Day: March 14, 2022 (Page 3 of 5)

The Road Less Traveled – Chapter 6
By
Caliboy1991

It was a blessing and a curse; I decided as I tore my eyes away from the window over the dining table. I could lose myself, looking at the distant mountains. And the problem was, I had a deadline, even if it was self-imposed.

Focus, I told myself, as I returned to the red and yellow highlights from my editor. Time passes as I reviewed the suggested changes and I lost myself, accepting or rejecting each recommendation with practiced speed. My focus was laser-like, I barely felt Gabe’s feet against my hip as he sat at one end of the sofa, with his legs stretched toward me, his laptop on his upper legs.

Over the past week, we had settled into a routine of writing during the morning. For me, writing and editing are part and parcel of the same creative process. Even though I ferociously edited my work, I still needed a skilled set of eyes to review and correct my work, which was why I sat on the sofa, going through the edits one last time. Gabe was blossoming as a writer. Already he was incorporating some tricks I’d passed on to him into his story. And just like me, he thought nothing of losing himself into his creative process for hours at a time.

We were more comfortable around each other too, after more than a week at the RV camp outside of Mesa Verde. I finished the final edit and hit the save button. I glanced over at him. He was wearing a pair of white shorts. Unlike the board shorts he seemed to favor, these were shorter, ending a few inches above his knees. When hanging around the RV, that was his preferred outfit. He was still in that state of childhood before puberty when boys often lack self-awareness of their bodies.

But that didn’t extend to me. This morning, I awoke to him traipsing through my bedroom in nothing but his underwear, on his way to take a shower. I could hear the shower running as I finally talked myself into getting up, too. As was my habit, I needed a cup of coffee to start my day, so I got moving and brewed a cup in my Keurig before returning to my bed to enjoy the rich, nutty flavor of my favorite blend. For as long as I’ve had the RV, this was a favorite tradition, drinking coffee in bed in whatever I’d slept in. This morning that meant a pair of mauve panties and a purple cami with spaghetti straps. It was my favorite cami, loose fitting, and cropped to end a few inches above my belly button.

Two sips into my coffee, the pocket door slid open. I glanced toward Gabe. Like the couple of other times he took a shower, he wore nothing. Freed from the strict confines Abby placed on him, Gabe found something liberating in going from the shower to the drawers naked. This time, though, he seemed to freeze in place as we stared at each other.

A few heartbeats passed before his instincts kicked in and his hands flew over his genitals. He went around the end of the bed to his drawers and covered his nakedness.

Even then, his eyes kept darting toward me. Finally, I said, “Yes, Gabe?”

He looked away, blushing, “I-, um, I thought you’d be asleep.”

I slept under a bedspread. I felt a bit of heat in my cheeks then. “You thought I’d still be asleep?”

He nodded.

I took another sip of coffee, “Sorry to disappoint you, Gabe.”

The way the crimson flushed through his face, along his ears and down his neck was something that drew me in. He cut another look at me, “That’s not it, Aunt Sydney. It’s… you’re…”

He faltered, but he didn’t look away. I wasn’t certain what was going through his mind, but knowing my sister, I offered, “You’ve never seen a woman in her underwear until this week?”

He bobbed his head.

The warmth in my face traveled through my body as I thought about what it meant to him to see a woman in just her underwear. Gabe was going on twelve. And even though puberty hadn’t laid its cruel mark on him yet, what boy wasn’t curious about women at his age?

I doubt I was going to win best sister award with Abby. I said, “Well, by the end of the summer, you’ll probably have seen me in my underwear so much, you’ll be telling me to cover myself up.”

His flush deepened, and he deadpanned, “Yeah, right.”

I felt some heat in my body as I blinked away the memory. I looked at the story on the screen. It was as complete as it would ever get, so I closed the file. Even though I have done it more than fifty times before, there was something heady about uploading a new story to the Kindle store.

“Hey, Gabe, my latest novel is ready for me to publish to Kindle. You want to see how it’s done?”

The boy looked up from his screen, “Really? Cool”

He closed his laptop and slid over, leaning against me. My arm tingled where we touched. Ignoring it, I said, “I’m on the Kindle Direct Publishing screen. All these files are my existing books.”

He pointed to the top of the screen, “Is that where you’ll add the new one?”

My cursor slid over the space and I clicked on it, taking me to another screen, “Yep. Each book has a bunch of metadata that I use so that people who are searching for romance books will see my books.”

Gabe glanced at me, “What’s metadata?”

I kept filling in the blanks, “It’s just a fancy way to say data about data. For instance, because the billionaire is a bit of a pirate, I’ll actually assign the word pirate to the metadata.”

“Why? Isn’t he like a Wall Street guy?”

I cocked an eyebrow at him, “And those guys aren’t a bunch of pirates.”

He chuckled, “Okay. I guess so.”

After more typing, I said, “Okay, so I’ve told the web portal that this is the fifth book in this series, that way people can see it’s not a stand-alone book. I’ve also assigned the appropriate genres for the book as well as the metadata terms. Next, we’re going to upload the file.”

I searched my laptop’s directory and clicked to start the upload. While the hourglass spun in the middle of the screen, I said, “Depending on the size of the book, it can take either a couple of minutes or a lot longer. My books tend to be fifty, sixty, maybe seventy thousand words. My readers love short books with lots of steamy action.”

Gabe giggled, “Sexy stuff, you mean.”

I shrugged, “Middle-aged women love this stuff. It sells.”

Gabe giggled some more. The spinning hourglass went away. I pointed to the screen, “Sometimes, when there are formatting issues, there will be alerts here. Luckily, I’ve done this a few times, so we’re ready for the next page, where it’s time to upload the book’s cover.”

The website took a while longer to upload the image file and when it did, it was displayed in all its sensuous glory. The billionaire’s placement covered up the heroine’s naked body. There was a game we writers played with Amazon’s censors, to see just how much skin we could get away with. This was probably as close to the edge as I could get away with. I didn’t want to pay my artist to redesign the cover; that was expensive.

Still leaning against me, Gabe said, “That’s sexy. You can’t tell if they’re doing stuff, but they’re definitely about to.”

I reached over and pinched his side, “Stuff?”

More giggles, “You can’t tell if they’re having sex.”

