by Artemis Hunt
I take my mother by the hand to a section in the garden with a pretty white cupola, where a table has been set. My mother is British, and she used to love afternoon teas. It’s all very peaceful in stark contrast to what just happened upstairs. A little silver tray of finger sandwiches and a dainty teapot with teacups have been set.
Mom used to serve afternoon tea to the members of the various charities she spearheaded back when she wasn’t ill. I figured that tea would calm her even further.
Beth awaits us in the cupola. She gets up as we approach.
“Mom, this is Beth. She’s someone I work with.”
I think any other appellation would be too open for interpretation. ‘Friend’ has its connotations, and I think Beth isn’t ready to be my friend as yet. ‘PA’ would be too formal and would denote the boss/employee relationship.
Beth holds her hand out warmly. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Morton.”
My mother doesn’t take her outstretched hand.
Fuck. She’s not going to have a full-blown attack again, is she?
“Mom?” I say gently.
My mother’s eyes are shining. They are the same hazel as mine. You can see what a beautiful woman she still is. I’ve managed to comb her hair and make her presentable in a floral shift.
She whispers to Beth, “You’re an angel. I can see your halo.”
Beth seems out of sorts, but she manages a smile. Her outstretched hand doesn’t waver.
I lean closer to my mother’s ear and say, “That’s what I tell her, but she doesn’t listen.”
Beth’s smile stretches wider and stays.
This time, it’s genuine.
We have tea with my mother and the nurse, with the attendants a call away. We make small talk. Well, as much talk as my mother can manage anyway. She seems to have calmed down a lot, and when she’s not looking, I slip her meds into her teacup.
Just when I think everything is going OK, my mother turns to Beth.
“Selena?” she says earnestly. “I don’t really know if you and my son will have a future. I understand what you’re both going through, but it’s wrong and it’s got to stop.”
Beth is a little taken aback.
I twitch in my seat. I don’t really blame Mom. Selena and Beth do have more than a passing resemblance.
“My name is Beth, Mrs. Morton.” Beth’s reply is gentle.
“The school board will throw you out,” my Mom insists. “I know these things. You will be ruined and there’ll be no place for you to go.”
“Mom, she’s not Selena. Selena’s not here anymore.”
Beth shoots me a quizzical look as if to say, “Who’s Selena?”
I shake my head almost imperceptibly.
We stay with my mother until the sun goes down and twilight settles onto the green tops of the trees. It’s time for Mom to go back to her room.
“She’s had a lot of excitement for today and it’s best she gets her rest now,” the nurse says. “Thank you, Mr. Morton, for coming.”
“Promise you’ll call me sooner next time,” I say.
“It’s not always that easy, Mr. Morton.”
“Call me Chris.”
“We don’t want to have to be calling you every day, so we leave only the most unmanageable of episodes to you.”
I envelop my mother in a bear hug. “I’ll come to see you next week, OK?”
Mom’s eyes are filled with tears. “You’re the only one who comes, Christopher. No one else ever does.”
“That’s not true. Dad came two weeks ago, remember?”
The nurse shakes her head behind my mother.
“No, he didn’t,” my mother says.
“Yes, he did.”
It’s always important to maintain the illusion that her entire family is behind her. Dad has remarried five years ago and I never had the heart to tell Mom.
It’s Beth’s turn to hug her. “Goodbye, Mrs. Morton. I hope you’ll allow me to visit again.”
“You’re a nice, nice girl, Selena, despite what they say about you.”
I can see that Beth is in equal parts perplexed and curious. It’s not an episode in my life that I’m proud of. I wonder how long I can keep silent about it.
We drive away from the Waverly Hills sanatorium and head back to the city. Beth is pensive, no doubt contemplating the events of the afternoon.
“I’m sorry today didn’t work out as planned,” I say.
“No, not at all. It was lovely to meet your mother.” She raises her eyes shyly towards mine. I have to catch my breath at the fragile honesty in them. “I must say she wasn’t what I was expecting.”
You’re the only one of the women I’ve been with, I don’t say, that I have taken to meet my Mom. And under such circumstances.
“We’ve kept a pretty tight lid over her illness. That’s why you don’t see us cozying up to any press.”
“But why? It isn’t something to be ashamed.”
“I know. But my father is ashamed of her. He’s afraid the genes will run in our family, and the board of directors – which comprises of some old fogeys who have no clue about mental illness – may declare either me or my brother unfit to head the company.”
“But it’s your company.”
“It’s still public listed and we have bosses to answer to, namely the board of directors.”
She’s silent for a while, taking all this in. I can imagine that she probably thinks my father is an ogre. But I don’t blame Dad. I once did when Mom first got ill. But I realize now that he couldn’t cope with the stress of it.
“Do the rest of your family go to see her often?”
“No. My father goes once in a while, but it hurts them too much to see her that way, you know. My brothers used to go a lot more often before, many years back. Then as time goes by and they marry and have families of their own, they see her less and less.”
“But not you. You still go.”
“I used to go a lot more often too, I’ll admit. But I don’t blame my brothers or my Dad. I’m the only one who’s single, and I’m the only one with lots of time to spare.”
