3

But she never had to make the choice, because her mother appeared in the doorway . . .

. . . Sherry awoke from a startling, violent dream to find that the violence was real -- it was going on in her own home. She spilled out of her bed the best she could, head shaky, vision skewed. While she struggled to wrap her heavy robe around her naked body she heard another sickening thud through the wall, followed by grunts and curses.

Halfway down the hall to her son's room she heard voices:

"You fucking . . . fucking prick! You broke my fucking tooth!"

Josh's voice?

"How dare you? How dare you touch her, you bastard?"

Neal's voice, definitely. But what . . .?

"You fucked her! You fucked her too, old man!"

The picture framed by her son's doorway burned itself into her mind in the space of a second. It was surreal, incredible -- it made no sense. It could only be a drug-induced dream, a black fantasy -- she couldn't be awake, not really.

Her husband of twenty years, naked, flushed, leaning against the wall for support. His eyes turned to hers in slow motion . . .

Her son, her beautiful son, also naked, on his knees before his desk, his accusing finger hanging in the air . . .

Her daughter, naked but for the corner of a blanket hastily tugged around her, on the bed, in the shadows . . .

And the words emblazoned in her mind, like the dialogue in that bizarre silent movie.

How dare you touch her?

You fucked her too, old man!

In time they all turned to her, their eyes blazing anger, passion, guilt. They stood there, stupidly, like actors in a play awaiting applause.

She ran.

Dimly she heard her husband curse and call out her name. The sounds of thumping footfalls behind her as her chest heaved, her eyes blurred with tears. A grotesque nightmare image as she slammed the door -- of her husband's naked form racing after her, his penis flopping wildly, her naked son limping-lurching behind. She pressed herself against the door as though Satan himself were in pursuit . . .

Neal threw his whole body against the door in wild, frantic blows, hearing his own panting, his heart thudding in his ears. He didn't know what he could say, how he could remove the crazed look from his wife's feral eyes. He only knew it was time to put a stop to it all, one way or another.

"Josh!" he screamed.

His son understood. Seconds before they had been grappling and spitting at each other; now they were allies with one common, unspoken goal. His daughter was yelling frenziedly in his face, clawing at his chest. He ignored her, slammed against the door in time with his son.

. . . It could be no dream -- no nightmare, though she'd had nightmares like this before. She only wanted to wake up, to leave it all behind. But it was real -- she knew it, through all her confusion and shock, from the details her subconscious could not possibly have conjured. The blood on Josh's cheek. The scent of weed lingering in the room. Vanessa clutching a trophy in her hand, like she was accepting some honor (for what -- Most Likely To Fuck Her Father?).

She heard wood splintering -- the door lurched against her. She leapt away, blind with panic, and snatched the brass candlestick from her bureau . . .

When Neal got through the door, emerging into his old bedroom for the first time in a week, he was greeted by a swift, savage blow across the face. For a moment he staggered from the blow, the dull taste of blood filling his mouth, before moving steadily forward into the darkness to where his wife was crying and shrinking away from him.

She was half doubled over by the big bed, her hair a long tangled mess that framed a puckered, hysterical face. Sobbing, shrieks, inarticulate words filled the room as he closed in on her, grabbing her wrists, shaking the weapon from her hand to clunk onto the floor. As he shook her, trying to speak over her babbling, her old mouse-colored robe opened wide -- he took in her jerking muscles, her bounding tits, her soft belly, the dark triangle of her bush, all in an instant. He twisted her forearms, bringing them to her side, his fists pressing against the warm, pliable skin of her waist.

He was hard -- rock solid hard, stretched tight, throbbing.

He blocked her knees with his own, his fingers digging deeper into her arms, forcing her back. She had nowhere to go, she fell backward onto the bed -- he pressed his weight against her. He tried to pin both of her wrists above her head with one hand, causing her tits to thrust upward at him -- but she was strong, she pressed back, determined. He stared into her eyes as she whimpered, and hissed, and sobbed in his face.

A thousand scenes rushed through his mind -- some old, some new. Fabulous sex with her while staying at a friend's house. The cup she smashed against the wall when she found out about Melanie, the names she hurled at him. Her dazed expression at the kitchen table, the way she studied his gushing cum with a half-smile, her big tits bouncing in the moonlight while she rode him, her face lit only by the black-and-white flicker of an old movie.

He loved her -- he knew that, had never doubted it for an instant. He was not going to lose her, not now. Not ever. He would save her from herself. He would give her everything she needed. He would devote his life to her, all over again.

"Josh!" he yelled again.

His son was behind him. In the distance, Vanessa cried and pleaded.

"Hold her arms," he ordered, his mouth suddenly dry and parched.

The boy bounded onto the bed behind his mother; he wrestled her wrists to the mattress easily, a blank expression on his bleeding face.

Neal wrenched open his wife's heavy thighs and grabbed onto her ankles, lifting her legs high into the air -- she kicked and cried impotently, but he was not letting go. He moved forward slowly, cautiously, wary of her every move.

No, Dad . . . no, please -- rang his daughter's voice in his ear.

"Vanessa, shut up or get out!" he blared, ignoring his son's nervous snicker.

In the shadows he could just see the pale column of his solid flesh, nestling into the dark curls of Sherry's motte. Just rubbing against the hairs, digging into the curls . . . my god, she had a hairy pussy: savage, bushy, unruly, like a wild garden. He had always loved it, ever since they were kids. When they shaved her for birthing, he remembered how impatient he was for it to grow back, lush and full. He ran his cock across the entire length of it, again and again, loving the coarse, mossy feel, before he finally dragged his prick down and guided it between her swollen lips.

He nudged forward, experimentally -- though his raging erection begged him to plunge ahead with all his might. She was dry, unyielding inside, a sensation he had never experienced. He prodded her anyway, trying to ignore her winces, her grimaces and cries. His son was grinning bigger than ever, but it was a joyless grin, a grimace-grin composed of pure nerves.

"Nessa," he said. "Nessa! Are you still here?"

"Oh god . . . yes."

She sounded miserable. He licked his lips, tried to calm his voice.

"Now listen to me . . . Are you listening?"

"Y-yes."

"Now I don't want to hurt her -- I just want to . . ."

"Okay," she said, breathing hard. "Okay, what? What?"

"Okay. In the drawer of the table -- if you'll look in there, you'll find some Vaseline, or KY or something. I need you to slick me up. Do you understand?"

She said nothing. He could hear her crying behind him.

"Nessa, do you understand?"

Again she said nothing, but he heard the snick of the bedside lamp, could hear her rummaging through the drawer. He looked down into his wife's tear-streaked face while he waited. She had stopped her noise, but her dull eyes crept crazily around: looking at her son, at him, at Vanessa behind him. She bore the look of a trapped, drugged animal; he doubted there was one conscious thought in her mind, she was totally on instinct.

Her eyes seemed to settle, in something like fascination, when Vanessa appeared at his side, began rubbing some cool, slippery something over his cock. The sensation was intense, wonderful -- he kept himself in check. She rubbed the goo into his skin with a trembling, yet practiced hand, but Neal noted that she was looking at her mother. She was still sniffling, but her face seemed calm beside his own, though her lips trembled. She understood, or seemed to. He could depend on her now.

