MATERNAL SOLSTICE

It wasn't something that I had fantasized about, nor planned. It was one of those cause-and-effect chains that was obvious in retrospect, but not at the time. It probably had roots; at my sister's wedding my mother had pulled me aside and confided somewhat drunkenly, "You know, the way you dance really turns me on " I was sixteen at the time, and found her observation generally disgusting, not only because I was a lousy dancer; she was an old lady, I was a teenager.

Five years later, I was a young adult, and she was a middle age woman. We both loved my father; this happened despite that. It had nothing to do with psychological issues, or resentment, or sexual frustration. It was just something that occurred in the quiet of a three bedroom ranch house in the middle of the Great Plains, and while neither one of us expected it, neither one of us would ever undo it either.

The night began typically; I picked my mother up at her workplace after getting off at my own. We were sharing a ride that summer because it was convenient; we both worked twenty miles from home, but within two miles of each other. I was doing an internship for a venture capital firm before starting graduate school at Wharton in the fall. The rides to and from work were generally quiet. I wasn't big on small talk, and she didn't generally have much to say on the way home. Perhaps nothing would have happened at all if her blouse had been fully buttoned. But the fact is, the third button on her blouse was undone and gapping, and as we made the twenty mile drive home, it became somewhat of a game with me to see what forbidden fruits I could glimpse through the open tunnel.

I don't know whether to say my mom was pretty or not – she was my mom. You could tell she had been pretty as a young girl, and age had neither punished her brutally, nor been overly generous; she looked perhaps three or four years younger than her age, but still old enough to have a third child who was past twenty. She was blessed with centerfold breasts, a genetic predisposition that my sisters were both thankful for. She hadn't gotten heavy with age; nor would you ever describe her as model thin. When I actually saw her naked, she had a little pooch in her stomach that was rather erotic; it just made her look very real without making her look fat. She looked like a healthy woman, with all of the French curves in all the appropriate places. So I would never feel comfortable labeling her with an easy descriptor like "beautiful", or "sexy", or "hot". Her copper hair and perceptive eyes warranted a more nuanced assessment. "Attractive" fit and maybe even "alluring", but only for someone who had a particular fondness for her set of features. As we drove, I kept one eye on the road, but, couldn't help but glancing over every thirty seconds or so to check out the gap between her blouse buttons, and try to see what I wasn't supposed to be seeing, which was a significant portion of her right breast, enveloped by a brassiere.

When we got home, I fixed her a seven/seven (seven up and Seagram's seven) which was her drink of choice at the time. This was a ritual; she rarely began unwinding conversationally until after her first - and normally only - drink. This night was a bit unusual; my father was traveling out of town on a business trip, and it was just she and I. My dad didn't travel often; once every three or four months. I waited for her to change clothes to see what dinner plans were; we often ate different things - things my father didn't like - when he traveled.

She came out in jeans and a tee shirt, and her drink was almost gone. I asked her what she wanted to do for dinner, and her response indicated indifference. This was unusual - she almost always felt the responsibility to fix something for us, and usually had a plan to do so. I asked her if she'd had a bad day, and she nodded that it was both long and stressful, although she never did tell me why. She was the accounts receivable manager for a medium sized corporation, and sometimes badgering customers for money when they had none could be draining. Without any ulterior motives, I suggested that she go take a long hot bath, and I would worry about making dinner. It was a sign of her residual stress level that she readily agreed, because she knew my culinary capabilities at the time consisted of warming up pork and beans, and frying hamburger. She actually seemed grateful for my offer, and said that a hot bath would feel very nice.

Mom went off in her direction and I started thinking about what I might make for dinner. I looked though the pantry for several minutes for something to suggest itself as a meal. After examining the same four shelves for the fifth time, I realized with some mild guilt that I still had no clue what was in the pantry, because I was fixated on the stolen image of my mom's boob, and what both her boobs might look like if they were unencumbered. I had guilt because this was my mother I was thinking about, and I had grown up with the clear understanding that these thoughts were wrong. The guilt was mild because, over the course of time I had discovered that not only did these thoughts not feel wrong, they actually felt pretty damn good. Of course, with my father gone, and my mother sitting naked in a garden bathtub twenty five feet away, this was the perfect storm of the wrong time to be having thoughts like these. The devil sitting on my shoulder began whispering suggestions about coming up with a viable reason to barge in to the bathroom.

