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Addiction

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

By

Rufus Quentin

September, 1999 - Spring 2012

It's a strange feeling to discover the things you miss. It's not like I'm the nostalgic type, or even had the time for nostalgia during the process of getting settled in Chapel Hill, but as a routine emerged I found myself counting things I lost in this great new adventure. I started running again as soon as my doctor gave me the green light. I had a new verdant campus and numerous well-kempt parks to explore, but no real wilderness. I missed the cool soft earth cushioning my foot-pads. I missed coming home caked to the knees with mud and the two trails of dirty paw-prints Dusty and I left behind. When I showered, enjoying one of the few contemplative moments my busy schedule afforded me, I just stared at clean water spiraling down the drain. The sight forced me to remember the days a year ago when my outings with Dustin began, when the hot water carried away the leaves and loam packed into my fur, but left the deeper stains uncleansed. Like the circling water, I'd watched my own blood slip out of sight when I gave up motherhood. I missed Chase every moment.

My jogs started easy at first; a jaunt to the end of the block and back. By the time the leaves changed their colors and my first semester in college crescendoed into full swing, I was doing more vigorous runs across campus. Pregnancy had made me much more health conscious. I swore to take that enthusiasm for the well being of my body and pup into motherhood. I found time to work off those post pregnancy pounds, but came home to the small studio apartment Nate and Chloe rented for me. No pup awaited my return. No diapers, feedings, or any of the myriad small things a mother needs to do were on my schedule. The only thing that kept me up at night was homework, reading, and cramming for tests.

No one raised an eyebrow when I started tip-toeing into classes and lectures two weeks after the semester started, and sat down beside strangers my age and older. My professors were remarkably accommodating, even if the workload, in addition to the registration run around nearly overwhelmed me during my first week. I must say, it gave me the distractions I badly needed. Otherwise I'd have spent the entire time on my back, thinking about what sort of an awful person I was for giving away my son.

I walked across campus, heavy backpack slung over my shoulder, and strolled through the halls of the academy buildings, hidden behind a protective shield of anonymity. All the students I passed seemed perpetually caught up in a great revel of optimism and joviality. I found it hard to identify with them at first. None of them had been through what I'd just gone through. Experiencing the same enthusiasm felt difficult, considering my long cavalcade of blunders. Smiling and attending the first parties, games, and school events still seemed unfathomable. Over time their persistence wore down my armor. I found myself slowly transforming into one of them, an average college student, the person I would have been from the start.

Time heals all wounds, they say. That's the advice I got from my father. Nate and Chloe, my closest confidants, reiterated that slogan during our many phone calls. Experience showed me those words were only partially true. My body slowly returned to normal. The aches and pains vanished. I earned the figure I wanted so badly as a teenager. The emotional damage lasted far longer. I can't say it ever healed. I still perceive the shame and loss. It's clear to me now that Nate and Chloe didn't rescue us from our mistakes. They rescued Chase from us.

As their parting gift, Nate and Chloe set me up with a studio apartment in the university district, the rent for which he and my second oldest brother Daniel covered. Because I'd deferred my enrollment, and rapidly un-deferred it immediately after my son's adoption, I didn't qualify for dorm housing, but I couldn't complain. My studio was cheaper and more spacious than the dorms. I kind of missed out on a lot of the college experience that way, but at the time I couldn't care less about the dating scene, the experimentation, and social life. Dustin was already nearby, taking classes at the technical college across town, a good one based on his admirable SATs and decent GPA. He'd study engineering there with an emphasis on metalwork and manufacturing.

Dustin was supposed to live out of his dorms. Needless to say he showed up at my doorstep with all his belongings before I was even unpacked. I had my misgivings about him de facto living with me. Chloe's advice still rang in my ears. Her concerns were mine since Dustin and I first grew sexual and the feelings I harbored broke my capacity to control them. I understood her perspective. Talking to me must have seemed like talking to an addict, someone so far gone, so consumed by their compulsion they no longer see their mistakes. I almost cried when I welcomed my brother in, not only because I missed him, but because I could see myself relapsing, buying my drug just when I'd come close to kicking it. My love for Dustin ran too deep.

The first thing we did when no one was looking was embrace and kiss, our futures redeemed. As the days unfolded and we finished unpacking our new lives, it felt as if we'd reached the Promised Land. For the first time I felt like I wasn't surrounded by idiots. Work was hard, but it felt infinitely more tailored to my interests, and therefore I adored it. Dustin spoke positively about his classes too. I could concentrate on school with all my attention, because I knew my son wasn't in good hands, he was in the best of hands. Best of all, nobody recognized us. My brother and I could walk side-by-side down the streets paw-in-paw, eat lunch or drink mochas in any of the many coffee houses near us, or even just lie on the campus greens talking about whatever shit we felt like. On weekends when we went on dates we didn't have to hide our love. Nobody questioned us. We finally turned into a regular boy and girl, our secret camouflaged perfectly by big city life.

Our place was small, one big room with connected kitchen and living room, and my bedroom area behind a partition. The only door in the entire place separated our bathroom from everything else. Dustin had a pullout sofa, purchased at a local Goodwill, along with the rest of our furnishings. I had a slightly more comfortable full size bed in the back, next to my desk and study area. Our first night we tried sleeping separate, but I joined him about an hour after the lights went out. We slept together curled up side by side like we'd done as cubs and those nights that winter I felt too lonely and afraid to find sleep alone. It took me a while to heal, both emotionally and physically, but we eventually resumed making love. We couldn't help it. We finally had the anonymity and the space we craved when our tryst began. I went on the pill as soon as my doctor let me and soon there was no reason why we shouldn't express our love.

School was difficult and the real world was stressful, but in that all too brief time, life felt perfect. We'd actually made it work. Of course it was too good to last. The signs started right away, but we were too jaded and in love to care. A sink full of dirty dishes, a pile of smelly laundry, boxes of open Chinese food containers on the coffee table, who cared? I did after a while, after midterms and towards finals, when I was especially on nerve. I rode my brother a bit too hard, and he grated me back the way he could. They were little spats, lover's quarrels really, but we were still so young we didn't have the experience to navigate them like we should have. In the beginning we'd kiss and make up right away. Then it got harder to do so. Some nights my brother would insist on sleeping on his couch and I'd have to spend the night alone in my bed. Sometimes I'd withhold sex if my brother wasn't doing his chores or his work in an attempt to recreate the incentive that had worked so well the previous fall. It stopped being effective. By the end of our freshmen year our little paradise had become a hell. The same thing was happening that had driven us apart when we were cubs. Our room, and it was just a room, was too small for us both.

We trucked it out through the summer with mixed highs and lows, and into the next fall. We sat side by side in-front of our television set aghast and silent the morning the towers fell. I remember it vividly. We had another one of our fights the night before. We woke up to a changed world. We held each other's paws and wordlessly forgave each other. Even with our promises renewed we hit our wall right before finals. Maybe we were both just way too stressed. We both had two part time jobs on top of our schoolwork, just to keep the cupboards full and tuition under control. The sixty-seventy hour weeks had taken their toll. We had a fight. Something stupid. I don't even remember what started it. That was when we reached the end. I was furious, panting from venting my latest tirade. Then my anger slowly dissipated, leaving me standing in nothing but boxers and T-shirt feeling naked and ashamed. Dustin lay there on the couch, fury in his eyes. It clicked then. This was my sibling. I'd forgotten that fact after pretending for so long that we were mates, just a random boy and a girl making a go of it. I knew then that after any more words like the ones I'd chosen, I'd run the risk of losing him forever. That was not an option.

We talked much more calmly until deep into the night. By the time dawn came and we needed to start packing up for our classes we'd dissolved our mateship. We made love a final time that gray morning and enjoyed our last tie, one that made us late for our respective classes. After that we were an average brother and sister again, living as our benefactors had intended we should. We weren't mad at each other. There was no spite. We helped each other out and supported one another when we needed it. Just the intimacy was gone. We lived together through the spring and most of the summer, but come August Dustin moved out. He left North Carolina, taking his Associates degree with him and continued at more specialized school in Pennsylvania. The place felt so empty without him.

So this is what it feels like, I said to myself every time I came home to my flat with no one to greet me, every time I found myself adapting to the unpleasant changes single life brings, and most frequently every time a positive memory of Dustin would surface from my subconscious and defy my decision to despise it. Just like when we got together, we didn't have a name for when we drifted apart. A break-up sure, but the predicted awkwardness that this person I was letting go of was still my brother made itself known. It began easier than you think. I was mad at Dustin, very mad. I cringed at the mention of his name and felt revulsion from his lingering scents. I threw away his abandoned belonging as if they were excrement. As time passed that anger began to turn inward. A break-up feels like a personal failure, an intense stabbing pain like the sting of some soul poisoning hornet. Maybe it's just me and my personality, but that anger subsided and replaced itself with self-loathing. I owned it. I held on to it and stoked it until the toxin ran its course, a process that took years.

I ended up moving into the dorms. I couldn't stand the loneliness of my empty flat for more than a few weeks. That's where I spent the last two years of my studies. My first roommate was an otter by the name of Sarah. She was sweet and we got along fine. I joined the dating game later that fall. It felt weird and I was inexperienced, but I was normal again with normal cravings. My story was tragic, but normal, once I omitted the keyword incest from my life's record. Incest was part of my baggage. It was a memory, a drug now out of my system, yet present like a ghost, a craving, especially when I met men with the quirks that attracted me to Dustin.

I had too much baggage and too little experience to make dating work well. I went through a few normal boys and I'll even admit a normal girl. After a good number of embarrassments I found my next boyfriend, a German Shepard from upstate New York named Mason. People would ask about my history, about my ex. I told them that I'd gotten knocked up in high school by accident, a broken condom. That I had a son whom had been adopted my brother in Charlotte. I told them that I had four brothers, each of which was very important to me, but I didn't tell a soul that I'd been in love with one of them, that I'd spent two and a half years of my life with him, nine months of which carrying their child. In the straight-world circles I found myself in, my relationship with my brother was considered an abomination. I kept it tucked under a veil of protective lies and never let it surface. Eventually I started believing the lies myself. The truth became a figment of my imagination. A dirty little craving, one I'd thankfully never acted upon.

Mason and I also spent two and a half years together. We graduated together and did our best trying to make a living with each other and our debts the year after college ended. I ended up with a degree in Pharmacology and Mason got his pre med in pediatric medicine. After a few disappointing jobs, and way too many rejected applications we decided to go to grad school. We both got accepted, but I got accepted in Johns Hopkins and Mason decided to go to Berkeley. On an afternoon in early September we packed up two separate U-hauls and drove off in two separate directions. We decided to try and make it work, but two months later we realized we were torturing each other. That relationship ended on good terms.

It was harder to find love in grad school. I had fewer friends and contacts in Baltimore. It was the first time in my life I was really truly alone. Luckily I'd entered the age of the internet and found a few dates here and there, one in New Jersey, one in New York, one in Washington DC. All of them were dead ends, but they did temper the loneliness. The only guy who I wanted to stick around with was a doberman from Arlington named Ryan. He was five years older than me, though I was already in my mid-twenties, past the point of seeing an age difference. He had Dustin's sense of humor and interest in firearms, as well as the crude loose tongue my brother had. He was ex-military and he'd spent time in Iraq. Most notably he was a dad with a seven year old he was left with after a similar situation that befell my own father. We had a lot in common and I identified with his daughter. I could have seen things developing further, hell, I wanted them too, but after I finished my masters and moved in with him and his daughter I noticed a few bad signs, namely ones that pointed to some fidelity issues and undiagnosed PTSD.

