Only Go Around Once

"Are you kidding?" Jason said. "How could it not make him furious?"

"Bob's a man of big ego. He's very sure of himself and of his superiority, even if the outward circumstances don't support him in his own conclusions."

"What do you mean by that?"

"He's just not a man who would give a second thought to someone lusting after his wife. In fact he would want that. It makes him feel good. Like he picked a winner."

"He definitely did that. And I guess he thinks you wouldn't dream of looking at another man?"

"I never have, not seriously, so I suppose he's right."

"What do you get out of it?"

"Me?"

"You. Have your expectations been met? Are you content? Are you happy?"

"I guess, although as far as Bob's concerned the questions don't even need to be asked."

"He must be very sure of himself. I don't think I could be that complacent about Lucy."

Helen glanced at Jason's earnest, serious profile.

"You'll be a good husband," she said. "I see how happy she is with you."

"Well, thank you. I know that's not the easiest thing for you to say, since we've never really connected in any personal way. You probably find it hard to see what she sees in me."

"That's not true."

"Anyway, I hope Bob takes care of you. In every way. You deserve it."

"We do okay."

"No, Helen, I don't think you get anywhere near the attention you deserve. I think you're neglected. I think you should be ravished half a dozen times a day."

"Really."

"At least. Would you like that?"

Helen snorted and then laughed, somewhat derisively but self-deprecatingly, too. She was pleased with the compliment.

"Helen, the thing is, I don't want you to think of me as hostile or underhand or conniving or unfaithful. I just happen to have a gigantic hard-on for my future mother-in-law who happens to be so distractingly sexy that I think about her every day, whether I want to or not. I'm stuck with it. It doesn't change anything at all about how I feel about Lucy."

"Where am I sleeping tonight?"

"Basement. As usual."

Jason and Lucy's townhouse was snug. It had three bedrooms, technically, but one of those was in the basement. The second bedroom upstairs was an office and library containing two large desks, each with a computer. Books in stacks covered most of the remaining floor space. The basement was an exercise room and TV den, and was more easily converted into a temporary bedroom. One of the two sofas transformed into a quite comfortable bed, and a powder room made it the obvious place to put visitors.

"All right," Helen said. "Well, let me do this for you. Come to me at half after midnight. I'll give you half an hour, then I have to get to bed and sleep."

"Half an hour. For seven years of lust." Jason smiled ruefully.

"Take it or leave it."

"Oh, I'll take it. I will definitely take it, Helen."

She reached out and patted Jason's right arm consolingly.

*

Jason made himself scarce for the rest of the evening, claiming papers to grade and lectures to prepare. It was past dinner-time and Helen had eaten on the train, so she and Lucy headed straight for the living-room sofa with a bottle of chardonnay. They spent a couple of hours catching up, which was a ritual of theirs whenever they got together, and discussing plans for the wedding.

Helen loved her daughter dearly, and she admired her almost as much. Lucy's success at school and then later in her career as a social psychologist was in many ways a compensation to Helen, who had married then stayed home with her children before it became clear to her that she had selected the less fashionable course for herself. Helen had made gestures towards starting a career, but she always found that there was one obstacle or another in the way, someone else's priorities trumping hers. And the truth was, she really didn't mind.

As she grew older, Helen realized that she was happy enough to be a homemaker for her family. It was a job she saw as being just as important as any wage-paying position and in many ways was much more valuable. She was pleased these days that so many women were free to make the choice to stay home with children if they wished; that was the real triumph of feminism, she thought. But what she did worry about was that she would pass along her undeniably passive ways to her children - particularly to Lucy, being the girl - and leave them with no ambition.

Lucy had proved Helen's worries to be unfounded.

As they sat talking, Helen felt the excitement and the strangeness of her encounter with Jason begin to recede. The subject of their discussion began to seem ridiculous to her, and she felt foolish for having agreed to such an adolescent request. She felt her esteem for Jason diminish and her protective instinct towards Lucy grow stronger. Where a couple of hours earlier she had been feeling the welcome flames of passion licking her cold and neglected soul, she was now feeling a new fire inside her, the hot wrath of indignation.

