Study Break
"She's staying with his family while attending the same university. Late-night study sessions in his room become increasingly distracted. The taboo makes it wrong, but the chemistry makes it inevitable."
Sophie moves in on a Sunday.
My parents help her carry boxes up to the guest room—the one across the hall from mine—while I hover awkwardly in the kitchen. I haven't seen my cousin in six years, not since Aunt Rachel's funeral when Sophie was sixteen and I was eighteen.
She's not sixteen anymore.
"Noah!" She appears in the doorway, grinning. "Get over here."
She hugs me before I can react. She's my height now, five-ten, and she smells like citrus and something smoky. When she pulls back, I get my first real look at her.
Sophie has changed.
Her face has sharpened—high cheekbones, full lips, those green eyes that run in our family. Her dark hair is cut short, asymmetric, edgy. Her body is lean but curved in all the right places, visible even in her simple tank top and jeans.
She's beautiful.
She's my cousin.
These two facts wage war in my brain.
"You look good," she says, punching my shoulder. "All grown up."
"So do you."
Understatement of the year.
The arrangement is simple: Sophie transferred to State for her junior year. She's pre-med, needs to focus, and rent near campus is brutal. My parents offered the guest room for free. She accepted.
"Just until I can afford my own place," she tells us at dinner. "I don't want to be a burden."
"Don't be silly," Mom says. "You're family."
Family. Right. I repeat the word in my head like a mantra as Sophie reaches across the table for the salt and her tank top gapes, revealing the lacy edge of her bra.
Family. Family. Family.
Week One
We're both taking organic chemistry.
"Study together?" Sophie suggests. "I hear Professor Chen is brutal."
So we start meeting in my room after dinner. Books spread across the bed. Notecards scattered everywhere. Her sitting cross-legged on my floor while I take the desk chair.
She's brilliant. Faster than me, better at the concepts, but patient when I need her to explain things.
"You're staring," she says one night.
"What? No."
"You were staring at the page." She smirks. "Lost in the molecular structures?"
"Something like that."
She stretches, arms above her head, and her shirt rides up. Flat stomach. The glint of a belly button piercing.
I look away. Too slow.
Her smirk deepens. "Eyes on your notes, cuz."
Week Two
The touching starts.
Innocent, at first. Her foot nudging mine when I get an answer wrong. Her hand on my arm when she's making a point. My shoulder brushing hers when we lean over the same textbook.
Nothing wrong with any of it. We're family.
But I notice every touch. Log them like data points. Analyze them late at night when I should be sleeping.
She's flirting.
Or she isn't, and I'm projecting.
Either option terrifies me.
"Can I ask you something?" She's on my bed now—we've migrated from floor to furniture—and I'm still at the desk. It's almost midnight, and we should both be asleep.
"Shoot."
"Do you think I'm pretty?"
The question catches me off guard. "What?"
"Pretty. Attractive. Whatever." She's not looking at me. "There's this guy in my bio lab, and he asked me out, but I'm not sure if—"
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, you're pretty." My voice comes out rougher than intended. "You're... extremely pretty. If that guy can't see it, he's blind."
She looks at me then. Something flickers in her eyes—surprise, maybe. Or something else.
"Thanks, Noah."
"Anytime."
We study for another hour. Neither of us mentions it again.
But something has shifted.
Week Three
I find her crying in the kitchen.
It's 2 AM, and I came down for water. She's at the table, face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
"Sophie?"
She looks up. Mascara streaked, eyes red. "Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't. What's wrong?"
She waves a hand. "It's stupid. The guy from bio lab—Marcus—he invited me to a party. I thought it was a date, but he just wanted to show me off to his friends like some kind of—" She stops. Wipes her eyes. "Men suck."
"I'm a man."
"You're different." She almost smiles. "You're my cousin."
I sit across from her. "Want to talk about it?"
She does. For an hour, she tells me about Marcus, about other guys, about feeling like she's never enough. Too nerdy for the hot guys. Too hot for the nerdy guys. Always caught in between.
"I just want someone who sees me," she says finally. "Not just my face or my body. Me."
"I see you."
The words hang in the air. She looks at me—really looks—and something passes between us. Something that shouldn't.
"Yeah," she whispers. "You do."
Week Four
The tension becomes unbearable.
