Copyright© 2001-2005

Edited by Isaac Newton, circa 2005

A remarkable race are the Persians;
They have such peculiar diversions.
They make love the whole day
In the usual way
And save up the nights for perversions.

I could smell the disgusting smell of tobacco in the air.

That fucking bitch!

Slamming the door behind me, I rapidly stomped through my home to where I knew the smell originated. Banging on the door, my temper near the breaking point, I shouted, "Open this fucking door right now!"

It opened, much to my surprise.

"Put it out."

Cautiously she answered, "I did when I heard your car pull up." She was still wearing her black dress and heels. Her eyes were tear-filled and missing... something?

Her compliance did not still my burning anger. "This is my fucking house, and I hate the smell of smoke!" I was nearly yelling. "If you want to stay here you will do what I tell you! My house, my rules."

There it was said. In all the time she had lived with my wife and me, I always looked for ways not to be around her, to say as little as possible to her, and effectively ignore her very existence. My wife had always been the peace-maker in our home, the buffer between two polar opposites. That is no longer the case, much to my great heartbreak, as only this morning we had buried my wife.

Then I recognized what I had seen in Amanda's eyes. There was something missing that had always been there before her daughter's death - her self assurance. And perhaps I detected a little fear mixed in as well.

She had been my wife's mother, after all; as long as her daughter had been alive, she had a secure comfortable life.

I growled in anger as I spun about and strode to my own room, the tears rolling down my cheeks even before I slammed the door behind me.

Amanda cooked and cleaned for me those next couple of weeks - saying little and staying hidden as much as possible. For my part, I ignored her completely, never saying a single word to her. If she had to live in my home then this was the existence that I preferred.

Immediately after the funeral I tried to dive right back into work, but it was impossible. My soul was filled with grief. I had to take more personal time, and thankfully my employer was supportive and generous.

I ignored my wife's and my friends as well. This left me spending my time of grief around the home. I simply wanted to be alone with my grief, hiding behind the closed door to my large, comfortable home.

That left Amanda acting more as a housekeeper than the less-than-perfect mother-in-law she appeared to be that time right after the funeral. I hated her guts and wanted her to leave as well. However, I had made my dying wife a pledge, though her mother didn't know it, to care for the elderly woman. She had easily forced the pledge from my lips, as my wife always knew how to use my love to get what she wanted.

When you loved a person, it did not matter.

My wife had told me something else at the time, something I felt was absurd - that her mother loved me and would do anything for me. Even though the setting for our conversation was sobering, a critical care ward in the hospital, I practically laughed at my wife's statement.

Seated outside in the cool fall air, my steaming mug of tea refilled every ten minutes by my silent mother-in-law, I remembered those last weeks of my wife's life. At one point, just after Amanda had slipped silently beside me to refill my mug and was just walking away, I turned to watch her for the first time in weeks. What I saw was not an irritating old mother-in-law, but a slim shapely ass encased in denim, walking away from me.

Quickly, with a rising pool of guilt in my heart, I turned away.

Amanda silently picked up her dirty breakfast plate and turned back to the kitchen sink. Normally I came to the table, ate the prepared food and disappeared while the old woman was out of the room taking care of her morning "necessaries." Today I remained until my mother-in-law returned from her toilet. Clearly startled to find me still seated at the table, she recovered quickly and went about her normal morning routine, picking up my dirty dishes and moving towards the counter.

I could not help but notice the condition of her old, ratty pink housecoat and said my first words to her since I had growled at her on the day of her daughter's funeral, "Why don't you get a new housecoat?"

Amanda stopped half ways to the counter with my dirty plates and slowly turned, as if she was distrustful of her ears. "Pardon me?" She was never so polite when her daughter was alive.

"Forget it."

I stood and turned to leave the room when she quickly interrupted my non-graceful exit, "Please... !" She had rushed over to stand before me, soiled plates still in hand. "It's just a housecoat and no one ever sees me in it."

