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Only Go Around Once

By: pollystrachan



Helen was visiting her daughter, Lucy, and Lucy's fiancé, Jason. Unusually for Helen, instead of driving for five hours - which Bob always insisted on whenever they visited Lucy - she came on the train. She also came alone. (Bob had work.) Lucy asked Jason to meet Helen off the 20:14 at Wilmington station.

From her window seat Helen watched the slowly approaching red-brick station along the curve in the track and felt the immense power of the engine vibrating through the train and through her body as steel brakes gripped steel wheels. The momentum of the train ebbed and the cars were finally brought to a halt.

She stepped down from the car. She looked tiny with the smooth silver capsule of the Amtrak train towering above her. She was wearing a black wool overcoat with an embroidered pattern in black thread. A small black overnight case on wheels stood next to her; she was holding a second bag with a thin rope handle and the look of a department store or boutique.

As always, Helen's face was heavily made up. Her red lips seemed to leap off her whitened face. She smiled when she caught sight of Jason, leaning against the wall by the stairs that led down to the street. In return Jason looked relieved to see her smile, as though he might have been expecting something less warm from his fiancée's mother. Helen half lifted an arm to wave but by then Jason was on her, embracing her. She felt her slight body completely engulfed by his strong arms.

Well, she thought, he seems pleased to see me.

And it was good to see him. She felt that familiar, slight disappointment that Jason was of the generation behind hers, and that in a few short months he would be her relation by marriage. She loved the sensation of being enveloped by his hugs - always so enthusiastic - and the feeling that at least for these moments being such a small woman was an unadulterated pleasure. The wild thought of being physically consumed by this man occurred to her again, as it had many times before tonight.

Jason peered at her, smiling, but he seemed to be checking her face as though he were seeing it for the first time, looking at her wrinkled eyes and mouth, perhaps, or checking the roots of her freshly colored hair. She was slightly older, of course, since the last time they had all been together, but she was enough past sixty now that she would probably look more or less the same for many years to come. Physical aging seems to come in sharp and sudden declines after long, idle stretches. Helen thought she was in for a steady run of a few years after an alarming physical decline in her late fifties. She had always been a fit woman, however, and the decline was measured more in terms of looser muscles and increasing sag around the arms and thighs. By any measure she was still a striking woman.

Her make-up was a little too much, as always – even she would concede that. Her eyes were black-lined (in an expressive way, she had thought when she checked herself in the compact just before getting off the train) and foundation powder had caught in the tiny crevices of her face to reveal, instead of conceal, the pattern of wrinkles there; more like finger-print powder. Her hair was a version of blond, reddish, shoulder-length; better-looking, she felt, for a little extra length these last few months. It was held back from her ears with barrettes, which she always thought was a bold and youthful way to wear her hair. And why not? You only go around once.

After a few seconds of 'how are you' and 'you look great,' the typical awkwardness set in between them. It never failed: halting, superficial conversation, and the unshakeable impression that they were meeting for the first time. Their backgrounds were so different – one an egghead PhD in his thirties, the other now in her sixties and a homemaker for nearly forty years with no education past high school – that Helen used to wonder whether Jason's stiltedness was because he thought he was too smart for her. Granted, he'd never actually said anything to suggest as much. Perhaps, she reflected, it was her own insecurity that made her think that way.

It was all very silly, Helen thought. They got along well enough, after all, but she was unable to break through to Jason, to connect at a deeper level. So why, as the train pulled into Wilmington station, had she felt her heartbeat quickening at the prospect of seeing her future son?

Jason offered his elbow to Helen as they crossed the street to the parking garage. He had never done that before, but Helen smiled with pleasure and gladly slipped her arm through his. Somehow it felt more intimate even than if he had put his arm around her.

Waiting for the elevator in the garage, after a few more lightweight and inconsequential exchanges, Jason surprised Helen with a sudden seriousness that came over his face. He spoke with a frown creasing his brow. He looked like a man carrying a heavy burden that he could no longer shoulder alone.

"You know, Helen, I think I finally know what it is that's made me so uncomfortable around you all these years."

Helen looked at him questioningly.

"It's Bob. It's not you, it's Bob. The reason we keep each other at arm's length like this. The way we can't speak about anything but the weather."

"I'm not following, dear. I didn't know you were uncomfortable with me."

It helps to feign ignorance sometimes.

Jason went on. "It makes perfect sense, really, that the father of my girlfriend and future wife would automatically – even if unconsciously - be a rival to me. It's no wonder that he and I have never got on. And in the same way I can see now that it's natural for me to feel attracted to you, the mother of my future wife."

Helen stared up at his soft brown eyes, set in that angular and muscular face. He looked so earnest, like he'd been struggling with this for a while and had finally worked up the nerve to say it aloud. The moment was mercifully dissolved when the elevator door slid open with a ding and two teenage boys tumbled out, cutting between them. Helen stepped into the elevator then assumed the automatic position, back to the wall and facing straight out through the door.

Jason violated elevator protocol by standing right in front of her, facing her. He was intimidatingly close, towering above her. She felt a small shiver of fear run through her.

