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Secret No Longer Ch. 01

By: ShadowWriterCa



If anyone had so much as vaguely hinted to me a year ago that I might be bisexual, they'd have quickly lost a friend and would have been informed of the fact very loudly. It was therefore as disconcerting as it was exhilarating when Janine, my very closest and dearest friend, and I stumbled onto that truth about ourselves. Although you'll see some of the particulars about this in what follows, there won't be a lot of details. This narrative is not about our new-found sexual dimension; it's about the events and consequences that it spawned. And there were plenty of both.

Janine and I had gotten into the habit of meeting nearly every day for coffee and chat, ever since I chose to bail out of the rat race and try on the role of stay-at-home wife and mother. It's been about eight years since then, and Jannie and I have grown very close in that time. She and her husband, Sammy, are our next-door neighbors and our closest friends. Fred, my own hubby, is as close to Sammy as I am to Jannie—well, not quite; they are both absolutely straight—but they have plenty of mutual interests and they and their other friends get together often for their recreation, male-bonding and all that, and yet are practically never too tired or too busy to bond with us, in many different senses of the word.

I honestly don't remember how the subject of bisexual women came up, other than that there are very few subjects that don't turn up in our conversations at one time or another. That discussion had started out in the abstract, but then, somehow, it very slowly turned personal. Haltingly, we edged our way closer and closer to the then-radical idea of curiosity, thence to wondering what might happen if we just tried it once, and ultimately, to fruition.

Our first lesbian meeting had left me frightened, suddenly questioning every aspect of my own sexuality. Jannie, I learned, went through the same thing. Nonetheless, there was a second time, and a third, and eventually they became a regular part of our lives. As time went on we both discovered, to our immense relief, that nothing much had changed in our physical relationships with our husbands, in particular, our own feelings and desires about them. This was something new, something added to our sexual lives, not displacing what already existed.

Janine and I would get physical about half of the time we met. We jokingly spoke of our "coffee days" and "sex days," and how we seemed to just know when a particular time was right for one or the other.

It wasn't hard to keep our liaisons secret. Nobody would take any notice of our meetings; we'd been doing that for years. We sometimes speculated on how our husbands might take it if they got wise to our fun, but neither of us wanted to find out the hard way.

So it was for six or seven months or so. Then the day came where I made that startling and disturbing discovery. I immediately called Jannie and asked her to come over.

"Jannie," I said, "you'd better look at these."

I placed a photograph onto the table and studied her reaction. It was printed from a computer image, and with high quality; it looked almost like a photographic print. Jannie glanced at it and I saw her eyes widen. Fear and worry wrote themselves all over her features.

"Where did you get these?"

"Fred needed something out of his briefcase last night. The briefcase was in the bedroom, so he asked me to get it for him. As I was looking for it, I ran across these."

I picked up the photograph and placed three more on the table. They were pictures of two women in the throes of Sapphic passion, pictures of us. Someone had been spying on our meetings and photographing them.

"Oh, boy. oh boy, oh boy..." Janine replied, her voice trailing, drawing in a very deep breath and exhaling slowly. "So much for our dirty little non-secret."

"There are about twenty of them," I told her. "When they first tumbled out and I saw they were pictures of naked women getting horny I was annoyed. Then I looked closer."

The pictures had been taken on our guest bedroom, which is where Janine and I were accustomed to going when we wanted to get into the hot and heavy at this house.

"You can imagine how I felt," I continued. "Our secret was out, I could see, and I was terrified to think what that might mean. I had all kinds of mental pictures of nasty divorces and court battles over custody where someone hauls in pictures like this to make the other out to be some kind of pervert that shouldn't come near the kids. That kind of thing."

"You say you were terrified. Past tense. You feel differently now, I take it." Jannie asked.

"I'm not really sure how I feel, and I'll tell you why," I replied, spreading out the assortment of pictures on the table. "The more I think this over, the more confused I get. I mean, here they are, pictures of us in flagrante, in my husband's possession. Yet, no matter how hard I try to be hard-nosed and objective about it, I cannot see one hint that he's upset about it."

"Maybe he's just found out about them," Jannie suggested, idly playing with the handle of her now-cold coffee cup, playing Devil's Advocate.

"That's what I thought at first. But now, look at these two." I pointed out two of the pictures. "That one is only a week old. That's when I first wore that red lace bra. But this one..." I pointed to the other of the pair, "...goes back at least a good five months. I can tell because it was printed on our old printer; you can tell by the look of it and those streaks over here. That's one reason we replaced it. If he's been keeping these for that long and has something nasty in mind to do with them, I'd be able to tell. He couldn't keep that hidden from me for all that time. Yet, if anything, things are even better. He's just as warm and wonderful as always, and our sex life has been great."

"Well, then, I can see only one explanation, Lin," Jannie said. "He likes them. Don't be so surprised. By now he knows that it doesn't reflect on him or your marriage and you're still the hot lover you've always been..."

"I am...?" I quipped back, surprised at my own levity.

"...so they get him hot. What else could it be?" she continued with a little grin. "Look, either he's OK with this, or he isn't. You've pointed out that he's known about this for a long time, and that there's no sign of trouble with him. What other explanation could there be?"

"Thank you, Jannie," I replied, earnestly. "In fact, that's what I decided too, after thinking it over. What I had a problem with was believing my own reasoning. I made myself realize that people can make themselves believe things, and ignore and deny other things, when they are upset or frightened. I was afraid that believing in this conclusion about Fred and these pictures might amount to just that, and that the truth might be something altogether different, something my mind wasn't ready to face, and would come back and destroy me later."

"Lin, I can't see anything else whatsoever it could be," she replied. Her words were comforting, and the earnest and loving way she spoke them was even more so. "Even in that one-in-a-billion chance there's something else, it can't be all that bad if Fred is still the way you say he is. And hey there, girl, think about this: if Fred's going to be getting some jollies looking at pictures of naked women, isn't it nice that he chooses pictures of his own dear wife?"

Tears glistened in my eyes. I opened my arms toward her, and she rose and embraced me warmly.

"Bless, you Jannie," I whispered, my tears saturating her collar. "This would be terrible to face alone."

I felt fear and tension steadily draining away during our long, warm and yet chaste embrace.. After a long time, Jannie returned to her seat and I went for more coffee with a sprightly step and lighter heart.

"Now I'm wondering if my Sammy is in on this," she said in a most refreshingly casual tone. "Those two don't keep too many secrets from each other. What's sure is that he's been just the same old sweet Sammy he's always been, though I do get the feeling, now that I think of it, that our sex life has been a bit hotter lately. I wonder..."

"Maybe you need to do a little detective work," I replied. "After all, if they can spy on us with their camera, we can do some spying of our own."

"Precisely, my dear Watson," she replied. "This female Sherlock is about to grab her deerstalker cap and lens and snoop around. I'll report back when there's something to report."

It didn't take long. The next day was another coffee day, and Sherlock had her report ready.

"It was easy," she said. "Sammy didn't do anything at all to hide the files away on our computer, other than putting them in a somewhat unusual place. A little bit of very weak security-through-obscurity. I even wonder if he wanted me to find them. I can't be sure.

"Anyway, the short answer is, yes; he's got them. A lot of them. I don't know how many of them you found printed out on paper, but Sammy's got a good two-hundred-plus of them stashed away, all the ones you showed me yesterday, and plenty more."

"No big surprise, then," I said. "Now we know that both our husbands know about this, and it looks like they think it's just fine. How do you feel about that? I have to admit something: for me it's actually kind of exciting. Do you know what I mean? It's like we've been having our own good time, and unwittingly been putting on a show for our own private audience, and it's even paying off in our own marriage beds."

"So it appears, Linda," Jannie replied. "At first I felt kind of violated, as if it were some freak peeping through the window blinds, like I'm sure you did. But let's face it: you can't very well say what they're doing is wrong and not admit that what we're doing is on pretty shaky moral ground too. As I see it, if we're making ourselves happy, and making them happy too, and it's not harming anything else, then what's so wrong about it?"

"Agreed," I said, smiling and downing the last of my coffee.

So more weeks went by. Knowing we had an appreciative audience, Jannie and I found ourselves automatically playing to the camera a bit, cautiously, so as to avoid tipping the guys off that we knew about it. I found myself choosing outfits I knew Fred liked me to wear, and Jannie did her own version of the same thing. Comparing notes, we soon discovered that it was unmistakable that our men were heating up; sex with Fred was getting hotter and wilder, and he was starting to throw some very interesting fantasies into the mix, things I suspected he'd thought for a long time but been reluctant to share.

Of course, we did make a careful reconnaissance of the camera site. It was easy to determine where it was by looking at the pictures, and we made sure that our investigations would not themselves be photographed.

It was actually quite impressive. It was installed into a cabinet that included a number of beveled glass windows. In one of them, several of the beveled edges had been craftily worked into into a system of lenses. A false side had been added to the interior, and we manged to loosen that just enough to see what was inside. There we found a very sophisticated optical setup, ending up with a space at the very back for the camera, which was not there at the time. They could have made do with something much simpler, but they clearly wanted quality. As we were yet to find out, though, there were more reasons than that for such an elaborate system.

"I'm impressed," Jannie said, sipping at her coffee on our back patio. "Also kind of flattered. I mean, to think that they'd go to this much trouble just to get pictures of us. They must really like what they're seeing." 

"No doubt about it," I replied.

She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. "I can just see my Sammy at home or traveling, with his eyes glued to one of our pictures and his hand...well, you know. Tell, me, have you thought about this at all? I assure you, and I promise it's no problem for me, that a lot of what gets his tallywhacker aimed at the sky is his getting a good look at that hot bod of yours!"

It was obvious, of course, that our husbands were seeing as much of each others' wives as their own in these pictures, but her mentioning it out loud made me suddenly shy and self-conscious. Just a few moments later, though, that turned to excitement, especially now knowing that there was no need to hide that fact from my friend.

"Jannie, Fred's admitted for years that he thinks you're one major hottie," I replied. "It must a have been the answer to a prayer for them to get their hands on nude photos of us, much more seeing us getting all hot and heavy. No, it doesn't bother me at all, either."

Possibilities were starting to appear in my imagination. I liked them.

There was one question, however, that remained unaddressed in all of this, one that we both had unconsciously chosen to suppress. As it goes with such things, however, it didn't remain suppressed for long.

I was seated at Jannie's back-patio picnic table, toying with my coffee cup, lost in thought, eyes locked meaninglessly on the hummingbird feeder suspended from the awning rail.

"Jannie," I began, my voice serious, but unemotional. "Have you given any thought to the question of just who is taking these pictures?"

Jannie's face told me that I had forced her to confront something already in her mind, but which she had preferred to ignore.

"Well, if it isn't the guys, who could it be?" she ventured.

"I don't know, but more and more, I'm not so sure they're behind it. First, think of the pictures we've found them with lately. They're getting pics of us nearly every time we get together, and lots of them. No way in hell either of them could be sneaking away from work all that time to come here and take them. And yet, they just don't look like they could be on a timer or some other automatic thing like that."

"I'm afraid I've had that same impression, Lin, and I just didn't want to mention it, to you, or to myself. Now I think it's time." Jannie thought for a moment and then rose, extending her hand to ask me to go inside with her. "Let's see if we can do a little more Holmesian deduction and find an answer."

She led me by the hand to the room where she and Sammy had their home office. She powered up the computer they both used. The screen glowed; the mouse clicked, and soon we saw the thumbnails for a folder full of pictures.

"He keeps them on the computer you share. Wouldn't he keep them on his personal laptop if he didn't want you to know about them?" It was mostly a rhetorical question.

"Exactly," she noted. "Now, check this out. Think about when these must have been taken."

It was easy. I clearly remembered when it was that we struck some of the poses in the set.

"Last Thursday night," I said softly, recalling one of the few times we met sometime other than in the afternoon.

"Yeah, Thursday. And where were the guys last Thursday?"

Fred had been in Atlanta, giving a keynote address at a conference. Sammy had been doing some kind of technical work somewhere in New England. There was no conceivable way that either of them could have been here to operate the camera, nor was there any possible way they could have faked their being away.

"Now look at the pictures and the file names. The software that downloads the pics from the camera to the computer names the files in a particular way, with numbers in the file names to show the sequence. There are no breaks in the series. Yet, it's obvious, isn't it, that these weren't taken at some kind of fixed interval."

I nodded.

"So, unless somebody went to a pretty fair amount of trouble to fudge file names to throw us off, it's safe to say that we're looking at all of the pictures that were taken over that interval. There aren't any that were deleted or rearranged.

"Now, do these look like they could have been taken by a camera set to snap pictures at some fixed interval?"

"Not a chance," I whispered in reply.

"Look at the way they get more frequent as we get hotter. He also seems to like our choice of lingerie."

I gulped.

"Lin, let's face it. Somebody, a real flesh-and-blood somebody, is watching and shooting those pictures, and neither of our husbands is that somebody."

I took a considerably long time to absorb this and mull over the implications.

"Right," I replied hollowly. "But it must be somebody they trust, if they're getting the pictures from him. They must trust him one hell of a lot to let him go on, almost day after day, photographing their own wives getting naked and nasty."

I was suddenly very angry. I had no problem knowing Fred was getting hot over pictures that showed Janine as well as me, and Jannie felt the same about Sammy from her side. As long as we had sustained the self-deception that only the two of them were behind this photo-voyeurism, we'd learned to enjoy it.

Now we knew there was a third party, an as-yet-unidentified third party, running the show, clearly with our mates' approval, if not eager encouragement. For some stupid reason I got visions of some kind of private investigator. It was a replay of that fortunately short-lived worry about nasty divorces that I mentioned earlier. No, that had nothing to do with it. It was even more ridiculous to imagine that the guys had hired some cloak-and-dagger expert to set up the system just to get the pics for their kicks.

Yet the single, inescapable fact was, there was, indeed, somebody.

I silently nodded to Jannie to follow me over to our house. I had found the answer, and I did not like it. 

I led her to the now-disused bedroom adjacent to our guest room where we had had the trysts which had been photographed, and where we had discovered the photographic apparatus that did it. The room had become cluttered with the usual household stuff that tends to accumulate in places that are used for storage. Wordlessly, I directed her attention to the point on the wall that would be directly opposite the cabinet with the optical equipment in it.

Even though I try to keep the house neat and clean, this room tended to get rather the short end of my attention. While there weren't exactly layers of dust on everything, there was just enough on things that should not have been moved in a long while to disclose where something had been disturbed.

A few odd boxes of odds and ends lay on the table, just as you might expect such boxes to lay upon such a table. Those boxes had been there for quite a long time. The thin layer of dust beside them, however, gave away the secret. These boxes had been moved about, and often. Still in silence, we dragged them to one side.

There, neatly embedded in the wall, was an eyepiece, much like the peephole devices in front doors used to check who might be on the other side. Peeking through, we saw just what was expected, the exact view of the room we knew from the photographs.

This shouldn't have been such an astounding revelation. If we'd given any thought to the matter, we'd have seen long ago that the pictures weren't taken blind. In our reconnaissance of the machinery we had seen where the camera was placed. How could we have overlooked the obvious fact that it was impossible to look through the camera's viewfinder from that position?

OK, then. Anybody who could get to the camera could also watch us cavorting in real time. Slowly, trying to avoid drawing Janine's attention to the fact, I studied the area around the wall and below it. There I saw what I was looking for. In several places, something, some fluid, had fallen on the wall and some effort then put into cleaning it up. The signs were subtle; I only noticed because I had been looking for it. They were the evidence of a man's ejaculate, a man who had been masturbating while watching us, and whose cleanup of the evidence was too haphazard to avoid detection.


Secret No Longer Ch. 01



Maybe Jannie noticed too, maybe not; I never got around to asking her. It didn't matter. We both knew from the evidence before us who our mystery man was, the voyeur in both eye and camera who had made it his practice to observe us, masturbate watching us, photograph us and then pass the photos on to our evidently appreciative husbands.

"Jason," I whispered. Jannie only nodded numbly.

Jason. My son, Jason. My twenty-year-old college-engineering-major boy, Jason.

I felt suddenly ashamed to face Jannie. It made no difference that I had known no more about this than she did. It was my son, my family, my house and my responsibility. Both of our minds now confronted the image of my son, his eye glued to the peephole before us, his cock emerging from the folds of his unzipped jeans, stroked to rigid eagerness at the sight of his own naked mother wrapped in the Sapphic embrace of his equally naked and passionate next-door neighbor, seeking the peak moment within the practice of our lust to drive his own, and once found, soiling the bedroom wall with the milk of his manood, only later to devote a rather inadequate effort to the task of cleaning up the result.

"Jannie, I am so sorry," I pleaded. This seemed no different from catching Jason in Jannie's back yard, peeping at her through her bedroom window blinds. "I would never..."

"Chill, Lin," she interrupted, quickly. "Don't stress about it one bit. It's not your fault."

She seemed to have read my mind again. I looked up. She raised her hands and tenderly reached around the back of my neck, then softly drew my again-tearful face to her shoulder. In a fairly short time I got past my own irrational reaction and relaxed.

"Let's sleep on this one, Jannie," I said. "Let's see if any inspired solutions await us when our minds are a bit clearer."

