Silver Lining, Chapter 2

  • Posted on June 29, 2017 at 12:43 pm

By Cassie

Justine woke up with a start — hot, flushed, and feeling incredibly horny. She hadn’t had an erotic dream for months, years even. And this one; this strange lesbian dream with her old childhood doll Pip mysteriously come to life, seemed to have strange undertones of incest about it.

Justine lay on the bed trying to think about the dream, to analyse it in her usual fashion, but eventually she succumbed to the desperate need to masturbate. She got up, walked to the shower unit and absently grabbed her long-handled hairbrush as she went. She held the hairbrush loosely in her hand as she stepped naked into the cubicle and turned on the water, patiently adjusting the temperature so that it was hot, but not scalding. She gripped and loosened the hairbrush in her hand. It had a slightly bulbous end, ridged and indented like a scored golf ball, and a longish handle leading to the brush. It had grown to be one of the things she used as a sex toy when aroused and in a hurry.

The shower gel made her skin soapy and slippery, and it was then that she leaned back against the wall of the cubicle, water spraying gently over her. She began to rub the tip of her hairbrush with the heavily scored edges against the soft and sensitive hood of her clitoris, moaning a little as the first wave of eroticism began to build within her. She used the fingers of her left hand to spread open the soft folds of her labia, then worked the handle of the hairbrush inside herself as she began to orgasm. In sexual matters, Justine had always been blessed with two things: the ability to orgasm quickly — within minutes, sometimes, when she felt very horny with David — and her capacity for sexual activity.

Although she was not adventurous with her own sexual explorations, Justine had always been a willing sexual partner. On occasion, when she was very horny, Justine liked to be tied or restrained a little, and didn’t mind at all if she were spanked. She also liked to be filled, and had once been stretched so far that David had slipped his whole hand inside her.

She remembered that time now and, thinking about it, removed the hairbrush from herself and reached up, grabbing the much larger, dome-capped shampoo bottle. It was not an obvious sex toy, being a little more than two inches wide down the mainly cylindrical bottle. But Justine was feeling very horny and began to work the large bottle inside herself.

She closed her eyes, feeling and hearing the splash of the water around her, thinking about sex. She tried to think about David, but his face wouldn’t come. She tried to think about others in her masturbation fantasy — the airline assistant Rosa whose short blond hair Justine had touched and caressed as they kissed outside Columbus Bar. But the woman’s image wouldn’t come either. She tried thinking about Pip, but could only see in her mind’s eye the inert, lifeless doll of her memory, not the vibrant, wanton and utterly irresistible young girl of her recent dream. She even tried thinking of Jan, the dark-haired girl by the pool, laughing and smiling with that crooked smile of hers and taking off the bikini she wore to ask Justine to rub oil onto her skin.

But, in the end, as her orgasm grew and deepened, Justine saw within her mind a sexual nobody — a formless, faceless figure with thick hair, a slim lissome figure and outstretched arms. She imagined being embraced by those arms, kissing red lips, and touching soft, secret places on another’s body. She imagined the hands of a woman caressing her, enfolding her and touching her most intimate places. She imagined—

“Oh! Oh! Yes!! Oh—”

Justine did not remember what she called out as the powerful wave of orgasm hit her. She only remembered having nearly swallowed the shampoo bottle entirely within her vagina as that wonderful, frightening moment of orgasm stretched time itself. She remembered desperately pushing the large bottle out of her body, and the feeling of glorious sexual release as it slid out between her pussy lips and into her hand. She rubbed vigorously at her sensitized clit as the bottle came free, feeling wave after wave after wave of pleasure flush her body.

Eventually, after recovering and soaping herself once again, she got out of the shower, wondering why the image of an unknown, unseen woman was the most powerful one in her masturbation fantasy.

She dressed lightly, in a short summer skirt and blouse, and went down to the pool to find Jan. She had more questions to ask the enigmatic Portuguese girl. A lot more questions.

*****

Jan was not there. Nor, according to the hotel reception desk, in her room.

“I’m sorry,” said the clerk. “There’s no answer at all.” He put down the receiver, having twice called Jan’s room at Justine’s insistence.

Justine thought for a moment, tapping her manicured fingernail on top of the desk. “What room is she in?” she asked.

