Caught with His Pants Down

Chapter 3: Taming The Rage

When Gloria Carter rang the doorbell at her son and ex-husband's house and received no answer it annoyed her. She did not like being ignored and she had very special plans for her and her son that day. She was going to do something which would change both of their lives forever.

When she tried to determine if anyone was home by checking the garage and found both cars present it caused her concern.

When she tried the doorbell again, still received no answer then found the door unlocked she began to seriously worry.

When she heard what she took for moans and whimpers of pain coming from the second floor it frightened her.

When she realized that the moans and whimpers were those of passion rather than pain she was relived but annoyed.

When she figured out that one of the voices from upstairs was some woman and the other was her son, Tony DeWitt, Gloria became angry.

When she found out that the woman with whom her son was in bed was her ex-husband's wife and Tony's step-mother, Katie DeWitt, Gloria went into a blind rage.

"Anthony Bernard DeWitt," she shouted, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

It was the second time in three days that Tony had heard a woman shout those words. The last time it had been Katie who had used the sentence as a ruse to get her hands on his big dick. This time he knew it was no ruse. He knew that voice all too well.

"Mom?" he squeaked from beneath his buxom step-mother.

"Gloria!" Katie said with genuine shock as she slid off of her lover.

Upon seeing his mother in a blind rage Tony's ten and three quarter inch dick shrank down to almost nothing. After Katie slid off of him he hugged his knees to his chest rolling himself into a fetal ball.

"This is absolutely unbelievable!" Gloria shouted, "What's wrong with you?" she demanded to know, seemingly from nobody in particular.

Katie started walking toward the older woman.

"Gloria, listen," she started to say.

The livid mother cut her off at the knees saying, "I'll be waiting downstairs. You have five minutes to make yourselves decent, at which point you had damned well better have a good explanation for this!"

Then she turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.

"Bitch!" Katie muttered.

It wasn't until she turned back toward the bed that she saw the shape her lover was in. She rushed to him. She tried to put her arms around him, but that turned out to be nearly impossible while he was wrapped up in that tight, little ball.

She settled for stroking his dark brown hair and saying, "It's going to be all right, honey."

"No it won't," he said in a small voice.

Katie suddenly realized that he was actually crying.

She put her hand on his shoulder comfortingly and said softly, "We'll be all right. But, you have to let go of your knees first."

He shook his head.

"Anthony," she said soothingly, but firmly, "We can't solve anything if you're going to try to hide inside yourself like that. Uncoil."

He looked up at her. She saw unbridled terror in his eyes. She had never liked Gloria or the way she treated Anthony. But, until that moment, it had never occurred to her how deeply the older woman was cutting her son. She wondered what kind of monster one would have to be to inspire this kind of extreme response to one angry outburst.

"Uncoil yourself," she said again, "Please? For me?"

Slowly Anthony released his knees and extended his legs. He turned to Katie and threw his arms around her hugging her tightly like a drowning man hugging a life preserver.

The more he cried the angrier she became. There was no damned reason that one person should be able to do this to another. Katie was determined to do something about it.

She tried to remember all of the things that she knew for certain about Gloria, added in the things that she had managed to guess, and came up with a plan. It was crazy almost to the point of stupidity. It would either work brilliantly or blow up in their faces. But, at this point there didn't seem to be much left to lose.

"Anthony," she asked, looking into his eyes, "do you trust me?"

He nodded.

"Good," she said, "I want you to get up and put some pants."

He nodded.

"Nothing else," she continued, "No socks, no shoes, no underwear," then she thought for a moment and added, "and no belt."

Anthony knew Katie well enough to know that she was very good at thinking on her feet. She had a knack finding creative ways to solve problems.

"What's that supposed to achieve?" he asked, slowly regaining some level of normality.

"Trust me on this one," she said, "It just might be a game changer."

Anthony nodded dubiously.

"Good" Katie said, "I'm going to go downstairs first and have a little talk with her. In a little while I'll call you down. When I do I want you to do exactly what I tell you without question. Understand?"

"What are you going to ask me to do?" He asked carefully.

Katie dodged the question by asking, "Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said.

