Good Son
What follows is a work of fiction that includes extensive scenes of incest between a mother and her teenaged son, and between two stepbrothers, one of whom is prepubescent. Standard disclaimers apply. Stop now if you don’t want to see more. Otherwise, read on and enjoy…
1: Family
“Stop it, Miguel!”
“Make me.”
“Miii-guellll!”
“What? I’m not touching you…”
“Joey! Joey! Miguel’s being a pest!”
Joey rolled his eyes at Juanita, his second younger sibling. “How many times have you been a pest to him?”
Juanita’s face turned red. “Joo-eeeey…”
“Don’t whine,” Joey said firmly. “It’s harder to take anyone seriously when they whine.” He turned to his first younger sib. “And Miguel, remember what we talked about before? With technicalities?”
The boy scowled and nodded.
“What did we say?”
“That technicalities are for lawyers,” the boy mumbled.
“That’s right,” Joey said. “You’re not touching your sister but you are hassling her. Stop it.”
“Fine,” Miguel pouted. “I don’t ever get any fun, and she gets away with murder —” He stopped sharply, coloring.
Joey let it go. “She does not,” he said. “And neither do you. Now separate corners, both of you.”
“Fine,” Miguel grumped, and stalked off to the bedroom he shared with all his siblings except Joey.
Juanita stared after him. “Hey,” she said, “I was gonna go to —” But she saw the look Joey was giving her and stopped.
Joey’s mother, Carrie, was running late again, and he was left in charge of the family. He didn’t mind it, though his responsibilities had grown enormously in the last two years, ever since…
He shoved it aside, finished his homework and set to work in the kitchen.
The two older kids, Miguel and Juanita, helped carry the food to the table while the younger two, Filippe and Teresa, laid the dishes and place settings. Joey had the meal ready promptly at six, but his mother still hadn’t arrived.
The kids watched the clock, seated around the table, Joey at one end and an empty chair at the other.
At ten after, he said, “I guess we should get started,” and all but Miguel and Joey dug in.
The two oldest boys traded a look.
“She’s coming, right?” Miguel said softly.
“Yes,” Joey said, and managed a smile, then put a serving on his plate larger than he had any appetite for. “Go to it, kid.”
A little before eight, the two youngest tucked in and Joey helping Miguel and Juanita concentrate on their homework, they heard the car pull into the drive and keys in the lock.
The younger kids greeted Carrie enthusiastically while Joey stayed a little aloof, keeping quiet. His mom looked at him apologetically. “They needed me late, son,” she said. “Three-car pileup. Pretty bad mess and someone’s got to do the nursing.”
Joey relented. “Fatalities?”
“Everyone.” Her voice was quiet.
“Shit.” He went to her and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said as she sobbed against his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” she sniffed. “It happens. The savages okay?”
Joey shrugged. “The kids … they worried. A little.”
Carrie smiled softly and held her oldest boy, the only one of the brood that was hers by biology. His arms were strong and warm. She caressed his face. “The kids?”
Joey let a smile show. “Well, yeah. You know. Kids. They worry.”
Carrie kissed his cheek and nodded. “They do.” She sniffed the air. “Spaghetti?”
“Yeah,” Joey said, following her into the kitchen. “Have a seat. The noodles just need reheating.”
“I can do that, son…” Carrie said, but Joey guided her to her chair at the table.
“No problem, Mom. It’ll just be a couple minutes.”
It didn’t take long before Joey got everything ready, and he sat by his mother while she ate. Thoughts rolled in his blue eyes. Memories. Of that day, two years ago, when another parent had been late coming home. And later. And later still.
And then there had been the sound of a two-way radio squawking mindlessly at the door, and a knock. A policeman, his uniform stark and his face sad, his badge glinting in the yellow porch light.
And then everything had changed.
Joey still didn’t like uniforms.
Carrie leaned back from the remains of her meal with a satisfied sigh. “Delicious,” she said.
“Juanita helped,” Joey said.
Carrie smiled. By helped, she knew her son meant that the girl had stood around, got underfoot and asked endless questions, only a few of which had anything remotely to do with meal preparation. She patted her son’s knee. “How was school?”
“Same,” Joey shrugged.
“The others?”
“Same too. Miguel’s still having trouble with reading. And spelling. I don’t think it’s ESL, Mom.”
Carrie winced. “I guess we should take him to a neurologist, then.”
Joey nodded. Miguel, a bright boy, had little of his native accent, and had no trouble in spoken communications. The word dyslexia had surfaced in Joey’s mind more and more often lately, and he knew his mother harbored similar concerns. “If it is something … you know, there are ways to work with it.”
Carrie nodded and squeezed Joey’s knee briefly, then went back to letting her palm rest on it. Since Mark had — in the last two years Joey had taken on massive burdens, and had done so without a single complaint. She frankly admired his strength. His shoulders, broader now at fourteen than they had been at first, never slumped in defeat.
“Juanita got an A on that spelling test,” Joey went on. “She was rubbing Miguel’s nose in it all afternoon.” He grinned. “Amazing what a little duct tape can fix though.”
Carrie shook her head slowly, then returned his smile. “Your father would be very proud, you know,” she said softly, surprising them both.
Joey shrugged uneasily. “Well. You know.” He spread his hands. “What else’m I gonna do?”
Carrie sighed. “I should have called, you’re right. But things get … you’ve seen the ER. You know. Hectic.”
Joey nodded. The ER was where his father had been taken, but he’d seen it before in other situations. It did get crazy, and messy. Noisy. That was one reason he tried to have the kids fairly well in rein by the time Carrie got home. She didn’t need more noise and chaos. He shifted forward, moving closer to her. “Forget it, Mom. Miguel was the only one who really … I mean, they all noticed, but he…”
Carrie squeezed his knee again and gave him another smile, her hand unconsciously stroking upward along his lean muscular thigh until her fingers paused an inch away from his prominent bulge. “And you?”
He put his hand atop hers, patting gently. “I … yeah, a little.”
His mother regarded him quietly, smiling sadly. “What a sorry thing,” she said.
“We can’t change it,” Joey said softly.
“I know. I know, son.” She sighed tiredly. “But you’re young. You shouldn’t have all these burdens. You shouldn’t be in the position of having to look after four kids every day…”
“Five, someday,” he reminded her, slipping his hand around her waist and pulling her near for an embrace. “And anyway, how’s it different from lots of other single-parent families? The older kids pick up the slack.” He shrugged. “That’s just how it works.”
She leaned back in his arms and reached to his face, handsome like his father’s but with a hint of her own features as well, and brushed stray blond wisps back from his clear forehead. “I suppose. But I still … I thank God, every day, that you’re in my life, son.”
Joey smiled and squeezed his mother’s hand where it lay on his thigh. She squeezed back, her fingers just nestling against his groin, her pinky caught under the rise that had grown so much on him in the last couple of years. So close was their relationship, so free were they in their gestures of affection, that neither she nor he noticed the almost-sexual touch.
“Any word yet on the baby?”
Joey shook his head, idly stroking Carrie’s back to the curve of her hip. “Just what we got last week.”
“I hope they’re able to work it out,” Carrie said quietly, then looked guiltily at her oldest boy. A fifth child, still virtually an infant, would be a tremendous extra load for him. She lifted her hand along his body, her fingertips tickling innocently over his rise, briefly stroking his sex as her palm rose to lie flat on his chest and feel the good muscles there, the sturdy beat of his heart. “Though, if not…”
“No,” Joey said firmly. “We agreed from the beginning. They stay together no matter what.” His voice caught and his vision swam a little. “It’s what Dad wanted.”
Carrie’s own eyes filled suddenly and they fell into a hug, quietly crying against each other’s shoulders.
Before turning in for the night, Joey paused outside the sibs’ bedroom door. Four small bodies breathed deeply in slumber, and he smiled at the sound.
His mom and dad had tried, after him, to have more kids, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t anything with Mom, he knew that. He also knew she didn’t blame his father. It was one of those things that happened sometimes. Like three-car pileups with no survivors.
Or customers in gas stations getting in the way when robberies were happening.
So they had decided to adopt, after talking things over as a family for a long time. They’d come across a small family that was split up, the kids living in several foster homes, and had taken them in. The only available biological parent, the mother, had given birth to Miguel when she was just thirteen. She wasn’t a bad person; she hadn’t been promiscuous. She just hadn’t been well-used by life, or by some of the men her mother knew.
Her youngest, the fifth child Joey and his mother were awaiting, was still in foster care, but in Mexico. That evidently made things harder to manage.
The other kids had been no trouble, even with being adopted by a Caucasian family, though little Teresa, herself just four, occasionally became wistful about having una bambina to look after.
The adoption had been finalized not too long before … before Joey’s father had died.
He heard a creak from down the hall and glanced toward his mother’s bedroom. She was standing in the doorway, regarding him. “Hey,” he said quietly.
“Everything all right, son?” She stole up to him softly, both of them dressed in their usual night garb — she naked under a tee, Joey barechested in his briefs.
“Yeah, just getting ready to hit it,” he said. “Checking on the monsters.”
Carrie smiled fleetingly at him. “Were they rough?”
He reached into his briefs, scratching idly. “Not as bad as some days,” he said. He adjusted himself and pulled his hand back out, the heavy cylinder of his penis pointing upward now in the clinging cloth, scrotum swelling full beneath. “About normal for them.”
“Good,” Carrie said. “Thank you. For all the help you’ve been. And for all the help you are.”
“Sure,” Joey said, stretching suddenly. “I think I’d better sack too.” He pecked his mother’s cheek and turned away. “Good night, Mom.”
“Sleep well, son,” Carrie said softly, smiling in amusement at how his briefs shone, seemingly luminous on his firm round butt, and watched his broad, strong back retreat from her, silvered in the moonlight, then blocked completely from her view as he closed his bedroom door.
“God,” she whispered, “thank you for my boy.”
2: In the Dark
You’re the man of the house now, son.
Joey’s brow, sheened in sweat, glistened in the night.
The voice is coming from one of the mourners at the graveside. Someone who knew Dad from work. His eyes are solemn and heavy, but he looks like he’s almost happy to be putting this load on the back of a boy, a mere stripling of twelve yet to grow pubic hair.
The man of the house. You’ll have to look after your mother. He looks down at his fingers, dark with the handful of dirt that he had dropped to fall in a streak across the glinting casket.
Alone in the night, in his room, trapped in the nightmare, Joey let out a soft moan.
The man’s face is sloughing away, skin dropping off in wet gobbets, revealing a yellowed skull underneath. Maggots spill from its mouth as it speaks again, this time in his father’s voice, choked with the earth that covered him. You’re the man of the house. The man of the house.
The maggots churn and spew, and he is covered in their cool clinging mass, buried in the wiggling chill. A white wave of life, rooted in death, swarms across him.
Joey woke with a shudder and lay on his back, naked but for his briefs and his body alive with clammy sweat, and stared up at the ceiling. His heart was still pounding in his icy chest.
Dad, he thought in the post-dream moment, I didn’t ask for this…
He sat up and scrubbed his face with his palms. “Shit,” he sighed softly, then reached for a cigarette.
He and Mom went around about his smoking, or they used to. She had eased up in the last six months, evidently deciding he would quit only when he chose to, not before.
