Mother - Hostile Makeover Ch. 02

Lauren took the twisting curves of the Ortega too fast in her silver convertible. A lot of people wrecked along this road. Some people dropped busted safes and other sundry evidence of crime, petty and grand, over the steep embankments into the granite canyons of the Santa Anas.

People dumped bodies here.

But the day was sunny and dry and racing in the heat was fun. Ethan had mounted grippy tires and welded a steel cage into the Miata for his mother shortly after Blue Oasis had moved their headquarters to the Southwest. He knew her penchant for risk-taking too well. So well that he'd practically run a one-man intervention last year to get her into therapy with Bethany Gallegos, who'd assessed her attraction to unnecessary danger as an unhealthy channeling of anxiety.

Doctor Gallegos was the good kind of therapist, the kind who offered hope but gave you the bad news straight up. She and Lauren agreed that the impulse-control project was not going too well so far.

She made it to the valley in record time this afternoon, and all in one piece. Just past the Mexican take-out place she used as a landmark, she swung the car left up the unmarked gravel road that cut through fallow, dusty fields to stop at the converted aircraft hangar her son called home.

No one answered at the apartment entrance on the side of the steel building. Walking around to the big open sliding doors in front, she found Ethan flat on his back on a creeper working under what she understood to be a 1951 Schuman coupe. Emil Schuman, her son had explained, had been a genius of sorts--one of those eccentric postwar inventor-slash-entrepreneurs, a tinkerer who'd fled the basin and moved out here with a scheme to beat Studebaker and GM at their own game. Available options on your custom-built Schuman had included a bar in the console, alligator seats, and a built-in 45 rpm phonograph.

Yet another visionary.

Ethan never said what had become of Schuman the man. But this hangar had been one of his warehouses and the kid had bought the place complete with a few hundred crates of not-so-labeled parts. So far he'd assembled two cars and was working on a third.

Lauren looked down through a hoodless and empty engine compartment at Ethan's upturned, grease-smudged face. "You going to try to fit a battery pack in here, or you just gonna Fred Flintstone it downhill?"

"Schuman didn't build engines. He bought Y-blocks from Ford. I'll probably just drop in an LS."

She held up her hand. "Whoa, there. I noticed your engine was missing. That's the sum total of my automotive acumen."

Ethan chuckled and rolled out from under the car, grabbed a towel that hung over one fender, and wiped grease from his forehead. He wore only torn jeans and steel-toed boots and his bare skin was caked with what looked like half an inch of mingled sweat and oil and wind-blown dust from the barren land outside. "So, what's up?"

"Drive me up to San Bernardino? I'm taking the 3:45 out to New Derby. The vert's got that weird wobble going on again, and I thought maybe you could take a look at it while I'm gone."

"Sure thing. I told you, though, it's the short nose crank. It's a problem in the older MX-5s. What did you pay that garage in Beaumont for last month, anyway?"

"Lord only knows. Lew Bradley recommended the place. He swears they're the best."

"That should have been your first clue, right there. Buy a new one. You can sure afford it."

"And who would love my baby? She'd go straight to the junkyard."

"You need something with modern safety features. Don't be so sentimental. It's a machine."

"Hush. She can hear you. Gimme." Lauren took the damp towel from her son and wiped off the grime he'd missed on his chin, and his throat. She rubbed briskly at his bare brown shoulders and chest. He covered her hand with his to stop her.

"That's enough. I'm not a kid, Mom," he said with a quizzical look.

Ethan had his mother's strawberry hair and upturned, Icelandic gray eyes--now pale blue, now mist green depending on the light. He was tall and slim and strong and unconscious of his gifts, both physical and mental, which made him all the more attractive to her.

"Yeah. Sorry." What the hell am I doing? It was becoming an old question, one that came up regularly in therapy. Dr. Gallegos regarded Lauren's working through her sexual feelings for her son as the key to resolving her anxiety.

That project wasn't going well, either. After forty-five minutes of video chat with the doctor, she usually spent an hour masturbating in the bath. It was the most relief she got from the whole exercise.

"Coffee?"

"Hmm? Oh, absolutely." To get to the apartment that Ethan had built into one back corner of the hangar, they wended their way past his rotating assortment of classic cars and motorcycles. He always had six or seven in the place at a time, with only a couple of them running. Most were in various stages of disassembly and restoration, their parts strewn across the concrete floor.

