The Secret That Bound Me to My Older Sister

There are things a person learns to keep with such care that they end up becoming part of oneself. Not like a scar that aches when the weather changes, but like something deeper: a constant presence that shapes everything one thinks, everything one wants, everything one keeps silent.

My obsession with Natalia began little by little, without any precise moment I could point to and say, “This is where it all started.” I was twenty-three when I admitted it to myself for the first time, though I had known it for much longer without wanting to know it. She was twenty-five and we both lived under the same roof, in our parents’ large, silent house on the outskirts of the city.

Natalia was beautiful in a way that did not ask for attention but received it anyway. Tall, with that kind of body that is formed when someone plays sports from childhood and quits in time for the body to keep the best of both stages. She had dark brown hair that she almost always wore tied back, and light eyes that looked straight at you with a frankness that made people uneasy if they weren’t used to it. I was used to it, and yet it still unsettled me.

It wasn’t just her body. It was the way she occupied space, the way she laughed when something genuinely amused her —without the social varnish of a fake laugh—, her habit of falling silent at family gatherings and then saying a single sentence that summed up everything the others had been going around in circles about for half an hour.

I dated several girls during those years. Some were smart, attractive, interesting. None lasted. There was always a moment when something reminded me of her —a gesture, a way of tilting the head, a phrase spoken with that particular tone of someone who knows exactly what they want— and what might have been good suddenly became insufficient.

I’m not proud of that. I tell it as what it was: the portrait of someone who didn’t know what to do with something that was beyond him.

***

I installed the camera two years before what is going to happen in this story happened. It was small, almost the size of a button, and I placed it inside the ventilation grate that connected her room with the hallway. I could turn the receiver on from my room and see what was happening in hers through a four-inch screen.

What I did with those images was predictable: I jerked off thinking about her, squeezing my cock with my fist until I came onto my stomach with my mouth open and my sister’s name stuck in my throat. Afterward I would try to convince myself it would be the last time, and three days later I’d be turning the receiver back on with my hand already inside my pants. The ritual of someone trapped in a habit he knows is bad and can’t —or doesn’t want to— let go of.

I had seen her come out of the shower wrapped in a towel that never quite covered her tits completely, with her nipples showing through the terry cloth. I had seen her asleep in a thin T-shirt, legs spread and panties sinking between her ass cheeks. I had seen her getting dressed in front of the mirror with the silent concentration of someone who doesn’t know they’re being watched, absentmindedly touching her cunt over the fabric while thinking of something else. I had never seen her like this.

It was a Thursday night, late. I came back from a coworker’s place and went in without turning on the lights because it was nearly midnight and everyone else was asleep. As I passed by her door I heard something: a very low sound, almost imperceptible through the wood. A muffled moan, smothered against the pillow. I stopped for a moment and kept walking, my cock already starting to swell inside my jeans.

In my room I switched on the receiver almost without thinking.

Natalia was lying on the bed, completely naked. Her eyes were closed and her lips were parted. One of her hands was slowly moving over her body, from her breasts —pinching her nipples between thumb and forefinger until they stood hard and erect— to her stomach, with a calm that was in no way performed. The other held a small vibrator she was moving in circles over her clit with a steady, unhurried rhythm, biting her lower lip every time she turned the power up.

I stood motionless in front of the screen, my hand already at my fly.

This was not the same as what I had seen before. This was different in a way it took me time to process: it was her choosing her own pleasure, completely alone, with nothing else involved but her own desire. She spread her legs all the way, with her knees falling outward, and unknowingly offered me a full view of her cunt: swollen lips, gleaming with moisture, the clit peeking out between her fingers. She slid two fingers inside while continuing to work the vibrator against the bud, and the wet sound coming from the receiver was so clear that I had to turn the volume down so nobody would hear it from the hallway.

I was there, looking at her through that small screen, my cock out and my hand moving slowly to last as long as she did. Every time she arched her back, every time she rolled her hips against the vibrator, every muffled moan she let slip, I tightened my fist around my shaft and bit the air to make no noise.

It took her a long time to finish. In the end she quickened the rhythm, shoved her fingers deeper inside, drove her hips against her own hand again and again, and when she came she did it with a long moan she couldn’t quite stifle, her legs tense and her feet digging into the mattress. I came with her, silently, over my own hand, watching her shake on the screen.

When she did, she stayed still for a moment with her arms open and her eyes closed, breathing still fast, one finger still inside herself as if she didn’t want to let go of the tremor completely. Then she rolled onto her side and covered herself with the sheet. Within minutes she was asleep.

I did not sleep all night. I jerked off twice more replaying the scene, and by the third time almost nothing came out, just a transparent thread and a dull ache in my balls.

