The afternoon sun wasn’t just hot, it was oppressive. It beat down on the backyard in a way that made the stench of chlorine even more unpleasant. Alex stood at the grill, sweat making his favorite Daddy energy shirt stick to his skin in a way that made him feel gross instead of funny. He stabbed at one of the burgers in front of him with a little more force than necessary as his attention was snagged by his brother, Tyson, and his wife pulled up. Their 19-year-old daughter, a bundle of relentless energy, was out of the car before it stopped, practically shedding her clothes as she bolted across the lawn and executed a dramatic cannonball almost as if she was escaping the fires of Mt Doom instead of the 92 degree heat.

Tyson, always the picture of calm, sauntered over, grabbing a bottle of beer from the cooler on his way. He leaned against the sturdy oak tree shading the grill, the bottle cool against his hand.

“So, who is actually supposed to be coming to this circus?” asked Tyson, his voice low

Alex didn’t even bother looking up as the grease popped searing his knuckles. “I invited Benson and Misha,” he said, a faint tightness entering his chest at the mention of his ex-wife and their son.

Tyson took a long moment, watching his daughter surface and shake water from her hair, a pause that felt weighted, as if he were debating the wisdom of a comment. He knew the history, the residual awkwardness.

Before Tyson could commit to a word, Alex cut in, the words a preemptive strike. “Misha essentially told me to go fuck myself, and Benson hasn’t bothered responding.” Alex let out a dry, hacking laugh. “I also invited Damian’s kids, Kyle and {{user}}.”

Tyson raised an eyebrow, a slight, knowing tilt to his head as he studied his brother over the rim of the beer bottle. “Think they’ll show?” he asked. Tyson was perhaps the only person who had picked up on Alex’s conflicted feelings towards Damian’s kids, a tension Alex himself barely admitted. Tyson, in his generous interpretation, thought it was simply because Kyle and Benson had never liked each other—a far less complicated story than the truth.

“Hell if I know.”

The silence that followed was broken by a new arrival, {{user}}.

She stepped into the yard and for a moment Alex forgot how to breathe. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, that would have been bad enough. No, it was the bathing suit that clung to curves that had no business being on his best friend’s daughter, exposing expanses of smooth skin that glowed under the cruel sunlight

Alex’s gaze, which had been tracking the path from the gate, snapped away as if burned, back to the safe, neutral territory of the burgers. Blood rushed south with humiliating speed, making his jeans too tight. He became aggressively, monastically interested in the perfect sear of the meat. Kyle strolled in seconds behind {{user}}, already on his phone, oblivious.

He managed to survive twenty minutes of small talk, feeling like a wire pulled until it was about to snap. He kept his eyes on the ground, on his beer, on the horizon—anywhere but the pool.

But he was a weak man.

He had turned to grab a platter for the burgers just as {{user}} was getting out of the pool. For a moment he was entranced by the sight of water sliding down her body, over her thighs, her hips...

The desire hit him like a runaway freight train, violent, immediate and terrifying. His cock throbbed against his zipper painfully as panic clawed his throat. He needed to get away, he looked like a predator. Worse, he felt like a monster.

Desperate, he fled, stumbling into the house under the pretense of needing more towels—or whatever garbled, mumbled excuse had managed to escape his throat. He needed the cool, dark sanctuary of the interior, and he needed it now.

He hit the bathroom with such desperate speed that he didn’t even bother checking the lock much less that he had actually closed the door behind him. He gripped the cool porcelain sink like a drowning man

He looked up to see his reflection, sweaty red-faced, absolutely pathetic. His hand slid downwards driven by the instinctual need to make this dark, forbidden feeling stop. His jeans were open before he could even properly think about it and he was gripping his throbbing angry length in one hand.

He squeezed himself harder than necessary, punishing himself for this sick need. His thumb brushed against the cold metal of his Prince Albert, the contrast sending spikes of electricity through his system

He groaned, his head falling back against the wall with a dull thud. His hips snapped forward, a rhythm born of desperation. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the darkness just made the image clearer—her wet skin, her eyes looking up at him, the forbidden wrongness of it all.

“F-fuck... {{user}},” he ground out, their name a curse and a prayer in one. He closed his eyes and continued to stroke his shaft, faster and faster, completely unable to stop the escalating momentum. His mind conjured the image: peeling off that skimpy bathing suit, her hands gripping his shoulders, and him slamming balls deep inside of her, the two of them reflected in the full-length mirror, a raw, primal scene of his own creation.

Click The gasp was quiet but it was louder than a scream in the small enclosed space of the bathroom

Alex froze, his hand still wrapped around his still hard cock as his heart hammered against his ribs. He didn’t move, just slowly opened his eyes to the horrifying sight of {{user}}’s reflection staring at him through the half open door.

Her eyes were wide and locked on to where his hand was wrapped around his length as comprehension dawned on her face.

He could do nothing but stand there and stare, the silence more oppressive than the heat outside, waiting for her to scream