Autumn Pt. 01 Ch. 05

Liz snorted. "She might let us slide this time but I wouldn't put it past her."

Only then, long after it would have made a difference, did it occur to Frank that enhancing his dexterity couldn't be too different from manipulating sensitivity. He was so used to thinking that it wasn't safe to use magic outside the bedroom that such applications didn't spring readily to mind, but he'd have to try that next time. It would be nice to surprise his aunt and even nicer to see what she could do with the enhancement.

A brief silence followed.

Eventually, Liz said, "I like you, Frank. This might be headed somewhere; I certainly hope that it is. I'm not the sort to jump right into bed, though. Our family might have some peculiar customs, and I don't want you to think that I'm either a prude or even looking for monogamy, but it's important to me that we build a connection first." She ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her glass. "Is that alright?"

"Of course," Frank said without hesitation, and not just because he was supposed to. Had some part of him hoped that the night might end differently? Sure. There was no way to stare into those dark brown eyes for hours on end, or rest a hand on her hip while she did a halfway decent job of mimicking the experts in the room, without thinking certain thoughts. Yet he'd expected to hear a speech along these lines sooner or later.

"Am I going to wake up to find that you spent the night with your mom?" she asked.

Frank raised an eyebrow. "Thought you weren't expecting exclusivity?"

"I'm not," she said. "No one likes to feel like a backup plan, though."

"If I went to her because you shot me down, however gently, wouldn't that make her the backup plan?" Frank asked, though only to make a point. His mother would never be that.

Frowning, his aunt said, "I don't claim to be as savvy about relationships as my daughter is, but I'm not stupid. If she'd been standing on that platform when you finished with our mother, the past few hours never would have happened." Sensing that he was about to get pedantic, she covered his mouth with her free hand. "I know where I stand and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. All I ask is that you don't rub my face in it."

"Tonight, I sleep alone," Frank said, daring to place a hand on the small of her back.

"I don't want you to think—"

"I don't," he interrupted.

Her lips twitched, hinting at a smile that didn't form. "If your mother has decided that she requires not one but two lovers, yet again, my daughter's bed might be empty. I'm sure she'd love some company." She exhaled heavily and patted his chest before giving his tie a gentle yank. Frank wondered if she realized how lucky she was to even see him in one. "I'd be lying if I said that wouldn't bother me. It would be just a tiny white lie, though." At last, a smile did appear. "After she put you up to this, I probably owe her."

"She didn't exactly have to twist my arm," Frank said.

Something approximating warmth characterized her expression. "I know."

A force yet to be discovered by physicists connected their eyes, preventing either from looking away. Corporeality became an abstract concept, one whose definition Frank could recite even though he had no experience with it. Only he did, and his awareness of all things physical grew more acute. Every slight wrinkle in his aunt's skin seemed more pronounced, as did the depth and darkness of her eyes, and the absolute Lizness of her not-makeup. Her skin was as white as a freshly sliced apple, her hair as black as pitch, and her lips redder than rose petals. Did her nose bear some resemblance to a bird's beak? Perhaps, but that only served to distinguish her from her sister and her mother, whose facial features were otherwise quite similar. She was nonetheless one of the most beautiful women Frank had ever laid eyes on. The more analytical part of him knew that his brothers wouldn't agree, that they'd argue Nat was far prettier, to say nothing of Brie, but his inner romantic just didn't care. That mix of youth and maturity, the intellectual sophistication and childlike innocence revealed by her knowing eyes and ready smile, took his breath away.

Just as he leaned in to kiss his aunt, she wished him a good night. The timing was too perfect for it to have been a response to his approach, but he still felt dejected.

#

Tempting as it was to scry on his mother after all, Frank decided to grab a bottle of Scotch from the liquor cabinet, a hardcover from one of the many bookshelves, pick out a bedroom, and settle in for a quiet evening of respecting everyone's privacy. Had he been in a different mood, he'd have taken his time making his choices; on each of front, the selection was incredible. He was eager to get out of his stiff shirt and necktie, however.