"Tomorrow," she replied with a sweet, soft kiss and embrace.

Sleep did not visit my side of the bed that night. I had bitter, enraged arguments with my husband, many of them, all confined to my own imagination. It was maddening, being unable to seize some kind of higher position from which to protest the affronts visited against us. No matter how I twisted the facts, every complaint I thought I could raise against Jason, my husband, or anyone else, collapsed under the weight of the illicit relationship between Janine and me from which all the rest flowed. Is this just moral justice? I have my beliefs and convictions, but that didn't fit them. This wasn't happening to me as punishment for sin.

At one point the cinema of my memory threaded up the scene from several days earlier and began to play it.

Janine's fingertips pressed very gently upon my increasingly erect nipples, sensing their answering pressure against the wispy layer of my light bra and the silken blouse over it. Her eyes were bright, her expression soft and open at the feel of my early response to her touch. Her movements were unhurried, sweet, tender, feather-light; the sensations gossamer, mere wraiths emanating from an unseen fire as prominences emanate from the greater heat of the interior of the sun. The patient flow of her touches took me into a timeless, dreamlike space, where both the pleasure of the immediate and the anticipation of the future could be savored, seamless, flowing from the separate into the common, erasing time from the experience and leaving only an eternal instant.

Her touch had progressed from my nipples to the underside of my breasts, and I felt the softest of touches as her lips brushed my forehead in the mere hint of a kiss. She then returned to her place sitting on the edge of the bed. Never losing contact with me, her hands flowed back to my breasts, to my shoulders, then behind my back.

I felt desire rising within me, leading me to return the tenderness in kind and then amplify it. My fingers toyed with the buttons of my blouse and it softly opened. Jannie placed her hands on my shoulders, inside the blouse, and gently lifted it and slid it down my arms and off. She then deftly grasped the clasps of my bra, and that joined the blouse on the bed.

My hands were now around her rib cage as I lifted her top over her head, exposing her own unencumbered breasts. Tracing the contours of one of her breasts with my fingertips, I sought the nipple of the other with my eager lips. When my tongue circumscribed the boundary of her nipple, I heard a sudden catching of her breath as my touch registered itself with her and the soft touches of her fingertips upon my skin became more insistent.

I felt her arch her back, opening more of herself to me. My touches flowed down her body, hands on her sides, as I placed gentle kisses down the front of her body, from her breasts to her navel, gradually halting at the waistband of her jeans, hinting at the possibilities living within the circumstance in which the barrier of the garment was removed.

Janine rose to her feet, her hips level with my eyes, unfastening the snap of her jeans. She pulled down the zipper of the jeans and in moments they fell from her hips gathering about her feet, which she extricated from them.

My tongue automatically sought her expectant clitoris, pressing through the silky fabric of her panties. Her breath caught again, much stronger than before, and I felt a shudder flow through her, followed by an automatic thrust of her hips against my face.

For some period of time whose duration is of no importance, I continued to tease her clit with her tongue, delighting in the accelerating response of her hips, her breath, her entire being. Finally she drew back and gently pressed my shoulders. I fell back to the bed and felt her repeat the removal of her jeans, now with mine. The simple sensation of the zipper being lowered, the relaxing of the tension of the denim around my hips, the uncovering of more and more of the most intimate regions of my flesh, all combined to elevate my consciousness to a plane devoted solely to ecstasy.

Presently, her tongue returned the attention I had recently devoted to her clitoris. At the first contact, a powerful ripple of excitement tore through my body and soul, and I felt the sudden acceleration of breath, the flutter of heartbeat and the tingling sensitivity of my skin as they all reached out in supplication to the gods of pleasure, begging for the satisfaction of their cravings.

Lost in time, immersed in pleasure, I felt her rise and lie beside me, her fingers never leaving my skin. The fingertips of two hands sought and pleasured the most sensitive parts of two bodies; two hearts exulted in the moment and in the promise of the explosive peak we knew awaited us. Other hands sought breasts; lips sought other lips as well as the soft sides of necks delighting in the soft brush of our fevered breathing against them.

At one moment I rose to allow my abundant hair to brush her face and breasts; another, she used her own to find sweet contact with me. Now our bodies were intertwined, legs wrapped around each other, rolling, twisting, undulating against each other.

I was now once again between her legs, drawing my tongue lovingly and yet feverishly against her clitoris. I felt the tension grow in her body, her breath grow frantic and I knew her climax was close at hand. Onward I continued, concentrating on nothing but her and sensing her sensations. Finally, her peak was attained. Her body convulsed; for some moments her breathing stopped as she held her breath, gathering the force within into a single, star-hot sphere; and then, in a single explosion, burst forth. Her body leapt in my embrace, her suspended breath returned with hurricane force and wave after wave of electric fire danced a tsunami of ecstasy within her. I stayed with her, riding the crests with her, doing my best to vary between actively touching her and holding back when it was best to do just that.

Gradually, very gradually, the wild fervor yielded to peace. Her frantic thrusts turned to slow, smooth movements, eventually, to no movements at all, as she regained her awareness of her surroundings. I moved to lie beside her and she rested her head against my shoulder, knowing I would stay there with her, for as long as she wanted, as she recovered. 

In time, still somewhat breathless, she turned smilingly to me and pressed my shoulders against the bed. With practiced precision she placed her own tongue against my grateful nubbin. The primal force I had just witnessed within her now asserted itself within me. Like a white-hot point expanding into a sphere inside me, the pleasure occupied more and more of me.

Suddenly, with heartless indifference to feelings or sensibilities, the memory of joy changed. Though my mind remained in the same place, at the same time, knowing the same events as had been in my memory moments before, my concentration on my experience of pleasure died. In its place, I saw my eyes sweep the room, exactly as they would have had they not been closed at the time, settling on that glass cabinet. The intricate optical wonder there, once a source of pleasure, became a malignant eye, the eye of a monster. Feeling only caustic fear, I recalled the undertone of excitement that had added itself to our experience when we believed we had the appreciative audience of the men we loved and cherished, and them alone. I recalled how, without even thinking about it, we had learned to make little adjustments to our play to maximize the transmission of our pleasure to their eyes, eyes living merely across a small shift of time, within its glass and silicon memory, or so we thought. In the midst of that thought, I felt the shock and anger burn as the eyes behind the lenses became, not our husbands', but instead, my son's.

My memory now cycled through a hundred little teases I had delivered to the silent eye, sometimes choosing a negligee or a gown, sometimes some other clothing, sometimes some other decoration, sometimes nothing at all, but all chosen expressly according to what I knew my Fred liked most. I remembered seductive dances, wanton movements of breasts, hips, pussies, whatever flowed naturally from within me, all of them designed to shout silently what my soul was shouting: this body is yours, it wants you, it wants to please you and be pleased by you, it cries out to be one with yours, to feel your blessed eminence declare your oneness with me by penetrating the most hallowed reaches of my natural sex, to draw that part of you entirely inside me as my soul wants to draw all of you inside, not to confine, but to complete, not limit, but liberate.

And now, every bit of that inner cry had instead been delivered into the prurient gaze of the young man which was the issue of that same blessed call some two decades earlier.

There was suddenly anger bordering on rage aimed at my husband, sleeping beside me in blissful ignorance of my agony. He knew what Jason was doing; in fact, he was, at least indirectly, part of it. For that matter, so was Sammy. Didn't they care? How could they exploit their own wives this way?

For the thousandth time I turned to stare into the red glow of the clock by the bed. What a heartless monster it is, I thought, dragging the hours by so slowly and yet inexorably, to prolong the torture, all the while promising the threat of a new day filled with the tormented raging of my mind which I must face weakened by lack of sleep.

My son. My own son. My Jason, eye flattened against the wall, peering into his telescope, watching his mother having illicit, lesbian sex with the lady next door, eventually convulsing in an orgasm driven by incestuous lust. I struggled mightily to convince myself that it was only Janine that appealed to him and not his own mother; but I knew perfectly well that this was pure self-deception. He was hot for us both, and no amount of mental flim-flam would change that.

The obvious answer, to call off our own lustful pleasures or move them beyond his sight, brought no satisfaction. It was as much what had happened and could not be reversed, but even more, the mere knowledge that these men had behaved as they had in response to it, that made the unbearable situation permanent.

Now and then, too rarely, a whisper of sanity penetrated the noise. It was a soft voice trying to assure me that the hurricane of thought really would pass, that the time would come when I would regain my power to think, to reason, to choose and accept, all things not even remotely possible now. The raging of the noise was obscuring that voice, drowning it out; but in those few blessed moments, it subsided enough to let me hear.

Hang in there, girl. Give it time...

Time... The word drove me back to that unwilling fascination with the clock. Fatigue of mind and heart made it hypnotic, a single thing that could occupy my thoughts instead of the nightmare.

So it was, and so I remained, as darkness yielded to the soft glow of dawn.

(To be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 02



If you've seen Part 1 of this story, you know that my wife, Linda, and Janine, her closest friend, had drifted into a fairly regular pattern of lesbian romps, and that our son, Jason, discovered them and photographed many of them and passed pictures on to me. You also know that Linda discovered some of the pictures I kept in my possession and disclosed them to Janine, who then ascertained that Sammy had his own stash. Shortly afterward they located the camera that had taken them. Finally, you know that Linda and Janine, believing only that Sammy and I were aware of what was going on, had been playing to the camera for our pleasure and benefit, only to realize later that Jason was the real voyeur, which fact disturbed Linda immensely. Her story left off at dawn of the first day following this discovery, which had left her tormented and sleepless.

This is the story of my introduction to the saga.

Jason plopped down into the easy chair opposite mine in the living room. Absorbed as I was reading a book, I took no particular notice that he was unusually pensive and serious in his manner.

"Dad...?" he began.

"What is it, Jason?"

"What do you know about lesbians and bisexual women?" he asked.

This was a rather extraordinary subject to bring up out of the blue. My eyebrows raised.

"Not much, Son, never gave it much thought. Seems to me that women come by that sort of thing more easily than men do, but I can't say I'm sure about that. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing," he answered, with what seemed to be an effort to look casual and mildly inquisitive, overplayed just enough to spoil it. "Just wondering, I guess. Do you think it means they are unhappy with their husbands or boyfriends?"

I gave it a few seconds' thought. "Oh, not necessarily. I suppose it's possible that a woman who is bisexual might feel some kind of need that only another woman can satisfy, no matter how good sex with a man is for her. At least, that's the best guess I can come up with. You can probably find a lot more answers to things like that on the Internet. I really know from nothin' about it."

I tried to study his expression without drawing his attention. With half an eye I could see there was more to it than mild curiosity. I just waited. Eventually, like someone steeling himself for a distasteful task, he took a deep breath and spoke again.

"Dad," he said, "actually, I lied. I'm not just wondering. There's more to it than that."

"You mean Lori?" I asked. Lori is his girlfriend.

"Actually, no," he replied.

Alarm bells suddenly sounded, many of them, and loudly, in my mind. If it's not his girlfriend, then there are few other possibilities close enough to him to merit this kind of reserve and concern. My own breath froze for a moment.

"You mean...?" I asked.

"Yes, Dad. I mean Mom," he replied, very softly and reluctantly.

A wave of shock passed through me and my eyes suddenly fixed themselves on the opposite wall, my mind suddenly a maelstrom of thoughts and demands clamoring for precedence.

"She and Janine have been going at it for some time now," Jason said. "I really don't know how long it's been going on. I found out about four months ago. A little later I started taking these."

He handed me a photograph, the first of the photographs which have figured so prominently in this story so far. There they were, naked, wrapped up in each other, feverish lust beaming brightly from their faces. My emotional reaction was numbness; I don't think my disbelieving mind was willing to coming up with anything else, not just yet. At this point it was more like the evening news than a big personal revelation, or, at least, that's all I dared allow myself to feel.

Numbly, I returned it to Jason. He passed several more to me. They were quite different, taken at different times and of different activities; the only constants were the identities of the two players and the game they were playing.

"Dad, what you just told me—I mean, about how it doesn't have to mean there's something wrong between you and Mom and your own sex life—I believe you can count on that."

"Thanks, Jason," I returned, managing a bit of a smile. "I'll admit it's a bit harder to accept when it's this close to home, so to speak." I stopped to relax a bit, then questioned him earnestly, "How can you be so sure about it?"

He reached beside him and placed a portable CD player on the end table.

"I don't think I need a soundtrack to all this, Son," I protested.

"Hang in there, Dad. I think this will be worth it."

"OK, Son, I hope so," I said with resignation, not sure how to prepare for what might follow.

"When I set up the camera I also bugged the room. It was actually kind of fun. You know, playing the big secret agent and all that. Anyway, I've saved an awful lot of what they've been saying these four months. I have a little of that here, some things you should hear. " He pressed the button to begin the play, and the two familiar feminine voices rose from the box. The first was Linda's.

"This one is his second-favorite, Jannie. I'll show you number one sometime soon. I'll tell you, the first time I shimmied up to him with this on he gave me the big what-for that should have made the headlines! His seven-incher felt like seventeen."

I heard Janine respond with a charmingly girlish giggle. I began to see the direction this road was leading and prayed my early conclusions would be right.

"Hey, stop getting all tingly like that, you!" Linda teased. "He's all mine, you know. You can borrow this if you like, but you can't borrow him!"

"Aww, gee, Lin," Jannie replied in a voice of mock protest. "You mean you won't rent him out now and then?"

"Ooh, kinky, kinky, girl! Depends on the price, I suppose."

"Maybe we can do some trade-out," I heard Jannie say. "I'm sure you'd get your price's worth and more with that lovin' lug of mine!"

"Well, don't mention it to Freddy unless you really mean it," Linda replied, still kidding—I think. "He's not the jealous type. I think he'd be tickled pink to let your Sammy get wild with me—as long as he gets a little of the same from his own hot little wife."

At another time that might have fired some extraordinarily pleasant imagery in my mind. Right then, though, the order of business was entirely different, and that subject was tabled indefinitely.

"Need to hear more, Dad?" Jason quietly intoned.

"I'm not sure, Son," I replied. "You say you culled these bits from your audio library. Are you telling me that this is typical?"

"It's more than that; it's nearly constant. I think they spend as much time giggling over the thrills you and Sammy are giving them as they do getting into their own thing. Sometimes it's almost like a friendly competition, as if they were both trying to convince each other that they have the hottest husband. You see why I insisted on you hearing that," he concluded.

I smiled. "Yes, thank you, Son. Still, this is quite a shock. Let me simmer this over in my own mind for a while. At least it seems pretty sure that there's nothing to worry about."

Jason nodded, collected the pictures and the CD player and left.

It did seem unreal, surreal. When you share home and bed with someone for twenty-odd years, you get to think you know them inside and out. And then, right out of the blue, here comes the bolt that shakes all of that up and leaves you breathless and uncertain. In this case, I might have added troubled, but the voices of these two ladies on Jason's recording had quelled that, thank God. Maybe, once the shock and amazement passed, I'd really sense the love and compliments contained in their banter and find relief in it.

It wasn't very long before it happened just that way.

It was just a few nights later. I was resting in bed, stretching and yawning at the first suggestion of the night's slumber when out of the corner of my eye I saw Linda entering the room. I then realized, with a start, that she wore the very negligée she had been telling Janine about when she made that sweet, and I hope, honest, comment about the reaction it had provoked in me. Once again it did its magic, as it would have even had I not been aware of the conversation with Janine that referred to it. Now, however, that recollection bolstered and amplified it. I saw her eyes glowing in anticipation, a sly smile gracing her face and her powerfully seductive grace as she traversed the small distance to our bed, suddenly dropping to it on all fours and nuzzling her face into my neck with some playfully aggressive twists and pushes augmented by little play-animal growls.

I'm not seventeen any longer and I won't be so vain as to deny that it sometimes takes a little time and attention to get my "seven-incher," as she had kindly referred to it, out and up to that dimension. This time, however, the combination of the angelic view she presented, the heated desire she expressed with her entire being and the recollection of her words from Jason's CD combined to jolt the little soldier to attention faster than any drill sergeant had ever accomplished with his compliant recruits.

"My, oh my!" Linda murmured as she took the evidence in her tender but unabashed grasp. "Someone's read the night's agenda in advance, I see!"

"Yes, and I think it's time to put it up to a vote, my dear," I replied with a responding nudge.

"I think we need to 'put it up' to something else, don't you think?" she whispered seductively.

In reply I buried my face into the side of her neck, letting my accelerating breathing brush the side of it. As that melted into a path of kisses along the side, I felt her own exhalations injecting their growing warmth into my system, and her hands seek the bottom of my nightshirt, quickly lifting it up an off.

We have long learned of and enjoyed the benefits of patient love play, but something had taken hold of her already that spelled out an exception to the rule. As my shirt disappeared, she pushed me back to the pillow aggressively and began caressing and kissing the top of my head, in the process pressing her exquisite breasts right into my face. My hands and lips sought them, sucking and teasing one nipple while tracing and caressing the other. Soon my hands insinuated themselves beneath the tantalizing gown and found the bare flesh of her breasts. Her hands reached behind my neck and she pulled my face forward strongly, driving my attention even further into her.

