@-9

The solution to the 'hot tub' design wasn't all that complicated in the end. It just involved scavenging some parts from Cassie's distillery and locating a second small water pump from a fish tank that had once belonged to an independent insurance agency in the next town over. Eric had simply dug a rectangular pit with the tractor, finished shaping it with a shovel, applied some insulating material around the inside, lined it with another piece of the same holding pond liner material that they'd used to make the lagoon and rigged up a propane burner and holding tank. It wasn't very pretty, but by adjusting the valve on the propane burner with the constant flow rate of the small pump into the holding tank, Eric was able to get the temperature of the water up to 102 degrees and hold it there fairly steady by monitoring it with a digital grilling thermometer which featured a temperature alarm that he could set at the desired temp to warm him if it was getting too hot.

It took Eric most of the day Christmas Eve to finish it, but he thought it would make a nice present for the girls. Using a 4x8 piece of plywood that he had cushioned with insulation and covered with a layer of the pond liner material, before installing a soft rubber stripping along the edges, he fitted the lid into place to create a seal over the 'hot tub' and hoped that it would help to conserve enough of the heat so that it wouldn't take as long to bring the water temperature back up again each time they used it.

Eric kissed each of the girls when he came down to dinner, grateful for the hot shower after working most of the day out in the cold. He had shaved and put on a collar shirt as they held a video call with their parents during dinner to celebrate Christmas Eve. They cleaned up together once they'd finished eating and despite how much work it took to warm up the flue and get the chimney drawing, Eric built a fire in the fireplace in the den so they could enjoy the warmth and light of a fire while they shared a drink and a smoke after dinner. They reminisced about Christmases they had shared growing up and recalled the best, and worst, gifts they could remember.

Cassie remembered a bag of marshmallows she'd seen in the cupboard and they attempted to roast them in the fireplace using a variety of utensils they found in the kitchen. The marshmallows had seemed a little hard and stale when they took them out of the bag, and none of the attempts managed to avoid bursting into flames at some point, but they all agreed that the end result tasted just fine. Ellie suggested that the fact that they were all 'high as fuck' might have impaired their judgment as taste testers, but it only made them laugh and didn't diminish their desire for eating another one each.

They agreed to wait until morning to open the presents their parents had sent them, along with the gifts that they had for one another. They had agreed in advance, that any gift between them must be home-made, using only things that they found on the property. But Cassie had surprised them by producing three small packages as they sat around the fire.

"These don't really count," she explained. "Because they weren't home-made and are really only more like 'stocking stuffers'". Cassie broke out laughing as she tried to finish the sentence, but given the drinks and the weed, Ellie and Eric assumed it was just because she was wasted.

Ellie and Eric tore off the wrapping paper and each found a single condom inside. Cassie unwrapped hers a little more slowly and held it up to match theirs.

"I had totally forgotten that they put three of these in every welcome back kit we get from Student Services each semester." Cassie explained. "I usually end up giving mine away at some point when someone ends up asking everyone in the dorms in desperation late some night," She smiled. "Nobody came and asked this semester with the lockdown and I just tossed the whole welcome home kit in my duffel when I packed up to come home." She shrugged. "I was going through my school stuff today and was tossing stuff when I checked the bag to see if there was anything worth keeping. I figured it was meant to be and so I wrapped them." She took a drink.

"Are you suggesting that we use them, Cass," Ellie seemed a little shocked.

"Actually, I'm suggesting that when you're ready, that the two of you might want to use them," She looked back and forth between her brother and sister. "I figured this was a lot less awkward than either of you going to one of the drugstores in town." She rolled her eyes. "Kind of hard to explain during a lockdown when you're not supposed to be leaving your property." They both nodded.

"What are you going to do with yours?" Ellie asked.

"I think I'll hold onto it for a while," Cassie smiled. "But I promise I'll ask you before I use it," she looked sincerely at Ellie.

"Why would you need to ask me?" Ellie made a face.

"Because you're in love with Eric," Cassie shrugged and couldn't help smile. "And I'm pretty sure he is just as in love with you."

Ellie looked over at Eric and blushed deeply, "I didn't...I never said..."

"You didn't have to El," Cassie said softly. "I don't think Eric had figured it out yet, but guys are pretty clueless." She laughed a little and Ellie smiled bashfully. Cassie turned to Eric. "I love what we do together Eric, but admit it, it wasn't me you were thinking about when you told Lisa you were involved in something 'complicated'." She raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to disagree with her.

