Picnic on Pebble Beach

A quick one in which Eric and Rebecca are re-united after two decades.

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There are probably errors in the text despite the numerous re-reads, etc. If there are, forgive me.

I tried to push more romance and less gratuitous fucking into this piece so, again, I hope you enjoy this.

GA - Playa del Carmen, Mexico - 9th June 2012.

He stood on the jetty and watched the dinghy on the lake. A rippled scratch lay upon the mirrored surface of sheet glass between the watcher and the craft, its track marking the course of the oars steady dimpling in the water at intervals towards the island. There were two spots of colour in the boat, one white, sitting spine against the transom, while the other figure, in blue, rowed.

He reached into a side pocket of grey cargo pants and retrieved a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit up and smoked with his eyes on the boat but with his thoughts almost a quarter of a century in the past.

The island smudged in the cuprous lake as a corona flared above the hills to the west and the day dawned proper.

Footsteps and a figure joined him on the dock.

The pair stood in silence for a minute and more until, eventually, the woman spoke. 'Is that them?' She raised a hand in a parody of a salute and shielded her eyes to the cuprous burnishing of the water.

Without looking at her he replied, 'Yep.'

'I didn't know Kenny could row.'

'It isn't Kenny rowing.'

'Melissa? Melissa's rowing?'

'It isn't difficult, Rebecca. I showed her how and then off they went.'

'My talented daughter,' Rebecca said, adding, 'looks like another beautiful day.' She sighed, expression wistful. 'I forgot how lovely it is up here, so quiet away from the hurly-burly.' Rebecca's quick survey of the solitude; the timeless cottage behind, the lake, the island, her brother and her memories. 'You're so lucky to live here.'

The man turned his head to regard his sister. His eyes flicked over her and he saw her as she'd been at nineteen.

Quietly he said, 'Do you remember when we rowed to the island?'

Rebecca flared. 'Of course I remember,' she snapped. 'How could I not? We'd only buried our parents the week before.'

The stub of his cigarette arced out across the lake. He sighed and turned his body to confront her face-on.

'You know what I mean,' he said gently with his hands buried deep in front pockets, tee-shirt bagging in the breeze that suddenly breathed ripples against the placid waters. His chin jutted sideways towards the silhouette on the lake. 'We were only a bit older than them.'

Avoiding her brother's eye she replied, 'Yes, but they,' she indicated vaguely along the dock with a flick of her head, 'are nothing like us. They haven't just lost their mother and father ...' She paused and looked beyond her brother directly towards the island.

He studied his sister's profile and saw the tiniest hairline creases like fine lines in fine bone china at the corner of her eye. He saw her changed, still melancholy yet paradoxically peaceful in repose, as though she'd accepted things and was no longer fighting. There were subtle differences in the way she spoke, her accent had altered and she was more assured and confident than she'd been back then, emphatic when speaking, without the demurring and lowering of her eyes as had once been her way. Physically, apart from the inevitable differences of two decades, she was much the same, albeit her hair was now a manufactured mahogany suffused with threads of an indeterminate red and which feathered to frame her face.

He looked at the woman his sister had become and lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. Quietly he said, 'In a way they have.'

At his touch she turned to face him again.

She left his hand on her cheek and reached hers up to it. 'It isn't the same as us though.' Her pale green eyes searched his.

'Nothing's the same as us.'

Rebecca broke away softly and left him there. He watched her tread up the gentle slope towards the cottage and heard her call distinctly on the flat, clear air of the morning, 'I'm making coffee ...'

He lifted his hand with a thumb raised and she turned to continue, moving easily away from him, as lithe and supple as she'd been at nineteen. He sighed. There were a lot of memories today – her being here again after more than twenty years, a brother and sister rowing on the lake, a near perfect spring morning, although their spring morning back had been overshadowed by bereavement.

That morning, a week after the funeral, he'd rowed and Rebecca had sat, quiet and withdrawn with her back against the transom, the bag with the picnic between her feet.