My hands had dropped from her breasts to that incredibly sexy narrow waist of hers and begun the exploration of her hips. At that, she suddenly rose to her knees and, with the kind of sweet-yet-sly smile that only genuine love and passion can produce, she lifted the diaphanous nightgown over her head and let it go, arching her back and opening her arms wide like a speaker or an actor proudly calling for the full attention of the audience. The driving heat of her body radiated the heat of her soul directly into me, inflaming me with desire.

The tracing of her hips with my fingertips evolved soon into wild kneading of the flesh of her wonderful ass. At this she rose again and planted her knees on either side of my face, inviting my eager tongue to seek and dance with her clit. I complied gratefully, my hands returning to her breasts as I flicked the sensitive nubbin. Her hips danced in little thrusts forward and back, growing bigger and bigger as she yielded control to her passions, sometimes making it difficult to stay on target, not that I had any objection to the task of locating it again. She supported herself with her hands on my hips, and found enough balance to free one of them to address the cries of my tumescent cock.

Her fingers on my penis and my tongue on her clit, we bucked and bounced, the fever rising as our surrounding reality faded from significance. The sound of her broken gasps as she drew in breath at each of her accelerating pelvic thrusts fired my bemused excitement further as my own breath matched hers.

Not interrupting my lingual attentions, I reached within her, seeking the sensitive G-spot inside, linking both touches in a way that the experience of our years together has taught me is particularly stimulating to her. In response her body stiffened for a moment and then resumed the wild gyration, even more intensely.

Then, suddenly, she lay back on the bed and seemed to lift me bodily to between her parted legs. Tonight this was her show, and I was pleased to follow her direction. It's long been that way with us: one time I'm leading the action, another time, she does. Both ways are immensely satisfying, and we seem to automatically know how it's going to play out, from one instance to another.

In a moment my eager cockhead had found the moist welcome of her vagina and I felt her legs behind mine, drawing me aggressively into her. She was moist and she was hot. I felt consumed by her lust, and reveled in it. Panting like an Olympic sprinter, she matched each powerful thrust of my body with her own, asking no time or persistence of me. This time she demanded it all, immediately, without regard to a more usual effort at restraint.

Her breathing and movements soon telegraphed a message I knew well. She was approaching orgasm. I matched her thrusts and held myself in check, drawing the electricity from her and giving it right back. I saw her face grow taut and red and I heard her breathing change to a tense moan as she coaxed the incendiary glow from within herself. A few breaks and thrusts later the lightning flashed; the thunder rolled, and I felt the warm flow of her moistness flow around the base of my turgid cock matching the relaxation of her body as it resumed the feverish dance of love.

Three more times did this repeat, and then it was the time that I must express the complement to her own. Struggling for breath I announced my imminent climax. The news triggered her next and final climb to orgasm. With automatic grace we matched our movements and drove each others' passions until I felt the thunderous spasm within me, driving my seed into her, at the very moment her climax seemed to desperately try to pull it into herself. This fervid explosion seemed to last and last, uncommonly so, only very slowly melting into loving peace, as our bodies surrendered. I remained in her, with her, refusing to relinquish the physical union we knew, seeking its quiet conclusion in embraces, nuzzling of our faces against each others' necks one moment, tenderly kissing at another, one expression flowing naturally and unhurried into another. Only much later did I lift myself from her sweat-coated body and collapse onto the bed, onto my back, still not completely recovering my breath.

"Just what the hell got into you tonight?" I asked, gently tweaking her dainty nose with my fingers.

"I have no idea," she replied, still breathless.

"Well, please find out as soon as you can. If we find it, maybe we can bottle it and put Pfizer to shame!"

"Believe me, if I can, I will," she murmured, and turned to nuzzle her face into my shoulder, her body nestling against mine. In moments she was silent; in but a few more, she slept, soon followed by her grateful husband.

If there had been any residue of worry over her satisfaction with me, that dismissed it. There was no longer any question: her trysts with Janine were entirely separate, a thing apart from our marital love. 

Not long afterward I cautiously approached Sammy, Janine's husband and my very close friend, with the news. I was mildly surprised when he seemed to be almost expecting it.

"I've had my suspicions that Jannie was a switch-hitter for quite a while, Freddy, though I didn't think she was actually doing anything about it," he told me. "I made my mind up a long time ago that if I was right about that, it wasn't a problem for me. She's one fine wife in and out of bed, and as long as it's just on the side and nobody else has a problem with it, I don't either."

"That's pretty much the way I see it now," I said. "I'm just glad that it's the same all around. It would be a lot harder to take if I were taking it in stride but you weren't, or worse, if you in the dark about it."

I then proceeded to play the comforting banter Jason had recorded and played for me. Sammy and I had not a trace of worry left about the situation.

With that reassuring conclusion, though, came the same troubling consideration that was to be so painful for Linda at a later time. That consideration was, of course, Jason's role in all of this, and what his young mind was making of it.

Like many other boys, when puberty struck me I had a brief period of sexual attraction to my own mother. That comes from the sudden realization of that mysterious, newly-discovered quality about the female of the species, which we then see evident in our mothers as much as in the rest of womankind. Normally that passes quickly as our sexuality acquires focus and direction. If my son had somehow failed to make that transition I'd certainly have noticed long ago, now that he was in his twenty-first year.

The contrary opinion came from the question: why four months? That was far and away longer than necessary to simply gather evidence of these proceedings between my wife and her friend. Jason had shown me his optical apparatus and I was quite impressed, but also clearly aware that he was using it for more than investigative photography, and the lengthy study of their enterprise left no doubt that he was getting some serious jollies from it. You've read of Linda's agony as she processed this same information. I was less tormented, but no less confused and concerned, than she would later become.

My decision was to raise no issue with Jason, but to let him continue for the time being while I sought the best course of action. A little longer would do no harm, and I could take time to study and think over the situation. I kept an eye on Jason, looking for any indication of disturbing trends in his perception of his mother. The results were somewhat equivocal.

On the one side, his relationship with his girlfriend, Lori, and his apparent regard for women in general, as best I could observe them, seemed healthy enough. I did not see any overt obsession with his mother, no sense of her sexuality acquiring an ascendancy in his own. I looked for things like trying to spy on his mother when she might be bathing or otherwise undressed, interest in intimate items belonging to her, or any other kind of unhealthy behavior for a young man of twenty, and saw none.

On the other, though, was a milder but not invisible tinge of more than mere passive recognition of her womanhood. The signs were subtle and fleeting, sometimes leaving me to question if they had been there at all, or if they were merely imaginary, the fulfillment of fearful expectation. The end result was enough uncertainty to keep me watching but not enough to lead me to do any more than that.

So passed the weeks and months. Jason continued to observe and photograph and provide Sammy and me with the digital files. I continued to observe Jason while cautiously and provisionally accepting the fact that he had the pictures as well, and in addition, was watching Janine and his mother in real time and becoming aroused by the sight. From what I could see, it seemed harmless enough, at least, so I convinced myself. If it got out of hand, I'd deal with it then.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 03



[Thanks to all who have given comments and votes to Chapter 01 of this story. At this moment as I write this, Chapter 02 has not yet been approved and posted. I am aiming at coming up with the successive parts of this story at about the same rate as it takes for approval and posting.

Here and elsewhere, some have questioned the way I write some scenes, sex scenes in particular. To some the style seems overly poetic and ethereal, though the most common adjective is "flowery." 

I do have a specific reason for that approach. I do not insist that it's exactly the right one; like all writers, I'm groping for the ideal approach and depending on readers to guide me.

I have just submitted an essay in the Essays and Reviews category that goes into this, titled "The Ideal Sex Scene? My (perhaps heretical) theories on the art" If you're curious about the basis for this aspect of the style I use, please take a look at that.

Thanks again.]





Secret No Longer Ch. 03



I wanted to leave, to avoid the inevitable, but could not. I pressed my eye against the wall even harder and Jannie slowly wound down from her peak.

And now, the time I equally craved and dreaded had come.

The scene is seared in my memory, recorded in slow-motion, every millisecond a unique and distinct frame. With aching slowness, Mom sought her balance with her hands, turned toward me, sat up, and in an instant, displayed her full frontal magnificence to my eyes. At 38 years she had breasts plenty of women my own age would pay surgeons very well to even approximate. And that narrow waist flowing into those perfect hips again! Now the periphery of that entire region became a gilded frame designed to flatter and enhance the splendor of the tiny region enclosed by the meeting of her legs and the framing effect of her jet-black, perfect pubic patch.

My God, Jason, you are looking at the very spot where you spent the first months of your existence, the very womb that gave you birth, the very one into whose celestially magnificent realm your dear father once spilled his own seed in ecstasy, causing the formation of a single cell which then multiplied over and over again, and now the stuff, the very substance of that multiplication was crouched behind a wall, straining to steal but a trace of that ecstasy for itself. My entire body was trembling, weak, my viscera like jelly. A mere slave to the vision, I continued to watch.

Right by the script of my expectations, Jannie and Mom moved until she straddled Jannie's face. With that same expert technique, Jannie's tongue commenced the same initially slow and gentle, but steadily accelerating, dance of Sapphic sex. Mom began to respond and in moments the ultimate in overwhelming force struck my soul, dwarfing even the thermonuclear impact Jannie had had on me.

Now it was Mom's bucking and thrusting that animated her body into the same pageant which, it seemed, was scripted solely for me. Those breasts were alive in themselves, swaying a symphony of lust directly into the ears of my libido, taunting me with the foolish message that I should have taken the opportunity to savor their sexual irresistibility twenty years ago, when I then only cared about a meal from them. My eyes helplessly drifted downward until they locked onto the point of union of her vagina and Jannie's tongue, once again rising from her half-reclined position to shout to me, not just to offer, but to demand, my full attention to the Dance of Fire being performed there.

At about this time my hand had drifted downward to dangle against the outside of my leg. By sheer accident, it swung like a pendulum until it grazed by exposed and aching cock. That mere instant of contact destroyed all traces of self-control, demanding the return of my fingers, which massaged it for, I swear, no more than a few seconds before the pent-up force of all I had witnessed burst forth in a furious torrent against the wall. On and on the explosion continued, it seemed, for minutes. As the depths and dregs of the man-milk drained, I felt my body fold and collapse to the floor, spent, exhausted, dazed, devoid of awareness of anything but the fading short-term memory of what I had just seen.

I can't say how long I stayed there before I managed to pull myself together, zip up my jeans and tensely open the door, hoping I would not be seen and therefore trigger even the tiniest suspicion of where I had been and what I had done for the past hour. 

Four months were to elapse from that day before I summoned the strength to risk the cessation of this blessed pageant by disclosing it to my father, the details of which disclosure he has already enshrined in these pages.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 04



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene in photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]





Secret No Longer Ch. 04



Jannie brightened and her eyes sparkled. "Thank you, Lin. No matter what, it's nice just to see you so relaxed about it all," she replied.

"Once a mother, always a mother, sure; he'll always be my baby, but that doesn't mean I'm unrealistic—or jealous."

"You're so sweet," she said, then grew more serious. "So, anyway, what it comes down to is, there are two problems with our situation. First, he was watching on the sly, and, second, he's your son. We already handled the first problem when we thought it was just the guys watching. In my case, it's really not all that difficult to extend that to Jason. So, now it condenses down to just one fact, that Jason is your son.

"And that is the only problem I can't just take in stride," I said, completing the thought.

"OK, then, Lin, what now?," she asked.

"I'm not sure, Jannie, but I think the wisest thing is to just let all this go, play it straight from now on and hope it all just fades away."

"Are you sure you want that, Lin?" Jannie asked, very earnestly. At the question the floodgates opened, wide.

"Of course I don't want that, Jannie!" I cried, a torrent of tears suddenly bursting forth. "You know that I'd never choose what we've been doing over Fred and our marriage, but I've gotten very used to this. And when I think about how the only problem in all of this is Jason, I want to find some way to fix just that, that one problem, and let everything else go back the way it was. I just don't know how to begin. I don't know if there even is any possible way to do that. There is only one sure way I can think of that will get us out from under all this and that is to just walk away from it, completely."

"I have to agree, Lin," she whispered, reluctance that mirrored my own showing through her voice as well. "So, maybe it's for the best. What do you say that we just call this little interlude one of life's high points and let it become a memory?"

"Yes. Why don't we," I replied, my heart nowhere in the decision. "If we've been playing with fire and not knowing it, now's the time to put it out, before it burns us all."

Our coffee and conversation ended early and quietly that day.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 05



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 05



I placed my hands on her undulating shoulders and kissed her again. I felt her hands descend until they encircled my slender waist. They continued, tracing the seams of my saturated jeans until they met at the center of my own sexual vortex, pressing through the denim to touch and electrify my yearning clitoris. Expertly, with no loss of energy in her passionate riding of Jason's cock, she pressed, released, encircled and traced my clit, leaving me blind with lust. I felt her touch upon my breasts, caressing, beginning anew...

Good God, again!

I was so dizzy with pleasure that it took seconds for me to recognize the obvious fact that her hands were totally occupied between my legs. The hands flowing freely, caressing, exciting, pleasuring my breasts were—Jason's! And I was aware only of the pleasure! No regret, no apprehension, only pleasure.

As I looked into his eyes, I saw him raise his lips to my expectant nipple, then hungrily explore it with his vigorous tongue while my other breast surrendered to his touch. My God, the very nipple which two decades earlier had given him sustenance was now giving him pleasure, the pleasure of an infant transformed into the pleasure of a man. Jannie's skillful touch proceeded between my legs and Jason's welcome attention, coupled by the excitement of the immediately present sex between them drove me over the top.

"Jannie! Jason! I'm coming! Heavens, I'm coming! Help me, help me!" My voice was a throaty gasp.

"Yes, Mom! Do it! Come! Come now!" Jason whispered.

Jannie, gasping with her own pleasure, suddenly released the zipper of my jeans. Drawing them down, she reached to my now unobstructed vagina and touched the sensitive point of my clit with incendiary force. I felt her fingers deftly find every part of my sex, touching, stroking, triggering sensations I though I never had felt before. Dimly, I realized that Jason could now examine the final, most private realm of my body. Janine's precise travels through my labia, my clit, the occasional penetration within me by her fingers, all played out barely inches from the rapt gaze of my son, his eyes devouring the sight of my exposed pubic patch, drifting downward to the point of Janine's blessed intrusions, taking in even the sight of my upper thighs, savoring the combined sight of the three where they met, defining my sex, my womanhood, the part of me that is designed for the exchange of pleasure with a man, as well as to bring forth the very being who, now grown, knew the leaping of the heart that came from the unobstructed and unabashed display of it to his eyes.

The wave began, rising from my hips, flowing, flowing, growing through me. My breath froze; my body tensed, and a climax of dizzying intensity enveloped me.

Slowly, very slowly, my overdriven nerves descended from Olympus and, weak and spent, I zipped up my jeans, refastened the button, and then fell back until I sat upon the backs of my feet. Jason and Jannie both smiled, as best they could amid the grimaces of their own continuing passion, then turned to concentrate on each other.

Presently I watched as Jannie lifted herself up, turned, and invited Jason to enter her doggy style. Unable to deny the force within me, I watched as Jason positioned himself, and then, amazed and still not troubled, I took his cock in my hand to guide it into my friend. Jason froze, expecting this no more than I had, and then, without a trace of slyness, he placed his hand on the back of my head, rubbed it softly, reassuringly, and turned his attention back to Jannie as I completed the task of aligning that member with the eager opening Jannie offered.

As Jason began thrusting into Jannie, I placed myself behind him. I wrapped my arms around his broad, well-muscled chest and felt my breasts press into the flesh of his back. At the most rearward point of his stroke I pressed my hips into his butt, riding his thrusts back and forth with my own, imagining another member reaching up into me. Forward, back, forward, back, I kept my pelvis pressed firmly against his butt.

Jason now moved Jannie onto her back on the inflatable cushion. I did not touch this time; I merely watched as Jason entered Jannie. I then felt myself touching his shoulders, then caressing his back, nowhere near intimate parts, yet still intimate in spirit. Over and over, his ecstatic manhood penetrated my friend.

Finally, his time had arrived. Whispering, moaning, grimacing, Jason announced the arrival of his climax. Deep inside Jannie, his man-milk erupted from him, his orgasm meshing perfectly, seamlessly with hers. Ravenously, Jannie drew it in, demanding very bit of it, until the two were spent, collapsed upon each other, resting together, still united, until they naturally separated. Jason collapsed onto the lawn, still unbelieving.

With the slow dissipation of sex, ordinary thought gradually returned. I saw a sudden dash of fear in Jannie's eyes.

"Linda...Jason...I swear, I don't know what happened to me," she cried. "It was just..."

"Shh," I whispered very softly. "It happened to us all, and right now, I am nothing but glad it did. Don't worry about a thing..." I glanced at Jason, "...neither of you."

Jason then broke the silence.

"Mom, I really didn't mean to...touch you...like that. I just couldn't help it."

"Jason," I replied, simply, then moved to beside him. Smiling, neither understanding nor really even believing what I was doing or why I was doing it, I gently took his two hands in mine, kissed them, and placed them on my bare breasts. I saw Janine visibly relax as her apparent concern over having stripped off my shirt before my son's eyes melted away.

