Your erotic stories

ONE

AN ILL-DEFINED QUALITY, something in her expression unsettled him. Despite the differences in their ages the girl was disturbing, made him feel distinctly uneasy. A hint of a smirk lifted the corner of her mouth while her pale-green, penetrating eyes bored into his and gave the impression of being able to recognise every dirty, sordid thought that had ever crossed his mind. He didn’t know her well; they’d never been close while she was growing up. She was his brother’s daughter.

“You OK, Uncle Pat?” she asked, breaking eye contact and flinging herself onto the sofa in a confident whirl of Barbie doll hair and flawless skin. She smiled brightly, innocence personified.

Patrick shifted uncomfortably in his seat, eyes moving from her legs to the apparently perfect tits in a clinging tee-shirt. Had he misinterpreted the intensity of Carrie’s look a moment earlier? He couldn’t help looking at her legs that were exposed to within a squeak of buttock in the fragile and faded membrane of Daisy Dukes.

Patrick closed his eyes to shut out the image of his niece. “Uh, yeah, just little warm, it’s stifling out there today.”

With a liquid and elegant rearrangement of limbs, reminiscent of Hollywood starlets of the 50s, Carrie unfolded then re-crossed her legs in an act that drew attention to the long muscles of her thighs in what seemed to Patrick to be languid and deliberate provocation.

“We could go for a swim,” the girl proposed, flicking her long hair away from her face before settling her disconcerting eyes on Patrick again. “We could go up to the pond. It’s quiet up there. Just the two of us …” She left the suggestion hanging.

Patrick gulped and the girl smirked.

Sweat dribbled down Patrick’s spine inside his tee-shirt.

The implication was obscene; he was her uncle, her father’s brother, but deep down in some primordial, visceral place Patrick recognised just how desirable his niece was and a glutinous and reptilian yearning stirred.

A somnolent fly — a huge meaty creature — droned in the silence that enveloped the couple as, oblivious to the tension between Carrie and her uncle, it butted against a window pane with obtuse purpose, apparently intent upon breaking out into the open air to the burst of colour in the garden outside or braining itself in the attempt.

Shrugging off the discomfort, and pushing the carnal thoughts from his mind, Patrick harrumphed and cleared his throat. “I’m not sure about that, Carrie. I don’t think a pond is too safe. There might be weeds …” He grimaced internally, chagrined at his pompous tone and at how wimpy his words sounded. Weeds, he was waffling about weeds, and he was meant to be a Royal Marine officer, Special Forces … OK, a former Royal marines officer, but still …

The girl laughed, a great blurt of derision that guffawed out of her. Patrick reddened.

“You didn’t want to take Dad’s Porsche out because you’re not insured to drive it,” her fingers hooking the quotation marks as she spoke. “You’re ten years younger than my father but you act like you’re < />his dad …” The eyes rolled, but then, seeing her uncle’s stricken face, Carrie realised her faux pas. “Sorry, Uncle P,” she gabbled. “I didn’t think …” Her confident, overtly sexual façade slipped away.

Patrick sighed; saw an after image of the man sprawled in the gutter; legs bent at impossible angles; some kind of vital liquid seeping from his ear; head concave and shattered like the broken shell of a hard-boiled egg. Patrick knew about physical trauma, had seen it first hand, even inflicted gaping wounds upon the enemy; he’d known the bloke was dead the moment he’d seen the prostrate, limp puppet. The shattered headlight was proof of guilt. He recalled the breathalyser test by the side of the road as blue lights strobed against the impassive façades of Oxford Street and gawp-faced onlookers gathered. Next came the caution; an interview; a trial; the jury, and a judge passing sentence …

“It isn’t worth it, Carrie.”

Apart from the rasp and thump of the insect at the window an elephantine silence grew between them.

The girl finally broke. “I … I don’t know what to say,” she stuttered, eyes downcast towards her lap.

“There’s nothing to say, Carrie.

The silence lengthened again. Eventually Carrie stirred and, looking directly at her uncle, smiled and said: “Well, I’m going swimming, weeds or no weeds.”

Patrick said nothing as his niece uncurled from the settee. He heard her climb the stairs and listened to the muffled thuds as she banged about in search of sunglasses and a towel. He looked at the dog as the animal’s brown eyes slowly blinked twice at him. “Jesus, Brillo, did you hear that? What do you make of that?” The dog’s tail thumped twice at the mention of his name before the eyelids slowly closed and the beast settled back into a doze. Brillo clearly had no opinion on the morality; swim or don’t swim, he didn’t care. The fly, in its own little universe of dull-witted dipteran purpose, offered no comment either as it buzzed and thumped at the window pane.

Footsteps banging on the stairs indicated Carrie’s descent.

Her blonde head appeared around the door. “Sure I can’t tempt you?” she offered.

“I … No, thanks Carrie, but …”

His niece stared at him, again regarding her uncle with those green eyes. Her tongue moved wetly over her lips — Was that deliberate? Patrick wondered. “That’s such a shame,” the girl murmured, holding Patrick’s gaze for a few more suggestive seconds. Then she broke the spell. “C’mon, Brillo,” she called brightly. At the sound of his name the scruffy lurcher uncurled from the cool shady spot under the window. Stretching, he yawned hugely before following the girl with his springing, tip-toed walk.

Patrick winced as the front door slammed closed.

He was alone, just like that, with only the fly for company.

After a few minutes of staring at the wall he sighed and, unable to take the tireless drone and thunk any longer, opened the window and scooped the grape-sized insect outside. The thing buzzed away, dark and heavy as an Apache helicopter, leaving Patrick to wipe the sweat from his face, dwell on the recent past, and obsess on his coquettish niece.

***

Patrick had no recollection of getting up, climbing the stairs, or walking along the corridor to Carrie’s bedroom door. Outside, through the open window he could hear the sounds of the countryside; a chittering squabble of starlings while a pair of nesting wood-pigeons cooed and courted from the guttering as the afternoon advanced towards evening. A breath of wind stirred the yellow curtains, but inside the house all was conspiratorial silence. Looking into the room he saw a typically chaotic array of cosmetics on the chest of drawers; an unmade and rumpled double bed; jodhpurs and riding boots flung in a corner …

Patrick hesitated, admonishing himself for what he knew he was about to do. “Shouldn’t be here,” he muttered. “What do you think you’re doing? Stop it, stop it now.” Nevertheless, in spite of the internal wrangling, powerless to resist, he still took the final, irrevocable trespasser’s step. Breathing in the lingering scent of his niece his eyes fixed on a wisp of fabric, a febrile tissue that passed for underwear and, unthinking, he picked up the scrap and held it to his nose. The primeval slug that lurked in the murk of dark urges slithered to the surface as lust ballooned hot and overwhelming. His cock stiffened instantly in a burst of longing that caused him to gasp out loud. The urge to snoop into the girl’s private places was irresistible and, without knowing what he was actually looking for, a demented and lust crazed thief, he opened drawers one after the other in a desperate scrabble.