Looking down at her he picked up where he had left off.

"I tried to ignore it for years, and then I agonized over it for years more. But when you think about it, if there's some natural resemblance - in looks and mannerism, and also maybe in some aspect of personality - what man wouldn't be attracted by someone who's, in essence, another version of his selected mate?"

In spite of her show of not understanding what he was saying, as she listened to these words (my future son, she thought, the nerdy professor with the body of a quarterback) Helen felt a small popping sensation in her belly, as though a bubble had just burst inside her, and a soft outward flow of warmth spread upward to her breasts and down to her groin and thighs. She curled her toes inside her black mid-rise pumps as she recognized the very beginnings of a sensation that came all too infrequently these days.

"I'm sorry, Helen." Jason was still looking at her, but now there was a scared, pleading look in his eyes. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. Helen, I'm sorry. Can you please forget what I just said?"

She couldn't help laughing.

"Jason, my dear. Are you okay?" She reached up to feel his forehead.

"Oh god, I'm so embarrassed," he said. "Why did I ever think it was a good idea to actually say something like that?"

"It's okay, Jason. It's not as if I haven't wondered about it myself."

He looked up quickly. "You have?"

"From time to time. I mean, I don't spend all day long on it, that would be foolish, but I defy any woman in my situation to say she's never thought about it." 

Jason half-smiled, still looking sheepish.

"Having said that," Helen continued, "thinking about it and acting on it are two very different things."

As she spoke she realized she could feel Jason's hand on her side, inside her coat and against her black cotton dress, gently squeezing her ribcage. She could feel individually each fingertip and thumb pressing into her.

"Jason." Her tone was sharp. A battle was stirring inside her between logic and sensation, clouding her brain as it sent waves of heat cascading through her. There was good common sense in Helen, and a strong sense of right and wrong, especially where her children were concerned; but what was beginning to surge through her, she knew, might be stronger than all of that. She had to fight it while her judgment still held.

The elevator door opened and Jason stepped back. He could not look Helen in the eye; in fact he looked abject, thoroughly ashamed.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

In the car, with nothing more said between them, they sat there with the engine on and the heater blowing warm air onto their laps. Jason seemed hesitant; he looked pale and scared by the low light of the dashboard. After a false start he said, with slurred speech as though he wasn't quite in control of himself, "Helen, would you do me a big favor?"

Helen looked over at him. Her mind was in turmoil. "I don't think I can answer that unless I know what the favor is."

"Would you mind if, while we drove home, you hitched up your dress so I could see your legs?"

Helen caught her breath for just a second. She felt her face tighten as she automatically reacted the way she would to any inappropriate suggestion. Jason saw the change and immediately looked panicked. In his scared eyes she could see the collapse of all he had with Lucy, the ugly scenes that would play out, the humiliation and shame. She also saw his terror at the idea of losing what he obviously valued so much. She realized then that Jason was at the mercy of his physical attraction to her, and it was so powerful that he was risking everything for it. He was a slave to his passion for Helen.

That's the kind of attention that can make a woman do bold things.

Did she decide, or did she react instinctively? Was her body making this decision? Her body was certainly making a suggestion... Her mind would never allow her to think that this was a good idea, and yet the mind can be overruled.

She sighed in confusion.

"I wish it didn't mean so much to me, Helen," Jason said, "but it would be very special for me." He was trying to control the quaver in his voice. "That's why I asked you as a favor."

Then, as if to be doing something as opposed to nothing, Jason put the car in gear and moved out of the parking space, trying to relieve the pressure of the moment but without cancelling the moment altogether.

They were five floors up in the parking garage, and they began the spiralling descent down the narrow concrete ramp. Unnaturally bright spotlights were mounted at intervals on the walls, creating isolated pools of near-daylight, as though compensating for the dusky gloom everywhere else in the garage. As they passed one of these spotlights Helen looked down at her lap: the black coat over the black dress. The coat was not buttoned. She looked at her small hands, clasped together like a nun in chapel. She glanced over at Jason, then with a slow movement she moved her hands apart, opening the coat wide. She ran her palms down her thighs towards the hem of the dress, just above her knees. Jason noticed the movement and looked over at her. Helen smiled at him in a conspiratorial way, but she could not keep the nervousness from her face.

Jason's breath caught in his throat and he seemed to grip the wheel tighter as they continued their downward spiral to the street. What is he thinking? Helen wondered. What am I thinking?

Before she could stop herself, Helen drew her hands towards her, sliding back the thin fabric from her thighs as she went. Her black pantyhose gleamed in the intermittent light.

Back at street level, at the gate to leave the parking garage, Jason lowered the window and passed his ticket to the guy in the booth. He was a young guy, in his late teens or early twenties. Jason took his first proper look at Helen in the passenger seat, illuminated by the harsh spotlights trained on the gate.

Helen flattened her hands against her belly to hold the bunched material of the dress out of the way while he looked. This was such an extraordinary experience for her that she almost felt like someone else. What kind of woman exposed herself like this? What havoc would she cause if she didn't stop this? In a whisper she called herself an ugly word, but she could not stop what she was doing.