She had successfully barred my exit, whether she meant to or not. "Well, I see you in it." She only blinked as if I was speaking a different language.

This was exactly why I wanted to be alone - I have zero patience for the incompetence in others!

Amanda must have seen my frustration and quietly replied, before I could move around her to make my way out of the kitchen, "It's not in my budget." She blinked quickly, walked back to the dishwasher, and continued in her chores.

Now, my wife's father had passed away years before, and his pension cheques were the only income my mother-in-law had. In fact, I knew my wife had been sneaking her mom money every month; it had sparked numerous arguments in the last years. Amanda's statement, though, sounded much more real than the self-pitying comment I would have expected.

Within five minutes, I returned with a cheque and strode up to her as she was filling the dishwasher with detergent. "Here." She just looked down at the slip of paper as if not comprehending its meaning. "Take it and get a new housecoat... and anything else you want." She reached out for it but her hand quivered as it stopped before touching it. "I said take it, goddammit, and get some clothing that won't offend me!"

Amanda finally took it from mid-air when I simply let it fall from my grasp. I immediately turned and strode out of the room, feeling her questioning, surprised gaze on me as I left.

Things didn't exactly change between us after that. But when I took the effort to look toward my mother-in-law, I found her dressed in clothing more suitable for going out for dinner at a nice restaurant or entertaining guests around the house - as if we dared to have guests - than her usual every-day attire. I knew I had had something to do with that. The clothing she wore now was new, and I guessed that I might have given her the wrong impression, as well as way too much money.

It was weird that she worked so hard to impress me. Her care for me even put my wife's home-making skills to shame. I mean, in the last three years that Amanda had lived with us, before my wife died, I never saw the old lady lift a finger around the house in any sort of domestic way. Now she had turned into some type of fucking homemaker or something. I thought perhaps the old bat was having a late-life crisis!

I put the paper down on my lap and watched Amanda as she opened the door to the wood burning stove across the room. It was a strange sight, let me assure you. She wore a white sweater, black knee-length skirt, and black nylons as she squatted facing the open fireplace. It was strange to see her in that new outfit, stoking the fire before adding more wood to it. Her new clothing was sure to get dirty.

In the dim light (the only electrical light source currently on was a small bulb over my shoulder for reading), the shadows seemed to hide her true person from me. In fact, the woman squatting a mere meter before me looked ageless; the curve of her bottom was delicious, the smallness of her waist perfect, her ankles and heels delicate and her square shoulders youthful. I must have stared at her with these thoughts for some time before I looked up to see her eyes looking over her shoulder toward me.

That killed the moment.

Perhaps it was the shadowed light, but I swore her gaze looked pleased.

Sick fucking pervert right?

Well, was it any wonder that I got a little numb when looking at a woman - yes, even my mother-in-law? Though my wife was in the ground only weeks, she had been sick nearly the last year; and in that time I had barely been able to be intimate with my own hand, let alone the flesh of a woman.

That was the excuse I sold to myself in fact.

Though no longer young, Amanda is an attractive woman. It was her personality that had always grated upon me, not her looks.

I tried hard not to look at my mother-in-law in that way again, but that resolve lasted less time than it took you to read this - in fact just until the next time she bent over away from me.

After that, I openly looked upon the only female form I had admired in months, the only woman that was in my vicinity - my mother-in-law.

I think she knew and possibly felt embarrassment, but she never said a word or changed a thing about the way she dressed. But... maybe it was because I was more aware of her, because I found my eyes wandering to her bottom, legs, waist or conservative breasts, but it seemed to me she came around me more often, finding chores in the same room where I was. Did she think that by attracting my lonely gaze, her place in my home would be secure?

The weakness of my gaze disgusted me.

It was the one month anniversary of my wife's death, and it was a very bad day.