It was my turn to laugh. While I wanted Abby to make a full recovery, she wouldn’t get back the same shy, clueless boy she gave me. “Right. Now that we’ve uploaded the book and the cover art, we’re ready to download a proof of the book.”

Every step seemed to take forever. It probably wasn’t helped by the less than perfect speed of the camp’s Wi-Fi network. While I waited, I became more aware of Gabe’s body leaning against mine. His auburn hair smells of strawberries. Just like mine. With a couple of minutes left to wait, I reached around with my right arm and drew him against my side. “You smell like strawberries, Gabe. Next time we hit a grocery store, you want me to buy you a different shampoo?”

Even though I wore a halter top, the material was thin and I could feel the heat from the skin over his ribs. He leaned his head against my shoulder, “If you want. But I kinda like it. It smells like you.”

My heart raced at the thought he enjoyed my smell. In that moment, while we waited for the download, it was easy to forget Gabe was my still-eleven-year-old nephew. It wasn’t like having a little kid leaning against you. No, when he leaned against me, his size matched my own. Without thinking too much, I pulled his shoulder, bringing him into a half-hug, “That’s sweet of you, Gabe.”

It was only when he absentmindedly adjusted his shorts that I realized I wasn’t the only one who might be enjoying this closeness more than I should. Thankfully, before I could figure out what to do about this closeness, the screen refreshed and the proof was ready.

We spent the next thirty minutes going through the proof. I pointed out to him the format for the copyright material at the front of the book. I also showed him how the first page of each chapter differed from the rest of the pages because readers expected a break in the formatting. After finishing the review, I felt pleased with the book’s formatting, “I think it’s ready, Gabe. Now the fun part. It’s time to hit the publish button”

I navigated back to the first page, where all the previous books were listed. Now the new book looked like all the others, save for the publish button on the right-hand side. I moved the laptop between us, “Go ahead, and klick on the publish button, sweetie, and book number fifty-six will go live.”

A grin split his face, “Really?”

I nodded. He reached over and put his hand on the tracker pad and pressed it. A moment later, the screen refreshed and the publish button disappeared and the book was finished. The elation I felt was better than sex. A thrill shot through me, like a dopamine rush, and I reached both arms around Gabe and hugged him tight. “I live for moments like this.”

Then, buoyed by the emotional high, I kissed him on the cheek again. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a warning bell went off. The thunder in my heart, the furious fluttering in my stomach, the warmth washing over me. At some primordial level, I needed this.

A thrill shot through me when Gabe reached around my back with his left arm and around my front with his right, and hugged me back. I lost myself for a moment in the embrace. He was Blackbeard, holding me close. Were it not for the laptop between us, I would have melted into his hug.

I followed suit when he released me from the hug. The familiar crimson in his cheeks let me hear the warning bell going off in my mind’s furthest recesses. I took the laptop and sat up, “Sorry, sweetie, I get emotional when I release a new book.”

A smile that reached his golden-brown eyes crossed Gabe’s scarlet features, “It’s okay. I like your hugs. Maybe when I finish a real book, you can hit the publish button and I can give you lots of hugs too.”

I powered down the computer. Those warnings in the back of my mind questioned my motives for hugging Gabe the way I had. Was I a bad influence on him? In the ten days since picking him up from Abby, I’d introduced him to smutty bodice rippers and conditioned him to coming out of the shower nude. None of those were behaviors Abby would have wanted.

I felt bad as we prepared sandwiches for lunch. Abby was fighting for her life and I was corrupting her little angel. Gabe joined me in the kitchen, fetching a tomato from the fridge. When he stood beside me, slicing the tomato, he stood even with me. And it was easy to forget we were related, and I was supposed to be the adult.

We ate lunch on the lounge chairs and after he finished, Gabe said, “It’s been a couple of days since Mom called. Do you think she’d mind if we called her?”

I took the paper plate from him and handed him my cellphone, “No, I’m sure she’d love to hear your voice.”

He had the phone on speaker as it dialed. After a few rings, I heard a click followed by my sister’s sleepy voice, “Hello?”

Gabe practically squealed, “Mom!”

“Hi baby. You sound good. Is your Aunt Sydney taking care of you?”

“Yeah. She’s helping me to be a better writer, like her.”

I came back and sat next to Gabe on his lounge chair. Abby chuckled, “God help us all. Another romance writer in the family.”

Gabe giggled, “No way. I’m still writing about the guy who’s gonna slay the dragon.”

“That’s good sweetie. You minding your aunt and staying out of her way?”

Gabe gave me a furtive grin, “It’s an RV, Mom. There’s not a lot of space to stay out of Aunt Sydney’s way. But she hasn’t threatened to kill me more than once a day.”

I smacked his bare arm, “Lies, Sis. Gabe’s a pleasure to have around. You’ve raised a very nice young man.”

Gabe’s grin grew wider at the mention of him being a young man. Abby said, “That’s nice of you to say, Syd. It’s hard to remember he’s not a little kid anymore.”

Gabe gave a mock glare at the phone, “It’s not my fault I grew so fast over the past year.” Then, seeking to change the subject, he said, “Aunt Sydney just published another book, Mom. I even helped her by pushing the publish button on the website. It was cool!”

All the steps that went into publishing didn’t strike me as “cool.” It was hard work, but also rewarding.

Despite the exhaustion I heard in Abby’s voice, there was also humor, “Oh, heavens. Syd, did you cover my impressionable son’s eyes? I’ve seen the covers you put on your books. You show him stuff like that and he’ll go blind.”

I grinned at my sister’s ribald banter. I think the comment flew over Gabe’s head; I wasn’t eager to explain old wives’ tales about why a boy might go blind after reading women’s soft-core porn. She seemed mellower than I remember. Maybe when facing one’s mortality, priorities change. “I don’t think he’s at any risk of that, sis. How goes the treatments?”

There was a sigh, “Well enough. I’m tired all the time. The chemo has me throwing up a lot and I’m definitely going to take you up on that offer to get a wig when I’m done with this.”

I let Gabe and Abby talk for a bit. Eventually, she said, “Gabe, can you hand the phone to your aunt? I’d like to visit with her before I fall asleep.”

I took the phone off speaker and went around the front of the RV, “What’s on your mind, sis?”

She said, “The cancer is farther along than I expected, Syd.”

For the past ten days, I’d been expecting this. Maybe that’s why it didn’t hit me harder. “You know you can’t keep this from Gabe. He’s not a little boy anymore, Abby.”