"Kiss them again. Let me feel your lips on my nipples once more," I whispered, almost with a moan. Tenderly, lovingly, almost deferentially, I felt his touch return, his lips once again on my nipples, his fingertips circumscribing the extent of my breasts, carefully resisting any urge he may have had to venture beyond that realm, content to enjoy the intimacy of my breasts alone, aware instinctively that despite the intensity of my arousal, I had set my boundaries to his sexual exploration there.

That night the tingles sweetly persisted into my slumber, alive with the wicked pleasure I had known that day. I knew it wasn't over yet.

I was, though, aware of one other truth as well.

Not all that was to come would be so pleasant.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 06



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene in photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 06



"With her husband's help, Christine worked her dress the rest of the way off, and removed her pantyhose as well. Her father was widening his explorations of her body when Maria sat beside us.

" 'Still OK with all this?' she asked us.

"Sammy glanced at me and said, 'As a matter of fact, yes. But I also think that we're both a little surprised that we could be OK with all this. ' He laughed a bit.

" 'I had this little feeling that you might be,' Maria said, and I sensed a trace of relief in her voice, as if she had taken on a a risky endeavor which had then turned out well. '" 'I'm just glad that we're not making you uncomfortable.'

"At that, I reached right down to Sammy's abundant bulge. I saw him jump a little.

" 'If this is uncomfortable, then I wanna be uncomfortable for the rest of my life!' he said. Suddenly, on impulse, I found myself taking Maria's hand in mine and leading it down down to check the evidence herself. Sammy's eyes got good and wide. He was amazed and a little shocked, more at the suddenness of it than the wickedness. Maria did check the evidence, for quite some time, if you know what I mean. All three of us were grinning very wide and wickedly.

" 'Hey, you three over there! Behave yourselves!' It was Larry, their son.

" 'Larry, give us one good reason why we should behave ourselves,' Maria shot back. Larry put on his best comic perplexed look and conceded defeat. He then sat at the end of the sofa, closest to Mark and Christine. Mark then spoke to Christine.

" 'Chrissy, as much as I love this, I think you should take a moment to help out that lonely boy over there,' he said, nodding toward Larry.

" 'Aw, he doesn't look so lonely, but I'll see what I can do anyway,' she said as she rose to come over to Larry. Maria left her chair to kneel beside Larry, placing her close to us as well.

" 'Just a moment, Christine, let me take care of this first,' she said. As Larry leaned back, Maria unzipped his pants and, rather unceremoniously, pulled them and his shorts off. He had already taken off his shirt. Maria moved to the side a bit, clearly intending to give us a better view, and then placed her lips around her son's already-hard cock. Everyone there, not in the least Sammy and me, watched intently as she tenderly sucked his cock, stiffening it noticeably beyond what it had been, all the while enjoying Larry's touches and caresses on her already-bared breasts."

At the sound of this I felt a very sudden, sharp pang of desire. I wasn't ready for it and I hated it because I knew what it meant and I did not like what it meant. I hoped that Sammy had not noticed. I studied his expression for a moment. If he did notice, he gave no sign of it.

"After a while Maria went back to her chair to the other side of us. I saw her continuing to watch our reactions as Christine sat down beside her brother and embraced and kissed him. It was good to see that they didn't just jump to the hot stuff. It was much more human, more tender, more loving. She then stood up and got ready to mount her brother. At the last moment she got an idea and turned around to face us, facing away from Larry. She wanted to give us the 'reverse cowboy' pose, emphasizing the sex.

"Sammy and I watched very closely as the first occasion of actual sex between family members was ready to begin. Christine politely smiled and nodded at us, acknowledging us, and then parted her legs. With Larry's hands on her butt to support her, she carefully lowered herself toward his very well-ready cock. With his hands thus occupied, neither he nor Christine could grasp his cock to position it, so Maria reached over to do the honors.

"At that moment I had a moment of disorientation. Have you ever had that happen, when you're looking at something that suddenly seems so unreal that your mind seems to want to make a dream of it and a moment later you feel a little like you're waking up from the dream?"

"I know what you mean, Jannie This is fascinating. Go on," I replied.

"OK, Linda," she said, pleased that the narrative was being well received.

"It was such a picture: Larry helping Christine, his sister, descend on his cock, with his mother, Maria, grasping it to position it to enter her, Mark, their father, looking on with pleasure and an obvious and substantial erection, Al, her husband, exactly the same way, and Nathan and Rita standing by behind them. I could see that Nathan had already unfastened all the buttons on Rita's blouse, which now hung open to reveal her breasts enclosed in a very sheer bra.

"In a few moments they were into the heat of raw sex. Christine was riding Larry like mad, and Larry was giving her the full treatment right back. Her last-moment choice of position displayed the meshing of his member and her vagina to our eyes with exceptional focus, and Sammy and I were getting much hotter than either of us could have imagined at such a sight before. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nathan and Rita, the rest of whose clothes were now heaped on the floor, find the smaller sofa and recline on it. She then straddled Nathan and there were two passions playing before us. It was almost a mental overload for us."

I was rapidly growing into that sweet, familiar, but at this moment unwanted sensation of excitement. I didn't want to let on that this scenario, one which so much of the world would instantly brand as perverted, was turning me on.

"Just a bit later I became aware that Al had moved over beside Maria, and had shed all of his clothes. I saw him place his hands tenderly on Maria's shoulders. Maria looked up at this and smiled, placing her hand over one of his. She then rose and embraced and kissed him. I then saw her turn away, toward us, and start drawing down the zipper of her jeans. Al helped slip them off and she started stepping out of them, which usually requires that the wearer reach down to slide them off. Suddenly I saw Sammy reach down to take care of that, and immediately, look at me with a look of surprise that matched my own.

" 'Did I really do that?' he whispered to me.

" 'You did,' I whispered back. 'And why not? It just seemed the natural thing to do, like holding a door open for someone whose hands are full and can't do it for themselves.'

"He looked relieved, though considering what I had done just a little earlier, what he had just done wasn't all that crazy. We watched on as Christine rose off of her brother and returned to her father who was, by now, undressed as well. She turned to give us another friendly smile and then repeated exactly what we had seen her do with Larry, but now with Mark. In moments Christine was bouncing over her dad's cock with wild abandon. Accustomed as we were by now with the radical events before us, we actually anticipated what happened next.

"Maria, now nude, had stepped over to Larry. She chose to face him, which happened to alleviate the problem of hands, and quietly and easily slipped onto his cock. I can't quite explain why it looked so sweet and exciting. It sounds crazy, I know, but it had become just another kind of motherly love, not all that different from the sweet caring mothers always give their children—well, good others, anyway—and yet was happening in this extreme realm of incestuous sex."

I dared not even hint to Jannie how crazy it did not sound, and that I had suddenly and unwillingly merged in spirit with Maria. I was frantically fighting the implications in my mind, and losing. Jannie must be seeing this, I thought. She always reads me so well, but right now she seems oblivious to me. I'm glad of it, but why not now? Or does she see and is not letting on?

"Before our eyes Maria rode her son; Christine rode her father, and Nathan and Rita, who suddenly seemedwere suddenly so stiflingly conventional, were fucking on the other side of the room. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer and Sammy, I could easily tell, was going into sexual overdrive as well.

"Al, Christine's husband, had taken the seat recently vacated by Maria, now impaled on her son's cock.. I felt a simple gesture of embrace from Sammy's arm over my shoulders, and somehow read an unexpected message. Our eyes turned to each other, each surprised at the message, but then accepting it. I leaned to him and kissed him, deeply, lovingly, then rose to my feet and stood away a bit, where all eyes except the married couple on the far sofa could look straight toward me.

"I felt my fingers shaking nearly to the point that I had trouble using them to unbutton my blouse. I managed, though, and felt it fall open to reveal the filmy bra that I wore. All of our hosts' family looked on in sudden amazement, but also pleasure and excitement; they hadn't expected us to do anything more than observe. Sammy's face shone consuming arousal and pride and love for his wife as I let the blouse, and soon the bra, settle softly to the carpeted floor. I felt a determined purpose, a proud, unrestrained intent drive me as my jeans unzipped and they and my panties slipped own as well. With a few movements I was now naked, fully revealed to our hosts and their entire family, as well as to my husband.

"We had already shared sex with Mark and Maria, but not only was this new to the rest of the family; it was the first time that our sexual sharing, even minimally, such as merely undressing, had gone beyond the private presence of one other couple. I strode over to Sammy, who took my hand in his and kissed it. He then nodded quietly to the chair beside us.

"Al, reading the hint, stood up. With a gracious and deferential glance at Sammy, he embraced me. He then sat back down. In a daze, as if pre-programmed, I stood facing Sammy, my back to Al, and moved to take the 'reverse cowboy' with Al. Still stunned at my own audacity, I descended, felt the peak of his eager member, and then felt it immerse itself deep into my vagina. I then saw Larry turn so Maria could see us, and saw wide smiles of encouragement on the faces of all present, including Sammy. Even Nathan and Rita had risen from their sex to look on from behind Mark's easy chair.

"Easily and freely I was fucking Christine's husband, watching her beaming with obvious pleasure at the sight while still fucking her father. Larry lay back so Maria could look straight on at the sight. Only half-seeing, I scanned the assemblage. When my eyes connected with Rita, a sudden wish struck me. I must have telegraphed it, because I saw her smile and walk toward us. She then took the place on the sofa I had vacated to couple with Al and embraced Sammy. It was good, again, to see the warmth of a personal connection like such an embrace precede the raw physical connection which I knew was about to come.

"As I watched, Al's cock firmly pleasuring me all the while, Rita helped Sammy discard his clothing. I saw them side by side, nude, sweetly embracing again, an embrace that was more personal than a strangers' and yet far and away distinct from the embrace of love that is and will always be ours alone, the kind of embrace that signals the one intimacy that surpasses all others, the intimacy of a loving husband and wife, the one whose strength was never in doubt and, because of that, allowed for the very intense pleasure we were now receiving with both established friends and new friends whom we had met for the first time barely minutes before.

"Sammy lifted Rita until she was standing before him. With the skill I know so well, he reached within her and began that dance of tongue and finger against Rita's clit and G-spot. I saw her stiffen and grimace with the pleasure. I was then, as I am now, so perfectly confident and trusting in Sammy's love that I felt a kind of pride at the sight of his clear success raising her fever. Nathan looked on with the precise counterpart to that, a joy and pride in the beauty and sensuous power of his wife which was now devoted to bringing pleasure to Sammy, a pleasure I could share with him in love, as if it were partly my own.

"Absorbed as I was with the combination of the sensations Al was driving into me with every fresh thrust of his body and the spectacle of Sammy and Rita meshing that I almost failed to notice Maria quietly separating from her glassy-eyed son. As Rita had moved to join Sammy, her husband, Maria's brother, had moved beside her. I could see that our hosts were making sure that every combination was tried and demonstrated. Easily and expectedly, Maria shifted forward and her brother entered her in doggy style while her son delivered his attentions to her now easily-accessible breasts and nipples.

"Meanwhile, Sammy pursued his enterprise until Rita reached her peak and shuddered in climax, the power of which communicated to me, raising me much higher. I could see that Maria had tuned into the same wavelength as well. Slowly Rita relaxed, descended and prepared to mount Sammy. Just before she did, though, I reached momentarily through the haze of my own pleasure to tap her shoulder and gesture to her. She read me: I wanted her to do the 'reverse cowboy' as well. I wanted to look straight on as she absorbed my dear husband's cock inside her, and she was very happy to accommodate me. With that same sense of slow motion I saw it happen; I saw her pussy brush my husband's cock, tease it, and then receive it to the fullest.

"The sex ratio was such that there had to be at least one man unmated at any one time, but the course of the evening did not slight anybody. I knew that the musical-chairs shifting from one partner to another was more for the purpose of demonstrating the ease and comfort of this family's practice of incest than it was their usual program, and was actually rather glad they should even take the time to help us grasp the feeling."

Jannie was about to wrap up this account, and I dreaded that because I would no longer be able to hide my feelings by simply forcing myself to keep still. I would soon be expected to speak, and my voice would then betray everything. I hoped she would somehow land on some more innocuous subject to talk about for a little while first, but that was a forlorn hope.

"So anyway, Linda, that was our first exposure to incest," she said, concluding the account. "Like I said, this is just telling you about what happened."

"Jannie, now that was one hell of a tale, I'll admit!" I said, trying to mask the quavering with a kind of exclamatory device. "But now, please tell me, without fear of anything I might think: just how much of what you saw did you really accept? I mean, as you were talking it seemed to me that you weren't really all that terribly far away from Mike and Maria's philosophy."

Jannie looked decidedly uncomfortable, no joke this time. She spoke softly in reply.

"Sammy and I talked about it afterward. You must know that a lot of the meshing with that little orgy happened because of curiosity and because of picking up on the excitement of the others, but..."

"Go on, Jannie. I promise, it's OK," I said as soothingly as I could.

"OK, it's a fact: Sammy and I have come to the conclusion that we are more conservative than Mark and Maria are, but not by very much. In short..." she gulped, steeling herself for the admission. "...in short, although we have never done anything of the kind, we believe that, if the occasion arrived, we...we could, possibly, allow ourselves to have sex with members of our own families. Particularly, though, we no longer have any misgivings about other families who choose to engage in incest, as long as those basic sensibilities we talked about are respected."

She looked with what seemed a very anxious look.

"Linda, please, please, say nothing of this to anyone, not even Fred. Especially not Fred. Not yet. Please let us decide if we're ready to admit any of this to anyone...other than you, of course."

I rose, moved behind her, placed my hands on her shoulders, then leaned down and kissed the side of her neck.

"It goes without saying, you know," I whispered. She put her hand on top of mine.

"Yes, I know, and always have. I just needed to hear it out loud, that's all," she replied.

"I understand perfectly, Jannie."

I took my seat. My sentiment was real, but my composure expressing it was thoroughly forced. I may have been hiding it, but I desperately needed to tell how enthralled I was with the story she had told, how aroused I was, how much I wanted to be where she had been, how much I needed to unburden myself my own inner conflict. I had actually counted somewhat on her concluding by telling me about what parts of this philosophy she and Sammy had not accepted, and her admitting that the extent of that difference was so very small left me feeling adrift and lost.

I desperately needed her understanding and non-judgmental ear and soul to hear me cry to her how I wished at that moment that I could be a Maria with the freedom to unite my quaking body with the Larry of my life, my Jason, my beloved son, without fear, shame, apprehension, but only with mutual love and pleasure, free of the need to conceal my desire and my actions from anyone who may have any business knowing at all.

I desperately needed that, but I even more desperately dared not say a word.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 07



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene in photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 

*

Sunset had come, and with it the imminence of a night of sleeplessness and torment. I thought back on another night, that other night which you may recall, that night of inner torture that seemed now merely the precursor to this one.

The irony was crushing. How I had silently railed against my dear Fred for having allowed our son to watch his mother in illicit sex with Janine through a system of lenses and mirrors and photograph us! How I had expressly denounced him for accepting the incestuous element of Jason's voyeurism! The names I had called him, the labels I had thrown at him in the debating-hall of my mind, all returned. They were bitter, accusatory, unyielding, unforgiving. I had only grudgingly conceded the one point against me, the impropriety of our sex, and even then had intermittently indulged the belief that my wrong was negligible in comparison to his.

And now I found within myself, not mere tolerance of a passively incestuous interest, but rather a desire so nearly compelling in its strength that I doubted my ability to resist it should the temptation confront me. This was active and driving desire, the desire to press beyond incest of sight and mind, beyond that to the incest of flesh. It was the desire to attract my son, to seduce him, using all the power of my body to excite him beyond his power to resist, to thus compel him to press his young, strong body against mine—and into mine. It was the desire to feel the touch of his hand upon the white-hot point of my aching clitoris, that then yielding to tongue, that, in turn, yielding in time to the ultimate prize, the eminence of his manhood, given to him by Nature to pleasure woman, now pleasuring this woman, immersing its totality into the very realm in which the physical beginning of it and the man who owns it had begun.

How shallow and insignificant Fred's transgressions now seemed in comparison, and how unjust had been my vitriolic attacks. I had then wished for the right time to lash out at him and was now was so grateful that no such time had ever come to pass.

Fred. The man whose love I counted on, the man for whose happiness I would sacrifice anything and everything, the man whom I loved no less at that moment than I ever had, was now being scorned by my unwilling passion. Oh God, how I wished for some cosmic shift able to reconcile these two conflicting loves! How I was forced to watch, helpless, as my own mind engaged in a futile search through every account of human history it could to find some excuse to justify a love of both husband and son in the flesh. Even the Biblical account of Lot's daughters was consulted, but it would take the mightiest of self-deceptions to corrupt that into the rationalization I was looking for.

That damned clock again. Two-thirty, it read. No, two-thirty-one. Time, the measurement of which was the reason for its existence, I had then depended upon to heal my torment, and it had not failed me. Would it heal again? I had not questioned its efficacy the last time; I had only chafed at the slowness of the healing. This time I feared to trust it to heal at all, ever.

This is hell, I thought. Torment without the possibility of parole. Agony without end, timeless time, minutes devoid of purpose marching lemminglike to death.

