Captured by Home and Loving Comfort

Cristina would never concede that she had been cowed by all that had befallen her, the dogged determination to live on through many hardships something that Romanian women were renowned for.

And yet nothing could have prepared her for moments of an aching, even crushing, loneliness that had begun to grip her as the months passed following Josif's death. She had not known of such emptiness since the death of her third one soon after his birth. It marked the end of bearing any more children.

Living in a well-tended, but isolated, farmstead had only increased her fears for the future, made ever more acute as one son, and then an only daughter, reached the conclusion that they would move into a town nearby, and there pursue a new and very different life that their friends had persuaded them to discover.

So it was that, with Andrei and Emanuela gone for long spells, Cristina came to rely more and more on her youngest 'boy,' Ilie. He had been an adopted child, first placed in her and Josif's care and then, after things were settled, brought into the family home and their lives as an unmistakable bond developed between them.

Until then, Ilie had found it difficult to adapt. He had his wayward and rebellious ways that had helped him survive the tough life in the children's home where he had been abandoned by his birth parents. But, as he grew up, he became ever more dutiful for a strong lad, some twenty-five years old now, with his luxurious black hair not cropped short as it had once been in his military service days, his weathered features robust and mostly unshaven, his eyes shiningly clear, his willingness to step into Josif's shoes and take on the tasks of shepherd and handler of their two dogs, a blesséd relief. The sheep were dutifully tended through the seasons, and the luscious red apples were harvested in good time and taken to market by them both, just as she had done with Josif.

They had spoken of converting two outhouses into dwellings for holidaymakers, Ilie clearing them out and he was already turning his hand to laying new floors and mending walls; skimming them with a rough render, limewashing them, and also fixing the windows along with their protective shutters.

He did so much for her that Cristina felt the bond between them draw ever tighter, that an altogether different sense of companionship was developing between them and that she had a need of.

'You're such a comfort to me,' she would tell him, and on a moment's lingering touch of her hand to his cheek, as they shared supper. It was confirmation of the unshakeable bond that she had formed with him, her touch the only sign of her relief that she had not been entirely abandoned and forced to sell her home. To do that would be to forsake all the memories that it continued to arouse in her. She did not want to be in any other place and prayed that Ilie would remain true to that hope in her.

Ilie had his adoptive father's sturdy build but none of his habits. He had even been persuaded into wearing some of Josif's clothes, the sight of them on this young man, when there was a feast day celebration, was a heartbreaking reminder of her lost husband. She had been younger, but a full life had been lived with him. Now, at fifty years of age, she felt emptier times stretching out before her, along with the fear of future days that she sought to push away. The most intrusive of such thoughts was that Ilie would grow tired of living on the farm with her for company, or when he did not travel into town and find a woman whose services he paid for.

Yes, the hours of the day could be filled, along with thoughts of Ilie being close by and working so diligently. They became a distraction from her situation as a widow. A subtle change had gradually overtaken their relationship; one that living together in that isolated and homely farmhouse had slowly wrought upon them and that no one should learn of.

For it soon became clear to Cristina, that her fondness for Ilie now bordered on reckless over-familiarity when she bestowed a lingering touch, or kiss to his cheek; these becoming a silent expression of what was at work in her. She was becoming possessed by a forbidden infatuation that many would consider sinful and depraved, unseemly, even if there was no blood tie. She had always been overly protective of him, perhaps too demonstrative in her affections, even possessive as Josif's health faded and she became increasingly dependent on Ilie to keep the farm working, which he did uncomplainingly.

They even made some extra money and 'treats' would be purchased, Ilie persuading her to spend some of the money on herself.

'It will make you feel better, I'm sure,' he would say with a smile.

'I'll do it to please you,' she would answer, and in those few words lay a deeper truth.

Her conscience would trouble her, but who was to know of how it was between them and in whatever form it might take?

