Chapter 5: Summer Ends

Mason and Lisa took the Uber from the airport. Richard couldn't make it due to a last-minute call. Mason was a little relieved. He wasn't sure how he felt meeting his father. 

Mason sat behind the driver with his duffel bag wedged between his knees, watching the suburbs scroll past like a life he'd left behind a hundred years ago, although it was just a few weeks ago. Lisa sat beside him, close enough that their thighs touched, but it felt like a canyon between them. Lisa was texting, probably Val, confirming they'd landed, her thumbs moving fast. Not someone who, a few hours ago, had been fucking her son and her sister.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and her lips twitched.

"Val?" Mason asked quietly.

"She says she misses us already." Lisa paused and then showed him the screen: 

'Tell my nephew his aunt is lonely and walking around the house naked thinking about him.'

Mason laughed but felt his cock stir. He shifted in his seat. "That sounds like Val."

Lisa smiled. Probably the first time since she got on the plane. The fact that she was picturing her sister too helped. "That is Val." Lisa put her phone away and looked out the window, and her hand was on the seat between them.

The Uber turned into the driveway. The house looked exactly the same. Yet, it felt so different to Mason. As if a century of events had passed. 

"We're here," the driver said.

Lisa pulled her sunglasses off. Checked her face in her phone camera. Reapplied lip balm. Smoothed her hair. Mason watched the transformation happen in real time, the way she shed whatever she'd been for the past week and became someone else. Became Mom. Became Richard's wife. Her shoulders squared, and the mask clicked into place so cleanly it made his chest ache.

"Okay," she said quietly. More to herself than to him.

They climbed out. Mason grabbed both bags from the trunk, and the Uber pulled away, and then it was just the two of them standing in the driveway in the late afternoon sun with their real life sitting right there in front of them. Val's house was like the old saying of Vegas—what happened at Val's was to remain at Val's. 

Richard opened the front door before they reached it.

"There they are!" He spread his arms wide. "My two favorite people."

Lisa walked into the hug first. Richard kissed her forehead and wrapped his arms around her waist, and Mason watched his mother melt into his father's chest with a comfortable ease that made his heart feel a pang of pain.

She was riding my face this morning.

"Hey, Dad." Mason extended his hand.

Richard bypassed it entirely and pulled him into a bear hug. The back-slapping, slightly too tight kind that dads use when they've missed you but don't have the vocabulary to say so.

"Get in here. You too old for a hug now?" Richard held him at arm's length, looking him over. "How was your internship? You put on weight. Val's been feeding you."

Not exactly the kind of nourishment you're imagining.

"Yeah. Val… I mean Aunt Val was good to me."

"She's a force of nature, your aunt. Always has been." Richard grabbed Lisa's suitcase and led them inside, with Mason carrying his bags, watching his father's hand settle on the small of his mother's back as they walked through the foyer. The same spot where Mason's hand had been. Holding her while he fucked her.

This was going to be a problem.

Dinner was surreal. Richard had ordered Thai because he said Lisa deserved a night off from cooking after traveling, and they sat at the kitchen table, the three of them, a family, passing containers of pad thai and green curry. 

"Work never stops," Richard said, shaking his head. "I keep saying I'll set boundaries, and then some founder calls at five PM with an emergency that's really just them not understanding their own analytics."

"You work too hard," Lisa said. She said it with genuine warmth, and Mason saw it, the part of his mother that did love Richard, that appreciated his steadiness, his reliability. Richard was a good man. That was the thing that made everything harder. He wasn't cruel or neglectful or absent. He was just... not enough. 

"So," Richard said, slicing into his ribeye. "Tell me everything. How was the summer? The internship... How was the research? Made any friends?"

"It was great. The research was on emerging market volatility; I helped compile data sets, ran some regression models, and wrote up two sections of the appendix."

This was technically true. He'd done approximately eleven hours of academic work across the entire summer. The rest of the hours had been spent learning things no university offered credit for, but his aunt did.

"That's my boy." Richard pointed his chopsticks at Mason with the kind of paternal pride that was genuine, but that Mason felt he didn't deserve. "Senior year. Last lap. You thought about what you want to do after graduating?"

"Still figuring it out, Dad. Market's tough."

"Don't figure for too long. Good spots go fast. I can make some calls if you want. Charlie Brennan at Lazard owes me a..."

"Richard, let him eat," Lisa's voice, warm and gently deflecting. She smiled at her husband from across the table, and it was so convincing, Mason almost believed it himself.

Richard chuckled. "Fine, fine." He turned to Lisa. "And you. How was the conference?"

Lisa sipped her wine with a composure that Mason found almost terrifying.

"Really productive, actually. The keynote on luxury staging was the best I've seen in years. And I connected with a developer out of Charlotte, mixed-use properties, and high-end residential over retail. Could be a great pipeline if the numbers work."

She hadn't attended a single second of the real estate conference after that first day. Mason knew this because she'd spent the conference weekend with her legs wrapped around him while her tongue was in her sister's snatch. 

"Charlotte, huh? That market's heating up." Richard reached across the table and squeezed Lisa's hand. "Smart move, honey."

