“Merry Christmas!” Mike and his parents all said to Jenna on the speakerphone, as they ended the call.

She was originally supposed to be home for the holidays, but she had to cancel for work. Mike felt disappointed and lonely. The two of them had unfinished business together. She had been physically distant overseas, pretty much since that last weekend trip. And of course there’d been no opportunity to say anything private to her, to tell her how he truly felt, when their parents were in the room with him.

Mike knew it was a bad idea to fall in love with his own sister, but that hadn’t stopped it from happening, and now he was suffering for it. It was like one romantic disappointment after another. First Lisa broke up with him, taking most of his friends with her. Then he met Rosie, only to discover that she was a ghost. Then he had the bad luck to become attached to his own sister, only for even her to leave him behind.

He went back to his room to sulk, and maybe distract himself with video games. It was partly his own fault, after all. He could try to meet someone at school. But this thing with Jenna had him feeling like he was already in a relationship of some kind, even if he couldn’t very well say that.

His cell phone buzzed. It was Jenna. He answered, “Hey.”

“Are you alone?” she asked.

He turned his laptop speakers up a bit, to give them some cover. “As much as I ever am.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Uh…what’s this about?” he asked. “I was looking forward to seeing you…and, you know, maybe more.”

“Yeah, that was my plan too,” she said, and sighed. “I realized I could either come home for the holidays, or carry our child, but not both.”

Mike sat dumbfounded.

“Mike, are you still there?” Jenna asked teasingly.

“I thought…the pill you bought…”

“I never took it,” she said. “What would be the point, if we were going to keep…” Fucking your brother was one thing, saying that in words was another. “Besides, I didn’t want to take that pill. I didn’t want it to make me sick again. Especially not when we didn’t have much time left before I had to leave.”

“I know, but there wasn’t a right time. I kept having flashbacks to when that cop caught us together, and if our parents walked in on us, that’d be just as bad, maybe worse.” He felt betrayed. He thought she had taken a morning after pill after the last time they were together, in that abandoned hotel. “I can’t believe you kept it.”

“Well it’s my body. My decision, Mike.” She sounded agitated.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” she said. “Just don’t go down that path, trust me.”

Mike tried to get his thoughts in some kind of order. “You’re sure you’re pregnant?”

“At this point, yeah. I wasn’t at first. It’s not that easy to get a piss test here, but by now it’s pretty obvious, to me at least,” she said. “With my weight, and the way everybody dresses here, I don’t think anybody else is going to notice. I figure when it’s about time, I’ll travel to somewhere discreet, somewhere it’ll be well taken care of, I’ll give birth, and give it up for adoption.”

That was a weight off Mike’s mind. He wasn’t sure about raising a child yet, and it was mortifying to think Jenna might bring one home, a baby made of their incestuous genes. Yet he was unexpectedly tantalized at the thought of her pregnant with their child. Knowing that when they’d made love, it had sparked life inside her.

“Anyway, it’s the only proof I have of what we shared,” she said. “I mean it could be Zack’s or Greg’s. Some of that weekend is unaccounted for. But you certainly did your best to make sure it’d be yours.”

“This sucks. I didn’t mean to put you in this situation,” he said.

“You still don’t get it?” she asked. “I put myself in this situation. I was the one fantasizing about getting pregnant. I was so ready I could feel it. So when it happened, I knew it was a possibility, and I just let it happen. I don’t regret what we did, and I don’t regret what came out of it.”

For Mike, her words cast a whole new light on those moments they shared together. He’d known there was some risk that she might get pregnant. The idea that she’d been toying with the idea, even intrigued by it, was new.

“If you can’t come here, maybe I could come to you,” Mike said. It would involve taking a break from school, but at least they wouldn’t be stuck in the same house as their parents.

“No, better not. We’d be even more conspicuous together here.”

—

When Jenna stepped off the plane and out into the terminal, it felt a little odd to have no one waiting for her, but this was how she planned it. Her family didn’t know she was coming home. It was meant to be a surprise. Most of all, a surprise for Mike.