The empty seven/seven glass was my inspiration. I refilled it, walked to the bathroom door, and hesitated. I listened to make sure I could hear the sounds of my mother splashing. I started to knock, and stopped. I started to open the door, and chickened out. I took a calming breath, and then, like leaping into a swimming pool even when you know the water is going to be cold, I just turned the door handle and walked in.

My mom's reaction was both indignant and curious. I caught a brief impression of her red pubic bush before she threw a washcloth over it, and she folded her left arm across her breasts, covering most of them. She looked at me curiously. "Do you need something?" she asked neutrally.

I held the seven/seven in front of her at arm's length. "I brought you another drink," I explained. Her expression softened, and she smiled. "Thank you," she replied. "I would like that very much. Just put it there on the side of the tub."

This was a turning point. I hadn't gotten what I came for – a good look at my mom – nor had I thought things through enough to know how I should respond to her common sense instructions. I froze like a marble statue and did nothing. My mom's smile faded, as she looked me in the eye. With a brief look of disappointed resignation, she extended her left arm for the whiskey. She took a sip, then held the glass in both hands and rested it on her stomach. She closed her eyes, pulled the washcloth away from her bush, and sighed contentedly. "That's good," she conceded.

I don't know how long we remained like that – ten seconds, thirty seconds – but she gave me a generous amount of time to appreciate the way she looked before she changed tones. "Okay," she said parentally, without opening her eyes. "I'm taking a bath, and I would appreciate some privacy. Is there anything else you need?" Her tone of dismissal was unmistakable.

I remained leaning against the bathroom vanity, unable to respond and unwilling to leave. Her breasts were definitely large, but they were perfectly proportional to the rest of her. They were full without being fat. Sitting with her back inclined, they touched each other, sagged a little, and swayed slightly when she breathed. Her nipples were brown, and seemed as big around as one of my fingers. She took another sip of her drink and placed her arm up on top of her head. The faint rust shadow of emerging stubble showed in the hollow of her armpit. She opened one eye and looked at me staring back at her. This time she spoke with clear irritation. "Please don't tell me that I am so failed as a parent that my only adult son is morally bankrupt and unnaturally attracted to the sight of his naked mother?"

That broke through my mental fog. "No," I stammered. "No. Sorry. I...just....got distracted..." I gulped. My voice was working but my feet still weren't. "I'm going." I looked again at her entire length, her knees poking up from the bathwater, the bathwater just covering her navel, small droplets of water glistening off her breasts, the look of relaxation on her face, and I forced my feet to come unglued from the floor. I opened up the door and was halfway through when my mother spoke again. I stopped with my back to her. "This is a very odd feeling," she said, the irritation gone, replaced by a tone she normally used with friends and peers.

"Drinking in the bathtub?" I asked, without turning.

"No." She gathered her thoughts briefly. "I should feel disgusted at the way you were just looking at me, and instead, I have butterflies in my stomach. It's been a long time since someone looked at me with that kind of desire" she replied.

My blood pressure skyrocketed to about 180 over 120. "I'll go work on dinner," I said, pulling the door closed behind me.

My mom emerged from her bath twenty minutes later. She was wearing a heavy pink terrycloth robe, belted securely at the waist. Her hair was combed out, but still damp. She smelled clean. "What did you decide on for dinner?" she asked, sniffing the air experimentally as she walked into the kitchen. She put her empty drink glass in the sink.

"Tacos?" I responded as both a reply and a question, hoping she would indicate her approval. "Even I can brown hamburger, and that's about all you have to cook. The rest is just chopping up stuff."

My mom smiled, either at my accurate assessment of my kitchen skills, or in approval of my choice of entrée, but either way, she said, "That sounds fine."

I pointed at her empty tumbler. "Can I make you another?" I offered.

She crinkled up her nose and titled her head. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"

I put my palms up, away from my body. "No, no ulterior motives, not trying to lead you down the path of debauchery, just wanted to give you a chance to get tipsy without worrying about being judged, if you so desired."

My mom did a double take. "When did you get so eloquent?" she laughed. "You make me feel like I am missing out on a huge opportunity." She paused for a moment. "Yeah," she said, sitting down at the kitchen table, "I would have another, and I know you won't judge me. I like that."

I poured it and placed it in front of her. "Eat in about twenty minutes?" I asked.

She nodded. "Sounds good."

I turned the oven on to 350, turned the meat on low, and poured myself a little bit of Seagram's in the bottom of a juice glass. I sat down across the table from her, and waited for the oven to preheat. My mother arched her eyebrows at me. "My little boy drinks whiskey neat? Do I need to worry about you becoming an alcoholic?"