Mason stared at his father's fingers around his mother's. Those same fingers had been laced through Mason's hair while she shuddered against his mouth and begged him not to stop.

"And Val?" Richard asked, topping off his wine. "How's she doing?"

"She's good. Sends her love. I've been asking her to visit."

"Yes… It will be good to have her visit. It was kind of her to host Mason."

Lisa caught Mason's eye across the table. The flicker was so fast and so brief that if Mason hadn't been looking for it, he'd have missed it entirely. A flash of shared conspiracy. A private joke.

"I'll mention it to her," Lisa said mildly, and changed the subject.

Mason pushed his food around his plate and survived the next forty-five minutes through sheer force of will. Richard talked about the office, a merger his team was leading. Lisa nodded in all the right places, laughed at the right moments, and touched Richard's arm when he told a story about a colleague's disastrous client dinner. She was so good at this. So seamlessly, heartbreakingly good at being exactly who Richard needed her to be.

After dinner, Richard insisted on cleaning up, and Mason escaped upstairs to his bedroom, where he changed and lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. His room looked exactly the same. Same navy comforter. Same bookshelf full of books and comics, and his set of Harry Potter books. Same framed photo on the desk of Mason at sixteen, arms around both parents at his baseball championship, grinning after winning a high school team.

He picked up the photo. Richard's hand on his shoulder. Lisa's smile was radiant and uncomplicated.

What the fuck have I done? He laughed at his choice of words. He had actually done that—fuck. 

It was late. Silence in the house. A soft knock at the door.

"Can I come in?"

Lisa slipped through before he answered. She'd changed into a thin cotton robe, her dark hair still damp from a shower. No makeup. She looked soft and real and devastating.

She sat on the edge of his bed. She folded her hands in her lap.

"We need to talk," she said.

Four words that have never in the history of human language preceded anything good.

The lump in his throat started.

Mason sat beside her, leaving a careful six inches of space. Enough room for Jesus, as they said. Though Jesus would probably not approve of what they had done.

"Okay, Mom. I'm listening..."

Lisa looked at her hands. At the ring on her left finger, the diamond Richard had put on her hand when they married. She turned it slowly, a full rotation, like she was winding back time.

"I love your father," she said.

It landed in Mason's chest like a sucker punch. Precise and devastating, and exactly where it would do the most damage. 

The lump grew.

"He's a good man," she continued, her voice steady and quiet. "He works hard. He provides for this family. He's been a good father to you. He loves me. And I love him. That's real, Mason. I need you to know that's real."

Mason couldn't speak. The lump had taken up all the space.

"What happened these last few days..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. What happened between us. I can't pretend it didn't. And I can't pretend I didn't want it. Because I did. God help me, I did."

She turned to look at him, and her eyes were bright and frightened all at once.

"You made me feel things I haven't felt in... I don't even know. Years. Maybe ever. You woke something up in me that I thought was gone, or that I'd decided didn't matter, or that I'd just buried so deep I forgot it was there. And it terrifies me."

Mason's hands were shaking. He pressed them flat against his thighs. The lump was bigger than the throat now.

"The right thing to do," Lisa said, "is to end this. Right now. Tonight. Before it gets out of hand. Before someone gets hurt. Before it destroys this family." She swallowed. "I'm your mother. I'm supposed to be the adult. I'm supposed to protect you. From the world, from bad decisions, from..." Her voice cracked. "From me."

Mason's world went still. The lump had now filled the room.

She's ending it. She's doing the right thing. She's being the parent. She's being pragmatic, sensible, and sane.

It's over.

Lisa held his gaze for a long, terrible moment. Her jaw was set. Her eyes were slightly wet. She looked like a woman who had made a decision and was preparing to carry the weight of it forever.

Then the corner of her mouth twitched.

Just barely. A sliver of the lipline moved so little that you'd need to be watching for it. And Mason was always watching.

"That's what I should say," Lisa murmured. "That's what a good mother would do."

The twitch became a smile. The lump shrank.

"But I don't think I can."

The lump disappeared.

The six inches between them evaporated.

Mason's mouth found hers with the hunger of a man who'd been told he was about to lose the only thing that mattered and then been handed it back. Lisa's hands came up to his face, pulling him in, and the kiss was deep and desperate, and they knew this would, no, could not ever stop.

"Quiet," she breathed against his lips. "We have to be so quiet. He's in the bedroom."

"I know."

"Mason..."

"I know, Mom."

Mom. The word did something to her. It always did. Her breath hitched, and her fingers tightened in his hair, and she kissed him harder, pulling him down onto the narrow bed.

Mason found the tie of her robe and pulled. The robe fell open, and she was naked beneath it. Completely, deliberately naked. She'd showered and put on this robe with nothing underneath and walked down the hall naked to his room.

"You planned this," he whispered.

"I kept my options open." She smiled up at him and pulled his shirt over his head.

