I drove home around six that Friday and I saw Mia's car parked in front of my apartment. She had a key to my place and she visited regularly. She was watching a talk show as I walked in, as she usually did when waiting for me to come home.
"Hey Mark, I got pizza, beer and some of your cinnamon buns, hope you hadn't scheduled anything tonight."
I lived alone since my wife had left me a year ago. As fate would have it, Mia had lost her husband in a car accident barely a month after my wife moved out so Sis and I suddenly found ourselves alone, the only remaining members of our family. She lived in a house she now owned outright, fairly close to where I lived. As we were both living alone, we simply started getting together for dinner and movies on weekends. Since I owned a huge digital TV and my sister did not, we soon decided we preferred enjoying our meals and movies at my place.
Mia had known I would be home that Friday evening as I had no one in my life since the breakup with my wife. My sister and I got along fine, even if we had not been close before her husband's death.
"Thanks, sis, that's great."
She stood and we rubbed cheeks as she made her way to the kitchen. I called after her, asking her to get dinner started while I showered. The meal was ready when I came back. We sat on the couch, watching a sitcom as we ate.
My sister and I were our parents' only children. I'm a regular guy and almost thirty years old, light brown hair, not quite six foot tall, but fairly muscular and in good shape as I exercise regularly. Mia is a brunette, twenty-seven, five foot five, delicate, and rather pretty. She had been very popular with the boys before she and Tom started seeing each other, and they had married when she was twenty-four. They would have loved children but, to their dismay, my sister never got pregnant.
On that particular evening, something special happened. Mia and I watched a movie about a man and a woman, strangers who had just met by pure chance and who had begun a sexual relationship almost right away. It turned out they had both been without sex partners for some months and they just fell in each other's arms after talking about their mutual predicament over dinner at a restaurant.
As I watched the movie, I began thinking about Mia's and my own situation. My seven-year marriage had not been a success but sex with my wife had always worked out fine for both of us. Getting married had probably been a mistake as we did not have much in common. However, even though I had not seriously looked for a new relationship since my wife had left me, the lack of sex was killing me and I masturbated almost every evening, with internet porn and magazines as stimulants.
The movie got me wondering about Mia and her own sexual needs. As she and I had never discussed our intimate lives, I had no idea of her needs or if she had sexual longings like me. Before that day, I had never seriously thought of Mia as a possible sex partner but I was getting so desperate for sex with a woman that, after seeing the movie, I could not avoid thinking about Mia in that particular way. The idea of incest sprang immediately to my mind and yet, instead of dismissing it as I had always done before whenever I had looked at my sister's body with more than passing sexual interest, this time I found myself glancing at her furtively, even as a guilty feeling was overcoming me. She was sitting next to me, so close I could smell the nice perfume she usually wore. Her white top draped nicely over her breasts and her short blue skirt was riding at mid-thigh over her bare legs and feet. Her dark brown hair almost reached her shoulders and it curled out and upward from there gracefully. I realized with a pang that, for the first time, I was looking at my sister with a frankly sexual appreciation. My penis hardened and I shifted my position in order to hide this development from her. Yikes! She was watching the movie's end credits, seemingly unaware of my newfound interest. I suppose I should have kept quiet but I couldn't stop myself.
"I can relate to these two. I can't say I particularly miss having a girlfriend but the lack of sex is killing me. How about you?"
Mia turned to me, clearly startled, her face slowly turning red.
"Just what do you have in mind, Mark?"
She seemed flustered and I realized my question had not been exactly tactful.
"Well, I haven't had sex since Carol left and it's driving me mad, that's all. I wondered if you were having a hard time of it too, that's what. You've been alone for months too, like me... Well, for my part, I'm getting fed up having to masturbate all the time, I mean, I so need a woman's touching me it's driving me up a wall."
Mia was looking at me with a strange look in her eyes.
"You can't expect me to help, Mark, you're my brother. You'd better not start thinking of me for sex, I hate to even think about what you suggested. Where did that come from? Gee, come on, bro."
My sister's face was flushed and she looked almost in tears. I realized I had seriously blundered.
"Sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me. Please, Mia, please excuse me, there was no good reason to say what I said, it won't happen again, ever."
Suddenly ashamed, I reached for her. For a moment I thought she would draw away from me but she remained where she was, not moving, and she let me put my arms around her and rest my head against hers. Our parents had died some years ago, we were alone now and I was ready to do anything to avoid spoiling the great relationship I had with my kid sister.
"There, there, don't worry, I'll never say things like this to you again, I made a mistake and didn't think things through, I was a fool to imagine you'd respond to my stupid feelings and, you know, it's the first time, really, that I've really thought about you in that way. I don't know what came over me, I think the story in that movie got me thinking things. I thought about my needs as I watched the film and I got the idea in my head that you must probably feel the same I do but, as far as I know, guys have needs all the time and girls less so, maybe that explains it but don't worry, I won't make the same mistake again and I want you to forget what I tried with you just now. Not seriously tried to do but it's kind of the same, isn't it?"