I'll Make a Man Out of You

"In three weeks for three nights at a law conference."

"Then you know what you'll have to do."

"Yes, get rid of everything."

"Yes, and when she calms down over that bring one of your women home for dinner. It's not necessary she stay the night."

Morgan turned to Finn, his upper body and voice shaking slightly. "I knew I should have talked to someone I could trust about this but it just didn't happen and we carried on with our little act that was nothing more than a charade."

"Well it may have served a useful purpose in the interim."

Morgan's voice trembled. "I have this feeling you are going to be good for Alice. She's made a habit of gravitating towards weak men who'll never challenge her and at the office everything knows her preference is for female clients. I only dumped you on to her because I thought you'd be weak and it seems so did she."

Finn grinned, "So you're not throwing me out or forcing Alice out to take me and live somewhere else?"

"Hell no. You're here for ninety days. I'll get you jailed if you move out any sooner."

The men grinned at one another like pals and as Finn walked out he thought one down and one to go, the hard one. God, he was loving this. For once there was some purpose in what he was doing.

As he emerged from Morgan's bedroom suite Alice came out of hers, dressed and carrying her satchel.

"Off to the office?"

"Yes."

"A kiss?"

"No."

"Oh come on Alice. I riled you and you whacked me. Doesn't that make us quits?"

"I'm ashamed I hit you. I've trained myself never to lift a finger in anger and believed I was invincible."

"Alice, as a homeless man I can tell you I've learned the truth about invincibility. It's like anything you can't have; effectively it doesn't exist."

She asked what was that supposed to mean and he told her to figure it out.

Finn took her around the waist to kiss her but felt the rigidity. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but as he pushed her away he saw pain. Oh shit, wrong move; he shouldn't have done that.

"Alice that was the hardest whack I've even taken from a woman. Also think about that. Be proud of it."

"No."

"Good girl, I wouldn't be proud of hitting anyone unless they were a threat to me or had to be stopped."

He now saw confusion in her eyes and stood aside to allow her to pass.

She went by and after four paces returned and said, "Let me kiss you. This had become all too much about me; I'd forgotten me mission. Don't tongue me Finn."

Finn received one of the sweetest kisses he'd ever experienced, ever. "God."

"Have a nice day Finn," she said, smiling thinly.

He watched her slightly swinging ass move farther and farther away from him and experienced the carnal thoughts that go with such a display for a guy with his heart in the right place.

More progress had to be made before that could happen," he smiled. Thinly.

Just before 7:00 Morgan and Alice drove into the garage almost together. They went into the house and didn't find Finn. Morgan called from the family room, "Come and have a look at this Alice."

She entered and saw her father was looking at devastation in the garden that framed the view from that room.

"Oh God, he's run amok," she practically screamed.

"No look, see how the shrubs have been removed and are neatly stacked up with their roots bound in sacking and they've had water sprayed over them. And see how the garden has been built up to make three levels? He's put in posts and retaining boards at random angles to provide a less formal look. Finn must have been working all day at a fast clip to do this."

"I see what you mean. He must have used his own money, the little he has, to purchase the post and rails and have them delivered. Oh the darling boy, I must get your to set up an account for him at the garden supply barn. I suppose he's in the bath. Oh god, what am I thinking?"

Morgan pursed his lips. "Well take coffee and knock at the door and ask may you enter. From what I've gathered I don't think he's shy."

Two minutes later Alice appeared in the kitchen highly flushed. She poured a coffee for herself and said, almost whispering, "Dad, he's told me to grab and coffee and jump into the bath with him. I said no and he said how am I going to experience erotic adventure in life if I don't take chances. I don't think he's thinking about doing it, but one will never know with him. Anyway, I'm taking the chance and I know how to say no."

Morgan looked over the newspaper. "I thought he might ask you to get in with him. He's the sort of guy who likes giving a lady very pink cheeks."

"Dad, you don't know what you're talking about. Dinner will be late."

"Take your time. We'll eat out tonight. It's time we showed him off."

"Oh daddy, thank you," Alice said, kissing him. "You normally don't want to eat out."

"The guy is attempting to stimulate me as well darling. Go have your bath."

CHAPTER 2

Alice had to fight displaying excitement. She entered the bathroom after knocking and put her coffee down on the chair beside his.