Another painful sigh, “You’re right, Syd. It’s just not easy to see how he’s growing up. You’ve got a better handle on it than I ever did. And you’re just his aunt.”

Guilt washed over me. She had no idea how I was losing the battle to treat him like a little boy instead of the man he would eventually become. I could never admit to the confounding feelings he stirred inside me, but I still tried to speak truthfully, “He’s almost a teenager, sis. I try to treat him a like a friend and you know what? Most of the time, he acts like one.”

Her laughter was like tearing brittle paper, “The corrupting influence of my bad-girl sister, the soft-core porn writer.” She broke into a coughing fit. Her breath was ragged when she continued, “Seriously, I know I sheltered Gabe; treated him like a little kid, even when I should have trusted him with more. One thing’s for sure, you won’t repeat my mistakes.”

“Hey now, Abby,” I said more sharply than I intended, “you’re going to beat cancer and by the time school starts up in the fall, Gabe will be back home with you.”

I never put more passion into words I believed less. More raspy laughter greeted me, “That’s sweet, Sis. And God knows, I wish it were true. Maybe you’ll have better luck treating him like a friend than a parent. But I still feel so guilty abandoning him.”

My eyes stung as I blinked away a tear, “Don’t, Abby. If anyone can beat this, you can.” I choked back a sob, before continuing, “If not, Gabe will always have a place with me, I promise.”

She told me she would call me in a few days and then she hung up. As I brushed away a tear, a familiar voice said, “She’s dying.”

Gabe stood by the door of the RV, staring at me. It wasn’t in me to hide the truth from Gabe. He deserved better than that. I shrugged, “I really hope not, sweetie. But it doesn’t look good for your mom.”

He came over next to me and leaned against the chrome on the front of the motorcoach, “I knew she was ill, even before she called you. After watching Grandma get sick last year, I worried the same thing was happening to Mom.”

I wanted to comfort Gabe; to tell him it was going to be okay. The problem was, his mom, my sister, was dying. Finally, I slid my arm around his shoulders and pulled him against my side. He leaned his head on my shoulder. I finally managed to say, “I hope she tells you herself, Gabe. But this is incredibly hard for your mom. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.”

He heaved the saddest sigh I’ve ever heard from him, “I know. Did you really mean what you said about treating me like a friend instead of a little kid? That wasn’t something you were just telling Mom because the two of you are so different?”

I hugged him to my side, “Hell no. I’m an absolutely shitty aunt, if you haven’t already figured that out. Going around, flashing you in my panties and letting you go about naked. No self-respecting aunt would do that. But a friend who loves you more than anything else in the world… she might.”

Gabe shocked me in that moment, he turned his head and kissed me on the cheek, “I love you too, Aunt Sydney. I’m glad you’re my friend too.”

Copyright 2022 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved

The Road Less Traveled – Chapter 5
By
Caliboy1991

“Dude!” I stared across the table at Gabe. I had no idea how messy an eater he was when spaghetti was on the table. Marinara streaked down his chest, where noodles now devoured, had landed. Even his chin was smeared in red. “You look like an extra in the Walking Dead, covered in blood.”

He giggled before stabbing another forkful of pasta into his mouth. Once Gabe swallowed the mouthful, he said, “Spaghetti’s my favorite. Mom fixed this at least once a week.”

I gave him a baleful stare, “Must’ve been when she needed you to take a shower. You’re a mess, you know.”

It didn’t help he looked so adorably cute, still in just his shorts. I took a napkin and rubbed at a drip of red on his bare, pale chest. He blushed as I scrubbed at the sauce. Finally, I licked my thumb and rubbed it directly on the stain until only pink skin remained. The flush on Gabe’s cheeks matched the heat on my face as I returned my attention to my plate.

While my stomach fluttered at the touch. Gabe glanced at his plate, then gave me a silly grin before shoveling more pasta into his gaping maw.

Afterwards, I showed him how to load the RV’s pint-sized dishwasher before finally tossing my arm around his bare shoulders, “Alright, Mr. Messy-eater, tonight you get a shower. Come on.”

Since leaving his mom’s, Gabe hadn’t come into my bedroom except once to grab a change of clothes. When I caught a flush on his cheeks as I guided him between the bed and the TV and cabinets, I wondered about how strict my sister had been about privacy issues.

“Come on through, Gabe. It’s not like you haven’t seen your mom’s bedroom or bathroom before. Right?”

He stopped at the doorway to the bathroom and glanced between the two spaces, “Mom made me knock before going into her bedroom. But the reason she rented our house was so I would have my own bathroom.”

More like so Abby could have her privacy. I shook my head and pulled a clean towel from a closet and tossed it to Gabe, “Well, that’s not going to work around here, is it?”

More rose on his adorable cheeks as he shook his head, “There’s only one shower.”

I smirked, “That wouldn’t work here. Otherwise, you’d smell like shit.”

He giggled at my casual use of profanity. I continued, “It’s just the two of us for the next couple of months, sharing a small space. There’s not much room for privacy, is there?”

Gabe shook his head and glanced back into my bedroom, no doubt wondering how he was supposed to take a shower in full view of my room.

I stepped around him and pulled out a sliding door a few inches, which was built into the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom, “Here’s a pocket door separating this bathroom from the bedroom. That’s about the best we can do for respecting each other’s privacy.”

The wheels behind Gabe’s eyes turned while his features remained guarded, “That’s cool. Mom was always going on about respecting her privacy. Aunt Sydney, how much, um, privacy do you want?”

I thought I was clear. But the look on the boy’s face said I hadn’t. “Abby and I aren’t the same person, Gabe. I don’t know why she makes a big deal out of it. After all, we’re family, and I want us to be comfortable around each other, and I don’t really want to get worked up about a bunch of rules around privacy. Do you?”

He chewed on his lower lip as he shook his head, “N-, not really. They’re her rules. She doesn’t care that I sleep in my underwear; just that I respect her privacy and, um, her rules.”

How the hell did Abby expect me to keep all her rules? I didn’t want to spend the next couple of months walking around my nephew on pins and needles. Sure, we deserved enough privacy to bathe in privacy. But the rest of it seemed like a lot of trouble when we live in such close quarters. I pulled the pocket door closed. The bathroom was spacious for an RV, but we were inside each other’s personal space. I replied, “When this door is closed, I promise I’ll leave you alone in here. I expect the same courtesy.”

