for me to tell him to. And I didn’t tell him, because I liked being tied up.

***

When he untied me, he went to the bathroom and came back with a damp towel. He cleaned my wrists, my shoulders, my stomach, between my legs, with a tenderness that did not match the previous hour. He didn’t ask if I was okay. It was obvious he didn’t know either. He switched off the bedside lamp, kissed my navel, and went to his room. He closed the door without making a sound.

I stayed awake until dawn, eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to cars passing in the distance. I could still feel the semen, warm, running inside me. I don’t feel guilty, I thought, and it surprised me. I felt something stranger: the certainty that this was going to be a secret for many years, and that I was not going to regret it.

When the sun came up I got out of bed. My wrists and hips ached, and my ass throbbed with a dull burn every time I moved. I threw the sheets in the washer, opened the windows to get rid of the smell of wine and sex, and stepped into the shower. The water came out cold at first. I let myself stay there, trembling a little, until my body adjusted to the cold. I washed my hair, then the back of my neck, then my back. Between my legs I washed with an open hand and still felt the burning and some of his semen coming out of me. And while I dried myself, I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. But I didn’t cry, either.

Mati didn’t come out of his room until noon. When I ran into him in the kitchen, he poured me coffee without saying anything. Before going out to the patio, he kissed the top of my head. It was a short kiss. A brother’s kiss and a kiss of something else at the same time. I closed my eyes.

My parents came back on Monday. The house smelled of disinfectant. Nothing on the table, the walls, or in our gestures gave away what had happened. But between Mati and me, something stayed behind, a current no wind could blow away. It happened again. It happened many more times, for months, until each of us went our separate ways to different cities. And when we see each other at Christmas now, we look at each other a second too long and both of us know.

That’s how the forbidden is. You don’t go looking for it. The forbidden finds you, and when it does, it shows you something about yourself you didn’t want to know. That night I learned that my body said yes before my mind did, and that my mind took years to forgive me. But I also learned that some guilt is lighter than it seems, and that a secret, when it is well kept, stops weighing on you and becomes almost warm.