Charlie And Mindy Bk 03 Ch 01 1

This is the first chapter of seven in Book 3 of the

Charlie and Mindy

tetralogy, which is a story of forbidden love between a brother and a sister.

This book stands on its own, but it refers to events that took place in Books 1 and 2. You may therefore want to read Book 1 and Book 2 before reading this book.

I value your comments and your feedback. I try to reply to comments.

—CarlusMagnus

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

I was a college sophomore, and Mindy, my main squeeze, was a freshman at our small liberal arts college that fall of 1987. On the evening of the first Friday in November, a vicious dog—known across the college campus as "The Doberman"—had attacked us and bitten Mindy badly. She'd needed surgery to repair torn muscle tissue, but her injuries were now improving a little with each passing day.

I'd fallen and knocked myself out when I'd tried to protect my lover, and then she'd wound up having to protect me—not to mention having to bear the brunt of The Doberman's attack. So we'd found ourselves in the emergency room—after one of the cops who'd happened to be in the neighborhood had shot and killed the dog. We'd been lucky that they'd been nearby, and I didn't like to think about what could've happened if they hadn't been there.

No—that's wrong! I

hated

to think about what

would

have happened if not for those two cops.

By the following Wednesday, she'd been able to give up one of the crutches she'd had to use in order to get around. Traveling on one crutch is a lot easier than traveling on two, so from then on she was no longer restricted to the immediate environs of our campus. Thus, we easily fell back into our routine of studying our school work at my apartment when my apartment mate, George, was around—and taking every opportunity to study the other's body there when he wasn't.

The next day, Mindy mentioned to Stephanie Young, who always sat next to her in our calculus class, that we would not be leaving town for Thanksgiving Break—the break being too short for the distance we would have to travel. Upon hearing that, Stephanie had immediately invited the two of us to their off-campus house for a Thanksgiving dinner with her and her twin brother Steve, whom Mindy and I didn't know.

We'd accepted gratefully—we'd been feeling a bit sorry for ourselves at the idea of spending the holiday with just ourselves. Not that either of us was ever sorry about being alone with the other, but that we wanted to share the holiday a little more widely. Stephanie was already planning to cook a turkey, so Mindy offered to make a pie and to help with the other fixings. I promised several bottles of suitable wine—say, a pinot grigio—and, that very evening, I placed an order with Frank—one of the seniors who lived downstairs in my house and was old enough to buy alcohol. (And, thinking ahead to the rest of the break, I ordered several more bottles of wine and a case of beer.)

Stephanie and her twin brother shared an old one-story house about three blocks from ours. They, too, were staying in town for the break. Mindy, who was very good at the necessary small talk, had long since teased their background out of Steph.

Their circumstances were very different from ours. They were born in March of 1968, just two months after I was born. Their parents had died in a boating accident in the summer of 1986, when the twins were 18 and just before they and I had begun our freshman year at the college.

They had no other siblings, and they weren't close to their remaining family. Those other family members, uncles, aunts, and younger cousins, were scattered along the West Coast—even farther from the college than our home in Fort Collins, Colorado. Steph, Mindy, and I were all pleased at the prospect of having friends to share the holiday meal with; Steph assured us that Steve would be, too.

Mindy's period arrived on time on the fifteenth, and lasted through the eighteenth. We got pretty horny again while we waited it out, but we were happy, nevertheless, when it came. She was still on the Pill, of course, but we knew that no birth control method is perfect. Pregnancy wasn't on our agenda, and it was good to have her state of non-pregnancy confirmed.

I had a visit from Li'l Abner and Sgt. Andy—the cops who had rescued us from The Doberman—just after eleven that Tuesday while I was at home and Mindy was in her English Comp class. Thus, I finally got to thank Abner for saving Mindy's life, but that wasn't the reason for their visit. They wanted to take a statement from me as part of a criminal proceeding against one Riley Carter for harboring a vicious animal, and, particularly, for criminal negligence.

