Yes, until she doesn't - Valerie's POV

Chapter 9

Valerie POV

Mom came back first.

I heard the car in the driveway, and then the front door, and then the heavy rustle of plastic bags. I was in the downstairs hallway on my knees, scrubbing the last scuff off the baseboard, and I didn’t even look up.

“Valerie.”

I stood up, wiping my hands on my skirt. Mom was in the entryway in her cream cardigan, arms full of grocery bags, glasses on their chain. She dropped them on the living room table with a thump.

“These need to be put away,” she said, rubbing her wrists. “Everything in its proper place, please. I have to go change.”

“Okay,” I said.

She climbed the stairs. I started unpacking.

It was a weirdly peaceful ten minutes. Canned tomatoes, pasta, rice, eggs, a family pack of chicken. I lined the cans up in the pantry with the labels facing forward. I put the eggs in the door of the fridge, the milk behind them, the vegetables in the crisper by color. When I was done, I stood back and looked at the shelves, and something warm and satisfied hummed in my chest.

Perfect. Everything where it belongs.

The front door opened again. Dad this time, in his navy polo, with three more bags hanging from each hand. These were different from Mom’s: black, opaque, tied shut at the top, the kind of bags that don’t tell you what’s inside.

“Those are for Brian,” Dad said. He didn’t wait for me to ask. He carried them up the stairs like he was bringing something sacred to an altar, and came back down empty-handed, a little out of breath, smiling.

“I’ll start getting dinner ready,” he told me, and went into the kitchen.

Dad bought him stuff. Sure. Normal Saturday.

I was in the living room, folding the throw blanket for the third time, when Mom came back down.

She’d changed. Of course she had. But not into anything I recognized.

I knew her yoga outfit. Mom did yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in this boring gray set with a little zippered top, the kind of thing a woman wears when she cares about her knees. This was not that. This was a pink sports bra so small it looked like it had shrunk in the wash, her tits spilling over the top and bottom in a way that made me wonder how she could breathe. And the leggings were black and shiny and sheer, tight as paint, with a strategic tear right at the crotch, a ragged little slit, like somebody had cut a window into them.

No underwear. I could tell from across the room.

She had her hair in a high ponytail, a yoga mat under her arm, and a determined look on her face.

“I have to exercise,” she announced, to nobody in particular. “To stay perfect for my man.”

She unrolled the mat in the center of the living room, right in front of the TV, and fiddled with the remote until a woman in a white tank top appeared on the screen. She had a soft, soothing voice and a bun so tight it looked painful.

“Welcome back, everyone. Let’s begin by finding our breath.”

Mom folded herself onto the mat and closed her eyes.

I went back to folding the blanket. I’d already folded it twice.

Brian came down about five minutes later, in boxers and a wrinkled T-shirt, with his hair standing up and his glasses crooked. He stood at the bottom of the stairs for a second, watching my mother do cat-cow on the carpet with her ass in the air.

Then he crossed the room and sat on the couch, directly behind her.

He didn’t say a word. He just put his hand on her lower back, and she let out a quiet little hum.

“Inhale, and lift through the spine… and exhale, round the back…”

Mom followed the video perfectly. Inhale, lift. Exhale, round. Every time she arched, Brian’s hand slid a little lower, down the curve of her back, over the pink spandex, across the swell of her ass. Every time she rounded, his fingers dipped between her legs, into the tear in her leggings. She didn’t break form. Not once. She just breathed, long and slow, with her eyes closed and her lips parted.

I was standing by the bookshelf with the blanket in my arms, pretending to straighten a row of picture frames.

Don’t look. Fix the frames. Fix the frames, Val.

“Now, we’ll step back into downward dog. Feel the stretch through the hamstrings…”

“I’d fuck her,” Brian said.

He said it low, and lazy, almost to himself, with his eyes on the TV. At first I thought I’d misheard.

