Charlie and Mindy Bk. 03 Ch. 02

I downed most of my remaining beer. It was time for the showdown. Mindy's warm little body, still close against me, bolstered my courage—more, even, than the beer. Once again, I felt like I could accomplish anything, if only she were beside me.

I began placing our cards on the table.

"Buck," I said, "I've known you now for over a year, and Mindy's known both of you since school started this year. We know you better than you think.

"We're telling you this because we want to be open with the two of you. We don't want anything to stand in the way of the friendship we think the four of us can build."

They took quick gulps of their drinks. Steph had figured out, at least in part, where I was probably going with this, and Buck was beginning to get the drift.

"And we're telling the two of you, out of all the people we could be telling—or not telling, because we know some things that may surprise you."

We were getting to the nitty-gritty, now. I could see that Steph was bracing herself for what she was sure was coming. Buck, however, was nearly unreadable.

Mindy gave me an encouraging squeeze, telling me that she approved of the direction I'd taken after she'd abandoned our plan. I squeezed her back, trying to tell her that I approved of her actions, too.

"Mindy and I have known you both all fall, and I've known you, Buck, even longer than that. But we didn't know you were twin brother and sister until yesterday. So we didn't think anything about it last September when we saw the two of you fooling around on a bench over in the park."

Now the queen of spades was on the table, and Buck's poker face began to crack. Steph's fear and distress were apparent on her face. It hadn't yet sunk in that they now knew as much about us as we knew about them.

"We just said 'Oh—Buck and Steph seem to like each other,' to ourselves and thought no more about it. After all, people are pairing up all over the campus. But then, yesterday, Steph presented you, Buck, as her twin brother.

"And then, as we left your place last night—knowing then that you're twins…"

And I laid the king down: "Well, your front window drapes aren't nearly as heavy as you think they are, and we saw, right after we left, the two of you doing what Mindy and I just did."

The two of them looked at us. They turned and looked at each other. Then they turned to us again. Steph gulped. Buck wasn't ready to concede defeat yet; e still had room to think that we held a busted flush at best. "We just fool around a little," he said, a little unsteadily—as though he didn't quite believe what he'd said. "Maybe a little more than a brother and a sister really ought to. You two are…"

He trailed off. He couldn't bring himself to complete the accusation.

"We are doing it with each other, Buck," I admitted. "I love my little sister very much, and she loves me. So we sleep with each other whenever we can. And that's been every night during this break."

It was time to put the ace on the table. "And we know—beyond any reasonable doubt—that you and Steph are sleeping with each other. We can prove it."

Steph's jaw dropped. "The white powder on the bedroom floors! I found it late this afternoon, and cleaned it up. I thought maybe the plaster in the ceiling was falling apart.

"But it wasn't plaster. It was flour! Mindy, you put it there yesterday after we'd worked on the gravy!"

It was just a statement of fact—not an accusation.

Buck saw that it was time fold their hand, and he completed the thought for her. "And then she checked it when they came over this afternoon, and she saw that nobody had used your bed last night. It looks like the joke is on us." He smiled ruefully.

No—they were not dimwits. Steph had put things together faster than I'd imagined anyone could, and Buck had been right there with her.

Seeing that everything was out in the open now, Steph got up and walked over to Buck. She sat down on his lap and put her arms around his neck. She smiled at us.

She turned her face to him and said, "It looks like we have to be friends with them, Steve-ster. We like them, and they know too damned much about us!"

And then she pulled herself close to him and delivered a kiss that must have made his toes curl. He stiffened at first, and then he relaxed and responded whole-heartedly. He pulled her tightly against him, and his hands wandered freely over her body. As that kiss lengthened, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if smoke had spurted out of his ears.

Finally their lips parted; they looked into each other's eyes for a moment before looking back toward us. Mindy spoke. "We don't want anything on those terms. That's why we told you about us before we told you what we know about you. We hope you'll want to develop a stronger friendship with us—because you like being around us, because we have some common interests, and because we share some problems. Not because we've extorted something."

"Yes," I added. "We want the air be clear between us. We all know too much about each other, now, for anyone to spill any beans—let alone pass any judgment. We're on equal footing that way, and either couple can walk away from the other at any time—knowing that secrets are safe. We don't want you to feel like there's any coercion. That's the only possible basis for real friendship. We want to trust you, and we hope you'll trust us."

Buck and Steph turned to each other, looked deeply, again, into each other's eyes. After a few seconds, they smiled and gave each other barely perceptible nods.

They turned together to face us, and, smiling broadly and with one voice, they said, "We're in."

Mindy and I looked at each other. We were no longer alone in the world with our secret love. We smiled broadly at each other before we turned together to Steph and Buck and said, also with one voice, "We're so glad."

I sat down again. Mindy sat on my lap in imitation of Steph, and she gave me a kiss that did curl my toes. I think that, as I responded, smoke did spurt out of my ears.

When we'd finished, we looked back over to see that Steph and Buck were sharing another kiss, too. When they finished, they looked back over at us. "Now what?" Steph asked.

"We don't know either," Mindy said. "We couldn't think past what we just did, because we weren't sure we could bring it off. We didn't even know if we'd still be friends at this point."

"I think," I said, "that we spend more time together, and we just continue to get to know each other better."

"Sounds like we're dating," Buck pointed out. "But a weird kind of couple dating couple thing."

"It does," Steph agreed. "But let me tell you: It's really wonderful to be able to sit on my twin brother's lap and love him in front of you, knowing that you'll understand." She put her head on his shoulder and melted against him with a big, shit-eating grin on her face. Buck held her tightly and gave us his own shit-eating grin. His hands moved over her body again—not touching any particular part, just touching.

