Karen was an unhappy girl. Why did she feel so different to everyone else? Maybe it wasn’t obvious that she was different. She wasn’t disabled, she didn’t belong to an ethnic minority, she wasn’t especially tall, short, fat or thin, and she was sure that she quite liked boys. Well, perhaps she liked them more as friends than as anything else, but she did feel more at ease in the company of boys than she did with the girls in her class.

Perhaps this was what made Karen sure that she was somehow different to the other girls in her school. Why she just never had that feeling of belonging, of being part of the team, or, even, and this really hurt, having a best friend like so many of the other girls had. Sure, she’d once had a best friend. That was Lucy, the tubby girl with glasses who was now spending all her time with Liz. But not with her! Ever since they had that argument over that hairbrush, and she even forgot why it happened, Karen no longer had a best friend.

But then most girls were stupid. Well, they had to be. Putting all that make-up on! Pushing up their tiny breasts to try and make them look bigger! Trying to look like some kind of magazine model or like one of the singers in the girl groups they liked. And for what? For boys who just didn’t care anyway. They were more fun just as friends. Okay, you couldn’t have a boy as a best friend exactly. Then he would be a boyfriend. And that might mean shagging or something, and Karen wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

She enjoyed snogging. That was fun! That day in the woods when she snogged with Alex, Jim and Dave. And then, when they later met Pete, why! she snogged with him as well. And Jim even got to cop a feel of her tits. They weren’t big tits by any stretch of the imagination, - just bumps on her chest with the nipples not really as distinct from the areola as she was sure they should be, - but it felt nice when Jim ran his fingers round and round them, while his tongue did battle with hers. And all the while, Alex and Dave were crying “It’s my turn!” and “Hurry up!”

But girls? They weren’t like boys at all, though there was something about them that made Karen feel very strange. It gave her a very weird feeling altogether. That time when she accidentally brushed against Emily’s bare breast in the changing room after hockey. Although Emily just pushed her hand off and made no comment, the memory of that sensation persisted for hours afterwards. And why did she feel so much short of breath at the time? And did she really blush? Emily wasn’t even the prettiest girl at school. She was a bit skinny and wore a brace to keep her teeth in place. But after that brief accidental encounter, Karen felt distinctly hot and flushed whenever she was near the girl.

She was troubled about her unfocused emotions. She stared at the bowl of macaroni cheese that her mother had scooped up for her, wondering whether perhaps the way she was different wasn’t because she had some secret super-powers like the heroes in the television cartoons she liked to watch, but because she was queer. Maybe she was some kind of girl who fancied girls. But that couldn’t be! After all, she enjoyed snogging boys, didn’t she?

“Karen,” her mother spoke to her, more as a command for attention than anything else.

“What?”

Karen’s father frowned, but he didn’t say his usual bit about her not being so rude. Karen’s heart thumped in her chest. Maybe her mother was going to say something important for a change.

“It’s about your sister, Po…”

“Po?”

“Or Pauline,” remarked Karen’s father, who’d always disliked the abbreviation.

“Yes, Po. When did you last see her, Karen?”

“Ooh, years ago! When I was, I dunno, ten or eleven or something.”

“Yes, that’s about right, Karen. About four years ago.”

Karen’s mother paused and regarded her husband with a slightly worried gaze. Karen could see that she wanted to stretch out her hand and grasp hers, but was anxious about how her daughter might react.

Her mother coughed awkwardly. “Po’s coming back to live here, Karen. She was taken to a hospital in Islington where they identified her. It’s been four years since she ran away…”

“Four years and three months,” her father elaborated bitterly.

“And Po was younger than you when she ran off. And you know how worried we’d been, Karen dear. We loved her despite her being such a tearaway…”

“All that drinking and smoking and goodness knows what!” her father elaborated.

“But she’s still alive. She’s had a fairly rough time we think. She’s been taking drugs and seeing strange men and living in the most squalid places and she looks such a wreck…” Karen’s mother paused, and her daughter rather uncomfortably noticed that her mother was actually crying. A tear had trailed down from an eye to her chin, and shone in the early evening sunshine.