The dog's bad disposition was well known throughout the town, and both Abner and Andy had witnessed the attack, so my statement wasn't completely necessary to support the harboring charge. But I was the only person who'd seen that The Doberman's gate hadn't been latched, and my testimony might make or break the negligence case. They would be looking for Mindy, too, to get a statement from her.

Our encounter with The Doberman turned out to be the second time that animal had attacked someone. Riley Carter, its owner, had been convicted of a misdemeanor and fined heavily for the first incident. This second offense meant a felony charge, one that, according to Sgt. Andy, ordinarily carried a prison sentence of up to four years. But Riley had done time on two previous felony convictions, and as a three-time loser could get up to eight years. If the negligence case stood up, it could result in even more time. Carter had sworn, they said, that he wasn't going back to prison.

Riley had managed to elude arrest until a few days earlier, when he'd been caught and jailed. He'd made bail earlier the morning that Abner and Andy talked to me, and so was out of jail. The two of them thought it would be a good idea for me and Mindy to try to keep our distance from Carter's house—known on the campus as "The Dog House"—for a while.

That night, The Dog House burned to the ground.

According to the newspaper, a neighbor had heard a shot from inside the house. He'd called the police, who found the house on fire when they arrived. The fire department had arrived quickly, but the house was engulfed in flame before they could get there. Onlookers reported that the smell of burning flesh had hung heavily in the area as the firefighters tried, without success, to extinguish the blaze. They had managed, however, to prevent damage to nearby homes.

A day later, the paper reported that investigators had found two empty gasoline cans and Carter's body, a pistol beside it, in the ashes—and that all appearances indicated that he had committed suicide after setting the house afire.

Riley Carter wouldn't go back to prison; he would not now find himself forsworn.

Our own problems seemed pretty mild in comparison with Riley's—and his solution. Both of us had three exams that Friday. That was a drag, but we both thought we'd done reasonably well on all of them. However, we did miss our Friday morning love-making while George was out of the house—owing to nervous pre-exam preparation during the hour before our first class.

Horny as we were that Friday evening, we didn't want to establish a pattern by often using the bottom floor of the library, whose security system I'd figured out how to penetrate, so I let Mindy in on the deepest secret that George and I kept.

The two of us had spent many nights the previous year borrowing lock cylinders from doors in each of several different campus buildings. We had taken each of those locks apart and measured its tumblers with a micrometer. Then we had put the locks back together and returned them to the doors from which we'd swiped them—always later the same night we'd borrowed each.

After we'd made measurements on several locks from a single building, we could easily see the master-key configuration for that building. We'd found that it wasn't very hard to turn the handle of an aluminum kitchen measuring spoon into a blank key and then file it appropriately. So each of us had made a key ring that gave him admission to many places on the campus at times when they were supposed to be locked up tight. We didn't want to steal anything or commit any crimes—we just didn't like being locked out of places.

That evening, before I let Mindy in on the secret, I took her to the empty football stadium. The gates weren't generally locked, so we had no trouble getting into the stands. But it was a cold November night, and—knowing what activity I surely had in mind—she looked at me as though she suspected I was crazy. She wasn't, she said, going to put

her

bare ass on one of those metal benches out there in the sub-freezing cold—even with our old quilt under her, and no matter what the reward might be.

I led her to the entrance to the press box, pulled out my magic key ring, and let us in. Then we had to put off what we had in mind while I explained to her where that key ring had come from. She looked at the other keys on it, wanting to know what buildings they worked in. When I told her, she got a familiar glint in her eyes. "Maybe," she suggested, "we should see how many different buildings we can do It in before school's out in the spring."

There was a game scheduled for the next day, and the athletic department had turned up the heat in the box, so that important sports reporters wouldn't freeze their asses off. The press box had almost as much floor space as my apartment, and there were some armchairs scattered about—as well as a pretty decent couch against the back wall. We had a very comfortable session on that couch, and we didn't freeze our own asses off, either. We figured that any tracks we left on the fabric of the couch would dry out by game-time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was nearly nine when I woke up on the day before Thanksgiving. I found myself lying on my side, naked, and in my own bed. Mindy's warm, naked little body lay in my arms, her back up against me. She was still asleep, breathing slowly and deeply. My hand cupped her tit, and the cleft of her ass accommodated my morning wood nicely. It throbbed its pleasure, and mine, as awareness returned.

