Last Night Fitting: His Stepsister's Confession

The house was too quiet with Mom and Dad gone for the weekend, every floorboard under my bare feet sounding like a confession I wasn’t ready to make. I stood in front of the full-length mirror in the sewing room wearing nothing but a pair of black lace panties and the half-zipped bridesmaid dress Ryan had been altering for me all week. The thing was scandalous—deep V in front, completely backless, the satin so thin it clung to my nipples like a second skin. I was twenty-two. He was twenty-eight. My stepbrother. And I had asked him, specifically him, to do the final fitting because I needed his hands on me more than I needed the hem straight.

Ryan knelt behind me with a mouthful of pins, the warm brush of his breath against the bare small of my back making my thighs press together. I watched him in the mirror: dark hair falling over his forehead, concentration tightening that stupidly handsome jaw. Our parents had married when I was nineteen. Three years of shared holidays, stolen glances across the dinner table, the way he’d look away whenever I came downstairs in a towel. I had been wet for him since the first Thanksgiving he spent under this roof.

“Hold still, Lila,” he murmured, fingers sliding along the curve of my hip to pin the fabric. “You’re fidgeting.”

“I can’t.” My voice came out thin. Confessional. I forced myself to meet his eyes in the glass. “I’ve fantasized about this exact thing since the day they got married. You, on your knees. Me, half naked. Pretending it’s just about the dress when it’s never been about the dress.”

His hands went still. A pin glinted between his fingers. The air thickened until I could taste it.