Heart's Hunter

Reader's Note: The following is a long single scene, about 6500 words, written as an excerpt from a "trashy novel" being read by another character as a "story in a story," intended as the opening for a longer work but capable of standing alone. If it is great, the credit goes to my volunteer Editor, Jen Litgirl, and if it is not, the blame rests with me. Please enjoy!

"Katherine," he said in his usual reserved and quiet manner, "I want you to pull off at the next exit."

"Should I pull over right away," I asked in a mildly concerned voice.

"No," he said curtly, "the next exit will do."

Now I was perplexed. Michael was not the sort to be melodramatic or car sick. He was never genuinely disrespectful or unkind but I knew that he resented me. I did not blame him for that I suppose; after all, it was natural for a child to dislike the second wife.

"Are you okay," I asked in a slightly perturbed tone.

"I am very well," he answered almost smug, "I just want to talk to you, Katherine."

Part of me welcomed the opportunity and part of me was rather concerned. He had never allowed me to be maternal towards him in nearly six full difficult years. He insisted on calling me by my first name no matter how his father admonished him, a. And he always said my name as if he were speaking to a servant rather than his step-mother. NowPerhaps now that he was eighteen and poised for adulthood; "perhaps he wanted to reconcile with me," I thought hopeful.

"Okay, Michael," I replied. The next exit was the old rest area they had closed almost two years ago. The buildings were all locked and it offered nothing but a place to pull off and park. "I would love to finally talk to you," I tried to sound cheerful.

In less than a mile and about another minute I saw the desolate exit ramp that no longer bore any sign of welcome. As I lifted my signal lever the blinking light sounded in the cabin and I eased my car off the highway to find a place to park.

"I prefer the end," he said casually.

The whole place was empty, the larger open area for trucks was between the highway and the now dilapidated rest area, the angled car spots were between that and the now overgrown woods that flanked the highway out here.

"Okay," I said dumbly, and drove slowly down to the very end near the exit ramp loop.

Once parked, I turned to look at him and wondered if I should start or just wait for him.

"Katherine," he said slowly, in a low masculine voice that reminded me of his father, "I have something very important to ask you;" he paused for a breath, "and discuss with you."

"Yes, Michael," I said sort of relieved but feeling my apprehension for the unknown.

"Do you know why I asked to go to your church with you yesterday?"

"I can guess," I started, "but I don't know why actually."

"Do you remember your wedding there," he asked sort of melancholy.

"Of course I do," I answered.

It was the same church his deceased mother had attended. Like me, she was Roman Catholic, his father was an Episcopalian, and I had insisted we marry in my Church rather than at the one he barely attended anyway.

"I was very mad at you then," he said more steely.

"I know, Michael," I was at a loss for any more words.

"There is a lot I would like to say to you," he interrupted my thoughts, "but I want you to know that I no longer hate you."

My eyes began to well with my first tears and I knew I would begin to cry.

"I am truly sorry for how I have hurt you in the past," he continued, "for hating you so deeply."

The big tears in my blurry eyes broke and started to flow down my cheeks. I used my fingers to wipe at my cheeks and then my eyes as I tried to stem the flow of my tears.

"But I was convinced that you were nothing but a gold-digging whore and that you never truly loved Father," he continued now matter-of-factly.

His words stung me, as I still wept. Of course I felt angered, yet sorry too, and relieved by his youthful honesty.

"I assumed you had Nicholas to trap him and that you were certain to divorce him as soon as you figured out how to get his money," he added coldly.

As I cried, I clamored for words and understanding. But just as I started to tell him that I loved his father, speaking out the word "I" and the first letters of "love," he interrupted me.

"Please do not speak yet," he said in the tone of a command.

Stunned, my mouth hung open and my eyes searched his for more meaning.

"I want you to see something first," he said in a flat tone, reaching into his coat. He took out an envelope and handed it to me. "Please open it."

Reluctantly I took it and used my index finger to tear open the envelope. Inside were two sheets of folded paper; one a full-page print of a picture and the other text. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, I could not believe what I was reading, and when I opened the picture I was whip-sawed by horror and grief.