The Dumitru family had always been private, some said far too withdrawn to be good for them if tragedy struck. Well, it had done. She was too young to face life as a widow or to be a lonely soul. Cristina had gradually succumbed to her emotions, and she had decided on ways of dealing with them after that life-changing event - her loss of Josif.

Ilie kicked off his boots and pushed on the garishly painted front door, its fading red paint still stark against the flaking whitewash of the walls. He heard the clatter of cutlery, and the clink of glasses, as the table was being laid for a simple lunch of cheese, bread, and apples. It was daily fare.

'I waited for you,' Cristina smiled, casting a nervy glance his way as Ilie quickly washed his hands at the sink, the handle of the water pump creaking. 'You left early this morning...'

'It was for the best that I did so,' he answered, averting his face as she sought to kiss him in greeting. Ilie looked at her as she sat down beside him and Cristina stroked the bare skin of his strong arm, tugged on the hair upon it for an instant, and then clenched his hand. 'I'm...I'm not cross with you, but angry with myself, Mama, for letting it even happen and to sleep with you.'

Ilie quelled the instinct to use a cruder, but only too appropriate, word for what had happened and had been so ardently pursued.

'Don't be angry, there's no need. Just understand me and why I needed to be with you...to lie with you as I did.'

She had felt and then succumbed to an unquenchable heat for him. Even in the circumstances, his use of that word before he had left for his morning chores, had shocked her. Yet Cristina continued to look at him, for she had heard both disbelief and anger in his tone. She saw that again, now, in the set of his mouth and in the way that his tongue tip moistened his lips. It was behaviour that she knew only too well, but now she shivered on seeing how his tongue moved, at the memory of what he had aroused in her when she had been taken.

'You understood me and what I have been going through, Ilie. You offered comfort, that is all...a special comfort.'

'Yeah, that was all.' She heard him sigh and then saw the slump of his shoulders, and a nod of resignation before he stretched out to grab at a large chunk of crusty bread. 'I'll get something to drink for us both.'

'Not for me, in case you're wondering.' She met his appraising stare upon her and recognised that look across the space between them. She could not rid herself from feeling uncommon gratitude for what had passed between them during the night. 'I...I've put the bottle away. I had to do that, for both our sakes.'

'Good, but it's time you did that for yourself most of all.'

'It wasn't just the drink that made me do it, darling, you know that now,' she confessed and watched him for a reaction as he sat down, heavily, beside her once more.

'No, and the reasons for my behaviour are difficult to explain,' he replied tersely on looking her way, responding to a moment's touch of her lips to the side of his mouth as Cristina leaned in to kiss him.

'You found me, you know that don't you?' she whispered, as any lover would do. Reckless behaviour had made her feel so alive again.

'Yes, I know that,' he answered, on a whisper of acknowledgment, and possessed by shame as she reminded him of how it had been between them.

Her look upon him softened and her touch to his arm became a slow caress, just as it had been through the night. She again sought to claim his attention upon her.

'No more. I've got to get on and then go into town with four sheep that the butchers have asked me for. His customers like them and he told me that he prefers what we bring to him.'

'And I'll come with you!' she asserted, not bothered by his gruff tone. Cristina knew what was at work in him, just as it was in her. 'I don't want to be here on my own, brooding and wondering what your feelings for me now are. You know that you're different from the others and always have been. You know what I had to go through, and with Josif, to bring you here. You have always had a special place in my heart and life. Don't shut me out, not now, not ever!'

They could talk of it now and had been able to do that for some time, even before Josif's death. Ilie's birth mother could not be traced, the children's refuge where he had been cared for, until adoption, informing them that he was one of the luckier ones to have settled so well with others; that he was fortunate to have grown into the man that he was seen to be.

'There's little chance of that happening, Cristina, of me shutting you out. We will carry the memory of last night with us, wherever we go.'

'But we will be together.'

'Somehow and yes, we will.'

He took to wondering if his life would be destroyed after all that had happened between them. And yet, impulsively, Ilie leaned across and kissed Cristina's trembling lips, and to silence any reply to what he had told her.