I thought about her question, and shrugged. "If you want. You're going to worry about something, anyway – might as well be that."

She smiled at me, and then broke eye contact. "What I said to you in the bathroom earlier...." she started, looking down at the table, and running her hands randomly across its surface, "That's not something I want you to remember about me....I don't know what possessed me to say that."

I could not hold back a chuckle. She looked up, startled that her heartfelt apology was not being somberly received. "Mom, sorry to tell you this, but I'll relive that statement every day of my life, as long as I have a functioning brain. That was not something I ever want to forget."

She shook her head and started to respond, but then stopped. She sipped her drink pensively. I checked the oven; it had only made it up to 275. Finally, my mom shook her head again. "I can't think of anything to say to you that you would consider relevant. There's just so much you don't understand."

"About....?" I couldn't help asking.

She shrugged. "Life." She saw the frustration register on my face. "I forgot, that's all. You are too young to understand intimacy, and I pretended you could for a selfish moment. It was stupid of me, and I wish I hadn't said it."

I got a little ruffled at that. "I understand intimacy."

Her smile was warm, but her tone was condescending. " I know you think you do, Honey, but you have to understand, at your age, what you think is intimacy is just a series of chemical reactions. Nothing more, nothing less. You have as much free will regarding sexual response as sodium and chlorine do regarding salt."

"I don't think that's true!" I was frankly getting a little defensive at this point.

She looked back at me as if deciding how best to respond. She seemed to be waging some kind of inner debate. She must have reached a conclusion, because her face cleared, and she tossed back her drink in two gulps. Shrugging her shoulders, she got up from her chair, and walked around the table toward me. As she was walking, she loosened the belt that held her robe tightly closed. She stopped about two feet away from me and looked me in the eye. "What condition is your dick in?"

"What?" I asked, confusion mixing with irritation.

"Your penis," my mother clarified. "The appendage between your legs. What condition is it in? Rather soft, and worm like, or standing at attention?"

"Soft", I confessed, although I would not stoop to agreeing with wormlike.

"Count to fifteen," my mother instructed. She bent over at the waist, and placed her palms on the outside of my hips, right where my thighs ended, fingers splayed inward. Her robe hung open invitingly, giving me the clear and startling view that the only thing she was wearing under the robe was a pair of blue bikini underwear. Her breasts hung down in gravitational splendor. She slowly moved her head toward mine and made as if to whisper something in my ear. Instead, I felt the warm moistness of her tongue massaging my inner ear, and combined with the immediate sound of gentle slurping, I sighed audibly and deeply.

"....fourteen, fifteen," I uttered. As I reached fifteen, my mom moved her palms moved inward until her fingers were resting on my now fully erect penis. "I'd now describe this more like a flashlight than a worm" she concluded. The electric feel of her fingers on my privates diverted another pint of blood to that region. "Whoa," she said, with mock admiration. "Maybe more like a rolling pin than a flashlight."

She stood up and returned to her chair. "That is what I meant," she said. "What you are feeling right now is not intimacy."

I started to stand up to protest her conclusion, but I knew my obvious woody would just be a not-so-funny underscore of her assertion. I remained seated, gathered my thoughts, and paused a bit before speaking. "That proves nothing. Females respond to sexual stimulus, too; what does that biological fact have to do with intimacy?"

"Females get a hard-on?" my mother asked.

"Females get wet," I countered.

"But we can control it," my mom said with emphasis. "That's my point. Women don't automatically get wet at the sight of a naked man. Men immediately get erect at the sight of a naked woman."

"What you did to me was a whole lot more than sight," I countered.

"True, but we both know if I would have just undone my robe and stood in front of you the results would have ultimately been the same. I just sped things up a bit"

"I can make you wet." I bluffed.

"Of course you can't. That's the point I'm failing spectacularly at making with you. Now, if you physically rub me down there, yes, there is a mechanism left over from our days as arboreal animals that will kick in to make sure I am ready. But if the question is left solely to my human emotional state, you will find me as dry as the Sahara Desert."

"Is that a challenge?" I asked.

She shrugged. "No. It's a fact of life. If you want to treat it like a challenge, feel free. But in return, when you fail, I expect you to have the character to tell me that I have convinced you instead of continuing to argue against anything that you don't like to hear. "

"How long do I have?" I asked, always seeking a competitive edge.

"Until the taco shells are warm?" my mother suggested. "I'm getting hungry."

