There is a Time and Place

It was about two weeks later, and during another of our morning talks, Robert touched on the subject again.

“Mother, are you in love with the man you have sexual intercourse with?”

“Not exactly, darling.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in love with someone you have sex with?”

“Well, I think that is probably the loveliest way to have sex.”

“Why do you have sex if you don’t love the men you have it with?”

“Darling, your mother does have sexual needs, and its not always very satisfactory if you only masturbate.” We had not used that word in our talks before, but I was sure that he masturbated himself, but what word he used for it I did not know. I was hoping desperately that he was familiar with the word so I wouldn’t have to explain. The indications were that he did know what it meant.

“Yes, I know,” he said, then went on, “Have you ever really loved anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“You should know the answer to that, my love. It’s you.”

He became very thoughtful, but did not pursue the subject further.

The lovers I had taken over the years had been mainly my fellow university students. I always made it clear that nothing permanent could come out of the liaison, and the longest time I had with one lover was two years. Always I was very circumspect.

The one person who was aware of the more intimate details of my love life, was Anne. She had lovers of her own, and together we shared the joys and woes of our love lives.

Remembering the horny young boys at high school and the sexual fumbling that went on, usually in the most uncomfortable environments, I discussed with Anne the matter of Robert’s sexual development.

“It always seems pretty hard on them,” I said, referring to the sexual development in general, “that at the time they are feeling most virile, and when they probably need some strong guidance in sexual matters, there is so little available to them.”

Anne gave a strange smile and said, “Don’t worry, I think Robert will be all right.”

During the school vacations, we returned to the big house so that Samuel could see something of his son. It was during one vacation when Robert was sixteen that I first noticed that Samuel seemed to be getting ailments, like coughs and colds that did not go away. He looked tired and drawn. When I asked about this he just said, “Just a bit run down.”

When we arrived home for the following vacation, I was horrified when I saw Samuel. He was white faced and looked almost skeletal. I questioned him more firmly this time, and he said, “The doctor’s don’t seem to know what’s wrong with me, and none of their treatments are working. I feel utterly worn out, and I don’t think I can cope with the business much longer.”

Although Samuel and I had lived very separate lives, and there had never been any love between us, I felt a sense of responsibility. It was decided that at the end of the vacation, Anne would go back with Robert and I would stay with Samuel. Anne and Robert seemed delighted with this arrangement, much to my motherly annoyance.

In the following weeks Samuel got steadily worse. There were no more pretty young men calling, and one morning, cornering one of his doctors, as he was about to leave, I asked him what was wrong with Samuel.

“To be truthful, Mrs.Goldwood, we don’t know. He is totally resistant to all the medication we have tried. We can find nothing organically wrong, so an operation is out of the question. I have to tell you to expect the worst.”

It was some years later that medical science was able to give a name to the condition.

When Robert was seventeen Samuel died. Apart from a few bequests, and some further additions to my investment portfolio, everything was left to Robert, to be held in trust by me until he was twenty-five.

Samuel had realised he was dying, and not long before death took place, he had briefly discussed with me the arrangement of his will. He felt that I would be unable to cope with the complexities of his business, which in reality was a combination of his own investments, which were vast, investment advice for a fee and good old fashioned money lending.

“You can trust Coates,” he said. “Be advised by him.” Coates was the accountant Samuel employed, and I had heard Samuel say that he was quite a shrewd head in his own right.

When after Samuel’s death I conferred with Mr.Coates, he said, “It is mainly investments. “Samuel was always bent on increasing his holdings, and did it very effectively, but if you are content with the present state of the business, and have no great interest in expanding your assets, just leave things as they are. It should take only a small amount of oversight to maintain things at their present level, and even if some investments do go down, others are likely to rise.”

It was a holding position, and I felt that my study of business management had given me sufficient knowledge to keep things going at the level Mr.Coates had suggested. So taking Samuel’s word that Coates was to be trusted, and giving him a substantial increase in his salary, I left him to oversee the running of Goldwood Finance.