Besides, she lit up herself, so who was she to judge?
The punk, a bright orange spot in the room’s dim, vibrated slightly in his fingers. He took another deep drag and felt his nerves begin to settle.
He’d started smoking the day after his father’s funeral. The day after that strange — to him — man had told him he was now the man of the house, that he would be responsible for looking after his mother and his family.
Joey had wanted to tell the man, I don’t want this, I didn’t ask for it, so quit smiling at me like you think I’m fucking happy about all this.
But instead he had nodded numbly, as he had to every other person who spoke to him that day. The condolences, repeated endlessly like a child’s mindless prattle, had lost all meaning, if they ever held any. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do… God bless you. You’re so brave.
And over and over, You’re the man of the house.
Man of the fucking house, he thought. I can barely keep any of my shit together.
He stubbed the cigarette and went down the hall to pee, then washed his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His cheekbones stood out, but not in a cadaverous way; they were just a little pronounced, and his jawline was even and solid. His mouth twisted in self-critique. He’d been told that he had sensual lips, and that always bothered him. It sounded a little faggy for his tastes.
His nose wasn’t overly pronounced and his eyes, pale sky blue, were usually clear.
Girls liked his looks. He knew that; they stared at him. Sometimes he caught them looking. A few boys too, he’d noticed. Checking out his ass, or sometimes his package.
He’d taken to wearing tighter jeans this year. Now that he had something to fill them with, it made sense. His bulge was healthy and obvious in them, the glinting buttons in the fly straining to hold it all in, and he liked the feeling of being sexy.
His chest was broad and lean, cleft neatly down his sternum, his aureolae a healthy russet, but he wasn’t sprouting any hair there yet. Under his arms and on his balls, sure. Around his cock. The usual places for boys of fourteen or so. But his father had never been especially hairy, so Joey figured he probably wouldn’t be either.
He turned and regarded his profile, how narrow his waist was and the way his stomach, rippled with abs, fell flat below his navel into the line of his briefs. His butt was lean and tight — smoking or no, he worked on himself to keep fit — and his cock lumped nicely in front, pointing upward the way he liked, a large, rounded distention of the cloth, ridged where the corona began. And right underneath, the swelling of his balls, twin mounds that echoed the larger shape of his dick’s tip.
His cock had really begun to enlarge in the last year, going from five inches long, hard, to a mammoth eight, hormones doing their thing to him, while hair sprouted all over and his voice lowered, gradually, in register. His cum had gone from thin and clear to a thick, pearly white, rich and opaque with his sperm, and when he shot it landed high on his chest. A few times it had even hit him in the face.
His bedroom at night was one of the few places where Joey could be sure of privacy. The other kids didn’t come in when the door was shut, and he usually took advantage of the quiet to jack off. He had a couple stroke mags that he used, old, creased and dogeared swaps that he would eventually trade for others.
He never talked to Carrie about any of it, but he was pretty sure she understood what was going on in there when he would disappear in his bedroom for a half hour, shutting the door and becoming very quiet.
Looking at himself in the mirror now, he wondered for the first time if his mother ever did anything like that.
Maybe, he decided. Probably. And why not? She wasn’t seeing anyone. She said she didn’t have the time — that was partly true — but Joey figured she was still missing Dad.
It didn’t matter, he guessed. She’d go out again someday, when she was ready.
His own social life was no better. He really didn’t have the time. He had his own advanced placement courses to take care of — that usually meant four hours’ homework after seven in school — and he had his sibs to wrangle as well. Some days they weren’t so bad. Today was about average. But some days they … it was like they conspired to be the maximum ass-pains imaginable all at once. It would probably be college before he had a shot at a girlfriend, let alone more.
He sighed and shook his head at himself, then went back to bed.
Carrie heard the bathroom door close and then the unmistakable heavy roll of Joey’s bladder as he voided into the toilet. Neither of the other boys had an anatomy developed enough to sustain a stream of that volume, she knew. That was a man-sized penis pissing in the night. The Third Billy Goat Gruff, the one with the deep voice.
She smiled to herself. Who’s that piss-piss-pissing over my bridge?
Joey had grown up quite a lot, particularly this last year. He was taller, broader, and his muscles were now well defined; his voice was deep and he was … enlarged, matured. And he took to masturbation with a gusto that only hormonally-rich teen boys seemed to muster.
The younger kids didn’t understand why Joey was strictly off-limits when his bedroom door was closed, and she didn’t explain it to them. Miguel maybe had some idea — he was eleven and getting to the age when boys might begin exploring themselves a little — but he honored the rule without question like everyone else.
Joey had, in their lives, taken the position that Mark once held, the male role model, the figurehead of manhood. He wasn’t precisely a father to them, but then, neither had Mark been, biologically.
Families. Who said they had to obey anyone’s rules?
Come to think of it, who the hell made up the rules anyway? Man, woman, kids, kids from the man’s sperm and the woman’s eggs, grown in her womb. Any variation was … broken, or incomplete, or nontraditional, a PC-ism she found especially loathsome.
Sanctimonious assholes.
Joey was so good with the kids. He was always gentle toward them, loving — but firm when he needed to be. Only once had anyone ever challenged his authority; a year or so ago Miguel had said, “I don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my real dad.”
Carrie had called the boy out, speaking so all his siblings could hear. “He might not be your biological father, Miguel, but Joey is the man of this house, and you don’t dare question him or his right to authority over you.”
That had been the end of that.
And her son was just sweet. Many nights Joey would cradle little Teresa, read to her (her favorite story was The Three Billy-Goats Gruff), cuddle her to his chest as she slept, then carry her gently into her room and lay her delicately in bed, snuggled against her favorite animal, a plush unicorn Joey had won for her at a carnival the year previous. Carrie watched him sometimes, standing back to look down on her with a smile on his face, reaching to brush her hair or plant a soft kiss on her brow before stealing away. As though the girl were his own daughter.
He was the same with the others, even Miguel, who was the most difficult. Miguel was getting to the age where he felt he shouldn’t show any emotions other than anger; he didn’t own up to fear or sorrow any more.
Except with Joey. Miguel trusted Joey completely.
The bathroom door opened again and she heard her son pad down the hall, the rustle of him getting into bed, and then the flick of a lighter.
She wished, still, that he wouldn’t smoke, but during one of their arguments on the subject he’d said, in essence, that since life was expecting him to be an adult in so many ways already, he didn’t see why a cigarette now and then was such a big deal.
She had never said so aloud, but internally she’d conceded. He was right; if she — or the world — was expecting him to act manlike, maybe letting him indulge a little adult behavior was proper.
So she’d backed off since then about the cigarettes.
She drew one from her own pack and lit up.
She truly wished only one thing: That Joey would relax just a little in his vigil over the younger kids, that he would let himself have some room for a social life. He was of an age when many boys were turning their thoughts, almost exclusively, to girls, to those girls’ budding breasts, to making out in movie theaters, to getting laid. She had talked with him about it a few times, making sure he understood that if he had questions — or needed condoms — she expected him to come to her. He knew, and still he seemed to prefer his hand for company.
Well, maybe it was less complicated that way for him. A girlfriend would be another high-maintenance element in his life; maybe Joey just didn’t feel up to the task.
She’d asked a few physicians at the hospital, discreetly, how often teenaged boys masturbated. The numbers varied, some of them really surprising — as often as half a dozen times a day — but none less than several times a week, with once daily being about the average, it seemed. So Joey wasn’t being unusually onanistic; his twice-a-day play was high average but still normal. That was a relief.
You’re a mom, Joey’s voice said in her memory. Moms worry. She smiled in the dark. How many times had he said that to her…?
“Mom?”
She started from her reverie and saw Joey’s silhouette in the door. In the dim of the room all she could really make out of him was a patch of grey where his skin was, dark spots for his aureolae and, higher up, the smudged features of his face, lower the faintly luminous triangle of his briefs. “Yes? Are you all right?”
His mostly-naked body changed shape indistinctly, and she didn’t know if it was a shrug or a nod until he spoke. “I guess.”
She sat up. “What’s wrong, honey?”
He came over to the bed and sat beside her, one leg on the mattress, the other hanging to the floor. He got one of her cigarettes and lit it, the cherry leaving red streaks in her vision as it moved between his lips and the ashtray. “Do you think … am I doing all right?”
She got another smoke for herself. “All right with what, Joey?”
His shoulders rose and dropped again. “Just … you know, life, dealing with the kids, all that.”
“Yes,” she said firmly, without any hesitation. “I think you can be very proud.” She reached for his knee. “I know I am. I know your father would be as well.”
She knew him so well that she didn’t need to see his face to recognize the shy smile he gave her. “Thanks.”
Her hand stroked along his calf. “What’s on your mind, sweetie?”
He shrugged again, playing with his cigarette. “Just … some days, I feel like I can barely hold on. Like I’m just barely keeping it all together, like I’m a … a fake, or like…” His voice trailed off.
“Son,” Carrie said quietly, “listen to me. That’s how it is for most of us most of the time.” She patted his knee again. “Every day is like that. We just barely keep on top of things, and we don’t keep on top of everything, and sometimes we really do feel like frauds.”
“‘We’?” Joey said.
She smiled, then lifted a leg to lean forward comfortably and patted his knee once more. “Adults. Men and women. I know you’re fourteen, son, and that many would still consider you a child, but there are plenty of boys in the world who’ve taken on the kinds of responsibilities you have, and their societies regard them as being men. You’re very mature mentally and emotionally, and you gain the respect of everyone who meets you.
“And you deserve that respect, son. I’ve seen men three, four times your age break down and cry like infants over a broken leg or a stupid little cut that doesn’t even need stitches. I’ve seen men who are shaped like bodybuilders puke and even faint at blood, just a few drops, seen them scream like girls, like they were about to die of a broken arm. You are a fine young man, a very courageous and strong young man, and I consider myself very lucky to have you. If you hadn’t been here after Mark — well, I don’t know how I would have carried on.”
Joey was regarding her solemnly. “Seriously?”
“Yes, son,” Carrie said.
She leaned back and the hem of her tee, risen with her leg, lifted high enough to show the dark patch of hair that grew low on her and within it the fold of her body. Joey felt his own body react at the sight, felt his cock swell and grow to full tumescence, but he ignored it; he was almost used to it. Being the age he was, he knew he could expect frequent hardons, and he usually didn’t pay attention to them any more. Besides, Carrie was his mother. He didn’t want her pussy.
She saw Joey’s sex stiffen and lengthen in his briefs but didn’t comment on it; there was nothing to say, and besides, it wasn’t truly a bad thing to see. Joey was large and still had growing to do, and the sight of him, watching as her son got an erection, was … titillating. In moments he went from flaccid — but still respectably sized — to fully rigid and pulsing, the distended heft of his flesh pushing firmly against the top of his briefs, his corona barely contained in the tight cotton.
He considered his cigarette, hand resting on his thigh. The orange heat of the coal fell across the elongate rise of his penis, casting the swollen bulge of his flesh in ruddy highlights. His voice became very low. “Sometimes I have … pretty fucked-up dreams, Mom.” She let him be quiet with that for a moment. “Dreams about … him. And I wake up and I think there’s no way I can ever … uh, like be the man he was, you know?”