She cupped his face in her hands and said earnestly, "Promise me you'll do it?"

"Katie, I..." he began to say. She silenced him with a kiss.

"Promise me," she repeated.

Anthony looked in his lover's eyes and saw a fire and anger there that he had never seen before. He didn't know what she was up to, but what he saw in her eyes made him think that, whatever it was, she just might pull it off. He'd regained enough presence of mind to realize that, for the first time in his life, someone was offering him a chance to fight back against his mother. Whatever she was planning it beat the hell out of rolling up in that ball and crying.

"Okay," he said, "I promise."

"Good," Katie said with a smile.

She kissed him again.

Anthony hugged her tightly and said, "I don't know what you're planning, but be careful." He pulled back enough to look her in the eye and add, "Mom doesn't surrender and she takes no prisoners."

Katie pulled him back and gave him a deep, tongue dancing kiss.

"I will," she said. Then she ran off to grab a robe before going down to confront Gloria.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Gloria was becoming more annoyed and anxious by the minute. She knew that she had already handled this badly. She had let her anger get the better of her. She knew how Tony would react. It was a given that he had wrapped himself into a little ball and was crying. He was a spineless, dickless little shit like his father. She had plans that would change that as of that day.

Katie was another matter. Gloria had never expressed any particular level of anger in the younger woman's presence. She had no idea how Katie would react. She would have to play this carefully.

She removed her suit jacket and placed it carefully on the arm of the sofa. Then she unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse to reveal a generous amount of her deep cleavage.

She was always very careful of her clothing. She had her suits tailored to her precise specifications. They were designed to appear, at first glance, like severe business suits. However, they were cut to hug and accentuate every curve of her body. It kept male, and many female, colleagues and adversaries just off balance enough for her to grab the high ground in most negotiations.

She didn't know if Katie swung that way, but it never hurt to have all available weapons at the ready.

She glance at her watch and scowled. She had clearly said "five minutes". Fifteen had passed since she said it. She was going to have to take her son and his step-mother to task for keeping her waiting.

As Katie walked into the room she smiled and said, "I guess we owe you an apology," she said sweetly.

Before coming downstairs she had run quickly to her room and grabbed the first robe she saw in the closet. It turned out to be an annoying choice from Gloria's point of view. Its general function was to look revealing without actually looking slutty. To Gloria's eyes it was way past that.

"We sort of forgot that it was Sunday and that you would be coming to visit," Katie finished.

"That is painfully obvious," Gloria said sternly.

"I guess," Katie continued, "but, as you saw, we were a bit," she paused as though she was trying to think of exactly the right word to use, "preoccupied."

"At the very least," said the older woman indignantly, "You were having sex with my son and it is going stop immediately!"

"What makes you think that you have anything to say about it?" the younger woman asked.

"He's my son!" Gloria exclaimed.

"So," Katie asked offhandedly.

"He's only eighteen years old!" Gloria nearly shouted.

"Said the cougar," Katie shot back, "How many eighteen year olds did you fuck last week?"

For one rare moment Gloria was at a loss for a quick answer. The impertinence and suddenness of the question came as a conversational sucker punch.

After a long silence Gloria growled through clenched teeth, "My love life is none of you damned business!"

"And mine is none of yours," Katie answered calmly.

Gloria stood up and shouted, "It is when it concerns my son!"

"Your son," Katie said evenly, "as you have pointed out, is eighteen. That makes him a consenting adult. He's free to have sex with any other consenting adult he likes," Then she smiled with exaggerated sweetness adding, "and I consent to him a lot!"

Anthony had thrown on a pair of jeans as soon as Katie had left his room. He had since been standing at the top of the stairs listening to Katie and his mother. He was grinning ear to ear.

Katie's last crack had the desired effect. It brought Gloria's self-righteous indignation up to full boil.

"I demand that you stop having sex with my son, effective immediately!" Gloria shouted.

"I demand," Katie said evenly, "that you sit down, and shutup!"

"How dare you speak to me in that tone?" Gloria yelled lividly.

"I said shutup!" the younger woman shouted.