I ended up leaving Ryan and his daughter because Ryan couldn't keep his cock in his pants. It pained me deeply. I wanted to stay for her, because during our years together we'd developed a tight bond. I dumped all the maternity I couldn't express for my own son on her. Then it was over and I was packing up again. I felt like my own mother and I hated myself for it, trying to say goodbye to a screaming nine year old, telling her that I'd no longer be part of her life. I wondered if this was what happened to our mother. Did dad cheat on her? Why else would she leave? Now that I'd been in her shoes, twice, it left some very heavy things to think about and I started hating her less and myself more.

I got a job in the New York City suburbs on the Jersey side of the Hudson as a chemist for one of the east coast's major pharmaceutical companies. I got a nice modern condo in a complex on the edge of the city near where the countryside began. I moved in near my 27th Birthday. I was alone again, once again pressing my life's reset button. I tried not to let it bother me that my twenties were reaching their end and I still didn't have a ring on my paw. I wasn't even close. All my friends had been engaged and married. Bryn was busy with her three cubs. Amanda was raising two. Sarah was on her second marriage. Even Mason, whom I stayed in amiable contact with moved on and tied the knot, alerting me on social media not long after my move in to inform me that he and his wife were expecting their first. I found myself on the train to Newark or Manhattan on the way to a date or a one night stand every few weeks. It wasn't what I wanted, but it tided me over. That's eventually how I came to see my love life; like a supermarket run for the bare necessities.

As often as I could I gravitated down to Charlotte as well. Chase turned eight years old. How time flies. Chloe sent me pictures every month. He was healthy, energetic, and smart, with no sign of any of the defects my brother and my selfishness could have passed on to him. I visited on every holiday, but I was never more than "Aunty Alex" no matter how many presents I brought. It felt amazing to watch him grow, to hear him gain language, and to read the adorably scrawled letters with their crayon illustrations. I found it difficult to talk to my own son. He wasn't shy around me. He would freely unload his little kid questions and observations on me in random order. Having helped raise Ryan's daughter trained me for kids his age, but Chase was different. Perhaps my knowledge of the truth about him made it hard. I saw the face of his father on him, innocent and diminutive as in the foggiest, most distant of my memories.

Every reunion reminded me of the price I paid for his, for my, for everyone's happiness. It was bitter sweet to see this pup living with terrific parents in a big house in the suburbs. I watched him play with his "twin" brother and younger sister in the halcyon calm of summer evenings. I wanted to run with him and like the little girl disguised as a boy in hand-me-downs I used to be. I remember how his father and I used to play, muddy and unsupervised in the field behind our home until one of us came home injured or crying. I wanted to be the one to clean his little cuts and scrapes and put ointment on his bug-bites. I wanted to be the awaiting arms when the day grew late, but he already had two wonderful parents to do those things. I had to content myself with my role on the periphery, a spectator, a gift-barer, a story-teller.

That was the price I paid to have everything I ever wanted. As I settled into my career, into the routines of the gainfully employed, every day felt like the end of my story. Every day I'd return to my dark and quiet home, and vegetate on the sofa alone. It was a good ending. I had all the things that topped the list of priorities I drafted as a teenager. I'd left the mountains. I'd gotten more degrees than I originally planned. And I had a job that was making me "rich" by the standards of my youth. I was never going to cure cancer as Bryn once speculated I would, but I never lost a wink of sleep over that impossibility. Despite all I achieved my ending still felt empty. New wants and needs existed and for those my story could go on.

***

A few months after I turned twenty-eight my brother Danny called me and informed me than our father had just had a heart attack, that it was severe, but that he was recuperating in a hospital in Charleston. It hit me pretty hard. Our father the workaholic, the guy with a constitution of iron, the immortal, wasn't quite so indestructible. That night I needed to speak with someone, anyone. I called Mason but it went to answering machine. Bryn and Sarah hung up after brief condolences. This left Dustin as the only significant person in my life I could call. We rarely spoke and I dreaded talking with him due to all the questionable memories. I picked up the phone with reservations and dialed his number. We hung on the line for hours.

I'd known the basics of what happened to him after we broke up. He'd gotten married and divorced during those seven years. He fathered another son with that woman, but from what I heard he'd lost contact with both of them. He lived in Massachusetts working as a higher up engineer for Smith and Wesson. He too did exactly what he wanted to do. He was a gunsmith, except for one of the big guys and not some shady pawn shop along some highway somewhere. I was proud of him, very proud. I missed hearing his voice and kept extending the conversation with trivial inquiries, just to hear him keep talking. Once we were both hoarse, we hung up, but not without agreeing we should meet.

That weekend Dustin came to my place, braving the New York City traffic. He'd definitely changed as I saw him walk through the door. Gone was the lean and tone physique. Most prominently his hard, flat belly seemed to have disappeared under a layer of softness. He was broader shouldered, had thicker arms, and seemed to have maintained some of his upper-body musculature as if he were a regular at a gym but enjoyed an otherwise careless diet. He had more of a mane than when he was younger. He also wore glasses now, a minor detail he failed to mention me, but why should he? I hate to say it, but he looked like dad when we were growing up. I started to cry when I saw him, which I hadn't done since I was a teenager, and I'm not sure why. I'm sure the flood of memories pouring back played a part, as did the reminder of our father and his brand new quad bypass.

It was awkward at first. I received a long hug, and traversed some uncomfortable small talk. Thankfully Dustin bought us some scotch. I normally detested the stuff, but it seemed the right thing to sip as we sat there on opposite ends of my couch, uncertain about how long our father would be with us. After not too long I felt tipsy, and our conversation turned more fluid as our past selves resurfaced from under the callouses of time. We talked about everything, the recent past, the far past, and the future. We tiptoed around those two and a half years we spent as mates, how he took my virginity, how we grew together during my pregnancy, and the slow decay in North Carolina. That time was a black hole that officially never existed.

When we broke up two and a half years seemed enormous, a love come and gone, but now it felt like a mere fragment of my life, but by no means a footnote. As I sat there, emptying one cocktail tumbler after the other, and chuckling at his anecdotes, the sad stories with happy endings and the funny ones with poignant punchlines, our past together, the repressed memories, and the events better left forgotten came streaming back, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. He reminded me of all his weird quirks and idiosyncrasies, the things that endeared me to him way back when, and to my surprise he still managed to possess.

At the end of the night my vision was so blurred I could barely read the clock. We exhausted our stories and sat there in the quiet. We'd slowly inched closer to each other over the hours, close enough to touch. My brother's arm extended down over the head of the couch. When I leaned back his paw brushed my shoulder. A shiver went down my back and into my tail. I looked at him and into his eyes. He still possessed that vibrancy and brightness, despite what a half bottle of scotch could do. Tears made my vision even fuzzier. With everything in me I tried to broadcast a nonverbal message, warning my brother that my resistance had reached its limit and that for his sake things should not go further. I don't remember how it happened. His fingers caressed the fur on my shoulder. My muzzle tilted. His did too, and we found ourselves in the first kiss in almost a decade.

The rest was hazy and fragmentary, an intimate touch, a stumble down the hall, a blur of fur, and a genital tingle. The next morning I awoke in bed to the body heat beside me. I was stripped naked. My brother's arm hung wrapped around my chest. My pussy felt sticky with drying semen. All my sibling's scents graced my bed and clung to my fur. They hadn't changed a bit. Somehow, that fatal attraction still existed. We fools had acted upon it again. I slipped out from under his arm and sat up against the headboard. My brother stirred as he slowly awoke, his naked body stretched under my sheets, his arm fumbling around the nightstand for his glasses. I looked at him in shock. Had I just lain with my father or my brother? Either way, the word incest had catapulted itself back into the present from its banishment. After I'd convinced myself I'd matured, that I could finally close the door on that forbidden chapter of my life, that I'd reentered the world of normal folk and normal desires, I realized I was just as capable of the same damn mistakes I made as an eighteen year old.

We looked at each other very differently than we did the night before, as if we'd somehow awakened a ghost. The amiable and the amorousness between us ceased to exist. The shadow of the past inhabited our naked bodies, changed as they were. It felt like looking into a magic mirror, beholding the identical shades of fur, the far too similar patterns, and eyes that inhabited a soul that knew too much. I slipped out of bed and wordlessly padded off to the shower. Dustin's scents followed me and dwelled in my nostrils even after I tried my hardest to purify my fur of his aromas and my sex of his genetic material. After I'd gotten as clean as hot water could get me we silently traded places. I clutched a towel over my privates as he passed me in the doorway. We met again in the kitchen by the coffee maker after he finished. I was dressed in my pjs and Dustin wore his clothes from the night before. I tried my best to be a good hostess, but every action and glance felt tinctured in awkwardness.

I made Dustin my usual what-the-fuck-are-you-still-doing-here breakfast of coffee and a pop-tart. We both sat down across each other and nibbled nauseated at our food. A conversation needed to happen, but neither of us knew how to start it. I'd become adept at handling awkward mornings after, lord knows I'd had sex with plenty of people I shouldn't have, especially in recent years, but nothing prepared me to manage the recurrence of the universal taboo. In the end we didn't have that vital talk that day. After breakfast Dustin took his things and I ushered him to the door. He expected a hug or something I didn't want to give him. I had to look him in the eyes and see how much it pained him not to say what we were both thinking. After brief goodbye Dustin strode out into the gray daylight and I closed the door on him.

I made it just a few steps back into my apartment before I broke down, but my legs grew weaker with every step. I stumbled and slammed my back into the wall and slowly sank to the floor, tears running freely on either sides of my muzzle. All the shame came to me as if riding a tidal wave. It felt like it could crush me. I just gave up my ten year chip! I didn't want incest in my life anymore! What had I done all those years ago? What moment did it happen? When exactly did I condition my brother to see me as a sexual object and doom him to a misled life? What happened the night before was more than a mistake, it was a diagnosis. That light fever I felt so many years ago, the dizziness and the delirium, the disease I infected my brother with and which I thought had run its course was still there, raging in the tissues of my body, dismantling me from within. It was chronic. I would have to fight it until the day I die.

Dustin, you asshole. You protected me and you took from me. You were my antagonist. You were my lifeboat, my panacea. You were my heroin and my naloxone. You were in my mind and you were in my veins. You were my delusions. You completed me and you split me in two. You guided me into adulthood. I carried part of you in me. You gave me my first born son. I gave you up. You are the part of me that's gone. You are my suicidal thoughts. You are my fondest memories. You can't possibly imagine my gratitude. You can't possibly imagine my hatred. Dustin, I love you beyond words.

