After the Lunch

The others had gone and the sink was still full.

Freya rolled her sleeves. Thirty-two. Her mother's new husband had a way of stacking plates that made twice the work. Anders dried, because he had drawn the short straw and because he had not got in his car when he could have. He was thirty-five. Their parents had married three years ago, in a registry office, when Freya was already living in Bristol and Anders was already paying a mortgage in Sheffield. They had met at the rehearsal dinner as adults with separate lives. That fact did not make the kitchen feel innocent. It did make the wanting theirs.

"You can go," she said. "I'll finish."

"If I go I'll think about it all the way up the M1."

"About the washing up."

"About you bending over that dishwasher in that dress. About not saying it at Christmas when you laughed at something I said and I had to leave the room."

She set a glass down harder than she meant to. "Anders."

"I'm not drunk. I know who you are. My father's wife is your mother. You're not my sister. You weren't a kid when they did this. Say stop and I will dry this spoon and leave."

Freya looked at the garden. The lunch chairs were still out. Her pulse was a stupid thing.

"Don't leave," she said.

He put the towel down. The kiss was immediate and clumsy and then better. He tasted of coffee. She got her hands under his shirt and felt him shudder like he had been holding it since the starter. They knocked a cup. Neither of them looked.

"Upstairs is their room," she said. "Not there."

"Utility."

The utility room was small and smelled of detergent. Anders shut the door with his foot. Freya's dress came up. His hand found she had taken her underwear off after dessert, and the discovery pulled a groan out of him.

"You planned this."

"I hoped. There's a difference."

He dropped to his knees and put his mouth on her. Freya braced on the tumble dryer and tried not to be loud. His tongue was greedy. He held her open and licked her clit until her knee buckled, then did it again because of the noise she made. She came faster than she wanted, one hand in his hair, the word stepsister not in her mouth and not gone from the room.

When he stood she opened his belt and took his cock out. Thick, already wet at the head. She stroked him and said, because one of them had to, "This is a bad idea we are both choosing."

"Yes."

"Fuck me, then. And don't be sweet about it. I'll get shy if you're sweet."

He turned her, bent her over the dryer, and pushed in. The stretch made her gasp. He held her hips and fucked her in short, hard strokes, the machine knocking the wall. Freya reached back and pulled him deeper.

"Say it," she said.

"You're my stepsister."

"And?"

"And I'm fucking you in our parents' utility room. And I'm going to come in you if you keep doing that."

"Do it."

He did, with his mouth on her shoulder and a broken sound he would not be explaining at the next lunch. Freya stayed bent, shaking, used and glad of it. Anders eased out. For a moment the only noise was the freezer.

"We're not telling them," he said.

"We are not telling them." She straightened her dress. Her thighs were a mess. She did not hate that. "Text me when you're home. Not a novel. Just home."

"And next time?"

Freya picked up the towel he had dropped.

"Next time you don't get to hide in the utility room. I want a bed, and I want you to look at me while you say what we are."

He nodded. Outside, a neighbour started a mower. The ordinary noise made the whole thing filthier.

They did not finish the glasses at once. Freya pushed him into the chair by the door and went to her knees, because she wanted the picture of it as much as the act. Anders's cock was sensitive and still wet from her. She licked him clean and then took him into her mouth until he hardened again, one hand in her hair, the other gripping the chair.

"Freya. If someone comes back for a coat,"

"They won't. Suck is the wrong word for what I'm doing only if you're trying to be decent."

She sucked him until he swore and tugged her off. She stroked him through the last of it and let him come on her tongue, looking up, so he had to see exactly who was swallowing. Anders's head hit the wall.

"Home," she said, wiping her mouth. "Text me."

Anders kissed her once more, quick, at the sink, and then they finished the glasses as if the lunch had only run long.

On the drive he did not play music. At a red light he texted one word, home, and then sat with the engine off outside his own building because home was not quite true yet. Freya replied with the same word. He read it twice. In the morning he would be a man who fixed nothing and dried plates. Tonight he was the man who had bent his stepsister over a dryer because she told him to, and he was not going to sand that down into a mistake.