Class - Valerie's POV

Chapter 7

Valerie POV

Physiology 201 was a disaster.

I sat in my usual seat next to Yasmin, in the third row, and I tried to take notes on the cardiac cycle while my brain looped one sentence on repeat: so I could wake up Brian. Mom’s voice, calm as a tutorial. The word okay coming out of my own mouth like it had been waiting there. I wrote “diastole” three times without realizing it, and then drew a little heart in the margin, and then scribbled over the heart until the pen tore the paper.

“You good?” Yasmin whispered, without looking away from the slides. She did that. She could carry on an entire conversation with her face pointed forward like a spy.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

“Mm.” A long, dry pause. “You’ve been tired since you sat down.”

“I’m always tired. I’m a swimmer.”

“Mm,” she said again, and went back to her notes, but I could feel her filing it away. Yasmin was like that. She never pushed. She just collected.

The first period ended, and we filed out into the hallway with everyone else. Yasmin had Histology next and I had a free hour before the second block, and I told her I’d meet her in the lobby after, and she nodded and wandered off with her black hair swinging and her boots clomping down the tile.

I walked straight to the bathroom on the second floor, the one nobody used because it was by the supply closets.

Okay. Here’s the thing. I locked myself in the last stall, sat on the closed lid, and took out my phone. I wasn’t going to do anything. This was science. A control test. I’d seen the video twice, which meant I had exactly two data points, and both times I’d felt great and passed out. Fine. But I was a med student. I should test it. If it really made people do things, then I’d feel it, and if I didn’t feel it, then I was immune, and I could go on with my life knowing my brother was doing something extremely illegal that I was totally unaffected by.

I put my earbuds in. I opened the link.

The colors began…

“Val?”

A knock. Three quick raps on the metal door.

“Valerie? Are you in there?”

I blinked. The bathroom came back piece by piece: the grey stall, the bad fluorescent light, the little scratched-in heart on the door that said J + M 4ever. My earbuds were around my neck. My phone was in my left hand. And my right hand was…

Oh my God.

My skirt was shoved up around my hips and my panties were pulled to one side, and my fingers were buried in my own wet pussy, working in these tight, frantic little circles. I’d been going at it for I don’t even know how long. My whole thigh was trembling. And, God, the thing that hit me first wasn’t shame. It was what I’d been thinking.

Brian. And Mom. Again.

Mom bent over his desk, Brian’s hands on her hips. Dad in the corner, watching with wet eyes. The line of girls waiting their turn. My brain had been replaying it like a movie while my hand did all the work, and I’d been two seconds away from coming.

“Valerie?” Yasmin again, and there was a note in her voice I rarely heard. Concern.

“Yeah! I’m here! Hold on!”

My heart was going a mile a minute. I yanked my hand out and grabbed a wad of toilet paper, wiping my fingers, and the first thing I thought was okay, that is so weird.

I’m jerking off in the middle of the day. At university. In a bathroom stall, like a feral raccoon. That wasn’t me. Valerie Hartley had standards.

Valerie Hartley would not masturbate without her master’s permission.

I froze with the toilet paper in my hand.

Ask Brian. Wait, why would I need to ask my brother if I can touch myself? The question flickered for half a second, like a lightbulb about to go. Then it just… settled.

Because he’s my master. Obviously.

It was so simple I almost nodded along.

I flushed, pulled myself together, and opened the door. Yasmin was standing there with her bag over her shoulder, her dark eyes sweeping over me, once, quick, like she was reading a chart.

“Sorry,” I said. “Stomachache. I think it was the cafeteria burrito, but I’m fine now.”

“Mm.”

She looked at me for about two seconds longer than was comfortable. Then she shrugged.

“Okay. You were gone for forty minutes. You missed the quiz.”

Forty minutes. Seriously?

We walked toward the pool together, because Yasmin always walked me to practice even though she’d never stepped one foot in water in her whole life. The sun was bright, and there were guys throwing a frisbee on the quad, and I tried not to think about my brother at all.

“So,” Yasmin said. “How are you getting home today?”

“Bus again.”

She turned her head. “No complaint? No fifteen-minute rant about your mother?”

