As she suckled, I looked down at myself and reflected on the strangeness of my naked breasts, one of which was giving sustenance to the little girl of the house. Coupled with a pink dressing gown, very little body hair and the panties that I was wearing, I didn't see much that was male.   A Mother's Love - Part 3 by Alys

"Where is Steve? What are you doing in my house?" asked Mary.

I realised that my earlier attempt at deceiving the grocery delivery man had been much too successful, I had now managed to accidentally fool my wife into thinking I was a woman.

"Mary, it's me" I replied, lowering the pitch of my voice to a normal range.

"Steve?"

"Yes"

"Who's that woman with you then?" she asked angrily.

"That's me too, I was just messing around with my voice earlier"

"Why?" she asked.

I explained about having to wear one of her bras because the nursing bras were wet and then the dress and the makeup.

"You idiot," Mary said a little caustically,"how is Bekka?"

"She is here in my arms now, feeding," I responded.

"Oh, how is it going?" she asked with an odd tone in her voice.

I looked down at our daughter sucking greedily on my nipple.

"Really well. You should have seen the face on the nursery nurse when I started breast feeding Bekka, it was a picture of surprise and.........." I paused when I realised my mistake in prattling on about being able to feed Bekka, when Mary couldn't.

"Oh, I'm sorry Mary, I forgot," I said apologetically.

There was a pause. I waited anxiously for her response.

"Listen, Steve, I'm going to hang up now and before you ask, I'm not sure when I'm coming back. Give Bekka a kiss from me, bye." She said before ending the call.

"Or if you're coming back, I guess," I said into the now dead phone, before replacing it on the base station.

I stroked the thin hair on Bekka's head as she continued to guzzle. Our similar intolerance to cow's milk had given Mary and I an initial shared experience at university, where we had both studied French and German. That, and a deadly sexually transmitted virus, that she had acquired from a brief sexual encounter before she met me, had lead me onto the path of estrogen/anti androgens and then induced lactation of the last eight months.

But now the very success of the treatment, essential to Bekka's survival, was driving a wedge between us.

Suddenly I felt Bekka's grip on my nipple slacken. I looked down to see my precious daughter fast asleep. I put her into her cot, next to the bed. I slipped off Mary's dress and too tired to search out a pair of my pyjamas from my wardrobe, grabbed one of her nightdresses and got into bed. I was asleep as my head touched the pillow.

Too soon, Bekka's grizzle woke me up. It was just after 4am.

"Well done, sweetheart," I said to her quietly as I picked her up, reflecting on her progress in sleeping over five hours.

I quickly changed her, discarded my damp nightdress and bra and after putting on Mary's dressing gown, sat in front of the TV to give Bekka her early morning feed. As she suckled, I looked down at myself and reflected on the strangeness of my naked breasts, one of which was giving sustenance to the little girl of the house. Coupled with a pink dressing gown, very little body hair and the panties that I was wearing, I didn't see much that was male. I shook my head at such weird notions and pulled the dressing gown to cover myself better.

Later on, I was making my way through the slow moving traffic to work. One of the main frustrations of driving to work was that although there would nearly always be a period when the traffic was fairly free flowing and my hopes rose about arriving at work early and having the luxury of a coffee and a chat with my fellow workers before the onslaught, it never made a difference to the length of the journey. Since every period of traffic moving well would be counter-balanced by the times when the main road metamorphosed into a huge car park.

It was two minutes before the appointed time to start work by the time I was walking through the main entrance carrying Bekka in her car seat. I smiled at John, standing in the middle of the plaza, exchanged a few words of greeting and rushed on towards the lift, just squeezing into one that was about to go up.

A few minutes later, after leaving Bekka in the capable hands of Janis in the nursery, I was speed reading the emails from the various people that Adventure Travel dealt with throughout Europe and beyond. Five involved phone calls later, two in French, two in German and one in English, I looked up to see Jules offering me a cup of coffee. I sipped the welcome beverage.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're busy this morning and you look tired Steve." she commented.

"Well you know how it is when you're a, more or less, single parent and you're b............." I stopped before I revealed more than I wanted to.

"And you're what?" asked Jules.

"um, maybe tell you later, lunch at O'Leary's again?" I suggested.

"Sure and, look, Kathleen's on a course, so maybe you can spill the beans?"

"Maybe....."

I was interrupted by another phone call and was soon engrossed in my work. Some hour or so later I had just clicked on send on yet another email when my nursery pager went off. Jules looked up as I stood up to go to the feed Bekka, I mouthed 'see you at O'Leary's' to her, since she was on the phone. She gave me the thumbs up sign as I left the office floor.