I slid the door open and gave Gabe more space, “On this side of the bathroom door, there’s not much privacy. Wear what you want to bed. I don’t care if you wear underwear or sleep naked. Before you moved in, that’s what I did.”

Gabe’s eyes grew round, “You slept naked?”

I realized I’d said more than I intended, “I slept in my underwear.”

I don’t know why it bothered me, but that wasn’t entirely the truth and I didn’t want to lie to Gabe, even if it was a little white lie. I added, “Well, usually. Although a few times I slept in the buff.”

Gabe draped the towel over the top of the shower door, “But you’ve slept in pajamas since you picked me up. Why?”

Aside from a pair of pajama shorts that barely covered my upper thighs, I’d been wearing t-shirts. Before that, it was panties and maybe a cami. Sometimes, just panties. That’s one of the few perks of small-breasted women. The girls don’t get in the way if they’re uncovered. “Why? I wasn’t sure how you’d react to seeing your aunt in her underwear.”

My stomach fluttered at the way the red flooded back into Gabe’s cheeks; there was something incredibly cute about it. He couldn’t look me in the eye when he said, “It’s, uh, okay. You’re super cool, so whatever is fine with me.”

I wanted to lean into him and plant a kiss on his rosy red cheek. Instead, I moved back into the bedroom and pulled the pocket door closed and let Gabe have his privacy. Before I could get comfortable, his unbroken voice came through the door, “Aunt Sydney! I can’t get the water to flow. It’s making a weird noise.”

Damn. I hadn’t considered all the buttons and knobs would confuse him. I hadn’t even gotten comfortable on the bed when I jumped off and came over to the packet door, “There’s a lever where you’d expect to find a knob. You see it?”

“Yeah. I tried it. That’s when the pipe started shaking. It’s not gonna break, is it?”

I couldn’t quite envision the problem, but didn’t want to pay to get something fixed if he broke it. “You need help?”

There was a long pause. His voice warbled, “Yeah.”

Sliding the door open, I went to the shower door. Gabe faced the outer wall, away from my prying eyes, but still giving me a perfect look at his boney rump. Skinny like me, he didn’t have enough meat back there to have a bubble butt, but to see him like that made the fluttering return in my stomach. I opened the door and realized my mistake. The last time I took a shower, when I shaved my legs, I hit a button that cut the flow of water. It was a water saving feature. I reached in and pushed the button.

Gabe squawked as water from the rainfall showerhead cascaded over him. He half-turned to adjust the hot/cold knob and in that moment, between pressing the button and closing the door, I glimpsed his midsection. It was but a fraction of a second. But enough to see his penis hanging down in front of a small ballsack. It was over too quickly to determine his size. But long enough to stir my curiosity and send the fluttering in my stomach into overdrive.

I settled back onto my bed and turned on the TV, eager to push that image from my mind. I found a mood station playing the best of pop music. I liked easy listening when I worked in bed. Evenings were for email. I had a few fan emails, which I ignored, focusing my attention on the latest art from my cover artist. The plot was about a hedge fund manager who used his wealth to seduce the heroine. The picture showed the two making out on a desk. Behind the desk was a window with a stylized New York skyline. The office was pirate themed to go with the bad boy image of a corporate raider.

I fired off an email to the artist, including the back matter I wanted to include on the book’s back cover. She did excellent work and her turnaround time made her a hit with other romance authors. If past experience was anything to go by, I’d have the finished cover before my editor gave me her final edits.

The water cut off, and Gabe moved around in the bathroom. I could imagine him, towel wrapped around his narrow waist, standing in front of the foggy mirror over the sink to comb his hair.

I swore under my breath; what the hell was going on with me, having sensual thoughts of my nephew? How weird was that? Gabe looked nothing like my college boyfriend, and neither of them looked anything like the gorgeous hunks in my novels. My favorite image of a hunk was a smooth chested man with wide shoulders and narrow hips, a thick cock and closely trimmed pubes. In my fantasies, I liked the idea of him taking me and having his way with me. Of course, in real life, that broke down to me using a vibrator while pinching my nipples to get me off.

The door rattled and Gabe stuck his head through the opening. An embarrassed smile creased his face, “I, um, forgot anything to change into, Aunt Sydney.”

Thoughts of sexy hunks evaporated, I pointed to the drawers where he’d stored his clothes, “Go ahead, sweetie. Unless you want me to get them for you.”

His face turned beat red and I couldn’t help wondering what got into him. What’s the big deal about going across my bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist?

“Um, okay. But don’t stare.”

With that, he slid the pocket door wide. He had draped the towel across the door of the shower. And Gabe was naked. Involuntarily, I stared at my nephew for those few seconds before his hands cupped his genitals. My earlier rushed assessment was right. He was smooth, like a little boy. His penis was long enough to hang loosely in front of a ballsack nestled tightly against his pelvis. The last memories I had of Gabe naked were when he was still a little kid, maybe six or seven. Back then, his penis had been no bigger than a macaroni noodle. Now, with enough time to see it properly, I figured it to three flaccid inches.

He wasted no time hurrying across the room. He pulled a drawer out and retrieved a pair of white briefs. When Gabe moved to pull the fresh underwear up, the reflection on the TV screen gave me another shot at his preadolescent cock. My stomach was a riot of fluttering butterflies by the time his waistband snapped into place.

He sent a baleful glance my way, “You looked, Aunt Sydney.”

The whole thing seemed absurd. I pushed my feelings away and laughed, “Oh, sweetie, I thought you were going to come out with the towel wrapped around your waist. Why didn’t you?”

Gabe’s eyes bugged at that. “I-, I didn’t think about that. Gosh, you must think I’m stupid.”

I rolled to the edge of the bed and grabbed his hand, “Not at all. I guess I figured you wanted to see if I was serious about the whole naked thing.”

He smiled through his blush, “Yeah, right. I’m an idiot.”

I hated to see him beat himself up over something so trivial. “No, Gabe. That was really brave of you.”

The doubt in his eyes was more than I could stand. No nephew of mine, especially one so cute, should feel like that. I ratcheted up compliment, “In fact, you’ve got a very nice body and you should be proud of it.”

He squeaked, “Really?”

I did then what I’d thought about doing in the bathroom. I stood and gave him a kiss on his blushing cheek. “Yep. Now, go on and get ready for bed. It’s my turn for my shower.”

