The Bennett Family: Prologue
Evening light cut gold across the old carpet. It was worn down in the usual paths, faded near the window where the sun always beat on it. Jen, my older sister, had opened Christmas presents there cross-legged under the tree. Now in her twenties, she knelt in that same spot in only panties, hands resting on her thighs, back straight.
My dad, Tom, was in his La-Z-Boy. He had occupied that chair the Sunday football game for twenty years. His jaw was set. His eyes flicked away from his daughter to the ceiling and then back. He wore a polo shirt and jeans, his wedding ring catching the light when his hand shifted.
My little brother, Tim, sat across from me. His breathing came faster than Jen’s, and he looked directly at her chest.
Beside me sat my mom, Jenna. She wore a short silk robe, and where the lapels fell open, her breasts were mostly visible through a transparent red lace bra. The matching panties showed when she shifted. Her shoulder pressed against my arm. She smelled faintly of chlorine from the pool that afternoon. Her hands were in her lap. She watched her husband.
My twin sister Stace sat on my other side in athletic shorts and a thin tank top, the kind with the built-in shelf. My hand rested on her upper thigh. Her skin was smooth and relaxed. She hadn’t had a chance to shower after mowing the lawn; I could smell the salt of dried sweat. Her ponytail was loose, strands of sun-bleached brown falling across her cheek. Her nearly always smiling eyes were serious and focused.
The TV was off. The clock on the cable box read 7:47. Tuesday, the end of August.
I thought about that rainy Saturday in June, when we’d played the game. The knight and the princess-in-distress. The busty tavern wench and the eager squire. The hooded master and the captured Amazonian warrior. We had chosen those roles without knowing we were choosing them, and now here we were, arranged the same way, waiting for the ending.
Tom’s eyes kept finding Jen and then leaving her. Each time they left, his jaw tightened. Each time they returned, something in his shoulders dropped a fraction. He was an engineer who built models in his spare time, and he couldn’t find anything in his mental toolbox to fix this. His wedding ring turned between his fingers.
Jen did not look up. Her t-shirt, bra, and denim shorts lay folded under the table. She had chosen, months ago, the story she would tell herself in moments like these. She was rehearsing it to herself now while on display for her dad and younger brothers, the gold light crossing from the carpet up her calves.
Across the room, Tim watched, too, but unlike Dad, it wasn’t his first time seeing even more of Jen than this. His hands gripped the armrests. He was small for his eighteen years. Mom had been taking care of him in the afternoon for weeks, but that still wasn’t enough relief to prevent his erection pressing conspicuously against his shorts.
Mom’s hand settled on my knee, the way it always had — in the car, on movie nights, anywhere her hand could reach one of her kids. Touch and affection were the same thing to her. It had embarrassed me in front of my friends and made me uncomfortable in ways I hadn’t been able to articulate. I could articulate them now. She had come out of twenty years of motherhood and faculty meetings this summer, surprised to uncover desires she’d thought long extinguished. She’d chosen the red lingerie without comment, the same way she accepted everything I suggested now.
On my other side, Stace’s thighs parted slightly under my hand, the small unspoken accommodation of a body that had given in weeks ago. I let my hand slide higher, until my palm settled over her through her shorts. She didn’t move at first. The heat of her came through the fabric, steady. When I left my hand still, she gave an, impatient huff and rolled her hips up into it, once, small but unmistakable. She hated being the one to ask. But she had been waiting all day for me, and I could feel her composure slipping. She was leaving for college with me in two weeks. This was the last summer the five of us would be in the house together.
Across the room, Tom’s eyes found Jen and lingered on her face, then dropped to her body. I took the moment to ire her too, her hands still on her thighs, her back arching toward Dad, her edges catching the last of the light. I suspected she had been waiting for this since she was sixteen, when she’d dog-eared a copy of Story of O still hidden under her mattress.
Tom’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“Jennifer Bennett,” he said.
The full name. The one from her birth certificate, the one he used when she was in trouble.
Before he could continue, she interrupted: “Neither of us has a choice, Dad.” Her voice was even, controlled.
The careful articulation hid her feelings. Every word was literally true. Tom heard something else. He heard a wanting too strong to refuse. His shoulders dropped another fraction. Something in his face changed—not relief, but the look of a man who has been carrying a weight, and who has just decided he can’t anymore.
