The Afternoon My Cousin Walked Naked Into My Room

My cousin Camila arrived home the first weekend in July, with two huge suitcases, dark circles from a three-hour train ride, and a family story falling apart at the seams. Her parents were divorcing in the middle of summer, amid lawyers and slammed doors, and she had decided to get away before they forced her to take sides. My parents offered the guest room without a second thought. We lived a hundred meters from the sea, there was plenty of space, and in theory, it was all a good idea.

I hadn’t seen her in years. I remembered a skinny little girl, with straight bangs and braces, who would get angry if she lost at Ludo. When I saw her get out of the taxi, I understood that girl no longer existed. Camila was nineteen, with a narrow waist that flared into impossible hips and breasts that strained against her T-shirt without asking permission. She wore her brown hair cut to mid-back and had long eyelashes that made you want to keep staring at her longer than you should.

—You’ve grown up —I told her, hugging her.

—So have you —she replied, laughing—. But you’re still just as shy.

She was right. I hadn’t touched a woman in months. The last one had been a girl from a concert, some Marta who had a tongue piercing and got tired of me in four weeks. Since then, my afternoons consisted of summer classes, console games, and a hand far too familiar under the sheets.

Camila’s routine settled itself in naturally. Late breakfast, the beach with my sister until midafternoon, a shower, dinner in the patio, and a series on the sofa. I tried to behave. I really did. But every afternoon she came back in shorts so short they barely covered her ass, skin tanned and hair still wet from the last wave. She smelled of salt, coconut, and something I wouldn’t have known how to name. I locked myself in my room under the excuse of studying and masturbated thinking about her, with a sense of guilt that lasted exactly as long as it took me to come.

—Are you okay? —she asked me one night, in the kitchen, while I pretended to look for something in the fridge.

—Heat —I answered, without looking at her.

She smiled crookedly and walked away. That smile haunted me for days.

She knows. She has to know.

***

It happened on a Thursday, after lunch. My parents had gone to a wedding in another province and wouldn’t be back until late. My sister, according to what she told me at lunch, was staying in her room studying. Camila had just come back from the beach and went into the shower, as she did every afternoon. I lay on my bed with the laptop on my legs, pretending to read notes, pretending not to hear the water running on the other side of the hall.

When I stopped hearing the shower, I put the laptop on the floor. I pulled down my pajama pants. It didn’t take me a minute to get hard thinking about her, about the shorts that morning, about the curve of her hip as she sat down to breakfast. I was halfway to orgasm when the door opened.

She didn’t knock. She didn’t warn me. She pushed the door open and came in barefoot, completely naked, with wet hair stuck to her shoulders and drops of water sliding between her breasts. She didn’t even bother to cover herself. She looked me up and down, saw my hand on my cock, and instead of running or laughing, she closed the door with her heel and locked it.

—Keep going —she said, in a low voice.

I froze, dick in my hand and my heart in my mouth. She leaned against the dresser, spread her legs a little, and started running her fingers between the lips of her cunt, slowly, never taking her eyes off me. Her nipples were small, dark, rock-hard. The afternoon light came through the window and lit up her right thigh.

—Camila —I whispered—. My sister is…

—I know.

She took three steps forward and sat on the edge of the bed. She took the hand I had on my cock and brought it to her cunt. She was soaking wet. Not wet: soaked. I slid two fingers inside her without thinking, almost without breathing, and she threw her head back with a sigh that made me fear for the silence in the hallway.

—Be quiet —I told her, and covered her mouth with my other hand.

Camila laughed against my palm and bit the base of my thumb. I kissed her neck, the lobe of her ear, the line of her jaw. She smelled of cheap shampoo and clean skin. While I opened her with my fingers, she used her feet to pull my pants down, gripping them with her toes like it was a game. She took off my boxer briefs and grabbed my cock without ceremony, squeezing just enough to make me close my eyes.

—You’re my cousin —she murmured, as if discovering it then.

—Yes.

—It’s wrong.

—Yes.

And she knelt between my legs.

***

Camila sucked it like she’d been waiting for months. She took all of it in one go, with no apparent effort, her eyes locked on mine. Then she pulled it out very slowly, licked the tip, and looked up at me from below with a smile that should not exist between family members. She took it into her mouth again and pulled back just enough to carefully bite the head, right at the edge, until my hips lifted on their own. When I covered her mouth again, she laughed with my cock inside her and nearly made me come right there.

—Stop —I begged, grabbing her hair—. I want to finish inside.

She straightened up, climbed on top of me without any more preamble, and sank down onto me in one sharp stroke. I felt her close around my cock as if a hot fist were squeezing me. She let out a moan that was too loud and I covered her mouth for the third time, this time hard. She looked at me with shining eyes, moving her hips in slow circles, clenching her pelvic floor every time she came up.

The first orgasm came too soon. I sat up to hold her and not move, trying to contain the urge. Camila didn’t let me: she kept moving slowly, feeling every spasm, until she drew out the last drop. When she finally stopped, I was still inside her, still hard, panting against her shoulder.

—Don’t get off —I asked her.

—I wasn’t planning to.

She started moving again, first slowly, then faster. She dug her nails into my chest, bit her lip, let out a hoarse moan. I grabbed her breasts, squeezed them, pinched her nipples until she muffled a cry against my neck. I wanted to cover her mouth again, but she wasn’t listening anymore: she rode me at her own pace, lost, her head thrown back.

And then I turned my head toward the door.

***

It was open.

The latch hadn’t fully caught, or someone had opened it from outside. My sister was leaning against the frame. In shorts, with her tank top hiked up under her breasts and one hand tucked inside her shorts. She was looking at us without surprise, as if she’d been there for a while. When she saw that I’d seen her, she didn’t move.

I stopped breathing. I thought about pushing Camila away, covering myself, shouting, doing anything. I did nothing. My sister lifted her index finger to her lips, slowly, and made the silence gesture. Then she put that same finger in her mouth, sucked it like a lollipop, and held my gaze until I understood.

It’ll be our secret.

Camila must have noticed something, because she turned her head slowly. The two of them looked at each other. They weren’t surprised. They didn’t speak. My sister smiled at her and my cousin smiled back, like two accomplices in a plan I didn’t know existed. For a second I understood that this wasn’t the beginning: they’d been talking about it for days, that Camila had known perfectly well when to come into my room and why the door hadn’t been properly closed.

—Keep going —Camila whispered to me, still moving on top of me—. Don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. I wouldn’t have been able to even if I’d tried. My sister stayed in the doorway, neither coming in nor leaving, one hand inside her shorts and her breathing getting heavier and heavier. Camila leaned over me, kissed me as if she wanted to swallow me whole, and when she straightened up again she was looking at her, not at me. I saw her speed up. I saw her close her eyes. I saw her come over my cock with a long moan that no one tried to muffle anymore.

I couldn’t hold back any longer. I came inside her for the second time in less than half an hour, gripping her hips, biting her neck so I wouldn’t shout. Camila collapsed onto my chest, laughing silently, her still-wet hair stuck to my skin.

When I looked up, my sister was already gone. The door was still ajar.

Camila kissed me below the ear and told me, in a very low voice:

—Tomorrow it’s her turn.