The lights were out up front by the time I closed the pocket door and undressed for my shower. My emotions were messed up. I told myself whatever I needed to convince myself that little kiss on Gabe’s cheek was Aunt-like. But my unsettled stomach told a different story. I hadn’t had nerves like this since college and that horrible night with Kyle.

I grabbed a clean towel from the closet and stepped into the shower and turned the water on. I took some bodywash and a loofa and was soon scrubbing breasts that could only charitably be called perky. They needed more breast tissue to rise to the level of perky. Still, my tits, such as they were, were what nature endowed me with. It wasn’t long before I flicked and rolled my nipples to an erect hardness. They were rubbery under my thumb and forefinger and around the same size as an eraser on the end of a pencil.

Like a thousand times before, I imagined being held by some romanticized version of Blackbeard. He held me close to his bare chest before ripping off my bodice. It was my fantasy, so my tits were fuller, truly perky in their perfection. And the object of Blackbeard’s hands. It wasn’t me squeezing my tits, but Blackbeard. It was my fantasy, so I relished how this idealize perfect man forced himself on me.

I sat on the tile bench and slid my finger into my slit, pushing through my labia. Instead of my finger, I imagined it was Blackbeard’s enormous cock rubbing against my clit. Both my hands were working me toward an orgasm. It had been too long since my last release. One hand rubbed against the stubble of my shorn bush while flicking my clit. The other, my index finger pushed deep into my pussy.

I lost myself in the tremors working their way through my body. I pulled my index finger out and slowed the massage against my clit with the other. I loved to imagine Blackbeard whispering about the abuse he wanted to inflict on me.

Both hands sped up again, and I closed my eyes. I pretended to be limp, held in his powerful, calloused hands. The thrumming of my body told me I was closing in on an orgasm and I moved my fingers faster still. I bit my lower lip as I felt a moan come up my throat. I couldn’t let Gabe hear.

Just his name was enough. Another spasm clenched my pussy, trapping my index finger inside. Blackbeard faded into the mist of my mind. In his place was Gabe, holding me close, rubbing his cock along the lips of my wet pussy, as another orgasm shook me. My eyes flew open even as I shook in the throes of another, more powerful orgasm. I was alone in the shower. Juices flowed from between my legs, washed away by the waterfall showerhead.

This was crazy. No, I was going crazy. I didn’t have feelings for Gabe. For God’s sake, he’s my nephew. Sure, I loved him. But not like what I felt a moment before in the shower. No fucking way.

When I finished with my shower, I dried off. Whatever just happened was nothing. It couldn’t be anything. I might write about women who enjoyed the rough treatment dished out by their bad boy billionaires, but that was pure fiction. There was no reality where I could possibly do anything sexual with Gabe.

I wrapped the towel around my chest as I muttered below my breath, “Get a grip, girl. You’re just feeling compassion for what Gabe’s going through. That’s it, nothing more. Now, stop talking to yourself and get to bed.”

The RV was dark when I opened the pocket door and left the bathroom. I had convinced myself the lapse was just momentary. It meant nothing. I grabbed a change of underwear and a pink cami and in the darkness, let the towel fall away. That I felt a little naughty standing beside my bed naked had nothing to do with Gabe. That’s what I told myself.

The moment passed. I put my underwear and cami on and crawled under the covers. My mind was a riot of conflict. It didn’t mean a thing. I was a long time falling asleep.

Copyright 2022 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved

The Road Less Traveled – Chapter 4
By
Caliboy1991

I pressed the key on my laptop, putting a period at the end of the sentence. Another chapter done. Leaning back against the leather seat at the dining table, I glanced outside. In the distance were the westernmost peaks of the San Juan Mountains. One pleasure of my nomadic lifestyle was a moment like this.

I saved my work and shut the laptop. Tomorrow, I would edit the completed chapter and begin work on the last chapter. This book had already been delayed by my experiment with Give the Devil His Due. This would be the fifth and final book in a particularly steamy billionaire romance series. I liked writing series; fans mostly seemed to enjoy binging every book in a series. Although there was a fall-off in readers between a fifth and sixth book. That’s why the fifth book would wrap up all the loose ends.

A blanket was folded on the end of the sofa. We hadn’t bothered unfolding the sleeper part of the sofa the previous night, and Gabe had slept on top of the leather cushions. His laptop rested atop the blanket. Gabe gave up writing by lunchtime and said he was going to explore the RV park. Getting out of the coach sounded like a good idea. This part of Colorado was arid and dry during the summer and when I opened the door, the dry heat slapped me in the face.

There were other diesel pushers near ours, but the way the park was set up, there were trees between each site, giving guests some measure of privacy. I expected to find Gabe wandering around the park. Imagine my surprise when I found him lying on a foldable lounge chair between the two slide-outs in nothing more than a pair of blue board shorts. He appeared to have fallen asleep while reading. My surprise was doubled when I saw the book he’d fallen asleep to. It was laying on his narrow chest, the front and back cover facing up. It was the book that launched my self-publishing career, Can’t Buy My Love. Since its release five years ago, it sold over two-hundred-fifty thousand copies. The cover showed a young woman wearing an evening dress with a plunging neckline. Her breasts were all but revealed as they nearly spilled out of the dress. A man in a tuxedo stood next to a Lear jet, his arm outstretched, as though begging her to come to him. I was proud of that cover.

But Abby would shit a brick if she knew I was letting her impressionably naïve eleven-year-old son read women’s porn. I cleared my throat as I stood at the end of the lounge chair.

Gabe’s eyes fluttered open. “You finished writing?”

I pointed to the book, “Your mom wouldn’t approve of you reading that, Gabe.”

His eyes shot open and instinctively, his hands shot to cover the book. A worried look crossed his face, “Come on, Aunt Sydney. It’s just a book. I read lots of books. And you’re a really good writer and I wanted to read your stuff.”

My problem with him reading my smut had everything to do with my sister. Funny how our experiences form us. She was the one who got knocked up in high school. Yet, she treated Gabe like he was still a little child and not a near-teenager. Smothering is what it was. But she was my sister and even if I didn’t share her views, I didn’t want to disappoint her.