Just months ago, she had been chronically single, a long dry spell after getting out of a bad relationship that went on too long. Having a sex life at all seemed out of her league then. That was before Frederic, the Olympic runner who gave her all the attention and respect Lefkoşa Escort she didn’t know she deserved. With him, she felt sexy again, and sexually voracious. More than that, she felt fertile and primed to reproduce, something she hadn’t even considered before.

Even if Frederic turned out to be a mere phantom, her perspective on herself had never been the same since. And then there was this thing with Mike, which she didn’t know what to do with. Even though it started with deceit, the moments they shared had taken her to new heights that she never knew were possible.

But since they returned from the haunted hotel that second time, there’d been nothing to sustain her. Mike was too scared of getting caught, or so he said. Her self-doubt made her wonder if it was something else about her that kept him at bay.

She had thought that her time abroad, away from Mike, would sober her up, give her some distance from that whole situation. She needed to get herself straight, stop lusting after her brother, stop thinking about getting pregnant, and most of all, stop letting those two impulses overlap and amplify each other.

What actually happened was that when she went abroad, she took with her a little souvenir of those explosively passionate times they shared. It implanted within her and started to grow, and to shape her around it. She noticed her breasts feeling tender and fuller. It was a slight difference to anyone else, but she could tell when her hips widened, when her belly pudged out a bit more.

The hormones gave her urges she had no way to satisfy. Her work situation didn’t provide much opportunity to socialize, and so she spent many nights alone, her mind constantly pulled back to that last sexual contact she had, kissing Mike hard as he pulled her down to him, holding her tight for when their bodily fluids combined. So many times she got herself off while replaying that scene. Instead of helping her distance herself from that attraction to her brother, her fantasies of pregnancy, she found herself dwelling on these things.

Even when she lost it. One day, without warning, she was spotting, more than she ought to. She knew this was something many women go through; for Jenna, it brought a complicated mix of emotions. She was sorry to see the life she had fostered within herself go out, and sad she wouldn’t get to see it live and breathe. But what if it wasn’t viable because of the incestuous genes that comprised it? What if it had been a bad idea in the first place, that she shouldn’t have let go on for so long? Another month passed, and she recognized, when her period started again, that it was certainly over. That was when she decided to fly home. There was only one person in the entire world she could talk to about this.

She was nervous though. She didn’t quite know where they stood anymore. They hadn’t talked much since Christmas. They didn’t know how to be together, as siblings, as lovers, as both, or as something unusual in between.

What if he had met someone else? Could she be happy for him like a sister ought to be? Could she be relieved that at least one of them was able to move on to a healthier relationship than theirs could ever be? She knew how she ought to feel, but her stomach twisted at the thought.

When the cab dropped her off, Jenna let herself into the house. She still had a key, after all. But the noise drew Mike downstairs.

“Oh my god! You’re here!” he said, and rushed to her, giving her a hug.

“Surprise!” she said. She wanted more than a brotherly hug, but she wasn’t sure if they were back to “normal siblings” again now.

“What gives?” Mike asked. “You said…”

“I’m…uh…not pregnant anymore,” she said bluntly, softly enough that it wouldn’t carry to anyone else in the house.

“Oh jeez. I’m sorry,” he said, holding her close. It felt good to be close with him again.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay, anyway,” she said, taking his hand.

In any other year of their lives together, it would have been an innocent, chaste gesture, but Jenna felt her breath catch at the contact.

He leaned in and kissed her, softly at first, then more hungrily. That had to mean they had the place to themselves, for now. She could feel his hands roaming her body, rediscovering all of the crevices that a brother shouldn’t be so familiar with. Or maybe taking in all the ways that the past months had reshaped her. His touch felt electric, sending shivers through her to her core, where she felt herself heating up quickly.

“Maybe not right here,” she said with a smirk.

As she padded up the stairs behind him, it felt ludicrous to be doing this, and yet she wasn’t entirely in control. She needed this. She needed him. She needed to renew what they had together before.

When she walked into Mike’s room, it was almost entirely as she remembered it. Right away, she noticed a couple of photos on his desk. A familiar hotel edifice in disrepair. A dim shot of a bare brick interior, with the arched Girne Escort ceiling of the lobby area.

“Zack gave me those. He said he went back there a couple times,” Mike explained.