“It’s a difficult decision to make,” continued Karen’s father. “She’s not been very well looked after at all. No school. No proper education. Not even a hint of good manners or good behaviour about her. I hesitated… I mean, we hesitated… about having her here, seeing as she could be such a bad example to you…”

“But she is our daughter!” smiled Karen’s mother, with a sad smile. “We love her, however bad or dissolute she might be. In any case, maybe it’ll be the other way. Maybe, you’ll be the good example for our older daughter. So, what do you think, Karen dear? Soon, you won’t be the only one in the house besides your father and me.”

Karen was wary, but delighted. She’d always thought highly of Po. She’d been so much fun as an older sister, all those years ago. She remembered the stories Po told her about boys and how she used to kiss and gobble their penises. She said it was called ‘sucking’, but you didn’t do any sucking at all. She remembered those cigarettes Po shared with her. And that time Po let her drink some beer, which made her feel really funny for hours afterwards.

“Yeah!” she said. “That sounds cool.”

“‘Cool’?” sniffed her father.

“Not now, dear!” said Karen’s mother impatiently. “Now, Po’s been pretty ill. In fact, she almost died. It’s something to do with the drugs she took. I think she took heroin and cocaine and some other drugs with funny initials like GBH, the doctor said. She was in a coma when the police found her in an alleyway just north of Finsbury Park tube station. Her clothes were in a very poor state and she had some nasty sores. She had some other health problems, related to sexual diseases…”

“But not AIDS,” Karen’s father interjected angrily. “How she missed that one I don’t know! She got other ones though. Fine if they’re treated, but left to fester…”

“Well, dear,” Karen’s mother interrupted. “What’s done is done! Po’s alive. She could have died! After all the worrying over the last four years or more of where she had got to…”

“And all along, she was living less than five miles away! She could have easily contacted us!”

Karen could see her father was bitter about this, but she was more focused on the fact that Po was coming back. That would be so much fun! Perhaps all she’d been missing was her older sister. She’d seen all those movies and television programmes where people had lost their older brothers or sisters, and when they came back, everything was wonderful again. And from what she remembered in the movies, wasn’t all that time when your brother or sister was missing meant to be traumatic? Maybe that explained why she felt different from other girls. And now that Po was coming back, perhaps now she too would go through that magical transformation. She too would be happy and contented with her beautiful older sister. They could do sisterly type things together. Karen wasn’t sure what it was that sisters did together, but she was certain that whatever it was, it must be good and wholesome and gratifying.

However, whatever image she had in her mind of what Po might look like - based on the prodigal daughters of children’s television drama - did not prepare Karen for the real thing.

Po was much older than she’d imagined, having aged rather more than the elapsed four years since they’d last met. She was very gaunt, her red hair was straggly and uncombed, and although the clothes she wore were just an unremarkable pair of jeans and a tee-shirt, with that ring through her nose and the stud in her tongue, she might as well have been dressed in archetypal punk leather and tartan as far as Karen’s father was concerned.

However, Karen noticed that he made no comment about this. Nor did he comment on her smoking, which she had evidently been doing for quite a while before Karen came back from school, judging by the stubbed filters in the ashtray and the pervasive smoke in the living room. And he also made no criticism when she swore, which she did frequently and with neither any sense of embarrassment nor even a hint that she was being intentionally provocative.

“Yeah, the cunt deserved what he got!” Po was exclaiming as Karen entered the room. “Fucking arsehole! I’d have ripped his other eye out if I’d the chance after the way he’d fucking raped me that time… And shit! Who’s this little girlie?”

“It’s your sister, Pauline,” said Karen’s father in a quietly restrained voice.

“Karen! Fuck me! She’s fucking grown, ain’t she? How’re you, sis? You got a boyfriend yet?”

Karen shook her head. This wasn’t quite the first thing she’d expected her long lost sister to ask her.

“Girlfriend then? You a les, then?”