Dustin called me a few weeks later, having finally worked up the courage to acknowledge our most recent transgression. Like spies on either side of the iron curtain we kept our language vague and full of code. He invited me to come to his place in Massachusetts. Like a fool I agreed. My next weekend I was behind the wheel of my car drawn north like some migratory bird for a reason I could not express. Dustin rented a small farmhouse in some wooded area in the middle of the state. I got to sleep in his guest bedroom which doubled as his gun museum. We spent most of the weekend out in public. He showed me the sights, took me to tourist towns, and a few of those upscale farm to table restaurants richer Manhattanites abscond to when they're tired of the city's chasms. We acted like brother and sister. It was nice, but the emotions where there, palpable from us both.

Dustin was well behaved. We talked everything through, sober this time, and agreed that we both wanted to include more of each other in our lives, but the past, as we called it, had to stay the past. I left refreshed and rejuvenated, a lot less lonely than before. We made good on our promise in that we called each other weekly, but we didn't see much of each other for the better part of a year. It still felt good to hear his voice. We'd filled each other in on everything and began to confess the more salacious parts of each other's lives. I had to listen with some jealousy as my brother began to talk about a new interest from New Hampshire with whom he'd apparently been trading fur. I exaggerated the stage of relationship I had with a guy I had been on a few dates with, some horn rimmed hipster working in Brooklyn. It was promising, I said. I had a feeling about him, I claimed.

My brother and I planned on meeting for thanksgiving. We would bring our partners and have a nice normal holiday. My boyfriend, it would be a stretch to call him that at that point, cancelled on me earlier that week. When I got to my brother's house I learned that his lady wouldn't make it either. We chuckled and showed each other pictures of how happy we were with our interests, just to prove that we weren't both liars and lunatics. We had dinner and a wonderful weekend. On the evening before I left we found ourselves giggling in his living room, tipsy, but sober enough to be responsible for our decisions. It felt as right as it did wrong when he leaned in and kissed me. All the resistance I had in me melted away as our arms took hold of each other and we started to make out. We made love again that night, awkward and embarrassing like a first date, as if we'd never spent those two years becoming experts in each other's bodies.

The next day I drove home, watching the first flurries of the season colliding with my windshield. I had plenty of time to think about things on the three-four hour trip. On one side it felt exciting, like a reawakening. Everything around me, every fiber of my body felt vibrant and alive. I felt like a teenager with a crush again, a way I hadn't felt in years. I was happy, euphoric even, and I had my brother to thank for that, even though we had committed that sin again. On the other, I felt fully cognizant of the shame. Just like when I was a teenager, I experienced that sinking feeling. I knew as I'd known all these years that trying anything would lead to a dead end. It could break us if anyone found out. I couldn't stop thinking about him. I had more questions than answers when I pulled into my driveway that night. What was it that kept bringing us together? What was this attraction? The only decision I made was that I needed to be honest with myself. This attraction existed.

We made good on our promises and saw each other every couple months. We finally had those double dates. Our partners went awkwardly underutilized as my brother and I chatted it up the whole damn time. The few moments we were quiet, we made eyes for each other in a way our dates probably trusted us too much to consider fishy. On nights when we were left alone with each other I let him share my bed. Sometimes that's all we did for comfort and to combat the loneliness. Of course there were nights our snuggling turned intense. I'd let him slip inside and mate me as insatiate and as hardcore as I let him in the hazy memories of those sordid days in our mutual past. No one else I'd ever been with had ever made love to me with such endearing curiosity, with such lust, and with such a complete love of my body, its defects and its mysteries. When he finally pulled off leaving me seeded and depleted, panting off the ecstasy, my recollection had to span nearly ten years back to find a time I'd been left so utterly, and completely satisfied.

Dustin became my sibling with benefits again. I should have made things go back to normal after I got more serious with my hipster, but for some stupid reason I avoided that conversation. After a few weeks passed I spent almost all the time I wasn't working north of the Hudson between my boyfriend's place and Dustin's. My brother and I kept fooling around in secret, rendezvousing when our schedules aligned. I flat out told my boyfriend I'd go out for the evening to visit my brother. I think I could go through with it as often as I did because I technically wasn't lying. The only lies I told were the lies of omission. When my boyfriend Liam asked what we did, I'd give him every detail, sans the description of our bedroom activities. He knew my brother and I were close, but I'm not sure if he understood how close. The conclusion that we were off committing incest probably just didn't click with him, despite all the evidence.

The both of us deviants lived a double life, even though I detested infidelity. After my brother and I re-opened the door to the possibility of exploring the sexual attraction we felt for one another, we re-discovered that every passionate transgression made the idea of closing that door again slightly less desirable. When my fingers sank into his mane after his knot locked us together and my gestures wordlessly begged him not to stop, in the moments after he did his deed and I spiraled back down from my own climax into his panting embrace, and when we tasted each other's kiss after our bodies had given us all the energy they had, it was obvious even to ourselves where our hearts lay.

I kept doing it because I was reluctant to lose him again. The years without him felt aimless. I permitted it because I believed whatever happened between Dustin and I occurred in a parallel universe, one with no connection to reality. Somehow my brother didn't count, or so I rationalized, even though we did so much more than just fuck. I figured if I kept showing him attention he wouldn't slip away again so easily, but at the same time I recognized we'd reached the limit of what we could be for one another. I wanted a relationship with a future, and that's why I had Liam, my "real" mate.

I ended up moving in with my hipster Liam for a trial cohabitation. He was a fascinating guy, weird and eclectic in the way I adored, but somehow driven and professional so that he never had to worry about the bills. Despite some very genuine feelings I had for that guy I'd found myself on the interstate to Massachusetts as frequently as possible, often keeping the mutt's fresh cum warm between my vaginal walls, talking to him on the phone while on the way to screw my brother.

Dustin knew I was active with Liam, just as I knew he was doing Emma, his real-world love. I refused to know the details. The foreign scents I picked up on my brother's fur and in his home gave me all the information I needed to know. I felt jealous, of course. I hated the idea that my brother showed other women the techniques we'd developed all those years ago, that his lips could taste someone else, and that he derived pleasure from spilling his seed into an equally gracious and impassioned lover. I can only imagine how Dustin felt when I kissed him goodbye and got in the car back to Brooklyn to go do whatever I did with that wool-wearing mutt. We both hated sharing and it was obvious.

I felt convinced I deserved it this one time after a rough release when my brother simply pulled his knot from my pussy, shaking his dick off on my gaping, visibly bred slit, and lovelessly rolled out bed. He walked away, leaving me naked, cunt dripping of dog cum. "Dusty," I whispered, feeling exposed without the affection I expected from him. He stood with his back turned toward me in the doorway to his bathroom, then turned, stroked his dick, and reached out to smear streaks of semen into the fur of my muzzle.

"There," Dustin said as I flinched. "Now everyone'll know who you belong to." I covered my face and burnt with shame as the warmth soaked into my fur. He left me to cool on the soiled sheets, too broken and humiliated to even weep. He made me wear those pheromones, denying me a shower and my own boxers, and sent me all the way back to Liam commando, damp, with my long and once elegant fur stained and matted with the products of sex. Dustin understood painfully well that as soon as I packed up and made it home, I'd go and fuck his rival. He meant it as a message to Liam, a frustrated and desperate territorial challenge. The fates had decided I should become the object of an awkward dominance competition and helpless, I resigned myself to that degraded status. When the mutt buried his nose within my pubic fur, he would know he'd gotten there second. It totally wasn't in Dustin's character, but jealousy brings out the darkest in people and a decade of other men had given him a lot to be jealous of.

I discovered a whole new level of rock bottom as the only non-prostitute, though feeling I belonged among them, in a truck-stop shower in Bridgeport, sobbing while trying in vain to comb cum and sexual scents out of my fur. No matter what direction I went, I would be unfaithful. How many guys have I fucked since Dustin and I broke up? How many times did I need to wash off sperm that came from a guy I knew I never wanted to see again before we even made it to my bedroom? The jizz I was discreetly trying to rid myself of came from my biological brother. I fucking had a kid at eighteen. Shit, I really wasn't any better than the lot lizards, was I? I belonged to the bad people. I never wanted to be this way. Karma did a good job of matching the kind of bitch I'd been in life.

The beginning of the end started with a few phrases from my boyfriend, a wish to see more of me, a complaint about too many turned down invitations, an observation about how distracted I seemed during sex. These things repeated themselves every week. I promised him things would get better, that it was just stress, pressure, work. Even after I moved in with him, keeping my condo, but living out of his flat in Williamsburg, things didn't improve. It just made it more obvious that I wasn't completely there for him. Liam was the opposite of my brother, levelheaded, considerate, and the rare kind of guy who actually wanted to tackle problems and talk them all the way through. Anybody who's ever been cheated on would have seen the red-flags a mile away and called me out on them. Liam might not have suspected my brother because of how absurd the thought is, but I don't see how he couldn't have known that I fucked behind his back.

The shit hit the fan on a weekday in October. I'd just come home from work, winded by the commute. I'd misplaced my Iphone that morning, but thought nothing of it as I walked through the door of my boyfriend's tenement flat. I greeted my mutt with a kiss on the cheek, and told him I loved him. He told me he loved me too, but at that point my intuition told me something was off. We sat down with some hot tea. Liam lit a cigarette. The ashtray was unusually full. He pulled my cell phone out of his pocket and put it on the coffee table between us. For a split second I was happy to see it, then I felt dread, the shivering cold grip of guilt. "Here," he said, turning the phone on to my text messages. Dustin had sent me a tidal wave of explicitly salacious texts that day. If one were to scroll back, which Liam no doubt did, he would have seen the hundreds upon hundreds of confessions of sexual longing, lewd descriptions of what we intended to do to each other, and a library full of sheath pics, full body nudes, and close ups of my pussy oozing rough collie cum. "You've been getting these all day," he said casually. "Care to explain?"

The first thing I thought is "Fuck, I'm going to jail now aren't I?" A betrayed boyfriend, a heap of incest evidence, and draconian state laws did not make for a good combination. Luckily cooler heads prevailed. For the first time since I was discovered by Chloe, I opened up about Dustin. Liam quietly nodded, channeling his inner Freudian scholar. I told him how things all started in high school. I told him how Dustin knocked me up. I told him about my "nephew" Chase. I ended by telling him that a few years earlier, before Liam and I became an item, we met up again. I told him, over tears, I felt like things were out of control.

I was surprised with how clean and composed Liam took the news. The professional and non-accusatory tone of his language took me aback; then again that kind of coolness hurts the most. He was a Brooklynite after all, a Williamsburger no less. He lived and breathed weird. I was probably the first person he'd ever met guilty of incest, but he handled it as if I were no stranger than the velocipede riding, living anachronisms outside of his apartment window. Even though it was a relief that he heard me out, that I could finally confess my life's most abhorrent secret, and that he accepted my faults without emotional outburst, I knew that it was over. Liam wasn't the one to give second chances, and even if he were, I was damaged goods, an incestuous pervert. I don't really blame him. Fuck, I hadn't given Ryan a second chance. He said he was in the market to get married, but that he wanted someone more attentive than I had become. His mind was made, and although we talked all night, nothing I could say could change it.

