Lifeline

He worked hard to school his features, to reassure Myra, to combat flares of irrational jealousy and anger at himself for feeling jealousy in the first place. He made a passable effort, even managed small talk with Cece's beau though he boiled inside. Myra stuck to him like a barnacle. That helped. It allowed him to let go and just feel her warmth, her softness. She calmed the storm raging inside him by her presence and obvious affection for him. He snaked an arm around her shoulders as the movie played and they slowly drew into their own world. They kissed tentatively, tenderly. He ignored Cece and her date's vigorous make out session with a massive effort of will. By the end of the movie Myra had managed to make him forget all about his sister; their own make out session had gotten pretty vigorous too.

The night was young and the couples had unfinished business. Kyle and Cece's parents were not concerned about their daughter being out late; Kyle was home to protect his little sister. Myra's folks were out of town. Her house was the perfect place to congregate. They talked absent-mindedly during the car ride; with their minds clouded by hormones it was difficult to form good conversation. Cece seemed to be the only one not paralyzed by the car's lust-filled atmosphere. What conversation there was, she drove it.

Kyle sat next to Myra in the back seat, heart racing as they held hands. He felt like he'd gone back in time, like he was in high school again. Myra had stripped his college sophistication from him effortlessly. Her eyes were quicksilver and very expressive. They disarmed him, put him off balance. He was no player but he had been around the block a few times; no other girl had ever gave him butterflies at the touch of her hand. He marveled that she was only 18, a few months younger than his sister.

They made a couple stops, a burger joint drive-thru and the liquor store (Cece's guy was 21) before pulling up at Myra's. They went in. The guys took a seat on different couches and the ladies went in the kitchen with the bags. Myra dimmed the lights and turned on the stereo, Cece served drinks. They sipped and ate and talked, delaying the inevitable, letting the sweet, sweet anticipation build to the point of pain. Myra was drinking slightly more than the rest and Kyle had to put the brakes on her to keep her from passing out. It was a near thing; she was certainly tipsy. Myra whispered in his ear, "Can you carry me to my room? Please?" He lifted her with no apparent effort and did as she asked, leaving his sister with her date. The jealousy tried to rise then. He stomped it flat before it had a chance to fully form in his mind.

Kyle laid Myra on her soft bed and joined her there. There they kissed passionately, continuing where they left off in the movies. Their hands roamed over each other with eagerness and urgency. They could not remove each other's clothes fast enough. They longed to feel skin. Their breathing was heavy, labored. Kyle tasted sweetness and alcohol on her tongue. He had no thoughts of Cece then, only Myra. His mind was filled only with making Myra his very own.

She stopped him on the verge of breaching her walls. "I want this so bad," she whispered. "Please be gentle. I've never done this before."

"You're a virgin?" he asked with genuine astonishment. "I mean, you don't seem like umm..." He trailed off, not wanting her to get the impression that he thought she was slutty but unsure how to express his thoughts without giving offense. She seemed sophisticated and experienced, not virginal at all. Suddenly nervous about taking her maidenhead, he asked, "You sure you want to do this? Um, I don't wanna hurt you or anything."

She responded by grabbing his aroused member and placing the tip at her opening. "Just be gentle," she said, her heels on his buttocks attempting to move his hips forward. Needing no other encouragement he moved forward slowly. He encountered resistance, pushed through it, sheathed himself completely in her body. She held him there, tears gathering in her eyes but smiling. He let her get used to him, let her breathe. She pulled his head down for another kiss, grabbing a fistful of hair on either side of his head. Slowly she relaxed her muscles, told him to move but slowly. He took directions from her, determined to make her first time as special and enjoyable as he could. Her freshly pierced womanhood gripped him as if never wanting to let him go. He could move no faster even if he wanted, she was so tight. She moaned and whimpered, pleasure starting to overcome the pain. "Faster," she gasped, her hips instinctively moving to meet his intrusions. Her womb began to open more to him, her wetness flowed freely. They moved in concert, faster and faster. Soon the sounds of lovemaking filled the room.

