Bitter Sweet

1

Cristina Ioveanu felt blessed that she had her adopted son, Florin, to tend the flock of sheep that she and her late husband, Josif, had relied upon as a source of income. His industrious ways about the farm and his cheerful manner, most of the time, she relied upon to see her way through to better times.

The family had owned the isolated farmstead with its pan-tiled roof, some five klicks from the nearest town, for generations; even through the last war, with the Germans, that had caught the Ioveanu family in its unrelenting grip.

That had been bad enough, but the Ivan’s had taken things to another level and had exercised their unrelenting control when the Iron Curtain had come down and a socialist paradise was to be constructed out of the ashes of the war. It was only in the last twenty years or so that the family had begun to really make its way and enjoy what had hitherto been a hard life on the rolling steppes; their home, a farmstead that had the mountains of Transylvania as a backdrop. It was idyllic in the warmth of spring, the heat of summer, and an unrelenting frozen wilderness in the depths of winter.

They had some hectares of undulating grassland and on this they tended a large flock of sheep. A studiously managed apple orchard that was rich in its produce, year on year was close to the house along with a large stand of coniferous trees that surrendered an ample supply of wood for their fires.

Cristina’s children had left their home. They sought a better paid life in a nearby town. Thus, Cristina became reliant on Florin and his devoted ways, a bond fashioned when she and Josif had adopted him.

Her strong spirit did not mean that she failed to mourn her lost man, but the strain of nursing her husband, to his end, had taken its emotional toll on her in the ensuing months and an aching sense of loneliness often prevailed.

But now, Cristina was seen to have recovered some of her zest for life; her luxuriant auburn-red hair always neatly brushed and fastened with a jewelled clip of some kind, or a small strip of cloth. Glittery earrings were always to be seen dangling and swaying; the embroidering of blouses, in the traditional styles, often worn on her fulsome body, such blouses matched by a swirling skirt wrapping her hips and concealing sturdy legs and only too functional boots. They were often to be seen on her otherwise bare feet. She had her preferences and would do as she pleased in her home. She longed to truly share, again, in all that life had still to offer her.

Cristina would never concede that she had been cowed by all that had befallen her.

Nothing could have prepared her for moments of aching, even crushing, loneliness that had begun to grip her as the months passed following Josif’s death. She had not known of such emptiness since the death of her third one, soon after his birth, a fragile boy. It marked the end of bearing any more children. But Florin had mended her over the years and had been dutiful.

He had returned after his military service and now, with Josif gone, she relied upon Florin to manage the farm. What he had failed to realise was that his adoptive had become emotionally reliant upon him; harboured feelings that Florin was to discover one night when he had returned home from hours in the company of a favoured tart and who met his needs, he thought, in every way.

 

2

‘Don’t shut me out, Florin darling…not now. I’m close to you in every way…closer than ever.’

She watched him make ready for a simple lunch, the large, scrubbed wooden table set at the centre of the room with its walls decorated with pictures and plates or carvings that Florin was so adept at fashioning. From te beams hung bunches of dried flowers that she made and sold when the time was right. On a dresser were placed the blouses that she embroidered in the traditional gypsy ways of it in these parts.

Their place was homely, isolated, and an ideal haven to harbour secrets, few as they were.

They could talk of it and had been able to do that for some time and before Josif’s death. Florin’s birth mother could not be traced; the children’s refuge where he had been cared for, until adoption, informing them that he was one of the luckier ones to have settled so well with others. He was thought of as fortunate to have grown into the man that he was seen to be. Cristina knew it only too well.

‘There’s little chance of that happening, Cristina…me shutting you out. We will carry the memory of last night with us, wherever we go.’

‘But we will be together…’

‘Somehow…’

He took to wondering if his life would be destroyed after all that had happened between them. And yet, impulsively, Florin leaned across and kissed Cristina’s trembling lips, and to silence any reply to what he had told her.

Through the hours of the morning, he had come to realise that his situation was like the fly caught in the spider’s web. The more he struggled, with his thoughts, and continuing lustful feelings, and a gnawing sense of guilt, the tighter the bond with Cristina seemed to become; the means of escape from the union of their bodies, now, difficult to discover and if he wished it to be so. He would know that she would be living alone out here and that was not to be contemplated, for the toll on them both, of him abandoning her, a price that was too high for either of them to pay.

