Ben was in the middle of appreciating how naturally beautiful and well shaped she really was when she caught him off guard, turning to face him directly and threw down the towel so that there was nothing left to the imagination. Tearing his eyes away from hers, where he could also not help but to ogle her pert little breasts, he looked down to avoid her look and instead rested his eyes on her neatly trimmed pubic strip. He darted away in another direction, not so surprised by that, but by how prominent her clitoral hood and labia seemed. They stood out and proud where most vaginas he had seen appeared like a peach – a fruit with a single neat cleft running along its underside.
Rather than speak, Tammy stood there with her hands on her hips studying her son’s blushing face and stifled a soft giggle. ‘Now that you’re done getting a good eyeful,’ she said, extending a hand for her pyjamas. Ben handed Tammy her bottoms first. ‘Like what you see?’
‘You’re a terrible tease lately,’ Ben noted and went to scratching the back of his head, still looking away.
‘You haven’t complained…’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he agreed. ‘You want the truth?’
‘I didn’t ask for nothing,’ Tammy said quickly, giving him another eyeful as she lifted her thigh and bent her knee to climb into the first pant leg, exposing her pussy to him flat out.
‘I think you’re hot, mom – very, very attractive!’
Tammy took her turn to blush, grinning from ear to ear briefly as she slid into the other leg and drew the waistband of her pyjama bottoms up to her navel and let the elastic snap against her hips. Then she snatched her top from him and waltzed out of the bathroom, swaying her butt as she went.
‘Let’s have a little fire outside on the stove,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll just dry my hair…’
5
There was no better way to welcome in the darker, cooler nights than with fire and alcohol. Hence the black cast iron wood stove that stood on the patio, which now raged invitingly with a mellow roar and crackle. They had an outdoor woven bamboo double-seater which they placed under the dining room window with the stove facing it from six feet away. Even with the early night chill the fire reddened their faces like a solid wall of heat, the orange glow lighting them and causing their shadows to wave and flicker from behind.
Tammy sat curled up against Ben, the both of them insulated further beneath a soft, thick tartan wool blanket and while she drank her chilled white wine, he guzzled from a six pack of Millers.
‘This is perfect,’ she purred and he felt her hand press lightly against the strong muscle of his outer thigh. ‘I couldn’t care less about anything else right now.’
‘It is nice,’ Ben agreed.
‘Mmmm,’ she hummed, ‘cold wine, cold weather, hot fire…’
Ben bit his tongue. ‘Hot company,’ she said anyway. He laughed it off.
‘What’s with the compliments, are you buttering me up for something, mom?’
‘Hmm, you’re just my muffin,’ Tammy offered and sniggered. ‘Just buttering my muffin…’
Ben laughed harder, feeling her hand slide further up his thigh. ‘Mom, I don’t think that means what you think it means.’
‘Why, what did I miss?’
‘Well, when a woman talks about buttering her muffin-
‘Oh,’ Tammy intervened. ‘Oh my…’
‘Yeah…’
‘God it’s been so long since anybody buttered my muffin,’ she corrected. Ben’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
‘Are you one of those people who get soberer the more you drink?’ Ben asked, causing Tammy to spit out her wine hysterically.
‘Just let’s shut up and enjoy this,’ she suggested, dabbing her chin dry with the wrist cuff of her pyjama top and leaned into his chest, her hand a little higher on his thigh. She stole a kiss from his cheek. Ben turned to look at his mother and found her doting on him. Surprising her, he stole a kiss back, such a soft intimate smooch right from her lips. And with that he stole her breath.
6
An hour later all the booze was gone and the fire had died down to nothing but glowing coals, like cooling lava and rock. They went back inside, hanging around the kitchen where Tammy was soon picking at a bar of dark chocolate.
‘Ben…’ Tammy was looking at him already when he turned to face her. He was walking out of the kitchen, moping off simply to find a purposeful direction. ‘What are you gonna do tonight?’
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged, although he was wondering if they would soon be driving each other up the opposite sides of the same wall as they had the night before, and many nights before that. ‘What about you?’
‘I might do some reading,’ she hinted in such a subdued manner. ‘Written anything new?’
‘No…’
‘Why not?’
‘We were too busy fantasising… about having actual… sex,’ Ben stammered. That final and all-important word came out like a hiss.
SSSSSEX!