He lit another cigarette and considered the effect of that day. Ripples on the lake from sweeping oars left ripples on the water, while their actions, like those ripples, lapped at the shore of their present day.

***

The dinghy sniffed the land and pebbles grated against the keel.

He shipped the oars and unnecessarily announced, 'We're here.'

Rebecca looked at him, blinking as though just waking. She looked around vaguely and then reached for the bag as he jumped ashore. He held the boat steady and, after dropping the bag onto the shingle, offered a supporting hand to his sister.

'Good day for a picnic,' he offered blandly after securing the painter to the eye-bolt picket and the blanket had been spread and the picnic laid out a few yards from the water.

Rebecca shrugged and brushed her long fringe from her eyes. 'I suppose.'

'It'll do us both good to get out of the cottage.' He swept an arm across the lake. 'Besides, you like coming here.'

Rebecca muttered a reply. 'I do, I do like coming here. It's just ... different now.'

'I know it's different. It's all changed. But we've got each other ... We can help each other.' He walked to where his sister stood looking uncertainly down at the food spread over the blanket in neat parcels of tinfoil and Tupperware. The couple embraced and he kissed the top of Rebecca's head tenderly.

'I think I'll swim,' Rebecca said and moved out of his arms. 'What about you, Eric. Are you coming in too?'

Eric shook his head and sat on a corner of the blanket while Rebecca, after kicking her flip-flops away, eased her shorts down her legs. He watched her pull the tee-shirt over her head and then step gingerly over the pebbles towards the lake.

'It's freezing!' she called in a bright voice, water up to her thighs.

He smiled at her grin.

Rebecca splashed about for a few minutes and then left the water, her chin trembling. She moved closer to her brother who, still sitting on the corner of the blanket, watched her progress with a strange look in his eye.

She stopped suddenly. 'What? Why are you looking at me like that?'

'You're so beautiful ...' Eric stood and took three paces towards his sister.

The girl looked at the stones at her feet. 'I'm cold,' she said almost imperceptibly.

Hesitantly, Eric embraced her. He then pressed his lips to the cold skin of her neck and kissed her there. His hands moved down her back, stopping the vertical trend only when her buttocks were cupped in his palms. He squeezed gently and then lifted one hand to his sister's face and tilted her chin with an extended forefinger. 'You're so beautiful, Rebecca.'

He stared into her wide eyes and, as he pressed her wet body closer to his with the hand on her backside, leaned towards his sister.

The girl closed her eyes and her lips parted.

That kiss, a brief touching of their tongues, lasted no more than seconds.

'We ...' Rebecca began and then stopped as her brother unzipped his shorts.

His tumescence regarded her and, without another word, as they stared at each other, Rebecca reached for the tie of her bikini top. She stepped out of the bottom half of the bikini and stood before him naked.

Eric's eyes moved up and down his sister's body. He licked his lips and then quickly undressed and pushed the tinfoil and Tupperware aside.

The lake waters gently kissed the hull of the rowing boat as Eric kissed his sister between her legs. The girl sighed and groaned and pushed her fingers through his hair. She pressed his face hard against her body as his tongue writhed and squirmed in those intimate places.

Rebecca climaxed with a gasp and immediately hauled her brother along her nakedness, bringing him past the rack of her ribcage, beyond the gentle roundness of her breasts. She pushed her tongue into his mouth.

'I want to taste myself,' she gasped, 'on your tongue.'

The girl then indicated that Eric should lie down by a firm push on his shoulder. Then it was his turn to gasp and sigh as, with him looking at her face, his eyes open wide, Rebecca took the length of him between her lips.

'Rebecca ...' Eric grunted. The girl heeded the warning and let her brother's cock slip from her mouth.

She glared at him, strands of her hair across her face. 'Don't you dare. Not yet ...' Rebecca lay on the blanket and opened her legs and, splaying the lips of her sex with her fingers, offered herself to her brother. 'Do it ... Just do it ...'