Two-thirty-eight. Whoopie.

 Twelve eternities later my half-full coffee cup steamed on the back-patio table while the caffeine I had already ingested fought a losing battle against a brown haze of strain and sleeplessness. Janine studied my face quizzically. This time she had no reason to expect this state of mind and it puzzled her.

"Linda, don't you think one trip through hell is enough for one lifetime? Or, at least, one month?" Her question was light and cheerful and it helped a little.

"Jannie, this is worse. It is far, far worse than last time," I said in a hoarse mumble. Jannie had probably read the news already, as she so often does, but if she did at all, this time she realized that she must wait for me to find my own time. Meanwhile, she sat and sipped her coffee in silence, speaking to me only with the compassion written in her features. More patiently than any friend has any right to expect of a friend she waited until I was ready to speak.

"Jannie, I am so torn. I cannot believe what I am thinking and feeling. It feels like every ounce of virtue I have ever dared to claim as my own has been stripped from me. I have been betrayed. I have become the victim of the worst of infidelities, an adultery too painful to admit because the victim and the adulterer are one and the same."

Jannie needed a little time to decipher all that, but she did not begrudge it. Within the time she processed the message the wellsprings of my eyes suddenly erupted, gushing forth with hurricane force.

"It's the incest thing, isn't it?" she asked, softly. "Oh, Linda, I never thought that our story about it could hurt you like this! I had no idea, I promise."

"I know, Jannie, I know," I sobbed. "I wouldn't have thought it either. The truth is, what you said didn't cause this pain; it only uncovered what was already there. Perhaps I should be grateful; now I can at least see the enemy."

Jannie looked into my eyes, engaged them with her own, looked away toward Jason's apartment, nodded and then turned her eyes back to mine.

"Yes, Jannie. Exactly," I whispered.

"Linda, at this moment there is nothing I want to do more than stand by you as you tackle this demon. Right now, though, I think it's too early for that. You are too stunned by this and weakened by fear and lack of sleep. Am I on target here?"

"Bulls-eye," I replied.

"Only you can tell when you're ready. Just know that the moment that comes, I'm on call, 24/7."

"Bless you, Jannie Bless you," I said with the most fervor I had summoned in a long time.

Jason breezed into the house at one-thirty. I heard him close the door and call out his familiar greeting.

"Hiya, Mom! I'm home. How are..." He stopped short at the sight of my tear-streaked face. He set down his back-pack and eyed me intently.

"Are you all right Mom? What's wrong?" he asked softly.

Desperately I rushed to his side and threw my arms around him, sobbing anew into his shoulder. Minutes passed as Jason patiently and tenderly allowed my sobbing to run its course. The sobbing subsided and in its wake I felt a sudden, refreshing strength flowing from within him into my own soul, suddenly blissfully relieved to know that I felt nothing sexual in this embrace, only warmth, the warmth of the deep yet chaste love of a mother and her son.

He was quite taken aback by my vehemence.

"What's wrong? Can you tell me?"

I could not speak, only cling to him in silence. When I relaxed, he turned his gaze to me.

"Mom, if there's anything I can do to help, just call. If you don't want to tell me what the problem is, that's OK. This shoulder is yours whenever you want it." He stopped to point his finger upward. "This one too. Your choice. Two shoulders, no waiting."

His carefree tone underlain with genuine concern was elixir to me. Just to hear his voice this way and to be able to concentrate exclusively on his heart to the exclusion of my unwilling interest in his body lifted the weights of millstones from my own heart. I was far from healed, but this medicine had done wonders. That night passed with some restlessness but far, far less than the one preceding it.

Now I was ready.

"You figured it out, of course, like always," I told Jannie.

"What else did you expect, Lin?"

"I expected you to know. I prayed that you'd understand. I was happily right on both counts."

"Good, good," she said warmly. "Now, what are you ready to tell me?"

"The horrible thing about all this is that there are two opposing passions burning inside me now. No way do I love Fred any less, and no way would I ever willingly indulge myself against him. I swear that to you and myself right now. So then, what is the other? I suppose I could say it a couple of ways, but perhaps the best one for our purposes right now is to say that the second passion is this frantic need to find some way to be able to...hell, I'll say it dirty; maybe that will help...I want to find some way to fuck Jason without hurting Fred. There. I've said it."

"I'm with you Lin," she said consolingly.

"The only conceivable, theoretical, hypothetical...Wait, doesn't that sound vaguely like something from The Wizard of Oz?"

"The Coroner. I hope that's not an omen."

"OK, the only theoretical possibility is to get Fred to think the way Mark in your story does. Or, maybe, do you think it could be, the way you and Sammy do?"

"It would, Linda. I won't mush around it any more. It would. If Fred thought about incest the way Sammy and I do right now, you would be free to have your wish without losing what's more important and with no fear or shame whatsoever, but I just don't see Fred coming around to that. What is your take?"

"The same as yours," I replied. "I cannot imagine Fred accepting incest under any circumstances. It's simply not an option, and I certainly do not fault him one iota for that."

"Yes," Jannie replied. "And like Mark said, wherever there's doubt, it's best to choose against it." She then gave me that very earnest, serious look. "So now, Linda, face the question: Are you prepared to stand firm? When you're face-to-face with temptation and opportunity, will you have the strength to choose against it?"

"I hope so, Jannie, I hope so," I droned.

Jannie replied, and her reply stunned and shocked me.

"Linda, hear me! That is not good enough!" she fairly shouted. "If you are not absolutely sure you are in control, you'd be better off taking a vacation in a convent until it blows over than face the enemy unarmed!"

"I don't want to hear it, Jannie!" I wailed, then subsided. "I don't want to. But I need to. Don't stop telling me. Don't abandon me."

I felt her arm across my stooped shoulders. I heard her voice, now delicate and soft, warm and reassuring.

"That, Linda, is a guarantee."

Passion and desire are the chameleons of emotion. They turn from the bright yellows and crimsons of love to the blood-stained purples and blacks of compulsion. Harnessed for good, they build. Harnessed for evil, they destroy. And always, they are equally prepared to be used for either purpose.

For days, I had experienced Jason's presence in only the most proper of ways. Bless his heart, he offered me that shoulder and the warm but chaste embrace I needed, whenever I needed it. No mother has ever been granted the gift of a son who could surpass him. I grew more and more confident that the power to choose for the best was now mine and that I would not falter when the challenge came.

I won't say that this confidence had bred complacency. But something had.

Something on television had caught my eye. It had nothing to do with incest per se, but it did touch on some story of a May/December romance, a young man and an older, married woman. That sight was all the suggestion I needed to suddenly relive the revel on the lawn. I suddenly felt those strong, manly hands on my breasts, the kiss of his lips on my breasts and nipples, given in response to my explicit request, and I now also felt something else, something which did not come from memory, the touch upon the sexual center of my body, the one which Jason could have touched had he reached into my loosened jeans that day, but which, in fact, he respectfully had not.

The tug-of-war within me resurfaced, and with it, the threat of another night of agony. Unwilling to endure it I collapsed under the threat. Given the power to choose my response, I declared the victory for the army on one side of the tug-of-war and forcibly silenced the other, choosing the easier rather than the wiser of the two possibilities. The warfare had ended, but the victory was Pyrrhic.

Jason was back from class again. I heard that familiar greeting, felt that gentle embrace and saw him disappear out the door to return to his apartment. I watched his figure disappear and the winning side of the tug-of-war issued its decree. 

I went to the bedroom, closed the door and selected two items of clothing: a sheer, black blouse and the tight black pants that Fred, and now I knew, Jason, found so provocative on me. I laid them out on the bed, humming. I shed the t-shirt and jeans I had been wearing, then removed the bra and the panties. Nude before my mirror, I momentarily imagined Jason standing right there. The image drove a wave of arousal through me and my body moistened and glistened in response. Gleefully I turned and strutted before the mirror until the inadequacy of the imaginary figure drove me to those steps, those simple steps, designed to capture the real thing.

The blouse draped softly, caressingly, seductively over my breasts. The touch of the gossamer fabric against my skin, which would normally be of no particular notice if I were merely dressing, became the fingers of angels. Growing giddy and animated, I pulled those tight pants on. I stood before the mirror with them unzipped, then pulled the zipper home. I stopped and stared directly into the mirror again, at the zipper. I made my eyes become Jason's, and when I had, I pulled the zipper again, driving into my imagination the very impulses I wanted to excite in him. I felt them, and with them, I felt the power of womanhood. I was Aphrodite and my Adonis waited for me no more than a few dozen yards away in space, and no distance at all in heart.

Dancing like a teenager on her way to her first date, I danced my way to my bedroom door. I felt the touch of my fingers upon the doorknob.

At that moment I froze, as if the doorknob itself had frozen and glued my skin to its surface. The inner voice of Conscience called to me, compelled me, spoke to me with such force and clarity that it seemed almost audible. This is the moment of decision, it said. This is the crossroads. You must now choose. There is good and bad to be found in each branch, each choice. Now is the moment you must choose which one offers the greatest good and the least bad. Remove your hand from the doorknob, put those clothes back in the drawer and stop, and you choose one branch. Turn the doorknob and you choose the other.

I don't know how much time passed while I remained rooted at that spot. The moment of choice had arrived and no longer could I avoid it.

My eyes opened. My heart raced. Time stood still.

The knob turned.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 08a



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 08a



Now Mom will take up this virtual pen and give you the rest of the story.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 08b



[Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news. ] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 09



[ Dear Readers:

Many thanks for all of your encouraging comments.

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]





Secret No Longer Ch. 09



Now, though, having broken such an extreme boundary of propriety, I was starting to feel this urge to dive into that life for a while, just a little while, just for the time that remained before Jason and I would have to abandon our own lust and return to our accustomed life and family.

When I ventured a few suggestions along that line to Jason, he had some reservations.

"I'm all for that, Mom, as long as you're sure you know why you're doing it," he said.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well, sometimes, I hear, women who have for some reason come to question their own self-respect start doing awful things, at least, awful to themselves, as a kind of self-flagellation. It's kind of like some kinds of depression. I suppose men can do that too, but this sexual variety seems to be a woman thing, sort of.

"I just want to make very sure that you really just want to have a little fun."

"You mean," I said, "you're afraid that our sex has made me think of myself as some kind of degenerate low-life slut, and this is just me living down to my damaged self-image?"

"I just want to make sure that's not it," he replied, very earnestly. "Believe me, I know lots of girls who flash their boobs at rock concerts, even a few who get to New Orleans at Mardi Gras to dive into that whole scene, and more than a few who get a lot wilder than even that, and I think no less of them. Yeah, sure, there are a few who do make it hard to respect them, but they're a whole different kind, the selfish, using kind, the ones who are hard to respect because they do not respect anyone, not even themselves. I don't associate with that kind any longer than I have to.

"But what you're talking about is nothing like that. I just want to be very sure you feel that way yourself, deep down inside you where these wild ideas of yours are really coming from."

I had no trouble with that. "Bless you for caring like that, Son," I replied. "But there's not one iota of question about what I'm talking about. It's just that when I was around your age girls just didn't do those things, which really means that the ones who did didn't admit it. I've just suddenly gotten this itch to see what it's like on the wild side for a little while, while there's time. But I want you with me when I do. I need someone I trust to support me and take care of me."

"Well, then, Mom, I'll be more than honored to be that someone for you," he said with a sweet kiss.

Thus began the era I now call The Decadent Period. I'll be filling you in on the details, or, at least, some of them, in the next chapter.

Now, if you're imagining wild Bacchanalian revels and Jason's mom pulling a train with his entire soccer team, well, cool your engines. Nothing remotely like that happened, and it's pretty sure, never will. But by the standards of my own values, even stretched as they had become, what did happen was radical enough.

And anyway, Jason isn't even on the soccer team.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 10



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 11



[ Dear Readers:

Many thanks for all of your encouraging comments.

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 11



"That shocked me a little, but strangely, didn't seem to surprise Timmy.

" 'And afterward I went to my room and pulled it out and did what I had to do to release myself. I fantasized about you looking in on me and realizing what a state you had put me in, and tenderly taking over for my weary hand with your sweet body.'

" 'Timmy, I could not have done that before, not before this conversation we've just had. But it doesn't mean I didn't want to.'

"Tim spoke no more. He drew his lips to one of her breasts and began to suck and tease it while playing with the other. Carly's face started to get that glazed look of one slipping into arousal. She lifted her shirt over her head, and, not having worn a bra, presented her bare breasts to her brother, who eagerly accelerated his attentions to them.

" 'Come here, Mother,' Carly said, indicating the place right beside her. I complied and Timmy interrupted his tender caresses of Carly's breasts to turn his attention back to me. When he looked up I started unbuttoning the rest of my blouse, then drew it open. His hands and lips then found my own breasts, still encased in my bra.

" 'Timmy, look,' I said, softly. He drew back and I very deliberately unfastened my bra and dropped it away, then reached out my hands behind his head and touched it, very gently stroked it, a motherly gesture, instinctive, I could tell. It wasn't exactly thought out, but this motherly touch following as it did the very moment I exposed my breasts to his sight and touch was yet another illicit thrill, one I meant for us both--actually, all of us.

" 'Timmy, I am pleased and proud, and very excited, to have the privilege of baring my breasts to you as a man, a man no longer the infant who once nursed there. I am anxiously awaiting the pleasure of feeling your touch upon my breasts.'

"Strange language the way it sounds here and now, perhaps, but it fit perfectly at the time.

" 'If your beautiful sister will wait for a while, I want you to give them your loving caresses now.'

"Timmy eagerly granted my request. I turned to my daughter.

" 'Carly, thank you for your patience. In a short while it will be my pleasure to watch you and your brother seek your own special forms of pleasure to give to each other and receive in kind.

"This very direct sanction, in fact, suggestion, seemed to send a jolt through Carly. I wondered for a moment if she had had some long-suppressed attraction to her brother that had suddenly and unexpectedly released.

" 'Thank you, Mother,' she whispered, slowly. 'I'll wait. I'm enjoying watching Timmy giving you pleasure right now, and you giving it to him. It's...' She finished her sentence silently, touching Timmy for a moment's attention. She took one of his hands and led it to to her jeans, then raised herself to her knees. Timmy unfastened the button and drew down the zipper. Carly's jeans slipped down, slowly, and while they still remained on her hips, Timmy put his fingers into Carly's panties and touched her clit. I saw her body tense and jerk. Then Carly slipped her jeans down, arched her back, thrusting her pussy toward us, and pulled the panties down. She slipped them off and, now completely nude, embraced her trembling brother and kissed him.

" 'Thank you, dear brother,' she whispered. 'Now, please take care of Mom. I'll be waiting for you.'

"Linda, there's no describing this! A whole world of pleasure had fallen into our laps, out of nowhere! All the world's lessons, it's strictures, its lectures, its thundrous condemnations ceased to matter, ceased to even exist. Right then I gave no thought to what unforeseen consequences might lurk around the corner. Fortunately, in our experience since, there haven't been any, at least, no negative ones."

"Shirley," I said, "I'm sure you know that I know just what you mean; after all, it's just like Jason's and my own particular flavor of the same thing."

"I do, I definitely do, Linda."

Right then, though, there was one painfully obvious difference I could not mention, and it lay in her last sentence. Negative consequences? Not so far, maybe. But it was taking a lot of mental effort to hold back the fear of the ones that the layers of my mind I held silent with this emotional stranglehold knew well were merely waiting for their chance to break free. Once again, the automatic mechanism I had created choked off the objections and allowed me to merge back into my friend's narrative.

"Timmy's hands were all over my breasts, my shoulders, my waist, everywhere skin was exposed. He really knew his stuff, too! I was amazed, and damn happy about it too.

" 'Just a moment,' I said, rising. 'Your father used to love this.'

"In a flash I had found a CD and started it playing. It wasn't exactly standard stripper music, but it was bluesy and had a good beat to it. I hauled Timmy up to sit on the sofa and Carly joined him there. I really did have a good routine practiced for Daryl's benefit, and I gave it all I had to give. Timmy's eyes got wide as Chinese gongs, and Carly was caught up in it too. I made a big production of unzipping those jeans, and then toyed with the panties I was wearing. 

" 'I see you do that pussy-shaving thing, Carly,' I said, making her a bit shy and giggly.  'That's fine, but I leave mine the way Nature made it. Can you see that, Timmy? Are these panties sheer enough that you can see my bush? Look carefully, now.'

" 'Just barely, Mom,' Timmy sort of gasped.

" 'It looks like our choice of swimwear when we use the pool might be changing. One of these days I'll wear these panties in the pool. The way they look wet used to drive your father crazy; most of the time he couldn't wait to get to me and we'd get down to it right there in the water. You have no idea how hot it was for us!'

" 'Uh, Mom, don't be so sure we have no idea about that,' Timmy said.

"My eyes grew wide.

" 'Oh, my! You saw us?'

" 'More than once, Mom.'

" 'How could you? Whenever that happened we were sure you were either away or asleep.'

" 'Sometimes you'd make a bit too much noise. We've watched you lots of times,' Timmy continued.

" 'Yeah, Mom, we did,' Carly chimed in. 'And if my brother here turns out to have as grand a cock as our daddy did, I expect to be very pleased with it.'

