My Forbidden Flower

My Perfect Cousin.

(1.1) Kindling.

Up until that summer, I'd only known of my cousins - Ruth (24), Angela (21) and Maria (19)(same age as me) - in passing. however, a while ago, my mum randomly decided that we just had to go see them. So, we headed out to Brazil and stayed at my auntie's house for about 32 days.

ONE-WHOLE-MONTH(!) of heat and sweat, sharing a single room among the three of us (me, my mom and my little sister). Between the near-constant,

awful

togetherness and the fact that all females in my family sleep with a strangely potent - perhaps supernatural - awareness of their nocturnal surroundings, I soon came to realise just how impossible it was going to be for me to 'meet my needs' as a sexually aware man with no hot Brazilian girlfriend to bust his nuts for him. That being said, there was also absolutely no chance of me surviving through a whole month without any kind of jerking off.

Pretty soon, this became a matter requiring the greatest urgency, especially when -- after those first couple days of all us strangers getting comfortable had subsided -- my troubles were compounded tenfold through the collective decision of my cousins to adopt a more naturalistic style of dress; booty shorts and tank tops everywhere (except church)... Oh, the tropical ideals of modesty! It was all quite extreme for the slouched, dull-eyed, virginal me who'd had very little experience of girlfriends or sex. After a particularly memorable incident involving an oblivious Angela and a couple four-inch rocket pops, I began to plainly understand the necessity of my new mission; to stem the tide of my own raging libido without/before disturbing the innocence of this friendly family get-together. Like the slice of a graceful samurai, my actions needed to be flawless. I would dedicate myself to the fulfilment of this masturbatory jihad even if it killed me! Let it begin; the secret holy war between my hand and my cock!

The plan was simple, I would train my mind over a couple late nights until I was able to stay up until at least 4am without want for sleep then sneak out like a ninja to beat my meat on the empty balcony. I thought at the time that I was being smart. There was, of course, no reason for anyone to be mulling about before the sun was up, right? So, as quiet as an early morning breeze, I rose from my bed one night and retrieved a spare bottle of lotion from my suitcase and a roll of tissues from the kitchen. I then tiptoed out of the room to finally go complete a Man's business -- two weeks in the making.

My Aunt's house (apartment more like) formed the second floor of a pretty wide orange-bricked building that sat comfortably in a small gated compound. There were few rooms (about five), all pretty large though rather vacant. Due to this, and because of the constant heat-induced open doors policy, it would have been pretty tricky to make sure I wasn't snuck up on at some point during the completion of my mission. This is why it had to be the balcony -- the connecting hinge between my aunt's apartment and the stairs leading down to the rest of Brazil.

I crept through the sleepy rooms, lit only by a few ingressive beams of silver moonlight and my own intuition, until I opened the rickety balcony door to emerge on my new self-administered-sexual-therapy spot...

The big brown eyes of my cousin, Maria, looked up at me with a flash of startled alertness from the bench she was sitting on. She had been out here in the warm air, a soft breeze rolling through her thick brown curls, with nothing on but her panties and a tank top. A flash of burning orange passed from her lips to the armrest as Maria quickly snuffed out a cigarette while swearing softly in Portuguese. She then turned to me, an embarrassed puppy smile on her lips, "H-hey there cousin, you startled me." I started laughing at her; something in her squirming cuteness really got to me. Before this moment, Maria hadn't really been the type to get flustered. Like her sisters, she'd proven to be the type of girl who'd rather flaunt what she had than hide it away. This situation was quite different however: I'd caught her completely off guard, doing something that clearly my aunt (who was oddly strict and casual about different, sometimes contradictory, things) didn't approve of and in a far more extreme state of undress than usual.

My first instinct upon realising just how much of her I was seeing had been to turn the other way. I would pretend I wasn't even there and just go to bed. I began to shift my weight left-ward, in preparation for this, but stopping myself. In the warm, dusty air, as the sky turned from black to stony blue, I realised that I didn't want to. I... liked the way my cousin looked and I liked that, for now at least, only I got to see her this way. It is true that even back then, she could boast the semblance of a great figure -- a mix of that classic Brazilian curviness and an innocent, bubbly vibrance that never failed to get (at least my) attention. But this was something more. Maria was my

cousin

, my own flesh and blood. Seeing her like this and enjoying it like I was felt wrong... super wrong.

