Just Where Do We Go From Here Ch. 01

Just Where Do We Go From Here?

Comfort and Guilt

1

Harriet knew that life had dealt her a harsh blow, that her husband Carsten Gaertner’s stroke and incapacitation, at the early age of fifty-five, now left her to manage as best as she could in changed financial and family circumstances. Of her three children, only Lothar was still at home. He was a precocious second-year student at Heidelberg University, and he invariably travelled into the city with her; she to pursue her work and he his studies. Lothar would often stay over with friends, so he said, but she knew that a fellow student, Lisa, was the one who kept him with her.

It was then that she felt the loneliness of an empty house the most, and in her life also. She had remained a dutiful married woman, but her husband did not recognise her and that was the cruelest cut of all. She would visit him in the care home, where she would stay and talk as if to a blank wall. She would receive no response as she chatted to him in her happy ways of old but receiving no reaction. So, on a kiss to Carsten’s face and saying soft words, she would leave him again and push from her mind, if she could, the thought of how long she had to continue enduring these ways of it and the emptiness of her life where, before, love and companionship had flourished and left her content. Lothar was so often a considerate counterpoint, to that emotional wasteland, and she always chose to make the most of their times together, yet not make him feel that she was becoming overly dependent on him.

On a balmy evening and having just arrived home from her work, she wondered what to prepare for supper and having had second thoughts about ringing Lothar. He could be so unpredictable and had said nothing about his plans for the evening and the weekend ahead of them. She hoped that he might be with her for some of the time and she would be reassured that their bond was as strong as ever it had been.

‘Oh! Can it be you?’

She fumbled in her handbag and found her iPhone. Its insistent lilting ring tone announced whom it was: Lothar! His beaming smile was soon seen on the screen, his lean face and that rebellious single earring, his riot of windblown brown hair, taking nothing away from his looks that were such a livid reminder of his father’s when he had been his age.

‘Hello darling…I hope that it would be you.’

‘Hello. Mother…I’m on my way…so don’t worry.’

‘Will we be having supper together, or are you going out again…to be with Lisa?’

‘That’s over,’ he answered bluntly, his voice suddenly cool, She saw him staring out from the small screen of her phone. ‘it was all getting to be too intense…for her.’

‘I’m sorry…I didn’t know.’ Harriet wondered how anyone could complain about a lover being ‘too intense’, but then her Lothar was a young man unafraid to express his feelings. There was the prospect of him being with her more often and until his attentive ways and affection was claimed by someone new.

‘Be intense with me then,’ she blurted out, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror that hung over the banque seat at one end of the kitchen where she was. ‘We could dress up a bit for supper…look special and make an evening of it?’

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she saw him grin, even on the small crystal-clear screen. His smile lifted her spirits, and she would have company when she needed it most. ‘I can always rely on you to pick me up when I’m not at my best. I’ll be home by eight…’

‘Should I drive over and collect you?’

‘No, don’t do that…silly!’ he laughed, ‘I have my scooter here, remember, but I just don’t use it so often. The thing’s parked in the students bike store. I always travel in with you…make the most of the few moments we have before the day begins.’

She could hardly forget their arrangement, and chatty start to her day, and was glad that he did so. ‘And I usually bring you back home unless you’re detained…’

‘It’s over mother…between me and Lisa. Don’t go on about that, please. I’ll soon have more time to be with you, if that’s what you want, and if it will help you.’

‘You know you do…help me.’ She could not keep from giving voice to her feelings that the hospital visit had again aroused in her, Lothar’s lively, personable and attentive ways needed, now, more than ever. ‘I do worry about you. Just be with me…and be careful on that scooter of yours, won’t you?’ she asked in evident concern. ‘I need company and finding that with you is what I need just now. We’ll have supper together and be close…which I hope you won’t mind?’

‘I never have, mother, and now the times are very different….’

‘Yes, but we won’t talk about that too much…promise me?’

‘Sure. I won’t be long, promise!’ she heard him laugh and then her son was gone from her sight.

