Blood Ties | NEON LIT

I found my birth mother on my thirtieth birthday.

The adoption agency gave me her information—finally, after years of requests. Her name is Susan Price. She lives forty miles from where I grew up. She was seventeen when she had me, and she never forgot.

I expected a tearful reunion.

I didn't expect what came next.

Susan looks nothing like I imagined.

I pictured someone thin, worn down by regret. Someone who'd spent thirty years mourning the child she gave up.

Instead, I find a woman who's forty-seven, vibrant, and large. She's easily two-sixty, maybe more, with curves that fill the doorway when she opens it. Dark hair with silver streaks. My eyes—I see my eyes in her face, and something shifts.

"Daniel." She says my name like a prayer. "You look just like your father."

"My father?"

"A mistake I made at seventeen." She smiles sadly. "But you weren't a mistake. Never that."

She hugs me. Pulls me into softness—her body surrounding mine, warm and overwhelming.

"Come in," she says. "There's someone I want you to meet."

Her name is Emma.

My half-sister. Born five years after me, kept when I was given away. Twenty-five years old, and built exactly like Susan—maybe two-forty, with the same dark hair, the same eyes, the same overwhelming presence.

She stares at me when I walk in.

"So you're him," she says. "The mystery brother."

"I guess so."

"Mom's told me about you. Every birthday. Every holiday. The baby she gave up." She crosses her arms, pushing her breasts up. "I used to be jealous. Now I'm just curious."

"Curious about what?"

She shrugs. "About what you're like. About whether you're anything like me."

Susan watches us interact. Something flickers in her expression—hope, maybe. Or something else.

"Let's have dinner," she says. "Get to know each other."

Dinner is awkward.

I ask questions about my birth father (dead, she tells me, ten years ago). About her life (married briefly, divorced quickly, raised Emma alone). About why she gave me up (too young, too poor, too scared).

"Not a day goes by," she says, "that I don't think about you. Wonder what you're doing. What you've become."

"I'm just a regular guy."

"You're my son." She reaches across the table, takes my hand. "Nothing regular about that."

Her thumb strokes my palm. The gesture is... intimate. More than maternal.

Emma notices. Doesn't comment.

After dinner, Susan insists I stay.

"It's late. You've been drinking. The guest room is made up." She pauses. "Unless you'd rather leave."

I wouldn't.

The guest room is comfortable—clean sheets, soft bed. I lie awake thinking about the evening. About Susan's touch. About Emma's eyes on me.

About the strange electricity that seemed to fill every interaction.

Genetic sexual attraction, a voice in my head whispers. I've read about it. The phenomenon where relatives meeting for the first time as adults feel intense, inappropriate attraction.

I push the thought away.

Sleep doesn't come easily.

Susan comes to me at midnight.

She doesn't knock. Just opens the door, enters, sits on the edge of the bed.

"I couldn't sleep," she says. "I keep thinking about you. About all the years I missed."

"Susan—"

"I know it's strange." She's wearing a silk nightgown that barely contains her. "I know what people would say. But you're not really my son. I didn't raise you. I just... made you."

"That's still—"

"Please." She takes my hand again. "Let me explain."

She explains.

The adoption. The grief. The years of therapy that helped her accept her loss.

"The therapist told me something once," she says. "She said the bond between mother and child forms through care. Through daily presence. Without that, the biological connection is just... chemistry."

"Chemistry."

"Hormones. Genetics. The reason why you feel like you belong with me, even though we just met." She leans closer. "The reason why I look at you and feel things a mother shouldn't feel."

"Susan—"

"I'm not asking for forever." Her hand finds my chest. "Just for tonight. Let me hold you the way I should have held you when you were born."

I should leave.

Instead, I pull her to me.

She's soft everywhere.

Two hundred and sixty pounds of the woman who made me, pressing against me, surrounding me. Her breasts are heavy, her belly round, her thighs thick. She feels like coming home.

"I've dreamed of this," she whispers. "Not like this—not exactly—but close. Being with you. Knowing you."

I shouldn't answer. Shouldn't encourage.

"I've dreamed of you too," I admit. "Since I started searching. Wondering what you'd feel like."

She kisses me.

Her mouth tastes like wine and tears.

"Make me feel it," she begs. "Make me feel like your mother wasn't a lie."

I make love to my birth mother in her guest bed.

Slow. Careful. As though she might break if I'm too rough. She doesn't break—she opens, softens, surrenders. Her body takes me in like it was designed to.

"Yes," she moans. "Yes—baby—yes—"

The word hits me like lightning. Baby. The name she would have called me. The name she never got to use.

I fuck her harder.

She comes around me, shaking, crying, calling me names that make no sense—son and lover and mine.

When I finish inside her, she holds me like she'll never let go.

"Thank you," she whispers. "For coming back to me."

I don't know how to respond.

So I just hold her.

Morning brings clarity.

Or should. Instead, I wake to find Emma in the doorway.

"Mom told me," she says. Her voice is flat. "She told me what happened."

"Emma, I'm sorry—"

"I'm not." She steps into the room. Closes the door. "I'm jealous."

"What?"

"I told you. I used to be jealous of you." She pulls off her t-shirt. She's not wearing a bra. Her breasts are heavy, young, almost identical to Susan's. "Now I know why."

"Emma—"

"We're not really family." She pushes down her shorts. "Not where it counts. We didn't grow up together. We have no memories. We're just... strangers who share some DNA."

"That's—"

"Exactly what Mom said last night." She climbs onto the bed. Two hundred and forty pounds of my blood sister, straddling me. "And if she can have you, so can I."

I should stop this.

I don't.

Emma is different from Susan.

Younger, obviously. But also fiercer. Hungrier. She doesn't want to be held—she wants to be taken. To be claimed. To be used.

"Harder," she demands as I thrust into her. "I want to feel this tomorrow—"

I give her what she wants.

Behind us, the door opens. Susan enters. Watches.

"You couldn't wait," she says. Her voice isn't angry. Just... amused.

"Neither could you," Emma fires back.

They look at each other. Mother and daughter. Women who should be fighting, should be scandalized, should be anything but what they are.

"Together, then," Susan says. Drops her robe. "If we're doing this, we're doing it right."

I fuck them both.

Mother and daughter. Birth family reunited in ways the adoption agency never intended. They take turns with me, then share me, then compete to see who can make me last longer.

Susan is soft, emotional, connected. She cries when she comes.

Emma is hard, demanding, aggressive. She laughs when she comes.

Together, they're everything I never knew I needed.

Three Months Later

I moved in.

Not because I had to—my old life is still there, waiting. But because this is where I belong.

We don't discuss it publicly. To the world, I'm the long-lost son, finally reunited with his birth family. We have Sunday dinners with Susan's friends. We attend Emma's work events as "family."

Behind closed doors, we're something else.

"Genetic attraction," Emma says one night, curled against me. Susan is on my other side. "That's what they call it. The science."

"I don't care what they call it." Susan strokes my chest. "I care that it's real."

I kiss them both.

My mother. My sister. My lovers.

Some families are chosen.

Some families are found.

And some families—the rarest, the most forbidden—are both.

I found mine at thirty.

I'm never letting go.