"I'll be back in a minute after undressing."

"Undress here."

"Um, I need to use the toilet."

He grinned and pointing said, "That's a toilet."

She looked at the bowl and looked as the low rays of the sun shining through the window and then looked at him, having thought of something. "But I really don't know you very well."

"Well use the John and then undress slowly, giving me a real show and I'll know you much better and quite intimately."

"Oh god."

"No I'm Finn."

She backed up to the bowl and pulled down her panties from the rear and looked at him grinning and he grinned back as they heard the tinkle. She wiped and then shuffled forward with her panties around her ankles and began removing her jacket.

Alice said, "This is embarrassing."

"I certainly hope so. I'd hate to find you didn't have clusters of emotional feelings at multiple depths."

"What?" she asked, dropping the jacket on the floor.

"I want you to feel shy, to blush, to exhibit passion of different levels."

"Are you intending to have sexual intercourse with me?"

"Not this evening unless you scream for it."

Alice frowned, after removing her top. "I don't know what I'm doing here?"

Finn smiled and said mysteriously, "I'd hope improving your knowledge about yourself."

"Don't you mean to allow you to feast your eyes on me if I'm up to scratch?"

"You'll be up to scratch. I've had oodles of time watching your body move under your clothes."

"I'm not sure I like the thought of that?"

"Your attitudes toward what I think of you will change in due course."

"Oh yeah? That's what you think."

"Yes, definitely."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm taking you down a road that will lead to your learning more about your inner self."

"You do want to fuck me. This is all a deceptive guy's thing to arouse me and make me yield."

"Unless you scream for it I'll not fuck you tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I only want to possess you when you are ready to want that to happen."

"Well it could happen sometime, you are not exactly physically repulsive to me."

"Come on, get those tits out."

"You wanted it done slowly and you've slowed me down talking to me."

She finally got the job done.

"Oooh. They are real beauties. You are a very lucky girl."

Her face now the color of raw beetroot, Alice dropped her skirt.

"Well?"

"Seen one, seen them all."

"Liar."

Finn grinned, Alice grinned and began climbing into the bath.

"Do my legs go inside or on the outside of yours?"

"Inside in case you have the desire to foot masturbate me."

Alice began sliding down and attempted to get her feet on the outside of his legs but he grabbed her feet and steered them in between his legs. She got caught out because she was staring at his erection, which had popped up out of the water when he'd let go of it.

"What now?" she asked.

"Tell me about your day."

Alice couldn't believe it. She wanted the guy up her and here he was asking her about her day. She asked if he could wash his erection.

"Yes."

"So I'm allowed to do that?"

"Yes, providing you really want to do it?"

"I think I do."

"Well that's not good enough. Out you get and I'll dry you."

Alice asked nervously, "You want to touch me?"

"Isn't that what drying is?"

He toweled her breasts and they watched the breasts and nipples firm.

"God this is so much more sexier than when I do it trying to get myself away."

"Get yourself away?"

"Oh god, what am I saying."

"Talking to me intimately I'd say."

"Don' you dare touch my pussy," she whispered. "If you did I think I'd burst."

He dropped to his knees.

"What are you doing?"

"Having a good look at your pussy. I think it is beautiful."

Without thinking Finn touched it and she came over his hand.

"Wow."

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right, you did warn me. Here lick my fingers."

Finn left the bathroom with a massive boner. He'd urged her to suck it dry but she'd refused, saying they were going too fast, too far.

"Go get ready for dinner. Dad is taking us out."

Something had changed between them, and all three knew it.

After a couple of drinks Morgan said, "What happened in the bathroom? You two are looking at one another like lambs."

"We just touched daddy, that's all. I don't want to take it too fast and Finn wants it that way as well."

"A guy wants to take it slowly? I find that difficult to accept."

"It's true Morgan. My feeling is Alice has to be unwound before she's ready to be really wound up."

"Oh, yeah, another wine young man?"

"No, I prefer to take it quietly thank you. It's almost four years since I've consumed much booze. When you're homeless it is easy to succumb, to drown your sorrows I mean. So I resisted. I was aware if I kept my resolve I'd find my future."

On the way home Morgan said, "Alice is going to a convention soon. It will be three nights away. She is entitled to take an accompanying person."