His wife gasped sharply -- once, twice, three times -- as he slid his adamantine cock into her with one slow, steady motion. He gasped himself at her tightness, grunted at her heat. He kept himself lodged there for several seconds, feeling himself throb and . . . yes! feeling her throb as well. Back again, slowly; in again. Perhaps the tightest, hottest pussy he had ever entered -- tighter than on their honeymoon, than when she surrendered her virginity to him, so many years before. Her moonlike face was still taut and flinching, her body still rigid beneath him . . . but her eyes were closed, and she didn't struggle. In . . . and out, in . . . and out, and then there was suddenly a gush of moisture inside her, bathing his cock, lubricating his passage. So good, so warm and wet . . . He leaned back slightly, his own arms trembling and quaking, and watched himself sinking into her again. Her milky white belly, shaking as she accepted him, bore one dark smear near her navel -- blood from his nose. He focused on it, watched it as her stomach rose and fell. It told a story, that dark spot. It reminded him of pain, and anger, and ugliness -- it kept him strong, kept him resolute.

She said nothing, made only the smallest of noises, kept her eyes clenched shut but for one brief glance. His son looked her over brazenly, his wide eyes poring over her heaving chest, the broad, dark nipples. He was openly lusting after her, after his own mother. Alarms sounded in Neal's head, alarms that he tried to silence. All that mattered was that he stayed hard, that he gave her pleasure. That he control himself, and pleasure her, and bring her back to him -- bring her back to them all. Vanessa still stood beside him, he realized; her gooey hand gripped his shoulder. There was no expression on her face; she simply watched. Her other hand rested on her swelling belly, stroking it absently.

Another sudden, head-spinning burst of warmth and wetness around his cock and he could finally sink all the way into her, groaning aloud as he did so. His balls mashed against the dampness of her fat, bulging lips. She cried out -- but there was no pain in it. No pain, no fear, no anger -- was it, could it be pleasure? He imagined that every rapist must fantasize that his victim's protests are cries of lust and gratification. But no, he knew his wife, knew the noises she made. And this was familiar to him: raw, bestial, abandoned . . . but familiar. They all said something at that moment in acknowledgment -- oh yes or oh god or oh fuck, some variation. Josh loosed a silly laugh, almost a giggle; Vanessa dug her fingers into his shoulder.

It's a group effort, he thought dimly, through the mist of his pleasure. We're all fucking her.

Through the foggy haze Sherry tried to breathe, tried to focus, her mind reeling and spinning on a coarse faster and more erratic than any pills or booze alone could ever cause. The man before her, the man now invading her, had seemed odious, menacing, vile and dangerous when he entered the room; now against all her reason and judgment, against all her gut-wrenching indignation he was seeming more and more like her husband -- like her lover. With every strong, purposeful stroke of his penis, with every surge forward into her body, he became both familiar and distant, a man she knew, but without a face. Likewise, his steady penetration seemed far removed, like something happening to someone else, even as the sensations raised chills in her arms, sent ripples of sensuality rocking through her breasts and belly. It was torturous, awful -- it was rape, violation, defilement, she wanted to kick him and claw him. But her body seemed to recognize him, her burning pussy wanted him, welcomed him. It was invasion, what he was doing, it was sick. They were sick, those people watching him, encouraging him. On some level she knew that the man holding her hands in steel vices, the man whose eyes perused her exposed body hungrily, that man was her son. Her only son, born to her, whom she had nursed years before. But when her eyes met his, and she was dumbfounded by the lust she witnessed -- it could not be her son. It was just a man, a stranger, forcing her to comply, feeding off of her.

Sinking in and out of realization, dazed by drugs and alcohol, despair and shock, Sherry writhed and remonstrated against them all, and hated them -- but her body was wallowing in the sensations, her mind was ablaze with the excitement of it all. Even now -- as her body's pleasure awakened and her traitorous pussy anointed her slow stroking, unchangeable, unstoppable husband -- even now she would flee them if she could, and lock herself away in some stronghold, and find some way to end her ruined, miserable excuse for a life. Yes, if she could, but she couldn't. They held her, they forced her . . . they were blood and skin and bone relations of each other and they were fucking her, like the most degraded animals, the least discriminating of human beings . . .

Yes, they held her, but it wasn't rape. They held her, but that wasn't why she didn't run. The pressure of her husband's fingers on her legs had lessened, her son barely held her arms now. She could break away if she wanted to, but instead . . . instead her hips were lifting, she was meeting the thrusts of that slow working cock, she was letting it go in deeper, deeper. She wasn't looking into her son's eyes now -- he wasn't her son anyway -- she was looking at his dick, which hung, hardening, in the air above her. For a moment there seemed something familiar about the posture, the shadowy form beside her, the hands on her, the rigid tool near her face . . .

Josh gazed down, openly fascinated, spellbound, jittery. There it was again -- that wonderfully weird combination he'd been relishing the past few nights. His mother's face and his own hard cock, close together -- in the same frame, as it were. Two elements of everyday life that should never, would never come into contact, yet there they were. He studied her puffy, wet cheeks, her trembling lips, her big, heaving chest, and focused again on his own prick, stretched taut and twitching, veiny, engorged, mere inches away from her.

The first night he'd picked the lock into his mother's room he'd been motivated by annoyance and curiosity -- anger at Ness for deserting him, fascination with his mother's reason-deprived state. He'd looked her over, pulled the covers back to inspect her naked body. He'd even pulled his dick out that night, to wank a few times half-heartedly in her presence. The second time he'd been really frustrated with Vanessa, and had come in determined to molest his mother for revenge. And he had touched her, to be sure: run his fingers over her breasts, stroked her nipples, cupped her insanely hairy pussy. And he'd stroked himself to hardness, right there beside her. He hadn't fingered her, as he told Vanessa later. But he had gotten aroused in her presence, his naked and demanding dick right next to her vulnerable naked body -- he had thought that was pretty damned kinky.

So he could never have imagined anything like this: watching her getting fucked, seeing her body move in time. Watching her -- consciously, deliberately -- watching him, studying his nakedness, fixing her eyes on his cock.

The scratches on his body, the lingering pain of his father's blows, Vanessa's treachery . . . everything faded from his mind. He watched, he waited.

Neal was doing the greatest fucking of his life. He was steady, rhythmic, determined. He could not be distracted. He would not look at Sherry's face save for the briefest of glances. He studied her belly, the dark spot of blood. He pressed on, slowly, deeply. Her hips had begun to meet him, her thighs to grip him, to let him in further. He was dimly aware of his daughter, clutching at his arm, her breathing. At one point she touched and stroked his nipples -- he stopped her, that would make him cum.

His wife's pussy was incredible, the heat, the slickness, the tightness. Every time he drew back it seemed like he would never fit back in, yet every time the tender folds yielded, and his lead pipe cock got sucked back up inside. He tried not to focus on it, tried not to do all his feeling through his dick. He willed love into her, he flooded his body, his mind with love.

It's a love fuck, he told himself, like a mantra, a love fuck . . . a love fuck . . .

. . . she remembered her dreams, her fantasies, her desires for the past weeks. They came to her suddenly, unexpected, forceful. The porn girl with the headband -- that was her. The big man, the sleazy man with the huge dick, the mullet-haired guy fucking her. The cameras had stopped rolling, but she wasn't through performing. The camera man had come closer, to see what was happening up close. He was calling to the other men, the lighting guy, the sound guy, a few bystanders. He was also unzipping his jeans, hauling out his own cock. She wanted it. Even though she was getting stuffed, even though the mullet man was filling her with impossibly hard dick, she wanted more. They all closed around her, they were all pulling out their tools, they were all stroking, watching, waiting their turn . . .

That was what she had been wanting when she dreamed, when she masturbated, when she reduced her poor Big Bear to a mute, sticky uselessness. She'd wanted to be spoiled by dick. She'd wanted too much dick, too many to choose from, a small army of stroking men lusting after her . . . and she'd wanted Neal to know it. She'd wanted him to watch her, and be able to do nothing about it.

Vanessa gasped, her father groaned, her brother giggled when Sherry took his dick into her mouth.