I returned to living with Robert and Anne, and somewhat to my chagrin, they seemed to have had a very happy time in my absence.

Robert now had less than a year to attend the school, and when that came to an end we could return to the big house, and then he would go on to university.

My need to attend the office occasionally, and the necessity of dealing with some paper work connected to Goldwood Finance, made life a bit busier than in the past, so I did not see quite as much of Robert as I had done. The morning and evening talks, that both now took place in my bedroom, had become curtailed, as he was increasingly busy with his final year studies.

When Robert completed his final school year, there was a three-month gap between the end of school and his start at university. It was early in this period when he came into my bedroom one morning looking very solemn.

“Something very important today, mum. I have to tell you something, and I hope I’m not going to upset you.”

This sounded very ominous and almost without thinking I reverted to our pattern of many years before, and pulled aside the bedclothes to invite him to get into bed with me.

He was wearing a dressing gown, and he slipped this off, letting it fall to the floor. Underneath he was wearing only boxer shorts, and they did nothing to hide his morning erection.

He stood for a moment as if deciding whether he should get in beside me or not. I gazed at him as he stood there, and the thought overwhelmed me, “My God, what a beautiful man I made.”

He was totally unlike Samuel both in looks and character. In fact, he looked very much like my paternal grandfather, Bryan Reeves.

From wide shoulders his torso tapered down to narrow hips. He was tall and muscular with clear clean skin. I felt a strange lurching sensation in my stomach, followed by a dull ache in my lower abdomen.

He seemed to decide, and dropped into bed beside me and snuggled up like he used to. I felt a sweet but disquieting throbbing sensation start in my clitoris.

“Something special, is it?” I asked, trying to control my emotions and make my voice sound natural.

“Yes.”

“Out with it, darling.” I later wondered whether this was a Freudian slip, as I could feel the pressure of his hard manhood against my upper thigh, and I was starting to lubricate copiously.

“Dad always expected me to take over Goldwood Finance one day, didn’t he?”

Samuel had always made that abundantly clear. It had been one of his disappointments that Robert had proved more interest and successful in subjects like math and science, than the more business oriented subjects at school.

I replied, “Yes, darling. I think the fact that he has left the business to you indicates that.”

“Mother, I don’t want to go into the finance business.”

“What do you want to do, darling?” I asked.

“I want to become a civil engineer.”

Certainly, Samuel would have been bitterly disappointed, since against all his sexual instincts he had gone to the trouble to produce a son specifically to take over from him. I thought, “Thank God he’s not alive, because there would be the most almighty rows if he was.”

I had been lying on my back, but in making my answer to Robert, I turned on my side to face him. This might be classified as a mistake. My nightdress had ridden up so that it no longer covered my genital region, and my move brought his penis into contact with me at the top of my thighs.

Now struggling to keep my voice steady and my body from shaking, I battled with myself to answer him.

“Darling, your father would have been very upset, but he’s no longer here, is he?”

“But what about you, how do you feel?”

“My God! How did I feel?” If only he knew how he was working me up into a sexual frenzy. My own son, and I was lusting for him.”

“How I feel is not really important, my love. If you are sure you want to be a civil engineer, then that is what you must do.”

I wanted to give him sound advice, but it was incredibly difficult to concentrate on anything but my burning sexual need, but I somehow struggled on.

“You have time. It’s another seven years before you would need to enter on the business. Why not try yourself out.” (“On me my sweet boy”) “Study at the School of Engineering for a year, then if you change your mind, you can take up other courses instead” (“Oh Robert, take me up now”). I won’t be upset whichever direction you choose to go in.” (“As long as you come in my direction and never change that course, dear love”).

It was mad. It was as if there were two people inside me carrying on parallel conversations, one of which was spoken aloud, and the other going on in my head.

