1

Linda felt her daughter’s arm go around her waist and she chose to grip the hand that Becky offered. She did so to stop it trembling as she met her girl’s troubled look. It drifted from her to the man in their lives, Deryck Owens, a devoted husband and stepfather who was to be seen studiously cleaning the swimming pool, the suction house drifting over the azure blue water, the pole gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Their Florida home, set among lagoons and stands of palm trees, was one of the few to have survived the worst ravages of a recent storm. Deryck wasn’t the kind of man to take risks when a solution was to be found, and a little more paid, to buy what passed for peace of mind.

They each saw the frown of concentration on his lean, unshaven face, how methodically he worked, and the slow steps that he took over the poolside slabs. His white beach shirt hung open and was seen flapping on the sea breeze, the fabric’s color stark against his tanned skin; the evident strength, in his toned arms and legs, and Deryck’s greying chest hair. They were all seen to belong to a man who looked after himself despite the long hours that he worked. A home gym saw to his fitness and kept him in shape. It also served to sweat away stress so that his life with them was not always dominated by his concerns for his business interests when he was away from them.

‘He seems lost,’ Becky ventured, her voice barely audible.

‘He’s got a lot on his mind  about the business and holding onto that.’ Linda brushed her daughter’s hair away from her face as she met a tired and strained look.

‘And about what happened yesterday and last night? Did he say anything to you about that?’

‘Yes, but we won’t speak about it until he comes back in for breakfast with us.’

‘Or we go out to him! I want to be with Deryck more than ever now!’ Becky retorted, her voice breaking as she saw the object of their attention, and her raging affection for him, stop and gaze at the house as if Deryck knew that he was being spoken of. ‘You understand, don’t you? Last night, and all that happened, has changed everything for me, for all of us.’

‘As far as it goes, as far as it can go, darling, as you’ll soon realize,’ Linda answered with more consideration in her voice than she felt. She too took to looking at Deryck as he walked towards them. At least she’d been there and been the one to calm him down, in circumstances neither of them could have foreseen or planned.

♥

Deryck waved to them, even though he could only see their shadowy outlines in the kitchen window, the slatted blinds open. He had sensed that mother and daughter were looking out at him as he cleaned the pool, early as it was on another warm morning. Linda and Becky were so alike in appearance and yet so very different in their natures.

Becky had it all to do and live out; Linda had gotten through tough times following abandonment and a wrecking divorce, but her passion for life, and him, remained undimmed and they had grown stronger together and made a home for them all. Clarke, her son from that failed marriage, was living away and at college and he rarely came back to what they still called ‘home.’ He looked on that otherwise.

Both his women had blonde hair, bleached fairer by the Florida sun, but Linda’s was tidier than Becky’s, and they each wore it long, Linda’s tucked behind her ears and kept in place by the arms of her sunglasses; shields that she was rarely seen without. Becky’s hair was pushed back and held in a jeweled grip and allowing everyone to see her pretty oval face and bright, innocent, soft blue eyes.

He did not know why he should think of it, even after all that had happened recently, and particularly last night, but they were both blessed with fulsome, large-breasted figures, slender waists and legs, broad hips, and easy ways of walking that betrayed a bubbly personality. In his Linda, there lived an only too passionate heart and he never refused her advances, the soft slide of her fingers and scrape of her varnished pink fingernails, as she caressed his neck and drew his attention back to her. When Linda did that, it set his pulse racing as he thought of what she had on her mind and was unafraid to let him know of; whether he was at work in his home office, or in the small house gym at the back of the garage, or when they were in the pool and alone, Becky off somewhere with friends.

In her voluptuous, not fleshy, body there burned a passionate and caring heart, and Linda kept the temperature in that part of their relationship close to the boil, tempered only when in the company of others and even her daughter, Becky.

The girl of nineteen, a young woman really as he knew and saw only too well now, was clever but un-worldly, and that came as surprise to him and Linda. Young folks were bombarded with info, explicit imagery, films, texts, and links that left them wondering whether the real joys of life and love, needed no discovery but were only to be absorbed, copied, and imitated and in the process left no emotional connection.

‘You learned in the hardest way, darling Becky,’ he sighed, ‘and I had to show you the other side to all that could have happened last night.’

The pool cleaning equipment had been stored away at his own pace, even as he sensed that their eyes remained on him. He would not be rushed, though he needed his breakfast and to be in the company once more of his two ‘lovelies’. In Becky’s case, the word had taken on a whole new meaning, and it was a situation that he had yet to come to terms with, just as Linda had to do.