Jason reached out the window with a couple of bills for the garage attendant. Helen watched the boy's face as his eyes naturally flicked across the scene in front of him. Was he looking at her thighs? Did it matter? She'd never see him again. The attendant was looking, and from the look on his face he knew something was going on here. He glanced up at Helen and as their eyes locked she pictured him standing behind her, pushing her over onto the hood of the car, pulling her dress all the way up over her backside, and tearing open her pantyhose with his cock as he entered her, forcing her panties aside. Then the image was gone.

They pulled onto the city street and moved off into a new lightscape, the slightly yellow glare of streetlamps making the car alternately bright then dark with a soothing wavelike rhythm. Jason reached to the console and turned the fan down to low, bringing an abrupt quiet to the car's interior. As he withdrew his hand from the control he let it fall toward Helen's black-sheathed thigh. She saw it coming and moved her knees right, toward the door.

"No," she said, sudden and sharp. Then, more softly, "Let me."

With a shimmy and a quick jerk she pulled the skirt of her dress up to her waist. She pushed the coat open wider. Now her legs were completely exposed from heels to hips. Her white panties were visible through the pantyhose, a silvery sheen of satin through the micro-honeycomb of the nylon. She kept her knees together in an ironic show of modesty.

They drove on in silence. The streetlights regularly picked up then dropped the curves and shadows of Helen's hips and knees and calves.

Finally Jason cleared his throat. He sounded like he was having trouble swallowing. "I don't know what to say, Helen. Thank you. You're beautiful."

She crossed one leg over the other, right over left. There was room to spare for her small frame in the passenger seat. Most people cannot cross their legs so easily in a car. She let her right shoe dangle from her toes, the heel and the arch of the foot visible and taut as she gently bounced her calf against her thigh. She called herself the name again. "Slut," she heard in her mind. "It's like you're in an Amsterdam shop window."

"So what are you going to do now?" she said aloud.

Jason looked into her eyes for a second, then back to the road.

Sex has a momentum that cannot be interrupted. Sex escalates like war. There was a challenge in Helen's question, but also simple curiosity. I've come with you this far, she was saying, now what do you have in mind? For Helen, despite the state of partial undress, she had not taken any steps she could not recover from. They could stop right there and it would be a thrill to recall, but a chaste thrill. Helen felt she had taken a risky step, much riskier than Jason's clumsy declaration of attraction. If he didn't pick up the baton now she would feel vulnerable, even ridiculous. She waited a few seconds for his reply.

"You know I look down your top every chance I get?"

Helen faked surprise. "Do you?"

Jason nodded, still staring at the road ahead. "And you arrange your blouse or t-shirt or tank-top so I can get a view of your cleavage if I happen to be looking. You've been doing it for years."

"I wasn't aware..."

"Oh, Helen, come on. It started that time we were all at the beach. You had on a red tank top, pretty low. You bent over to grab Stevie" – this was Helen's grandson by her son Mark – "he must have only been three at the time - and I was standing right there in front of you and looked down and you weren't wearing a bra. I saw your tits. They were beautiful. I forced myself to look up into your face because I wanted somehow to let you know what I had seen. And you were looking right at me. You'd been watching me look. And you smiled. God, even the memory of that turns me on. So you knew, Helen. You've been doing it ever since because I think you get a little buzz out of watching me."

"So my secret's out. OK. I confess, I do notice you looking and I do sometimes lean over a little more than I might need to."

Jason reached out and placed his right hand on Helen's thigh, then slid it between the crossed legs. "I know how wrong this is, Helen. But I think if we can help each other a little, we'll be fine."

"Help each other?" Helen's tone was harsh but she didn't move to avoid Jason's hand. "I was under the impression I was helping you."

"Don't you feel any of this?" Jason moved his hand up onto Helen's right leg and stroked downward to the knee.

"There's nothing we can do about it, Jason."

"But you feel it?"

Helen didn't know how a situation like this was supposed to go. She wanted Jason to take the lead, since he had started it. She wanted not to feel guilty. She wanted--

"...I don't know what I feel. Perhaps this should just stop now. In fact, yes, let's stop. That's enough."

Suddenly in a hurry for this to be over, Helen wiggled her hips and did a half crab position as she pulled her dress back down into place. The coat closed over her like the sea engulfing a diver.

"Well, thank you for that," Jason said after a moment. He sounded sincere.

Helen began to feel the stirrings of anger that come with humiliation. "I don't suppose you'd want me to mention this to Lucy? How about to Bob?" There was some malice in her voice, as she sensed an advantage and was pondering the possibilities.

Jason's answer surprised her. His voice sounded very weary.

"Actually, you know what? I don't mind if you do. It's not like I have any control over what I'm feeling, and in some ways it would be a relief just to move on from the endless cycle of frustration. It would bring it to a head, or bring it to an end, or both. It's been so long, Helen, that it could only really be a good thing."

She looked at him. "But that's not really what you want, is it?"

"No, of course not. It's obvious what I want. But if that can't happen it would be better for it all to be over. I mean, for how I feel to be over with."

There was a moment of quiet, with only the low whine of the engine to listen to.