I can’t complain. My master decided how I get home, so I don’t get to complain about it. And I would rather die than tell Yasmin that my loser brother is my master. Well. Unless he ordered me to.

“I got tired of complaining,” I said. “It is what it is.”

“Huh.” Another dry little noise. “That’s the least Valerie sentence I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m growing as a person.”

She snorted and let it drop. Two minutes later, she nudged my shoulder with hers.

“Chloe wants to go out tonight. Some party at Ryan’s friend’s place. Drinks, probably someone’s terrible playlist. You in?”

“No,” I said, instantly.

She blinked. I blinked too. Because that wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but it was what came out, and underneath it, loud as a bell, was a second voice: I’d have to ask Brian.

Yes, I should ask my master.

“I have homework,” I said. “A lot. I need to get it all done so I can go shopping with you guys on Sunday.”

“Fair,” said Yasmin. “Sunday, then. Chloe’s already making a list.”

She veered off toward the library, and I walked into the pool with my heart beating way too hard.

Practice, for the record, was fine. Coach Ortega clapped her hands once to start us, the way she always did, and I swam a hundred and twenty laps of the same stroke without thinking about anything at all. Chloe was in the next lane and tried to race me on the last set and I let her think she was winning for forty meters, then touched the wall a body-length ahead. She slapped the water in rage. I felt very normal and very good.

Then I took the bus home, thirty minutes, standing for ten, and I let my head rest against the window, and I wondered what Brian would want me to do when I got home.

I got home, went up to my room, and the second I stepped through the doorway, I heard him behind me.

“Hey.”

I spun around. Brian was standing in my doorway. He’d followed me up the stairs without a sound, and he stood there in his gray hoodie and joggers, glasses sliding down his nose, one hand twirling a curl of his hair around his finger. He was holding something in his other hand. A rag, and a broom.

Stay alert, Val. Whatever he’s doing to Mom and Dad, I’m the only one who can figure out how to stop him.

“Get out of my room,” I said, automatically.

“Your room is a mess.”

That’s all he said. Five words, in this soft, flat voice.

And I turned around and saw it. I mean really saw it, like a flashlight had clicked on. The clothes everywhere. The damp towel on the bed. The three week-old cereal bowl on the desk. The dried-out sock stuck to the dresser. The swim bag I’d tossed yesterday. How had I not noticed? How could I live like this?

“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s disgusting in here.”

“Yeah.”

“I have to clean.”

“You do.”

He held out the broom and the rag, and I took them, just like that. Obviously he’d brought the right tools. That was so thoughtful of him. I almost said thank you. I was standing there with a broom in one hand and my swim bag in the other, ready to start, and Brian leaned against the doorframe.

“You can’t clean in those clothes, though.”

I looked down. I was in my school clothes, my nice jeans, my favorite top.

“I can’t,” I agreed immediately. “They’ll get dirty.”

“Exactly.”

“What should I wear?”

He pretended to think about it. It was almost cute, how bad he was at pretending. Then he said, “The swimsuit you used today.”

It was in my bag. Still wet. I pulled out the competition suit, the black one with the red stripe, and it was heavy and cold, and it smelled like chlorine and my sweat.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go change in the bathroom.”

“Why?” said Brian.

I stopped.

“Why would you go all the way to the bathroom? You’re going to be right here cleaning anyway. It’s faster if you change here.”

Right. Of course. If my master tells me to change in front of him, then that’s what I do. I don’t get to say no. It’s not what I’d prefer, but I don’t have a choice.

I took my shirt off.

I could feel his eyes on me the whole time, every inch of it, my bra, my jeans sliding down my legs, the pale stripe of skin where my swimsuit usually sat. I should have felt embarrassed. I should have screamed. But what I mostly felt was this shivery, warm attention that made the hair stand up on my arms, like when Coach Ortega watches you swim and you know she’s about to say something good.

I took off my bra. I stepped into the cold wet suit, and it clung to me and made me gasp. When I looked up, Brian had stopped twirling his hair.

I reached for the broom. I never got to it.

