Page 17 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
It was to my benefit that Eli acted so embarrassed, which made it even more justified that I was acting that way too. For all she knew, as comfortable as I was with sex and nudity, maybe it was different with Eli because he and I had always been different with one another. Maybe it was just how we were; something about how close we were was enough to change things.
God, I hoped that was how she saw it. All the jokes from family and friends notwithstanding, none of them seemed to honestly believe there was anything there, not even from me. It would be one thing if we were simply childhood best friends, then at least I’d be just another gay guy who stumbled into a crush on their straight best friend. That, at least, was understandable, hopeless, but no one could say much about that. But when that same straight guy was your stepbrother? Well, that would raise some eyebrows, if not draw down some judgment.
“I guess there are worse things to see,” she said with a laugh as I came back into the living room, having grabbed a second beer after polishing off the first one while I’d tried to get myself under control.
“I think you and I are gonna have to disagree on that,” I lied through my teeth because Jesus Christ, now I was going to have to decide if I should add that to the spank bank. It wasn’t like I hadn’t given in to temptation in the past and jerked off to thoughts of Eli, but that had been years ago. Guilt and shame had won out over temptation as I’d gotten older, and damn it all, thinking about someone else while I was dating someone was out of the question. Not quite cheating, hell, even I knew I was attracted to other people, and it wasn’t like sleeping with the person, but the shame from that, the shame of being hot for my damned stepbrother, was going to win out.
Which was especially awful because itbarelywon out, even with two guilts combining; that was how intense my arousal was, even as I fought to keep it under control.
I flashed her a smile, knowing it was better to fake it until eventually it made itself real. “So, I’m going to guess he’s still getting the job done if you keep coming around for it.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, raking her fingers through it. “Like I told you that night, we didn’t break up because the sex was bad. Because it wasn’t and isn’t.”
As if I could forget the night she had come by to talk to him to find out he was already out cold in bed, and decided to linger and have a few drinks with me. A few turned into several, and we had talked. Alcohol and comfort had brought me dangerously close to spilling my guts, to admitting that the guy she had broken up with a year ago was the source of my most hidden and potent fantasies. That if I allowed it to happen, the love I had for him could quickly shift into something one shouldn’t feel for someone related to you, even if it was by marriage.
The admission had sat on my tongue, dangerously heavy and threatening to drop from my lips. Only for Eva to announce she was glad the two of them had broken up, but damned if she didn’t miss the sex. My admission flung itself back downmy throat, sitting in my chest like a weight as she explained how their relationship had been great, but in the end, she had walked away feeling as though they weren’t connecting. In some hard-to-describe, nebulous way, neither of them had made a connection, and that had been deeply important to her. There was no bitterness because she couldn’t explain if the failure was hers, his, theirs combined, or if it wasn’t a failure at all, and that in the end it didn’t matter because it was what it was, and the two of them still got along.
Which would have been fine, except the part where I wanted to hear that to feed the hope I could never quash, no matter how much I tried. The hope that one day, the special bond between us would spread to encompass every aspect of our lives. We wouldn’t just be incredibly close brothers who were also best friends, but ones who found their way to being lovers. No matter how many times I stamped on its head and buried the body deep, it popped up whenever Eli’s relationships didn’t work, or when people commented on how close we were, how we never seemed able to be away from each other for too long.
But then she had to inadvertently make it worse by going into a follow-up rant about how she missed the sex. About how good Eli looked naked, and how he liked to talk a big game but was oh so rare in how he followed up on that talk. I, of course, had not known Eli was the sort to talk a mad game in the first place. If there was one gap in our knowledge of one another, it was about sex. Him, because why the hell would he want to know about mine beyond what little he’d witnessed, and me, because it was not a good idea for me to have more knowledge to fantasize about.
Lord, I got plenty of information I didnotneed that night.
“Yes, thank you for that reminder,” I said with a snort and another sip. Better to play up the slightly traumatized brother,but not to play the hand too hard because that would be suspicious. Just play it off, that was it.
“Don’t you talk about anyone’s sex life?” she asked with a snort. “Like it’s nothing?”
Oh, but it was not nothing when it came to Eli. “I mean, yeah, but it’s different with him.”
“Why, because he’s your stepbrother? Weren’t you the one who said you scar your other siblings by openly talking about your sex life and asking about theirs?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess.”
“But this is Eli,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose. “So that’s different.”
It wasn’t a question, and an alarm trilled in my head as I realized she had either come close to the truth or was letting me know that she knew. Either way, I needed to get the conversation back under control quickly. Even if she knew the truth, if I could put her off ever saying it, that would count as some form of victory. And if I could keep her from ever getting to the truth, that was even more of a victory as far as I was concerned.
“There’s a difference between talking about someone’s sex life and walking in and seeing them in their birthday suit,” I pointed out, thinking it was especially different when you had a giant boner for the person and had to stare down their boner for a few seconds too long.
“True,” she said with a laugh, and I felt a sliver of relief slice through me as she eased back onto the couch. “You got yourself an eye full.”
“That I did,” I said just as Eli reappeared, fully dressed and still some color in his cheeks.
“I guess it was bound to happen eventually,” he grumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. “We live together, we’ve got sex lives. It was gonna happen. I guess it’s a surprise it didn’t happen sooner.”
“Especially since I haven’t exactly been shy about having guys over,” I added with a shrug.
“I didn’t even hear your keys in the door.”
“Someone forgot to lock it, so I walked in. Thought you were napping. Didn’t realize you had, uh...company.”
Eva let out a soft laugh. “You two are hilarious.”
“What?” we both asked, and I felt better when I heard the same defensiveness in his voice that I was feeling.
“Both of you are so comfortable about sex, except when it comes to each other,” she said with a shake of her head. “You guys are so free about everything else, but sex is where you draw the line.”
“A lot of people do that with their friends and family,” Eli said with a scowl.
