Homecoming

Tom had haunted her thoughts that night: him in his uniform, resplendent and handsome, the mouth she'd wanted to kiss smiling at her. She imagined him there in her in bed, his hands on her body, the weight of him on top of her, the girth of him filling her, stretching her open before they began to move together.

Then, in April there had been the gut-sinking news of potential conflict. There had been the worry during May as the Task Force steamed south, and the sleepless nights in June when they were ashore and marching across the island. Even when the good news came and it was over Rita still worried, going so far as to phone Tom's father in the camp in Germany, unable to rest until she knew categorically that Tom was alive and well.

"He's fine," was the terse response from the god-awful man. What had Madeline ever seen in him? "I don't know any details..."

A pause and Rita knew there was something coming. She suspected he wanted something, a favour or some such.

"...But, since you're in Guildford, when they come back ... I'm busy here ... I wondered if..."

The self-serving, career-minded bastard couldn't be bothered to fly back to England to see his son's return. Anyone else would be proud, but not that cold-blooded prick.

"I'd be happy to," Rita had said, her tone all sweetness and light. As if she'd miss it. "A pleasure. Leave it to me. If you could just let me know a time, a place to go..."

And when she'd hugged Tom close she'd felt it. With people all around them, when Rita and Tom had shared that first embrace she'd felt his body tense, muscles tightening in his back while her arms encircled him and the sudden protrusion had prodded her.

His cock had been between them, a memory Rita had used while lying in her own bed while she moaned and sighed into the dark, desire molten between her legs.

**

Tom could hear her moving around upstairs. He sighed and looked down at the dog who, ever hopeful of some treat from the table, head tilted in a likeness of the HMV icon, sat near his feet.

"What am I going to do, Meg?" he asked. Brown eyes in a foxy face regarded him, but no answer was forthcoming. "I've got this problem, you see." Megan blinked and licked liquorice lips. She whined and shifted on her haunches. Tom chuckled and sliced a sausage, dropping the pieces onto the floor. "You don't care, do you? You don't give a stuff I'm a virgin. You're not bothered that I'd love to shag Rita."

The terrier sniffed the meat with a fastidiousness that could only be found in a dog that didn't have to share food with any other of its kind. Her head dipped and she picked the pieces of sausage before chewing and swallowing and then pointing the damp blackberry of her snout towards Tom again.

Tom ignored her and automatically worked through his breakfast. He couldn't taste a thing, didn't register the food at all because of the lurid fantasies which filled his head.

He listened for the occasional sound from the floor above, Rita moving around in her bedroom.

He could go to her; he could push away from the table and go upstairs, perhaps catching Rita in her underwear.

Oh, hello, Tom, you caught me by surprise."

Her smile caused a frisson of lust to thicken his cock.

"Tell me, darling, should I wear this bra...?" She thrust her chest at him, breasts spilling over the cups while holding another bra up for his appraisal. "...Or should I try this one instead?"

Without waiting for a response, Rita, with a calm gaze locked on Tom's face, gauging his reaction, unclasped the bra she wore and allowed him to stare.

"Or I could just stay like this..."

She moved her shoulders and those big tits swayed.

"I could stay here, with you, like this. I don't need to keep the hair appointment, not now you've come to me." Her smile shifted to a calculating grin. "Shall I take my knickers off too?"

"Oh, fuck..." Tom groaned. "Megan, what am I going to do?"

**

He invaded her personal space, trespassed into a place he had no right to enter.

He peeped into drawers, handled personal items--

her underwear ... lacy garments that had nestled close against the most intimate places on Rita's body

--He snooped into her wardrobe.

"Be good. See you later," Rita had called. There was some murmured exhortation to Megan, the dog's nails clicked across the tiles and then the front door had clicked shut.

Tom forced himself to wait for a full ten minutes, his conscience counselling against his abhorrent intention throughout. But, inevitably, with Rita and the dog out of the house, the inner voice of morality lost the battle and Tom found himself outside Rita's room. His heart thudded inside the rack of his ribs with a strident lub-lub of such resonance that Tom could picture the organ pulsing rapidly, bouncing around inside him. He watched his palsied hand rise to touch the door, mind oddly detached, a disembodied third party witnessing his crime.