Brian crossed the room, stood behind me, and put his hands on me. They slid up my ribs over the wet black fabric and found my nipples through the suit, rolling them between his fingers, pinching, tugging them into hard little points. His thumbs were still cold from the doorframe. I stayed where I was.

Okay. He’s my master. I have to put up with it. That’s all this is. It didn’t do anything for me. It was just Brian being Brian, fumbling at me like I was a game controller.

His fingers kept going while he talked.

“You know,” Brian said, close behind my ear, in that low, careful voice, “you were really mad at Mom yesterday.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t move. His thumbs circled over the nylon. “She made me take the bus.”

“No,” he said. “You were mad because she wouldn’t let you be the one to do the chores.”

I stood there with my hands empty, his hands still on me.

“You can’t stand a mess,” he said. “You wanted everything clean. You wanted to take care of the house, and she was keeping you from it. That’s why you were angry.”

It made so much sense. It was like a missing puzzle piece sliding into the empty spot. I’d been so mad all day, this cloudy red ache that I could never quite explain, and now it had a name.

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Yeah. That’s… that’s it. That’s totally it.”

“I know,” said Brian.

“And when Mom comes up here, you’re going to apologize to her for yesterday”

“Okay,” I said. It didn’t even occur to me to argue.

Apologize to Mom. Fine.

I really need to find out how he’s doing it. The videos. How he gets everybody to do whatever he says.

Speaking of doing what he says…

“Brian?”

“Mm?”

“Am I… allowed to touch myself?”

It came out in this soft, small voice that I didn’t recognize. My cheeks were on fire. I couldn’t believe I’d asked. But I’d been carrying it around since the bathroom, like a stone in my shoe, and I had to know.

Brian smiled against my hair. His fingers never stopped, rolling my nipples through the wet nylon.

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

Then he let go of me, stepped back, and walked out.

I finally started mopping. For maybe a minute. Then I heard footsteps on the stairs, the steady click of Mom’s heels, and I heard her voice. Low. A murmur. I couldn’t make out the words. Brian answered her, and then a lot of nothing.

Then the noises.

I stopped moving.

It was so soft, at first, that I thought I was imagining it. A wet, rhythmic little sound, from somewhere down the hall. And a groan. A man’s groan, low and rough, that I knew without a doubt was Brian.

My mouth went dry.

She’s… she’s not…

But my imagination had already filled in the picture, in vivid, Technicolor detail. My mother, my elegant, strict, perfect mother, on her knees in the hallway in her white blouse, her mouth wrapped around my brother’s cock. My brother’s hand in her hair. The wet sound of her sucking. Brian making those small, helpless noises, the same ones he used to make when he was little and got a sudden hug.

I dropped the mop. I didn’t decide to. My hand was already pressed between my legs, pushing against the wet nylon of the swimsuit, and my forehead was resting against the wall, and I was shaking.

Because I could hear it. Because the walls in this house were thin, and I could hear every sound. The slick, greedy rhythm. The faint moan Mom made, desperate and wet. Brian’s groans, low and rough, getting closer together.

I almost came right there.

I pulled the leg of the swimsuit aside and slid two fingers inside myself, and I rode my own hand with my teeth sunk into my forearm, and I listened to my brother groan and my mother moan, and when I heard that last long, ragged groan, I came so hard that I had to slap my other hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

It took me a long time to stop trembling.

Then I heard a door close down the hall, and silence. And then, right behind my bedroom door, I heard it: a shift. The tiniest sound. A floorboard.

I lunged for the mop.

“Valerie, what are you doing?”

The voice came from the doorway, right behind me. I could hear her breathing, a little too fast, and the faint rustle of fabric being smoothed down.

I didn’t turn around. I kept scrubbing, with my ass toward her, and my heart pounding. Play it cool. Play it cool.

“What does it look like? I’m mopping. Can’t you see my room’s a disgusting mess?”

“Why the swimsuit? Didn’t you change after practice?”

“I did change. But when I got here and was about to start cleaning, Brian reminded me that I shouldn’t wear my normal clothes when I clean.”

A beat.

“He’s right,” Mom said, and I nearly dropped the mop again, because she sounded so proud.

“Your brother said you had something to tell me.”