“You aren’t expected to be,” Carrie said quietly. “You can’t be your father, any more than he could be you.
“But son, the man you are is wonderful, and I know — I know, Joey — that your father would be bursting with pride to see how finely you’ve turned out.” She stubbed her cigarette.
Joey seemed to digest that slowly, then nodded, putting out his own smoke. “Thanks,” he said.
“Any time,” Carrie said, and drew him near for a hug. He settled casually between her parted knees, nestling his hips to hers as they embraced warmly. His organ, still fully erect, throbbed a little at the contact and she pushed aside the unmotherly response in her own body to that gently insistent pressure. She leaned back and smiled at him. “Anything else, sweetie?”
He shook his head.
She let go of him. “All right,” she smiled, her hands trailing along his shoulders, down his biceps, over his forearms, until they had caught his fingers. She gave a little squeeze. “Good night, son. Sleep well.”
He leaned in and pecked her cheek, then rose, still indistinct in the gloom, the hovering white delta of his underwear the only clear signal of his location. “You too, Mom.” She watched the glowing briefs draw away, bobbing with each step, then pause again at the door. He turned to her. “I love you.”
“I love you too, son,” she said.
He left, and went to bed.
Mornings were usually Carrie’s favorite time. They were a chance to set the tone for the day, a chance for a new beginning after the sorrows and concerns of the night had passed.
Mornings were also one of the few times she got to really feel like a mother. Her shifts at the hospital usually kept her from being able to be there in the afternoons when the kids got home, and Joey was mostly the one to prepare the evening meals. Before, Mark had taken that task; but both he and Joey let her have her time in the kitchen in the early hours of dawn except for a few special occasions. It was a gift she had appreciated, and still was grateful to Joey for allowing her.
As the bacon popped mellowly, she heard the pad of bare feet behind her and felt hands sliding around her waist. She leaned into her son’s embrace and smiled at the press of his lips to her cheek. “Morning,” he said quietly.
She nodded, relishing the pure sensual delight of a good pair of strong arms around her. She had always been physically affectionate and Joey had followed in her footsteps, easily sharing cuddles and snuggles, and they stood for a while quietly, swaying slightly, embraced gently but firmly, her hands sliding slowly over his forearms. Veins tracked over his muscles and she traced them with her fingertips as Joey’s lean, almost-nude body pressed her skin warmly through the tee she wore. Neither of them had ever been shy, though it never felt like immodesty to her. “Sleep well?”
She felt his nod. “You?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she smiled.
“Good.” His arms tightened around her waist. “I’ll call the school about a neurologist this afternoon for Miguel.” As he spoke she felt the resonance of his voice in her chest.
“You don’t —”
“I know. But I will.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “You have enough each day. I’ve got the time. It’s no problem, Mom. Really.”
She sighed. “It’s just that … sometimes you take on so much responsibility, son.”
“We both do,” Joey reminded her. “It’s all right.”
She turned in his arms, facing him, seeing his faint smile in the early morning light filtering through the kitchen windows. Her arms slipped naturally over his strong naked shoulders, around his neck, and they nuzzled, rubbing noses in Eskimo kisses. Joey had loved them since he was a small boy, and he giggled with her now. Foreheads touching, they shared a smile.
She lay her cheek alongside his and pulled him nearer, wanting the touch and reveling in the sensation of the embrace, the feel of his healthy young body, the total and unconditional adoration they held for one another. “I love you so much, son,” she whispered.
“I know,” he whispered back. “Me too. Me too.”
“I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
“It’s a good thing you recognize it.” She could hear in his voice the smirk that he wore.
She leaned back in his arms to see him again, how handsome he was, so breathtakingly, astoundingly handsome, marveling that she could have — that she had any involvement at all in his creation, that this incredible, good-looking boy had come from her body. Her hands eased down his arms and over his bare torso, halting at his hips, the waistband of his snug briefs riding over them tightly. She let her eyes roam over his chest, admiring the build of him, further amazed at the beauty that he held, that he was. “Those workouts are really showing,” she said, her touch gliding over the firm rise of his pectorals, the stiffness of his nipples tickling her palms, her fingertips just catching the scratches of the wiry hair at his armpits.
Joey shrugged nonchalantly but she could tell he was pleased. “I guess.”
Her hands slipped around his waist once more. “You’re so handsome,” she murmured, feeling a little rill of heat in her that she didn’t want to fully acknowledge, pushing it back before she was actually conscious of it. “You’ll have no trouble getting a girlfriend.” She saw his face and understood she’d touched a nerve — again — he didn’t like the occasional pressure she put on him to date. “When you’re ready. When you’re ready.”
He nodded and she felt something happen to him, something that had been a firm presence between them now softening on his body. Until then she had not truly been aware that Joey’s sex had filled to erection while they had shared their morning cuddle, and she wasn’t sure how she felt now that the stiffness was gone. “I guess I should hit the spray before the mutants are up,” he said, just a little curt.
The cool that bloomed in her was surprising. “Son —”
“Forget it,” he said, and then his face relaxed. “Forget it.” He pulled her near again and that quickly, the incident was over, forgotten, in the past. He held the embrace a few moments longer, gave her another Eskimo kiss and then slipped away, down the hall to wash up, leaving her with a warmth of gratitude and the memory of his body against her own, leaving her with a tingle between her hips where his prominent flesh, more man’s than boy’s, had been pressed to her.
Leaving her feeling, right then, much more woman than mother.
Behind her, in the pan, the sizzle of the bacon competed with the hiss of her son’s shower.
3: Arrivals
Clay was spinning slowly on a wheel, being shaped by hands.
Scenes cut and changed and then the camera pulled back. A woman with black hair was casting a pot and a soundtrack was swelling.
Strong, solid arms circled about the woman and hands caressed hers, knowing, sure, male.
Demi Moore leaned back into the barechested embrace of Patrick Swayze, and the couple shared a kiss.
Carrie sniffed slightly, her eyes blurring, and then felt arms fall about her. She nestled against Joey’s body, laughing a little as he handed her a tissue. She blew noisily and then reclined on his breast, watching the movie with her son.
Since Mark had died, Ghost was one of her favorites, though not in the same way that she liked A Beautiful Mind. This film hurt to watch, it hurt deeply, but the pain was good. It had been one of his favorites too.
She knew it was a way for her to deal with her husband’s murder, with that terrible night when she had held his head in her hands as he bled so awfully, when he had looked at her for the last time, when he had smiled … and the monitors had wailed, and her heart with them.
She had been there for his end, as she had been there so often for so many others, and for that she supposed she could be grateful. Or should have been.
Joey took a tissue for himself and used it loudly and wetly, and they shared a laugh, at — at everything.
Movie nights were usually kids’ fare: The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo, Mary Poppins. Their DVD racks were well stocked with titles that were good for families but not insipid, geared toward entertaining both children and the adults in their lives. But after the kids were safely off in sleep, sometimes she and Joey would settle into a final feature, something meant for more mature thinking, often movies that addressed their own slowly-healing wounds.
“I miss him,” Joey said, his whisper thick with his feelings.
“Me too,” Carrie said. “Me too.”
On the television, Whoopi Goldberg appeared, and mother and son tucked in, sharing the microwave popcorn and the salt of their sorrows.
Joey woke to the electric blue of the TV. The room was lit in its sterile glow and he felt pressure on his thigh. He glanced down and saw Carrie’s head in his lap, her cheek resting on his leg.
He smiled down at her and stroked her hair softly. It was different from his own; dark, not blonde like he and his father were.
Had been.
Her eyes were grey, not blue like his, and he guessed their light color showed their common genetics — that, plus their facial features. Her nose was his, as was her browline. But in hair color they were very different.
He smirked to himself as he thought of another difference. His dick was bigger than hers, but she had much better tits.
His chest was bare, his shirt taken off long ago, and Carrie shifted under the blanket as Joey lifted the remote and killed the tube. She stirred gently, then settled back, the knob of her skull settled against the thick cushion of his groin. She nestled, a faint smile on her face, and her hand stroked along his jeans-clad thigh. He rubbed her shoulder and she woke fully, her eyes looking up into his, bewildered at first but then filling with constant, abiding love, a steady flame that never guttered. She kissed his bare flat belly softly and smiled, her cheek resting against the lump of his penis. “Morning?”
Joey glanced at the flickering display on the VCR. He shook his head. “Not for a while yet.”
Carrie stretched, then sat up, the blanket falling away from her body, still in her ER whites. “Guess I dozed off.” She nestled back against Joey’s lean frame.
Her son settled his arms around her shoulders. “We both did.” His lips touched her forehead. “It’s after two. We should go to bed.”
“Yeah,” Carrie murmured, her face pressed to Joey’s muscular chest. Her arms circled his waist. “Okay.”
Joey waited.
“You first,” he said at last, but Carrie was asleep again, and he shifted into a better position on the couch, still holding her, taking her weight and serving as her pillow, and sank into his own dreams.
The baby, little Hermosa, at last arrived, and was immediately in need of attention.
She was just over eighteen months old and had thrush and roundworms. The thrush was an annoyance; the roundworms were a serious problem. No one seemed to know how the poor little girl had got so sick, though Joey was certain, all his life, that she had been malnourished practically from birth. That wouldn’t have helped.
Hermosa’s treatments weren’t difficult but the roundworm medicines gave her the most amazing case of the shits either Carrie or her son had ever seen. The baby was unloading into her diapers almost as quickly as she was being changed, and it was made worse by their having to treat the diapers as contaminated medical waste — they were full of eggs from the worms.
Probably the worst moment for Joey was the time one afternoon when he was changing Hermosa. He swabbed at her with a baby wipe and saw a small, red-brown object protruding from her … from her little body.
Suddenly his flesh stood in goosebumps.
He carefully grabbed the small wirelike shape with a baby wipe and tugged, and it came free while Hermosa kicked.
It was a roundworm, and at first Joey thought it was dead, but then it writhed in the wipe’s grasp and he nearly screamed.
At first he was too horrified to think clearly. He was going to flush the worm but realized that would be a bad idea. Into the diaper pail was no good either. Eventually he called for Miguel to bring him an empty baby food jar and the bottle of rubbing alcohol from the bathroom.
Joey dropped the still-wriggling worm into the jar, then dumped alcohol over it. He watched in satisfaction as the worm writhed and twisted in the fluid, then settled utterly still into death.
“Bastard,” he said. “That’s what you get for fucking with my sister.”
Miguel’s eyes were full of horrified fascination. “That was in her butt?”
“Yeah,” Joey said quietly. “That’s why we say wash your hands if you change her.”
“Sick,” Miguel said, sounding like he was half thrilled as well.
“And that’s why she has to take those drops, hermano,” Joey went on. “It’s to kill these buggers off.”
“You gonna keep it?” The boy’s eyes, nearly coffee-black, were wide.
“We should show her doctor,” Joey said.
“Oh,” Miguel mumbled.
“Look, kid,” Joey said, “this isn’t really … I mean, worms are things you don’t want to mess with much. I mean, suppose you had worms when you were a baby, and an older brother who told everyone about it and even showed it around, like maybe at school. How would you feel?”
