The Door Is Always Open

The Door Is Always Open

1

Elena and Gabi had been the best of friends, for so long, that they often asked each other if they had a life before they married and had their boys, Niall and Oscar, enter their lives around the same time.

The similarities did not end there. They were each divorced, Elena longer than Gabi, but when their men had left them their sons were almost through college and Elena's business, 'Verdant,' already active and successful in landscaping and lumber. It had been the foundation for her new life from the moment that the ink had dried on the divorce papers.

Gabi worked at whatever she could find and that kept her mind occupied. She chose to do that, rather than to be at home, and having to endure the silence that fell over the place now that her stepson, Oscar Kennett, had left and joined the Marine Corps. His loss in that way had cut Gabi deep, and she struggled not to feel that she had been abandoned by both father and son. Oscar had become her emotional prop and, now, he was no longer around and she had no one in her life to make good her loneliness.

Gabi should have known what could happen. Oscar had been into all things military ever since he had been a kid and she had married his father. His closest friend, Niall Jackson, had not been tempted into doing the same thing. He was now a vital part of Elena's business, it being his idea to also deal in lumber, what Verdant cut down on a customer's lot and that they either logged and stacked for the customer's fire or the brash was shredded for mulching. That too a client could keep, or Verdant took it all away. Once rotted down, some, Niall bagged it and they turned what had been mulched into cash, Verdant's logo prominent on every bag.

The boys had been inseparable until Oscar had joined up and gone to Parris Island. It might just as well have been the other side of the country, and the base in San Diego, because Gabi had not seen him until recruit camp time was through. She had never doubted that he would make a success of it all.

"There sure is goin' to be a space to fill in my life once you're gone...you've always been my best pal around here and we've done almost everything together," Niall had blurted out when he'd been round at Oscar's place, a compact ranch style house set in a patch of woodland scrub, and where they'd often throw a football or challenged each other at basketball, the ball rattling the loop set high on the gable of the garage. Girlfriends came and went. They'd fooled around with them and learned along the way, but none had hooked them, enough, to make either think about what the future might hold. In any case, Oscar wasn't wired to stay true or remain with anyone for long.

"I'll be back as soon as I get through the boot and recruit camps, and I've found my way around the Corps," Oscar had observed casually, not wanting to let his pal know that it was going to be a wrench for him too.

He would also miss the four of them having a barbecue out in the yard of their respective homes, but he knew that Niall was committed to the business his mom had set up before her marriage to Niall's father hit the skids. Elena sure didn't deserve that, and he'd started thinking that he would miss the sight of her. She sure was competent, attractive enough to hold the eye on her, and she never could conceal what she'd bring to a man, even when she wore only too functional work clothes, usually some washed-out dungarees along with a blouse or T-shirt, a colourful bandana at her throat and her stark blonde hair cut in an only too functional bob. In winter that would be hidden by a knitted beanie hat, her body wrapped in a quilted jacket zipped up to her throat, and only too functional patch-pocket pants replacing the dungarees. Her bright smile and lively eyes always made up for it all.

But when they were together, relaxing at a barbie, out would come the swirly skirts and figure-hugging tops, clothes to catch the sun on their skins, the bracelets and the necklaces. When she, and his stepmother, did that they saw another side to the women who were constants in their lives, and that set them talking.

It was then that they gave voice to youthful fantasies that the girls they went with, or had gone down on, never quite satisfied. They had also taken to wondering what their moms found so funny when seeing them fooling around before them. They were both lean and strong, jocks in their college days; he was the more muscled of the two, taller and broader than Niall, but he had seen how his friend had filled out some more after he had begun working for Verdant. The heavy lifting bulked him out. Yeah, they were just over six foot tall, lean and strong, their mothers not knowing that they still catalogued every curve and dip of their bodies when they had the chance. They were fooling around, and it was all teasing banter, nothing more they would say to each other and would let their imaginations run a little wild.

"I sometimes think it's disrespectful to think of them as we do, pal," Niall had gone and told him. "I also think that they must get lonely and with only us around most of the time."

