No Words

Michael lay naked on his bed, his erection staring up at him as though to ask how much longer until things got started. But his older sister Holly lay next to him, her head on his chest, her eyes shut, but the smile on her face belying the idea that she was actually asleep. Patience, he thought. Patience.

He'd finished a year of college and returned home for what he assumed would be a summer of painting houses, using the family pool, and drinking with friends. But Holly had turned things in a different direction.

She had found him naked in the kitchen one late morning, their parents gone away to their beach cabin. Michael being naked wasn't terribly new. When he was younger, he had frequently walked around the house nude without a word from anyone. That habit had faded away in the few years previous, but, thinking Holly had gone with their parents, he rekindled it with the goal of spending the day nude by the pool. Instead, by midafternoon, he lay on the couch recovering from a toe-curling, eye-crossing handjob courtesy of his sister.

He didn't really cross his eyes, but the orgasm left him in a another state of being. Holly wiped her hand on her tee-shirt and smiled sweetly -- something he did his best to return. Then she kissed his forehead and said she'd be right back. As she walked away toward the laundry room, he watched her lift the tee-shirt off her body, her pink panties being the only thing on underneath. When she came back, she was wearing another tee-shirt of similar length and carrying a towel, which she offered him.

She crouched down next to him as he lay there and said, "I'm glad we did that. I liked it."

"I did, too," he stuttered, causing her to smile like one would at dope who had stated the glaringly obvious as some kind of revelation. She kissed his forehead again, said she was going to take a shower, and then ran upstairs.

He sat up, using the towel to wipe himself off, and suddenly seemed to comprehend what had just happened. His sister? Holly? They'd always been on good terms and he did consider her cute, but the majority of memories he had of her involved her face buried in a book. She was going to go to grad school to study literature. She knew about genres and authors from the 1700's. He didn't (to put it lightly). However, he now knew that his sister gave amazing handjobs. That's just not something I should know, he said to himself.

But, despite his misgivings, he had to admit that he wanted another one. He had no idea how to go about it. Even after what had just happened, he couldn't imaging just outright asking his sister for a handy. Or making a move on her. When she came downstairs after her shower, she was dressed, said she was going to meet some friends, and left with a friendly goodbye. For his part, Michael showered and then called some friends to come over. He put on some shorts, and spent the rest of the afternoon and night by the pool with buddies drinking beer. A couple of them crashed on the couch. The next day, by the time everyone cleared out and he and Holly got the place back in order, their parents arrived home.

For like ten days, it was like nothing had happened. His interactions with his sister went on as they always had. They each just went about their lives and jobs. He painted houses, she worked a temp job in an office. He started to think that maybe nothing had really happened after all. At least nothing that would leave a permanent mark.

Then came a Tuesday at 2 AM. He lay in his bed in the dark having woken up for no reason it seemed other than that his eyes insisted on not shutting. The door quietly opened, and in the mixture of streetlight and moonlight that filtered through the window curtain, he could see it was Holly wearing one of the long tee-shirts she slept in. He slept nude. Always. She lifted the sheets and slipped into the bed next him.

"You're awake," she said softly.

"Yeah."

"I checked on you last night and you were out cold," she said. Her hand slid under the covers down his torso to his penis, took hold of it, and began massaging it. It responded quickly, stretching out and getting hard. He turned his head to her, and she said "Shhhhh, don't want to wake them," meaning their parents sleeping in the bedroom at the end of the hall. He nodded and turned his focus to the sensation of her fingers loosely holding his hard cock and sliding along its shaft. Her warning that they needed to keep quiet muted not only his spoken words but everything he said internally. Granted a woman's hand on his penis had always been something of a brain eraser, but his mind went entirely blank, maintaining his breathing being all it could handle. In the History of Handjobs, the one she gave him that night would receive no accolades nor even a footnote, her hand moving silently but rapidly as though she, too, felt the need to get it accomplished before some unwanted knock on the door.

The denouement arrived with a shudder and a squirt. No curled toes. No crossed eyes. Just that squirt and some dribbling. Instinctively, he reached for the tissue box on the nightstand and handed it to her. She took one, wiped her hand, kissed his forehead, and padded out of the room.

His thoughts returned to him as he lay there after cleaning himself. A shudder and a squirt. Maybe, he thought, just maybe that first handjob wasn't all he made it out to be. We make such an opera out of sex. It could have been just the timing, the circumstances, the fact that she's his sister combining into some aria that kept playing in his head when, in reality, they had really just hummed a tune. A shudder and a squirt. The handjob that had just happened was like the disappointing sequel that brings down the original with it. That squirt might have been the dose of reality they both needed to move on. Let what happened remained fixed in the past to never be spoken of or thought about again. He rolled over on his side ready to doze off and let it all fade away.

Then it rained the afternoon of the following Thursday.

An hour after lunch, the boss told everyone to go home. They'd done all the busywork. As he got in his car, Michael got a text from Holly asking if he was done for the day. He replied that he was and was heading home.