Together, they had helped Becky deal with a situation that could so easily have turned ugly. In dealing with it, he’d taken and landed a few punches, hauled a crying young woman out of the melee that had ensued. She’d remained ‘clean’ and her refusal to play, as some guys and one fellow student in particular, wanted from her, had set everything off.

And then consolation and comfort had taken the three of them to a place they had not been in before. He wondered, as the kitchen door was pulled open before he reached it, where their lives together would now go.

‘Hold me, just hold me!’ Becky cried out, running to him in her bare feet as Deryck met Linda’s understanding smile, then a pouted kiss.

He couldn’t put from his mind just how easy it had been to fall into these new and only too-permissive ways with each other. It had been a behavior that was far from being habitual pleasure where it concerned Becky, as it sure did now.

‘I’ll always do that, be here for you, darling, and you should know that by now,’ he smiled tenderly, looking down into her upturned face. His chino beach shorts kept his girl from knowing the full effect that she again had on him as he met an improbable kiss to his mouth and before Becky clung to him.

♥

Becky knew that what he had told her was the truth, although it had become far from simple to hear the words, ‘be here for you’.

The college party, with people she had thought to count on as friends, had wrecked her, guys thinking they could come onto her and see what happened with the girl who kept it to herself. She’d never seen anything wrong in wanting the right guy to show her how it went, to share in a loving act and not a meaningless fuck, a word used so often, by so many, that it scarcely registered.

She sure wasn’t prim. She was particular, that was all, and her mom, Linda, had set that notion firmly in her heart and mind. She’d met and loved Deryck, so the mantra sure settled in her receptive mind on seeing them together, once being unable to sleep and hearing how they were loving as she passed their room.

And then, last night and when her bedroom felt stuffy and seemed to be closing her in with her memories, she’d lain naked on the covers and had smoothed her fingers over her belly and between her parted thighs and repeated what had been done to her. She’d felt her breasts, brushed her tender nipples until they were hard nubs and she’d tugged on them just as his lips had done, the act sending hot rushes through her body and making her cunny flush with wetness that her fingers couldn’t stop.

Deryck had shown her how it could be, just to feel his touches to her body setting off the tingling sensations between her legs that his tongue and lips had also brought. He’d licked her out, flickered his tongue over her labia and into her cunny in ways she had never known of; her naked body respected by his kisses and touches, his soft words asking if she was okay with what was happening and that she wanted him to continue.

And then he’d asked her to touch his penis. She had never touched something so long, thick, and erect. She had not agreed to pursue such ways with the boys she’d been with. On Deryck, a man she cared for so much, it trembled but soon began to jerk as he encouraged her to slide her fingers over its length, to lick the glistening tip with her tongue and then over its sides. She had soon done what she’d seen her Mom perform on him one hot afternoon as they lay by the pool and hadn’t heard her come home earlier than she’d said she would.

Her Mom, Linda, had been in on what had happened from the moment they had gotten home last night, the weather balmy and threatening rain. They had all gone for a swim, the mood so sparky that all inhibitions were cast aside. What her fingers had often brought on had been replaced by Deryck’s love wand, she writhing under him as they lay on the mats, the stars bright in the night sky above them, when the clouds parted, and Deryck making a woman of her. He had loved and not hurt her; he had shown consideration for her and only let go, really let go, when she’d told him to and with Linda looking on.

It had become a night of delirious and reckless madness, of unsheathed loving, something that Linda had made sure would have no consequences; just as her troubles with one guy at the party had been guarded against. The pill would keep her safe, no matter who was finally allowed to find her.

It had been Deryck, her true and deliciously horny man, who’d become her lover and teacher. Derryck, whom she would not be able to let go of so easily, despite what her Mom kept saying. Linda kept intruding on her memories of how it had gone and how her body had convulsed from her orgasm, maybe more of them. She’d become so lost, her body spasming in hitherto unknown pleasure that she couldn’t remember if she’d had one or many.

Linda touched her girl’s shoulder, intent on having her release the hold she had on Deryck.

‘Let him go, now, darling…let him go,’ she heard her mother say, again, and her memories of last night were broken into. ‘Deryck and I decided that we’d help you through. We don’t want you to get hurt again, so what happened may help prepare you.’

What had happened had defied everything that had gone before between them, she and Deryck being complicit in everything that had been discovered and then pursued. She had wanted her girl to learn of it with a caring man and not some faceless and forgettable young man she might meet at parties she went to or came into her small circle of friends.

