A Closely Kept Secret
1
Lydia parked some way from her daughter’s house, the row of terraced houses, in this part of London, two-a-penny, their owners having devoted time, and not inconsiderable sums of money, on make-overs that soon brought their values up to an eye-watering sum for the space that you had bought.
She had acted on impulse and hoped that Josh might be working from home. His programming skills were much in demand, for a young guy, and he could be choosy in what he took on, and for whom. It seemed to pay well, judging by the BMW that she saw parked outside his door and what Joanna, her daughter, had persuaded him into buying. She knew he wasn’t into such fripperies and preferred to get about on his motorbike with its paniers. It wasn’t a beast of a machine, so he had told her, but with enough power to get out of trouble if you ever needed it.
She felt her spirits lift.
‘Good, he’s at home…so I’ll see where the day takes me,’ she murmured as the gate was pushed open, its creaking hinges announcing her presence. A sash window was opened, further, and she looked up, shielded her eyes as Josh poked his head out. She saw him grin.
‘Hey! What a great surprise! I’ll be right down…give me a moment.’
She was thrilled to hear him speak as if to a close, favoured, friend. ‘I was passing…thought to call in. Am I disturbing you in doing your work?’
‘Even if you are it’s okay!’
She heard his infectious laugh once more, felt her spirits lift on seeing him smile. His smooth skinned, slender, face bore only the hint of stubble, Josh’s bushy eyebrows arched for an instant as he looked down at her. His flame red hoody was open at the neck, the zip drawn down to reveal his breastbone. She knew Josh to be smart, but casual, in his ways of dress. Who wasn’t these days, but she had yet to fall into those alien habits. They had served her well, a woman going on sixty and now only too glad to be with him and Josh’s easy-going ways with her only too captivating. She knew what she was doing by being here, unannounced, but he put her at ease and seemed genuinely to be glad of her company.
‘Come in…come in! I like these surprises that you spring on me,’ he enthused as the door was pulled open. Josh stepped to one side to allow Lydia to pass. He breathed in her discreet scent and met her appraising glance upon him. ‘I know…it’s my dress down day. I’ve only got one delivery of some work to make….and the people there are only too relaxed, even if they are clients.’
‘Do you hear me complaining?’ she laughed softly, touching his chest for an instant as he leant in to kiss her cheeks.
She stood almost as tall as him, he a lean and fit looking six-footer and she a few inches shorter, a woman obsessive about her diet, close friends often told her. She reasoned, soon enough, that what had happened to her should not mean that she let go of everything. Far from it.
Joanna had suggested that he do some work for the charity that she was involved with; to write a programme that allowed them to monitor income and expenditure so much better. He had done so without complaint and had devoted more time than she had expected of him, in seeing that it worked as she and others on the committee wished of it. A few e-mail exchanges between them had soon seen him attend at the charity’s main office, set behind a high street shop, there to show the administrator how it provided the results they sought. The programme also showed the results graphically.
‘You’ll see the high and low points in trading…or maybe you don’t want that?’ he had joked, ‘but it tells the story you want, either way.’
She had marvelled at his confident manner, then, and she did so again now. He behaved as a friend not as a family member, his eyes paying her some attention. She had met his errant, brazen, looks upon her before, looks that set her pulse racing and tightened the knot of longing for the man before her, destructive as that would be. She had not said that he was, perhaps, something of a flirt or lady’s man; but to behave like this with her, now, was only too disconcerting.
‘I’ll go in, shall I?’ she smiled after a few moments when nothing had been said.
‘Yes, do that.’ Josh brushed past her in the narrow hallway and closed the door. ‘I’ll get us a drink…then I’ll have to scoot. I have a delivery to make…was about to make ready when I saw you. Joanna’s only jut left…decided on taking a train, not the car.’
‘I saw it outside.’ She looked at him for a moment. ‘How are things between you..?’
‘Oh, you know? She has a life within a life with me and I’ve decided that it can cut both ways…’
He spoke so naturally, and easily, that she felt her anxiety slip away and other emotions gain took a hold. She craved his attention and now followed him, his footfalls not to be heard. Lydia noticed his large feet, how his toes splayed out on the tiled floor as he walked. He stooped effortlessly to sweep up a briefcase sarıyer escort and cast it onto a worktop.