Miguel had reddened; Joey, who had not too long ago been an eleven-year-old boy himself, knew his mind quite well. But he tried to bareface anyway. He shrugged. “I think it’d be cool.”
Joey pulled a face. “Right.”
Miguel smirked and rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay, so I guess you keep it.”
“Yeah,” Joey said, finishing up with Hermosa. “But what a story we’ve got to tell, huh?”
Miguel smiled up at him.
Taking care of the newest member of their family was leaving Carrie frazzled. There had been a significant staff change at the ER just a week before Hermosa’s advent, which left her in the position of having to train a half dozen new nurses, two of which she was sure would wash out by the end of the month; and of course the little girl herself was in a pretty poor state. She shared her son’s suspicions that Hermosa had been dehydrated and malnourished until comparatively recently — and suspected, in her darker moments, that the reason for the final weeks of delay before delivery of the baby was simply that someone somewhere wanted to cover things up, so held on to her until she looked reasonably healthy.
Joey was a solid-gold blessing to her. He took on the care of Hermosa with his customary lack of complaint, his boundless well of young strength, not hesitating for a moment. She simply could never have found the words to express her gratitude to him.
As the treatments for her worms proceeded, Hermosa began to require changing with a regularity that neither one of them could match alone, so they took to sleeping in shifts. Joey would lie in her bed for four hours, catching the sleep he could, while she looked after the little girl; and then she would wake him and they’d switch places.
Some nights she was reluctant to rouse him. He looked so sweet and relaxed in sleep — beautiful, really — his chest rising and falling slowly, evenly with his breath, his briefs betraying the sleep turgidity that men were prone to, his face lax and free of cares. But she also knew that he would remonstrate with her — rightly so — if she cheated like that, so always woke him gently when his time was due, smoothing his hair back from his brow and patting his chest lightly.
He would waken immediately, his clear eyes focusing on hers with complete recognition, and then he would stretch sinuously on the mattress, his long penis firmly erect in the tight white cotton that was all he ever wore to bed. He’d never been particularly embarrassed by his still-mounting sexuality or his puberty-charged organ, and she was glad for that. It was one less hang-up for him to get over; he took his hardness in stride, even when it was in her presence.
Then he would rise and take her place in the chair by Hermosa’s crib.
Carrie, in her turn, would nestle into the warmth that had been made by her son’s body, catching the scent of him on her sheets and pillows, and sink into almost instant sleep with a faint smile on her face.
The other kids quickly got used to seeing Joey go into his mother’s room each night and emerge the next morning; they seemed to take it as a matter of course in the name of looking after the newest addition to their family.
Carrie woke with a start, her heart pounding and her body washed in heat, glancing guiltily over at Joey, quietly reading beside Hermosa’s crib.
She closed her eyes again, shutting out the vision of him, but not able to clear her mind of the dream she’d had.
In it, she and Joey had made love.
They had made the decision — such was dream logic — so Hermosa and the other children could have a father in their lives. They’d been speaking in her bedroom, Joey sitting beside her and virtually nude as usual, his body strong and healthy, his handsome face calm as he listened to her words.
She had been the one to suggest it.
“Son,” she’d whispered, taking his hand, “we’re doing so much for the kids that we’re ignoring ourselves. Maybe we should think about … about being truly close to one another.”
“What do you mean?” he’d said, but she thought he already knew; in the dream his penis was full and ready, making a peak in his underwear.
“I mean that you and I might think about being more to each other than mother and son. That we might try something new, something that will … strengthen us as a family.”
She had waited while his eyes roved over her body, and then he had spoken again. “You mean … sex?”
“Yes,” she had said. “I mean sex.”
His look was serious as he considered it, gazing at her. At last he nodded slowly, squeezing her hand. “Yeah, Mom,” he had said. “Okay, sure.”
Joey had put his arms around her and they had kissed, and in the dream his briefs were simply gone, his heavy cock bare before her, fully erect, ready to enter her.
Looking down she had seen she was nude as well, and she lay back on the bed, drawing him atop her. With confidence born of experience he didn’t have in real life, her son had mounted her, his naked body moved within hers, and they had begun making love.
They had continued kissing in their sex, Joey’s hands warm and gentle on her breasts, his rigid flesh easing both of them toward climax, and then he had bucked over her, and she knew he was in orgasm, felt him ejaculating inside her.
And then she woke, her pussy virtually dripping, her clit aching for attention, her stomach in knots. She had just had an erotic dream about her own boy.
Fuck, she thought. Fuck. What the hell…
Her eyes were still closed. She didn’t want to see Joey right then, because he was wearing only his small, tight underwear, and she didn’t need to be pouring kerosene on this fire.
He truly did have a fine body, she realized. He was strong, solid, well-made. Sexy.
But he was also her son.
Torn by guilt and desire, she slowly slipped back into slumber with only the whisper of the book’s pages as Joey turned them disturbing the stillness of the night.
4: Boys
Miguel strained at the dumbbell, the five-kilo weight something Joey lifted easily but which caused the younger boy’s biceps to stand out over the delicate bone of his humerus in a taut ellipse. He grunted through his reps, the curls hard and painful, face grimaced with the strain of it and small beads of sweat formed on his smooth, brown brow. He let the weight down at the final count with a sigh that was unfeigned.
“Nice,” Joey nodded appreciatively, meaning it.
“Thanks,” Miguel panted, passing a forearm above his eyes, the hairless cup of his armpit dark with shadow in the stark fluorescent overhead light. He examined his arm, then showed the glisten on it to his older brother. “Got sweaty.”
“You did,” Joey grinned at him, tousling his thick hair, normally glossy with blue-black highlights but now lank and damp with their efforts. “Good honest sweat.”
The pair worked out together; at first it had only been Joey but with time Miguel, who had begun just by watching, had decided to join in. Shy at first, feeling small, weak and inadequate next to the still-growing body of his older adoptive brother, Miguel’s self-confidence had improved markedly — along, Joey noticed, with his self-image.
The boy really was handsome, almost pretty; his features were even and clear, his chin delicate and elfin. And his muscles were definitely growing, standing out clearly now under his skin, glimmering with the fine downy hairs of boyhood. As Joey took his position on the bench, waiting for his little brother to spot him, Miguel flexed experimentally, then grinned shyly at Joey.
“Lookin good, bro,” Joey smiled. Miguel’s bare chest — he worked out shirtless, like his older brother — swelled with pride, his aureolae a deep brown, the shade of cinnamon, his nipples small peaks in them. He moved to the head of the bench and stood with his hips hovering over Joey, his penis a slight rise in his tight spandex shorts, as the older boy took a firm grip on the bar and nodded up at him. Miguel lifted as Joey did, his hips shifting forward for leverage, and Joey felt the boy’s cock brush against his forehead as the bar came clear of the stays. As Miguel stood back Joey felt the damp patch of warmth, moist with Miguel’s sweat, begin to cool.
It happened that way every time, though; Miguel just never seemed to notice, though Joey always did. Kind of hard to miss having someone’s cock and balls jammed against your skull.
Joey did his presses with effort toward the end — he was up to seventy kilos now and aiming for another ten by the end of the next month — and the bar went back onto the rack with a clatter. Joey sat up and took the towel Miguel passed to him with a nod, wiping the sweat from his face and chest as Miguel looked him over, admiration clear in his gaze. He stood. “Your turn.”
“Okay,” Miguel nodded, lying back on the bench and watching as Joey changed out the weights for him. For the longest time he could only press the bar — at first with help from Joey too — but he’d recently moved up to five kilos of real weight added, and Joey could see how proud the boy was of his accomplishment. In a moment more Joey took position at the head of the bench, standing over Miguel, practically straddling his little brother as he gazed up, his dark eyes wide and frank. “Joey?”
“Yeah, bro?”
“Does lifting weights make your pene bigger?”
Joey glanced down at his rise, large and unmistakable in his skin-tight shorts. He, like Miguel, wore no underwear when they worked out, so his organ’s shape was clearly visible, his tip a large rise separated from his shaft by the vee of his corona. It was no wonder the question was on the boy’s mind; Joey’s long, thick cock was less than a hand’s breadth away from Miguel’s face. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully.
Miguel glanced along his supine body to his own rise, nowhere near as prominent as Joey’s but still a presence between his legs, flesh clearly marking him as a boy despite his nearly feminine good looks. “It makes muscles bigger,” he said, his face red. “I want mine to be big like yours someday.”
“That’ll happen anyway,” Joey said. “It happens when you get older.”
Miguel stared at Joey’s bulge again, then up into the older boy’s face, his eyes wide. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Joey said. “It’s like automatic. Your balls get big, your dick grows, you get hair, you make cum — it all starts happening pretty much the same time.” He ruffled Miguel’s hair again and grinned. “Then your voice gets deep and girls start calling you on the phone.”
“No way,” Miguel whispered.
“Truth, hermano,” Joey said, though no girl had ever called him. “Let’s finish up, okay?”
“Yeah.” Miguel’s hands reached to the bar and his knuckles whitened as his grip tensed. He nodded up at Joey, his chest taut, and then he had the full weight of the bar and began his presses, Joey encouraging him more the nearer he got to finishing.
Miguel made it through his reps and the brothers got into a flexing contest until Joey tickled Miguel and the boy fell back onto the bench, his flexible little body wriggling, laughing as Joey’s fingers probed his ribs. Joey let up and stared down at his little brother as he lay there, half-naked and grinning, his chest heaving. “Your abs are looking good now,” he said in a moment, thumping the rippling plain of Miguel’s belly.
Miguel sat up readily, his small young frame contracting in a graceful, effortless arc that only a year ago would have been impossible for him. He pounded his fists in staccato over his belly, grinning up at his older brother as his muscles jumped, the shallow cup of his navel catching shadow over the waistband of his thin, tight shorts. “Stop bullets with these,” he said. Between his hard, small legs, his penis swelled, visibly lengthening in the shimmering fabric.
“Just about,” Joey agreed, and they stood. “Shower time.”
“Okay,” Miguel said easily, ignoring his erection, and they left the workout room — what had once been the garage — to clean off and, as Joey said sometimes, un-stinkify.
In the shower Miguel’s eyes were roaming over Joey’s bare body openly. The two oldest boys shared showers frequently ever since Miguel and his other sibs had first come to live with them, much as the two girls shared a bath; it was often the only way to make sure everyone was able to get cleaned off in a reasonable amount of time and with enough hot water for all.
Joey let his little brother look at him. He understood that Miguel was naturally curious; he’d felt his gaze on him many times before and never tried to hide anything. It would all be happening to Miguel soon enough anyway. A year or two more, Joey figured, and the boy would know firsthand about all of it. Besides, he wasn’t ashamed of his body, so there was nothing wrong with letting Miguel look all he wanted.
“Cum is what makes babies, right?” Miguel asked suddenly.
Joey nodded down at him, pausing in soaping his chest.
“And it comes out of your balls?” Miguel’s finger strayed, briefly, over one of Joey’s large testicles.
“No, it starts there, but then it goes inside.” Joey pressed his belly, below his navel, above the wet tangle of hair over his root. “In here. A place called the seminal vesicles. They’re like … sort of like little water balloons, and they keep all your cum until you shoot it out.”
“And it comes out your dick?”