He lifted his right hand from the armrest. His knuckles had been white. He beckoned her, fingers curling toward his palm. It was the same gesture he had used when thunderstorms shook the house and she needed a comforting lap. It was the same gesture from the same man.
Jen rose from the floor. She was built like her mother—the same shoulders, the same dip above her hips—but where Jenna had curves, Jen was still skinny, the body of a young woman not entirely done being a girl. Tim had stopped breathing. Dad’s jaw worked once. She stood in front of the armchair, and the light came through the shutters in gold bars across her. Then she stepped forward, and he pulled her onto his lap. For a moment she pressed her forehead to his shoulder, the way she used to long ago. His big hands settled on her waist, and her breath caught. Engineer’s hands. Callused and capable of precision with a fuse or circuit, now, with the elastic at her hip.
He hooked a finger under the band and pulled. His hands were shaking slightly—the tremor was fine, almost invisible unless you were watching for it. She braced her hands on the armrests and lifted her hips to help him, and he worked the panties down past her ass. She settled back onto his jeans with the fabric bunched at her knees, then lifted one foot, then the other, until he had the panties in his hand. He set them on the armrest—a careful, neat gesture. And then she was naked on her father’s lap, her back against his chest, her thighs spread across her pussy bare to the rest of the family—the soft outer lips bare, the cleft between them parted just enough to show pink. Tim and I stared even though we’d seen it before. She began to breathe heavily through her mouth.
She reached down between her own thighs and worked his fly. The zipper gave under her hand. She reached inside and freed him, then looked down in surprise, a worried crease forming between her eyebrows. She was used to Tim and I, and Dad was bigger than either of us.
Tom tried to be careful with his daughter. His hands moved her slowly, the pace deliberate, a man measuring his own strength against something he did not want to break. But he was too big and too far gone. Jen exhaled sharply when he pulled her to him. “Daddy,” she said—the word getting away from her. Her palms pressed flat against the armrests, and she struggled a little, her whole body stiffening as she tried to accommodate him. His grip tightened without meaning to. His fingers pressed into her hips; the bruise of his thumb would be there in the morning. She pushed less against him again on the second thrust, and then her arms gave, and she went slack against his shoulder. The stretch of him showed in everything—the way her thighs quivered and the way she rhythmically gripped Dad’s shirt in her fists.
From the couch we had a clear line to all of it. He had her by the hips now and was working her up and down on him in a steady rhythm. His cock came completely out of her on every pull, the shaft wet from her, the outer lips of her dragging up around it. Then he brought her back down, and the same length disappeared back into her body. I could see the exact line between the part of him that was visible and the part that was inside her.
Jen started moaning low every time she sank down. It got louder fast. My cock responded, growing hard in my jeans.
The room was sound now. Her moans. The sloppy wet rhythm of him in her. He had been her father all her life, and now he was inside her.
Tim’s hands clenched and unclenched. He was watching his father fuck his sister on the armchair a few feet away, and he only ed heat and movement. His breathing had gone shallow. His mouth was slightly open.
Mom watched her family from beside me. Her palm on my leg. Her weight was still settled against my arm. I had let her know this was coming. She had talked to Jen about it in the kitchen, in phrases that were both oblique and truthful. Neither of them had named my influence directly. They hadn’t needed to.
Stace grew tense under my hand. She was watching too, wondering what I had in store for her. We had shared nearly everything as twins. Tonight we were going to finish. Her hand found mine and covered it.
Jen began to move with him. Her arms braced against the armrest, feet on either side of Dad’s lap. Finding the pace he had set and matching it, she impaled herself on him. She exhaled hard on each drop. Her eyes stayed closed.
Mom’s fingers shifted up my thigh, a slow drift inward until her palm settled next to my erection through my jeans. Her touch was just enough to let me know she was ready. I reached over with my free hand and took hold of her silk robe’s lapel. The fabric was thin, cool under my fingers. She leaned forward slightly to let me pull it down her arms, and the robe fell away behind her, pooling on the couch between us.