The man instinctively reached behind him, then stopped, turning round. “Am sorry,” he said, in his heavily accented voice. “I cannot tell room numbers. Is security.”

“That’s okay,” said Justine, smiling brightly for him, and waving a hand in dismissal. Besides, she had already seen his hand hover over the key for room C12. Justine turned around, and left the reception. She would find Jan herself.

But throughout that day, she did not see the dark-haired Portuguese woman. She gave up, after a light lunch in a tavern near the sea front, and went shopping instead, finding a few trinkets for herself and her friends. Buying them, she couldn’t help thinking about those mysterious birth parents and the even more tantalizing prospect of a sister. Were they real? The conversations she’d had with Jan had somehow materialized them in Justine’s head. She felt a renewed energy to find them, discover who they were.

Reaching the point where she had too many bags to carry, Justine quit the markets and went back to her hotel to drop them off and take a rest before going out to dinner. As she went into the hotel, she asked again at the desk if Jan was in. The clerk there tried once more and, once more, got no reply. Justine wrote a short note, and asked the clerk to leave it for Jan. Then she went back to her modest room and collapsed on the bed, closing her eyes for a few moments.

The telephone bell was a harsh ringing alarm that woke her out of her slumber with a start. Justine rolled over the bed and picked up the receiver, long strands of red hair getting in her eyes.

“Hello?”

“Ms Holloway, you have a call,” said the clerk. Justine sat up and rubbed her eyes. A call? Her immediate thought was that David had somehow tracked her down and was now badgering her and pestering her about his blonde mistress. But when the phone line clicked, and a new voice filled the earpiece, Justine relaxed.

“I never answer the phone,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Justine smiled, recognizing Jan’s voice already despite their very recent acquaintance. “When on holiday, at least. That is why it seemed I was out.”

“Yeah, I should have guessed. Maybe I should have done the same.”

“Ha! Too late. You’re a serial phone answerer, I can tell already!”

Justine smiled again, glad of a friendly voice.

“I got your note,” said Jan. “And wondered if you still wanted to go, or if it’s too late?”

“Too late? I—”

And then Justine recalled that she had penned a short note for Jan, asking if the Portuguese woman wanted to share her company for dinner that night. Justine also realized, with a start, that she had fallen into a much deeper sleep than she expected, and that the day had long slipped away. The digital clock on her bedside table read 20:54 and, seeing that, Justine felt the twin sensations of mild panic and rumbling hunger.

“Ohmyygosh! I didn’t realize — Give me five minutes. I’ll meet you by reception.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Justine rubbed her eyes, went into the bathroom and splashed her face with water. Then she changed clothes, pulling on a long white gypsy skirt, a turquoise blue vest top and light summer shirt before donning sandals, grabbing her handbag before she left.

When she got down to reception, Jan was waiting for her; dressed in three-quarter length trousers, a white and pink top, with her dark hair gathered up in a ponytail. She looked very 1950’s American. The two women embraced and kissed briefly, on the cheek.

“Hey,” Jan said, squeezing Justine’s hand. “You were pretty out of it, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Justine said. “It’s this late summer sun. Makes me sleepy.”

“Hungry?”

“You bet. Know anywhere good to eat?”

*****

The two women went into town and, after having a gorgeous seafood meal at a little backstreet restaurant Jan had discovered, moved on to a bar in the old quarter of town and sat drinking long, tall cocktails until the early hours. It seemed they had no end of subjects to talk about, but eventually, as though they had gravitated toward it, they talked about Jan’s involvement with her sister-sister website, and the whole concept of sexual love between siblings.

“I’ve heard from a few women who say they’ve enjoyed sex with their brothers,” said Jan.

“They were raped?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in women.”

“Obviously!” said Justine, butting in. The two women giggled.

“In women who share a consensual love with their sister. I’ve been amazed at how many wonderful, strong women there are who have admitted this.”

“It seems unreal to me. Still. That two siblings — two sisters — would want to have sex with each other.”

“But it’s never as simple as that,” said Jan. “I’ve never had someone just e-mail me and say ‘Hi, Jan. I’m a beautiful twenty-something, and me and my twin sister have been fucking happily for years’. It just doesn’t happen like that.”

“So how does it happen?”

