Michael stood naked in front of the mermaid, his older sister's hand on his right shoulder blade as they admired the creature, its hair flowing in waves, its features broad and solid, its breasts large and full with pink shells as nipples.
"Someone took their time with this one," he said.
"You just like the big boobs," Holly replied. She then lifted her hand from his back, held it up palm to him, and added, "If you even say she has a nice tail..."
But she knew he little brother wasn't clever enough to come up with that joke so quickly. Over the course of the summer she'd learned that he wasn't only innocent, but even simple -- not dumb but simple in the way a lot of good, decent men are. Entirely uncomplicated. No knots to untangle. No twisted strands to unravel. Perfectly naked in every way. And in that way, beautiful. She admired his lean body, his height, his cock hanging happily.
He'll be gone in few days, she thought. Back to college. And, in reality, this version of him will never return. Ever.
She put her hand back on his shoulder and leaned her head against his arm. The beach they were walking to was known by rumor more than anything else. Drive a couple hours south along the coast, look for a certain milepost, go a little beyond that, and you'll see a gap in the trees and maybe a few cars parked along the road. The trail to the ocean ran a mile through woods surprisingly thick, the second half of the tail opening a bit, a sandstone cliff running the length of it, the stone soft enough that people would carve names, faces, and sea goddesses into it.
When they had gotten out of the car, she told him that he should take his clothes off, which he did because she said to. She unbuttoned her shirt and revealed the bright red string bikini top she'd bought the day before. They left the clothes in the car. Along with their phones. She carried the beach bag and wore a pair of cutoff jeans.
Holly moved a hand down his side and cupped his balls. "It's been five days," she said. "Poor you stuck out on the couch in the den with no privacy." Their parent's cabin on the coast lived up to the title. Compared to their house in the city, it seemed of another generation and social class altogether. A kitchen and a common room, two bedrooms, and a tiny bathroom, and two closets. And nothing more. Thin walls, wood paneling, linoleum in the kitchen, a worn out carpet in a den filled with old furniture and a TV. Michael slept on a couch in that room. Any guests who spent the night made do with the rickety sleeper sofa across from him.
She massaged his cock and smiled watching it grow. She could feel his apprehension wrestling with his innate desire to cum after several days of having no privacy at all. "Hold on," he said. "What if someone comes?"
"Someone's going to," she said as she started pumping his erection. "Can't have you going out on the beach naked and feeling all pent up." He placed an arm around her, beathed deeply, closed his eyes, and let his chin drop towards his chest. She pumped vigorously, laughed when it started chirping, and then smiled broadly when a rope of cum leaped out of it, his hold on her tightening. He opened his eyes to the mermaid's stare. His cock deflated, the last drops falling from it.
"Your offering," Holly said, "To the goddess." She'd been stroking his cock all summer since finding him naked one morning in the kitchen when he thought himself alone. Any moment they had to themselves, anywhere in the house or out by the pool, she'd get him naked and treat him to an assortment of techniques, some of which absolutely transported him, left him quivering, and made her feel powerful. He was taller and stronger than her, but trembled at her touch -- which unlocked a need from within her to possess this kind of power. And use it.
Though Michael didn't know it, he wasn't the sole object of Holly's frenzy those summer months. Biding her time until she left for grad school, and not wanting to take a job offered at her parents' law office, Holly signed up for a temp job at some remodeling company, and at once, she realized that she'd been hired just to be the office girl. The idiot son of the asshole owner told her has much one afternoon. "The girl who normally works here likes to take the summer to be with her kids, so we get another girl to fill in." Really, she thought. He was in his early forties, a wife, a couple kids, and a hairline he was in denial about. He always showed up in the afternoon when everyone else was out at sites, saying he was just checking in, when it was more about checking out.
Never, she said to herself. Never with a guy like that.
Until one afternoon, she hiked up her skirt and pulled down her panties while he bent her over her desk.
"Do you have a condom?" she said. He stopped cold and said he thought he knew where one might be, and (surprise, surprise) he found one just where he thought it might be. It was ugly sex with grunting and his big dong thrusting into her like some dumb animal until the final grunt announced the session's end. Once dressed he started in on the spiel about having a wife and kids and how this was just something casual that wasn't meant to lead anywhere. "You got that right," she said, grinning at the flash of anger and disappointment at her agreeableness that crossed his face.
She let it go on a couple times a week solely because the old Holly never would have done anything like it. Of course, the old Holly never would have spent the summer getting her brother off, either. The Old Holly never would have studied up on ways to do it and things to say to get him going wild. She'd often tell him how heavy his balls felt from all the cum stored up in them -- she understood that he had no idea that his balls held only a small fraction of the cum he spurted, but that he loved hearing how big and heavy they were because, in truth, all he really knew about the semen he produced was how to shoot it.