 Karen shook her head more adamantly and blushed, but secretly feeling pleased that her sister could be so open about something which had troubled her so much.

“Well! What’s fucking wrong with you, sis? Here, have a fag!”

“Karen doesn’t smoke, Pauline,” said her father firmly.

“She doesn’t? Well, good for you, girl! Nicotine’s fucking poison, it is! I’d give it up tomorrow if I could! But when you’re coming down, you know, from where I’ve been, I need every fucking prop I can get hold of.”

With that, she opened up the packet of cigarettes, placed one in her mouth and lit it, while Karen’s father pretended not to notice and her mother smiled ineffectually.

Karen didn’t get much chance to actually say anything at all to her prodigal sister all evening. It was Po who did most of the talking, pausing mostly just to light cigarettes and take swigs from the cans of lager, the fetching of which from the refrigerator in the kitchen were almost the only times she deserted the huge sofa that had somehow become hers. Karen’s mother and father sat around politely, occasionally emptying the ashtray or flicking ash off the furniture where it settled, while Po talked and talked and talked.

For Karen, it sounded very exciting indeed, though her parents were quite obviously appalled. Po had done everything, it seemed. She’d hung around with like real gangsters who’d fuck you up soon’s they saw you. She’d done a stint of prostitution at King’s Cross, till she figured that streetwalking was for mugs when all you needed to do was place a card in a phone booth. She’d done a bit of dealing, soft stuff mostly, but she’d graduated to H. Bit more lucrative, but not as much fun as selling E at night clubs. But lately, it had all got fucking out of hand. The smack had fucking done her in. She’d thought she’d be able to handle it. After all, her best mate, Griz, she’d been fucking mainlining since she was fifteen, and she was like, fucking twenty three now. Fucking ancient. And she was alright. She’d managed to handle it. So why couldn’t Po?

“You couldn’t though, could you dear?” interceded Karen’s mother before her father could say something rather less tactful.

“No. I guess not! But it was fucking great for a while. I felt real cool. And with what I made from flogging the gear and the bit of extra from the punters, I was fucking rich, I can tell you. I could fucking afford everything!”

After a few days, Karen was able to spend more time with Po without her parents accompanying her. In fact, it was obvious that they were thoroughly exhausted from the effort of such chaperoning. Her father now spent most of the evening watching television in the living room, while her mother sat in the kitchen.

Po mostly stayed in her bedroom which had been reserved for her since she’d run away all those years ago. Karen liked to sit with her sister in her room, watching her puff away at her ciggies, swig at her lager, and, bolder now, toke off her thin single-skin spliffs. It was Po who did most of the talking, lying stretched out on her bed, flattening the duvet, while Karen sat there on the armchair. And what things Po talked about! As Karen got to realise, there was a fucking big world out there and a girl had to have her fucking wits about her to survive.

There was something a little incongruous about the setting though. As Po let forth about the things she’d done or heard about, which were of a distinctly adult nature, expressed in suitably adult language, the bedroom remained that of a girl in her early teens, and Po showed no interest at all in updating the décor. There were the posters of the boy bands she’d once enjoyed, the stacked-up CDs were compilations of dated juvenile dance music and the duvet still displayed a mosaic of friendly ponies and gruff looking teddy bears. But Po just didn’t seem to notice much about her surroundings.

She once put on a CD that Karen brought in of some fairly weird techno that she thought her sister might like, but although Po made some appreciative noises, Karen could see she wasn’t paying it any real attention.

But it was Karen who was learning the most. There were some pretty kinky people out there, men and women, who did the weirdest things. And there was a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a lot of money to be made, and so much much more which made Karen’s own fears, about her uncertain feelings towards girls and the fact she preferred being with boys, appear pretty boring really. Karen so wanted to tell Po about her life, but it would just sound so pathetic and boring compared to her sister’s really cool life.

“I’m glad you spend so much time talking to Po,” said Karen’s mother one day as she was preparing to go to school. “I’m sure it does her a lot of good to talk to someone.”