A few days later I was taking down the few boxes of my stuff out his flat back to my car and driving to my cold, lonely condo in New Jersey. I'd broken up so often it didn't really hurt anymore, though that was the first time in my life I'd ever been broken up with and not the other way around. Despite numbness I felt liberated, glad that my days of burning the candle at both ends were over. I couldn't keep that up much longer, even if I tried. My brother further helped mitigate the blow by spending some time with me after it happened, but being with him reminded me that I'd just blown an actual chance of marriage in a time where everyone I've ever known seemed to have done it at least once. Dustin could convincingly whisper "I love you" into my ears, he could perform the actions better than anyone else to prove it, but he couldn't ever slip a ring on my finger. What exactly was the end-game with incest?

I fell back into the normal routines of my life, the drive to work, keeping my home tidy, the meals alone and the evenings spent with Netflix. The monthly or bi-monthly weekend trips to Massachusetts became all I ever looked forward to. I was closing the book on the first third of my life. My son's age was already two digits. Our conversations were becoming fewer and further in between, but they now had a level of sophistication to them that reminded me I'd soon be talking to an adult. Life was starting to feel so very short and passing as quickly as it reads on these pages. I'd blink and a month was gone. I'd sit down for a rest and a season passed. I'm not sure what happened to my brother's love interest. He just stopped mentioning her and I think the same thing that happened to me, happened to them. Infidelity, whoever it's with, is hard to hide.

After Liam and I broke up, my online dating profiles went without updates and the inboxes of notes from potential suitors unanswered. I knew that as long what was happening between my brother and I continued, I'd just go down the same path as before and I couldn't emotionally go through with serial infidelity anymore. I cursed myself for giving in to the attraction I had for my brother. So long as it existed I was robbing him and myself of the possibility of ever having a normal relationship. It didn't matter if I ruined my life because my life was mine to ruin, but I couldn't forgive myself for screwing over his. I figured that every time I bedded him, I made him more dependent on me, more engrossed in the illusion that there was some desirable outcome to sibling incest. I felt like shit for it, but Dustin never complained. As such I carried on, pretending I was just satisfying a basic need when we fucked.

Adulthood has given me enough emotional calluses to get away with it for a while, but gazing down your muzzle into the eyes of the person you're riding, feeling overwhelmed by the bliss and vulnerability of coitus, the memories both positive and negative come flooding back and get under your armor, get under your skin. They get into your veins along with the dopamine and become the light toxin that opens you up. It takes command of your bones and your muscles and guides your behavior. Your body becomes language, your gestures semantics. It only speaks truth, shows you both the extent of your lies. It betrays your secrets. It strips you down to nakedness more revealing than uncovered fur and exposed most intimate skin. You know that you're hooked, yet still you don't stop. You're in it too deep. If you keep going, which you will, mistakes will be repeated. You don't learn. It will cease to be about pure fucking.

Thase facts became more obvious as my internal odometer clicked past the milestone of 30 years. Dustin came to visit on a weekend I didn't expect him. He'd given me a call earlier, telling me he'd be there in six hours. I had just enough time to commute home from work, do some shopping, and straighten out my home for company. He knocked on the door as I got dinner ready. He brought a paper sack full of a few bottles of wine as well as his weekend duffel bag. Those had to wait on the floor for a minute as I eagerly received the hug and kiss that awaited me. He came in wearing a blazer instead of his usual denim jacket in his best attempt at looking fancy. I helped him pull it off. It didn't fit him anyway.

"What's with blazer, Dusty?" I asked, hanging it on the coatrack and choosing a bottle of wine out of the bag which I intended to open first. "And why wine? Where's your six pack?"

"Lost that years ago," he joked. "Jackets there so we can go to a wider variety of restaurants."

"Fancy." I said, referring to both my brother's idea for a date and the wine I held. "What's the occasion."

"Good news," He said, kicking his duffel bag out of the way for the moment and taking the rest of the wine to the kitchen.

"What?" I said, pulling a corkscrew from a drawer in my liquor cabinet.

"Guess," he said from the kitchen.

"You finally get your landlord to sell you the property?"

"No," he said, joining me in the living room with two glasses.

"I'm stumped."

"You're gonna love this."

"What?"

He smiled. "I got offered a promotion today."

I popped the cork on the wine, "Oh wow," I said, venting some genuine praise. "Congratulations!"

"Senior project manager!" He said. "I get to design and market shit. Comes with a nice raise too! Extra 5k a year. More if my patents make it to market."

"Good for you," I said, pouring us both a glass. "I'm proud of you."

"Gonna take you out tomorrow. Someplace nice."

We both took our glasses and a seat on my couch. Dinner could wait a bit. "I'd love that," I said, taking a sip.

"This gives me some job security," Dustin said. "Well, I had it before, but this shows they actually like me. They want me around in the long haul."

I nodded.

"I can finally buy property with this. Gonna get a good loan, if not the house, then another in the area. Been seeing lots of for sale signs."

"It's a lovely area."

"Laws are shitty, but I can get used to it. Connecticut and Rhode Island are better in some ways, but their gun rules suck. Just wish New Hampshire weren't so far away. I'd love to settle there."

"I'm ready to move on too," I said. "Don't know where though. The bad memories are starting to add up here." I looked around my living room in a wistful motion.

"Can't always run away from those," Dustin said.

"You're right," I said. "I like my work and all. I'm happy. Fuck, I've worked my entire life to have precisely this. I don't know if you feel this way too, but sometimes I just want to bug out. Go AWOL. Settle someplace crazy like California or Oregon or even fucking Maine. Do something ridiculous."

"I hear ya," he said. "And I know what you mean. I love my work, but sometimes I just want to be alone. I've been thinking. I remember how much we hated it back home when we were growing up, but I could use a place that's a bit secluded like dad's place was. Not that I want to go back to West Virginia."

"I know what you mean. After Brooklyn and Manhattan I'm starting to be done with that. I don't want to be in a place as extreme as dad's, but some greenery would be nice. Maybe some land."

"Sis," he said. "It might be a bit forward, but I'd like you to come move up with me."

"Would be one hell of a commute," I said.

"Well, you'd have to relocate that. Isn't there a branch up there? One around Boston? Hartfield? Rhode Island? A similar job maybe? Everything in that area is really close together. The trains are nice too."

"What are you asking?" I said. "Even if there is another job up there, is that really the right thing? Remember what happened last time we moved in together?"

"That was different. We were kids back then," Dustin said. "We'll get a bigger place. That and I've learned not to be a pig."

"I don't know. This arrangement has worked out for us. I don't want to jeopardize us again. You're the only person I have right now I can talk to, you know? It would suck if I lost you permanently because you can't remember to flush the toilet and I can't stop being a bitch."

"Do you really like the idea of spending ten-twenty hours in the car every month? Paying two sets of rent?"

I sighed, "Dusty," I said. "You don't know what you're asking."

"I thought about it and I do."

I ran my paw over my muzzle and eyes, combing flat my fur, "We can't," I said. "It's impossible."

"We're doing it," he said.

"This is different," I said. "You know?"

"I don't want to be with anyone else anymore."

"Dustin," I said, looking at him in shock.

"What's to stop us? Nobody cares. We've been doing it for years."

"We're just fooling around. We're friends. There's no possible way for us to do more than what we are. They won't even let us. Plus remember what happened last time we were together?"

"Bullshit." Dustin said.

"I just don't know how it's gonna work."

"The way we've always done it. We'll just be living together, doing what we always do."

"That's not what I want."

"What do you want?"

"I always thought I'd get married someday. I want to settle down and I guess I want to start a family eventually. Even if we move in together we'll just be pretending."

"I'm not pretending when I say I love you. Well, do we need a legal document? Tax breaks, yea, but is that really so important? We'll save a lot as it is. The rest is just language. And as for, well, starting a family, we can try."

"We can't do that!" I said, raising my voice in disgust.

"We already have. Look at Chase, look how well he turned out."

"No," I said. "It just isn't ethical."

"It's risky, but you know this better than I do. Nobody else maps out their fucking genome when they hook up. And even if they did and figured out they had a chance of bad double recessives, that won't stop them from screwing and knockin' each other up. There's no law about that." y

I shook my head. I couldn't believe we were having this conversation.

"Let's put that aside for a second," Dustin said. "What about you and me?"

I opened my muzzle, but no sounds came out. I just kept shaking my head.

"Here. Let me ask you some questions I already know the answers to. I've been with a bunch of girls over the years. Before you and after you. I've never felt as comfortable with any of them as I've felt with you. Look me in the eyes and tell me, honestly, that you don't feel that way too after all the guys you've been with."

"Oh god," I said, knowing he was correct but not wanting to answer.

"You stopped looking when we started fucking again, didn't you?"

I looked into my lap and clasped my paws together. I just didn't want to incriminate myself.

"You're not looking for anyone else now. We're fucking, and we're gonna keep fucking if nobody stops us. We can keep doing this for years if you like, for the rest of your life, but it's not what you want and I know why. The happiest I've been was when we started being honest with each other, even though you were pregnant at the time and that sucked. Face it! We're mates. We may have stopped being it for a while, but look at us now. What do you call this? We're in love again! I know you well enough to know that I'm only offering you the things it will take to make your life happier."

"I don't know. Is it really gonna make us happier? In the long run?"

"It won't be easy, but what relationships are?"

"I mean, aren't we taking a more difficult route?"

"Who knows?"

I sighed. How long could I keep it up? I felt like I'd been eroded down to a nub. It wasn't just my brother. It was life. All my history. All my failed relationships. This stupid attraction that kept us boomeranging back into each other. I felt like a cog in a great cosmic mechanism some perverse engineer decided should align with the only incongruent counterpart in existence. I could let its ticks carry me away, but it would only be a matter of time before I came full circle. When forced to step back and behold the bigger picture, it became clear how hopelessly powerless I was to change things. Why did my life have to be so adversely dictated by genetic sexual attraction?

I let his paw take mine and together we sat there on the couch. "I'm scared," I said, looking off toward my fireplace, at the material world objects I'd collected and surrounded myself by, all the things that made me happy but couldn't console me now. "I'm scared we're fucking each other up. I'm afraid I'm gonna cave and give you another pup. I'm afraid we won't be so lucky like we were with Chase."

"I'm scared too. I'm afraid to lose you again. I'm afraid that if we aren't honest we could slip up and miss a chance, that we don't make the right decisions. I'm afraid to not have you in my life or to keep seeing you with someone else."

"I'm gonna take a rain check about moving in with you. I need some time to think on this. I know if I do, then it will be a matter of time before I'm tempted to go off the pill. I just don't think we should ever intentionally have children together."

"Look," he said. "I have two kids. Ours, which Nate and his wife are taking care of, and Hunter which Veronica took with her. I know you know how it feels like to watch someone else raise Chase. You told me a dozen times how much you miss him, how much you hated seeing him call Nate's wife "mom." It was the right thing to happen at the time, but it hurts to see. I had to deal with that twice. That bitch Veronica took Hunter to the west coast and I get to pay child support while she's all but promised to never let me see him again. I just want to see my kids grow up. At least once I want to be there every step of the way." He enunciated his last two sentences one word at a time. His voice sounded desperate and pained.

"Me too," I said. "That was the hardest thing I ever had to do."

"We can make this work."