His mother blinked and then smiled devilishly, then subdued herself again. ‘Yes we were, weren’t we?!’ It was Ben’s turn to smile, but he did so both wearily and warily. She repeated that last word just as he had said it then. Sssssex. She emitted an involuntary sigh. ‘We’ve yet to talk about that face to face…’
‘What about it?’ Ben asked and then promptly blushed.
‘About wanting it,’ Tammy recollected. ‘About the lines we’ve crossed.’
‘Seriously?’ Tammy held her hands out, approaching Ben from across the kitchen. Naturally he held out his own to be taken, but they passed the living room and went straight for the stairs, turning off the lights as they went.
‘I won’t keep you against your will,’ she said, leading the way up the stairs. Then they entered her bedroom, turning on the overhead light before Tammy sat Ben down on the edge of the bed. She sat next to him and flipped off her slippers, looking down at her wiggling toes as she thought of how she would word what she wanted to say.
‘I love you,’ she began carefully. ‘You’re my world and I don’t know what I’ll do if and when you decide to move out and start a life of your own. You don’t ever have to. I’ll never push you. We’ve always had a great mother-son relationship. Then all of this happened and somehow our relationship actually got better, closer…’
‘I love you too, mom,’ Ben said when he saw the chance. ‘I’ve honestly never thought about leaving.’
‘All of this fantasy sex-play,’ Tammy furthered, ‘the stories, the messaging, the sexting and the sex talk – you’re okay with it going as far as it has?’ she yearned to know. ‘I’m going to be frank and open and I want you to be just as honest with me.’
‘Yes,’ was all he said, looking deeply into her eyes. Tammy was caught like a deer in the headlights when she thought of something that made her laugh.
‘I had to delete your photo this afternoon. Not even because I was worried I’d be caught with it, but because I was constantly touching myself. And I keep thinking of the last weekend, about the way you wrote your story…’
‘Our story,’ Ben corrected.
‘Yes, our story,’ Tammy said, beginning to fluster. ‘Then you took me out and we had such a good time. And then there was the resulting phone call when we began to fantasise about what we’d do if we were to make all of that a reality. We’ve already kissed in this bed, slept naked together.’
‘I loved all of it,’ Ben admitted openly.
‘So did I,’ Tammy seconded. ‘So you don’t want to stop?’
‘No, mom,’ Ben assured, looking back down to her wiggling toes with her. ‘So what about sex did you want to talk about exactly?’
Fear washed over Tammy as those words hit her. Adrenaline was quick to flush into her bloodstream, intensifying that fear and causing her breathing to quicken. She held her breath before asking. ‘When we fantasise about incest, about you and me having actual sex as you put it, you’re not making it up, are you? Do you really want to have sex with me?’
It was all on Ben now, or so he thought. Frank and open, he thought and chose to bite the bullet. “May I begin with an open statement?” he imagined asking the judge.
‘I really do…’
‘Thank you for being honest with me,’ Tammy whispered and kissed his hand. She looked into his eyes briefly and saw somebody who had instantly grown a few years older. It could have been that she projected her fears onto him, that he was suddenly no longer her son but a handsome mature stranger. Her son was handsome and mature beyond his years. He had grown up without a father figure, learning to be self-reliant by being the outsider, growing up without that bond. But by his mother he had grown into a loving young man, and for his mother he had unlimited and unconditional love. ‘I want to take a minute, if you’ll leave me here just now,’ she said.
7
11PM
‘I hope I didn’t hurt you. I’d die inside if I have,’ read Ben’s text.
‘I love you more and more,’ Tammy replied. ‘Come back to my room when you’re done doing what you’re doing.’
Ben wasn’t doing anything. He suspected she might have thought that he was masturbating again, not that he had done lately without her knowing about it. But maybe that was the mother’s intuition. Only a short while ago he heard her padding around in her bare feet, switching off the main light and turning on the bedside lamp before the mattress on her bed depressed as she climbed in. He thought that was it, unless she was going to drop him another raunchy message which, surprisingly, she hadn’t either.
Maybe she wanted to talk again, he supposed, which was fine, seeing as she was clearly wrestling with what they were doing with each other, trying to come to terms. Maybe it was over and he was about to be dumped as her sex fantasy. Maybe it would be for the best. With a heavy heart, Ben snuck out of his room and into his mother’s.
Tammy lay on her side, one arm over the duvet that hid everything but the top of her shoulder and collarbone. She wasn’t wearing anything from what he could see and her hair was down and splayed across the pillow. She wore an innocent look and smiled sweetly when he asked her if she wanted anything.