She had been watching her mother intently, watching her nipples surge, watching her eyes roll around, waiting, hoping for some sign of consciousness, of pleasure, of acceptance. She could never have dreamed this, could not imagine how things had spun so recklessly out of control. But now that they were here, naked, highly aroused, helping father fuck mother, she had hoped against hope that her mother would come around, that something right would happen. Now this.

Her mother's head had lifted off the bed and accepted her brother's throbbing dick in one smooth motion -- no drama to it, no hesitation, no build up. A steady, sudden move and it was in her mouth, and Vanessa could see nothing of her mother's face but her chin and her bottom lip. She wrenched her father's shoulder -- her father who still pumped steadily but shakily away, his biceps trembling -- while she watched her mother's big breasts heaving, listened to her taking breath in sharp hisses through her nose. Josh's head fell back and he stared at the ceiling, he made noises she knew of old, of shock, of surprise, of pleasure. She felt her own heat rising, her own heart pounding as she watched her mother's lips grasping their way up Josh's length like a struggling rock climber, until his hanging, hairy sack was squashed against her nose.

Well, she thought absurdly, she had sworn to keep her parents together, and now they were together. With a twist.

It was the wildest scene she'd ever witnessed, and she'd witnessed a few. There had never been any doubt in Vanessa's mind that she had had the most, and the most varied, sexual experience of anyone in her family. But she never expected that her wildest, kinkiest, most bestial night would ever occur in their presence, with their bodies, with their lusts. For several minutes she lost control in her enthusiasm, began groping and fondling her hard-working father as if she were a dirty old man, her hands on his fuzzy butt, between his crack, beneath to fondle his balls. Neal made sounds to warn her off, but she kept playing, her eyes intent on her mother's fast-rising pleasure, her breathing fast, her cunt moistening, knees weakening. She locked her father's arm and shoulder between her tits and rubbed against him, felt his chest and the small of his back, began kissing and biting at his shoulder. At one point Neal grimaced and sucked air through his teeth, held himself rigidly locked deep in his wife's cunt.Vanessa drew back -- her father was on the knife edge of orgasm, trying to hold it off. She could see his whole body tensing, his fighting to retain control. And she was amazed to see that, despite everything, her mother seemed to understand. The thrusting of her hips, the grinding of her thighs slowed; she waited for him, even as (with noises like a hound of hell) she continued to devour Josh's dick.

She backed away from her father, despite her longing for him, and fell forward onto the bed beside her mother. She wasn't helping that way; she needed to help her mother cum. Neal needed no help cumming, God knew. It was Sherry who might need nudging over the edge. Vanessa had lost it for a second there, but now, as her own naked curves melted into that of her mother's, she felt her duty was clear.

As she touched her mother's nipples for the first time, burying her fingers beneath her splayed, sweaty tits, she watched her mother's mouth sucking, saw her tongue slurping at Josh's hard red cock. Her brother looked down at both of them with an unreal expression, a look as bereft of cockiness and egotism and smartass as she'd ever received from him. She kissed between the pale, heavy breasts and licked between them, and laid her head against them to hear her mother's hammering heartbeat, the gurgling noises she made. She met her father's eyes, briefly, as he resumed his slow stroking, watched his belly loom closer with every thrust, saw the curls of his pubis merge with her mother's rhythmically, hypnotically. For a while she suckled one of her mother's nipples, tugging at it with her teeth, marveling at its hardness, its stalky length. Keeping her face ever close to the pale flesh, she glided downward, across the white expanse of belly to the hips and upper thighs. She encountered the jungle of hair with a small shock -- she hadn't been able to tell just how overgrown her mother was until now (waaay hairy pussy, her brother had said, ages ago). Into this mass of dark curls the long, glistening barrel of her father's gun kept sluicing, burrowing, pistoning wetly. She could hear the squelching, maddening sound it made as it entered and withdrew, the sound of some soft-working, well-oiled machine. Only by watching the slippery mushroom head could she see, in the shadows, the fat cleft of the lips accepting this hard offering. Keeping her fingers splayed on the soft belly flesh, that she might feel the tension and release of orgasm, and breathing in deeply the musky aroma of her parents' sex, Vanessa moved closer.

She knelt, like a lapper at a pool, nudging through the thick curly grass of hair to find the sweet, wet opening. The hot folds electrified her tongue, flooded her senses with woman-ness. She hadn't slept with a woman in quite some time, and never with a woman like this. Her girls had been sleek and shaved, their bodies studded with piercings, their skin exuding the scent of clove cigarettes. This woman, this body was somehow primordial, savage, basic -- fleshy, overgrown, fertile and pungent. Natural. She dimly realized that she was at the site of her own being, that her own life had begun right here, with these two slow-working, passionate bodies. The thought, if it could be called a thought, excited her further -- she felt an infusion of wetness between her legs, a sudden stabbing ache of emptiness in her pussy, and began lapping at the bowl with greater rapidity.

At first she had rested her chin at the very crest of her mother's opening, dipping her tongue downward tentatively, fascinated at the sight of this wet, wide pussy accepting the hard steel that was her father's cock. But after a minute of dancing her tongue-tip across the delicate folds, like a child stealing frosting from a cake, she felt the belly flesh beneath her fingers set up and firm, becoming as rigid as a table. Her mother's obvious excitement excited her even more, and she snaked her tongue deeper between the plump, oily lips. The fire in her belly, in her breasts only increased when, delving deep into the hot gash, her tongue met the solid, plunging rigidity of her father's cock. Vanessa felt the coarse pussy curls grinding against her cheek and chin, the slapping of her father's belly as he stroked. She inhaled the scent of pure sex. She dug her fingers into the firmness beneath her, willing it to give way, to let loose.

There came an animal snarling, snorting sound from behind her; she stopped the wild whipping of her tongue long enough to look behind her. Across the pale landscape of her mother's undulating curves, her brother, his body twisted, stomach so tight she could see his heart thumping, clawing desperately at his own shoulders, having nothing else to hold onto; his face contorted, the chipped tooth plainly visible in the dim light; her mother, upper torso raised from the bed, resting on her elbows; her lips working, her cheeks hollowed, throat muscles contorting, Adam's Apple bobbing. This sight, this delicious sight, framed by the splayed, peaked hillocks of her mother's breasts, for a few seconds only met her gaze, filled her vision -- she then dived into the pussy once more, the thought buzzing through her head crazily: Josh is cumming, Mom is swallowing his cum . . . The idea flashed through her mind, stoked all her lustfulness. She wanted to be her mother, fucked by her father, swallowing her brother's spurting cum -- wanted to be Josh, loosing his seed into that gluttonous mouth -- wanted to be Neal, relentlessly fucking, driving, working that fat pussy, this fat, hairy pussy. Most of all, she wanted her mother to cum. She wanted to make her mother cum. She wanted to feel it, to know it, to make it happen.

Her face sideways in the cleft, jammed, sucking plump, slick lips into her mouth. The hips shaking beneath her, the gurgling, grunting sounds. Her brother's groans lengthening and softening. The exact moment when he broke free of his mother's tireless suction, the popping sound, the intake of breath, Sherry's long sobbing moan. Hands on her head while she sucked -- her father's. He smoothed the hair behind her ears as he had since she was a girl, before grabbing a handful of it. A hand on her ass, questing fingers dipping into her crack -- her mother's? her brother's? it didn't matter. She sucked and thrashed, whipping her tongue against the brave clit button, poking out into her mouth. She focused her all upon it, bathed it with violent affection, as she did every dick she had sucked, every throbbing cock she'd ever tasted, when she wanted them to explode.