"It was an accident back then and we dodged a bullet. It's unethical for us, knowing what we know, to do it on purpose. We shouldn't even talk about this. Even if we stay together, we have to be good. One of us has to get fixed if we want to be smart about it. If we don't you'll just talk me into it. You do that. You're doing it! I can't keep saying no to you. And when you do, chances are we're gonna fuck up someone's life."

"Come on. You know this better than I do. You're practically a doctor. There are always risks, for everyone. We all carry defects in our genes. Yea, there's a chance ours could align, and it's higher than anyone else, but it's not like it's a certainty, you know? Chase is fine, our next will be too."

"You've researched this, haven't you?" I said. I knew he was right. I'd learned enough about reproductive medicine and genomics that statistics were on our side. "Still," I said. "Even if he or she comes out okay, he or she will eventually find out about us. What do we say? What if he or she hates us for it?"

"How can they hate us if we show them all the love we have?"

"It won't be easy on them if they do learn about us. Remember, they'll be ours for life."

"They'll have it better than we did. Growing up isn't easy. We're better equipped moneywise and we're probably more stable than our parents ever were."

"What if someone else finds out?"

"Then I'll just add twenty minutes to my commute and move to Connecticut. There's no penalty there. I'm willing to disavow parentage on documents too. I just want to be a dad to my kids. That's been taken away from me way too often. Documents don't matter to me. Knowing that they're part of me is enough. If anyone asks I'm just an uncle helping support a single mom."

"This is too weird," I said. "Are we really having this conversation?"

"Why? Because we can actually do this and get away with it? Besides, you've always been weird. With you weird has always been code for cool."

"I mean, I think about Chase all the time, now that I'm ready for him. Before and after it happened it's always seemed so far away. I've always wanted something else first. I know the time is getting close, but I can't believe it's an actual decision we're talking about."

"You have everything now. Maybe it's time? One of the reasons I brought this up today is if we decide that this is the right thing, it should be soon. We're not getting any younger. The older we get the more the risks compound. We can wait a year or two, but the more we wait the more we gamble. It's true for all couples."

"I know you're right. I just wish I could give you a pup and know that it's gonna come out alright, but I don't know if we should try. Besides," I chuckled, "this isn't a conversation I expected to have today."

"Think about it. I didn't plan on any answers today. I just wanted to let you know I'm ready. I want this with you. I could be a good dad if someone let me have the chance. Think with the money we would save by living together and my new raise we would be able to support a pup just fine. Give it a great life."

I clutched my brother's paw and sighed. He had a way of telling me everything I wanted to hear.

"I just want to hear you say, in theory, if I could give you a healthy one, one of these days, whenever you want, would you let me?"

I felt myself venting a long breath. I shook my head, but I answered, "Yes."

Dustin kissed me on the lips, the nose, and the muzzle. "I love you so much, sis."

"I love you too, Dusty," I said, aware that I meant those words had no code. I meant them across all contexts.

My brother inched closer, his nose and whiskers swept along my chin. My muzzle rose, exposing my neck as he nipped his way down and tugged at my mane. His paw came to rest upon my belly and caressed me in a way reminiscent of the way he touched me when I carried his first born. His finger traced circles over my shirt, around my navel as if weaving part of some esoteric fertility incantation. Our kiss grew more heated. I sunk into the cushions with my brother on top of me. The world around us shrunk down to our immediate area, to a space with just our two bodies, our heat, and our breath. Soon we couldn't get enough of each other's taste, we made out as eager as ever, paws constantly in motion over fabric and intimate spots.

"Be honest with me sis, you've thought about it, having another one with me, haven't you?" My brother said, eventually pulling from our heated kiss. Dustin began to concentrate on my neck and mane, inhaling the scents of my fur and venting his words against my flesh.

"I have," I said, letting loose the words in a meek voice. "A lot," which was true.

"Me too," he said, "a whole lot." He paused. "Fuck it all, let's just do it. I promise it'll be healthy. Please sis? Please let me be the one." His voice trailed off with a shudder, desperation I'd never heard come from the collie. His nuzzles grew more intense and eager, as if trying to nudge out of me the words he needed to hear.

"Oh god," I said, as Dustin stripped my layers like a bandage taking a tuft of fur with it, exposing the bloody skin. There was no point in hiding anything any longer. My mind was made and had been all along. "Okay," I exhaled, disbelieving I'd just shared that fateful utterance.

His paws squeezed where they rested. "Thank you sis," he mumbled between hungry, wet kisses.

I still had the pill to protect me and Dustin knew it, but somehow we were tapping into some heavy subconscious bullshit so that both of us could conveniently disregard that fact. We goaded each other with just the right words to turn up the flames, and thereby stepped into some emotional territory we very much needed to see some therapist about. Even as adults we were damaged goods and it showed, which is probably why we belonged together. Sadly some very true feelings got mixed up in the pillow-talk, to the point one could consider it more a confessional than erotic button mashing. His paws continued over my body, squeezing my breasts, and the thin paunch around my belly and flanks. His nibbling returned up my cheek until his lips reached the peak of my muzzle. We made out as deep and as insatiate as we ever had. I knew and I knew he did too, that sometime in a previous epoch of our lives, an eon ago to be more precise, we'd mated for life. Our decisions, as heat fueled as they were, were just a rediscovery of that fact.

Dustin began to unbutton my cardigan and plaid shirt starting from the bottom. So much for dinner, I thought. He exposed my belly and bra one eyelet at a time, taking a break halfway up to coarsely finger through my belly fluff as if he'd discovered a new erogenous zone on me. His palm pressed on my stomach, upon the area I'd effectively reserved for him for nine more months. Once satisfied he tugged my garment off my shoulder. We broke kiss long enough for me to slip out of the sleeves and help my sibling lose his polo. He looked like a dork in it anyway. We confronted each other with a smile, holding each other's tops which we both simultaneously let fall to the floor.

I reclined nearly bare-chested on the couch while my brother crawled over me. He looked upon my body as I lay curved across the cushions, beaming a coy look of invitation and very much turned on. I reached up and pressed my palms across his chest and tussled his chest-ruff with my fingers sunk to the skin. He kissed me again during the moment it took his paw to follow the curve of my flank and slip under my back. I arched up until he managed the latch on my bra. I took in a deep breath, finally able to breathe free. That last little covering left my shoulders, liberating my breasts for my sibling to do with as he pleased. The work-hardened and scarred leather of his palm-pad caressed my nipple, his textures triggering an excitement that tapped into my deepest memories and emotions, and had me lifting out of that tenebrous nebula the undeniable awareness that I needn't look past my arm's reach for my life-mate.

My chin rose, offering my neck to Dustin, and I sighed as he nuzzled, nipped, and bit on his way downward. My body surged and my hips fidgeted on that little knot of arousal within me, stoked hot though it hadn't even been touched. Dustin's face and muzzle continued into the furrow between my bosoms. His kisses ascended the breast he wasn't fondling and his lips encompassed my nipple. He suckled upon me as rapaciously as I'd ever seen and felt him, ravenously mouthing my mound and drawing upon it. I held him tight with my paws hidden in his mane, holding him upon my chest as if in invitation to partake in any way he desired. He left my breast endearingly coated in slobber and continued to my belly with his nose pressed firmly in my fluff, nuzzling in search of my navel and my womb. Shuddering breaths vented from my trembling lower jaw and an unseen force arched my stomach upward for him, as if he'd held me on a cresting wave of climax.

His paw moved to unbuckle my belt. Trembling fingers unzipped and unbuttoned me and slipped under the waistband of my jeans in order to gruffly tug them down. My boxers received similar treatment, hastily shooed from place by my brother's fingertips, exposing my hips, thighs, and legs to sight and touch. My toe-claws did the rest, hooking into the bunched fabric and tugging it off my ankles. Foot-paws kicked the unwanted garments to the end of the sofa. Dustin proceeded to kiss down to my pubic tufts, but as I felt him nibbling my coarser furs down by the wellspring of my gender's aromas, I signaled him to move off. As much as I wanted to see and feel his nose pressed between my labia, I had other things in mind.

Dustin got to his knees and so did I. His paws caressed my perfectly naked body, buttocks, hips, flanks, back, passing over every inch of my bareness in a motion to draw me near. My breasts pressed against his chest and my muzzle met his to refresh the taste of my sibling in the corners of my mouth. My own paws traveled down his sides between our bellies. I unbuckled his slacks and did my best to usher him into as natural state as I. He helped, stumbling awkwardly until he shimmied himself free. My paws then reached between us, finding his enviable canine point peeking and hard. I clutched Dustin's balls and held his manhood, feeling it swell under my finger-pads.

We traded places with some subtle guidance until I kneeled between his spread legs. I too started kissing down his chest and belly, taking far less time to make it to his pubic fur than he took to get to mine. I nuzzled his balls, sheath, and exposed cock, sliding the side of my whiskers across all that made him male. When I couldn't resist any longer I took him into my lips. "Oh sis," he whispered as he perceived my muzzle's warmth wrap around him. My tongue swept away the flavors of his sheath and started to caress his length while my muzzle sank further into his lap.

Dustin passed on little scritches between my ears and caressed the blaze stripe on my forehead. I slid up and down his growing shaft while keeping his balls warm within my paw. He quickly got long enough to reach the back of my throat with each hungry descent. Our dialogue and our eagerness rang in my ears and fueled my imagination, making me acquiescent to the dirtiest of thoughts. My sex truly ached to be filled by the cock in my muzzle, to be wrapped around my sibling's length as he hammered away at that vacancy inside me. I concentrated on Dustin's canid glans, sweeping my tongue around its ridges and point as I visualized it pushed as far as he could shove it between my pink walls while he fulfilled our tacit compact and painted them and my womb white with virile essence. As my own needs became too great to ignore I slipped my muzzle off his length and passed on a last kiss on his pee-slit, gazing up my brother's belly with bashfully angled ears.

"How about we go to the bedroom?" I said, bumping his cock with my nose.

"Great idea," he said, smiling down at me. His paws once again caressed my ears and cheek, ruggedly, but affectionate.

I stood up and let me brother have one more look at my naked form in the living room light. I mimicked his smile as Dustin took in my modesty. There I stood, in my early thirties, I dare say I felt as attractive as ever. If my brother could do one thing with utmost excellence, it's make me feel at home in my own body. I helped him to his feet and then I was gone, prancing down the hallway to my bedroom like a wild animal. I pounced onto my bed in total darkness, knowing from memory where to find the switches to my nightstand lamps. By the time my brother made it to the doorframe I'd crawled on all fours with my butt held high. My tail flagged in about an explicit 'breed the fuck out of me' pose I'd dare take. I rarely ever found myself in that position, but based on our conversation and our recent promises, I couldn't think of a better way to show my support for the idea. I looked over my shoulder toward my brother and smiled. He stood, as naked as I, taking in the sight of me as if taken aback by my behavior. His dark-pink cock pointed out of his sheath in a clear a sign of approval. It didn't take long for him to approach, whispering, "Damn, sis, didn't think I'd be able to talk you into it this soon," as he slinked on the bed behind me.