"What are you holding?" he asked, setting a Moka pot on the stainless steel stovetop and adjusting the flame.

"What do you--Oh, God." Lauren fished in her purse and tossed him a small stoppered bottle with two joints in it. "Wait, it's legal now. Isn't it?"

"It is, here. Where you're going, not so much. TSA don't usually care, but catch the wrong inspector on a bad day..." He shrugged. "Dad's been calling, looking for you."

"I muted his number. Then I ran over to Redlands to get in a workout before I head out. Anger management."

"It's great that you're keeping up the kickboxing."

"You kidding? My ass would be down to my knees if I let up. Thanks for turning me on to it. Kid, at this point I damn near owe you my life."

"Drama-mama. You don't need to drop by the house, before the airport?"

"That place is 10,000 square feet on two gorgeous mountainside acres of not big enough for your father and me to share." She studied her hands. "I need a manicure. And a pedicure. Jesus, look at me: I'm forty-five, and I'm flying cross-country with my purse and the clothes on my back and what's in my purse, all to play footsie with a snake oil salesman who dates movie stars."

"Breathe. Here. Cup's hot."

"Thanks." She sipped her coffee. "That's good. Ethan, we've all worked our asses off to get where we are. But your father acts like someone gave me the cheat codes."

"Because you're beautiful."

"Ethan--"

"Mom, you're the most beautiful woman in the world."

"I love you too, Ethan." She said as casually as she could. She knew she was blushing.

She got why men called her pretty: the sweep of honey blonde hair, the high cheeks and pointed chin, the full lips, the eyes. In middle age, she still had the spare frame and sturdy limbs of a young tennis player. But what she saw in the mirror was a caricature of beauty. Her boobs were way too big, hips too narrow, eyes too wide apart, and her expressive mouth clownishly broad.

When her husband praised her looks it was to dismiss her hard work.

When her son admired her, her heart raced.

She tried changing the subject. "Have I told you yet this week how I adore this place? I should live with you."

Maybe not changing the subject so much.

Ethan had installed tall windows in one outer wall near the rear entrance, then built ten-foot partitions to divide the space into rooms. But with no outer walls enclosing the living space itself, the effect was something like a movie set on a soundstage. You could walk around the whole place, see into all the rooms, and cross in or out of the space anywhere. There was no ceiling, the blown-glass chandeliers suspended by long chains from the high steel rafters. His mountain bike hung on one wall of the single long downstairs room, surrounded by shelves. The open kitchen was at one end. At the other, a floating staircase led up to a deep loft bedroom with an oversized platform bed. The spare furnishings included a few sticks of mid-century furniture, a table, and a long couch.

Lauren's working-class reflexes balked at what it must cost to heat and cool the place in this climate.

They sat down together on the couch. Ethan lit one of her joints, inhaled, and passed it to her. "Snake oil worked, you know."

"Did not."

"Did too. Traditional Chinese remedy, made from water snakes. Workers on the Pacific Railroad used it for their joints, except they made it out of rattlesnakes. Later on, the government sued a guy for selling fake snake oil made of turpentine. There was a big fuss about it and the fraud's what stuck in people's minds."

Lauren exhaled fine smoke. "So where are we going with this? Are we talking about Libidramine?"

"Maybe. What would it mean to the world, if this stuff worked?"

"Four-hour erections as a feature instead of a bug? Us wimmen folk running around frisky all the time?" She couldn't help giggling. "You seeing a downside here that I don't, kiddo?"

"Seriously, yeah." He took the cigarette from her. "In principle, human drives are pretty finely balanced. Like, everything's in a kind of Goldilocks zone, not too hot or too cold. Our survival instincts promote selfishness but since we depend on each other for survival hungry people will share food with others in the clan. Sometimes even if they're starving. Things like that. Balance.

"But now, we live in a society where most of us can eat as much as we want, whenever we want, for as long as we want. And you and I know how well that's working out for most people. If it weren't for people trying to lose weight, Blue Oasis sales would drop by more than half.

"And sex is right up there with hunger. It's really the most powerful engine you can attach to any effort or relationship. So, what happens if you jack the sex drive way up beyond what we evolved to deal with? Side effects may include: sex addiction, infidelity, broken taboos, murderous lust..."

Lauren yawned and leaned against her son. Weed always made her drowsy. "My darling, I had no idea you were such a Puritan. You may have noticed that we already have all those problems. Look at Lew Bradley. Unless you believe that he and Irina were just meant to be, twin flames bound by destiny, then he blew up a twenty-five-year marriage all for a piece of supermodel ass."