"You know," Helen said, "there's no way it can happen. Between us, I mean." As she said it she knew she was testing him. In some ways it was the boldest move she had ever made with a man, including her husband of forty years.

Jason looked over. "I know that. But it won't stop me wanting you." There was an almost plaintive note of resignation in his voice.

Silence returned. For Helen, Jason's answer was enough. She could remember being wanted, and she was still admired, but the visceral, gut-churning lust she could feel emanating from this young man – and at such personal risk to him - was almost overpowering. It made her giddy, almost drunk, the sexual power she could still wield.

Then Jason said, as if to kill it all stone cold dead, "I think you should tell Bob."

Helen put her head back on the headrest. A sigh escaped her like a gas burner before ignition.

"It wouldn't make any difference." The subject of her husband's attitude toward her had been picked clean in her mind long ago, and revisiting the subject served no purpose for Helen.


Only Go Around Once



"Are you kidding?" Jason said. "How could it not make him furious?"

"Bob's a man of big ego. He's very sure of himself and of his superiority, even if the outward circumstances don't support him in his own conclusions."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He's just not a man who would give a second thought to someone lusting after his wife. In fact he would want that. It makes him feel good. Like he picked a winner."

"He definitely did that. And I guess he thinks you wouldn't dream of looking at another man?"

"I never have, not seriously, so I suppose he's right."

"What do you get out of it?"

"Me?"

"You. Have your expectations been met? Are you content? Are you happy?"

"I guess, although as far as Bob's concerned the questions don't even need to be asked."

"He must be very sure of himself. I don't think I could be that complacent about Lucy."

Helen glanced at Jason's earnest, serious profile.

"You'll be a good husband," she said. "I see how happy she is with you."

"Well, thank you. I know that's not the easiest thing for you to say, since we've never really connected in any personal way. You probably find it hard to see what she sees in me."

"That's not true."

"Anyway, I hope Bob takes care of you. In every way. You deserve it."

"We do okay."

"No, Helen, I don't think you get anywhere near the attention you deserve. I think you're neglected. I think you should be ravished half a dozen times a day."

"Really."

"At least. Would you like that?"

Helen snorted and then laughed, somewhat derisively but self-deprecatingly, too. She was pleased with the compliment.

"Helen, the thing is, I don't want you to think of me as hostile or underhand or conniving or unfaithful. I just happen to have a gigantic hard-on for my future mother who happens to be so distractingly sexy that I think about her every day, whether I want to or not. I'm stuck with it. It doesn't change anything at all about how I feel about Lucy."

"Where am I sleeping tonight?"

"Basement. As usual."

Jason and Lucy's townhouse was snug. It had three bedrooms, technically, but one of those was in the basement. The second bedroom upstairs was an office and library containing two large desks, each with a computer. Books in stacks covered most of the remaining floor space. The basement was an exercise room and TV den, and was more easily converted into a temporary bedroom. One of the two sofas transformed into a quite comfortable bed, and a powder room made it the obvious place to put visitors.

"All right," Helen said. "Well, let me do this for you. Come to me at half after midnight. I'll give you half an hour, then I have to get to bed and sleep."

"Half an hour. For seven years of lust." Jason smiled ruefully.

"Take it or leave it."

"Oh, I'll take it. I will definitely take it, Helen."

She reached out and patted Jason's right arm consolingly.

*

Jason made himself scarce for the rest of the evening, claiming papers to grade and lectures to prepare. It was past dinner-time and Helen had eaten on the train, so she and Lucy headed straight for the living-room sofa with a bottle of chardonnay. They spent a couple of hours catching up, which was a ritual of theirs whenever they got together, and discussing plans for the wedding.

Helen loved her daughter dearly, and she admired her almost as much. Lucy's success at school and then later in her career as a social psychologist was in many ways a compensation to Helen, who had married then stayed home with her children before it became clear to her that she had selected the less fashionable course for herself. Helen had made gestures towards starting a career, but she always found that there was one obstacle or another in the way, someone else's priorities trumping hers. And the truth was, she really didn't mind.

As she grew older, Helen realized that she was happy enough to be a homemaker for her family. It was a job she saw as being just as important as any wage-paying position and in many ways was much more valuable. She was pleased these days that so many women were free to make the choice to stay home with children if they wished; that was the real triumph of feminism, she thought. But what she did worry about was that she would pass along her undeniably passive ways to her children - particularly to Lucy, being the girl - and leave them with no ambition.

Lucy had proved Helen's worries to be unfounded.

As they sat talking, Helen felt the excitement and the strangeness of her encounter with Jason begin to recede. The subject of their discussion began to seem ridiculous to her, and she felt foolish for having agreed to such an adolescent request. She felt her esteem for Jason diminish and her protective instinct towards Lucy grow stronger. Where a couple of hours earlier she had been feeling the welcome flames of passion licking her cold and neglected soul, she was now feeling a new fire inside her, the hot wrath of indignation.

But still she could not bring herself to mention any of it to Lucy. What kind of mother did that make her? Didn't she owe her daughter the honest truth about her fiancé? Wasn't it a mother's job to protect her child? Shouldn't she now reveal to Lucy that her betrothed is only a tomcat, after all?

