Coming Home 47

"Kates?" Peter called as he stepped into the basement. His eyes adjusted to the gloom of what had been his-their-childhood playroom. Against the wall he could make out the shapes of Little League trophies. No lights were on in the room, and the midnight sky outside offered little illumination. Most of his family was sleeping upstairs, in whatever bed or sofa they could find, drawn together as his grandmother slipped towards death.

"I'm over here," a quiet voice answered. Kate reached for the light switch on the lamp next to her. "Careful, someone has rearranged the furniture." He saw her, then, curled into the corner of the daybed. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face pale. Without thought he moved towards her and sat down on the daybed.

"All of my happiest memories are in this house. Gramps, Grams, and you. No matter how bad everything else in my life was, I knew when I got here it would be okay." Kate fought back tears again. Her childhood hadn't been perfect, but Peter's had been brutal. Their grandparents did everything they could to keep Peter with them as much as possible. An only child living in a downtown condo, Kate had spent as much as she could on her grandparent's farm, racing ponies with Peter. Suddenly he laughed, the light up his face, baritone laugh she had loved for as long as she could remember. "Remember when Gramps and Grams went into town and we drove the truck?"

"Do you mean do I remember when we went mudding in the truck when you were all of, what, thirteen? And you drove through a field Gramps had just finished preparing, after you told me I was to young at twelve to drive?" The conversation naturally drifted into the warm, happy memories of their grandmother and their own childhood antics.

"Anyway, if I had been the one driving the dune buggy that day it never would have flipped over," Peter informed her in the tone of voice she never had been able to abide. Katie sat up and playfully punched him in the arm.

"If you had been driving we would have all ended up in the lake!" Kate cried, and Peter tickled her side in answer. She retaliated by hitting him with a pillow. They jockeyed for position and dealt out playful blows, but soon Kate found herself pinned to the daybed. She stopped laughing and tried to catch her breath. Peter's black eyes bored down into her. "Why, Kate? Why did you leave for college and disappear from my life? Why have I only seen you at Christmas? You've come to visit Grams and never called me to say you were in town. You were my best friend, and then you were just gone." She closed her eyes against the pain in his voice. When she purposefully distanced herself from Peter she knew what she was doing, that she would cause him pain. But she had chosen the lesser of two evils, and had lived with her horrible choice for the last eight years.

Peter continued to look down on her. Her thick, glossy chestnut hair had come loose and floated around her head. He could see the rise of her breasts under the pink tank top, and could feel the swell of her hips pressed against his own. Cousin, yes, but more than that. Soulmate. Other half. Best friend. "You know I got divorced?"

Kate nodded, still unable to open her eyes. "Do you know what she looked like? Light eyes, brown hair, medium height, freckles. That's how all of my girlfriends have looked."

No, Kate thought, no. She had to make him stop talking. "Peter..."

"You, Kate. They've all been attempts to replace you. But none of them have had your sense of fun, your intelligence, your...Kateness."

Tears now slipped down her face. She had hoped that only she was tormented by the idea of a relationship that could not be. She had hoped that Peter only thought of her as his cousin, his childhood playmate, and nothing else. She had hoped Peter would settle down, and have the happy homelife he had been denied as a child. She had hoped to go to her own grave with her terrible secret never known.

"Peter, we're cousins! The woman dying upstairs is our grandmother. I haven't meant to ignore you, I've just been..."

"Liar," his voice gruff. Although Kate was better at coming up with stories to hide their misdeeds, she was such a horrible liar she always got caught out. It was her voice. It went higher and flatter, not the animated honey-whiskey voice that had haunted him since she was thirteen years old.

Now her voice cracked and her eyes opened. Light eyes met dark. Peter moved over her, pinning her down with his body. She felt the lean, clean weight of him press down upon her the way she had often imagined. He felt the softness of her breasts and hip flatten beneath him, her face inches from his own. Kate wasn't lying about their grandmother, and Peter knew that after she died, Kate would have no reason to return. A life without Kate was unbearable.

When his mouth clamped down upon hers, Kate tried to fight, moving her head. But his mouth stayed with her, and Kate began to fall into the kiss. With each flick of his tongue she felt some previously unknown part of her come alive. He shifted his weight so that he lay next to her, and she was pinned between his body and the wall. Carefully, he slipped one hand under the edge of her pink tank top and drew circles on her abdomen. Kate mewled against his mouth and he could taste her tears. He knew that the price of this night would be tears, both now and later. With great control, he moved his hand up to her bra, and was glad to find it was front clasped, the kind of bra he always remembered seeing in Kate's mess of a room when they were young.

Deliberately he unclasped her bra and pushed the tank top up over her breasts, reaching around her so that he could grasp both breasts. Their weight was unexpectedly heavy in his hands, and felt himself growing hard against his jeans. He pushed his thumbs against her already erect nipples and was rewarded when her body pushed against his. The tears turned into sobs. His natural instinct was to comfort her, so he started covering her face with kisses as he continued manipulated her breasts, enjoying the silken velvet feeling of her skin.

"Peter, stop. Please stop. Please stop." Kate was sobbing even as she arched her back to meet his hands.

Their foreheads were touching, and he looked into her eyes. "Tell me you don't want this, Kate, and I'll stop."

"I don't want this," Kate answered, but her voice was high and flat.