Cristina looked at him with tear-filled eyes. She moved as he brushed them away, a softened look upon her.

‘Sorry, but we live our lives here, together, differently now…my darling.’

He heard it as a hope rather than a request.

‘You may be right…you may be right.’

He offered her a slow kiss and she kept it on her lips; reached out to hold his head.

‘Enough now,’ he smiled on easing from her claims on him.

Perhaps, Cristina was playing him; perhaps she knew that what they had shared would not have him feel that he was a prisoner, but an only too willing accomplice. Here they were, just the two of them, living in their isolated farmstead and rebuilding their lives, now that Josif had left them. He had stepped into Josif’s shoes and a private place in her life; the world beyond all but oblivious to their existence and, so, to what had played out between them.

There was time for them to come to their senses.

It had happened only once, but the memory of all that had been shared would possess them for a long time.

Oh Jeez!

Cristina followed him as the plates were gathered up and the table cleared, her hands tugging on his shirt to restrain him and to keep him by her. He felt again the press of her fulsome body against him and her tightened embrace that had him feel all that she brought toa man. She pressed her breasts against his chest and he felt the warmth of her breaths on his throat as Cristina embraced him.

‘You know that we’re together…and like never before,’ she exclaimed.

He nodded through their raging kisses and clamp of hands to heighten their flaring, uncommonly tempestuous, embrace.

‘I’ve got to go…to make ready!’ he cried out on breaking free. ‘I have to go into town!’

‘Not alone you aren’t!’

Florin stared at her and nodded. It was futile to resist.

‘I love you…and all that you and Josif did for me…you know that I do, but not like this and after what happened!’

The devoted woman that he had so often seen in his stepfather’s company had revealed her passionate soul and dependency on him. What he had known of and shared with her might, again, overwhelm them.

Florin rushed from the room without a backward glance.

 

3

As the cart trundled along the road, the sheep bleating in complaint at the confined space and uncommon surroundings, Florin thought back to events of the previous night. Cristina, his adoptive mother, sat very close, her gaze falling on him and then onto the undulating road ahead. She would clutch his arm, the road’s surface often having them bump against each other, or it would have him tugging on the reins to control their progress. Then her grip would ease for an instant, only for her claims to be resumed.

Her undoubted affection for him had become an overwhelming, possessive need; his presence a confounding surrogate for all that she had lost and given no sign of seeking from him until hours ago.

Anywhere else, and if known, what had happened between them would have earned him jail time; tamping the woman beside him and whom, to the cops, would be seen as his mother. Their tryst, following a moment’s loss of control, should have been avoided; could have been avoided. He was a strong young man, for sure, but a man who had been seduced by her prevailing ways; a man driven on by his feral impulses and his actions those that he had never known of before, even during his service in the army. He had broken all the rules, and that even their isolated life could not fully excuse or get close to explaining.

But this careworn woman, Cristina, as she had demanded he now think of, she had moments of taking to the bottle, mostly after a busy working day and with quieter hours of the weekend ahead. At such times, he had shouldered the burdens that working the farm demanded of them both.

What had been shared was a perversion of all that was family, but in the aftermath she had confessed to suffering in silence from an aching loneliness yet knowing that drink was not the answer. It cured nothing, and the effects of the booze only made her sadder still and had led her to pursuing errant behaviour that he should not have conceded to. He had been complicit in its fulfilment and, possibly, continuation.

His baser instincts had been aroused as never before. He toiled with the thought of all that had been conceded to and then pursued.

He had touched a voluptuous body and known of heated ways and a brutal passion for a woman; actions that could never be undone. He had shared in ardent loving that this auburn-haired seductress beside him, with her slender face and keen eyes, had aroused in him. Just where was he to go with the knowledge of what had passed between them?

‘I just want a moment’s company,’ she had told him last night; her discreet knock on the door, to his cramped room almost filled by his bed, waking him from fitful sleep. He had taken in the mixture of alcohol on her breath and the unmistakable scent of some cologne she had chosen to put on, for some reason, and that only became clear when she had sought to claim him, later.

Cristina met a snatched look upon her. ‘What’s that for?’