But did Helen really believe that? 

"It's after eleven, darling, I think I'll head off to bed. First, though, a quick shower; travel always leaves you feeling as if you walked the whole way."

They embraced, and Helen went downstairs to the basement for her toiletries.

Half an hour later, after a long hot shower which she hoped would cleanse her of any impure thoughts, Helen, in a white toweling robe, returned to the basement from the upstairs bathroom. In the open suitcase on the sofa-bed she could see the thick and long cotton nightshirt she had brought. Not even a little bit sexy. It was a reality check. You're sixty-one years old, almost sixty-two... Without your make-up you look every day of sixty-eight... He's your daughter's fiancé... Put the old-lady nightgown on, Helen. Be the old lady you are.

A short while later she turned up the thermostat on the wall, turned the small reading lamp down to its lowest setting, and climbed into bed. I'll wait until twelve-thirty, she told herself as her cheek warmed the cool pillow. I don't even believe he'll come. This is all just silly. Even if he does come...

*

She woke to the touch of a firm hand stroking her back through her nightshirt. She heard her name repeated softly, so softly that it seemed to linger from the dream she had just been roused from. She was warm from sleep, and her body felt soft and relaxed. She couldn't remember being woken up like this in years. She lifted her head to look up at him. His face was serious and tense-looking, softened only by the brown curls on his forehead.

"Climb onto the sofa," he said in a whisper.

Helen was confused, perhaps still a little sleepy.

"The sofa? I thought--"

"I want you to show me your ass."

"Jason."

If she had gone to sleep resolved to end this absurd situation, something had infiltrated her dreams and stolen that resolve. She was waking to a singular, urgent desire deep inside her. She felt Jason's hand trail lightly down the soft cotton on her back until he was tracing the crack of her ass through the fabric with his fingertips.

"Sofa," he said, and gave her right cheek a pinch. "On your knees. And don't fight me, Helen. You only gave me half an hour."

As she got up from the bed she turned to face him, close, and for a half-second their lips touched, then parted.

He was wearing boxer-briefs and a tight-fitting gray T-shirt, clothes he normally wore for bed, she guessed. He looked less like a college professor and more like a college athlete. She had often noticed Jason's well-defined muscles and his lithe body. He seemed to stay in shape effortlessly, and based on what she could see of him now, most of the time he dressed down to disguise his physique. He was being less modest now.

She stepped over to the other sofa, which was only a few feet from the bed she had been sleeping on. In spite of all she had told herself before going to sleep, she could feel her desire turning into arousal. Her heartbeat was strong in her chest. She pulled the nightshirt up to her knees. Blood was coursing through her with every thump in her chest, racing to her cunt and ass and tits to swell the soft flesh there. Her breath came in short gasps that she could do nothing to control.

She knelt on the sofa facing the white wall and pulled her nightshirt higher. The brush of cotton over her nipples was like a small electric shock. Her breasts felt bigger and firmer than they had in years, and her nipples were so sensitive now that she thought one touch of Jason's hand might send her into orgasm. Her body felt like a stretchy membrane filling up with thick honey that would burst at the slightest pressure.

But Jason wasn't interested in her tits. Not yet. Helen glanced over her shoulder – she was holding the nightshirt bunched up at her waist and her ass felt uncomfortably exposed – and she saw Jason drop to his knees behind her, like a supplicant in church. There was a strange look on his face, almost like pain, but she could see reverence there, too. It was unsettling to see. No matter how much a man might tell her she was still beautiful, Helen knew that certain parts of the body could never escape the ravages of time, and she knew her backside was not a picture-postcard to look at. She had always had wide hips for her small frame, and the extra flesh made no effort stay in place any more.

She felt Jason's hand in the small of her back, and she understood she was to bend forward. She pulled the nightshirt over her head and discarded it, then rested her arms on the back of the sofa. She was completely naked now; her ass was sticking out and up into the air, and by bending over she was revealing her swollen pussy lips to Jason like a ripe fruit. She had never felt so exposed or vulnerable.

She heard a gasp from Jason and looked over her left shoulder to see him. She was impatient to feel his hands on her and to see what he wanted to do with her. She wanted to see and feel his pent-up passion burst out of him and into her. She was shocked at the thoughts that were running through her mind; she was appalled but thrilled at the lust heaving around inside her.

"My god, Helen," Jason said softly.

She felt his hands on her ass - finally! – and for a while he stroked and squeezed her butt cheeks as though he were a blind man learning the shape and texture of a new object. She felt his thumbs glide along the crevice between her cheeks, and she could feel her asshole puckering involuntarily at the close contact.

Jason's hands moved down the backs of her thighs and kneaded the flesh all the way to the backs of her knees. On the return trip he squeezed harder as he went, his hands gripping her thighs, the soft tissue rippling under his palms. As he neared the lower curve of her ass cheeks she could sense the proximity of his thumbs to her cunt lips, and she expected him to plunge into the wetness that lay beyond her vulva's curtain of skin.