“The teacher,” he added, to Mom’s ass. “Honestly? Absolutely. Look at her. I’d bend her over that mat.”

Mom made a small, pleased sound, like he’d said something sweet about dinner. “Yes, Brian,” she said, between breaths.

My face was on fire.

I stood there, frozen, with a blanket in my arms and my heart thudding.

Yesterday that would have been the most appalling thing anyone had ever said in front of me. Today it’s just… what he’s like. My brother says things like that, and our mother says thank you.

It’s fine. It’s fine. I’m cleaning.

I put the blanket down and picked up the duster.

It was supposed to be a normal yoga class, so of course it ended up being the most obscene ten minutes of my life.

“Now, from standing, we’ll lower into a deep squat. Hips back, chest tall. Hold it. Feel the stretch in your thighs, and keep breathing.”

Mom stood up from the mat, spread her feet wide, and sank down into a squat, with her thighs open and her back straight and her hands pressed together at her chest. Her ass hovered an inch over the carpet. The slit in her leggings gaped wide.

“Hold,” Brian said.

He slid off the couch onto his knees behind her. I couldn’t see his face. I could see his hand, spreading her cheeks, and a finger slowly pressing against her asshole.

Mom gasped.

“Hold it,” Brian said, calmly, like a coach. His finger slid inside. She shuddered. Her thighs shook, but she held the squat, her face scrunched in concentration, her breath coming in short, sharp huffs.

“Keep your core engaged… breathe into the stretch…”

I was holding my own breath.

Slowly, he pulled his finger out. And slowly, he slid two others into her pussy, through the tear in her leggings, and she let out a low, broken moan I’d never heard from her in my entire life.

“No,” said Brian. “Stay. Stay there. You’re doing so well.”

Her legs were trembling so hard that the pink spandex rippled. I could hear the wet sounds, over the soothing voice of the woman on TV. A strand of hair had escaped her ponytail and was stuck to her cheek, and her mouth was open, and her eyes were shut, and she looked like she was about to cry.

My hand had drifted down.

I didn’t realize it until I felt the lace of my thong under my fingertips, through the thin skirt of the maid uniform. I’d stopped dusting. I was standing in the middle of the living room with my other hand clenched in the duster and my hand halfway to my pussy.

Stop. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t.

Mom came with a long, wailing cry, her legs gave out, and she collapsed forward onto the mat on her hands and knees, shaking, face down, panting like she’d run a marathon. Brian pulled his hand out. It was shining.

He looked up.

His eyes found me right away, standing there, flushed, frozen, one hand twitching at my hip. He looked at my face, and my chest, and the hand that wasn’t quite hiding between my legs. And he smiled.

That was it. That smile. I felt something low in my stomach clench so hard that I almost came right there, standing up, with my mother twitching on the carpet at my feet.

I dropped the duster. I walked, very fast, out of the living room and up the stairs, one hand on the railing, all the way to the top.

I’m going to need to clean that carpet again.

I started with Brian’s room.

I’d never really been inside it since he was a kid. It hadn’t changed much. Posters of anime I didn’t recognize, a desk with two monitors, a messy bed with a Pokémon blanket I’d known since I was eight. The air smelled like old pizza and warm electronics. It was a loser’s room. A loser’s room, and my master’s.

I stripped the bed, and I wiped down the desk, and I gathered the empty cans and the cups with the dried-up soda. I vacuumed the rug. The black bags Dad had brought up were lined up beside the desk, tied tight. One of them had slipped open at the top, and inside I could see the corner of a box, bright blue, with a big white label.

Condoms.

A box of condoms. The size of a shoebox.

My dad bought my brother a box of condoms.

I stared at it for a long time.

Okay. That’s… a thing that happened.

I tied the bag shut, very neatly, and put it back where I’d found it.

I was wiping the monitor when the door swung open behind me.

“You’re done in here.”

