Best Kept Secrets Read online

  We hoped the plant would have valuable medicinal properties, and Josh had been promised a huge sum by the Pharm-Co Company back on Earth if he brought back samples. The money they were offering was enough to buy us a whole new hopper—which I was beginning to think was a good idea. Not because ours was broken or in need of repair, but because lately it had begun to seem too cramped for the two of us to be in such close proximity. Or at least, Josh seemed to think so.

  I nibbled my bottom lip and stared at the lush green globe swinging beneath us as I contemplated the recent change in my big brother on this latest trip. In the past, Josh had always been very loving and warm. He’d hug me when I felt sad and sometimes even held me on his lap when we cuddled up at night to watch our favorite shows on the com-link. He often kissed my cheek and called me “sweetheart” and other endearments as well as shortening my given name of Cassandra to “Cassie” when he was feeling particularly sweet.

  There was nothing sexual about our interaction—Josh had never, ever done anything inappropriate with me. He was an honorable man, and I had the feeling he would rather cut off his right arm than hurt me like that. Despite the fact that we had no real blood ties between us, he considered himself my big brother, my protector. And besides, he had always seen me as a little girl who needed protection and care—not as a woman with any kind of sexual nature. So he was kind and affectionate to a fault.

  But not on this latest trip. Since we entered the cramped confines of our spacehopper the month before for our mission to Svortza 6, he had become withdrawn…aloof. And he almost always seemed to be ill at ease whenever I was around.

  It’s my fault, I told myself miserably, moving the controls to adjust our orbit somewhat. He’s uncomfortable because of what happened in the shower last month. I know he is.

  In the beginning of what I had come to think of as “the truth-plant mission,” Josh and I had had an…well, an incident for lack of a better word. It was disturbing for both of us, and we had barely left Earth orbit when it happened.

  The incident had happened while we were taking our nightly shower together. I know it sounds strange, but it wasn’t like we showered together for any kind of kinky, weird reasons—it was the simple need to conserve water. Even with the ship’s recycler going at 100 percent, H2O was still a rare and precious commodity in deep space, and we couldn’t afford to waste a drop. The nightly shower was a routine for us—something we had done a thousand times before on our different space missions and nothing ever happened between us. We just kept our backs to each other while we did a quick soap and rinse and then got ready for bed.

  This was the first time we had showered together following the changes to my body, however. During our long layover on Earth, we had each our own room, and there was no need for communal showers. In fact, it was probably the normal gravity on humanity’s home planet that finally jumpstarted my late development. Anyway, by the time we got back on board The She-Creature, our affectionate name for the little spacehopper we traveled in, I was a whole new woman so to speak.

  Of course Josh had noticed my new curves—I knew he had—there was no way he could miss them. But we had been able to keep our distance on Earth, so it wasn’t really shoved in his face. Now there was no way he could avoid looking—not in such tight quarters.

  * * * *

  It was awkward but still, when Josh and I squeezed into the tiny bathroom together, I tried to act like nothing had changed. I adjusted the water temperature and hummed a nervous little tune under my breath as I got it just right.

  But I found I couldn’t meet his eyes when I dropped my towel.

  Though I wasn’t looking at him, I could definitely still feel Josh studying at me. A glance at his face showed that his eyes were wide with shock as he took in my ripe breasts with their puffy pink nipples and the curly blonde thatch between my thighs. Another glance, farther down, showed something even more disturbing—Josh had a hard-on.

  In all the years we had been showering together, my stepbrother’s body had never reacted to mine. But now it was—and in a big way. My eyes widened as I took in the length and girth of his cock. It was nine inches at least and so thick around I was sure I wouldn’t be able to circle it with my fingers even if I tried. Of course, I would never try such a thing with my own stepbrother. Just the thought of it made me blush.

  Josh seemed to be blushing too, though he turned away from me so quickly it was hard to tell. Normally we laughed and joked in the shower, splashing each other and having fun. But this time there was a strained silence between us as we stepped into the tiny plasti-glass booth. Without talking about it, both of us were careful to keep our backs to each other and neither of us said a word as we washed.