That was the cue. That was the line I’d been preparing in my head, the thing Brian had told me to say, or maybe I’d just thought of it myself. I looked at the floor.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

I turned around and made myself look at her. Her eyes were so blue. They were shining.

“Sorry. Yesterday I yelled at you and said some ugly things. But I realized you were right.”

She looked so happy. It almost made me feel bad about everything.

“It’s alright, Valerie. I understand what being a teenager is like.”

I rolled my eyes. I was eighteen. But I let it go.

“It’s just that I was a little jealous of you, Mom.”

She smiled like I’d finally said the right thing. “That’s normal, sweetheart. Someday you’ll be the woman of a house too.”

Woman of a house? Mom doesn’t talk like that. Mom has never talked like that. That’s him. That’s whatever Brian is doing to her.

A small, warm pulse dropped through my stomach, and I pressed my knees together without noticing.

“The woman of a house?” I frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? I’m jealous that you get to spend your time at home, cleaning everything. Brian helped me understand what I was feeling.”

And I realized, the second it left my mouth, that I’d just said the thing out loud. Brian helped me understand. It wasn’t a lie. And it wasn’t what I’d meant to say.

But Mom’s whole face lit up, and she crossed the room, and she hugged me, hard, in her silk blouse and her perfume and her sweat.

“I’m so happy to hear that, sweetheart.”

She smelled like perfume and sweat, and under it something else, salty and musky. I only knew that smell from the one night I’d ever gotten that far. I’d never smelled it on my mother in my whole life, and my stomach did this long, slow, dizzying drop.

“Let go, Mom,” I said, “I can’t breathe.”

She let go. And that was when I saw the blouse.

My suit was soaking wet, still, from the pool and from me, and I’d left a huge dark patch of water across the front of her white blouse. It had gone nearly see-through, and under it, plain as day, was a black lace bra and the dark, hard shape of her nipples. She didn’t seem to care. She didn’t even look down.

“Dinner’s ready!” Dad called from downstairs.

Mom and I smiled at each other, and for a second, it felt almost normal, almost sweet, like we were just a mother and daughter who’d made up.

“Shall we?”

“Let’s go.”

Dad had set the table. He was in shorts and a white sweatshirt and—oh my God—a pink apron covered in little hearts. When he turned to grab the salad, I saw that there was a hole cut out of the bottom of it, a small, neat, heart-shaped hole.

I decided not to ask.

“How manly, Dad,” I said, and my voice came out perfectly ironic. I was proud of that.

“As manly as I can be,” he answered from the kitchen. And he didn’t sound ironic at all.

I sat down. Mom sat down. Dad served the food while telling Mom about a meeting at the bank, about some client and some spreadsheet, and we all sat there with our forks in our hands, waiting. Nobody ate. Nobody even moved.

I can’t eat without my master’s permission.

Of course I wait for my master.

But Mom and Dad waiting for Brian? That’s weird. That is so weird. Mom and Dad, forks in the air, waiting for him to sit down like he’s the king of the table. Weird. But thinking about it made my pussy tingle.

Brian came down a minute later and took the seat across from Mom.

“You can eat, family.”

And we ate.

Mom was looking at Brian. Not in a normal mom way. She was looking at him like he was the sun, and her wet blouse was sticking to her, and when he let his eyes drop to her chest, she undid two buttons. Right there. At the dinner table. In front of me. In front of Dad.

Oh my God.

Dad kept talking about the bank. Brian chewed. And then, without even looking up:

“Shut up, old man.”

Dad shut up. Immediately. Like a light switch.

I felt the heat rush up my neck and settle somewhere between my legs. My skin was prickling. I was acutely, painfully aware of the wet swimsuit clinging to me, and of the chair beneath me, and of every inch of my own body.

Brian got up. He walked over to the couch, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV. When he came back to the table, Mom was already shifting over.

“Sit next to me, little slut.”

I gasped. I couldn’t help it. Nobody had ever talked to my mother like that, out loud, in front of everyone, and it made something clench inside me, hard.

“Dad!” I said. It had to come out of me. It was what I’d have said yesterday. “Did you hear how he just called her?”

