Unintended Consequences

by Eva

As always, fantasy fiction for adults only. Enjoy.

It was an infinitely stupid question, Dee thought as she drove home from school. A teacher faces many stupid questions in the working day from her pupils, but when they come from one's own child... well, that was just too much.

Dee had always tried to raise her daughter Zoe properly. By that, she meant getting her daughter to use her intelligence; to think before she acted. Half of the problems in the world, Dee said, were from people who did things without thinking, and the other half were from people who thought that their actions wouldn't have the outcome it did.

The law of unintended consequences, Dee called it. History was full of it and politics even more so.

There was no doubt that Zoe was bright, and could work all sorts of things out for herself. For a nine year old going on ten, she was proof that the careful upbringing of a child with proper attention to her mental and emotional welfare was beneficial. Thanks to Dee's efforts, Zoe was clever in a way most of her friends weren't. It didn't mean she was unpopular; far from it. But her friends were slightly in awe of a girl who could play chess, dance with a remarkable grace and run faster than anyone else in her school year. But they were friends always.

But then a lot of Zoe's popularity was that she would help her friends with their maths homework, or explain what the geography teacher really meant, or show them some new dance step she had seen.

And yet... The young girl had asked the infinitely stupid question that morning. "Mum," Zoe had said over breakfast. "What's it like to have a lover?"

Dee hadn't heard quite right. "Have a louvre? The window blind?" She asked.

"Mum!" Zoe sighed. "I said lover. Not louvre. I know what that is. And the Louvre museum in France. I know about that. I mean a lover. Someone who loves you," she added helpfully.

Dee stared blankly at her daughter. "Well, you are loved. Your father and me. Your Grandmother and Granddad and––"

"That's just family." Zoe airily dismissed her mother's words. "Of course they love each other. You and me and dad. We all love each other. But a lover is someone who loves someone that isn't in their family."

Dee opened her mouth to ask where did Zoe hear about that, but she had always said that she would never try to put a healthy query out of reach. It was the most important part of raising an intelligent child, the woman believed. Encourage them to find out more by answering their questions. But here was question that floored her. The temptation to ask where a girl as young as her daughter had heard about lovers was almost overwhelming, but she stopped herself in time. "Lovers? People find them because, I suppose, they want something they don't get from everyday, family love."

"Yes," said Zoe. "I know that." She sighed as she did whenever she was finding it hard to get through to her parents. Her dad though had gone to work, so it was all falling on her mum. "What I wanted to know is what it's like?"

Dee started to colour up slightly. "I've don't know. I couldn't... I've never had a lover." She paused wondering how to say this. "Your father and I are... we're very happy. We don't need any one else to love. We've got you and each other."

"And gramps and granma and all the rest. I know." Another Zoe sigh. "But what's it like to love someone who isn't family?"

Dee took a deep breath and felt on safer ground now. "Oh don't worry about that. In time you will meet someone who you will like and it will turn to love. Then if things work out you will become part of another family. But you will know what love is like with, I don't know, a young man." Zoe was a pretty young girl and Dee could imagine that in ten years or so she would blossom into a very attractive young woman. Perhaps even get a bust like her own, the kind that made men look and smile. Good legs too, so that men would look her up and down and like what they saw.

"Yuk." Zoe wrinkled her nose. "I don't like boys."

"No, probably not. Because boys at your age are immature. But in time it will change."

"And then I can have a lover?"

Dee was startled. "What? No... I mean, you probably won't have a lover. You'll be in love with a young man and then you won't need anyone else."

Zoe nodded, with that distant look in her eyes that indicated she was thinking of the future. "So lovers are for people who are married." It wasn't a question.

"No, lovers aren't a good idea. I mean, you don't go looking for them." Dee felt her face burn a little more. "You will be happily married and not want anyone else." Another surge of heat to Dee's face, and she turned away to hide it. "Now, enough talking, young lady. Time for us both to get ready for school."

"Okay," said Zoe sliding off her chair and heading towards the bathroom.

Thank God, thought Dee. Relief at last.

Having nursed the memory of this conversation all day it was therefore, on impulse, that Dee called at Laura's house. She didn't usually see her on a Tuesday, but she felt the need to talk. They did, as they always did, closed the door on the world and kissed like there was no tomorrow.

"You want to fuck me?" Asked Laura eventually, eyes twinkling.

"For once, no." Dee sighed. "I have to be home. But I need your advice."

Laura grinned. "We don't normally talk with your tongue up my holes," she said.

