The door opened at Lawrence's touch. He paused on the brink, uncertain now. His body tingled. He knew it was folly, this mad adventure, but he could no more stop the course he was set than he could stop the tides. There was inevitability to his actions, as though his movements were scripted and he was merely acting his part in a play.
He looked into the room beyond the open door. A broad shaft of sunlight, its edge sharply defined, bisected the already bright room and highlighted the lazy dust motes that danced within its smile. The light came through the single window, the very window in which she had been so fatefully framed on the morning Lawrence had spied her nudity. He sighed heavily at the sudden memory of her shocking nakedness, a memory that blazed in his mind and which had caused him so much anguish.
Even though the view was restricted, Lawrence could easily picture the objects and furniture that were presently hidden. They were all familiar to him. He took a single step, and in so doing, was now beyond the point of no return. The room was both well-known and strange at the same time. He'd visited this room on many previous occasions. Its contents and their layout were like old friends, but today there was an exciting difference; this visit was illicit. This was her territory, and without her presence, Lawrence had no business to be there.
The thrill of guilt rippled through his gut and flashed, bright and hot, inside his skull. The amoral appendage, hitherto dormant between his legs, sensed the guilt and uncurled suddenly like a serpent sensing prey. This swift rise of lust burned and mingled with the fear and excitement already surging through the young man's veins in a heady cocktail of desire, and a low moan sounded deep in his throat. Lawrence closed his eyes and recognised her scent. It was the familiar smell of her that he had known all his life. It was the imprint of her, branded forever on his senses.
Beyond the call of reason, set on his irreversible course and mindless to discovery, Lawrence moved quickly to the bureau. The dark-wood piece of furniture held no interest for him; it was the contents he craved. There, nestled inside the open drawer! There was the prize. Soft and delicate, neatly folded, the treasure lay before him.
Lawrence lifted a piece from the trousseaux. He closed his eyes again and pressed the scrap against his cheek. It was so soft, so fragile, and he savoured the sensation of it against his own flushed skin. He brought the blue material to his lips and kissed it lightly, as though it was her flesh.
The subtle essence of her remained; vague and undefined, but impermeable nevertheless. The light, lingering trace of her was like an apparition - part sensed and part intuitively felt - suspended beneath the laundered scent, a delicate hint of her. Lawrence couldn't resist; the tip of his tongue, timid yet eager, traced the thicker band of cloth at the point which would have been tight against the most intimate part of her.
In his mind's eye, Lawrence imagined his tongue was pressed into the crease that had warmed the smooth, flat fabric. How would she taste? What murmur of appreciation would she let slip if he were savouring her arousal for real, and not just dreaming into this transient scrap of cloth?
While one hand pressed the forbidden garment to his lips, the other was drawn down to the insistent ache between his legs. He fumbled with the buttons and allowed his ardour the freedom it clamoured for. The single eye cried a thick tear and Lawrence used his mother's underwear to wipe it away.
With a groan, Lawrence tightened his grip and succumbed to the rush. He was like iron against the tantalizing caress. Every sense was alive within him, the texture against his tumescence inflamed his desires, and his hand moved quickly in a desperate rhythm.
The force of his inevitable release surprised him. A sob burst from his lips when the lust rained heavily onto the carpet between his feet, and further evidence dribbled reluctantly down the face of the bureau. He tried, in a moment of sharp clarity, to stem the tide using the pathetically inadequate clothing that was creased beyond recognition and balled in his fist, but the task was beyond his capabilities.
Still lewdly exposed, Lawrence turned. The madness had cooled and he was searching desperately for some way to mask the evidence of his trespass when shock flashed red across his vision. He felt a palpable, near physical blast at the surge of adrenalin coursing through his veins as his body reacted to what his brain refused to accept. He had neglected to close the door and, with fatal inevitability, his mother was standing there now.
A near gasp split the awful silence. 'Lawrence!'
He didn't react. There was no panicked fumble to hide himself from his mother's shocked stare. There was nothing Lawrence could do to influence time; he couldn't turn back the clock. He had been discovered so devastatingly inflagrante that it was almost comic. In another dimension, Lawrence caught sight of the dust motes still turning in their languid, unconcerned way, caught in the beam of sunlight that continued to pour into the room. 'How pretty,' he thought silently, his brain insistently detached from the full, embarrassed horror of his reality.
'Lawrence... please...' It was obvious that his mother, too, was experiencing difficulty in reconciling what she had just observed. She had faced her own period of torment following her son's accidental witnessing of her nudity at the window. She had been aroused to the point of furtive masturbation following her reciprocal appreciation of his muscled torso. During the original incident, Lawrence had gazed up at her while she had looked down upon him, and she knew in her secret heart that she had, in fact, flaunted herself to her son. She was to blame, or so she thought, for her son's fumbled attempt to kiss her during the garden picnic; just as she was to blame for this... Elisabeth struggled for a description and was found wanting.
'Lawrence, I...' Still no words would form.
Elisabeth took a step toward her son, who was standing in profile to her. Elisabeth's eyes were drawn to the thick, downward curve of him. In spite of herself, and her original rejection of her son's clumsy advances, Elisabeth felt a rush of warmth deep in her belly. The warmth grew and moved downward and Elisabeth felt a single trickle of her own desire leak from her. She saw the glistening pools dotting the carpet, and then surveyed the devastation spattered across the dark bureau. The obvious, physical evidence of her son's virility turned the trickle between her legs to flood, and Elisabeth felt the throbbing pulse at her vulva and tips of her breasts.
Lawrence turned and faced his mother fully. His face was rent with an expression of utter despair as he finally accepted the enormity of his crime. He looked down at the balled remnant of his mother's underwear, defiled and corrupted in the palm of his hand. With a grunt of disgust and self-loathing, Lawrence cast the thing aside before he pushed the offending appendage into his flies. Then, with one final glance at Elisabeth's shocked face, he pushed past his mother and out onto the landing.
For a long moment, Elisabeth remained immobile. She stared at her spoiled underwear that lay in the sunlight still blazing through the window. Then, she bent slowly and plucked it from the carpet. She uncurled the cloth as though it were a balled sheet of crumpled paper and examined the silver stains; the evidence of Lawrence's sin.
Elisabeth recalled the image of her son in profile and the glow in her tummy grew suddenly hotter and became an insistent beat between her thighs. She could feel herself awash with her arousal, and knew that her present underclothes would be smeared with traces not dissimilar to the stains on the material she held in her hand.