" 'Carly!' I felt stunned, but I could hardly find fault with it, not now.

" 'So he did, kids. Perhaps if he were with us right now he'd be giving us all a first-hand look. Maybe more than just a look.'

"I saw Carly giggle and shiver a bit at that.

" 'Well, it won't be long now before I can see the evidence for myself!'  With that she placed her hand directly on the mountainous bulge firmly established in Timmy's trousers.

" 'Hmm... Even now it looks promising. See for yourself, Mom.'

"Here was another little surprise in a night of surprises. Timmy stretched back to open the space around his erection and I watched Carly play with it before taking my hand and placing it right on the bulge.

" 'See? Seems pretty good, right?' she asked.

" 'It does,' I replied, starting to draw back my hand. Carly quickly grasped it and stopped me.

" 'Uh, uh!' she admonished. 'Don't be impatient. Like this...' She guided my hand in slow, deep caressing and stroking of Timmy's cock through his jeans. No surprise that it grew and hardened a lot with just those touches, which cranked up my own racing engine plenty.

" 'Mom, this is so weird...and so nice. I never dreamed I'd feel my mother's hand on my cock, and now that it's happening, I can't even say how good it feels.'

" 'It feels good to me, Son,' I breathed back. The mound I touched was no longer just an amorphous blob; it was the clear outline of a penis, a cock growing hard and straight and fighting with the clothing around it as it did. In a while I drew back.

" 'I'm not done with this yet,' I said, and resumed my striptease. Timmy watched, raptly, as I teased down those panties, and now Timmy was in the presence of both his mother and his sister, both nude, open, eager for the chance to gain sexual lust from him and give it right back, in kind.

"Carly lifted his hand, signaling him to stand.

" 'Take off your clothes, Bro; nothing's gonna happen with you like that.

" 'Gladly!' he grinned, and his shirt soon joined Carly's. He fussed with his jeans and his sister reached over to help. I saw my daughter helping my son open his jeans and free his rigid cock, and felt only good, almost proud, to see how strong and unfettered my two children's sexuality had become. Good or bad what we're doing now, I thought, I can see we did something right raising these kids as we did.

" 'Oh, my!' Carly gasped when Timmy's cock sprang free, and silently I echoed the reaction. He was very nicely endowed. Definitely above average. My daughter and I would soon be getting the benefit of it, and I shivered at the anticipation.

"I took the lead then. I walked up to Timmy, wrapped my arms around him and kissed him. It as a long, sweet kiss, a lovers' kiss, and I felt his hands all over my butt, up to my breasts, down my sides, and then venturing rather delicately toward the final goal, then stop short. I let him hesitate for a while.

" 'Thank you, Son, that feels wonderful,' I said. 'Now, please allow me.'

"I took his hand then and very slowly pressed it against my abdomen, fingers pointed down, and then pressed it to slide downward. It was just like you said about how you opened up to Jason. I felt his fingers touch my bush and felt how special that moment was, what a boundary it was that had been crossed. Onward, slowly, savoring every instant, I led him downward, until his fingers touched the very outermost limits of my labia. I let go and stood still.

"He certainly needed no guidance then! A slight motion and his fingers touched my clit. My eyes closed I heard a sharp moan emerge from myself. I was drifting through space, lost but loving it, surrounded by an atmosphere of pleasure. His simple touch took me to crazy heights. I could dimly hear Carly starting to speak, cheerleading.

" 'Feel it, Mother! Feel his touch! Feel his love in his touch on your clit. Does it feel good, Mom?'

"I could only nod in reply.

" 'Good. Keep feeling it, Mom, more and more. Feel your son's touch.'

"She then stopped speaking and I became aware that she had knelt beside me. She reached toward Timmy and I saw her close her lips over Timmy's cock. She was doing down on him! It was tremendous! I was in a daze now, depending on them to suggest each move, and they came through splendidly. Carly drew back and Timmy sat back onto the sofa. I felt Carly's hands around my waist, pushing me gently in that direction, urging me on, until I was straddled across my son's hips. Carly grasped his cock and held it straight up, toward me. Easily, but slowly, looking lovingly right into Timmy's eyes, I relaxed, descended and let his cock enter me. I felt my body take it in, every blessed millimeter, until I was filled with his manhood and his love. Carly backed away and Nature took over.

"Two years of emptiness, deprived of a man's love, physical and spiritual, had cried out for relief, and the cry was about to be answered. The young man dwelling now within my body was half me and half the man that Fate had stolen from me. I could focus on that half and regain a bit of what I had lost. Maybe that's a little of what is behind this; I don't know. I was mad, crazy, out of control. Timmy could barely breathe.

" 'Wow, Mom!' I heard Carly saying. 'You're damn hot, you know that? Timmy, is she hot or what?'

"Timmy just grunted a kind of 'yes.'

" 'Good. Do it, Mom! Fuck Timmy! Timmy, fuck Mom!' Carly cheered on. Any other time I'd have been a bit shocked at the language, not that it's any great surprise Carly would use the words; she just never did at home. Now, though, they were nothing but appropriate, and exciting. I got wilder and felt my son bucking and shoving even harder himself.

"I was climaxing plenty, then. Don't know how many times. It doesn't matter. Finally Timmy could hold back no more.

" 'I'm coming, Mom!' he was gasping. I was about to reply when Carly jumped ahead of me.

" 'Yeah, Bro, do it! Come! Come, now, come in her! Come in your hot, beautiful mother, Timmy!'

"That sounds gross now, here, talking to you, but it was sheer heaven then."

"No, not gross at all, Shirley," I replied. "At least, not from where I sit. To be honest, where I'm sitting is pretty close to where you were, in mind, if you get my drift."

What I missed now was what Jannie could do when our talk got me into this state. Shirley was purely straight, and even if she were bi, like me, we weren't close enough yet for me to dare to ask her to take care of me. I just held on and tried to keep the frenzy in my mind from showing, at least, not too much. Shirley smiled, I think a bit gratefully to know she was not offending, and went on.

"In a while Timmy and I were collapsed on the sofa, struggling for breath, glancing at each other from time to time as if to try to figure out what the other was thinking, as if it mattered right then. Timmy got his wind back after a while and I saw his sister sit down beside him, just resting gently on his shoulder, letting him recover.

"As I looked on, I saw him regain his energy and turn his attention to his sister. He now resumed his long-postponed treatment of her breasts and she was teasing and stroking his cock in return, which, with his youthful strength, was already thinking in terms of another erection. It was a beautiful sight, not in the least like a porn movie."

"I know what you mean by that, Shirley," I interjected.

"Timmy and Carla were more into teasing games that he and I were," Shirley continued. "It was fun to watch. Carly went over to the sound system and started up the same track I had used for my striptease. They started dancing--sort of dancing, I think they call it grinding; we'd call it foreplay--with him standing behind her and she grinding her backside right into his cock. They do that at clubs, believe it or not.

"Timmy reached down then and found Carla's clitty and started teasing it. They don't do that at clubs. At least, not where the lights are; I'm learning that there's a lot going on in the shadows in those places you don't hear about."

I found the idea intriguing for some reason, but it didn't matter right then.

"Then Timmy got in front of her and started tonguing her clitty. She lit up like a rocket. I suppose I might have looked something like that, I don't know; you can't tell when you're in the middle of it. In any case it was electrifying. Carly came many times, and then calmed down enough to go down on Timmy again for a while. He was up and ready and Carly lay back on the sofa and drew him toward her. I saw a moment of silent communication then, a kind of testing to make sure each was completely sure they wanted to do this, and then I saw Timmy's magnificent rod disappear into Carly's young, supple body.

"I don't know how their bronc-riding compared with Timmy's and mine; I only know that it was crazy, absolutely crazy. They were like rockets that have lost their guidance systems, pushing and rocking and shaking and thrusting every way they could and some you'd swear they couldn't.

"Timmy finally reached his limit, not before Carly had had her own climaxes, and they exploded. He was all over her like a pile-driver. After a long time they started cooling down, and after a longer time, they separated and found their own places to rest and recuperate.

"It took a long time before the fire and glow of it all subsided enough that we could go back to just talking. When we did, we mulled over what we had done. We wanted to know where we stood, if we were comfortable with it, now that we were not in the middle of it, if we thought we should consider it again, or what. We concluded that none of us had any real misgivings about it at that time, and that we'd just let the future take care of itself."

"And it looks like it did just that, and it was in a good way. Am I right about that?"

"You're right about that."

"I have to admit that hearing about all that has had, shall we say, an effect on me," I told her, a bit shyly.

"I can see that," she said, a bit slyly. I had to laugh.

"Didn't hide it very well, eh?"

"No, but why should you? If that's your natural reaction, then just react! No need to pretend it didn't happen."

"Thanks, Shirley, I feel better about that now. And I'll check out that movie. The First Taboo, right?"

For some reason that got a good laugh out of her.

"No, Lin, it's just Taboo. I said the first because there were sequels."

I settled back in my chair and took another sip of now-cold coffee. Right then I had this wicked fantasy about Timmy and Jason magically just happening to show up and a wild foursome resulting. That did not happen. However, something else, something much milder and yet enjoyable, did.

"Girl you need to cool down. We both do."

"No swimsuit, Shirley."

She looked at me as if I'd lost my mind.

"You think that matters here? Come on!"

We were alone, after all. After just a moment's hesitation I shucked my shoes, shirt, jeans and the rest and hit the water in my bra and panties. I was used to wearing the kind that are, if not entirely sheer, then almost so, and usually always nearly invisible when wet. My husband, and now my son and lover, liked it that way, and I did as well. Not that it mattered now.

Almost.

It did happen. Timmy did arrive home, and Jason with him. Not all that surprising, since I had left a note on the dining-room table to let him know I'd be here, and I was there later than I had expected to be. I was suddenly very careful to keep as much of myself submerged as possible. Jason knew what I was wearing, and how it looked wet, but Timmy didn't.

"Hey there, ladies!" Timmy announced, a bit boisterously. "How's the water?"

"Just fine, boys. Come on in if you like!" Shirley replied, to my near shock. I tried to get her attention, to signal her to dissuade the guys, but she ignored me.

"Got homework to do, Mom. Jase here, too," Timmy said.

"Aw, screw the homework! It'll wait. Get in here!"

"OK, I'll get my trunks. Jase, I think I can find some that will fit you."

"Boys, boys..." Shirley said with a sigh of exaggerated exasperation. "You mean you think we old biddies are going to be scandalized by a couple of boys swimming in their BVDs?"

"Psst... Shirley...Shirley!"

She continued to ignore me.

"If you don't mind..." Timmy began.

"We don't mind."

Shirley! We? I don't recall voting on this! I knew then she was teasing, having fun, and with that knowledge, I relaxed a bit. It was then that I decided that I would stop fighting the trend and enjoy it.

Quickly the boys doffed their duds except for shorts and hit the water. I still automatically tried to keep distance from them, but Jason wouldn't be fooled. He swam right over.

"Love your swimsuit, Mom," he chortled.

"I didn't expect to need one today."

"I figured. But why the shyness? Isn't this the lady that confessed she had exhibitionist fantasies? Who better to exhibit to than a really decent guy, who is also a good friend, and who also just happens to have had it bad for you for years, just like I had it bad for Jannie all that time?"

"He has?!

"I swear it on all that's holy, Mom. Anyway, you can ask him yourself."

"Thanks; I'll hold off on that for a while."

This was news, and exciting news, to think that this strapping young hunk, who just happened to be a very sweet boy as well, has had a crush on me all these years! Is that why Shirley has been engineering this little play, to give me the chance to fulfill at least part of her son's years-long yearning? It would probably--definitely--be thrilling to let go and bare it all to this young man's eyes, to stir him, arouse him, excite him, maybe even raise him to his fullest, straightest and hardest tumescence. I regretted the limit I would have to impose on this, but I now wanted to give him everything I could give short of that boundary.




Secret No Longer Ch. 11



Jason read this and smiled.

"Have fun, however your choose to," he said, giving me a playful pat on the behind under the water. I playfully slapped him back as he ducked away.

"Shirley, you sly one, you," I said, grinning, as I approached her. "Admit it: you've got a little agenda here, don't you?"

"Well, only if you choose to accept it---Mr. Phelps," she replied.

"I think I do, now. Just some looking, though. I'm not ready to take it much beyond that."

"It's your body and yourself. Nobody is going to force you to take anything where you don't want it to go. By the way, I have a little something of my own in mind, much the same, for that studly son of yours. I hope that's OK."

"It is, Shirley. Go for it!"

Not too surprisingly, Shirley's own undies were much like mine, practically invisible when wet. I watched her heading over toward the boys at the shallow end. As she did, the water level dropped below her breasts. As she proceeded toward the boys I saw Jason glance her way and then jump in surprise. So, my question is answered, I see. Shirley has not yet been part of the action among Jason, Carla and Timmy. Shirley's provocative exposure is new to him. I enjoyed the response.

Timmy, of course, was unfazed.

"Mom, you hussy you!" he cried. "What do you think you're doing, parading those luscious breasts and those pert, hard little nipples right in front of my friend here?"

"Ooh, really?" she said in a cartoonish Betty-Boop voice. "I'm so sorry, young men!" She crossed her hands over her breasts.

"There, Jason, now she's decent. Isn't that better?"

"No."

"Why, you nasty boy, you!" Timmy cried, aghast. "I get the distinct impression that you consider my very own mother to be a sexy, alluring, shapely, seductive, fetching, arousing, stimulating, wild, crazy, sizzling-hot, irresistible siren, or something like that."

"Something like that. Just like that."

"Now, that's more like it!" Shirley piped up. "You're a sweet kid. Gimme a hug!"

"Gladly!" Jason replied eagerly, and threw his arms around Shirley. The embrace continued a long time, and there was plenty of subsurface turbulence, betraying some interesting goings-on down there, hidden from view. Rather than think about what they might be, I took the natural lead of my own feelings. Resolutely, I made my way toward the boys just as Shirley had. As my breasts broke the water line I saw Timmy repeating Jason's reaction to his mother almost identically, and I exulted in the feeling. With pleasant little thrills surging up and down my spine I approached Timmy.

"Now, Timmy," I said, severely, "I must have a talk with you about your assessment of Shirley's clothing and what Jason was just seeing. Clearly you are in dire need of a revision of your standards."

Timmy lifted his eyes momentarily as if overplaying the stance of an itinerant Puritan preacher of the 19th century.

"On the contrary, Mrs. C..."

"Linda!"

"Linda. I must inform you that attire such as Shirley was wearing, when saturated with water and then displayed to a young man such as Jason, invariably provokes lascivious and lustful thoughts."

"I'll drink to that!" Shirley cried, lifting an imaginary wine glass. Timmy gave his best harrumph and continued.

"In fact, Linda, I would be remiss if I did not bring it strongly to your attention that you yourself, at this moment, are expressing a nearly identical force upon both of the young men present, to wit, Jason, your son, and my humble self."

"Oh, really," I said, scornfully. "By that I trust you are referring to the rather clear display of my breasts..." I cupped my hands over them and played with them, forcing his attention directly to them, "...as so minimally concealed by the transparent fabric of my wet brassiere."

"That is correct, in part." I sensed a little quivering excitement poking through his mock severity.

"Oh, then you must also be including in your assessment these very prominent, and at this moment excited, nipples, pressing through that same sheer fabric as if they wanted to burst right through it," I said, tracing over them with my fingertips. "So then, just what kind of awful things will come from that?

"Well..." A long drawn-out pause. "How about...." Then suddenly, "this?

At that he lunged at me and grabbed me around the upper legs, lifting me and splashing me back down. As I gleefully pretended to struggle, he lifted me again, this time with his lips at the level of my breasts, and then, with exaggerated motions for the benefit of the others. locked his lips on my nearer nipple.

I feigned pounding on the top of his head as if to dislodge myself from him.

"Ooh, nasty, nasty, Timmy!"

At that he nuzzled his face against my breast harder and I began to lose interest in the role-play, gaining interest in the sensation of this young man's attentions to my breast. My cries turned to sighs and I began to hold his face against my breast.

All the while, though, I forced myself to remember my limits. As extreme as Jason's and my behavior had become, this time of breaking rules did not extend to sex with any other man on the planet. That boundary was sharp and clear. Things were far short of that now, but behind the giddy fun and pleasure of this boy's attention, I resolved to keep well short of that, and that meant short of even leading him on to expect it, which would be cruel. For now, though, there was nothing to worry about.

Now repeating that mysterious embrace I had observed between Jason and Shirley, I felt Timmy wrap his arms around me and sweetly envelop me. His hands were straying over my butt, outside my panties, and I had no problem with that; I let myself explore his own tight derrière myself. I expected him to move on from there, and as his hands found my hips and aimed forward, I felt him stop and heard a quiet, sharp little hum, pitched to clearly be the question: is it OK?

In reply I took his face in my hands and kissed him, then whispered, "No. The time may come someday, maybe not. But not now. You're very sweet to ask me first." I kissed him again.

"My pleasure," he whispered. "If anything ever does happen, it has to be because everyone concerned is OK with it."