It started with shells in my eggs, which almost caused me to break down and cry (luckily Amanda was not in the room at the time). Then the news carrier forgot my house on his route... again. I could not find the book I wanted to read in my library. The phone company called asking about fucking services, and of course my politeness quickly disappeared at their demanding tactics. It was raining fiercely outside so I could not retreat to the sanctuary of the lawn chair out back.

But topping all of that, at only ten in the morning I stepped into the shower for my regular daily cleansing... and the fucking water turned cold!

I rinsed the soap from my face with freezing water and jumped immediately from the glass cage. Grabbing a large towel, I stomped noisily down the hall to Amanda's bedroom door and hammered on it.

"There is no hot water, bitch!"

Practically kicking it open, I saw that it was empty, though very messy. Amanda had hung wire across the room where her new skirts, blouses, sweaters and undergarments hung. It looked as though a blizzard had run through the small room. After the spotless precision of the rest of my home, the sight of this disintegrated domain fuelled my anger even more. I slammed the door and kept looking for her, now even hotter than before.

I found her trembling in fear in the basement near the washing machine. Evidently it had been running a cycle, using up the last of the hot water in the moderate sized tank. She simply stood there waiting for my blast of anger. I did not disappoint her.

"You fucking cow! How could you forget that I take a shower every fucking morning at the same fucking time?"

Though based on her history before my wife's death I would never have expected it of her, she wisely kept her mouth shut.

I roughly snatched my dirty tee-shirts from between her trembling, white-knuckled hands and threw them at her feet. Although I had never raised a hand in anger at any other time in my life, I could have struck Amanda at that moment. She cringed away from me as if I was about to hit her. It angered and shocked me at the same time, enough to pause my outburst.

Grabbing her thin upper arms in my big hands I shook her roughly, "I am not going to hit you, you stupid cow! But can't you do a thing right?" And then the stupid thing to say: "If you want to continue to live under my roof, you will never make me mad, ever again!" Her eyes were wet with tears but they burned into my own. "And if you can't do even that right, you might as well get the fuck out right now."

We stood in that strange embrace with dirty clothing about our ankles before I finally let her arms go. It only took another second for her to rush past me, sobbing all the way up the stairs to her messy room.

My own tears washed down my cheeks and I dropped to the cement floor, bawling like a baby.

After my grief cleansed the anger from my soul, I slowly stood up and returned, as if from the ether, to the upper levels of my home. I was looking for Amanda, not to apologize (I've never done such a thing with her), but just to see that I did not hurt her. It was the male thing to do after all.

I found her behind the closed door to her bedroom.

Without regard to privacy or a single thought that she could use space for her own grief, I opened the door to her room.

Amanda stood at the foot of her bed, wearing only a black bra, panties and thigh-high stockings. I realized that I could see the shade of her nipples as well as her pubic hair beneath the semi-translucent fabric, but I also realized she was in the middle of packing. A suit bag was open and she was in the process of shoving in all her old garments - nothing that she had purchased with the money I gave her, I noticed. I also saw a few of the thinner garments that had been hanging previously were now torn and ravaged.

She turned at my entrance, with hands at her sides, and sobbed silently, her eyes glaring at me in fear... and anger. The defiance in her demeanour was reminiscent of the 'old' Amanda, and I did not care for it.

A spark of my anger returned at the sight of her packing and at the damage done to some of the things I had given her money for and had come to enjoy seeing on her person these last days.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

My anger dominated hers, and any thought of using her shrill voice, the one that came out when she was angry or drunk, on me subsided. In fact, her eyes lowered to an invisible spot on her messy floor between us. I could see she wasn't going to say a word. We both knew she was leaving in anger and that she had neither a place to go nor the means to create a new home for herself. Effectively, without her daughter's widower — me - she was destitute.

Striding the two steps into her room, I found myself directly before her. Amanda might have thought I was there to hit her or to again verbally thrash her with my angry voice, but what I did must have frozen her heart - if only for a second.

I wrapped my arms about her and held her tightly, until finally I felt her hands slide around my back and her face press into my shoulder, as she began to sob uncontrollably.