Michael saw her face almost literally go completely pale as she read the log of her chat messaging. "Oh my god," was the scream that her expression uttered plainly on her face.

"Where did you get this," my mind formed the words but I had utterly no voice to speak it out loud to him now.

"Tell meslut," Michael emphasized the word, "does your pussy still quiver when you think of those pictures?"

His words mocked something I said in that conversation. "Pictures," I screamed inwardly. And I knew he had them all, the rest of the filthy chatting I had so eagerly and foolishly played along with during my brief and illicit affair. "Oh dear god no" my brain screamed in agony.

Michael showed absolutely no emotion when I finally looked at him. My palms were sweating, my heart was suddenly beating a hundred times a minute and I felt ready to literally faint, collapse into a ball and just die.

Michael enjoyed how her breasts were rising and falling to the rhythm of her panicked breathing. Beneath her cream sweater he could see the shape of her and he admired her beauty, the long seductive form of her body, her stunning good looks, her long natural blonde hair, the feminine shape to her body, the curve of her breasts and hips, those long legs and stunning blue eyes that sparkled like sapphires.

Seeing her tears and how her mascara had begun to run filled him with an oddly arousing sensation of pleasure, but seeing her pinned like a helpless butterfly on her own infidelity was the thing that actually stirred him sexually. It was true that he did not hate her, in fact he loved her in a way, but never as a mother or the wife of his father; no, she had proven she was none of those things at all really. She was just hopelessly "sinful" as she would say in her now obvious hypocrisy.

Michael had stumbled over the chat logs when she had left her email open. She did not realize that the software logs you into your messenger automatically and that it records everything into memory. In them, near the end of her affair was the login and password for a picture sharing site and there he found almost two dozen pictures of her naked at what he surmised was her lover's house. A few were of her posing in slutty clothes, lingerie or naked, but a few were of them having sex or just after. Lurid images of her, obviously wanton and sexual, so very different from her familiar to her prim, proper and conservative persona.

Disgustingly all I could do was remember my affair, no matter how desperately I wanted to forget it. I had deleted everything and tried to erase it all from my mind. But the one picture before my eyes forced it all to tumble right back into my mind as if I was reliving it again. And the black-and-white text spurred me to think suddenly again of all those wicked conversations and how despicable I must seem with those ugly things recorded without feeling or context.

"Now," he interrupted my thoughts, "what do I do with you?"

A long terrible silence formed and hung in the air between us. I could no longer look at him and my eyes fell to my lap. I could no longer cry, I could barely breath, and my throat closed tight, dry and suddenly sore as if I had been screaming myself hoarse.

"I will do anything," I wept quietly.

My marriage was over! My entire world was crushed in this instant. My husband was wealthy and I was the mother of a young child, and in almost every way I lived a perfect life in gilded luxury and high status.

"Please give me the pictures," I begged, "forget this and forgive me." And I began crying again now, deeply and painfully.

Michael watched as she slumped forward and buried her face in her hands, he heard her sobbing and felt genuine sympathy for her, he had hoped she would just be a bitch about it or something. She just sobbed for a long time like that until finally she seemed to stop the weeping sounds.

All I could do was weep after a while and then I had no more tears at all.

"Please stop crying," he said gently, "here," he added.

Between my opening fingers I saw him handing me a handkerchief. He always carried one, his initials monogrammed in the corner.

"Thank you," I weakly responded.

Taking it, I patted my swollen eyes and wiped the trail of tears from my flushed cheeks. Finally, I wiped the wetness from my nose and tried to smile.

Michael had read the messages, every single one was recorded in a log by her computer; only those she had conducted on her phone or another computer were missing. There were plenty of gaps but what he had printed was damning enough. He knew a great deal about her inner thoughts, fantasies and feelings. He knew her reasons for cheating and had read the explicit banter she had typed to both confess things and be seductive for her lover. He had read the end of the affair too. Michael forgave her in a way, but he also knew how it would devastate his Father. The man loved her, he knew it, and it had taken him years to understand that. But he knew how he himself would hate any woman who said and did the things he knew she had done. He was angry at her for that, aSword of Damoclesshe had placed over his Father's heart with her affair; the revelation of it would hurt him deeply.

