“You still want me to make some popcorn?” Brian nuzzled Janie’s neck, leaving feather light kisses there and over her chest. She was wearing a halter top that left the tops of her breasts exposed above the blanket.
“Please?” Janie smiled up at him, and I felt a tightness in her chest. It was the same look Janie used to give me as a little girl when she wanted something, the sweet puppy-dog eyes and slight pout. Except she wasn’t such a little girl anymore, was she?
Brian leaned in to kiss her and I swallowed hard as I saw their tongues touch, Janie’s body arching into his, her arms twining around his neck. The boy had to be hard as a rock, laying so close to Janie like that under the blankets-
and who knew what was going on underneath them? The thought made me flush, and it wasn’t from embarrassment, even if I tried to convince myself it was.
“Anything for you, baby,” Brian murmured into Janie’s hair.
“Not the microwave kind!” Janie insisted, wrinkling her nose at him as Brian got up. I couldn’t help but see the bulge in his shorts, even though they were denim and enveloped him in quite nicely. “Real popcorn. With real butter.”
“I can make it, if you want to stay and watch the movie,” I offered to Brian from the couch.
“No, thank you.” Janie’s head snapped toward me and her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t want your popcorn.”
“Real popcorn with real butter, coming up.” Brian turned and headed toward the kitchen while Janie snuggled back under the covers, curling her arm around so she could rest her head on it.
“Here.” Gretchen plied me with more ice cream and I attempted a smile as I took the creamy bite. “It’s almost gone. We’re such pigs.”
“Oink,” I agreed, watching as Henry lifted the edge of Janie’s blanket and slid underneath it.
“What are you doing?” Janie sighed as Henry slipped an arm around her waist.
“I’m cold.” Henry settled in behind her and Janie sighed again, but accepted him spooning her, snuggling her back against his chest and twining her fingers with his.
“You’ll have to move when Brian comes back.”
“I know.” Henry shrugged, glancing toward the doorway where Brian had disappeared. I could hear the whir of the air popper. “You smell like coconut.”
“My shampoo, I think,” Janie murmured, her eyes on the screen where Tom Cruise was playing, of all things, a Nazi.
“It’s nice,” Henry breathed, dipping his face a little closer to Janie’s head.
“Last bite,” Gretchen said, scraping the spoon across the bottom of the ice cream carton. “Want it?”
I shook my head, frowning as I watched my former charges snuggling together on the living room floor. I had noted and tolerated Brian’s advances-
Janie was old enough, and he was her boyfriend, after all. But this? Henry and Janie were brother and sister, but they were lying together like… like… I glanced at Gretchen, who appeared unaffected by their closeness. Obviously this happened all the time. But for siblings, it seemed like they were too familiar, too…intimate. Much more than I was comfortable with.
“Quit being so mean to Ronnie.” Henry’s whispered words weren’t meant for my ears, and I knew it, but I heard him anyway. Janie didn’t answer him, her eyes on the television screen, but I saw the way her jaw tightened. “She loves you, ya know?”
“Funny way she has of showing it,” Janie breathed, tossing the blanket aside as she stood.
“She’s so impossible.” Henry sighed as his sister stalked out of the room, joining her boyfriend in the kitchen.
“She hates me.” I was surprised at how steady my voice was.
“She doesn’t hate you,” Gretchen countered, leaning over to put the ice cream container on the coffee table. “She’s just mad. She’ll get over it.”
“Does anyone else want popcorn?” Brian poked his head through the doorway to inquire and I smiled at him.
“No, thanks.”
“I do!” Gretchen waved her spoon at him. “Me! Me!”
“You’re going to get fat.” I laughed, pinching at Gretchen’s nonexistent stomach.
“Gretchen can out-eat me and Brian put together,” Henry scoffed, shaking his head. He stood and announced, “I’m gonna get a Coke,” before heading toward the kitchen.
“I don’t know where you put it.” I watched Gretchen as she stretched, cat-like, her top pulling up out of her shorts to reveal a tanned expanse of belly.
“I have a hollow leg.” Gretchen smiled as she slid back against the couch cushions, the blanket pulling down to reveal the length of her tanned legs.
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember that.”
“What do you remember?” Gretchen cocked her knee and traced a line with her finger down her inner thigh toward the hem of her shorts.
“Quit,” I hissed, glancing toward the kitchen. Gretchen wrinkled her nose at the warning and ignored it, using her finger to slide her shorts aside a little, revealing the fact that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Her pussy lips were shaved smooth, and I glimpsed the familiar pink. “You’re bad.”
“I know.” Gretchen moved back under the blanket, her hand sliding up my bare thigh, her words whispered close to my ear. “You make me wanna be really, really bad.”
I groaned softly when Gretchen’s fingers pressed the seam of my jean shorts, rubbing there.
“Popcorn!” Brian announced, coming back into the room with two full bowls. Gretchen eagerly reached out to take one and settled happily next to me, already munching.
Brian flopped on the floor beside Janie, who sat on the floor stirring popcorn around in the buttery bowl.
“Did we miss anything good?” Janie asked, licking butter off her fingers.
“It’s a Tom Cruise movie,” I snorted. “There couldn’t have been anything good to miss.”
Janie turned to look at me, making a face. “Don’t be mean to my Tommy.”
“Who are you now, Rosie O’Donnell?” Henry scoffed.
“Do I look like Rosie O’Donnell?” Janie glanced over her shoulder at him, her blonde hair a cascade down her bare back. She was still wearing the bikini she’d swam in earlier in the day and Henry’s eyes swept over her, darkening.
“No, sweetie, far from it.” I frowned when I saw Henry’s very unbrotherly look. “Besides, I think Tom Cruise is too old for you.”
“Ha. He married Katie Holmes, didn’t he?” Janie tossed a kernel of popcorn into the air and caught it quite delicately on the pink tip of her outstretched tongue.
“She was a child bride,” Henry grumbled, popping the top on his can of Coke and taking a long, loud sip.
“Well, I’m not a child,” Janie countered, but she was looking not at her brother, but at me.
“I know,” I murmured, but Janie had turned her attention back to the popcorn, the movie, and her boyfriend.
Brian hushed us with, “I can’t hear the movie!” and I refrained from further comment about Tom Cruise’s acting ability when Gretchen’s fingers slipped under the edge of my cutoffs.
Being under the blanket made me feel entirely too warm, but I didn’t dare throw it off, and Gretchen’s teasing made me even hotter. I thought the end of a movie, Tom Cruise or otherwise, had never come soon enough.
“Want to go up to my room?” Gretchen whispered as she slipped under the covers and spooned me from behind. I murmured something indefinitive in my sleep, snuggling back against her in spite of myself. The house was quiet and dark, and I didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room. Henry had fallen asleep before the movie’s end, and when Janie and Brian decided to go out after it was over, Gretchen had woken him and sent him off to bed.