My Stepbrother and I, Trapped by the Storm

The lock gave way with a groan, and a rush of damp air greeted us in the farmhouse entryway. It smelled of wet stone, old firewood, a decade of closed windows. Carolina walked in front of me without looking at me, as if she’d spent five years rehearsing that gesture.

—We could have paid for a hostel in the village —I muttered, dropping the suitcases onto the patterned hydraulic-tile floor of the hall.

—And have the notary deduct the lodging from the lot? No way, Adrián.

It was the first complete sentence she’d addressed to me since the funeral. Five years. Five years since her father and my mother had decided that marriage had been a mistake, and another five before that, when they introduced us as siblings without anyone asking whether we wanted to be. I was eighteen then. She was sixteen. We spent three awkward Christmases and two summers on a northern beach together, and we never quite got to the point of using tu with each other.

Now my mother’s grandmother, a stubborn woman who had loved Carolina because of a photo she’d once seen, had put us both in the same will. Ten days to inventory the house and sign the sale, the executor said. Ten days in a lost farmhouse in the Sierra de Cazorla, with no signal, only one heated bedroom, and an olive grove stretching to the horizon.

—That room is mine —she said, pointing to the one at the end of the corridor—. The one with the balcony facing south.

—Works for me.

The first night we ate what we could find in a pantry that smelled of oregano and paprika. Cold crumbs of bread, a piece of cured cheese, a bottle of red wine with no label. We talked about the lawyers, the land registry, the price per hectare. Nothing else. When she went up to her room, she counted four steps, stopped, and said “good night” without turning around. I stayed there staring at the fireplace until the embers died out on their own. With my right hand tucked under my pants, I jerked off slowly, thinking about how her ass looked under her skirt when she climbed the stairs. I came into a handkerchief, clenching my teeth so I wouldn’t make a sound, and I hated myself a little for still being, at thirty-three, the same teenager who used to jerk off thinking about his stepfather’s daughter.

***

The second day, Carolina came into the kitchen wearing a wool sweater two sizes too big and her hair gathered high on her head. No makeup. None of the armor of the city woman who had arrived the day before. She was making coffee in a moka pot that was spitting steam from the sides.

—I don’t know how this thing works —she admitted, almost smiling.

I showed her. My hand brushed hers when I tightened the lid, and neither of us made the move to pull away. It lasted two seconds. Three, maybe. Enough for something to shift in the kitchen air, a stone rolling very slowly before falling.

—Thanks —she said, and went out to the patio with her cup.

On the third day it started to rain. Heavy rain, African rain, the kind that turns dirt roads to mud and erases maps. I went to the door and saw that the SUV had sunk down to the axles. I took out my phone and held it up to the sky. Zero bars. The battery radio in the living room announced downpours for the next four days.

—We’re trapped —I told her when I went back inside.

She was in the library, up on a wobbly wooden ladder, trying to bring down some files from the top shelf. She was wearing a long skirt and thick stockings up to the knee.

—I already knew that —she replied without looking at me—. Come, hold this.

I went over. The ladder wobbled every time she reached out. I put a hand on her waist to steady her and, beneath the wool, I felt the exact curve of her hip. I didn’t take my hand away. She didn’t lower hers either.

—This ladder won’t hold —I said, and my voice came out rougher than I meant it to.

—And you will?

Carolina slowly turned her head and looked down at me from above. She had a smear of dust on her cheek and very still eyes. It took me a moment to realize we’d been silent for five seconds and neither of us had looked away.

—Get down from there.

She did. Step by step, unhurried, letting my hand slide from her waist to her thigh and from her thigh to her knee. When her feet touched the floor, we were three fingers apart, with the oak bookcase behind her and the smell of old paper tangling with her perfume.

—Adrián —she said softly—. This isn’t right.

—I know.

—This really isn’t right.

—I know.

But I didn’t move. Neither did she. And when I lifted my hand to brush the strand of hair falling over her eye, she closed her eyelids for a second, like someone surrendering to something she’d been waiting for for a long time.

***

The first kiss wasn’t tender. It was a collision, an impact that had been building for years and that the storm had just authorized. Her teeth grazed my lip, and I shoved her against the books with a force neither of us expected from me. The hard covers dug into our backs and sides, and she didn’t care; she grabbed the collar of my sweater and yanked downward, as if she needed to remind me she was shorter and that this didn’t scare her.

—If we stop now —she panted when I let go of her mouth—, we can pretend it never happened.

—Do you want to stop?

She didn’t answer. She slid her hand between my legs over my pants and squeezed my cock, already hard since she’d started climbing down that ladder. She held it for a second, measuring it with an open palm, and let out a rough little sound through her nose.