"You mean I'd be sleeping in her bed."

Morgan laughed. "What you can bath together but you can't sleep together? Am I hearing right?"

"Correctly rather than right is the appropriate word daddy."

Finn turned to look at Alice in the back seat. "Do you want me to accompany you?"

"Yes, I'd love that. If you don't want to sleep with me there will be another bed in the room or if not there will be a day bed."

"Okay Morgan, I accept your kind invitation. I'll have the garden finished by then."

"How did you pay for the timber?"

"I charged it up to you. Mrs Harris the accountant questioned me and my answers to her questions seemed to convince her I was staying in your home."

Morgan asked in surprise, "Wendy Harris?"

"Yes, she's one of the five mystery women isn't she?"

The car served but Morgan had it under control quickly.

"Oh daddy. She's lovely."

Morgan went to his study to do some work. Alice yawned and Finn said, "I'm plunging ahead with you far faster that I'd intended Alice. You needed to be given a few slow manipulations to adjust you to the normal way people of our age handle relationships with the opposite sex."

"I have no idea what are you talking about. Could you explain more clearly?"

Finn decided he was digging a hole for himself. If Alice wasn't aware she'd grown up slightly off-center over relationships with males, possibly because she didn't listen to her peers and was without a confiding mother, then why should he be the one to identify her problem for her.

He blurted: "It's your shyness with males."

"Me shy?" she answered appearing to be bewildered.

Fuck thought Finn. She was digging him deeper. Then he remembered something her father had said about weak guys as boyfriends. If he said that she'd slip into denial and be offended but he could twist that slightly to draw out an admission.

"Okay Alice, name me just one hard-ass boyfriend you've associated with since you were, say, eighteen?"

"What is this? A probe into my private past?"

"I was wondering if you steer clear of confident guys with passion because you are shy of men?"

"You're too difficult to comprehend. I bet you don't know what are you saying yourself. I'm off to bed."

"Okay, a kiss please."

"Get lost!"

Finn was left with the feeling he'd been rolled. Little wonder she was a fucking attorney. How could a guy talk to a woman who was in denial she had a problem with men without making matters worse?"

He grinned and whispered, "I'll go to the law convention and make a women out to you Alice Keys."

Alice was in a black mood next morning and even snapped at her father. She went off without breakfast and Morgan grinned: "Perhaps mixed bathing doesn't suit my daughter's temperament?"

"It's okay, I know how to fix it," Finn said.

"Oh yeah."

"Yeah, it's quite easy really."

Morgan almost slurped his coffee. "I wonder how many guys have carried that mistaken assumption about women?"

"You stroke their vanity."

Morgan began to cackle but then stopped. "What?

"You hit the center of their vulnerability."

"Their vanity. Jesus you might be on the right track."

Just after 9:00 two men arrived in a pickup with the twenty bags of soil-compost mix Finn had ordered the previous day.

The driver Phil said, "There is a shortage of bags. We'll spread this under your direction if we can take the bags away with us."

They were burly men and carried two bags at a time compared with Finn's one and twenty minutes later it was all done.

Phil looked at the bagged shrubs and drew out his pocket knife. "Show Joe where to dig the holes and you tramp into these plants as I toss them in the holes.

Twenty minutes later they were all done. Finn offered coffee but they said they were due back at the barn. They took all the sacking pieces and cut twine with them.

"I can't believe this," Finn said.

"Oh Mrs Sexy said to be extra cooperative with you."

"Mrs Sexy?"

"Wendy Harris."

"Oh, well thank you and please tell us we at the House of Keys are most grateful."

Finn showered and biked to the mall where he purchased a stack of drawing paper including some A3 sheets and a full range of pencils. He'd noticed an obviously fairly recent formal photograph of Alice on the far wall in Morgan's study. He worked all the remainder of the day, barely without of break. At 6:00 he left a note saying he'd gone to run a few circuits of the park. To his delight Finn found the park was large and he found the start of an eight-mile circuit. Two other guys arrived just as he was about to take off and asked if they could join him. In one day Finn marveled, he'd made casual friendships with Phil and Joe who told him the bar they drank at after work and told him to feel free to join them. Now he had Anthony and Ash who told him they ran the circuit at that time every week night and they should team up more often.