"Please Michael," I begged again, "tell me what you want."

He said nothing. Again he left me in agonizing silence. He just looked at me without feeling in his expression, letting me suffer in that silence, tormented by my own misbehavior and weakness, tortured by the images and recollections I actively suppressed in my head. "What does he want?"

Michael was only partly surprised at her response. In the matter of minutes, his desirable step-mother was already offering "anything" for the return of the pictures and such. He thought to himself that she must really be stupid. How could she believe that anyone would simply return the stuff? Just forget everything? But in fact he had no thoughts of how to respond, he wanted nothing from her, only to understand her.

"Why?" He thought over and over when he had discovered her terrible secret. "Perhaps I should demand she leave?" He had thought and rejected that already. "How it would hurt Father," he recalled his thoughts. "Should you confess to him, beg his forgiveness, not mine?"

"Fix your mascara," he said in a voice like a daddy to a little girl.

Looking into the rear-view mirror, I cleaned my runny mascara and touched it up with my fingertip, silently whispering in my own thoughts: "You are such an idiot, you are so totally fucked!"

"I think you are going to have to work really hard to keep me from sharing what I know with Father," he said casually, the first thought that came to mind actually.

"Michael," I mustered my words, took a deep breath: "I will do anything you want."

Michael listened to her every word, watched her lips move to speak them, heard the pause and her inhale after saying his name, and he was surprised by how sexy her voice sounded and how seductive the words felt as he listened carefully to her soft feminine voice.

"Anything," he said curiously.

Michael saw her as she was right now, not as she had been these six years since his Mother had died and his Father remarried her. Katherine was a physically beautiful woman, but had always been rather conservative for such a young woman. He knew she was only thirty-one, but to him that was still "old.," She could dress comely enough, even sexily, but mostly she wore casual dress, often just jeans and looked very "Soccer Mom" like mostly;, like many of the other older women in the neighborhood.

"Anything," he had said.
I had done "anything" when I seduced his Father. I was twenty-four and his new personal secretary. I had struggled to go to a better college and learn to be prim and proper and conservative. I was "born again virgin," and had cast off my wild past to have a good job and find a better husband. I grabbed my chance to marry into this very wealthy family, no matter how cliché that everyone treated me as just a "trophy wife" and whispered about the timing of my son's birth.

"I know what a man, especially a young man wants," I thought ominously.

"I want to unbutton your sweater and look at those beautiful breasts of yours," he said with carefully controlled lust in his voice.

"You have got to be kidding," I desperately tried to laugh light heartedly.

"I am very serious now," he said with iron conviction in his voice.

"Please Michael," I tried to dissuade him "you shouldn't ask such a thing."

"Just a little look," he said more innocently yet his eyes were just as adamant.

"I can't," I wanted to cry again but my eyes were suddenly dry, "please don't do this."

"I just want to see them for myself," he sounded harmless just then, more like a boy again.

"Then will you be reasonable," I asked rather naively.

Without answering he leaned closer and I watched almost completely helplessly as his hand moved to the top button of my high necked sweater. Scared, I was unable to move or speak as I watched his fingers unbutton the first button. The next button opened my neck to his view, and the third opened the neck to show the tops of my breasts in my bra.

"Please," I whispered, hoping my hands would actually move to stop him or cover myself.

His eyes looked directly down and I knew that he could see the top of my bra, the deep décolletage formed by it with my breasts. Thankfully he stopped and just admired my breasts, and I hoped he might be satisfied.

"Enough," I managed to pleadingly ask of him.

He just shook his head and I knew that he wanted to more fully expose my breasts. He unbuttoned another button and another until he had my sweater fully open.

"You shouldn't," I murmured.

He ignored my plea and he slowly pulled the sweater from the waist of my skirt. Of course I knew that he wanted my sweater off. Passively, I just let him, as my heart raced.

