The Photographer's Mother

Now Daniel was amazed - taken aback. He felt it heavy in his heart. Yes there it was, the gravity of reality meets the unknown, once again. What was it like to be Mary and Adam, or any of the other mothers and sons who committed themselves to his work?

In her mind, thoughts swirled like the very magic liquid spiralling down to her stomach, and left her warm in a way she might never have imagined, if she hadn't already imagined before this day had ended.

The comment Mary made, that it should have been Linda up there on the wall, it came back to dance with the images and imaginings of what went on in Daniel's life, in his studio, and in his mind. On one hand he seemed too open for secrets, but then some things he might dare to show, but never to say. And wasn't that the beauty of art?

Linda, at that moment, couldn't help but imagine - what if she didn't have to imagine being Mary, being intimate with her son before the camera? What if Linda could simply imagine what it would be like to be intimate with Daniel, and to be okay with that?

'Daniel?'

'Hmm?'

'Would you ever like to photograph me that way?'

Daniel was taken aback, scooched his deck chair back and to the side so that he could directly face his mother and study her, which he did with complete awe. 'Is that something you'd like?'

'Do you think I have the looks?'

'I think you're gorgeous, mum.'

'Do you find me attractive?' she asked.

'You are attractive,' he replied.

'But do you... find... me attractive?'

'Yes I do,' he said and nodded.

Refusing to break eye contact with her son, Linda could not believe she had asked at all, never mind that it had become a serious possibility. 'What if I wanted to be photographed with you like Mary was with Adam?'

'Can I be honest?' Daniel asked, struggling to find the answer that felt right.

'Rightly so!'

'I'd need years of practice being naked and intimate with my own mother, like Mary and Adam, before I trusted somebody to photograph us that way.' Linda smiled and nodded understandingly, still refusing to break eye contact.

'And you're forgetting something,' Daniel added. 'They had sex on camera...'

'I didn't forget,' Linda assured quietly, taking her son by surprise. It took him a moment even to consider the possibility that it was in any way a flirtation.

Daniel only saw that as an opportunity to play the game, to give as good as he received. 'I'd like to show you something,' he offered; 'something that couldn't go into the book!'

Expectantly, Linda's eyes widened. Just how much had Daniel seen that she hadn't?

She did wonder, but not for long.

8

It seemed that the day was, very much like Daniel's book, was playing out in reverse towards the end. There they sat, mother and son beside each other beneath the spotlights over the breakfast bar, right back where they'd started and yet approaching unforeseen territory.

The photos, the other photos, the secret ones he'd taken just for Mary and her son, were stored on a memory stick. Daniel had gone so far in his effort to keep them hidden that he had cut a secret compartment out of his travel case and stored the stick where he hoped it wouldn't be found and confiscated, if things came to that.

The apprehension, the expectation, the dizzying anticipation of knowing what she was in for caused Linda's abdomen to toss and turn. Secretly she herself tried to steady herself, to conceal her uneven breathing as Daniel set up the laptop and set about retrieving the folder marked "Motherhood".

'Are you ready?' he asked one last time. 'You do know what you're going to see, don't you?'

'They're having sex, aren't they?'

Daniel breathed a heavy sigh. 'Are they?!!' was his hushed response. For a long moment he just looked at his mother and she, uncertainly, looked back. Did she really want to see this, and in front of him?

Linda licked her drying lips, tasting lipstick and cranberry and wine, feeling restless and admittedly turned on by the prospect. 'You don't have to,' Daniel said.

'Show me,' she whispered.

Those few seconds after might have been the longest of their shared life, as Daniel went ahead and clicked on the first image thumbnail.

The moment the screen went dark and the first photograph filled the screen, she inhaled sharply and covered her mouth. But she became immediately mesmerised by the gloriously sexual sight now playing out before her. Daniel chose, somewhat wisely, to let it run as a slideshow, and sat back out of the way, lighting another cigarette.

That day of the photo shoot, when Mary had ended up in her son's lap, covered in oil and riding his cock; that day when she had asked Daniel to take those photos, the very first thing he had done was to approach the couple from over Adam's shoulder, and to capture them in all their naked, hard, hot, and wet glory, as Mary fed herself to Adam's rigid cock.

And they didn't stay in the one position throughout. The bed at the far side of the studio ended up being put to good use too, and yet Daniel, ever the professional photographer, wasn't one to leave a scene unprepared and badly lit. They'd made a day of it.

All of a sudden Linda couldn't control her own breathing. She was inhaling and exhaling so heavily that Daniel, concerned more than anything, reached out to hold her hand and to make sure she didn't topple off her high chair.

Glistening with oil and sweat, Mary's every muscle fibre and inch of ripe flesh was taut and flexing, as she worked her pussy around her son's cock, and the look on her face - so lustful, amorous, and exhilarated - the intensity in her smiling eyes, caused Linda to tremble and even for a little moan to escape her gaping mouth.

'Oh wow,' she marvelled. 'Oh my god, look at them together,' she cried as the slideshow moved on. More photos took closer shots of Adam sliding his soaked cock into his mother's veteran pussy, inch after inch, taking both Linda and Daniel together deeper and deeper into incestuous territory.

'Oh,' she gasped. 'Oh Daniel,' she gasped harder, and turned her hand around to offer his her palm, wrapping her fingers around his.

'What do you think now then, mum?' Daniel asked and couldn't help but laugh to himself, but it was defensive and anxious. Tearing her eyes from the screen, his mother looked dead into his eyes and yet failed to conjure any words. Her breathing ragged, her neck and chest had bloomed into a light red all over.

'I don't know what to say!'

'A little turned on, maybe?' he guessed.