***

At seven in the morning I showered, got dressed, and went down to the kitchen. Natalia was already there, making coffee with that silent efficiency of someone who prefers not to talk before the first cup. She was wearing her usual pajamas: long cotton pants and a thin T-shirt with a slightly wide neckline. Through the thin fabric you could see she had nothing underneath. Her nipples stood out in the morning cold, and I, who had spent the night watching them between my fingers, had to grip the back of the chair to keep from going up behind her.

I sat at the table and watched her move around the kitchen. I remembered exactly what I had seen a few hours earlier —the shiny vibrator slick with her juices, her fingers going in and out, her cunt contracting around her own knuckles— and the contrast between that image and this one —her in the full light of morning, making toast with absolute normality, completely unaware that I had been watching her all night— produced something in me that was hard to name. My cock was getting hard again under the table.

Our parents had already left. The house was silent.

She sat across from me with her cup. She started talking about something insignificant, a problem at work, a meeting that had gone on longer than expected. I nodded, answered in monosyllables, watched her talk.

I don’t know exactly what pushed me to speak. The insomnia, perhaps. Or the weight of two years carrying something that, that night, had become too concrete to keep ignoring. The thing is that at some point I stopped nodding and said:

—Did you sleep well?

—More or less —she answered without looking up from her cup—. It took me a while to fall asleep.

—Yeah —I said—. I know.

That did make her look at me.

—What do you mean, you know?

I didn’t answer right away. I let her hold my gaze for a few seconds, and then I nodded toward our bedrooms.

—The camera’s been in the ventilation grate for two years —I said—. I’m sorry.

I wasn’t sorry at all, but I said it anyway.

I watched the color drain from her face. She stayed completely still, the cup halfway between the table and her mouth. Then she set it down on the tablecloth with a careful movement, as if she had to concentrate to avoid dropping it.

—Repeat that —she said in a very low voice.

—I recorded what you were doing last night. How you were fingering yourself while rubbing your clit with the vibrator. How you came with your mouth against the pillow. And other nights before.

She stood up abruptly. The chair scraped against the floor.

—You’re sick —she said. She didn’t shout. She said it with a completely flat voice, which was worse.

—Probably —I replied.

She went upstairs to her room. I heard her footsteps on the ceiling, the door closing, silence settling back in. I stayed with the cold coffee in front of me and waited.

It took her twenty minutes to come back down.

***

She stopped in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. She had put on pants and a sweatshirt. Her jaw was tight.

—What do you want —she said. It wasn’t a question either.

I got up slowly and walked toward her. She didn’t back away, which already told me enough.

—You’ve been the only thing on my mind for years —I told her—. I jerk off thinking about you three times a day. I didn’t choose this. I don’t know if that matters to you, but it’s the truth.

—It doesn’t matter to me —she replied. But there was something in the way she said it that wasn’t entirely convincing. Her eyes had darkened a little, and her breathing had become shorter.

I rested my hands on her shoulders carefully, without pressing. I looked into her eyes until she stopped avoiding mine.

—If at any point you want me to stop, you say so and I stop. That’s all I’m asking.

She said nothing. She didn’t move either.

I kissed her.

At first it was all resistance. Her lips pressed tight, her body tense under my hands, her crossed arms functioning as a barrier I made no attempt to force. I just kissed her, slowly, patiently, sucking her lower lip, running my tongue along the corner of her mouth. Until I felt something in her give a millimeter. And then another.

When she answered, it was with an urgency that took me by surprise. She grabbed my T-shirt and pulled me closer on her own, opened her mouth and shoved her tongue deep into mine, and what had begun cautiously turned into something completely different. Her mouth open against mine, her tongue battling with mine, her hands no longer pushing me away but holding me by the hair at the nape of my neck. She lowered one hand and squeezed my cock over my pants, measuring me, and let out a short moan when she felt how hard I was against her palm.

I took her to the living room sofa. We sat down. She looked at me for a second, with that expression of hers like she was processing something, and then she pulled off her sweatshirt in one quick movement. Underneath she wasn’t wearing anything. The tits I had watched on the screen for two years were there, thirty centimeters from my face, with her nipples already hard and pointing at me.

The first time I saw her up close like that, without the distance of a screen, something inside me broke in a way I still struggle to describe. It was real. She was there in front of me, and she was looking at me with a mix of nerves and something that definitely was not fear.

I lunged at her. I caught one nipple in my mouth and sucked hard on it, barely biting down, while with my other hand I kneaded her other breast. She arched her back and buried her fingers in my hair, pushing me against her chest.

—Harder —she said in a hoarse voice. I bit her nipple until she let out a gasp that was half complaint, half order to keep going.

I yanked the pajama pants off her in one pull. She wasn’t wearing panties. The cunt I had watched on the screen the night before was there, almost completely shaved, the lips swollen and already shining without me having barely touched her. I spread her legs with my knees and dropped to the floor in front of the sofa.

—Wait —she murmured, but she did not close her legs.