Brian stood in the doorway, shirtless now, with a towel over his shoulder. He’d clearly washed up. His hair was wet. He smelled like soap, and I hated how much I noticed.

“It’s clean already,” he said, looking around. “Good job. I need to use my room.”

“Okay,” I said, setting down the rag.

I was halfway to the door when he spoke again.

“Go clean the master bedroom.”

I stopped.

“There’s something there you’ll find interesting,” he said. He didn’t smile this time. He just watched me, with that steady, patient look of his.

My stomach turned over.

I didn’t ask what. I didn’t ask why. He’d said clean the master bedroom, and I couldn’t not clean the master bedroom.

I slipped past him into the hall, and walked down the carpet to my parents’ door, with fear, and curiosity, and something that felt a lot like anticipation, and I didn’t let myself think too hard about which one was winning.

I heard it before I opened the door.

A low, wet, rhythmic sound. Voices. And under them, a third sound I couldn’t place, a soft slapping, like somebody patting a drum.

I turned the handle.

The curtains were closed, and the room was dim and warm and smelled like sweat and skin and perfume. The TV on the dresser was on, and a woman on the screen was on her hands and knees, saying things in a high, fake voice. But I wasn’t looking at the TV.

My mother was on the bed.

She was lying back against the pillows with her legs spread as wide as they would go, naked from the waist down, with the pink sports bra pushed up above her breasts. One hand was between her legs, working fast. The other was twisted into the sheets. Her eyes were half open, glazed and unfocused, and her mouth was wet and slack.

At the foot of the bed, on his knees, was my father.

He was naked, except for his socks. One of Mom’s feet was in his hands, lifted to his mouth, and he was licking it. Slowly. Reverently. Between her toes, and up the arch, and around the ankle. His other hand was around his cock, stroking it in the same steady rhythm as Mom’s fingers, as if they’d been told to match.

Oh my God.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

“Brian,” Mom moaned.

“Brian,” Dad breathed, against her foot.

“Brian—please—”

Neither of them looked at me.

I stood in the doorway like I’d been shot. My ears were roaring. My knees had gone to water. Every part of my brain was screaming at me to turn around, close the door, go back to my room, go back to my life.

I can’t.

He said clean it. I can’t not.

So I walked into the room, and I picked up the rag from my apron pocket, and I started cleaning the nightstand.

I don’t know how long I was in there.

Long enough to dust every surface in the room. Long enough to wipe down the dresser, and straighten the books on the shelf, and polish the mirror over Mom’s vanity. I vacuumed the rug, and Dad shuffled his knees six inches to the left, without breaking his rhythm, to let me get the corner. I sprayed the windowsill, and the baseboards, and the top of the closet door.

And the whole time, my parents jerked off, six feet from my face.

They didn’t come. That was the thing I couldn’t stop noticing. Mom would get close, her thighs shaking, her back arching off the pillows, and then her hand would freeze, and she’d gasp, “Not yet, not yet,” and lie there trembling for a minute before she started again. Dad did the same. He’d get to the edge, with his cock swollen and dark and leaking onto the carpet, and he’d squeeze the base and whimper through his nose, and wait.

Nobody lasts this long. Nobody.

They’re being told. By a video. Somewhere in their heads, my brother is telling them exactly when.

My parents, who had never once said the word “sex” in front of me. Who changed the channel when a kiss scene went too long. Who’d given me a very short, very awkward talk with a pamphlet when I was twelve and never mentioned it again. And here they were, naked and shaking and moaning my brother’s name, and not one of them had noticed that I was in the room.

I should have been horrified. I think part of me was. But that part was small, and quiet, and getting smaller. The rest of me was shaking too. My panties were so wet they clung to me. My nipples scraped against the lace of my bra with every breath. And I kept cleaning, and kept cleaning, and kept my hands very, very busy.

Don’t touch yourself. I can’t. I can’t touch myself. Just clean.

I was on my knees, wiping the leg of the bed, when the video finally ended.