Instead he moved his hands outward so that each buttock was resting in the V formed by the thumb and forefinger of each hand. She looked over her shoulder again to watch him. He squeezed hard and simultaneously pushed upwards so that her butt-cheeks were spilling over his hands. It looked like he was holding two enormous ice-cream cones. As if to reinforce the image, Jason leaned forward and began to lick and kiss and nibble at her ass, left cheek, right cheek, slurping, smacking his lips, occasionally dipping his nose down into the cleft and inhaling deeply. She heard him begin to moan. It was a kind of rumble in his chest to begin with but as he kept on, taking the meat of her ass in his teeth, running his tongue along her crack, the sound became more of a note of appreciation, as if he were eating her alive and delighting in the taste of her.

Helen had begun to make noise herself. She tried to suppress it by biting herself on the forearm, but she could not contain it for long and began to let out first little whimpers of acquiescence, then full-throated groans of pleasure.

Jason seemed to fall back from her for a moment, and Helen felt a cold draft over her butt and thighs, still wet with Jason's saliva. But Jason had not let go of her and she felt him spreading her ass even wider with his hands, and then felt his hot breath at the lips of her cunt.

"Yes," she said aloud. The word just popped out of her; she had not meant to speak. She could hear in her own voice the heavy burr of desire, and it excited her to know she was still capable of this kind of passion. 

"Taste it," she said. "Taste me. Lick me."

She was gyrating her hips, trying to grind herself into his face. It felt like a dam breaking when he first pushed past her outer labia and found the hot wetness beyond. Jason's tongue flicked inside her and began lapping at her honey.

"Lick my... lick my cunt, Jason. Eat it."

Saying these words out loud only added to her pleasure. It almost didn't matter who was back there sucking and licking her. It felt almost like masturbation with a very cleverly designed toy. Helen felt a need inside her that had gone unmet for years, and now by accident she had found the means to meet that need. 

She felt Jason's fingers near her clit and she reached down between her legs to guide him. Compared to her own slender fingers Jason's were like rough-sawed logs. Through only the touch of her hand she taught him the exact pressure she wanted, then led him in the intricate manipulation and rhythm that only she knew. She realized, as she released Jason's hand and let him continue by himself, that he was only the second person in the world ever to know how to satisfy her that way. Not even Bob knew. Bob had never been interested enough to find out.

The sensations that Jason's fingers and mouth were stirring in her core were growing stronger; Helen knew she was close to orgasm when a kind of plasticity took over her body and she felt as if she could fold over on herself a hundred times.

As if sensing the change in her, Jason shifted a little behind her and Helen felt his mouth and tongue slide up toward her ass again. He maintained the pressure on her clit with his right hand while with his left he spread her ass cheeks again to reveal her dark puckering hole. His tongue poked and probed at her asshole, trying to overcome the defensive muscle spasm that closed her up at the first sign of an invader. Helen realized what Jason wanted and she focused her mind on relaxing her pelvis. After a moment she felt Jason's stiff but slippery tongue slide into her and the combination of sensations was suddenly too much. She yelped at the onset of her orgasm, and Jason responded by reaching under her with his left hand and taking her left nipple in his fingers and squeezing hard.

Helen came for a long time. On her knees, bellowing, she felt like a cow in a field. Her legs and arms grew suddenly weak and she fell backward and sideways into Jason, who gathered her up in his arms and held her close.

After a couple of minutes Helen realized she had been crying gently into Jason's chest. Jason rocked her back and forth, saying nothing. She wasn't upset. She could have found lots of words to describe what she felt, but upset or sad was not among them. She felt, strangely enough, as if she had fallen naked into the energy field of the universe, and she was now fully charged with the life force. She did not say as much to Jason, however. Somehow she knew that Jason's experience had been entirely earthbound. Small wonder, considering he had worked so hard for her pleasure.

"What time is it?" she asked him quietly.

He kissed her sixty-one-year-old forehead. "After one," he said. "My time's up."

"I'm sorry, Jason. You were so good to me."

"Don't apologize. Time to get some sleep."

Jason lifted her in his arms and stood her on the sofa-bed like a child getting ready for bed. He picked up her night shirt and bunched it up ready to go over her head. She worked her arms through the sleeves and as she brought the shirt down over her head she felt the hot softness of his mouth on her right breast. He sucked the nipple and a surprising amount of the breast into his mouth. He looked as though he would die without it.

For a couple of seconds they stood like that, Helen's hands on his shoulders, then Jason let the breast fall from his mouth and he helped her pull down the nightshirt. She got under the covers.

"Sleep tight," Jason whispered.

He climbed the stairs out of the basement.

*

At breakfast, still in her nightshirt, Helen sat sideways to the small dining table so she could bask in the warmth of the direct sunlight coming through the french window. She tasted every bittersweet drop of her coffee as though she had personally supervised the picking and roasting of the beans in South America. Tiny motes of dust that swirled in the sunlight brushed against her cheek and she imagined she could feel every one of them, knew the shape of each, and its trajectory on the domestic breeze. The velvety green leaves of a geranium on the sideboard felt like the skin of a shrew or a vole under her gently caressing thumb. The world was suddenly alive to her this morning in a way that she had not felt in years. No, not in years, in decades.

