1
Lily sat on the window seat and gazed at a photo that had fallen out of a small album, the pockets within its plastic covers holding pictures of her and the children, Evelyn and Theo. In none of them did the father appear, but she had disclosed what had happened and informed her decision on the life that she had chosen to follow since their conception and birth.
She had decided to have a family, on her terms, soon enough. She would not marry and be ‘locked into’ an arrangement that saw ‘love’ turned into something that left two people embittered and the children, if there were any, having to confront a choice. To whom did they owe a greater loyalty, to their mother or father, and having that challenged and even put under impossible strains?
She couldn’t recall the moment that had compelled her to decide that she would have children by resorting to sperm-donor services that she would pay for, and in whichever form that might take. It had crept into her thoughts gradually and she had concluded that she would expect, nothing more of the donor. It would all be done at ‘arms ‘length’. Her fiercely independent approach would appall many people, but there were agencies who had offered such services in the city where she lived. The reasons for them doing so had not concerned her, unduly; but the donor’s bio and profile, on the listings, had been thought of as being of greater importance.
Of even greater concern, at the time of reaching her decision, was how to deal with the inevitable questions from any children that she brought into the world and by these ‘fatherless’ means, in the sense of a man not being involved in their day-to-day upbringing. There were many stories, on a variety of media, that told of the search by siblings for the other parent who had made them. What was she to do when that situation arose, and answers had to be found?
“We only lived for the moment, didn’t we?” she murmured, those times returning to her with livid clarity as she held the photo. ‘I loved you for agreeing with me.’
Lily put the picture to her lips as if to kiss the memory of him, of Noah Anderson, a young man who had loved her plans into a raging reality and had honored her wishes, for how it was to be from that moment on. She had no need of a photo to remind her of him, nor of the emotional sacrifice that Noah may have made, even at his age, when she told him that it had all happened. They had each come to terms with where they stood on their paths in life. She had her established career and money put by; he was at its very beginning and showed great promise.
♥
At the time of meeting him, she had lived in the family home located in a desirable part of Seattle, Puget Sound a few blocks away and where the Space Needle seemed to tower over them. It was the house where her parents had lived almost all of their married lives and it came to her following their deaths.
Tom was an airline pilot, and he would often take her and Sally, her Mom, for a flight in a light plane over the Sound. That life, in a desirable, architect-designed, landmark home with its bright and airy spaces, literally came crashing down when their two-seater plane was hit by another, killing all on board. She had inherited the house and all her parent’s effects after she had been living in an apartment over the garage that included space for her ‘home office’. The rooms had been modified by her late father so that clients could call in for conferences. She had graduated in Marketing and worked for two agencies until deciding to set up on her own and to make her way, at a young age and as she had always wanted to do, along with being answerable to next to no one except her hard-won clients.
It was through her agency, and not her friendship with Natalie Anderson, that she agreed to her friend’s son, Noah, spending a few weeks working with her as an intern, something she too had done when his age. Noah, a polite and somewhat withdrawn young man, had just turned twenty and was in his second year studying for an advertising and marketing degree. The weeks of a long vacation were the perfect opportunity to get work experience and be involved in all aspects of running a small niche practice.
“Put the theory, whizzing around in your head, to some practical use. You can do that here,” she had told him. “I’ll hear what’s new from you and you can see how I put it all into effect…what I’ve learned along the way.”
“You’ve got some great clients,” he had said approvingly. “I read it up on your website, but I would sure like to learn about direct action and not sit at a desk all day long.”
She had smiled inwardly on hearing that.
“You’ll do both…now, come on. Leave your bag at that workstation I’ve set up for you. We go and do some of that ‘direct action’ you’re so keen on.”
How easy it now was to recall those first moments with him as the photo, she had been holding, was put back in the small album, neatly stowed behind a clear cover, those words of Noah’s, of direct action, having taken on a whole new meaning. It had been aroused by the look of his stilled, appraising, eyes upon her; a look that she had not encouraged but still had her feeling that the weeks of his apprenticeship, of them working together, could become a time that should not be wasted.
2
Noah heard his Mom call out the time.