A sudden quake, a tremor -- and the bridge collapsed beneath her, the belly jerked, the hips thumped, her mother cried. Her nose, her mouth suddenly awash with hot, thick girl honey, pouring out, washing the still pounding cock. Her father, muttering long and fast, religious and obscene words mingled. The hand in her hair becoming a fist, pulling her away, a long rope of spit and juice linking her to the scene -- just as suddenly, just as roughly, thrusting her face back into the mess, while stomachs spasmed, bodies groaned and cursed around her. Her mouth wrapped around the shaft of her father's pulsing cock like she was eating corn on the cob, her lips feeling the cum coursing through it, into her mother. Slurping, vacuuming the juice from its length, from its sticky base, to the place where it lay lost between the tight gripping lips. The cries lengthening and dying, the shuddering flesh subsiding.

Mashed between the two bellies, sobbing, her face soaked, she extracted one hand, extended one aching arm, and found her own orgasm at her fingertips, the very instant they touched her own quivering pussy.

***

They sat silent. Dazed. Puzzled.

There were no words to account for it, no way to explain it. Only the shaking of heads, grumbled curses. Wide eyes. Disbelief.

It wasn't simply that the boundaries between them had been crossed; no, they had been rudely, irrevocably smashed.

The Father had seen the Mother sucking the Son.

The Son had watched the Father fucking his Mother.

The Daughter had lapped from the Mother's cunt.

There was, quite simply, nothing left between them. No walls, no rituals. Nothing sacred.

And yet, Who They Were to each other, fundamentally, had not changed: husband, wife, father, mother, daughter, son, sister, brother. (Master, mistress, son and daughter, as the song went.) What had happened between them was either far above, or far below, the meaning of such relationships. It was either fine and wonderful, imminently understandable, blameless . . . or base and instinctual, inexcusable, guilt-ridden. But it had happened, and there were no words to explain it.

No one I think is in my tree, remembered Neal, bemusedly. I mean it must be high or low.

He was sunk into his chair in the den, smoking his first cigarette in eight years. (A Virginia Slims, and a menthol -- he didn't care.) Across the room, his bruised son sat huddled into a corner of the couch; snuggled close to him, his poor pregnant daughter. She and Neal wore bathrobes over their nakedness, the boy wore only a pair of cotton briefs. Vanessa had sat with him, Neal gathered, because she intuitively sensed he needed her more. The kid had been a smug and headstrong smartass ever since he hit puberty, and he could get on your nerves awful damn quick, but seeing him deflated, dumb, and senseless was somehow worse. Vanessa lay her head on his shoulder, stroked his arm. She was there to soothe, though she must have been as shocked as he was at what had happened . . .

They're lovers, Neal thought, watching them, weighing the horrid incongruity. They are lovers, they fuck each other.

Too late, much too late to worry about that. They were more than that now, or less.

Good God, what had he done? What had he been thinking? He took a deep drag and exhaled, tracing the perversely complicated thought patterns in the air.

He had been a fair logician at school, a dab hand at critical thinking. The problem -- or one problem anyway -- lay in his own internal words. Good God, he had thought, what had he been thinking? Neal believed in no god. As for thinking, he hadn't been. He had only acted, on the purest instinct. He had been angry and desperate, jealous and confused, lonely and in pain. The anger, the angst, had turned to lust, as it so often does.

So once more, he thought, it was all down to him and his stupid dick.

There was nothing so unbalanced, so basically illogical as lust. Look at sex talk, for instance: the crap that passed for speech when the throes of orgasm were upon you.

Oh Jesus, I'm gonna cum.

Now there were two disparate ideas -- two words that definitely did not belong in the same sentence.

Likewise: Oh fuck, oh my God.

Then there were formulations like God, I love you, you bitch and its variations. Had he really entrusted them all, his own family, to thought patterns like this? Things had been bad enough, surely, without handing all the decisions over to his endlessly selfish dong.

"Should I . . . go up and check again?" asked Vanessa, her voice tiny and fearful, stabbing.

He looked at the clock. It had only been ten minutes.

"No. Give her a little while longer."

The silence returned, a pall, a dank cloak that hung over them all.

They were waiting for their mother, his wife. After . . . after they, after he, had raped her -- there could be no other word, surely -- Nessa had shooed them out, remaining with her mother, the victim, awake but crying, breathless, shocked. Two minutes later his daughter had joined them, saying Sherry was in the bathroom, that she sounded like she was sick. Vanessa had remained at the door until she heard the noise of the shower, the sounds of her mother climbing into it. That was ten minutes ago.

Ten minutes, eleven now, for Neal to drag his soul through hell. Eleven minutes, twelve, to conclude that there were no excuses, that he had sold them all for one mindless fuck.

Yes, no matter what happened, no matter how much they fought to remain a family, to realize their mutual destinies together, this would always be between them. There would be no escaping it, no explaining it. There it would be, ever present. He cursed for the umpteenth time, and stubbed out the cigarette.

A sound, and they all sat up. Neal's heart quickened, his breath came short. Their eyes all met, for half-a-second only. Footsteps. On the stairs. In the hall.

Sherry Ford came into the room, the dark cold room still hazy with cigarette smoke. Her walk was slow, but steady. The bath robe she wore -- not the old mouse one but a bright yellow terrycloth -- came to her knees and hung open, its ties dangling. She paused in the doorway and exhaled a weary sigh, lifting her arms to secure the towel that wrapped her hair, and the motion, and the posture, filled Neal's head with a thousand conflicting thoughts. As she moved into the room -- seemingly in slow motion, still tucking away the towel, her arms spreading the robe so that he could see, so they could all see, the heavy breasts beneath, the pale stomach, the dark triangle beneath -- she seemed not one woman but many, a cubist nude in motion.

In her freshness, her just-washed cleanliness, she was the girl he married. The shy but wonderfully sexy girl, with no children yet, no ties, only her husband. She was youth and spring and adventure, long, exciting nights, warm, sleepy days.

With her tired eyes, her pained movements, her deep sigh, she was an old and experienced whore, a professional, a knowing hand. A woman who had seen all and done all, and merely needed a place to rinse afterward.

Her shamelessness, the middle-aged, less-than-perfect body she exposed to them made her trashy and wicked, yet also a victim, a sufferer. More sinned against than sinning, for all her uncaring nakedness. Modesty was gone, destroyed, shattered.

But most of all, so powerfully he could not explain it, she seemed like Sherry -- the woman he married, the mother of his children. Uncannily, everything about her -- her beauty, her haggardness, her exposure, the droplets of water on her legs, the bloodshot eyes -- indicated that she was the victor, that she had somehow won over them all. Neal realized with a start that this woman, this middle-aged woman, a woman he had nearly left, had engaged them all. Had centered all their attention, had focused all their lusts. She had taken them all on, pleasured them, satisfied them, and walked away from it. In the insanity of the moment he had argued that all his slow, steady fucking, all his restraint was somehow for her benefit -- that she was lost and needed to be rescued, retrieved. But there was nothing pathetic about this figure, nothing to be pitied. She was up, she was able, and she was theirs. Even more palpably: they were hers. Her walk, though slow and weary, was confident nevertheless.

She stopped in the middle of the room, massaging her hair through the towel, her large breasts shaking and swaying with the motion. He studied the two jostling curves and the valley between and realized, incredibly, that he wanted her again.

"I hope you won't argue," she said, her voice small but strong, and steadier than it had been for days, "when I say I need a drink."

He was on his feet in an instant and holding her.

"I think we could all use one."

***

Then there was the old joke about Chinese fortune cookies. How you could add "in bed" to each fortune to find new significance, how it never failed.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES ARE WAITING FOR YOU . . . IN BED

DO NOT FEAR TO TRY NEW THINGS . . . IN BED

SLOW AND STEADY DETERMINATION WILL BRING YOU GREAT REWARDS . . . IN BED

Neal turned the possibilities over in his mind while he studied his wife, his shaken and weary but still beautiful, oh so beautiful, wife.