“Oh … fuck,” he moaned at the discovery.

A pornographic magazine featuring lurid and explicit pictures of grey-haired men and pixie-faced totty stared up at Patrick from a nest of underwear. Next to the lewd publication lay an obscenely long and thick rubber penis. In his mind Patrick pictured his niece, naked and thrashing on the bed masturbating with the faux phallus as she stared goggle-eyed at the pictures, licking the tip of an index finger as she leafed through the pages. He pictured her flat and flawless stomach tensing with the effort to reach a climax as she fucked herself, and he saw her face contorted with ecstasy, eyes clamped tightly shut while groans and moans of pleasure bubbled from her throat. Patrick licked his lips and swallowed heavily and imagined Carrie’s labia clinging to the girth of the thing in his hand. Tentatively he sniffed the dildo and then, with shame burning his cheeks and lust bubbling in the pit of his stomach, unable to stop himself, he licked the bulging dome and imagined he could taste the girl’s essence.

What would the reality be like? How would she taste between her legs with her sex pouting and dribbling desire? What would her skin feel like under his fingers? Would she moan and sigh and exhort him to lick her; her uncle …

A huge grunt accompanied Patrick’s ejaculation. Moans sobbed from him while his seed pumped from his cock and he attempted, in a futile struggle as it happened, to staunch the seething outpouring with Carrie’s thong.

Oh, God, the divine release! … Yes!

The reptilian urge, temporarily sated, slid back into the filth while guilty anxiety soured Patrick’s stomach and threatened a vomit-swell into his throat. He had to get out of her room, had to pack everything just as it was, had to make it right again and leave. He could never allow himself to do this again. It was just wrong, so wrong …Then, to his gut-wrenching dismay he saw a long splash of semen spattered across a page of Carrie’s magazine. He dabbed at the smear frantically with the girl’s now sodden underwear he still clutched in one hand. It was useless, a wasted effort, the page was wrinkled and obviously damaged — A mark of his shameful transgression.

As best he could, and with rising dread, Patrick hurriedly made good the evidence of his visit. He pocketed Carrie’s underwear, not as a souvenir but because it was damp and sticky with his residue and would only serve as further sign of trespass if he left it. He stuffed the rubber cock and magazine back into their hiding place among the diaphanous lace and frills. Shamefaced and torn with foreboding he crept away from Carrie’s room and the scene of his intrusion.

***

Evening eased cooler and shadows lengthened. With a tumbler of his brother’s whisky in hand Patrick sat in the same chair as earlier and considered options. Discovery was certain, there was no way Carrie wouldn’t recognise the damage. She would guess at the culprit for there could be only one suspect, but would she tell? Would she want her father to know about the private things she kept in her drawer? Patrick didn’t think so, there were some things a girl wouldn’t want her old man to know about; she might be nineteen but the ignominy of her dad knowing about that stuff …? No, Patrick was fairly certain that his brother would never find out. If Anthony did discover what he’d done, then what? Where would Patrick go? He couldn’t stay in the cottage, he’d have to leave despite the debt Anthony owed him; the shame of it would drive a wedge in their relationship, some things, some crimes couldn’t be returned from. Guilt twisted Patrick’s watery guts. Anthony had already been more than generous by opening his house to his brother following Patrick’s release from prison; and how had he repaid the kindness?

Patrick jumped when the door slammed behind him.

“You shoulda come up, Uncle Patrick,” Carrie beamed. “There were no evil weeds to drag me under,” she continued, teasing her uncle. “The pond was divine.”

A bedraggled Brillo, with his matted beard and straggly fur resembling a well-used, gun-metal grey scouring pad, a likeness for which he was named, sauntered off into the kitchen, ever optimistic, in search of scraps.

Carrie’s long hair hung in damp rats’ tails over her shoulders; her teeth flashed brightly as she grinned at her uncle. The sight of his niece’s breasts spilling over the top of her bikini bra elicited and internal groan from Patrick. He closed his eyes against the temptation to stare at her body, lush with the fecundity of youth, although, with his eyes closed, Patrick was then tortured by fantasy images of Carrie masturbating with a rubber cock.

“Another time, Carrie,” Patrick mumbled before taking a deep slug of whisky. “Maybe tomorrow.” He gulped at the drink again.

“I’ll hold you to that,” the girl said in a low, throaty voice before, with swaying hips that had Patrick staring after her, a barefoot Carrie padded from the room.

Patrick stared at the empty door frame with the after image of his niece’s narrow waist and pendulum hips branded on his mind.

The door slammed behind Patrick again, he turned to see Anthony, his brother, looking weary, sweaty and rumpled after the commute home to Oxford from his office in the City of London.

“Didn’t hear the car,” Patrick said. “Drink?” he offered.

Anthony laughed and ruffled Brillo’s short damp fur when the hound bounded in from the kitchen to greet his master. “Any whisky left?” he asked when the dog’s whipping tail finally slowed to a swish. “The train was heaving, a fucking cattle truck …” Anthony ran his fingers through his hair, hair that was only a shade darker than his daughter’s but which was also greying at the temples.

Patrick, remorse goading his bright response, jumped to his feet.

Anthony threw the drink down in one and proffered the glass again. “Top me up, old chap.” Patrick obligingly replenished the glass. Following a second swallow, Anthony said, “Off for a shower. I’ll get freshened up and we can fire up the barbecue, sink a few beers. Good idea?”

Fingers of dread tickled Patrick when the floorboards in the old cottage creaked overhead and he heard muffled voices. Despite his earlier certainty that Carrie wouldn’t want her father knowing, Patrick was worried. Was Carrie telling her father about his illicit visit to her bedroom? Had she even discovered the evidence herself? Unlikely, but…

It was only a matter of time.

In a quest to quiet his nerves Patrick went out to the vast back garden and trundled the barbecue from its place of customary hibernation in the shed; a graveyard for cast-off domestic appliances, redundant clothes that never quite made it to the charity shop and toys from Carrie’s long distant childhood. He parked the thing, which seemed to be the size and complexity of the space shuttle, on the paving slabs at one edge of the acreage of green that served as a lawn for his wealthy brother. Patrick twisted the dial to turn on the gas and then pressed the button of the ignition. The hotplate warmed quickly after a single metallic click and a whoosh of flame. Once the hot plate had warmed Patrick scraped the charred residue of previous usage from its surface. Having cleaned the griddle, he turned the thing off and went back into the cottage.