—Fuck, Adrián. You’re rock hard.

—I’ve been like this since before you got on that ladder.

—Liar. You’ve been like this since we were twenty.

She took my hand and pulled me toward the living room.

The fireplace was still lit from the morning. On the tanned sheepskin rug, the flames cast an orange light that clung to her skin when she started unbuttoning her sweater. I stood there watching her let it fall to the floor and pull off her undershirt with a quick gesture, no flirtation, like someone trying to get through a chore she’d held off on for too long. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were bare, small and firm, the dark nipples already peaked from the cold or from the other thing.

—Don’t look at me like that —she said.

—Like what?

—Like you’re the first man ever to see me.

I laughed, surprised, and stepped closer. I ran a finger across her sternum, slowly, from the hollow of her throat to the button of her skirt. Her shoulders trembled. When the skirt dropped, she stood in front of me in long stockings and black panties clinging to her cunt with dampness. I hooked the elastic with my index finger, tugged it down a little, and left them halfway down her leg.

—I’ve been imagining this for ten years —I admitted.

—Shut up and put your fingers in me.

She asked for it without words: I lifted one thigh with my other hand and slipped two fingers between the lips of her cunt, already soaked. It opened for me on its own, as if it had been waiting. I found her clit with my thumb while my fingers slid in and out of her, and Carolina clutched my shoulders and dug her nails into the wool of my sweater.

—There. There. Don’t stop.

—Like that?

—Deeper. Put them all the way in.

I did what she said. I shoved my fingers in to the knuckles, curling them upward, and she let out a guttural moan that bounced off the ceiling beams. I kissed her while I kept working her with my hand, and I felt her cunt tightening in short pulses around my fingers, warning of a first orgasm that was close. I pulled away before she could come. She opened her eyes, furious.

—Asshole.

—Not yet.

I kissed her again, and this time I guided her down to the rug. The sheepskin smelled of woodsmoke. I pulled my sweater off over my head, and she shoved me with both open hands in the chest until I lay back. Before straddling me, she unbuckled my belt, pulled my pants down to my knees, and yanked my cock out of my briefs with furious clumsiness. She stared at it for a second, lips parted and a bead of saliva at the corner of her mouth.

—Fuck, little brother.

—Don’t call me that.

—Now I will.

She knelt between my legs and took it into her mouth without warning. All of it, to the base, until the tip hit the back of her throat and I saw her eyes fill with water without her pulling away. She drew back slowly, sucking hard, and went down again. She sucked with rage, with a technique she hadn’t learned in five awkward Christmases, and I laid my open hand on the back of her neck and set the pace, forcing her all the way down every three or four strokes. When I could tell she was going to choke, I let her breathe. When I saw the thread of spit slide from her lip to my balls, I shoved it back in her mouth.

—That’s it. Swallow it like that.

She nodded with her mouth full, pulled it out dripping, and licked my balls one by one, looking up at me from below. Then she climbed back up the shaft with long licks and took me again to the uvula. I was about to come down her throat when I pulled her away.

—Come here.

She straddled me. The firelight lit up her ribs, her neck, a small scar beneath her navel that I hadn’t known about.

—When did you get that?

—Three years ago. Appendicitis.

—You didn’t call me.

—You weren’t someone to call.

She said it without reproach, almost tenderly. And then she grabbed my cock with her hand, ran it through the lips of her cunt to wet it well, and sat down on me with one sharp push. I felt her sink all the way down, her hot, tight cunt taking me in all at once, and both of us let out our breath at the same time, as if we’d been holding it for years.

—Fuck —she whispered—. Fuck, you’re huge.

She began moving on top of me, very slowly at first, measuring the effect. I grabbed her hips with both hands and held her still for a moment, looking up at her, wanting to store that image away to use later at every family dinner we were never going to have again.

—Look at me —she asked.

—I am looking at you.

—Not like that. Really look at me.

I looked at her. And she let herself be looked at. And for the first time in ten years I wasn’t her stepbrother or the son of the woman who had replaced her. I was a man who desired her without labels, without a will, without a notary. She braced both hands on my chest and started riding me for real, coming up until only the tip stayed inside me and then dropping down hard to the base. Every descent tore a short, guttural moan from her. I grabbed one breast with my right hand, squeezed it, pinched the nipple between thumb and forefinger, and she threw her head back.

—Harder. Both of them.

I got the other one and did the same. She moved faster and faster, her loose hair falling over her shoulders and her belly tightening with every thrust. The appendicitis scar rose and fell before my eyes.