‘That you look nice…in your embroidered blouse and headscarf…your skirt covers your legs…you’re also wearing shoes as you do when you dance, not those awful working boots.’

He knew that his voice was conciliatory and that it now held the soft tone of admiration. There were moments when the beauty of a younger woman could still be seen on her face. It accompanied her undoubted vitality; working on the farm bestowing strength that he had soon learned of as never before.

‘They all hide what is going on inside me,’ Cristina confessed and gripped his arm tightly. ‘Florin, darling, it is difficult for me too…living with what we have done and what I asked of you.’ She leant in to offer a kiss to his rough cheek. ‘I would like you to shave, occasionally, please? It makes you look so much younger…and even more handsome.’

‘But, old enough to….’ he growled and leaving the reply unfinished.

The woman beside him sought to find the words to justify what had passed between them, acts that he had been seduced into pursuing with her.

‘Be still, my darling…I thought it through, long ago,’ she said before looking away; her face lifted to the sun, but her grip on his arm as fierce as before. She had wanted him; had ached for that strong young body and what he had then brought to her. She had felt that and sensed it in him before she had discovered it with him. ‘Love comes in so many ways…’

‘But not like that…between us,’ he retorted and on a gentle slap of the reins on the mule’s flanks. So, she had thought to ask it of him for some time. He realised again that he shouldered the burden of what had happened as much as she did.

‘We’ll see, my darling Florin…we’ll see how love goes.’

Cristina had crept into his room and, before he could say anything on it, she had settled on the edge of his bed; soon confessing that she had sipped on more than was wise that evening, and after he had gone to bed. But she was far from being ‘out of her face’ on drink.

‘Just a little sad, again…I suppose?’ he had ventured.

That, and the drink, had been the start of the trouble. It had lessened any remaining inhibitions on her part and that he had shamefully taken advantage of, he now supposed. Cristina had explained it all.

‘Yes, sad, and it’s at times like that when I want company. I won’t stay long….’

‘It’s okay…’

‘Is it…is it okay, really?’ she had asked, uncertainly, but still moving closer on the mattress beside him and resting her back against the wall, just as he had done, her boy all but naked to her wondering gaze. The dim light from the small table lamp, in the hallway, had cast an eerie glow on the walls of his room, through the open door. ‘I get moments of missing him….’

‘I know. I get to thinking of him too…how we used to work together. They come to me when I least expect them…’

‘Do you?’ she had exclaimed, her movements tightening a thin nightdress over her body, the hem sliding up and over her thighs and the bodice revealing the drooping swell of her breasts and the curve of her softly rounded belly. ‘You always were the most sensitive one…out of my three. You went through so much before we brought you here.’

‘Yeah,’ he had replied on a soft laugh of acknowledgment. ‘It also got me into trouble in the army at times…always having to prove myself.’

‘You don’t have to do that with me, and I always worried for you, then, when you were away from me.’

She had looked at him across the narrow space between them and had seen the strength in his arms and torso. Her ‘son’ was strong, nicely shaped, and he kept it that way. Cristina saw his wondering look cast over her. ‘I can’t stay long or we’ll both get cold…’

‘We know how it can be when it is cold, here.’

Cristina now met a moment’s appraisal of her body as she moved; wondered how she could not have noticed such a stilled look from him before. Her blood offspring had lived in a converted outhouse until her two eldest had left her and following Josif’s death. Her undoubted favourite, so different in temperament from her own, had stayed true to her and become a choice comforter in strained times. She felt an ache for him…a man…in her belly and felt the tightening of muscles in her throat as if she struggled to get her breath. Florin did, and said, nothing to persuade her to leave his side.

‘Josif always said I was too warm blooded to be a farmer’s wife…’

‘But it worked out…’

‘Yes…until…until, you know?’

Cristina reached for his hand that nervily clutched the thin sheet on his bed, close to touching the bare skin of her leg. She moved until it did so.

‘Mother…Cristina…just don’t.’ The surprising grip of her hand on his keeps him from moving away. ‘I…I know you’re lonely…cold…that the drink you’ve had may…’

Florin meets her silencing stare.

‘I’m lonely and, yes, I am cold!’ she snaps. ‘Yes, you are company for me, and it feels cosier in here than in my room…where I’m alone. Just let me get warm…let me get under the sheet for a moment or two and lie here beside you?’

