Deceitful Surrender

I didn't want to be here, but my sister really had me over a barrel.

She'd found a video of me. A video I'd meant to delete. It was me, jacking off. I knew it was stupid - I only did it occasionally, when I was alone at home and she was away at college - but there were things about the way that...*she* looked...that made me do it nonetheless. And now, an hour ago, she'd told me that if I didn't do what she wanted, she'd show everyone the video.

And so here I was, in the family living room, with my sister on the other side of the room. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, smirking at me like a cat about to eat a canary. "Well?" she asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Are you going to do it or what?"

I licked my lips and tried not to look at her breasts, and failed. They looked even bigger than they had before: they were bigger than they had been before. When we were younger, she'd always been a tomboy; now she actually wore dresses sometimes, not just jeans and t-shirts. Her hips weren't nearly as narrow as they used to be; they curved out into shapely roundness that set men's mouths watering and women's noses wrinkling in disgust.

That wasn't all that had changed though. She'd gotten contacts instead of glasses years ago. Her hair had grown long enough that she could pull it back into a ponytail now - she no longer tied it back with rubber bands or wrapped it around her head like a turban every night before bedtime. Her skin had cleared up as well - acne is seldom cute on women in their late teens and early twenties (though some people think otherwise), but when you're sixteen and your face is covered in blemishes it's hard not to feel self-conscious about them.

They still weren't perfect; her eyebrows were still a little too big for her face, her jaw was still a little too sharp, her chin still pointed just a little too much for beauty contests (though I suspect that's more because of our father than any physical flaw), but...well ...yesterday I would have said that none of those flaws meant anything to me at all; today I'm finding myself wondering why I never noticed them before.

"It's not fair," I said finally, looking straight ahead at the TV screen across from us rather than at my sister directly. "You're blackmailing me."

"Technically speaking," my sister replied calmly, "you blackmailed yourself by recording yourself without my consent."

I frowned at that, but didn't reply immediately; what could I say? She was right? For once? Instead I forced myself down into the armchair facing the sofa where she stood above me and stared at the floor instead until she spoke again: "Have you decided yet?"

I looked up slowly and met her eyes; they were calm but firm beneath high eyebrows and thin blonde eyelashes - yes, they were still too large for her face, but somehow they fit anyway - unmoved by my attempt at intimidation; this farce might as well have been real for all the emotion that showed through their blue depths: "No."