There was also the fear that wandering the halls would allow his mind to wander as well, but that was a secondary concern. It wasn't like Frank was feeling deeply conflicted after going on a perfect date with the wrong woman or anything, who just so happened to be the right one's sister. No, that definitely wasn't causing any guilt or distress.

As plans went, his was actually pretty good. It helped that the title he'd selected was a treatise on magic; in the first ten pages, Frank learned a ton about things he'd been fumbling at for years. He couldn't wait to get to later chapters, where the advanced stuff was covered.

Before he got halfway through the first chapter, though, a knock came at his door.

"Come in," he called.

"It's me," came the reply. "Liz."

Rather than repeating himself, Frank used a spectral hand to open the door. The hallway was dark and his room was lit only by a small sphere above his book, yet Frank had no trouble tracing the curves of his aunt's body thanks to her complexion.

Or perhaps that was her white bodysuit camisette and matching thigh highs? No, the getup didn't hurt, in that sense or any other, but it was definitely her pale skin reflecting the light by which he read. Sure, the effect was all the more breathtaking because he'd never thought he'd see her in lingerie and stockings. It almost didn't matter what she wore, though; Liz was a vision of pure beauty and her arrival was a most pleasant surprise.

"Does this mean I should have followed you up to your room?" Frank teased. He set his book on the nightstand, beside the glass of whisky, and made the orb glow a little brighter.

His aunt's eyes flicked to one side then the other, taking in the furnishings of his room before returning to him. His own gaze remained steadfast, however.

Her lingerie was less revealing than anything his mother would wear, covering all but the very tops of her breasts and reaching down past her hips, but that still made his heart race. She didn't have his mother's curves, either, but her figure was a bit fuller than Natalie's, and Frank had always found his sister more attractive than he wished he did.

"No," Liz said, without moving through the doorway. "If you were the sort of guy who'd do that, I wouldn't be standing here." Again, her eyes wandered, though less furtively this time. "I like what you've done with the place."

"How do you know I did anything?" Frank asked. There must have been two dozen bedrooms in Orwin Manor; she couldn't have the details of every last one committed to memory. She was right that he'd made it his own, though. He preferred darker colors, less ornate furniture, and more open space. The scarlet and persimmon leaves remained on the walls, but now stood against black paint rather than white. Where an armoire had been, there was now a squat chest of drawers and a flat screen TV. The desk in the corner went from brown to black and the high-backed leather chair, which looked like something an old English professor would smoke a pipe in, had become a comfy office chair. Other items had simply disappeared. The floors had gone from hardwood to black carpeting.

The red throw pillows on the love seat against the wall would appeal to his mother, whom he hoped would be spending a lot of time there. As would the color of his quilt. Liz undoubtedly knew what her sister's favorite color was, and so could guess why Frank had made a point of featuring it so prominently, but he didn't think that was the reason for her comment. She was just making conversation. Delaying the point at which she'd have to admit that she was looking to get fucked in every orifice.

Or simply to cuddle?

Nah, Frank doubted that. She might want it slow and soft, but sex was definitely what she was after. That was what she'd get, too, and just the way she liked it. He was going to take his time, the way his mother and sister would never tolerate. Hours would pass before he removed her panties, and she'd never walk on bare feet again without feeling dirty.

"I poked my head in earlier, when I was still thinking I might want a different room."

"Decided to stick with the status quo?" Frank asked.

Frowning, his aunt said, "Is that a comment about Bobby?"

It was more of a comment on her politics, but Frank kept that to himself. He was going to have to stop making that sort of joke soon anyway. Though he had some sense of what the political cleavages were, he wasn't entirely sure where his aunt fell. Noreen thought that they should accept things the way they were, which made her sound conservative, but her primary concern seemed to be avoiding a war, which made her sound dovish, and Liz either didn't agree with her goal or at least questioned her methods of pursuing it. His old sense of left and right might not help him make sense of things here.

His aunt ran a hand through her hair but still didn't enter. "It was good enough before; it'll be good enough now." She tilted her head towards the floor but still peered at him through dark eyelashes that fanned out from her lids. Her eyes weren't framed by as much not-makeup as his mother's, but her lashes were just as luxurious and that made it hard for Frank to breathe. "I was thinking, though, that maybe tonight we could share this one?"