But still she could not bring herself to mention any of it to Lucy. What kind of mother did that make her? Didn't she owe her daughter the honest truth about her fiancé? Wasn't it a mother's job to protect her child? Shouldn't she now reveal to Lucy that her betrothed is only a tomcat, after all?

But did Helen really believe that?

"It's after eleven, darling, I think I'll head off to bed. First, though, a quick shower; travel always leaves you feeling as if you walked the whole way."

They embraced, and Helen went downstairs to the basement for her toiletries.

Half an hour later, after a long hot shower which she hoped would cleanse her of any impure thoughts, Helen, in a white toweling robe, returned to the basement from the upstairs bathroom. In the open suitcase on the sofa-bed she could see the thick and long cotton nightshirt she had brought. Not even a little bit sexy. It was a reality check. You're sixty-one years old, almost sixty-two... Without your make-up you look every day of sixty-eight... He's your daughter's fiancé... Put the old-lady nightgown on, Helen. Be the old lady you are.

A short while later she turned up the thermostat on the wall, turned the small reading lamp down to its lowest setting, and climbed into bed. I'll wait until twelve-thirty, she told herself as her cheek warmed the cool pillow. I don't even believe he'll come. This is all just silly. Even if he does come...

*

She woke to the touch of a firm hand stroking her back through her nightshirt. She heard her name repeated softly, so softly that it seemed to linger from the dream she had just been roused from. She was warm from sleep, and her body felt soft and relaxed. She couldn't remember being woken up like this in years. She lifted her head to look up at him. His face was serious and tense-looking, softened only by the brown curls on his forehead.

"Climb onto the sofa," he said in a whisper.

Helen was confused, perhaps still a little sleepy.

"The sofa? I thought--"

"I want you to show me your ass."

"Jason."

If she had gone to sleep resolved to end this absurd situation, something had infiltrated her dreams and stolen that resolve. She was waking to a singular, urgent desire deep inside her. She felt Jason's hand trail lightly down the soft cotton on her back until he was tracing the crack of her ass through the fabric with his fingertips.

"Sofa," he said, and gave her right cheek a pinch. "On your knees. And don't fight me, Helen. You only gave me half an hour."

As she got up from the bed she turned to face him, close, and for a half-second their lips touched, then parted.

He was wearing boxer-briefs and a tight-fitting gray T-shirt, clothes he normally wore for bed, she guessed. He looked less like a college professor and more like a college athlete. She had often noticed Jason's well-defined muscles and his lithe body. He seemed to stay in shape effortlessly, and based on what she could see of him now, most of the time he dressed down to disguise his physique. He was being less modest now.

She stepped over to the other sofa, which was only a few feet from the bed she had been sleeping on. In spite of all she had told herself before going to sleep, she could feel her desire turning into arousal. Her heartbeat was strong in her chest. She pulled the nightshirt up to her knees. Blood was coursing through her with every thump in her chest, racing to her cunt and ass and tits to swell the soft flesh there. Her breath came in short gasps that she could do nothing to control.

She knelt on the sofa facing the white wall and pulled her nightshirt higher. The brush of cotton over her nipples was like a small electric shock. Her breasts felt bigger and firmer than they had in years, and her nipples were so sensitive now that she thought one touch of Jason's hand might send her into orgasm. Her body felt like a stretchy membrane filling up with thick honey that would burst at the slightest pressure.

But Jason wasn't interested in her tits. Not yet. Helen glanced over her shoulder – she was holding the nightshirt bunched up at her waist and her ass felt uncomfortably exposed – and she saw Jason drop to his knees behind her, like a supplicant in church. There was a strange look on his face, almost like pain, but she could see reverence there, too. It was unsettling to see. No matter how much a man might tell her she was still beautiful, Helen knew that certain parts of the body could never escape the ravages of time, and she knew her backside was not a picture-postcard to look at. She had always had wide hips for her small frame, and the extra flesh made no effort stay in place any more.

She felt Jason's hand in the small of her back, and she understood she was to bend forward. She pulled the nightshirt over her head and discarded it, then rested her arms on the back of the sofa. She was completely naked now; her ass was sticking out and up into the air, and by bending over she was revealing her swollen pussy lips to Jason like a ripe fruit. She had never felt so exposed or vulnerable.