Patrick stood at the kitchen counter with a chopping board and an array of vegetables in front of him. He turned at the sound of Carrie’s voice. “Can I help?” she asked. Carrie wore a light cotton dress, yellow which emphasised her tanned legs and arms and which brought out the sun-bleached highlights of her hair. Her huge green eyes regarded him with something akin to amusement while her mouth twitched in that sly, vulpine way she had. “What did you get up to this afternoon?” she asked.

Patrick’s stomach flipped at the question, bitter gorge rising in his throat. Did she know already? Was it a loaded question or innocent? There was no way to tell with Carrie. She’d always been the same, impossible to read, precocious and somewhat clandestine, a midnight opener of Christmas presents well before the big day. It was characteristic of Carrie to ask such question. Patrick felt the heat radiating from her close proximity; he found it impossible to ignore Carrie’s lithe body as she took the knife from his hand as, with a nudge of a hip, she pushed her uncle aside and sliced a tomato with sharp, efficient chops. Stepping back, Patrick shrugged with feigned indifference. “Nothing much, just mooched around.” To mask his discomfit he buried his head in the huge refrigerator and asked, “I don’t suppose you’re on the beer?”

“Mmm’no,” the girl replied. “Voddy and coke for me.” She chopped and diced and sliced while Patrick popped two cans of lager and poured his niece a drink. “So,” Carrie persisted, “what did ‘mooching about’ find you doing?” After scooping up handfuls of salad into a bowl Carrie turned her concentration and unsettling stare on her uncle.

Patrick, firmly on the spot under the searchlight gaze of his niece, unable to formulate any credible answer, gaped like a fish. The arrival of Anthony, freshly showered and wearing shorts and an old ragged tee-shirt, saved him.

“One of those for me?” he asked, taking a beer from his brother’s insensate fingers. After swigging heavily, Anthony gave an enthusiastic gasp of satisfaction and announced: “Just what the doctor ordered. Now, steaks, burgers … Anyone want a sausage?” he added as he rummaged in the freezer.

Carrie held her uncle’s eyes with sharp-eyed intensity. “I’d love a sausage, Dad,” she replied. After another long, cool and disquieting stare, like a fox eyeing a chicken coop, Carrie turned away from Patrick with a grin widening on her face.

The evening sky turned indigo as the sun, after bleeding spectacularly into the horizon, slid from view. A detritus of empty beer cans and plates littered the top of the table while rivulets of condensed water ran from Carrie’s sweating glass and stained the wood. A breeze sighed through the leaves of the ancient oak that nestled in the crook of the dry stone wall bordering the property. Birds settled down to roost while bats flitted erratically around the gable-end of the cottage and Brillo, stuffed on hand-outs, lay curled under the table. The world was at peace; except for Patrick and the demon of torment perched upon his sagging shoulder.

“Well, that’s me.” Anthony placed the empty can on the table top, stood and stretched. “Half-ten, time for bed. Some of us have work tomorrow.”

“I’ll clear up the mess, Dad.” Carrie smiled at her father who, after kissing her cheek goodnight, walked a touch unsteadily into the house.

“Nighty night all.” His fingers waggled and he was gone.

Patrick jumped to his feet and then gripped the table, non-too stable himself. “I’ll take the stuff into the kitchen,” he slurred.

It was on his second trip that he saw her. She’d left the door open and was squatting on the toilet in full view. Patrick halted, arms laden with empty cans. All he could do was gape slack-jawed while his niece tinkled into the bowl. Then with no ambiguity whatsoever — this was no accident — the girl opened her legs and exposed her smooth sex to her uncle. Reaching for the toilet paper with deliberate slowness she tore a sheet or two from the roll and, holding her uncle’s gaze, wiped herself dry and dropped the used tissue between her thighs and into the water. Carrie stood to flush the toilet while still holding the hem of her dress against her stomach. Her exposed pudenda looked plump and inviting, positively edible …

The dog leapt from his basket with fright and Carrie laughed at her uncle’s clumsiness when Patrick, forgetting the armful of empty cans, dropped the lot in a clattering of aluminium that shocked him back to reality. Pushing past her poleaxed uncle, Carrie bade a cheery goodnight: “Sleep tight, Uncle Pat,” she grinned with not a care in the world as she pressed the frontage of her body against his in the narrow hall as she passed. “I left you a present on your pillow.” Carrie ruffled the grey-furred head. “Night, Brillo.”

Reeling with the effects of beer, the sight of Carrie’s surprisingly substantial labia, and the mention of a mysterious gift, Patrick mindlessly picked up the cans and dropped them into the recycling bin before weaving his way up the stairs to his room.

There, like an accusation, sitting on his pillow after he turned on the light, was the dirty magazine he’d spoiled earlier in the day.

TWO

SOME DAYS ARE PIVOTAL. The events of one day and the decisions made can affect the course of a life; one such day for Patrick began with myriad pains. Ignorant of what was to come he woke to a bright morning, another glorious day, but was plagued by physical aches and mental anguish. A dull headache throbbed low down at the back of his skull while what felt like shards of broken glass pricked behind his eyes when they encountered daylight. His joints creaked with rheumatic reluctance as though they’d been tapped all night by a spiteful elf with a toffee hammer, and a deep thirst raged ocean deep while under it all, in a layer of thick and stinking sediment lay the angst about Carrie and her knowledge of his transgression.

She knew he’d been in her room and defiled the magazine. Patrick groaned at the dim realisation; his face, already fevered with hangover, flushed hotter. What was her game? Why did she persist in flirting, even going so far as flaunting her gash at him as she peed in the downstairs cloakroom? The magazine, she’d left the magazine … But why? Was it a warning, a precursor to blackmail? Would she want money from him?

Patrick’s thoughts waded through the gluey morass of the hangover and he reasoned slowly: She has money, lots of it, all she has to do is ask daddy …

Putting aside his tribulations, Patrick decided to tackle his immediate concerns. A drink of water would do to start. To his relief the cottage settled around him in silence as, after pulling a dressing gown over his nudity, Patrick walked barefoot along the landing and negotiated the stairs. The absence of Brillo in the kitchen told Patrick that the cottage was empty; Anthony would long ago have set out for work, and God knew where Carrie would be.

Toast and then a bacon sandwich washed down with scalding tea. At first his body, outraged at the affront, tried to reject the assault on his stomach. Patrick gagged and sweated and gulped a pint of water until, eventually, the sweating cooled and he began to feel part-way human again.

