Ed Friar wasn't surprised to discover his son Nicholas waiting outside the front door of his flat when he got home from work -- Nick had arranged weeks before to stay that night, as he was going to a party near where his father lived -- and nor was he surprised to find that Nicholas had a girl with him -- Nick had said something about that in advance, too. What left Ed bemused was that the first thing he saw of either of the two visitors was the girl's nearly naked bottom.
It was, Ed reflected as he climbed the stairs, a very
nice
bottom, and in many ways it was the most attractive sight which Ed had come home to in many months. It was just unexpected. Nick and the girl were embracing, too wrapped up in each other to notice Ed's arrival at first, and Nick had his hands fondling the girl's hips, unintentionally pulling her short skirt up so as to expose her to the gaze of anyone coming up those stairs. The fact that she was wearing a lacy thong so skimpy that it couldn't be said to cover her buttocks in any meaningful sense was, Ed had to admit to himself, a bonus.
Still, he felt obliged to cough as he reached the top of the stairs, and the pair broke apart with unselfconscious smiles; Ed guessed that they hadn't realised how much he'd seen. Nick introduced his friend as Louise while Ed found his keys, and Ed apologised for his lateness as they entered the flat. Nick accepted in his usual chilly manner; Louise was actually much more charming about things. She was definitely attractive, Ed decided, slim, with coffee-coloured skin and hair a mass of short curls, and she smiled a lot at Ed, which he couldn't help enjoying.
Ed had shown the couple to his spare room, where he noticed something indefinably odd in their reactions to what he said about their using it. Then, Louise announced that she'd travelled a long way, and asked if she could use the shower. While she was doing so, Ed took Nicholas to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
"So," Nicholas said, "what are the rules?"
"Pardon?" Ed was bemused.
"The rules -- your ground rules for your house."
"Oh good lord. Nothing like that. You're my son and my guest -- the place is yours."
Nicholas looked startled for a moment, then actually smiled. "Okay, yes, you're not like Mum."
Ed laughed, understanding. "Oh, no," he said. "She's the sort for ground rules in her house, I suppose."
"She is." Nick looked at his tea. "In by midnight, don't disturb her, girlfriends to sleep on the sofa..."
"Oh, but I hope that you'd take the sofa and let Louise have your bed."
" I would, but Mum made it clear that her beloved son got the proper bed, and any visiting
girl
would take the sofa and be grateful. And it wasn't just Louise, by the way; I think it was Mum and her rules drove at least one of the others off."
"There've been others, then..." Ed bit his tongue; relations with Nicholas could be difficult enough, without seeming to pry. But Nicholas found his own sort of retaliation.
"A few," he said. "How about you?"
"Pardon?"
" I assume that you have a
romantic
life."
Ed laughed. "I'm a fifty-two-year-old man living alone in a small flat and working long hours to pay off the mortgage on your mother's house. Not very romantic, I'm afraid."
"Well, you managed to play around when you were with Mum."
"According to her, I take it. There are two sides to every story, you know."
Nicholas stared at his father. "Really? So what is yours?"
Suddenly, Ed tired of his months of effort not exposing his son to the details of his divorce. Nicholas was an adult, who could stand a bit of truth, and it was clear that his mother had been quick enough to put her own slant on the business when she got the chance.
"It was simple enough," he said, "believe it or not -- and I know it's an old line -- we drifted apart. Truth is, we hadn't had sex for nearly a year -- but that's not the point. It was just a symptom. Anyway, I got friendly with Kate Jones..."
"
Kate Jones?
"
"Yes, she was an old friend. I know you found her dull, but she was unhappy, and we ended up spending time together. Then your mother found out..."
"...And chucked you out for screwing Kate Jones."
" I wasn't
screwing
Kate, as you so charmingly put it, and I don't want anyone thinking that I was. Her husband was in hospital, and she needed moral support. We might have been tempted, I suppose, but Ian Jones is an old friend and I wouldn't have betrayed him like that, and I don't believe that Kate would either."
Nicholas stared at his father. "So you're saying that Mum threw you out for having a
non-
affair with Kate Jones?"
"Yes. Believe it or not as you choose."
Nicholas stared a moment more, then reached out a hand to pat his father's shoulder. "You know," he said, "I do believe it. It all fits. Which means that I owe you a hell of an apology..."
But then, Louise returned, changed into another skirt no longer than her first, and accepted the offer of tea -- and by the time the social niceties had been observed, it was time for the young couple to head out to the party, with Ed's spare door key in Nicholas' pocket. After which, Ed made himself dinner and retired to bed with a good book.