He moved between her thighs and, straight-armed above her said, 'I love you.'

Rebecca began to move with him, her hips lifting to meet each downward thrust. She mewled and he groaned as they coupled beneath the benign spring sky, the streamer of a jet's contrail miles above them the only evidence that anyone else existed on the planet.

Eric pulled out as he came, his jizm squirting onto his sister's thigh and across her stomach.

'I'm sorry,' he sobbed breathless. 'I'm sorry ...'

Rebecca wiped the glutinous mess from her tummy. She examined her smeared fingers with a look of mild distaste.

'Mucky bugger,' she chided, and then, noticing her brother's continued tumescence, said, 'You're still hard.' She pointed at his hard-on. 'Put it back in ...' Rebecca shifted position and, on hands and knees, wriggled her buttocks at her brother as he stared at her. 'Put it back in,' she repeated. 'Make me come again.' With her voice rising urgently Rebecca added, 'Please ...'

Eric knelt and aimed his erection towards his sister's opening. The girl reached under her body and guided the blunt cock-head into her.

'Oh, god,' Eric groaned. 'Rebecca ...'

Rebecca turned her head and snarled at her brother, all flashing eyes, swirling hair and bared teeth. 'Fuck me. Just fuck me.' She thrust her hips backwards. 'Hold me and stab me with it. Hard ...'

Her flesh whitened where her brother's fingers dug harshly into her hips. Rebecca groaned loudly and reached a hand under her body again. While her brother pumped vigorously behind her, his girth stretching her as he stuffed her with meat, Rebecca fingered her clitoris and came in a loud, long explosion of grunted obscenities.

His sister's orgasm triggered a second climax from Eric. His cock pulsed as he forced himself deep with one huge final thrust.

Panting, breathless, and with her brother's semen dribbling out of her, Rebecca collapsed face-down onto the blanket.

'I love you,' Rebecca,' Eric sighed as he slumped alongside his sister. He kissed her mouth. 'I love you so much. Did you know? Did you know I wanted you more than a brother should?'

His sister looked at him with her eyes brimming with tears.

'What have we done, Eric?' she whispered. 'What have I done?'

Two days later, following the reading of their parents' will, Eric woke and sensed something amiss in the cottage.

He searched and found she'd packed a bag and gone.

Rebecca left no note, no hint of where she was going, and he found no succour from this new heartbreak that followed so closely upon his parents' untimely death.

***

Her footsteps on the dock broke his reverie.

His sister handed him a mug. 'Here, coffee,' she said.

He said thanks and bent to place the mug on the planking. He sat on the edge of the jetty, bare feet dangling above the water.

Rebecca also sat and they sipped the steaming liquid.

'Where did you go?' he asked abruptly.

'When?' Rebecca surveyed the scene in front of her, avoiding his eyes.

'You know what I'm talking about.' He let a cigarette. 'We went to the island and we ... we ...' He drew heavily and blew a viper's breath towards the sky. 'You run away and leave me here. I don't hear from you for nearly four years. Then you write me a letter and I find out you're married and have Melissa. Just a letter, mind you, no phone call or anything like that.' He smoked again. 'How did you even know I'd still be here?'

Rebecca sipped her coffee and shrugged. 'I didn't,' she said. 'But I didn't have any other way of contacting you ... I didn't want to use the phone. I couldn't.' She eyed the cigarette. 'When did you start to smoke? You never used to.'

He coughed a bitter laugh. 'When I started going to the pub seven nights a week. I had all that money from mum and dad; I had the cottage – or half of it anyway. I used to go into town and get rat-arsed. Sometimes there'd be a fight. I never lost, well, almost never. I was so fucking angry and mixed up ...''

'So you took up drinking and smoking and brawling because I left?'

'I was twenty and hurt and confused and I didn't have anyone to help me.'