“Usually,” said Jan, pausing to sip her drink, “the hard way. Like all stories of love, sex between sisters can be a very painful and damaging thing, even when it’s consensual. But that’s not to say it’s wrong, or people should repress such feelings.”

“And if your sister suddenly told you she had feelings for you?”

Jan smiled. “She wouldn’t. She’s very happily married, and not gay.”

“But if she did anyway,” Justine said, pressing for an answer. “If she were still single, and a lesbian?”

“She would have to be a lesbian?” said Jan. This threw Justine somewhat.

“Well, yeah. I mean, she’d have to be—”

“A lesbian? You want to pigeonhole all of us together?”

Justine was confused. Sexual love between sisters meant they had to be lesbians, or at least ‘lez-curious’, surely? How could they not be? It was a prerequisite for the situation, right?

She voiced these thoughts to Jan, who only smiled sadly and shrugged. “Do you not think the path to love is sometimes a very rocky place?”

“Oh, yes,” said Justine, dripping with heavy irony. “Very.”

“And so, would it not be even more difficult if two sisters had feelings for each other that were a) believed to be immoral and incestuous, and b) opposite to their sexual preference?”

The thought struck Justine like a blow. She had not considered the complexity, or difficulty, of such a thing. She had assumed, up until that point, that all incestuous relationships were immoral and wrong, and had also assumed that all relationships between same-sex partners meant that they were homosexual.

“But that can’t be,” she said, rather unconvincingly.

“Why not? I have read accounts from women who say they have no homosexual desires whatsoever, and indeed have ordinary relationships with men or husbands, and yet feel strong sexual desires to their sisters, or close female relatives. How can this be easily explained?”

It could not, and Justine accepted that. She was about to ask more when her ear caught the tune of a new song being played, one that reminded her of her teenage clubbing years, and she put down her drink, smiling.

“Gotta dance!” she said brightly. She moved out into the small throng of people dancing in the centre of the floor, and started to move with the music. Jan left both hers and Justine’s handbags behind the bar, then moved out, joining her English friend on the dance floor.

Several dance tracks later and the girls were hot and thirsty. They drank some cold water first, then had one more cocktail before going back to the hotel.

They arrived, arm in arm, singing the tune of American Pie — which neither knew all the words to — both feeling lightheaded. That was when Justine made a mistake.

“Hey,” she said, smiling and whirling to take hold of both of Jan’s hands. “Do you want to come to my room for a bit?”

Jan smiled, but shook her head. “No, I am too tired. I need to go to sleep. I have to pack tomorrow.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” said Justine, sad that her new friend was leaving so soon. “Jan, don’t go. Stay a few more days. Till the weekend.”

Jan smiled sadly. “I can’t. But this has been great fun!”

Justine bit her lower lip. “Stay with me tonight?”

There was an awkward pause, and Jan reached out to stroke the side of Justine’s face. “Thank you. It’s very flattering, and you’re very pretty. But I must sleep, and get ready to go home.”

Justine, ignoring this, leaned forward to kiss her new friend. Jan turned her head at the last moment, as their lips almost met, and hugged Justine instead.

“Keep in touch with me, Justine,” she whispered into the Englishwoman’s ear. Justine felt her new friend hold her tight for a moment, and then she left.

Feeling a little dejected, but suddenly tired, Justine stumbled back to her room and, within minutes, fell asleep on her bed.

She awoke late into the morning, with a bad hangover, and began the slow process of recovery; starting with lots of water, then coffee. By the time she went down to the reception to ask about Jan, the enigmatic Portuguese woman had already checked out.

*****

Justine spent the last few days of her holiday quietly, soaking up the late summer sun and finding the time, at last, to relax properly. But one thing she could not shake was the persistent strange dreams she’d been having about her childhood, mixed with dark erotic thoughts. Nor could she dismiss the idea that she had to trace what she could of her birth family. It suddenly seemed more important than ever.

The flight back home was uneventful and, for the first week back at work, Justine managed to forget about the bizarre yet intriguing conversations she’d had with Jan. David had moved his things out of her flat, and the only communication she’d had with him was a series of curt, almost aggressive e-mails where he suggested that they try to patch things up so that he could “explain things” to her, and where Justine suggested he could go fuck himself — or his blonde mistress, if she’d still have him. He didn’t press the point.