"I'm gonna go with Lew being fucking nuts, there," Ethan agreed. "Which, weirdly enough, makes my point. Where sex is concerned, a lot of us are already barely keeping it together. Now multiply everyone's sexual capacity and lust exponentially. We'd wind up doing everything with anybody, all the time. We'd destroy ourselves."

Everything with anybody. Lauren felt the same frisson as when she'd watched late-night slasher movies with Janet when they'd been roommates. She'd discovered then that dread and arousal were kissing cousins.

"Mom?" Ethan's voice broke the spell. "Where'd you go, there? Hate to tell you, this shit's not that good."

"Oh, I was just, uh, thinking about Janet. And Frank. They haven't been in touch yet. I'm sorry...we were talking about a hypothetical."

"Let's hope that's all it is." Ethan let out a long breath. "Because if Libidramine is more than just hype, it's dangerous in the hands of people with the best intentions. And do we think the Novaks are all that?"

Her son's concern was all too familiar to Lauren. He had that "Mom's car needs a roll cage" look about him. She put her hand to the back of his head and kissed his chin. "Hey, I'm going out to have lunch in a public place with a guy who's trying to sell us some pills. I do it all the time. Haven't had one slip me a mickey yet."

"Promise that just this one time, you'll look before you leap?"

"Sure thing, kid."

If not for her twenty-year-old stepdaughter Peyton, Irina would have found marriage to Lew Bradley unbearable.

Fortunately, Peyton Bradley loved eating pussy.

The two women had forged an affectionate relationship upon that shared enthusiasm.

Right now, Peyton's mouth was fitting quite nicely around her stepmother's vagina, sealed to her smooth, hairless pubic mound, gently sucking and lapping up pussy cream. They spent many afternoons this way, together in the big bed that Irina still shared with her husband most nights. It was five in the evening, and she knew that Lew would return home soon. If he were to walk through the door now he'd find his bride of eight months resting on a pile of pillows, legs wide apart, knees bent, and feet flat on the mattress while his naked daughter greedily licked her toward one more in a series of orgasms.

"Shit," Irina muttered under her breath at the mental image of Lew's face appearing in the doorway. Peyton raised her head and regarded her stepmother with knitted brow. "What's wrong? Should I not--"

"Oh, no. Just keep doing exactly what you're doing," Irina reassured her, resting a hand gently on the crown of the young blonde's head. "You're perfection."

Peyton beamed. "I'm not very experienced. I mean, not like your other friends."

"The other sluts on the runway? Shall I tell you a secret, Myszko? Some of us indeed make quite the art and practice of pleasing one another, for our own satisfaction and to amuse the buyers and the promoters. But I always favored the ingénues. They'd arrive fresh from their pageants with their portfolios and Instagrams and their pervert managers. Full of unwitting bravado and determined to climb to the top. I took the dear things under my wing." She flashed her stepdaughter a savage grin. "And I devoured them."

"Like you did me," Peyton whispered, shivering in delight.

"Yes. But you're not like anyone else. You're special." Irina lifted her pelvis up and guided the girl's head back to her crotch. Peyton's freckled nose brushed teasingly against her stepmother's protruding, stiff clitoris, tongue-tip darting into the top of her dripping slit. Irina shut her eyes and focused on the soft warmth of the young woman's tender lips caressing her vulva, licking the slick inner walls of her cunt, setting every nerve to tingling.

A little flattery would always get you what you wanted from a Bradley.

Irina admired their reflections overhead. The mirrored ceiling had been Lew's idea, middle-aged American adolescent that he was. Gauche as it might be, she'd come to appreciate it during her private tutoring sessions with Peyton. She turned on to the vision of her stepdaughter's pert, round little butt swaying from side to side, her fine, pale hair fanning out over her slim back. She could see the girl reach back under herself, her curled and nimble fingers dancing over her own flowering slit.

"Mmmm...that's it, that's the way, darling. Go deeper...you know the way...Yes! Just l-l-like that! Awwh..." Irina's toes curled and the muscles of her thighs and belly contracted as she climaxed.

She had known from the evening that Lew had first introduced her to his quiet, shy daughter just where Peyton would fit into her plans.

