Reliving A Forbidden Love
1
Lothar stepped soundlessly over the highly polished floor, his mother Harriet yet to notice him drawing near. She sat at the breakfast bar, her shoulders hunched, and swirled the contents of a glass around as if in time with her thoughts. He loved the sight of her long greying blonde hair, the grace in her movements and how that silk nightgown shaped her. If she was cold, or the chill air of the room affected her, Harriet did not show it.
'Mother...Harriet?' he asked hesitantly, controlling the urge to touch her bare shoulder and startle her. 'Are you okay, I understand what made you do it?'
She turned on the barstool and answered him sharply. 'Do you, because I don't! Letting go and with you was one thing, but with Andreas? You shouldn't have seen that.'
'I know, but I understand. We agreed to let go of what we found when life was tough for you.'
'During your father's illness and before his death? It's still difficult for me, and even more so after what happened, yesterday.' She sipped on her drink but met his look upon her. Harriet soon clutched the hand that he held out to her and drew her favoured son to her side. 'What I did with Andreas was natural, but...but I couldn't undo what happened with you and the sharing of forbidden comfort and company before your father left us. I felt so low at the time, took advantage of you and what you felt for me.'
'I wanted and understood the reasons for everything that we did, so don't go blaming yourself,' Lothar replied, finding his mother's use of words only too correct.
She nodded and rested her head against his chest as Lothar stood behind her. She met his stilled gaze as he looked down at her, took in what her nightdress failed to fully conceal from his gaze. Dismayed, she knew again what lay behind those eyes. It was and had been so wrong what she had conceded to with him, her twenty year old son, the turmoil in their lives affecting his studies at the local university in Heidelberg.
'I'm sorry that you should have seen us, but I thought you were going to stay with Lisa and not come back home.'
'We just met up with others and went for a drink. We're friends, I'm not starting up a relationship with her again.' Lothar paused, could not keep from taking in how his mother's breasts shaped the thin nightgown that she wore, the lacy straps on her bare shoulders and the lace frill at the neckline revealing her cleavage. The wayward gnaw of desire for the woman claimed him once more as he stroked her skin with both hands.
'You can't be jealous of him, of Andreas, can you?'
'I don't know what to feel or think about that,' he answered sullenly and sought to move away from her, but she gripped his hands and took them slowly until she pressed them against the tumble of her breasts. Lothar gasped in dismay at what she had done. 'You don't have to make it up to me.'
'Don't I? How you are with me now makes me think that I do, darling.'
He heard her soft gasp as he squeezed and felt their weight. He was possessively dismayed by the thought that someone else had touched her in these ways. 'I understand what made you do it...'
She met the press of his lips to her cheeks, avoided Lothar's kiss to her mouth. 'Do you, really?' I just needed a moment's comfort from him...from Andreas,' she whispered, looking into his eyes and seeking his reaction. Her son would know that she was not the promiscuous sort, yet even she had fallen from grace by sleeping with him, his devotion to her and what she was going through in the final days of his father's life no excuse.
'I said that I understand...'
'He came to the house to see how I was. Your father's brother, your uncle. He has been a help to us all in dealing with your father's testament. I didn't know he would do what he asked of me and...and that I succumbed to. He's kept hidden his feelings for me and I felt guilty for other reasons and that you know of, my darling.'
'You wanted to forget what we did?' he prompted sullenly.
She reached up to touch his face, her look soft and understanding, 'Perhaps, but it wasn't the comfort I wanted to find, somehow.'
Lothar felt his mother shake. He knew only too well what was at work in her, his presence a reminder of how their relationship had changed. She kept his embrace to her, wrapped her fingers with his and kept their hands to her body. He loved to feel her warmth, to breathe in what remained of her preferred scent, to see the woman that she was to his eyes.
'You still want to find a way through, but only with me?' he asked, pressing his lips to her hair and feeling her nod.
'Is it any crazier than what I did with Andreas? I'm impatient and I'm no good at living on my own.'
'You're not...living on your own.'
'You know what I mean!'
She said it as she turned on her seat and Lothar soon stood between her parted thighs. Harriet did not resist as he drew the skirt of her nightdress up until he could caress the warm skin of her slender legs. He felt her hands move under his T-shirt, then under the rim of his lounge pants that he slept in. She caressed his hips before she found him, could not help but shiver on feeling his state of arousal.
'You already know what your touches will do to me,' he told her on halting breaths, 'even though I know that we said we wouldn't go there again,' he murmured, now bending to kiss her, slowly and then deeply.
'Feelings have changed,' she answered through his slow kisses.
'And I've stayed true to you...also had counselling to help me with bereavement and on losing father. But comfort also comes by being with you, wrong as it is and has been. It's become a drug, an intoxicating drug that...that seeing you now, in your nightie, only makes real. I've said nothing on any of that.'