"Okay," I agreed. "But what's the proof? If I feel you, you'll say it's a mechanical response."

"You'll just have to trust me. I'll tell you if I feel wet." my mother promised. I didn't believe this for a minute. She would drown before she would admit she was wet and I was right.

"How about this," I suggested. "Do this. Put your feet up on your chair, right next to your butt." She complied with some uncertainty, but it had the effect of pointing her vulva directly at my face, and stretching her bikini underwear tightly over top of it. I wasn't certain women got wet enough to make their panties wet, but it was a better hedge than "trust me".

"I'm going to put the shells in for eight minutes," I warned, announcing both dinner time, and the length of my opportunity. I have to admit, she looked pretty damned good in that position. Her thighs were wider than a model would want, but her ankles and calves were thin, and the thin bikini underwear showed the outlines of her genitalia in sky blue detail.

I stuck the cookie sheet with the shells into the oven and set the timer for nine minutes. Frankly, at this point, I didn't really care if the taco shells spontaneously combusted; I needed all the time I could get.

I sat down next to my mom, and stared at the two thirds of her tits that were hanging out of her still loose robe.

I shifted my gaze down to the area between her thighs, where the thin blue nylon stretched across two inches of forbidden zone for the length of her crotch. Several stray red pubic hairs volunteered from the edges of her panties. I could make out the shadow of her bush above. I didn't really know what to say, but I knew as long as I remained silent, time was on her side. What had she said in the bathroom, about feeling butterflies? That I'd made her feel desirable.

"I don't know a lot of things about you that I wish I did," I started. "I don't know if you realize how attractive you are. I don't know if you realize how much I'd like to reach out right now and touch the smoothness of your thighs. I don't know what excites you, and I'm not likely to stumble on it in the next eight – seven minutes." I looked at her eyes. She was interested, but that was all. "You've always inspired me, Mom. You've inspired me to be a good student and get good grades. You've inspired me to get along with people, and develop social skills. You've inspired me to be responsible, and to think about people other than myself. You probably know all of that. What you probably don't know is that because you inspire me in all those other ways, you inspire me to lay awake at night with my dick in my hand, wishing you were lying beside me and I could hold you and tell you these things. And when I'm by myself in the middle of the night, there is no chemistry; there's only imagination in the darkness." My mom shifted a little, but I couldn't tell if it was in response to what I said, or just to get more comfortable. "It's gotten worse as I've gotten older, Mom. It used to be that sometimes, if I saw you in a bathing suit in the summertime, or you were sitting suggestively in a nightgown, I would have go somewhere right then and beat off. But now, I come with you in my mind almost every night, sometimes more than once. Do you ever imagine me covered in my own semen, Mom, because I've been thinking about you?" Her thighs definitely flexed on that question, and I couldn't swear, but I thought I saw a tiny shadow on the blue panties. "Do you know that sometimes I take your underwear out of the laundry hamper, and hold them close to my face at night? That between your legs you smell like mushrooms, and damp earth, and perspiration?" I looked at her eyes, and did not know how to interpret the fact that they were closed. I didn't know how much time was left, but it felt like it was running out. The shadow I thought I had seen on her panties was more distinct now. "All of the rest of the women in the world are at a terrible disadvantage, Mom, because they're not you and never will be and I will probably hold that fact against whoever I end up marrying. When I came in the bathroom tonight, it was just a sort of stupid, impulsive thing to do. And I can't undo it. But tonight, when you're alone in your bed, know that I am alone in mine, and awake, and thinking about you. Thinking about how you look, and imagining that I might have washed you all over, or toweled you dry, and touched you in ways that I have never touched you before. Know that I am laying in bed covered in my own jism, and you are the reason." Her panties showed a dark wet blotch.I looked at her expectantly. Her breathing was noticeably shallow. "Okay, I'm wet." She admitted. "Let's eat."

I pulled the taco shells out of the oven, turned off the timer with a minute to go, and put three on a plate for her. After putting her plate in front of her, I impulsively gave her a quick kiss on the lips. It was just a peck, but even so, I felt my mom kiss back, ever so slightly. That made me kiss her again, pressing my lips firmly against hers, and she tilted her head slightly and pushed back again. I confess, at this point I was actually light headed, so I was more than a little bit pleasantly surprised when, after I broke contact, she put her hand behind my neck, pulled me close, and opened her mouth. Her tongue on my lips was delicious; her tongue on my tongue was erotic, my tongue on her lips still makes me hard just thinking about it. That may be the best kiss I've ever had in my life; it was a combination of love, and exploration, and lust, and the sudden explosion of having known someone completely without ever having known them at all. If I had my way, we would still be having that kiss, but about the time I had decided to shift position and wrap my arms around her, Mom's phone rang.

