It was late Spring when I moved back into Mom's house for a while. I had just received my bachelor's degree and left the college where I'd been living for four years, and I returned to the city where I'd grown up.
There was plenty of space for me at Mom's house. She had been divorced for several years and said I could use the spare bedroom. She told me the company would be nice. I figured I'd stay at her place for a while until I found a job.
It was a cozy arrangement. The bedroom was spacious, and Mom kept the house spotless and the refrigerator full. In the backyard, a big amoeba-shaped pool sparkled in the sun. Behind it stood a small, detached building that Mom had converted to a home office. She was a paralegal, and after the pandemic was over the firm she worked for let her continue working out of her house.
She was proud of the little office. It was meticulously organized. Mom kept everything very neat.
"It looks great, Mom," I said, when she took me on a tour of it after I moved back in. When I was a kid, we'd used it as a pool house. It had a ping-pong table and a refrigerator in it. They had been replaced by a spacious modern desk and shelves and file cabinets.
"Thanks, Tim, I'm glad you like it. It took a lot of work to get it up and running like this."
I gestured to a door at the back of her office.
"What's back there?"
She paused in a funny way before answering.
"Oh, that's my file room."
She seemed uncomfortable, which wasn't like her.
"Let's go have lunch."
We went back into the house and ate turkey sandwiches, and we washed them down with big, ice-cold glasses of milk, which was delicious. It was a little unusual, too, and I guessed it was a different brand, or maybe a fattier variety, of milk than the low-fat stuff I drank when I was young. I was now 22, but I felt like a kid again. I never drank milk while in college. Maybe I'd just forgotten what milk tasted like.
When lunch was over the doorbell rang.
"Client," was all Mom said, and she let him in. He was middle-aged and non-descript looking, and he carried an unusually large shiny metal briefcase. I wasn't familiar with the type.
They went out to her office in the back yard. I logged onto my computer, looking for jobs.
An hour later the man left the house, and I could have sworn he seemed to strain somewhat at carrying the briefcase, as though it was heavier than before.
It seemed odd, but I didn't ask Mom about it.
A week passed. I spent a lot of time hunting for jobs and even managed to schedule an interview. More clients visited Mom, every single day, all men, mostly middle-aged, and every one of them carrying an identical metal briefcase.
"Mom, what's with those funny metal briefcases all your clients carry?" I asked her, finally.
"Oh, the firm gives them those," she said. "It's a benefit. They're extra durable and super secure."
Something didn't ring right in her answer, but I didn't ask her any more about it.
I helped Mom with the gardening. I mowed the lawn and trimmed the thick hedges that lined the backyard fence. One day, pulling weeds from the bed in back of Mom's home office, I noticed, for the first time, a small window in the side of the building. I guessed that it must be a window to the file room of her office. The blinds were tightly closed so I couldn't see inside.
Saturday came, and the sun shone hot and bright. I put on my swimsuit and went out to lie by the pool for a while before taking a swim.
After a few minutes, Mom joined me. She sat down in the lounge chair next to mine. My jaw dropped. She wore a tiny pale blue bikini bottom, tied on both sides. On her top, she wore . . . nothing.
Mom had a great body. She wasn't fat, but she was very curvy. Her breasts were enormous. I cannot recall having ever paid much attention to Mom's breasts before, but they seemed bigger than I remembered them being. I couldn't even estimate the cup size. But they looked completely natural, too. I knew what fake boobs looked like, and these didn't look fake. These had a natural sway and a hint of sag that was perfectly natural for their size and Mom's age.
I was speechless. Mom looked, well, she looked really good. Hot, even. My Mom. Holy shit.
"I hope you don't mind," she said.
"No," I stammered. "It's just . . . it's just . . . ."
"You weren't expecting to see your Mom topless? I don't mean to shock you. We're both adults and I figured you'd get used to it. After you left for college and Dad left and we have so much privacy in the backyard I got used to swimming in the pool in the nude. I figured that might be too much for you so I left my bottoms on."
Now I was really fired up. I was picturing Mom lying stark naked in the backyard. It was hard to do. I couldn't remember ever having seen Mom naked. In fact, this was the first time I'd seen her topless.
She sat up in her chair, just feet from me, and seemed nonchalant about the way she exposed herself to me. Her skin was pale and unblemished, save for a few freckles. Her nipples stood out in hard little pink peaks and her areola encircled them in big rosy saucers. When Mom moved her upper body, just slightly, the movement set off her huge breasts swaying and jiggling.
"Ahem," she said.
I looked up at her face and realized I had been staring at her boobs.
"Sorry," I said and I'm sure I blushed. "It's just a little weird."
"Sorry to freak you out. You'll get used to it."
She pulled a bottle of sunscreen out from the scrunched up towel she'd brought, and she began liberally applying the lotion to her body.
"I'm so pale," she explained. "I need to really lather myself up well or I'll burn."