Sherry was a wonderful wife and a caring mother, in bed.

Sherry provided for them, nursed them, fed them all, in bed.

Sherry loved her husband and her children better than anyone ever could, in bed.

In spite of himself, he smiled. It fit. It made sense.

She sat in his chair, lazily, but alert. Her legs were crossed, her feet muffled in ridiculously fuzzy slippers. She rocked one foot absently in thought, held her bell-shaped glass carelessly in a slightly shaking hand.

One glass of wine, she had wanted. Just one, to "steady her nerves." Neal had fixed it for her, the best Cabernet in his closet. He had then downed a double of gin himself, and poured another. Vanessa (allowed only one drink by her mother) had taken a brandy, Josh a beer. Three beers, in fact. He had brought them two-fisted from the refrigerator. But his wife had only that one glass of red wine, and had only taken a sip or two. She popped no pills, she smoked no cigarettes. Her eyes were sharp in the dimness.

Neal's own eyes, he was sure, were glazed by now, his features blank and stupid. Thirty minutes of questions, of details dredged up from years before, and from two hours ago. Through it all he had watched his wife, waiting for her to flinch, to crack, to break down. There was none of the lying, the evasion, the intermixing of anger with shame that had accompanied his confession about Melanie, and none of the accusatory looks and rending tones from his wife. So calm was she, so obviously in control, that he began to fear for her reason. Surely they had all pushed her too far; she could not possibly cope with it all.

But there she sat, almost motionless, seemingly serene. She took a sip of wine with unfeasible casualness.

"So," she said, her round, clear voice filling the room, "you've been partners, you've been having sex for four years?"

Both Josh and Vanessa nodded mutely.

"Four years?"

"Yes," said Vanessa. She looked as though she were going to choke, and Josh looked worse.

"When, for God's sake? Where? No, don't answer that."

Sherry's eyes fell on Neal.

"And you and your father, you've been partners for two days," she said to Vanessa.

Again her daughter nodded silently.

"That's all," Neal offered.

"That's more than enough, Neal," she replied.

He shut up.

"So . . . the baby isn't Brad's, it's Josh's," Sherry said next, smashing new bulwarks in Neal's already flooded mind.

He hadn't thought of it. He hadn't had time to think of it, really. But here he was, worrying about his wife's sanity when she was sharper than he was, thinking more clearly. My God, his daughter was pregnant with his son's child -- the mind boggled, rebelled, refused to accept.

The guilty pair nodded next to him -- they made no excuses, asked for no mercy. There was something in their mother's tone that forbade guile or subterfuge, even delay.

"Mmm-hmm. So, what is Brad, then?"

They looked at each other, Neal's daughter and her lover, his son. Vanessa spoke up:

"He's just . . . someone who liked me enough to marry me -- well, to say he would marry me, even though the baby isn't his. I've known him since the tenth grade, he always liked me."

"Mmm-hmm. Does he know whose baby it is? Please tell me he doesn't --"

"No, he doesn't."

Sherry sighed.

"Well, that's something anyway. So you're going to marry him 'cause he's a pushover, 'cause he likes you a lot. Do you like him? I know you don't love him. I know you'd cheat on him, you told me so. Well --" She laughed, actually laughed. "Obviously you will."

Both kids laughed, the laughter of the condemned.

"Um . . . he's okay," said Vanessa, making a pained face. "He's steady, he's nice, he's reliable. He'll do what I tell him to. No, I don't really like him."

"But you're gonna marry him. And what happens in two or three years? What happens when you're twenty-one, twenty-two, with a toddler on your hands? No more clubs, no more partying, just the guy you married to look at?"

Vanessa made another face; she was blushing deep crimson. Sherry went on.

"What happens when there's real problems in your lives, and there will be. How are you going to feel if he fools around on you? You're so prepared to do it to him, how will that be -- having the shoe on the other foot?"

"I hadn't really thought that far ahead, Mom," she said.

"Vanessa, I love you. But your problem is that you never think that far ahead. Marriage is big, serious stuff, honey -- not something you rush into hoping it will all work out." Her eyes met Neal's, briefly, as she said it, and he felt his throat swelling. "You have to mean it, you have to make it work. This thing with you and Brad won't work. A family is one thing, that's trouble enough. A family with a guy you don't love is quite another. That's just making things worse."

"Right," said his daughter, wiping tears away. "I know that."

"You know your father and I both love you. We love both of you. We'll help you all we can, we'll work things out. But Brad has to be told. It's not fair to him, to the baby or to you if you let it go on."

"Okay." It was barely a whisper.

Sherry rose and crossed to them, falling on her knees before them, hugging them. She kissed their foreheads and rocked with them, as if they were three years old.

Neal sat amazed, dumbfounded, mute. There were no kisses for him, no hugs. No signs of reconciliation to reassure him, save one.

You know your father and I love you, she had said. Your father and I . . .

"Okay," said Sherry, resuming her seat and drying her own eyes. "That was the easy part."

***

Hours later, when there was no more talk, she and Neal gathered in the kitchen to recover. The kids had fallen asleep, Josh in Neal's recliner, Vanessa on the couch.

Actually, there had been "no more talk" rather quickly. As Sherry came to realize, and as Neal seemed already to surmise, there was almost no way to talk adequately about What Had Happened. In fact, the phrase had acquired capital letters for her during their attempt to talk, simply because no one was sure what to call it, how to refer to it. Some things Neal had said seemed to indicate he thought of it as a rape, but Sherry was prepared to argue with that definition. She did not feel like a "victim" in any sense.

It would have been far less complicated to talk about if she could fix on some definite response. She certainly could not condone what her husband and children had done to/with her -- Hey, let's all fuck each other on a regular basis! -- nor could she, with her hand on her heart, honestly condemn it -- That was vile and disgusting and I hate you all. Neither attitude fit her feelings. She would never be able to bring their sex (it was after all "their" sex -- she had participated) into their normal, everyday lives together; she wasn't sure any civilized human being could do that. But she also could not genuinely feel the revulsion, the dismay and disgust she thought she should feel. The sex had just felt too damned good.

What she needed -- she wasn't sure about the others -- was a way to think about it that kept them safe, that kept them together. Admittedly, her remarkable burst of clarity in the past few hours had a lot to do with all the puking she'd done upstairs, the natural response of a body after days of physical abuse. But it also had to do with the fact that she now knew the worst, and had an objective: keeping her family. It seemed to Sherry that she must acknowledge the fact that they had all had sex together, not merely in the same room, but actively participating, and that she had enjoyed it. Yes, the fact that she had been on a week-long drug and booze buzz had made it possible for her to enjoy it, had softened the hard lines of reality enough to get lost in it. If they had all shown up at her door and said "Can we all come in and make love to you?" she would certainly have refused them. Hell, six hours ago she would have refused Neal this request, and he was her husband.

Sherry finished her glass of wine, her second glass, and looked across the table to Neal. His eyes were smoky, and still, not a little afraid. A while ago, when the kids had begun to doze and they lowered the lights and made for the kitchen, she had kissed him -- their first kiss in almost a week. It had to be a tender kiss, what with his busted lip: that blow she'd landed with the candlestick. But their first in a week, and the first they had really meant in much, much longer. Despite all the craziness, the elements that made their sex so hard to understand, the fact remained that Neal had made love to her again. Slowly and carefully, with all his attention upon her, he had brought her his hard, throbbing, naked desire and had buried it, had lost it, in her. In her pussy, her womb. It was not rape, nor was it just complacent, dutiful sex, which might have been worse than rape. It was an almost unthinkable set of circumstances for reconciliation, but it had happened. Somehow, she felt like she possessed him again.

"What's going on?" he asked her, peering anxiously into her face.

"What do you mean?"