Shower, coffee this time and a rare cigarette were the tools he needed to think. He sat in the garden, sunglasses masking the road map of broken capillaries that criss-crossed the sclera and which went some way towards blunting the tungsten-tipped arrows of sunlight; oblivious to the blaze of summer colours at full volume in the garden, and ignoring the trilling and tweeting cacophony of birdsong, under the shade of the great oak, Patrick sipped black coffee and savoured the nicotine buzz.

Then it came to him. He knew where Carrie would be. It was then that his brain cleaved in two and the ancient reptile of lust heaved its bulk from the obscene and filthy depths and slithered in a mess of slime across Patrick’s moral landscape. Ignoring the sensible fussing of the lucid mind and, as if in a dream, unable to control his actions, Patrick left the butt smouldering in an ash tray, the coffee half drunk and cooling, and set off along the path towards the garden gate.

The Cotswolds wrapped itself around him like a conspiratorial blanket as Patrick, mindless of being clothed only in the robe, took the shaded, dusty path through the trees to the swimming hole. There was no possibility of a clandestine approach, not with Brillo’s warning gruff and Carrie, sunbathing in the glade by the pond, leaned into a sitting position with one hand raised in a facsimile of a salute to shield her eyes from the sun and watched him approach.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, ignoring her uncle’s bathrobe as she settled back onto one elbow. “Did you find it?”

Patrick’s eyes went straight to her breasts as the globes jellied inside the bikini top. His balls tightened and his cock thickened.

“Carrie, I—”

“It’s OK. I don’t mind. So you took a look in my room …” Carrie shrugged as if her uncle’s trespass was of no consequence. “… and found some stuff. It’s my fault anyway. Winding you up like I did. I can’t blame you for looking in my bedroom.”

Patrick stood on the edge of the glade, dappled sunlight camouflaging his face. Hungover and with a mind disordered by the almost overwhelming desire for the girl he stared at her with longing. Then the obvious question came to him. He dragged his eyes from hers, appraising her lean body with a lingering, hungry look, Patrick croaked: “Why?” Just why are you teasing me, Carrie? I’m your uncle, for God’s sake … You’re my brother’s kid … What is it? Does it give you a thrill?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I said yes.”

“What do you mean? I—”

The girl sighed and butted an interjection as her uncle grew wild-eyed and strident. “—it gives me a thrill!” she barked. Carrie’s brow crinkled in a frown of concentration. “Well, not a thrill exactly, but I like doing it. I think it’s the power. I know men find me attractive. I know they want me, I can see the look in their eyes and I know they’ll do silly things. It’s surprising how a seemingly rational and intelligent man will do just about anything I ask … if I ask them the right way.” The frown unwrinkled and an impish glint flickered in her eye, Carrie’s upper lip curled and her face took on the sly look Patrick was growing accustomed to seeing. “And you being Dad’s brother … why that only makes it better.”

Patrick stepped into the glade. He grew aware of only being clad in his bath robe and flushed with embarrassment as he realised that he was proving Carrie’s words. He’d come out in his dressing gown; wasn’t even wearing slippers …

“Power,” he muttered, shaking his head from side to side. “Makes it better,” he continued quietly, almost breathless with incredulity. “But I’m your uncle,” Patrick insisted. “For you to think like that … it … it … it’s sick … Depraved … Perverted.”

Carrie shifted on her elbow; her breasts jiggled. “What about you?” she challenged belligerently. “What about sneaking into your niece’s room, rooting through her personal stuff …” Carrie’s face twisted into a sneer. “What about wanking over that mucky book — What about that, Uncle Patrick?”

“I … It … I didn’t,” Patrick began, the throb in his temples re-emerging; he heard the lub-lub of the blood in his ears. His stomach twisted, bubbling with the breakfast lying leaden in his guts. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he groaned.

Concern replaced the contempt on Carrie’s face. “Here,” she said before standing and taking a plastic water bottle to her uncle. “Drink this. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

Patrick took the bottle from Carrie’s outstretched hand. “Thanks,” he managed weakly. After several heavy swigs he tilted the bottle up again and rinsed his mouth. Patrick spat the mouthful of water onto the grass and sat with his back against a tree. He crossed his legs in front of him and studied his toes. “I don’t know why I went to your room, Carrie,” he admitted. “I knew I was doing wrong even as I was doing it.”

Carrie knelt next to her uncle. She placed a concerned hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK,” she murmured, eyes downcast. “I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have teased you. It isn’t fair. Like you said, you’re my uncle.”

Turning his attention from his feet to his niece’s face, Patrick was surprised at how forcefully he was struck by her physical beauty. Carrie looked so demure, so innocent with her eyelids lowered like a penitent. He saw the snub of her nose in profile and thought how cute it was; he felt the pressure of her hand on his shoulder, the first physical contact Patrick could recall other than the light hug and peck on the cheek she’d bestowed upon him when newly released from prison. Again, like in the kitchen the evening before, he could smell her scent, feel the heat of her body, that glorious body … Then she opened her eyes and tilted her head to face her uncle.

He was lost to the Cupid’s bow curve of her mouth, the lips slightly parted, moist from her tongue, and fraternal loyalty flew into the high summer sky like a flock of startled birds. She was his niece — so what? Carrie was, in his eyes, damn near perfect; it had been a long time since he’d held a woman. He wanted to kiss that mouth, to feel her tongue sliding around his as they tussled and tore at each other’s clothing in desperation. Patrick wanted to rip the bikini from her body and see her breasts, tight and high with stiff teats begging to be bitten … He desired nothing more than to have the girl lie back and spread her legs so he could cleave the lips of her sex apart with his tongue and drink in her essence.

Sensing a fundamental shift in her Uncle’s sensibilities Carrie acted quickly in a moment of carpe diem. She stood and casually hooked her thumbs into the elastic waist of her bikini bottoms. After yanking the briefs down her legs and stepping out of them, pausing for effect, the girl pushed her pelvis forward and thrust her pubic mound towards her uncle. Patrick’s heavy swallow and wild-eyed stare was reward in itself. Her heart beat faster as she pulled the bootlace straps of the bikini top down over her shoulders. Again she paused and let Patrick’s eyes rove all over her body. The pulse, ever present between her legs, throbbed heavily with blossoming desire. Her nipples stiffened, not because of the benign summer breeze, but because they ached for the touch of Patrick’s tongue and his nibbling teeth. The girl posed, allowing the man his fill of her body until, after removing the bikini top to expose her breasts, she turned. Carrie smirked when she heard her uncle’s sharp gasp after she turned and the man saw her tapered waist and teardrop buttocks.