"Were you...?" Ellie asked softly.

Eric turned to look at her and felt a lump form in his throat when he saw the look in her eyes. He thought of a million things he could say, but in the end he just nodded and knew it was true the whole time. Ellie crawled over to him and he was pushed back over onto the rug as she climbed onto him and her mouth found his. Eric felt something wet on his face and when Ellie finally pulled back her mouth away to catch her breath, he saw the tears that were still spilling from her eyes and running down her cheeks.

Eric glanced over at Cassie, more than a little freaked out, as this was the first time he could ever remember seeing Ellie cry, about anything. Cassie simply smiled and nodded, as a way to tell him that it was all going to be okay. That it was a good thing. For her part, Ellie was hugging Eric, her face resting on his chest as he rubbed her back comfortingly.

"So that's why I thought I'd need your permission, if I ever wanted Eric to use this with me," Cassie said softly. "Because I was pretty sure that you two would be together at that point if I did."

Ellie sat up. "But is it going to be weird now between the three of us?" She looked back and forth between the two of them. "I don't want to stop...you know...what we have."

"Neither do I," Eric said.

"Neither do I," Cassie sighed. "But I think I'm headed back to school again after New Year and I'm not sure how much I'm going to be around for the next few months." Ellie and Eric both looked shocked. "My advisor thinks we can get permission to start setting up lab space, if we agree to certain guidelines, even though the campus is shut down. There is some research that I really need to be a part of and there's a chance it could lead to something pretty big for me. I don't think I can pass this up."

Eric and Ellie, both rose to their knees to come over and hug Cassie, begging her not to leave.

"If this is because of Eric and me, I swear, I won't make it weird. You don't even need to talk to me about, you know, using the condom if you don't want to," Ellie assured her. "I totally trust you Cass."

Cassie smiled. "No El, it's not that. I'm just not ready. I'm not sure how soon I will be." She reached out to pull a strand of hair to one side of Ellie's face. "And anything I do with either of you going forward has to be when all three of us are together. So nobody gets left out." Ellie's face wrinkled up and she swallowed hard as their eyes were locked onto one another. "But I will make you promise me one thing."

"Anything," Ellie urged her. "Just name it."

"If I decide I'm not ready to use this by Valentine's Day and I come home to visit," she held up the condom and blushed as she fought a smile. "Can I watch you two use it?"

"That is the hottest fucking thing I've ever heard," Ellie leaned in and kissed Cassie deeply, panting as her hand went up to Cassie's sweater to fondle her breast and pinch at her hard nipple through the soft fabric. Eric smiled as he watched Cassie fall back onto the rug as Ellie pawed at her sister's sweater and bra, freeing her boobs so that she could lower her head and suck on one of them. Ellie paused to look over at Eric, "What the hell are you waiting for? Come help me remind her why she needs to come home, like every fucking weekend."

"And maybe do some encrypted video chats during the week," Eric smiled as he crawled over to take Cassie's other nipple in his mouth while Ellie tugged at the zipper on her sister's pants.

Cassie and Ellie loved the hot tub, despite its crude appearance, and they used it together for the first time on Christmas Day, while snow fell in large, soft, silent flakes and the last of the light left the sky. Ellie christened it the 'hillbilly hot tub' after a few drinks and they made increasingly stupider jokes and rules about its use as the night went on. Most of the rules involved some mandate that only homemade liquor could be consumed when they used it and only siblings were allowed to skinny dip together.

Ellie took a drink of the tangy lemonade concoction they'd invented and proposed a toast that they should, "rename it 'Brother Sucker' instead of 'Brother Pucker'." She insisted that all those in favor, "should suck their brother's dick for ten seconds to show their support. " The vote passed 2-0 with Eric abstaining.

"Only if you guys tell me which one you're drinking when you finally do it," Cassie proposed, with a small burp. "So we can rename that one 'Brother Fucker' too." Both she and Ellie were laughing so hard they couldn't breathe and Eric delicately took their cups from their hands before they spilled their drinks in the hot tub.

It took a little while to convince Ellie that she couldn't run naked all the way back to the house through the cold, no matter how warm she felt getting out of the hot tub. As it was, they were all chilled by the time they got into the house in their robes, even with towels over their heads and they piled into the shower together, taking turns under the spray and making sure none of the hot water went to waste.

