Mother - Hostile Makeover Ch. 06

The soft tissues of her mound muffled Ethan's howls as he drove his cock up into Peyton and climaxed again.

Lauren and Stefan were crowded into one of the Land Rovers with Janet, a young man she introduced as Jakob, and two others for the long drive across the rugged cliff sides of Kai'ulau back to the Novaks' headquarters. Long stretches of the road were unpaved, and beyond the throw of the headlights was pitch darkness. Their driver took the fogbound curves like he was cruising the Autobahn.

The journey itself was harrowing, but the little that Lauren was able to learn from Janet along the way unnerved her far more. Jan seemed untroubled by her husband's disappearance and too vague on the details. Lauren suspected that she didn't want to talk freely in front of the others. The two women agreed to meet privately the next day.

Exhausted as she was, Lauren still slept badly. She woke breathless several times from weird dreams, sweating and wetly aroused. After dozing late into the morning, she wandered down a winding staircase to the great hall of the place that Jan had called the Hermitage and promptly got lost. The building was an odd combination of old and new, ancient stonework branching abruptly into corridor extensions of manufactured block and concrete and fluorescent lighting. She backtracked a couple of times, trying to remember Jan's directions of the previous night. Eventually, she found her way outside to an open courtyard.

A broad, curving flight of stone steps led down onto gardens bounded by a low crumbling wall. Jan lay sunbathing on one of two mattresses beside a sculptured fountain at the far end, naked save for big sunglasses. She sat up and waved at Lauren.

"There you are! Jet-lagged much?"

"My body has no idea what year it is." Lauren sat in a half-lotus on the second mattress, clad in her rinsed-and-wrung tee-shirt and a brief sarong skirt she'd found in a drawer of the rattan chest in her sleeping quarters. "Is there somewhere in the town where I can buy some things?"

"You mean like a cute little boutique kind of place? Nah. There's no tourist economy here. We're too far from everything. You know you're welcome to what's in my closet. Looks like we're still pretty much the same size. Someone should get some use out of all that stuff."

"Thanks. Uh, you wearing clothes at all, these days?"

Jan picked up a tumbler of amber liquid from the flagstone and sipped from it. "Not when I can help it. The climate is ideal for nudity. And clothes are a nuisance when I want a cock in me."

"Jesus Christ, Jan!"

Janet laughed, long and loud. "Your face!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Lauren had a sleepy memory of Jan pawing Jakob like a horny teenager the previous night, just short of sitting in his lap for most of the drive. He'd returned her attentions casually, intent on his conversation with Stefan in a language Lauren didn't know.

"Wrong? Not a thing, hon," Janet said, seeming untroubled by Lauren's tone. She waved and raised her glass as if in a toast. "Welcome to Shangri-La. Hungry?"

"I don't eat in the morning."

"Morning's fled. Have some of this stuff. Tangerines and mangos and booze and I don't know what all else. It hits you on an empty stomach, maybe you'll unclench a little."

Lauren stared in disbelief. "I don't know you."

"Yes you do, Zonk. It's just been such a very long time." She reached over and brushed the backs of her fingers across Lauren's cheek. "Hasn't it?"

The unexpected use of the old nickname set Lauren back on her heels. Her pulse quickened and her stomach fluttered at Jan's touch-- at long-buried memories and feelings that she didn't appreciate her friend rekindling.

Perfect SATs had compensated for Lauren's mediocre high school GPA to get her into DeSoto State, where she'd flailed hopelessly away at freshman remedial algebra. A volunteer tutoring program had paired her with a severe, earnest sophomore named Janet Tucker, who appeared to exist in the world without family, friends, or any sense of humor whatever.

After two review sessions, Jan had looked at her pupil through her thick eyeglasses and announced, "Zonk, you're wasting your time and mine unless you're going to buckle down. Study more and party less. Like, a lot less."

The name meant nothing to Lauren. Her mother overheard the exchange and was tickled to explain it at dinner that evening. Turned out that the tutor did have a sense of humor, one that Lauren didn't much care for.

"You think I'm a dumb stoner."

"Zonker is not dumb," Jan objected, retreating to her most professorial manner. "He's the best character in the strip. He's a free spirit. Like you."

They'd stared at one another for a long time after that. Lauren didn't remember which of them had blushed and looked away first.

That was how they'd begun.

"This is not the time." Lauren's voice quavered. She moved away from Jan. "We have to talk about Frank. What happened?"