‘It did let him go, and it has helped me, and it will help me again.’ Becky felt Deryck slowly ease out of her embrace, felt the lightest of touches to her face as if to show her that he understood what was at work in her only too well. ‘I didn’t want what happened with you to end.’

She blurted it out, had confessed to what it had meant to her, and now saw Deryck look away and at Linda, She sensed her mother’s sigh escape over her parted lips as she nodded slowly.

‘That’s what Deryck said too, later, when you’d gone up to your room and we stayed by the pool a while longer.’

‘Loved a whole lot longer, you mean.’

The way they looked back at her needed no words, but she had become a part of the mix that was still to be their lives together. What had happened between them could never be undone and she wondered where the shared experiences would take them.

2

Linda’s car keys rattled on the kitchen top, thrown there by Becky. ‘I’m going out as you suggested, Mom. Thanks for letting me use your car, I appreciate it.’

Linda nodded as she came to her daughter’s side. Impulsively, she brushed her girl’s hair back from her face, the usual grip either forgotten or her appearance reflecting Becky’s rebellious mood. White slacks and a long-sleeved denim blouse flattered her girl’s figure. A woven tan leather belt cinched her waist tight, the loose end hanging down. She wondered whether to say anything about what the sight reminded her of.

‘Don’t be angry with us, darling will you? We all need some space after all that’s happened. We wanted to be of some help, but not to make you think that we’d make a habit of what we did, or you and Deryck especially.’

‘I can’t just take it as something that happened and move on. It means so much to me!’ Becky flared before sighing. ‘I know what you’re saying.’

‘And I understand that if we just move on it’s no better than what Deryck saved you from.’

‘Precisely!’ Becky flared again; her mood only too brittle. ‘Deryck’s still working is he, even if it’s a Saturday and it should be time off time?’

‘You know him.’

‘I thought I did,’ Becky sniffed, her subdued mood now becoming clear. ‘I’m not promising I’ll be gone for long. Sandra said she’d be in but had plans that won’t include me.’

‘We’ll be here as we’ve made no plans. We can decide on something for the evening when you’re back and if I persuade your father…I mean Deryck, to stop working and spend some time with both of us. Okay?’

Becky put her hands on Linda’s shoulders and bent her head until it touched her mother’s. ‘Yeah, that will be okay. I’m sorry for how I am. Things, so many emotional things, have been turned over. It must be hard for you, me feeling what I do for Deryck now. I’m intruding on your life with him, aren’t I?’

‘Perhaps, but it’s another strand in the weave that makes our lives together so special and different,’ Linda smiled ruefully, choosing to speak her mind. She’d seen how tender Deryck had been with her as Becky was overwhelmed by the waves of her orgasm, how she had clung to him, her pretty face contorted with the newly discovered pleasure that he had brought. Her daughter wasn’t the only one to be in a new place in life and they all had to find the time, even the words, to take in just what had happened to bring them all to where they now found themselves. ‘Now go and be careful!’

‘I have even more reasons for that now,’ Becky shrugged. With a deft sweep of her hand over the worktop she took the car keys and, on a backward glance, skipped away and out of sight.

♥

Deryck stood at the window of his home office and looked down into the yard. He had seen Becky drive away from the house and turned again to look at a favored photograph of the two of them together, mother and daughter, taken the previous summer. She had so much of her mother’s looks, what she brought to the eye, even down to how her straw-blonde hair was naturally parted in a ragged line, to the left, and was kept clear of her smiling face; its long oval shape, slender nose, and high forehead so much like Linda’s.

He’d bonded with the happy-go-lucky girl, who had then been ten years of age when he’d begun seeing Linda some ten years ago. The divorce had taken its toll on them and her oldest child, Clark, but he’d moved on and it hadn’t been long before he and Linda had become a couple, lovers, parents in all but name to Rebecca, or Becky as she wanted to be called and only used, so Linda had told him after he had come into their lives.

He had watched the pubescent girl become a captivating, if still innocent, young woman going on twenty. What she brought to the eye would fire the imagination and hormones of any young man, but the young woman was far from easy and her distress the previous evening had gotten through, even to him, on something that Linda would usually have dealt with on her own.

And then, oh Jeez!

How he’d loved to feel Becky’s young, slicked heat around him as he claimed and loved her; kept from crushing her as he took her virginity, Becky’s inexperience such a turn-on that it had brought to him a long, gut-wrenching, ball breaking and draining orgasm that even Linda had become worried for her girl.

Thinking of the young woman, who was all but flesh and blood to him,...