Megan Hart: An Erotic Collection Volume 2

Dan, on the other hand, had no doubts about his ability to charm my mother. I watched them through the kitchen door before I went in. He poured her coffee and offered her the creamer. He was talking about something, his hands waving, and she watched him, nodding. I might have been jealous if I really wanted her to like me as much as she liked him, but thankfully I’d managed to get past yearning for that.

“…rip out the floor and put in hardwood.”

Ah. He was telling her about his grand plans to renovate the house. Dan talked a lot about what he wanted to do. I talked a lot about how much it would cost. We usually found a compromise.

“Elle.” My mother looked up from her coffee. “You’re home.”

I bit my tongue on the sarcastic “duh” that wanted to come out. “Hi, Mom.”

Dan came to kiss and hug me. “How was the shower?”

“Fine.” I wanted some coffee and helped myself.

“Shower? What shower?”

“My friend Marcy is having a baby,” I said.

“How lucky for her mother,” my mother said. “She must be thrilled to become a grandmother.”

Dead silence filled the kitchen. I glanced at Dan, but he was getting ready to flee. My husband is a smart man.

“Mom,” I said mildly, turning with my cup in my hand. “You’re a grandma, too.”

“I’ve got some…stuff…to do…in the place….” Dan said, and exited the kitchen before my mother could reply.

“I need a cigarette,” my mother said. “Come outside with me.”

I’d learned to pick my battles. I went outside. My mother lit up at once, smoking and looking out over our small backyard. I waited for her to talk.

“He sent me a picture of her.”

“Her name is Leah, Mom. She’s adorable.”

My mother glanced at me sideways and blew twin streams of smoke from her nose. “I know you think I’m being awful. But I just can’t, Ella. I just…”

“Oh, why not?” I asked, weary of her drama. “Because she’s black? Because he’s gay? What the hell is your problem, Mother, really?”

“Because I’m not sure how to be a grandmother!” she cried in a thin, high voice nothing like her usual one. Her hand shook as she stabbed out her cigarette and lit another.

I couldn’t speak at first, not until I’d swallowed some coffee. “I thought you wanted to be a grandma. God knows you keep dropping hints about it.”

“It would be different with you.”

“How would it be different?” I demanded.

My mother looked at me. “You are my daughter. It’s different with a mother and a daughter, that’s all.”

I hardly thought our relationship qualified, but I didn’t say that. Sometimes the things we most want to say are the ones that should never be said. “She’s just a little girl, Mom. All you have to do is…all you have to do is love her.”

I was horrified at the way my throat closed on those words and at the burning of tears in my eyes. “Just love her.”

We stared at each other for what felt like a very long time while my mother’s cigarette burned to ash in her fingers, unsmoked.

“I don’t know if I can.” Her words came out low and soft and naked. “I just don’t know if I can.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure she could, either.

“You should try.”

How had the tables turned? How had I become the one who knew what should be done and how to do it? How had my mother become the child needing to be taught?

“Maybe we could…go see them together,” she said after another long, long minute. “Would you go with me?”

She had asked, not demanded. I couldn’t remember if she’d ever asked me to do anything in my entire life. And though we never touched, I reached for my mother’s hand.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’ll go with you.”

* * *

My period had come and gone. I stared at the plastic compact in my hand. Today I was supposed to take the first of this month’s pills. I hadn’t decided if I was going to.

“Elle, are you coming?”

“Just a minute.” I punched the pill from the foil but didn’t swallow it.

I’d just finished my nightly shower and as usual the mirror had steamed over. My hair hung in wet tendrils on my cheeks. The towel I’d tucked around my chest hit me only at midthigh and wasn’t much in favor of staying on. When Dan poked his head into the bathroom and I turned to face him, it fell down.

“Nice view.” He grinned.

I grabbed it with the hand not clutching the pill. “Ha ha.”

He came in, naked and unconcerned with his nudity. He reached for the towel and yanked it with a grin. We tussled over it. I didn’t fight too hard. I was naked in a minute.

Dan put his hand between my legs as he looked into my eyes. “Hello.”

“You,” I said, “are a perv.”

His brows raised. “Why? Because all I can think about right now is eating that sweet pussy until you scream?”

His dirty talk made me giggle even though it turned me on, too. “I hear you talking, but I don’t see you on your knees.”

He dropped at once, so fast I let out a startled cry. He kissed me, hot breath stealing over my flesh and parting my legs. I took a step back until my rear hit the countertop.

“Is this better?” he murmured against my flesh.

Whatever witty comment I’d planned got lost as his tongue came out to taste me. I put a hand on his head, my fingers threading through his hair. It had grown long, needed a cutting, but it was perfect for grabbing.

He opened my thighs with his hands and found my clit with his lips and tongue. I could see his cock in his fist if I tilted my head just right, but I found it hard to concentrate on anything but the pleasure sweeping through me. I settled for putting my other hand on his shoulder and letting the smooth rise and fall tell me how fast and hard he was stroking.

My head tipped back as I lost myself in the sensation of his hot, wet mouth on my hot, wet cunt. When he added a finger, then two, inside me, I cried out. It sometimes took me too long to come this way, and sometimes I didn’t like it at all, but not tonight. Tonight it was all I could do not to ride his face and hand…well, I’ll admit it. I did.

His soft moans and the steady, slick sound of his cock pumping in his fist encouraged me. He licked me and I rocked my hips to press my clit closer on his tongue.

I was going to come. He was going to come. Best of all, there was absolutely, positively no way I was going to get pregnant this way.

He got there before I did. He let out that certain groan-moan-sigh I knew so well. I smelled him, that familiar scent. My orgasm ripped through me and the world spun. I took a breath, then another, gasping.

When I opened my eyes, Dan was looking up at me with a cat-got-the-cream grin. He got to his feet and kissed me. I put my arms around him, hugging him tight.

“I love you,” he said and kissed my mouth again before turning on the shower. I heard him whistling, jaunty, when he got under the spray, and I envied him the nature that made everything so swiftly eased.

I turned to the mirror again and saw my face, flushed, before the steam once again covered the glass. I’d had my fingers closed tight and the sting in my palm made me open my hand. The pill still lay within, half-dissolved, and I stared at it before I brought my hand to my mouth and licked it clean.

* * *

When my father was alive, my mother had thrown a gala Christmas party every year. We children had been banished upstairs while the grown-ups ate and drank and smoked and played cards. It was a party for adults, never us. I remembered peeking through the banister to watch my mother, dressed as always in a perfectly matching outfit, her hair and makeup immaculate. The perfect hostess. I had grown up thinking that was what a woman should be. What a mother should be.