His paws came to rest on my hips. He pulled my cheeks apart and held down my already permissive tail and glanced over my tail-hole and slit, admiring my presented intimates. I didn't have to wait long to feel his nose press between my lips and his tongue sweeping through my folds. "I do think someone's in heat," he jested, sniffing my sex and tasting my flavors. It was nonsense but it still felt cute for him to suggest it and I went along.

"It just started today," I teased, glancing back over my shoulder as far as I could. "So if you're planning on fucking me, you better take precautions, unless you're ready to become a dad."

Dustin chuckled and tasted me again. He nuzzled between my thighs and repeatedly let his tongue travel the length of my slit. I'm sure he noticed how acutely turned on he'd made me. As always he lapped up the evidence of my arousal and demonstrated an interest in the sources of my flavor. "Don't worry," he said, speaking into my pussy. "I'll be good." His intonation twisted the words in a way that left room for doubt.

Dustin had me sighing and readily pressing back upon his nose and whiskers by the time his tongue thoroughly stripped my dripping pussy of its intimate tastes. He nipped my folds and prodded my slit when my arousal didn't replenish fast enough. Insatiate, he nuzzled upward and kissed my tail-star and proceeded to give it attention to the degree it became unbecoming of him. It was an odd feeling to have his muzzle pressed between my cheeks and his wet tongue sliding over my small furless patch and wrinkled star, which he rarely ever did and I even less frequently permitted. Usually I felt too shy to allow more than one or two licks across that very personal part of my body, and that was if I was in the mood, but that night there were no taboos. I'd taken such a vulnerable position and in it, I had to follow through.

I pressed my face into my wrists and fought the warmth of a blush while my brother's tongue wiggled through my ring and against my inner walls, further past that adamantly off-limits part of me than I'd ever let him go before. My brother's actions made me lose control of my tail. It wagged from side to side, just as Dustin's was doing behind him. Its wisps brushed his ear tips as he carried out his deep improper kiss. I accidentally swatted him in the face with my tail when he pulled off. He just chuckled, grabbed it and pinned it to my side in an endearingly dominant way. I looked over my shoulder at him as he got to his knees and scooted into position. I don't think my expression was over the top. My smile was slight and my eyes didn't beam with lust, just a faint idea that I was ready for him in more ways than one. I just wanted him to see that. I knew he did.

His paws guided my butt where to go. He lined up his cock with my slit and teased me with its canid point. "You ready?" He asked as he brushed aside my lips to find my opening.

"Go ahead," I said, in a quick breath, perhaps too assertively. With that I felt him poke me and then the infinitely more pleasurable sensation of my sibling slowly filling my passage inch by inch. Too eager, I pressed back upon him until his sheath and balls tickled my sex. It ached, as it always does when I take him to the hilt too fast, but I didn't want it any other way, so badly did I need to feel the bare skin of his cock parting my smooth vaginal folds. I grunted as elegantly as possible and wiggled up against him. When I flexed my muscles I felt every inch of his warm hardness and the faint hint of his knot.

Dustin gave me the moment to adjust before he withdrew. He looked down his torso, under my pinned tail and watched his venous shaft reemerge from his sister's vagina, wet with female arousal. He quickly re-hilted me so deep I stifled another grunt. Thus began his cycles. His paws gripped my hips and used the firm hold to pull me toward his oncoming bucks. I winced and let the sensations roll over me. One strong desire was fulfilled; another burned waiting to be doused. As his movements accelerated his paws traveled up my flanks. He leaned in, tired of watching himself, and began chasing sensations with bucks of differing speeds at various angles.

We spent several carefree minutes delighting in the comfort of casual incest. There would be moments of intense bareback bucking and grinding, but also instances slow enough to whisper little confessions and vent coy giggles in response to the vulnerabilities of lovemaking. In due time Dustin's technique changed, transitioning to the short rutting pushes intended to keep his growing knot from accidentally slipping out of me. All I could do was brace myself on my elbows and clutch my comforter to keep from sliding, and try not to collapse under his weight and pressure.

He huffed into my mane as his cock stiffly throbbed inside me and his knot continued to expand. I could guess he actually wanted to go through with it. All his actions were brusque and delightfully dominant as if he wanted to show me that he was truly in the mood to breed me, and wanted to prove that he was strong and man enough to deserve to father my pup. I felt his knot spread apart my vaginal walls as he bucked into me from behind. Bands of muscle evolutionarily designed to lock in a canine member such as his grew taught in my belly. The last chance to pull out had arrived. In the spirit of the moment I considered teasing him with a reminder to withdraw or face the consequences, but in the end I decided to be more reckless. I flexed around his fully swollen manhood, trapping my brother in me in the most intimate way possible.

I sighed as we crossed the point of no return, noticing the firm sphere of his knot get stuck in the part of my body it was designed to fill. Dustin grunted above, discovering his dick tenaciously locked inside his sister's vagina. He tested the tie without stopping, trying to withdraw but only succeeding in pulling me with him. The ensuing back and forth made me feel every aspect of the collie cock stuffed inside my vagina, the seamlessly fitting knot, the appropriate length, and the ideal girth. His fuzzy balls brushed my clit with every swing. I grew weak under all the stimulation and simply let my sibling's motions, gropes, and panting spill over me like a cliff weathers the battering of waves. My last task was to flex my belly from time to time, willing my passage to grow taut around every inch of Dustin's manhood, tacitly implying that I was still game to repeat this action sometime and face the consequences. The closer he and I got, the better the idea sounded.

I could sense my brother's usual signs; the keen sense of focus and determination as he zeroed in on a gratifying rhythm, the deep and irregular pants for air, and the rapid, distracted motions in which any pleasure to me was merely coincidental. "So sis, you ready to become a mom?" Dustin huffed between my ears. His voice sounded gruff and sultry as if affected by our long and hardcore mating session. His movements slowed just enough to let me answer coherently.

I chuckled and wiggled up against him. I didn't expect him to take the game so seriously, but I appreciated the lengths he took to make it feel real. I knew that blessed pill I'd taken that morning would prevent us from actually following through so soon, and that even wishful thinking wouldn't override that chemical barrier, but nonetheless his words struck a nerve making me feel more ready than ever to try. "Please," I vented, my voice affected and strained. I turned my head to the side so he could see the genuine need in my expression. I contemplated what other words I could say that would seem in character, settling on, "Go ahead Dusty. I'm ready. Give us a healthy pup, one that looks just like you."

"Fuck!" My brother said shuddered as he resumed his motions as fast and as feral as ever. "Alright. Here it comes, Alex." He had me grunting in ever higher tones, producing sounds I didn't always let slip out. I buckled over, supported both our weight, bore the heat of his breath on the back of my scalp, and waited for Dustin to make good on his promises. He rocked into me, thrusting as much as our tie allowed, lubricated by the mixture of his pre and my wetness. He felt so deep I continuously winced, anticipating the feeling of his cum throbbing through my sex and sticking to my internal details. I flexed my passage around his hard cock, practically begging him to let loose. In those last seconds I considered some of the "what ifs." What if I went off the pill? What if one of these days we weren't playing around? What if I actually let him get me pregnant again? Would I feel as confident, as eager, as ready as I did in that moment?

When I couldn't take it anymore I peeped out, "Come on. This pups all yours. Go for it."

He probably didn't need the encouragement. Seconds later he uttered out an, "Oh fuck," and his movements changed in a very telling way. His tail began to jerk and his hips pressed against me firmer than ever, then again, and again, each grunt inducing buck timed perfectly with a deep visceral throb. Dustin's shaft and knot pulsed within me, giving me all the signs I needed to know that my brother was underway doing his damnedest to claim the son or daughter I promised him. I could only imagine what quantities of white collie cum he currently shot into the deepest corner of my vagina. I wondered how I would feel if I didn't have that oral contraceptive in my system. I pretended I didn't. I imagined that my brother's freshly unleashed sperm had as good a chance as ever of finding their target. The thought that it was actually happening, that it could happen again if I planned it sent me over the edge as effectively as the simulation itself.

I yelped and pressed back against my brother's weight and warmth, shuddering out a sigh as a deep and powerful orgasm took hold of me. My passage flexed around Dustin's knotted canine cock as pulse after pulse of his heat and slickness spread through my twitching lower belly. In the intoxication of the moment my muzzle snapped down. I stared, panting and delirious with bliss, at the spot my pubic fur started, beneath which my brother's manhood throbbed away, ejecting the product of his climax precisely where commanded. My back arched and I threw my head back, profaning the name of god, reveling in the "what ifs" as much as the physiological jerk and spasm, and neurochemical rush of the best zenith in recent memory.

Eventually the deed was done. His last bucks had the mere purpose of stirring the flood of incestuous semen pooling around my cervix, and taking advantage of my last constricting spasms. My orgasm petered out shortly after my brother's but I felt too strained to sigh or feel the relief. It'd been too long since I'd tied with him. My pussy felt sore because of it. My brother felt immense even after he'd come. In that moment as my awareness slowly returned and I was left to experience the fullness of my brother, his knot, and his genetic material, I couldn't have felt more bred and more satisfied.

"Damn sis, that was hardcore," Dustin said, mumbling into my mane of fur. I felt his heavy breathing pass into my fluff and his chest rise and fall upon my back.

I chuckled, feeling a blush, one I couldn't hide from him, even if I tried.

"Everything you did. Everything you said was really hot, you know? Come on? To give you a pup? One that looks like me? A healthy one? Good lord sis, how do you know how to press my buttons?"

I couldn't help but sheepishly giggle again. "Did I go too far? You were taking things pretty seriously there yourself, Dusty." I said, lifting my muzzle up out of my paws.

"No," Dustin said. "You were just right."

"You actually want this, don't you?" I asked.

"Of course I do, but only if you want this too."

"I do," I said.

"Good," Dustin said and kissed me on the back of the neck.

"We're really going to try this, aren't we?"

"Whenever you're ready to start."

"Are we really ready to have one?"

"I don't think it's a matter of being ready," Dustin said. "I think it's a matter of being able to rise to the challenge."

"Will you?"

"I promise," Dustin said. "When it happens, I'll be there every step of the way. Like last time, only better. I've grown a lot since then and I'm better poised to actually be useful."

"Then we'll see," I said, feeling my panting decelerate, and growing conscious of the after effects of mating.

My brother lifted some of his weight off of me. I rose up a bit myself, suddenly able to breathe and stretch. We were still connected at the hips and would be for another half hour at least. His knot plugged the flood of dog semen deep inside me. Carefully, as not to put too much strain on our connection, the two of us collies shifted to our sides on my bed. We lay, side by side, for the remainder of our tie, conversing about what would happen if we ever made love and it stuck. My brother's paw swept over my breasts and caressed my belly, concentrating perhaps by subconscious interest on the spot our child would grow, should I actually permit him to put another one there. I remembered the previous decade where my brother and I lay tied and post-coital in a similar position in our father's house. Back then Dustin swept his paws over my distended belly while I carried our first. We were afraid and clueless, but in love. What changed? We were still in love. We were probably just as clueless, and there is a lot to be afraid of when contemplating turning two into three.

