What Happened in the Kitchen When My Brother Came Back

Clara had gotten up three times before nine in the morning to look out through the hallway window. The one that faced the access road. The one that let her see cars arriving with enough warning to decide whether to run or not.

She decided not to run.

When Marcos’s taxi appeared among the pine trees at a quarter past ten, Clara was standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee she had not taken a sip from in more than twenty minutes, too busy controlling the irregular rhythm of her own heart.

Three years. In three years you can love someone very much over the phone and through messages and in calls that sometimes lasted until two in the morning. You can also, without really meaning to, start loving him in another way. Without that second kind of loving being innocent at all.

The front door opened and November cold came in with Marcos.

He had changed. Not dramatically, but in the way people change when they have spent years being themselves in a new place: more settled in their own bodies. Broader shoulders, a different posture, something in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. He dropped his backpack on the floor of the hall and looked at her.

—Clara.

Just her name. But in that deep voice that was not the same over the phone.

She crossed the space between them and hugged him. Marcos took her in at once, his arms wrapping around her with a calm strength she had not expected. He smelled of travel, of cold, and beneath that of something she recognized without needing to think about it.

—You’re different —he said against her hair.

—I’m nineteen. Three years have passed.

—I know. But still.

They pulled apart. Clara studied him with that direct honesty she had always had. Marcos held her gaze with that calm of his she had never quite managed to copy.

—Berlin changed you —she said.

—For the better, I hope.

—For the better —she confirmed.

For too much better.

Her parents were in the living room. The reunion was noisy, warm, with the kind of questions parents ask when they have spent years waiting for someone to come home. Clara stayed on the edges, watching. Watching him, if she was being honest. And noticing, very low down, a heat between her legs she had spent three years trying to ignore and that, that morning, was no longer asking permission.

***

By midmorning, with the welcome coffee still untouched on the table, her mother called to both of them.

—We have to go into the village to take care of a few things. We may take a while. Can you manage lunch on your own?

—We can manage —said Marcos.

The door closed. The car disappeared down the gravel road. And the large, silent house in the mountains was suddenly left to just the two of them.

Marcos poured himself more coffee and leaned against the kitchen counter. Clara cleared the cups from the living room because she needed to do something with her hands.

—Tell me —he said when she came back.

—What do you want me to tell you?

—Everything you haven’t told me over the phone.

—That’s a lot.

—We’ve got all day.

Clara set the cups in the sink and sat on the opposite counter, crossing her legs under her body. She looked at him for a moment that stretched longer than expected.

—Have you missed the house? —she asked.

—I’ve missed some things about the house —said Marcos.

—Which things?

He held her gaze.

—You know which ones.

The silence that followed had weight. Clara let it stay and looked down at her own hands.

***

The idea of cooking together came when they both opened the fridge at the same time and found that their parents had left ingredients for something sweet before leaving. Flour, eggs, milk, butter.

—Pancakes —said Marcos.

—Mine never come out right.

—I’ll teach you.

They began in silence, with that old comfort that comes from knowing each other forever. Marcos measured the ingredients with that precision of his Clara had always found exasperating in other contexts and was now watching with an attention that had very little to do with the recipe. His forearms were bare, his T-shirt pushed up to the elbow. He mixed with slow, circular movements.

—Like this —he said, handing her the bowl—. Don’t rush it.

Clara took the bowl and stirred. Marcos stood behind her, his hand over hers to correct the angle. The contact was as natural as it was unexpected. She kept stirring. He did not move his hand away right away. And she felt, very clearly, Marcos’s hard cock pressing against the small of her back through his jeans.

—Like this? —Clara asked, her voice a little rougher than she wanted.

—Like this —he said, his voice lower, closer to her ear.

Neither of them moved for several seconds. Marcos pushed his hip forward just a little, almost imperceptibly, and Clara felt his dick harden against her. Then Marcos stepped away and went to turn on the burner as if nothing had happened.

Clara stirred the batter alone, more slowly than necessary. Her panties were already damp and she had been in the kitchen with him for eleven minutes.

