HAVE YOU BEEN A NAUGHTY GIRL LILS?

The handle turned.

Lily's entire body seized, muscles locking in a paralysis that felt almost religious like she was waiting for judgment, for the sky to split open, for her stepbrother to push open that door and see her with her hand between her legs and his own face frozen on her laptop screen in mid-orgasm.

Click.

The door didn't open. The handle paused, trembling slightly, and then it released. The shadow under the door shifted. Footsteps retreated across the hallway carpet.

"I'll... I'll be in my room," Ethan's voice came through the wood, rougher than before. "Take your time, Lils."

Lils. The nickname he'd given her when she was twelve and he was fifteen and they'd been forced into siblinghood by their parents' whirlwind romance. The nickname that meant “family” and “off-limits” and “you're being weird, stop acting like we're not related.”

She didn't breathe until she heard his door click shut down the hall.

Then she collapsed forward, forehead smacking against the cool porcelain of the sink, and let out a sound that was half sob, half hysterical laughter. Her heart was doing parkour against her ribs. Her hand was still wet. And the video was still playing, Ethan still panting, still oblivious, still ruining her life one pixel at a time.

She slammed the laptop closed.

*****

Two weeks of torture later, and Lily was officially losing her mind.

The problem with having a p**n star for a stepbrother. Amateur, whatever, same difference, was that you started noticing things you had absolutely no business noticing. Like the way sweat tracked down Ethan's spine when he did pull-ups in the garage at 6 AM. Like the specific shade of his skin where his tan faded into the waistband of his basketball shorts. Like the sounds he made when he thought he was alone, which Lily had started noticing with the intensity she used to reserve for her Spotify Wrapped.

She'd developed a system. It was unhinged, probably going to land her in therapy, but it worked.

Morning: Coffee in the kitchen, pretending to scroll T****k while Ethan shuffled in wearing nothing but sleep pants and bedhead, scratching his stomach in that lazy way that made her want to bite something.

Afternoon: "Working" by the pool while he swam laps, her sunglasses hiding the fact that she wasn't looking at her laptop at all, but at the way water dripped from his lashes when he surfaced, at the flex of his shoulders cutting through the chlorine-blue.

Evening: The crack in her bedroom door, positioned at the exact angle that let her see him walk from the bathroom to his room, steam still rising from his shoulders, towel slung too low on his hips.

She was stalking him. In her own house. While her parents watched The Great British Bake Off downstairs like everything was normal.

"You're being feral," Becca said through the phone, her voice tinny on speaker. "I can hear it in your voice. You're literally growling."

"I'm not growling." But Lily was watching Ethan through her window, watched him stretch up to pull the garage door down, his shirt riding up to expose the sharp lines of his hip bones. "I'm just... observing."

"You're hunting. There's a difference." Becca paused. "Has he said anything? About the other night?"

The bathroom. The handle. The way Lily had avoided eye contact at breakfast for three days straight, convinced he could see the guilt radiating off her like heat waves.

"He hasn't mentioned it." But he was looking at her differently. She was sure of it. The way his knee brushed hers under the dinner table, lingering for a half-second. The way he'd asked yesterday if she was "sleeping okay," with this strange smile playing at his mouth that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

She hadn't been sleeping. She'd been “watching”.

That was the problem with having unlimited access to her stepbrother's entire sexual history archived online. She'd started treating his videos like ASMR, like white noise, like something she deserved to have playing in the background while she answered emails or painted her nails or touched herself to the rhythm of his breathing.

The risk made it hotter. She knew that. She was messed up, officially, certifiably messed up.

Which is why, on night fourteen, she started leaving her door cracked.

Just an inch. Just enough that if Ethan walked past on his way to the bathroom (their rooms shared a wall, the plumbing connected, she knew his schedule by heart now) he might see. Might catch a glimpse of her lying on her bed, laptop propped on her knees, headphones in, watching him while he didn't know he was being watched.

It was a game. A dangerous, stupid game where the only prize was probably therapy and the consolation prize was getting caught.