“Dear fucking Christ,” Patrick blasphemed.

“Take that dressing gown off. Come for a swim,” Carrie called over her shoulder as she walked slowly away.

Patrick watched the girl as she moved towards the swimming hole, his cock jutting with desire through the gap in the robe. The girl’s body, a delight to behold, seemed to him to be an art form delicately sculpted by a divine hand; the creator with an eye for the erotic. He could see the knobs of her spine as the girl walked with a distinctly feminine, rolling-hipped glide. Her round shoulders and slender limbs were painted a honeyed gold by the sun; her back tapered down to a tiny waist before the curve of her hips and swell of her buttocks lengthened into her long legs. Carrie paused and looked back towards her uncle.

“Coming?” she asked with a widening of her eyes and a questioning look.

The nymph entered the water, breaking the mirrored surface and ducking under immediately. Patrick saw a flash of buttocks and the girl’s legs as she dove. He understood then, after watching his niece stroll to the pool, what force compelled a hound to howl all night. He scrambled to his feet, leaving indentations of his passing in the meadow and discarding the dressing gown as he hurried.

THREE

HE DROVE WITH ONE HAND resting on Carrie’s cool thigh, only lifting it off her leg to change gears as he powered the Porsche through the bends between Burford, the gateway to the Cotswolds, and Charlbury. Conscious of his illegal status as a driver, Patrick held the car to the speed limit as they passed through charming Chipping Norton, the town basking in yet another day of sunshine. His eyes darted this way and that as he scanned the streets for any sign of a police car. Out on the lanes beyond, heading for The Great Western Arms a few miles past Deddington, Patrick unleashed the beast and the Porsche growled its satisfaction.

Carrie, squirmed in the leather bucket seat to his left. The movement rucked the dress higher up her thighs and Carrie lifted the hem to flaunt her uncovered sex to Patrick as he drove.

“You trying to get us killed?” he asked and grinned.

Carrie smiled in return, blonde tendrils of hair coming loose from its clasp as slipstream from the car’s open top buffeted above the windscreen. “You’re a fantastic driver.” Sunlight as bright as her smile glinted off her sunglasses. “You drive as well as you fuck.”

Patrick felt a quick, guilty stab of remorse. Anthony’s daughter, his brother’s daughter … He pushed the thoughts aside, repressing the emotion like he had many times over the last three days.

Since that day at the pond.

“I did a course, a driving course. It was for a special job in Northern Ireland.”

“Like James Bond?” Carrie’s grin widened, as did her thighs.

Patrick’s laugh flicked into the slipstream. “Not even close,” he said, “nowhere near as glam.” He didn’t mention the nights spent under a grim blanket of border drizzle in bandit country, night vision goggles to his eyes as he tracked the movements of the major players of Irish republicanism in the north. Those days were long gone, as were the sweltering heat of middle-east operations and monochrome experiences of prison. Despite his momentary misgivings about his relationship with his niece, Patrick let his hand slide along the taut flesh of his Carrie’s thigh until his fingers found the mush of her sex.

“My clit,” Carrie groaned as the gap between her thighs widened and she slumped further down in the seat. “Rub my clit. Make me come before we get to the pub.”

“They didn’t teach me this on the course …”

Arching her back and moaning as her uncle fingered her opening and slid the tips of his fingers over the slip-slidey bud of her clitoris, Carrie urged: “That’s it, Uncle Pat.” She sighed as she rested her head against the car seat. “Finger me. Make me come.”

With concentration impossible Patrick hauled the car into a rare but fortuitous lay-by. The engine idled, growling like a petulant animal denied its run until Patrick turned off the ignition and the car fell silent. He pushed open the driver’s door, dimly grateful through the fog of lust for the overhanging avenue of trees that shielded them from view of the lane. Heedless of scuffs on the knees of his jeans he knelt on the tarmac and unceremoniously hauled his niece bodily to suit his needs. A grey horse stuck an inquisitive head over the fence rail that ran parallel to the short car park. Bemused but hopeful of apples and Polo mints its long face eyed the couple. Ignoring the equine voyeur, and after staring in apparent wonder as had become his habit whenever Carrie’s sex pouted wetly inches from his face, Patrick held the girl’s long thighs apart and slid his tongue into the ooze.

Carrie’s fingers ran through her uncle’s thick brown hair as she purred encouragement. “Uh-huh,” she squeaked. “Lick it, lick it … Lick it.” His tongue dipped lower while his fingers splayed Carrie’s buttocks. “Oh that’s bad,” the girl chuckled darkly. “Licking my arse … Uncle Patrick, that’s just so fucking dirty … Oh!” Patrick’s tongue squirmed deeper into his niece’s dirty-hole. “Finger it,” Carrie panted. “Finger my shitter and lick my cunt …” The girl wriggled and squirmed and pushed Patrick’s face hard against her pubis, grunting when her uncle’s index finger slid into the puckered ring of her sphincter and his tongue delved deep into her sex. “Two fingers in my cunt. Finger-fuck me, I’m going to come. Kiss me, I want to taste myself on your tongue … Kiss me … Finger me … Do it … Do it to me … Do it all to me.”

The girl climaxed heavily, nearly sucking Patrick’s tongue out by the root as they kissed. Her breath panted into the man’s open mouth as she came writhing and moaning and clawing at the leather of the Porsche interior.

Eventually her orgasm tapered and Carrie lay sprawled uncomfortably in a tangle of tanned limbs and her rumpled dress, half-in, half-out of the car, gasping for breath, her eyes rolling at the intensity of feeling. The horse, disappointed by the lack of goodies, snorted its derision, flicked its mane to emphasise its displeasure and sauntered away and Patrick eyed the car for signs of damage from the girl’s chaotic thrashing.

“No more fucking about while I’m driving,” he admonished.

“Yes, sir,” grinned Carrie, struggling to regain a modicum of decorum as the car kicked up a shower of stones and accelerated out of the lay-by.

“Thanks for taking the car out.” Carrie sipped at her vodka. “I appreciate you could get into real trouble if we get caught.” She took a surreptitious look around the beer garden. Nobody was close by. Sotto voce, she added: “Would you go back to prison?”

“Very probably,” Patrick replied, sipping at the pint of lime and soda. No point in courting trouble by driving with any booze in him, not even a single pint of Old Hooky.

“Was it dire? … In jail?”

Patrick grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that the whole thing is a bit of a mystery to me. I mean, what happened?