When he walked through the door from the garage to the kitchen, there was Holly dressed for the office. Both their parents were lawyers, and their mom took dressing professionally very seriously -- something she pressured Holly to do, as well. Though that pressure wasn't needed. Holly liked formal attire. The girl with the sweetly unkept bedhead and body swimming in an overlong tee-shirt could, in the space of a half-four, transform into the professional woman with her hair pulled back, makeup done, lips crimson, and wearing a linen skirt, blazer, button-up shirt with the top two unbuttoned, and the shoes to match.

That's who sat at the kitchen table when Michael walked in. Her skin looked fine china.

"What are you doing home?" he asked.

A cup of tea rested on the table in front of her. "I said I felt unwell and needed to come home."

"You're sick?"

"No," she said. "Mom and Dad have meetings all afternoon and then a client dinner. With the rain and you being free, I thought I'd come home."

"Just to hang out?"

"No," she laughed. "I thought that, after you take a shower, you could meet me naked down in the rec room, and I'd give you a handjob. If that meets with your approval."

And, thus, all of Michael's thoughts about sexuality being an overwrought opera composed primarily in memory from the rudimentary materials of a shudder and squirt augmented with ritual and fantasy that conjures a untrue narrative of events that could just as well be allowed to recede into the ether -- that all fizzled away to an "Okay" and a two-minute shower.

He tromped down the stairs and then down the stairs again to the rec room, where he found Holly contently kneeling by an old blanket she had laid on the carpet, a pillow on top of it, and a small jar by her side. She still wore the blazer, but had unbuttoned another button on her top, the black fabric of her bra showing through. She patted the blanket as a way of telling him to stop standing there naked and gawking. He laid down on it and put the pillow under his head, his right elbow to her knees.

Her hand moved from the blanket to his chest. Though slim and tall, Michael didn't have the defined body some guys get either by the gym or genetics. He was more or less unaware of his muscles until someone touched him like Holly did. Her hand on his chest made him breath deeply and his pecs harden. Then she took his right arm into both her hands and again the muscles flexed and her grip tightened and she signed a happy sigh, a smile on her lips. Every muscle in his body flexed, lifting him momentarily. His cock followed suit.

Her hand reached down to his thigh, then up along his torso to his abdomen and then his groin until four fingertips ran lightly over the underside of his penis as it lay there pointing up at him. She scooted over to be closer to it and reached out with both hands to lift it to vertical. He let out an Oh. One hand held it, the other reached down and massaged his balls, each of them in her hands moving with the rhythm of her fingers rising and falling. "They feel heavy to me," she said, a comment that momentarily stilled his heart. "I think I can help."

She let go, opened the jar by her side, and applied what he later found out was a CBD ointment to each hand. One hand took hold of his shaft and pulled the skin tight. The other wrapped itself around the head and slowly twisted left and right, her grip light enough that her lubed-up hand glided over its soft skin. As her brother's body trembled, Holly explained, "I read that pulling the skin tight exposes nerve endings."

Sure, he thought, but couldn't say anything coherent out loud at the moment, his body plunging into a paralysis that clouded his vision and over took his consciousness, the sole focus being the utter bliss emanating from his cock as his sister worked all those exposed nerves. He watched her hand twisting, her nail polish a dark red bordering on black.

When she finally released the tip, he gasped. She gave him a moment to catch his breath while she massaged his testicles. When his breathing settled, her other hand started moving slowly up and down the shaft but never even touching the rim of the head. With each stroke, a voice within him pleaded with her to let that hand ride all the way up to all those nerve endings she'd talked about, but each time, the hand turned course back down right before it would have arrived there. Minute after minute of this. His body squirmed underneath her hand. His ability to keep breathing started to become questionable as all that occupied his attention was that one hand and its torturous path up and down. All perception of time obliterated, he had no knowledge of how long this went on or exactly at what point or for what reason he decided to sit up and then shift to his knees, his butt lowering down to his heels, his cock out in front, her one hand on his balls, that other one working the shaft, a sly smile on her lips, a clever look in her eyes, her hair so perfect for the professional world.

It was like silent thunder. Everything shook. His vision whited out. He'd later think of it as the closest he'd ever come to being teleported because, no matter the physicality of it all, he simply was not there in any form, the totality of his being having been cast into the Great Unknown.

When he finally realized he was still breathing, he saw the blanket, his hands palm-down on it, his body having lurched forward, his cock hanging there in a daze as the last spurts of cum leapt out of it almost as afterthoughts. He lifted his eyes and saw the evidence of what had transpired splattered on the blanket in front of him. He turned his head to the right and there was Holly kneeling there, her hands folded on her lap, that same wry smile, those same clever eyes.

"Hello," she said.

He could only nod.

Bit by bit, his world reassembled itself. His lifted his hands from the blanket and sat up, his heart still pounding.

