Children of Doubt

"Happy Valentine's Day, Mom," Billy said, leaning over her and laying a Valentine card on the table.

"That's nice, Billy. You know what I like for a Valentine even better than that, though, don't you?"

"Sure, I do." He moved the hand on her shoulder to cupping her chin, raised her face to him, dipped his own face down, and kissed her on the lips. His other hand moved down under the neckline of the house coat and cupped one of her generous-sized breasts. She sighed for him and reached back behind her and cupped his basket, rubbing him more erect through the denim of the jeans.

"You look like there's something on your mind," she said, when they came out of the kiss. "You still stewing about my going next week?"

"No, go if you want, Mom. But you know it'll never work out like you want. You know it will always be whatever time he wants to take away from his other life to be with you."

"Don't be jealous now, baby. So, what's your problem? I know there's one. I've always been able to read you, sugar."

"I got fired at the hotel today."

"They finally catch up with you cattin' around with the lonely women guests, did they?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I told you you'd get in trouble fucking those rich old floozies up at that fancy hotel."

"I like fucking older women, Mom. They aren't all floozies—not the ones I pick out. I'm picky. You know that. Some of them are very nice, and I only fuck 'em if I can tell that it's what they need. None of them complained. It was Reg, the head bartender. He said I was doing more fucking than working at the bar. And I haven't heard you complaining about me doing older women. Anyway, I'll have to find something else."

"Do as you like. Or just enjoy yourself surfing. You know he'll continue supporting us both. You could take the trip with me."

"Yeah, and just sit around while he finds time to fuck you? Maybe a threesome? Think he'd like me to join in?"

"Don't get fresh like that, son. He's your father. Maybe not on paper . . . but nonetheless."

"A lot of good he's been as a father. Besides, I don't like taking his money; you know that."

"Well, don't fret about it now. It's Valentine's Day. You got some sugar for your mother?"

"Sure," Billy said. He went down on his knees in front of her and buried his head in her lap. Sighing and giving a low moan, she held his head close into her lap. He brushed aside the wings of her house coat. Her belly rounded a bit, but her thighs were still pretty firm for a woman her age. She still was able to take pride in the shape of her legs—in her overall shape, in fact. The breasts weren't firm anymore, but she still felt comfortable with what she long ago had named them—Pride and Joy. She moaned and spread her thighs as he burrowed his face into her crotch.

"You know, it's your fault I like older women, Mom," Billy murmured. "Always thinking of you when I'm with them."

Clutching his head in her hands, she arched her head back and moaned as he stopped talking and worked his tongue between her folds, searching for and finding her clit with his teeth. She writhed under him, gasping and using every dirty word she could think of to egg him on.

"Fuck me, Billy! Give me that big cock of yours as a Valentine's present!"

Billy rose up, lifted his mother up under her arm pits, and laid her down on her back on the kitchen table. As he crouched over her, she reached down, unzipped him, pulled out his hardening cock, and guided it inside her.

She arched her back and gasped as he sank deep inside her. As he started to pump, she turned her head toward the sink and watched the bourbon glass slosh around and work itself to the edge of the table, powered by the thrusts of her son's cock inside her. She didn't change expression as she watched it go over the edge and shatter on the linoleum floor below.

She didn't care as long as a man had his cock working deep inside her. And she didn't give a shit that the man was her own son. That he was her son didn't mean dip shit to her. He was young, virile, and big dicked. She'd sheath any man possessing this trifecta. Hell, he didn't even have to be young.

As he still lay on top of her on the kitchen table, both of them spent and panting shallowly, she spoke. "Maybe you can do something with the surfing. I think Ralph Bender has a company running beach chair and umbrella services for the hotels—and snorkeling and surfing equipment. I could put in a call to Ralph before I go up to L.A. He'll do it if I ask."

"Thanks, Mom, I'd like that." He knew exactly why Ralph Bender would do what his mother asked him to—and Billy didn't want to give that too much thought.

"Promise me one thing, will you, Billy? Promise me you'll never grow up. You're my sweet baby. Men are such pigs."

"Yes, Mom, I promise."

"And another thing. Promise you'll never leave me. You're my rock. And, sweet jezzuz, you're rock hard today—still. Give me another round, will ya?" She laughed, but it was a laugh segueing into a cougher's hack.