Amanda didn't leave that day.

In fact, after the long time we held each other, we went our separate ways and did not see each other for the rest of that terrible day. No chores were done, and I ordered a pizza for myself for supper.

It was the next day that I sought her out. She stood before me, surprised at my calm, commanding voice as I ticked off the things I wanted her to do about the house. (Number one was no washing till after lunch!) I can't remember how many instructions I gave her, but she agreed to every one, looking very thankful all the while. She appeared to feel my ordering her about was equal to my accepting her in my home. My next instructions did not roll off my tongue so easily.

"As for the clothing you destroyed yesterday..." She swallowed nervously.

"... I want you to buy more of the same kind of garments you were wearing when I interrupted your packing yesterday." I saw a puzzled frown and then the spark of surprise when she realized what I meant. "Also pick outer clothing along the same theme."

I prayed she understood, as this was awkward and embarrassing enough as it was. How else could I tell her I thought she looked wonderful dressed not as a teenager but as a mature sexy woman? It was not meant to mean anything beyond my trying to be nice to the old woman so she would take better care of herself and my selfish desire to look upon a shapely ass around my home again. And it was not inconceivable that she might increase her self-worth by making herself up each day.

I pushed forward my hand. In it was a credit card - my wife's actually - the mate to my own on a joint account. Amanda took it with a slight tremble in her hands, and then her eyes returned to my own, as if gauging my words and trying to see if I was serious.

My hand again pushed forward, this time with the keys to my wife's Jaguar. Amanda took longer to take the keys - perhaps reading too much into the offer?

The woman who lived in my home became a stranger to me. No longer was she the shrill, opinionated mature woman who hid behind her daughter. instead she was the silent, dutiful, sexy woman who did all that her daughter's widower wished.

It was the little things - things like her soft smile that, when it first appeared, seemed to me to be alien upon her face because I had never seen it before. When I saw it I told her that she should smile more, as it complemented her so very much. After that, she seemed to wear it more than her normal, thin-lipped expression.

In the days that followed, I found reasons to compliment her person, the way she dressed and moved. Amanda had certainly replaced her torn clothing and then some, having generously abused my credit. Where my compliments fell, she seemed to acquire more clothing for that part of her person. And my compliments focused primarily upon her legs and bottom.

My eyes partook of her expensively-clad, mature, shapely legs generously, and any thought to be gentlemanly to my mother-in-law was dispelled when it was apparent she desired my admiring looks as much as I wanted to give them. She dressed to please me. Amanda spent so much time in my vicinity, usually doing her chores or attending my wishes, that I knew she wanted to be near me, to be seen by me.

Amanda wanted to make me happy.

It brought the first smile to my face in a very long time. I was like a very old wise man smiling at the antics of a child. That was how I was feeling in my own home.

Weeks later, while the hem of Amanda's skirts rose and the jeans and slacks all but disappeared, I began to wonder if my reasoning had been faulty. I started to wonder just where her boundaries lay. I realized this was probably more than a platonic response on her part. She had misread my offer to continue living in my home, using my wife's car and credit card and enduring my admiring gaze.

I had convinced myself that my motives, in the form of my directives, were pure; her response was far more than I had intended. Truly this was not the outcome I wanted. I had only intended to raise an older woman's spirits, to get her to the level that living in my home would not be cumbersome to either of us.

Did she mean to replace her buried daughter?

I (wisely, I thought) stopped all compliments, but the hem of her skirt did not drop. I tried very hard to read my paper or book and not put it down when she came into the room, so that my admiring looks were not so open. This was difficult as she took great care to look very fine, and I was but a starving man.

Yet, when I woke one gray morning to find her soft smiling face and the short hem of her skirt near the edge of my bed, I dropped to a new low. Perhaps I was still half asleep or perhaps simply a starving man staring at a banquet for too long.