"I'd like that," Frank said, making room for her atop the huge mattress. "We don't have to do anything," he added, meaning it. Did he expect certain things to happen? Yes. Would he be disappointed if they didn't? Absolutely. In that unlikely event, would Frank try to turn her no into a yes? Not at all. "I'd be happy just to have you fall asleep in my arms."

"I don't know if I can settle for that," Liz replied. For a while, she seemed to have trouble believing that those words had come out of her mouth. In the end, though, she let them stand. At long last, she started towards the bed, though in the most tentative and least seductive manner Frank could have imagined. Nary a sway of the hips. "The sort of woman I always saw myself as would have no trouble doing so, but my Libido feels like it's been placed over a burner with the heat turned all the way up."

"And you want me to stop it from boiling over?" Frank asked.

"If you can," his aunt said as she climbed into bed.

"I might have to pour some into my Libido," he warned.

Fretting at her lower lip, Liz said, "I know." One hand settled atop his chest, which gave him a thrill in spite of the quilt separating his skin from hers. Every bit of contact, no matter how small, felt forbidden, improbable, and intimate. "I trust you'll give it back."

Sweeping the hair back from her face, Frank leaned up and pressed his lips to hers. It wasn't much of a kiss, though it was almost more than he dared so soon after she'd settled atop the mattress yet. He lingered for all of two seconds, figuring that was long enough to communicate amorous intent without putting any pressure on his aunt.

"You wouldn't believe how long I made Bobby wait," his aunt said after their lips parted. "I probably wanted it even more than he did, and our dad had already claimed my virginity, but I still couldn't bring myself to cross that line with him." She frowned. "I was so afraid he'd think less of me if I gave in too quickly. Does that make any sense?"

"It does," Frank assured her. In a better world, women wouldn't need to worry about that sort of thing. The one they'd grown up in, however, made her fear all too understandable.

The covers slid down to the foot of the bed. Once Liz snuggled up against him, Frank drew them back up. Her skin was so cool it almost gave him a chill. Her palm was soft, the thigh she stretched across his legs firm, and the backside he couldn't help but cup after snaking an arm beneath her waist was somewhere in between. He didn't feel like he was fondling a statue, the way he had with her daughter, yet her bottom wasn't as plush as his mother's. There was a nice layer of padding over well-developed muscles. Some part of him was disappointed that she wasn't wearing heels, yet another was glad that they didn't need to be removed before he could feel her soft, silk-clad sole sliding over his shins.

"Are you surprised that I gave in to your grandfather so easily?"

"No," he replied almost without thinking about it. Then he decided that he really wasn't, though he'd have told a white lie even if he was. It was obvious that she and Bobby had better chemistry, andher father would have a hard time getting between her legs again now that she was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, but she'd been a teenager once.

And not so long ago, in a certain sense. She'd been alive a lot longer than him, as he'd always thought, but she too was a nineties child. If he had his timelines straight, which was admittedly a dubious proposition, she'd been no older than he was now when she'd first set foot in Autumn, and had left the Court just a few years ago to raise Brianna.

According to his aunt, time moved ten times as fast in the simulation, which was reset for each new generation. That shouldn't have been so hard for Frank to wrap his head around, and probably wouldn't have been if he hadn't spent most of his life inside it, yet the implications had yet to fully sink in. The life he'd led up until that very morning had been a lie, unfolding at an accelerated pace, yet had felt perfectly normal to him.

Well, aside from such minor details as magical powers and frequent incest.

Whether it had been a few years ago or a few decades, his aunt had once been as nerdy youth, awkward and unpopular with the opposite sex, and thus desperate for the validation that only a parent could provide. Liz couldn't have been as smitten with her father as Frank was with his mother, because Grandpa Dick was kind of a dick, but it was easy enough to understand why she'd have surrendered to him initially.

"I regretted it afterwards," she assured him. "Maybe I still do. He was so insistent, though. Charming, too, though I'm sure you won't believe that. I guess I can't blame you, since it still sort of shocks me, but your grandfather can be a proper gentleman."

"When he wants to be," Frank said.