I looked at Dad and waited for him to say something, anything. He just sat there with his mouth shut and his eyes wet.

He’s not going to say anything. Brian told him to shut up, so he’s shutting up.

My thighs pressed together under the table, and that heat crept up my neck again. Mom stood, walked around the table, and slid into the seat beside Brian.

“Mom, you can’t let him talk to you like that,” I said, outraged.

Come on. React. If I push hard enough, maybe something snaps them out of it.

Mom looked at me. Her hand was hidden under the table, and I saw her thighs shift.

“Since yesterday, your brother has been the man of the house, Valerie. It’s an agreement he came to with your father.”

“Brian is the man of the house?” I turned to look at him.

He smiled at me. It was so confident, so relaxed, that I almost didn’t recognize him. And then he turned to look at Mom, and winked, and I saw Mom’s mouth fall open, her eyes fluttering shut, and I knew exactly where his hand was.

“Yeah, I’m the man of the house, Valerie. Any problem?”

My face burned.

“None,” I said, very quietly.

Dinner went on. Brian watched some guy on the TV talk about anime while his arm rested casually on Mom’s chair, and every now and then he’d murmur “That’s true” or “Exactly” without looking away from the screen, and Mom’s breath would hitch. My brother was fingering my mother under the dinner table while he watched YouTube, and Dad was sitting right there, eating soup, saying nothing. Every single time I looked at them, something low in my body pulled tighter, and I had to press my thighs together so hard that they ached.

When everyone was done, Brian turned off the TV.

“I think Valerie is going to clear the table and wash the dishes. Right?”

He was looking at me.

“Yes, s—” I said.

Sir? I almost said sir.

“Yes, Brian,” I corrected, and my voice was shaking.

He turned to Mom and Dad. “You two, go upstairs and put on what I left on your sides of the bed.”

They went without a word. Dad stood, red-faced and shaking, and Mom followed him up the stairs on stiff, trembling legs, and I watched them go with my fork frozen in my hand.

And then it was just the two of us.

I stood up and picked up the first plates, because it gave my hands something to do. I hadn’t even taken a step toward the sink when Brian was suddenly right in front of me, blocking the way. I hadn’t heard his chair move.

“So,” he said. “Did you notice?”

His hand closed hard on my ass through the wet swimsuit, squeezing, fingers digging in.

“Notice what?” I said, and it came out smaller than I wanted. I still had the plates in my hands.

“Valerie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I gripped the plates tighter. “If this is about Dad’s apron, I don’t want to know.”

He stepped closer. I could smell him now, not unpleasant exactly, just hot and slightly sweet, like a laptop that had been left running. I backed up until the edge of the table dug into my spine, and he followed, one hand still squeezing my ass, the other braced on the table beside me, trapping me.

“I’m controlling Mom and Dad,” he said, low, close to my face.

The plates slid out of my hands and clattered onto the table.

“I don’t… I didn’t notice,” I said. My voice was terrible. High and thin. “No. I really didn’t. That’s… that’s crazy, Brian, how would you even—”

His free hand slid down my stomach, over the wet swimsuit. And then, without any warning at all, his fingers slipped under the stretchy edge between my legs and pushed into me.

I gasped and gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles went white.

Two fingers. Easy. Like there was no resistance at all. I was so wet it was embarrassing.

“I bet you were already touching yourself,” he murmured, “thinking about it.”

He curled his fingers, just slightly. My knees almost went out.

“Yes,” I whispered.

It just came out. Where was the lie? Where was the Valerie, the one who rolled her eyes and made jokes? I’d been so careful all day. And now that sharp, snappy girl was gone, and in her place was someone standing in a kitchen in a wet swimsuit, breathing like she’d run a mile, with her brother’s hand between her legs.

“Good,” he said, and I wanted to cry from how much I liked it.

He slowly, slowly withdrew his fingers. And I made this horrible whimpering noise that I will take to my grave.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” said Brian. His voice was different now, steady and a little breathless. “I’m going upstairs. I’m going to finish what I started with them. Tonight. After that, there’s no going back. Not for them.”

I stared at the plates on the table.