Through the hours of the morning, he had come to realise that his situation was like the fly caught in the spider's web. The more he struggled with his thoughts, his continuing lustful feelings, and a gnawing sense of guilt, the tighter the bond with Cristina seemed to become, the means of escape from the union of their bodies, now, difficult to discover.

Even if he wished it to be so, leaving her would have him wondering how she managed to live alone out here in the wilds. It was not to be contemplated, the toll on them both and of him abandoning her a price that was too high for either of them to pay.

Cristina looked at him with tear-filled eyes. She moved as he brushed them away, a softened look upon her.

'Sorry, but we live our lives here, together, differently now. It means everything to me.'

He heard it as a hope rather than a request.

'I know and you may be right, you may be right.'

He offered her a slow kiss and she kept it on her lips, reaching out to hold his head and prolong this moment of intimacy.

'Enough now,' he smiled on easing from her claims on him.

Perhaps, Cristina was playing him; perhaps she knew that what they had shared would not have him feel that he was a prisoner, but an only too willing accomplice. It would be just the two of them living in their isolated farmstead and rebuilding their lives, now that Josif had left them. He had stepped into Josif's shoes and now occupied a very private place in her life and with the world beyond all but oblivious to their existence and, so, ignorant of all that had played out between them.

There was time for them to come to their senses.

It had happened only once, but the memory of all that had been shared would possess them for a long time.

Oh Jeez! Cristina followed him as the plates were gathered up and the table cleared, her hands tugging on his shirt to restrain him and to keep him by her, the press of her fulsome body against him and her tightened embrace that had him feeling the press of her breasts against his chest, the warmth of her breaths on his throat as Cristina embraced him.

'You know that we're together and like never before!' she exclaimed.

He nodded through their raging kisses and clamp of hands to heighten their flaring, uncommonly tempestuous, embrace.

'I've got to go and make ready!' he cried out on breaking free. 'I love you and what you and Josif did for me, you know that I do, but not like this!'

The devoted woman, that he had so often seen in his stepfather's company, had revealed her passionate soul and dependency on him. What he had known of and shared with her might, again, overwhelm them.

Ilie rushed from the room without a backward glance.

As the cart trundled along the road, the sheep bleating in complaint at the confined space and uncommon surroundings, Ilie thought back to the events of the previous night. Cristina, his adoptive mother, sat very close, her gaze falling on him and then onto the undulating road ahead. She would clutch his arm, the road's surface often having them bump against each other, or it would have him tugging on the reins to control their progress. Then her grip would ease for an instant, only for her claims to be resumed.

Her undoubted affection for him had become an overwhelming possessive need, his presence a confounding surrogate for all that she had lost and given no sign of seeking from him until hours ago.

Anywhere else, and if known, what had happened between them would have earned him jail time, tamping the woman beside him. To the cops she was his mother and their tryst, following a moment's loss of control, should have been avoided, could have been avoided. After all, he was a strong young man, but a man who had been seduced by her prevailing ways; a man driven on by his feral impulses and, actions that he had never known of before, even during his service in the army.

He had broken all the rules and that even their isolated life could not fully excuse, or get close to explaining.

But this careworn woman Cristina, as she had demanded he now think of as being with him, she had moments of taking to the bottle, mostly after a busy working day and with quieter hours of the weekend ahead. At such times, he had shouldered the burdens that working the farm demanded of them both.

What had been shared was a perversion of all that was family, but in the aftermath, she had confessed to suffering in silence from aching loneliness, yet knowing that drink was not the answer. It cured nothing, and the effects of the booze only made her sadder still, and it had led her to pursue errant behaviour that he should not have conceded to. He had been complicit in its fulfillment and, possibly, continuation.

His baser instincts had been aroused as never before. He toiled with the thought of all that had been conceded to and then pursued.

He had touched a voluptuous body and had known of heated ways, shared in moments of dissolute passion for a woman that could never be undone. He had shared in ardent loving that this auburn-haired seductress beside him, with her slender face and keen eyes, had aroused in him. Just where was he to go with the knowledge of what had passed between them?

