Chapter 5

Jean hesitated, taking a deep breath and doing her best to rally her courage before raising her hand to ring the doorbell. She hadn't seen Adele since their little falling-out the day before yesterday. Not that such fallings-out were that uncommon between them. Though they'd been friends in college and lived as neighbors their whole lives since college, she and Adele weren't really that much alike. In spite of all Tom's playing around, Jean had never been unfaithful to him during their marriage, even after he was shipped to the Far East and she was left here alone with their four-year-old son. But Adele frequently cheated on her husband Pete, which was something Jean had never been able to approve of. Often she found herself unwillingly obliged to cover for her friend, and on more than one occasion Adele had tried to involve Jean with male friends of her extramarital lovers. And then, of course, there was what had happened between Adele and Tom, just before he and Jean were married.

But there was a lot Jean liked about Adele, in spite of what she considered the other woman's shortcomings, and usually the tension between them would dissipate quickly enough. Today, however, she feared things might be different. Her anger had arisen from the remark Adele had made about her feelings for her own son. She realized now that anger should have been directed as much at herself as at her neighbor. And the anger was still there, turned inward, a deep-seated self-loathing that would be difficult to overcome. But that wasn't the real problem now, or the real reason Jean had decided to swallow her pride and come over and apologize in the hope she could patch things up. She needed help and advice. She knew no one else to turn to.

At last she rang the bell. She listened to footsteps in the house, then the door opened and Adele, wearing a skimpy halter that teasingly revealed her full rounded breasts and a pair of tight hot-pants stood before her. After an almost imperceptible hesitation she smiled and pushed open the screen. "Come in, honey. I'm glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you too," Jean began, feeling somewhat foolish. "I ... I'm sorry about the other day."

"Forget it," Adele said generously. "It's already far in the past. Come on. I'll give you something cold to drink." The buxom blonde led her down the hall to the spacious kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. "Coke or a beer?" she asked as Jean took a seat. "Pete's got a couple of six packs if you want a beer."

"Yes. I'll have a cold beer."

Adele opened two of them and sat down across the table. Noting the troubled look on Jean's face, she smiled. "I said forget it."

Jean bit her lip. "I don't want to forget it, Adele. And it's not in the past. It's here, now. It's like ... it's the only thing that is here."

Adele raised her eyebrows. "Boy! You do look bothered. Tell me all about it."

"You were right," Jean began almost shamefully. "I didn't realize it at the time, but I guess I was looking at him ... at Stephan ... that way. I guess I must have been looking at him that way for some time now."

Adele nodded. "You have. But it's not that bad.

It's not bad at all. It's natural. And the way he looks at you is natural too. I told you, I read it in a book."

Jean took a long drink of the cool refreshing beer. "The way he looks at me?"

"According to Freud, though God knows I'm no expert, all boys, or almost all boys, go through a phase where they have sexual desires toward their mother. Stephan, I think is in that phase now. And mothers, especially if they don't have the boy's father with them, have natural, usually suppressed sexual yearnings for their sons. That's the source of over-possessiveness and all those things you hear of. And you're no exception."

"I know," Jean nodded ruefully. "My God though, you make me sound like some kind of hospital case." she paused, looking Adele in the eyes. "I've got to do something. Adele, last night, I mean the night before last, I hugged Stephan and he got ... an erection."

Adele smiled consolingly. "I know."

"You know?"

"Yes. Stevie was over here last night. He wanted some advice. He had the idea maybe Pete could help him out. But Pete couldn't advise a bullfrog about the birds and the bees. He just does it, without thinking. Steve is more sensitive. And right now he's got a few problems."

"What kind of problems?"

"Well, you know it's hard for a boy who doesn't have a father to turn to when he needs advice about ... the facts of life. And now he needs a lot of advice. He apparently thinks he made a fool of himself in front of his friends. I don't know the exact details but ... "

"How horrible!" Jean gasped, all her motherly protective urges rising to the fore. "I knew it was a mistake for me to let him start running around with those older boys."

"You have always been overly protective."

"Overly protective?"

"That's natural too, honey. Don't get defensive with me. And there is obviously a lot going on below the surface that needs to come out into the open now. I think it's good this had happened. Until the last couple of days you didn't even realize there was a problem. But to me it's simple." She paused. "You want to hear it?"

Jean nodded. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"You're not going to like it."

"How do you know? Give."

"You're a woman. You need a man."

"I had a man last night," Jean interrupted. "I went to bed with Ed again."

"I imagined as much. How was it?"

"That's not what I came over here to talk about."

Adele's smile was smug, almost self-congratulatory. "So you still need a man. What Stephan needs is a woman."

"Adele!"

"I didn't mean it that way."

"Then how did you mean it?"

"I didn't mean you necessarily had to sleep with him. But you could at least teach him to kiss and pet, you know." Adele giggled. "Sounds like fun to me.

