Jenny

On the morning of the second day he caught her coming out of the shower, towel-wrapped, hair tousled and flat to her scalp. She stopped in the doorway; the corridor was too narrow for them to pass one another comfortably. Mist rolled out around her. Cal found himself looking at her collarbone. The line of it. Her pale neck.

He caught himself looking, and stopped. Cleared his throat. “Your music,” he said. “It’s too loud.”

Jenny raised a pierced eyebrow. Pressed her lips together.

“I don’t mind it in the evening. But it’s early. I need to work.”

She didn’t reply to that, either. Her eyes were so bright and wide she looked almost alien: a creature from another planet stepping into Cal’s world in a cloud of steam. She raised a slender hand to the knot of her towel and, with a twist, undid it.

Cal felt a hard kick in the pit of his stomach as the towel hit the floor. She was naked underneath. Completely naked. Flat stomach. Fist-sized breasts standing pert – large, pink nipples. Her skin was pearled with droplets of water all the way down, even between her legs. She was shaved there, with only a thin strip of downy hair. Cal hadn’t seen that on any woman except in porn before.

“Whoops,” said Jenny, sarcastically.

Rage or arousal – hard to tell which – gripped Cal tight. He looked for too long, then averted his gaze. He tried not to blush.

“Pick that up,” he said, pointing at the towel.

“No,” said Jenny. She stepped out into the corridor, utterly naked, and squeezed past him. Contact. A hand on his arm, and a brush of something that might have been her breast, but he didn’t dare to look. His hand was inches from her naked groin. Inches. He caught her bitter, bodily scent again – layered over now by coconut shower gel, but still every bit as strong as it was last night.

He tried not to look as she disappeared down the corridor to her room. He failed. Her shoulders were narrow, her arse pert. Between her legs: a shadowy hint of folded flesh. She went into her room and shut the door, leaving Cal alone in the hall, leaving her towel crumpled on the floor.

*

There was silence for a while, then the music started again. Back at his desk, Cal ignored it for as long as he could. He tried to focus, but focus eluded him. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jenny, about the fact that she shaped her pubic hair.

The visual of it was one thing – the graphic nudity of that part of the body – the intention was another. What is it they call that style? A landing strip. Indeed, the strip of hair like an arrow, a line pointing you towards a body part that was just brazenly there, not covered by clothes nor by hair. She had done that, chosen that. She had gone to a salon, or patiently shaved herself in the shower.

She expected other people to see that part of her.

He gritted his teeth. He was in one bedroom, Jenny in the other – just the narrow corridor (where her towel still lay discarded on the floor) between them. The music, turned up to a volume that shook the floor, was an act of deliberate defiance. Provocation.

For a moment he was torn. He imagined going across to her room, hammering on the door, Jenny answering it, still naked, beckoning him inside. He felt the same kick again, like he did when she dropped her towel. He wrestled his mind away from that train of thought. Back to the screen of his laptop. Back to his thesis.

But the music continued. Barely even music, actually – no discernible melody, no tune. There was nothing pleasing about it, just screaming and the clash of drums and sometimes something that might be a guitar chord. It was noise. Cal tolerated it for another few minutes, then snapped. Nobody could be expected to work like this.

Leaping up from his desk he stormed across to her door and slapped a palm against it. “Turn that DOWN!” he shouted. And, after a moment and much to his surprise, the music ceased altogether. Silence lay flat and heavy on his eardrums. “That’s better,” he muttered.

He returned to his room. Settled at the desk. Before he could return to his work, however, the other noises began. Just a body shifting on a bed at first, springs moving, covers being swished around. Then there came the buzz of a small electric motor. Heavy breathing. After a minute he heard Jenny moaning quietly.

Cal sat rigid in his chair. Rigid in his spine and his cock too, which had stiffened almost in a jolt. The moans were low and husky, drawn out, performative. For a moment he convinced himself that she wasn’t actually masturbating, merely taunting him. He went back and forth on that: it was a game, it was real, it was another of her petulant little plays.

It didn’t matter, really, though. Whether she was masturbating or pretending to masturbate, the fact was that Cal could now think of nothing else but her masturbating. Naked. Stretched out on the bed. Legs splayed to make that private fold of flesh between her legs open, available. Her small hands creeping down to touch herself there, maybe curl up and dig inside, maybe thrust, palm smacking against her pubic mound…

Cal gave himself a little shake. Stop it, he admonished himself. You can’t think this. You mustn’t do this. For god’s sake get a grip. You shouldn’t be thinking these things about your step-sister.

*

This is the opening chapter of a much longer dirty story titled Jenny. If you want to read the rest of it, maybe buy a copy? It costs about the same as a cup of coffee, and I’m willing to bet it’ll last somewhat longer than one.