A Baumgartner reunion

“Funny way she has of showing it,” Janie breathed, tossing the blanket aside as she stood.

“She’s so impossible.” Henry sighed as his sister stalked out of the room, joining her boyfriend in the kitchen.

“She hates me.” I was surprised at how steady my voice was.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Gretchen countered, leaning over to put the ice cream container on the coffee table. “She’s just mad. She’ll get over it.”

“Does anyone else want popcorn?” Brian poked his head through the doorway to inquire and I smiled at him.

“No, thanks.”

“I do!” Gretchen waved her spoon at him. “Me! Me!”

“You’re going to get fat.” I laughed, pinching at Gretchen’s nonexistent stomach.

“Gretchen can out-eat me and Brian put together,” Henry scoffed, shaking his head. He stood and announced, “I’m gonna get a Coke,” before heading toward the kitchen.

“I don’t know where you put it.” I watched Gretchen as she stretched, cat-like, her top pulling up out of her shorts to reveal a tanned expanse of belly.

“I have a hollow leg.” Gretchen smiled as she slid back against the couch cushions, the blanket pulling down to reveal the length of her tanned legs.

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember that.”

“What do you remember?” Gretchen cocked her knee and traced a line with her finger down her inner thigh toward the hem of her shorts.

“Quit,” I hissed, glancing toward the kitchen. Gretchen wrinkled her nose at the warning and ignored it, using her finger to slide her shorts aside a little, revealing the fact that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Her pussy lips were shaved smooth, and I glimpsed the familiar pink. “You’re bad.”

“I know.” Gretchen moved back under the blanket, her hand sliding up my bare thigh, her words whispered close to my ear. “You make me wanna be really, really bad.”

I groaned softly when Gretchen’s fingers pressed the seam of my jean shorts, rubbing there.

“Popcorn!” Brian announced, coming back into the room with two full bowls. Gretchen eagerly reached out to take one and settled happily next to me, already munching.

Brian flopped on the floor beside Janie, who sat on the floor stirring popcorn around in the buttery bowl.

“Did we miss anything good?” Janie asked, licking butter off her fingers.

“It’s a Tom Cruise movie,” I snorted. “There couldn’t have been anything good to miss.”

Janie turned to look at me, making a face. “Don’t be mean to my Tommy.”

“Who are you now, Rosie O’Donnell?” Henry scoffed.

“Do I look like Rosie O’Donnell?” Janie glanced over her shoulder at him, her blonde hair a cascade down her bare back. She was still wearing the bikini she’d swam in earlier in the day and Henry’s eyes swept over her, darkening.

“No, sweetie, far from it.” I frowned when I saw Henry’s very unbrotherly look. “Besides, I think Tom Cruise is too old for you.”

“Ha. He married Katie Holmes, didn’t he?” Janie tossed a kernel of popcorn into the air and caught it quite delicately on the pink tip of her outstretched tongue.

“She was a child bride,” Henry grumbled, popping the top on his can of Coke and taking a long, loud sip.

“Well, I’m not a child,” Janie countered, but she was looking not at her brother, but at me.

“I know,” I murmured, but Janie had turned her attention back to the popcorn, the movie, and her boyfriend.

Brian hushed us with, “I can’t hear the movie!” and I refrained from further comment about Tom Cruise’s acting ability when Gretchen’s fingers slipped under the edge of my cutoffs.

Being under the blanket made me feel entirely too warm, but I didn’t dare throw it off, and Gretchen’s teasing made me even hotter. I thought the end of a movie, Tom Cruise or otherwise, had never come soon enough.

* * * *

“Want to go up to my room?” Gretchen whispered as she slipped under the covers and spooned me from behind. I murmured something indefinitive in my sleep, snuggling back against her in spite of myself. The house was quiet and dark, and I didn’t know how long I’d been sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room. Henry had fallen asleep before the movie’s end, and when Janie and Brian decided to go out after it was over, Gretchen had woken him and sent him off to bed.

When it was just the two of us, Gretchen helped me pull out the couch bed, and we’d said goodnight. But when she bent her head to my ear to whisper,

“I'll come down later,” as Janie and Brian got ready to go-I didn’t say no. I already knew what was going to happen. Whatever resistance I’d managed to hold onto had disappeared.

“What time is it?” I murmured, blinking in the darkness. Gretchen slid her hand up under my t-shirt, stroking the soft skin of my stomach.

“A little after two.” Her lips found the sensitive spot behind my ear, the one she knew made me melt, and I did just that as her tongue made fat lazy circles there.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I whispered, tilting my head anyway, to give her better access. “Did Janie and Brian come back yet?”