It was on the second week that Justine was prompted into action. And it was a spam e-mail, of all things, that did it. She’d logged on, delighted to have received an e-mail a few days earlier from Jan, and was hoping for a further one when she decided to clear her spam e-tray. By chance, the top e-mail caught her eye. She didn’t open it, but stared at the title for a long while.

NEED HELP LOOKING FOR THAT SPECIAL ONE? read the title. The sender was named “Amanda Pullen”. It was probably junk of the lowest matchmaking variety. And yet.

Amanda. The other name relating to her birth parents that Justine had found. Was it her sister? Did Justine really need help finding out for sure?

She decided, right there and then, to take some leave from work. Her boss was understanding, given that she too knew about Justine’s break-up with David. And Justine, wasting no further time, spent the next few days researching the best way to find out about her long lost family. For some reason, although she knew more notionally about her birth parents, it was the promise of a long lost sister—this unknown “Amanda” which drove her on.

A week into her research, Justine had unearthed many new details about her parents. Her father, Walter, had died nine years ago, with heart failure recorded as the cause of death. A year later, Mary had emigrated to Australia and could not be traced, beyond a hint that she was living near Adelaide. The Jacksons, Justine’s birth parents, had left a house in Ashford, Kent, but that had been sold going on eight years ago.

But about her possible sister, this other daughter of Mary and Walter Jackson, Justine had found nothing.

Frustration began to set in, and Justine felt herself staring down a chasm of depression. She’d sent out hundreds of e-mails to various companies and individuals, in the hope of tracking down someone or something to give her a new lead.

After two weeks of fruitless searching, she went back to work. She refused offers from her girlfriends to go out for a drink, and also refused a dinner date with Marco; one of the newer guys in the administrative division. He was cute, no doubt, but Justine was in no mood for socializing, and people quickly saw that. Justine felt her depression getting worse, and would find herself some evenings crying whilst watching the TV, clutching onto a cushion and not knowing why she was sobbing so hard.

One silver lining to her current state was the occasional e-mails she got from Jan. Justine had browsed Jan’s internet site Sisters in Love and read some of the testimonials and forum topics, but had not contributed anything herself. She found some of the stories there fairly wild, but many of them were incredibly moving. These were women who had not only the strength to live through their incestuous feelings, but to share them with others.

It was November 15, in the commercial build-up to the Christmas season, when Justine received an e-mail that would change her life. It was marked as “Unknown Sender” and automatically placed in her spam e-tray. She was going through her e-mails, ready to delete them all, when her eye caught the e-mail title:

WALTER AND MARY JACKSON

Justine stopped, feeling that incredible sensation of butterflies as her finger hovered over the “Open” key. Of course, it could be a piece of spam, turned around from one of the many she’d sent out. But there was something undeniably desperate about her search for her lost family, so Justine opened the e-mail and read the short message:

Hello. You don’t know me, but your e-mail was sent to me by a company tracing old family names. I’m not sure if this is going to help you in your search, but my father is named Walter Jackson, and my mother’s middle name is Mary, though no one ever called her that. My dad died some years ago, and my mum left England. I don’t know who Amanda Jackson might be, but I’ve always had as a keepsake from my father a copper bracelet with the name ‘Mandy’ engraved on it. This may or may not help you, but I’d be happy to talk more about it.

The e-mail was signed by “Kelly Bracken,” who supplied her phone number.

Justine read the e-mail several times, then began laughing and crying, at the same time. She felt elated, like she’d won the biggest prize at school or the best bonus at work, then suddenly scared about what to do next. Part of her wanted to ring up Kelly Bracken immediately, and part of her wanted to square it all away; rationalize that her parents had gone, and that so had Amanda.

Then another thought struck her: could this Kelly Bracken actually be her mysterious Amanda?

Once the idea made itself known, Justine held it at arm’s distance. Don’t get your hopes up too high, she told herself. Maybe she is, maybe not. Are you even certain that these are your birth parents? If you put too much hope in this and it doesn’t pan out, you’ll be completely undone.

Elated, yet frustrated, she decided to sleep on the matter and hope for some kind of inspiration.