Her body encouraged him to give her all his frustration, all his passion, she wanted everything he had to give, was begging for it. He lost his mind, let the animal in him take over. She accepted it and threw it back at him. Hers was a body built for sex. Though she was inexperienced she had no problem pleasing a man. And she had some animal in her as well. She screamed, "Fuck me! Oh fuck oh fuck oh FUCK!" spurring him on. Her cries of pleasure only revved him up more. He couldn't last much longer after that, nobody could. His hips moved even faster as his balls tightened and he was heading toward climax, toward completion. He had been grunting. On the verge of cumming he finally screamed, "Oh God! I'm Cumming Cece I'm CUMMING! AHHHH!"

He could not hold back. He emptied his seed inside her willing womb. Then, realizing what he'd done, he froze. Oh fuck! What did I just say? he thought frantically. Why in the hell did I say that? Oh man, what the fuck is wrong with me? He tried to play it cool. Maybe she didn't notice... One glance at her face killed that hope. A myriad of emotions played across her face, so many that he could not read them all. Pain was the chief emotion of those he could read. He'd hurt her. He was too embarrassed to even attempt indifference after seeing the look in her eyes, those amber orbs beginning to glisten with the hint of tears. He looked away. "I'm sorry. I'm a degenerate prick who ruined your first time. Hopefully I haven't ruined your life as well. I guess I'll be going." His dick was still erect, still pulsing at random, still sheathed within her womb. He tried to disengage.

She wrapped her arms around him to keep him still. "Kyle, I have been dreaming of this moment since like forever and I will not have it fall to pieces that easily. I'm probably going to hate you and myself in the morning but for tonight you're mine. I don't care what name you call out, what image you have in your head that keeps you going, you aren't leaving until I'm satisfied. Do I look satisfied?"

He studied her face as if her question were not rhetorical. He still saw hurt in her eyes; what he'd uttered in the heat of the moment had cut her to the bone. What he saw most however was a growing determination and hunger. She meant what she said and she would not be denied. He could not help but to respond to her challenge, though guilt threatened to eat him alive. All his attempts at nobility disappeared as if in smoke. He kissed her savagely and began to thrust once more.

Present...

Kyle woke up with a hangover that would have felled an elephant. He felt an intense pounding all throughout his skull and his mouth tasted like some disease-ridden creature had crawled in and died while he slept. His nightstand clock read 8:15 in bold, blood red numbers and the alarm had been blaring for at least 10 minutes. He forced himself to shake off the effects of binge drinking and disturbing dreams, forced himself to get his shit together. He'd never been late, not since he'd joined the workforce 5 years prior. He would not start now.

For a long time his job was the only thing he had to hold on to, the only thing that kept him from using that .38 special to end it all. He had a gift for coding. He created programs that worked the first time and did exactly what they were supposed to do no matter the platform. He worked on all types of programs, from financial software and word processors to gaming mods and DLC's. Eventually he became the head troubleshooter; at a glance he could analyze thousands of lines of code at a time, finding and fixing bugs in hours instead of days. The digital world was a simple one for him; it made sense. He wished on more than one occasion that real life were as uncomplicated as software.

He made no friends, had not even attempted to make friends in all the time he was in Phoenix. He did work out, a habit he'd picked up in school and never broke. He was attractive still. Female co-workers had been trying to catch his eye for years. Though not blessed with movie star good looks he was certainly attractive enough. His general sense of melancholy gave him an air of mystery that many women found irresistible. He could have bedded any number of them but he never even acknowledged their advances; he chose to focus on the work that kept him sane. When his sexual urges began to distract him from more meaningful enterprises he would hire a call girl to service him. He sometimes called them Cece, at other times Myra; he always cried when he was done with them and paid them well for their trouble. Close, personal relationships of any kind were out of the question. No friends and definitely no family. His father had severed that tie years ago.