She put music on from her phone. Current pop, something that sounded like normality. She started singing under her breath while she prepared the rest, and when she turned to look for the sugar, she found Marcos watching her from the other side of the island. Not in a way anyone could point to. Just watching. The way someone looks at something they have gone a long time without seeing.

—What? —she asked.

—Nothing —he said, and looked away toward the pan.

***

She was the one who spilled the batter. A sudden movement when passing the bowl from one side to the other, and a thick stream fell onto her T-shirt, covering her chest. She stood still for a second, looking at the mess, then burst out laughing.

—You’re dangerous —said Marcos, coming closer.

—I always have been.

He grabbed a dishcloth from the counter, but did not use it. He stayed in front of her, looking at her with that expression Clara had been trying not to name all morning. With the cloth still in his hand, he tilted his head and brought his mouth to her collarbone, where a thread of batter shone on her skin.

His tongue traced the trail slowly. Very slowly. Licking the batter and the skin beneath it too, taking advantage of any excuse not to pull away.

Clara did not move. She braced one hand on the counter so she would not lose her balance. Marcos’s tongue kept going down, sucking the batter from the edge of her neckline, and with his teeth he tugged her shirt so he could get closer. The heat of his mouth spread from her collarbone to her neck, slow, with no urgency, as if he had decided he had time. She felt her own breathing change without asking permission and her tits tighten inside her bra, her nipples hard as stones against the fabric.

—Marcos —she said. Just one word, with no continuation.

He lifted his head. Looked at her from very close. His mouth was shiny with batter and saliva.

—Tell me no —he said—. If you want me to stop, you tell me and I stop.

Clara took a full second to answer.

—I don’t want you to stop. Don’t stop, fuck.

***

What came next had that strange texture of something that had wanted to happen for too long. Marcos kissed her and this time there was no care in it: he shoved his whole tongue into her mouth, searching, and Clara kissed him back with the same hunger, sucking his tongue as if she had spent three years waiting for that taste. She bit his lower lip. He growled low against her mouth, and with one hand he grabbed the back of her neck and with the other her waist and pulled her against him.

Clara felt Marcos’s hard cock again, now against her belly, and she did not pull away. On the contrary: she slid her hand down the front of his jeans and squeezed the bulge over the fabric. Marcos hissed through his teeth.

—Fuck —he said against her mouth.

—I’ve spent three years imagining this —she said—. Three years.

—Me too.

He yanked the stained shirt over her head and threw it to the floor. The bra followed, with two quick movements of his fingers at the clasp. Clara’s tits fell free, white and full, with pink nipples, hard, pointing at him. Marcos stared at them for a full second, mouth open.

—God —he murmured—. They’re better than I imagined.

—You imagined them?

—Every night.

He bent down and took one nipple into his mouth. Clara let out a short, sharp moan that bounced around the kitchen. Marcos sucked hard, tugging with his lips, while with his free hand he squeezed and kneaded her other breast, pinching her nipple between his fingers. He switched to the other one. He ran his tongue around it slowly, and then bit just enough for Clara to dig her nails into his shoulders.

—Marcos —she gasped.

—Shh.

He lifted her onto the counter with ease, his hands firm on her waist, and positioned himself between her knees. He unbuttoned her jeans and yanked them down, along with the soaked panties, leaving her completely naked on the cold marble. Clara felt the shiver of the contact on her ass and the heat between her legs all at once.

Marcos stepped back. Looked at her whole. Looked at her tits rising and falling with her breathing, her belly, her shaved pussy with the short dark hair just above it, the thighs opened by her own posture.

—Open wider —he said in a hoarse voice.

Clara did. She leaned back on her hands and spread her knees. Marcos came close again and ran his open palm along the inside of her thigh, going up, until he reached her cunt. The first time he touched her there, Clara almost fell backward. She was soaked. Marcos’s fingers slid with no resistance through her lips, up and down, and he made a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan.

—You’re dripping.