Uncommonly pleased with the change in her mood that Lothar’s news had brought to her, she stepped lightly to the foot of the stairs, her mind already possessed escort izmir by what to wear and what the evening would bring to them, pledges not to talk about what possessed their thoughts easier to make than to keep, but her Lothar had his ways; character traits that made it only too easy to be in his company and with an emotional void, that was her loss of Carsten, to be mended somehow.

 

2

She sat at the table and sipped on a small beaker of fruit juice, recalled moments that had affected her deeply and concerned a devoted son. Lothar had confounded her in his behaviour over supper, along with the attention that he paid to her that had become so different. It had become intimate in ways that she had scarcely believed possible and had left her to deal with a riot of conflicting emotions. She had spent restless hours lying awake and sleep eluding her, or it was fitful at best.

The dress she had worn at supper, a black jersey favourite with its cutaway sleeves and somewhat revealing neckline, had not been worn for some time and not since Carsten’s stroke. But she could still get into it. The dress shaped her rounded hips and thighs, the soft swell of her belly, its neckline drawing the eye to the jewelled pendant that she had worn and to be seen nestling in her cleavage.

She still wore it now, under a silk nightdress that she loved to feel against her skin and a billowy silken dressing gown loosely fastened at her waist. Then, as now, she had dressed to please herself, not to engage the attention of a man, let alone Lothar in the pursuit of wayward ways, whether to console her or for him to make up for the loss of a girlfriend.

‘That boy…that young man,’ she sighed, ‘what am I to do about this?’ He had regaled her with stories of university life, and he had soon told some of the jokes doing the rounds and that bordered on the obscene, to her ways of hearing them.

‘I’ve not told you the dirtiest ones!’ he had laughed and seeking her reaction, his eyes drifting over her and what she had chosen to wear. ‘I wouldn’t embarrass my mother with those…’

But how he had become when they had danced, especially a few steps to a tune heard on the house sound system that he had programmed for her, had soon alerted her to what he felt when she had been held close, far too close. It had been a consoling embrace that had become disconcertingly intimate until he’d been obliged to step away, suddenly embarrassed at the press of his prick against her belly and in response to holding her in ways quite different from before. Lothar was light on his feet, assured in most dance steps that she and Carsten had taught him at an early age, and it had all been deployed on her.

She had decided to let him down gently and had given voice to her dismay at what had happened. ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea of mine…after all? Being in each other’s company has its limits, darling…’

Lothar’s sigh of dismay had expressed the turmoil he felt. The offer of company for her had gradually aroused different emotions in him; the pursuit of easy dance steps, the sight of her, the perfume she had chosen to spray on her skin, all of it perhaps too much and inflaming a riot of conflicting emotions that she had been swept up in, until the effect that she had on him became evident. She had been dismayed to discover that she too had felt an aching tension building between them.

‘I know all of that,’ he had retorted, ‘and now I should go…it’s late…I just wanted to see your happy face once more…not the sadness in your eyes,’ he had stammered, his eyes taking in her reaction to what had been aroused in him, by her all of all people and her relaxed features suddenly changed. He had met again the look of her haunted eyes and heard her soft-voiced admonishment for his behaviour. ‘I hope that I’ve been some sort of company for you…until…until moments ago?’

‘Yes, you have darling….so let the moment go’

‘I’ll try and do that…but I’m not sure I can,’ he had answered her in some embarrassment, his strong hold on her hands lessening until he had let her step away.

She had brushed her fingertips over his cheek as if to console an injured child, wondering as she did so if he had been embarrassed for his aberrant interest in her being discovered, not for the emotion that had provoked it. ‘You took me out of it all, what’s been happening in my life with your father….for a while at least.’

‘That’s something, I guess…’

She had detained him, had gripped his arms as he leant in to kiss her goodnight, her mouth so close to his and Lothar’s hands on her hips for an instant and their eyes locked on the other’s as if to acknowledge that what had happened had taken their relationship into unknown territory. A step too far had been taken by him and encouraged, perhaps, by her not saying something to admonish his joyful behaviour, all of it offering a clue to what may have been at work in her, also, but propriety holding her back.

She escort izmir was possessed by the riot of conflicting emotions that again welled up within her on thinking back over the evening. ‘It’s crazy…what I felt for him, then.’