"I guess, and dating isn't something I know my mom gets into, or she'd tell me."

"Too bad, because she looks okay," Niall had said and sensed that Gabi thought of Oscar as the only company that she needed while he was still at home.

"Yeah, it is. My mom wouldn't count on me so much if she had someone in her life but she's taking time to mend, even after some time has gone by and my father's just gone...out of both our lives. That gets to me too, you know?"

Niall had understood. "Gabi sure didn't deserve to be left in the way she was..."

Oscar had kept him from saying any more on that. "It's not just sometimes that I think of them or when I'm not with you and Elena, your mom. So, I'm glad that I'll be away for a spell. It will let the heat in me cool down, some."

He had stopped from saying how his mother, for that was still how he thought of her, got through to him in ways that wound his clock and whenever she needed him to be close. She'd touch his arm, give him a smile that revealed what was at work in her again, an unmistakable tremble of her lips, a softer wondering look of her eyes on him as the clock wound down to him leaving her.

"But it won't help me with what I feel, sometimes, when we're all together. I sure know it's wrong, but they're in our lives so much."

"Then you'll have to find a way to work it out of your system, pal," Oscar had laughed.

Niall had been too embarrassed to admit that he already did that when he was alone and in his room. His mother's frequent calls to Gabi, how they were heard to laugh and, sometimes, the cutting short of a call when he was near, suggested who it was they were again talking about.

But for him, it was all talk and no follow-through. In Oscar, a different flame seemed to burn, and it wasn't something he had decided to ask him about. Some feelings, and behaviour, were off limits and that was how it was going to stay.

2

Gabi heard a hard and insistent knock on the front door. It was louder than usual, and she knew that her months of waiting were finally at an end. Her small home, with its clapboarded walls and neatly trimmed hedge to the front, had been spotlessly cleaned, the ceiling fan in the living room cooling the air and a floral-scented spray freshening the rooms.

"I've gotta go!" she whopped, "Sorry, Elena, but my boy's home! I've got company at last!"

She spoke out in a soft, honeyed voice, her look in the mirror soon showing a bright smile, her long auburn red hair brushed out and a blush of makeup and soft lipstick just as she wanted, the wide-eyed wonder that the house would again be lively to the sound of Oscar's deep voice and engaging laughter, his energy lifting her spirits as he strode from room to room, or he slumped down on the sofa beside her and they could talk. There was so much to catch up on and to share and she would again have attentive company and, perhaps, be able to put right what had happened the last time she had seen him.

"I'll leave you two to it and won't trouble you until tomorrow, okay?" Elena felt her spirits lift, too, and hoped it wouldn't be long before they were all together.

"Sure, we can meet up for supper," Gabi enthused, checking her reflection in the hall mirror, once again, and adjusting the fit of her patterned wrap-around dress that shaped her. She had a reason to make a fuss over how she looked, doing her best for her 'boy,' as she still thought of him. "I sure have missed Oscar being around..."

"That goes for me too."

"You missed him too?" Gabi blurted out in some dismay. "I guess it's no longer illegal..."

Elena was heard to laugh softly. "I remember us talking of our boys often enough. Who else was there in our lives? I work all the hours I can with Niall's help, so we're bonded really close, but that's a different feeling and a special bond that I won't risk breaking."

Gabi knew it well enough, but being abandoned by her husband, and Oscar's father, had shaped their relationship so much further than she dared to speak of, even to Elena. Joking about the young men took things too close to how it was for her and had become before Oscar had gone away. Now she had a week, or so, to make good their bond once more and that Zoom calls were no substitute for.

"Sorry, I really do have to go, or my Marine son will smash down the door! I'll call you, promise!" she laughed in her excitement and anticipation of seeing her darling Oscar again.

On a last look at herself in the mirror, and in the grip of gnawing anticipation, she was gone.

♥

Gabi tugged open the door and gave voice to her suppressed feelings with a shriek of delight.