My housemates were gone for the Thanksgiving break. Technically, that break began today, but Frank had left town on Friday—almost a week early. (Luckily, he'd gotten my beer and wine first.) Earl and George had left at about lunchtime on Tuesday, and so had Mindy's roommate, Carol. Bussey Hall, the freshman women's dormitory where Mindy lived, would be closed for the break. Under the circumstances, we saw no reason why she shouldn't spend her nights where we thought she belonged—sharing a bed with me.

On account of our house- and roommates, we hadn't been able to spend a night in the same bed for almost three months. Of course, doing so in the women's dorm was out of the question. As far as my housemates were concerned, I knew that, generally speaking, they wouldn't much mind my having a woman in my bed. Ordinarily, they would applaud—probably even congratulate me on getting laid.

But the circumstances weren't ordinary, because Mindy is my little sister, and we couldn't be open about the erotic nature of our love for each other. Neither of us was very happy about needing to keep it a secret that we were deeply in love with each other, but we didn't see what else we could do. We couldn't be openly romantic with each other, because too many people about the campus knew that we were siblings. Our story for public consumption was that, during the break, she was sleeping in the spare bed in my apartment.

We were almost the only people on or near the campus, and we were determined to make the most of the five nights we could spend with each other. And I had just rediscovered how much I loved sharing bodies with Mindy before falling asleep with her—and then waking up the next morning to find her in my arms, naked, snuggled up against my own nakedness.

Gently, almost automatically, I began to knead her boob, and I felt her nipple begin to stiffen against my palm. After a minute or so, her breathing altered and she moved a little bit. I continued my action—a little more robustly.

"Mmmmmm." She hummed a little moan of pleasure—still half asleep.

"Mmmmmm." I hummed my own little moan back at her and kept kneading. Her hand found and stroked mine where I held her boob.

"Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm." She gave me two sleepy little moans.

"Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm." I returned them, still a little sleepy myself.

And then, waking up a little more, I reached down and planted a big kiss on the back of her neck. Her wonderful little body shivered against me.

"Ooohh, Charlie!" It came out fuzzily. "That feels so good. But it gives me goose-bumps."

Her butt-cheeks clenched around my boner—which throbbed its approval. That elicited another butt-clench—which caused another throb. And so on for six or eight cycles.

She was mostly awake, now, and so was I.

"I like waking up to find you next to me, naked, with your dick hard and where it is now." She mumbled it, still fuzzy with sleep. "I love you so much."

"I like it, too." I squeezed her as she wiggled back toward me. "And I love you even more."

"I'm going to go to the bathroom," she said. "And then I'm going to come back here and make love to you."

"That's a plan. But I'm going to the bathroom, too. I'll go downstairs; you can use the bathroom up here. Can we snuggle a little more before we do It?"

"Good idea. I like snuggling like this. We'll add that to the plan." She wiggled out of my arms and rolled to the edge of the bed. I watched as she stood up, naked, beside the bed. It was a lovely view. She looked at me and saw how my eyes caressed her body. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She started toward the bedroom door, limping slightly, favoring her left leg.

"How's your leg this morning?" I asked.

"It still hurts a little when I walk," she replied. "But it's nothing I can't handle. And it keeps getting a little better every day. It should be okay before long."

"I'll be glad when it's completely healed," I said. "Then we can stop thinking about that goddamn dog."

She stepped back, reached over, and stroked my upper arm as I lay there. She was still smiling. "Go, lover. We can talk after, while you hold me." Goose-bumps were appearing in earnest on her skin, now. I'd turned the thermostat down the evening before, and it was chilly in the drafty old house.

"I'd better," I said. "Before I wet the bed."

