1
The story so far — Harriet Gaertner’s husband has suffered a catastrophic stroke. He does not recognise her. In a moment of weakness, she seeks solace in the arms of her son, Lothar, and an illicit affair has been pursued for some months, and that no one in the family has become aware of.
♥
Harriet felt exhausted from the emotional strain and was relieved when the last of the mourners, most of them family members, were seen to drive away. It left her in the company, once more, of Lothar…her rock and shoulder to cry on. They had refrained from seeking, nor offering, solace of a very different kind. Propriety and a raging sense of guilt from what they had often sought of each other had prevailed.
‘I feel so tired…’
She spoke in a soft voice that conveyed all the emotion of what she had been through since Carsten’s death and defied the fortitude that she had shown. Her voice held the agony of saying a final goodbye. Harriet dabbed at her eyes with a tangled web of tissues and Lothar moved to be by her side. She broke down in tears as he drew near to her.
‘Here, take this,’ he said gently on holding out a handkerchief. It was more a colourful trucker’s bandana than one of those white cotton squares that were next to useless, and way too smart for his student ways.
She offered a wobbly smile in gratitude for his consideration and looked up at him. She felt the lightest of touches as he cleared away her smudged mascara.
‘Thank you…I’ve been through the mangle, that’s for sure these past few months and don’t know how I’d have gotten through without you being near me, Lothar darling. I suppose it will be for the best…your poor father seemed so lost in his body.’ He met her tear-filled, grief-stricken eyes as Harriet took it all in. Their home suddenly felt so much emptier, though Carsten’s care-home stay had rubbed the rawness away over recent months. ‘If only we hadn’t gone out for that walk by the lake…or been so distracted by all that we’ve done recently.’
‘You can’t go playing the guilt game now, Harriet. It’s not fair on either of us.’
‘Inconvenient, I know,’ she said bitterly, ‘but it’s only the truth. I wonder just what we’ll find, now that he’s gone? Our lives will take on a news shape…a different pattern will emerge. It has to. ‘I’ll go crazy with the guilt carrying on as before…and with you.’
‘I know, just don’t tell me that now…’
Harriet nodded and looked up at him. She saw the loss in his eyes…for his father and in response to what she had told him. She persuaded him to sit down by her side and felt him hesitate before he put his arm about her shoulders. She closed her tear-filled eyes and felt the lightest of touches as he brushed her tears from her cheeks.
‘I.I don’t know what to say to you,’ she told him on a breaking voice and suddenly darting a look his way.
‘Nothing…there’s no need. We all hurt, you especially…and I feel I’m intruding at the worst possible time.’
‘No, you’re not!’ she moaned, sensing him shift and intent on leaving her side. ‘We’re in this together…we will help each other through. Your brother and sister have their children and lives…we start another one alone here, or I will.’
‘Be still on that now…’
She kicked of her shoes and settled; drew her legs up onto the sofa and nestled against him. Harriet made Lothar move until his arm was about her shoulders. The corner banque where they sat was only too wide and comfortable for them to be together like this.
Lothar felt his hand being gripped fiercely as he lay against the back rest. He slipped off his shoes as she had done. He breathed in her perfume and felt Harriet’s breath on his face, the touch of her fingers to his lips. His suit jacket and tie had been thrown onto the seat opposite to where they lounged, All of the day’s formality could now be dispensed with.
‘Lie down and hold me,’ she asked on looking up at his drawn features and stroking his face, his lips and eyes. Saying goodbye to Carsten had taken its toll on him too. He had a haunted look and had kept his grief in check throughout the day, perhaps his sense of guilt, also, for what they had succumbed to. ‘We’ll be a comfort to each other…’
‘Your dress will crease,’ he answered, woodenly, even as he did as she asked of him and shifted to lie on the banque. She soon moved to lie on him; pressed her lips to his throat before her cheek warmed his chest, her fingers unbuttoning some more of his shirt.
‘Warm and so alive,’ she murmured and pressed her lips to his skin for a tantalising moment. Harriet felt the gentlest of tugs on her hair and met his stilled look upon her. ‘It’s no more than the truth, my darling…’
He kissed her trembling lips before Harriet lay down again on him. He felt her breaths become softer and slow down until they could barely be felt.
His mind was in a whirl as a result of what she had said to him. The passionate distraction that had been their illicit affair might soon be a thing of the past; that sense and propriety would again prevail and that it would soon be left behind and they would again lead ‘normal’ lives. It would return to being only too ordered and prosaic, each of them in a relationship with someone else, and in Harriet’s case after a period of mourning.
They had not spoken of it while Carsten had been alive and over recent weeks. Their affair had been all-consuming.
But now, he felt her breasts press into his chest as she lay upon him, the skirt of her dress pulled up over her thighs to stop the stitching from tearing, his legs between her parted thighs and she only to aware that his prick was hard and that it pressed into her belly.
She must have heard him sigh and shift beneath her.
‘Darling…you darling boy?’ She met his look as a hand moved between them, and she touched him; pressed her fingers to what he could not keep from her. ‘Even now you can’t keep back those feelings. Are you wanting to offer solace of a different kind?’
‘Contemptible, I know…but yes,’ he answered as her lips brushed his mouth; as their eyes took in what the moment would again mean for them. They shared in their breaths as his fingers found the zip of her dress and he pulled it slowly down. He soon caressed the base of her spine and moved to unhook her bra. She leant on her hands as he drew the garment from her body and eased Harriet’s arms from the sleeves. She soon leant forward and pressed the tumble of her breasts to his lips and shifted until the dress was off her body. ‘Here…we love here?’
She remained resolutely silent. Harriet knelt over him and looked down. She soon tugged loose his belt and coaxed him to lift his hips before she pulled them and his briefs over his legs until they were about his knees.
