What Happened Between My Sister and Me While Painting

I’d been thinking for weeks about that move as the doorway to a completely new life. The apartment was small, bright, on the tenth floor with hardly any noise, and it still smelled of the paint I’d put on the week before. One wall was left unfinished, the one in the living room, and I’d decided to leave it for that Saturday in August.

When I asked Nadia if she’d give me a hand, she didn’t hesitate for a second.

—Of course. But fair warning: I’m late and I’m useless at painting.

—I know —I told her—. But I’m glad you’re coming.

Nadia is my little sister. Well, little in age, not in anything else. We’re four years apart and we’d always been more like friends than sisters, the kind who tell each other things they don’t tell anyone else. We’d shared a room until we were twenty, we’d traveled together, we’d seen each other naked a thousand times without that meaning anything special.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

She arrived at eleven in the morning with a plastic bag full of soft drinks and a smile that took over her whole face. She was wearing cut-off jeans ending at mid-thigh and a sleeveless top that showed off everything. When I saw her appear in the doorway, something I couldn’t name shifted somewhere in my chest.

She’s always been beautiful, I thought. But I’d never looked at her like this before.

—Is this all you’ve got? —she said, looking at the empty living room—. Where’s the furniture?

—It’s coming Tuesday. That’s why we have to paint today, while there’s nothing in the way.

I explained the plan: one coat on the back wall, the last one, and that was it. Two hours’ work, maybe. I’d set aside some clothes from my ex in a box, oversized men’s shirts so we wouldn’t stain our own.

—We can change here —I said, pointing to the corner where I’d put an old sofa.

Nadia didn’t hesitate. She took off her top and her jeans without the slightest embarrassment and stayed in her underwear. It was completely natural between us. We’d seen each other like that all our lives. But that morning, I don’t know if it was the heat or the light or simply that I hadn’t seen her for months, I kept looking longer than I should have.

—What? —she said, catching me.

—Nothing. Here. —I handed her one of the shirts.

Instead of putting it on the expected way, she took the shirt, opened it, and tied it in a knot under her breasts. She was practically naked from the waist down, only in her underwear. She looked at me, waiting for my reaction.

—It’s hot —she said, as if that were the most reasonable explanation in the world.

—It’s hot —I repeated, and said nothing more.

I put mine on too. I buttoned it only as far as I needed to, not much. We grabbed the rollers and started painting. The silence between us was comfortable, the kind that doesn’t need filling. Every so often a song drifted up from a downstairs apartment.

The problem was the heat. That wasn’t a metaphor: it was brutally hot that morning, the kind of heat that clings to your skin and won’t let go. Within twenty minutes we already had shiny foreheads and arms streaked with white paint.

I am not going to spend the whole morning looking at her like this, I promised myself.

I broke that promise almost immediately.

It was hard not to. In that sticky August heat, with the windows open and the fan spinning uselessly in the corner, Nadia painted her half of the wall with a concentration I envied. I painted mine, or tried to. But my attention kept drifting back to her bare legs, to the way she swayed slightly when she reached the top of the wall, to that strand of hair that stuck to her neck every time she turned her head. Every time she stretched her arm, the shirt parted and I saw one whole breast, the nipple pink and hard from the friction of the fabric. Just looking at her made my mouth go dry.

Nadia moved with that easy grace people have when they’re unaware of their own bodies, or when they are aware and have decided not to care. She raised the roller, lowered it, stretched, and each time she did the shirt opened a little more.

—Are you looking at me? —she asked without turning around.

—I’m looking at the wall.

—Uh-huh.

She tossed me a glance over her shoulder and the two of us just laughed.

***

The accident happened when I was working on the upper part. I lifted the roller too high and a stream of paint splashed straight onto my chest. I yelped in surprise and Nadia turned, saw me, and burst out laughing without the slightest attempt to hide it.

—Think that’s funny? —I said.

—Very.

I flicked paint at her with the roller. She did the same back. In a matter of seconds we were both white-spattered and laughing our heads off. We started smearing the paint on each other with our hands, first on our arms, then on our shoulders, and somewhere between the laughter and the heat and the hands on skin, it stopped being a little-girls’ game.

Her fingers slid along my side, down to my hip and from there up inside my shirt to brush a breast. She traced my nipple with her thumb, very slowly, without taking her eyes off me.

I stopped laughing.

We looked at each other. I don’t know how long we stood like that, with our hands still dirty with paint and our breathing a little uneven. Nadia had a white streak on her cheek and her eyes were wide, and something in her face said she hadn’t planned this either.

She kissed me.