“If you want me to stop,” he said, and his fingers slid back inside me, deep, all the way in, curling, until my breath broke, “this is the only time you’ll get to say it. If you tell me not to go up, I won’t.”

He’d do it. I knew he would. He’d just… stop. For me.

The kitchen was silent except for the quiet ticking of the stove clock. My brother could stop this right now. The cold, clever part of my brain, the part that was a med student, the part that took notes, said: do it. This is wrong. This is so wrong. Tell him to stop.

And I thought about Mom’s face at the dinner table. The way her mouth had fallen open. The way Dad had cried, grateful, when Brian told him to shut up. And I thought about how my whole body was humming.

“Go up,” I said.

“What do you want me to do?”

He wanted me to say it. I understood that. He needed me to say it out loud.

I lifted my head, finally, and looked him in the eyes. Light brown, almost gold behind the glasses. I’d known those eyes since I was born.

“I want you to go up there,” I said, “and dominate Mom and Dad.”

Something flashed in his face. Not a smile. Something hungrier.

“Okay,” said Brian. “One more thing. When you go up to your room, don’t watch the video Mom sent you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to come to your room. And I want you awake.”

He wiped his fingers on a dish towel, casually, like he’d just handled a carton of milk. And he left.

I don’t know how long I stood there.

Long enough for the clock to tick through whole minutes. Long enough to realize that my hand was between my legs again, and I was rubbing myself hard through the wet nylon, fast and ugly and desperate. I leaned my forehead against the cabinet. I could hear footsteps upstairs, and a door, and a low murmur of voices I couldn’t make out.

I came in about a minute. It wasn’t even good. It was a quick, sharp, humiliating little spasm, and then it was over, and I was just standing in my kitchen, in my wet swimsuit, hating how empty it felt.

So I cleaned.

I washed the dishes. Plates, glasses, the big pan Dad had used. I scrubbed each one longer than it needed, trying to scrub my head clean while I was at it. And with every plate I stacked on the rack, I felt a sort of dim, calm peace wash over me. Like I was finally doing the thing I was supposed to be doing.

I was just drying my hands on a dish towel when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Heavy. Uncertain.

Dad.

He came down in these… clothes. A pair of women’s elastic shorts, hot pink and tiny, hugging his hips tight. A fluorescent purple crop top that rode up above his stomach. His face was red, and wet, and streaked with tears, and his eyes were glassy. I tried not to look, but it was impossible not to notice how the pink spandex tented at the front.

He didn’t cover himself. He didn’t even try.

“Valerie,” he said in a rough, humble voice. “I’m… sorry you have to see me like this.”

I couldn’t speak.

“I’m going to be sleeping on the couch,” he said. “Brian’s sleeping in my bed now. With your mother.” He swallowed. A fresh tear rolled down his cheek, and his cock twitched in the shorts, visibly. “It’s better this way. He’s… he’s a real man. And I’m not.”

My father said those words. My father, who taught me to ride a bike and to change a tire. Who grilled every Sunday and never let anyone else touch the tongs. Who carried the entire couch up the stairs by himself and called me “my girl.” My father, standing barefoot in neon spandex, crying and rock-hard.

Every single word felt like a hot coal dropped into my stomach.

I had to run. If I stayed for one more second, I was going to put my hand down my swimsuit right there, in front of my father, in the middle of the living room. So I said, “Okay, Dad, goodnight,” in a voice I didn’t recognize, and I sprinted up the stairs.

I shut my bedroom door and leaned my back against it, gasping.

My room was still a disaster. Clothes on the floor, the damp towel on the bed, the cereal bowl on the desk, my swim bag right where I’d dropped it. I hadn’t even gotten to it.

I sat down at my desk, put my earbuds in, and opened my physiology textbook. I stared at a diagram of the heart, and I told myself I was going to study. I was going to focus. I was going to be a doctor someday, and I did not have time for any of this. The left ventricle. The right atrium. Oh God, Mom’s face. The aorta. Brian’s hand. Systole. Dad’s tears.

I didn’t read a single word.

“Hey.”

I jumped so hard I knocked the book off the desk.