‘I won’t keep you long…just wanted to call in as I was passing by Josh…’
‘And I’m glad that you did, Lydia…’ he observed, looking down at the briefcase and unfastening the single clasp. He looked inside and nodding, appeared satisfied with what was to be seen there. He stepped over to the sink, holding two glasses in his long-fingered hands and ran the cold tap, soon held out a glass of water. He gulped thirstily on his and she saw his Adam’s apple move, hos he stood tall as the glass was drained of its contents. ‘I shouldn’t say it but seeing you…how you’re dressed does make me wonder…again…about things.’
‘Why Richard…my ex…left me?’ Her tone suggested he should say no more on the matter.
‘It’s none of my business, but Joanna’s not said anything either and after so long…’
‘That’s something, I guess. She took his side…’
Josh held a finger to his lips. ‘I won’t say another word on it…promise. You’re her with me now…’
‘Unannounced…’
‘Yes, but I like surprises.’
She looked so stately in a white chiffon blouse with the long sleeves buttoned at her wrists. It hung free over black slacks and was a counterpoint to a jewelled, bangled necklace that hung at her breastbone, a large ruby coloured fake jewel like an unseeing eye. The fabric and cut of the blouse shaped her, left something for him to imagine…all this in a woman turned sixty, her low-heeled pumps clacking on the floor as she shifted restlessly to his ways of seeing it, before Lydia drew near once more.
‘I just wanted to get out for a while…’
‘What’s happened…to make you so low?’ he asked considerately.
She shrugged her shoulders; looked away for an instant. ‘I remember how it once was with Richard…when we were your age and Joanna’s…really starting out in our first place.’
He was seen to hesitate, as if a hand in consolation was to be offered, but he decided against it. Instead, he leant his large frame against the worktop and simply looked back at her.
‘I never did get to understand what happened to you…and…and it seemed then, as now that…’
‘Joanna takes his side?’
‘Yes, it goes something like that.’ He nodded. Josh then smiled. ‘I’ve got an idea…’
‘Oh?’ she said doubtfully, ‘a sane or a crazy one?’
‘Both…depending on what your take is on this. Why not come with me…forget your troubles for a while and ride on the motorbike? Jo’s helmet’s here and if you tie back your hair then the helmet she uses should fit you…’ He was out into the hall before she could respond. The bright yellow helmet was soon held out to her. ‘Try it…look in that mirror and see someone else!’
She faltered, though his ways of asking her to go along with him only too infectious. ‘I…I can’t do this…be seen siting behind you…on a motorbike!’
Even as Lydia said it, she took the helmet from his grasp, sensed him sit down on the bottom step of the stairs and shove those feet into some socks then his biker’s boots. Josh met her glance.
‘No, sorry…I haven’t got boots that will fit. Your pumps will have to do. At least you’re wearing slacks and I can give you Jo’s jacket to keep off the chill. I’ll be your windbreak…’
‘You’ve got it all worked out already…haven’t you?’ she smiled, but soon doing as he suggested. She sensed his look upon her as she fastened her hair and then put the helmet on. ‘I’ve become someone else…’
‘That’s the whole idea, Lydia,’ he assured her in a wondering voice and soon holding out a faux leather biker’s jacket. ‘See if this fits too…do that for me? You and Jo have much the same figure.’
Her fingers trembled as the jacket was slipped on, and she adjusted the fit of her blouse underneath it, pulled the embroidered cuffs down until they poked out from the sleeves. It was tight against her breasts. She took to wondering what he would make of her clothed in Joanna’s jacket. She looked Josh’s way for an instant.
‘Just clip it at the bottom…’ he said on a shrug, feigning indifference but loving the sight of her. With age came a settled beauty It was something that, he realised, Lydia seemed to nurture. ‘Now, let’s roll…if you’re ready?’
‘Wait!’ She had reached out to detain him. ‘I’ve not been on a thing like that…ever…so go slowly…don’t show off. You don’t need to do that for me.’
Josh grinned, even though he had met her bewildered look upon him. Her actions had made her believe that she had been over-familiar. ‘You may have noticed how the traffic can be around here? Now, let’s go. There’s no time to change your mind, I won’t allow it. Leave your handbag under the hall table. We won’t be gone for long…just out for a spin and to take your mind off other things.’
‘Or they will set them off…again,’ she blurted out.