"But I'm his mother. I can't do that."

"Somebody's going to have to do it."

The two women sat staring across the table into each other's eyes, Adele smug, self-confident, Jean floundering in confusion and misgivings. And the sensuous young mother knew the challenge was there. She'd grasped, in no uncertain terms, the unvoiced but clearly implied threat.

If she didn't do it, Adele would.

Jean changed from her tight-fitting pants into a short summer skirt. After a moment's inner debate, she peeled off her sleeveless pink sweater and reached up behind her back to loosen the snap of her brassiere, her gaze dropping briefly to the full swells of her breasts, standing up proudly with no real need of artificial support. Then she pulled the sweater back over her head and turned to the mirror for appraisal. She decided the effect was actually attractive, not to mention the comfort, and she found herself wondering why all these years she'd persisted in encumbering her firm lovely breasts with a brassiere. Then she felt a slight flutter of anticipation as she wondered if Stephan would notice, and wondered how he would react to the change.

If the worried young widow had gone to her friend for consolation and support, she had been anything but comforted by their conversation. Jean could not remember when she'd ever heard a suggestion so shocking as Adele's. And yet the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that the idea did have merit.

The upbringing of a young boy by his mother without the strong male presence of a father to balance the relationship was a very complex and even dangerous undertaking. Jean had known that before. But never until now had she examined the various aspects and pitfalls to such a degree as she had today. She had accepted instinctively a dual role in the raising of her son. She had tried to be both mother and father to Stephan. Adele had pointed out that this might have been the wrong approach and Jean was inclined to agree. She could never replace his missing father. She could never be a strong masculine and authoritative figure Stephan could respect, look up to and imitate. And in her attempt to fill her dead husband's role even as she fulfilled her own duty as loving mother, she had only succeeded in sheltering Stephan, or even smothering him. Now somehow she had to cut the apron strings, but she had to do so without completely breaking contact and losing rapport with her son. If Stephan was going to develop normally into a strong healthy man, they had to become companions, living under one roof on equal and mutually respectful terms.

Adele had defined the ideal perfectly when she said that Stephan had to become the man of the house. It was Stephan, not Jean, who should be filling the vacuum the death of his father had left in their home.

Jean took a last appraising look at herself in the mirror, then walked out of the bedroom and down the hall to the den. Thought of in those terms, the whole situation seemed easy enough to deal with. But there were more disturbing subtleties.

A sexual tension now existed between Jean and her son. It had manifested itself most clearly the night she had consciously excited herself while holding him in her arms and when his response to the physical contact was revealed in the small hard erection Jean had noted tenting up the crotch of his pajamas. But the tension had been there before. She could see it now. And it was still there between them. Stephan was old enough to know the facts of live and now more than ever he needed a father to advise him. But Tom would not come back from the dead and there was no man in Jean's life, certainly not Ed Barton, who could take his place. Jean had to teach Stephan the facts that he was old enough to come to terms with. But she couldn't just tell him, because she was a woman and he was a man, that made a genuine father-and-son-type verbal rapport impossible. The best she could hope to do would be to establish, at least as far as the subject of sex was concerned, a kind of brother-sister relationship. That would entail physical contact, direct demonstration, at least until the ice was broken. And what worried Jean most about this was her own response. Just the thought of actually kissing and caressing her darling young son, even innocently and unlasciviously, caused an excitement to stir in Jean's breasts that almost drove her out of her mind.

The dark-haired young mother went out to the kitchen and made herself an iced coffee, then returned to the den and sat down on the couch. She crossed her legs, noting that her skirt came barely halfway down to her knees, sipped the coffee slowly and mulled over the disturbing situation in which she found herself embroiled. The minutes ticked by like separate little eternities as she waited for the sound of Bill's motor-bike. Outside the cool shadows of summer evening crept across the lawn. Restless, filled at once with dread and anticipation, Jean rose and walked over to peer out the window. Her heart almost skipped a beat as she looked up toward the corner and saw Stephan walking down the street.

Jean pressed her face to the glass, watching with baited breath as the young boy drew closer. He'd left on Bill's bike to go to the swimming pool and she wondered idly why he should be returning on foot. Then as he came up into the yard, his shoulders slumped, a look of dejection on his face, Jean thought she understood. And the genuine maternal compassion that filled her existed in complete independence of the other less noble feelings that had driven her to embark on her present daring undertaking.

Her heart pounding in her breast, Jean turned away from the window and walked to the hall doorway. She listened to Stephan's dragging footsteps as he came up onto the porch. Then the front door opened and he entered, head slightly bowed, eyes downcast.

"Stephan!" His name came from her throat in an emotional little gasp.