She had felt disconcerted by the effect that she on him, how she had dressed and revealed to his gaze, and touch, as they danced. She had failed to let rip and admonish him for his behaviour and had been dismayed that she, of all people, had made him feel and behave in the ways that ye had. She was a typical middle-aged woman and mother trying to keep a hold on herself, her emotional state and dealing with Carsten’s decline. Three children had softened her body’s fleshy curves, but Lothar had seemingly thought of her differently. He had seen and held someone else as they danced and then thoughts of them together, perhaps, in different and forbidden ways had taken a hold until reality had again intruded upon them, emotions battling with propriety.

‘Where do we go with this…from here on?’ she murmured, shutting her eyes for an instant and trying to close out the image of them dancing together, his exuberance just what she had needed after a hospital visit earlier in the day had left her dismayed and fearful of the future.

‘Mother?’

She was startled to hear his deep-voiced call to her, but to see him again might help to settle her unease over the change in his ways with her. ‘I’m here…Lothar, darling!’

Footsteps were heard on the stairs before she saw strong legs and large feet on the wooden treads; then her son’s torso, scarcely covered by a T-shirt that hung over his soft cotton boxer briefs. They shaped him, aroused again a sense of aberrant interest for the young man, the company he would offer in the seclusion of their home.

‘I…I couldn’t sleep…and I then saw the light on down here,’ he smiled, uncertainly, on drawing closer, his eyes taking in her appearance. ‘You?’

She shook her head and met his unwavering look upon her. She knew that the silk robe shaped her, but she had chosen to wear it as she had always done when Carsten was with her in every way that mattered. Now, she felt nervy on realising how the sight of this diaphanous garment affected Lothar, his gaze again as it had been only hours ago.

‘Don’t look at your mother like that!’

He heard the sharp tone but pouted a smile, chose not to explain away his unflinching gaze upon her, nor his feelings. The events of the previous evening had taken him to another place in his dealings with her. He had always felt proud to have parents that were an attractive and bonded, couple. He had thought, often enough in recent weeks, of the toll that Carsten’s loss would take on the woman he gazed at, she with her glacially pale skin that he took delight in seeing, her jewelled necklace and beaded bracelets a wondrous feminine touch.

He was again in thrall to her.

‘You are a woman…beautiful…and you’re alone and you hurt. I see it in your eyes…and I understood the reason for you dressing up last night…for wanting to do that.’

‘Not for reasons to make you feel the way that you did, then,’ she retorted on a whisper, ‘or how you are behaving towards me now.’ She shivered as his hands touched her throat, then lifted her face to make her look at him. ‘Don’t darling…not this, Lothar…darling!’

‘I can’t stop thinking of what’s happened to you…what you have lost. Carsten…father…he doesn’t recognise you….you don’t deserve that…a loving woman like you.’

‘Don’t say these things to your mother as if it’s normal…’

‘You haven’t heard it from anyone else, that counts, for some time….’

She met the understanding look in his eyes upon her, gripped his arms with trembling hands but could not restrain him in his renewed attentions upon her. She felt her robe being opened, the tugging away of the silken belt before he gazed down on the tumble of her breasts, shaped by the lace-trimmed bodice of her nightdress, before Lothar…her son…drew her to him.

‘Stop! I know that you care but stop this!’

‘Comfort…it’s a moment’s comfort for you,’ he breathed on her lips; the stilled, questioning, look of his eyes searching for a response. He felt her hands on his hips and pushed forward so that she could feel his hard prick against her body once more. ‘Help me with the ache I have…I don’t do that on my own…play with myself like others do all the time. You…seeing how you were last night at supper and then now have made me feel this way. I’ve seen a desperate loneliness in your look…in your eyes that was never there before.’

‘Your father was everything to me, then. Now, I try not to let others see it…not even you. I seem to have failed in that…’

‘I’m close to you….’

‘Yes, you are…but what you say and do, now?’ She spoke on averting her face from his kisses, but Lothar persisted in his other claims, kneaded the hollows of her hips and held her to him, moving again as if in a dance with her, the effect of his caresses impossible to ignore, or…or to move away from. ‘I know that you want to be of help and comfort, but…but what you’re doing is crazy….so wrong.’

He looked at her considerately.