“And he found it like this?”

“No, he told me it looked intact to him when he took these.”

Jenna thought it over. “So that place got its hooks into him too. Him and who else, I wonder?”

“He didn’t say.”

Mike leaned in close to her, and she turned back towards him, lifting the hem of his shirt. Piece by piece they undressed each other, barely parting long enough to take off each garment. With each one, Jenna knew they were recrossing old boundaries, reopening wounds to the sibling relationship they once lad, leading each other closer to an unwise end.

When she stood before her brother completely naked, Jenna worried what he’d see now. She had been built big before, still carrying the weight she put on in college, though she kept herself active and strong. Now she was a bit thicker still, the waistband of her pants fitting a little snugger since the pregnancy. Her worries melted away when she saw the admiring look in his eyes, and the obvious erection between his legs.

As she joined him on his bed, Jenna remarked, “Your sheets are going to smell like sex.”

“I can deal with that,” he said.

Mike kissed her neck, his hands admiringly caressing her breasts. She led one of those hands down to her belly, and below that, to where she needed his touch the most. She was aching for it, and the first time his finger grazed the sensitive skin of her clit, she nearly jumped. He tried to pull his hand away at first, but she held it in place reassuringly.

Once he started exploring her slit, she moved a hand to his lap, finding him rigid and swollen, already leaking precum. A reminder that any contact between them could be laden with sperm. Just the tip could be enough to do it.

“Have you not gotten off at all without me?” she teased.

“No, you’ve been there every single time,” he said. They had never talked dirty like this before. This was a side of Mike that she wasn’t used to, but she wasn’t complaining. She felt her arousal building quickly.

She held his hand to her crotch and thrust back at it desperately, until the shakes overtook her.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. She hadn’t came this hard in months. And yet it was just the beginning. “I want you.” She knew she didn’t need to say where, or how.

He leaned over her, kissing her, and she waited to feel him press into her, but it never came.

Abruptly, he pulled away. “I’m sorry, I just can’t do this.”

“What?” she asked, still foggy with arousal. “Why not?”

“I keep worrying that our parents will come home. They aren’t supposed to, but they could. And once I get started, I won’t be able to stop, not even if it’s too late,” he said. “That would be…really bad.”

She let out a breath. The mood was broken. That fiction, that they could have this whenever they liked, whenever they needed, like a normal couple, was shattered. She should’ve known it wouldn’t be so easy, given everything that kept them apart in the first place.

“Then let’s go somewhere,” she said.

“Where?” Mike asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Mike was already stressing about getting caught, which probably wasn’t helping him think straight. “How far away do we have to go, to avoid being recognized together? I have no idea.”

“What about that creepy hotel?” she said. It wasn’t exactly convenient, since it took hours to drive there. But it was the one place in the world where the two of them being together had never been a problem.

She went on, “Zack only got a couple photos, right? But we were there for an entire weekend. Eating, drinking, walking the halls. We still don’t know what was actually happening during all that time.”

“Okay, okay,” Mike said, nodding along. “This time we keep a video camera rolling.”

“Shouldn’t you be worried what it’ll record you doing?” she asked.

“No one else will see it,” he said. “Besides, I could use something to keep me company after you leave again.”

They made plans to leave the next day, and packed bags for the trip. They packed two tents and two sleeping bags just for show; they only intended to use one this time.

Jenna still felt let down from Mike pulling away from her. Like she was missing something, was still owed something. But at least they had a plan. Not that it seemed all that clever or efficient or romantic. She didn’t want to wait an entire day, but she had waited months already, she could tolerate one more day. The anticipation was heavy in the air, though. Last time they did this, it had nearly changed her life forever. This time, there might be no undoing it.

That night, their parents were surprised but pleased to find Jenna home. Mike let them know they’d be going ghost-hunting for a couple days. It all sounded normal enough, not at all like a romantic weekend getaway.

——

“Is it recording?” Magosa Escort Mike asked, as they drove up the winding driveway.

Every curve of it was now familiar to him. Just like Jenna’s curves. He’d been out of his mind with desire all day, knowing where they were going and what they intended to do there. Mike could feel himself getting hard in the car just from holding her hand. At times, it was hard to resist pulling off the road, even knowing what had happened last time they tried that.