I'd already been harbouring a covert erection before I'd arrived, but thinking about all this made me even harder than I thought possible. At some point, she must have noticed because I heard her squeal in something like bemused shock. The only thing illuminating us, aside from the weak, yawning sun, was a small porch light hanging from the ceiling. I guess that was enough for her to see something. The way Maria's noise cut through the silence had startled me enough so that I unceremoniously dropped my cargo of lotion and tissues and now, a new look, low and fox-like, came over my cousin's face. In the dim light I could see her bright teeth curl into a sharp smirk.

"Hehe, well ain't someone being a dirty boy." I tried to stay composed. Obviously, she knew what I'd come here to do but I still had the upper hand. "Wait 'til aunty hears this, oh she's gonna freak out haha!" She added with a chord of satisfaction in her voice, like the chess master delivering a slow, brutal 'checkmate'.

With a cold snarl, I countered with a threat of my own: "Maria, if we're in the business of spilling secrets now, then I guess there'll be no reason to keep silent about that cigarette you just had tucked between those beautiful... lips."

The focus on 'lips' was an odd choice. I'd meant the whole thing as a joke -- a kind of mocking, sarcastic sting -- but, as soon as the noises left my throat (in that awful half-formed way words do when a guy realises -- too late -- that what he's saying isn't cool) the air between us changed. Maria shifted in her seat a little and something in the way we addressed each other -- our eyes, the furrowing of our brows, the bespoke inflections we made with every flick of the tongue -- all transformed. She looked up at me in a way that seemed to ask "You think I'm beautiful?" And I seemed to answer, in the language of stiff gulps and return glances, that I did.

A silent moment passed before Maria eventually said, "Aaaw, does papai think I've been a bad girl..." My cousin's voice dripped with the winding sounds of not just mockery but also flirtation. "Come, sit" she instructed. I did, trying my hardest not to think about how little she had on and how hard I was still getting. After another moment of mild silence, Maria leaned her head softly on my shoulder.

"So, you know my secret." I said, it was the only thing I could think of.

"And

you

know

mine

..." she responded, her voice trickling out in a cute yawn. "Whatever shall we do about it, Lucas? Something like a cold war would be far too stressful and not very fun, don't you think.". at this moment Maria turned to look me in the eyes, her wild mane of curly brown hair spilling over both our shoulders, "Instead of division, we need something to unite us, eh papai? Something to bring us closer." She got closer. "A secret that we

both

gotta keep..." with that, she pushed her lips to mine and started to kiss me. It was a sweet yet clumsy kiss that tasted like smoke.

(1.2) A spark:

By the time our mothers had cooked up another summertime reunion, me and Maria had already turned 19. This time, it would only be my Aunt and Maria taking the trip and they would come stay with us in England for about two weeks. I was told that Maria had seemed particularly excited and that she'd asked about me and how I was doing. This... I don't know how this made me feel. Maria had always been amazingly beautiful and, as the first girl I'd ever kissed, it was near impossible for me to get her out of my head completely but... she was still my COUSIN.

The thought of what we'd already done -- and the secret desire to do even more -- filled me with a queasy, almost guilty sensation. To hear that she was excited to see me sent my mind racing through an assortment of different fantasies and scenarios, most of which I'd regret (or try to regret) soon after with that righteous air of self-loathing unique to all those who know their wants are wrong but can't help wanting whatever it is all the same. It was hard, feeling this way when I knew, I KNEW that if anyone found out -- her mom, my mom, my friends, my boss, anyone! -- this could mean the death of all my social connections or perhaps even worse. I wasn't ready to face disgust or vitriol, not to mention I didn't even truly know how she felt. But, despite all that, I couldn't help myself. The image of those large round eyes, sparkling under a thin layer of ivory moonlight, had stuck with me all this time and would stick with me all the way until she finally arrived in glorious 3D to replace it. During the week or so leading up to my relative's arrival, it was noticed by a lot of people; my strange new habit of constantly leaving the water running for at least twelve minutes before every shower.

The day came. At five, I was woken up by my busy parent and told to take a taxi down to Heathrow, find my displaced family members then escort them home. The morning was a tired blur of asphalt and wind, finally punctuated by the rough rising screech of planes lurching off the ground and the constant benign rumblings of busy airport staff and bored patrons but, all the while I only thought of Maria.