*****

Justine was sitting yet again at her school desk, scratching geometric designs into the wooden surface. It was one of those old-fashioned school desks with a lift-up lid and an inkwell at the back. She was bored, and could only hear Mr Everrard’s voice drone indistinctly as he talked about the end of the Tudor period.

Pip was sitting on the desk beside her; sitting on the knee of Kevin Bradman and snogging him relentlessly. Her doll’s legs were draped over Kevin’s thighs, and her arms hung limp at her side, just as a good doll’s arms should. But her red-painted cheeks, usually so uniform, were flushed with sexual excitement as she and Kevin kissed and kissed.

Justine was bored. She didn’t like Kevin, and she resented Pip snogging him so much.

“Well, why don’t you snog me instead?” said Pip, swinging free of Kevin, who disappeared along with the rest of the classroom. Justine sighed and walked over to the window by her room, staring out at the red-dappled leaves on the autumn trees in her garden.

“Because it’s wrong,” she said, stubbornly.

“Hmph. It’s only wrong because you’ve never kissed a doll before.”

“Of course I’ve kissed you before,” said Justine, smiling, and thinking of the times gone by when she and Pip shared an intimate kiss in bed together.

“So why not now? Aren’t I pretty enough?” Pip said, pouting her pretty doll’s face.

“Oh, of course you’re pretty,” said Justine, coming over to lay her hand on Pip’s cheek, feeling the soft warmth of her doll’s woven skin. “Much prettier than me.”

“No, I’m not!” said Pip, hotly. The doll reached out and adjusted the towel at the side of the pool they were both lying beside. Justine was not surprised to recall that it was the pool at the hotel where she stayed in Portugal. Pip let her doll’s hand drift over to Justine’s body and began to caress her childhood playmate’s thighs. “We’re just the same, you and I,” Pip remarked, allowing her hand to travel between Justine’s hot thighs. “We’re practically sisters.”

Justine felt Pip’s soft hand delve beneath the fabric of her bikini, and sighed, closing her eyes to the sweet, erotic sensations the doll was giving her.

“Like sisters,” she echoed, opening her legs and feeling Pip move closer to her.

*****

Justine woke up horny. Again. She showered, went to work and then came back, feeling distracted all that day.

That evening, after wrangling with the subject in her head, Justine composed an e-mail reply to Kelly Bracken, asking if she could phone her the next evening. The reply, when it came a couple of hours later, was short and to the point;

I left you my number.
Call anytime after 7.
Kelly

Justine sighed and finished the bottle of wine she’d opened before going to bed. She slept deeply, with no recollection of her dreams.

The next day, she could not wait for seven o’clock to arrive and, when it eventually did, she found that she couldn’t pick up her phone to dial the number. She had to remind herself that this might be her sister, possibly just a link to her parents, perhaps a clue to finding out who Amanda really was… or another dead end.

Anything was possible.

It was that thought, more than anything, that gave her the strength to call. For Justine, finding out about Amanda had become an obsession that she simply had to resolve.

“Hello?”

“….”

“Hello?”

“Is, uh, is that Kelly Bracken?”

“Yes, who’s speaking?”

“It’s, um, it’s Justine Holloway. You sent me a reply to my e-mail about—”

“Oh, yes, hi! You called. I didn’t think you would call!”

The voice was sweet, quite young, and a little on the rough side as far as Justine knew anything about voices.

“Huh. Yeah, I feel a bit silly really, calling you and and bothering you…”

“Oh, it’s no bother. You’ve just saved me from another bloody episode of Eastenders. You could slit your wrists watching that stuff. So how are you? I mean, who are you…?”

Justine barely knew where to begin. And, after twenty minutes of almost constant chatter about nothing in particular, Justine closed the call with a smile on her face. And an invitation to meet Kelly the next weekend. She felt light-headed and dizzy, like a teenager waiting for her first hot date.

She’d felt the temptation to find out, then and there, if Kelly was her actual birth sister… but in the end, couldn’t bring herself to ask such intimate questions over the phone. Too impersonal. She had to meet this woman face to face.

Justine couldn’t wait for the weekend to arrive.

Continue on to Chapter 3

 

Leave a Reply

Please review the terms of use and comment etiquette before commenting. Messages that break our rules will be removed.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.