Jason and Lucy were separately occupied: at the other side of the table Jason pored over the newspaper; in the kitchen, Lucy opened a can of food for the gray-striped cat that encircled her legs in a figure-eight, then began to unload the dishwasher while listening to the radio. Helen had a chance to watch Jason, who was idly looping one of his curls around his finger as he concentrated on the text in front of him.

She recalled the attentions of his mouth and tongue and hands the night before and shivered slightly at the remembered sensations that had pulsed, throbbed, and raced through her body. After a moment she realized that she was smiling and quickly raised her coffee mug to her lips. Not that anyone was watching her. Jason was engrossed with the news. He was still wearing the T-shirt he had worn the night before, but was now in navy sweat pants with his college name printed vertically down one leg.

Was he avoiding looking at her? she wondered. Other than a very chaste kiss on the cheek from him when she had emerged from the basement (and what a long and deep sleep she had enjoyed...) Jason had more or less avoided catching her eye this morning. Was he feeling guilty? Or, after all these years of lusting after her, had his encounter with Helen been a let-down? Was that why he hadn't stayed with her last night? For sure, after the way he had made her feel, Helen would have let him stay all night to do whatever he wanted to do to her, half-hour ultimatum be damned. As she thought more about it she became convinced that this was the truth: Jason was disappointed in her, he wanted nothing more to do with her. He couldn't even look her in the eye.

She felt indignant, even angry, that the magnetism Jason had apparently felt towards her yesterday had disappeared so abruptly. She felt small and old and terribly used. Jason should show a little more consideration, she thought. After all, she now had very dangerous knowledge about him that she could use against him whenever she felt like it. If she felt like it, of course. As she watched him she imagined the potential of this sudden new power, the chaos she could bring to his life with a few well-placed words.

But these things cut both ways, don't they? What would be a disaster for Jason would be an even bigger disaster for Helen. She would lose the love and affection of her only daughter. So, no, she could not exploit the situation that way; there was enough guilt to go around that everyone would be damaged beyond repair.




Only Go Around Once



But that didn't change the fact that the young man who had virtually begged her to undress for him, to pose like an animal while he violated her with his mouth and his hands, was now through with her, and would not even acknowledge her presence.

The phone rang. Helen saw Lucy disappear from the frame of the kitchen doorway as she went to answer it. Helen looked across the table at Jason again; to her surprise she found him already looking at her.

"I have to have you," he said in a low voice. "Last night wasn't enough."

For a second Helen felt the rising indignation again, but it was quickly overcome by a fresh wave of the same arousal that had begun in the parking garage at the station the evening before. She let out a small gasp at the brazenness of Jason's words but also at the swiftness of her body's response to them. Her nipples were already hard, and blood pounded through her body to engorge her tits and cunt again, leaving her light-headed, as if she might pass out.

"Uh-huh" was all she managed to say. 

"Lucy's going out for a run."

"I'll get a shower, then," Helen said after swallowing hard.

"No, don't shower. I want to smell you."

His gaze burned into her from across the table.

"In fact, I want to smell you now." He got up from the table and came round to where she was sitting sideways on the straight-backed chair. He knelt in front of her and quickly pushed up her nightshirt to her knees. They both could hear Lucy's voice as a murmur coming from the next room.

"Jason," Helen said in a fierce whisper, reaching down to stop him. "Lucy's right there!"

"On the phone," he said, and she saw in his eyes a kind of blankness consisting of pure lust. As he spoke he pushed his hands between her knees and forced her thighs apart. She was wearing no underwear; she had gone to sleep the night before with her own juices drying on her thighs and pussy lips. She felt sure she was rank down there, but there seemed to be no stopping her young lover. His head plunged between her legs until she felt his stubbly jaw on the tenderest part of her inner thighs. She felt his shoulders heave as he drew in an enormous breath, then felt the now-familiar sensation of his tongue sliding from the very bottom to the very top of her cunt lips, ending with a quick suck and flick of her clit. She had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to stop herself crying out.

Jason quickly withdrew and primly pushed Helen's legs together and pulled down the nightshirt. Then in a sudden movement he lunged upward so his face was an inch from hers.

"I'm going to fuck you, Helen."

"I want you to fuck me, Jason."

He stood up quickly.

"More coffee?" he said reaching for her mug on the table.

A half-second later Lucy entered the dining-room from the kitchen.

*

Fifteen minutes later Helen stood at the living-room window and watched her daughter trot down the front steps of the townhouse and run up the street in a sweatshirt and form-fitting Lycra pants. As she watched, she felt Jason's mouth land on the slope between her left shoulder and her neck; his arms reached around to cup her breasts through her nightshirt. She also sensed a hard presence on her back; she felt behind her and encountered Jason's cock, naked and hard, pressed firmly up against her. It was the first time she had touched it. The heat of it in her hand made her pussy wet in a hurry.

"My god, you undressed already?" 

"Just now," he said, licking her neck.