The suggestion of a number that must include Fred began to spoil the fun again. The membrane was stretching to the breaking point, and a time I was dreading, and inevitable one, loomed ahead. Again, though, I bottled it up before it spoiled the fun. In moments I was back in the swing of things.

Timmy continued the embrace a while longer, and I let him put his hands on my butt inside the panties, which pleased him. It pleased me too. I could not tell him that I wanted exactly what he had wanted and had chivalrously asked about before taking it for himself.

Presently the frolic evolved into an impromptu game of tag, in which the objective was not so much to keep from being tagged as to have an excuse to not-quite-accidentally touch interesting places on the bodies of the other players. I expected young men's hands to find my breasts, and I got what I expected. When Timmy managed to slip his hand inside my bra I slapped at it underwater, but didn't try to remove it, so he knew it was all in play. Emboldened by this, he slowed some of his quick touches until his hands were freely roaming the surface of my breasts.

"Timmy...?" I whispered.

"Yes, Linda?"

"Can you promise you'll be content if I just let you go as far as you've gone already tonight?"

"I promise. I don't want anything that will make you uncomfortable."

"That's good. I am enjoying this and I want to have fun, and give you some fun, but I don't want to lead you to expect things I'm not willing to give."

"I already knew that, but thanks for saying it out loud."

"OK. If you think I'm pushing it, just tell me. I trust you to say so even if it means I have to rein in on something."

"I will, but I can promise you that, whatever you choose to do, I'll keep the limits straight."

"You're a gem, Timmy," I said, and gave him a little kiss, then swam away, toward the deep end.

"Hey guys!" I yelled.

"Hey what?"

Quickly I unfastened my bra and raised it high over my head.

"How about this?" I yelled, and tossed the garment to the side of the pool.

"It ain't the latest fashion from Pa-ree, but I like it!" Timmy cried.

"I'll second that."

"Hey, just wait just a gol-darned minute!" Shirley called out. "She's not the only supermodel around here, you know!" She made her way to the poolside steps, then walked to the side.

"See? I've got the same outfit!" she called out, and then, with a flourish, unfastened her own bra and tossed it aside. The boys applauded.

"Hey, Shirley Supermodel, how about that ensemble I saw the other night?"

"You mean the one just like this one, except with one less garment?"

"That very one."

"Hmm... I'm not sure..."

She was playing her uncertainty but I also saw a glance in my direction, and I knew she was silently asking me if I would object. I just smiled brightly and nodded.

"OK, then, but it'll cost you extra."

"Hey, whatever the price is, I'll pay it!" Jason said.

"Well, then, here goes!"

At that she shimmied out of those sheer panties with a style that impressed even me. I made a mental note to ask her about it and maybe get a few pointers. The flimsy fabric teased with her bushy pelvis and finally dropped to the concrete walkway.

"There. Approve?"

"It just doesn't get any better, Shirley!" Jason replied, with affirming noises from Timmy as well. Shirley danced and paraded a bit and then hit the water again.

Now I wanted to do something. I would not strip nude; that would be too dangerous to my self-imposed limits. But they had not seen me with those wet panties, and at least I could give them that much.

"OK, if you wanna play dueling supermodels, we'll play dueling supermodels!"

I made my way to the same place Shirley had, keeping my back to the boys. I started undulating my hips, teasing them with my butt, even pulling down the panties. No big deal on that side.

The boys hooted and hollered their approval while Shirley made wacky mock-jealousy faces.

"Thank you, thank you..." I said, Marilyn-Monroe style, starting to turn forward, then retreating. I did it enough to provoke some strong entreaties to end the mystery and when I thought it was time, turned back, shining my full frontal (almost) radiance to my adoring audience.

The panties, of course, hid nothing; indeed, with the sun behind me, it was hard to see them at all. I had retained the slight security of the garment while actually giving them essentially the same show Shirley had by stripping nude. The glowing appreciation behind the playful acts of the boys was sweet, exhilarating, exciting. I knew I would have to remind myself to keep things in line if I was to keep my promise to myself.

As Shirley had, I strutted a bit and returned to the water. The frolic continued, with both boys homing in on my now-bare breasts with great skill, with me avoiding them only to the extent of the game.

Afternoon shadows were heralding evening, and with that, the frolic turned into more quiet, more personal intimacies As we stood at the shallow end of the pool, Timmy stood behind me and massaged my shoulders and back and then let his hands flow over my breasts, now freely cupping them, exploring them, massaging and caressing them, sending sweet little shivers of pleasure through me. I held onto my limits and still enjoyed it, and was pleased at that.

Jason was doing much the same, though his hands were below the water line much of the time. Gradually we closed the distance until all four of us were close enough to converse easily.

"I know you have to keep a rein on things, Linda," Shirley said. "Please tell me if what we're doing is straining that."

"Thanks, but it won't be a problem."

"Good. Jason's a terrific guy; you can be very proud of him."

"I am, Shirley, I am. And may I say the very same about your Timmy. A real man, and a real gentleman as well."

"That's my boy, Linda," she said, and at that, turned his attention back to my son.

True to his word, Timmy did not attempt to venture beyond my stated limits despite the clear evidence that the same boundaries were not impeding my son and his mother. I was increasingly concerned that my boundaries would, in fact, fail, not because of Timmy, but because of me.

As Timmy and I looked on, his hands gently tracing my own body, Jason lifted Shirley and she wrapped her legs around his waist. She arched her back and Jason drew his lips to her breasts, teasing them and her nipples. Now no longer divided between arousal and innocent frolic, Shirley was slipping quickly into that sweet world of sexual arousal. Her body began to undulate spontaneously as Jason expertly varied his attentions. At one point I saw her stretch toward him and reach down and suddenly realized that she had stripped him of his shorts. Now, before my eyes, Shirley and my son danced, nude and ready.

Shirley then turned her glazed eyes in our direction, once more testing my acceptance, which I granted. Her face returned to Jason; he kissed her, and then we saw a lifting movement beneath the water followed by the unmistakable signs of union. I turned to Timmy.

"Timmy, Jason told me about your threesome with Carly," I whispered. "I'd like to know: has there ever been anything with Shirley?"

"No. Remember when Mom first let him see her breasts in that wet bra? That was a first for him, so he hasn't been past that. This is all totally new to him...and her."

The sight before me was pushing all of my buttons. Almost as if observing from outside myself, I heard my breath quicken, felt my heart race and sensed subtle movements in Timmy's arms, the movements of sex. I forced myself to keep still, but I could not force myself to turn away. Timmy's hands were now over my breasts most of the time, and freely wandering everywhere else except that still-forbidden realm protected by the front side of my panties.

I was also aware of another sign of Timmy's presence: the unmistakable impression of a rigid cylinder against the flesh of my butt, and I realized that he had also removed his shorts and I was feeling his own hard cock against me. I thrilled at the sensation, automatically moving against it, yearning for it and forcing myself to keep in check. I felt Timmy move back a bit, and the firm rod ceased to press my flesh.

"Linda," Timmy whispered very softly, "I'm sorry about that. It was automatic; I forgot my promise."

"It's OK. I almost forgot it myself."

Another young man might have taken that as a sign of vulnerability, an invitation. Timmy was too chivalrous for that. He kept his distance, which was both a relief and a frustration for me.

The slow, smooth dance before us had metamorphosed into the quick one, the frantic one, sending swirls of water in every direction. Impeded by the mass of the water, their bodies took on an unusual grace, beautiful in itself. Higher and higher they rose, until they peaked together and Jason cried out his orgasm. Together they rode the wild rapids and gradually let peace return. In time they separated.

I worried a bit that, despite my silent assurances, Shirley would be unsure of me, so I walked to her, put my hands on her shoulders.

"That was beautiful. I'm sure Jason got more out of it than I did, but was great nonetheless."

"Thank you for that," she said softly, and hugged me.

Jason and Shirley had had their time, but it was not all over. I knew I had to find my own release, and the obvious way soon presented itself, when Timmy and his mother started some little teasing games. Jason smiled and made his way toward me.

"You OK, Mom?"

"I'm fine, Jason," I replied. "Forgive me if what I just saw has left me a bit wound up myself."

"Nothing to forgive, of course, but there are more needs here that need attention."

I was about to speak when he obviated the need. I felt his embrace and melted into it. Gradually closing the distance between us and the other two, he lifted me the same way he had lifted Shirley. I reached to find his cock and discovered is was hardening. At my touch it continued until it was fully ready. Timmy and Shirley were occupied in much the same thing.

We were nearly side-by-side now, and Jason lifted again and relaxed, and his young manhood was once again within me. He thrust himself into me powerfully, while I returned the force as best I could. Mother and son were fucking, while right beside them, another mother and son were fucking as well.

Uncanny, isn't it, I thought. I had put a moral boundary against welcoming any man other than this one into me for the duration of our "vacation," and had found the alternative in incest! Crazy, by any ordinary reckoning, but perfectly sensible for us, right then.

In the throes of passion, our inhibitions were greatly reduced. I felt a hand straying over my belly which I knew was not my son's. My eyes met Timmy's and did not signal disapproval. The hand strayed downward, downward, until I felt Timmy's fingers playing with my clit, while the merest distance away, Jason's cock pounded into me. Jason's presence guaranteed the limit and I yielded to the desire for Timmy's touch. Jason saw, and decided to do the same to Shirley, which meant that two women were getting a double dose of pleasure, and we didn't have to try hard to make sure they knew it. Our noises heightened; our bodies drove against our men harder; every sensation, for all four of us, was elevated until the ultimate, and the inevitable return to peace, had transpired.

That night was a busy one when Jason and I returned home.

Later, alone in my bed, in the silence of my room, I began to worry. Would I be able to keep control if something like this happened again? And what if it did? Would it matter? How, and how much?

All the while, just a hair's breadth beneath the surface, the real problem was threatening. That army, the one side of that tug-of-war that had tormented me that night, the side upon which I had pronounced defeat, was growing restive. I had hoped the war was over, but it had been just a battle, and the forces were regrouping, preparing for a new assault. It was the army of Right, of Conscience, the morality that is not dictated in the words of others, but in the sensibilities of our own, the forces of integrity, loyalty, respect, and most important, love. That voice that had firmly offered me the choice to turn the doorknob or leave it was by no means silenced; I had but maintained a constant cacophony of sensuousness that had drowned it out. Now the voice was growing louder and the masking noises less and less effective.

I knew all along this could not last forever. I told myself I'd be ready for it to end, and I was half-right. As strong as my passions had become, I knew I could learn to live without the titillation when the greater love of my husband was mine again, and deep down, I knew I could trust Jason to make the same decision. But the other half was Conscience, facing the reality of my acts, how and why, and what they meant. Would I be ready for that too, when the time came--the time that was approaching very very quickly?

I knew well, as much as I tried to deny it, that the answer was no.

(to be continued)



Secret No Longer Ch. 12



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 12



"Not a bit. Glad to see it up front, though, like that," Timmy replied, clearly enjoying this.

"Well then, talking about seeing things up front..." I said, and putting to rest the very last of the limited intentions I had brought with me into the room when I first arrived, lifted and discarded my shirt. Well, what the hell? Wasn't I the first to shuck her bra back at the pool that day? No real difference.

Carla clapped with glee.

"That's the spirit, Linda!" she cried. Spurred on by her enthusiasm and the obvious gratitude of the two young men, I started playing with my breasts, teasing and luring the boys and delighting Carla as well.

Carla jumped up and knelt on the bed and launched into a vigorous dance of her own, playing with her own breasts, wiggling and swaying her hips, and before long, adding thrusts forward and back and turns and twists of the kind that mean only one thing: pure, hot sex. The guys turned their attention back to her, hooting and hollering in fun, while she took it all in. I was enjoying the show myself, enjoying her free-spirited exuberance. Suddenly she turned back to me.

"Come on, Linda, let's give 'em a show!" she cried, pulling on my arms to help me rise myself. I shyly declined, encouraging her to keep up her own dance, but she would have none of that.

"This comes with your hundred-dollar ticket, Linda!" she nearly shouted. "You're gonna get your money's worth whether you want to or not!" The sexual energy that seemed to hang in the very air now combined with simple abandon, fun-loving exuberance, the unfettered energy of youth that now seemed to be flowing right into me. My resistance turned weak, to a token, and disappeared.

"OK, OK, if you insist," I muttered, and rose to match her stance. The boys began to applaud wildly, partly in fun, but by no means entirely. I loved it!

Carla slipped back into similarly wild and wanton moves, now prompting me to match them. I was a lot more restrained, at first, but after a while I felt no reason to hold back. The more I matched her, the wilder and more provocative she became. The boys stopped making noise and sat on the bed, to get a closer look, eyes wide with bemused glee.

Carla leaned toward Timmy with a sultry shake and he responded by clapping his hands over her breasts and launching into wild stroking and kissing of them. When I didn't follow suit fast enough Jason, with a great laugh, leaned toward me and then fell right on top of me, diving onto my my breasts for a while before returning to his place. It was comic behavior, but that moment during which I felt my son's body pressing into mine did not fail to leave a strong wake of electric force behind.

Carla, ever the cheerleader, now planted her knees wide apart and, leaning back, started into thrusts of her hips that would have melted the resolve of a bronze statue. Unexpectedly it was Jason who responded this time. He clasped his hands behind her butt and buried his face between her legs, half-innocently in that his eyes were level with her pussy, sort of like what an unusually bold man might get away with at a strip club. He playfully nuzzled her for a few seconds and then rose up again. Carla whooped a kind of cheer.

All this was the sexy-and-yet-silly brand of play, relatively innocuous.

I knew that I was now expected to give my own version of the same thing. I still had my jeans on, and panties beneath them, so I let myself dive into the same moves, maybe even wilder. I knew that kind of movement looks particularly provocative in tight jeans like mine, and I chose to make the very most of it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a look on Jason's face that was half-excitement and half-amazement. Even he had not seen anything like this before.

With Jason down from Carla, Timmy was down from me. I focused the energy of my movements directly to him, luring him closer, and successfully. He crawled closer to me, eyes fixed on my hips wrapped up in the tight denim, now moving, undulating, swaying and thrusting with all the seductive provocation I could throw into them. Carla clapped gleefully again; Jason stood, mesmerized, and Timmy approached as if in a trance. A moment's hesitation and he then matched Jason's actions, burying his face between my legs, holding me to him with his hands on my butt, grinding and pressing through the denim so that my clit was getting the message. In a few seconds he started to get back up, but I pressed my hands behind his head. I wanted more.

The message changed the atmosphere of the room. Carla grew quiet; Jason seemed both bemused and eager, and Timmy began to lose himself in the space between my legs. Now, though, as my gesture directed him to continue, he lifted his head and turned until his tongue was level with my clit, as if he were intending to start into pleasuring it. He paused and locked eyes with mine, and we saw in each others' eyes the clear message that our momentum was meant to continue. He drew his face back and I surveyed the assembly, pausing, letting the tension build, ensuring I had the undivided attention of all three.

With my strong, deliberate intent manifested visibly in the form of my actions, I unsnapped the waistband of the jeans. Clasping the zipper, I drew it downward in that same slow and meaningful fashion you have heard of before. Downward proceeded its inexorable travel, until that boundary, the top of my pubic bush, was reached. I stopped then, scanned my audience, and fixed my gaze upon Timmy.

It took a moment or two, but he read the message. Tenderly, slowly now, he reached to me and drew the zipper the rest of the way. I slid my hands into the jeans, starting their downward travel, but letting him actually pull them off. Even as he did, my hips were moving, small movements, but definite. The jeans traveled, slipped off, and fell to the floor. Even now, some strained logic insisted that I was in safe territory, since I had been undressed this far once before, in Timmy's presence, in the pool, but in vain.

I pulled Timmy's face to mine, and kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, but a prolonged one, leaving no doubt of its meaning. He leaned back up and I simply glanced at my hips. His fingers slipped under the elastic of my panties, and the limits of precedent were breached. The wispy black fabric followed the jeans, and I was nude before my son, his friend who had adored me through years of adolescence, and the young lady who was my son's girlfriend, his friend's sister, and sexual lover to both.

Carla knew nothing of my resolve to avoid what was now imminent; in her eyes she had simply helped me overcome some shyness and inhibitions to enjoyment; Timmy was too far gone to remember now, and Jason looked on, excited as were we all by what I had done, but with a note of concern clearly written on his face as well. He knew what I had intended and that now I would have to face the collapse of my resolve, but he knew that the choices were my own and that if I could come to terms with what had happened already, I could come to terms with this as well.

Timmy was on his knees at the end of the bed. Slowly, with strong, pointed resolve, I looked straight at him, raising my hips and pressing them forward, toward him, as I did so. He approached. His body loomed above mine. Our eyes locked; his body descended; I felt the head of a desperately eager cock make contact with the wetness of my opening; a moment's pause...

Two bodies burst forth with deep sighs as the young man penetrated me to the full depth of his manhood. Now, for the second time since all this had begun, I had invited a man to enter me, he for the first time, a man who was not my husband. Those thoughts I now desperately bound behind the walls, the closet door, as I yielded totally to the pleasure of the manhood plunging in and out of my wildly animated body. On and on, for moments that became minutes and minutes that flowed seemingly without end, I drove my body against his cock, drawing, sucking the life and ecstasy from it, every nerve, every impulse, every moment an incendiary burst of exquisite pleasure absorbing my very consciousness until I was aware of nothing else.