The TV went black. The room went quiet, except for breathing.

“Michael,” said my mother.

Her voice was different. Flat. Clear. Her hand stopped moving between her legs.

“Stop. That’s enough. Go get dinner started.”

Dad let go of her foot. He let go of his cock. He jumped to his feet like somebody had flipped a switch, and for one second his face was pure, naked longing. And then he said, “Yes, Diana,” and bolted out of the room, naked except for his socks, his erection bobbing, and I heard him thunder down the stairs.

The room was silent.

Mom lay there, flushed and glistening. She turned her head, slowly, and looked straight at me.

“Did you like the show, Princess?”

It wasn’t her voice. Not really. It sounded like her, but it had that flatness, like she was reading a line off a card.

That’s him. That’s a question from him.

I could have lied. I wanted to lie. Every cell in my body wanted to say no, God, Mom, what is wrong with you.

But if Brian wanted to know, I couldn’t lie.

“Yes,” I whispered.

She smiled, sleepy and satisfied.

“I thought so.”

She sat up, pulled her bra back down over her breasts, and shrugged on a silky robe from the foot of the bed. At the door she turned around and said, in her normal voice, the voice that had called me down to dinner a thousand times:

“Don’t forget to change the sheets, sweetheart.”

And she left.

I changed the sheets.

I stripped the bed, and I stuffed the old ones, warm and damp and smelling like my parents, into the laundry basket as quickly as I could, and I made the bed with fresh ones, white and crisp, with hospital corners. Then I did the bathroom.

The master bathroom was huge, with a double sink and a stand-up shower and a big mirror lined with Mom’s skincare. I scrubbed the tub. I scrubbed the toilet. I polished the faucets until they shone. I opened the cabinet under the sink to wipe it out, and I stopped.

It was packed with boxes.

Small white ones, stacked on top of one another, a dozen at least, every one of them labeled with a bright green stripe. Glycerin Suppositories. Fast-acting.

I picked one up.

Why are there so many suppositories?

Since when does anyone in this house need… oh. Oh. Okay, that’s Dad. That’s something Dad bought. Because Brian wanted him to.

I didn’t know why. I couldn’t imagine. But I stood there with that box in my hand, and something else bubbled up in the back of my mind, small, bright, and practical.

Everything needs to be clean.

The whole house. All of it. That’s the rule. And I’m in the house.

I looked at the instructions on the back of the box. Insert one suppository. Effect in fifteen to sixty minutes.

Inside, too, if it’s going to be spotless.

It made perfect sense. It made so much sense that I didn’t even blush. I took one out of its foil, locked the bathroom door, and used it.

Dinner was at seven. I was starving.

Dad had made roast chicken with potatoes and a salad, and he served it in his apron, with his cock out through the little heart, as usual. Mom sat at Brian’s side in a short white robe that gaped open at the chest. Brian was in a T-shirt and boxers, leaning back in his chair like a man who owned the house.

Because, I guess, he did.

“Hey, Val,” said Brian. He was cutting his chicken, slowly. “Want to see something funny?”

I looked up from my plate.

I didn’t know what to say.

Say yes? That’s wrong. Say no? I can’t.

I opened my mouth, and nothing came out.

“Watch,” said Brian.

He turned to Mom and Dad.

“How’s the food?”

“Delicious,” said Mom.

“Very good,” said Dad.

“Is it?” said Brian. “Is it, really? Is there anything missing?”

Mom hesitated. “Well… it could use a little more salt, maybe.”

“A little salt, yes,” Dad said quickly. “You’re right, Diana.”

“Oh, salt,” Brian said. “We’ve got salt.”

He pushed his chair back. He stood up, right on the seat of his chair, in his boxers, and he pulled them down. His cock was already hard. He wrapped one hand around it and looked down at my parents, at the two of them tilting their faces up at him, and he said, in a bored, lazy voice:

“If you want salt, put your plates under here.”