Gloria stared slack-jawed at Katie. The inferno of rage in the younger woman's eyes frightened her. The sheer force and enormity of it made a tsunami look like splashing in the bathtub. She sat, remained silent, and broke out in a cold sweat.

"I've had it with you!" Katie said, her own anger finally boiling over, "You stomp in here, every Sunday afternoon, acting like visiting your son was some sort of unpleasant, dirty task you were forced to perform. You bombard him with sarcasm and intimidation, treat his father like shit, and treat me like a servant.

Well it's going to stop! It stops here. It stops now."

She leaned over the Gloria until they were nearly nose to nose. She made her next statement in a clipped and precise manner.

Biting off every syllable she said, "You will not hurt Anthony anymore!" She stood up abruptly and said, "Have I made myself quite clear?"

Gloria nodded mutely. She was visibly trembling. It had been a long time since she had seen such unbridled fury. She decided that the woman was clearly insane. She was probably dangerous. She tried desperately to think of a way to escape the clutches of this madwoman. She had to get out of there to tell the police, tell someone!

Katie turned sharply on her heel to walk away. Gloria flinched at the sudden motion. The move didn't escape Katie's notice.

"Maybe I've gone too far," she thought.

Taking a closer look at Gloria confirmed the thought. Though the older woman was gamely trying to maintain her haughty demeanor, she was clearly rattled. Her eyes reflected fear similar to what she had just seen in Anthony's eyes.

It startled Katie. She hadn't realized the depth of her own anger. She certainly hadn't thought herself capable of evoking this sort of reaction from someone as formidable as Gloria Carter. Yet, while she regretted the fear she had driven into the woman, it was giving her what she had come downstairs intending to achieve. Katie had complete control of the situation. She knew that she was rationalizing, but she couldn't help thinking that there was a certain justice at work here.

As Katie struggled with herself and her ethics, Gloria made her decision for her.

"There was no intent to hurt the boy," Gloria said.

That set Katie's anger off again. She had always despised the use of the passive voice. People who used it usually did so to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions. She couldn't let that pass.

She answered Gloria with one word, "Bullshit!"

The flames of anger returned to her eyes. They weren't burning as fiercely as they had earlier, but they were enough to keep Gloria at bay.

"Get a hold of yourself, Gloria," the ex-wife thought, "You've underestimated this woman. It's not the first time you've made that kind of mistake. It probably won't be the last. That's no excuse for sitting here trembling like a child.

There's always a way to win. You just need to calm yourself down enough to find it."

She decided that it was time to change the subject and tone of the conversation. She racked her brain for another tangential subject. Then she realized that something was missing from her usual Sunday visits.

"Where is Roger?" she asked.

The question caught Katie unawares. It seemed to come out of the blue. After her initial surprise she recognized the question for what it was, the old "change the subject" gambit. Still, she saw no harm in answering it.

"He's out of town on business," she said.

That struck Gloria as very odd. Roger almost never took business trips. He wasn't high enough up in the company he worked for to be worth sending anywhere. This might be something she could use.

"Where?" Gloria asked.

"He's attending a marketing conference in Cincinnati," Katie replied.

The mention of that city was setting off several alarm bells in the back of Gloria's mind. She couldn't quite place what they meant. This annoyed her given that she usually had an extraordinary memory for details that others had long forgotten. She considered it one of her great strengths. She wrote her lapse off to the stress of the moment. She could always make a few phone calls to find out what it was when she got home. She was, however, quite certain that there was something about Cincinnati that she could use to reestablish long-term, absolute control with her son and his step-mother.

"Katie," she said after a long silence, "I can readily understand why you would cheat on Roger. He's not exactly a sexual dynamo."

"Gloria," Katie said feigning shock, "how can you say such a thing? I would never have taken you as someone with a gift for understatement."

Gloria looked incredulously at Katie for what seemed like an eternity. Then she did something she had rarely ever done in her entire life. She burst into gales of laughter. Perhaps it was just the tension of the last half-hour. Perhaps it was finally being with someone who knew exactly what she was talking about when she referred to Roger's sexual inadequacy. Whatever the reason it broke the tension. She could calm down and be herself again.