“I’d been in Iraq, the western desert,” Patrick replied tersely. “Like I said, I don’t really want to talk about it. Do you have a cigarette?” Carrie rummaged in her bag and pulled out a packet and lighter. Patrick took one and lit up. “You’re too young and pretty to use these things,” Patrick quipped as a deflection.

After lighting her own cigarette, the girl’s fingers stroked Patrick’s bare arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought that now … now we’re …” she actually blushed. Patrick was surprised at Carrie’s coyness. “… lovers,” Carrie finished after a pause, her face flushing a deeper crimson at the word. She shrugged her shoulders. “I just thought we could share things.”

Patrick relented with a sigh. “Yeah,” he began. “We’d been out celebrating. Your dad had just pulled off a major financial coup with some Japanese thingummy or other — I have no idea how his business works — and I was just back from running around the desert. We’d taken in a few bars in the west end. Anthony was flinging money about and we had women dripping off us. Nothing serious,” Patrick added quickly, “I mean your mum had buggered off long before this. I was single and your dad was unattached. Nothing went on, just us having a good time with a few goodtime girls, on the pull—”

Carrie blew a stream of smoke towards the sky. “—You were all in the car, the bloke came out of nowhere … and you hit him.”

Patrick stared at his niece for long seconds. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Then he opened it again. He paused, on the verge of speaking, but then shook his head instead and picked up his drink. Eventually, after swallowing the fizzing water, he spoke. “Yeah, the bloke got hit. It killed him. I ended up in court and got banged up. Now my brother’s putting me up while I get myself together …”

Moving away from the touchy subject Carrie asked: “What do you plan to do?”

Again he paused. The gentleness of the countryside settled around the couple as Patrick contemplated an answer. In the distance he heard a man’s voice from the Oxford canal as a narrow boat moored alongside the dock — a pub lunch and a few drinks before another sedate leg of a journey downstream. There came to his ears the distant rumble and clatter of some agricultural machinery threshing away in the haze — yellow and green livery of a John Deere working on the farmland … Quintessentially English summertime.

“I thought about travelling,” Patrick eventually responded suddenly thirsty for a pint of beer, real beer, ale. “Not that I wouldn’t miss this,” he added, shoving down the temptation and casting an arm around him in an arc to represent the scene about them. “Just getting away from reminders of the past and losing myself somewhere like Thailand or Bali.”

“That sounds lovely,” Carrie murmured.

“Want to come with me?” He was only half joking.

It was her turn to pause. “I can’t …” she began.

“Why not?”

“It… It’s nothing,” she shrugged, “just a man.”

Jealousy, bile-green and bitter tanged in Patrick’s throat. “What? But …”

“Just like you, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s complicated.” She dragged vehemently at the cigarette.

“Is he married?”

“No, but it’s still complicated.”

“But—”

“—Not now, Uncle Pat, please.”

Patrick drove the Porsche home without incident. With the fissure of Carrie’s revelation yawing between them, the young woman kept her hemline demurely about her knees on the return journey. Brillo, his body bent U-shaped and with his tail whip-lashing the air, greeted their homecoming with lavish licks of welcome.

Carrie disappeared upstairs and Patrick, deciding a walk might help to clear his thoughts, escaped with the dog to put a bit of distance between him and the girl. Following the path up to the pond Brillo sniffed and snuffled in the undergrowth while Patrick walked on in contemplative silence. At the pond, while the lurcher engaged his doggy nose and marked his territory with frequent lifts of a hind leg, Patrick lit up a smoke purloined from Carrie’s bag. He smoked and remembered his niece and her heart-shaped derriere as she’d slid into the waters a few days earlier …

He’d floundered into the pond after the girl, throwing up a wash of foam and mini tsunami with the force of his blundering entry into the water. The girl had shrieked with laughter as her uncle waded towards her in the chilly, waist high stream. When he reached her, without preamble, Patrick lifted her and forced his mouth against her lips. Carrie became suddenly serious when the ferocity of her uncle’s feelings enveloped her. She clamped her legs around Patrick’s waist, and with her arms around his neck, hanging off him, their tongues danced and slid in that first kiss. Patrick supported Carrie’s buttocks with his palms and his fingers inadvertently spreading her labia. His cock, long and stiff now, butted against the girl’s body, with the head of the thing bumping against Carrie’s opening.

“You’re beautiful,” Patrick moaned into the girl’s mouth. “So beautiful.”

“So are you,” she’d sighed. “I love your body and the way you smile. I can’t help myself. It’s wrong to do this with you but I just don’t care.” They kissed again while the water rippled about their entwined bodies. “Take me back.” Carrie pointed towards the edge of the pond. “Fuck me,” she moaned at the littoral when her uncle, after carrying her to the water’s edge, had gently settled her on her back on the grass and knelt between her thighs. “I’m so wet, so wet and so horny. Just fuck me. Stick it in. I want it inside me.” Growling with desire for his niece, who so obviously yearned for his cock, Patrick shuffled closer on his knees. “Put it in!” she exhorted after Patrick rubbed the dome of his cock around her labia. “Just fuck me with it … Ahhh—” A short, stabbing thrust and Carrie groaned at the first penetration. “Oh my God,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “You’re fucking me. I never thought you would. Straight-laced Uncle Patrick is fucking me.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re doing it to your niece, you filthy fucker, you’re sticking your cock into your niece.” Carrie’s eyes widened when Patrick thrust deeper and harder into her. She heaved herself up onto her elbows and, with knees bent and with her toes pointed like a dancer’s, looked down her body to the place that was being stretched by her uncle’s erection. “Look at it going in. I love to watch it going in. I’ve made you all wet; your cock’s all shiny and wet.” She grinned at her uncle’s contorted face. “Kiss me,” she urged. “Kiss me and fuck me.”

That first time was brief. Patrick slammed into the girl’s slight body, mindlessly pounding her sex until, with Carrie’s squeals of approbation, he spurted his semen into her body. His cock pulsed, spitting months of frustration inside her. His niece accepted the outpouring with murmurs of love and exhortations for him to fill her with his seed.

Finally, spent, Patrick sagged, his weight resting on the supine girl beneath him. Carrie accepted his bulk, stroking his hair and muttering inanities while his cock slowly shrivelled and slid from her body. A dribble of goo slid along the cleft of Carrie’s buttocks when her uncle finally heaved himself upright.

Carrie laughed when Patrick leapt suddenly to his feet and swatted at a trio of flies as they swooped in like fighter jets to feast on the gloop hanging from the end of his flaccid penis.

“Fucking dirty bastards!” he cried, fanning his hand around his waggling genitals and fumbled for his robe with the other. Brillo, following a prolonged excursion, bounded into the glade and added his barks to the disorder.