"It is, isn't it," Mindy said. She produced a shit-eating grin of her own, put her head on my shoulder, and melted against me. I squeezed my wonderful little sister and lover, knowing that I, too, was radiating a shit-eating grin.

We sat there a while in silence, each couple enjoying, at long last, the freedom of being able to demonstrate their love to others. At length, I kissed Mindy lightly and said, as I lifted her off my lap and deposited her on the couch, "I think this calls for another round."

Buck pulled a hand free and reached for his not-quite-empty beer bottle. Raising it, he said, "I'll drink to that!" And so he did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was about eleven, the girls had made their way through the whole bottle of wine, and Buck and I had each put away a three more bottles of beer, when we all decided to call it a night. The lubrication had eased some initial awkwardness, though I think we'd have done almost as well without it. We learned that Steph and Buck had become lovers early in the summer of the year before. It had happened in the aftermath of their parents' deaths, as they'd realized that they faced an uncaring world with only each other's support.

They'd been eighteen—legally adults—when their parents had died, and they'd already been admitted to the college. Their parents' estate would see them through college, they said, and maybe through a few years' worth of graduate school.

They'd had a tough freshman year, being required to live in different dorms, and without a refuge like my apartment or a hideaway like the secret spot I'd found in secured basement of the library. But they'd made it with their love for each other intact. They, too, had spent time in "our" park, and they'd been strolling down memory lane that day we'd seen them there.

We told them of the trip we'd taken together into Wyoming's Wind River Range the previous August. And we described how, alone together in the backcountry, we'd come to know that we loved each other fully, emotionally and physically. And they understood, accepting us as we were. They celebrated our love, and we celebrated theirs.

We saw them to the door, and, before they put their heavy clothes on against the cold of the night, Mindy and Steph embraced—as Buck and I shook hands. Steph turned to me and stepped close. She looked up, smiling. It was a deep, rich smile whose like I'd seen before only on Mindy's face.

I felt my own face respond with a similar smile. Her arms opened, and I reacted without thought; I opened my own arms. And her sturdy body flowed into them. She looked directly into my eyes, and she said, "Thank you, Charlie, for your friendship and your understanding. Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Her arms closed around my neck, and she drew her body tightly up against my own. Her astonishing boobs pressed against my lower chest, so that I was acutely aware of her femininity as she reached up and planted a lingering, but closed-mouth, kiss on my lips.

The kiss ended, and our lips parted, almost reluctantly, but she didn't release me or pull away—she looked up at me, holding herself tightly against me, and said, "Thank you so much."

My hand, seemingly of its own accord, came up to stroke her hair. She responded by pressing her head into my touch; she stroked my cheek. Full of wonder at her behavior—and my own—I said, "We're the ones who should be thanking you two, Steph. We gave you a pretty nasty surprise, and we didn't know what to expect. We couldn't have hoped for better than what the two of you gave us."

At last she released me from her embrace and we moved away from each other—not hurriedly, and not with any display of shame or regret at the touches we'd shared. The deep, rich smile was still on her face as she said, "We're looking forward to the rewarding friendship you two have offered us. Thanks again."

My cock had responded to the woman pressed close against me. She could hardly have failed to know about my body's reaction to hers—but her manner had been one of acceptance, rather than encouragement, or rejection, or embarrassment. Curious, I thought.

I turned to pick up her coat and help her into it, and as I did, I saw that Mindy had locked lips with Buck, with whom she was sharing an embrace much like the one that Steph and I had just enjoyed. Curiouser and curiouser! I thought as Mindy and Buck parted. They showed every evidence of having enjoyed their contact as much as Steph and I had enjoyed ours. Most curious of all was that what the four of us had just done seemed entirely natural, and I felt no pangs of jealousy over Mindy's behavior with Buck—nor any of guilt over my own with Steph.

"Let's all get together and go to Arlene's for supper on Sunday evening," I suggested as they moved toward the door. "We're paying. We'll stop by for you around six."

Mindy looked at me and said, "Why not tomorrow? Then we can stop by Sarge's after supper for a few beers and not have to worry about classes the next day."

"What a good idea!" Steph chimed in. Buck agreed, and so it was arranged.

We said good-night to them as we saw them out the door. When they were gone and the door had closed, we turned to each other. And, instantly, we were in each other's arms, holding, stroking, kissing.

She looked up at me, and said, "That was the hardest thing I've ever done. I'd rather have faced The Doberman again, than do that."

I held her close, and she put her head down against my chest. "It was hard!" I agreed. "But we did it. And you were wonderful. Asking me to hold you and kiss you in front of them was a stroke of genius."

Her head came off of my chest, and she looked up at me. "Hey, mister," she said, severely, "we don't use that G-word about each other." She kept looking up at me; her voice softened. "And it wasn't that kind of stroke at all. It was a stroke of cowardice, is what it was! I needed you more than ever then. So I asked for you, and you came—like you always do!"

She put her head back down on my chest, and I held her. We stood there, in each other's arms, for a while.

"Take me to bed," she said eventually, looking back up at me, "and make love to me. Please? I still need you."

I unwound a bit from her and picked her up, cradling her in my arms. Her little body came up lightly, and she wrapped her own arms around my neck. Before I could start up the stairs, my little sister reached up for a kiss. Our lips met, our mouths opened, and our tongues intertwined. We stood there, enjoying the close contact of our bodies and our mouths, for several minutes. At last, our lips parted from each other and we looked into each other's eyes.

"I need you, too, Mindy," I said. "I always will. And there's nothing I'd rather do than make tender love to you."

And I started up the stairs toward my bed, carrying Mindy, my sister and my lover, in my arms.

(To be Continued)

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