Children of Doubt

It didn't matter to me. Not for this night, the night of Valentine's Day, with my soon-to-be husband off in Las Vegas with his sister, doing whatever unspeakable things I suspected they did.

And it didn't matter when Billy laid me, naked, out on the end of the bed, my feet, still in the high heels, touching the floor, and knelt between my spread legs and made love to my inner core with his lips and tongue and teeth, while I gripped his curly strawberry-blond mop of hair, writhing under his attention, clutching at his head, begging him to stop and never to stop. Exploding again and again—and then again when he had risen over me, covered me close from above, his chest pressing in on my crushed breasts, as I hooked my ankles on his shoulders and he thrust inside me again and pumped and pumped and pumped, until once more I felt him creaming me deep inside.

Insistent and virile, he fucked me once more before leaving my room, me laid out on the bed, arms akimbo, legs bent and parted, panting and moaning softly. Happy Valentine's Day to me.

I looked all over the hotel for him the next morning and early afternoon. The previous day he seemed to be everywhere I was. Today I couldn't find him anywhere. Was this the day he was taking off to go surfing? I wondered. I didn't think so. I thought it would be the next day.

After noon—I couldn't say after lunch, because my emotions were tied too tightly in a knot to be able to eat lunch—I found Billy behind the bar at Babcock & Story. He was hunched over the bar, facing a brunette of indeterminate age, although I'd like to think that she was older than I was, and he was cooing at her and running his fingers over her forearm. She, of course, was eating him up.

Just as I had eaten him up the previous night. Literally eaten him up. Given him a blow job between couplings—something I'd also become accustomed to do for William, because he said he got a bigger rush from that than from penetration sex—but not as enthusiastically as I did it for Billy the previous night.

Fighting the tears, I rushed back to my room, completely lost on what to do now. Pretend I hadn't seen him with the brunette and hope he would come to me again that night? It wasn't a pride thing. He was young and virile. I needed comfort and attention and he'd given it to me—expertly. If this was my last fling before marrying, so be it. I was willing to make the most of it. I was willing to pretend I hadn't seen him with the brunette in the bar. He'd been honest with me. A married woman was taking him to Hawaii the weekend I was getting married. He made no pretense about pursuing multiple older women.

It wasn't forever. Neither of us had pretended it would be.

The decision was taken out of my hands when I got to my room, though. There were text messages on my phone. One was from William. He'd come home earlier than expected. He wanted to go over his firm's accounts and check on some wedding planning. Where was I?

Indeed, where was I?

Packing quickly, I checked out early and turned the nose of my Triumph Spitfire toward L.A. I'd had my bachelorette party. Just me and Billy. I had no plans to regret that.

Valentine's Day, 2003

As the hotel car valet worked to pull my suitcase from the back of my Honda Accord coupe over the obstruction of the empty baby seat, Billy suddenly came to mind. This wasn't because of similarities, but because of contrasts. The valet was Hispanic and not particularly good looking, although he was as young looking as Billy had been that Valentine's Day two years earlier. And the Accord had been what William had insisted I change for the Spitfire, which he kept for himself. He'd said, reasonably enough, that I now needed a backseat and preferably one that Gideon wouldn't have a door he could somehow open—if he could get out of his seat—and go zooming out into space in our exclusive neighborhood, where I couldn't drive more than fifteen miles per hour anyway.

I hadn't thought about Billy when I'd made a beeline for San Diego and the Hotel Del Coronado—at least consciously. But now that I was here, once again escaping my doubts about my marriage, I realized that Billy had everything to do with my retreat choice.

I wondered if he was still working here.

The wonder left me, though, as I approached the hotel's reservations desk to find him standing there in a front desk uniform. He was as hunky and gorgeous as ever. Still the strawberry blond hair, good tan, and engaging smile. And the sensuality too.

I positioned myself in front of him, choosing him over two other available clerks. Mentally I did the count of how long it would take him to remember me—if ever.

"Welcome, Mrs. Crane . . ."

One, two, three. I'd kept my maiden name rather than take William's, but I'd replaced the Ms. for a Mrs.

". . . Have you been a guest at the Del Coronado before?"

Four, five, six.

"Wait. Mary Ellen? It is Mary Ellen?"

