The bedroom had been mine since I was twelve. Pink walls I’d painted black at sixteen. A desk covered in makeup and old journals. A bed that creaked when I shifted, that had heard every secret I’d whispered into my pillow, that had been the witness to every fantasy I’d ever had about the woman currently kneeling beside it.
Sloane was my stepsister. Twenty-eight. A cybersecurity expert who consulted for firms that paid her more in a month than I made in a year. She’d moved in when her apartment flooded two months ago, and our parents had said “make yourself at home, darling,” completely unaware that Sloane had been making herself at home in my fantasies since the day we met.
Tonight was a Tuesday. Our parents were asleep down the hall. Sloane had been in my room since 10 PM, supposedly helping me with a “computer issue” that I’d manufactured specifically to get her alone.
The issue was my phone.
“It won’t unlock,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed in my black silk camisole. The fabric was thin, borrowed from Sloane’s drawer, and I knew it was doing nothing to hide the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra. “The facial recognition only works when I’m alone. Stupid phone.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just looked at me—her blue eyes dark in the light from the phone screen, her blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her black tank top clinging to her body in a way that made me forget what I was complaining about.
Then she reached up. Her hand was warm, sure, completely confident. She tilted the phone toward us, adjusted the angle, and pressed her cheek against mine. Her skin was soft. Her breath was warm against my temple. And her proximity—her smell, her heat, her impossible closeness—made my hands shake.
The screen flashed. UNLOCKED.
“How did you—” I started.
She turned her head. Our faces were inches apart, her cheek still warm against mine, her nose nearly touching my nose, her eyes locked on my lips with an expression that was part triumph, part hunger, part complete ownership of a moment she’d clearly been planning.
“What’s on the screen?” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Sloane turned the phone. Showed me the home screen. It wasn’t the sunset photo I’d set last week. It was a photo of us—taken at the beach last summer, her arm around my waist, my head on her shoulder, both of us looking at the camera with a closeness that was unmistakable, that screamed couple to anyone who looked closely enough.
“I changed it,” she whispered, her voice low, completely unapologetic. “Three months ago. When you were sleeping. Your face alone doesn’t unlock it anymore. The algorithm needs both of us. Together.”
“Sloane—”
She swiped. Opened the Photos app. Navigated to a hidden album—one I hadn’t known existed—and turned the screen toward me.
Two hundred photos. All of me. Sleeping. In my bed. On the couch. In the car on road trips. Close-ups of my face, my hands, the curve of my waist under a blanket. Some were innocent. Some were not. Some showed me in moments of private vulnerability—my camisole riding up, my underwear visible, my mouth slightly open in a way that looked like invitation.
“I’ve been collecting you,” she whispered, her hand sliding from my knee to my thigh, her fingers finding the hem of my camisole and sliding underneath. “Every moment. Every angle. Every time you didn’t know I was watching. And now that I have you unlocked…”
Her hand was inside my underwear when our mother’s voice came from the hallway.
“Girls? I thought I heard a voice. Everything okay?”
Sloane didn’t panic. She just pressed her palm over my mouth, her fingers pressing deeper inside me, her thumb circling my clit with a precision that made my eyes roll back. She held the phone up with her other hand, the screen showing a generic weather app, and called out:
“Just fixing her phone, Mom! Software update!”
“Okay, honey! Don’t stay up too late!”
The footsteps retreated. Sloane removed her palm, replaced it with her mouth, and kissed me with a violence that spoke of months of hidden photos and denied wanting.
“Now,” she whispered against my lips, her fingers still moving inside me, “where were we?”
She made me come while scrolling through the hidden album, showing me each photo, narrating when she’d taken it, what she’d been thinking, how many times she’d touched herself to the image of me sleeping. The orgasm was sharp, devastating, completely consuming—amplified by the violation, the intimacy, the knowledge that she’d been collecting me like art.
After, she changed the lock screen again. A new photo—us, kissing, taken tonight with the phone’s timer. She set it so that only our faces together would unlock it.
“Now,” she said, lying beside me, her head on my chest, “you can’t get rid of me. Even your phone knows you belong with me.”
She was right. I tried to change it the next day. The phone wouldn’t unlock without her. I tried to delete the album. It was backed up to her cloud. I tried to forget.
I couldn’t. So I stopped trying. Sloane still takes photos—every morning, every night, every moment in between. And every time I pick up my phone, I see us. Together. Unlocked.