"You are lying," he told her as one hand left her breast and began sweeping down her side in large, soft strokes. Soon he was stroking the back of her knee, and then he placed her top leg on top of his own and began pushing her skirt up her leg as his hand explored the different textures of skin she had behind her knee, on the front of her leg, and on the inside of her thigh.

Electrical impulses flooded Kate's brain. Logical thought was gone. All she knew was that Peter, her Peter, was causing this explosion in her brain. Her hands traced down his back until she caught the edge of his black polo and began pulling it up. Thought was replaced by need, and right then she needed to feel his skin against hers. Peter startled when he felt her hands roam his back and grab his shirt, but he sat up to help her take it off. Then he pulled Kate up, causing her to groan when his hand left her breast, and pulled her tank top off and tossed her bra aside. Then grabbed a handful of her skirt and pulled on it until Kate lifted her hips and he tossed the black and pink print skirt to the floor. Kate lay back on the daybed.

Beautiful. His eyes took in the curve of her neck, the swell of her breast, and the soft down between her legs. Other images of Kate's body swam before his eyes. Kate swimming in the lake. The first time he saw Kate in a bikini. The time he walked in on her in the bathroom and she was wearing nothing but a towel. The scar on upper thigh from when her pony threw her and she landed on the barbed wire. The scar on arm from when she cut her arm trying to change a tire on her first car.

Kate's hand traced the scar on Peter's stomach, remembering how she had cried when she saw him in the hospital after his surgery. His skin was softer than she would have thought, and paler than her own. She flattened her hands on his stomach and the pushed them upwards across his chest, then behind his back as she pulled him down to her. Flesh against flesh, Kate almost started crying again. Peter made a shushing sound as his mouth closed over first one nipple, then the other. She was lost, and she knew it. His hands roamed freely across her legs, and when he brushed against her clit she almost came up off the bed.

He didn't know how long he could last as Kate began nibbling his ear. He pushed her back down as he fought for breath. He had waited to long, and he planned on savoring this. He didn't just want Kate for tonight, but he knew how stubborn and willful she was. He had to break her, to push her so far she'd never want to come back. Stretching out on his side he continued dancing his hand across legs, never quite stopping where she wanted. Her breath was shallow and rapid, and closed his mouth over hers as he sank two fingers deep inside her. He was rewarded when she came up off the mattress, arching her back and pushing against his fingers. He lowered his mouth to her left nipple as his hand continued its assault against her.

Kate's mind worked against her, as the impulses flooded her brain it revived flashes of old memories, and she relived things she had not thought about it in years. Peter's dark eyes looked up as his mouth continued suckling her nipple, and the heat she saw there was almost to much. She closed her eyes against it all.

Peter bit down, causing her eyes to fly back open. "Keep your eyes open, Kate," he said, his voice demanding acquiescence.

"No, no, I can't," she breathed out.

"You will," he said, and then slipped a finger onto her clit, making figure eights as his mouth reclaimed a nipple. Kate kept her eyes on Peter's face, even as she felt a blush break out on her face. She tried to control the thousands of messages her nerve endings were sending to her brain, but it was useless. Peter reclaimed her mouth as his hand continued dancing. The world had contracted to these things, Peter's hand, Peter's mouth. She felt herself turning inwards.

Pulling away from her, he watched the emotions play across her face as he felt the contractions start deep within her body. "Tell me you want this," he said, his own voice heavy with need.

Kate nodded. "I want this," she whispered, her voice unsteady.

"Tell me what you want," Peter said.

"I want you."

"You want me to do what, Kates? Bring you to orgasm? You want to lay on this bed and let me give you an orgasm?"

Tears were falling down her face again. "Yes," she breathed out. He nodded, pushing a lock of hair from her face with his free hand.

"Then what?" Then what, Kate asked herself. She could barely think, had no control, was doing the unthinkable by letting him watch her. She'd always insisted her boyfriends turn off the lights and had kept her own eyes closed during intimate encounters. She knew what she wanted, of course. She'd always known. "I want you to make love to me."

He increased the pressure on her clit as her hips began to rock under his hand. Kate reached up to grab his shoulder and he kissed her forehead. The pressure was building and Kate began to cry out his name, over and over. Peter. Peter. Peter. It sounded like the beating of his own heart.

Kate could feel his erection grinding into her side, and even as she lost herself to the waves she knew what she wanted. Her hands moved to the waistband of his jeans, jerking urgently at the button fly when suddenly she was overcome. She was flying into a million pieces and falling off the edge of a cliff, and only Peter could save her from oblivion.

With a desperate yank Peter pulled off his jeans and knelt before her. Kate's breathing was still jagged. Her eyes were so bright he could barely stand to look into them. Her arms snaked around his back and she ran her hands over his butt. "Peter, Peter," she said again, the naked need still there. He ran his penis against the swollen folds over her labia and felt her tense again. She pushed on his hips and drew air in sharply as he entered her.

He lay still on top of her, letting them both adjust. How long had he dreamed of what Kate would feel like underneath him, surrounding him. Her hands continued pressing upon him and hecupped her face in one hand, watching her as they began to move. This was what he wanted. For the rest of his life.

Kate stared up at his face as her hands traced down his back and hips. She met each thrust with a parry, just like she had their whole lives. A new feeling came over her, along side the deep ecstasy that continued to brew over her.

Home, she realized as Peter thrust so deep inside of her she thought she would die. It was the feeling of home.