‘Honestly though?’ he asked. She listened for him. ‘You and everybody else’s mum too. People who talk high and mighty hide more than most, you know.’
Stevie lifted her head and looked at him with a dazed, heavy-eye-lidded smile. Out of nowhere her son craned up his head and planted a quick succession of butterfly-light kisses on her lips. His head hit the mattress again, leaving her stunned.
Was that meant to be affectionate, because it caused a stirring within that left her guessing. She exclaimed softly before her eyes strayed south again. The bulge in his shorts had grown. In the pit of her stomach she felt that familiar giddiness rising, but now she was too relaxed about him to feel bad.
The guilt of her inner desires was gone…
And all that remained were butterflies!
‘That was nice,’ she whispered. Her hand ran from his abdomen back up to his chest. This was the next natural step in their increasing closeness and intimacy. She shifted up a bit, came face to face with him and her foggy grey eyes searched his. ‘But I’d better have those back,’ she countered, and returned the sentiment, her lips pecking repetitively back against his.
Soon they were laughing quietly into each other’s necks. Inside Stevie was thrilled rigid. She couldn’t bring herself to speak or to move away, even though her camisole top hand shifted with her movement, baring one partial breast. Her hard nipple now pressed nakedly against Lee’s shoulder and the slightest movement electrified her. Stevie stifled her sudden urge to giggle. Before long though it snuck out like a series of mouse sneezes.
‘One thing you never told me,’ Lee began to say dreamily. He wasn’t aware that he was drifting in and out of reality. ‘After everything, what stopped you?’
‘Hmm?’ she hummed from the pit of his shoulder.
‘I shouldn’t ask…’
Stevie raised her head finally, with the courage to look at him. ‘No, please tell me!’
Lee’s head lolled to the side, lazily meeting her gaze. He took in a big breath and exhaled carefully, coming awake again. ‘My eighteenth birthday – what was it that stopped you in the end?’
Again, silence but for the music wafting on the air. Stevie stroked his forehead with her fingertips, and then found herself in his eyes again. ‘Because it was need, not love. That’s why! Even if you were an adult and had consented, I’d have been taking something from you that wasn’t mine to take. I love you too much to take from you, and so that’s why…’
Again she said it; ‘It was need, not love!’
‘Women have needs and so do men,’ Lee tried to reason.
‘That’s no reason to use their sons. Besides, I was getting what I needed.’
Lee wasn’t going to win that argument and he didn’t want to argue. Neither did he want to feel that familiar pang of envy over his bastard ex-stepdad. This moment was surreal enough, likely for the both of them. Instead, in his dazed and slightly aroused state, he dared to tell her something that would make her see him differently at least.
‘Do you want to hear something shocking?’ he asked. She looked south again and held her breath. She looked back and nodded, still holding her breath. ‘If you’d have told me, it would have been one-hundred percent consensual…’
Still Stevie held her breath, her eyes frozen on him.
‘But,’ he continued, ‘I’m glad you didn’t. I couldn’t have known what I know now. And now that I know, I still love you anyway. And I honestly love you more because you trust me enough to tell me the truth.’
Stevie crashed into his shoulder. Her elbows simply unlocked and let her go. Still, enraptured by those words, she looped one strong arm around him and hugged him tight, her eyes closed tighter. In return Lee held her against him and gave it time.
So many questions now raced through her mind. It was as if a floodgate had burst, every last gallon of truth surging through, and now they were swimming in it, hurled around by the chaotic current of odds.
She knew immediately, though, what she needed to hear from him. If she told him she still felt that way, that she wanted to be with her son sexually, would it still be consensual? Would he feel the same way, or was she actually all alone in this maddening sexual tension right now?
One-two-three, breathe…
One-two-three, breathe…
It was suddenly so damned hard to breathe!
Through her own trembling, which caused every inch of her to shake against him, he could still feel her heart pounding against his. In all he was relieved, if not happy, that there were no tears.
‘I need to ask you something too, then,’ she said and released a laboured sigh. Again her hand travelled south and came to stop just at the waistband of his stretching shorts. ‘What went on in your mind when I confessed everything?’
‘Lots of things,’ he gasped. ‘So many things,’ he stressed. ‘But in the end I felt relieved.’
‘Why relieved?’ Stevie asked, raising her head once more. She knew that she would need to see him say it, not just to believe her ears.
‘Because I did feel that way…’
Her heart stopped. That’s what it felt like. Everything but the music and the words between them stopped and waited. ‘How about now?’ she asked.
‘Still do…’
No words. No thoughts possible. The world again hung on the edge of a few words, ready either to roll away or to be slung back into place by the gravity of greater purpose. And now as every neuron, every hormone, every impulse and blood cell, rushed through her body like a raging rapid, her body vibrated, and her mind filled with all of the things about Lee she had tried to cram down.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me that it’s wrong?’ he wondered aloud, breaking her mind-blowing reverie.
Get a hold of yourself, woman, Stevie thought, letting those words echo inside. Wasn’t that just the greatest punch line to a small lifetime of torture? For all she had endured in keeping her forbidden thoughts and feelings hidden, though she did a bad enough job of that, it was her son all along that had held the ace up his sleeve.
And for all the pain and shame and guilt, now all she felt was the urge to say “fuck it!” and to accept what was. She sighed lightly and stifled a barely audible snort of laughter. Staring off into space, she laid her free arm down on Lee’s bare muscular chest and then rested her chin on top.
‘Nope,’ she remarked. And after another little silence, she added; ‘Sleepy?’
Lee nodded. She ruffled his hair again and for a moment remarked to herself about how for such a big strong man, he was still her baby at times. Kissing him again, she invited him to just slip under the covers and sleep beside her that night.
For a while they lay eyes open facing each other, each regarding the dark silhouette of the other. Another kiss happened, and another ‘I love you,’ and another kiss, and again. What do I do, each asked themselves within the safe walls of their own thoughts.
Despite their frustrations, and that tension that would just not quit, they lay side by side in the dark, the music still playing, and thought about each other until that sweet herb-induced sleep finally stole them away.