It was my dad. "Hey, Honey," my mom said into the phone, unconsciously pulling her robe tighter across her body. "How did your day go?" I listened to her side of a general exchange of chit chat as I finished putting things on the table. "No," she said, "I'm having a wonderful evening. I got to take a long bath while your son made dinner, and we're just sitting down to eat." She listened and then smiled. "I know," she agreed, to whatever my father's response had been. "Yeah, me too," she added. "Well, I'm glad you got there safely, and that it looks like things will work out. You'll be back tomorrow, right?" She nodded. "Okay. Well, if you need anything, give us a call. We're just planning another boring evening here." She nodded again. "Okay. Bye bye. Love you, too."

My mom looked at the confusion and desire and affection on my face and sensed that I was about to ask her an awkward question that she didn't feel like answering. She smiled sweetly at me and asked "Can you please pass me the cheese and salsa?"

We ate our tacos mostly in silence. It wasn't the awkward silence of two strangers, or the strained silence of two people who have been arguing, but rather, the silence of two people processing an enormous amount of new information, and thinking deeply about it. To be honest, I wasn't reaching any conclusions, and after rinsing my plate in the sink and putting it in the dishwasher, I sat back down at the table.

"I really like those freckles on your chest," I said randomly. She was liberally speckled in the area of her permanent tan, and I wondered why I had never noticed it before. She looked down and shrugged. "I never liked them. I always thought they were unlady like. "

"Do you want to go into the living room?" I asked.

"I think I feel better right here with a table between us," my mom replied. At least she had given me an indication of where her head was, and that she, too, was a little uncomfortable.

"Do you want me to leave?" I asked.

She shook her head without thinking about it. "No, I want you to stay. I sort of want to understand whatever I can. And try to inch along cautiously to whatever conclusion I'm going to draw about what happened tonight."

"Did Dad calling in the middle of-"

"This really has nothing to do with Dad," Mom interrupted softly. "This is about me trying to deal with the problem that my simple feelings about you are actually quite complicated. It's about how a rigid wall of right and wrong can suddenly become a tissue thin curtain, and I'm not certain what side I want to be on. "She paused for a bit and ran her fingers through her hair. "What did you hope would happen when you started all this? Was your goal to fuck me?"

Hearing her use the f-word in that context was like a slap in the face. "No. I didn't have a goal. I didn't really even have a plan. What did I hope would happen? I hoped I could see your breasts in all their glory as an adult. That was my big hope."

"Were you telling the truth before? About masturbating and thinking about me? No! You wouldn't really think about me if you were masturbating." She suddenly looked perplexed. "Would you?"

I could feel myself blushing. "Yes I have thought about you. Yes I do think about you. Yes I do know what you smell like between your legs. And yes, I will use the image of you in the bathtub in the future."

She nodded absently, as if that made sense. "So, mission accomplished, and you're back on a normal track?"

I shook my head. "No."

"No?" She arched her eyebrows at me expectantly.

"That was before we kissed."

Her face softened immediately. "Honey, that was a...a....that wasn't a kiss. Not the way you're thinking about it. I shouldn't have done that tongue in the ear thing, either – it turned out differently than I intended. "

"No, that's the problem, Mom. Those both turned out differently because you won't admit how it felt. "

She shrugged apologetically. "I feel like we're in an endless loop. We're back to whether or not your reaction was emotional or chemical."

"And I think that's stupid, because you are basically arguing that the proof of me being unable to understand intimacy on your level is that I am unable to understand intimacy on your level."

She thought about this for a while. Sighing, she shrugged. "You may be right; I don't know. Even if you are, I'm not sure it's helpful. I feel the way I feel, you feel the way you feel."

"Truth or dare." I challenged.

"What?" she asked, confusion on her face.

"Truth or dare. I think you felt just as much on that kiss as I did, but you're afraid if you admit it, then I will try to up the ante somehow that makes you uncomfortable. So let's deal with your intimacy theory one step at a time. We take turns. You can choose truth, or you can choose dare, but whatever the other person gives you, you have to do."

She looked skeptical. "What's the point? And the limits? What are the borders?"