"I promise not to leave you, Mom. But, you need to try givin' up those fags again, Mom."

Valentine's Day 2005

It took two car valets to take all of the luggage and extra stuff we needed out of my BMW X5 SUV under the porte cochere of San Diego's Hotel Del Coronado. Baggage piled up exponentially when there were two toddlers and a nanny to move around.

I took a slow swipe of the back of a hand to my brow as Joshua, one and a quarter years old, pulled at the skirt of my shirt dress and wailed about some injustice his older brother, Gideon, three and a quarter, had done to him. Gideon was standing, using his foot to cause the automatic doors into the lobby to open and close, while the nanny, Gretchen, tall, lanky, and honestly Germanic blond, barked out orders to the two valets pulling bags and parcels out of the SUV.

This had been the best I could do on short notice, and I no longer fooled myself about why I had used the opportunity to come back to the Del Coronado on a Valentine's Day. Not a run-up week to Valentine's day for four years had gone by that I hadn't wondered what Billy was doing—what I and Billy could be doing together, what Billy could be doing to me, and whether there was potential for more.

"Yes, yes, I know I'm a dreamer?" I muttered to myself.

"Momma lift me."

"Shush, Joshua. Gretchen will take you and Gideon to the café for ice cream before you come up to the room."

"Not Giddy. Naughty. No for Giddy."

"We'll see," I automatically answered, my voice distracted. I was thinking of the mistake I'd made last evening, Sunday. Valentine's Day was a Monday, and the construction crew William had sent needing the week with the house I'd moved to with the water off to finish off both the bathroom and kitchen renovations meant I, Gretchen, and the boys needed to go somewhere else for the week. What had happened with William yesterday had determined I would be escaping Los Angeles—and probably that I was driving down to San Diego and checking into the Del Coronado.

William had been at the pool behind the Los Angeles house, having asked me to come over for a surprise. A support check was due. Maybe it would be for a larger sum this time, I had thought. So, I drove over.

It had almost been romantic that, when I arrived, he'd had a special Valentine's present for me—the keys to the Triumph sports car I had been driving when we were married. I was so touched at the time that it was only later—after we had fucked on the sofa in the family room; no, now his and Kathy's sofa and family room—that it had hit me that a two-seater sports car wouldn't be anything I often would be driving now that I had two toddlers in tow.

Still, now that I thought about it, Billy had shown he loved that car the first time I'd ever seen him—as a car valet that first Valentine's Day under the porte cochere of the Hotel Del Coronado. He had caressed the hood of the car as he'd walked around it to the driver's side. He had caressed the car much the same way he later caressed my body.

William's gift could go to the good—to my own long-range plans—I thought. What a thrill it would be for Billy if I could get completely away from L.A. more often, drive down here alone, and let Billy drive the Triumph—and then drive me. It could only bring him closer to me. So, it was a much better gift than William could know.

William had been so nice to me and knew exactly what sort of drink I couldn't resist—repeatedly. And he knew just where to touch me, tentatively at first and then more aggressively, as we settled in to the sofa. From the start I knew I had to try to be polite and calm. And I decided early just to give him what he obviously wanted. It wouldn't be long until he was totally out of my life in that way.

He was being good to me in the settlement. I could have had this obscene mansion we'd shared, and, to irritate William, who had designed every element of the place, might have said yes. It was a mixed bag, though, in feeling Kathy's presence in every room—even during the two years William had said he'd given his sister up, but hadn't. What tipped the balance in making me say I'd prefer a smaller home of my own was that I knew Kathy hated the overindulgent house William had built as much as he loved it. And I knew the housekeeping hated Kathy as much as I did and would make her life a living hell.

William had cajoled me into having sex with him for one, last, "no hard feelings" parting lovemaking, and, liquored up and not having had attention from a man for a couple of months, I was vulnerable to his seduction. He was still a handsome, persuasive man. I almost choked at the thought of "hard" and "lovemaking," though, in contrasting William with the Billy I'd romped with in San Diego. I had thought of little else in the last week but Billy and how much he had all of the favorable attributes of a younger William and how I'd liked to have met William when he was Billy's age—but with some of the attributes Billy had that made William pale in his shadow.