‘Whatever, Lydia. We live for şarkışla escort the moment…you and I, that’s what I say.’
The door was closed certainly behind them.
2
He soon eased away her fears. Josh hooked up the intercom between their helmets and helped her step up and sit behind him, her mind in a whirl at what she was doing with her thighs pressed against his hips and her arms soon around his waist as he moved off. He chattered amiably to put her raging mind at ease. He’d turn his head enough to try and glimpse her way, each sharp turn that he made arousing a sudden rush of apprehension in her, a tightening in her belly as the wheels trilled on the road surface, or the machine accelerated or slowed down as circumstances allowed.
‘Are you okay now?’ she heard him say on a crackly link.
‘Yes…you do have crazy ways to help me take my mind off things, Josh.’ She said it on resting her cheek against his back and felt strangely reassured on doing that.
There followed a moment’s touch to her thigh in acknowledgment of what she had done, and to her dismay she realised that she ached for that touch to also be on her skin. She squirmed to heighten the sensation of feeling him press against her, the trill of the road surface arousing a charge of excitement.
‘I didn’t want to see you so miserable when you looked so good in your blouse and slacks…’ he now ventured as the scene changed and they entered an industrial area.
‘We’ve arrived…the delivery’s done in no time. I spoke to the people, here, before you showed up at the house…so, you won’t have to wait…too long.’
‘And set tongues wagging…’ At least no one would recognise her with that helmet on and the visor firmly pushed down. ‘Then what, Josh?’
‘I’ll take you over two bridges and you see the Thames differently. Then it’s home…for lunch…and you can relax…let what’s at work in you go…set it all free.’
‘How can you know what is at work in me? I never speak of it…’
‘Then maybe you should…’
Lydia shivered on feeling the touch of his hand become a purposeful caress, the intention behind it only too clear. Had she made her need for distraction only too obvious? She felt as if they were on a roller coaster ride, that they were riding to a summit before the dizzying, crazy and tumbling fall. What madness and wishful thinking!
She gazed at him as Josh tugged loose his helmet, their communication broken and put it on the seat before her. The machine stood rigidly on its parking stand. Lydia moved enough for a folder to be taken from the panier, his hand again brushing her leg for an instant to afford him better access.
Lydia saw a moments pout of his full lips as Josh did that, resisted the urge to keep that touch for a moment longer. The rumble of the wheels on the roads they had travelled over, the feel of him against her, how he had spoken to point out the sights or something that might be of interest even to her, had aroused all kinds of imaginings that should not have a place in the lives that they led, but they had done so.
They seemed of one mind, and she wondered on it once more, on how long he had harboured such thoughts about her and given no sign until she had been taken out of her only too ordered, and closed in, world. She failed to dismiss from her mind the thought that her son-in-law was pursuing her, that he might even seek to offer particular comfort, when she seemed to be in need of that.
He was soon out of her sight, and she chose to straddle the machine for an instant, felt the seat press against her thighs. She wondered how it must look to anyone else, so she resumed her place and her mind possessed, once more, with thoughts of him. A good-looking, vigorous young man was in the thoughts of a woman so much older. How easy for others, she read of, to look on any liaison as of passing importance. Josh would be in her life long after the passion, the heat of any shared moments, had cooled. She would have to live with the knowledge of what she had conceded to, or she had been seduced into doing, and all because she felt lonely and discarded.
She was living it out only too differently. She had been taken out of herself by the simplest of devices, of being asked to try something else and with a young man who showed no embarrassment at being with her. In fact, she realised with a shock, Josh wished to pursue such moments and to do that with her. She would be complicit in his acts of infidelity to Joanna if she allowed him to pursue his interest in her.
‘It’s all a little crazy…’
‘What is?’ she was dismayed to hear him ask. ‘We have radio links between the helmets too. The cable’s just as insurance…’
‘Oh! Now you tell me!’
‘Just what were you thinking of but kept quiet on?’ she heard him laugh over the link.
‘What I’m doing here and with you, if you must know…’ Lydia was startled to now see him stride towards her and soon saw şarköy escort him push an envelope into the inside pocket of his biker’s jacket. She was prompted to hold out his helmet to him. ‘Is work done for the day?’