In the night, Cassie crept back to her own bed and when Ellie woke up early the next morning, only she and Eric were still there, naked under the covers. Ellie looked at the clock on Eric's bedside table and tried to remember the last time she'd woken up that early. She watched Eric sleep, his soft, slow breathing as regular and reassuring as any sound she'd ever heard. When he rolled over on his side and faced away from her, she slid up behind him, his back smooth and warm against her breasts. She wrapped her arm around his side and placed her hand against his chest, feeling the gentle thud of his heartbeat beneath her hand until she drifted back to sleep herself, wondering if this was going to be the day that they used one of the condoms, and if Eric was as nervous as she was, about what it would be like once they did.

It didn't end up happening that day, mainly because Ellie's body assured her that she wasn't pregnant, and she had absolutely no intention of letting Eric's first time, and their first time together, happen under those conditions. So they focused on making their last few days with Cassie as magical as they could, filling them with fantasies, memories and the bonds of love and desire that could never be broken, no matter how much time might pass, or how far fate might pull them apart.

Ellie and Eric took turns driving Cassie to the train station on the Saturday after New Years while each spent half the trip in the back seat with their sister, stealing a few more minutes of guilty pleasure, while they drove through the winter landscape and the tinted windows hid their secrets from the other cars out on the road. When Ellie tasted Eric's cum in her sister's mouth as they kissed, she lifted her mouth away, panting as her hand went between Cassie's legs, and whispered, "That is so fucking hot I can't stand it."

For a brief moment, Ellie could taste the both of them in her mouth, before the intoxicating nectar of her sister's excitement washed every other thing from her senses. She spent the next ten minutes focused only on Cassie's pleasure, as their heated desire for one another pushed back the gray haze of the winter day on the interstate. Cars sped by in either direction, going to wherever the New Year, and the cold, grey horizon led them, each one of them oblivious to the tiny sun that burned within the small space between the two sisters who now spun in an orbit all their own.

They waited together in the train station and they hugged as Cassie's train was called. Cassie waved to them on the platform and for the first time since she had gone away to college, she looked back out the window to the train station until it faded out of sight. She watched the gray landscape pick up speed as she rolled past farms and highways, over trestles and under arches until her phone pinged. She opened the message from Ellie and it only said 'we miss you already'. There was a link below it and Cassie put in her earphones and clicked on the link, letting the soft piano and guitar wash over her as the world rolled by.

When the harmony of the chorus swelled up out of the simple arrangement she heard the lyrics cut through the low gray haze:

"Here's to you and me, and in between

We draw a line but we can't see where it's been

We scratch our heads and race against the heart's content"

A tear slid down her cheek, but she smiled as she wiped it away. When the song ended, she started it over and she listened to it, over and over again, all the way to where her new life waited for her.

The day it did happen ended up surprising them both, perhaps because there was nothing at all remarkable about it. Ellie had gone upstairs to shower after eating breakfast, leaving her pajamas on the bathroom floor in a small pile of flannel.

When she came back into her bedroom, with a towel wrapped around her head, and a toothbrush in her mouth, she found that Eric must have emptied out her clothes hamper at some point and done her laundry. In neat stacks laid out along her freshly made bed, he had left her clothes, clean and dry and folded. Except for her panties. Those he had arranged to form a heart beside her other clothes, right in the place where she slept.

Ellie found him in the den, shooting things in a video game and sitting on the couch where they'd had their first date. Ellie opened her robe to reveal her naked, pink body and dropped to her knees to open her brother's pants and take his still soft dick into her mouth. The initial shock soon wore off and Eric fumbled to pause the game while Ellie got him almost instantly hard, using her hand and mouth to work him into a state of gasping arousal. Ellie lifted her mouth away from him long enough to scoot back a few inches and pull Eric to his feet. Grabbing his hip and placing his hand on the back of her head, she urged him to thrust with his hips and he quickly humped her mouth until he came less than a minute later, unable to resist the magical feeling of her warm mouth and the sensation that her lips, tongue and hand imparted upon his hard cock.

He sat down panting and waited for his heart to slow down a little before asking her, "Was that for doing your laundry?" She couldn't help giggle, before she stood up and took both of his hands again to pull him to his feet.

"No, that's because you always cum too fast the first time," she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the lips. "Now come on." She tugged at him until he followed her up to her room.