This was the most disconcerting experience of my life. I freely confess that I had considered Robert as a lover, but never consciously as a lover for me. I had thought what pleasure some lucky girl was going to get from his beautiful body and obvious virility. That I should now be actually not only weighing him up as a lover, but was hungering for him myself, was a life-shaking occurrence. After this experience, my relationship with Robert could never be quite the same again. I had seen or been shown, an aspect of myself that could not be denied. My passionate love for him as a mother had spilled over, to became the sensuous love of a woman.

In the midst of this turmoil of mind, I heard Robert speaking.

“Thank you, mother.”

I caught a tone in his voice that frightened me. It was his voice, but it had that in it, which I had never heard before. Despite his hard shaft pressing to within a few centimetres of my sexual organ, his body against mine, I suppose I had been counting on him to control the situation.

He sounded ardent and sensuous. I looked into his eyes and saw there the fires of his passion. One overt sexual move from either of us would explode into erotic coupling.

As he spoke his words of thanks, he leaned over to kiss me on the lips. We had, of course, often kissed, but not quite like this. It was not forceful but soft and tender, yet it had all the passionate fervor of sexual desire.

The pressure of his hard young manhood against me increased, and I was lost. No word was said. It was as if we both knew what must now be, or the moment might be lost forever.

I let my lips part to admit his tongue, and he explored the depths and crevices, tasting my saliva, and I his.

Through the thin fabric of my nightdress, I felt his hand start to explore my breasts, gently drawing up from the base of my breast until reaching the nipple, he tenderly squeezed it. Then, discontented with the barrier of cloth, he slipped my nightdress over my head and dropped it on the floor.

He stopped caressing my breasts for a moment, and sat looking at me. He had never seen me naked before, and now his eyes seem to take in every physical particle of me.

His voice was a murmur of love and awe. He spoke as if in some holy, sacred place. “Oh God, I didn’t know you were so beautiful.”

Leaning over me, he continued his caresses, at the same time taking a nipple into his mouth, suckling me as he did when a baby.

A dark voice deep inside me cried out, “Resist, resist,” but my powers of resistance had fled. They had run before the insistent and relentless demand of my body, “I shall be fulfilled.”

It had now been months since my last coupling with man, and now I was with a man - and what a beautiful man! – whom I had loved from birth.

Robert had taken all the initiative, but now, in a final act of submission to my desperate need, I reached down to take his shaft into my hand, and found it hot, throbbing and wet with pre-cum against my palm.

His mouth released my nipple and he moaned, “Mother…oh mother…”

Waves of love and lust coursed through me. If he had tried to break away, and stopped the progress of our move towards sexual union, I would have begged and pleaded for him to stay with me; such was the overpowering nature of my greed for him.

In the turmoil of my mind I tried to think what had led to this, but dropped the search almost before I had begun it. I was too lost in him. His beautiful body enthralled me and I longed for his penetration.

His fingers were now exploring my vagina, penetrating my entrance and softly moving round my clitoris. If he sought to discover whether I was ready for his penetration, he could have been left in no doubt. I was soaked with my lubricant.

My state was such that I could bear it no longer, and I pleaded with him. “Now, darling, now.”

As he came over me I felt his magnificent lance seek for the place of entry. I guided him, and felt him pierce me as if he would stab me to the heart.

Having had experience with ardent young men over the years, I anticipated a quick ejaculation for our first sexual coupling, I was wrong. When he had fully penetrated me, I flexed my vaginal muscle round his shaft, and he gave a gasp, but made no further movement.

We lay, looking into each other’s eyes as if searching each other’s souls. It was a moment of exquisite, agonising wonder and anticipation in which I found my true self in him and, as he revealed later, he in me. It was a union the like of which I had never experienced before. In all the wild lustful couplings over the years, this moment of stillness made them all pale into insignificance.

“This is where I belong, my love,” he whispered, and he was right. He had come from me, and now he had returned to once more be at one with me.”

He began slow movement in me, and I melded in with his rhythm. His speeding up was almost imperceptible, but suddenly I found myself shaking. It felt like an earth tremor that I had once experienced, when I heard the rumbling of its approach at first a long way off, but getting closer and closer, until it finally arrived, shaking the earth under my feet.