“I’m ready! I don’t want to forget what I’ve been working on these last few days.” His feet clumped on the stairs and over the hallway floor. “Lily gets more than she bargained for when you told her I was looking for a placement.”
“Well, she sure is pleased, I can tell you,” Sally replied, looking with pride at her oldest son, his studious face more relaxed than she had seen for some time. “Now scoot, ride that motorcycle carefully, won’t you?” She held out his battered helmet. “Don’t forget this…”
“Sure Mom, as if I’d do that,” he replied and keeping exasperation from his voice. He heard the lecture most days since going to work at Emblematic, Lily’s business that she had started from scratch. The enthusiasm in the woman was unquenchable, and he’d feel lost, even somewhat empty, when the vacation was over and he returned to college. “It’s only a few city blocks and I’ll be with her…”
“A lot can happen in a few blocks, son.”
“I’m going and I’ll take care.” He had his reasons to be at work on time and to share his ideas following yesterday’s meeting with a client. Lily, the slender-bodied woman with her wonderful sandy brown hair and freckles on her skin, had taken a hold of his mind. She was shapely, everything seemingly in proportion, a moment’s look of her wondering eyes seeming to bore into his soul. He could get lost over her, in her, even if she was older and he was behaving like some besotted fool. “Bye Mom! I’ll see you when I see you!”
The front door closed behind him and he strolled over the driveway to his motorbike, his one and only means to get around and not have to worry, too much, about where to park. He might even persuade that eye-catching woman, Lily, to take a ride on it. The girls he’d hooked up with, at College, became more approachable after times clinging to him as he leaned the machine into a curve, or surged past traffic, when it was safe to do so.
Would Lily be any different? She remained single, as far as he could tell, and couldn’t be older than thirty or so, vivacious and with a great and captivating smile. With all of that came a sharp business mind, a quick tongue if things didn’t go so well, and a willingness to listen to his ideas. If she hurt, still, from what had happened in losing her parents, some time ago, she didn’t show it.
He had every reason to show up for work and to see what the day brought. A couple of weeks remained before the new College semester began, and then life would become only too routine once more. The past three weeks had flown by, and the diary he kept of projects he had worked on, and his College demanded that he kept, was a testament to how much he had been allowed to experience.
The rest, what he felt when in Lily’s company, was stored away in his mind, and she was the only one who might discover how deep it now ran.
The bike’s engine soon burst into life, and he was gone, did not see that his mother stood at an upstairs window with a phone in her hand.
♥
“I see him, Natalie!” Lily laughed, holding her phone a little tighter as she saw Noah turn into the driveway and slew to a stop. The sound of his motorbike’s engine echoed off the wall to a neighbor’s home for a moment before it became still. She listened to what her friend had to say. “Well, I can only tell you that he is full of ideas and has a creative streak much as I have when it comes to marketing…or promo work for clients. I’ll be sorry to see him go. It’s not so long now…”
She meant it but would never have gone into any details with her. The relationship with Noah had changed, subtly, and his somewhat unkempt appearance, at the beginning of his time, with it. He wore smarter, if still casual, clothes; he wore chinos or clean slacks, a cotton long-sleeved shirt, and always a windcheater or light jacket that was on style. His mop of dark brown hair was cut shorter and kept tidier, and she could not keep from thinking that Noah exuded raw vitality in his youthful, strong, and broad-shouldered body.
In short, she had become a little smitten with him, and being alone in his company, as they worked and the ideas seemed to spark between them as if they read each other’s minds, only heightened her senses; brought into sharper focus what had become a preoccupation for some time and that the agencies, she had turned to, had failed to satisfy. A healthy, clever, and good-looking young man was with her and she sensed that she had had an effect upon him too. But propriety, and the fact that Noah was a friend’s son, made her longing for a resolution to her plans all the more difficult. Conclusions would be reached if she took him as her lover, the purpose for doing so becoming clear as time went by.
“It has to happen first,” she muttered, clutching the phone tightly in her slender-fingered hand. The day’s diary wasn’t so full, just for a change.
“Lily…hello, Lily?”
“Yes, I’m still here and I’ve got to go, get back to work,” she chose to say before closing the call. Noah’s presence had again taken a hold of her.