She heard a gasp from Jason and looked over her left shoulder to see him. She was impatient to feel his hands on her and to see what he wanted to do with her. She wanted to see and feel his pent-up passion burst out of him and into her. She was shocked at the thoughts that were running through her mind; she was appalled but thrilled at the lust heaving around inside her.

"My god, Helen," Jason said softly.

She felt his hands on her ass - finally! – and for a while he stroked and squeezed her butt cheeks as though he were a blind man learning the shape and texture of a new object. She felt his thumbs glide along the crevice between her cheeks, and she could feel her asshole puckering involuntarily at the close contact.

Jason's hands moved down the backs of her thighs and kneaded the flesh all the way to the backs of her knees. On the return trip he squeezed harder as he went, his hands gripping her thighs, the soft tissue rippling under his palms. As he neared the lower curve of her ass cheeks she could sense the proximity of his thumbs to her cunt lips, and she expected him to plunge into the wetness that lay beyond her vulva's curtain of skin.

Instead he moved his hands outward so that each buttock was resting in the V formed by the thumb and forefinger of each hand. She looked over her shoulder again to watch him. He squeezed hard and simultaneously pushed upwards so that her butt-cheeks were spilling over his hands. It looked like he was holding two enormous ice-cream cones. As if to reinforce the image, Jason leaned forward and began to lick and kiss and nibble at her ass, left cheek, right cheek, slurping, smacking his lips, occasionally dipping his nose down into the cleft and inhaling deeply. She heard him begin to moan. It was a kind of rumble in his chest to begin with but as he kept on, taking the meat of her ass in his teeth, running his tongue along her crack, the sound became more of a note of appreciation, as if he were eating her alive and delighting in the taste of her.

Helen had begun to make noise herself. She tried to suppress it by biting herself on the forearm, but she could not contain it for long and began to let out first little whimpers of acquiescence, then full-throated groans of pleasure.

Jason seemed to fall back from her for a moment, and Helen felt a cold draft over her butt and thighs, still wet with Jason's saliva. But Jason had not let go of her and she felt him spreading her ass even wider with his hands, and then felt his hot breath at the lips of her cunt.

"Yes," she said aloud. The word just popped out of her; she had not meant to speak. She could hear in her own voice the heavy burr of desire, and it excited her to know she was still capable of this kind of passion.

"Taste it," she said. "Taste me. Lick me."

She was gyrating her hips, trying to grind herself into his face. It felt like a dam breaking when he first pushed past her outer labia and found the hot wetness beyond. Jason's tongue flicked inside her and began lapping at her honey.

"Lick my... lick my cunt, Jason. Eat it."

Saying these words out loud only added to her pleasure. It almost didn't matter who was back there sucking and licking her. It felt almost like masturbation with a very cleverly designed toy. Helen felt a need inside her that had gone unmet for years, and now by accident she had found the means to meet that need.

She felt Jason's fingers near her clit and she reached down between her legs to guide him. Compared to her own slender fingers Jason's were like rough-sawed logs. Through only the touch of her hand she taught him the exact pressure she wanted, then led him in the intricate manipulation and rhythm that only she knew. She realized, as she released Jason's hand and let him continue by himself, that he was only the second person in the world ever to know how to satisfy her that way. Not even Bob knew. Bob had never been interested enough to find out.

The sensations that Jason's fingers and mouth were stirring in her core were growing stronger; Helen knew she was close to orgasm when a kind of plasticity took over her body and she felt as if she could fold over on herself a hundred times.

As if sensing the change in her, Jason shifted a little behind her and Helen felt his mouth and tongue slide up toward her ass again. He maintained the pressure on her clit with his right hand while with his left he spread her ass cheeks again to reveal her dark puckering hole. His tongue poked and probed at her asshole, trying to overcome the defensive muscle spasm that closed her up at the first sign of an invader. Helen realized what Jason wanted and she focused her mind on relaxing her pelvis. After a moment she felt Jason's stiff but slippery tongue slide into her and the combination of sensations was suddenly too much. She yelped at the onset of her orgasm, and Jason responded by reaching under her with his left hand and taking her left nipple in his fingers and squeezing hard.