"I think that was better than the other night," she said. He agreed, this time with words. She smiled warmly like the Holly of the bedhead and tee-shirt would and leaned in to kiss the side of his head.

That episode set the tone for the remainder of the summer. For two young adults who had complained that their parents were always around, it was amazing how often their parents weren't around. Operating by rules they never discussed or disagreed over, if and when Holly offered, off went whatever Michael had on and out came that magic jar of CBD ointment. Never another furtive handy in the dark. Always in the light. Always Michael nude, Holly wearing whatever she had on at the moment. In his bedroom (though never hers), in the living room, in the rec room, the kitchen, the dining room, even the upstairs hallway, and of course out by the pool, Holly cast her spell and waved the wand in a never-ending assortment of motions that transported her brother to multiple dimensions all at once, and always his return greeted with a kiss to the forehead and that warm welcoming smile. And a rag to clean things up. That was his job. And the most worthwhile job he'd ever had.

Notions still crept into his head about how and why and what's going on and for fuck's sake she's your sister, but man, they scattered the moment Holly said handjob and stayed away well afterward.

They never got caught -- something that seemed so against the odds that they marveled over it. The closest they came was late one weekday afternoon when Holly, who studied this stuff on her phone while at her boring job, had successfully executed a reacharound in the backyard which left them both somewhat impressed with the distance attained. After the kiss to the forehead, Holly went inside up to her room, while Michael, a bit lightheaded, laid down on a lounger. And dozed off long enough for their mom to come home and be standing at the doorway to the pool as he woke and stood up.

She smiled widely. "Well look at you," she said, still dressed for the office.

"Hey," he said.

She laughed. "Don't worry. I remember you going around naked all the time." She approached him and reached out two hands to hold his face. "You look so good, sweetheart," she said. "I was worried when you came back from school. You looked so pale. But the color's back in your cheeks. I'm so happy to see it." She might have hugged him had he not been naked. "Though, maybe you would put something on," she said. "I'm pretty sure your sister's home. Lord knows what she'd do if she caught you naked like this. You know how she can be."

That comment stuck in his mind as he lay there on his bed, his penis pleading for attention, and Bedhead Holly laying at his side with her head on his chest, her eyes still closed, and her smile still there. They were alone in the house, their parents down at the beach. He and Holly would join them there later that day. Holding her, he pondered all those questions of why and how, all of them still unanswered. And unasked. What had motivated this beautiful future professor of some lit seminar to do what she did this summer eluded him. A shadow of guilt crept across his mind. Why had he never asked her why? Maybe afraid to break the spell. We can be selfish, he thought. A guy and his dick. He never reciprocated. He never saw her naked. Never asked to. These just seemed to be the rules. Or, perhaps, the easy assumptions for a guy who was getting to blow his load a whole lot.

He looked at her, and this time, her eyes were open.

"You look like you're thinking big thoughts," she said.

"Thinking about you, so I guess so."

"Thinking about me?"

He nodded. "This whole summer. How much I've liked it. And how this is it. You know. We have to drive down to the cabin later today. Spend the week there in that shack with aunts and uncles and kids showing up. And other people. Then right after that, I'm gone back to school. And you're off to like your career. Like today -- or this morning -- is it." He paused and took in a breath. "I just feel I should say--"

She placed two fingers on his lips.

"There's nothing you need to say," she said. "I love you, little brother. But I've taken from you what I needed. You don't owe me anything. Especially not words. Words complicate things. I want us to be uncomplicated."

He nodded and then brought his lips to the top of her head and kissed her realizing that he hadn't done so all summer. Her hand stretched down and propped his penis up to vertical. His own hand had done that maybe a few thousand times, and each time his magnifying male eyes had happily assessed its magnificence. But in her hand, in truth, it just looked like any other dick, the only remarkable thing about it being that she held it. Again he kissed her head. And then she slowly sat up, her curls rearranging themselves. He readied himself. His penis practically sighed in relief.

A look in her eyes. She moved down the bed, climbed over his leg, and knelt there on the bed between his knees. Her curls fell forward as her head lowered, and he felt the warmth of her mouth around his cock. He reach down and held her head as her lips glided up and down his cock. She maintained a constant pace along its full length, even as his breathing picked up, she held to that rhythm, changed nothing, when he said oh, when he said her name, when she heard the tension in his voice, she change nothing, nothing at all, when the fluid filled her mouth, still, she changed nothing.

No toes curling. No eyes crossing. No earth shattering. No new dimensions. No leaving. In that flashing moment everything seemed more solid to him than it ever had. The world felt real. Like something that could be walked upon. Stood on. He filled her mouth. He felt her tongue circling the head. He felt the contraction of her throat and palate as she swallowed. And then again. He felt her slow and then stop, her lips still around him. Swallowing once more. He felt her release him. Saw her eyes. Put his arm around her has she returned to his side. He brought her close, felt her warmth, held her body as though conscious of it for the first time.