Still giggling, Carrie slid into the water. Sluicing her opening, she said: “Let’s go back to the house; I want to do it again.”

So they did.

***

The cottage was quiet when Patrick and Brillo returned from their walk. The man left the dog slurping noisily at his water bowl and went in search of his niece. He found her in her bedroom, on her bed, naked and with a heretofore unseen vibrator pressed against her clitoris.

“Come here,” the girl ordered through gritted teeth, eyelids heavy with desire and with cords of effort tensed in her neck as the pleasure swept through her. “Get it out, make it big and stiff and then wank it for me,” she urged.

Powerless to resist, and with all the earlier ill-feeling dissipated, Patrick clambered onto the bed. He unzipped his jeans and hauled his erection into view. He slowly stroked himself, the jealousy momentarily forgotten in the press urgent appetites. “Wank it for you like this?” he asked.

“God yes …I love it when it’s hard. So thick and veiny. It’s like a caveman’s club … Put it in my mouth, I want to suck you.”

Patrick offered his stiff penis to the girl and watched her masturbate. She craned her torso forward and took the helmet between her lips while keeping the tiny vibrator pressed hard against her excited clitoris. The thing buzzed angrily, the noise rising and falling as Carrie chased the pleasure around her vulva. Watching his niece masturbate, her stomach tensing with effort and with her lips stretched tight around his girth, Patrick reached down and smoothed his fingers over the girl’s breasts. Carrie moaned in appreciation around her mouthful of gristle. The man’s cock swelled when he felt the soft velvet of his niece’s breasts under his palms and heard her groan. The nipples, taut and erect, were hard pebbles against his stroking hand.

“Get on top,” Patrick commanded. “Ride me.”

With exuberant haste the girl scrambled to comply. She waited impatiently for Patrick to settle recumbent on the bed and then flung her leg across his thighs to squat flat-footed and hovering above him. Tiny mewls of longing sounded in Carrie’s throat as she reached down to hold her uncle’s member upright. Spreading her labia wide with her fingertips, she lowered herself down until the awful bulk of the domed head touched her bubbling, inflamed sex. The girl gasped and, entranced, looked into her uncle’s eyes and slowly took the glans into her opening.

“Stretch me … Oh fuck,” she moaned, her eyes closing. “Stretch me … Oh fuck,” she repeated, groaning again while her head lolled loose-hinged on her neck and she slid down further. “Fill me, Uncle Patrick,” she sighed, leaning forward to take her weight on her knees. Patrick reached for Carrie’s hanging breasts and the girl’s long hair brushed his face when she tilted closer towards her uncle. “Suck my tits,” she urged, sliding her sex upwards over Patrick’s shaft. Patrick complied and pushed up with his hips to meet Carrie on the downward stroke. The girl’s buttocks slapped with a solid thwack against Patrick’s thighs. “Uhnf …” she grunted before the slapping increased in tempo as the urgency to fuck overwhelmed the pair and her uncle’s hands dropped to grasp the girl’s hips, fingers digging into the flesh.

Carrie urgently rode her uncle’s cock. Her long hair swung wildly while her breasts swayed to and fro and side to side. Flesh slapped against flesh while Carrie’s sex squelched and farted indelicately and a torrent of obscenity spilled from her lips.

Patrick changed grip, reaching for his niece’s waist, his fingers almost circumnavigating her body as he attempted to quell her ardour. He was seriously concerned for the safety of his cock. If it slipped out of the girl, with her riding so vehemently, there was a real chance of her enthusiasm snapping his dick. His hands sliding along Carrie’s ribcage halting below her breasts before Patrick heaved and rolled, manoeuvring his niece into a more manageable position beneath him.

“Bang me, Uncle Patrick,” the girl snarled, her eyes blazing and face twisted with apparent hatred for the man above. “Don’t tickle me. Fuck me. Hard, fuck me hard. Split my little cunt in two … Pin me to the bed with your cock. Come on!”

Fingernails raked bloody trails along Patrick’s chest and he struggled on one straight arm while trying with the other hand to pin his niece’s wrists above her head. “You evil, foul-mouthed bitch,” he growled. “You want it hard? I’ll give you fucking hard …”

The girl wailed and thrashed, impaled on her uncle’s erection, pinned to the bed as she’d asked. Patrick grunted and thrust as hard as he could, stabbing into the tight, illicit body below him.

Patrick’s conscious thoughts were all muddied. He recognised the beauty of her as she struggled wildly beneath him. He’d never desired a woman like he did his niece. The things she did, the things she said … She was beautiful, untamed and undaunted by life. He wanted this girl, wanted to have her all for himself, didn’t want to share her … Whoever her lover was … Patrick grimaced, teeth gnashing as he struggled to hold his climax in check; not wanting to end this tumultuous ride.

“I love you,” Patrick blurted. “Carrie … I … Love you.”

The girl stared into her lover’s eyes, pausing for several banging heartbeats before snarling and snapping like a terrier: “Then show me,” she grimaced, “make me come and show me how much you love me.”

“From behind,” Patrick urged. “Finger yourself while I do you from behind.”

“Yes please!” Carrie shouted after she’d slid from beneath her uncle and repositioned herself on the bed. On hands and knees and with her backside offered, Carrie moaned: “That’s it, nice and deep. Push it in really fucking deep, Uncle Patrick … Oh—” Patrick held her hips and pushed, sliding completely into Carrie’s accommodating body in one long slick glide. He felt a scraping against the root of his cock — Carrie’s fingernail as she diddled at her clitoris. “Bring me off,” she murmured.

Patrick, his face contorted with concentration and with sweat pouring off his brow and chest, struggled again against the tide of his orgasm while his niece sighed and groaned her way to her own noisy peak. When the girl had come she pushed the man away from her body and rolled onto her back. Opening her legs and offering her sodden sex to her uncle, she muttered: “Now love me. Love me and fill me. Let your love spit into me. I want to feel you come.”

“I do love you, Carrie,” Patrick groaned as, moments later, the stuff pumped from his cock to fill his niece.

“I love you too, Uncle Patrick,” the girl whispered, her eyes bright with tears as her uncle’s seed spurted inside her.

Then came the voice, Anthony at the doorway: “Well isn’t that sweet …”

*** Accusations flew on fletched shafts, barbed tips piercing deep into the flesh of their fraternity. Wounded and staggering from his brother’s acrimony, Patrick packed a quick and hasty bag. Stuffing what few clothes he had into the holdall and zipping it up he turned to see Carrie, eyes red and swollen at the mess she’d created, regarding him from the doorway.

“Where’ll you go?” the girl sniffed.