But I had let William take me again last evening, even though I knew it wouldn't be a last coupling if William was able to manage it. Amusingly, his production in the effort was a little weak. Well the second time. After a bit of canoodling, and some breast squeezing—which I always liked, no matter what man was doing it—William managed to get me to sink on the floor between his knees, pull his swimming trunks to below his balls, and give him a hummer, complete with ejaculation on my face, just as he liked.

That made me want attention enough myself to allow him to lay me out sidewise on the sofa on my back, work his knees between mine, and then to slide right inside me. Any man would do at that moment. Looking at his still-strawberry blond hair and his handsome facial features that God was still blessing him with, it wasn't hard to imagine him as the younger, similar-featured and colored Billy. Although my cunt knew the difference between the two, my inebriated state and need for attention permitted me to visualize William as the Billy I had been dreaming about for a week, and thus to have something approaching a pleasant orgasm myself when William tensed, jerked, and gave up the little seed that had been held back from the early blow job.

I didn't begrudge William his last fuck at that moment—not until later in the day. I knew that he hadn't rejected me as much as he had a fetish with his older sister that he wouldn't give up. I was the one making the demands on that. I couldn't really argue with him when he kept repeating that this was L.A., and who here "fucking" cared about anything like that?

He had made clear that he had really wanted the two women to coexist in their mansion. When I went to the house a few weeks earlier to retrieve a lamp I bought and had now decided I wanted, I found Kathy draped over a banister on the mezzanine above the family room on her belly, naked, with William, equally naked, covering her back and doggy fucking her. Seeing me, standing aghast in the family room below, William had invited me to join them, citing as he'd done several times before that this was the twenty-first century and California and I had had plenty of time to adjust to reality. Kathy's stare at me wasn't a tenth of the welcome that William was trying to sell.

The house was certainly big enough for all of us. I had to agree with that. It was the screwy relationship that wasn't big enough.

But I was walking a thin line here. He didn't fight me over the boys, when he could have, supported by a phalanx of top-notch lawyers. And he was leaving me and the boys very well off in the settlement. I only had to stay in Los Angeles and give him periodic access to the boys. He was devoted, in his own way, to the sons. Of course, there was a threat there too, and a credible one it was. William's lawyers—not William himself, of course, but his lawyers, had let me know in no uncertain terms that any hinting in public by me of a relationship between William and his sister, Kathy, would endanger my life—physically endanger me. I had every reason to believe that threat wasn't empty. Anyone working in construction in L.A. had to travel with decidedly shady characters. And in nearly the same breath the lawyers had said I had some baggage of my own to hide.

Could they have been talking about Billy? Had they discovered him? There had only been those two times, even though I ached for more. There had been two more men, in Los Angeles, but they had been brief, angry, revenge flings. Of course Billy had been a fling, and brief ones, as well, but I knew that there was a vast difference between my connection with Billy and the brief revenge affairs I'd had in Los Angeles. What could William's lawyers know about that? The stakes were too high, though, to test that as bluff.

"Gretchen," I called out to the nanny, who had gotten everything in organized stacks on two trolleys—one for each valet. "Take the boys on in to the café for ice cream while I get us checked in, I change from these clothes, and I can be off to someplace to shake off the tension of driving all the way down here with two screaming Banshees. I'll arrange for the bill at the café and get a room key to you and you can take the boys to the pool."

"Pool. I want the pool now," cried out Gideon.

"No. Ice cream now," countered Joshua.

But there was the Germanic Gretchen, all organization, common sense, and "she who is to be obeyed," and each boy sighed, reached for one of her hands, and let her guide them through the wooshing automatic doors and straight for the café. Gretchen had never been in this hotel before, but she knew exactly where she was going. With a little smile, I appreciated how direct and focused on her path Gretchen was. Then, as the two valets passed me, pushing overloaded trolleys, I walked through the door and over to the desk.

He wasn't there. I more than half had expected Billy to be at the reception desk to welcome me again—to assure me that he hadn't forgotten me. I had dreamed of that moment. But he wasn't there.

"Yes, Mrs. Crane. We have your reservations. There are the two connecting rooms on the second floor for you, your two sons, and another woman."

"Our nanny. For the boys," I said, somewhat defensively.

"Certainly, Mrs. Crane. Young boys can be quite a handful when you are vacationing alone," he added, without losing a beat.