Helen came for a long time. On her knees, bellowing, she felt like a cow in a field. Her legs and arms grew suddenly weak and she fell backward and sideways into Jason, who gathered her up in his arms and held her close.

After a couple of minutes Helen realized she had been crying gently into Jason's chest. Jason rocked her back and forth, saying nothing. She wasn't upset. She could have found lots of words to describe what she felt, but upset or sad was not among them. She felt, strangely enough, as if she had fallen naked into the energy field of the universe, and she was now fully charged with the life force. She did not say as much to Jason, however. Somehow she knew that Jason's experience had been entirely earthbound. Small wonder, considering he had worked so hard for her pleasure.

"What time is it?" she asked him quietly.

He kissed her sixty-one-year-old forehead. "After one," he said. "My time's up."

"I'm sorry, Jason. You were so good to me."

"Don't apologize. Time to get some sleep."

Jason lifted her in his arms and stood her on the sofa-bed like a child getting ready for bed. He picked up her night shirt and bunched it up ready to go over her head. She worked her arms through the sleeves and as she brought the shirt down over her head she felt the hot softness of his mouth on her right breast. He sucked the nipple and a surprising amount of the breast into his mouth. He looked as though he would die without it.

For a couple of seconds they stood like that, Helen's hands on his shoulders, then Jason let the breast fall from his mouth and he helped her pull down the nightshirt. She got under the covers.

"Sleep tight," Jason whispered.

He climbed the stairs out of the basement.

*

At breakfast, still in her nightshirt, Helen sat sideways to the small dining table so she could bask in the warmth of the direct sunlight coming through the french window. She tasted every bittersweet drop of her coffee as though she had personally supervised the picking and roasting of the beans in South America. Tiny motes of dust that swirled in the sunlight brushed against her cheek and she imagined she could feel every one of them, knew the shape of each, and its trajectory on the domestic breeze. The velvety green leaves of a geranium on the sideboard felt like the skin of a shrew or a vole under her gently caressing thumb. The world was suddenly alive to her this morning in a way that she had not felt in years. No, not in years, in decades.

Jason and Lucy were separately occupied: at the other side of the table Jason pored over the newspaper; in the kitchen, Lucy opened a can of food for the gray-striped cat that encircled her legs in a figure-eight, then began to unload the dishwasher while listening to the radio. Helen had a chance to watch Jason, who was idly looping one of his curls around his finger as he concentrated on the text in front of him.

She recalled the attentions of his mouth and tongue and hands the night before and shivered slightly at the remembered sensations that had pulsed, throbbed, and raced through her body. After a moment she realized that she was smiling and quickly raised her coffee mug to her lips. Not that anyone was watching her. Jason was engrossed with the news. He was still wearing the T-shirt he had worn the night before, but was now in navy sweat pants with his college name printed vertically down one leg.

Was he avoiding looking at her? she wondered. Other than a very chaste kiss on the cheek from him when she had emerged from the basement (and what a long and deep sleep she had enjoyed...) Jason had more or less avoided catching her eye this morning. Was he feeling guilty? Or, after all these years of lusting after her, had his encounter with Helen been a let-down? Was that why he hadn't stayed with her last night? For sure, after the way he had made her feel, Helen would have let him stay all night to do whatever he wanted to do to her, half-hour ultimatum be damned. As she thought more about it she became convinced that this was the truth: Jason was disappointed in her, he wanted nothing more to do with her. He couldn't even look her in the eye.

She felt indignant, even angry, that the magnetism Jason had apparently felt towards her yesterday had disappeared so abruptly. She felt small and old and terribly used. Jason should show a little more consideration, she thought. After all, she now had very dangerous knowledge about him that she could use against him whenever she felt like it. If she felt like it, of course. As she watched him she imagined the potential of this sudden new power, the chaos she could bring to his life with a few well-placed words.

But these things cut both ways, don't they? What would be a disaster for Jason would be an even bigger disaster for Helen. She would lose the love and affection of her only daughter. So, no, she could not exploit the situation that way; there was enough guilt to go around that everyone would be damaged beyond repair.