'I think... I think I need to go lie down,' she gasped, her voice ever so slightly trembling.

9

Daniel began the next day with an early start; a walk along the heath, followed by a shower, and breakfast before 8am, and then he started work on his laptop at the dining table at the back of the kitchen by the patio door. The sun was strongest there that time of the morning, as the house faced west.

He was so full of energy, despite dragging towards the end of that last night, that he hadn't considered the fact that his mother was sleeping later than she usually did. Until 9am came around, he had taken care of all his social media updates and arranged for his next line-up of exhibitions the following week.

By that point, he couldn't stop wondering, worrying about his mother after the strange reaction that sent her early to bed. Quickly he spun up to the top of the spiral staircase and then up the flight of stairs to the first floor, where her bedroom door stood ajar, mostly closed.

He called out gently to her at first, which left a faint stirring sound emanating from beyond the door, and what seemed to be the slight rustle of paper, like a book closing over. 'Are you okay?' he asked.

'Morning, darling, you can come in,' Linda called back a little too uniformly. Daniel opened the door and walked in to find her still lying in bed, with the book splayed out in the empty space beside her. He didn't need to think twice to imagine what she'd been doing. She was obsessed with that book.

'I was worried,' Daniel said, foregoing the desire to ask why she'd taken that particular book to bed with her.

'I'm fine,' she blushed, radiating gratitude. Again his eyes went to the book, and hers followed his, but neither spoke of it.

'Was it shock or did you take ill? I have to ask. You'd had a few drinks, mixed.'

'Do you really have to ask?' Linda asked her son. She supposed he deserved an answer though.

'No I suppose I don't, but so long as you're alright,' he began to say anyway...

'I was aroused, overly,' Linda somehow forced herself to say. 'I'd never felt like that before, Daniel,' she confessed, and while her fingers were still wet where he couldn't see them. Breathing deeply; 'Can I be honest with you, since so much has been said the past day?'

'Please,' he nodded.

'I've never been so aroused in all my life and I don't know if that's good or bad, a reason to be happy or sad, or if I should be telling you, and why I am telling you at all,' she confessed. 'I had no control over my own body last night and...'

'It's okay,' Daniel offered weakly.

'Do you forgive me?'

'For what?' he asked.

'I could have handled myself better,' Linda supposed, though she was grasping at straws, really. 'Maybe I shouldn't have seen what I did.'

'There was no other way to react, if not to be completely horrified,' Daniel reasoned, 'and we've been through all that. So you were turned on. I forgive you if I must.' Though I'd rather approve, he thought.

She pondered, again thinking of how Daniel had introduced her to this world to begin with. 'Why don't you come sit next to me,' she invited warmly. There she lay in her pyjama shirt, fastened up to the top two buttons, adorable as anything Daniel could imagine, her hair a cute mess. He wasted no time in putting the book on the bedside table for her, kicking off his slippers, and lying at her side, basking in her sleep heat.

'You had no control,' he refreshed their conversation. 'You followed the Hatter down the rabbit hole,' he reached, which thankfully blessed them with a moment of shared humour.

'So, you were there,' she changed her tone, became immediately softer. 'How did that make you feel?'

'Like you did,' Daniel said, looking up at her blushing.

'Which was?'

'Breathless, nervous, losing control of myself...'

Hmmm...'

'Aroused beyond belief,' he had to add.

'Hard?' she added unnecessarily. He smiled sheepishly. It was Daniel's turn to blush. 'Well?'

'Rock solid!'

'Society says that it's not natural,' she said aloud to herself. 'They say that incest is this terrible thing. But if a mother and son can love each other on that level, and otherwise feel such exhilarating arousal, like with nothing else, then that to me says something quite profound.'

'And that is...'

'That maybe it's more than natural - supernatural? - like it's meant to be more than anything else in the world. A higher purpose,' Linda concluded, absently reaching for her son's hand and caressing his fingers with hers. 'I'm very nervous saying this.'

'I love you,' Daniel declared admirably.

'I thank you,' Linda chuckled and shuffled down to meet him face to face. 'But now you have to answer me a very hard question. Why else did I do the book, Daniel thought. 'If we both had such a profound physical and emotional reaction, then does that mean we might be like them?'

Daniel's heart swelled as he gazed lovingly into his mother's eyes, those eyes that gazed back at him the same way Mary so intimately loved her own flesh and blood. Yes was the only answer, but Linda would need more assurance than that, if that's what she wanted.

'Do you feel like maybe you want to be like them or that you might be like them?' he searched, and felt her hand reach for his again. Maybe the photographer's eye had seen her nodding in the world that was yet to be, or maybe with the slightest of movements, her expression plain but far from cold or even tepid, she had nodded or just didn't find the courage to.

'I love you too,' she hushed and that silenced them for a while, where they simply held hands and looked at each other. Daniel embraced the urge to lean in and to kiss his mother, to test her resolve and her reaction, but did nothing with it. He let it torment him inside, like a sweet stimulant which caused the heart to race and the blood to rush. And blood did rush to places he didn't expect.

'Are we them?' she finally whispered.

'I don't know,' he replied, 'but if we were, I'd only love my mother more than I already do...'

'My god, those pictures are still driving me nuts,' Linda laughed, squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. Daniel took the incentive to draw her close and to hug his body to hers, casting aside the worry that she would feel his hardness press against her. And there they held each other, cheek to cheek, breathing in each other's scent.

'Imagine me and you making love like that; can you even imagine?' she asked.

You don't want me to answer that, Daniel thought. A hum escaped his mouth as he breathed warmly against her neck. 'I can,' he said against all sensibility.

'Me too,' she spoke softly in his ear. So what if we did, she wanted to ask, but didn't.

TBC...