Her areolas pebbled in the cool air, visible through the transparent fabric. It was a mockery of a bra. The panties were similarly indecent, showing off rather than concealing. She had been wearing just underwear in the evenings around the house for weeks. The family had stopped noticing, or had stopped acting like they noticed, which was the same thing. But not like this. I had told her the effect I wanted her to have on her husband and son, and this is what she chose.
Tom’s eyes cut across the room to her. His hands stayed on Jen’s hips, his rhythm didn’t break, but his eyes found his wife sitting exposed beside me on the couch. Something ed across his face—recognition, maybe, or the pain of a man watching two things at once that he’d been spending months not letting himself acknowledge—and then his eyes went back to his daughter, to the movement of her on his lap, to the place where his cock disappeared into her and emerged wet and flushed.
Tim forgot Jen for the moment and stared at Mom. His hands had been gripping his knees; now they loosened slightly, his fingers spreading across his thighs. He had been using her mouth since late June, in his bedroom, in the afternoons, but he had never seen her like this—in front of everyone with his dad fucking his sister a few feet away. His breathing caught. His mouth was dry. I could see his throat work when he swallowed.
I spoke to him. My voice was low, even. The same tone I had used all summer when I needed something to land.
“You think you’re ready to take charge of her?” I said, and pulled my mother’s hair a little, forcing her head back, exposing her throat. That got his attention. “Whenever you need release, not just her mouth—that’s a real responsibility. But outside of that, she’s still our mom. You understand what that means?”
Tim looked at me in astonishment. The eagerness he had carried since June was there, but underneath it was something else—the realization that this was not a temporary arrangement, that his mom taking care of him in his bedroom had been the prelude to this, to her doing whatever he needed, whenever, for as long as he lived in this house, and maybe beyond.
“Yeah,” he said. His voice caught on the word. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I am.”
I looked at Mom. Her shoulder was still against my arm. “Outside of this,” I said, “you’re still in charge. But when he needs release, you do whatever he wants. Whenever. However. Ok?”
She nodded. Once. “Yes, Alex.” She did not look at me when she nodded. She was already looking at Tim. Her obedience made me want to take her again before letting her go, but I kept to my plan.
She stood from the couch without hesitation. With all eyes on her body, she crossed the room to Tim’s side chair. She knelt between his legs on the carpet, her knees on the worn fibers where Jen had knelt minutes earlier.
She looked up at him.
Her expression was warm. Unhurried. She looked up at him from the carpet with the same affection that had watched him graduate every grade, come through every door. Then, quietly:
“Hey, baby. “ Just that, first,” her hands settled on his knees. “I know what you need.” I’ve known since before this all started.” Her voice was low, even—the voice that had said be home by ten, I’m proud of you, and eat something before you go. “Whatever you need, whenever. Mommy’s right here.“
Tim’s jaw worked. His eyes moved once to his father for direction—habit—then came back.
“But outside of that,” she said, “you still do what I say. Same as always. You hear me?” Almost naked, kneeling, and ready to service him, her voice still had the parental bite it always had.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hear you, Mom.”
She reached up and pulled his shorts and boxers down his thighs with practiced ease; she’d been doing this every day, sometimes more than once, for months. Her hands settled back on his knees, his cock inches from her face. She moved to take him in her mouth, paused, smiled mischievously at her son, and sat back looking up at him and waiting. Tim looked down at her for a long moment, confused, before he understood. Then his hands moved to the back of her head, fingers threading through her hair until he had a fistful. It was at first the cautious, experimental grip of a son worried that Mom might tell him to sit on his hands.
From the couch I had her in profile—Mom kneeling between Tim’s legs, her hand wrapped around the base of his cock. He let her work him in the rhythm she was used to. Then his hand tightened in her hair. When she tried to pull back into the upstroke, he didn’t let her. He held her still and pushed — just enough that she had to take more of him than she’d planned. She made a small approving sound around him, low in her throat—mmh—the same noise she made when he handed her a straight-A report card. Her hand fell away from the base. He pushed her further. Her nose touched the front of his jeans, and the bulge of him appeared in her throat—a clean line at her jaw. She gagged, wet and low. More confident now, he didn’t let her up. He held her there a moment, watching her mouth stretched around him and her eyes watering. When he relaxed his grip allowing her to rise, a thread of saliva hung between his cock and her lower lip. She was breathing hard, and she met his eyes, his mother, struggling to serve him but ready for more. He was learning what she would let him do. What she would let him do was everything. He didn’t give it back. After that, every time he reached the back of her throat, she lifted her watering eyes to his.