"I want to see you in just your bra," he told me softly; his hands already had my top off of my shoulders as he spoke.
Shamefully, being undressed in the cool car made my nipples stiffen and disgusted with myself, like two stigmata my nipples poked beneath my almost see-through lace bra visibly.
"Magnificent," he said to himself.

That was so deeply humiliating, to know how he now admired my breasts. I knew that he must have looked at me in swimwear by our pool or on the boat, perhaps when I wore other clothes that were just a little too clinging or revealing. Feeling exposed and desired for my tits, I felt powerless, yet that did not slacken the tightness of my nipples or the racing beats of my heart.

"Unfasten your bra and show me your breasts."

I shook my head to refuse but saw the insistent look in his eyes. Knowing no way to get out of the situation, I then leaned forward and felt my sweater fall between me and my seat as I reached around to unfasten the clasp of my bra. I could no longer look at him as I undid the hooks and let the bra fall free of my breasts. Even with the heater running I felt the coolness of the air tingle over my breasts and reassured myself that was why my nipples were getting fully erect, achingly hard.

As the bra fell from my breasts, I heard the click of his phone taking a picture.

"Why did you do that," I said angrily, snapped out of my trance.

"Relax," he said innocently, "I want to remember this."

As shocked as I was, I thought he had already seen this and more, and then hoped that it meant he would be satisfied with a few randy pictures and we could put this behind us shortly.

"Please delete it," I tried to sound resolute, angry and demanding but not too much to actually upset him.

"No," he said flatly, "I will take as many as I want, you don't seem to mind it one bit really."

Verbally he had slapped me as certainly as if he had used his hand. It stung right to my core as I instantly thought of the dozens of pictures my lover had taken of me during our affair. He had promised to delete them, and we had fought when he put many of the worst on a site to show me how much I loved the sex with him. Thankfully he finally deleted those, and I was then certain that all would be forgotten. But cursedly now my step-son had pictures of my lustful ways and knew my exhibitionist fetish, how pictures both frighten and arouse me.

"What a filthy sinful whore you are," I berated myself.

Michael could see her near perfect breasts rise and fall with her every breath. He was not that talented by a mere look, but he knew her bra size was a perfect thirty-six "C" from looking at her underwear in the laundry. He had of course seen many pictures of nude women and some of hers now, in comparison, Katherine's breasts looked as ideal as any in any girlie-magazine or talked of by his friends.

Admiring them, he thought they were wonderfully shaped, a nice curve from below up to her nipples and a graceful sweeping curve back to her chest. Each breast sat apart and seemed to point both upward and outward, like her nipples sat in the center of a circular areola that were a darker shade of pastel pink, her nipples almost a reddish pink. And now her nipples looked perfectly hard too. He had seen them poking through her swimsuit or shirt on occasion, and when he saw them in her bra just a moment before, he knew he had to see them completely and they looked even better like this, exposed.

"May I touch them?"

Stupefied, lost in my own troubled thoughts, I mindlessly nodded my consent for some utterly unfathomable reason.

As if in slow motion, his fingertip reached out and touched the nipple closest to him. A shiver ran down my spine. Instantly both nipples swelled unbelievably firmer still, unmistakably with arousal now and to my dread the electric shiver pulsed straight in between my legs. Softly he felt my nipple with a gentle curious pinch, yet firm enough that I could not ignore that he was feeling how my nipple blatantly swelled and filled to meet his pinch. As he slightly twisted my nipple first this way and then back, my wanton pussy began to moisten and I shamefully forced my legs tighter together to try to contain my dirty lust down there.

My eyes stared down and away. I just could not look at him because of the embarrassment I felt. "How many times have you let a boy or man feel your tits, slut," I thought to myself.

"Put your hands over your head," he instructed me in a now dominant tone.

Now I knew he would take another picture of my high flaunted tits, but I could only obey and as I did so I saw how pleased he was with my image in his eyes. I had seen the same look in my lover's eyes, and shamefully I felt suddenly hotter between my legs and knew my wetness was now building in my panties.

"Your breasts are truly magnificent," he flattered me sincerely.