* * *

"Dad, dad oh god dad, come quickly."

Morgan ran, thinking Alice must have had a fall or cut herself. He found her in the bathroom, staring transfixed at a wall. He stared as said, "Ohmigod. It is you, with just the subtlest of changes. He's made you radiantly beautiful."

"He can draw, can't he daddy. I mean really draw?"

"Yes dear, for a half day's work perhaps less he has been wonderfully creative. Any woman would love to have a colored sketch of herself like this."

"I love it daddy, really love it. Oh isn't he just the most wonderful boy. Oh where is he? Oh god, he may have absconded."

"What, and professionally embarrass you? He's not that sort of guy Alice and you need understand that."

Only then did Morgan remember what Alice had said to him about flattery. He took Alice by the hand and led her out, saying, "Your wonderful boy must have worked like a Trojan all morning. Look at this."

They looked at the finished shape of the remodeled garden. "Oh daddy, next year it will look absolutely beautiful with more plantings filling in the gaps."

"He'll do that now, adding ground cover as well and later bulbs for next spring."

Alice left her father with a whisky, looking out at the garden. "Why don't you ask him to install lighting? I bet he knows how to do that."

"Good idea."

"I'm off to prepare dinner."

Alice found his note about running in the park and smiled. When Finn arrived she was all over him about the drawing and the garden and told him to shower while she ran a bath for him.

She said cutely, "I'd like to bath with you most nights."

"Okay."

She moved in close and kissing him whispered, "When can we have sex?"

He disappointed her as she'd thought he'd say after dinner. But with a quick flip her disappointment was behind her when he said, "As soon as we arrive at our hotel for the convention. What a way to start three hot nights."

"Ooooh. I might not be able to wait that long but it sounds fabulous."

Finn thought she might have difficulty waiting that long because in the bath she became highly excited with the skin touching and she finally could hold out no longer and jerked him off with her feet.

She was crimson and panting after seeing his cum arc down the bath and splatter in the water, some reaching her belly. "I've never done that before," she giggled. "I like doing it."

Finn pulled himself up after they washed up and then pulled her to her feet. Three rubs over her vulva and two little circles around her aroused clit and he had her gush over her hand. He licked his fingers and she was pushing at him trying to get the two wet fingers he'd saved for her.

Finn found Morgan was still having a nap so sat near him and ten minutes later Morgan awoke.

"You are going a great job out there. Marvelous progress today."

Finn told him how the men had helped him and on whose instructions they had been acting.

"Well, the first Saturday night after the convention I'll invite widow Harris around. I had been trying to figure who to invite. Actually I think she might be Alice's choice although she'd not top babe in bed."

"At your age should that be the prime consideration?"

"Grab another whisky for me son," Morgan grinned. "Then sit back here and tell me about lighting this masterpiece of yours."

Finn was almost to the kitchen when he realized Morgan had called him son. Holy cow!

Alice was chopping something at one of the benches and Finn gave her butt a friendly pat and it wriggled under his hand. He was so overcome he wanted to say her father had just called him son but then recalled some people used that word just as an endearment. Her hard-bitten father would scarcely call him the other type of son with a capital 'S'. Also Morgan had met Finn's biological father when hiring Morgan to represent his son to keep him from jail if that were possible.

"Want a wine?"

"Yes please," Alice said. "Take it through and I'll join you guys in a few minutes. Is it all right if I invite a couple of my girlfriends to view my treasure?"

Finn figured she wouldn't be possessive about the garden. "Yeah, fine. It's yours."

"What if anyone wants you to draw them?"

"My fee is a simple structure, worked out when I was sleeping under the stars on my first year adrift -- one dollar per minute. That's why I set the price for rough sketches at ten bucks and took ten minutes. So any client has to figure it out, the higher the price the better the image. I spent six hours on your drawing because you deserved to look good. But a drawing as opposed to a quick sketch to queenly quality would cost perhaps three and a half thousand bucks. Skill allows me to quickly get a face anatomically correct but time is taken for finesse -- for example, getting the eyes set correctly, to portray expression with light reflecting in the eyes and taking great care to achieve dynamic interactions to capture personality and expression. Then think about the bucket approach to sketching hair or to artistically render hair right down to capturing its wispiness."