“Yes, Karen,” agreed her father, who looked up over the front page of his Daily Telegraph. “I’m sorry your sister talks in such disgusting language, but your mother and I think it must be good for her to be able to talk to someone who doesn’t take drugs or do any of the other disgusting things she used to do.”

Karen nodded, but secretly she rather envied Po for her much more exciting past. And she also knew that though her sister wasn’t taking heroin any more, she was dabbling in a few other drugs, mostly cannabis, but occasionally cocaine and sulphate. But the drugs weren’t what Karen found most interesting about Po’s life. It was the sex. And her sister expressed no sense of embarrassment at all as she talked about all the various sexual encounters she’d had, with men, women, groups of men, indeed, whole orgies!

However, although Karen’s parents liked the notion that their older daughter was now, in a sense, a reformed woman, it must have come as a shock to them both when, one evening, having both returned from their different places of work, they arrived home to a kitchen where Po was sitting quite nonchalantly on the stool with no clothes at all, smoking a cigarette and occasionally biting into some chocolate sandwiches she’d prepared. And as Karen was soon to find out there was something rather shockingly blatant about Po’s nudity. Her body was unmistakably that of a teenage girl, with a full brush of hair around her vagina, but the folds of her vulva fell right out and were visible to all unless she chose to cross her legs. And although her breasts were not very full, and she no longer wore the rings through her nipples that she apparently once used to, hers were still a bosom that Karen’s father found difficult to look toward without embarrassment.

“I’m just fucking pissed off with wearing clothes, that’s all!” Po explained it to Karen, when her sister visited in her room after some very anxious words of advice from her parents. “They fucking itch! And anyway if I don’t want to wear clothes when I’m in my own home, why the fuck should I?”

Karen nodded, but rather inappropriate feelings distracted her as she regarded her sister’s naked body. She’d seen naked female bodies before. How could any girl who played sports, and was even in the school girls’ soccer team, not get used to seeing naked girls? But there was a difference somehow between the girls crowded into the shower with their puppy fat disappearing and their breasts not yet fully grown and a girl like Po whom Karen knew so well had a sexual character and was not ashamed to flaunt it.

However, the fact of Po’s habitual nudity had the consequence that neither of her parents now felt at all comfortable being with her. They’d already long since ceased to invite their friends home, and whenever an opportunity came for either Karen’s father or mother to see a friend, this was invariably done at the friends’ address or at some neutral territory.

Indeed, Po had the house to herself during the day. Karen was at school. Her parents were at work. And Po was still recuperating from her drug addiction. And, except for a few hours at a time, usually at weekends, Po was almost always at home. And when she was at home, she was almost always in her room, sometimes with the television on, sometimes playing computer games on an old PlayStation and sometimes just browsing through magazines she’d bought at the newsagents. Karen got to believe this was how it should be, forgetting totally that in her life before rehabilitation, she must have had friends and accomplices in the whirl of her exciting and sordid social life.

And the fact of this was made pretty much apparent to her, when one evening she pushed open the bedroom door through which she could hear an old Chemical Brothers CD blaring out and was confronted with a rather startling sight.

Karen was pretty much accustomed to seeing her sister in the nude now, although the thought of it still made her feel quite giddy and strangely hot when she lay in her own bed sinking to sleep. But here her sister was not just naked herself but with a naked man, whose buttocks were sinking and rising with an unmistakable rhythm, while Po’s legs were straddled around his skinny back.

“Fuck, Karen! You coming in to watch?”

Karen shook her head. A broad blush burned her cheeks.

“Well, sis, you either fucking stay and join in. Or you fuck off!”

And with that Po ignored her humiliated sister while grunting and gasping to her friend’s coital thrusts. Karen retreated to her room, still hearing the guttural sound of Po’s sexual intercourse, the louder and more clearly when the Chemical Brothers CD came to its end. She intended to read up for her History assignment, but instead found herself masturbating madly at the image of her sister having sex, imagining against the brightly coloured wallpaper of her bedroom wall her sister’s vagina being repeatedly thrust and thrust again by the penis of which she had actually only caught a glimpse, but the associated testicles she remembered only too well as they flopped to the same rhythm as Po’s short sharp breaths.

