Ron Taylor: The hot niece

I had a lot of getting adjusted to do, and same getting acquainted too. It was the first time I'd ever been cast among strangers, you might say, but still, it felt like something I could handle. Really, I don't think there's very much I can't handle, if I put my mind to it. I'm eighteen, but I seem to have the makings of a survivor. Anyway, there was the kick of fresh surroundings, being in the country, with all that fresh air and green grass and a wooded mountain lifting behind the house. I had an aunt and an uncle I didn't know at all but might as well get to know, since I'd be staying with them for the next nine or ten months. I'm a city girl, not from Slumsville by any means, but already I could feel the tug of nature in my bones. It wouldn't be bad, I told myself. As long as my hosts didn't try to put me in some kind of harness.

Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Bill. They didn't seem old enough to be called "aunt" and "uncle". I hoped they wouldn't mind if I dispensed with the formalities once we got better acquainted. Anyway, they were darlings to take me in while Daddy was in Saudi Arabia. Sure, I wanted to go with him, but he pointed out the obvious things – it wasn't the place for a man to take his daughter, not in these days of instant wars and terrorist kidnappings and PLOs and Israeli commandos and all that shit. I guess he was right, but I was going to miss him every day he was gone, no matter how nice Uncle Bill and Aunt Cheryl treated me.

And they'd been pretty nice so far. Well, they seemed pretty mellow. Uncle Bill is Daddy's younger brother, about twelve years younger, in fact. Daddy's forty and Uncle Bill is only twenty-eight. I hardly knew Uncle Bill. The last time I'd seen him was at my mother's funeral four years ago, and the last time before that at my grandmother's funeral a year or so earlier. I'd never met Aunt Cheryl before the two of them greeted me at the airport and hustled me and my things into their Volkswagen bus and drove me out winding country roads to their place. I didn't feel unwelcome. They were both friendly and seemed glad to have me around. I figured, what the hell, it may be a nice nine months at that. I just hoped the schools here weren't fucked up and that my 3.8 average would transfer over to the local college once classes started in September.

They had a nice place, a big old house they'd fixed up. It was so quiet you could hear birds singing in the gathering darkness, a whip-poor-will call over and over again in the distance, the occasional hoot of an owl, and the chirp of crickets. I could smell grass and pine trees. It was a far cry from Cleveland Heights to Colorado, but I was here, and I could hack it.

"You must be worn out, Elizabeth," Aunt Cheryl suggested. We'd been sitting in the big old, high-ceilinged living roam, sipping mellow Burgundy from a jug, and eating cheese and crackers, a little after-dinner snack. All that was lacking, in my opinion, was a fat heady joint to get us all really mellow, but I didn't know if they'd appreciate me bringing out my stash and offering it around. Since they didn't offer me any, I wasn't sure how they felt about the stuff. Later, I thought, I'll have a joint to settle me down for bedtime.

Bedtime had arrived. "I have to be up pretty early myself," Aunt Cheryl continued, "so maybe we should all think about turning in."

I wasn't tired at all, but I nodded. I was a guest, after all, and just because I felt like raving on till morning I shouldn't expect that everyone else felt the same way. "Guess that makes two of us," I agreed, standing up. I finished my glass of wine, smacked my lips, and helped Cheryl pick up the leftovers.

She was a pretty lady, this aunt of mine. She smiled a lot, and she had longish hair, so straight it looked as if she ironed it every night. Straight hair isn't in nowadays, but on her, it looked good. She wore jeans and a loose sweater this evening, and sometimes when she leaned forward, I could see the little punch of her half-hardened nipples or the free wiggly sting of her tits. Body wise, she rated at least an A-minus. The jeans fit tightly over her ass, tightening into her crack, and I could see the outlined shape of her small bikini pants under the denim. Her legs were long and strong, with firm thighs. She had light brown hair and her skin was tanned but not so it looked like leather. She wasn't wearing any makeup, and she didn't really need to.

Uncle Bill? Well, he was nearly as much a stranger to me as Aunt Cheryl. At least I could remember him very vaguely from when I was a kid, and I'd seen him a couple of times in recent years. Nothing like funerals to bring families together. He'd gone off to school at Berkeley when I was very young, and he'd never come back to Ohio, not that you could blame him. He and Cheryl had gotten married in California I don't know why they bothered with getting married; (like, who does, these days?) and come out to the mountains. Only major traumas seemed likely to stir them from their stronghold in the foothills of the Rockies.

Uncle Bill is younger than Daddy, and he's a few inches taller, I guess, but not built like a big huggy bear, the way my father is. Daddy's an engineer; he can handle anything from a t-square to a jackhammer. Uncle Bill is taller and leaner, his clothes fit him loosely and he walks in a slow, lazy western fashion. His hair is curly and long, where Daddy's is not so curly and not so long, but facially there's a resemblance, especially the eyes – blue, like mine.

Aunt Cheryl was a licensed paramedic. She worked in town, at a women's clinic. Uncle Bill had learned the printer's trade; he had a shop in an outbuilding where he turned out collector's edition reprints of old time pulp detective and science fiction stories, as well as occasional books of poetry or short stories. He turned out the weekly newspaper too, which was probably what paid the bills. They had it nice, I thought. Their farm, 300 or 400 acres of land, their careers, and they could do it all without the world peeking over their shoulders to see what was going on. Yeah, I thought, I might enjoy spending some time here. Maybe I wouldn't want to go back to Ohio again either. I thought of Daddy and sighed softly. Yes, I'd go back, but in the meantime, it should be nice living a while with my aunt and uncle.

Uncle Bill shut off the stereo. We'd been listening to progressive country mast of the evening; it seemed to be all they had in their collection. I'd never cared much for country. Disco was more my style. After a few LP sides of Townes Van Zandt and Michael Murphy and Tony Rice, it was hard to stay impassive, and I was thinking about Cherokee fiddles and a horse named Wildfire and California autumns and White Freightliners. I followed Aunt Cheryl up the stairs, to the bedroom they'd fixed for me. She's taller than I am, two or three inches, and I stood in the doorway looking up at her as we said goodnight. For no real reason, I tiptoed up and put one hand on her shoulder and kissed her soft pale lips. I felt them tremble warm against mine. My chest touched hers too, and her tits jiggled inside her sweater.

She stepped back, brushing at her hair, and said, "Goodnight, Elizabeth." It was like she wanted to get out of my reach or something, and it made me feel funny. I'd only kissed her goodnight, for Chrissake! "I'll see you in the morning," she added, turning, going down the hall.

"Thanks again for taking me in," I said, in a soft voice. She probably didn't hear. Uncle Bill was coming up the stairs as she went into their room and I waved to him. "Night! See you on the sunny side."

"Goodnight, Elizabeth," he said. He didn't smile the way Daddy did. For a moment, he hesitated at the door, then he opened it and went inside. I retreated into my room, closed the door too. There seemed to be a lot of doors shutting all of a sudden.