Thus did my orgasm approach. I wanted to both escape from its intense agony and at the same time, embrace it.

Then it was upon me, shaking my entire body. I felt the first explosion of his sperm into me. He had his hands under my buttocks, and I wound my legs round him to drag him in for the fullest possible penetration.

I was tumbling down a tunnel swirling with brilliantly coloured lights, and I heard a voice that was mine and yet not mine, crying out, “Oh, my love, my baby,” over and over again.

Then the tremor began to pass on, reverberating away into the distance. I came out of the tunnel into a place of tranquility. There was a silence, a peacefulness that engulfed us both. He, his ardour sated for the moment, and I basking in the after effects of the most overwhelming moment in my life, short of his birth.

He was still inside me, holding on to me as if he would never part from me again. In this post-coital quietude we strove to find words for the love and joy we had in each other, but they were poor substitutes for the glorious moment of melding we had just accomplished.

I knew then that there was no road back for us. Oh, I knew we could have said, “No more,” and parted, but we would from then on be half creatures slinking through a dimly lit world, our destiny having been denied, forever seeking the lost half of self.

We had crossed a line of demarcation. On one side of that line was the known, the things that had been and could be no more. On the other side, where we now stood, was the unknown. It was a radiant and awe inspiring land, but we had no map or compass to guide us but our love.

Still Robert was inside me, his penis slackening, but he unwilling to withdraw. I briefly wondered where he learned to be such a superb lover. I knew from my experience with ardent young male virgins, that however intense their desire, they had to learn the techniques sex. I thought I knew where Robert had learned his craft.

Practicalities began to nudge my consciousness. I was soaked with Robert’s sperm and my own fluids. There was the post sexual intercourse aroma that the lovers often find alluring, but which can be offensive to others.

“Darling,” I said, “we must shower and have some breakfast.”

He groaned, complaining that he did not want to end our bond, but never the less withdrew from me, giving a gasp as he experienced that delicious pain that goes with withdrawal.

We showered together, and our mutual washing of each other’s genitals speedily had us ready for another coupling. I was insistent, however, that we breakfasted before any other move was made.

Anne had always shared her meal times with Robert and I, and she was sitting at the table just finishing her breakfast as we entered. She looked up, contemplating us for a few moments, then gave a shrewd smile and said, “And about time to.” She rose and left us alone.

Her words might be understood in at least two ways. She might have meant, “It’s about time you arrived for breakfast,” or, “It’s about time you two found each other.” I have always suspected it was the latter.

We started our breakfast, and about half way through the meal, a rather frightening thought occurred to me. We had been so overwhelmed by our zeal for each other, we had not thought about contraception.

In the long period since I had last had a lover, I had grown careless, and failed to continue taking the pill, and even if Robert had some condoms in the house, neither of us were capable of thinking of them at the height of our passion.

I knew I was still extremely fertile so our action might well bear fruit. Recalling how I had become pregnant as the result of Samuel’s first little dribble, I could well imagine the effects of Robert’s flood of semen.

As if he had read my thoughts, Robert suddenly asked, “Dallas, can you still get pregnant?” (Without discussion, the new shape of our relationship brought the change in his mode of addressing me).

“Yes, darling.”

“Please don’t mind me asking, Dallas, but how much longer will you be able to get pregnant?”

“I don’t know, darling. I read the other day of a woman in her sixties giving birth, but for myself I would say perhaps another eight to ten years. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering how many children we could have.”

I choked on a piece of toast. That was one thing I had not taken into account in my preliminary thinking about our new relationship. As I have already said, I could have become pregnant from our first encounter, but that Robert would want to have children with me had not registered. I swallowed some coffee and responded to him.

“Robert, do you mean you wouldn’t mind if I was pregnant to you?”

“Well, when you boil it all down, that’s what sex is really for, isn’t it?”

“Like father like son,” I thought, but of course, with some vast differences in most respects.