"Makes sense," I said, in what I suspect sounded like a nearly strangled whisper.
I was ashamed to admit it, but I was mesmerized by the sight of Mom spreading the lotion over her nearly naked body. She spread it over her arms, and over her torso, and she seemed to take extra time when she spread it over her breasts. She held the bottle over her pendulous breasts one at a time, letting the lotion dribble in a fine stream onto the tops of her big globes and then watching as the lotion trickled its way down to and over each hard nipple. When the nipples were coated her hands went to work again, gathering up her mounds and running her hands over them until they were fully coated. But she was in no hurry to finish. She mashed and kneaded the lotion into her boobs past the time when I would have thought it necessary to do the job. She pinched each jutting tit between a thumb and forefinger.
It occurred to me, incredibly, that Mom might be putting on a show for me.
That seemed impossible, but when she was done with her top she began lathering up her legs, and the sexy show continued. She bent a leg, stretched it out to the side, and set a sandal-clad foot on the lounge chair. Her eyes were occupied with lotioning her thigh, and my eyes strayed to the thin pale blue fabric that stretched over the mound between her legs. It was a very small, tight bottom. The fabric was thin enough that I could actually see the contours made by what obviously was a lush thicket of pubic hair under the suit. In fact, a few stray hairs poked out from the side. Mom's pose, so close to me, was brazen, almost lewd. I knew enough about women to know it could not have been an accident.
Why was she doing it?
I didn't know, but I didn't look away. If Mom was going to put on a show, I was going to enjoy it.
When she finished with her legs, she handed me the bottle and turned away from me.
"Will you do me?"
She meant her back, obviously. Or, sort of obviously. I cleared my throat and applied lotion to her back. I started at her shoulders, working my way down through the muscles of her upper and lower back.
"Feels good," she said. "Like a massage."
I hadn't meant it to feel like a massage, but maybe my hands had other ideas.
When I got to the bottom of her back, I realized how low the little bikini bottom was. It didn't quite reveal an ass crack, but there was a hint of a dimple above that indicated where the ass crack would soon start.
I gulped.
My hands finished near the stringy tie-sides, and, yes, my mind went there. I thought how easy it would be to pull those strings, and then the bottom would fall off and my pale, lovely Mom would be completely naked in front of me.
I finished with the lotion and shook off the crazy thoughts. This was my Mom, not a porn fantasy.
We lay by the pool for a while, then went swimming, and then Mom got up and left. I watched her ass sway as she walked into the house.
* * * *
A few days passed, and it seemed like life was settling into a very pleasant rhythm. Summer approached and the days grew long and hot. Mom and I hung out by the pool a lot, and she treated me every time to the sight of her topless and in a different, tiny bikini bottom. She always seemed to know the right color to wear against her pale skin, and her curvy body always gave the impression it was about to burst out of the fabric.
I kept looking for jobs and had a few interviews.
Mom's paralegal practice was doing well, and she was visited regularly by clients, all male, at a rate of one every day. Curiously, she was never visited by more than one per day. Every single one of them carried that weird metal briefcase.
I was doing a lot of work in the yard, and I could feel my muscles grow in response.
Mom was playful, even flirty, with me, in ways I could not ever recall her being when I was young. She still did all the Mom things she liked doing. She was a great cook and kept an immaculate house. But there was something extra -- a teasing, girlish, even sexy demeanor. She'd wear blouses and tops that exposed a lot of cleavage, or dresses that were short or had slits that exposed a lot of her pale thigh.
Curiously, she never dated, and never talked about dating. I asked her about it once and she said she wasn't ready for it. It seemed odd to me because she sure acted like she was ready for a man in her life. She radiated feminine, sexy energy.
I wasn't dating, either. My girlfriend had broken up with me right before graduation and I hadn't dated since then.
I think the absence of any sex in my life stirred my increased interest in watching Mom. I felt guilty about it, but not too guilty, because I could tell she knew I was looking, sometimes, and she never seemed to mind.
One Tuesday, late morning, I worked in the back yard, trimming a hedge with large clippers. It was hot and I was shirtless and sweaty. Mom was in her backyard office with a client. They'd been in there for about fifteen minutes.
I glanced at the office building and noticed something different. I left the hedge and put the clippers down on an empty bird bath. I walked toward the office.
The blinds were open. Just a little bit.
I don't know why I did it. On the one hand, I had no reason to think Mom would be in her filing room and, besides, there was nothing interesting about a filing room. But it occurred to me that I'd never seen it -- that it was a mystery, even if not a seemingly significant one.
And there was something about that client visits that nagged me, that ate away at the corners of my curiosity.
So, I crept up, quietly, to the window, and the slats of the blinds were parted just enough that I could see inside.
I got the shock of my life.
It wasn't a file room. It looked like the inside of a barn. Straw was strewn all over the floor.
That wasn't the shocking part, though.