It wasn’t a sisterly kiss. It was slow, firm, deliberate, her tongue slipping into my mouth without asking permission, and when I didn’t pull away it grew longer. I felt her hand slide up my side to settle over my breast, searching through the fabric, squeezing, pinching the nipple between index finger and thumb. A moan slipped out of me before I even realized I was going to make it. Her other hand went to my ass and pulled me hard against her, and I felt her thighs open so I could press mine against her cunt over her underwear. She was wet. You could tell through the fabric.

—Stop —I said.

She didn’t listen. She bit my lip and kept pushing her tongue into my mouth.

—Nadia. Stop for a second.

She pulled back just enough to look at me, without taking her hand out from inside my shirt.

—Do you want me to stop?

No, I thought. I don’t want you to stop.

—We’re covered in paint —I said instead.

She smiled slowly.

—Then let’s shower first.

***

The bathroom was the only part of the apartment that was even remotely in order. Nadia turned on the tap and tested the water with her hand while I stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do with my own body.

—Coming or not?

I took off my shirt. She did the same. She tugged her panties down her thighs with two fingers, never taking her eyes off me, and let them fall into a puddle of wet fabric beside the toilet. I saw her cunt for the first time: almost completely shaved, with a thin strip of dark hair just above it, and the lips already swollen. I took off mine too. We stepped under the water together.

There was something extraordinarily strange about being like that, with my sister, under the same stream. Strange in the sense that it shouldn’t be happening, and at the same time in the sense that I didn’t want it to stop. The water washed the paint from our bodies and with it something else too, some boundary we had always had without ever questioning it.

Her hands soaped my back. I did the same to her. It was slow, unhurried, as if there were all the time in the world. I ran my soapy hands over her tits, squeezed them, circled her nipples with my thumbs until they turned hard as stones. She gave a short gasp and returned the favor, lifting mine from underneath, weighing them in her hands.

When she turned toward me, I saw her face-on and froze for a moment.

—What? —she asked.

—Nothing. It’s just... —I couldn’t find the words.

—I know —she said, and kissed me again.

This time I didn’t stop. I touched her the way I wanted to touch her, with my palms flat on her back, sliding down to her waist, lower, grabbing her ass with both hands and parting it while we kissed with our mouths open. I slipped one hand between our bodies and found her cunt under the water. She was hot, slick not just from the water. I ran a finger over her lips and rubbed her clit with my fingertip, in slow circles. Nadia grabbed my shoulders and went very still, breathing hard against my neck.

—Fuck —she murmured.

I pushed one finger inside her, then two. They slid in with indecent ease. She started rocking against my hand, seeking them out, biting my shoulder so she wouldn’t moan too loudly. With my thumb I kept rubbing her clit.

—How long have you been into girls? —I asked in her ear, without taking my fingers out.

—For a while. I hooked up with a friend last year. —She paused, swallowed—. And you?

—I don’t know. I think since this morning.

She laughed. It was a genuine laugh, the kind that comes out unwillingly, cut off abruptly by another gasp when I curled my fingers upward, searching for that spot inside.

—Glad I was the first.

—I don’t know whether to be glad or worried —I said—. The fact that you’re my sister complicates things a bit.

—Or simplifies them —she replied, eyes closed and hips pressed into my hand—. There’s nothing to explain.

***

We dried ourselves with the only large towel I had, handing it back and forth without much patience. My fingers still smelled like her. The living room was still half painted. Neither of us cared.

The mattress was on the floor of the back room, with no bed yet, a sheet over it and two pillows. Nadia lay down and looked up at me from below, still with wet hair stuck to her face and her legs slightly parted.

I started at the top. Her neck, her shoulders, the curve of her collarbone. I licked the hollow of her throat, nibbled her earlobe, went down her sternum and took one whole breast into my mouth. Every so often she would close her eyes and then open them to look at me, as if she needed to make sure it was real. I moved down to her breasts slowly, circling the nipples with my tongue, sucking until they hardened and I let them go with a wet pop. I bit one carefully but hungrily, and she arched her back.

—My God —she said under her breath—. Keep going.

I kept going down. Her stomach, her navel (I put my tongue there too), her sides. I took my time because I wanted to, because we had spent our whole lives as sisters and never had this and now we did and I didn’t want to waste it. I bit the inside of one thigh, then the other, and she started to get impatient, lifting her hips in search of my mouth.

—Don’t make me wait —she murmured.