"The point is that there is no limit. There are no borders. With that much solution space, you should be able to prove to me that I do not understand intimacy. On the other hand, I think that I can prove to you that this is about me trusting you and you trusting me. That's pretty key for intimacy, wouldn't you agree?"

She looked unconvinced. "I'll try it. But I'll tell you up front, I'm not real hopeful. Who starts?"

"My idea; I'll go first. You ask me 'truth or dare'?"

"Okay, truth or dare?"

"Dare" I answered.

"Anything?" she verified

"Anything," I confirmed.

"I dare you to take off your pants and your underwear."

In retrospect, I think she immediately regretted the dare when she saw me comply. I think she thought the game would end immediately, and we could move on to what she considered more productive conversation. So she was first surprised, and then somewhat embarrassed as I sat bare ass naked in the kitchen chair, with a woody staring at my chin, at her request. My mom kept glancing at my crotch, but she didn't want me to see her glancing at it, and finally decided to stare off into space.

"Truth or dare?" I challenged.

"Truth," she said without hesitation. She wasn't taking the chance that we would both be sitting naked at the table.

"Have you ever cheated on Dad?" I asked.

"No. I haven't. But I'm starting to appreciate the implications of this game. If I had cheated on your Dad, would I have the courage and trust to tell you? Interesting." She thought about this for a while until she realized I was waiting for her to take her turn.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

"Dare," I answered.

"Suck on my toes." she dared, after thinking for a few seconds.

I never really understood how she planned to interpret my response to this dare in regard to her concerns about my comprehension of intimacy. I'm pretty certain she doesn't have any kind of a foot fetish; I think she was still trying to test whether this was truly a game without limits. I carried my chair to her side of the table, my dick waving back and forth like a willow tree in a wind storm. She watched me warily, as if I might pounce suddenly. I patted my thighs and looked at her bare feet. With a sort of bemused anticipation, she lifted her feet onto my lap. I scooted a little closer to get some flex in her knees, then lifted her right foot and began nibbling on her toes. My tongue caressed each one in order. I got in between each one, and at times I had multiple toes in my mouth. I put down her right foot and started on her left. The slight parting of her legs gave me a highly motivating view of her recently wet underwear, and I was able to put a lot of tenderness in my chore. The only feedback I got was towards the end, when she closed her eyes and sighed out loud. She idly reached over with her right foot and rubbed it against my very erect penis, but I scooted back from that.

I placed her foot back in my lap. "Truth or dare?" I asked.

"Truth," she replied, without hesitation.

"Have you ever been intimate with another woman?" I asked.

"Nope." She replied. "Never even been vaguely interested. Why?" she asked.

"No reason," I answered, "just finding out who you are."

"Truth or dare?" she asked me without needing to be prompted. She seemed to be getting into the spirit of the game.

"Dare."

She laughed briefly. "We seem to have a pattern here. You're afraid of the truth, and I'm afraid of a dare."

I returned her gaze levelly. "Actions speak louder than words."

She smiled. "Okay, here's a dare that combines actions and words. Describe me in as much detail as you can."

I gathered my thoughts. I lifted her feet, went and poured myself another couple fingers of Seagram's and sat back down. I returned her feet to my lap.

"Is that uncomfortable?" my mom asked, pointing with her chin at my still erect penis. "Would it be better with pants on?"

I smiled at her. "It's your dare. That's the game. Use your choices wisely." I continued. "Describe you. Okay. You're kind. You're patient. Despite all of the grief I've given you, you're really smart." My mom smiled appreciatively at that. "Your best facial feature is your eyes. They telegraph everything; when you are going to smile, what you are going to yell; when you are deep in thought. They crinkle at the edges and it just looks stunning. Your hair looks best like it is right now. Shampooed, air dried, just sort of wherever it happens to be. I like it longer, but I know that's harder to take care of. My absolute favorite thing is to give you a hug in the morning, and bury my nose in your tangled hair and just...smell you. It's clear that the gods of genetics favored you when they were building bodies because even though you may be a couple pounds overweight, you carry it in a way that makes you more attractive than less." My mom began shaking her head in dismissal of my appraisal. "I'm right. When you go to the beach, guys stare at you. I used to get tired of my friends telling me what they would like to do with you. You aren't a standard of physical perfection, it's just that every single part of you complements another part of you. You can ignore me if you want, but the fact remains that you've got a great chest, and nobody fills out a pair of jeans nicer than you, and no, your waistline isn't Barbie thin, but you do have a noticeable waste line. The whole of you adds up to something much better than the parts of you. And you know what is really weird? You know how usually your imagination runs wild and ends up so far from reality that it's just stupid? You're just the opposite. All those times I jacked myself off imagining you, and you know what? They physical you is about ten times better than my imaginary you ever was." I took a sip of the whiskey. "I think you've got the body of a goddess and I wish I could kiss every freckle on it."