"Hello Mom," her son said. He started past her without even looking up, and seemed at first to see her only out of the corner of his eye. Then he stopped suddenly, his head jerking around, his eyes widening as they beheld the two soft round swells of her breasts, unencumbered beneath the tight-fitting sweater she wore.

Jean stood trembling in the door as Steve's excited eyes took in the lushly revealed curves of her body, dwelling on her breasts and the soft bare skin of her lower thighs before he looked questioningly back at her face. And as he looked at her, Jean looked at him, wantonly, hungrily, lovingly. Her motherly love and the illicit desire that had been fomenting in her body seemed to merge as an overwhelming force in her consciousness. Little electric tingles coursed perceptibly over her skin, finding focus in the pert and rigid tips of her nipples and deep in the most forbidden and sensitive areas of her loins. Then, almost before she knew what she was doing, the voluptuous brunette had stepped forward and reached out toward her son, her bare arms going warmly about him, her fingers combing lovingly through his hair. She stooped slightly, placing her cheek against his, listening to his boyish breath whistling raggedly past his ear. She snuggled her breasts warmly against his shoulders and chest, pressed her thighs against his, her eyes closing as she felt something stiff and hard prodding up against her loins on the outside of her skirt. She moaned, softly, distantly. Then with a sudden squirming motion Stephan wriggled from her arms and stepped away.

In the excitement of the moment Jean had closed her eyes. Now she opened them, staring almost crazily at her son. "Stephan? Stephan, what's wrong?"

"You know what's wrong," he blurted shamefully.

"I don't." Then, seeing the bulge at the crotch of his Levi's, she understood. "It happened again," he said. Jean reached out and placed her hand lovingly on the side of Stephan's red-flushed face. Her eyes watered as she gazed tenderly down at him. And she could hardly believe the lusty voice she heard was her own.

"I know it happened again, Steve. And it's all right. I expected it to happen. I guess I wanted it to."

"You wanted it to? Gosh, Mom. I ... I don't understand."

Jean smiled. She took her son by the hand and led him back into the den and over to the couch. "Sit down. I'll try to explain."

The astonished teenager could hardly believe his ears. He'd gotten another hard-on when his mother had taken him in her arms. She must have felt it against her thighs and she'd seen it sticking up in his trousers. She must have known what it meant. She must understand it meant he wanted to do thing, dirty things, to her. And yet she wasn't mad. She said she'd expected it, said she'd wanted it even.

"All right, Steve," Jean began after she'd taken a seat beside him on the couch. "I want you to understand that there is nothing wrong with ... with the physical manifestation you just displayed. It's natural that should happen to you when I touch you and hold you the way I did. You're turning into a young man. I'm a woman. It's natural that you should respond to me and that I should respond to you." She paused, not sure what to say next. "Our relationship is a very special one because ... because your father is not here. I think I've made a lot of mistakes in the past. Now, somehow, I want to rectify them. And you're going to have to help me. And together we're going to have to ... come to terms with our ... sexuality. Both as individuals and as we relate to each other."

Jean continued nervously, trying to explain generally the ideas she'd been pondering since her conversation with Adele, expounding as best she could on the relationship between, for example, a baby or a small child being stroked and caressed by its parents, and the first sexual experiments of stroking conducted by the puberty and pre-puberty aged child, then trying to tie this information with the phenomenon of sexual foreplay as she perceived it pertinent to a boy of Stephan's age and making vague references to adult sexual activity as it pertained to itself.

Stephan listened to her as attentively as he could, but though what she was saying seemed at least connected to what he had on his own mind, he was having a difficult time following her line of thought. He was completely confused by the whole situation. It was embarrassing and exciting at the same time. Something very strange was going on between him and his mother, and though he recognized its existence it seemed beyond his ability to grasp. He knew he'd been sexually curious about his mother for a long time, but the feelings he'd experienced the other night when she'd held him in her arms and again just a few moments ago were new to him. He'd never been held or touched by another female like that and his whole body was still tingling from the warm softness of having had her arms around him, from feeling her big warm breasts pressing almost nakedly against his chest when she'd held him to her. And the thing that made it all so unique and exciting was that he'd sensed instinctively that she, his own mother, had been just as excited as he was.

Doggedly, Jean stumbled onward with her technical explanation. Then her voice faded as she realized Stephan was hardly listening. He was staring intently down at her thighs, half-revealed by the shortness of her skirt, and as she glanced back at the crotch of his trousers she saw that the tell-tale bulge had returned. She was exciting him, merely by the closeness of her body she was prompting him to a new erection, and the realization of that sent a galvanic surge of tingling electric shocks up and down the length of her spine. Hardly able to control her own secret inner pleasure, she reached up and touched his shoulder to attract him to look her in the eyes.

"Do you understand what I'm trying to say?" Her voice almost quivered and she was acutely aware of her son's nearness and of his innocent masculinity as she spoke. "Do you?"