"At last, you're here! I can kiss and hold you...you're not a face on a Zoom call anymore!" Gabi soon closed the door and flung her arms around his neck, offered a flurry of kisses to his face and met a moment's look of his eyes over her. "Yes, I dressed up for you. I came home early from work as I didn't want to be late for you, darlin'."

Her pent-up emotions had been given voice to in a rush of words and now she met Oscar's appraising look upon her.

"I wondered if you'd wear the dress from that last night before I went away..."

I knew that you liked it..." she answered in a low voice, not needing to be reminded of that time.

He stood before her as his bag fell to the floor with a thud. Oscar brushed his fingers over Gabi's face and touched her trembling lips. "It was difficult for me too, with no let up from anything. There were times I wondered what I was doin' there...no release for how I felt or what I was goin' through."

Gabi nodded for she understood exactly what had been at work in him, just as it had been in her. There had been no one to take her mind off how they had been together before he had left for boot camp. She had not been without him, close and present, for as long as his enlistment had brought upon her. She had sought reassurance and he had offered it, and along with that came the tumult of emotions after all that they had done.

"But you did, and now I see how you've changed, that you look so lean and strong." She sensed it in all of him, his broad shoulders, his body narrowing to the waist, the strength in his arms, his biceps hard. She felt that as her hands gripped his arms and Oscar drew her to him once more. "It sounds crazy, I know, but I don't want to let you go. Make me believe you're here again, please?"

He knew her not to be the needy sort, far from it; but where it concerned them, they lived out their lives quite differently from anyone they knew, and certainly Elena and Niall. In their early calls, she had confessed to the turmoil that being together in tempestuous ways had aroused in her, the sense of raging guilt that she had persuaded him to concede before he had lost himself with her. Once dismay, and inhibitions, had fallen away everything they had shared had become consensual but ragingly taboo. They had shared in forbidden acts, given in to raging desires, that neither of them had given any sign of wishing to pursue or to seek from the other. And yet Oscar's reluctance had been slowly seduced away.

"I sure am glad to be back, and I feel it in my blood, mom, again."

"Gabi...I'm Gabi!" she reminded him, sternly. "I became Gabi after that last night together and before you left me. I had to get through the days, and then weeks, afterwards." She was dismayed to see the drift of his eyes over her. "Darlin' don't look at me like that...."

"You know why I do that, and why it was right that I left you. I'll always come back as I know that the door's always open."

"Even after all that we did together? It was a crazy time, wasn't it?"

"Yes, even after those moments. I knew that I'd hurt you by deciding to go away..."

"But you're here with me now."

"Yeah," he smiled, brushing fingertips over her upturned face. "I sure wanted to be here..."

They fell into a tightening embrace as he answered her, as they kissed and held each other so close. He clutched her hips. She would feel his state of arousal against her belly and Gabi clung to him as best as she could. What madness, she thought as she looked up at Oscar and understood what was at work in him, once more. This really shouldn't be happening, but she had not put the possibility from her mind either.

It was so wrong, what she felt taking a hold of her once more, just as it had done that last night before he had left her in an empty house and her emotions, along with his, had run wild. There was no one in her life to meet her needs, to take away the wayward longing that she felt for him again now. The well of trust had run dry over the years since her divorce, but she knew Oscar like no other man.

"Darlin'...you...you want me to...again?"

Gabi remembered and felt the ache of a destructive longing as she recalled his last night with her, of them meeting in the hall outside their rooms, his hugs of consolation for the upset he was causing, the brush of his fingers to the tears on her cheeks, her son's embrace slowly becoming questing caresses, the speaking out of persuasive words and meeting of kisses, the gradual concession to him before the tumult of finally being impaled on her stepson's long prick and losing it completely with him. Idle talk with Elena had become ragingly real, even if it was Oscar who had sought it of her and she had given herself to him.

"Let me...let me," he murmured, pressing his face to her breasts and on feeling Gabi's hesitant touch on his head as she kept him to her, "let me find out where you've put your perfume? Forgive me...for...for wanting to be with you again like before."