"When he wants to be," Liz agreed. "Though I should say that the man you think you know only has so much in common with Richard Orwin. Whenever they came to the simulation, he and my mother made a point of acting the way their grandkids would expect them to act. I think Dad took that a little too seriously at times, and I'd be lying if I said he isn't a bit gruff and irritable even here, but don't judge him too harshly."

Understanding that his aunt really meant that he shouldn't judge her too harshly for having had sex with him, Frank kissed the top of her head. Then he lingered, smelling her hair. It reminded him of his mother's, though her scent was sweeter.

"Refusing him would have made me feel guilty, but that wasn't the only reason it happened," she continued. Her eyes met his, wide and plaintive. Pleading for understanding, if not forgiveness. "You also have to admit that he's pretty handsome."

A laugh burst out before Frank could think to contain it. Seeing the look that put on his aunt's face, though, he gave her a kiss on the lips. Then another. And another.

"He is," Frank eventually allowed. "Extraordinarily handsome." He gave his aunt's butt a light squeeze, though he longed for more. "And he's got a really big dick."

Blushing, Liz said, "I don't care about that." Her hand made its way down his chest, over his hard abs, to the front of his drawstring pants. She found his his own cock and tightened her grip momentarily, as if to tell him that his was just fine. When that got a predictable groan out of him, however, his aunt made a nervous sound and repositioned her palm atop his six-pack. "It might even be too big, at least for...certain things."

"Meaning?" Frank asked, raising an eyebrow.

Was his prim and proper aunt into anal?

"El was so proud that he couldn't keep his hands off her, too," Liz went on as if she hadn't even heard the question. As if the years had done nothing to blunt their rivalry, either. "Is it supposed to be a great honor when a man wants to put his thingie inside you? I thought that only meant that he's noticed you've got a pulse."

"Thingie?" Frank asked.

His midsection received a deserved smack. "Answer the question."

Had it not been rhetorical? "Pretty low bar, yeah."

"I'm not saying all guys are like that," Liz added.

"Most of us are, though. Present company included."

Had she realized he wasn't being facetious, his aunt might not have giggled. It was true, though. Frank wasn't proud of it, but the number of girls he'd have given it to over the years, had they but asked, was rather large. And as any good economist knew, when you flooded the market with your product, all else equal, you drove the value of it down.

"Anyway, I wish Bobby had been my first," Liz said. "When I finally decided he couldn't think I was unchaste, which might have been around the time your mother became obsessed with taking two guys at once, it was everything a girl could want her first time to be."

There was a hint of humor in her voice, but also of pain from wounds that might never fully heal. Frank gave her another kiss. That one lasted so long, and was reciprocated so enthusiastically, that he expected his aunt to climb on top of him and guide his cock inside.

"He was probably more nervous than I was," she said, her heavy breathing, dilated pupils, and glassy Libido making it clear that she'd only been a few seconds away from cumming. "He didn't know half of what he does now, but that almost made it better."

Frank snorted in amusement.

"No guy has ever been so eager to please his lady, nor so reluctant to overstep his bounds," his aunt continued. "He wanted to go faster, and part of me wanted that too, but even more than that, I wanted him to prove that he wouldn't unless I asked him to."

"Which you never did?" Frank asked, trying to imagine those words coming out of his mother's mouth. Had she ever wanted a man to go slower? Perhaps, but not because she needed him to prove that he was capable of restraint. In her mind, that could only mean one of two things—he wasn't really attracted to her, or he wasn't really a man.

That didn't matter, though. His mom had different taste in men, and would never sit through an econ lecture for him, but so what? True, if Frank ever took her into Harveston for a night on the town, he'd have to remember that repeated displays of dominance, however small, were necessary if he didn't want to suffer through another lecture about what women wanted. He could force play the part, though, couldn't he? Was that such a big deal?

If he forgot to, though, would she again make it sound like she just wanted to keep him from having his heart broken by some other woman, or would it finally be clear that his own mother saw him as a beta male? That no matter how good he was in bed, she'd never stop thinking less of him because he fell short of her expectations of a man? His mother's understanding of masculinity was such that she couldn't even help it.