What surprised Karen was that as Po’s behaviour became steadily bolder in the home, her parents became ever more resigned and more tolerant towards her. Even when Po started smoking smack again and leaving traces of tin foil in the bathroom waste bin, all that was said was that Karen shouldn’t touch them. And it was Karen’s father who was the most tolerant. Despite his daughter’s dreadful language and her sometimes smoking dope in the living room. And one day, Karen was sure she saw Po place a hand on her father’s lap, surely higher up than it was decent to be, which was then politely removed by her father, anxiously regarding his wife whose back was turned at that moment.

“I think it was a mistake letting Po come back here,” confided Karen’s mother to her one evening, while Po could be heard in full flow with a male friend in the adjacent bedroom. “She’s clearly got no interest in reforming her character. I know you’ve tried to be a good example to her…”

Karen nodded her head. “I’ve tried talking to her, but she doesn’t listen.” That was totally true. Karen wasn’t sure that in all the months since Po had returned, she’d ever actually listened to a word Karen had ever said, although Karen had listened to everything Po said with incredible attention.

“It’s strained things between your father and me, too, Karen dear,” her mother continued. “Your father… It’s difficult… I don’t think…”

And then her mother burst into tears and for the first time in her life, it was Karen who had to comfort her mother whose head was laid on Karen’s lap and whose tears soaked Karen’s jeans with a sweet salty puddle of misery. All the while, her mother talked about Po and her father, but Karen wasn’t sure she understood their import as the remarks were so disjointed and incomplete.

And then she suddenly lifted herself up, her face a mask of unhappiness, and said to her daughter: “It may only be suspicion on my part as to who it may be, but I know that it’s someone! And whatever your father might say, we can’t both live under the same roof!”

She then lowered her head back on her daughter’s lap, moaning softly and sadly, while Karen stroked her mother’s slightly greying bush of hair. And all the while, there was a thump thump thump of Po’s bedstead against the wall and her own uninhibited screams of sexual passion in an approximate synchrony to that same thump.

And so it was, and with remarkably little argument, Karen’s father chose to leave home and live in a small flat he had managed to rent nearby. He bade his family goodbye, but Karen noticed that no mention was made of either she or her sister ever visiting him at any time unaccompanied by her mother. And, in fact, her father made no comments that suggested he expected it to be any other way.

As Karen’s father drove off in his company Mondeo with his luggage in the boot and on the back seat, her mother remarked: “Of course, I can’t be sure dear. Your father wouldn’t bring himself to answer the question. Or, in truth, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him. But it’s for the best for you, dear. We’ve got one incurable casualty in the house. We don’t need you to become one, too!”

Karen wasn’t sure what her mother was quite getting at, but it was noticeable that Po was nowhere to be seen while she and her mother watched her father load his bags, although maybe that was her naked silhouette against the lace curtains of her bedroom looking down as her father drove off. Or maybe it was just some other shadow across the window. After all, Po generally didn’t seem to care about anything at all these days. However momentous. In fact, if war was declared, Karen fancied that all her sister might be bothered about was whether it might interrupt her supply of stash.

“’S’at you, Al?” Po slurred, when Karen knocked politely on her door a few days later.

“No, it’s me, Karen,” her sister said, easing the door behind her. She wasn’t sure who Al was. As far as Karen knew, Po’s boyfriend was called Mick, although the boy who came round to visit a few weeks’ back and vomited in the toilet bowl might have been called ‘Al’. Although Karen was under the distinct impression that his name was actually Ian. “I just thought I’d come and see how you are.”

Po nodded her head. “Fucking pissed off is what I am,” she said, and then lapsed again into the habitual moody silence that was the only other state she was in these days, when she wasn’t sleeping, fucking or talking. Karen preferred it when Po was talkative than when she was silent, although it was only quite recently her sister had ever been like that. On these occasions, Karen would just sit there watching her sister lie on the bed, her naked legs stretched out, her nipples covered with cigarette ash, while all Po would do was stare in no particular direction, occasionally sipping from a can of beer or puffing on a cigarette.