I ran my tongue the whole way from bottom to top, from her perineum to her clit, in one slow lick. She let her head fall back against the couch with a long moan. She tasted of salt and something sweet, and I buried myself there, licking her cunt the way I had imagined for two years: with my lips, with my tongue flat against her clit, with two fingers sliding into her slowly and curling upward until I found the spot that made her lift her hips off the sofa.

—There —she panted—. There, fuck, don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. I sucked her clit, trapping it between my lips while I fucked her with my fingers, and within two minutes she was coming in my mouth with one hand clenched in my hair and her legs trembling on either side of my head. I felt the contractions closing around my fingers and didn’t let go until she stopped shaking.

She sat up, panting, and yanked my arm upward. She kissed me with her own taste still in my mouth, and while kissing me she opened my belt, unzipped me, and took my cock out. She wrapped her hand around it and squeezed hard, looking me in the eyes, measuring it.

—Stand up —she ordered.

I obeyed. She slid to the edge of the sofa, licked her lips, and took my cock halfway into her mouth in one stroke. She pulled it out, spit on the head, and swallowed it again, this time deeper, until I felt the back of her throat closing around the glans. She looked up at me from down there with teary eyes and smiled around my cock, and I thought I was going to come just from that.

I put a hand behind her head and started moving my hips. She let saliva leak from the corners of her mouth and never looked away. She sucked me off with the same clear direction she had shown when kissing me: she knew exactly how much she could take, when to relax her throat, when to run her tongue under the frenulum. When she noticed I was about to come she let go all at once and pulled back.

—Not yet —she said—. Fuck me first.

I laid her on her back on the sofa and knelt between her legs. I lifted her knees against her chest and shoved into her in a single thrust, slow but complete, feeling how she opened for me, how the hot flesh sucked me inward millimeter by millimeter. She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and looked straight at me. She did not look away for the entire time it lasted.

—Move —she said—. Hard.

I started fucking her without care, coming almost all the way out and driving back in to the base, until my balls slapped against her ass with every thrust. The sofa creaked. She dug her nails into my back and moaned in my ear everything she had been keeping quiet for years.

—I knew you were watching me —she told me, her voice broken by the blows—. I knew you were there.

I almost came from that. I pulled out so I wouldn’t finish and turned her over. I put her on all fours on the sofa, ass raised toward me, and slid back in from behind. From that angle I went deeper, and she started pushing back against me, setting the rhythm, fucking me as much as I was fucking her.

I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. With my other hand I slid my palm down her belly until I found her clit and rubbed it in circles while I kept driving into her.

—Like that —she panted—. Like that, don’t stop, don’t stop.

She came a second time with her face buried in the sofa arm and her cunt clamping around my cock in waves. I had never felt anything like it. I held out as best I could, breathing through my mouth, until she stopped shaking and I could keep going.

We changed positions several times. I got on top and watched her ride me, biting her lip and massaging her tits, going up and down on my cock with her knees planted on either side of my hips. I fucked her on her side, with one of her legs over my shoulder. I put her on her back again and lifted her legs against my chest to drive my cock as deep as possible.

When I finally couldn’t take anymore, I pulled out and finished over her stomach and tits in three or four thick spurts that spilled down to her navel and reached her neck. She ran two fingers over her belly, gathered my semen, and brought it to her mouth without taking her eyes off me.

We stayed there, panting, saying nothing, for a very long time.

We spent the whole morning there. The house silent, the sun coming through the striped blinds, time suspended in a bubble we both knew would end but neither of us wanted to pop. We fucked again on the rug, slower, her on top of me rubbing her cunt against my cock until she came once more, and me finishing inside her when we no longer even knew what to call what we were doing. At some point we fell asleep, tangled on the too-narrow sofa, with dried semen between our thighs, exhausted and not remorseful yet.

When I woke up, she was gone. Only her scent remained on the sofa fabric and, in the drawer of my desk, the recording from the night before.

***

That was more than twenty years ago. Natalia is almost fifty now. She lives half an hour from here, has a family, a life that from the outside looks orderly and complete. I have my own, also imperfect, also real.

But two or three times a year, without anyone planning it too much, it happens. A message that seems innocent until it stops being so. An afternoon that opens up. A hotel downtown that we both arrive at separately and never mention afterward. She walks into the room, locks the door, and before she even greets me she’s already taking off her clothes. She sucks my cock on her knees on the carpet as if twenty years had not passed. She lets herself be fucked against the window glass with her tits flattened to the pane and her face turned toward me. She comes with my cock inside her and my name in her mouth, and afterward she dresses in silence and goes home.

I still don’t know what to call what exists between us. If it’s love or simply the weight of a secret that has gone unresolved for decades. Maybe they are the same thing and the difference doesn’t matter as much as one imagines when one is young and believes everything has to have a name.

What I do know is that when I see her walk through a door, I still lose my breath in the same way I did that night in front of the receiver. And that she still looks at me, clothed or naked, in a way she gives no one else.

That will have to be enough.