Some people sat on the subway and read. Some people listened to music. Some dozed, bobbing awake at each stop. I sat on the subway and fantasized about sex with my stepbrother.

In another context, that would totally warrant an ewww. But other differences between us were more concerning. Our ages. Our incomes. Our power. Our shoe storage. It was hard not to feel inferior sometimes, when I technically was in many ways. I’d just finished college, for heaven’s sake, whereas Nathan had just finished, well, me.

Only an hour earlier I was flat on my belly on Nathan’s bed, suspended in the boneless torpor that followed my first time having morning sex. I was so dazed that it took him slapping my ass to remind me that I had to get to work.

We’d tried to keep some distance. I still slept in my own bed most nights. For one thing, I didn’t want to crowd him. For another, he didn’t invite me to join him. The night before, we’d both fallen asleep after an hour of incredibly vanilla sex. No kinky stuff at all. In fact, when he began snoring, I worried that I’d bored him to sleep.

After tumbling off me, he’d barely moved from his prone position beside me, except to stretch his hand over my stomach. The solid weight of his arm was like an unconscious hug, a safety belt in this strange new relationship we were forging. Some kind of restraint was probably a good idea. I was counting on Nathan’s maturity and experience to guide us. God knows we’d be up shit creek if we had to rely on mine.

I should have gone back to my own bed. There was no real reason for me to stay, other than just being… comfortable. Instead, I pulled the covers up over us and snuggled closer to the warmth of his naked body. His hair flopped into his eyes, his cheek on the bed. For all of the power and control he demonstrated when awake, in his sleep his mouth fell open like a little kid. I watched him, fascinated, until I realized I’d never get to sleep with his breath on my face.

By the time I realized I’d made the decision to stay it was dawn, and I woke up in the pearly light to find Nathan’s head between my legs.

“Oh!”

He grinned up at me, his lips glossy. “I knew you’d taste sweet.” Likely, he was more pleased about being right than my, er, flavor. But as long as he went back to doing that thing he was doing with his tongue, I wasn’t going to quibble.

My hands went to his head, tangling in his hair and pushing him back down. “More,” I demanded hoarsely.

I was still drowsy, but the sensations roused me like an alarm clock with a very, very short snooze button. It would be a lie to say I was wide-awake as he brought me to the edge of climax, lapping and teasing and tasting. It was a little like having a falling dream, and my orgasm woke me up as I hit the ground.

As I was coming, Nathan crawled up beside me and pushed my hip to turn me on my side. Then he looped his forearm under my thigh, pushed it up to my chest, and entered me.

Another novelty for me. He went so deep I thought he’d touch my heart. His hand had clamped over it already.

“Fuck, Zoe. You feel so good,” he grunted.

I twisted my head back to try to kiss him. I got as close as my lips on his jaw, but his face ossified in a state of focus and despite being inside me he felt very far away.

His fingers dove down my belly to catch my clit as he slowly and methodically drilled me. If I were on my back I could wrap myself around him. If I were on my hands and knees I could push back against him or try to reach where we joined. In this position, neither was easy to manage. Nathan was in total control. It was nerve-wracking and liberating and overwhelming.

When I came, it was with a relieved shout and a sense of loss. And now I sat on the train trying to figure out how I felt about the whole… thing.

Then I sat in my cubicle thinking about it. And one or two trips to the ladies’ room, thinking about it. On my second visit I’d gotten so lost in my thoughts that I was peppered with jokes about drowning when I returned to the department meeting I was sitting in on. The irony was that we were discussing a bid for a PSA for safe… sex… Oh shit.

Halle stopped at my desk at a little after twelve, snapping her fingers. “Get your purse.”

I looked at her blankly.

“We’re going to get some lunch and you’re going to tell where the fuck you’ve been all morning.”

My wristlet hanging off my arm, I followed her outside. She ordered two falafel combos from a food truck, handed me an iced tea slick from the melting ice in the cooler, and sat me down on a black granite bench in the plaza connecting our building to another.

“Zoe. What. The. Fuck?” Halle scowled behind her sunglasses as she unwrapped her lunch. “Damn it, I always forget to hold the onions.”

I squinted at her—having forgotten my shades upstairs—and said the first thing that came to my mind. “My ass is hot.” I was wearing a pair of khaki capris and my white eyelet lace blouse.

“No shit. We’re sitting on a hundred degree rock. Now what’s going on with you? You were a total space cadet this morning.”