When I got where I wanted to go, she spread her legs all the way open without me having to ask. Her cunt opened in front of my face, pink, shiny, already dripping. The first touch of my tongue tore a long sound from her throat. I ran my whole tongue from bottom to top, slowly, tasting her, ending on the clit. I went back down. I pushed my tongue in as far as I could, fucked into her with it, and she grabbed my hair with both hands.

—There, there, don’t move from there.

I listened. I watched her. I sucked her clit between my lips, taking it in, and at the same time slipped two fingers inside her, slowly at first, then harder according to what her body was asking for, because the body asks very clearly when you know how to listen. Nadia writhed beneath my hands and whispered broken things, my name, words that never quite made it all the way out.

—Like that —she begged—. Like that, fuck, don’t stop. Push it in deeper. Eat my cunt, eat it all.

I didn’t stop. I added a third finger and fucked her cunt with my hand while I licked her clit without pause, a steady rhythm, getting faster and faster. She started trembling all over. Her thighs closed around my ears.

—I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come...

When she came, she came with her whole body, tight at first and then completely loose, squeezing my fingers inside with spasms that made me want to put my tongue back in just to feel it. I kept licking her slowly as she came down, until she pushed my head away because she couldn’t take it anymore. She stayed still for a long while, staring at the white ceiling of the new apartment, her chest rising and falling.

—No one’s ever done that so well for me —she said at last.

—You’re lying.

—A little —she admitted—. But not much.

***

Then it was my turn. Nadia had experience, that much became clear right away. She made me lie on my back and positioned herself between my legs, but she wasn’t direct. She knew where to go and how to go there, knew when to speed up and when to take her time, knew how to read the signals I didn’t even know I was giving. She kissed my stomach, licked my groin, blew on my wet cunt without quite touching me, and I grabbed her head to pull her down.

—Don’t rush —she said, laughing against my thigh.

When she finally put her tongue on me, she laid it flat from bottom to clit, and I arched off the whole bed. She sucked my lips one by one, took them into her mouth, slid her tongue in and out, and then attacked my clit with insulting precision, alternating tongue and lips, sometimes sucking, sometimes just brushing. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I kept burying them in her hair, taking them away, curling them into the sheet.

She slipped two fingers inside me and curled them upward, searching for that spot, while she licked my clit nonstop. She kept me there, on the edge, much longer than I would have wanted, pulling back every time I was about to tip over. I learned live that Nadia was a damn good bitch at what she did.

—Please —I begged her—. Please let me come.

—Ask nicely.

—Please, make me come. Eat me, don’t stop, please.

That was when she sped up. She drove her two fingers in deep, pulled them out and thrust them back in at a brutal rhythm while she sucked my clit hard, and I came screaming, my legs clamping around her head, pissing myself inside over her hand, with no control at all.

—Quiet —she said, laughing against my cunt—, the neighbor will hear you.

—Let him hear me —I panted—. That’s why I moved out on my own.

She climbed up my body and kissed me on the mouth. I tasted myself on her. She threw my leg over hers, cunt against cunt, and started rubbing herself against me, slowly, slick, and I could feel her clit sliding over mine like a bare cable. I grabbed her ass with both hands and set the rhythm. She moved faster, her mouth fell open, her face went taut, and she came again on top of me, leaving my thigh soaked.

She let herself fall beside me. We stayed like that for a while, saying nothing, listening to the dull noise of the building and distant traffic and our breathing slowly settling.

—The living room is still half painted —I said at last.

—I know.

—I have to finish it before the furniture gets here.

—I know. —Pause—. When’s it coming?

—Tuesday.

—Then we’ve got Sunday.

She said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world: we come back tomorrow, finish the wall, and whatever happens, happens. No drama, no labels, no need for either of us to name what had just happened.

—Are you coming tomorrow? —I asked.

—If you invite me.

—I’m inviting you.

—Then I’m coming.

She sat up to gather her clothes from the floor and put them on with the same naturalness she’d shown in everything else, not putting her panties on, which she stuffed wrinkled into the back pocket of her jeans. I watched her from the mattress without moving.

—Hey —I said.

—What?

—Don’t tell anyone.

She looked at me for a moment.

—Did you really think I would?

She was right. She was my sister. We’d kept secrets from each other all our lives. This was simply the most complicated one of all. And also, without my having planned to think of it that way, the most pleasurable.

***

She left at lunchtime. I stayed sitting on the mattress a little longer, naked, with the smell of her still on my fingers and between my thighs, staring at the white walls of the new apartment, thinking about everything that had happened that morning. The heat was still inside me, that kind of heat that has nothing to do with temperature.

There was one unfinished wall in the living room.

It didn’t matter.