I didn't know if he'd really recognized me from looking at me. Someone in their early thirties and having acquired a husband and son in the interim could easily look different from two years earlier. I acknowledged that. But as long as that big, suggestive, knowing smile plastered itself on his face—which it did—I didn't care whether he recognized me by my face or by full name on the reservation card he now held in his hand.

"Yes, my family has been staying here for years. The last time I stayed here—exactly two years ago—was very pleasant indeed. The service was great. I'm hoping the service has remained great."

I gave him a quizzical look, giving him a chance to go one of several ways with this. I now knew I'd escaped to here from L.A. and William because I might find Billy here—might be able to reverse time and regain passion. I didn't know that until a few minutes ago, though, so if I had meant nothing to him and wasn't going to mean anything to him now, I hadn't lost anything I was consciously pursuing.

But he grinned, and said, "I'm quite pleased that you were pleased with the service during your last stay. We must do what we can to maintain you level of satisfaction in that regard."

He looked around to see who might be listening. Thankfully the other two clerks now were engaged with incoming guests. He lowered his voice and, giving me a meaningful look, said, "We have a very nice room with a king-sized bed. Would you like to have one room key or two?"

"I'm alone. One key wouldn't be enough?" I asked, but being as quick on the uptake as I could have been.

"If I make two, perhaps you'd like me to keep one," he said. "If, of course, you are interested in receiving the same great service you did during your last visit."

"Yes . . . two . . . would be good; two would be very nice," I said, with a stammer resulting from a jolt of electricity that went through my body. This, of course, was exactly what I'd come for, even if I only now fully realized it. Revenge. To a certain extent to get back a bit of my own on William. I'd escaped to decide whether to stay with the marriage or not. I didn't realize at the time that I also was licking my wounds, trying to recover my pride, looking for a bit of "getting back." I knew now, though, by making a beeline to the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, that the "getting back" was uppermost in my mind. That and the great sex, of course—if Billy was still working here, which he was.

And then regrouping. But first the getting back. Billy was making it easy for me.

"And is the service fast here?" I asked, trying on a suggestive smile of my own—with a tentative look around to assure myself we weren't being closely observed.

"Only in arriving. Not necessarily in completing. Great service can take quite some time." Was that a bit of a smirk on his face? He did remember. He was toying a bit with me. But he'd handed over only one of the card keys. He'd palmed the other and slipped it into his pocket.

"I have a break in thirty minutes," he said. "Would you be interested in some service that—?"

"That would be quite satisfactory," I said, turning and following the not-comparable Hispanic car valet turned bellhop to the elevators.

No initial frenetic coupling this time. Showing that he remembered everything, Billy told me how anxious he'd been for it that first time and how afraid he'd been that I would change my mind that he had pushed for that first penetration total possession and only later giving me more attention.

I remembered it well. No one had seized my total surrender as that first time or made love to me that second time as Billy had done. Certainly not William in our nearly two years of marriage.

William. I felt like throwing something while I impatiently was waiting for Billy's key card to slide into my door—I stopped at the point, moaning at the thought, the anticipation, of Billy sliding into me—and I almost did throw a soap dish into the bathroom mirror. Had I aged in the last two years? Yes, of course I had. But Billy didn't appear to have done so. I still was only a decade older than he was, but would it seem to him like more?

It didn't seem like more to me as I sank down in front of him as he entered the room, unzipped and freed him, and moved my lips over the bulb of his cock. I was exhilarated that he was hard already—not as hard and long and thick as he would get. But the thought of coupling with me again had succeeded in starting his erection.

I could at least take pride that I could suck off a man better now than when we'd first had sex. That was one aspect of lovemaking that William really enjoyed. He didn't measure up to Billy in any way in terms of penetration sex, but he did enjoy my ever-improving sucking technique.

"Stop. Stop. You'll need to stop that now," Billy said, with a groan, as he leaned down and lifted me up off my knees. For nostalgia purposes, I'd remained in my slip, bra, and panties and had strapped on high heels for his arrival, and he made quite a performance stripping me and playing with the high heels when he laid me on the end of the bed and making love to me with his hands, lips, and tongue.