She heard his footfalls on the stairs and went to greet him, stood at the railing that marked the edge of the stairwell, the tall window that her father had wanted and shaped as an ‘L’, forming a crucial part of the ceiling’s design, casting the sunlight over them.
Noah stopped for a moment and simply looked up at her.
“What?” she asked, needlessly, for she saw in that gaze that something was again at work in him.
“I…I won’t see you like that in a few weeks, Lily. I’m reminded of that every day when I’m here with you,” he confessed, his look upon her only too direct and appraising; her floaty white blouse and matching slacks lending her such grace that it would be so darn difficult to keep his mind on work and not on her. She wound his spring, real tight, and there’d be only one way to let that tension unwind.
She saw but did not hear him sigh.
Lily waited until he met her at the top of the stairs. “It matters to you, does it, being here with me?”
“Yeah, it does. It sure does.” His bag fell to the floor with a soft slap. “I sure don’t know where to go with this, with what I feel about you.”
She was taken by his honesty and responded in the only way she knew. “I do, Noah, I do.”
Lily reached out to him, brushed her hands over his chest, and felt only a moment’s hesitation, in each of them, before their mouths crashed against the other’s and they snorted through deepening kisses of avowal, made real what they had only felt and had said nothing of.
“I have to let go of what I feel!” he gasped, feeling her warm lips press against his throat as they clung to each other, living for the moment.
“Did you close the door…lock it?” she breathed quickly, looking away for an instant, feeling his hands grip her hips and prolong their embrace. The knot of repressed longing for him had tightened some more, held her in its unrelenting grip. She needed no agency to match her to a donor. She was in his arms, and he’d soon be in her body, their love and lust merging into one.
“I never unlocked the catch,” he kissed, holding her gaze as they clung to each other. “Can we deal with this, what we’re doing, before anything else?”
“Try and stop me!” she laughed and rushed away from him, looking back to make sure that he followed her, Noah’s jacket falling to the floor as he caught her outstretched hand. “It’s just you and me, and this is our moment!”
To her dismay, he simply swept her up in his arms, and cradled her as they stumbled to her bedroom, Lily’s hand on his head as he bent to nuzzle kisses to her skin; her blouse stretched open and his breaths warm and exciting, the slick of his tongue ragingly intense as if to taste what had been forbidden but desired fruit.
“I’ve left the condoms in my bag, darn it!” he muttered in despair, the heat of the moment broken into by a harsher reality as h left her standing by the bed.
She detained him, rushed after Noah and threw her arms around his neck, rose on tiptoes to look into his eyes. “We don’t need them. I don’t want you to use one, any one of them! I want you to love me and to help me.”
He looked away, the meaning of what she had confessed to and the searching look in Lily’s eyes slowly registering. He then turned back to her and spoke sharply as it dawned on him what she was asking of him. “You want me to be…?”
She kissed him slowly just to buy herself some time. “Yes, I want you to be my lover and a friend…to meet a special need. Make a dream of mine become reality. It’s gotten to mean so much to me and…and I’ll not make any demands on you. I’m being honest, and it’s no more than you deserve.”
Noah looked at her as if seeing Lily through new eyes. The beautiful and clever woman he had found her to be was someone else, vulnerable even. He wondered if the loss of her parents, the love that they had lived by, was something that she was unable to find or commit to.
“I’m here for you,” he murmured, delighting in the woman before him as she pulled on his hand. She was beautiful, and captivating, her smile radiant and the look in her eyes brimming with expectation and longing for him.
“I got to hoping that you would be.”
She had given voice to her suppressed feelings. Now she wanted to be loved and by him; a young man and woman on the cusp of life brought together; a man and a woman, not the boss of Emblematic and an intern.
To each other, they were Lily and Noah.
3
No one would ever know what happened next.
How would they ever know?
They rushed back into her bedroom, the windows set high in the wall and her bed lit by sunshine filtered through the blinds. They kissed wildly, groped and caressed what could be found, and they forsook any finesse. Lust overcame all reason, and she overwhelmed him.
“I’ll do as you want…just take it slow!” he called out to her even as Lily pushed him onto the bed and straddled him, and he was taken in by her bewitching smile.