He tapped her forehead gently. "In there. You've been so quiet."

"Oh. Well . . ."

"I know," he said. "I understand. Well, I . . . at least, I think . . . I'd like to think I do. But no, I guess I don't."

She smiled at him. It was just Neal, bumbling through a conversation. Certainly no great help. But it was sincere.

"Sure you don't want some coffee?"

"Oh no. Have a little more wine though. No, I'm not going on a binge or anything."

"I wasn't saying anything. Hang on, I'll get it."

He got up, cheerfully enough. No accusing looks. The fact was, coffee was a reality drink, something that woke you up. She didn't feel like being wakeful was what she needed at the moment. Better to sort things out in a relaxed frame of mind.

While she watched her husband uncork the bottle and pour the dark red liquid, she pondered for the hundredth time two remarks made by her kids during the long, frustrating discussion.

One: Josh, who had often seemed too dazed to contribute anything useful to the conversation, had brought said conversation to a burnt-rubber halt when he asked, "How come family members can fart around each other but they can't fuck?"

The question, which produced its share of giggles, seemed at first to be totally incongruous, if not deranged. And to be sure, the poor boy was a bit distracted from the shock of what had happened. But the more Sherry thought about it, the more she extrapolated from the specifics of the question, the greater validity it seemed to have.

Family members -- that is, people in an immediate family, living under the same roof -- acknowledged certain basic aspects of being human more or less without question. They showered and left hairs in the tub. They got sick sometimes and threw up, right in front of each other. They took pisses and got the toilet seat wet -- well, men did. And yes, they cut the cheese in each other's presence (mostly men again). Everybody got to smell everybody else's dirty feet. All these things, all perfectly natural and understandable, are tolerated daily, by virtually every family. They all had to do with typical human drives and functions.

Now sex is a typical human drive and function, too, but it is not shared in a family. It is not acknowledged. In other words, what her dear son was asking (in his own shallow way) was why this had to be the case. Why was it okay to wipe your son's piss off the toilet seat but not okay to let him pleasure you, sexually? Why was it normal to wash his cum-stained bedsheets but not to let him cum in your mouth?

Of course, it was a ridiculous comparison. But that did not mean the question was invalid.

Two: Vanessa had interrupted at one point to say, perhaps a little petulantly, "You know, Mom, you're wrong when you say I never think far ahead. I think far ahead about you and Dad. I want you two to stay together."

That remark really got Sherry thinking. What the hell did that mean? Was Vanessa saying she'd intended all this, that she'd engineered it somehow? Surely that was impossible. She could never have stage directed such a catastrophe, nor could she have known everything would come out (reasonably) okay.

Well, no, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest that she was mindful of the sexuality in the house, or lack thereof. Her remarks about overhearing Sherry and Neal through the wall, and her gift of the dildo (a dildo! for Christmas! for her mother!) made that obvious. It seemed to Sherry that her daughter, for all her nuttiness and lack of restraint, for all her impulsiveness, had been trying to heal them. She recognized a need and tried to provide it. It was strange, it was extreme -- it was insane, her solution. But to some degree, it seemed, it had worked. Sherry was calmer than she had been, less afraid, less desperate. She had just taken part in the craziest sex scene of her life -- and without becoming a swinger, without risking disease, without betraying Neal. Saying that she "kept it in the family" sounded a bit lurid, but in effect, she had. All that release and none of the consequences -- well, none of the conventional consequences, anyway. Just some guilt and bewilderment. Now if Sherry could find a way to contain that guilt, to clear up that bewilderment, why couldn't they all get on with their lives, intact?

"Hey," Neal said.

"Hmm -- what?"

"I love you."

Sherry looked at him. He was across the table but leaning towards her, as though hanging onto her every expression, her every sigh. She hadn't seen him so . . . so into her, since they were newlyweds. She smiled and touched his hand.

"That sounded like you meant it."

"I did. You're beautiful."

"I love you too."

He held one hand, the other she ran through her hair, then, absently, let roam across the front of her robe, over her breasts, to her stomach. How fantastic it had felt. Neal filling her up, making her gasp with every stroke, so hard and so big inside her she could feel him in her throat. Her son, at least as big as his daddy, crying out while she sucked him -- his burning skin against her lips, the broad head at the back of her throat, the powerful spurts of his cum. Her daughter, kissing and nuzzling her tits, sucking her nipples raw. Her tongue dancing over her clit, expertly, like she ate pussy every day. That girl, Sherry thought, shaking her head, has got a lot of explaining to do, some time.

It was all so unreal, dirty pictures glimpsed through the haze, an obscene, guilty dream. That haze, she thought again, that ugly haze had made it possible. Under the influence of the three D's -- drugs, drink and despair -- she had accidentally done something beautiful. Consciously she would have rejected it, as wrong, immoral, unthinkable, gross. In that patently irrational condition, though . . .

Maybe that was the answer. She and Neal had always been fairly rational people -- they could not have enjoyed many of their common interests otherwise. But sex, especially crazy, kinky, "improper" sex, was not rational: it was basic, instinctive, raw. It did not fit into the rational world, but it could not be suppressed either. Suppress it and shit happens. Suppress it, and you get desperate, depressed, self-destructive, as she had been for the past week. Suppress it, and you fall prey to infidelity and deceit, as Neal had done. Maybe the answer was to allow it, but contain it. Maybe sanctioning irrationality once in a while was completely rational. Everybody needed a chance to blow the lid off, to loose all that madness. It made sense to do that . . . as long as it was confined to the space of a few days.

Or even, she wondered, to the space of one's own family?

Her eyes fell on the Christmas decorations at the kitchen window: the arcing garland, the electric candles. A Santa Claus decal, clinging to the frosty pane.

"Neal," she said, "what was it you told me Christmas used to be?"

"Um," he grunted, clearly surprised by the question, "well, there were no trees and stuff. Prince Albert brought a lot of that to England when --"

"No, no -- not what did it used to be like. What was it, before it was Christmas? You said something about it once . . ."

"Oh. You mean the Saturnalia."

"Yeah." She squeezed his hand -- her man, the bookworm. "How did that go again?"

"Well, in the old Roman calendar all the months were the same length. Like thirty days or something. And there was no leap year. So every year there were a few days at the end just sort of 'left over.'"

"And those were party days?" Sherry said.

"Right -- very rowdy party days. Slaves got to be masters, masters were slaves. Sex, drunkenness, gluttony. That sort of thing."

"So what happened," Sherry asked, rubbing around her right breast in a lazy circle, "if you did something that had . . . I dunno . . . consequences? I mean, you couldn't just shoot someone, could you?"

"Well, you couldn't shoot anyone anyhow."

"You know what I mean. You couldn't, like, chop somebody's head off, or get somebody pregnant, or something like that."

"Chop their head, probably not. Get 'em pregnant, yeah probably. I don't really know. Far as I remember, unless it was really bad, you just did what you did and that was that. Sorta like a 'Whatever happens in Vegas' kinda thing."

She nodded thoughtfully, taking a sip of her wine . . . wine, that would certainly have been part of it. Bacchus or whatever his name was. There was something intrinsically sexy about wine; she decided that long ago. Just lately, during all her depressed days, she'd been drinking to escape, to forget, or to pretend things weren't happening. Now in her younger days, she remembered, she used to drink to have sex. Drink was a wonderful lubricant, so to speak. And wine had always been her favorite.

As she sat, feeling the tannins tugging at the back of her throat -- that place where her son's big cockhead had been -- her mind conjured up the ancient days, the ancient people lost in the joys of their Saturnalia. Strong, fit husbands tugging up their togas to reveal their cocks, the kitchenmaids falling to service them (did they have kitchenmaids?). The mother of the house, allowed for a little while to fuck the brains out of that one slave she'd always fancied. The children, free to run naked, the older people chasing their warm young bodies. Surely in times like that, in cultures like that, brothers had sisters, fathers had daughters, sons had mothers . . .?