"Lucas!" Her voice cut through everything like a razor made of music. At first, I didn't see her in the crowd and began searching half-frantically -- launching my spotlight gaze over the swarms of staff and commuters, who all suddenly seemed to have both multiplied and congealed into a massive obstructive wall of irrelevant flesh. I'd turned left just a bit to inspect a bronze-skinned girl a few meters away when I heard the melting rhythm of Maria's giggle drift into my left ear. "You didn't recognise me, did you?" she said, stifling a laugh.

I turned, only managing a meek, quibbling "Hello" in response but before letting me see her fully, Maria pounced on me and wrapped her long arms around my shoulders and neck, resting my face on the smooth bone part of her upper chest, a few centimetres above her ringing heart.

I could feel Maria's breasts pressed against my chin, the warmth of her breath in my ears, the calming rhythm of her heartbeat and I watched as little beads of sweat rolled south like small translucent doves -- carrying with them the lovely sting of my unwashed cinnamon idol's scent. In that moment, I wanted to grab her by the waist, intertwine my body with hers as tight as physically possible and then systematically perform the long list of tremendously unacceptable things that I'd been dreaming up all morning.

It was the rough, sly 'I'm-here-too-you-know!'-style cough of her mother that finally broke the spell. Maria released me, started whispering in my ear some quiet words in English, before switching to Portuguese after an embarrassed giggle, then withdrew from me completely; thus allowing her mother to step forward and spew the dry, common greetings of proper family members. As the old lady talked and I feigned attention, Me and Maria grew to be just a meter apart, it was certainly better than the colossal width of the Atlantic Ocean but still, my heart burned.

Only after all the chit chat had subsided and we'd gotten both the luggage and ourselves into the taxi did I finally take the first tentative steps towards properly acknowledging my cousin's sex-appeal. Risky business, I figured. Even if she had been 'excited to see me' or had hugged me like a bear at first sight, there wasn't any real guarantee that my feelings (my lust specifically) would be reciprocated. 'Incest' after all, isn't a very sanitary word.

The taxi was a six-seater with the two rows of back seats facing each other, driven by an old Indian man with rusty eyes and yellow teeth. I had decided to sit directly across from Maria, while her mother sat to my left, separated from us by a recreation of Hadrian's wall in hand-luggage form that I'd casually erected.

The car moved and, at first, I tried looking out the window. My instincts against self-incrimination had led me to put on a front of outward indifference: there would be only quick glances to and fro or the browsing of my phone with an autonomous finger while my eyes lingered just above it to browse all the peaks and valleys that sat cross-legged before me. Every time I was addressed, I would mumble a quick "Yes" or dispense a neutral chuckle regardless of the context (which I think ranged from blank observations on the weather to inappropriate jokes about my love life or my mother or anything else).

I think that in those first thirty-or-so minutes of rumbling quiet, I played my part well but gradually, inevitably, my armour cracked. My clay ambivalent-seeming gaze was chipped away by each deep sigh she let slip from those full, soft lips and each flattering road bump that the blind Indian -- sage that he was -- traversed at top speed to the glorious jostling of my cousin's neatly arranged breasts. I needed to look at her, fully and completely. I needed to soak up the nectar of my cousin's lovely amber body. At the very least, THIS small indulgence was required if I were to ever get over my attraction or (an equally improbable task) stay sane. So, I looked. I stared. I consumed.

Maria was taller than I'd remembered with long golden legs. Even now, seated as we were, her honeyed toes (resting loosely upon a pair of leather sandals she'd kicked off) had breached the gap between my own legs and begun rubbing absently against my heel. Elsewhere had grown also: her hair had transformed from that shoulder-height mop of warm brown curls to a dark, straight pony tail that came down all the way to her lower back; She had a pair of large, soft, supple breasts wrapped snugly in a floral blouse; below, her bare midriff was smooth and slender with a small metal stud flashing in her bellybutton like the strong inviting beam of a lighthouse at sea; and further south, her hips flowed outward like the curve of a deadly blade concealed under a pair of tight-fitting jean-shorts -- teasing at the soft, round ass that would come to take up so much of my attention later on. For the remaining duration of that taxi ride, I was left with no words. She was perfect. My perfect cousin.