“Yeah. It goes into the girl, and if it finds a special cell inside her called an egg, she can get pregnant.”
“An egg?” Miguel looked appalled.
“Not like a chicken egg,” Joey said. “Not like eggs and bacon. It’s a special kind of thing. It’s tiny, and — oh, it’s just not a chicken egg, okay?”
Miguel nodded uncertainly. “Does cum happen first?”
Joey passed the soap to Miguel. “What do you mean?”
The younger boy shrugged. His muscles, still developing, rolled under his clear maple-colored skin with the motion in his shoulders. “You said your pene grows, and your bolas — does the cum happen then, or is it before?”
“Depends, I guess,” Joey said, and then he stared at Miguel. “Why? You making cum?”
The younger boy shrugged again. Joey saw that his penis had stiffened once more and was pointing directly upward along his smooth, flat belly. He’d seen Miguel erect many times before in the shower, but this time it wasn’t just something that happened. It had a little more significance, he thought, especially for Miguel. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well … you know about jacking off, right?”
Miguel glared up.
“Sorry,” Joey said. “So when you … you know, when you do it, does anything squirt out at the end?”
“Yeah,” Miguel said, his hand moving slowly now over his groin. “Want to see?”
Joey blinked in surprise. “Uh,” he said. “Sure. I guess.”
“Okay,” Miguel said, smiling shyly and beginning to actively stroke himself. “Can I —” He paused, his hand slowing.
“What?”
“Can I see yours too?”
Joey, his sex already half-filled with the titillation of the moment and their conversation, felt himself rise surprisingly swiftly. He swallowed, then let his soap-slick fingers roam along his length, his cock thicker than Miguel’s forearm. “Sure,” he said, pushing his unease aside. He’d jacked off before with friends, so this wasn’t really all that new — but Miguel was still just a kid, really, and … and, well, so what? Did it really matter?
Looking at how experienced Miguel seemed to be with himself, Joey guessed not.
“It’s really big,” Miguel murmured, his eyes wide as he stared at Joey’s rigid dick.
“Thanks,” Joey said. “It’s a two-hander.” He demonstrated, wrapping both fists around side-by-side, his tip protruding more than an inch past the end.
Miguel gaped. “I can’t do that.” He grasped most of his length with only one hand.
“Yeah, but it’s not bad,” Joey said, pointing to Miguel’s own tip, which was shining past the curl of his thumb and index finger. “That’s about how big I was when I was your age.”
Miguel looked delighted. “So mine’ll grow like yours?”
“I bet it does,” Joey grinned back. He began stroking again, taking it easy, and looked on as Miguel did the same.
They worked slowly, both familiar with the motions of self-pleasure, and in less time than he expected Joey felt his orgasm drawing near. “Here it comes,” he grunted softly, his hand rapid on his cock, and Miguel’s eyes widened as Joey’s back arched and his dick pulsed in his grip, thick ropes of fluid jetting from his purple, swollen tip.
Miguel gave a little gasp as his brother’s seed landed on his chest, sliding down his naked skin in a creamy wave, and then his smooth hips jumped with his climax and a thin stream of clear liquid shot out of his body. He sighed, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, and Joey saw two more little pulses leave Miguel’s bucking cock as the boy came, the semen flying in low arcs to land on his own leg.
The boys’ hands slowed and they looked at each other appreciatively, a new understanding between them. “You got it on me,” Miguel said.
Joey nodded. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Miguel shrugged, turning his chest to the spray until the last traces of Joey’s spunk rolled down his skin under the surge of water. “Did I do it too?”
“Yeah. That was it,” Joey said. He showed one of the slick, shining streaks to Miguel, then rinsed his thigh. “That was cum, hermano. It was your cum.”
“I’ve got cum now?” Miguel’s eyes shone and his face was glowing with delight.
“You sure do,” Joey said. “Pretty soon you’ll get hair on your balls, and then look out girls.”
“So I can fuck now?”
Joey laughed. “You can fuck any time, hermano,” he said. “It’s just that now when you do you gotta wear a rubber or the girl gets pregnant.”
Miguel’s mouth hung open. “I can do it any time?”
“Pretty much,” Joey shrugged, reaching to turn off the water. “You just need a girlfriend.”
Miguel stepped from the shower, followed by his older brother, the muscles in his butt dimpling as he stepped over the edge of the tub. “You got a girlfriend?”
Joey paused. “Not yet,” he said at last.
Miguel passed a towel over his body. “Why?”
“It’s … complicated,” Joey said, drying off as well. “I have … lots of stuff, you know, things that take time, so no, no girlfriend yet.”
“You mean, taking care of us.”
“Well,” Joey shrugged.
“Sorry,” Miguel whispered.
“It’s okay,” Joey said quietly. “I … I really don’t mind.” He cupped the younger boy’s chin and smiled. “You’re my bro, you know? And the others … we’re all family, and family … they take care of each other.”
Miguel smiled too, then dusted some cornstarch over his now-softened penis, patting more into place around his backside and then under his arms, as he had seen Joey do countless times. “What about Mami?”
Joey reddened. “What about her?”
“She got a boyfriend?”
Joey laughed with relief. For a moment he had thought Miguel was suggesting something else, and for a heartbeat he hadn’t wanted to think about how … compelling the idea seemed. “No, not right now.” He took the container of deodorant powder from his brother and dusted his own body.
Miguel nodded, tugging clean shorts over his hips, these a loose pair of fleece that let his skin breathe. “You ever … you know. Do it? With a girl?”
Joey stood, pulling his own light shorts on. “Not yet,” he said. Before opening the bathroom door he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look, Miguel … we can … what happened wasn’t bad. I mean if a couple guys, you know, jack off together it’s not like they’re gay or anything. Only we…”
“I’m not estúpido,” Miguel said with a scowl. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Joey nodded. “Sorry.” He smiled at Miguel. “Get going on the homework. How’s fried chicken and mashed potatoes sound for dinner?”
“And green beans?”
“Extra butter.”
Miguel grinned broadly. The meal was his favorite. “Great!”
5: The Forbidden
A few nights after Joey plucked a still-living roundworm from Hermosa, the girl had a bad reaction to strained carrots. It was Joey’s watch — of course, he thought wryly ever after — and Hermosa’s poor little body was absolutely committed to divesting itself of every carrot atom that had invaded it. By the time the girl had finished clearing out the undesired material, Joey’s skin was slick and dripping, his briefs were soaked through with orange fluid and he was nearly doubled over with laughter.
It was disgusting, yes — but it was also four in the morning, and being tired can do strange things to people.
He was planning to quietly carry the girl into the master bath and swab her down, then clean himself off as well, but Hermosa began to fuss.
He quieted her as best he could but Carrie woke anyway and stared, shocked, at her still-damp son. “What the hell…?”
Joey smirked, then giggled. “She doesn’t like carrots, Ma,” he said, and then they were both snorting and whooping, trying their best to keep from waking the rest of the house.
“You need to get cleaned up,” Carrie wheezed. “Go. I’ll bathe her.”
“Mom —”
“Son,” Carrie said, “I am so grateful to you for all the sacrifices you’ve made on this family’s behalf. But if you think I’m going to let you spend the night covered in Hermosa hork just so I can get a little more sleep, you are all wet.”
Joey glanced down at his skin, sticky but still dripping in places, and grinned. “Uh…”
“Don’t,” Carrie said. “Don’t get us started again. Just clean up. I’ll take care of Hermosa.”
“Okay, Mom,” Joey said, and went into the master bath, stripped off and took a quick shower.
By the time he emerged, a towel wrapping his narrow hips, Carrie had already washed Hermosa in the other bathroom and had lay the baby back down. She was standing and looking into the crib. He moved up beside her and they gazed down fondly at the little girl where she rested, placidly asleep at last.
They smiled at each other and Joey’s arm fell about his mother’s waist, and he noticed her tee was soaked. “What’d you do,” he whispered, “dry her with your shirt?”
Carrie smiled. “She splashed a little.”
Joey looked Carrie over. “I’ll say.” The shirt was cool and clinging to Carrie’s skin everywhere. Normally white, it showed pink now, tinted by his mother’s body, and he noted a detail he didn’t want to — Carrie’s nipples, centered in her ruddy aureolae, were stiff enough to cut glass.
She put her arm across his shoulders and leaned her head against him. “What a lovely girl,” she whispered.
“She is, isn’t she?” Joey whispered back.
She looked up at him and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, son,” she said softly. “I know it’s been a rough few weeks, but the worst will be over soon.”
“I know, Mom,” Joey said, kissing his mother’s brow. “I know. You’re shivering.”
“A little,” she said, and he took her in his arms. “You’re shaking too.”
“Yeah,” Joey said, trying not to think of the way Carrie’s breasts pressed against his naked chest, or the glimpse he had had of her body as she turned fully to face him. He’d seen his mother nude before; but he had also masturbated to many wet T-shirt contest pictures, and the spike of heat that filled him now was very different from the regular love he held for Carrie.
He closed his eyes and the vision of her breasts, full and firm, came to him once more, unbidden, her nipples peaked and tight, the same breasts and nipples pressed to his warm bare skin now. And lower, the dark triangle of her full bush, a sexy rich bed of glistening curls pointing the way to…
He opened his eyes again and blinked.
They stood in an embrace, near, the warmth of their bodies creating a quiet space that neither of them wanted to leave.
Carrie was acutely aware of their dress. She was in a sopping long tee and nothing else, a gauzy layer of cloth that clung to her skin, exposing everything; and Joey was wearing only a towel on his taut body. She thought back to a few minutes before, when he’d gone into the bathroom to clean up, the door not fully closed as he’d taken off his underwear. He had been facing away from her and she had hesitated for a moment, staring at her naked son, admiring his lean muscles, how well-shaped he had grown, how his butt, firm and dimpled, had flexed as he started the water, his wide shoulders rolling in the smooth, clear skin of his back. Sometime when she hadn’t noticed, it seemed her boy Joey had become a man, and in that moment, seeing him nude and so candidly, she had truly looked at him for the first time not as his mother, but as a woman.
That body, his man’s body, where it touched hers now through her thin shirt, was warm, firm, real. It made imprints of his heat on her breasts, her belly, under her hands and arms.
Under the towel, she felt him grow, felt her son rise to tumescence, and ideas began to fill her. Ideas, and memories of her dream.
What would she do, she wondered, if he stepped back from her, looked at her with his dangerous, risky teen-boy smile, and removed his towel right then?
What would he do if she stepped back and took it off him?
Instead she settled for caressing his shoulders, stroking his even, warm skin, feeling the tone of his hard muscles, and the other place where he had hardened.
She leaned back a little to see his face, and he let his hands slip to her hips.
His eyes were distant, far-away.
They looked into each other’s gaze for several rapid heartbeats, and then Joey’s eyes flicked between them. She let him see, let him look at her breasts, didn’t try to judge or shame him. Between their pressed hips, she felt his penis jump.
Their eyes met again and their faces heated.
Her son’s head head tilted just a little to one side and he leaned in, and the tip of his nose brushed against hers, gently, delicately, the Eskimo kiss a light caress.