"No, and while we could, I haven't the time."

"How about if I bend over and you do a quick rim of my arse?"

"Laura Lawson!" Dee said it the way she used to when Laura was in her class. Eight years before, a precocious 15 year old who –– Dee believed –– seduced her English teacher. They had been lovers for all that time. Hardly apart, except for when Laura married James and they went off on honeymoon. Two wretched weeks wondering if the young woman would still want Dee when she got back from some exotic place with the man she had wed.

I'm 33, Dee had thought; a twenty one year old woman wouldn't want me now. But Laura Newton who was Laura Lawson wanted Dee even more than before. As soon as she was back from the Bahamas there was a place in Laura's new double bed for her old teacher. A tanned and sexy Laura wanting the woman's tongue where, she always said, it belonged.

"I need to talk about Zoe," Dee explained and tried to ignore the way Laura was undoing her blouse. The younger female had one of those damn push-up bras that made her boobs swell and jut forward. Tempting, with hard nipples poking through the lace to make Dee begin to drip in her pants. Drip more; the wet tongue that had thrust in her mouth when she got into the house had done that already.

"Zoe looking at you like I used to do?" Laura asked.

"Don't be revolting. And put those tits away." The bra was coming off. "Won't James be home soon?"

"He's in Swindon. Away all night. Again. Just me and a lonely bed." She rolled her eyes up towards the bedroom.

"No!" Dee took a step backward, away from those perfect orbs with their inviting dark brown, hard nipples. So easy to touch and pinch and suckle... Dee shook her head. "Advice Laura, that's all. This isn't all about sex, you know."

"Okay, lover," grinned Laura. "Mind if I take my jeans off?"

"Yes I do. Look, talk to me about Zoe."

"In bed," said Laura as her jeans slid down her shapely legs. "We can talk when you have licked me out."

"No," Dee said. And she kept saying 'no' right up to the moment she buried her tongue in her young lover's arsehole.

"So," Laura lay with her head on Dee's chest afterwards. "Tell me about Zoe."

"She wants to know what a lover is. What it's like to have one."

"You told her?" Laura was grinning again as she lifted her head and looked at Dee's face.

"Of course I didn't! What do you take me for?"

"A lover," said Laura.

"I am hardly likely to tell a nine year old girl –– my own nine year old –– about what we do."

"You want me to tell her?"

Dee stared at the young woman. "Are you crazy?"

"Only when I'm mad for some lesbian action." Another wicked smile.

"I am not lesbian," insisted Dee. "I have sex with you because... well, it's nice and anyway I don't fancy other women. I'm married, remember?"

"Me too. So?"

"So this is just fun."

"Thinking of fun... You want to tie me up and spank me, miss strict-pants."

"No!"

"The marks will be gone by the time James gets back. Please... I have been bad." Laura put on her 'little-girl' voice. "Pleath. I looked at Mrs Harvey next door. She's fifty if she's a day and she had this low sexy cut dress on and I could see her wrinkly tits and I wanted her and I was going to ask her to have me in their greenhouse among the flowers while her hubby was watching the racing on TV."

"Stop it, Laura." Said Dee. But she tied Laura up anyway and spanked her. And then Dee said 'sorry' for making her lover cry by eating the helpless young woman out. Making her cry as she came with her clit being bitten.

——

On the way home Dee wondered if Laura's suggestion would work. Laura would pretend to be an ex-pupil of her mum's (not so much pretence, as she was) but that she had a lover. Not naming Dee, of course, but just talk to the girl about having a lover. Zoe would presume it was a man, and if she asked about this mythical male Laura would describe some man. Probably old Mr Harvey next door. Pipe and slippers and watching horse racing all day. Secret meeting among the begonias. A whole new meaning to the word pruning.

Well, it made sense in that Laura was good at writing stories at school. She would spin a yarn as good as anyone. She would tell Zoe about the danger of being discovered, the regrets, the doubts. All fiction, but told with such seemingly genuine heartfelt anguish she would put the nine year old off even thinking about it.

It was later that week that Dee finally, and casually, remarked to Zoe that she had found someone the girl could talk to about what it was like to have an affair.

"An ex-pupil of mine." Dee kept her voice down as her husband was in the other room. "Nice girl, but... She got married a couple of years ago and I was talking to her and she confessed she had been having an affair. All very sad, but I was thinking if you still want to know about it I guess she's the person to ask."

Zoe's eyes lit up. "Wow, mum, that's great. Thanks. She going to come here?"