And shoot it he did. In gorgeous streams, each of which she saw as a victory. The Old Holly never would have fathomed the idea of seeing her brother spewing cum in fits of ecstasy of her own making. But this Holly did. And liked it.
She and Michael turned from the mermaid and began walking down the trail toward the beach. They passed an assortment of figures and faces carved in the sandstone, most weathered and old.
"Feeling better?" she asked.
"Much," he said. An aunt and uncle had been staying with them all week at the cabin, sleeping on the pullout couch in the den where Michael slept. They were loud people, both of whom snored, and one of whom always seemed to need the bathroom whenever it was occupied. And the situation would only get worse -- more aunts, more uncles, and their kids were arriving that evening. They'd stay in tents in the cabin's tiny yard. Their mom had a big picnic dinner planned, so when Holly and Michael ducked away for the afternoon, she warned them to be back in time for dinner or else.
"And look out for the sneaker waves," she added.
The fucking sneaker waves.
Along the Pacific coast, at times, the ocean hurls forth a mini-tsunami that's renown for sweeping unsuspecting people out to sea or lifting driftwood trunks of dead trees off the sand and dropping them on anyone nearby. It's not entirely a legend -- they definitely happen, and people do get hurt. But their mother's fixation on sneaker waves is, to Holly's thinking, part of a kink her parents have built up around the cabin. When they go there, they transform. Holly's dad dons sandals, shorts, and a polo shirt. On chilly evenings, he puts on a sweater, sits in the recliner, and actually reads the newspaper. The only thing he lacks is a pipe. All the while her mom, the sharp-witted corporate lawyer, straps on a floral apron and buzzes about the kitchen perpetually fixing some meal or pouring their dad another drink. And this normally hands-off mom starts fussing over every detail of her children's lives. And seeing danger everywhere. Thus the constant and inevitable warning about the sneaker waves whenever she thinks they might actually approach the water.
It started the moment Holly and Michael arrived at the cabin. Instantly, the dad renowned for keeping his distance started warmly referring to Michael as his son and "my boy" and taking him out to fish or play a round of golf at the local course. And Holly? Her mom had a floral apron ready for her so she could "help out" with whatever meal needed prepping for.
The day before their trip to this secret beach, Holly's dad and his boy were off to the golf course as Holly and her mom were aproned-up and chopping vegetables in the kitchen. Holly looked at her mom and briefly wondered if, when she and Michael weren't around, if her mom only wore the apron around the cabin. She imagined her dad walking in and fucking his wife up the ass while she chopped carrots.
"What are you thinking about, girl?" her mom asked.
Girl. "Mike and I are going hiking tomorrow," Holly said.
"We got all your aunts and uncles and cousins coming tomorrow. If you go, you'll need to be back in plenty of time for that."
Holly nodded as she peeled a cucumber. Then her mom laughed out loud, put her knife down and said, "You know what happened last week?"
Dad face fucked you right here in the kitchen. "No," said Holly.
"I get home from work, and -- remember how your brother used to go around naked as a jaybird? Well there he was coming in from the pool totally in the nude." She laughed again. "I thought he'd jump out of his skin." She shook her head. "It was so sweet. She's such a nice-looking boy. And..." She help up her hands about eight inches apart. An exaggeration. "I shouldn't say anything, but a mom can be proud of her boy."
Tell me about it.
"Of course, I told him he should get dressed. Can't imagine you'd want your brother strolling through the house in the buff." She picked up her knife and started chopping again.
Holly and Michael had put off joining their parents at the cabin as long as they could. Their mom and dad had gone down on Friday evening, with Holly and Michael promising to join them Sunday afternoon. And that Sunday morning, as they lay in bed together, Holly had given Michael a blowjob.
She'd been lying next to him, her head on his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin and the steadiness of his breathing, her own eyes shut, a smile on her lips in a moment of peace. When, after a while, she opened her eyes, she noticed a grim look on her brother's face as though he struggled with something internally. When she asked what he was thinking about, he responded with a collage of words and bitten-off phrases that centered on her and what they'd done all summer and what it could mean and how it could have happened. When he finally managed to speak in complete sentences, he told her that he felt he should say something, so she touched a finger to his lips, not to comfort him, but because words complicate things, and what she wanted from him was the simplicity she'd been feeding off from him all summer. He'd never understand that in the remotest sense. So to ease his mind and dispel the demons, she gave him a simple sweet blowjob that put an end to his concerns.
They reached the end of the trail and the bold Pacific Ocean lay on the other side of an expanse of rippled sand. Bands of clouds hung in the sky above the horizon, the sun high enough to be unaffected by them. Hand-in-hand, Holly and Michael stepped out onto the beach, which stretched to the north, the slight haze in the air making its end unseeable. They noticed a few figures in the distance either lying in the sand or walking along the water, but they seemed nothing more than silhouettes.
Also in the distance at the water's edge seemed to be the remnants of a tree, its roots flaring at one end, the rest of the trunk pointing to the horizon.