Brian stood in my doorway. His hair was messy. His glasses were crooked. He had that look, flushed, loose, a little dazed, the look of someone who had just run a marathon and found out he’d won. His hoodie was gone, and his T-shirt clung to him with sweat.

“It’s done,” he said. “There’s no going back now.”

I pulled the earbuds out of my ears. “Okay,” I said.

“Come on. I want to show you something.”

I followed him. Of course I did.

We went down the stairs, the steps creaking under us, and into the living room. And there, on the couch, was my father.

He was still in the neon top and the pink shorts, stretched out with no blanket at all. His phone was in one hand, a pair of earbuds were in his ears, and he was staring at the screen with a slack, dreamy look. His other hand was inside the pink spandex, moving. Fast. Rhythmic. I could see his fist working under the thin fabric. He was jerking off. On the family couch. In the room where we’d watched a hundred movies together.

I should have been horrified. Instead I stood in the doorway with my heart hammering and my cheeks burning, unable to look away.

“He’s fine,” Brian said, low, behind me. “He can’t hear us.”

He put his hand on the small of my back.

“The short version is, he’s my beta now,” Brian said. “He’s not allowed to touch any of the women in this house. Not Mom. Not you. Not Stephany, when she comes. He’s only allowed to jerk off. He cooks for us, and he loves it. He wears what I tell him to wear. And his cock stays visible, always, so that every woman in this house knows exactly how pathetic he is.”

His hand slid down. Over my hip. Over my ass, squeezing, slowly, the whole palm.

“When he cooks,” Brian said, and he was almost whispering, “he gets so hard he can barely walk.”

I should have been disgusted by that. I wasn’t. I was pressing back against his hand. And, oh God, my father was five feet away, tapping and moaning softly into a screen full of colors, and my brother was squeezing my ass, and I could feel Brian’s hard-on pressing against my back.

I turned my head, and I felt his breath on my mouth, and for a second I thought this is it, he’s going to kiss me. And I wanted him to. Which was the most disturbing thing of all, because this was Brian. Brian who still had Pokémon sheets in the attic. Brian who smelled like old pizza and desperation. Brian, my loser, nerd, hermit brother…

But he stepped back. He took his hand away. “Come on,” he said. “There’s more.”

I nearly screamed in frustration.

He took me upstairs, to my parents’ bedroom.

Mom was on the bed.

She’d just showered. Her blonde hair was wet and tangled around her shoulders, and her skin was pink and glowing, and she was completely naked. She’d put her earbuds in. She was propped against the pillows with her phone in front of her face, her legs spread wide, one hand working between them, her mouth slightly open, her eyes glazed over. Her red lingerie was scattered across the carpet like she’d been peeled out of it: the bra by the dresser, the garter belt twisted in the sheets, the stockings in a heap, a tiny crumpled thong at the foot of the bed.

She didn’t look up. She didn’t see us. Her whole world was in that phone.

“She watches her video every night,” Brian said, closing the door softly behind us. “After she showers. It lets me change things a little more each time.”

He moved behind me and put his arms around my waist.

“Mom’s job is to please me,” he said into my ear. “To stay in shape. To stay available. At the office she still keeps her dignity, because that’s what I want. But here, in this house, in this bed, she does anything I ask.”

His hands roamed while he talked: my stomach, my tits through the swimsuit, my thighs, the inside of my knee.

Okay. Don’t look at his hands. Look at the ceiling. Listen to the words. Mom, who made me rewash a pan three times, doing whatever he says. In her bed. In THIS bed. Oh my God.

On the bed, Mom’s hips lifted off the sheets, chasing her own fingers, slick and glistening, a dark wet patch spreading beneath her. A soft, broken moan slipped out of her. Behind me, Brian’s thumbs brushed my nipples through the nylon, and a shiver ran down my spine.

“Dad doesn’t get to touch anyone anymore,” Brian murmured, one hand sliding between my thighs, over the suit. “He cooks. He cleans. He watches. I control them, Valerie.”

His palm pressed right where I was already throbbing. Without deciding anything, I tilted my hips back into it, just enough that the heel of his hand rode over exactly the spot I needed. My breath caught.