My panties were soaked from both of us as he sucked at my folds through the panties. After gliding them off my legs, he returned to his labors between my thighs, not relenting despite my thrashing about and clutching at his head he had made me see stars and drank of my flow.

He rose over me then, prepared to take me in the missionary position, until I told him I wanted something different—something that would be a matter of revenge—something I had spied William and his sister, Kathy, doing earlier that day in our guest room when I came home early from a book club meeting because the speaker had canceled her appearance at the last minute. On Valentine's Day. In my own house.

The something that had put me in a car headed for San Diego.

With a low, melodic laugh, Billy agreed readily. "You've become quite jaded since last we fucked," he murmured.

Not really, I thought. I'd never done this position before—didn't really know if, at thirty-two, I could do it now. But Kathy was forty-four, and she jolly well did it with William. So, I'd do it to.

Billy went on his back on the bed and pulled me down on top of him, with me facing the ceiling. I was hovering over him, like a reverse crab position, largely supporting my torso on my arms and bent legs, stiffed armed into the bedspread on either side of Billy's torso, although he was also supporting me by gripping my waist in his hands. The back of my head rested in the hollow of his shoulder. My legs were bent back. Long and thick, his cock snaked up inside me. As he thrust up, I thrust down. With each rhythmic dive deep inside me, I screamed in my mind the names of my tormentors. Thrust . . . William! Thrust . . . Kathy! Thrust . . . William!

I was able to sustain it for no longer than I had observed that morning in the guest room that Kathy was able to maintain the position. Like William then did with Kathy, Billy pulled me down onto his chest, grabbed and squeezed my breasts in the same rhythm he was set in in thrusting up into me—deeper now—and I, like Kathy, cried out in explosion as Billy released his semen deep up inside me.

We lay there, not moving from that position, both panting heavily.

"That was nice," he whispered. "You are so beautiful, such a good lay. Among the best of my ladies."

Ah, the always honest—perpetually young—Billy. Happy to fuck. Fucking like a bunny. Never mincing words that it was just another lay to him, albeit one of the better ones, or so he said. Well, that was OK with me—at least for now, although I was beginning to hope for more. I'd take Billy anyway I could have him. My own way of clutching at youth, passion, and a bit of satisfaction in a troubling marriage. Not a theoretical activity. I'd actually cling to—open to—a young, virile stud.

I felt one of his hands glide across my belly.

"Feeling for stretch marks?" I asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Stretch marks. Evidence of birth. I'm a mother now. Did I tell you? I have a beautiful son. The spitting image of his father. Gideon. Fifteen months old now. A real handful. He goes straight for what he wants, and he wants it all. Can you feel motherhood in my belly and sagging breasts?"

"Nothing about you sags as far as I can feel."

"And you've felt a lot of women my age, haven't you, Billy?"

"My share, yes," he answered. He laughed. "Well, more than my share, I guess."

I didn't laugh with him.

Not a hint of embarrassment or shame. No commitment at all. It occurred to me then that not only had I subconsciously come here to see if Billy was still here—the Billy who would do this with me—but also to check on his commitment potential. A glorious, young, hard cock able to move inside me like no other. But could there be more?

"How long are you here for?" he asked. "I want to see you—to feel you, to move inside you—again."

There was a bit of poetry in him; I'd give him that. "This is it for now, then?" I asked, my disappointment coming out in the question.

"No, of course not, but if you are here for a few days—"

"I don't know how long I'm here for. The truth is that I've walked out on my husband. I found him with another woman." I wasn't about to reveal that the other woman was my husband's own sister.

"And left that precious little son of yours?"

"Ah, there's the rub," I said. "We have a nanny. We have someone to do everything. A housekeeper. A gardener. Even a driver." An extra cunt. "I get to do nothing," I continued. "But there's the rub. Gideon."

We were quiet for several minutes as he gently pushed me off him and then rolled with me, the two of us on our sides, facing each other. He embraced me, his lips moving down to my nipples—in those breasts he'd been gallant enough to say weren't sagging.

"How long can you stay now?" I whispered.

"Not long today," he answered, gliding a hand down across my belly, into my groomed bush, and deeper, into the folds, making me tremble. His cock was right there too. I felt it engorging again. "I have to take my mother to a medical procedure."