***

I don’t know when we stopped being careful. I remember the crackle of the firewood, I remember her laugh when she dug an elbow into my ribs because I moved wrong, I remember the taste of wine still left in her mouth and the way she said my name twice in a row, with the second syllable heavier the second time.

—Adrián. Adrián.

—I’m here.

—Here isn’t enough. Put me on all fours.

I turned her over onto the rug and laid her face down. I lifted her hips until she was on her knees, face against the sheepskin and ass held high. I parted her with both hands and took a second to look at it: the red, swollen cunt, soaked with my spit and her juices, and the tight, dark little eye of her ass just above it. I ran my tongue over both, bottom to top, and she let out a shriek I wasn’t expecting.

—Adrián, fuck.

—Shut up.

I ate her from behind, with my tongue flat, until I felt her trembling. Then I moved her hair off her neck and knelt behind her. I grabbed my cock, ran it along the lips of her cunt, and slid it in little by little until her ass bumped against my pubis. She let out a long, contained sigh, almost sad, as if at last she were allowing herself something she’d been denying for years.

—Fuck me like that. Hard. Like it isn’t me.

—It is you.

—I know. That’s why.

This time I set the pace. I gripped her hips with both hands and started driving into her from behind, faster and faster, hearing the wet slap of my balls against her cunt and the muffled moans she released into the rug. I slid one hand underneath and found her clit with two fingers while I kept thrusting. It was rock hard, swollen. I rubbed it in circles in time with the thrusts and felt her thighs starting to clamp.

—I’m coming. Adrián, I’m coming.

—Come on my cock.

She came with a rough cry that rose from her stomach. Her cunt closed around my cock in strong waves, milking me from the inside, and I had to bite my lip not to come with her. I held on. I let go of her hips, grabbed her hair with one hand, and twisted it around my fist like a rope.

—Turn around.

When she turned around and asked me to look at her face, I did. I spread her legs with my knees, lifted them to her shoulders, and drove into her again to the hilt. When she asked for harder, I gave her harder. When she told me not to stop, I didn’t stop. I fucked her without restraint, looking into her eyes, sweat dripping from my forehead to her neck. I sucked one breast, then the other. I bit her neck. I whispered obscene things in her ear, things I had never dared say to any woman.

—Where do you want me to come.

—Inside. Inside, don’t be an asshole.

—Are you sure?

—Inside, Adrián. All the way inside.

I finished both of us at once, almost by accident, in a tremor that left us silent for a long time. I emptied myself into her with three long thrusts, feeling her cunt tighten around me in her second orgasm, smaller, longer. The rain kept pounding the windows. The firewood kept cracking. And she stayed beneath me, eyes open, not smiling, a white thread sliding down the inside of her thigh onto the sheepskin.

—Are you okay? —I asked.

—I don’t know.

—Do you regret it?

—Ask me tomorrow.

***

Tomorrow she didn’t regret it. The day after, either. On the fourth day, when the road was still cut off and the radio was still predicting more rain, I fucked her on the kitchen table, with breakfast crumbs falling to the floor, her lying on her back with her legs open at the edge and me standing, pounding into her while she clung to the edges of the wood and shouted at me to give it to her harder. She came with two of her fingers on her clit and mine inside her. On the fifth, I woke her with my face buried between her thighs and my tongue working her cunt until she came before she’d even fully opened her eyes; then she sucked my cock on her knees at the edge of the bed in the south-facing bedroom, with the shutters open despite the cold, and swallowed everything I gave her without looking away. On the sixth, she shoved me against the bathroom tiles, knelt under the shower and took me down her throat with water pouring over both of us; then she turned around, braced her hands on the wall, and told me in my ear that she’d spent her whole life wanting to do that with someone she couldn’t tell anyone about. I fucked her from behind against the tiles, one hand on her chest and the other over her mouth, until she came biting my fingers.

On the seventh day the sun came out. The mud began to dry, the SUV was freed with patience, and the phone signal returned in a rage of piled-up notifications. We went down to the village to buy groceries. In the bakery, an old neighbor told Carolina she looked well-rested, and she smiled without answering.

That night, sitting by the fireplace, we opened the folder with the sale paperwork. The buyer was a fund that wanted to turn the farmhouse into a rural hotel.

—Adrián —Carolina said, running her finger over the contract without signing it—. This house isn’t for sale.

—No.

—We’re going to need it.

—I know.

I took her hand on the table and kissed her knuckles one by one, unhurriedly. Outside, the sky had covered over with clouds again. There were three days left in the mountains and many rooms left to be used for the first time.

—There’s more storm in the forecast —I added.

—Good.