Unlike Abby, I didn’t lose my virginity until college. Was the worst sex of my life. We were the same age, but he wasn’t gentle or skilled. It hurt the entire time, and I was bruised and uncomfortable for a week. Since then, my sexual experiences extended no further than the sex toys secreted under my bed. Yet, I prided myself on the realistic sex scenes in my stories. Yeah, funny how different my sister and I are.

Trying to figure out how to explain to him about why it was bad for him to read my smut, I grabbed a second lounge chair from an open storage bin and set it up next to Gabe’s. “What would your mom say about you reading my books?”

A spark of anger flashed in the boy’s eyes, “She doesn’t understand what it’s like to want to write, Aunt Sydney. I’ve read books at the school library with stuff in them. People getting shot, people kissing and, um, doing stuff.”

I doubted the school library had anything as explicit as what I wrote. I tried again, “But what about your mom?”

He glared at me, “She treats me like a little kid, Aunt Sydney. I’m not. I’m almost twelve. I’m as big as some of the eighth graders and I know what they talk about when no teachers are around.”

My resistance crumbled. Gabe wasn’t my child; just my nephew. But I found myself agreeing with him. He had more emotional maturity than some adults I knew. As much as I loved my sister, I also wanted to show Gabe I trusted him. And one way was to get off his back about reading my books. Writing under a pen-name, the only feedback I got were the piles of reviews on Amazon. My mom never approved of my writing career and Abby treated it as some guilty pleasure. She probably went to confession after reading each book. If Gabe wanted to read the books, maybe I could finally have someone with whom I could share my passion.

I raised my hands, “I surrender.” Then, as I thought about some of the explicit scenes in Can’t Buy My Love, I added, “You might want to skip some of the scenes. They get really mushy.”

A splash of crimson rose on Gabe’s cheeks, “Yeah. I-, I noticed.”

Unconsciously, he reached down and adjusted his shorts. For a split second, I thought I saw a bulge pushing against the fabric between his legs. I tore my eyes away from his midsection, “I warned you.”

The flush in my nephew’s skin didn’t go away, but he smiled, “Y-, yeah. But I’m old enough to read stuff like that now.”

It would be wildly inappropriate, but I wanted to ask him what he thought of it. But no sooner had the thought materialized that I pushed it away. This was my nephew I was thinking about, for God’s sake.

I pushed the back of my lounge chair back and closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. After a few minutes, Gabe said, “Aunt Sydney, does a woman really like it when a man, um, forces her to do stuff, um, like in this story?”

After more than fifty books, and countless steamy sex scenes, they ran together in my mind. But I would never forget that first sex scene I wrote. Rupert, my first billionaire bad boy, had forced himself onto Elizabeth, my first heroine. For reasons I still don’t understand, there’s an enormous market for stories with dubious consent in them, and Can’t Buy My Love tapped into that market in a way nothing since had done. But fiction wasn’t fact.

I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to explain this in a way Abby would approve of. Not for the first time had I wished she had already had the talk with him. “There’s stuff that happens in a story, Gabe, that touches our fantasies. Kind of like when your character in your story turned his magic on the bullies. Even though it’s fiction and fun to think about, it probably wouldn’t be near as fun in real life.”

Gabe pursed his lips, “But there’s no magic in real life. The bullies keep on bullying.”

I dipped my head, “It sucks when they do. I guess it wasn’t the best example. There are some women who like it when a man…”

The word failed me. There wasn’t a way to explain this to Gabe that would carry the stamp of Abby’s approval. I sighed and decided it’s easier to be me instead of trying to toe my sister’s line. Abby might kill me, but Gabe deserved a real answer, “… does things to control he. Even forces himself on her.”

Gabe sat up straighter, “L-, like um, doing stuff together?”

Damn you, Abby, I thought. There was no getting around the fact that Gabe’s education had been sadly lacking. I snorted, “You mean sex?”

He absentmindedly adjusted his shorts as the blush spread down his neck, “Yeah.”

Maybe I’ll burn in hell, but Gabe would learn about the birds and the bees from his Aunt Sydney, regardless of what my sister had planned. “Okay, sweetie, you’re almost twelve. When I was your age, I called things what they were. Stuff usually has a name. Sex, penis, vagina, those are all nouns that describe stuff. You’ve got the makings of a talented writer, Gabe. So, let’s call stuff by its name. You’re not going to embarrass me if you say penis or dick, vagina or pussy, sex or fuck. We’re writers and sometimes we make use of all of them. Just don’t call them ‘stuff’ anymore. Okay?”

Maybe that was a mistake. Gabe giggled as he stared at me. When he stopped laughing, he said, “Okay, Aunt Sydney. So, in your story when Rupert, um, fucked Elizabeth, he forced her.”

Now that the gloves were off, I said, “Lots of women fantasize about a powerful man forcing them to have sex. But that’s just a fantasy for nearly all women. In the real world, that’s not what they really want. They want agency.”

Gabe cocked his head at how I used the word. He replied, “Agency? Like the Agents of SHIELD?”

I chuckled at his understanding, “Not quite. To have agency is to be in control of your life, able to do the things that are important to you.”

Recognition flared to life in his eyes, “Oh. I get it. Kids don’t have any agency, because we can’t control our lives.”

I reached over and patted his bare knee, “That’s a good example of it. Adults, both men and women, want to be in control of our own lives and that means how we have sex. We might fantasize about someone forcing sex onto us, but would never want that in real life. We want it to be with someone we love, or at least with someone we like.”

I had opened a whole new world for my nephew, and watched the gears in his mind spin, absorbing our conversation with growing awareness. “I guess that’s why mom didn’t have many second or third dates.”

Abby never talked to me about her love life. The wild teen had become a bit of a prude in her twenties, as far as I was concerned. I said, “It could be more complicated than just about sex, Gabe. She may have thought none of those guys would have been a good father figure to you. Without asking her, we’ll probably not know.”

The light dimmed in his eyes, “Even if she wasn’t really sick, I don’t think I could ever ask her about that. You understand me and it’s easier to talk about this stuff-, um, about sex with you.”

I don’t know why the praise from a nearly twelve-year-old made me feel so good, but it did. I grinned at him, “I’m glad. You’re growing up and there ought to be someone you can talk to, and I’m glad I’m that person for you.”

He smiled, picking up the book to continue reading it, “Me too.”