She tilted her own head to the other side, stroking her nose against his, her eyes slipping closed and her lips just beginning to part, and she brushed her nose against his again, tilting her face up slightly, and her heart was throbbing in her ears, and she felt his pounding in his chest, and she felt his breath warm on her face, and their mouths touched.
With a soft moan, from her or him or both, they kissed.
She felt his lips part against hers, felt a flick from his tongue, uncertain and testing.
Her mouth opened suddenly, hungrily, as Joey’s did as well, and they sipped at one another, tongues, lips, teeth, lapping, tasting, getting the full flavor of the kiss.
Carrie pressed her hips to Joey’s and he shuddered. She felt his penis stiffen further, felt a heady rush of her own fluids in response to his frank need. She became bold and grabbed his hard tight butt, kneading it through the towel, her tongue plunging deeply into his mouth, the flavor of his saliva the same as her own, and the towel came undone and slipped from his body onto the floor, and she was holding him to her and he was naked, and they were kissing and he was so frank, so helplessly frank in his arousal.
He groaned and his hands drifted to her ass and grabbed, massaging, and the hem of her tee rose and she felt his rigid sex catch between her thighs, slipping against her slick labia.
She answered his wave of passion with her own. She reached and lifted, taking her shirt off, making herself naked in front of him as he watched, as his eyes widened, the curls of hair at their hips mingling. She pulled his strong body to herself. His shaft was gliding against her now as they embraced again, both naked, kissing, continuing.
Carrie’s heart was thrusting against her ribs. One motion. One simple motion from either of them was all it would take; from coupling to climax, they would be done, whole. She pressed her pelvis forward and her hips began to grind rhythmically against his, wanting him to understand, wanting his permission for the last move, for the final action that would bring them together entirely.
Wanting him inside her.
Joey broke the kiss with a gasp, then backed away a little. “Mom…”
She felt her ardor chill instantly. “Uh … son…”
Joey backed away further. “I think … uh, maybe I’ll go put on some clothes,” he said. “You should too.”
“Joey…” But he had already fled the room, his erection still prominent, the towel a semicircle on the floor where he had abandoned it.
He came back in a few minutes wearing shorts and a tee. By then Carrie had time to change into a dry shirt and panties, and to convince herself that she had utterly wrecked her relationship with her boy.
But he seemed to be more or less the same, apart from being fully clothed and keeping a slight distance between them. “I’m tired, Mom,” he said.
“We need to talk, son,” she said.
He nodded, but was looking at the sleeping little girl in the crib. “We will,” he said. He sighed. “But not tonight. Not now. We’re both tired and … and let’s just let it go until tomorrow, okay?”
“Joey —”
“I’m serious, Mom,” he said, using a tone she had only previously heard him direct toward the younger children. “Not now. Okay?”
She bristled, then grimaced. “Fine,” she said, and went back to bed, failing completely to get to sleep once more until half an hour before the day was to begin.
6: Talk and Familiarity
Joey was in deep turmoil. He wasn’t sure how he could even begin talking with Carrie about what had happened. But he had to. They were mother and son, lived in the same house, looked after the same family. She depended on him, and he, truth be told, depended on her as well.
Looking back it was all just a wild blur. The love he’d felt right then had seemed to be … natural, complete, a full growth and expression of how his relationship with his mother had changed over the last two years.
There they had stood, gazing down at Hermosa like they were the baby’s biological father and mother. And Joey had realized then that he really was the girl’s father, at least as far as that definition went in this family, and for some reason the thought of being a father had enlivened him, had stimulated him in a much deeper way than fantasies of sweaty sex with cheerleaders.
And Mom had been wearing nothing at all except that wet tee, and he was wearing nothing under the towel, and her body had been so near to his, so warm and loving.
He had never stood so close to a woman so nearly naked, and he had never felt such love before.
And when they held each other face to face, he had … grown, and she had not backed away.
His heart had begun to pound. He had wanted her to feel his hardon, wanted her to know that something was happening in him right then, and she had not done anything to stop him. She had let him look, let him stare at her breasts, at the dark patch above her pussy; she had been sexual with him for a few moments, and had given him permission, with her action, to be sexual with her as well.
But the kiss, which had begun so well, her breasts swelling against his chest in the thin cloth covering them, his body bared to her as she stripped him of the towel, his cock going absolutely rigid, her hands stroking his skin and her mouth so eager, went very badly suddenly when he felt her hips lunging against his.
He remembered being five years old and walking in on his parents in the act of making love. Dad had been lying on his back, naked, and Mom had been atop him, also naked.
They were both groaning, and Mom’s hips were driving up and down on Dad’s cock in exactly the same way she had driven them against him as they kissed.
The memory had struck him in a flash and left his mind overturned.
At that moment he had heard his father’s voice. You’re the man of the house now, son. And had a vision of himself lying on his back, his mother fucking him hard, just like he was his father. And then a laugh, like it was all a sick, macabre joke on him. On all of them.
Suddenly his rigid penis felt like a liability. His pulsing heart was driving him into something — not insane, but maybe partway there.
He was guilty, he knew, guilty of harboring lustful thoughts about his mother.
But it seemed she was guilty as well.
And they had, they absolutely had to figure out what to do about all of it. They had to keep it together; they had five children to care for and couldn’t lose sight of that.
He smoked incessantly that afternoon, waiting for Carrie to come home, the same phrase coming back again and again in his mind, the only anchor point in his tumble of thoughts.
I didn’t want to be the man of the house. I didn’t have any choice.
Dinner was awkward between mother and son. The younger kids kept their general chatter, though Miguel seemed to sense something was amiss. Joey saw them all off to bed, and that left him with Carrie and a heavy silence.
Hermosa fussed in her crib suddenly and Carrie said, “Look, Joey, you can sleep down the hall — I’ll come and get you, it’s all right…”
“No,” Joey said. “Look. Look. Uh, about…” He trailed off and lit a cigarette.
Carrie checked the baby’s diaper, found she was in need of changing, and started. It was the only time in her life she was grateful for babyshit.
“I love you, Mom,” Joey said suddenly. Carrie nodded but kept her attention on the business of changing Hermosa. “And I just — I mean, I guess it all just came to the surface at once, and…”
“It’s my fault,” Carrie said softly.
“Huh?”
She gently settled Hermosa back into the crib and turned to face Joey. “It’s my fault, son,” she said again. “I’m the adult here. However mature you are — and you are — however much you’ve grown into a magnificent young man, I am still supposed to be mature enough to…” She lit a cigarette, then waved vaguely. “I don’t know, to not be thinking with my pussy, I guess.”
Joey gaped. “I thought it was just guys who…”
“No,” Carrie said. “It happens to women too.” She sighed, sounding aggrieved. “We lose control sometimes.” She crossed her arms, cupped her elbows in her palms. “Joey, it’s been two years since … since I’ve felt the touch of a man I loved, had a … a man inside me. Your father and I … we had a magnificent relationship, you know. A very intimate one, a very … satisfying one.” She took another drag. “Mark was … was a friend to me, a companion, a lover.”
Joey nodded. There had been many occasions when he heard them making love together, and they were always openly affectionate to one another.
Carrie was continuing. “And I guess I forgot … that there are lines, son. Lines that I can’t cross with you. I should have known better. I do know better. But … well, Joey, it’s a shitty excuse but it’s all I have. My hormones got away from me.
“I’ll understand if you decide you can never trust me again. I am so sorry, Joey, so sorry that I … tried to take advantage of you.”
“But, see,” Joey said, “that’s just it. I mean I … it was … nice. You know, being near. And the … the kiss. And … if what you’re saying is true, you feel the same way.”
Carrie nodded miserably.
“So we really just … kind of took advantage of each other.” He laughed shortly, more like a bark. “It’s not like it’s the first time I ever kissed anyone…”
Carrie smiled wanly at that. Then she stared levelly at him. “How far have you gone with a girl?”
Joey flushed to his roots. “Just … kissing,” he said.
“Well, if you hadn’t … pulled away last night when you did, son, you would be giving a different answer right now.”
Joey stared in shock. “You mean you … you were really going to…”
Carrie nodded slowly. “I had every intention of taking you to bed,” she said.
Joey swallowed. He wasn’t sure how to feel. His cock wanted to stiffen but his stomach was in knots. He could’ve fucked his mother last night. “Wow,” he said at last.
Carrie lit another cigarette. “Yes,” she said, the word coming out on a cloud of smoke. “Wow.”
Joey lit another one for himself. “So … so what do we do now?”
Carrie sighed. “I guess we — I — get over it and move on,” she said. “And in the meantime, you don’t have to watch Hermosa, and you don’t have to stay here —”
“No, Mom, it’s okay,” Joey said. “We both have to watch her right now. You know that. And if I sleep in my room you’ll have to go get me, and that might wake up the other kids, and besides, you know it’s better to have both of us here in case an emergency happens.” He grinned painfully. “Like more carrots or something.”
“I don’t know, son,” Carrie said.
“Look. Look. It was a mistake, right? So what do we do about it? Do we pretend nothing ever happened? We can’t. Do we let it tear us apart from the inside? We fucking hell can’t. So the only thing left for us is to keep going along and work through it. That means not changing our lives like … like suddenly we can’t even be in the same room together any more, like if we’re alone for five minutes we’ll … jump all over each other and … and fuck each other cross-eyed.”
Carrie let out a dry laugh.
“And even if we did … you know … well, so what? I mean it’s not like it’s something people never do. So even if we really did end up … you know, being close, we’d still be … you know, a family.”
Carrie took another hit from her cigarette.
“And anyway, we’re okay. Nothing happened for a long time. One thing happens once. Will nothing happen again? I think so.” Joey spread his hands. “The odds are in our favor, Mom.”
Carrie wanted to argue further, but wasn’t sure how to put into words her concern: That maybe, by not drawing clear boundaries right then, they were guaranteeing that what they had begun the night before would eventually reach the only conclusion it could.
And part of her, a deep quiet part she didn’t want to recognize, the part that dreamed, didn’t want those lines drawn, didn’t want those events to be stopped.
But she didn’t tell her son any of that. Instead she nodded. “I guess we can give it a try,” she said.
“Good,” Joey said, then stripped and kissed her cheek. “I really do trust you, Mom.”
She was still weeping softly at his words long after he’d relaxed into sleep, nude save his briefs once again, his body sprawled freely across her bed.
Hermosa’s worms were finally cleared out a week or so later. The girl was able to sleep normally — normally for a baby, that is — and no longer shat virtually her own weight every day. Joey and Carrie both heaved sighs of relief.
Carrie knew, and thought Joey did as well, that there would be more trials, that the five children in their lives would occasionally get sick or hurt and require diligent attention. But they also both knew that it probably would never be so bad again.
They celebrated with dinner out, leaving the rest of the kids in the care of a family friend. They had reached a turning point, had been tempered in the fire of Hermosa’s illness, and had come through it much stronger.
And the events of … that night had strengthened them in another way. Carrie began to understand that Joey truly did trust her, that he had forgiven her invasion of his privacy, her violation of the mother-son relationship boundaries, and she saw that he was equally trustworthy.
Their affection cemented around that new discovery.
Joey usually went to sleep in his room, but sometimes they would stay up late in the night together, talking, cuddling, enjoying one another’s company, doting over her — their — daughter. On those nights Joey would sleep in her bed, next to her, and she would drift off with his presence alongside her.