A voice came from behind her and Carrie turned at the sound. “Who cares where he goes,” said Anthony as he appeared at his daughter’s shoulder, “just so long as it’s away from here.” He sneered at his brother in contempt. “And you,” he continued, turning his ire upon the girl. “You can get away from him. Get to your bedroom and don’t come out until he’s gone.”

“Don’t take it out on her,” Patrick interjected as he slung the bag over his shoulder. “I’m to blame, not her; I should’ve controlled myself, not allowed myself to get carried away. I’m sorry.”

“Fuck off,” Anthony spat vehemently to his brother. “Sorry means bugger all after this. How could you? My daughter for fuck sake … Your own fucking niece! You,” he snarled at Carrie, “I thought I told you to get to your room.” He shoved at the girl who yelped as the toes of one foot snagged on the other foot and she fell to the carpet.

The bag thudded to the floor a second after Carrie landed in a heap. Anthony’s eyes widened in fear as Patrick, taller, heavier, well-muscled and infinitely better acquainted with violence than his sibling, strode across the threshold and grabbed a fistful of cloth.

“You always were a bully, Anthony. Picking on kids smaller than yourself … You make me sick, all sanctimonious and holier-than-thou. I said I was sorry and I’m leaving. I told you it was my fault; don’t take it out on her. She’s young and confused and now she’s scared. She better not have anything to worry about from you, you spineless little wanker …” Patrick tightened the twist of Anthony’s shirt in his fist. “And to think I took it for you …”

Suddenly deflated Patrick sighed, shook his head sadly, and released Anthony’s shirtfront. He walked back into the room and picked up the dropped valise. Stooping to kneel next to his niece, who still lay on the carpet, Patrick kissed her wet cheek, stroked the blonde hair and whispered that he’d call her.

After helping the sobbing young woman to her feet, and with a final threatening glare at his brother, he left the house.

Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand – A Year Later

GRAVID AND CUMBERSOME, the girl eased her weight and that of the unborn child onto her side. Eager for her lover to penetrate her, despite the advanced state of her pregnancy, she offered her sex to him, sighing when she felt him butt up against her swollen vulva.

“Put it in,” Patrick she urged. “God, please, just put it inside me.”

Mindful of the woman’s distended belly, Patrick laid a palm gently upon the uppermost promontory of her jutting hip and, holding his erection in one hand to aim the end at the heat of her, nudged at her body,. Encouraged by the hiss of his lover’s breath and the thrust of her buttocks towards him, Patrick jabbed again. He felt the slight reluctance of her body to accommodate him at first before, suddenly, his cock nudged further and the clenching of Carrie’s insides closed around his girth.

He eased his length all the way in. The girl sighed again, her blonde hair fanned on the pillow as she turned her head awkwardly in order to watch her lover’s face as she squeezed her love around his shaft. The cock pulsed inside her; Patrick winked.

“You OK?” he asked, concern scratching his voice.

“Fine,” Carrie mumbled, “just fine. Move it in and out,” she continued. “Nice and slow, fuck me nice and slow. Love me first, and then stab me with it. Don’t worry,” she said with a reassuring smile on her face. “You won’t hurt us. You’ve got a lovely big cock but it won’t do any damage.”

His hand slid over her skin and came to rest cupping her breast. There was a noticeable difference between Carrie’s burgeoning breasts of today when compared to the tight and compact articles she’d packed into her swimwear and tee-shirts the previous summer. Seething with desire for this fecund young woman, with his erection jammed firmly inside her body, Patrick craned awkwardly and, pulling Carrie’s flesh as much as he dared, took the extreme tip of a distended teat between his lips.

The young woman moaned a low growl from the back of her throat. She exhorted Patrick to stab her cunt harder and deeper.

“Don’t talk dirty,” the man complained. “You talk like that and I’ll come.”

“Do it then,” Carrie panted as she increased the speed of her thrusts against Patrick’s thighs. “It’s what got me into trouble in the first place, your cock spitting that goo into my sweet, clean, innocent body. It’s your fault, contaminating my pure little cunt with your vile seed.”

Grabbing her hip again, Patrick shifted his body until, after a deep and prolonged nibble at the woman’s neck, he was in a position to pound harder with ever increasing ferocity at his girlfriend’s sex.

“Carrie,” Patrick grunted as the irreversible tide surged. “I’m …”

“I know,” she grunted. I can feel your cock pulsing and your spunk spitting … Oh, fuck, Patrick … I’m coming too …”

Following their shared shower, the lovers lay entwined on the bed, Carrie’s hair lank and damp and fanned over the pillow with Patrick’s hand on the swell of her tummy while the noise of traffic coughed and whined from the bridge over the Mae-ping river. They spoke of Carrie’s realisation that she no longer wanted to continue the affair with her university lecturer, preferring instead the former marine, the man she’d seduced and fallen for over the course of a few days of one hot summer. Discussion turned to Anthony’s rancour when Carrie refused to stop seeing Patrick. They spoke about, often tearfully, the circumstances which led to Patrick’s incarceration — the revelation that it was Anthony who’d been driving when the fatal collision took place, and that Patrick, acting with a soldier’s quick instincts had taken the blame for his brother.

“He had a lot more to lose than me,” he said. “He’d just got that deal worth millions with the Japanese; he had you …” Carrie kissed Patrick’s smoothly shaven cheek as he spoke those words, her hand moved to his and she squeezed.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

There was talk of Patrick’s adoption into the family. “He used to pick on me,” he revealed. “Anthony used to bully me … until I grew bigger than him, then the shoe was on the other foot …”

“You didn’t …” Carrie began.

“No,” Patrick said. “I didn’t ever get my own back; it isn’t in me to be like that. Too sporting,” he quipped. “Commissioned officer don’t you know!” Patrick mimicked an upper class accent. “Very puckah!”

The girl, her head on his chest, smiled. “I didn’t think you would’ve. You wouldn’t be you otherwise.” She shifted her weight onto her side and looked into his brown eyes. “You took the rap for your step brother — how noble, you big idiot.”

Patrick shrugged against the pillow at is back. “When’s he arriving?”

“Next week. He says in the email that he’s missing me … us actually, and that he’d like to build some bridges.” The girl sighed, eliciting a word of concern from the man. “It’s Brillo I miss the most,” she revealed. “I love his fuzzy face … I really miss him.”

“Well,” said Patrick, “if it goes well when Anthony comes over and …” he prodded the drum tight skin of her swelling “…if junior here pops out soon enough, well then, maybe we could go back for visit. What do you reckon?”

“Brilliant idea,” Carrie beamed, “but for now … how about a swim?”