Damn those ancient fuckers. It made a lot of sense. It really made a lot of sense.

You blow off the god-damned lid, you blow the hell out of it. Then you get on with it, at least till next year. And if you screwed up, if one of your kids screwed up, or your husband, you dealt with it. You moved on.

You accepted it and you moved on.

Sherry's wandering finger came to rest on her nipple. It was hard, poking against the yellow terrycloth. The one touch sent a thrill throughout her body.

She glanced at the clock atop the refrigerator. Three forty-five. In a few more hours the sun would be up. But only in a few more hours. Their own "Saturnalia" did not need to be over yet.

She tugged aside the hem of her robe, pulled her plump tit out with its yearning brown nipple. Neal's eyes widened -- she took his hand and put his fingers on the hardened tip. He grasped it, twisted and stroked it automatically. A wave of pleasure doused her, nestling in her hips and stomach. His hand widened, cupping the front of her breast. His eyes were shocked but wakeful. She read desire there.

He crossed to her and knelt on the tile floor, taking her nipple into his mouth while she pulled her other tit free. She petted his hair while he fed and drained the rest of her wine. With nothing in her stomach, as tired as she was, that should give her a little buzz. Not a stupor; just enough to find the balls do this.

"Come on," she ordered her husband. "Follow me . . ."

Neal stood and followed obediently as she led him down the hall, past the row of family pictures, beneath the mistletoe and streamers, and into the darkened den . . .

. . . her daughter had awakened slowly under her kisses, long kisses around her cheeks and along her neck. She had started awake, eyes full of panic, panic that had subsided, had drifted away, when Sherry touched her lips with her own.

She had been thinking that the only thing wrong, truly wrong, with their sex upstairs had been the beginning: the tears, the cries, the hysteria. She thought that if she started it, deliberately, if she could control it and monitor it, then maybe --

Eventually Vanessa started kissing back. Sherry noticed, as she felt the questing tongue in her mouth, that her daughter closed her eyes. Maybe that was why people closed their eyes during lovemaking, she thought -- festivals like Saturnalia. You closed yourself off from distractions, like who you were kissing, who was fucking you, and you focused on the pleasure. She moved her daughter's hand to her breast thinking that again, it made sense.

A cold draft between her legs. Neal was raising her robe from behind her, his hand was cupping her snatch. She held one breast for her daughter to suck and soon felt hot hardness bump against her ass . . .

. . . her son did not understand, but he did not struggle. She kissed him twice, kisses that painted his face with his sister's juice. All the while her hips were gyrating uncontrollably. Her knees burned from the rug but she ignored it. She also ignored Josh's quizzical expression, barely visible in the darkness, choosing instead to hear his quickening breath as she reached down between her legs to find his fat dick -- so fat, so long and fat in her hand.

The recliner had proved too awkward a place for lovemaking -- they had dragged him onto the floor before it. Now he sat stupidly with his back against the chair, arms still at his sides, while she mounted him. He needed some encouragement, either too sleepy or too confused to participate. With long strokes she coaxed him into it, thinking while she did so that no, that could not be why people closed their eyes, not entirely. Because part of the pleasure, part of the savage joy that could not be contained, that you needed to let out or you would die, was the knowledge of who you were loving. That's my son . . . my son, she thought, as she guided the tip between her lips.

Someone stumbled by her in the darkness, bumped into her shoulder, just as Josh began thrusting up into her a little. A few seconds more and an ass was in her face: a smooth ass, rounded. Vanessa's. She cupped the cheeks with her hands, feeling the body lower in front of her. She heard the frantic licking noises before she realized what was happening.

My son is inside me, she thought, savoring the thought. My son is licking my daughter, his sister . . .

. . . on her hands and knees, like an animal, she crawled across the carpet to where the dark forms were writhing. She could hear Neal grunting, cursing, approving -- could just see the tip of his cock, peeping out, disappearing, between his daughter's breasts. Vanessa was sighing, almost sobbing, calling him daddy. She moved down the prostrate form, behind where her husband's straining back shone from the hall light. For a while she listened to the snuffling, liquid sounds, then reached her hand out to find their source in the shadows, to ruffle her son's hair. She gritted her teeth and pushed his face further into his sister's pussy, held him there while he gasped and sucked.

She was angry, she thought. She was vengeful, she was vicious. She was brutal, she was wicked, she was nasty.

She was incredibly horny.

She let her hand glide down his neck, over his hard shoulders to the small of his back, onto his tight, fuzzy cheeks. They moved beneath her fingers; he was thrusting against the rug.

Bending forward, her breasts hanging free, she pulled up on his hip. He did not resist. Without stopping his frenzied feasting, he let her roll him to his side . . . just as her husband began groaning and growling uncontrollably, and her daughter whined and squealed.

Blow the lid off, she thought, pulling the dick to her mouth.

December Twenty-ninth

Sherry remembered a nasty little joke from college: you know you had a good time if you wake up and your face feels like a glazed doughnut.

She stretched her mouth wide, yawning, and rubbed at her cheeks and around her lips to loosen up the skin. In her mouth she tasted something a bit bleachy, a bit alkaline. Her body was sore, especially her back and hips. She had bruises on her thighs. She rolled around against the sheets, trying to work it out.

Twelve thirty, the clock said.

Her bedroom was full of light, and not the dull grey they had gotten used to. This was genuine Florida sun, yellow-orange and everywhere. The snow should be melting, she realized.

Neal was snoring beside her; she rolled onto her side to watch him. Her big man, back in her bed. It scarcely seemed possible. She stroked his arm to make sure he was really there. For a moment she thought about sweeping the covers back, about awakening the lovely cock that slumbered beneath. But no, he was done in, poor man. Best to let him sleep.

She crossed the room naked, liking the chilly air on her breasts, rushing up between her legs. She hugged herself at the window, casting her glance over the brilliant white landscape outside. Yep, melting soon, without doubt. She didn't know snow but she knew sun. With both hands she cupped her breasts, weighing them, gingerly touching her sore nipples. Ow. Somebody had bitten that one, really chewed on her. She rubbed around them gently, like she used to do when nursing, and continued to take in the view, beginning to remember what the backyard looked like. She had to admit, that crappy old barn looked better with its layer of icing -- it made it seem picturesque somehow . . .

It was then that she noticed, parked where Neal's car was normally, the long charcoal-grey Lincoln.

"Oh . . . my God," she breathed.

Her daughter burst through the door at that moment, all bouncing, naked curves.

"Hurry, get up, get up!" she was saying, "It's Grandma!"

Sherry froze, Vanessa fidgeted.

"Holy shit," croaked Neal from the bed.

Ten minutes later, when they had struggled into clothes and hustled Sherry's mother and her array of packages out of the cold, Sherry began to breathe easier. They were all in the living room and had talked about the downed phone lines, the impassable roads, when she snuck into the kitchen to wash the coffee pot. She didn't notice that the old lady had followed her.

"Did you and Neal make up?" she was asking.

"Um . . . yes! Pretty much so," answered Sherry.

"I thought so!" said her mother, bright-eyed. "You smell just like spunk!"

January First and Beyond

The Fords' new year together began more normally than any of them might have expected. Dick Clark, Rosie O'Donnell, Sting. The descending ball in Times Square. The countdown, the popping of the champagne cork. No one mentioned, nor did anyone need to mention, that this was the first New Year's Eve they'd spent together since Vanessa and Josh were pre-teens. They all felt the significance of this -- the sudden comfort to be found at home, with family. It had taken a freak snowstorm and several defunct automobiles to make them spend Christmas together. But New Year's they spent together on their own, willingly.