He gulped down the urge to barge in and ransack the place, remaining lucid enough to realise that he couldn't leave any sign he'd been in the room.

He paused, assailed by persistent doubts about the wisdom of forthcoming actions.

Tom stood there, one foot inside forbidden territory.

What the hell was he doing? It was wrong, so very wrong. This was betrayal, a sneaky and cowardly way to behave. Rita didn't deserve this. No matter how he felt about her Tom knew he shouldn't be where he was at that moment.

The act he was on the cusp of performing was out-and-out wicked.

What would his mother say?

Tom was ashamed.

He turned away from Rita's door, newly resolved. He would push carnal fantasies about Rita out of his head. The persistent, lingering virginity would be dealt with by sticking to his plan. London was a quick train journey away. Get down there, visit a prostitute. Fifteen or twenty quid and job done, and with virginity lost, hopefully along with it would go the ridiculous and cumbersome shyness around the opposite sex.

Yet two minutes later he found himself in Rita's boudoir.

Beyond the point of no return Tom crept around on the balls of his feet, and it wasn't until he felt the burn in his chest that he realised he was holding his breath.

"Twat," he muttered. "Why are you creeping about? Just get in, have a quick shuftie and get out. Leave the place exactly as you found it."

Drawers were carefully opened one after the other, a quick glance inside before moving on. He had no real idea of what he hoped to find, he just hoped there would be something.

It was a thrill, an illicit buzz, looking through Rita's things. But nothing shocking was forthcoming, only an extensive collection of lingerie in a wardrobe. Nothing kinky like leather or rubber, just lacy, diaphanous knickers, a few corsets clipped to coat-hangers, neatly arranged garter belts and piles of stockings. The floor of her wardrobe -- a mirror-fronted behemoth -- was covered with shoes, over a dozen pairs of high heels.

Then the guilt and recriminations hit him. Before Tom had left the bedroom he was wracked with self-loathing and self-reproach.

And it had all been for nothing. He had trespassed for no gain, had succumbed to base desires and betrayed a woman who had been his mother's best friend, the same woman who had been kind enough to meet him off the bus and invite him into her home.

The worry began to gnaw. Had he disturbed anything, was there any sign of intrusion? Was he certain the room was as he'd found it.

Yes, he was. Tom was confident Rita would never know.

But he couldn't be absolutely sure.

Somehow he resisted the urge to go back into the room, conscious that by doing so he might then, by revisiting the scene of the crime, do something that would lead to the uncovering of his offence. No, it would be best to leave well alone. Better to watch television or read than go upstairs and make things worse. He could go for a walk, enjoy the summer outside rather than sit inside and dwell.

For two hours he tried to supress the mish-mash of emotions welling inside him. He showered, masturbating beneath the spray, his ejaculate bursting from him on a gasp and a groan. Tom's knees almost buckled when the jizm pumped out of him. The stuff swirled around the drain set in the floor of the cubicle and he pressed his hands against the tiles to stop himself falling.

He dressed and then walked aimlessly, unfulfilled by the physical purge, hungrier for Rita than ever before finding himself at the top of the high street. He'd moved through prosperous avenues, his mind blank to the affluence of the commuter belt, unconcerned by the size of the houses he passed on the way. Uppermost in his mind were the persistent images of Rita and concerns over what he'd done to her.

It had to stop. It had to stop immediately, before he said or did something to ruin everything.

He would drop down to London, visit a girl in Soho and get it all out of his system. Tom resolved to be bolder around women his own age, maybe get a girlfriend and put Rita out of his mind completely. He would concentrate on his career and try to get some courses under his belt for promotion. He'd knuckle down and work hard, move through the ranks and do well for himself. He could do as well as his father and gain a commission, become an officer.

All of this passed through his troubled mind while Tom sat on the bench outside WH Smith and watched the world go by. The sun beamed down unnoticed while Tom, with his plan firmly set in his mind, wondered about the people he saw and the troubles they might be dealing with. For a moment his mood soared -- nobody hurrying past had been where he'd been, done what he'd done. They were going about their lives without knowing what being alive really meant. How many of them had risked all at such a young age? He, at twenty, his birthday falling during the voyage south, had been there and done it. Tom experienced a sudden a ripple of contempt for the civilians around him, scoffed at their humdrum existence before, moments later, the arrogant, self-congratulatory and oh-so-smug sentiment evaporated. How many of these people had behaved in the despicable way he had that morning? How could he sit there feeling superior after such mean and sneaky behaviour?