“Yeah, the little red light is on, anyway,” Jenna said. “Is there any way to see what this thing sees? The front of the hotel looks intact to me, but we know that’s not right.”

“No, that little action cam doesn’t have a built in display. We won’t really know until we get the SD card back to a computer.” He pulled into a parking spot near the font door and got out. “I guess we just go in then?”

The lobby was relatively quiet. Over towards the far end, there were a couple people loudly exchanging stories. The air smelled like cleaning products and ash from the fireplace. Mike knew this was all an illusion, and yet it was hard to keep believing that when his senses told him otherwise.

The desk attendant was someone he didn’t recognize, an older man with a prominent nose.

“Hi, I’d like a room for two, please?” he asked. There was no point in maintaining the pretense that they’d be spending the weekend apart.

The attendant looked the two of them over. “There’s no need to cram yourselves in. This is our quiet season, so we have plenty of rooms available. I can give you each a room, at no additional charge.”

“No thanks, that won’t be necessary,” Jenna said, stepping forward to the desk.

“Well then. If you change your mind, we’d be glad to assist,” the man said, giving them each a key.

As they walked down the hallway, Mike remarked, “I guess it’s easier for the ghosts to seduce us if they can get us alone. Maybe we should have stuck together that first time.”

“Or maybe it would have just taken longer for them to get what they want.” Mike nodded. That did seem more likely to him. And there was a certain comfort in the idea that the way things had ended up was inevitable.

Suddenly a man coming the other way collided with him. Mike hadn’t been paying close enough attention to dodge out of the way. The man muttered his apologies and went on his way before Mike realized the man’s drink had spilled all over him. Mike watched him stumble away.

“I can’t believe he did that,” Jenna said.

“Probably drunk,” Mike said, though he knew nothing here was so simple.

When they got in the room, Mike stripped off the stained clothes, but the wine had soaked all the way through to his skin. It felt sticky and gross, and not in a good way.

“I’m going to step into the shower, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Do you want me to film you showering?” Jenna asked. “If we want to know what’s really happening?”

“I think maybe we should draw a line at the bathroom door,” he said. “There are things I just don’t want you in the room for, even now.”

The hot water was soothing, real or not, and Mike came out of the shower feeling refreshed as he dried off. Jenna wasn’t in the room anymore. Mike felt a bit disappointed. Their time alone together was so rare and so brief that he wanted to make the most of it.

There was a knock. Mike looked out the peep hole, but didn’t see anyone. Behind him, the closet door opened. Rosie poked her head in.

“The door to the next room is back in the closet,” she explained. “Mind if I come in?”

“But…what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I was home with the baby, but Harry rang me when you arrived, and I rushed over here,” she explained. She walked towards him purposefully, gauging his reaction with every step.

She looked just as stunning as ever, maybe more so. Her bust had grown during her pregnancy, her hips were wider, like he found that he liked now. She had a glow about her, and a sweet milky scent that he wanted to breathe more of.

“How is…the baby?” he asked.

“She looks just like you. I can’t wait for you to meet her,” Rosie said. She brushed the wet hair away from his face. “But that can wait a bit. I just had to see you first.”

It was clear that she longed for him. Mike wasn’t sure he deserved this devotion.

“I don’t know…” he said.

He was conflicted. He came here to be with Jenna, that’s what he truly wanted. Yet he still had feelings for Rosie too, and she had given birth to his child, according to her.

He was tempted, for sure. By the physical closeness of her. More than that, he found himself drawn to the narrative she was spinning. He was surprisingly comfortable with the idea that he had a child. Only he knew it wasn’t real. It was a farce of the real thing. The thing he could have with literally anyone else. Maybe even Jenna.

“Really? You don’t feel so reluctant to me,” she purred into his ear. It was true. He was firming up despite himself, and with him in only a towel, it was impossible to hide.

Mike struggled to remind himself that she wasn’t real, not entirely anyway. Not anymore. But he wasn’t sure exactly where to draw that line. She could play him like an instrument, and his body would have gladly played along, even if he wanted something else.