"You have a very sharp and quick wit, young lady," she said when her mirth finally wound down.

"Thank you," Katie said, with an exaggerated, theatrical bow.

"The point is, why cheat on your husband with my son?" Gloria said, finishing her original thought.

"Would you rather that I go out to single's bars picking up strange men?" Katie answered, "That's a great way to bring home trouble and diseases."

"Valid point," Gloria said with a nod.

Gloria sat seeming to be lost in thought for a moment and said, "I hope that you won't take this personally, but I had rather hoped for a different sort of sexual education for him."

"What do you mean?" Katie asked.

"Well," Gloria said, "my plan was for him to learn from someone with," she paused while searched for exactly the right phrase, "more experience with young men his age."

Katie was about to nod in assent when her eye went wide with shock. It suddenly dawned on her what Gloria was desperately trying not to say.

The two women locked eyes. Gloria suddenly knew that she had revealed too much. Katie knew.

The older woman tried to recover control by saying, "Don't be absurd! That would be incest! It would be absolutely wrong!"

"I didn't actually say anything, Gloria," Katie responded.

"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" Gloria thought, "How could I have stepped into such an obvious trap? She's kept me off balance since I arrived. How could she do that?"

Katie could feel her ire rising. She knew that she should rein it in, redirect it into something positive. For the first time in her life she didn't want to. There was a nagging thought in the back of her head that, in this case, it might even be counter-productive.

She turned to Gloria and said in an emotionless tone which belied the inferno inside her, "You are the most appalling parody of a human being that I have ever seen. It's all about control for you. Isn't it?"

"What else is there?" The older woman said self-protectively.

"The fact that you asked that question shows how truly fucking pathetic you are," Katie answered.

"Now, just one minute, young lady..." Gloria started to say.

"Shut up!" Katie pronounced it very distinctly as two words, biting off each syllable.

As before, that clipped delivery had its Pavlovian effect on the older woman. Her eyes widened in fear.

"You steamroll over everyone and everything," Katie yelled, no longer able or willing to contain her rage, "my husband, me, your business, your parade of cougar cubs..."

Gloria was hugging herself tightly.

"...right down to something as intimate and personal as your son's sexuality!"

Katie leaned down until her face was scant inches away from her lover's tormentor.

"Are you insane?" Katie screamed at the top of her lungs.

Gloria's body stiffened as she yelped in terror. Her breathing was coming in short gasps and her eyes were moistening. She fought back the tears, fearful of what might happen if she began weeping. She began to draw her knees up toward her torso.

Katie pushed the older woman's knees back down. She was no longer rational. She was completely possessed by her own wrath.

"Don't hurt me," Gloria whimpered, "Please, don't hurt me."

"Why shouldn't I?" Katie said in a voice suddenly cold as an arctic wind.

"You don't understand," Gloria whined the through the tears she could no longer restrain.

"Make me understand," Katie said with blood freezing glare, "Explain it to me."

"I didn't *gasp* want him to be like *sniffle* other men," said Gloria in a frightened whisper.

"You mean like his father?" Katie shot back.

Gloria nodded weakly.

"Whatever sexual difficulties Roger may have," Katie said, "Roger DeWitt is one of the kindest, smartest, most compassionate men I know. He's second only to his son, Anthony. You'd know that if you weren't so busy trying seize control of them.

Anthony doesn't need your teaching. He doesn't need your tutelage. He's better off not learning your insanity.

And there's one way in which Anthony is very different from his father. Do you want to know what that is? Do you care?"

Gloria nodded.

Katie walked to the bottom of the stairs and called out, "Anthony, would you come down here, please?"

As Anthony strode into the room, Gloria realized that there was something very different about him. It took her a moment to figure it out. He wasn't slouching. He was standing as straight and tall as his five foot five stature would allow. She suddenly recognized his proud, confident stance. It was certainly not his father's stance. It was the bearing of her father. Anthony stood next to his step-mother with the same self-certainty and boldness that had made Gloria, through her adolescence, love her father almost to the point of worship, and fear him like no other.