Guilt settled deeper in the pit of his stomach.

"Shit," Tom muttered. He rose from the bench and vowed to never behave that way again. He'd deal with the business in hand and live a clean life from then on.

But in the end he couldn't stop himself from taking another quick look in Rita's bedroom.

**

On the second circuit, with the wardrobe doors flung wide, Rita's lingerie in front of him, with the vast collection of high heels at his feet, Tom again imagined Rita displayed in some combination of the flimsy garments.

His mind began to work and he saw Rita sprawled on the bed, her pose seductive, the ripe, lush curves of her body packed into a corset. In his head Tom pictured her, legs covered by stockings, her thighs wide, shoes providing the finish, a final polish as she grinned from the bed, the gusset of her underwear stretched tight over a plump pudendum.

His cock thickened and, without recalling how, he found himself stroking the stiff length of gristle as another lewd fantasy took shape.

"Fuck ... Rita," Tom gurgled, his fist working faster and faster. "You're so fucking sexy. I want to fuck you. I want to suck your tits and fuck you."

The woman on the bed held Tom's gaze with a feline stare. She smirked and, with a breath-taking casualness, yanked her knickers aside and exposed the pelt of her pubic bush.

"Yes," Tom grunted, the hint of Rita's scarlet slash peeping from that hirsute place between her thighs. "Show me more, Rita," he mumbled, cranking away at himself. "Show me your tits. I want to see your tits."

Without a word, a crooked smile on her face, lips painted deep red -- the colour of danger -- Rita spread her legs wider, slid a forefinger between her labia while with her other hand she hauled one breast from the cup of the corset. She gasped and winced, a solitary finger moving over her clit, tickling herself there while she exposed a second breast to Tom's gape-mouthed stare.

Tom gulped and shook his head, the image fading to re-form as Rita kneeling on the living room sofa, arse presented to him while an arm reached back over her hip to part the globes of her buttocks.

Rita smirked, her torso twisted as she regarded him over her shoulder, eyes twinkling. "Lick me," she murmured. She moaned and sighed and slid a finger into her body. "Come and taste me. Lick me and then fuck my mouth, darling..."

The irreversible surge began, but Tom, through the mist of madness, had the presence of mind to recognise that the stain of his ejaculate, if allowed to pump from him unchecked, would be bound to splash all over Rita's clothes and shoes. He reached out and grabbed a handful of underwear, wedging the bundled garments against the head of his cock with one hand.

"Fuck..." he grunted. "Oh shit ... Oh fuck..."

He buckled at the waist and whined in desperation, attempting to hold the deluge in check, hoping to contain the spunk jetting from the eye of his cock with the bundle of fragile cotton.

Tom turned and back-heeled both wardrobe doors closed before he shuffled from the room. His gait was a short-stepped scuttle, with him leaning almost double, sodden knickers wadded with both hands around his cock, fraught with concern should a single dollop of goo plop onto the carpet.

It was inevitable that as Tom blotted at himself with rolled up sheets of toilet paper, with Rita's underwear in the bathroom sink, he heard Megan's excited bark. He froze, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed with shock and disbelief when the dog's yap-yap-yap heralded their return.

Tom blurted an oath and threw the tacky mess of soiled tissue into the toilet bowl while apprehension swelled in his chest.

He railed and cursed in silence, recriminations screaming inside his skull. Why had he gone back into that room? Had he left any clues behind this time? Would she be able to tell her space had been invaded? And most concerning of all, would she notice the underwear was missing?

The problem then clamoured for attention: Rita's knickers, what the hell was he going to do about that little obstacle? Laundering the spoiled items and returning them to her bedroom undetected was an issue ahead of him. Tricky in the extreme.

Tom flushed the toilet, shoved his flaccid cock back inside his shorts and scooped the cum-drenched wad of cotton from the sink.

"We're home!" trilled Rita from downstairs.

Tom scuttled across the landing. "Be down in a sec!"

Would Rita notice the shaky edge in his voice?

In his bedroom he dithered with indecision. There seemed to be nowhere suitable to hide the evidence.

A scampering sound from the stairs signalled Megan's ascent, with Rita no doubt following.

