This is the mother/son version of a set of four separate, three-part stories. All are basically the same with slightly different character relationships. "It Doesn't Count" involves a brother and sister, "A Mother's Lust" involves a mother and son, "It Doesn't Matter" involves an older woman and her daughter's young ex-boyfriend, while "It Shouldn't Matter" involves a young woman and her younger sister's ex-boyfriend. You can read any or all of them, according to your tastes, but the vast majority of all parts of all stories are the same.
-- The Author
*
Dan glanced down at his mother's slim, well manicured hand. It rested just millimeters from his, with her long, delicate fingers beside his own, on the table between plates littered with the remnants of a moderately expensive lunch. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her, but her hand wasn't touching his. He looked up into her eyes, seeing a mischievous twinkle there. She'd placed her hand there, just that way, on purpose, as a subtle reminder.
Dan had to look away. He felt a blush rising in his cheeks. A quick glance told him his mother was grinning, enjoying his discomfort. He didn't know why this was all so much easier for her. He'd thought that he was the bold one.
In their family, his mother was always the careful, considering, planning one. She bought groceries and told you to wipe your feet. She told you to look both ways before you crossed the street. She told you to always play by the rules. She never pocketed a bill that someone else had carelessly dropped. And Mom was the one that tried to make sure she had a royal flush before she made even a small bet, if she ever played poker at all.
She was a generation older than him, yes, but he was still more daring. He considered himself to be more mature, too, at least in affairs of the heart. Or, rather, especially when it came to sex. She thought he was a hound. He thought he was well traveled.
She herself had been divorced for six years. Dad had moved all the way across the country, where he didn't even bother to stay in touch. Mom hadn't even tried to date while Dan was still in high school. By the time she'd decided to try men again, after Dan was well into his first year of college, she was woefully unprepared. She didn't even really know where or how to start.
She took her hand away to reach into her purse to pay the bill. Dan felt a sudden sadness as she did so.
"Let me pay, today, Mom," Dan offered, knowing he couldn't really afford to pay for even his own meal, let alone hers, too. "Just this once."
His mother looked up at him with her wide, sea green eyes, her hand at rest in the maw of the purse. She hesitated a moment before continuing to look in it for cash.
"No, lover, I've got it."
She had never called him lover before. It sounded strange, and a little unsettling. She'd been saying things like that throughout lunch.
"No, let me, come on," Dan argued.
"It's the twenty first century, sweetie," she said, looking up at him with a smile. "Men don't have to pay for their dates anymore. Anyway, I have a job, you don't."
Dan glared at her, letting his face harden into ice.
"It's not a date, Mom."
"Whatever you say, lover," she said, smiling, as she dropped some crumpled bills onto the check on the table. "I've gotta get back to work. I'm running late."
She rose from her seat, then walked around the table to pass him on the way to the exit. As she reached him she suddenly bent down to put her broad, full mouth to his, or almost to his. She stopped with her lips just a hair's breadth away. He felt one long, warm breath caress his lips.
She made a slow, soft kissing sound, then was up and off, never having touched him. Dan watched her walk away with a motion that made him sit up straight. He felt something stirring in him. He tried his best to ignore it.
* * *
It had happened, or rather started, rather innocently. He'd stopped by to visit her at her apartment on Friday after work. They had sold the house as soon as he'd graduated from high school, both to pay for college, and to simplify his mother's life.
She was getting ready to go out for the evening with friends. He had brought some of his laundry for her to do for him, but mostly he just wanted to collect some of his CDs. He didn't have room for them all in his own cramped off campus studio, so he treated his collection at her place like a library, checking out just what he needed, when he felt like it. He looked to borrow some of hers, too, for a change.
As long as he was there, she'd said she wanted his opinion.
"Be honest. Brutally honest, if you can."
"About what?" Dan asked, not really listening, as he sorted through her collection. She had far too many slow, romantic pop albums. That stuff made his skin crawl. He'd thought she had better taste than that. At least, she did with everything other than music.
"As a guy, not as my son, just as a guy."
The way she'd phrased that made him pause. He swiveled his head to look her in the eye.
"Yes?"
"As a guy, on a scale from, say, eight to ten... am I hot?"
"Eight? Eight to ten?"