Normally we didn’t see each other much at work, as I was at the beck and call of Creative Services and she was running numbers in Business Development. That morning was the first time we’d sat in on a meeting together, and apparently I’d been too distracted to notice Halle trying to get my attention.

“Do you engage in safe sex?” I blurted out.

She almost choked on her iced tea, swiping at a trickle running over her chin. “What are you, my doctor? Oh, the PSA bid. I guess it depends on what you mean by safe, right?”

The sun blasted down on us. I swear I could feel my skin burning. “Okay, what’s safe?” I asked, cracking open my drink and downing half of it. Mist from the nearby fountain drifted to us, providing momentary relief from the heat.

“Condoms. Communication. Cunnilingus.” Halle stabbed at the salad that came with the falafel.

Ha ha. “Not a bad slogan.” I opened the container and tore off a piece of pita bread.

We’d had lunch together only a few times, but Halle was the kind of girl that acted like you’d known each other for ten years instead of ten days. You know, the kind of girl that would ask you to be her bridesmaid after knowing you a week and then ask you to hold her wedding dress up while she peed.

I loved that I was making friends. Halle, Tom, Jordan. Jordan was interning in the same department as Halle, and Tom holed up with the graphic designers. I was the only “Communications” graduate. In fact, I was the only graduate—the rest of them were going into their senior year. Despite being the oldest, I felt like Bambi around their hipster ways and east coast nonchalance.

There were some things I definitely didn’t like about New York. Being passive-aggressively treated like a naïve hick was one those things.

“Oh my god, you’re having sex!”

My falafel box fell off my lap to splatter on the hot pavement by my feet. “Shit!” Disgusted, I picked up as much as I could and put it back in the container, then I went to dump it in the nearest trash can. When I came back, Halle was clearly thinking hard.

“Who are you fucking? I know it’s not Tom.” She screwed up her face. “He wishes. Jordan would have told me.”

“You’re not the only people I know in New York,” I lied.

For a city with so many damn people, it was surprisingly hard to get to know anyone. But I also hadn’t tried too hard either. My head had been wrapped up in work or Nathan. Speaking of wrapped heads and Nathan… My stomach flipped at the reminder that I hadn’t been practicing safe sex.

Fuck my life. I was smarter than that. I wanted to beat my head against the granite grill I was sitting on.

Halle hummed to herself as I finished my tea, her eyes widening. “You whore! You’re fucking your brother?”

Now I wanted to beat her head against the granite bench. Thankfully, nobody heard her; or, if they had, nobody cared.

“He’s not my brother.” The sun was just too damn hot. My arms were turning red and I wanted to hang my tongue out like a dog and pant.

“Stepbrother, sorry. Wow.” She leaned back, bracing herself on her palms until she realized how hot the stone was. “Motherfucker!” She shot to her feet, shaking her hands. “I mean, brotherfucker,” she snickered.

“So funny.”

“Seriously, Zoe. How old is he?”

What should I tell her? “He’s thirty-two. And rich. And kind of bossy.”

Her mouth fell open. “Well, slap my ass and call me Ana.”

“Sooo funny.” My face burned. It was a good thing I didn’t tell her about the kink closet. “I need to get out of the sun,” I told her, my chest feeling tight.

“So hot,” she breathed as she walked beside me back into the cool of the lobby.

“Too hot.”

“I mean with—Nathan’s his name, right?” She waved her hand in front of her face. “So fucking hot. How is it?”

I could only hope my new sunburn would hide my blushing. “I’m not telling you details.”

At least she wasn’t judgmental. If anything, by the look on her face, she was envious. I’d shown her a picture of Nathan on my phone on the Fourth that I’d taken without him knowing. Even in profile watching TV he was pretty striking.

My body began slowly returning to a normal temperature, or at least most of it was. Our lunch break was over, so I was hoping we could postpone the rest of this conversation.

“C’mon Zoe, tell me. How big—”

“Later,” I ground out as we got in the elevator with half a dozen other people.

Halle wore an anguished expression, like a toddler doing a pee-pee dance. When she opened her mouth again, I experimented with Nathan’s hand gesture. It shut her up briefly. Cool.

“Okay,” she sighed. Then she leaned over and whispered, “I’m sorry for calling you a whore. I’m just jealous as fuck, to be honest.”

That was what I figured. “I’m sorry for calling you a nosy bitch.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh. My bad. You’re a nosy bitch.”