I didn’t have a cell phone in the nineties. Even if I did, text messaging wasn’t a thing.
I had an email account through my university, but plenty of people still weren’t using email. And even if they were you didn’t always know their account.
So I had no way of communicating with Cara. I certainly couldn’t call her home phone. She was my aunt’s stepdaughter and basically my cousin, even though we weren’t related by blood. I’d known her since childhood. I’d never once called their house to talk to her. I’d actually spent most of the time avoiding her because she was nerdy, almost four years younger than me, and she had a tendency to follow me around like a puppy dog, which everyone else found cute and hilarious.
Everything changed in December of 1998. I was visiting from college during the winter break and horny after a few drinks at the local strip club with Cara’s brother. I’d gone into the laundry room looking for a towel so I could jack off and clean up. Impulsive, I’d grabbed a pair of panties instead. Cara had caught me in the act. And instead of running away in horror and telling her family, she had been drawn to it. She’d wrapped her silky panties around my cock and given me a hand job that night and again the next morning in my car after I drove her to school. Then she’d walked away with a smirk and left her underwear in my lap.
I knew it was wrong. If anyone in our family found out they would be devastated. It wasn’t illegal, but it was definitely taboo. You’re not supposed to fool around with your step-relations.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It had been over a year since my last long term relationship ended and I wasn’t getting laid a lot in college. The sex I was having was usually vanilla and uninspired.
Cara was playful. She enjoyed being a tease. She was quick-witted. It wasn’t ideal that we were practically related. Although, in a way, that made it somehow sexier. The forbidden nature added to the allure.
I was conflicted in the days that followed. I’d lock myself in my bedroom at my parents’ house and stroke my dick with the panties that Cara had left in my car. I’d think about the way she’d gotten me off. I’d try to picture her plump ass and big tits. And I’d fantasize and wonder how she would moan during sex and what it would be like to grind against her pussy covered in silky panties.
Afterward, I would feel guilty, but it would pass. I’d spend hours trying to figure out a way to make contact with her. I knew where she went to school and that I could take a chance and drive up there to try and catch her at the end of the day, but that seemed risky. What if someone else from my family was picking her up that day? Plus, she might think I was being a creep. The last thing she’d said to me was, “See you at Christmas,” so maybe she didn’t want to see me sooner. And it wasn’t like I was going to go back to college without talking to her again.
Both our family and Cara’s family were going to be at my grandmother’s house for a few days. My dad’s oldest brother had bought an old farmhouse and a lot of land out in the country years earlier. My grandmother had moved to the same area when she retired to get away from the city. We tried to go out at least every other year for the holidays. My aunt did the same, but Cara sometimes spent Christmas with her mom and step-dad instead. The last time I’d actually spent Christmas with her she was still a chubby high school freshman instead of a buxom barely legal senior.
We drove out on the 23rd with a plan to stay through Christmas and the weekend that followed. My uncle’s house was a huge renovated farmhouse with four bedrooms upstairs, a master on the ground floor, and a two-bedroom mother-in-law suite in the basement. His daughters were both married and out of the house and my grandmother lived in her own house that he had built on his land, so that left six bedrooms for guests.
I always tried to grab one of the basement rooms since there was also a big screen TV down there. My cousin, Cara’s step-brother, usually did the same. The parents and girls usually took the upstairs rooms, although the girls fussed about never getting the basement, and my dad’s youngest brother and his family stayed at my grandmother’s place. I was really hoping Cara would find a way to stay downstairs that year but couldn’t imagine how.
Once everyone arrived the arrangements ended up the same as usual. I had a room to myself in the basement right next to Cara’s step-brother, who I normally loved to hang out with. But I wasn’t looking forward to it that year. Cara was up two flights of stairs in a guest room right next to my parents and across the hall from my sister.
That first evening I was desperate to get some alone time with Cara and didn’t know how to do it. She was either playing it cool or just being a cruel tease because she barely acknowledged me. There wasn’t as much as a sly smile or a covert wink when nobody was looking. It was making me nervous.
Everyone came over to the big house for dinner. When my dad’s youngest brother was greeting everyone he made an awkward joke about how Cara used to idolize me. She brushed it off by saying that it was pretty common for high school kids to admire those in college. It was the right thing to say, but it definitely made me wonder if I’d misread things. Was it silly for me to think she had a crush on me?
The whole situation was making me anxious. I’d gone from worried that I couldn’t avoid the temptation to feeling foolish about thinking she’d even want to tempt me again. The fact that I was sitting at a table with all my relatives made it worse.
At some point after dinner, I saw Cara head down the hall toward the restroom. I knew it would be stupid to follow her, but my stomach was in knots and I had to know where I stood.
“I have to go to the restroom,” I announced loudly to my cousin who was sitting nearby.
“Nobody cares,” she said.
I went down the hallway to the bathroom door. I heard the sink running. Cara came out a second later.
She was wearing a bulky flaxen cowl neck sweater and corduroy skirt with tights. The outfit obscured all her curves and made her look like an innocent nineties chick who was still clinging to the grunge era.
I think my heart stopped for just a second while our eyes locked. I’d never had any interest in what she thought until a week earlier when she’d given me a handjob in her dad’s basement, but at that moment it was all that mattered to me.
She flashed a wicked smile and my heart started beating again.
“Hey, you,” she said quietly. She looked down the hall to make sure we were alone and then leaned in close. “Did you pack my panties?”