  It was awkward, but it still might have gone all right if not for the reeter bug.

  Reeters are pests that like to infest outgoing spaceships, and they’re uniquely adapted to a zero-g, freezing environment—in other words, space. They stick flat to the side of a spaceship, just waiting for an opportunity to get onboard. The minute somebody pops an airlock to make repairs, they invite themselves inside. Since they can hold their breath indefinitely and extreme temperatures and poisons don’t bother them, there’s almost no way to kill them except to squash them dead.

  But none of that tells you how they look. Reeters are descendants of roaches from Earth. They’re long and flat with a shiny purple-black shell and long, twitchy antennae. When they skitter around, they make a horrible chitinous clicking sound that makes my blood run cold every time I hear it. In size they’re about as big as my palm, and I flat-out hate them.

  We had been doing pretty good with the reeters this trip—I’d only seen two, and Josh had killed both of them right away. He liked to tease me that my fear of the ugly bugs was girly, but this was one time when I didn’t care if I looked weak. I might have been training to be a xenobiologist but not all forms of life held the same fascination, as far as I was concerned.

  I could deal with deadly animals in all shapes and sizes from the massive hairy man-eating angorths of the Andromeda Galaxy to the blidgers that live in the Crab Nebula and have poison so toxic a single drop will eat through a metric ton of flesh. But if a life-form was little and skittery with a lot of legs and might crawl on me or get caught in my hair, forget it—it had to die.

  So there I was, in the shower, trying hard to ignore the sudden awkwardness between myself and my stepbrother, when suddenly I heard the telltale click-click-click on the tiles above me. Despite the hot water, fear made my whole body go cold. I looked up and sure enough, there was the biggest reeter I had ever seen. Forget the size of my palm—this one was the size of my head. It was sitting there on the wall, looking down at me with its antennae waving as though wondering which part of my naked flesh it wanted to crawl on first.

  I did what I always do when I see a reeter—I shrieked and tried to get away. I can’t help it—it’s an instinctive gut reaction. Girly or not, nothing brings out my flight-or-fight response like a great big nasty bug.

  At that point, my only thought was to get away from the ugly thing. And since Josh was blocking the entrance to the shower, I tried to go around him on the far side, near the wall. My sudden actions took my stepbrother by surprise and he turned, trying to find out what was going on. The result was that we wound up completely naked in each other’s arms with my breasts pressed to his muscular chest and his still-hard cock branding my lower belly.

  “What the hell?” Josh bellowed as I basically climbed him like a tree.

  “Reeter!” I gasped, clutching at his shoulders and wrapping my legs around his hips. “There’s a—” I broke off as something more important than the pesky space bug got my attention.

  Due to my panicked escape attempt, my big brother and I were pressed together in the most intimate way imaginable, and I do mean intimate. Despite the many times we’d shared the shower, there had never been this much contact between us before. My nipples rubbed against the hard planes of his chest,
but worse than that was what was happening down below.

  Something long and hard and hot was pressing against me. In fact, it wasn’t just pressing against me—it was pressing into me. Looking down, I saw that Josh’s thick shaft had parted my pussy lips and was rubbing directly against my slick core.

  He hadn’t entered me, thank goodness—I felt like I would have died of embarrassment if my own stepbrother’s cock had penetrated my tight, virginal pussy. But though he hadn’t entered me, the entire upright length of his shaft was pressing against my open pussy, making it look like we were trying to have sex and he just hadn’t gotten around to putting it in me yet.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered at the same time Josh said, “Goddamn,” in a hoarse, uneven voice.

  Neither of us moved so much as an inch. It was as though we were frozen to the spot, unable to believe what was happening. My legs were still locked in place around Josh’s hips, and he had instinctively reached out to catch me, so his hands were firmly planted on my bare ass.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, not sure what else to say. “There was a reeter—the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It was right above me.” Remembering the ugly bug made me turn my head to see if it was still there.