She tugged loose the buttons on her blouse, slipped her arms out of the sleeves, and gracefully lifted it away before she reached behind her back and unfastened her bra.
“You too can slow down, Noah, we’ve got plenty of time.” She had felt his hands on her breasts as they tumbled free. She had heard him groan in dismay at the sight of her body, and she now loved to feel his caressing hands upon her.
“I just love those freckles on your skin. They’re everywhere and make you so beautiful!” His kisses were on her skin as she leaned forward to have him take her breasts in his mouth, to hold them wonderingly.
“And I love what I can feel, here,” she giggled as they kissed before easing away and succumbing to the pleasure of his lips on her skin, then his sucking kisses to her hardening nipples. It had been a long time since she had felt this way, but the deeper purpose of loving him excited her more. “Take your shirt off, Noah…let me begin to see you.”
Her soft kisses, the sweep of her breasts over his chest, urged him on, but Lily was too quick. Her hands were on his belly as she tugged his shirt loose, unhindered by his hands as Noah unbuckled his belt. She sighed softly on seeing the spiral of hair on his belly, the soft tone of his stomach muscles as he tensed. She pushed her hands under his shirt and he sat up, having no time before she pressed her lips to his skin. It was her turn to suck, paying attention to his nipples as she ground her pussy on his prick, shaped so enticingly by his briefs.
“You could sit up, take those slacks and your panties off…”
“You do that for me, lover!” On a soft teasing laugh she rolled off him and gazed up at Noah as he pushed his chinos and briefs over his strong thighs, the mattress sinking as he kicked them away. “Now come back down here!”
“To undress you…completely, boss lady or not.” He grinned at her before his hands brushed her body and she squirmed on feeling his touches, the slide of his fingers over her skin as he tugged her panties and trousers down, trailed kisses to her legs until he squatted, coaxed her with his kisses to lift her legs before he wrenched those stylish slacks away. “Now I can really see you…glorious you.”
His tenderness dismayed her and she shivered as Noah bent down and began to trail wondering kisses to her thighs, to the soft skin that was kissed until his fingers and tongue settled on her pussy’s pink lips, parted them before his tongue dipped into her, slicked and pressed until he touched her clitoris.
“Noah!” she cried out as she felt him make contact, so brazen and assured, her breaths hitching in her throat as she inhaled and breathed out in short snaps of breath. Her body jerked as his mouth and fingers worked their magic upon her.
“I love your taste…what you bring to me,” he kissed, one hand reaching up to clutch at her breasts. She kept it to her skin, her grip tensing and releasing as if as one with what he did to her. She was being tortured by her intern, his ways of loving sublimely practised and now deployed upon her body.
She lay on the covers of her bed, knees drawn up, and breathed irregularly as he resumed in his delicious torture; by the flicker and stroke of his tongue that was replaced, occasionally, by his fingers that moved in and out of her pussy, circled and probed, the boldness of his ways with her so at odds with the restrained young man she had worked with in the early days of his internship.
“Go on…go on!” she urged as Noah eased away from her. Just at that moment, she felt all barriers of her restraint had crumbled away. She needed release even though she had yet to feel that love wand, that she sought to touch, in her body and the expulsion of his seed. Her time was now, she had recorded her temperature and planned her seduction of him. But there had been no need for any subterfuge; he had come onto her and now she wanted him in her.
She bucked her hips, clawed at his head and shoulders as Noah’s fingers and tongue, the feelings that these and his breaths on her slit aroused, had he blood humming in her veins, and her release came in a body-shattering, shuddering orgasm that weeks of anticipation finally made real.
“Noah…oh Noah!” she moaned like a wounded animal as her body was wracked by irrepressible spasms, “what have you done to me?”
“I’ve let you know what you’ve done to me,” he grinned, trailing his tongue over her tummy before looking into her eyes, bending over her before offering slow kisses. Lily had taken one of his hands and put it on her slit, moved her body to feel its caress. “You want me in you?”