It was well after two in the morning that he was woken by the sound of the door being clumsily unlocked and opened; he was unable to resist a glance at a bedside clock. There seemed to be a positive stampede of footsteps heading into the spare room, accompanied by some low voices and a couple of theatrical shushing noises as somebody presumably remembered Ed's presence in the house. Then everything went quiet for a moment, and Ed smiled and turned over, preparing to go back to sleep.
Then more sounds began. First voices, male and female, then creaking as weights moved on the spare bed -- and then loud moans, and gasps. For a while, Ed lay frozen, startled though not unhappy; clearly, Nick's sex life was going just fine at this immediate moment. The noises, though, were persistent and pressing; Ed decided that Louise couldn't need to breath in very much, as the feminine moaning was more or less continuous, occasionally punctuated by deeper notes which suggested that Nick was also enjoying himself to the full.
Nothing you can say,
Ed told himself, and
What're you going to do -- interrupt them?
Well, it was a Friday; he'd just have to catch up on any missed sleep over the weekend, and be happy for his son. But now he was wide awake, and his fully conscious mind was telling him that he needed to empty his bladder. So he slipped out of bed. He was wearing just pyjama trousers, and he thought of grabbing a dressing gown, but it was a warm night, and he didn't expect to meet anyone on the way to the bathroom -- Nick and Louise sounded totally preoccupied -- so he slipped down the hallway, past the spare room, towards the bathroom.
The spare room door was ajar -- almost open.
Ed just smiled at that; evidently, Nick and Louise had arrived with far too much on their minds, and that door did have a tendency to drift. Still a little muzzy from sleep, Ed didn't consider angles of view, and didn't think to restrain himself from glancing in as he passed the room. And then he froze.
The room was illuminated through its thin curtains by a street light outside, and Ed saw Louise at once. She was naked and kneeling upright, and Ed's brain registered with interest that her nipples were large and dark; her eyes were shut in ecstasy, presumably because, as she knelt over Nick's face, his mouth was working assiduously at her groin. But the two weren't alone in the room, and Ed decided he could now understand the volume of female speech he'd heard, and for that matter the intensity of Nick's cries of pleasure. There was another woman, also naked, also kneeling, facing Louise; from where he stood stunned, Ed could see his son's balls, and it was clear that Nicholas' cock was deep inside the girl, who was rocking back and forth, her hands on Louise's thighs as she concentrated on the act of sex.
Then Louise opened her eyes, and her gaze locked with Ed's.
His instinct was to look away in embarrassment, to leave the trio to their fun -- but he was still paralysed by the unexpected sight and by fascination at something so far beyond his experience. Nor did Louise look angry; startled at first, and then amused, she continued to move slowly, gently rotating her crotch over Nicholas' mouth as he worked on her. Then Louise leaned forward, and the other girl raised her head. The two kissed, full on the mouth, for long seconds.
When they broke apart, Louise whispered something in the other girl's ear. The other girl looked around at Ed. He was expecting her to look annoyed, but instead, she smiled broadly.
Something about that broke the spell. He fled to the bathroom. Behind him, the sounds of enthusiastic fucking continued.
When he'd finished peeing, Ed threw cold water in his own face and stared into his small shaving mirror for a full minute. The problem was, he'd have to pass that open door again on the way back to his room. Eventually, he resolved simply to keep his gaze fixed forward, showing no reaction to anything he glimpsed.
As it turned out, what he glimpsed was slightly less dramatic -- mostly the second girl's back and bottom. She was standing behind Nicholas, gently massaging his shoulders, as he knelt between Louise's thighs. Louise was lying back on the bed...
Ed walked briskly on. The noises of sex became a little less intrusive after that, and eventually, Ed drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, Ed was lying in bed as the morning sun flooded through its own curtains. Despite having slept for a while, he'd had a restless time since he'd seen ... what he'd seen; he was inevitably turned on by the sight and sound of two attractive young women naked and fucking, but also confused and rendered unable to deal with this in any sensible way -- even simple masturbation -- by the fact that it was his own son he'd seen involved in the threesome. He was just deciding to put it all in the back of his mind, to treat it as an exciting but disturbing dream, when there was a knock at the bedroom door.
"Come in" he called, expecting to see his son, but it wasn't Nick who entered. Rather, it was Louise, now wearing a long t-shirt as a nightdress of sorts -- followed by the other girl. In the clear morning light, Ed could see that she was a pale-skinned redhead, with straight shoulder-length hair; she was wearing what was presumably her party costume from the night before, a glittery gold top and tight blue satin trousers, and carrying a large black purse. Both the girls were looking quite theatrically contrite, Ed noticed.
"Ah -- sorry" he said, realising that he was sitting up in a crumpled bed, bare-chested as well as bleary-eyed.
"No, really -- no, don't apologise." Louise replied. "Actually, we've come to apologise to you."
"To me?" Ed was feeling slow, but he was also feeling too guilty to take this in.