“Why are you pissed off?” Karen asked.

“Thought Al was coming. Fucking need a fuck, me! ‘Sall I want! No one can deny me that, can they?”

“No,” said Karen meekly, dropping her gaze towards her clasped hands in her lap. She so wished there was some way she could help her sister. It couldn’t be easy for her, coming off drugs. Although Karen wasn’t sure Po had actually done that good a job of it, now she was smoking more heroin than she did when she first arrived. And these mood swings of hers, from lethargy to hyperactivity, from sullen moody silences to unstoppable garrulity, they were extremely unsettling, and judging from the shouted conversation she could sometimes hear coming from her sister’s bedroom when she was entertaining one of her boyfriends, it wasn’t just Karen and her mother who found it all very disconcerting.

Po looked Karen up and down with quite a sweet smile on her face. This slightly alarmed her sister who was used to a rather more disinterested expression. “Are you alright, Po?” she asked apprehensively.

“Yeah! Sure! But you’re growing up a bit now, aren’t you sis? You’re not such a little girl any more, are you?”

“No, not any more,” Karen admitted, a sad smile breaking across her face. At least, Po had noticed she was there.

“Stand up, girl!” Po commanded. “Let’s have a look at you.”

Karen did so, pushing herself up off the armchair which after all these months had almost moulded itself into the shape of her bottom and pulled-up legs. Po looked her up and down, sitting up on the bed, one knee crossed and her other leg dangling over the edge of the mattress, a cigarette dangling from her hand and the ash sprinkling over her lap.

“You’re not a bad looking girl, are you? A bit boyish, what with your hair being so short and all. But you’re losing that like tummy you had. And I bet your tits are coming on a bit under your tee-shirt. Is that so? Are you getting proper girl titties now?”

Karen nodded, feeling very self-conscious.

“Well, take off your top then! Let’s see what your tits are like?”

Karen tittered with nervousness. “I can’t do that! It’s not right!”

“Don’t be fucking wet! It doesn’t fucking stop me. And anyway I’m like your sister, aren’t I? Fucking family. Let’s see what your tits are like!”

Karen’s heart thumped with an urgent percussive panic, as she nonetheless pulled the tee-shirt up and over her slim shoulders and stood with her blue training bra on display. But not for long after Po mimed that she should remove this mere pretence of a cover, and revealed two breasts more like mounds than mammaries.

“See! Nothing to be so fucking scared of! You got nice little girl titties, haven’t you? And what are you now? How old? Not long till they’ll swell out into a proper size, like mine!” Po cupped her breasts from underneath and slightly pushed them up, while Karen’s heart pounded away furiously inside her chest and the back of her mouth choked with a sudden swelling of mucus. “And I bet you’ve got a proper little patch of hair on your twat as well. A regular little garden of pubic hair. Let’s have a look at that as well, sis!”

“But, Po! I can’t do that!”

“Fuck! You worried about Mum or something. It can’t be Dad, since he’s buggered off. When’s the last time Mum ever came up to my bedroom ‘cept to clear things up when I’ve gone out? She’s too fucking frightened of me. Come on! Take off everything! Go fucking nude like me! It’s not done me any fucking harm, has it?”

Karen squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a deep breath. At that moment she’d almost rather be anywhere than here at the moment. This was not what she wanted. She was supposed to be setting a good example to her sister, but instead Po was just teasing her. And, anyway, Karen was embarrassed about her body. It was such an awkward thing. Not yet properly grown up at all! But she obeyed her sister. She couldn’t see that she had much choice. She pulled off her trainers and socks. Eased down her jeans and with a final gesture of resignation took down her knickers which she held in one hand while looking over at her naked sister sprawled on the bed.

“So! What d’you have to worry about, sis?” Po asked. “Fucking nothing, was it? Here! Come closer, so’s I can look at your darling little pussy.”