On a morning a season or so later I sat on the toilet relieving my bladder, I held my trusty little container of birth control pills. Taking them had become a religious part of my morning ritual for that past decade. My brother had inseminated me again moments earlier, teasing me for the umpteenth with promises of making me a mother, but thanks to these things his dirty talk was nothing more than kinky but cute role-play, something we were aware was just a little bit of fantasy. For the first time since I had my initial prescription filled I found myself seriously considering breaking with my morning tradition. My thumb caressed over the round box, over the neat rows of little pills, wistfully and wordlessly thanking them for their reliable service and for slowly but surely making sex fun again.

The decision I was making was by no means an easy one. The memory and the trauma of my first pregnancy was baggage I'd always have to deal with, and didn't make the prospect of carrying another child, especially one which would be the product of incest, a particularly appealing proposition. This time, at least, I had the choice. I did want to be a mother. I only got to be one for a few weeks, days really. As the years past, the wish to see the mission through had grown. Even if I decided to take the pill today, I could always decide against it tomorrow, or the day after that and so forth until I was truly ready. And even if I went without for a while, it could take a few weeks or even months for my system to normalize enough for it to even become easy to receive a pup. Either way, it was my decision to make, and mine entirely.

I tried to think of the reasons I shouldn't, such as the fact I had no ring on my finger and knew I couldn't ever expect to find one there. The most glaring counterargument, however, had to be the risks of coupling our limited gene pool. That alone should have dissuaded me, but when I looked at the photos of my son, and got to see him in person, I always felt amazed about how well he was developing. Through precedent I could at least have a reason to be cautiously optimistic that we could be so blessed again. When I considered my future plans, well, I just saw more of the same. I kind of wanted to go for a doctorate, but that could wait. Money was there. I was slowly building a savings and so was Dustin. Together we had achieved an enviably middle-class way of life. Even with the world in recession and friends losing their jobs all around me, my insular field of pharmaceutical chemistry had been spared the worst. I was already older than Nathan and his wife, and Daniel and his when they had their first children. In fact, as I passed the big 3-0 people started to ask if and when I was planning on it, as if they were expecting me to make an announcement any day. Of course if I did become pregnant, big changes would have to follow, but unlike last time, not all of those changes would be unpleasant, and I was ready for most of them.

I stood up and put the little dial of pills back into the medicine cabinet, and that's where they would stay untouched until the day I write this. I closed the mirrored door on them and met with my reflection. I saw an older, wiser, more confident collie than the one who needed those pills prescribed for her, one with admittedly a few more scars, and a depth to her gaze that evidenced a life more difficult than she would have preferred. Before I could really go through with it a few more plans would have to be made and important decisions struck. Long conversations needed to take place and myriad agreements needed to be reached before we could effectively become parents. I felt up to it, and as things progressed, to my joy, Dustin was too. That was the decision I made, and the one to which I stuck.

A few weeks passed before our paths crossed and we could make love again. This time I was off the pill. I felt as indecisive as I was when I was eighteen as I witnessed myself guiding my sibling's unprotected cock to my sex and later instructed my body to accept Dustin's bare knot, wiggling it into place to make sure it stayed there. As we rocked toward the inevitable I channeled the same emotional back and forth as I did back in the winter of 98-99. This time Dustin's dirty talk bore the potential to come true. By the time his heated promises reached my backswept ears, it was too late to reconsider. Our complete tie fated me to experience the no longer harmless internal twitch and the warm proliferation of my biological brother's dangerously similar genes through where they could once again be effective. After our orgasms subsided and we held each other in a meaningful cuddle, I thought "Good lord, what have we done."

We weren't quite so "lucky" our second time around. It took quite a bit for my cycle to normalize. After the better part of a year I still felt nothing. This gave me more time to do research, to converse with Dustin, and to do what we failed to do when I became pregnant with Chase; plan. We had some anonymous genetic testing done with auspicious results. Conversations further abated my worries. Some adjustments to my pocket book made the whole idea seem feasible. Every successive time I straddled Dustin and slipped him in to the point his sheath-fur tickled my clit, knowing that's where he would stay for the next hour, or crossed my ankles behind his back, forbidding him to do anything else but knot me, I did so with progressively more confidence and certainty until we both wanted the consequences of mating with all our hearts. His profane utterances expressing his intent to sire my children inspired me to bring about that end all the more quickly with every muscle I had. My brother and I ended tied and panting as we came down from simultaneous orgasms, emitting the occasional oversensitive and childlike giggle, beaming at each other as if the deed had already rendered us parents to be.

During the last days of summer and the fall of 2011 we spent every weekend together. Sometimes on weekdays, especially when I suspected I was in my fertile window, I would even make the long drive to his house just to spend an evening with him, and occasionally Dustin surprised me at mine whenever he managed to wrangle a day off. Every time we saw each other it didn't take long for us to land naked in bed, or on the sofa, the kitchen table, or for me to find myself pinned against the closest convenient wall or furnishing rocking in the motions of some very serious bareback mating. I grew addicted to the look he beamed me during sex and between rounds, on dates and errands in public around town, a telling gaze that spoke loud and clear 'Sis, today I'm gonna put a life inside you.'

We must have done it hundreds of times that year. During every single one of those times in the moments after my brother slipped his knot into me and locked us together, between the seconds after he decided he was ready to finish but had yet to perform those last desperate motions of attainment, he would lean in and whisper some variation of the question if I were ready to receive his pup. And every time in response, sometimes more than once, I'd beg him to make me a mother and goad him on with the invitation to father a cub for us both. My word choice, more than anything else, got him to spill his seed as if on command. The idea that perhaps it would be this time, that one extra determined sperm could be among the millions in the flood my own brother was throbbing into my unprotected pussy usually had me convulsing in climax within the moment.

That time was easily the most active and fulfilling sex life I'd had since our senior year of high school, back when we had just discovered our mutual interest in each other and the excitement of all those risks and taboos. Unlike that time where it all happened so fast my period came back and reappeared month after month, despite our best efforts and readiness, but at least for me it was never much of a disappointment. I thought it just meant we'd been given a few more weeks for us two deviants to review our decision to seek parenthood, and also plan as many opportunities for us to try for it as we could squeeze into four more weeks. My brother would call me on the phone, always on time as if he were marking the days on a duplicate calendar of my cycle. We'd make small talk, then he'd come to the question whether or not I'd noticed anything about myself. When I said I hadn't, he sounded disappointed, but in his very next breath he already had an idea for our next date.

We did more than just try and conceive of course. We were slowly cementing a permanent relationship. Our jobs prevented us from moving in together, but we had a lot of fun visiting each other. We went on dates and hung out at home. I helped Dustin reroof the house he was renting and he taught me how to properly use a drill press. He even guided me through the assembly of my own shotgun. On quiet nights we'd open up the newspaper and look at properties. We even visited a few houses in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the laws weren't so strict, should we get exposed. We had open discussions about our finances, as well as our emotions. Through summer, fall, and winter we had wonderful adventures. It was a good time and gave me hope for our future.

During the nights we did make unprotected love, I'd sit up awake in bed while my naked and drooling brother slept, out like a light beside me, twitching softly to careless dreams. I stared worried and pensive out the window with my paw resting on my lower belly, aware of Dustin's milky white sperm leaking from my tarnished labia and potentially into my womb. I'd imagine the processes happening within me and play out the scenes months and years ahead, of what could happen now that I didn't have a certain drug in my system, now that deeds like this put my future completely in the hands of nature. I thought of Chase. I thought of names. I thought of the absurdity that I may, through the course of the night, conceive my biological brother's offspring. I thought of what of what it would be like to be a mother, something I never really had any experience with post childbirth.

After a few seasons came and went, a month or two into the new year, just as we were considering some more effective measures of conceiving than the simple strategy of rampant lovemaking, I noticed my period hadn't started when expected. I kept the fact to myself, not out of shame, but because I'd raised my hopes once too much. I didn't skip a chance or two to lay with my brother as if to make sure it took, especially as I entered into what would have been the fertile phase of my next cycle. As the days ticked on past that mark in the calendar I became more and more optimistic. When I entered well into my next cycle without bleeding and other telltale symptoms started to appear, I legally purchased a box of tests from the pharmacy, walking up the check-out lady without shame. She was an elderly dalmatian, and smiled as soon as I walked up. She scanned and bagged the box and asked. "Are you and your husband trying?"

At first my heart skipped a beat, so thrilling was it to be included in a sentence with the word husband. I nodded, and placed my paw on my belly. "Congratulations!" She said, smiling.

When I got home I made a bee-line for the bathroom, read the instructions twice, and held the testing stick under my urine stream. Two pink plusses appeared minutes later. Like the first time it didn't sink in right away. Big changes are always like that, like a cut so clean it takes a moment to feel and for the blood to well. "So this is it," I thought to myself, sitting there on the pot, holding the results of a half years' worth of trying in my quivering paws. We did it again. For better or worse Dustin put another life inside me. I thought of the ordeals ahead cemented in place by those two pink symbols, the changes I vowed to make but now had to see through. Then came the dreaded unanswerables like how to come out to my brothers that I was in love and mated with our mutual sibling and tell my dad that I expected a child from his youngest son.

Even after all this time to think and plan, facing the results has a way of forcing second guesses. There would be a lot of uncertainties, but thankfully I wasn't alone in facing them. I recalled the promises I made when I shelved my birth control. This pup would be mine. I would raise it with love. I would not be the mother mine was to me, I would be better in every way. I would not sit by on the sidelines with sorrow and envy as another raised it in my place. This positive result meant a generation had shifted, my brother and I, the youngest of our family, were now starting our own. I repeated those promises like a catechism. I was happy, but it was a serene happiness made bittersweet by all my life's mistakes. Only time would tell if this were another, but that's how everyone feels when things as big as this change their lives.

I went to my doctor the next day, took another urine test, and a litany of more personal ones. She confirmed it. I was pregnant. I went home with a bottle of vitamins, a due date, a bunch of pamphlets and a piece of paper proving that we'd done the deed. I kept the result a secret for as long as I could, until I could see my brother in person. It gave me a few days to think of how to tell him, to plan a special little evening, and to choose the right words, ones he would always remember. I waited, trembling with excitement on that Friday evening, everything as ready as possible. When Dustin finally came and walked into my apartment, all my carefully crafted plans came to pieces. He stood still, barely through the door and took a long inquisitive look at me. A smile crossed his muzzle, a broad boyish one I hadn't seen on him in ages. "You're not..." he said as if both a question and an exclamation.

"I am," I replied, forgetting everything I planned to say. My paws crossed over my lower belly, over the approximate part of my body that housed my biological brother's latest progeny.

Everything he carried landed on the ground in a thump. Before I knew it, he held me in his arms. His muzzle and mine instinctively found their way into a kiss. The path may not have been what I expected, but the result was just what I hoped for.

"How long have you known?" He asked after our lips grew sore.

"Just over a week. How could you tell I was?"

"Sis, they can see you glowing from space."

I chuckled, remembering just how well we could read each other.

"You're beautiful," he said, brushing my fur.

"We have a lot to talk about," I said.

"I know, but first things first." He picked me up with a grunt and carried me down the hall to my bedroom. He lay me down more gently than usual on my bed and got between my legs. He hovered halfway over my midsection, paws moving from my hips up my flanks, peeling my shirt up with it and exposing my belly. Belt buckle and fly were quickly undone but my pants stayed put for the moment. Dustin pressed both his paws upon my stomach and caressed outward, brushing fur as if coaxing it out of the way.