"I guess I do," Stephan stammered, his eyes descending again greedily to the full swells of his mother's breasts and the hard points of her nipples making visible protrusions in the tight-stretched material of her sweater.

Jean's mind was racing wildly. She still hadn't really gathered the courage to say what she wanted to say. She'd been speaking in general, almost clinical terms, and the problems she and Stephan needed to confront were not general at all but very specific and personal. Yet the mere broaching of the subject caused a nervousness and excitement to surge in her belly and loins that was more than she could control. Oddly, she felt almost like a teenage girl herself, curious and frightened on the verge for the first time in her life of sexual contact with a boy.

With a desperate effort, Jean tore her eyes away from Steve's excited face. "I guess what I'm saying doesn't make much sense, hunh? Let's try another approach. I know you went to Pete's and Adele's looking for advice. I know something happened that embarrassed you in front of your friends." She paused, watching the crimson flush come over Stephan's cheeks. "Now don't be ashamed. I want to help you. Tell me what happened."

"They've found a couple of girl friends," he said sadly.

"So. You're getting old enough that you should be able to find a girl of you're own," Jean soothed, realizing as she said that that she would actually be bothered by the thought of Stephan, her Stephan, with another female.

"That's the problem," Steve answered glumly. "They had another girl for me. But I didn't ... I didn't know what to do with her. I didn't even know how to kiss her. And she just laughed at me. Anyway," he added. "I don't have a bike. I couldn't take her anywhere."

"Oh, Stevie," Jean purred, her hand still resting on her son's shoulder. Then, hardly even thinking of what she was doing, she turned him to face her. She watched his eyes open wide as she leaned toward him and touched his lips with her own, pressing her mouth lightly and softly over his, letting her lips linger there for a brief but exquisite moment.

"That's what you do for a start," she said with a shaky smile as she drew back. Then, her own face flushing, she averted her eyes, beset by guilt and shame at the lascivious excitement even that brief and almost innocent kiss had inspired.

Steve could feel the trembling of his mother's hand on his shoulder, see the nervous tightening of her face. He felt his own young cock swelling to even greater hardness in his trousers. It wasn't the first time she'd kissed him, of course. But it was the first time she'd kissed him like that, and he could think of nothing he'd ever experienced in his life that had felt so good and so exciting. And he had to know that same feeling again. Suddenly determined, the nervous youngster lunged forward toward his mother on the couch, gathering her voluptuously inviting body into his arms, pulling her face to his own as he locked his lips ardently over her slightly open mouth.

The startled mother gasped in surprise at her son's sudden show of aggression. Delicious erotic sensations rippled through every nerve in her body and she felt half-drunk with the sensual delight of his boyish embrace. Her scarcely protected breasts were pressed hard against his firm young chest and tingling sparks of rising lust seemed to be shooting crazily between their incestuously entwined bodies. For a brief moment she lost herself in the mounting desires rushing through her breasts and loins, let her mind be filled with forbidden visions that bordered on shameless dreams of incestuous seduction.

Then, as she continued to squirm her body against her son's, as her hungry lips parted to suck his tongue deep into her mouth, Jean realized what really dangerous ground she was treading on. The currents of desire now shooting out of control through her body were beyond the bounds of rationality and she knew that what she was doing was absolute madness. Adele had convinced her that to kiss Steve, to hold him, to teach him a few things and maybe even to let him feel her breasts, buttocks and thighs if he wanted to would do no real harm in the long run. And maybe she would have been right, if it could stop there. But the way she felt now, this should be only the beginning. Their loving embrace should go on and on, it should build and build, it should reach some end. And that was what made the whole thing so really mad, because it could never reach its natural satisfying conclusion. It could only serve to frustrate them both, and she knew that with every moment she let the kiss continue, the frustration both she and her son would feel later would only increase. And yet she couldn't stop herself. Not now. Her body was aching with a need she'd almost forgotten she could even know.

At last, with a desperate effort, Jean pulled herself free from her young son's embrace. She drew back, panting, staring at him wild-eyed as she saw the hunger and want in his face. She was vaguely aware that in her twisting on the couch she'd allowed her short skirt to work even farther up her thighs and she knew that Stephan could see all the way up to her skimpy little panties. And it was precisely there his gaze was directed. He was staring unashamedly straight down at her lewdly exposed loins.

He wanted her. She knew it suddenly. He wanted more than just to kiss her, to touch her body and be touched by her hands. And worse, she wanted more than that from him.

Suddenly filled with fear and self-loathing, Jean stood up and pulled down her skirt. She glanced again hysterically at her son, then turned abruptly and hurried out of the room, down the hall to the front door.

"Mother?" She heard him call, faint in her ears, as she went out the door. It seemed to echo over and over as she got into her car and drove off.