After a quick nod to personal hygiene and grooming Kyle rushed out of his one bedroom apartment and made it to work just before 9. He found the environment much more stifling than usual. Something's wrong, he thought as he moved through the building. Normally his fellow employees were little more than background or scenery to him but the tension in the air was thick enough to chew on. Nearly every face he glanced at was strained in anger, fear or desperation. Obviously something had happened and he was not in the loop. He put on his game face without conscious effort, automatically hiding his inner turmoil, his growing sense of dread. He had been working in a corporate environment long enough to know his job depended on remaining calm regardless of the situation; it was never wise to display fear or weakness to wolves.

He walked to his section with a confidence he did not feel, head high and eyes focused. It would not have mattered if he'd run though the office screaming like a lunatic. His game face was irrelevant. The decision had already been made. He opened the door to the project floor to find it a ghost town. Where there was usually a bustle of noise and activity even at such an early hour there was only quiet. He stopped in his tracks. The cube farm had already been cleared out. In a room that normally held over 50 workstations there was only one desk a few feet from the door with file boxes stacked haphazardly next to it. Gretchen Dorne, his immediate supervisor, sat at the desk looking at him impassively. "Ah, Mr. Bloomhurst," she said with a wan, insincere smile. "You're one of the last ones. Good." She sat a couple sheets of paper in front of him, one the outline of his severance package and the other a general recommendation letter.

"One of the last ones for what? What's going on?" He stared at the paperwork as he would a venomous snake, his mask of corporate indifference cracking, his voice edged with panic.

Gretchen sighed and lost her weak smile. "Great," she said with irritation nearly under her breath. "Another one who doesn't read the blast messages." She then addressed him directly. "Look Bloomhurst, if you had troubled yourself to read the company-wide memo put out yesterday you'd already know what happened and you could have cried somewhere else instead of bothering me. The short version is you're fired effective immediately. The company is downsizing and our corporate overlords felt it unnecessary to have a debugging department. Your personal effects have been boxed, I need you to sign for yours," she pulled out a third sheet and highlighted a signature block, "right here." She tried to hand him a pen. He could not move to take it. He felt his entire body go numb. She was speaking to him but the words made no sense. You're fired, effective immediately. You're fired, effective immediately. Those four words drowned out anything she was saying. They echoed in his head and arrested all his motor functions.

The part of his mind that let him survive the rigors of the cube farm jungle yanked him back to awareness. It was the tone she started to use that got through to him. That tone was straight out of the corporate supervisor handbook, the tone one used to keep a disgruntled employee from going postal for long enough for security to escort them out of the building. His wits returned to him for just long enough to mumble a placating response, sign the required paperwork and leave before he was thrown out.

When he left the parking lot he had no idea where he was going. At that point he wasn't even sure where he was. He knew he was at rock bottom, that for the second time in his life he was lower than he could ever imagine. The very last thing in his life that was any good, the last thing he could take pride in was gone in a flash. Even if he could have summoned the strength to fight he'd have found no target. He was truly broken and he knew it. Whether he used the .38 special comfortably nestled in his nightstand drawer or just drank himself into an early grave, he was doomed. All that remained to him now was to figure out if he was brave enough to end it quickly, for real this time, or if he was going to chicken out and prolong the agony.

The speedometer needle read over 100mph as Kyle drove in a daze. His mind was on his fate, still trying to decide what he was going to do with what was left of his short life when the car lost control on the expressway. It went into a spin as he overcorrected his course and then flipped over and over and over. The sounds of crushing, over-stressed metal were music to his ears. It seems like fate decided to finish the job, he thought with a wry smile. Then the car hit a wall and the time for thinking was over.

Seven Years Ago...

Kyle was nearly asleep on the couch in his room with a beer at his feet and ESPN on the TV. He had been interning for over a month and had not had a day off since he'd started. He worked long hours; most days he was too tired to do much save grab a quick bite at the table and head directly to bed. He was pushing himself far harder than was strictly necessary, often volunteering for the most challenging and time-consuming tasks available. Even his father had started to show concern, dropping hints at the breakfast table on occasion about burning the candle at both ends. Kyle told himself that he was investing in his future. If IBM put in a good word for him he could work anywhere in the industry as soon as he finished school.