"Absolutely right," I said.

"But, there's another . . . this must be mistake."

"That there's a third room, requested well away from the other two?" I interjected. "Yes, I asked for that room too. Those boys again. Mine are a handful, and the younger one won't stay down for the night. I get migraines if I can't sleep at night, and I'm on vacation. These are times when nannies are worth their weight in emeralds."

"Of course, Madam, I quite understand. Then room 482 as well. It's at the end of a long hallway."

This was the Del Coronado. The staff was first-rate. Of course he'd just say he understood, even if I thought I noticed the corner of his mouth uptick a bit.

"My sons are in the café with their nanny. Could you arrange to have the tab for whatever they've ordered billed to the second-floor rooms? And could you have room keys to the second-floor rooms delivered to her in the café?"

"Certainly, Madam."

"I'll take copy of the second-floor room key cards and the two keys for the fourth-floor room."

"Very good, Madam." Was that another slight uptick at the corners of his mouth. Frankly I didn't give a shit. The hotel staffers were trained to turn a blind eye.

I turned to leave, but then, really not giving a shit, I turned back and said to a young woman behind the desk, who was standing by the older man who had checked me in, "There used to be the son of a friend of mine working the reception desk here. He was here the last time I visited—maybe two years ago? His name was Billy something."

The young woman visibly searched her mind. "I haven't been here for quite a year. I'm sorry, I can't remember anyone named Billy working here."

"William left us a year ago," the original clerk interjected. "I believe he heard the surf calling him."

William? Of course. Billy would be a nickname for William. There was no question that the man was fighting not showing a smirk. Deflated, I just thanked him quietly for the information, turned, and headed for the elevators.

After checking out the two rooms on the second floor, I mournfully, packed a bag for the beach. I took out a two-piece bathing suit—one with more slimming lines and a longer skirt than I had worn any of my previous visits to the Del Coronado. Birthing babies can be a real bitch for the waistline, I'd come to admit and to say to anyone who would listen to me. It seemed an inevitable curse despite a whole lot of time on the treadmill. Yet another thing to resent Kathy for. She'd kept her figure better than I had. Of course Kathy had those floppy tits.

I started to change, but then stopped, sat down on the end of the bed, and emitted a "Shit!"

I gathered up the beach things, left the room, and went up to the fourth floor and down the long hallway to room 482. There I proceeded to collapse on the bed, had a good cry, and, exhausted, slept—but only for ten or fifteen minutes.

Sitting up abruptly from returning to consciousness, I said "Shit" again, steeled myself, struggled my butt into my bathing suit, and stoically moved down through the hotel and then out the back and to the beach. I'd had no idea it would hit me so hard that Billy wouldn't be here. I castigated myself for having formed more hopes and dreams in my subconscious than I had permitted myself to entertain on the surface.

* * * *

It was him. By God it was Billy, rising from the surf, holding his board under his arm, big smile, looking every bit the hunk that he was. My heart leaped and I instantly felt myself going wet.

I had been lying on a lounge bed, facing the beach at the Del Coronado, trying to get interested in a Nora Roberts book and trying not to feel sorry for myself when, suddenly, there he was. And he was looking directly at me, smiling large, and moving out of the surf toward me.

"Mary Ellen? Is that you? Looking good, my lady. Come for me on Valentine's Day again, have you?"

I felt like I should pinch myself. This had to be a dream. But it wasn't a dream. He was standing over me, having dropped the surfboard en route, and laid a hand gently on my upper thigh. He was dripping wet, drops gloriously falling on my thighs and belly, assuring me this was real. He'd remembered me; he'd remembered my name; he remembered that I'd been here on Valentine's Day before; there was every indication from how he was responding to me that he remembered what we had done.

There was no doubt how he reacted to me. His bathing suit was skimpy. It left little to the imagination. He couldn't hide that he was hardening up. But my Billy wouldn't bother hiding anything like that. That's one reason I melted to him—he was straightforward and honest in his dealings with me—with women in general, as far as I knew. Even though we'd been together so rarely, I felt I knew him well. I didn't like some aspects of his open honesty about what he thought and felt, but it had always told me where I stood with him. There were no doubts what he wanted from me, with me, when we were together. No holding back from giving me what I wanted, as well.