  There was no reeter—nothing but a blank expanse of tiles that stared back at me accusingly, as though suggesting that I had made the bug up, just to get close to my stepbrother.

  “I don’t see it,” Josh said flatly. He was still supporting me, his big hands on my ass and a skeptical look on his face.

  “I swear it was there,” I protested. “It must have crawled back in the crack it came from. It—oh!” A sudden shadow, like a pair of antenna twitching in the corner of the stall, made me jump against him.

  Josh gave a low groan, and the broad, mushroom-shaped head of his cock twitched, pressing against my mound. I moaned too, surprised at the sudden burst of pleasure that tingled through my body as his shaft rubbed over my tender clit. With a start, I realized that I was turned on as well—maybe as turned on as he was. My pussy was wet and slippery against his shaft, and my clit ached at the intimate friction with his thick cock.

  “Sorry,” I gasped again. “I thought I saw it in the corner.”

  “It’s not there,” Josh snarled. “There’s nothing there, Cassandra. Now will you please get off me before I embarrass myself?”

  “Embarrass yourself? What do you m—” I broke off abruptly as I looked down at his cock again. The wide head was leaking, precum flowing copiously from the tip and wetting the blonde, springy curls of my mound. Oh my God—he’s about to come!

  The thought flashed across my brain, leaving panic in its wake. I wasn’t on any form of birth control—my pussy was bare and completely unprotected. I couldn’t get Josh’s cum inside me. I just couldn’t.

  “Let me down!” I demanded, struggling to get away. “Let me down right now, Josh, or I swear—”

  “Goddamnit, Cassandra! I told you don’t move. I—oh!” His large frame trembled, and he dug his fingers into my ass, letting me know I would have marks there the next day. Then he took a step forward, pressing my bare back to the tiled wall. He pinned me there with his throbbing shaft deep within my cunt lips and then began to move.

  It only took two or three long, hard thrusts against my slick inner pussy before a low groan was drawn from his mouth and then spurt after spurt of hot, creamy cum was soaking my belly and pussy mound.

  “Josh, no!” I exclaimed, but it seemed he couldn’t stop. I felt his hard cock grinding against me, rubbing my throbbing clit in just the right way and I realized with horror that I was even hotter than before. In fact, just a little more friction and I would be coming as well.

  Josh thrust against me again, pinning me more securely to the wall in a hard, possessive move that made me moan. Suddenly, I was there. Stars danced before my vision as a wave of unrelenting pleasure swept through me, tightening my body like a fist and forcing me to grip his broad shoulders even more tightly.

  “Josh,” I cried. “Oh, God, Josh that’s so…so…oh!”

  “Cassie,” he growled low in my ear. “Cassie, damn it…”

  Looking down between us, I saw that he was still coming. I didn’t know if it had been a long time between girls for Josh or if he always came so much, but hot cum was running down my belly and between my legs where we were almost joined. It was slipping into my unprotected pussy, sliding down between my wet cunt lips, and no doubt being pressed up into my cunt channel by Josh’s long, slow thrusts.

  “Stop!” I begged, trying to push him away. “Please, Josh, stop. We can’t do this—you know we can’t.”

  “I know.” Abruptly he broke the connection between us. Pulling away from me, he set me down on my feet. “I’m sorry, Cassandra. I didn’t mean to.”

  “I didn’t, either,” I assured him, using the rapidly cooling stream of water to wash away the cum that decorated my belly and pussy mound. “I really did see a reeter, Josh. I’m sorry.”

  “I am too.” He looked away from me. “I’d better go.”

  “Wait, Josh.” I put out a hand to hold him back, but his bicep felt like iron under my fingers. “Can’t…can’t we talk about this?”

  He turned to look at me, his face a mask of shame and anger. “Not unless you want a repeat performance, sweetheart,” he snarled.