On New Year's Day Jeannie Crews called to argue with Josh and instead received from him a long and sincere apology for his behavior before the holidays. Vanessa could only overhear her brother's side of the conversation, but even from this she could tell Jeannie was amazed, thrilled, astounded at his apparent change in attitude, at the sudden abundance of humility in a guy who had formerly possessed not a shred. Vanessa could just imagine the gushing forgiveness on the other end of the line, the new promises Jeannie might make, perhaps even the apologies on her part (oh I made too much of it all -- I was just being childish -- I promise I won't overreact like that again). She figured that her brother's apology had probably done nothing but stoke the fires of the little twit's ego, so that now Jeannie supposed she had changed Josh. Of course, what she couldn't know was how the entire edifice of Josh's smartass persona had been rocked, cracked, and caved in by the events of the holiday. The girl was just dumb enough to suppose that she had caused it all, had put Josh in his place.

All of this -- though more than half of it was surmise -- served to confirm to Vanessa that this girl was entirely wrong for her dear brother. Paired with such a twerp, Josh would only rebuild that facade of cockiness and selfishness, brick by annoying brick. He was too genuinely desirable to help it. What he needed, she was now positive, was a girl who could keep him down in a world of shit. Instinctively, Josh seemed to grasp some inkling of his needs, and realize that Jeannie couldn't provide them. They dated again for a few weeks during January before he, not she, broke it off.

Late in January, when she had almost worked up the courage to break things off with Brad, Vanessa lost her baby. Among the many unbidden, unexpected emotions that swept over her at the time, relief surprised her by being the strongest. Vanessa would have scratched the eyes out of anyone who dared say anything so pat as "it's probably for the best," but, in fact, it probably was. She certainly had never been ready for anything so serious as a baby; the abject fear of it all had probably driven her to her excesses over Christmas more than she realized. But she could never have brought herself to terminate the pregnancy, so that the end, ugly and hurtful as it was, nevertheless lightened her load. Josh surprised her again by taking it as hard as she did, becoming a pale shadow that haunted the house for days. Brad, though full of good intentions, was no help; he could not get between his so-called wife and her new ties with her family, an intimacy he sensed but could not understand. And so, Vanessa not seeming to need him, and the physical reason for the union now gone, he left her. He and his family moved away from town a month later.

In the days following the miscarriage, Vanessa found comfort and release in her mother's arms, in her mother's bed. They made love three times on three consecutive weekday afternoons, while the men-folk were away. They wove the elements of a lazy, still, wintry mid-day into a combination all their own: fresh, cool air through open windows, clean sheets on the bed, hot showers together, toweling each other off, lying naked to talk, kiss, and explore. It was their ritual, the most powerful and intimate they'd shared since her girlhood tea parties. Afterwards they usually snuggled for an hour or so, talking, perhaps dozing, rising before Neal or Josh came home. On the third afternoon, gathered up in her mother's arms, Vanessa heard in warm whispers against her ear how Sherry too had lost her first baby -- the older brother or sister Vanessa would never have.

There were certainly couplings among them all during the year, though they were only couplings, they were infrequent, and they were not "made public." Once Brad left, Vanessa moved home again to her old room, and it became even easier for rendezvous to occur. Neal had been quite right, in a way; what had happened would indeed always be between them, but as a bridge, not a boundary. And where there is a bridge there are people to cross it.

Vanessa was unwilling to give up her newfound lover, the only man who could both worship and dominate her -- her father. But she was still less willing to interfere in the passion that had been rekindled between Neal and Sherry. The two now behaved in a way that seemed almost insufferably cute and cozy, always in each other's company, always kissing and touching and sharing looks. They had made a weekend project out of fixing up the old barn, partly (she knew) as an excuse to sneak into the loft and have sex. As gut-wrenching a spectacle as they made, as two people really sickeningly in love always make, Vanessa could not come between them. But she did bring her desire to her father when Sherry was away, when she felt reasonably sure it would do no harm. These times they shared always felt more like a kindness to her than to him. He accepted her happily, and pleased her body with attentiveness and devotion. But he belonged whole-heartedly to Sherry when she reappeared.

Josh still leeched off of Vanessa, still drew a lot of his energy from her willingness to take charge and control him. But he didn't seem to need her as much as he had, and initiated their sex together only about half of the time. She thought she knew why.

One afternoon in March, she had come home early from work to find the doors to the old house locked, Josh's and Sherry's cars in the yard. Vanessa let herself in quietly, said hello to her mother (who looked flushed) and to her brother (who looked exhausted). It was obvious even from a glance that she had interrupted something, that they had spotted her arriving and had rushed into "normal" mode. After using the bathroom upstairs, she poked her nose into her brother's bedroom, and found three belts and a neck tie fastened to the four bed posts. Also, though someone had opened the window, she thought she detected the scent of cum lingering in the air. She came downstairs again pretending ignorance, but Sherry obviously picked up on her mood.

"Your brother's a big boy," she told Vanessa, eyes flashing, "but I think he knows who's boss now."

Until he graduated Josh went through a string of girlfriends rapidly, dating some for as little as two weeks before breaking up. To an outside observer this might have seemed like rootlessness or womanizing, but Vanessa knew it was a good sign in her brother's case. It meant he had broken his old pattern of finding a girl who let him fuck her and staying put, until he pissed her off and she dumped him. It meant that he was looking for something better, even if he didn't know what.

In the middle of September, knee-deep in his first semester of junior college, Josh brought a new girl home. The very fact that he brought her home was of enormous significance, of course. Her name was Katya, and she was (he proclaimed with awe) a Swedish exchange student. This girl differed from all Josh's previous girls in some interesting ways.

First, anatomically, she could not really be called a "girl," but had to be acknowledged a woman. She was tall and lean, with a perfect complexion. She had broad shoulders and short blonde hair that wisped around her ears, small, tight breasts and hair in her pits. She was everywhere so fit and so toned that bullets would have bounced off her. She had miles of leg, which she liked to show off by wearing the shortest of short skirts. The one time Vanessa had run into them at a club, she had to fight the urge to rummage beneath that short skirt, to lift it up and see the ass those gorgeous legs led to. Katya was so unlike Josh's previous tastes in females -- twigs with tits -- that her anatomy alone signaled a new direction for him.

Second, Josh doted on her, fawned on her, watched to obey her slightest wish. When she was out of the room he watched the doorway for her return -- when she was in the room he deferred to her choice, pulled out chairs for her, did silly things hoping to gain her attention and approval. He made a point of opening car doors for her, whereas his previous girls were lucky if he slowed down enough for them to dive in.

Vanessa didn't ask what sort of sex life inspired this change, and Josh wasn't volunteering anything. But she could look Katya in the eye and see most of it. She felt fairly certain her brother was in good hands now, and, when in the awful presence of the girl, found herself wondering just how far she pushed him. Did she whip him? tie him up? piss in his face? Or was she just so damned strong she could make even conventional sex feel like domination? Whatever she did it made Josh happy, and that made Josh easier for everybody to take.

Vanessa herself now watched and waited, content to take her life slower and more carefully. Her clubbing, her hanging out, her playing she had reduced by more than half. She left the Denny's and got a job on campus at a bookstore, and began taking some night classes, sometimes with her brother. She dated some, but not much. She knew from experience that chance encounters could bring her good sex, terrific sex, mind-blowing sex, but not the emotional security she now needed. Until she found a man (or a woman, she thought, to be fair) who made her feel . . .

Loved, like her mother did,

Beautiful, like her father did,

Powerful, like her brother did,

. . . she resolved to take her chances and wait. She was young, she had life ahead, and above all, she had a family to take care of.

THE END