I got up and followed her out of the bedroom. She turned left toward the bathroom, and I turned right toward the stairs. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have gone downstairs, because that was a different apartment from the upstairs. But there were no locked doors separating the two apartments, and Mindy and I were the only ones in the house. And I knew that Earl and Frank, the men who shared the downstairs apartment, didn't mind if I used their bathroom when they weren't home—or, even, sometimes, when they were home. Our unspoken gentlemen's agreement was simply that we'd announce ourselves and wait for acknowledgement before entering the other apartment when somebody was there.

When I finished, I kicked the thermostat from 60° back up to 72° as I passed it. Turning the heat down at night saved on the gas bill, but there was no good reason to stay cold through the day.

By the time I got back to the bedroom, she was back in bed—enjoying the warmth of the two old quilts we'd slept under. I felt her eyes caressing me as I walked naked back to the bed, and that made me smile at her. She smiled back.

I slid back into my place behind her and took her back into my arms. My cock had known what it would find in my bed and had stiffened again. It reoccupied her butt-cleft, and she wiggled back against me. I throbbed, and she clenched. Again. Again. Still again.

"Are you okay, Charlie? Are you still having those dreams?"

I'd had some nightmares. I'd awakened in tears a couple of times, after dreaming that The Doberman had killed her while I'd lain unconscious, unable to defend her.

"I haven't had one since late last week. How about you?"

She'd had some dreams, too. Her dreams had ended with me dead, the dog having chewed through the collar of my old leather bomber jacket, and then my throat, before she could divert it to herself. She'd awakened screaming one night in her dormitory room, and her roommate and some of the other women on her floor had comforted her.

"My last one was sometime last week. Are you still feeling bad about getting knocked out when you thought I needed you?"

"You did need me, and it's not so much that I feel bad about it," I said, "any more than you feel bad about your leg injuries. But your leg hurts you, and it hurts me that I wasn't there when you needed me to protect you.

"But I went down, and then I needed you. And it makes me feel really good to know that you took care of me."

She rolled over in my arms and scooched up the bed a bit, so that we were face to face. Blue fire crackled in her eyes.

"Charles Edward Magness! How could I ever not take care of you! You're my big brother! And my lover! And I can't live without you! If you think that I shouldn't take care you because men don't need it, or because I'm a girl, or because I'm too little, you are in so much trouble…"

She had my attention. She only used my full name when she was about to give me a thumping, verbal or otherwise. But I wasn't going to backpedal.

I smiled at her. "I can't live without you, either, Melinda Lee Magness. And you

are

a girl. Not that that makes any difference where love and courage matter. And I'm pretty much in favor of you being a girl—as you might have noticed. But, at least to outward appearances, you are little." She was only five feet tall, against my six feet, so she really was small. And she was sensitive about it. I paused, knowing what was coming.

"I am

not

—"

I shushed her with a finger across her lips.

"You are on the outside," I said. "But you didn't hear what Sergeant Andy said about you that evening in the emergency room—right after you told us that you aren't little, and they wheeled you away."

"Whatever it was, it had better be good," she allowed. The blue fire in her eyes danced; I didn't have to stretch my imagination to hear it crackle.

"He said that he's been a cop for over thirty years, and he's never seen anything like the way you took on that dog after I went down. And then he said, near as I can remember, 'She might be little on the outside, even if she don't think so, but inside, where it counts, she's every bit as big as Li'l Abner. And she's got a lion's heart.' And, Ms. Magness, you'd better believe that I agree with every word of that."

Li'l Abner was the cop who had killed the dog; he was about 6' 10" tall and made mostly of bone and muscle—he was a true mountain of a man. Sergeant Andy was his partner.

The blue fire became less intense. "Did he really say that? That on the inside I'm as big as Li'l Abner? Nobody's that big! Inside

or

or out!"

"You are," I said. "And he did say that. And that was when I realized that I'd known it all along without knowing that I did. I think it's part of why I love you so much.

"Mindy, I've always thought it was my job to protect you, and I've always welcomed that job and done it with my whole heart. But I never really

thought

about it. You and The Doberman made me think. Now I know that it's always been your job to take care of me, too, every bit as much as it's been mine to take care of you. I think I've always known that, but, like I said, without knowing that I knew it.