“That’s not fair to you . . . to take the burden.”
“It’s not a burden. She’s my Mom. She loved me best when we were growing up. She’s my responsibility now.”
She nods, commiserating. She gazes out of the window so that her lovely profile is to me. Then she turns to me again, her eyes brimming with light.
“You’re a good man, Chris Morton. You don’t know it, but you’re a good man.”
“Why do you say I don’t know it?”
“Just a hunch.”
I don’t respond to this, but a prickly warmth spreads through my body to gather in a knot around my chest.
We arrive at her apartment. The Lambo draws hungry stares again from the denizens of the neighborhood, and I’m acutely uncomfortable under the collar.
“You know, I wish you’d move out quickly from here. Come Monday, what do you say you and I start looking for a place?”
Or you could always move in with me.
Naturally, I don’t say this because it might scare her silly. It would scare me too if Taylor or anyone else were to suggest it to me. Funny how unexpected revelations can be misconstrued and distorted, even if they are absolutely honest.
Beth says, “Do you want to come up?”
The same light is shining out of her eyes, and her lips are slightly parted.
I swallow the lump that has formed in my throat, and nod.
BETH
We make it as far as the inside of the door. He falls onto my mouth and ravages it as he rips my blouse open. Buttons pop, and he mutters “I’m sorry, baby, but you’ve gotten me so hot, I’ll buy you another one” and tears the fabric off my shoulders.
Wow, oh wow.
I’m overheated myself, and my core has burned into molten jelly, and my legs are weak and I can hardly stand. He slams me against the wall as he rips his own expensively tailored shirt
off. (So mine is not the only torn piece of fabric.) He rains hard kisses upon my neck and throat as he gropes for the side zipper of my skirt. For some reason or other, it’s caught.
Impatiently, he hikes my skirt up and reaches for my panties. With a decisive tug, he pulls the skimpy piece of lacy material down.
I have worn my best panties for our date, and it matches my pretty brassiere. But they were all for nothing, because he doesn’t even so much as look at the damned things as he savagely peels them off. His ardor sweeps me away.
I find myself panting as he seizes my nipples with his mouth and sucks at them with an intensity that galvanizes all the circulation in my breasts into those two red twin peaks. I moan and clutch at his hair –all sexily mussed up now. His scent – of clean flesh and mystifying pheromones – is driving me crazy. His hand dives for my sex, already moist and aching for the memory of his clever, clever fingers to prize it apart and make it weep.
Oh Chris, I want you I want you I want you.
There’s an ache in my sex – an ache so raw and beguiling. An ache like I have never experienced before. An ache to be taken, claimed, filled, pummeled.
Oh!
Is this what rabid desire feels like? The bodice-ripping, gut-clenching, heart-stopping desire that I have only read about in romance novels and magazine serializations? I never thought they existed in real life, but here it is – and I’m in the main cast of this wondrously erotic stage play.
His fingers latch on to my sex, hitting the sweet spot of my clit, and I almost combust at the sheer ecstasy of it.
“I want you, Beth. I want you so bad.” His voice is musky with need. “Are you . . . OK with it?”
I realize he’s asking me for permission, of course.
Permission to be the man who takes my virginity.
I’m not even thinking anymore. I’m just reacting. All those years of moral upbringing by my parents are now taking wing and catapulting out of my window. I’m been reduced to my basest self – in animal heat.
“Yes, yes, I’m ready,” I pant.
He doesn’t hesitate to think twice. His hands move to unzip his fly, and out springs his thick rod. His luscious, luscious manhood. The large staff of flesh that would impale me and whatever misgivings I have into a threshold I must cross.
It almost strikes my pubic area.
“Give me a sec, baby,” he says, and rifles in his side pocket to take out a condom in its foil. He tears at it with his teeth. “Just let me put this on.”
I watch with fascination as he rolls the damp latex onto his pulsing cock. My mind tells me I should have doubts, but my body is too flushed, too much in want to heed it.
Once the condom is on – a damp, glistening sheath on his flesh – he catches my arms.
“Lie down on the floor, Beth, it’ll be better this way.”
We tumble onto the floor with its thin but clean carpet. Not the best of mattresses, but hygienic comfort is the farthest thing from my mind right now. He opens my thighs. Our eyes meet, intense hazel against soft brown. Oh, his melting chocolate eyes – so alluring in the lamplight. I can stare into those eyes forever.
“Just lie back and relax, Beth,” he whispers. “You’re wet enough already.”
He does something with his hands – I can’t see what – and a hardness pushes against my sex. I take a deep breath.
“It’ll only hurt for a second,” he says.
And pushes.
This is it. My debauchery, no . . . deflowering.
“Uh,” I cry out.
The pain is sharp, sweet, exquisite. My long dormant walls are cleaved apart, and the sensation of being filled is so pleasurable, so amazing that I regret I’ve never tried it before. His flesh rushes into mine – I can almost hear the swoosh and parting of velvety walls. It’s as if he’s meant to be there, and his flesh is homing in at last.