Gabi knew that she should deny it all, what she felt, and restrain him in his claims upon her. But from the moment she had opened the door to him, she had realized that to resist was to deny what she needed to have from him. Oscar would again be a surrogate for an enduring and acceptable relationship with another man; a bond that continued to elude her.

She was in her home and he would ease away any restraint and satisfy the wanton charge of excitement that his kisses and caresses again aroused in her.

♥

All that she and Elena had teased each other about, had spoken of and had laughed at the idea of it, had again been made lovingly and passionately real, her body gloried in as Oscar caressed and kissed, sucked and clamped his lips to her skin, to her thighs and the soft swell of her belly, to her large and sagging breasts, his wayward sucks those of a lover and not the boy she had nurtured as if he was her own; all of them a prelude to him being taken inside her body, to feel the deep and tamping rhythm that he sought from her and that she craved, all of it a raging assault on all that was proper.

It had never been spoken of, not even with her closest and trusted friend. Incest was taboo, you never spoke of it, although it happened more often than folks dared to realise, and in cultures so different from theirs. She'd always been so close to Oscar, denied him nothing in her motherly loving and care, but she could not fully explain just how she had gotten to this place, where they both were, again.

"I'm with you."

"Yes, and I should stop you! I should make enough of you just being home again with me and feeling you close to me but no more of this, what we have done!"

Could she recognise the woman that she had again become? In thrall to him, it had again become depraved and destructive behaviour, what she had hoped for and not talked of with Elena, even in the abstract, and all made ragingly real once more. She offered a lingering caress to his skin as Oscar left her bed, the flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder close overhead, and the blustery wind battering the window of the bedroom, the wind to be heard sighing in the eaves.

"It sure is stormy out there," he laughed softly, looking out through the net curtains as the rain lashed the glass and blotted out the view. "I've worked out in that until I looked like a swamp animal, covered in mud!"

His laugh was infectious, her boy like she had never seen him before, confident and only too self-assured in his claims upon her. Gabi held out her arms to him as he returned to her bed and leant over her, looking down at her naked body; at the tumble of her breasts and how she brushed fingers over the mat of hair on her mons. He joined her in doing that as his lips tugged gently on her hard nipples.

She writhed as his claims brought her on, her hands on his head keeping Oscar to her. He had become someone else, and she was behaving in her own brazen and complicit ways.

"You've missed me!"

"I sure have, and I wondered about this, you know?" he said in a husky voice, locking eyes with her as he said it, a hand again brushing over the skin of a passionate woman. "It was bringing comfort for you, then, but now it's become something else. I won't force myself on you, I would never do that as I know how you feel about doing this."

"I'm not sure that I do, darlin'...I've let it happen again."

"There may be a reason for it happening again, even though it's so wrong?"

"Yes, but come back to me!" she gasped, not wanting to speak of it, squirming under his touches to where she had taken him, holding his head as Oscar knelt on the bed beside her and bent down to kiss and lick her out; to have her taste on his lips what they had shared a few moments ago. He did so shamelessly, again and again, and her restraining touches, to control his wanton behaviour, slowly fell away

"Like this...come back to you like this?" His breaths were on her mouth as he moved to settle between her legs and pushed her aching thighs apart before he slowly entered her slicked heat, all thoughts of restraint soon dispelled on feeling the clamp of her hands on him, as they again sought a wild union of their bodies.

"Yes, like this! I have you back with me...and I know it's so wrong, but I'll never know when you'll be back again, and you'll end the emptiness of my life!"

He no longer felt intimidated by what they had sought to do and share. He was captured by the sight of her fleshy, naked body, not by the thought of Gabi being his stepmother. and not intimidated by the sight of her naked body. Her skin still bore the rosy glow of their love from earlier in the night.

"Come closer to me," she demanded.

They wrestled, dismay at what was happening meeting the raw desire to experience again what had been rediscovered. Gabi reached between their bodies and took a hold of his erection, that pole of flesh that was so hard and curved out from his taut belly.

"Bring it to me as only you can!" she gasped, lifting her hips to meet the long slow thrust of his penis into her receptive body, sharing in his breaths as their bodies met and a slow rhythm was set.