"I'm feeling fragile today. You can't go lower than eight."
Dan grunted as he turned back to selecting music. His mom always felt fragile. Or rather, she always felt insecure. He didn't know why. She was smart. She was fun. And she was a total knockout, and she knew it. Dan had spent an embarrassingly large part of his life telling his friends that no, they couldn't even fantasize about seducing her, so let it go. He'd kill them if they ever mentioned it again, which they still did every chance they got.
"Come on, Danny. Okay, have it your way, on a scale from five to ten, how hot am I?"
"Are we talking hot as in simply attractive, or hot as in getting a guy to try to get into your lonely pants?"
Dan had said it without looking up. His bored, tired tone of voice said he wasn't looking up, in case she didn't notice. Inside, though, even thinking about his mom with another man made his skin crawl, let alone putting it into words.
"Into your pants hot," she answered, ignoring the "lonely" comment.
Dan sighed loudly, realizing that this wasn't going to stop until he gave it his full attention. Fine, if that was the way she wanted it.
He stood up to look her over. Only now did he notice that she was dressed to kill. It was funny that he hadn't even noticed that she'd changed since he'd arrived. If she weren't his mom, he was sure it would have hit him like a whole bottle of tequila. He wondered now which friends she was going out with, and who she was actually going after. He fought down a surge of inappropriate jealousy.
She wore a tight fitting, short, black dress. It was almost too low cut, showing too much of his mother's expansive cleavage in a way that made Dan a bit uncomfortable. She obviously wasn't wearing a bra. High heels, makeup, lipstick, dangly earrings, she had everything she needed to get any guy that wasn't gay to do anything she wanted, for, with, or to her.
"Turn around," he ordered.
His mother looked him in the eye, hesitating, as if she were suddenly too shy to model for her son. She slowly spun in place, spinning her head to keep him in her sight the whole time. Her long, straight, pale blond hair flew around her as she whipped her chin from one shoulder to the other, taking her eyes from his only in that instant, but looking right back into his as soon as she could.
Dan silently whistled in his own head. He didn't really need his mother to spin around to know what her curves looked like. She would have looked hot in flannel pajamas. It had been driving him crazy since he'd reached puberty and figured out that his body was attracted to women, no matter what they did or how they acted or how old they were, or who they were. The fact that she was his own mother hadn't made her any less exciting to a growing teenage boy.
It wasn't that she didn't show her age. She didn't look young. Instead, she had mature, feminine looks and curves and projected an attitude that made guys ignore young girls. She was a woman. She radiated sex appeal, with a calm lust and a worldly familiarity that promised an incomparable experience in the sack. At the same time she projected a shy innocence, a sense that she was submissive, and uncertain, and so pliable that any guy that wanted would be in charge, and be able to take what he wanted, and ultimately that was what she wanted. The whole package was unsettlingly arousing, even to her own son.
He'd gotten used to it by now. He'd numbed himself, over time, to his mother's incredible sex appeal. But when he stopped to look at her, to really look at her, his blood started pumping faster. Bodies like hers didn't come along very often. Faces like hers didn't come along very often. Finding them together, on one sweet, warm, intelligent woman, simply didn't happen, ever.
Dan knew that for a fact. He'd been searching his whole short life for one woman that was half of what his mother was, and no one he'd met had ever come close. She thought he was a rogue because he never dated the same girl more than three times. She'd never know that it was because he knew he was never going to meet a girl as unbelievable as the one that had raised him, the one that he could never have. She herself had set the bar too high for him.
"Well? How long is this going to take?" she asked, growing impatient. He sensed that she was afraid that he wouldn't give her a ten.
"Nine and a half," he said, out of spite.
She wrinkled the corner of her lip at him, demonstrating a mix of disappointment and irritation.
"You lose a half a point because you're my mother," he explained quickly, feeling guilty about hurting her feelings, no matter how slight the insult was. She really was too sensitive. "A half a point because I can't do any of the things the sight of you brings to mind."
She immediately broke into a warm smile, which had its usual effect on Dan. He suddenly felt warm himself. It was mostly a contented warmth, the result of making her happy. It was also a slow burning, surging warmth, the inevitable result of seeing a beautiful, sexy woman, dressed to seduce, smile at him lovingly.
* * *