—I’ve been like this since you walked through the door.

He slid one finger into her. Just one, all the way in, and Clara arched her back. The finger moved slowly, searching inside, curling upward. When it found the spot it wanted, Clara let out a moan she did not recognize as her own.

—There —said Marcos, more to himself than to her—. Right there.

He added a second finger. Both went in and out with an obscene wet sound that filled the kitchen above the music. Clara moved her hips against his hand, seeking him, unashamed, her mouth open and her eyes closed.

***

—Stop —she said suddenly.

Marcos pulled away at once, his hands going still where they were.

—Are you okay?

—Yes. —Clara breathed—. I just needed to tell you something first.

He waited, his fingers still shining with her.

—I’ve never done this with anyone —she said—. Not fully. I’m a virgin.

Marcos looked at her for a moment. He read her face with that years-old habit of reading her.

—Do you want to keep going? —he asked.

—Yes. But I want it to be you. I needed you to know.

He nodded slowly. He brought his two fingers to his mouth without taking his eyes off her and licked them slowly, tasting her. Clara felt her cunt tighten just from watching him.

—Then we’re going to do this properly —said Marcos.

And he came closer again, this time even slower.

He kissed her mouth. He kissed her neck. He moved down over her sternum, between her tits, sucking her nipples one by one again until they were red and sensitive. He kept going down her belly, biting the skin just enough, until he reached her pubis. He laid her out on the cleared counter. Clara felt the cold marble at her back and Marcos’s hot breath between her legs and could not tell which was making her dizzy more.

He grabbed her thighs from below, draped them over his shoulders, and opened her cunt with his thumbs.

—Fuck, you’re beautiful down here —he murmured.

The first lick was long and slow, from bottom to top, from her ass to her clit. Clara let out a moan so sharp it startled her. Marcos went back up with his tongue, wider now, flatter, and dragged it across her cunt as if he were eating her. He sucked her lips one by one. He slid his tongue inside, pulled it out, went back to her clit and circled it, licked it in circles, sucked it with his lips.

Clara moved her hips against his mouth unable to help herself. She grabbed his head with both hands and tugged his hair, not to pull him away but to press him closer, and Marcos growled against her and the vibration in his throat hit her clit like a shock.

—Don’t stop —Clara gasped—. Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop.

He did not stop. He slid a finger in again, then two, while he kept eating her clit with his mouth. The fingers went in and out with a steady rhythm, curling upward on every thrust, and the tongue worked her clit above, slow, deliberate.

Clara started to feel her whole body tighten. Her thighs trembled on Marcos’s shoulders. Her breathing came in broken bursts. Sounds she had never made before were pouring out of her chest, high, unfiltered.

—I’m going to… Marcos, I’m going to…

—Come —he said against her cunt, never stopping—. Come in my mouth.

Clara came. She came so hard that the orgasm arched her back and lifted her ass off the counter and made her scream with no shame whatsoever. She clamped Marcos’s head between her thighs, smothered him against her cunt, and he kept licking her slowly, more softly, drawing out the last tremors while she collapsed again onto the marble, panting.

It took a while to get her breath back. The kitchen light was the same as before. The music was still playing from the phone, too soft to have covered anything.

—Good? —Marcos asked, his chin resting on her belly, shiny up to his cheeks, looking up at her from below.

—I don’t have words for how good that was.

He smiled.

***

It was Clara who took the initiative after that. She sat up, still naked on the counter, looked at him, and went straight ahead because she had always been direct: she ran a hand up Marcos’s neck, brought her mouth to his, and tasted herself on his lips. She licked his wet chin. She sucked his lower lip.

—Now you —she said.

She unbuttoned his pants with fingers that did not tremble as much as she expected. She pulled down his jeans and boxers in one yank. Marcos’s cock sprang out, hard, long, the tip red and a drop shining in the slit. Clara stared at it for a second. It was bigger than she had guessed. Her mouth watered without her wanting it to.