The reality was that the more he worked the less time he had to think about Cecelia, to fantasize about her impossibly long legs or her perfect breasts. If his mind was occupied with designing webpages it would not be occupied with imagining what Cece's voice would sound like begging him to fuck her like a whore. The reality was that he was obsessed with his little sister. He couldn't shake it, could not forget about her although God knew he tried. He wished so hard that he could be normal, that things could go back to the way they were before he started looking at his sister in ways no brother should. They weren't particularly close growing up but he'd always felt they had a solid brother/sister relationship. His newfound desire threatened to destroy their bond; he could hardly bear hurting her in that manner.

He needed to put a little distance between him and Cece; knowing she slept just down the hall was too much temptation. His plan was to avoid her at all cost. If it meant working himself silly all summer then so be it. He would complete his internship and go back to school until he could sort out his feelings. It was a stupid plan. Myra had told him so. He still talked with her from time to time. Although they never had a repeat performance, she seemed a lot less freaked out by the situation than Kyle thought she should be. Talk to her, she'd urged him more than once. You'll never get over your obsession unless you confront her. She won't hate you, no matter what her reaction ultimately is. Her advice was sound, but he was much too ashamed of himself to take it. Burying himself in work was a much better option for him, or at least an easier one.

Kyle's gambit was ultimately futile. Cecelia had plans of her own and unlike her brother she had no intention of avoiding him. She wanted to talk and was tired of waiting for the so-called right time to do so. She burst into his room with her typical energy and flounced on the couch beside him. She was wearing boy shorts and one of his old striped pajama tops. His penis twitched against his will. "What's goin' on bro-bot? I barely see you anymore." Her tone was light but he could still hear the hurt and accusation in her voice.

"Um, nothing," he replied, deflecting. "You know, work keeps me pretty busy." He gave a weak laugh that fooled no one.

"Yeah, about that," she countered. "Misty's boyfriend Jake had that same internship last year and he never worked as hard as you. He always had at least the weekends off. I remember 'cause I saw him at every party I went to last summer. You, on the other hand, haven't had a day off since you started. What's going on bro? Why are you gone so much?"

"I'm telling you, it's nothing sis. I'm just working really hard. Oh and by the way, haven't you ever heard of knocking?" He allowed a touch of anger to color his voice to try to get her to change the subject or perhaps leave him alone before his body responded further to her presence.

He realized his mistake at once. Cecelia had never been the type to back down from a fight. She wouldn't this time either. "First of all, quit trying to change the subject. Second, that 'working hard' excuse is bullshit. I may not have seen you much over the last couple years but you haven't changed that much. I know something's bothering you and I want to know what it is so that I can help you. So spill it. Come on bro, you owe me. You gotta tell me."

"I don't owe you shit," Kyle raised his voice. There was venom in his tone now. "If I say it's nothing then it's nothing! Get off my fucking back! Matter of fact, you can stay on the couch and act all self-righteous and concerned and shit. I'm getting outta here."

He rose sharply, kicking his beer over. He didn't care. All he could think about was escape. He felt like shit; he knew he'd overreacted but he felt it necessary to keep from violating her. Her smell, lilacs and summertime, was starting to kick up those carnal desires no man should feel for a sibling. His dick was rapidly approaching full mast. She reached out a hand to him as he walked away. He ignored it, intent on the door, holding on to his anger to shield him from his desire and guilt. He had to escape no matter what. His hand was on the doorknob, ready to fling it open and leave. He had no goal in mind, no destination, just away. "Kyle, please," she said, her voice was nearly a whisper but it contained so much anguish it stopped him as effectively as running into a brick wall.

He stood there, teeth gritted. He could not look at her, could not see those baby blue eyes spilling over with tears, knowing he caused them. He couldn't leave either. She only called him Kyle when she was deadly serious. There was nothing in him that could ignore her when she called his name like that. He stood frozen, silent, holding fast to the anger that was his armor. Then she said two words that caught him so by surprise he could hold to his anger no more.