I stopped breathing.

Mom picked up her plate with both hands. Dad did the same. They held them up in the air, side by side, directly under Brian’s cock, like two children holding up bowls for soup. And Brian started to stroke himself, fast and rough, with his eyes on me.

He came almost immediately.

Long, thick ropes across both plates, across the chicken and the potatoes and the salad, across Dad’s fingers and the edge of Mom’s plate. Mom gasped, delighted. Dad closed his eyes. Brian shuddered, shook out the last drops, and sat back down with his shorts around his knees.

“Thank you, Brian,” Mom said, sweetly.

“Thank you,” said Dad.

They picked up their forks, and they ate.

I sat at the table with my hands under my thighs and my face burning, staring at my own plate. My thighs were clamped together so hard I thought something might snap. I’d made a small, strangled sound, somewhere around the second rope, and I was desperately hoping no one had noticed.

Across the table, Brian was eating his chicken, calmly, like nothing had happened.

After dinner, he pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth.

“You two go shower,” he said to Mom and Dad. “Then watch your videos. Both of you. Before bed.”

“Yes, Brian,” they said together.

“I’ve got some things to finish in my room,” he told them, stretching. He didn’t say what. Nobody asked.

Mom and Dad stood up. They went upstairs, hand in hand, and Brian followed a minute later, taking the stairs two at a time, whistling.

And then I was alone at the table, with a stack of dirty plates and a heart that wouldn’t slow down.

Okay. Think. Think, Val.

He’s going up to his room. To do “some things.” That’s where he makes them. Or watches them. Or whatever. The videos. If I could just get in there, if I could figure out how it works…

I’m the only one. The only one it didn’t work on. Mom and Dad can’t help themselves. They’re depending on me.

I stood up. I took one step toward the stairs.

“Val,” came Brian’s voice, from the landing. “Don’t forget the dishes.”

I stopped.

Of course. The dishes. I’d almost forgotten. The dishes were dirty, and somebody had to do them, and Brian had said, and—

“Right,” I said. “The dishes.”

He stood on the landing until I looked away. Then I heard him go up the rest of the stairs, and down the hall, and a door closing.

I washed every plate. I scoured the pan Dad had used, and the pot, and the roasting tray. I washed the plates with the salt on them, which I tried not to look at, and I washed the glasses, and the silverware, and I dried each one and put it in its proper place. And with every dish, the heat in my stomach, which hadn’t gone away for even a minute since ten o’clock that morning, grew a little more insistent.

Now what.

I knew what. I’d known it since lunch.

I couldn’t touch myself. Not until the house was spotless, and not until Brian said it was. I’d cleaned every inch. I’d scrubbed the floors and wiped the shelves and washed the sheets, and my whole body was a tuning fork, vibrating, aching. I needed it. I needed to come so badly I could have cried.

And the only person who could say I was allowed was in the room at the top of the stairs.

I stood in front of his door.

I don’t know how long. A minute, maybe. Maybe five. The hall was dark. I could hear the shower running in the master bathroom, and the quiet murmur of the TV in my parents’ room. From under Brian’s door came a thin stripe of yellow light.

My breath was getting short. I could feel the heat climbing up my neck, into my cheeks, my ears. My hands were shaking.

I’m actually going to do this.

I’m going to walk into my brother’s room, and I’m going to ask him if I’m allowed to touch myself.

Valerie Hartley. Captain of the swim team. Eighteen years old. Top of her anatomy class. Who, not twenty-four hours ago, had stood in her own bedroom in a wet swimsuit and told him, with her hands on her hips, that she wasn’t an animal, and that she could wait.

Valerie Hartley can last a day without masturbating.

I raised my fist to knock.

It would be a defeat. That was the thing. It would be the biggest, stupidest, most humiliating defeat of my life, and it would be the end of the person I was at nine this morning.

My knuckles hovered an inch from the wood.