Mom's face was void of any expression. I could see she was fighting hard to keep something under control, but I wasn't sure what. Finally, a single tear escaped from one eye, and I at least had a clue.

"Is that sad, or happy?" I asked.

"It's...overwhelmed." She answered truthfully.

"Truth or dare?" I asked.

"Dare," she said, very softly.

My heart pounded, as I asked her my dare. "Put your fingers inside you and then let me taste them."

"That's not intimacy," she protested.

"It's not a chemical reaction, either," I responded.

She stood up, untied her robe, hooked her thumbs inside the bikini briefs, slid them down her legs, and stepped out of them. She resumed the same basic position she had taken during the "get wet" challenge, with her knees bent, and her heels up next to her ass, only this time there was nothing left to the imagination between her legs. I watched as she rubbed herself briefly, gently, and then one red polished nail disappeared into the dark brownish-pink flesh. I glanced at her face, and she was watching me intently. A second finger slipped in, and she moved them rhythmically, deeper and deeper. She repeated the exercise on her ring and pinky and then extended that hand toward me.

I licked the back of her fingers, and then the front. Then I took each finger into my mouth in turn, and enveloped it until the taste of her was gone.

"What do I taste like?" she asked.

I smiled. "I'll take that as my truth question," but my mom was very serious.

"You taste like sweat, and humidity, and very dry white wine mixed with honey and salt."

"If this game is about telling the truth, then I think you just forfeited," my mother accused in a husky, shaky voice.

I reached forward slowly and stroked her vulva lightly. I could see her stomach contract as she inhaled sharply at my touch. Her labia were slippery and wet, and I slowly inserted my first two fingers. I watched her face for any discomfort as I slid them both in to the last knuckle. As I gradually withdrew them she rocked her pelvis slightly. I brought my fingers up to her lips and rubbed the thick wetness across them. She licked her lips, and then my fingers.

"Do you agree I told the truth and am still in the game?" I questioned.

"I don't want to play this game anymore," she said. She let the robe slide off her shoulders, moved to me and sat across me, straddling my lap. She pulled my face close to hers and kissed me, first softly, and then again, with more abandon. Her left hand reached between us and she caressed my penis gently. My hands ran over the curves of her shoulders, the slope of her waist, the spread of her hips. I kissed her eyes, her ears, her forehead and found her mouth again. She inched closer and I could feel the moistness and the heat from between her legs on my dick. I ran my hands down the length of her back and let my right one explore the crack of her ass. When I touched her anus she squeezed my neck so tightly I could barely breathe, and her tongue went deep in my mouth. I moved my hand away and felt her relax, and I rubbed my other hand through her hair. I returned my hand to her ass and she scooted closer. I pushed my little finger into her ass, just enough to feel penetration, expecting her to flinch and pull away. Instead, she grabbed my cock with almost primal urgency and started trying to guide it inside of her. I could feel her warm lubrication sliding across the head of my penis, and I knew that I was seconds away from coming if this continued. I put both hands on her waist and slid her away.

She pulled her face away from my lips and looked at me with a cross of hunger and impatience. Her breathing was ragged, and she had not released her grip on my dick. I didn't speak, or indicate my intention; I simply took her hand away, lifted her up and sat her on the kitchen table in front of me. Her eyes widened, either from the surprise that I was able to lift her easily with my arms, or that my face was about to be buried in her crotch. She sat motionless for a bit and made it difficult for me to do anything worthwhile. I nibbled at her thighs and she gradually moved them apart; I rubbed my lips over her pubic bone and got her to squirm just a little bit, but when I started at her left knee, and drug my tongue as far up the inside of her thigh as I could get, she finally got the idea and lifted her leg up onto my shoulder as she leaned back on her hands. This tilted the right things my way, and before long her right leg was on my shoulder as well. I licked her vulva, I nibbled her clit, and I slid my tongue as far inside her as I could. Sometime in there she began real moaning, the type of noise that is difficult to distinguish if someone is in pain or in ecstasy. I stopped long enough to take hold of her hands, and lowered her until she was flat on the table. I placed her hands on her vagina, and began licking them instead of her. As she began methodically caressing herself, I moved my tongue lower and lower until I once again was at her anus with a different exploratory tool. The first time I licked her with a long slow deliberate stroke, she arched her back as if she was having a seizure and shouted, "Oh God!" I repeated the maneuver with less dramatic results, but I noticed that her hands were becoming more and more frantic. With the encouragement of enough random "yeses", I finally just settled in to pushing my tongue as deeply into her rectum as I could, in rough cadence to her hand movements. Eventually a moment came in which the moans became one long continuous howl, and she crossed her legs behind my neck and squeezed my face into her for so long I had the brief thought that if I was going to die by suffocation, this was the place I wanted it to happen.