'I just want a moment's company,' she had told him last night, her discreet knock on the door, to his cramped room almost filled by his bed. She had woken him from a fitful sleep. He had taken in the mixture of alcohol on her breath and the unmistakable scent of some cologne she had chosen to put on, for some reason, and that only became clear when she had sought to claim him.

Cristina met a snatched look upon her. 'What's that for?'

'That you look nice in your embroidered blouse and headscarf. Your skirt covers your legs and you're also wearing shoes as you do when you dance, not those awful working boots.'

He knew that his voice was conciliatory and that it now held the soft tone of admiration. There were moments when the beauty of a younger woman could still be seen on her face. It accompanied her undoubted vitality, that working on the farm bestowed strength that he had soon learned of as never before.

'They all hide what is going on inside me,' Cristina confessed and gripped his arm tightly. 'Ilie, darling, it is difficult for me too, living with what we have done and what I asked of you.' She leaned in to offer a kiss on his rough cheek. 'I would like you to shave, occasionally, please? It makes you look so much younger and even more handsome.'

'But old enough to...you know what I mean, ' he growled and stopped short of saying what he wanted and that was so descriptive of what they had done. Yeah, he had fucked her and fucked with her and there was no way back from that.

The woman beside him sought to find the words to justify what had passed between them, the sharing of only too pleasurable but forbidden acts that he had been seduced into pursuing with her.

'Be still, my darling. I thought it through, long ago,' she said before looking away, her face lifted to the sun, but her grip on his arm as fierce as before. She had wanted him, had ached for that strong young body and what he had then brought to her. She had felt that from him and had sensed it in him, had discovered it with him. 'Love comes in so many ways.'

'But not like that, not between us,' he retorted, and on a gentle slap of the reins to the mule's flanks.

So, she had thought to ask it of him for some time. He realized again that he shouldered the burden of what had happened just as much as she did.

'We'll see, my darling Ilie, we'll see how love goes.'

Cristina had crept into his room and, before he could say anything on it, she had settled on the edge of his bed, soon confessing that she had sipped on more than was wise that evening, and after he had gone to bed. But she was far from being 'out of her face' on drink.

'Just a little sad, again, I suppose?' he had ventured.

That, and the drink, had been the start of the trouble. They had lessened any remaining inhibitions on her part and that he had shamefully taken advantage of, he now supposed. Cristina had explained it all.

'Yes, sad, and it's at times like that when I want company. I won't stay long or try not to.'

'It's okay,' he had blurted out, distracted by the sight of her and by Cristina's behaviour.

'Is it, is it okay, really?' she had asked, uncertainly, but still moving closer on the mattress beside him and resting her back against the wall, just as he had done. He had appeared all but naked to her wondering gaze. The dim light from the small table lamp, in the hallway, had cast an eerie glow on the walls of his room, through the open door. 'I get moments of missing him, what we once shared.'

'I know. I get to thinking of him too, how we used to work together. They come to me when I least expect them.'

'Do they really?' she had exclaimed, her movements tightening a thin nightdress over her body, the hem sliding up and over her thighs, the bodice revealing the sagging swell of her breasts and the curve of her softly rounded belly. 'You always were the most sensitive one out of my three. You went through so much before we brought you here.'

'Yeah,' he had replied with a soft laugh of acknowledgment. 'It also got me into trouble in the army at times, always having to prove myself.'

'You don't have to do that with me. I always worried for you, then, when you were away from me.' She had looked at him across the narrow space between them and had seen the strength in his arms and torso. Her 'son' was strong and nicely shaped, and he kept it that way. 'I can't stay long or we'll both get cold...'

Cristina would not have missed his wondering looks upon her as she said that. 'We know how it can be when it is cold here.'

The horse's hooves clopped on the road's surface in a steady rhythm. Their route was straight, for a while, and he could take her in as Cristina sat beside him.