Karen obeyed, a sweat breaking out on her forehead and her knickers still dangling from one hand, stepping forward towards Po who’d pulled herself onto the side of the bed, both legs over the edge, and her hand stretched palm upwards towards Karen’s crotch, the hairs thickening but not nearly as thick and wild as those on full display in front of her eyes on her older sister’s crotch.

Po gently stroked Karen’s pubic hair with one hand, the other hand still holding a cigarette, and with a very strange expression on her face. “You’ve got a real furry pussy, sis. Real nice. I bet it purrs too! Just like a real puss cat. Is that so?”

Po raised her eyes from gazing down at Karen’s crotch and looked her straight in the eyes.

“Is it a real friendly pussy you’ve got, sweetheart?”

Karen nodded her head nervously, but with a smile on her face. It was so nice for her sister to show so much love and affection. Perhaps this was what prodigal daughters were supposed to be like when they returned home. Perhaps this was the sisterly love that Karen had heard so vaunted on children’s drama programmes.

“And does your pussy bite, I wonder?” asked Po, and with a sudden sharp prod. Karen was aware that her sister had actually pushed her middle finger through the slightly swollen lips of her vulva, and it was just inside her, the fingernail and as far as the second joint inside her private place, where before only she had ventured, with rather more timidity than Po was demonstrating at this moment.

“I don’t think it bites,” was all that Karen could think of saying, as her vision clouded in a kind of red blindness and a trail of sweat disengaged itself from the widow’s peak at the top of her forehead and trailed down over her eyebrows.

“It mightn’t bite, but it’s certainly wet!” Po remarked, twisting her finger around and around and around inside her sister’s vagina, entering Karen as deeply as her knuckle.

Karen sighed, now totally unable to express herself in any way, shape or form that was at all more articulate. Po took her sister totally under her control, using the wealth of her experience to guide Karen back onto the bed and still in dazed partial arousal, her pelvis thrusting with the rhythm orchestrated by her fingers, and, so soon, her tongue bringing her sister to a helpless, melting, totally abandoned state of sexual ecstasy.

When Karen finally regained her normal state of clarity and articulacy, it was only after many hours in which she had been at the total mercy of her sister. Had she known better, been better experienced herself, she might soon have found that despite Po’s considerable acquaintance in matters of carnal seduction, she was not so equally expert at maintaining the rhythm or quality of the lovemaking. Her selfishness and her need for sexual gratification were obstacles in building the cycle of desire and lust to beyond a certain plateau, and only Karen’s desperate hunger for Po’s flesh kept the passion from petering out after her younger sister’s first involuntary, pained and wholly unexpected orgasm.

It was Karen, soon, who had the energy and desire to feast on the ragged edges of Po’s vagina, to nibble at the lips and circle her tongue around the clitoris. It was Karen whose mouth returned again and again to Po’s own. It was Karen, indeed, who sucked and suckled at Po’s nipples bringing them to a stiffness she’d forgotten they were able to attain. And it was Karen who rested her head, her ear crushed into the fat of her thigh, in Po’s lap while her sister stroked her short hair whilst desultorily puffing at a cigarette.

Karen raised her head slightly and gazed into her sister’s eyes as they looked down at her, her pupils still too small but betraying a genuine flush of feeling about her face. It had been a long time since any of her male lovers had shown her as much affection, certainly so much unconditional affection, as her younger sister.

“Po! What will become of us? What will Mum say? I promised that I would try and set you a good example.”

Po smiled again. She reflected that amongst all the slithery, sweaty groping, licking and nibbling, she had felt inside her strong emotions and sensations she’d not felt for a very long time, and compared to which even the high of a heroin rush was in some unquantifiable way rather less precious. In fact, hadn’t she actually experienced a genuine orgasm? Not one she’d manufactured to fit expectations.

“Don’t worry about Mum, sweetheart,” Po said, twisting a short lock of hair in her nicotine-stained fingers. “And anyway, you have been setting me a good example. Just not in quite the way that Mum thought you might!”