Wait. Hold on. Why did I just do that? Do I actually want my brother touching me there? Ew. No. Ew?

No. Obviously no. It’s the story, okay? It’s literally the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. Mom naked on the bed, Dad downstairs crying in a pink apron. Anyone would be wet. Anyone.

His fingers began rubbing slow circles over the soaked nylon, and I pressed my lips together to keep the sound in.

Okay, but listen to yourself, Val. You’re in your parents’ room, grinding on your brother’s hand while he tells you how he fucks Mom, and Mom is RIGHT THERE. That’s not “the story.” That’s so messed up. I’m so messed up.

His other hand closed over my breast and pinched my nipple, and a small, helpless sound slipped out anyway.

It’s fine. It’s FINE. He’s my master. He says touch, I get touched. That’s the whole deal. It’s not that I like it, it’s just… rules. And if my hips kept rocking against his hand, well. That was just me following the rules.

Brian’s hands left me for a second. When he came back, he was holding something small and red and limp. The thong. He dangled it from one finger, a scrap of lace that was dark with wetness and heavy as a sponge.

“Smell it,” he said.

Before I could answer, he balled it up in his fist and pressed it over my nose and mouth, the soaked crotch right against my lips.

I breathed in, and I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. Sweat. Soap. Perfume. Underneath it, thick and heavy, the musky sweetness of my mother herself, soaked into the lace. And under that, faint but unmistakable, a salty, male smell I’d noticed on her earlier. The smell of him. Of his cum.

My knees buckled. “It smells like you,” I whispered against the lace, and my voice shook. “Mom’s thong. It smells like… like my master.”

Behind me, Brian made a low sound in his throat. His hands tightened on my waist.

“That’s right,” he said hoarsely.

But he didn’t let it go further. He took the thong away from my face and dropped it back on the carpet, with this infuriating control. “Okay. That’s enough.”

Wait, that’s it? Two more seconds and I would’ve totally come. Ugh.

No. No, no, no. What is WRONG with me? I’m not mad that he stopped. I’m not.

And I followed him out.

In my room, he pointed at the closet.

“Open it.”

I opened it.

Hanging on the rod, in a plastic bag, between my winter coat and my prom dress, was a maid’s uniform. A black and white one. The skirt was so short it looked like a joke. The top was a tiny apron with ruffles, cut so low that it seemed designed to show everything. There were thigh-high stockings, and a headband with lace. It was ridiculous. It was obscene.

“Tomorrow,” said Brian, “you’re going to put that on and clean the house. All day. Every room. Top to bottom.”

“Okay,” I said, because I couldn’t imagine saying anything else.

“And you’re not allowed to touch yourself,” he said, “until the house is spotless.”

I blinked. It was like being slapped.

“What? You said I was allowed.”

“You were. Now you’re not. Not until it’s done.”

“Done when?”

“When the house is spotless. And I’m the one who says whether it is.”

“I’m not some… pervert who can’t control herself,” I snapped, and I actually put my hands on my hips. “I can wait. Obviously. I’m a person, Brian, I’m not an animal.”

He smiled. A thin, patient smile. “We’ll see.”

I hated that smile.

Then he took out his phone, tapped it, and my own phone buzzed on the desk.

“I sent you something. It’s from my channel.”

I went still.

“Is that…” I looked at the phone. “Is that how you did it? To Mom and Dad? With a video?”

“Yes.”

He said it so simply. He wasn’t proud, and he wasn’t bragging. He was just telling me the truth, which was somehow worse.

I picked up my phone. The thumbnail glowed up at me: cartoon faces, bright colors, a stupid title in big letters. And I thought, it’s a shame. A real shame, that I couldn’t disobey him, that I couldn’t just throw the phone across the room. But I’d watched the other one three times, and I was fine. I was the strong one. I had a better brain than my parents. More willpower. I trained for six hours a day in cold water. I wasn’t weak.

“You won’t be able to hypnotize me,” I told him.

He tilted his head, gently, like I’d said something sweet.

“Again, Val. We’ll see,” said Brian.

He left, and he closed my door behind him, and I was alone in my messy room with a phone in my hand.