Gideon tried to walk the straight and narrow path. He rose early for work each morning when there was work to be had. He did his best to busy himself with those things that decent people do.

It’s not that trouble had never found Gideon. It had. In fact, trouble had been a constant if mostly unwelcome companion for nearly all his twenty seven years. He had designedly sought it out in those heady, joyful, angry days when he thought, as all young men do, that he was invincible. Trouble, he learned, has a very long memory and is a difficult friend to lose.

He lived alone in a rented house on a colorless side street where whores, pimps, and dealers sometimes sat in cars to count the proceeds of their nightly labors or to make furtive phone calls to their loved ones. Whores, pimps, and dealers do have loved ones too.

The house was just a bungalow really, with a shabby, gabled roof and a low, cinder block wall separating his dusty lawn from the street. Young men sometimes sat on Gideon’s wall late at night to drink and smoke and to talk loudly about being invincible and other such things. Gideon didn’t mind. He sometimes lay awake beside an open window and listened to them laugh and talk, remembering how it was to feel like them.

Gideon tried to walk the straight and narrow path. It was not always an easy thing to do.

*****

“No.”

“Gideon, please. Just listen to what we have to say.”

“You’re out of your minds,” he said, looking from one young woman to the other. “Both of you.”

He looked at the camera in his hands and was surprised by the size and weight of it. He ran his fingers lightly over the recessed controls and admired the black matte finish and long neck of the wide rectangular lens. In its clear glass he saw the glint of three bare bulbs hanging from a pitted fixture above his kitchen table.

“You want to use this to make a video of your sister having sex with me,” he said evenly. He looked at Audrey, then back at Mara. “You’re serious. This is what you came all the way over here to talk about?”

Mara flicked ashes into an empty beer can. She shifted her weight in her chair and tried to keep her voice from shaking. Something beneath Gideon’s relaxed, no-nonsense tone made her uneasy.

She hadn’t seen Gideon in years. He still had that seductive air of danger about him, she thought, despite barely having moved a muscle in the last five minutes. Yet he had changed. She no longer saw the spark of youthful mischief in his eyes. It had been replaced with something else, something she couldn’t identify. It unsettled her, though she didn’t know why.

“Yes… well, no, not just that camera. I, um… I’d have other equipment too.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Mara felt stupid. The type of camera was beside the point, wasn’t it? She chided herself for sounding nervous. This was already going very badly.

Gideon pressed a button and a digital display sprang open on the side of the camcorder. He tapped a finger twice over the makeshift ashtray while blowing a long string of smoke out of the side of his mouth.

“What kind of equipment?”

Mara knew that Gideon was toying with her, making her work for it before ultimately shutting her down. He doesn’t give a shit about the equipment, she thought. Even so, she was relieved to be on familiar ground for the moment.

“Well… I’d need three pro-grade 1080/50i HD digital cameras,” she started. “… a lighting package, tripods, sound… there’s more. I can borrow most of it from a guy I know who produces shorts. I’d have to rent some things too.”

“I haven’t seen you around here in a couple of years.” Gideon tilted a can of beer toward his mouth and then stopped. “Is this what that fancy scholarship to UCLA was for? You went all the way to California to become a pornographer?”

Long strands of brown hair fell in front of his clear, hazel eyes. Mara thought the untamed waves that fell on his shoulders and the two day old growth on his angular face invested his looks with an adventuresome quality. Like a knight errant, she mused.

“Gideon, no, it’s not…” she hesitated, beginning to feel very young and foolish. He had always made her feel this way, so unsure of herself. She took a deep breath. “It’s for a competition at a film festival in Montreal. The theme is Moments Érotiques Explicites. It’s not… pornography.”

“Oh, now I get it. A French title,” he said dryly. “It’s art.”

He looked at Audrey. She had scarcely made eye contact with him since she and her sister had shown up at his door. Her cautious irises were a fine waxen blue and sandy locks tumbled haphazardly down her back. She looked thin and very pale to Gideon, paler than he could ever remember seeing her. Splotches of red around her eyes and nose suggested that she had been crying. Even so, she had the kind of effortless, enduring beauty that made other women stop and take notice. For Gideon, her graceful, tender presence was agony.

Gideon turned back to consider Mara. She was smaller and slighter than Audrey, with canny eyes and a pert nose. Her long brown hair was piled loosely on her head and two stray locks framed her scrubbed face. Thick tortoise shell glasses punctuated the fashionable, nerdy look.

She was uncomfortable; he could see that. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to sit still and her skittish, dark eyes had never stopped moving. These two really didn’t seem like sisters at all, he thought.

“Okay, why me? Why your own sister? There are people you can pay to fuck for you.” He jerked his head toward the window. “They aren’t hard to find around here.”

Mara winced. That really was the question, wasn’t it?