Amanda leaned over me to lift my blanket to my chin and to set down the mug of tea on the low table next to my head. When she had finished placing the tea, I reached for the free hand and held it firmly. Our eyes met and she smiled softly, until she felt me place her warmed hand on my naked chest. Her smile vanished, but she did not resist as I pushed the hand down my nudity, beneath the thick blankets, down to what lay awake and at attention.

I wrapped her fingers about my hardness and closed my eyes.

It started with small movements - her warm, thin hand moving up and down with barely a centimetre of distance travelled. Then, I felt and heard my mother-in-law as she knelt on the floor next to my bed. Her other hand lifted my blanket from my naked form so that the chill morning air caused a brief shiver to run up my spin. In seconds I swore I felt her warm breath on the head of my raised manhood, and then I imagined I could feel her gaze upon it, in the same way as if it was a physical touch.

All this while, her hand moved up and down gently.

The effect was electric. It was the first hand besides my own that had touched me there in months, certainly the first since my wife's funeral. Coupled with the half-slumber of my mind, I could not help but enjoy. My hips began to move up and down so as to get more movement out of her hand. It worked, and Amanda stroked me generously and steadily, with the precision of experience.

It could not have been long - indeed it felt as if but seconds had passed since her fingers wrapped about me - when I felt tightness beneath my balls and the churning of juices as I prepared to boil over.

Just as I froze in position, gasping and holding my breath while the peak came upon me, I felt warm moist lips wrap about the crown of my sex. That was it, and I released myself (as if I was really able to control it) and jerked and spurted a flood of sperm into the loudly swallowing mouth.

My body and mind felt as if they were slowly descending through a thick cloud; I felt slumber returning. Distantly, I felt a smooth, warm, wet tongue slid about me, searching and cleaning dutifully. Then the blankets were again raised to my chin and lips kissed my brow as sleep returned.

It was I who was embarrassed when I finally reawakened. I hid in my room for hours afraid of my actions and how to confront Amanda with the reality of the morning. Yet, it could not be denied that I felt wonderful upon waking that second time, more refreshed than I could remember. Eventually I took a deep breath to still my resolve, and, dressed in only a robe, descended to lunch. The wonderful smell guided me to the kitchen and my mother-in-law.

I sat as quietly as I could. When Amanda saw me, she turned and gave me one of those wide soft smiles before returning to her work. With a sigh of relief, I realized that was to be the extent of the much-feared confrontation.

Then I looked over at the mature woman and admired her as I had tried hard not to do in days. She wore a tan skirt that ended inches above the knee; white silk encased her shapely legs, and black expensive slippers covered her feet. So engrossed was I in admiring the lower half of her, that I did not even bother looking above her waist until I found those legs standing right next to my chair.

Amanda slid the steaming bowl of chowder before me, along with a small plate of freshly baked biscuits and a tub of butter. It looked as delicious as it smelt.

My attention, however, was focused in another direction.

In those seconds it took for her to place her burdens on the table, my hand moved, nearly unconsciously, to the legs I had admired for the last weeks. I grasped the inside of her calf at about the same time she was placing the butter on the table. Amanda stood still, staring at the marble table as if waiting. A quick look up at her face revealed nothing - she wore neither pleasure or disgust.

There is nothing as sexy to me as the feeling of smooth shapely legs encased in nylon or silk. Amanda's were no disappointment. My big paw slowly slid upwards, enjoying the intimate touch of her person and revelling in the primitive touch of a man on a woman for the first time in oh, so long. Her thighs beneath the silk were soft, well-shaped by the fabric, and very sexy. And when my hand came to the end of the stocking and touched the unrestrained flesh of her middle thigh, life returned to that place between my legs.

Quickly, my hand yanked itself from that hot, soft, inviting flesh, and I leaned into the table to start my lunch, my face crimson with surprising embarrassment. Still, Amanda stood next to my chair for nearly another minute before she turned and strode back to the counter. My eyes rose from my chowder to enjoy the movement of her bottom beneath that tight skirt.