And the emotions! The complex rush of emotions this spills to the forefront. It’s as if I belong to someone, and he desires me above all else. The knowledge that I’m deeply desired and wanted for my physicality is intoxicating. It’s like an actual drug. I can float on this all day, all night if I have to.
A moist trickle oozes within my tight passage. A maidenhood taken.
“Oh, Beth,” he moans as he arches on top of me, “I’ve been waiting for this for such a long time. It’s incredible . . . how you feel.”
His face is contorted with bliss, and my heart expands to see it – the fact that I can make someone else so physically happy by just my body alone. He stills himself on top of me, allowing me to feel him inside me.
“How does it feel?”
“Gorgeous,” I whisper.
He begins to move his hips. He’s gentle at first, establishing a rhythm.
“You OK?” he asks me. “Any more pain?”
“No.”
There’s the slightest discomfort because he’s very huge, but the tendrils of exquisite and erotic warmth – tremulous and in wavy frequencies – that course from my sex in radial spokes and shimmer their way into every part of my groin . . . and beyond . . . more than make up for it.
Oh, I didn’t know it was going to be this way.
Oh oh oh!
“Bend your knees,” he says. “It’ll be better.”
He has been right so far, and so I obey. His organ thrusts in even deeper, reaching places I’ve never knew existed before. I want to close my eyes to savor the intense pleasure of it all, but I don’t want to tear my gaze off his beautiful, beautiful face. For he is a god. Adonis incarnate. Having someone like him make love to me is a fantasy every girl can only dream of, and I’m the living dream.
He heightens his rhythm. His thrusts and pounds become more labored, more powerful. It’s the slap of flesh against flesh – of moist, sticky unity. I have heard and often wondered about my G-spot, and if I indeed possess one. But there’s an area within me that he’s aiming for now. Every sharp nudge against it sends a flotilla of erotic sensations scurrying throughout my groin, which in turn shoot flowery spasms to my spine.
I begin to grunt with each stab he makes upon it.
His arms are on my arms, holding me tenderly – for support, for leverage, for further nails in the cross of my surrender. The waves I have felt yesterday – only more florid and coming from another spot – begin to build again, sweeping magnificently and broadly up my entire pelvic region. On and on they rush, until I’m floating above the flotsam . . . higher and higher upon the white capped peaks . . . and even higher towards the sun, which is a red voluptuous fruit for the plucking in the sky.
My plucking.
Chris, Chris, Chris.
I want to moan his name over and over, but I have no voice. I’m reduced to my very basic state. I have become a vessel, a receptacle for pleasure. It is shockingly liberating.
I burst – white hot shards like a mirror splintering in all directions. I come and come, and he believe he lets himself come too with a cry . . . that shuddery, shimmering paean of two infinite wills merging. And it’s as if we are one continuous plane – of fireworks in the night sky on the Fourth of July, completely of our making.
We hold each other, and revel and luxuriate in each other, and let our sticky, sweaty bodies merge as we pant and gulp in deep breaths and stare into each other’s eyes. His brow is beaded with moisture, as is his upper lip, and he has never looked more beautiful and contented.
This man. This wonderful sensual man whom I feel so safe with, no matter what people tell me on the contrary.
And it’s so warm and wet and wonderful and peaceful that I wonder if I’m already lost in him.
I cannot lose myself in him.
Oh God.
Is it already too late?
*
We fall asleep in each other’s arms on my narrow single bed. When we wake up the next morning, we make love again, and this time, there is no pain – only the slow suffusion of luxurious pleasure through all our body parts and limbs. It’s as though we are
moving in a sea of molasses. I explode again, and this time the colors are painted on a different palate – hues unseen on any rainbow.
Later, much later, I make him some breakfast in my little kitchenette. Scrambled eggs on toast. He watches me frying at the stove, smiling. He’s sitting at my tiny dining table, clad in nothing but his underwear. And even that is tight.
“Thank you for last night,” he says in that slow, sexy, upper class Midwestern drawl of his. “It was fantastic.”
I blush a little. I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.
The air between us is compressed, still torpid. It’s as if time trickles more slowly in here, and I never want this to end.
“No regrets?” he asks.
“No.”
Not now, but I may have some later.
“What do you want to do today?” he says.
“Relax.”
“You want to take a walk in the park?”
We go out to Grant Park, where we walk hand in hand to the Field Museum, and then to the Aquarium to see the manatees. We’re almost like any other loving couple, except that I know better. But the day is too nice to quibble about things I cannot change. The sun is out and whole families are having picnics. Children frolic at the lakeside while policemen on two-wheel cyclers keep a watchful eye on everyone. A light breeze whips through the rustling trees.
Chris’s cheeks are pink and he’s the very epitome of health. He radiates a glow that makes everyone – men and women alike – turn to stare. And yes, they stare at me too, but with envy.
I should be so lucky, except that this is the fourth day we’re together, and it’s all going to end pretty soon.
Unless I make a decision to sell myself out.
A sliver of dread curls within my stomach. The day has been so nice. It’s a shame to have to spoil it, and yet I must forge ahead.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” I say.
We are sitting beneath a shady tree. Our bodies are sprawled on the grass. Just ten feet away, some kids are playing Frisbee with an overgrown golden retriever.