  With surprise and fear, I saw that his cock was still hard, still obviously throbbing for release. So once wasn’t enough for him. Was it really me he desired—or was he simply still horny from a long period of abstinence?

  “Well? Do you?” Josh took a step toward me, and I recoiled from the barely veiled rage and desire I saw in him. Though I didn’t know it, that was the first time I saw the Beast—the sexual animal that lived in my stepbrother’s soul, crouching and ready to leap out when the opportunity presented itself. Perhaps all men have one. I don’t know—I only knew it frightened me to see that look on Josh’s face. To hear that tone in his voice.

  “No,” I whispered, taking a step backward.

  “Good.” He nodded contemptuously at the shower. “Finish washing yourself off. It would be a shame if you got pregnant when I didn’t even get to fuck you.”

  His harsh words were like a slap in the face. It was so unlike Josh I wasn’t sure how to respond. Was this really the same big brother who had saved me from a life of bondage on Titan? Who had held me and let me cry when I missed my mom? Who called me “sassy Cassie” when he was in a teasing mood? That was the Josh I knew and loved—but who was this angry, sexual stranger?

  Chapter Three

  It is my fault, I told myself, still watching the vast curve of Svortza 6 spinning in space like a green glass marble. I should have talked to him about it right away instead of letting this wall grow between us. I should have objected when he said we had to take separate showers from now on and ration the water in other ways. There was no need for this awkwardness between us. No need to let one silly accident spoil our whole relationship.

  Yet it had been a pretty big accident. When I closed my eyes, I could still feel his muscular body naked and wet against my own. And my clit still tingled when I remembered the hard press of his naked cock against my open pussy. I knew I shouldn’t dwell on such thoughts—after all, Josh was my brother. It was wrong, so wrong to remember the incredible orgasm that had ripped through me from the thrusts of his hot shaft sliding over my tender clit. Wrong to—

  “Looks like a nice tight orbit. Good piloting, Cass.”

  I jumped guiltily and spun around to see Josh standing behind me, staring at the viewscreen. In the past he would have put his arms around me and rested his chin on my head. Now, however, he was keeping his distance, his sculpted arms crossed over his broad chest as though to ward me off. It was a distinctly unapproachable pose, and it made me sad to see him that way. At the same time, I felt embarrassed and guilty about my thoughts just a moment before.

  Pull it together, Cassandra. It’s not like he can read your mind.
r />   “Thanks,” I said, giving him a small smile. “I, uh, hope we won’t have to search too hard to find the truth plant.”

  “According to the natives, the lish k’lit grows everywhere in the central jungle.” He pointed at the viewscreen. “There. So let’s take her down, shall we?”

  “Sure,” I said numbly.

  Josh turned to go, and I realized what I was doing—chickening out again. We had to talk this thing out before another minute went by. And certainly before we went down to the surface of an alien and possibly hostile world.

  “Josh.” I put my hand on his arm and tugged. “Come on, let’s talk.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Yes, there is. We need to talk about what happened in the shower our first night out, and you know it.”

  Reluctantly he turned to face me. “I don’t think so,” he said stiffly. “I think we should just forget it ever happened.”

  “But it did happen. It happened, but it’s not the end of the world—it was an accident, for Pete’s sake!”

  “An accident that wound up with me coming all over you.” Josh’s tone was harsh and his face was like stone.

  I took a deep breath and lifted my chin. “If it makes you feel any better, I…I came too, Josh. I couldn’t help it.”

  “You just don’t get it.” Josh shook his head. “Do you have any idea what nearly happened in that shower, Cassandra? I nearly fucked you. I was so far gone I nearly shoved my cock into your pussy and pumped you full of my cum.”

  I put a hand to my mouth and drew in a ragged breath. To hear him talk like this, so blatantly, so sexually, frightened and shocked me. But it did other things to me too, I was ashamed to admit. For some reason I was suddenly wet between my thighs, and the way he was looking at me had me burning up inside.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, to hide the strange and frightening emotions that were bubbling inside me. “I never meant to make you so…so upset.”