An orgasm was rapidly approaching. Timmy was not quite as adept as Jason at helping me with it, but it thundered through nonetheless, as did at least two more. The signs of the third rose with the news that Timmy was at his time now. Two bodies exploded now in violent agitation. I heard his whispered message, the earthy groan from deep within him, and then he erupted into me. The unrestrained violence of our thrusts long continued unabated. Then, after some time, it eased, slowed, relaxed, smoothly subsided, and finally, converged on a single point of peace. Through glazed eyes I saw in his face the glow of one whose dearest dream, the dream of a lifetime, has been suddenly, unexpectedly and thoroughly fulfilled. I knew what that meant, and now that the matter of a boundary was no longer a matter at all, I found a special joy knowing that I could be the one to grant such a wish. I dimly imagined how Jannie may have felt when she had bestowed upon Jason the fulfillment of his own dream, of the same kind. 

Now the four us lay on the bed, side by side, silent, sated, at peace.

(to be continued) 



Secret No Longer Ch. 13



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

SPECIAL NOTE HERE: We are at the part of the story where personal and emotional consequences of the past are coming to the fore. Here, and probably in some chapters to follow, there may be no sex at all. I don't expect very high vote figures for them, perhaps, but if you complain about that in the user comments, don't expect your post to remain there long.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 14



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]







Secret No Longer Ch. 15



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]







Secret No Longer Ch. 16



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 17



[ Dear Readers:

If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.

Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.

Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene with photographic detail.

In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.] 





Secret No Longer Ch. 18



[ Dear Readers:

Usually when you see a writer explaining his story it's a good sign he didn't do much of a job with it in the first place. That might be true here anyway, but there's another reason, which is also why I had to walk away from this for a while.

In a story like this, evolving as it is published, there's the danger that the plot will take a turn that puts it at odds with something in an earlier chapter. The writer's challenge is then to come up with the best way to reconcile what's past and irreversible with what's present and progressing. So it is here, in several places.

As it is probably the biggest of these, I'll cite the widely-criticized decision of Sammy to keep Fred in the dark. Had he done otherwise, Fred would have squelched the shenanigans next door right quick, and without the shenanigans, there's no story. Clearly, it would be better if Sammy didn't find out until Fred did, but way last February, in part 9, I blew that possibility by having Linda, in a moment of mindlessly giddy excitement, prance on over to the neighbor's house and blow that chance away for good. After heaven knows how many abortive attempts at rewrites, I'm going back to my original versions of the next three parts, which is what I'd completed before this hiatus.

So, early on in this chapter, Sammy will grace us with Plan B. 

Once again, I'm very grateful to all who have enjoyed this, and those who have criticzed it thoughtfully. I hope you'll find the rest of it worthwhile.





Secret No Longer Ch. 18



"Yes. Go on." For the first time I really sensed how irresponsible I had been. Granted, Sammy as well, though I didn't care to worry about his part in the matter right then.

"The next phase came a little later. It was about me at first, Jason and me. He's had that May/December crush on me since he was a teenager. Well, now he was a fine adult, well-developed and mature, and free to make his own choices. Now, for the first time, what I had automatically assumed would remain his fantasy forever suddenly seemed possible. Sammy would be OK with it; Linda had a few of those once-a-mother-always-a-mother misgivings, but got past them and saw it would be a great pleasure between two consenting adults, and we didn't think you'd have a big problem with it either."

"Sure, I guess so. You and he are perfectly free to make your own choices, and if nobody's hurt, why not? But it's a hell of a long way from my son and the attractive lady next door and my son and his..."

"Please, Fred, I understand," she admonished gently, "We're on the same page here." I calmed down and she resumed.

"Normally you'd think that if Jason and I were to consummate our mutual attraction it would be somewhere alone, private. But you know me well enough to know that I can be very impulsive. That's how it was one day. It was warm, one of those sweet days where even the wind is sensuous. Linda and I were in one of those moods, if you know what I mean, helped along somewhat by both you and Sammy being away for a good long time by then, and making with some pretty bawdy conversation."

"I know what you mean; I've heard you two a couple of times before," I replied, amused.

"That's when Jason showed up, asking what we'd been talking about. It was a time for a little teasing, nothing unkind, but then that first wild impulse struck me. I got up, turned on the lawn sprinkler and started dancing in the water. It felt sexy, sensuous, and I knew that when my clothes were saturated they would be turning transp..." she caught herself and, embarrassed, subdued the wording a little. "I felt I'd be more...interesting...to look at then."

But Jannie had caught herself too late. Her vivid recollection of the day had already united with her passionate nature to to ignite a severe distraction to her role as narrator and historian, while at the same time the picture of her dancing exultant in the spray, Linda and Jason both conveniently out of frame, combined with her crisp description of the sensuous atmosphere of that moment to tantalize and quickly inflame me as well. My mental gaze centered on Jannie, gleeful as a water nymph, her clothes drenched and thus no longer restricting the view of those breasts and nipples to their mere outlines, now drawing back to a wide shot of her splendid body...

Suddenly, with a crash of consciousness, I was jolted back to the present, realizing that I had been staring fixedly at Jannie's bosom for--well, quite a while. I felt the rush in my face as it turned pure red in embarrassment.

"I apologize, Jannie, I really didn't meant to stare like that. I just..." My voice trailed as I could find no explanation that wasn't merely stating the obvious.

"Please don't apologize, Fred," she replied, voice hushed and with a distinct quiver to it, "I guess I got carried away too. It was a--sweet--pleasant--you know, kinda fun--thing." She was struggling hard to avoid provocative terms to describe her memory and what remained was comically insipid. That, combined with our mutual self-consciousness, struck us simultaneously and we dissolved into gales of laughter, laughter sweet as a nectar from the gods, throwing open the floodgates, letting the tension, apprehension, worry and doubt drain away in a blessed torrent of relief. Each of us sustained the joyful explosion in each other until sheer exhaustion brought us back to peace.

Now the Jannie I knew had returned from hiding. The gleeful spirit had re-emerged, and so, I knew, had the real Fred. Brief though it must be, the respite was refreshing, joyful all the more in contrast to the black business behind it which, though it could not be dismissed, could at least wait a while.

"I can't help it, Jannie," I said, still guffawing, "I was just drilling my eyes right into your... That...that isn't polite. Or something."

"Fred, forget it. I'll consider it a compliment," she replied, easily and sincerely.

Reluctant to let go of this unexpected lightness and peace, we relaxed in silence for a while. Too soon, however, it was time to turn back to the sterner matter of Linda and Jason and Jannie's narrative.

"Fred, this is where I started making some mistakes. Serious mistakes. Mistakes that might have made the difference between Linda hanging on and slipping the way she did.

"As I said, it was all very sudden and impulsive on my part. On a pretext I got Jason out of his jeans and then, on another impulse, dragged Linda into the spray. Her clothes were by no means revealing, but I failed to notice how much that might change if they got wet. By now I should have seen this was heading beyond a little innocent frolic, but somehow I didn't. Maybe I was enjoying myself too much and it warped my judgment a little."

facts, twisted by desire...desires, twisting the facts...thrills, desires, and twisted facts... 

"Fred...?"

"Oh...Sorry, Jannie. Something you said reminded me of...something. Just go ahead."

"Of course, Linda could have walked away anytime and I will neither excuse nor condemn her for not doing that. Just try to picture how sexually charged the whole atmosphere was. That's something else about me you may or may not know. Once my own engines are getting tached up to the red line I don't always think so clearly. Sex takes over. That's fine with Sammy, or even some of those other situations you know about. This time, though, it might not have been so good, but that's how it was. The more Jason and I worked to turn each other on, the more it must have struck Linda. Her own judgment was off kilter by then, and wherever her mind was, she stayed and kept watching, keeping some distance, but not leaving either. Again, it's no excuse, but getting aroused can cause some strange kinds of blindness."

"To keep to the point, just a while later Jason and I were down on the lawn, on a cushion that came from somewhere. We were..." she stopped, once again to tone down the intensity of the imagery. "We...started...the big number. Linda came closer, but that's all, Fred. Just watching.

"Here is where I made a big mistake. A huge one, one that still boggles my mind. If anything is going to destroy your respect for me, this will. I hope it won't, but I will have to face it either way. All I can say is that I make no excuses for this, and I meant no harm."

"Go on, Jannie," I ordered, darkly enough to prompt a slightly apprehensive look from her.

"Like I said, when I'm fired up, I don't think really well. Remember that Linda and I have been lovers. Somehow, the idea that it would be terribly wrong to reveal to Jason what he had been seeing of us both only through his telescope failed me. I wanted to give him..."

"A treat?" I snapped with a bitter snarl. Jannie cringed, but kept on.

"Yes, that's about it. In one impulsive moment I whipped Linda's shirt off of her. She was shocked, but she didn't try to put it back on. All of us, all three, were out of control by then, and I was a big part of pushing things over the line like that."

She stopped then and looked at me, not quite meeting my eyes, the very picture of remorse and contrition. Some protective instinct had subdued my reactions in favor of hearing all of this out, dispassionately. Jannie's appallingly bad judgment was deserving of criticism but I felt no motivation to destroy my personal respect for her, and criticizing her actions would be no more than repeating to her what she had already admitted.

"Go on, Jannie. What else happened?" She seemed relieved as she resumed her story. I don't hold it against her that at this moment she omitted the details about Jason touching Linda's breasts. The essence of the matter was stated; that would only have inflamed my anger and weakened by objectivity. I could learn of that later.

"The next day I was very uneasy about what I had done. It should not surprise you that Linda wasn't happy either." She saw questioning in my eyes and her voice rose. "I swear to you, Fred, she did. She was not at all happy with herself for staying and watching us."

"OK, I believe you. Go on."

"Sometimes, when something disturbs you and then the disturbing part of it fades away, it changes, instead of disappearing as well. Maybe to neutral. Maybe to even interesting, even attractive. And sometimes, if how it's changing is uncomfortable and you start to fight it, it just gets stronger. I think you know what I'm talking about now.

"Jason wasn't doing anything to encourage that. He was still himself, nothing suspicious about his behavior toward his mother. But things were changing for Linda. The snake had entered the garden.

"Don't think she welcomed that, Fred. Far from it." Once again her voice rose as she saw some doubt in my expression. "She knew damn well it wasn't good, but it was starting to run away with her and she was begging me to help her get over it. I wanted to do something to help. I did try, Fred, but it didn't help. It was my next big mistake, and it made things worse."

"And that was...?"

"Another secret from the lives of Sammy and Jannie. You heard the first one yesterday. There is one more." She needed a long time to steel herself this time. "I wanted it to help. I thought by telling this other story it would help her realize she's not alone in her feelings and that there are other viewpoints about...it...that aren't so harsh. Maybe if that took the edge off she'd stop wrestling with it and then she could just let it go."

"That wasn't too bright, Jannie," I growled, "I should have expected better from you."

I hated to see the way she seemed to collapse at the force of my censure. As much as I would have liked the criticism to focus solely on the act and not the person, there existed no appropriate way to say that. Now it was harder than ever to recognize the Jannie I knew from our years of friendship.

"I know, Fred, how well I know! But I told her. Do you want to know it now?"

"Might as well," I said, as gently as I could force myself to. "I think I know enough already that the details won't make it much worse."

"OK," said she, taking a very slow, deep breath, "Here it is."

This, as you have probably already guessed, was the Mark and Maria story, only now with real names, which happen to be Jerry and Costanza. Whatever. Any other time that part where she got fired up and took on that person at the party would have been a real kicker for me. Certainly, not now.

"So, there you have it. Little Miss Fix-Everything has now broken the machinery worse than before." Jannie stopped, eyes downcast, facing straight to the floor.

I was having trouble believing anyone could pull something that lunkheaded. Of course, as you know if you've seen the earlier parts of this story, she was telling the truth. About this, and everything else.

"All right, then. Go on."

"That night was for her just like the one we talked about before, only much worse, because now she wasn't furious with you; she was furious with herself. It was a runaway train in her mind now and she was desperate. You think she looked bad that morning before you went to work? Believe me, she was a work of art that time, compared to what I saw now.

"We jawed about it; she felt better, but was no nearer to putting this monster to death than before. She said it to me straight right then. I'll say it to you straight, too--if you're ready for it. Make very sure you are."

"I am, Jannie," I said, after taking time to prepare as best I could. Even so, I wasn't too sure.

"I can recall the words, verbatim:

"The horrible thing about all this is that there are two opposing passions burning inside me now. No way do I love Fred any less, and no way would I ever willingly indulge myself against him. I swear that to you and myself right now. So then, what is the other? I suppose I could say it a couple of ways, but perhaps the best one for our purposes right now is to say that the second passion is this frantic need to find some way to be able to...hell, I'll say it dirty; maybe that will help...I want to find some way to fuck Jason without hurting Fred. There. I've said it."

Yes, it was damn good she warned me, though even so my wife's words set me reeling for a while. Such a crazy mixture of conflicting messages! Like a ball in a nightmare's version of a pinball game, my mind darted from one to another and again, randomly, trying desperately to extract comfort from the good parts, and understanding from all of them, and failing.

There was no reason to be shocked at her admission; it was nothing more than stating the compulsion to do exactly what she had done, and what I had caught her at, her and Jason. My dying effort to make something positive of this revelation passed, and the whole thing melted into one gray, homogeneous mass. At least I'll have it to draw upon later, I thought.

"Go on, Jannie," I said. She must have expected an explosion, because she visibly relaxed when it didn't happen.

"Fred, this is the one and only time I have ever yelled at her. I had asked her if she was sure she could resist temptation and her answer was equivocal. I told her, loudly, that wasn't good enough and she should find a cave to live in until it blows over. Or a convent, or something like that.

"Well, I don't know exactly how it happened after that. One way or another, she snapped. She turned into a different person. It's almost enough to convert you to a believer in demonic possession, so far removed she had become from herself."

Once again, that mental flailing took over. For a while my image of her shifted radically, from sinner to a woman newly fallen from a lifeboat, suddenly swept away by the violent sea around her, helpless as a bit of flotsam. I struggled to hold onto that picture. Tragic as it was, it was better than the one of the duplicitous betrayer of my trust that had been haunting me from that terrible day of discovery to this. I could not, and it faded.

"The gist of it, Fred, to pass over details that don't really change anything, is that she suddenly was trying to live two lives at once, two completely separate, distinct lives, with no part of either one overlapping any part of the other. I swear, over and over, she did not want to hurt you; she just wanted to chase a silly dream, rewrite reality top to bottom, but just for a little while. She thought she could do it all, get it out of her system, and jump right back into her old self, with nothing changed but a few crazy memories left over. We both know--we all know--it could never have turned out that way, even if you'd never gotten wise to it all. But she was getting lost in it, and I didn't know how to even talk to her any more. Maybe this was another mistake, maybe not, but for the most part I just pulled back and let her--them--carry on, not saying anything to either support nor criticize. Anything I might say that even hinted at reconsidering her behavior annoyed her."

I don't know how long I remained there, deep in thought. Jannie, to her credit, did not try to run from my reactions. She had one more thing to say, and said it very softly, nearly inaudibly.

"I can assure you now, that is all over. The Linda that waits back home has recovered her values, but now they have become her enemies, shouting the depths of her depravity back into her mind without taking a breath, every waking moment, maybe even when she's not awake. You know how her upbringing was; she's prone to that, and now the superego has flattened a bullhorn against her ear and launched into a Jonathan Edwards harangue that doesn't pause a moment to come up for air.

"The lies she fed herself to keep the illusion going are dead and burned, the ashes scattered to the four winds. She is listening again. 

"What is not the same is her spirit. That, Fred, is silent now, but I refuse to believe it is dead forever. At this moment all that can be seen is the hollow shell of a woman. I pray that someday, somehow, the right things will happen to breathe life into it again."

"I can pray for that too, Jannie," I replied, my tone just like her own. "But I cannot promise that I'll be there to see it happen, much less help it to happen. Maybe it's true, Jannie, that there was a lot of pressure on her, and Jason, too, and that it came upon them--indeed, all of you--unannounced and unexpected. In fairness, that has to be allowed for.

"But in the end, Linda and Jason are not puppets. That same maturity you cited as reasons to enjoy sex with Jason--and I am not questioning that--makes them accountable for their actions. It falls to me to find as much understanding as I can in their circumstances, but they made their own choices. They alone are ultimately responsible for them."

"I won't dispute that, Fred," Jannie replied, "But please remember that goes for me as well. And Sammy. And Fred--lest you forget--it goes for you.

"Think about it, Fred. There are five, five of us in this. And all five have made mistakes that contributed to it turning into what it did. Nobody's entirely at fault, but nobody is completely innocent either. Every one of us, every single one, had a hand in creating this tragedy."

There was much to absorb now, and I needed time to absorb it.

"Shall I leave you alone now, Fred?" Jannie asked, her voice subdued almost to a whisper.

"Yes, I think you should. I have a lot to think about."

"Goodbye, Fred."

"Goodbye."

This was Thursday. That mysterious Friday was almost here. Now I wasn't so sure I cared about it.

I wasn't sure about anything.

(to be continued)