I was failing to remain composed. My hand had tightened unintentionally on Stace and I only realized what I was doing when she moaned with satisfaction. I’d built this all summer. Seeing it actually happen hit harder than I expected.
The room held two sounds now. The rhythmic pump of Jen’s ass onto Dad’s lap, his breath coming harder as his control went. And the sloppy wetness of Tim’s hips into his mother’s mouth, the soft gag of her throat on each push, his hand on the back of her head.
Tim’s breath had begun to shorten. The movement of his hips hardened. Mom knew what was coming—she had been timing his body for long enough. She let her jaw go slack, opened her throat, and made herself ready to take him.
Both men were closing in on it. Tom’s hands roamed his daughter’s body with the confidence of experience he’d gained from decades of experience with Mom in the bedroom. His palm cupped her breast, calloused thumb brushing her nipple with practiced pressure, fingers tracing the dip of her waist before gripping her ass and pulling her down hard onto him. His other hand slid down her stomach and between her thighs. He found her clit without hesitation. Her body jerked once, hard, and she made a noise I’d never heard her make. “Oh,” she said. “Oh fuck. Daddy.” His fingers worked her in firm, knowing circles while his cock kept moving inside her, and her thighs muscles shook in a way that wasn’t just from the stretch anymore.
Tim’s fingers stayed tangled in Mom’s hair, but his other hand reached down, cupping her breast through the lace.
Tom came first. He pulled Jen all the way down on him and held her there, his hands locked on her hips. Daddy, Jen moaned the last time, feeling him spurt in her, barely a word. As he finished, he moved his hand from her breast and rested it flat over her heart. His other hand stayed locked on her hip. Jen’s chest rose and fell against her back matching his. A line of tear-track ran down her cheek. Dad stayed buried inside her, face pressed into her hair, breathing hard, coming to with what he’d just done.
Tim was a few seconds behind his father. He pushed Mom down to the base and stayed there. His hand at the back of her head went from fist to clamp, his hips lifted once and held, and his whole body locked. She did her best not to push away, to take him obediently. She swallowed desperately over and over, the muscles visible along the side of her neck where the bulge of him sat. She was swallowing her son. She did it in front of her husband, her daughters, and me.
When Tim finally let her come up, she didn’t pull off. She rose by inches, his hand loosening in her hair to allow it, until her lips rested against his head. She held him there catching her breath, chest heaving. Her eyes lifted to his face again. She was looking up at her son the way she’d looked at him across kitchen counters his entire life.
I watched it all from the couch. Mom’s robe lay pooled next to me. Stacey tensed and relaxed under my hand. Her hand still covered mine. The room had gone quiet around the two of us. Tom was still inside Jen and watching from a place beyond what he could comprehend.
I took the hem of Stace’s tank top and pulled it up — slowly for our audience. The fabric slid over her stomach, over her ribs, over her small athletic breasts. She lifted her arms so I could pull it over her head. Her ponytail came loose, loose strands falling across her shoulders. The tank top came off, and I dropped it on the couch beside Mom’s robe.
I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her shorts. They were the athletic kind, with the small built-in liner. She did not lift her hips this time. She let me lift her instead — one hand under her ass, the other pulling the shorts down — and then she was back on the cushion bare. The shorts came off her feet one at a time. I dropped them on the floor beside the couch.
She sat beside me naked. The room was holding still. I put my hand on her knees and parted her legs, opening her up for the family’s view. Dad’s and Tim’s cocks twitched a little. Her body was tan from her runs, lighter where her shorts had been, the tan line sharp across her thighs. Her stomach was flat, muscle visible when she breathed. Her breasts were small and firm, the nipples dark against her skin. Her body had always been what it was, comfortable in its own skin, and now it was exposed in the living room with her family watching from where they were, and her smile arrived — the same one she had worn all summer, the one that didn’t go away.
Her hand tightened on mine.
Stace put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me down to her mouth. “My turn,” she whispered into it. “Now. Please.”