"But later? Is there someplace other than here we can go?"

"I live with my mother."

"You live with your mother?" I asked. He's twenty-two and still living with Momma? Would that be a package for all time? I wondered. I was already up to here with relations with hanger-on relatives.

"Shush," he whispered. "The time is slipping away. I'll meet you here again tomorrow afternoon. But for now . . ."

He pulled me into him, and I opened my thighs to him, sighing as he entered me, moving his hands to my butt cheeks and massaging them, squeezing them, rhythmically pulling them into him to aid moving his hard cock deeper inside me.

Gripping my buttocks. "Hold it, hold it, darlin'. Gonna come. Shit! Gonna come again!"

And then he did. And if this was as far as it was going to go, it was more than enough for me.

* * * *

"I'll give her up. That's the best I can do. I dropped her off at her home here on the way to the hotel."

I looked at William, who had tracked me down at the Del Coronado—at the pool. I felt at so much a disadvantage, reclining on a lounge bed by the pool, in my two-piece suit, and William standing over me—in an expensive three-piece suit.

"Let me put something on, and then let's take this into one of the bars—one without a big crowd." I played for time as I rose off the lounge bed and covered myself in a cotton wrap, not feeling so naked and vulnerable in front of him now.

"I can't stay with a man who screws his own sister, William," I said when we found a remote table at one of the beach bars, where the sound of the nearby surf covered our painful—shocking, really—conversation.

"It's the twenty-first century and we're not in Arkansas, Mary Ellen. You knew what Kathy and I had before we married. I mean I didn't directly tell you or anything, but—"

"The hell I did. I wouldn't have married you." Of course I suspected it. I had my doubts. I just didn't follow up on them because . . .

"You knew. Deep down you knew. But you wanted what I had to offer. I could give you so much. And think of Gideon. We share a son now."

Yes, that was it, I had to admit. I thought we could make it work. And that's what I said now. "I thought at the time that we could make it work, William. But you're throwing it in my face. You're screwing her in my bed."

"Technically speaking, we've kept it to one of the guest rooms," he responded. "But we could make it work. We can. We live in L.A. A lot of families in L.A. have special living arrangements. I can take care of you both. And now we have Gideon. I intend to raise Gideon no matter what."

I looked up into his eyes then. He was playing the Gideon card. This was what I was afraid of. William had everything. He had position, power, friends, in Los Angeles. And the best of lawyers. What did I have? Could I manage to keep Gideon? Would I dare tell the world why I wanted to leave William? William was right about L.A. That town had seen—and weathered—everything.

"Come on, baby. Come back to me. We can make it work. Dan's here. He can drive your car back today. We can stay until the morning, make use of the room you've already paid for. We can start all over again."

There was no preliminary other than the blow job I gave him—what he always liked to start off with. When I had him as big and hard as he was going to get, he pulled me up from my knees and lowered me to the bed, spreading my thighs, hovering over me, entering—not nearly as far or as thick as Billy did—but enough. Enough. I kept telling myself it would have to be enough. Thrusting. Again. Enough. And again. Enough. My nails digging into his shoulders, arching my back, my mouth opening to his. Again and again.

Exploding . . . together . . . as two years of marriage had trained them to do.

Not walking on clouds but enough. I'd have to give it another chance—to see if it was enough. If I can keep what's mine. If Kathy is truly gone.

But even though he had started by saying he would give her up, that's not what he continued to say. Was it? He said he could take care of both of us.

Valentine's Day, 2004

"Billy, that you? You home? Com' on in here and giv' us a buzz. I'm in the kitchen."

Billy's mother took another drag off her cigarette and another slug from a glass of bourbon, neat, and set the glass down on the kitchen table She sat sideways to the table, a bit slumped in the chair. Billy came in behind her where she was sitting, wrapped loosely in a house coat, with nothing underneath. He put a hand on her shoulder, leaned over her, and kissed her on the top of her head. She was a strawberry blonde, like he was, although there were strands of gray here and there. The hair was tightly coiffured in a twenty-year-old style and stiff and brittle from too frequent visits to the salon. She reached up and covered the hand he had on her shoulder, turned her face to it, and kissed the back of his hand.