Tom stuffed the underwear into the zippered compartment at the top of his bergan rucksack and sat on the floor, forcing himself to calm, to breathe deeply.

"Shit," he hissed through clenched teeth when he heard Rita move into her bedroom.

**

The day passed into early evening with no sign from Rita that she harboured any notion of Tom's illicit visit to her room. She had passed by Tom's bedroom without knocking, simply calling out in passing that she was back and that she was looking forward to a pleasant evening out.

He sat in one of the easy chairs in the living room and attempted to read as sunlight poured in through the open window. The book was an exercise in futility and he couldn't concentrate, not with Rita upstairs, her footsteps moving from bathroom to bedroom, a constant distraction as she made her preparations for their evening out. Tom expected a confrontation any moment, was convinced Rita was bound to notice her underwear was missing.

The sound of her decent caused Tom's stomach to flip. He heard her tread on the stairs and his sphincter tightened.

But a moment later, her entrance preceded by Megan trotting into the room, a smiling Rita appeared. "What do you think?"

Tom took all of her in, his eyes moving from red-painted toenails peeping from open-toed shoes, over finely sculpted calves to where the hem of the button-fronted dress, light cotton, a garment with a bright floral design, perfect for a summer evening, fell to a flattering point above Rita's knees. His gaze lingered for a few seconds on the scooped neckline, attention caught by an enticing décolletage decorated by a thin gold chain that garlanded Rita's throat. The small heart-shaped pendant dangled at the apex of Rita's cleavage, drawing Tom's eyes, and when, eventually, his inspection moved further, Tom saw a platinum blonde bob feathered around Rita's face, her lips coloured the same firebrand red as her toes.

The same shade she wore in his fantasies.

Rita spoke again, repeating the question in the face of his slack-jawed boggling: "So, Tom, what do you think? Will I do? You won't be embarrassed to be seen out with me, will you?"

Tom's mouth worked, gaping open and then closing before he managed to blurt, "You look gorgeous. Wow, Rita..."

The smile broadened and lit Rita's face. She brushed hair away from her temple. "Really? Do you mean it, Tom? Are you being honest or just humouring an old bird?"

Overwhelmed and unable to hide his admiration, his pulse racing, Tom replied. "I mean it. Honest, Rita. You're lovely."

"Well, darling, why don't you go and put on a clean shirt and you can show me off around town."

**

She was almost certain he felt the same, that Tom wanted her the way she wanted him. However, almost certain meant doubt remained. It had been there again, the look in his eyes and the catch in his voice, and he'd called her gorgeous again as well. But the lingering doubt that trickled into the pit of her stomach made her reluctant to probe, cautious in word and deed.

"What do you think, Megan?"

The terrier perched on the settee and blinked, her head canted to one side.

"Should I say something or not? Do you think he knows I went to all this effort just for him?" Rita checked the perfect helmet of sculpted blonde hair in the mirror and adjusted the pendant at her throat. "God, I don't know why I'm in such a state about it; I should just seduce the bugger; get him squiffy and lunge for his cock."

With an agile leap Megan jumped off the sofa and trotted to her mistress. She inspected Rita's shoes, sniffing delicately before lifting her muzzle.

Seeing the brown eyes regarding her Rita chided the animal.

"You're bloody useless," she said with a smile, the tenderness of her tone belying her words. "No use at all when it comes to men." Rita sighed, undecided. She would have to play it by ear, a moment would present itself. She would just have to be ready when it did.

Three

They left the house and walked towards the town centre and a popular riverside pub, disappointing Megan who had hoped to be included in the outing.

Inside the pub it was packed, but providence would have it that two men were just leaving a table in the beer garden outside. Tom left Rita settled and pushed through the heaving throng towards the bar. He waited patiently, his mind constantly working over the events of the day, anxiety gnawing at him until the barman finally acknowledged his presence.

Tom had just placed a sweat-beaded glass of vodka and lime in front of Rita, had no sooner sat on the bench opposite her at the picnic table, one of several set about the lawn at the rear of the pub, his pint of beer in hand, when she began.

"Tom, can I ask you something?"

Worry gripped his vitals, a vice clamped his guts.

She knew! Rita knew he'd been snooping. She knew, somehow, that he'd defiled her underwear.