He kissed down her body. Slowly at first, then not slowly at all. When he settled between her thighs, she grabbed the pillow and pressed it over her face. He inhaled his mother's scent, and then he put his mouth on her and heard the muffled groan and felt her hips buck up against him. He worked her with his tongue, long slow strokes at first, then tighter circles around her clit, his fingers sliding inside her, curling forward.

"Oh fuck," she gasped into the pillow. "Oh fuck, baby, right there...don't stop, don't you dare fucking stop...eat me, Mason, yess..."

He didn't stop. He kept going, alternating between his tongue flat against her clit and two fingers deep inside her and his lips sucking gently, reading her body, responding to every twitch and shudder. When she came, it was violent. Her thighs clamped around his head, and her back arched off the bed, and she screamed into the pillow. Her whole body shook in waves, and he held her through it, his mouth still on her, gentler now, easing her down.

She reached down and grabbed his hair and physically pulled him away, gasping, her eyes wild.

"Get up here."

He crawled up her body, but she pushed him back and rolled him over. She slid down the bed, wrapped her hand around his cock, and looked up at him with dark, hungry eyes.

"My turn. I've been thinking about this since fucking dinner."

She licked the underside of his shaft from base to tip. Slowly. Looking right at him the entire time. Then she took the head into her mouth and sucked, her tongue swirling, her hand working what her mouth couldn't reach. She was incredible at this. 

"That's it, Mom... fuck, your mouth is so good..."

She moaned around him and took him deeper. Her head bobbed, finding a rhythm that built and teased and retreated and built again. She'd pull almost all the way off, just the tip between her lips, tongue flicking at the slit, then swallow him deep until he hit the back of her throat, and he was gripping the headboard and grinding his teeth trying not to make noise.

"Mom... fuck... I'm going to..."

She pulled off just long enough to whisper, "Not yet," and then took him even deeper, and he understood this was punishment and reward at the same time. She kept him on the edge for what felt like forever, five agonizing, perfect minutes, before pulling back and climbing on top of him.

Lisa reached between them, gripped his cock, and sank down onto him slowly. One hand on his chest, the other braced against the headboard. Her hair curtained her face. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he was inside his mother in his own bedroom, and his father was feet away in his bedroom, oblivious.

"Oh god," she breathed. "Oh god, you feel so good. You fill me up so fucking good, baby."

She rode him with controlled rolling movements. Quiet. Deliberate. This was stealth sex. Every creak of the bedframe was a potential catastrophe, every moan a liability.

Mason moaned every time she went down on him. 

"Quiet," she kept whispering, her forehead pressed to his. "Quiet, baby."

He wasn't quiet. He tried. He failed. She kissed him to muffle his sounds, and he kissed her back, his hands gripping her hips, pulling her down harder.

"You're so wet, Mom... you're dripping on me..."

"Because I've been wanting you, My son," she whispered. "Been dying to climb into your lap..."

She ground down on him, changing the angle, and her breath caught and her eyes fluttered shut and he felt her tighten around him.

"Right there... oh fuck, right there, don't move, just let me..."

She rode him through it. A slow, deep orgasm that he felt everywhere, her whole body clenching around him, her mouth open in a soundless cry. He followed seconds later, pulling her hips down hard, burying himself as deep as he could, and the release was so intense he forgot to breathe for a couple of seconds.

They lay there tangled and breathing hard, the comforter kicked to the floor.

"I should go," Lisa whispered. She didn't move.

"Five more minutes."

"Three."

"Four."

Just then, Lisa's phone buzzed. She reached for it and looked and showed it to Mason.

A text from Val. A photo. Val, lying on her bed in nothing but the gold anklet, one hand resting on her stomach, the other holding the phone, looking into the camera with that knowing half-smile. Underneath the photo: Miss you both. Hope you're behaving. (Don't you dare behave.)

Mason felt his cock twitch against his mother's thigh. Lisa noticed.

"She has that effect, doesn't she," Lisa murmured, looking at the photo of her naked sister. "Even from a thousand miles away."

"She really does."

Lisa typed a reply. Mason watched her compose it, this woman who three days ago would have been horrified by a nude photo and was now texting her sister while lying naked in her son's cum.

We misbehaved. Your nephew says hi. He's still hard.

Val's reply was immediate: 

That's my boy. Give him a kiss from me. I'm proud of you, sis. And jealous." 

"I need to really go."

"I know."

She smiled against his chest. Kissed his collarbone. Then his jaw. Then his mouth, softly, gave a goodnight kiss that was also a promise.

"Goodnight, sweetheart." She retied her robe, smoothed her hair, checked herself in the mirror on the back of his door, and slipped into the hallway.

Mason stared at the ceiling and listened to her footsteps pad down the hall. Heard the master bedroom door open. Heard the murmur of his father's voice, "Everything okay?" and his mother's reply, warm and easy. "Just checking on him."

He pulled the pillow over his face. It smelled like her.

He was so fucked. In every sense.

His phone buzzed. Val again. This time just for him. Another photo. This one was closer, more explicit. She was lying on her side, and the camera was angled down her body, her breasts, her stomach, and her hand between her thighs, fingers parted in a V around her clit. The text read: Thinking about...