Janis was rocking Bekka who was whimpering a little when I arrived at the nursery.

I took my precious baby off her and settled down in the comfortable chair as the day before. I opened my baggy shirt and pulled the flap of my bra covering my left breast down to allow Bekka access to lunch, or was it late breakfast or brunch?

Janis had a quiet few moments so she sat down opposite me.

"So tell me," she asked quietly," what's the deal here with you and this breast feeding. I talked to one of my friends who works in a nursery and we couldn't work out the why and how of this"

I smiled at her.

"In fact," she continued," it took me half an hour to convince her that this was not some elaborate wind-up"

"OK, let me explain"

I gave her a brief summary of the events leading up to me breast feeding Bekka.

"HIV, that's tough, your poor wife." She said sympathetically.

"Yes," I responded,"but at least the drugs are working well for her and we managed to avoid Bekka getting it too"

Our conversation was interrupted by the cries of two of the other children in the nursery and in a moment Janis was a whirlwind of activity.

I settled back into my parental bonding with Bekka.

"Well that is a peaceful scene," said Mrs Susan Williams, my immediate superior and the person who had lobbied for me to use the nursery with permission to breast feed.

"Hi Susan," I responded.

"Well I wouldn't have believed it without seeing it, it's amazing and I'm sure Mary must be proud of your efforts. Not many men would do what you have done," Susan stated.

"I think she appreciates it," I responded.

"Anyway I can't stop for long but I wanted to give you some news and made an offer to you"

"Oh really?"

"I've just come back from a meeting of the Senior Management Team and I must say that we are impressed with what you have achieved in being back only a day and half. You seemed to have solved some logistic problems that had been plaguing us for weeks just with a few phone calls and emails."

"Just doing my best, Susan"

"You are too modest Steve. But listen, here's the offer, we want you to think about it for a day or so. We are thinking of setting up a new department to deal with clients who want a more personal service and are prepared to pay appropriately for it. We are talking about organising exclusive holidays staring at a minimum of one hundred thousand pounds," she stated.

"Wow, some big spenders," I responded.

"Yes and we want you to lead this section with maybe one or two assistants, think about it Steve, OK?," she requested, before gently stroking Bekka's head and leaving me to contemplate a very lucrative job offer.

O'Leary's was as crowded as usual when I eventually arrived a while later. I made my way to a corner table that Jules had managed to commandeer.

"Thanks," I said at the sight of the spicy chickpea wrap and orange juice that she had ordered for me," how much do I owe you?"

"It's on the house," she replied," a down payment for you revealing all"

I chuckled.

"OK, Inspector Clouseau, I will confess all," I responded.

"I don't want your confession, just the juicy details of your crimes," she stated in a mock serious tone.

"I'll come quietly," I responded.

"Come on," she said laughing," just tell me what the story is with you and the you know what"

"OK," I said before giving her a similar story to the one I had given Janis earlier.

Jules's response was rather more marked since she knew Mary a little, we had occasionally associated as a foursome with her and whatever partner she was with. She made sympathetic noises when I told her about my wife's illness. When I got onto the breast feeding she stopped eating and stared at me open mouthed as I explained the how, why and wherefores.

"This I must see," she stated firmly after I had finished my explanation, "when will you be feeding Bekka again?"

"Sometime mid-afternoon, about three hours from now"

"OK, I'll try and organise my phone calls to avoid that period, this should be an interesting experience"

I looked at my watch and realised that it was time to return. As we walked briskly back to our office I told Jules about the job offer and asked her if she would be interested in being one of my assistants. We reached the main entrance but before I could get a response John had hailed me.

"Mr Jones, excuse me sir but this gentleman has something for you," he said referring to a young man in a post office courier uniform who was holding a mountain bike in one hand and a small package in the other.

Jules continued onto the lift while I signed for the package.

I looked at it as the lift made its rapid ascent.

"What is it?" Jules asked.

"It's a same day delivery letter, that is ruinously expensive," I responded.

"Who's it from?" she asked.

"I don't know, there is no return address on the back, although the writing looks familiar"

I looked at the post mark, I made out 'Manchester'. I felt my pulse quicken. The lift reached our floor, I stepped out and stood in the corridor and opened the package. Inside was a sheet of paper and a ring. A wedding ring. Mary's wedding ring. I opened the folded sheet of paper and started reading

'Dear Steve
I'm sorry, I can't go on like this. Being with you has felt more and more like being with another woman and after yesterday on the phone..............'

I couldn't read the rest. I dropped the package on the floor and banged my fist on the wall, jolting my breasts violently and painfully at the same time.

"Noooooooooooooooooo"