She wrapped her hand around it. It was hot, firm, the veins marked beneath the thin skin. Marcos tensed all over under her touch and let out a low sound through his teeth.

—Wait —he murmured.

But she was already lowering herself.

She knelt on the kitchen floor and looked up at him with that mix of honest curiosity and clear intent that characterized everything in her. She stuck out her tongue and licked the tip, gathering the drop of pre-cum. Salty. She liked it. She licked the whole underside of his cock, from bottom to top, like it was an ice cream, and when she reached the tip she took it fully into her mouth.

Marcos let out a guttural moan that bounced off the tiles.

—God, Clara. Fuck.

She did not know exactly what she was doing, but she was learning on the fly. She lowered her mouth as far as she could, felt the tip in her throat, pulled back, took a breath, went down again. A thread of saliva hung from the corner of her mouth and she did not care at all. Marcos had his fingers tangled in her hair, not pushing, just following the movement, watching her from above with his mouth open.

—Like that —he gasped—. Just like that.

Clara sucked harder. She ran her tongue around the head every time she came up. She brought one hand down to his balls and kneaded them slowly while her mouth did the rest. With the other hand she circled the base of his cock and pumped what did not fit in her mouth, coordinated, a steady rhythm. Every time she choked a little, Marcos growled like an animal and that made her cunt get wet all over again.

—Look at me —he said, his voice broken.

She lifted her eyes without taking him out of her mouth. Marcos looked at her with an intensity she had never seen before. He stroked her cheek with his thumb, marking the bulge of his cock inside.

—You’re gorgeous like this —he murmured—. With my cock in your mouth. God, you have no idea how many times I’ve come thinking about this.

Clara moaned around him and the vibration made him tense up completely.

—Clara —he said, voice broken—. I’m going to come. If you don’t want…

She did not pull away. On the contrary: she sped up. She sucked harder, faster, her hand pumping in sync. Marcos groaned, threw his head back, and came in her mouth with two long thrusts that filled her tongue with hot, thick semen.

She swallowed what she could. The rest slid from the corner of her mouth, down her chin, and fell onto her chest, between her tits. She did not stop until he was completely finished, sucking him softly, milking him with her lips. When she finally pulled his cock out of her mouth, she looked up at him, eyes shining, chin covered, and he looked back at her with an expression Clara had never seen on his face before.

—Come here —said Marcos.

He lifted her from the floor. He kissed her on the mouth, on his own dirty lips, with no disgust at all, sucking his own taste from her tongue. He wiped what was left on her chin with his thumb and put it in her mouth so she would swallow that too. Clara did it, looking him in the eyes.

***

—Now you —he said—. I want to fuck you.

—Yes.

—Say it.

—Fuck me. Please.

Marcos growled and lifted her again onto the counter. His cock had not gone fully soft and within a few seconds, with Clara’s mouth biting his neck and her hands running over him, he was hard again against her belly.

He took a condom from his wallet —Clara noticed he had one ready, and she liked that— and put it on while looking into her eyes. He positioned himself between her knees, grabbed his cock by the base, and ran the tip all over her cunt, up and down, soaking it, pausing on the clit until she let out a moan of complaint.

—Put it in already.

—I’m going slow.

He pressed the tip to the entrance of her cunt. Pushed just a little. Clara felt the pressure, a widening, something tightening inside she had never felt before. Marcos went in another centimeter. He stopped. He looked at her.

—Good?

—Keep going.

He pushed a little more. She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth. It hurt for a moment, a sharp stab, and then the pain dissolved into the strange fullness of having him inside. Marcos kept going, very slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until she felt him all around her.

—Fuck —he murmured—. You’re so tight.

—You’re inside —Clara said, half laughing half crying—. You’re all the way inside.

—I’m all the way inside.

He stayed still, letting her get used to it. He kissed her mouth, her neck, sucked her nipples again. When Clara started moving her hips on her own, looking for more, Marcos began to move.

