Image License From Depositphotos

EROTICA | STEPMOM | STEPSON | FORBIDDEN | CHEATING | HOME TENSION | RISKY DESIRE

Alone with My Stepson — 1

The house felt too quiet, the air too thick, and every glance between us carried something we both knew we shouldn’t name.

The microwave beeped.

Three times. Insistent.

Nathan's Hot Pocket was waiting, and I was looking at the plate that was spinning through the little window in the flaky crust, and I could see the cheese already oozing out the side.

My hands were on the cool granite countertop.

The kitchen reeked of fake butter and something else: his cologne, I'm sure, that lingered in the air after he leaned over me to grab a Gatorade ten minutes ago.

“Are you going to look at it or eat it?”

His voice was in the living room.

Deep.

A little raspy.

Nineteen years old and already had that man-timbre that made me glance up from my phone whenever he spoke.

I pulled the microwave door open.

I was letting it cool down, so you don't burn the roof of your mouth and then gripe for three days.”

“Once, that did happen.”

“Last week, it occurred.”

I picked up the plate, which was warm, but not hot, and walked it by the kitchen island to where he was lying on the sectional.

His long legs over the armrest.

Basketball shorts.

Gray, loose.

The kind that ride up when you're lying down.

My eyes darted to the strip of thigh that showed up above his knee.

Then away.

The tv was on, but it was a race movie that neither of us were watching.

I placed the plate on the coffee table and then sat down on the other side of the sectional with one of the throw pillows in my lap.

Nathan swung his legs down and sat forward, elbows on his knees, and picked up the Hot Pocket.

“You want half?”

“I’m good.”

“You haven't had anything since breakfast.”

He’d noticed.

Of course he’d noticed.

The child—no, not child.

Young man.

The young man who has been staying in my house for 2 years since Mark and I got married noticed when I missed lunch.

When I went from wine to sparkling water.

When I was reading in the bath for too long, I noticed and knocked on the door and asked, "Have I fallen asleep?"

Mark traveled.

A lot.

Three weeks out of four, wherever the consulting firm sent him.

That left me and Nathan with this open floor plan, four bedroom colonial with an echoey upstairs hall.

The first year had been a strange year.

Polite.

Two people who don't know each other sharing a fridge and a Netflix account, still trying to figure out how to call each other.

The second year… something changed.

Became easier.

Turned into something I didn't look into.

“You're hovering,” I said, watching him take a bite out of the Hot Pocket.

A line of mozzarella was stretched out from his lip to the pastry, and he was able to pick it up with his tongue, fast and practiced, and my jaw tightened a little.

“It was a late lunch.”

“Liar.”

He chewed and swallowed and grinned.

“At 2:15 you had a protein bar and you called it lunch, I saw the wrapper in the trash.”

“Detective Nathan, you're not a detective.”

“Nah, I just listen.”

He said it offhand, but his eyes held mine for longer than offhand.

Blue eyes.

But his father's eyes were a polite corporate accessory, technically, on Mark.

On Nathan they were different, darker, hungrier, the blue you'd find in deep water where things lurk.

I turned my head away first.

Turned on the TV and increased the volume by three notches.

The sound of a car engine roared through the surround sound.

What time will you be on duty tomorrow?

“Eleven.

Only the lunch rush.”

He ate the Hot Pocket and licked his thumb.

“If you want it off, I'll pay for your Thursday, Jenkins said.

Why take Thursday off?

Another pause.

Not long.

Too slow, but not quite slow enough.

Well, thought we could do something, since dad wasn't home till Saturday.

My thumb ran over the remote’s rubber buttons.

Up.

Down.

Up.

The volume indicator appeared on the screen, but I didn't look.

“Something like what.”

“Well, I don't know, movie, that pizza place you like, the one with the brick oven.”

“Giovanni’s.”

Yeah, you've been saying you want to go back for a month or so.

I had.

Maybe twice, in passing.

He remembered.

Twenty-seven years old, or thirty-four, and I was still playing the “we’ll see” game when I didn't want to say yes but couldn't say no.

However, Nathan wasn't a child.

And this didn’t feel like asking for ice cream.

I stood up.

I'm going to take a shower.

“Just showered this morning.”

I like to be clean.

“You enjoy being there because there is no water pressure, so you can't hear anything else.”

I froze.

My back was to him.

I felt his eyes on my shoulder blades, moving down my back in the thin cotton of my tank top.

The air conditioning turned on, and a faint noise filled the emptiness.

What does that imply?

My voice came out stronger than my heart beat.

“Nothing, just an observation.”

He shifted on the couch cushions, which creaked.

“You wash your hands a lot more since dad started travelling more, three times a day sometimes.”

“That’s not unusual.

Some people simply just like—”

“Clean, yeah you said.”

I turned around.

Now he was leaning back with his arms outstretched across the top of the sectional.

The pose was casual but his eyes were not.

They found my body and went back and slow, like he had plenty of time and he wanted me to know it.

“Nathan.”

“Leah.”

His mouth was filled with my name.

Not “Leah-with-the-weird-inflection” as Mark's mom said.

Just Leah.

Plain.

Familiar.

As if he'd been saying it for 10 years, not 2.

“You’re being weird,” I said.

“Am I?”

He scratched his jaw.

Stubble coming in.

He had shaved the day before, but his beard grew quickly—one of the things that I noticed, but not in a good way.

I thought we were talking, I thought we were just talking.

PART 2