And her sleep was peaceful and soft then.
7: Father and Mother
Joey lay beside his mother in her bed. He was naked and he was masturbating. His eyes were closed and in mid-stroke he suddenly felt another hand on his cock.
He was about to speak but her free hand covered his mouth. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t say anything.”
He nodded, his eyes still closed, and felt her lips press his, the kiss bringing waves of need to him that he’d known once before. “I want you,” she said, her breath warm and moist on his ear. “I need you. I need you to make love with me, Joey. Okay?”
“Okay, Mom.” He felt the mattress shift as she moved, and then she was over him, and he felt a soft, wet warmth descend on his throbbing dick, gliding smoothly along his solid length. He knew it was her pussy. His cock was inside his mother’s pussy.
He felt her hands on his shoulders and she lay mostly atop him, moving her body, fucking him, kissing him, egging him on with her touch. He opened his eyes to look up at her, at their bodies, coupled in beautiful, raw heat, man and woman, mother and son. He thrust upwards to meet the slow rocking of Carrie’s pelvis over his own, his hands on her hips, his penis sliding deeply into her body with each of their motions.
“That’s good,” Carrie whispered quietly. “It’s been so long.” She shuddered, moaning, as Joey’s warm palms slipped over her erect nipples, a naked woman riding her son’s cock, getting fucked by the boy she’d given birth to. “I came, baby,” she said as Joey smiled up at her. “Are you getting close?”
“Yeah,” Joey said. He was. “But Mom,” he whispered, “I don’t have a condom on…”
“I know. It’s okay,” she said. “I want you to give me a nice cream pie.”
“All right,” he sighed. “All right…”
He drew a sharp breath and began to pulse, and she kissed him as he came inside her, filling her pussy with his sperm, pumping his load entirely into her warm smooth cunt. It gushed down his shaft and coated his balls in a thick pearly wave and Carrie whispered I love you to him as his eyes rolled back in his head, his body spasming in the final traces of his orgasm.
Joey woke with a slick wet patch on his briefs, the product of the first — and only — wet dream in his life. He looked over to Carrie, the sheets drifting light on her sleeping body, and with a shudder half of lust and half of something else, something older and more resistant, slipped out of bed to change his underwear.
Carrie signed the legal papers necessary and Joey became, officially, the children’s guardian, empowered to act in her behalf should any emergencies arise.
Hermosa, most nights, slept well until about three AM, when she would wake and fuss for a feeding and diaper change. More often than not, Carrie would wake to Joey’s silhouette, bent over the baby’s crib or cuddling her to his bare chest and gently bouncing her, his underwear glimmering in the dark. “It’s okay, Mom,” he would say. “I got her.”
She would slip off into sleep again and surface only briefly when Joey climbed into bed next to her, out almost as soon as his head hit the pillows.
Other nights she woke alone and cared for Hermosa herself, falling back into sleep alone as well.
The nights with Joey were always better.
His presence next to her filled her with a quiet sense of awestruck devotion. What had happened between them one night could well have destroyed their relationship, but Joey didn’t let that happen, and she took strength from his strength. She would lie awake and listen to him breathing in his sleep, and feel a kind of bewildered adoration that she had only held once before.
She knew she was falling in love; she knew it and still let him sleep beside her, because she knew that he was in love as well, that her son had fallen in love with her as surely as she had with him. And when it was daylight and she was surrounded by gurneys and IVs and trauma teams, it was wrong and sick and perverted — but when she woke beside him and the sun slanted gold across the fine hairs on his arm and chest, when he slept so easily, so casually next to her, it wasn’t sick. It wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t perverse. It was older than either of them, older than anything, a love that left her breathless and helpless, in thrall to his solid male being beside her.
He was her son, and she was in love with him as a man, and it was that simple, and that complicated.
Gradually, as the weeks went on, Joey’s presence next to her in her bed became more common, until it was expected. They no longer parted when they said good night to each other, he to his room alone and she to hers. They slept together as a couple, not consummating, but the tingle in her skin as his arm brushed hers in the night said it was near, very near, and she didn’t turn from the touch.
She woke to the sound of the shower running and stretched easily in the sheets. Joey’s spot was mostly cool, just warm enough to show he hadn’t been away very long. She turned on her side, burying her face in his pillow, breathing his scent.
It was a weekend, one of her days off, and she knew she could count on a lazy morning courtesy of her two eldest sons. Joey and Miguel would treat her to breakfast in bed, then spend the weekend doing housework, handling chores and generally doting over her, making her feel like a queen.
She smiled warmly and waited for her son to finish his morning ablutions. He came out of the bathroom in a while, steam billowing thickly after him, and smiled to her when he saw she was awake.
“Morning, sweetie,” she said.
“Hey, Mom,” he nodded, the towel scuffing over his chest, and only then did she realize.
Her son was naked.
She lay there and watched him dry off, not trying to stare but unable not to look, crazily jealous of a towel as the cloth roamed over his developed pecs, his rippling belly, his large, hanging sex. He ruffled it through his hair last, his hips swaying with the motion of his arms and his penis swinging freely, and she felt a rill of heat in her that she tried hard to push aside.
Joey glanced down at his long heavy cock, then wrapped his hips in the towel. “Sleep all right?”
She nodded stupidly. She had never in her life been treated to such a perfect display of masculine beauty.
He nodded to the bedroom door. “I’ll be back in a minute, Mom,” he said, smiled innocently at her, checked on Hermosa, and then went down the hall to his bedroom to get dressed, and Carrie subjected herself to the coldest shower she could get.
She stood gasping under the needling spray, her eyes closed, the vision of her son’s swaying sex, his heavy ripe testicles, the golden tufts of his springy pubic hair igniting a fire in her that no water could douse.
Her hands wandered down. Down to the place Mark had known. Down to the place Joey had come from.
She shivered from cold and from heat.
It didn’t take long, and it didn’t help at all.
Miguel gulped when he saw Joey.
He was in trouble, the worst trouble he’d been in for years, and he was sure that his brother — or father, depending on how you looked at it — would beat him.
All he could remember of men in his life before Joey and Papá Mark was a merciless insistence on following the rules, some of them baffling … and the clink of a belt buckle when the rules were transgressed. All he knew now was the certainty of a thrashing.
Joey sat and listened to the principal’s report, nodding from time to time and glancing at Miguel. The boy felt his eyes sting, burn, fill with tears of shame and remorse. He wished he could curl up in a round little coil like a bug and just wait to be squashed.
As they rose to leave Miguel shook in fear.
Joey was silent for most of the walk home. They passed the corner Dairy Queen and Joey halted them. “C’mon, kid,” he said. “Let’s get something here and talk, okay?”
Miguel wiped his eyes and nodded hopelessly. A doomed prisoner’s last meal.
Joey ordered a Peanut Buster Parfait and Miguel chose a Hot Fudge Brownie Delight. They ate in silence and then Joey pushed his cup aside with a sigh. “I guess you know you messed up,” he said simply.
“Si, Papá,” Miguel murmured.
Joey regarded the boy silently. “You stole,” he said. “You stole a kid’s Game Boy cart.”
Tears spilled down Miguel’s cheeks as he nodded.
Joey sighed again, then moved across the booth to sit next to Miguel. He dropped his arm around the boy’s shoulders and drew him near, let his sobs leach brokenly against his chest. “I won’t say I’m happy,” Joey said softly. “But you’re young and kids fuck up.”
Miguel gasped. “I’m so sorry, Papá, I’m so sorry — please don’t whip me.”
Joey grunted, surprised. “Whip you?” He settled his hands on Miguel’s little shoulders and peered into his face. “You think I’d do that?”
“It’s what Papás do with bad boys,” Miguel snuffled inconsolably. “Like me.”
Joey reached for the boy and he flinched, but then stared in shock as the older youth began to gently wipe his tears away. “You aren’t a bad boy,” Joey said, “and I’m not going to beat you. No one is.”
Miguel could only gape.
“You confessed, you immediately said you’d done it,” Joey said. “That took balls. You made a mistake but the only reason anyone knew it was you was you told a teacher.”
Miguel nodded again.
“All that happened was the kid said, ‘Hey, someone took my cart,’ and you spoke up. You could have stayed quiet and no one would ever have known,” Joey said softly. “But you told. Why?”
Miguel wiped his nose. “It’s what you would do, Papá,” he said. “Not the taking. The telling.”
Joey looked puzzled for a moment, then drew Miguel close for another hug. “Let’s go home, kid,” he said, wiping his own eyes. “We don’t need to tell Mom about this. It can stay between you and me.”
And only then did Miguel realize that his new Papá was what he’d needed all along.
“Okay,” he mumbled. Joey squeezed his shoulder and Miguel leaned in against him, returning the hug. “Papá?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you and Mami married?”
Joey chuckled. “No, why?”
“Well,” Miguel said, suddenly shy once more, “you sleep in her room.”
“Yes,” Joey said.
“And you’re like Papá to me and Juanita and Fillipe and Teresa and the bambina,” he went on. “Like Papá Mark was, before he … you know.”
“Yes,” Joey said again.
“And Papá Mark used to sleep in Mami’s room. And you don’t have a girlfriend, and Mami doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“That’s true,” Joey said.
“So we were wondering if you and Mami were married.”
We — him at least, maybe Juanita too, Joey decided. “We’re not,” he said. “Mami is my Mami too. Mamis and … Mamis don’t marry their boys.”
“Oh,” Miguel said. “Why not?”
“Because they — it’s…” Joey thought for a moment. “Because they don’t have to, Miguel. Look. We’re all a family, right?”
The boy nodded.
“But you make family in different ways. A man and a woman marry to … to be a family to each other, and if they have kids, the kids are part of the family. And if they adopt, they have their family that way too. Do you see?”
“I think so, Papá,” Miguel said. “Papá Mark married Mami to make the two of them a family?”
“Right,” Joey said.
“And they had you, and you were family too.”
“Yeah.”
“And they got us, and we were family too then.”
“Yes.”
“And you and Mami already are family so you don’t have to be married,” the boy concluded.
Joey nodded.
Miguel smiled. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad you don’t have to marry Mami to be my Papá.”
Joey ruffled his hair. “Me too, kid.”
Miguel studied Joey’s motions carefully. He had become convinced that if he adopted his older brother’s masturbation techniques his own little cock would grow to massive proportions, just like those of his adored hermano.
The shower was running over them both; they were un-stinkifying again. Most of the time now they jacked off together after a workout, but today the need was even more urgent than Miguel normally felt it to be.
It had started with the presses. When he’d lifted the bar for Joey, Miguel felt his dick push onto his brother’s forehead. It always did that but Joey never said anything. He figured his brother understood. Miguel was still small and he couldn’t hold the bar the way Joey did. He couldn’t help it; when Joey was lifting he was pressing twice what Miguel’s entire body weighed.
He’d let his little package slide over Joey’s brow until he felt the peak of his nose digging against his groin, and then he’d stood back. It wasn’t on purpose, really it wasn’t. He had to have his thighs under the bar to lift it well, and that meant practically sitting on Joey’s face as he spotted and got him going. And it was like it always was; even his hardon was part of the game.