‘I know, but I also want to be the comfort you need…a special comfort,’ he murmured, his breaths hot on her lips as she met his gaze, languished in his embrace upon her, the tumult of raging and confounding emotions that had been aroused by how they now were together and as never before. His confident ways defied what she thought she knew of him.

‘It…it’s unfair on…Carsten…how we now are, darling.’

‘Don’t you think I know that? I’ve waited and then I’ve seen what’s happening to you…how you’re changing and becoming lonelier. The happy vibrant woman, that I know you to be, has gone…’ He spoke out on kissing her hair, breathed in her scent, held her in a loosened embrace as she stood against him. ‘I’ve seen how it is, father not really recognizing that it’s you…’

‘I hurts me, but how you are with me…’ Harriet let the question in her voice drift away.

She clung to him, then eased her hold on his T-shirt, felt the insistent press of his penis against her belly. She hesitantly met his lover’s kisses and clung to him in raging distraction as her ordered world was again turned over. She pushed her hands under his T-shirt and felt his heat, relented and responded to another’s lustful ways and claims on her body. She felt the rage of sudden longing for a man course through her belly and pulled him to her.

‘You…you crazy boy…to want me and offer comfort in these ways! It’s…it’s so evil and wrong.’

‘I want it to mean something.’ Lothar bent to kiss her parted lips, felt her breaths as hey mingled with his. ‘Yes, I…I can’t keep what I feel and want from you!’ he gasped as she began to rhythmically clamp the swell in his boxer shorts, lifting his head and feeling her kiss his throat and to then share again in quick breathless kisses, all restraint seemingly forsaken.

‘And I don’t know how to end it, except…’ Wrong as it all was, she needed to have him possess her and to find solace in this way, even with him, her lustful son whose behaviour and soft words had her feel that she was on the edge of a dizzying fall.

‘I’ll help you with it as you can for me!’ he said as she shifted off the seat and out of his embrace.

‘Then be with me and then never again…like this!’ she called out as she ran from him and up the stairs, her auburn hair flowing free, the ribbon bindings of last night eased out of the weave that it was always worn in, the thump of their feet echoing on the stilled landing before they embraced, their fiery kisses silencing her words of dismay that he should want her and that she would succumb to his deviant lustful kisses, to his questing caresses, submit to these claims upon her body with a hungering intensity that had been denied to her for so long.

‘I love who you are…never forget that!’ They undressed each other in a manic frenzy, soon embraced and gloried in the touch of their naked skins upon each other, Harriet tearing her lips from his quick fiery kisses and cradled his face in her hands, sought to meet his gaze but he was in thrall to her, clung to him and felt that his embrace would crush the breath out of from her.

‘How can I let you do this…how can I share these moments with you? It’s a strange comfort that I want from you now, darling…oh darling!’

‘No one will know…no one will know what happened.’

His questing hands, his hungering lips, Lothar’s kisses were on her throat, neck and shoulders before they drifted to her breasts, tugged at her hard nipples. His strong hands caressed her buttocks and she reached for him, leant away as his lips continued in their progress over her breasts, these errant touches inflaming her senses. The infant she had suckled now claimed them with renewed hunger and a different purpose. Her boy lusted after them. His fingers claimed the haven where she had pushed him out and into a life with her and Carsten. The nub of his long, hard penis was between her legs as he caressed her soft thighs, the moist lips to the haven that he sought to enter so purposefully. She shuddered on feeling how long and swollen, thick and veined it now was, his sac full.

‘My boy’s become a man…’ she murmured in dismay, ‘and I should refuse you in what you want from me.’

‘Bring to you…share with you!’ Lothar gasped and pulled out of her hold. ‘Sorry…it’s so full…it aches.’

‘From wanting me?’

‘It’s been like that ever since we had supper. I tried to blow my load…couldn’t make it happen.’ He gave a soft laugh in embarrassment. Harriet pushed him down onto the edge of the bed. Her son, the tall, gangly athlete with his toned body and confident ways looked to her, again, for help. She saw him raise his arms, felt the slow, tantalising, sliding caress of his fingers to her body, noted again the small tattoo on one bicep. The unblemished skin of a babe was that no longer. ‘I…I want you…want you so bad, even though…’