Seducing Peyton had been even easier than catching her father and reeling him in. She'd been such an innocent eighteen-year-old, not quite a virgin, and was understandably hostile to the "Eurotrash tramp" who'd so abruptly and heartbreakingly displaced Mother.

Libidramine had solved that problem, just as it had changed Irina's own life. She owed all that to her dear Jakob.

They'd met as foreign students at school in Paris a decade ago, outsiders clinging to one another. The affair had been brief. Irina had left after a year to pursue modeling. Jakob had graduated and returned to his far-off island home to work in the family business. He'd reached out to her again two years ago, an intriguing email out of the blue. They'd started up again. The sex this time around had been transcendent, enhanced by the marvelous new drug he'd introduced her to.

Enthralled by Jakob and in love with the drug, Irina agreed to seduce a certain lawyer named Lewis Bradley who worked for the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium.

She disliked Bradley on their first "accidental" meeting, but never considered saying no to Jakob. That would have meant saying goodbye to Libidramine. She could live without Lib, she was sure, but had no intention of ever doing so again.

Peyton's natural curiosity had worked in her soon-to-be stepmother's favor. Half an hour after the girl had agreed to try the aphrodisiac, she'd let Irina coax her out of her tennis shorts and top. The pair had cuddled naked together while Irina had soothingly caressed Peyton's shoulders and hips and thighs. Their lips had met and Peyton had accepted Irina's tongue as gratefully as she'd responded to the woman's hands tracing the swelling domes of her small, round tits. Those gentle, massaging fingers had ignited the young woman's drug-fueled desires as Irina's fingertips had teased her puffy pink nipples into hard, rubbery points. The older woman had playfully pinched and tickled those stiff little nubbins before taking them one at a time into her mouth and sucked until Peyton's weakly trembling thighs had parted to expose her wet little slit.

By the time Irina slipped her tongue inside Peyton's pussy for the first time the young blonde was shrieking and begging for the release of orgasm. But Irina brought her to the precipice and poised her on the edge for long minutes before letting her climax.

By the end of Irina's first evening with Peyton, the girl was hers.

"I think maybe you're not so angry with me, these days."

"What? I was so silly. I didn't know anything. Being like this with you, just the two of us...it's a dream I don't want to wake up from. It's my second-favorite thing in the world."

"Of course, little frog," Irina said with a tolerant smile.

She heard Peyton's first-favorite thing pull the 911 into the driveway, and a minute later his footsteps on the stairs.

"Now, isn't this a pretty sight to come home to at the end of the day?"

"Daddy!" Peyton's giddy squeal set Irina's teeth on edge. She threw a gleeful glance over her shoulder at her father standing in the doorway and thrust her buttocks up higher. "Hurry up and fuck me while I make Irina come!"

The speed with which Lew could undress to get at his daughter never ceased to amaze Irina. He was not ordinarily what she'd have called a high-energy personality. It spoke to the importance of motivation.

He got onto the bed, but Irina blocked and pushed him away from Peyton with one foot. "Not so fast there, Sport. Have you done the thing?"

Lew's long, sallow face clouded. Irina was unmoved. She'd taught him better than to challenge her. He took a deep breath and said, "It went just like you said it would. I wouldn't have believed it'd be so easy to lure Jon in. He's such a narcissist that I expected that he'd fight harder against giving up any control to outsiders."

"I told you, he's desperate for a cash rescue. His board will vote in a few weeks on whether he will go on serving as CEO."

"That group? They're tight. No one's ever challenged him."

"That remains to be seen, dear. Things are in motion. What of Lauren Chase?"

"I maneuvered her into a meeting with Novak. Nothing to it." His boasting couldn't mask his eagerness for his wife to accept his assurances.

"You've done well." Irina stretched sensuously and yawned. "You may now fuck your daughter."

Peyton yipped and rolled onto her back to lie beside her stepmother, holding her open arms up to welcome her father's lustful embrace. Lew knelt between her slender thighs. She arched her hips and waited breathlessly for his bloated cock-head to enter her exposed, wet pussy. Her excited cries as he entered her were almost more than Irina could bear to hear.

Peyton would never have conceived of sex with her own father, if not for daily doses of Libidramine and Irina's patient encouragement. It was doubtful that the aphrodisiac played so large a role in Lew's embrace of the opportunity. Irina had picked up on his lewd attraction to his own daughter when he'd first introduced them. Nonetheless, dosing him with Lib kept him on a knife's edge of constant arousal, always needing sexual relief.