“Yes! Bring it to me!” she called out, the mattress sagging as he pushed down on her, responding to how she held his penis in a vice-like grip and rubbed the tip over her pussy’s lips before he pushed forward, enough until it nestled between them and he slowly dipped and rose, teased her opening and prepared her for what she demanded of him. She called out his name as he kept stretching and dipping further into her, the charge of excitement, the purpose of their tryst, devastating her control. She would succumb to orgasm after orgasm if it finally brought him to where he wanted to be and share with her. She met his wondering look. “Go on, it doesn’t hurt…don’t pull away…just take me!”
Noah shivered. The boss, his mother’s friend, a woman that he had grown to know with every day that passed, and they worked together, was now naked in his arms; his prick was slowly being taken into her slicked heat and all that they now seemed to want was an end to the foreplay and to smash.
“I want to be here with you,” he kissed, supporting himself on one elbow as he reached between them and made sure she was ready, her shivers and soft breaths of anticipation tipping him over the edge of restraint. He pushed down into her, and she gasped and shuddered as her hips met his and a pounding, relentless rhythm began.
“Now don’t you dare stop!” she gasped, overcome by the exquisite feelings that he brought in her, the rushes of anticipation and what having him take her could lead to and with his agreement. “Find me…and find me deep!”
He needed no encouragement and did not prevent her from raising her legs to caress his hips and body before she locked them behind his back; twisted and bucked her hips and dragged on his meat, varied the pressure of him against her clitoris, her pubic bone and hips. She wanted him to be buried in her and to chase her dream.
“Lily…oh, Lily!” he groaned from his efforts, her wrenching and tugging claims unrelenting. “I want to hold on…but…but I can’t!”
“Soon darlin’…soon! I’m almost there!”
She was feeling the rushes of her pleasure, the tumble into ecstatic oblivion she had not thought possible and so soon with him. Emotion and the wracking clamp of her orgasm pushed her over the edge. Her arms and legs tightened around him and she yelled, threw back her head on the pillows, and uttered mindless encouragement as she felt him push deep. There followed the tingling rushes of Noah ejaculating, his hips gripped by her hands to keep him buried in her as he resumed thumping furiously out of reflex and in response to her movements beneath him; to the drag on his penis that was so vigorous and demanding.
She kept him to her, in their clammy embrace, as they came down from their shared highs and caught their breaths. They shared wet sloppy kisses and met each other’s looks, as if in acceptance that this would not be the only time they were together like this. She loved what had happened for its spontaneity, the unrehearsed passion that they had aroused in each other.
“It will always be a special moment, every one of them until you have really found me,” she kissed. “Please, promise me that there will be more times of us being together like this?”
“I’m not going anywhere unless you say so, or it’s time for me to go.”
A phone was heard to ring, and she knew that they could not stay in, or on, her bed any longer. A different reality had intruded upon them, the world outside her office; a world of work that had first brought them together, but its purpose now declared as never before, and that neither had expected at its beginning.
There was to be no turning back. They had become someone else, during the time they had spent meeting each other’s needs and that to others defied all reason.
4
Lily remained seated at the window and gazed out over her garden. She felt the stillness of her home, a small property with its clap-boarded walls, porch, and with its boundaries marked by trees that still afforded a view of the Sound. She had moved here in the months following her last passionate moments with Noah Anderson. She had told him of Evelyn’s conception, then of her birth but sometime after that happy event had occurred.
Noah had remained in her life, albeit on the edges, until after she had conceived Theo and she had felt her life to be complete; that a different life’s path would be followed, and that Noah had come to accept. But his bond to her, that vein of love, was wider and ran deeper in him than she believed it ever could or should.
They both realized that some biological marker would, at some time in the future, identify who her children’s father may be, that curiosity would get the better of them, especially Evelyn, and new challenges would have to be faced.
She was startled to hear the door open and to see her daughter peer around the edge. There were moments, flashes of recognition in how she could look and behave, a simple gesture or mannerism, that bore the legacy of her father, Noah.
“Here you are, mother…”
“Yes, here I am, Evelyn, darling.”
It was no use hiding the photo album she had been looking at. It was way too late, and Evelyn had been like a dog with a bone, persistent in finding out about her birth father, be the news good or bad. DNA tracing was only too important to those trying to track down family, known or unknown. Evelyn, as a student lawyer had her ways of drilling down through the papers and leads, intent on finding what she wanted to know.