‘If you want it that way, then yes,’ he smiled before his face was lost to her view as the helmet was again fastened, his moment’s gaze upon her gone when the visor closed. She saw her reflection in its mirror surface.
‘I do…yes, I want that,’ she heard herself say.
Josh sat down before her and eased the machine off its stand before the engine was gunned into life. ‘A short scenic tour…then home!’
‘Go for it…go for it all!’ she cried out on a laugh and soon nestled against his back until he told her that there was something to see that was of interest.
She responded when she felt it to be necessary, but she had taken to thinking on just how the day would play out between them and on who would take the lead.
3
The gate into the small front garden had been widened, to allow better access, and for the machine to be parked amidst the potted plants arranged haphazardly on the slabs. Josh was soon seen to vigorously pull a purpose made tarp over the machine and to fasten the straps so that the breeze did not tug it away.
Lydia followed him up the steps, stood behind him as the door was unlocked. Her heart beat furiously. She had heard again his easy chatter and occasional touch to her thighs, one then the other as they rode, all of that sending shock waves of pleasure and apprehension coursing through her body. Everything she felt belonged to a different time, and with someone else, but reality soon struck her when they were inside, and they tugged off their helmets. Josh slipped off his jacket and carelessly hung it on the coat rack, gazing at her as he did so.
‘Here we are…’
He soon gripped her wrists as she fumbled with the zip on the jacket she had been given to wear. Lydia felt a tightening in her throat aroused by his touch, the brush of his fingers as he tugged at the zip and drew it down over her breasts, his head bowed as he seemed to take in what he was doing and she not stepping away.
‘Josh don’t…listen, please?’
‘Listen to what…your racing heartbeats?’
She moved her head as his hands caressed her throat before she felt his thumbs lift her chin and Josh gazed into her widened eyes.
‘Josh? I…I wasn’t expecting this from you.’
‘But you had your reasons for being here today. There’s a secret between us now, isn’t there?’ he replied, his voice smooth and understanding.
‘Yes…yes,’ she whispered against his lips that slowly brushed along her mouth, their eyes locked on the other’s and the touch of hands slow. ‘I…I can’t stop the feelings that I have for you…feelings that would destroy everything I have…we have. The past informs the present…and I know that it shouldn’t, not like this.’
She felt an aberrant longing for him that Josh’s touches had aroused, shivered on feeling his hands caress her hips, under her thin blouse, felt his breaths on her lips. ‘Be still on that…I have my reason too.’
‘No…I took my ex for a bundle and the children, Joanna especially haven’t forgiven me, even when I was the wronged party…’
‘I know…I know that much…and you want me to help you to forget that…even for a moment…to make you feel wanted again? Isn’t that so? We’ve always got along, so why not this…us being together?’
‘Is it so obvious?’ she sighed on looking back at him. ‘How selfish and mean that sounds, I know. But, yes, that’s how it goes…crazy as it is to say it…and to you. It’s been a crazy fantasy of mine…whenever we talked or were together I felt I could go on.’
‘And you can. Jo has her times away from me and I don’t…until now.’ His confession startled her, also broke down any impulse to show restraint in what she wanted from him, and he was willing to pursue with her.
She put her arms around him and felt the heat on his skin under that hoody he still wore. She met the hungering blaze in his eyes upon her before she felt his hands on her hips that draw her body against him. She felt the press of his penis through the fabric of his chinos. Brazenly, she reached down and gripped it, heard him gasp before his mouth crashed onto hers and they kissed quickly, then hungrily.
‘You…you know how it is for me now,’ he said through her kisses, ‘how I’ve felt ever since you were so close to me on the bike.’
‘I need this from you!’ she cried out, felt his hands push up the hem of her blouse and lift it to her shoulders. She raised her arms and tugged it away even as his mouth claimed the tumble of her breasts; tugged on her nipples so enticingly shaped by her thin bra. ‘Josh…Josh…what madness!’
He felt the grip of her hands on his head to keep him to her. ‘Yes…and you’re wonderful to look at and to touch.’
He lifted her as if she were a rag doll, felt Lydia kick off her shoes before she wrapped her legs around his hips and was carried in slow faltering steps up the stairs, Lydia’s heart racing at what she had succumbed to and the rush of longing impossible to ignore.
She breathed in his animal heat; met his kisses and clung to him. ‘I ask too much of you…Josh, you wonder!’