Some of the colour drained from Dee's face. "What? No... she's going to be at her house. Look, it's better if she doesn't come here. I mean your father might overhear and, well, I don't think he'd understand." She paused. "Men don't," she added. All sorts of alarm bells were ringing inside Dee; she recalled all too clearly the time that Laura and herself had been in bed here at Dee's and Ken had come home unexpectedly. Dee's husband had almost discovered them but finding his wife supposedly ill in bed he thankfully hadn't checked the wardrobe. Finding a naked young woman in there in her suspender belt and stockings and a strap-on cock sticking out would have been the end of a lot of things, Dee reflected. But she had got away with it, and Dee had resolved never to let Laura into her home again. It was the safest option, she had decided. Anyway, Laura's husband was away a lot on business so it was far safer to go to her former pupil's house for sex.

Zoe accepted her mother's point, even if she knew nothing of the circumstances.

"The woman is called Laura and she lives at 73 Woolstone Avenue. You can go and call on her tomorrow night after school. But, and this is important, you mustn't ask too many questions Zoe, and never ever tell anyone about it. Affairs are secret things, do you understand?"

Zoe understood.

——

The doorbell at 75 Woolstone Avenue rang for ages before a woman –– an older looking woman than Zoe expected –– answered the door. The woman had grey streaked hair swept back off her face, but she was tall with clear penetrating eyes and a nice smile. She had a blue dress on that was cut a little lower than modesty might prefer in middle-aged women but it clung nicely to her mature, rounded shape. "Can I help you?" She asked.

"Sure," Zoe, though she sounded unsure. "Are you Laura?"

"Laura? Oh, the woman next door. No, I'm not her. I'm Jenny. Jenny Harvey. The woman you want lives next door." She nodded to one side.

"Oh, sorry. I must have got the address wrong. I didn't write it down."

"Who is it?" Came a voice –– a man's voice –– from the living room.

"Visitor for Laura next door," called Jenny over her shoulder.

"Someone for the lesbian?" Asked the man's voice with a snort.

"David, please!" Jenny rolled her eyes and looked back at Zoe. "He didn't mean it," said the older woman.

"Is she really a lesbian?" Zoe's eyes widened. She had heard her friend Paula talk about her auntie being a lesbian but never met one. It all suddenly seemed even more intriguing that women had affairs with women.

"Well, we don't know," said Jenny, a little embarrassed at what her husband had called out. "Just a bit of a joke really."

"Oh," said Zoe. "It's a school project. I have to talk to her about what it's like having an affair. Is she having a, um, a lesbian affair?"

"I have no idea!" Jenny smiled and shook her head. "Anyway, I think she's gone out. I saw her leaving in her car a few minutes ago."

"'Kay, thanks. But I'll go and see if she's back." Zoe said goodbye and turned to go. She was halfway down the garden path when the heavens opened. It had been threatening rain all day but this was a cloudburst; heavy rain and hail was suddenly bouncing on the trees and bushes and the path. "You better come in and wait," said Jenny, beckoning the child inside before she got soaked.

"Not raining at the racing," called out the man's voice from in front of the television. "Little Hailstones is running in the four thirty at Epsom. What do you think of that for coincidence,huh? Worth a quid on it, I think."

Jenny didn't reply and steered the girl into the kitchen. "Sit down and I will make you a drink of something. Goodness, your blazer's all wet. Here take it off and I'll hang it up."

Zoe thanked the woman and slipped off her navy blue blazer before handing it over. Her thin shirt was wet at the front and she hadn't put on a vest so it was transparent enough to see her small puffy nipples. The woman stared at them and then turned away. "I haven't got anything to give you for a shirt, but I think you'll dry out soon. It's warm in here." The woman poured a glass of apple juice and handed it over.

"Thanks," said the girl as she took the glass and sat down at the table. "Jenny," she asked after a moment. "You think that lady Laura is having an affair with a woman? My mum says she's married but she regrets having an affair."

"I don't know." Jenny sat down opposite the girl and tried not to look at the girl's wet front. "I wouldn't know about her regretting it. I mean, we only say hello every so often but..." The woman paused, unsure what to say. "But I don't think she regrets it. There's someone who comes round pretty often."

"Another woman?" Zoe sat forward, eagerly. "She's Laura's lover?"

"I don't know that." The older woman took a deep breath. "Well, I do I suppose. I mean, I have heard them when the bedroom window's open and I'm in the garden. I shouldn't be telling you this."