"Frank," Janet repeated with a puzzled frown. "I told you last night, Frank left."

"Yeah, so you said. He just walked out the door in the middle of the night without a word. You didn't talk to him. No one saw him."

"We weren't together. We were fighting. He was being crazy. Paranoid, like he was convinced we were in danger here. And he was mad because...Okay, you know I'm fucking Jakob?"

"Um, I kinda picked up on that, yeah."

"And Dominic, and...oh, a lot of guys. I'm fucking lots of guys now, all right? Frank couldn't stand to see that."

"How unreasonable of him." The significance of Janet's phrasing sank in. "Wait--you literally were having sex with other men in front of him?"

Appallingly, Janet giggled. "I was a faithful wife for twenty years, Lauren. Not that many good years, but what the hell. And then we came here, and, well, Lib just changes everything."

"You've completely lost your mind."

"Uh-huh. Didn't you say last night that you've used Libidramine yourself?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Did you take it with Jon?"

Lauren opened her mouth but could not speak. As she and Stefan had fucked through the night, she'd sworn that she would not stop if the hotel were burning down around them.

"Well...shit."

"The Natural Products Expo in Miami. Two years ago?" Janet reminded. "We roomed together. And I spent most of the weekend alone. How many times did you ball that sales rep from Utah? So don't judge, okay?"

"Jesus." Lauren took a deep breath and decided to try again. "Frank is missing. Left humiliated, got lost, got taken, whatever. Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"It's an island. There's one real town. How often are there even ships in the harbor? What's happened to your husband, Jan?"

"Nothing! He's not--Aleksandra says she has people looking for him. Frank's all right. They'll find him."

Pressing the point was futile. Jan had checked out, disassociating on a deep level, blocking those possibilities that were too terrible to bear...at least for now. Stockholm syndrome? Constant drinking? The Libidramine? Could those even be considered apart from each other? A chill ran through Lauren, mindful of the desperate imperative of the addict: protect access to the supply, whatever the cost.

The full weight of her own peril bore in on her for the first time. She'd rushed in, as usual, chasing something without forethought. And here she was on an island so distant and obscure that it wasn't on Wikipedia, completely dependent on her hosts for safe passage home. Lost among strangers. If she couldn't even reach Jan, she was utterly alone.

She had to be careful. Don't force Jan to confront what she couldn't. Ask safe questions that she might want to answer.

"Pour me a glass of that stuff," Lauren said with careful nonchalance, reclining on her mattress. "What've you learned so far, about Libidramine?"

"Hmm. That's the big one." Janet's eyes brightened. She pursed her lips as if her pupil had asked her to explain polynomials. Lauren smiled despite herself. "Okay, so it's derived from the blossom of a plant called Tiare Aeaea. So named by Père Thomas, a French Catholic priest who was a botanist and zoologist. Those were his hobbies. His day job was saving the wretched souls of the hedonistic savages."

"God's work. Seems to have been a bust."

"Uh-huh. For reasons." Janet gestured toward the monastery. "There's a trove of old documents in there. Copies of charts and logbooks that belonged to the French sailors, journals kept by the colonists, genealogies and weather logs kept by the monks...all kinds of cool stuff. Aleksandra's turned me loose in the Hermitage library. She's as curious about Kai'ulauan history as I am, and my French is way better than hers.

"There are later writings in English, too. Like, you ever hear of the Nancy B. Flanagan? It was a whaling schooner that disappeared out here in the mid-1800s. Turns out they shipwrecked on Kai'ulau. Twenty-three crew, all of them black freedmen. Modern islanders are quite a mix, Polynesian and European and African."

"Yeah, that's real interesting. But about the flowers..."

"From Father Tom's notes and what I can look up online, when the Internet even works here, I'd guess the plant is an unknown variety of Sclerotheca. There are less than a dozen cataloged species. And Aeaea only grows on Kai'ulau."

"That's remarkable. And very convenient for the Novaks."

"But not as odd as you might think. It has a cousin, Apetahi, that only grows on the slopes of one extinct volcano on Raiatea. No one knows why. I bet if there was a fuck-load of money to be made from it, someone would figure out how to transplant it pretty quick. So you see why the family's keeping this close. Why they want so badly to control distribution."

"Keep the secret. Stretch out the window of exclusivity as long as possible. Can't say I exactly blame them. But look, how does the drug work? What's it doing to us?"