The first thrusts were slow, almost cautious. He pulled almost all the way out and pushed back in, calmly, letting her feel every centimeter. Clara dug her fingers into his shoulders when she started to understand what she was feeling. A presence, a fullness, something she had not known she was missing until it stopped missing. Marcos’s cock opening her cunt slowly, sliding out, going back in, and with each thrust a wave of heat rising through her belly.

—More —she gasped—. Harder.

Marcos sped up. He grabbed her hips and started fucking her harder, with a steady rhythm that made Clara’s tits bounce and the skin of her thighs smack against his with a wet clap every time. There were awkward moments: an angle that did not work the first time, a pause to adjust that made them both laugh under their breath. They shifted. Clara hooked her legs around his waist and Marcos went deeper. She let out a muffled cry.

—There —she gasped—. There, fuck, there.

Marcos braced both hands on the counter on either side of her and started fucking her for real. Long, deep thrusts that pinned her against the marble. Clara wrapped her arms around his neck, her breasts flattened against his chest, biting his shoulder so she would not scream too much and not managing it entirely.

—You’re mine —he told her in her ear, voice dark—. Do you understand? All mine.

—Yours. I’m yours.

He growled and sped up. The kitchen filled with the sound of skin against skin, with moans, with the wet sound of Clara’s cunt soaked around Marcos’s cock. She felt her body tightening again, the heat rising from her belly, the second orgasm building sooner than she had expected.

—Again —she gasped—. I’m going to come again.

—Come with me inside you —he said—. I want to feel you.

Marcos brought one hand down and found her clit with his thumb while he kept driving into her. Two circles and Clara broke. The orgasm split her open from the inside, stronger than the first, and her cunt clenched in spasms around Marcos’s cock, squeezing him, milking him.

—Fuck —he groaned—. Fuck, Clara, I can’t hold it.

—Come —she gasped—. Come inside.

Marcos gave three more thrusts, deep, brutal, and came with a broken moan against her neck, his cock throbbing all the way inside her. Clara squeezed him tighter with her legs and felt every one of the throbs as if they were her own.

They stayed like that for a long while, breathing. The kitchen smelled of burned butter because the pan had stayed on all that time. Marcos withdrew carefully, removed the condom and tossed it away, and went to turn it off. Clara stayed where she was, naked on the marble, looking at the ceiling, with that inner silence that sometimes comes after important things and her legs still trembling.

***

Much later, when the two of them were sitting on the floor with their backs against the low cabinets —Clara wearing Marcos’s T-shirt and nothing else, him in boxers— Clara looked at the bowl of solidified batter on the counter and let out a long laugh.

—We ruined dessert.

—Completely —Marcos confirmed.

—We’ll have to explain where the ingredients went.

—We’ll say it turned out badly. Which is technically true for the pancakes.

Clara rested her head on his shoulder. He rested his on hers. Outside, the mountain birds were making noise among the pines and the November sun was striking low and cold through the window.

—What happens now? —Clara asked, without drama. A real question.

Marcos took a while to answer.

—I don’t know. I suppose we have to think about it.

—Yes.

—Are you okay?

—Better than okay. —She paused—. And you?

—Yes. —Another pause—. Though I still don’t know what to call this yet.

—You don’t have to call it anything right now.

He nodded slowly.

They stayed like that, in silence, until they heard the sound of their parents’ car on the gravel road. Then they got up quickly, cleared away what needed clearing, Clara hurried to put her own clothes back on, and she put water on to boil for coffee with the calm of someone who knows exactly what she is doing, even if what had just happened still did not fit into any known category.

Marcos watched her from the other side of the kitchen while she waited for the water to boil.

—Clara —he said.

She turned.

—I know —she said before he could continue.

He nodded. And neither of them said anything else when the front door opened and their parents came in with bags and noise and questions about whether they had eaten well.

—We tried to make pancakes —said Clara—. It went badly.

Her mother looked at the empty bowl and the clean pan and asked nothing else. Marcos poured the coffee. The afternoon in the mountain house went on as if nothing had happened, which was exactly the right way for it to go on for the moment.