"Please tell me," said Zoe. "Promise I won't tell anyone else."

Jenny hesitated before speaking quietly, glancing at the kitchen door to make sure her husband wasn't about to come in. "Well, I think the woman who comes round spanks Laura. Sometimes I hear her crying and then saying she likes it, and well... You know. People are funny."

"Spanks her? Like she's done something wrong?"

"Yes... But it's what adults do. Not children. I expect it's banned at your school. Wasn't when I was younger."

Zoe grinned. "Sounds fun."

"Being spanked?" Jenny laughed. "I think it must hurt."

"But if she did something to upset her lover..."

"I think it's what they call a bedroom game. You know, I shouldn't be saying any of this. You are much too young."

"I'm not! I'm nearly ten and mum says I have to ask questions and find things out."

"I am sure you do, honey."

"Honey?" Zoe gurgled a laugh. "No one's called me that before."

"Well, they should. You're sweet."

"I like you too," said Zoe. She looked at the woman's low cut dress. "An' I can see your boobs."

"Oh this thing!" In an act of embarrassment Jenny plucked at the top of her dress to pull it up and hide her cleavage, though not successfully. "I shouldn't wear it, but... well, I like clothes like this."

"Um... Can I ask you, Jenny. Have you ever had a lover?"

Jenny stared in amazement at the small girl. "No, I haven't! Goodness. What would Mr Harvey say?"

"He wouldn't know," said Zoe quietly. "Affairs are secret."

"Well, I haven't. Married twenty three years and..." She trailed off. "Happily married."

"Um, you don't sound it."

"Young lady! I am happily married. Mr Harvey and I are totally at ease with each other. He watches the racing and I tend my plants. We are happy."

"Okay, sure" said Zoe, the way she did when she din't buy something. It had a tone that Jenny recognised.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Course I do. I'm only nine, right?"

Jenny laughed. "Actually, you seem a very wise girl."

"And a honey."

"And very much a honey," confirmed Jenny. She looked back down at the little girl's front and felt a pang of disappointment it was drying and not so see through now. She wriggled a little in her seat as various thoughts occurred to her. "Would you like to see my flowers? It's stopped raining."

Zoe checked the window and the view outside. The sun had come out and little drops of water sparkled on the plants. "Yes," she said. "That'd be nice." Then she asked: "Can I hold your hand when we go and look?"

Jenny blinked for a moment. "Why yes... if you want."

Zoe nodded and jumped off her chair. "Show me, please," she said, and held her hand out for the woman in the low cut blue dress to take.

——

Zoe listened politely when the woman described all the plants in her garden and never let go of her hand for an instant. Eventually, when they had gone through the greenhouse, the woman and Zoe stood in front of a large garden shed. "That's my secret room," said Jenny, looking at the shed.

"It looks like a garden shed," said Zoe. "Not very secret."

"But inside it I am alone and can be me. I can think of the things I like. I put a settee in there, one we were throwing out. When my husband is watching the racing on TV I often come up here and sit and look out of the window at the garden. David never comes up here, so it's my world."

"And see Laura and that women," said Zoe.

"Yes," blushed Jenny. "I see them."

"Can I go and sit on your secret settee too?" asked Zoe with a smile and squeezed the tall woman's hand.

"Yes, honey," smiled Jenny.

The inside of the shed wasn't like Zoe imagined. It was like a well cared for room with wallpaper on the wood walls, a heater, a small rug, a small table with a little TV and a big soft settee with huge cushions to bury yourself in. There were some books on a shelf, too. Books about women loving women. Zoe saw them and though she didn't know what 'Sapphic' meant she knew what 'passion' was, and the word 'desire' too. She sat next to Jenny and didn't let go of her hand, not until the woman promised to take her dress off and Zoe took her shirt off and they kissed and played with each other, and Jenny showed Zoe what it was like to have a finger in your pussy and why the clit was so important to being happy. Showed her why nipples liked to be teased and pinched. Even the bottom, as Zoe called, it was important.

Especially when you spanked it and your lover said "thank you, honey," and gave you a nice big kiss between your legs.

It was the sort of secret room you could be happy in, where you could take your clothes off and lie down and cuddle and kiss and stroke and explore your lover, and know you would be coming back often because that was where your lover was.

It was somewhere you could sit and watch those two women in the bedroom window do what they did while you and your lover did what you liked. In secret and in love.

And you never had to ask any questions, because you knew what made the other person happy.