"Hon, I've got no idea." Janet laughed. "I'm just a schoolgirl scientist. And they've got no research labs here. But you know that as soon Lib gets out onto the market all the pharma giants will be all over it looking for something they can synthesize and patent. Every government--"

"Will want to control it. Don't you think this is dangerous, Jan? It's--"

"It'll be disruptive as hell," Janet agreed. "I haven't told you the half of it. Now, as nearly as I can tell, Lib just supercharges every system of the body. You become more of whatever you already are. It heightens your senses--makes every experience way more intense. Increases your metabolic efficiency, stamina, pain tolerance. And obviously, it jacks your sex drive into the stratosphere. I stay hornier than a submarine crew on a weekend pass in Bangkok." Jan cocked her head and winked at Lauren mischievously. "And how are you feeling?"

"Goddamn, cut it out."

"I'm totally serious. Listen to your body, Laur. Motor running a little hot?"

"Jan, I really don't want to--"

"You realize that you're breathing Lib right now?"

"What!"

"Pollen from the blossoms is carried on the wind, everywhere on the island. It's been part of Kai'ulauan culture for a thousand years. They use the plant in traditional medicine. They cook with it. They bury their dead with garlands of it, which, if you ask me, really is missing the point.

"It affects everyone all the time. After a few days here, Frank and I were both so hot and bothered that, well, by the time Jakob gave us the refined drug I was primed and about to explode."

She brought her face close to Lauren's. "And the same thing's happening to you. How'd you sleep last night?"

Jan pulled Lauren close and kissed her, tongue darting at the corners of Lauren's mouth.

"Don't start this again, Jan. Please. Not...not now." Both knew too well that her reluctance was not refusal. Jan angled a leg over both of Lauren's and slid a hand under her friend's sarong to cup her buttocks.

Lauren's heart pounded, and she twisted as if to pull away. But physical impulse won out over willpower, and she ground her vulva against Janet's thigh. Pushing Lauren's shirt up off of her breasts, Jan lowered her face and sucked one large flat areola into her mouth. She bit the hardening nipple lightly and lashed it with her tongue.

"Now is a perfect time." Jan moved to the other breast and continued sucking. Lauren trembled from head to toe. It as was if no time at all had passed, and they were nineteen and twenty and together in the little attic bedroom of her mother's row house on Munsee Island. "Come on, lady, I want you naked."

A flash hotter than the tropic sun shot through Lauren at Jan's words. She hesitated for half a heartbeat before tugging the knotted cotton at her waist loose and pulling her sarong free. She let Janet pull her shirt off. They were naked together. She ran her hand through Janet's short hair, fingers caressing the nape of her neck, holding her close. So much had changed, and so little; Janet was still the one leading them down the path that they both wanted so desperately to tread.

The young teacher had not quite seduced her student, the first time. Janet was too reticent for that, and Lauren was more sexually experienced than she. But Lauren had only been with guys. Once she'd made the first move Janet had taken over. Jan was a voracious reader, and it turned out that her interests had ranged well beyond studious immersion in Mendel, Kant, and Al-Khwarizmi. Her favorite British author was not Bronte or Keats, but a prolific Victorian who'd signed their work "Anon." She had a riotous imagination and ideas of her own that she was dying to try with someone. She could be aggressive, dominating, and tender at the same time.

"I don't know what it is about you," she'd confided. "I've never been close to anyone. Never had a good friend that I can think of, really. All those foster homes...I guess I just don't attach."

Enthralled, Lauren had attached to Janet with a vengeance. They'd done everything together. Whether in or out of bed, Janet somehow always led. She'd talked their way into jobs on Jon and Frank's food truck. When Lauren had surprised herself by falling for Jon, rather than being jealous Jan had maneuvered it so that they became a foursome.

What had come next still stung. Remembering, Lauren pushed Janet away. "You ended us."

"I gave you up." Janet looked stricken. "When I married Frank...he wasn't who I thought he was. He changed."

"Don't hang it on someone else."

"I'm not blaming him. Okay, maybe that is what I did for a long time. That was wrong. I loved him, and he had fixed ideas of how things were supposed to be, in a marriage. I didn't want him to leave. We were all so laser-focused on getting along, on building this wretched business." Her vehement dismissal of Blue Oasis shocked Lauren. "You and Jon were crazy about each other, anyway. And I guess I just thought, you know, it was time for me to grow up."

She held Lauren and kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her mouth. "God, my heart has been in two pieces for so long. I'm so sorry."