“This has to be about real people, not actors,” she started. “It’s an exploration of stimulation and sexual response, not faked orgasms and staged money shots. There’s a connection between you two. The piece is about the physical expression of that connection. It will be beautiful.”

He crushed a charred filter tip on the empty can.

“Do you realize just how full of shit that sounded? There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

Audrey placed a warm hand over Gideon’s and feathered the small crescent moons tattooed between the knuckles of his fingers. There was one for each of the eight months of his incarceration.

“Gideon,” she said quietly. Her unsteady voice was barely audible. “Mara knows we both really need the money. And you and I have been… you know… with each other before.”

“You’re really okay with this?”

Audrey looked down and nodded. She put a can of beer to her lips and took a sip.

“Mara knows someone else who will… you know… do this with me if you won’t, but I don’t know him and I would feel….” She shuddered and water filled the wells of her eyes when she looked at him. “I just trust you.”

“You would actually do this?”

“It would just be Mara with us, no one else,” she said weakly, studying the can before looking at Mara. “She’s family.”

Gideon pressed a green button and Mara’s face appeared on the display. He zoomed in until it filled the screen.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t throw you out of here right now.”

Mara knew that her face must be beaming with color. How could I have thought this would ever work? She wondered. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t put me over his knee and spank me.

“There’s a fifteen thousand dollar cash prize if I win,” Mara said deliberately into the camera. “There are awards for second and third, too. I really don’t care about the money. I’m working for a studio in LA now. You two can split whatever’s left after I pay my expenses. The recognition is what would be most valuable to me.”

Gideon thought about the two years of night school he had completed at the community college. It hadn’t exactly prepared him to take his place in The New Global Economy, at least not here in America’s rust belt. And work would never be steady for a crane operator with a criminal record.

“Money. That’s your answer,” he said, his face giving nothing away. “Is that it? Are we done?”

He pulled back and panned lower, past the hollow of her delicate throat and the plunging neckline of her thin gauze top. He studied the swell of her breasts beneath the loose fitting cotton.

“I thought,” she hesitated. “I thought you might do it for Audrey.”

Oh, you wicked bitch, he thought. The camera moved back to Mara’s big, aphotic eyes. They darted nervously from the camera to the table. She really is an ambitious little mouse, he told himself. Even as a kid, she had always been the smart one.

“I remember you were just a sixteen year old brat with braces when I met your sister,” he said. “So that would make you…”

“Twenty three,” she said, looking squarely into the camera.

*****

Gideon remembered the sixteen year old Mara well. She was gangly and painfully shy when her big sister first brought him around the house. The girls lived with their mother who, it appeared to Gideon, was more a frequent flyer than a resident. Working two jobs, she always seemed to be on her way out the door, staying just long enough to throw in a load of laundry or to deliver an armload of groceries.

Gideon had been supplementing his construction income by selling a little grass and boosting German imports for his uncle’s chop shop. Taking risks and taking shortcuts came naturally to him. He was clever and fast and still young enough to embrace the foolish belief that the universe appoints consequences only to those who get caught.

He knew that Mara wasn’t a popular girl. Her looks weren’t the problem; she was cute enough despite her awkwardness. It was just that she had such a serious demeanor, unlike her carefree sister, and an unsettling intensity that radiated from every pore. Seriousness and intensity, Gideon knew, were not highly valued qualities among the high school social set.

Over time, Mara became more of a presence whenever Gideon was around the house. She would slide onto the couch watch television with him or offer to fry some eggs when he was hungry. She kept him company while he weighed buds of Hawaiian Haze and sealed them in zip lock bags at the kitchen table. Mara became absorbed in his tales of daring larceny and narrow escapes.

As the months rolled by, Mara’s tee shirts became tighter, shorts shorter, and underwear all but forgotten. She blushed furiously whenever Audrey gently teased her about her growing breasts or her obvious interest in Gideon. He noticed that she always glanced at him to gauge his reaction.

By the time she turned seventeen there had been more than a few embarrassing moments, with Mara often managing to get herself caught leaving the shower with only a skimpy towel for cover. Sometimes Gideon heard the creak of floorboards just outside the bedroom door when he and Audrey fucked in the late afternoon heat. She’d even walked in on them once, nervously apologizing and jabbering about a borrowed blouse.

Early one evening, Gideon remained behind after Audrey had left for her bartending shift. The sound of yet another of Mara’s frequent showers travelled down the hallway. The squeak of turning handles hardly registered as he sat on the counter, drinking milk out of the container.

“Gideon. I didn’t know you were still here.”

He looked up from his motocross magazine to see Mara standing in the doorway adjusting her glasses. She was soaking wet, skin reddened from the hot water, and wearing a towel that barely reached her thighs. She held the terry cloth closed with one hand behind her back.