'And the fighting? You almost always won?'

Eric smiled ruefully. 'Constable Davies gave me a good hiding. Right in the market square. In front of most of the people I'd pissed off.'

Rebecca gasped. 'Davies?' Eric nodded. She stared at her brother agog. 'Did you ... did you report him?'

'God no; and neither did anyone else. I'd deserved it. I'd been a huge pain in the arse for weeks; he'd warned me and warned me. Had a friendly chat and I basically pissed in his eye. I got thrown out of the Red Lion one night and there he was. I offered him out. Taunted him and goaded him and he just took off his tunic and rolled up his sleeves. Told me it was all unofficial, that if I didn't want to listen then he'd teach me a lesson the hard way. He said it to the gaggle around us. Nobody said a thing. They just watched.'

'Bloody hell.' Rebecca looked at her brother again. 'Can I have one of those?'

'Since when do you smoke?' he asked but offered the packet.

'I don't ... not a lot anyway ...' Rebecca sucked deeply. 'And that stopped the drinking?' she asked.

'It did. He came and saw me a few days later. Told me he'd been shitting himself that I'd go to the chief constable or something, but that I'd asked for it. I agreed with him. He'd humiliated me but I didn't have too many friends anyway. I started painting just after that. When the internet came along I put some of my stuff out there. It got some interest ...' He shrugged. 'And I slowly got myself back in line with the town. I can go for a drink in the Lion and nobody mentions what happened. It's all history to them.'

The sun slid into the sky towards its eventual apogee. The lake mirrored the sky now the orb had drifted upwards on its curving ascent and the dinghy was long ashore on the distant mound of the island.

Rebecca began in a quiet voice. 'I took the train to London. I had some cash ... you know ... from the will ...'

'I know. Then what?'

'I got a flat and a job in a cafe. Jason was working on a building site nearby and used to come in for breakfast. He courted me and we got married.' Rebecca flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the waters. 'Melissa isn't yours, Eric,' she said. 'In case you were wondering. She isn't, she's Jason's daughter.' Eric nodded again without comment. Rebecca drew a long breath. 'We muddled along. I opened a business, a cafe of my own after I'd done some courses. Kenny was born. I tried to forget what we did on the island.' She sipped the now lukewarm coffee. 'But I never could of course. I couldn't forget you.

'Then I found out that Jason was having an affair. Predictable, sordid, obvious ... pathetic. He made excuses, went through the usual cycle. There was anger, blame-shifting, tears ...

'And I found out I just plain old didn't love him. Never had.'

A long silence followed.

'Those two,' Rebecca continued after thrusting her chin towards the island, 'won't hang around here long. They know I'm divorcing their father and they only came with me because I asked them to; I couldn't face you alone, Eric. Not after all this time. Melissa and Kenny have lives of their own down south – friends, girlfriend and boyfriend, jobs ... No, they won't stay long.'

'Why did you do it? Eric asked. 'That morning on the pebble beach.'

'I knew you loved me in ... that way. I knew you wanted me. When I came out of the water and you were looking at me like that ... all ... hungry. I don't know. It just seemed to be the right thing. When you came and then stayed hard ...' Rebecca groaned and rolled her eyes. 'That set me off. I had to have it again. You're my brother but I didn't care. I just wanted someone close to me to love me.' She blinked and colour bloomed in her cheeks. The blush spread softly to the collar of the outsized shirt she wore. 'And I was so horny then. I wanted to get fucked ...'

'I waited for you,' Eric said.

She turned to look at him, her eyes on his. Everything was there in his expression. The years melted; her time with Jason dissolved; all the experiences since she'd left the cottage and him, her brother ... her lover, all of it crystallised.

'I know,' she whispered. 'Thank you.'

She rose and looked at the cottage, then across the lake. 'They'll be a while out there,' she said and extended her hand. 'Take me into the cottage, Eric. To your bedroom. I've come home.'