Her nightshirt had three buttons that opened down to her cleavage. Jason took the fabric on either side of the opening in each hand and pulled violently. The nightshirt split open and Jason dropped the ruined garment around her feet. She turned to face him, naked, and immediately grasped his cock in her right hand while they kissed. She had to let go when Jason lifted her off the floor, holding her at either side of her ribcage. He lifted her so high her breasts were level with his face. Silently she thanked god for making her so tiny and light, and for making her such a slut that she would let herself be fucked by her daughter's fiancé. And just the thought of the word 'slut' again made her feel even dirtier, and she felt her body responding to her own depraved thoughts as well as to Jason's noisy suckling on her nipples.

She wrapped her legs around him as he held her up there, and from that moment it was inevitable that she would slide down gradually but inexorably onto his cock, and that for the next few moments together they would be an integral part of the universal cunt-cock continuum.

The mechanics of it are always messy, however. With Helen skewered on his cock, Jason walked to the living-room sofa and knelt on the floor in front of it, at the same time lowering Helen onto the cushions. He kept his hands under her, gripping her ass, kneading the flesh as he gave her several hard and regular strokes as deep inside her as he could reach. Helen's head was sideways against the back of the sofa in an awkward and uncomfortable position, but she did not want to lose the momentum of this cock inside her as Jason found his rhythm. Better the fucking of a lifetime than a comfortable cushion to rest your head on.

As Jason pumped and Helen writhed beneath him, her cunt juices flowed freely and soon the sloppy noises began. Pussy farts, belly slaps, and the smack of Jason's wet balls against her slippery ass.

Jason sat back on his heels, pulling Helen upright as he went so she was straddling him, all her weight pushing her down hard on his cock.

"Your turn," he said.

He put his hands on the floor behind him and reclined further, knees still bent, so that he presented her with his torso, tightly stretched, and of course his cock still inside her, a length of meat for her pleasure.

"You fuck me now."

Helen now had the floor to push off against with her feet. In order to maintain the position and the rhythm she had to use all the strength in her calves and thighs. In turn this required her pelvic muscles to be tight, and so her pussy clamped around Jason's cock, making their thrusts, to which he was now contributing from below, even more intense. She leaned on his chest with her palms for support, using her index and middle fingers to squeeze his nipples while she fucked him.

Jason watched her tits bouncing and swinging as she worked. He seemed to be mesmerized by them. Finally he said, "I have to lie down," and he stretched out flat on the floor. This meant Helen was now on her knees astride him. Normally she couldn't spend more than a few seconds on her knees before pain forced her up, but now the stakes were too high to let up for the sake of a touch of agony in her joints. What agony? It was as though she didn't feel anything but the thick heat of Jason's throbbing cock sliding in and out of her. She saw his eyes begin to roll back in his head and guessed he was about to come. His hands had found her breasts and he was twisting the nipples hard as he began to peak.

"This is it Jason," she said, as she felt herself rising in response to Jason's evident ecstasy. "This is all we're going to get, my lover."

"I only wanted to be inside you," he said between panting breaths. "It's more than I imagined."

Jason suddenly grabbed her waist and slammed her down hard onto him so she couldn't move. For a second or more she waited for his explosion, sensing it rising up through his hard cock and finally erupting into her cunt, one blast, two blasts, three blasts, four blasts, five blasts, then a funny juddering of his loins before he released his grip on her waist. This was all she needed to find her own orgasm, which had been building throughout Jason's spasms. It was even better than the night before, so powerful that she had no surplus energy to make the noises that had surprised her in the basement.

After a whole minute of convulsions she was limp, her hair covering her face, her head hanging from her shoulders and almost touching Jason's still heaving chest. Her body felt wrung out like a used washcloth, and a dull ache emanated from her life-making core. She collapsed on her partner and licked sweat from his nipples, taking a last taste of his forbidden fruit.

*

The following day both Jason and Lucy took Helen to the station. Lucy was particularly happy with the progress she and her mother had made on the plans for the wedding, which was still six months away but had already reached the critical book-it-or-lose-it stage for many major elements. Helen had decided to back off her insistence on many items for the big day, which until this weekend she had imagined with photographic clarity in her mind. She realized that despite the financial assistance she and Bob were providing, she couldn't make Lucy's wedding a reenactment of her own; this wasn't her chance for a do-over, fixing all the flaws and mistakes from forty years ago.

She had come to know (and she hoped it was not too late) that her own disappointments in life and in love were no reason to thwart her daughter's happiness; the best gift she could give Lucy was to step out of her way. And for both of them, for Helen and for Lucy, even for Jason (Bob, too, for that matter), Helen understood that whatever was left of life was there to be lived, not spent editing what had already passed.

On the platform they all embraced as whistles blew to signal imminent departure. When she turned to Jason, Helen felt the same old awkwardness between them, the maddening superficiality that not even this weekend had been able to change. At least not entirely. They were slipping back into their assigned roles, but Helen felt determined that the door she and Jason had opened should not be closed for good.

"Jason, my dear," she said, reaching her hands up to cup his face. "Thank you for a lovely weekend."

"Thank you, Helen," he said.

They kissed chastely, and as she held his face Helen gently rubbed the soft skin behind his earlobes with her middle fingers.

End