We study together every night, but the chemistry between us overpowers the chemistry in our textbooks. Every accidental touch lingers. Every look lasts too long. The air in my room feels charged, electric.
"This is crazy," she says one night. We're on my bed—side by side, shoulders touching—and neither of us has turned a page in twenty minutes.
"What is?"
"This." She gestures between us. "You know what this is."
"Sophie—"
"Don't." She turns to face me. "Don't pretend you don't feel it too."
"We're cousins."
"I know what we are." Her voice is barely a whisper. "And I know it's wrong. But I can't stop thinking about you. Every night, in my room across the hall, knowing you're right there—"
"Sophie."
"Tell me you haven't thought about it." She's so close now. Her breath on my face. "Tell me, and I'll drop it. I'll move out tomorrow."
I should tell her. Should lie, if that's what it takes.
But I can't.
"I've thought about it," I admit. "Every day since you moved in."
She kisses me.
It's nothing like kissing a stranger.
It's familiar—the same green eyes, the same bone structure, the same blood running through our veins. But it's also new, explosive, years of suppressed wanting detonating in a single moment.
She straddles me. Pins me to the bed. Her hands in my hair, her tongue in my mouth, her hips grinding against mine.
"We shouldn't—" I manage, between kisses.
"I know." She pulls off her shirt. Lacy bra, same one I glimpsed that first week. "Tell me to stop."
I don't.
I can't.
I pull her back down and kiss her until neither of us can breathe.
We strip each other frantically.
Her bra, my shirt. Her jeans, my shorts. Every layer removed brings us closer to the point of no return, and neither of us wants to stop.
She's gorgeous naked. Lean curves, small breasts with pink nipples, a strip of dark hair between her legs. She looks at me looking at her, and she doesn't flinch.
"Like what you see?"
"You're incredible."
"Then show me."
I roll her onto her back. Kiss down her body—throat, collarbone, breasts. She gasps when I take a nipple in my mouth, arches when I move lower. By the time I reach her thighs, she's trembling.
"Noah—please—"
I taste her. Sweet, musky, Sophie. Her hands fist in my hair as I work her with my tongue, and her moans fill my room. I hope my parents are heavy sleepers. I don't care if they're not.
"Close—" she gasps. "Fuck—I'm close—"
I push two fingers inside her, curl them, suck her clit. She comes with a muffled scream, biting her hand to stay quiet, her body shaking against my mouth.
When she comes down, she pulls me up.
"Inside me," she breathes. "Now."
I slide into my cousin.
The word echoes in my head—cousin, cousin, cousin—but it doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters but the way she feels around me: tight, wet, impossibly hot.
"Fuck," she moans. "You feel so good—"
I start to move. Slow at first, then faster as she urges me on. Her legs wrap around my waist. Her nails dig into my back. We find a rhythm, and it's like we've done this a thousand times.
"Harder," she demands. "Make me feel it—"
I fuck her harder. The bed creaks. The headboard taps the wall. She's moaning with every thrust now, not even trying to be quiet.
"Someone will hear," I warn.
"Don't care." She pulls me deeper. "Don't care who knows. Just don't stop—"
I can't stop. Couldn't stop if I wanted to. She's consuming me, her body clenching around me, her voice in my ear begging for more.
"Gonna come—" she gasps. "Come with me—"
She clenches. I shatter.
We come together, messy and loud and wrong in every way that matters. I spill into her while she shakes apart beneath me, and for a moment, there's nothing but us.
Afterward, we lie tangled together.
"That was—" she starts.
"Yeah."
"We should probably—"
"Talk about it? Define it? Figure out what this means?"
"Eventually." She curls against my chest. "But not tonight."
I hold her tighter. Press a kiss to her hair.
"Not tonight," I agree.
We don't tell my parents.
Sophie stays in the guest room—officially. But every night, after the house goes quiet, she slips across the hall. Into my bed. Into my arms. Into a rhythm that should feel wrong but doesn't.
"What happens when the semester ends?" she asks one night.
"We figure it out."
"And if we can't?"
I roll onto her. Slide inside her. Watch her eyes flutter closed.
"Then we study harder," I say. "Until we get it right."
She laughs—then moans—then forgets the question entirely.
Some things are worth the risk.
Some study breaks change everything.