“Are you looking at what I think you’re looking at and that Theo and I have never seen?”
Lily shrugged and clenched her lips a little tighter to stifle an impetuous, instant, reply. She’d prepared for a moment like this; if you could ever truly do that. You had to get through on a wing and a prayer, and she had certainly prayed that she would find it in her heart to be honest and truthful.
“Yes, I am looking through things from those days, and then afterwards,” she confessed and held out the little album to her. “Sit down beside me, please?”
It sounded colder than was intended.
“I just need to know about him, Mom. I don’t blame you for anything. I understand the reasons why, and Theo and I have had the best of lives with you. I…I just need to complete the circle.”
Evelyn felt her mother’s hand tremble as she sat close and threaded her arm through Lily’s.
“I loved him, you know, in my own ways of it, and I don’t just mean what we did to make you and Theo. I mean that he was willing to understand me, the reasons why and I left it to Noah…that’s his name…to ask me to change my mind, to see if I would or wanted to. But I didn’t, and he loved me and was with me until I knew. He was a student and so our bond slowly fell away. He went to Frisco, and I heard that he got a great job and made something of a name for himself. I follow what he does, still, through my connections and trade magazines…”
“You don’t have to explain…”
“Yes, I do.” Lily took the album from her girl’s hand and turned to the photo that she had just put into its protective sleeve. “Look, the handsome and clever young man who made love to me…and helped to make you, and Theo.”
“And whom you loved back?”
“Yes, whom I loved back,” she whispered, “only there were too many years between us and I couldn’t go breaking up my plans, now could I?”
The tears trickled down her cheeks as her thoughts drifted back to those days with him. It was Evelyn’s turn to get emotional. “I’ve…I’ve found him, Mom. That’s what I came to tell you.”
“Darlin’, oh darlin’ girl!” Lily bent forward and she couldn’t hold back the tears. She was drawn a little tighter against Evelyn. It was something her children had never seen her do. “Have you seen any pictures of him?”
“Yes, I have,” Evelyn said gently. She also hesitated as she took her iPhone from her fleece’s inside pocket. “He, Noah, he took sick some years ago and the hospital he went to tested him as a matter of routine. They got his DNA and it’s on the records. And so, in that way…”
Lily saw her girl shrug her shoulders in mute acknowledgment of what she could have gone on to say.
“And you tracked him down in that way?” Lily had composed herself and turned to meet her daughter’s baleful stare. “Show me what you’ve found…please?”
“He sent the pictures to me, Mom. I asked for only one, but he sent me these.”
The images of him, of Noah, swam before her eyes. His hair was shorter, he still had that wondering look in his eyes, and he was smiling just as she remembered. He had also been inventive, had put his iPhone, or a camera, on a tripod and he had taken three quick snaps, all of them to be scrolled through, which Lily now did.
One, in particular, shocked her for the emotion that it aroused in her. It followed the first which showed Noah holding a whiteboard on which he had written a few words in a clear black script.
‘I often tell myself that…’
And then, she read on the second board that he held.
‘The Past Belonged to You and Me.’
Lily looked away and clutched the photo album to her breast. She felt no shame when the tears came again, and she no longer did anything to hold them back. Her Mom and Dad had felt that way too about each other and had lived out their love to the end. Noah had respected her decision, but he had loved her for reasons that went beyond the purely physical manifestations of it.
“There’s the third picture, Mom. Look…look at this one?” Evelyn now told her, hesitantly, as she too was overcome by emotion that contact with Noah had aroused in her. She had never seen her mother break up in the way she had just done, and about a decision she and her biological father had reached so many years ago. She could only conclude that Noah had been waiting for his ‘kids’ to contact him and complete the circle. The rest would be up to the four of them.
‘It’s not too late to start again.’
Lily wondered if he still rode a motorcycle. They had ridden over the roads beyond the city limits and had behaved as lovers so often do, oblivious to everyone but the one they were with. She had made real what had been a cherished hope for him, just as he had done so for her.
♥