"So this is where he is," my brother said, gently sweeping his thumbs just below my navel over my still flat belly.

"So you prefer it turns out to be a boy?"

"I just have an expectation, that's all, given my track record. I'd be just as happy if it's a girl, so long as they turn out just like you."

"We deserve terrible kids for the way we were when we were going up."

Dustin chuckled, "I know." He leaned in and kissed my belly gently. "It's all mine," he said, more as a declaration than a question, speaking into my fur.

"Of course it is, you dumb dog," I confirmed, reaching out and giving him a rugged rub between his ears, and in doing so ruffling his mane. "About time your men did their job."

"Never heard you complaining about the process," he said and pressed a soft kiss on my belly. He nuzzled below my navel, nosing through my fur all the way down to the elastic of my boxers, "I already love it. With all my heart. You hear that little guy?" He said, with his lips touching my tufts, "Daddy loves you."

I chuckled and shook my head. "Dork. To think I'm gonna have two of you to deal with," I said. My brother could be goofy and always had been, but seeing him showing a paternal side, even if a silly one, made me confident that I made the right choice in him. He began to tug at my waistband and soon had them ushered down to my ankles, leaving all my feminine curves and mysteries exposed. It didn't take much longer to get me stripped. He helped me shed my clothing and pressed muzzle between my legs before I could even get comfortable. He pecked numerous kisses between my thighs, upon my pubic fur, and sex, and ended up making out with my labia with the same curiosity and intensity as he had the first time I let him, back when we were under-supervised teenagers.

He had me panting, staring down my torso between my breasts, watching my brother's ear-tips perked between my thighs. He licked all over my naked body and worked his tongue into my pregnant pussy in search of my abundant arousal. He stripped his clothing one item at a time, taking only minute breaks from pleasuring me. The fact that his nose was buried in his sister's intimates and his tongue tasted the inside of her vagina was enough to get him hard. When he wanted more he joined me on the bed, crawling over my torso with a look that that expressed his cravings. I eagerly took hold of his cock and balls and helped him line himself up with me. After a few rewarding strokes I guided his perfectly compatible dog cock to my slit and into my opening. My hips rose all too impatiently and hilted him all the way to his balls. He hummed and I giggled with excitement as we once again became complicit in what had lost its sin and become a pure expression of love.

Dustin made love to me, eager and passionate, but somehow cautious despite my attempts to goad him into letting loose. Even after my vaginal muscles flexed around my mate's knot and caught him where he belonged, in the moments his fury usually got the better of him, he bucked gentler and smoother, observant to the life he planted in me. "I found a downside to this," Dustin panted, slowing down his compassionate but nonetheless heated thrusts.

"What?" I panted, taking the short intermission to straighten out my brother's mane and reaffirm my hold on his torso.

"I really like the dirty talk, when you were telling me to knock you up. Now that it's done I can't think of anything."

I chuckled, "Just think of yourself as a good dog who's done his job and earned his reward. Have at it. This one's just for fun."

He growled at me with a playful intonation and bucked again, this time hard enough to elicit a grunt from me. I smiled, tugged at him as if I had him on a leash and squeezed him between my legs. He finally began to mate with me the way I expected, the way he always had. I heard his grunts, and I didn't repress mine, since I knew how much he liked to hear me express the pleasure he gave me. Right before he got off, I shook off the delirium of an impending climax his rapid prods were on the verge of causing, clutched him, pressed my cheek against his and whispered into his close, crooked ear, "Plus if you made good on your promise of giving me a healthy one, I might let you have a third." With that his bucks escalated in intensity to a clear mutually desirable outcome. He had me clutching him, singing a note, and feeling the deep belly tremors that brought me unspeakable joy. Dustin finished a moment later with an all too familiar grunt. He repeatedly pressed into my flexing passage and marked the spot he so successfully struck just a few weeks earlier with the delightful warmth of his thick, sticky cum, much to my satisfaction.

Our tie lasted longer than usual; namely the better part of an hour. My vaginal walls just didn't seem to want to let him go. It was no fuss. We found plenty of things to do to amuse each other as the two of us lay so intimately connected in afterglow, comprising a two-backed ball of foot-paws and identically shaded fur. As they say, all good things... We both gasped with a little bit of sensitivity and discomfort as his deflating knot finally slipped from inside my passage. His cock followed, as did the usual rivulet of viscous collie sperm. His body collapsed beside me with enough impact to shake the bed. In those afterword moments we lay side by side, nose to nose, giving one another the occasional kiss, while our paws lazily gravitated to recently used points of our anatomy free from every taboo.

"I love you, sis," he said, passing his paw down my flank, over my feminine hips.

"I love you too, Dusty," I confirmed, clutching his mane.

"Oh, shit. I almost forgot." He said, abruptly disturbing the placidity. I let my paws slip from him as he scooted off the edge of the bed and padded off, to where I couldn't know. I'd figured his eyeballs were floating, but no, he avoided the bathroom entirely. I watched the chocolate fur on his back disappear down the hall from my place upon the bed. I felt a shiver without his body heat radiating upon me. I hugged my breasts and became more conscious of Dustin's semen cooling on my loosened labia, as I lay there upon my pillows, sprawled out in total indecency. My brother returned a moment or so later, giving me no clear indication of what he went out for. His slick dark pink cock still drooped out of its sheath, swinging with every step, contrasting against his fur enough to grab my attention. Instead of returning beside me on the bed, he strode around my side and got on one knee.

"Look sis," he said and opened his paw, showing me a small velvet box. "I've been holding on to these for a while. I've been a bit too chicken to give them to you because I wasn't sure if you would even take them, then I was concerned about finding the right time. Now that it's set in stone that we're gonna be together for a very long time, it's high time I man up and ask. This belonged to Grandma. She gave it to me when she knew she wasn't going to make it. Having been the black sheep it meant a lot that she let me have it." He flipped it open and showed me a rather plain, but still beautiful gold band. "I know we can't officially get engaged. I know this means you're not gonna have the wedding you wanted, but I hope it helps you feel as if we did when you wear it. At least you'll be able to show some other people that you're taken." He chuckled. "We even have the same last name. When we walk around, people will just think we're just two collies that found our way together. Do you really need a big stressful party, some ceremony, or some tax breaks?"

I rolled over to my side. My eyes fell upon the present in his hands. "Dusty," I said, looking at the ring and up at his face. I read the honest longing in his eyes for me to take what he offered. I didn't have any other words for him.

"Please Alex," he said. "I want you to wear it. I think it would make you happier, especially now that we're starting a family."

Somehow, wordlessly, I extended my left paw. He took it and with his other, slipped the gold band on my fourth finger. I looked at it and all it symbolized.

"Here," he said, producing another box as if by magic, a maroon one rather than the lavender one my ring came from. "This is dad's. He gave it to me when he was back in the hospital; back when we thought it was his turn to kick it. Mom took the other one, so this one is kinda mateless. We can change that, if you want." He gave me the box. I opened it and saw another ring, a darker gold band equally plain. I plucked it from its nest and beheld it between thumb and index finger. Dustin looked at me expectantly. His paw came to rest on the side of the bed, as if ready to receive it. I took it, and slipped our father's wedding ring on my brother's finger.

"Does this mean?" I stuttered, looking at both our paws.

"It means what we want it to. Since we can't officially, you know, but if it's okay with you, I want it to mean exactly that. Fuck, we've been living like that for, like, a year and a half now, and we've known it was gonna come to this for a lot longer. Let's call it what it is. Would you like that?"

"Yes," I said, still taken aback, flexing my paw and feeling the ring and all its responsibility on my finger. I looked at the back of my paw, then at him, into his vibrant eyes.

"I love you Alex," he said. "I promise to make you happy for the rest of your life, and our kid too."

I reached out and extended my ringed paw around the back of his head. My fingers curled into his mane. I half pulled him in, half let him fall willingly into a kiss, a long one. "I love you too Dusty," I said upon parting muzzles. "I promise to make you happy too. We'll be good to this one. Learn from our mistakes."

"I have," he said, "and I'll learn from all the other's I'll make. I know I'm gonna screw up here and there. I love you because you've been so tolerant of all my fuck-ups. Yet you're there for me, and have been."

I chuckled, still in disbelief. "I promise. And be patient with me too. I'm not as perfect as the way you're looking at me suggests you think I am, but you know that. We'll make this work, somehow, as weird as it is."

"I'm glad," he said and kissed me again. His naked form got back onto the bed and crawled beside me, huddling close as possible. His ringed paw swept through my fur. Mine clasped his.

"I guess this means we're married," I said, after another round of kissing.

"As close as we'll ever get to it," he nodded.

"It's not how I expected it, but I'm still happy."

"Look at it this way. We just saved dad like twenty thousand dollars or some shit."

"That's right. Father of the bride," I said, chuckling.

"Wedding registry, fuck it," he said.

"Dresses, fuck them," I continued, trying unsuccessfully to imagine myself in one, one that could by no means be white.

"Bride's maids. Go to hell."

"Nasty expensive cake.'

"Church."

"See, it's not so bad," Dustin said, licking my nose.

"I still can't believe it's happened. First this," I put my paw on my belly, "then this," I looked down my brother's muzzle, into his auburn eyes.

"It'll sink in, eventually," Dustin said. "By the way," he chuckled again, more so than I've seen in in a while. "I hate this to be the first thing I say to you as your husband, but what's for dinner?"

I chuckled too, caressed my twin and brushed my paw across his cheek. "Fuck," I said. "I completely forgot about that."

"That's okay," he said. "You've got something to tide me over right here." He turned me over on my back and got between my legs. My muzzle rose and I gasped as my brother once again pressed his nose upon my sex and his tongue started lapping away. I whispered the name of my husband and pressed my palm upon his scalp, more than willing to indulge him with everything I had to offer. As my paw ran through my brother's mane the glint of gold shone on my finger as it swept through his fur. The joy I felt at seeing that spark could never be described.

My story ends in an all-night diner in the Newark suburbs. There's just not that much left to say after that. My "husband" and I made love for hours, mating over and over in every position we knew, to the point I felt too drained to even think about cooking or even reheating anything. A tired avian waitress with a strong jersey accent impatiently took down the long list of menu items intended to slake my cravings. My brother couldn't keep his eyes off me, chuckling as I woefully over ordered. We sat silently across from each other after she left, brushing one another's foot-paws under the table in a subtle show of affection in the nearly empty restaurant. My paws moved to the middle of the table. Dustin's slid his to mine and clasped them. I looked at the rings we wore and smiled. We stared at each other, finding it hard to keep from giggling. I may have been on my wedding night, my undocumented elopement, but in reality I knew we were celebrating more than thirty-one years together. To anyone who saw us we were just a duo of peculiarly similar rough collies, an enamored young couple with the memories and scars of an elderly pair. So many ups and downs behind us, and so many more to come. I sat across from my husband in the stark light, whose luster could shed no illumination over the ambiguity of whether it was a blessing or a curse of the fates for putting my life-mate within arm's reach from the moment we were conceived.

The End