Eric started to undress when Ellie allowed her robe to drop to the carpet in her room, halfway between the door and her bed. Eric watched her body, warm, curvy, pink and naked as she sat on her bed and pulled something from the drawer in her nightstand. It took him a moment to realize what it was and he froze as his eyes went wide in disbelief.

"Ellie, are you sure about this?" His voice sounded as shaky as he felt in that moment.

"I am," Ellie looked up and their eyes met. "Come here, baby," she held out her hand. Their hands shook and trembled as they finished undressing him and his cock twitched as Ellie unrolled the condom onto his hard dick before scooting back onto the bed and reaching her hands out to him.

In the end, it wasn't anything that Eric imagined it would be like. It was slow and sweet and he didn't have to do anything more complicated than complete a circle that ran through their lips and their chests and the sliding, grinding movement of their hips as Ellie's firm thighs wrapped around him and her arms hung on his neck. He was as deeply connected, and as deep inside of her, as he could be, and yet it still wasn't close enough to satisfy how much he wanted to be completely at one with her.

Ellie's kisses found his chin and his jaw, his neck and lips, just as his found hers. His mouth found the lobe of her ear, and she gasped as it sent shivers through her body, and she giggled at how it tickled, and her hips made everything he did feel like it was the perfect thing to do in the moment it happened.

He whispered, "Oh Ellie, Ellie, Ellie..." into her ear as their bodies rose and fell in the undulation of the earth that moved beneath them. In that moment, her name became a poem and a promise and a password to unlock the instant when every wall between them dissolved and they were caught naked in the blinding light and tumbling waves of sensation, where they could only cling to one another until the storm subsided.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Eric heard Ellie's name whispered again and again, but it was the sound of Ellie's gasping into his neck, his jaw and his ear, that reminded him of where he was, and made him realize that it was his own breathless voice that he was hearing.

His cheek and hers, wet with exertion, and her hair, still damp from the shower, against his face, still smelling of her shampoo as the towel lay undone beneath them on pillow. Eric kissed her shoulder, her neck and her chin, felt her arms still clinging to the back of his neck, then her fingers intertwined in his hair, as they struggled to remain attached to the surface of a world, that no longer felt as real as the new one that they had come to inhabit.

Ellie rolled with him as Eric landed softly onto the bed beside her, her eyes as wide as he had ever seen them, closing only to allow his fingertip to slide the damp strands of her hair away from her face. If she looked younger and more innocent in the moments just after she had woken up each day, then in this moment she was made new in his eyes, every eyelash and tiny crease in her full, pink lips, stripped of any makeup or mask that the world demanded. The bloom of desire glowing under her skin and the deep blue of her eyes that had now become pools where he knew he would never be able to touch the bottom. He stared at her full, parted lips and he marveled at the constant desire he had, to kiss her and feel her mouth on him, the gate by which she had allowed him to find her, where he could never have before she had let him in.

"I just love you so much, El," he whispered. "I still can't believe...just...all of this."

Her eyes flickered back and forth between his, looking again and again, for something she feared, but was now willing to risk, in order to find that which she desired.

"I just love you too Eric. I can't explain it, but I just want to do...everything for you...want to give you everything. I don't know how to say it." So she put her arm around his neck and clung to him, like the world would try to drag her off of his body in the very next moment.

"Is it bad that I want to go get mine and like...use it right now," Eric chuckled in her ear.

Ellie shook with silent laughter, her boobs squeezed up against his chest. "No, and I think I'd let you...except I know that I would be down at the drugstore ruining both our reputations later this afternoon if we did."

"I guess this has to stay something special for a while until we can find a way to get more then." He pulled back to look at her.

"I think it will always be special if we make it that way," She smiled at him shyly. "So should we tell Cassie?"

"I was kind of wondering if she'd send us the third one now if we promise to video chat with her when we use it," he chuckled.

Ellie's mouth opened in a pantomime of shock and her head moved slowly side to side, but her eyes were locked hungrily into his. "That is the hottest fucking thing I've ever heard." Her mouth locked onto his again and she whimpered urgently as she sucked on his tongue and Eric's hand slipped between her legs.

********

Author's Note-

Thank you for coming this far, amid the frenzied pace it took to get through more than 134k words down, in just over a month.