We fell into silence; Gabe reading my smutty first novel and me closing my eyes and hoping I could figure out how to tell my sister she doesn’t need to worry with the birds and the bees anymore. After a bit, he said, “Aunt Sydney, I know Mom never brought any men home, but what about you? Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

My stomach lurched; had I just unleashed Pandora’s box? I opened my eyes, “That’s a story for another time, Gabe. I think I’m going to head inside and start preparing dinner.”

Copyright 2022 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved

The Road Less Traveled – Chapter 3
By
Caliboy1991

A click of a door opening and closing brought me out of my sleep. Light filtered through the curtains when I blinked my eyes open. We plugged the RV into the 50 Amp outlets at the camping site the previous night and the air conditioning ran off the city power, keeping the coach cool. Just the way I liked it. I pulled back the covers and rolled over, searching for my phone. When the back-light came on I groaned. It was a few minutes after seven.

Now that I knew I wanted to write, I was itching to be six hundred miles away, exploring ways my billionaire bad boy could seduce the heroine. Before, I would have grabbed some powdered donuts from the nearest convenience store, along with a cup of coffee and a twenty-ounce Coke. Even though I lacked any maternal instincts, I knew Gabe needed better than junk food.

The door to the half-bath opened right then. At least I wouldn’t have to wake the boy up. I called out, “Good morning, sunshine.”

His bare feet shuffled across the tiled floor until he stood in the opening between the bedroom and the kitchen area. Sunlight filtering into the RV behind him outlined his body. His hair was mused, and he yawned as he leaned against the wood-paneled wall. He was dressed in the same white briefs he slept in the previous night and nothing else. He yawned, “Good morning. What’s for breakfast?”

As my eyes went to his tighty-whities, he seemed oblivious to his semi-naked state. That was the Gabe I remembered from when he was little. In between his legs, there was a slight bump outlined in the white fabric of his underwear. With only one truly horrible experience under my belt about men, I was hardly an expert. But he seemed soft to me, for which I was grateful.

Stunned at where my eyes had gone, I glanced away, ashamed I had chosen to gawk at my preteen nephew. “Um, probably McDonalds. You want an Egg McMuffin?”

He stretched, drawing my eyes back to him. He was definitely related to me. He wasn’t simply slender. No, he was skinny and reminded me of when I was his age. Mom had been on me all the time to eat more because I was just skin and bones. He nodded, “Yeah. Sounds good.”

Glad I had slept in a t-shirt and pajama shorts, I rolled toward the other side of the bed, closest to the rear bathroom, “Cool. You should probably get dressed. You don’t want any preteen girls spying you strutting your stuff.”

Gabe gasped, as though only now realizing how little he had on. He was halfway back to the sofa when I heard a faint, “Right.”

I grabbed my jeans from the previous night and a clean shirt and headed toward the rear toilet. While I sat there doing my business, I noticed the envelope Abby gave me. In all the hubbub of getting away from the house and the drive, it had skipped my mind.

I pulled it from the back pocket. It was heavier than I first realized. Abby hadn’t sealed the envelop; she just folded the flap inside. There were folded sheets of paper, plastic cards, and a spare key to her place. And money. I sighed with exasperation. I was the successful writer, with a million copies of my books sold. The last thing she needed was to give me money.

I rifled past the money. One of the plastic cards was Gabe’s insurance card. The other was the previous year’s student ID. It must have been taken at the beginning of his sixth grade. Even though his face lacked the angular lines of adolescence, there was something still innocently boyish in his features. There was just a lot more of it in the school ID photo.

There were a couple of folded up sheets of paper. The first was a simply power of attorney Abby got notarized the same day she called me. The second was Gabe’s birth certificate with his social security card stapled to it. The last set of pages was a will. It was simple. Like our Mom, Abby didn’t have much. Even the house was a rental. The will reflected her simply lifestyle. Her one prized possession was getting dressed in the front of the RV at that moment. And she named me his guardian in the event of her death. She signed and notarized the will the same day as the power of attorney.

I bit my lip and blinked back tears. I still hoped she would call us after the chemo treatment, but seeing the will and other documents, I felt a sense of finality in the previous day’s visit. As I dressed in the closed confine of the little room enclosing the toilet, I wondered for not the first time what I was getting myself into.

We ate breakfast in the parking lot behind the one-horse town’s McDonald’s. Even though we had retracted the RV’s slide-outs when we pulled out of the RV park, we still squeezed into the dining table seats behind the passenger’s seat. Thoughts of the contents of the envelop filling my mind. But the last thing Gabe needed was for me to confess my worries. I needed to be strong for him.

Halfway through his McMuffin, he asked, “Aunt Sydney, Mom said you write bodice rippers. What are those?”

The biscuit, already drier than most, seemed to stick in my throat. “Your mom said that?”

He rolled his eyes at me. I couldn’t let the fact that his eyes were even with mine make me forget he was still a little boy, not a teenager. In the back of my mind, I really wished Abby hadn’t sheltered him as much as she had. He deadpanned, “You’re too young to be forgetting stuff.”

I always thought kids my nephew’s age thought everyone older than sixteen or seventeen was ancient. The few times I included children in my stories, that’s how I played them. My voice was droll, “How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-four. That’s only twice as many years old as me. Mom’s almost thirty,” his eyes sparkled with mischief, “you know that’s almost ancient.”

My lips curled into a smile, “When we talk to your mom, I’ll make sure to tell her that.”

He crumpled the wrapping on his biscuit, “You getting forgetful, Aunt Sydney? You didn’t tell me what a bodice ripper is.”

So much for hoping he’d forgotten. My mind went into overdrive, wondering how to keep our conversation PG rated. “It’s just a nickname for a type of romance novel.”

Gabe’s eyebrow furrowed, “I get that. Um, what’s a bodice?”

Keep it PG, Syd. “It’s an old-fashioned name for the part of a woman’s dress, from the waist to the neckline, but excluding the sleeves.”

The golden-brown eyes looking back at me were intelligent, and one wrong step would be more than my sister wanted her son to know. Slowly, those eyes grew round and his mouth formed a little oh. “The ripper part means the man tears her clothes off?”

I flushed. “Maybe we can talk about that later, okay?”

A smile slid across his features, “Your stories are sexy. That’s what Mom meant. That’s why that man and women were naked on the book cover. He ripped her bodice off.”

Despite the air conditioner, I was hot. “Gabe, I don’t think your mom wants me talking about this with you.”