But when it had been Miguel’s turn today, Joey had done the same, grinding the soft shape of his dick against his surprised face. Miguel had writhed, then gasped, “I can’t breathe!” His voice had been muffled against the mass of Joey’s balls over his lips.
Joey had stood back, shaking his head at him. “Sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he meant it. “I … I don’t know what got into me.”
“I don’t mean to,” Miguel had whispered, not trusting his voice right then. He felt hot tears sting his eyes. “I can’t help it.”
“I know,” Joey said. “I’m sorry. Really. That was shitty of me.”
Miguel lay on the thin padding of the bench, shocked, and then wiped at his cheeks. “Okay.”
“Really,” Joey said again, putting his hand over Miguel’s on the bar and patting gently. “I’m sorry, kid. I don’t ever want to do anything to hurt you.” Joey’s hand caught between his fingers and squeezed. “I love you, you know?”
Miguel nodded dumbly, really surprised.
“Forgive me?”
Miguel swallowed. “Okay,” he said.
Joey studied him. “Trust me?”
Miguel thought a moment. The way Joey seemed so crushed. The press of his groin over his face. The way his cheeks were pale. I love you, you know.
He nodded again. “Si.”
Joey looked mostly relieved, but still a little uncertain. “Okay.” He stood at his normal distance, handed the bar to Miguel — so easily; he was so strong — and the boy took his reps.
But what Miguel didn’t want to admit was that he had … he had liked it. It had surprised him, yes, but when he got over the surprise the truth was that he’d enjoyed feeling the shape of Joey’s large, heavy cock on his face, lying trapped and helpless under the boy’s big strong body. In the moments after the shock wore away he had felt himself get hard, and he knew Joey could see it.
It had felt good, and he had caught a scent from his hermano, a scent he couldn’t name; something sweaty but not stinky, something strong but not rotten. Something that was like the way his sweat smelled when he passed Joey’s towel over his nose, inhaling the rich damp aroma of the older boy’s body. Like that, only stronger.
It was faggy to think so, he knew; but still, there it was. He liked his brother’s ball-sweat. It had been good, that scent. And it hung still in his nostrils.
Now they were jacking off together like regular, but Joey halted them before either made the cum happen. “Hey,” he said, “let’s not finish right now. I got something to give you, okay?”
Surprised, Miguel agreed, and they got out, toweled off, and then Joey led them to his room. He gestured Miguel to the bed and then reached under the pillow, pulling out some magazines. He handed the little stack to the boy and said, “You can use these any time you want to. Just put them back when you’re done, okay? And don’t tell.”
Miguel gaped at the collection. It was pornografía, lots of it, page after page of naked women, mostly alone but not all. There were other pictures, these of men with the women, and the men were putting their penes into the women’s lugares especiales. At first he thought they must be pretending, but then he saw some of the pictures showed white thick cum from the men, like Joey’s, so he knew none of it was fake. Some of them showed the men’s sperm in the women, heavy white strings between their glossy places and the men’s shining tips, and then the women lying there with the cum oozing from them.
Miguel glanced down at his shorts, at the ripe little peak his pene made in the cloth. He looked up at Joey. “Thanks,” he said.
“Sure, kid,” Joey said, then flicked playfully at Miguel’s erection. “I guess you like them.”
Miguel gulped and nodded, then lay back on the bed, shifting his hips upward. His cock rose in the cloth, standing out clearly. Something made him want to show it to Joey. Something that made the heat in him rise; something that was different from how they were in the shower. He was in his hermano’s bedroom, in his hermano’s bed, and he wanted Joey to see. He was a boy; and he was stiff. His cock wasn’t much by Joey’s standards, but it was there, and he proudly displayed his hardon.
Joey seemed fascinated by the bulge. “Your balls are bigger,” he said in a moment. “You know?”
Miguel sat up, studying himself. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Joey pressed the cloth against the younger boy’s crotch, making the twin rises of his testes stand out clearly. “They used to be like little grapes. But now they’re more like … like Brazil nuts.” He traced them with a fingertip. “See?”
Miguel shuddered at the brushing contact and let out a little gasp. “Oh.” He looked for, sought for something else, and then stroked the ripe weight of Joey’s sac. “Yours are like … like plums.”
“I bet yours get that big too,” Joey said, his voice somehow not in the room with them.
Miguel stared at Joey’s body. At how heavy he was in his shorts. It was all so different now from how they were in the shower, but he couldn’t understand why. He swallowed.
Joey’s hand remained between Miguel’s legs, keeping the thin fabric of his shorts taut. He ran his fingers around the swelling there again, around the paired rises of his little balls, and Miguel let out another breath.
“You like that?”
Miguel nodded jerkily.
Joey settled next to him on the bed, his legs crossed. Miguel saw that his hermano was also hard, that his pene was firm in his clothing. Big. And it pulsed, not quite in time with Joey’s breath, not quite in time with his heartbeat, showing in his bare chest. It was like his pene was its own living thing, rising from Joey’s middle all on its own.
“How about this?” Joey said, and his fingers brushed against the shaft of Miguel’s flesh, making it jump.
Miguel swallowed again. “Yeah,” he managed. The truth was that he had never felt anything so good in his entire short life.
Joey let the cloth go and slipped his fingertips along Miguel’s smooth, tight thigh. He found the hem of the leg hole and probed inside gently until Miguel felt his cool touch drifting along the cleft between his leg and his balls.
He stared into Joey’s eyes, and saw something there that made him bold. Barely believing he was doing it, Miguel reached for Joey’s cock and grabbed it, squeezing experimentally. It was solid in the older boy’s shorts, firm and warm, and he felt it pulsing in his hand.
Joey shuddered, then let out a sigh and passed his hand fully over Miguel, touching him directly under his shorts, his fingers brushing over the warm tube of skin that jutted firmly from him. “Yeah,” he said softly.
Miguel gasped and, with a single reaching motion, pulled Joey’s dick free of his loose clothing, stroking it gently, admiring its heft and length and loving, completely loving how it felt in his hand. It was warm, so warm, and it was smooth on the skin but rippling with veins and seemed full of power kept barely in check. It felt … it felt vulnerable, but also much stronger than any other part of Joey’s body, which Miguel knew was very strong everywhere. “Play a game with me,” he said quietly.
“What game?”
Miguel gulped. “Tie me up,” he said. “Make me do it.”
“What?”
Miguel panted, his bare chest heaving. “I like it,” he said. “I like to think about it. How it would be if you tied me up and made me do it with you.”
His hermano sat back and stared at him.
“Please,” Miguel said. “Take me to the weight room. Stand over me and tell me that if I don’t do it right you’ll put the bar on me. Or make me do it right here. I don’t care.” The boy was gasping, his lithe little body squirming. “I don’t care. Do it. Do it.”
Joey rolled over him suddenly and caught his wrists in his hands. As he straddled Miguel’s frame he smiled down, then spread his arms over the boy’s head. Miguel squirmed, trapped and pinned, then lay still, and Joey smiled at him once more. His long cock was solid, pressing firmly against Miguel’s bare belly. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Or else.”
The boy nodded, his heart pounding, not sure any more what might happen.
Joey dug into his laundry and pulled out some pillowcases. Still smiling, he used one to tie Miguel’s left hand to one side of his headboard, then tied Miguel’s other hand.
As the boy writhed on the bed Joey climbed atop him again.
He smiled distantly, then tugged Miguel’s waistband down. The boy lifted his hips and in moments was stripped, lying naked in his older brother’s bed, feeling raw surges of fire fill his belly as his hermano caressed him in a way that he’d done to himself many times, but that no one else had ever done to him. He felt at once helpless, felt that there was no way to stop Joey doing whatever he wanted — and he felt that he wanted to let Joey do to him anything he might have dreamed.
Joey worked his hips between Miguel’s, and the boy lifted his thighs to let his older brother’s body have room. He felt the surge of Joey’s cock against his tight sphincter and wondered if he was about to be raped, then remembered that rape meant unwilling.
His hermano hesitated.
“Do you want to?” he sighed. “Fuck me?”
Joey shook his head. He looked confused. “Shut up,” he murmured.
Miguel did.
Then his legs were tied, more pillowcases at each ankle, and Miguel lay spreadeagled and stripped, naked and vulnerable on his brother’s bed.
His cock had never been so hard before, and then something amazing happened.
Joey let the knots on his ankles and wrists slip and Miguel sat up, took his limbs back, rubbing circulation to them. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” his hermano said. “I just … I can’t.” He shrugged unhappily. “It’s too weird.”
“Forget it,” Miguel whispered. “Let’s just … you know, finish, okay?”
Joey nodded in a moment. He stripped as well and the boys lay side by side on the bed, their hands wandering, exploring once more. As Miguel admiringly cupped Joey’s large, heavy balls, tickling his blond springy hairs, Joey did the same for him, rolling his smaller nuts around, tightening them against his crotch. He didn’t seem to care that Miguel had no hair. He just moved his hand and made the younger boy shake.
“Want me to show you something?”
Miguel nodded.
Joey reached across the boy’s body and picked up a small bottle of hand lotion. “This helps,” he said, squeezing out some drops and stroking the gel over Miguel’s rock-solid flesh.
The smaller boy moaned at the feeling, his hips rocking unconsciously, and took some moisturizer for himself, easing it into Joey’s burning skin.
Their hands slipped up and they began to stroke, feeling each other, making the heat build between them.
“This is pretty good,” Joey whispered.
“Si,” Miguel sighed. “Si. So good…” He had never felt anything like this before. Even in his wildest fantasies he had never even imagined anything like this before.
In moments, both boys were gasping, shuddering, their bodies tight arches on the bed as their bare cocks pumped into the air, glistening trails of cum leaving streaks on their chests and bellies, and then their motions slowed and they eased back onto the bed together, panting and smiling shyly at one another.
“God,” Joey whispered. “That was good.”
Miguel nodded. “The best ever. We got sticky.”
“Yeah.” Joey smiled at him. “You’re all right, you know?”
“Thanks, Papá,” Miguel said. “You’re all right too.”
Joey sat up and wiped Miguel off with a shirt, then himself. They pulled their shorts back on and Joey pushed the pile of magazines over to Miguel. “So anyway, whenever you want to, you can look at these, okay?”
“Yeah,” Miguel said, not as interested in them as he had been only a few minutes earlier. Before they had got sticky together. “Thanks.” He carefully hid them under the pillows once more. “Can I look at them with you?”
“Sure,” Joey said, ruffling the boy’s hair, and they got up. “And Miguel? Don’t worry about the bar. I don’t mind.”
Miguel grinned. “I don’t either,” he said, and they laughed, and then left the room together.
Joey stirred and smiled, warm in the night, as the body beside him moved. He nodded and murmured, not awake and not asleep.
Carrie shifted gently, deep in her dreams, her body settling against his. She fell into deeper places and as she did, her hand caught his rise, caressed it softly. His flesh grew, hardened, and his tip slid past his waistband, exposed and meeting the warmth of her palm.
He smiled again and his hips shifted a little as Carrie stroked his penis, and her fingers nestled around his solid shape as her face nuzzled the musky tufts under his arm, and they fell away again, his flesh caught twice: Once in cloth, once more in skin.