Who can tell where stories come from? I had started another story for the holiday contest that I was tens of thousands of words into before I realized that it just didn't go anywhere that I was interested in going. Around that same time I saw an animated gif of a young Demi Moore and another actress turning topless on a beach from what looked like a tropical bar. There was something about their body types, expressions and beauty that left me obsessed with how I might get to that moment in a holiday story during a pandemic and everything else unfolded from that. I missed the contest deadline, but I was long past caring. The story became the prize.

That said, this is probably my last effort at the brother/sister thing, at least for a while. I had made a previous effort with the 'Neverland' series as the pandemic got going and it struck me as a very interesting premise for how someone ends up getting involved in something that they ordinarily wouldn't. Based on many of the comments and feedback, I don't think I'm wired to give many of the readers of this genre exactly what they're looking for.

For me, the greatest excitement sexually comes from those transitional/barrier moments when we step into something we feel otherwise unprepared for, but want deeply. The 'Secret Cove' series is really about that same thing. I really enjoyed the 'Lockdown' and 'Neverland' dynamic because reality has so many structures in place that make these sibling relationship rife with these barrier/threshold moments that otherwise don't have as much significance in everyday relationships. Everything is heightened by the circumstance in which it happens. I'm sure that there are other possibilities out there besides this sibling dynamic and I'm interested now in finding those to write about. I hope that if you enjoyed these stories, you'll take a chance and read whatever comes next, even if I jump to another genre to write it.

I really do think that everyone got what they really wanted most in this story.

Ellie's personality makes her the sexual instigator for many of these events, but deep down, she really wants intimacy, along with love and commitment. She surprised me most out of the three characters from who I believed that they were as I initially sat down to write this story. I fell in love with Ellie along the way. Just like Eric did. I initially thought she was device to move the action along, while Cassie was the less obvious object of the story arc, but Ellie changed my mind somewhere along the way, and insisted, like a temper-fueled pixie, that I pay attention to who she really was. I think I did.

Eric obviously wanted sexual experiences, but I think he found that he also wanted emotional and physical intimacy outside of sex along the way. I think he discovered, on an abbreviated timeline, that there was a far more complex, interesting and desirable world, inside each one of these women, than he was able to comprehend when the story began.

I hope Lisa's part in the narrative made more sense to many of you as the threads of this story finally pulled together in the last few chapters. I don't think Eric develops the insight that he does without Lisa. Nor do I think he ever comes to understand how objectively desirable he is to women, based on his frustration leading up to college, without her there to affirm its presence. Lastly, I don't think Eric realizes that he's in a relationship until he is forced to choose between what he thought he initially wanted and his contemporaneous understanding of where he was with Cassie and Ellie.

I don't think it's a stretch that Cassie was just as sexually charged as Ellie and Eric, but we've all known a lot of smart, determined people who have painted themselves into the kind of corners where Cassie finds herself. All of the women that I've deeply loved have shared this trait, which I think transcends gender. They make decisions and choices because they are passionate, or anxious, about some aspect of the world around them and it ends up creating armor and fences, that we only realize very late, have constrained us as much as they have allowed us to navigate some part of the world that captured our attention.

I believe that part of Cassie's reaction to many of these experiences is the overwhelming sense of relief they provide from the anxiety of her situation, at the same time that they affirm that she isn't fully the construct that the world has come to accept her as. There is an aspect of running through the sprinklers naked about her that I just love. I don't think she wants to be humiliated or shamed in real life, but she absolutely tingles when she gets to ride the rollercoaster that mimics those feelings, because there is no other outlet that lets her safely enjoy that rush. I didn't know any of that about her at the beginning. I thought she was the one that kept the story interesting, by keeping some barriers intact to cross later, while Ellie made sure there was enough action to keep everything interesting until she did. She was the one that kept talking to me through the fourth wall the whole way. She wrote much of the story and she surprised me several times when she did things that seemed really out of character at first. Understanding why she did those things was the key to understanding how complex she really was.

This story has so many little quirky side arcs that didn't always go where I thought they would. In the end I think they interjected enough messy unpredictability, and mislaid plans, to make the story more believable than it otherwise would have been without them.

The mysterious package was the Halloween costumes the girls ordered for the strip club. I thought it was obvious in the timing of the events, but I'm sorry if the reality was less enigmatic that some of you might have imagined.

I think Cassie ends up sending them sends them a lot of condoms, bought anonymously in the university town, and comes home to visit, frequently.