‘What! No…no, you can’t do that!’

He sits bolt upright as Cristina moves so that the sheet can be pulled away, enough for her to settle underneath it. She puts a restraining hand to his bare thigh. Just to feel her touch is enough to set his pulse racing; to feel the warmth of her thigh against his skin arouses destructive imaginings of what may follow. He pushes at his hardening prick and squirms away as best as he can as he feels her heat so close to him.

‘It’s snug and warm…and I have company,’ she murmurs. Cristina has a wondering smile on her lips and a softened, questioning look of her eyes upon him. ‘You’ve always been the attentive one…your new father, Josif, he always said that of you.’

‘Josif wasn’t my father…and don’t bring him into this!’ he says trying to move away, but she detains him. She offers caresses to his chest and belly but stops short in her progress. ‘Cristina!’

‘I’m…I’m here…and I’m feeling warmer…more settled. Thank you…’ Before he can stop her, Cristina slides her hands over his belly; moves to kiss his cheek. As he looks her way, she presses her lips to his mouth; meets his startled look upon her. ‘You’ve been a good man to me…in…in everything else that I ask of you.’

‘What…what you’re doing now…is…is…it’s not normal,’ he stammered, his shame at what was happening only to be matched by the growing swell in his underpants, her slow clamps upon it inflaming his senses.

Florin has listened, but Cristina’s…his stepmother’s…this woman’s breasts are pushing against his bare skin and the soft warmth of her thigh is now to be felt caressing his legs. A woman is pursuing him and here in his own bed. Trips to a nearby town, and the ministrations of a favoured tart, are nothing to what he is now beginning to feel. The fabric of his briefs is being stretched…all on account of the mental and physical stimuli that the woman in his bed is bringing to him and…and that she now shows every sign of seeking to ardently pursue with him.

‘Mother…don’t…don’t…this is crazy!’

He feels her hot breaths on his lips; meets the wondering look of her eyes on him.

‘Cristina…not mother in that sense…and I know…and I can feel the turmoil in you…as there is in me now, Florin, darling! We’re together here…just the two of us. Who is to know?’

‘We will! Don’t…and we shouldn’t be like this! No…don’t!’

‘Don’t be embarrassed to show me what you feel…for a woman…she who is here in bed…beside you.’ Cristina’s voice coaxes in warm whispers of breath to his face. Her hand has moved to clamp on the swell of his prick and works it in slow moves. She is seeking to coax him to abandon any remaining restraint. ‘I…I have wondered…if you find relief…living alone out here and only with me for company.’

‘No…not in the way that you mean!’

‘Good…but…but you could have me now…and…and no one would know.’

Her questing touches have found their way under the waist band of his pants. Cristina brazenly moves to kiss his belly; she then squirms to sit on him, her hands on his chest as she bends down to him, provoking and certain.

‘Cristina…just you slow down! No…no, wait!’

‘Undress me!’ she commands hoarsely.

‘Cristina! This is madness…what you ask of me!’

Her movements have cast the sheet away and he does as she asks as her hands claim him. They stroke his chest, and her fingers pinch his nipples. He grabs the hem of Cristina’s night-dress and is soon urged to kiss the tumble of her naked breasts as the garment is pulled over her body and they are fully exposed to his gaze and touch, for him to suck on Cristina’s nipples as she gropes him. She works him purposefully and squeezes his length and sac until he can bear it no more. He seeks to twist away from her wanton and aberrant claims upon him.

‘Cristina…Cristina…don’t…no more!’ he gasps on quickening breaths. He wants her. He knows how destructive it would be to claim her. ‘We can’t do this! We can’t…doing this is madness.’

‘No one will know…so don’t say anything!’ she hissed in reply. ‘Just go on…go on!’ she calls out, not wanting him to stop in what she has prevailed upon him to do.

Her hands hold his head in encouragement, and to have him resume in his delighting of her. His lips move from one breast to the other as she groaned in her rediscovered pleasure of a man being taken to her. She dug her fingers into his shoulders as he pressed his questing mouth to her skin. She felt his fingers brush the hair at her cleft and then enter her body; soon part soft wet lips and offer awkward, but deepening caresses.