I knew in that minute that there was no limit for her. Was there one for me?

With only the one light left on over my shoulder to give me enough light to read by, the rest of the house was dark. It surprised me when I looked up to find Amanda standing just by the side of my chair; I had thought her long asleep. I jerked in surprise and set down my book before I noticed what my mother-in-law wore. The mature woman had spent my money well. She was wearing a white, very sheer, silk nightgown, so sheer that I could see the lace of her French cut white panties beneath as well as the elastic white band of the top of her thigh-high white stockings.

Nothing else but one of those soft smiles... and hard nipples.

For the first time since that eventful morning and lunch, I was able to relax my defences because I now knew it was not her that I needed to be worried about - it was me.

"Amanda! You surprised me?" I said, after staring boldly at her near-nudity for nearly a minute.

"I could not sleep and wondered if you would like anything?" The soft, dare I say it, loving smile boldly looked at me.

Perhaps I was wrong in only worrying about my own offences?

As my gaze moved downwards, I noticed that the nightgown had small discrete buttons down the front; buttons which were unbuttoned to her navel. Her mature, small breasts, low due to age, with small dark nipples hard and thrusting invitingly toward me, took my breath away. The fabric was so sheer that I could see the wrinkles that her hard nipples spawned.

She was offering herself to me, that was obvious. She stood there before me, late at night, dressed in clothing meant to reveal and enhance her ageing body. I saw that her fingernails, newly painted with red polish, lightly scratched upon each outer thigh. I looked closer and saw that her breathing was laboured, her shoulders were trembling and, most obvious of all, the familiar scent of feminine musk filled the room. Amanda was, much to my surprise, very excited!

How could this be; hadn't she succumbed to my advances just to ward off being banished?

At first I had thought myself a scoundrel for forcing myself upon this woman while I was half-asleep only that morning. After the incident, I had felt guilty for suggesting she bare her body in seductive and sexy clothing, though I had rationalized that my original intentions honourable. Was I now finding that she was more anxious than I for more of my bawdy attentions?

This was my wife's mother for god's sake!

What about that anyway - how did Amanda compare with her attractive daughter?

The knees were a little wrinkled, her small breasts sagged, her face was aged. "Turn around slowly Amanda," I commanded and saw that her bottom no longer firm either. Wisely, she stopped while facing away from me.

Much of my visual inspection of her recently had been upon her legs... and her bottom. Now here that lay, exposed to my eyes and within arms' reach. The sheer silk nightgown hid nothing; the skimpy panties ran between the cheeks of her ass and left no mystery. The middle-aged ass before me was mine for the taking.

So I reached out with my arm and grasped one cheek roughly.

The old lady sighed.

It was not the first ass I'd ever fondled, but it was the eldest. It was nothing spectacular, looking better in expensive skirts than without, and very soft to the touch. I squeezed that cheek, pinched it, pulled it from its sibling and generally toyed with it.

My mind was awash in thoughts all the while I fondled her. Part of me was disappointed that the reality was not up to the expectant fantasy of my starving spirit. Another part of me was horrified that although I had hated the mere sight of this woman only weeks before, here we were, each highly erotically charged for the other. Could sexual starvation drive my path to such a bawdy outcome? This was my dead wife's mother that I was feeling up!

I dropped my hand and took another longing look at that ass before lifting my book and muttering, "Go to bed, Amanda."

While I pretended to read, I felt her eyes upon me for some time before she slowly left the darkened room. When I knew her to be gone, I dropped my book and took a long deep sigh. I knew that if not for my morning orgasm, I would have succumbed to my desires and used Amanda's ageing body.

I sat for an hour afterwards, looking blankly into the corner of the dark room.

Amanda served breakfast, much as she has for the last weeks - silently and perhaps a little submissively. Again I was expecting something, anything - perhaps a show of emotion - from the denial to her offer. It was confusing; after thinking her hot for my attentions, the light of day caused doubt within me.