“Oh! Hey babe,” he smiled. “You look… clean.”

“You really think so, Gideon?” she asked shyly, letting the towel fall around her feet. “Will you check me over to make sure?”

The magazine dropped to the floor and Gideon practically fell off the counter. Mara’s delicate body trembled in the doorway. Her prominent areolas were acutely swollen and covered with goose bumps. Faint traces of veins meandered beneath the electric pallor of her milky skin.

Gideon opened his mouth but he found himself incapable of producing a sound. He drank in the gentle curves of her girlish hips and narrow waist. His gaze fell to the tawny spray of pubic hair and the inviting bow of her slender legs.

Mara’s breasts swayed subtly as she unsteadily closed the short distance between them and looked up at Gideon. She took his hand, held it to her cheek, and closed her eyes.

A bass drum beat in Gideon’s chest. This can’t happen, he thought. He told himself she was just a kid, Audrey’s little sister. But his body couldn’t be fooled; the nervous sylph in front of him was a woman, one that was burning with arousal. She ignited a response in him that he had no ability to control.

“Mara, you’re beautiful; you are,” he said hoarsely. “But you know I’m with Audrey.”

When she opened her eyes the intensity of her gaze startled him. She removed his hand from her face and brought it to her breast. He instinctively weighed the soft, full bosom and rolled a long, fat nipple between his fingers. She moaned softly and shivered. Gideon felt a rush in his groin, realizing that she had never been touched like this before. He couldn’t resist squeezing and tugging the erect peak.

“Does my sister have tits like mine?” she crooned. “Do her nipples get hard every time she sees you?”

“Mara…”

She slowly guided his hand over her soft belly and stopped between her legs. He combed her feather soft tangle of hair. The flat of two fingers moved lower and slid along her warm moisture, his cock roiling in his jeans. Mara began to slowly rock her pelvis, her hot breath warming the hollow of his throat. I can’t do this, he thought. I’m twenty one; she’s only…

“Let’s go to my room,” she pleaded, voice cracking. She squeezed the long lump in his pants, her naked body squirming against him. “We have hours and I’ll do anything you want… We can lie on my bed while slide your big cock inside me.”

Her words sent a jolt of adrenaline through his body. Whether he willed it or whether his hands acted out of some primal imperative, Gideon would never know. He separated her labia and slid up and down her slick channel. She ground her hips and drenched his fingers as he explored her pussy.

Mara gasped sharply and her body stiffened when a slippery finger finally penetrated her tight opening and curled firmly against her wall. His thumb gently stroked her swollen clit and his free hand swept her smooth back and cheeks. She collapsed against him, breathing through her mouth.

“Oh don’t stop,” she whispered quickly. “Don’t stop.”

Mara held on tightly, her hands laced behind his neck. She buried her face in his chest, soaking his shirt with her mop of wet hair. They stayed like this, his fingers electrifying her virgin pussy, until violent shudders rolled through Mara’s fragile body in waves. Her head fell back and she closed her eyes, a look of dreamy relief on her face, as she quietly came in Gideon’s arms.

“Mara… baby.”

He wrapped his arms around her narrow back and shoulders while her breathing returned to normal. He wanted to pick her up and carry her off to bed.

“God… you made me come so hard,” she panted, straining on her toes to reach his lips. “It was so much better than when I play with myself, Gideon.”

He easily lifted her up and sat her naked body on the countertop. He cupped her chin and locked his eyes on hers. She raked her fingers through his long hair, her body seething, melting his meager resolve by the second.

“Mara, this is wrong,” he said, trying to stop shaking. “We… I… should never have done that. I can’t sleep with you. Do you understand?”

“Fuck me, Gideon,” she croaked, staring back at him. “Look at how wet I am. I’m really ready for you now.”

Mara spread her bony knees apart and hooked her ankles around his thighs. She pulled his jeans by the waist and fumbled with the snap. Gideon knew he was seconds away from burying his throbbing cock into her sweet pussy and fucking her senseless.

“No,” he said, holding her wrists firmly. “It’s not gonna happen, baby. I just… I can’t.”

They stared at each other, neither truly knowing what would happen next. A look of resignation slowly came over her face. Mara pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them. She looked Gideon coldly in the eyes.

“I understand.”

*****

“I’ve changed.”

“I can see that,” Gideon replied, pulling back on his shot of Mara. “You’re not an innocent teenager anymore. You’re much more than that.”

She didn’t know exactly how he meant the remark but was sure it wasn’t intended to be a compliment.

“You know we’re not together any more, right? Audrey and me?” he asked. “We haven’t been for a long time.”

“Yes, Audrey told me,” she answered, eager for an advantage. “You stopped seeing her after you got out of prison. Why did you just leave her like that? You really hurt her.”

Her question...