When she finally released me, I stood up, and ran my hands up her belly. Beneath those beautiful breasts, her heart was racing, and I bent over and kissed her lips. She licked all around my mouth with her tongue. "You taste like my come," she chided.

When I bent to kiss her again, my dick rubbed up against her hypersensitive vulva, and I felt her entire pubic area shudder. She pulled me close and kissed me. "Now" she murmured.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"I need you in me now." She scooted around on the table and I climbed up between her legs. She bent her knees and rubbed her heels up and down the length of my back. Her hand guided me into her smoothly, and any plans for a gradual penetration fell by the wayside as she thrust her hips forward and took all of me inside her. Our eyes were locked on each other, and I could only hope that the feel of my swollen flesh inside of her felt as good to her as the velvet sponge furnace of her pussy felt to me. She looked at me with those expressive eyes, and I understood what she meant by intimacy, and I hoped she saw it in my eyes as well.

"Move with me," she urged.

"I can't, I'm so close, "I responded.

"Just rock," she insisted. And so we did, small tiny movements, still joined as one, she swallowing me in heat and honey, and I stayed deep deep inside her, and felt my penis pushing against her cervix, and every time she gasped and I could feel her belly contract I would push harder, and in her eyes was a quiet desperation and I kissed her, and I felt her belly contract for a long long long long time, and she nodded up at me and smiled and said, "okay," and I exploded in her with the longest continual convulsions of come I had ever had or have ever had since. I tried not to collapse my weight on top of her, but I did bury my face in her breasts. I started to pull out of her, but she grabbed my ass and held tight.

"No," she said. "Stay in me. I never want to forget what this feels like."We lay there for a long time; maybe a half hour, maybe an hour. I just held her tight, and listened to her breathe, and every so often, I would be overcome by the feeling that something was slipping away, and then I would need to feel her lips on mine, and I would be okay for another few minutes.

After a while, she stirred, and I untangled myself from her so she could get off the kitchen table. She led me by the hand to her bedroom, and we spent the rest of the night in a softer, but no less passionate, location. My memories of that night are more muted and less vivid than the memories of the evening leading up to that night. I remember that I did not sleep at all, because I couldn't stand the thought not being aware of being with her. I remember a moment when she was straddling me on top, her hands on my chest, her breasts bouncing to the rhythm of our love making, and that will always be the image that I wish I could paint, because I could see everything about her at one time that made her so beautiful to me. I remember that we were doing it doggy style, and she asked me if I wanted to fuck her up the ass, but I declined, despite my previous fascination with that erogenous zone. I remember my dick being red and raw the next day, because essentially, if I could get enough blood to it, I had it inside Mom. I remember that early, early, in the morning, after we'd fucked for about the sixth time, my mom said, "Is this what you had in mind when you said you'd be laying in jism, thinking about me?" And then she moved down, and licked my penis clean all of the accumulated pussy juice and semen and sweat, and when she was done it was not all that surprising that she had an erect dick in her mouth. She sucked on if for a few minutes, but moved back up to lay beside me. She held my erection in her hand, and kissed me. "I want to feel you in me again," she whispered, tugging gently. She rubbed my head across her pussy, back and forth, until I pushed inside her, and she breathed in the way she did, and I reached behind her and held that beautiful ass and wished that time would just stop.

We showered together and drove to work the next day. The trip was in total silence, except that she reached for and held my hand the entire time. My dad was home that night, and we resumed our normal roles without any opportunity for closure of what we had experienced.

Sometimes, when we are home on holidays, I see my mother staring absently at a certain spot on the kitchen table, and suspect that she is thinking about the same thing I am thinking. Sometimes, when I kiss her goodbye, we extend it for an extra heartbeat, and remember. Sometimes, I randomly text her, and describe some aspect of her that I like in detail.

And the rest of the time, I just miss her.