Harriet leant over him and felt his lips and mouth claim the tumble of her breasts; to lick circles over her areolas before tugging on her pert nipples.
‘Love me my darling….I’ll tell you when to stop. Help me to forget for a while longer…’
2
Lothar worked on writing up a project. He done that as Harriet slept down the hall from his room. Now, he heard a soft tap on the door and turned to gaze at her, he knew that they would forsake everything once more; the hook was in too deep to pull it free.
‘Lothar…come to me?’ he heard her say. Harriet stood before him, her nightie in her hand but with a soft wondering look now on her face. ‘Help me again…please?’
He went to her, and they kissed wildly and passionately, Harriet pushing his lounge pants down and sighing deeply as his erect flesh sprang free and she clasped it. She squirmed on feeling his caresses to the hollows of her hips, over her buttocks and then the prick of his fingers to the base of her spine
‘I’m possessed by a madness…and need to be with you. I can’t explain it! Help me with this…I’m lost in all that we have done and for so long!’
‘No more words…no more teasing…no delays…we do it again,’ he kissed. Harriet nodded but he saw fear in her eyes.
‘Come to me?’ she said scampering away once more, but he caught hold of her hand. He had seen the sway of her breasts and was possessed once more by a feral lust for her body. He’d made Harriet turn to face him before he buried his face between them and felt Harriet’s hands push them together and met the frenzy in his nipping kisses.
She tumbled back onto the bed and shifted, enough, to be able to raise her feet and plant her legs wide…to expose herself fully to his gaze and renewed claims.
‘Harriet….Harriet…’ he gasped on seeing her brazen ways. He touched himself in reflex, the destructive unquenchable ache that he felt for her all- consuming.
‘I’ll…I’ll help you with it…if you’ll help me find a new life?’
It began slowly and naturally; the rediscovery of each other as if this was meant to be…as if it had all been planned.
‘This feels so wonderful…I know it’s not right, Lothar…darling!’ she said moving so that he lay down beside her. Harriet then moved, straddled his thighs and stroked his flesh with purposeful clamps and tugs. She positioned herself perfectly, touched her slit with the head of his penis before settling upon him for an instant before moving off him.
‘Oh…oh…Harriet!’ Lothar reached out to her, his breaths catching in his throat as Harriet circled his hard length with her teasing and clamping fingers. She worked on him and sought his responses.
‘Tell me that it’s okay…that you need this from me as much as I need it from you?’ She leant forward to kiss him, had her nipples brush his chest in agonizing sweeps of her breasts.
‘Harriet…mother…oh Harriet! It is…it is! It’s so crazy…but we need to find a way through!’ Lothar called out.
The woman had impaled herself on him again, and they moved in unison; called out to each other and finally forsook any remaining restraint. They were two people in thrall to each other and fucking. There was no other word for it…making love was too tame for what was going on between them. They clutched and pinched at skin. They kissed and sucked on lips. They pushed and eased in their frenzy, as if they again sought to blot out what they were really doing; the shattering of proper behaviour and family bonds as they pursued wanton pleasure; a break from reality that had been their lives as Carsten slowly lost his fight to survive.
It was frenetic and it felt lustfully wonderful.
‘Harriet…Harriet…darling!’
‘Yes…it’s that way for me too. Let me know of it…all of it!’
Their moans and cries of ecstasy filled the room as Harriet’s claims upon him brought them both to a shuddering climax that wracked their bodies; had them clamping each other’s skin and sharing in deep, open mouthed, snorted, kisses and moans of abject delight and fulfilment.
Harriet leant forward and gathered her breath. She held his head to the tumble of her breasts and made him sit up so that she could bask in this attention upon her.
‘Oh forgive me…where will I find that?’ she groaned, shivering as she finally moved and felt the slow, residual caress of his penis as she eased him from her. She lay down beside him, her arms wrapped around Lothar’s neck. ‘Rest a while longer…shall we?’
She felt his hand stroke her thighs and she clamped it between them.
‘Rest, I said…Lothar…stop, please?’ she now laughed appreciatively and overcome with a sudden sense of languour. ‘We’ve become one now…again.’
‘Yeah…in this at least,’ he said softly and meeting her kisses.
Harriet moved to lie on him and to rest. ‘Is this better…for now…we love while we can?’
He stared up at her. Her words of warning were again to be heard. ‘I can touch and kiss all of you this way….know from your voice…from what you say that it’s wrong for me to feel what I do about you…about what we do.’
Harriet pushed on the bed and looked down at him.
She pressed her fingers to his lips and felt him suck upon them suggestively. She obliged him. They had given, and taken, so much from each other in recent months, that the lines between normality and excess, destructive and wanton behaviour, had become blurred.
‘Listen to me, my darling…I will never remarry. I loved your father too much to want that again. I see so much of Carsten in you…the passionate soul unafraid to give that to another. But I cannot close you in…cannot live with the knowledge of that. We have a love that cannot speak its name, and the secret we share may destroy that. We have to live with what we have done, but not have it destroy us. Our bond is special…beyond price and saying.’
Harriet saw her son clench his lips to stifle an immediate reply. She saw his eyes drift over her body, one that she had so willingly and wantonly surrendered to him, their behaviour defying all decency and family bonds.
‘I’m here for you, whenever you need me…’ he said, in some dismay after what she had told him.
‘I know my darling, that is why we have to find a way to live on with what we have found and done together. We have to live and love differently from now on. We have to do that, or it will destroy us and everyone that we know. If they found out what we have done. The reasons would never be understood…our excuse empty words…to them.’
‘Tell me when it should stop…’
‘I will have to find the words and the time to try, my darling boy.’
She bent to kiss him, and the tumult of wayward emotions began all over again.
♥