"Lily?" Ethan's voice drifted through the crack one night at 2 AM. "You still up?"

She froze, hand already down her shorts, the video playing loud enough that she didn't hear him approach. He was right outside. She could see his shadow under the door, big and broad and still.

"Yeah," she called out, trying to sound normal, trying to sound like she wasn't wet and wanting and watching her stepbrother fuck a camera lens. "Just... studying."

"Studying," he repeated, and she couldn't tell if he was amused or suspicious or something else entirely. "Okay. Night, Lils."

"Night."

His shadow stayed there for three full seconds. Then…footsteps, retreating, and Lily let out a shaky breath that was half relief, half disappointment.

She fell asleep like that. Laptop open on her chest, video looping, one hand still tucked beneath the waistband of her sleep shorts, dreaming in the rhythm of Ethan's recorded breath.

She woke up to sunlight and an empty room.

The laptop was closed.

Not just closed, folded, with obscene neatness. In the way Ethan folded his gym towels, the way he organized the spice rack last week when he was bored.

Lily sat up so fast the room spun. Her heart wasn't beating; it was vibrating, a high-frequency terror that made her fingers numb as she reached for the computer. It was warm. Recently used? Or recently closed?

On her pillow, folded with that same terrifying neatness, was a square of paper torn from a legal pad.

"We need to talk. Meet me in the basement after Mom and Dad go to sleep."

No signature.Just eleven words in handwriting she recognized from a thousand shared grocery lists and chore charts growing up.

Lily spent the next eight hours vibrating. Dinner was a blur of meatloaf and her mom's commentary about the neighbors' landscaping and Ethan's knee brushing hers under the table, accidentally? On purpose?. That made her choke on her water. By 9:30 PM, when her parents finally retreated to their bedroom with their respective books and their 10 PM bedtime routine, Lily was practically levitating.

She stood in front of her closet for twenty minutes. Changed four times. Settled on a thin white tank top. No bra, her nipples already hard against the fabric just from anticipation and the smallest pair of panties she owned, black lace that she'd bought specifically because they matched the ones in Ethan's "Midnight Session" video.

If you're going to get exposed as a pervert, you might as well look good doing it.

The basement stairs creaked. Each step felt like walking toward her own execution, or her own wedding, or some delicious combination of both. The air got cooler as she descended, the unfinished concrete walls radiating that specific subterranean chill that made her skin prickle.

"Ethan?"

Her voice came out too small. Too hopeful.

The basement was dim, lit only by the single bulb hanging from the ceiling fixture. Their dad's workbench cluttered one corner. The old couch they'd been threatening to donate since 2019 dominated the center of the room. And leaning against that couch, arms crossed over his bare chest, was Ethan.

He'd been working out. She could tell by the sheen on his shoulders, the way his sweatpants hung precariously low, the defined lines of his abdomen that she had, admittedly, memorized from multiple angles online. But seeing him in three dimensions…close enough to touch, close enough to smell…was different.

"Lily." He didn't smile. His voice was the same one from the videos. Low, controlled, intimate in a way that made her toes curl against the cold floor. "Close the door behind you."

She reached back, fumbling for the handle, her breath coming in shallow gasps that she couldn't control. The latch clicked. They were alone. Soundproofed by concrete and distance from their parents' bedroom upstairs.

Ethan pushed off from the couch. Took a step toward her. Then another.

"I've been finding things," he said softly. "In the laundry."

Lily's blood turned to ice.

He reached behind him, into the couch cushions, and pulled out something black and lace and familiar. Her favorite pair. The ones she'd been missing for three days. The ones she'd worn while watching his "Shower Stroke" video on repeat.

"These yours?" he asked, holding them up by one finger. His eyes dark, exactly like they looked through the camera lens dropped to her tank top, to the obvious peaks of her nipples, to

the tiny shorts that suddenly felt like nothing at all. "Or should I ask…have you been a naughty girl, Lils?"