The more fucking Lauren did, the more she wanted. The Kai'ulauan farewell orgy had not quelled her urges one jot, nor had the shock of seeing Aleksandra and Stefan together. If anything, it had fired her imagination.
She kept to herself as much as she could on the flight into LAX and booked a commercial flight back to San Bernardino alone. Her withdrawal dismayed the Novaks, particularly Stefan, but she'd compromised her loyalties too much. A few more days with him and she feared that, like Janet, she'd never leave the island at all.
Ethan met her at Luxivair. She rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. "I've been worried about you," he said. "A lot's been happening here. I'm glad you're home."
He had changed. For many years he'd been uncomfortable whenever she'd hug him too close or for too long. Tonight, he didn't pull away. He held her as she'd so often dreamed that he might, confidently drawing her in against him with one hand on her waist and the other arm around her hip, wide hand cupping her bottom.
"Me, too." Her lips touched his and lingered, parting slightly to inhale his hot breath. She slid her knee up the outside of his thigh. It was not discreet public behavior by any means, and beyond inappropriate between a mother and son, but what the hell--no one in the nearly-empty executive terminal knew either of them. She wasn't sure she'd have cared if they did, so excited was she by the gentle pressure of Ethan's erect cock against the crotch of his jeans.
"Take me back to your place."
He insisted on driving, as always since he'd first been old enough to take the wheel. Ethan claimed that her driving scared him. She noticed how much more smoothly the Miata ran now. "Nose crank, I told you. Could have saved you the mechanic's charges to start with," he boasted. Neither said a word about what was uppermost in their minds.
Lauren distracted herself as they pulled out of the parking lot by texting Jon, attaching her report and documentation of the NGT operation on Kai'ulau. She scheduled a morning meeting at Oasis to brief him fully and to formulate a plan of action to deal with the Novaks.
They still had a business to run together, at least for now, but the marriage was unquestionably over. Lauren could not have gone on with the charade, even were it not for the forbidden things she was contemplating at that moment. She fought the urge to reach across from the passenger seat, unzip her son and get her hands around that big hard thing. She hadn't jacked a guy off in a moving car in decades. It was the kind of risky behavior that had charged her up when she was young.
But Ethan would no doubt object, on the grounds of safety if nothing else. She chose not to challenge that or take advantage of his vulnerability. Not here.
Not yet.
They talked about business instead. Describing her visit to the island was fraught in its own way, and she gave him a heavily redacted version of her experiences--long on the maneuvering and intrigue, skipping lightly past her threeways and gangbangs. Watching Ethan's face, intent as he was on the dark highway ahead, she guessed that he wasn't having much trouble filling in a lot of those gaps for himself. That embarrassed her. She wondered if her son's imaginings about his mother could possibly be as salacious as the reality in this case.
"The short version is that, like it or not, for now at least we have new partners and Aleksandra Novak is dangerous as hell," she summed up the situation.
"About the sale of Janet's shares...we could have a go at challenging her competence," Ethan suggested.
"That woman will testify to her own soundness of mind in any court of the land, and she'll do it with an IQ of 140 and a very wide smile."
Lauren had a lot of time for her internal debate by the time they arrived at Ethan's home. She had been way too forward at the airport. Even if her son couldn't hide his desire for her that didn't mean that he was willing or ready to act on it.
What she wanted might be impossible, and she told herself that it should be. Shouldn't it?
Once inside, Lauren sat with her legs tucked under her on the living room couch, beneath the dimmed light of the high industrial chandeliers, as they continued to avoid Topic A. Ethan wouldn't land, pacing the room, restless.
"You don't believe them, about Frank."
"No way. But I don't know what I do believe. The Novaks are a complicated threat, for several reasons. But the first order of business is getting rid of Lew Bradley. Aleksandra as much as admitted that he's been her mole all along. Stupid me, I just figured he was the worst attorney on the planet."
Ethan's explosive laughter startled her. "We fired Lew a week ago. Maybe it's soured Dad on this whole deal, which would be a good thing."
"You figured it out? You would."
"Not exactly." He said down beside her at last. "Now you get to hear my story."
To Lauren's relief, he let her snuggle into his arms while relating what he'd learned about the Bradleys and how. She listened, wide-eyed, as he described his afternoon of captivity with Irina and Peyton. Unlike his mother, it didn't appear that he left anything out. If not for her own adventures on Kai'ulau she wouldn't have believed half of it.
"By the time they turned me loose, I had Irina convinced that she'd got me all rewired and recruited for the Novaks. And why not? It worked on Lew. Irina's about got this down to a science. She should publish."
"Keeping Janet horny and fucking her stupid has worked all too well." Lauren poked Ethan's arm playfully. "Hey, should I worry about you? How do I know those vixens didn't succeed at turning you into their sex zombie? "
He caught her wrist and held her away from him. "I'd never turn on you. Not for anything."
It was not a protest born out of filial love, but a man's wounded declaration of loyalty to a woman. Lauren's breath caught in her throat. Despite her lust for her son, up until now sentimentality had deceived her into seeing remaining traces of boyishness in him--sentimentality, and the shame that she'd wielded as a shield to protect them both. Ethan was a man.
"I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. I- I just can't think about you with them."
Ethan's arms went around her waist again. She ran a hand down over his hip, kneading the tough muscle of his buttock, inching around to his crotch. When she touched his cock through his jeans, his body's heat radiated through the coarse denim.