Resentment and grief that Lauren had clung to for decades evaporated in the hot surge of her blood and the thrill of carnal reunion.

What Jan said about the Tiare must be true, then. There wasn't the extreme kick of rampant horniness that Lauren had experienced with Stefan--but then, Lib was a concentrated version of whatever was in the red flowers. The pollen's effect was more subtle but just as irresistible. And Jan's confession touched her.

Broken pieces.

"I feel like a piece of me is missing," Lauren had told Jon after Janet had ended their group relationship. "Like I've got a phantom limb that still aches." Jon had listened, without understanding. She had him, after all; why would she need anyone else? That was when what she'd lost had hit her hardest.

Lauren cradled Janet, covering her mouth in a long kiss. "You are insidious. You always have the words that make me want..."

"I've never made you do a thing, Zonk. I can't believe that anyone ever has."

Janet trailed her fingers down Lauren's stomach to her crotch, drawing lazy patterns on her velvet mound, not quite touching her moistening pussy yet. Lauren's labia swelled. Janet circled around her clitoris, fingers drawing closer and closer. "Yesss..." Lauren sighed. She squeezed her thighs together, trying to trap that teasing hand between them but Jan evaded her. Jan's eyes were dreamy and heavy-lidded. She smiled with satisfaction, coaxing Lauren's clit out of its hood. Her fingertip directly stroked the exposed, swollen pink button.

Lauren sucked in her breath. She squirmed and moaned and molded herself to Janet, mouth to mouth and tit to tit and belly to belly. Janet's nimble fingers brought her to the edge of climax just to let her slide away again. Once, twice...

Moaning, Lauren put her hand to the parting of Janet's legs, finding the blonde's soaking pussy.

"Oh yeah. Play with me, too," Jan murmured. "Right here, just now, there's only us." Her low, husky tone soothed and excited Lauren both at the same time. "No Jon. No Frank, no Ethan..."

"Ethan?" Lauren started.

Janet dipped a finger into Lauren's slit. "Wow, you're really gushing." She nibbled at Lauren's earlobe and whispered. "Because I mentioned Ethan? Oh, look at that! My girl has a secret! You know, on second thought I wouldn't mind having Ethan here right now. I don't think you would, either."

"Stop it!" Lauren protested. "Now you're just saying awful things. Like always."

"Only because it always gets you hot." Janet curled two fingers up inside Lauren's pussy, working them upward along her inner walls. "Why is it so awful, to want Ethan? "I'd sure want him if he were mine. There must be so many opportunities, for the two of you."

"Don't...talk like that..."

"Come on, you like it. You're not so alone. I think about Ethan a lot. He looks so much like you. Same eyes. Same mouth...I've sat through so many goddamn meetings at the office, watching him, all wet in my underpants. Now, isn't that awful, me wanting to fuck my best friend's great big stud of a son?"

Lauren cried out. Janet straddled her, peppering her throat and shoulders and breasts with little kisses. Her probing fingers massaged the sensitive nerve cluster deep inside Lauren's vagina that they both knew would drive her insane. "Didn't Stefan tell you, the Kai'ulauans don't care about such things? Incest is no big deal here. Another thing to love about this place. If Ethan were here now we could fuck him together. You and me. Imagine it...that's right...Has he got a big dick, hmm? Have you seen it? Of course you have! Your son's got a great big cock that belongs right here--"

Jan thrust three fingers in and out of Lauren's cunt in a fast fucking motion, as if they were a penis. Lauren shrieked and exploded in an orgasm so intense that the world grew dark around her. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she fought her way back from the brink of unconsciousness.

"You're more beautiful than ever," Jan mumbled. She kissed Lauren's breasts, fondling them and pleasuring her nipples with long slow licks and little nibbles. "So womanly. You're all new, again." She kissed her way down Lauren's belly and along one inner thigh as far as the knee before moving to the other and making her way with agonizing slowness back up to her warm, wet target. She blew softly on Lauren's clitoris. "Pretty pussy."

Lauren spread her legs wider apart, knees trembling. The wet tip of Jan's tongue edged up between her labia and she arched her hips automatically toward Jan's mouth. "Don't stop...please don't stop!"

"If I had my way I'd never stop. I'm gonna drink you dry," Janet opened her mouth wide, pressed her lips to Lauren's vulva, and sucked. Her tongue darted up into the hot little opening of Lauren's pussy, swiping and licking and swallowing every drop of nectar that she could find.