The Taboo Folder

He was due home no later than quarter-to-six, which also came and went.

When both hands on the huge Ikea clock showed a single vertical line Louise began to worry. It was February, cold and dark, and he was on a motorbike. She chewed her bottom lip, anxious for her son's safety, but stopped when she realised she would have to carry out repairs with more of the red lipstick she'd chosen for the effect.

Another fifteen minutes and the lipstick had gone. Louise's guts were a churning mess. "Carl," she mumbled, picking up her mobile phone. The time had come to call.

Why hadn't he phoned her?

The device took several seconds to do its thing, signals to masts to Carl's own mobile. Then Louise heard the tone that told her the contact had been made, that Carl's phone would be ringing.

The purr sounded nine times and then rang out, the answerphone option kicking in. Her son's voice: Yeah, hi, this is Carl. I can't answer the phone right now. Leave a message, and if I like you I'll call back.

Louise considered calling Arnie, but supposed that Carl must have left work at the normal time or surely he would have called.

Her eyes went to the clock -- twenty-past six.

Then she heard the grate of a key in the mortise at the front door.

"Mum?" Louise heard. "I'm home."

Epilogue

HIS MOTHER'S clothes lay in a pile on the kitchen tiles. It was a very small pile; insubstantial given the skirt had been little more than a belt, the tee-shirt flimsy. Carl grinned across the table at her, noticing the candlelight reflected in her eyes -- or was that wickedness glinting there?

"How do you feel, darling?" Louise asked, her tone light, head tilted to one side.

She brushed a hand against her cheek, touching the place where his jizm had spattered in a hot rush of liquid, a thick glistening rope of the stuff that had flicked out of his cock and over her skin at her own breathless exhortation.

"You made such a mess earlier."

Carl still felt shy and awkward, the reality of the situation slowly sinking in. It would take time, like moisture permeating through a dense brick, but Carl would come to believe, fully trust that this whole scene wasn't some surreal and very vivid dream. "I'm still not sure, mum," he replied, quickly adding, "I don't mean I'm not sure about ... about..." Carl gestured with a sweep of one arm. "...This being real," he finished.

Louise nodded. "It's strange, isn't it? It's like we know each other but are somehow strangers."

"That's exactly how it is for us, mum," responded Carl. "I mean, we know who we are, but not like this."

"More wine, darling?" Louise asked, rising from her seat at the table. She noticed her son's throat work as he blinked, eyes moving over her nakedness. "It'll help relax you," she purred, pouring the dark liquid.

Carl reached for the glass and took a deep draught. When he replaced the long-stemmed goblet he saw his mother still standing close to his side. "Oh, mum," groaned Carl, his cock thick and hard in his jeans. "It was just like the story. I -- uh -- I can't believe you did that. You actually sucked..." He hesitated, ridiculously reluctant to vocalise the act his mother had performed.

Louise chuckled and took a step closer to her son. Her heels clicked on the tiles. "Just like you described, darling. Now," she added with a purr. "Do you want dinner now, or shall we go up to my bed?"

Carl gulped again, the suggestion and all the promise it contained twisting on a visceral level. "Duh-do you really want to, mum?"

"Dinner or bed?" Louise quipped. She leaned in and tilted her son's face with a forefinger beneath his chin. "Carl," she breathed, her stare locked on his face. "Look at me. I'm naked. You've already come on my face. I sucked the spunk off your cock, babe." Louise's eyes widened as her eyebrows arched. "Trust me, darling; I want it all. I want to feel you inside me. I want you to make tender love to me. After all," Louise grinned and winked, "it is Valentine's Day."

"You really mean it, mum?"

Air hissed through Louise's nostrils. She nodded, her face closing in. "I mean it, Carl. Everything. From now on I'm yours. You can do things to me. You can do all the things you've seen in those clips. I'll be the naughty mother who offers herself to her son. Would you like that, Carl?" she breathed. And in the second before she kissed her son's mouth, Louise added, "Don't you want to fuck mummy's wet cunt?"

The candles smoked dark and greasy after Louise blew them out. The steaks stayed in the fridge, the vegetables went uncooked. But the naked woman led her son upstairs by his hand.