He leaned back in the booth, “I’m almost twelve. I know all about that stuff, I’m going to be in the seventh grade in the fall. Just because mom won’t let me watch any sexy movies, doesn’t mean I don’t understand about it.”

If there were a hell, I was risking damnation. But the smug look on his adorable face was too much. I leaned against the table, “Really? Like what?”

It was Gabe’s turn to turn red. He stammered, “Well, um. A man, um, puts his, you know, thing, into a woman’s, um, thing. That’s how they have sex.”

It was all I could do to not laugh at his description. “That seems so, ah, precise and scientific.”

Gabe giggled. “I know the words. It’s just mom would whip my butt if I used them around you.”

It was my turn to smirk, “Best stay out of my books, they’re full of language your mom wouldn’t want you to say.”

The smile remained on my nephew’s face as he leaned forward. “You use words like, um, shit and fuck in your stories?”

Those words were scarcely out of his mouth when he bit his lip, as though trying to gauge my response. I just smirked and slid out of the booth and tousled his hair. The language he used reminded me he was his own person, developing his own identity. Parents are there to keep kids going the right direction. Grandparents are there to spoil them and give them presents. Young, single aunts, we’re there to be a bad influence.

“Yeah. I use shit and fuck in my stories. Sometimes dick and pussy too.”

The scandalized look on my nephew’s face was priceless. I turned and said, “Come on, let’s hit the road. We’ve got nine hours ahead of us.

***

The sign read another forty-five miles to Flagstaff. My stomach told me we’d be going through it just in time for an early dinner. The drive reminded me why I enjoyed heading north when leaving SoCal. Arizona was dry and dusty; all the more so along Interstate Forty. Gabe was quiet. He propped his laptop on his lap. The typing didn’t bother me and he had been quiet, which let me do lots of thinking and praying.

I grew up lapsed Catholic and hadn’t been inside a church for anything more than a wedding or funeral since high school. It’s not that I didn’t believe, just that I didn’t think any of it mattered. But that didn’t stop me from praying. Maybe prayer is like a lottery ticket. For the 99,999,999, it’s a waste of time, but that one person with the lucky numbers, maybe God would hear that one prayer and answer it.

Not that I really believed, but I didn’t want to lose my sister. I loved Gabe and if it came down to it, he could stay with me if something happened to Abby. But I knew I wasn’t a proper role model for my young nephew. I mean, for God’s sake, I write soft core porn for women. Not exactly conducive environment to raise a boy. All the same, he was more like me than his mom. Abby was the one with the feminine curves, although none of us Nelson women were going to win the Most Buxom contest. She had briefly flirted with a c-cup after giving birth to Gabe. It’s not that I had a boyish figure, after all, my hips were wider than my shoulders, it’s just I was lean, to the point of gauntness, and had been that way all my life. And Gabe’s thin arms and legs, his narrow torso, those were traits we shared. Even our hair was the same russet color, a genetic reminder of our Irish roots.

But whether he stayed for a couple of months, while his mom fought the “Big C” or whether he took up permanent residence on my sleeper sofa, bad influence or not, there was one thing I could teach him; something else he shared in common with me. Writing.

I lowered the volume on the radio, sending CCR fading into the background of road-noise, “So, tell me about that story contest you won at school.”

Gabe pulled his head up from the laptop. A smile danced across his preadolescent features and a spark lit in his eyes, as though pleased I bothered to ask. “It was about a boy who was picked on by bullies at school. One day, he discovered he had magical powers. And he used those powers to turn the things the bullies did to him and other students back on themselves.”

Tall for his age, the idea bullies would tease my nephew hadn’t crossed my mind. “Are there bullies at your school?”

Gabe shrugged, “There are bullies everywhere, Aunt Sydney.”

The maturity of his answer struck a chord in me. Even a dozen years before, in the same junior high, a couple of girls had tormented me almost every day for two years. It wasn’t that I had been a late bloomer, it’s just what tits nature had endowed on me and my sister had mostly gone to Abby. Even twelve years later, if I wanted to look even the slightest bit busty, I wore a padded bra.

“Yeah, I guess so. So, what’s your favorite scene in that story?”

His eyebrows furrowed in thought, “There’s this one time when a couple of bullies push the hero into a toilet stall, and they’re forcing his head into the toilet when he works his magic, and reverses their positions. Only their heads start out in the toilet. That was the first time when he stood up to them. But there are a couple of more times where he has to do similar things to the bullies to finally get them to stop.”

Something I learned later than Gabe seemed to have, for most of us, our stories come from our fantasies. “That’s a cool story. Turning the tables on the bullies is an awesome idea. I know what those old kill-joys called teachers couldn’t have approved of the idea, but you still won. That’s something.”

Gabe grinned. “The contest was voted on by all the students in the creative writing classes. The teacher took everyone’s names off their stories, so that everyone would vote for their favorite story, not the one by the most popular student. And, well, a lot of kids get bullied. So, I won.”

Hearing my nephew’s enthusiasm was almost a window into my own youth. I didn’t discover my passion for writing until high school, but I’ll never forget the feeling as people raptly listened to my stories. More than that, though, getting him talking brightened both of our days. “What’re you working on now?”

He glanced at his laptop, “Just an idea I’ve been playing with for a few days. It’s a story about this kid who lives in a magical land. Kind of like England, but with magic.”

I offered, “Like Harry Potter?”

He scowled, “That’s der-, deriv-, a copy of stuff already done. More like Merlin and King Arthur. Anyway, he wants to become a knight because a fire-breathing dragon killed his parents. The dragon has everyone in the kingdom scared, so the king promises his daughter to whoever slays the dragon.”

The idea intrigued me. The great thing about self-publishing is that you don’t have to please some progressive moral busybody in New York or San Francisco with your own progressive ideas. If you write something appealing, people will read it, no matter how un-woke it may be. And the traditional gatekeepers would certainly think some young man slaying a dragon to win the hand of the princess was positively neanderthal. Of course, it sprang from the mind of an eleven-year-old boy, and they’re hardly civilized; so, it’s almost the same thing. More than that, I loved the idea for him.

“That sounds exciting, can you read to me the first chapter?”

If Gabe hadn’t been buckled into the seatbelt, he would have floated away. A moment later, he read, “Jack snuck off and went fishing the day the dragon struck his parents’ farm…”

Copyright 2022 – Caliboy1991
All rights reserved