(1.3) And so it rages:

Three days after the taxi ride, I was sitting at my laptop. Except for the skinny light of the screen, I had turned my room into a chasm of darkness and could hear practically nothing except the pair of headphones I had screaming into my ears (an old -- and probably unhealthy -- habit for when I'm writing). My hands danced over the keyboard, punching into life lines of text for a document entitled 'journal'; the focus of which had naturally shifted to the strange and wonderful experience of being under the spell of my lovely

flor proibido

who's hips, eyes, hair and lips had all permanently been impressed on my soul like a web of the stickiest caramel wrapped around my brain.

Every time Maria strolled absently through the corridors; her scent (when washed, something like biscuits and cut grass but ultimately, unmistakably, unimitatably HER'S) would drag my spirit in that direction.

As Maria would lounge about watching The Big Bang Theory, or whatever else she managed to drag up from the abyssal waters of Netflix, a wave of vague yet vicarious happiness would storm through my skull and eventually her laughter would become my own simply because -- like anything else I now wanted -- it was hers.

As Maria's post-shower toes stamped a wet trail across the floor on her way to my sister's room (which she would be sharing), my own toes would curl and tighten by the force of that self-administered medicine of pleasure that, I'm sure, is familiar to those trapped in a disaster of passion who can't turn to anyone else for gratification.

Anyway, the words digitally etched into my Journal document vocalise my hopeless condition far better than anything I could conjure or recreate so, I'll share them verbatim:

4

th

June 2019

I'm sure to most tourists, London looks like one of the greatest cities in the world: A network of yellowish brick that weaves a path dotted by embassies, museums, cafés, galleries, parks, a quartet of giant bronze lions (my favourite), innumerable fountains and of course Buckingham Palace. (We went to central London today of course. There's apparently no way one can travel to South England and not peruse Lovely London) It appears a great and arresting city, overwhelming in its beauty and elegance. It seems like a golden chain that stretches for miles where-in each link forms another item on its list of qualities.

When a man who is native to the form and fashion of this city visits London, all his un-dreaming eyes allow him to see is pigeons, homelessness, the congestion charge and a wave of endless dry-lipped smokers with White-Walker cheekbones and poor manners. The trail of pretty delights becomes instead a big dull maze. Unappealing.

A little while ago, as all my family sat around in the living room, watching a funny old movie with the lights turned low, I again visually traversed my cousin's body (seventh time today, I think); the folds, the lumps, the skin-deep blemishes that all - in a sudden moment of lurid clarity - seemed frighteningly familiar. In the span of that poison second, my dark, throbbing tumour of love seemed to be no more than the misplaced tribute to another dull, un-ephemeral family member who spewed only grey light and sawdust sex appeal like all the other hens that sat around her.

Maria now looked to me like a fleshy roadmap to my own genes -- identical in all its twists and turns to the patterns I'd been viewing all my life: Suddenly, I could spot the shadow of my own flat nose in hers; the constellation of dark freckles across her chest reminded me almost 100% of my, equally freckled, mother in a low cut top; the pearl grin she'd unsheathe in chorus with the sows (who were all too busy watching TV to notice the conflicted Hunter's trembling gaze) seemed carved from the same ancient stone as my little sister's; and I'm quite sure that if I'd cut Maria open somewhere and lapped at the pretty stream of blood, it would taste of familial blandness and not the lustful spice I'd dreamt of sampling for these three days.

In that moment, all my projections, affections and nsfw fantasies seemed utterly disgusting even to myself. But... the moment passed and Maria eventually returned to her natural form as MY Maria; my dangerously intoxicating and dangerously erotic

flor proibido. All lovely and all forbidden.

I was, of course, so engrossed in my writing that I failed to detect the footsteps that echoed behind me or the jovial (I assume) assertion that "Dinner is ready and it might even taste good this time!" Awareness of the creature in my shadow only came to me when, from behind, a sheet of slender fingers came over my eyes. I must also have missed a "Guess who!" - or something like that - because after I'd removed my headphones, I was greeted by Maria's mockery aimed at me for having not figured something

out. In my usual way, I mumbled vague replies while she -- in her usual way (unexpected visits such as this became expected over the course of her stay) -- monopolised my bed with her lovely body and made jokey small talk.