A Taste Of Honey

Natalie lay in her man's arms and allowed herself to come down from her high. She loved Kevin so, and she had done that for the twenty-two years of her marriage to him. They had been blessed with two kids from their marriage; the third, Connor, was her stepson. It had all happened for her so very quickly, in a few years. They had said it often enough to each other when they were loving and trying to make it happen, which had been the easy part. Kevin brought so much and she never, once, had to look at a man in any other way than to be grateful that Kevin was in her life and no one else's.

'We'll live as a family, then go on as two people with the rest of our days still ahead of us.'

Connor's nature had made her lavish special attention upon him, as any mother would on a kid with his troubles. He had paid her back, even if it was in his controlled ways. It had set her wondering why he was so closed in on himself; when she and his father were only too outgoing and sociable sorts.

She had gotten her answer when her boy, as she had always thought of him, was ten years old and he had seen military displays, and by the Marine Corps in particular. The closed-in and studious boy, who worked out and had a physique that even she, as his stepmom, loved to see when he lazed about the yard, or they had friends and family round for a barbecue on special days, was going to boot camp the minute after he'd graduated from College.

She'd wept buckets when he was sent on deployments to places that were always in the news, but her boy always got through and came home, only to be gone again and the house falling quiet. It was then that she would begin to worry about how he dealt with what he saw and had to do to keep him and his buddies safe. Her two girls, Hannah and Allison, were a comfort, and Kevin made her thoughts fly free whenever they were alone, over a weekend or her girls had sleepovers with school friends.

These were times when she missed having her brood all about her, but the day had come when the peace and tranquility she thought she had, by the bucketful compared to so many others, just fell apart.

Connor was coming home. The base commander's office and welfare section told all families, by email, that their boys had been withdrawn from theatre and would be given R and R. They would be called in by Corps number and be assessed for trauma, and if any specialist help was to be needed, given or wanted. The news had been full of the rushed withdrawal from a place they had finally found on a map of the world.

'I'm the only comfort he needs,' Natalie whispered against Kevin's chest, and she held him a little tighter. His hand swept over her enervated skin, and she reached for him once more. 'You'll help me with him, won't you darlin'?' she asked, her soft drawl husky and clear.

'Sure, but he's not here yet and you are.' Kevin did not need to coax his woman to lie on him, her breasts pressing against his chest as his fingers slowly moved to find her before she reached between their bodies, pressed his prick to her heat, and soon felt him enter. 'Let me look at you and love with you while we have the chance and there's no one to hear us...hear you I mean.'

Natalie stifled her soft laugh of acknowledgment against his mouth and knew her man would find her. She settled on him as Kevin plumbed her body, bucked her hips to heighten the pleasure that he always brought to her, and gripped the skin of his chest to keep her balance. Connor might yet come to depend upon her, but she sure couldn't count on that happening, whereas she could with Kevin.

The young Marine was a silent enigma, and the Corps had found a use for him that he never spoke of. But, in his early years, Kevin and he had shot on ranges, and it was then that Connor had decided on his future. Whatever he knew of rifles and pistols, he'd learned from Kevin before the Corps took him on.

Who the man was, underneath that uniform, his medal ribbons, and white cap, she might yet discover. The independent boy had become a man, quicker than was good for him, she would often take to thinking when he was home, and she tried to bond again with him. He'd had his girlfriends, but none were on the phone number list that she kept; none called either, and she'd wonder how a strong and good-looking young man did not seek relief from the stresses of his life by loving someone special.

In a few days she might get an answer to that particular concern, one she kept trying to push from her mind.

'Are you with me?' she heard Connor groan as he bucked his hips in his efforts to find her and consummate their loving of each other once more.

'Yes! Find me as only you can!' Natalie slumped forward and stifled her cries with kisses to his mouth as Kevin's hands gripped her butt cheeks and brought her down hard on him. She shuddered in her orgasm and felt her man's cum spurt into her only too-receptive pussy as his body jerked three times. 'I'm with you, forever and ever! No one and nothing comes between us!'

She just hoped that it would be so.

Her boy, as she still thought of Connor, had changed. She'd heard it in his voice the last time he'd called and before the mayhem had erupted all around him and his buddies. Something had to give, or her son would burn up.

He'd never liked to hear it said; that his stepmom, for he didn't speak of her in that way, was a 'good-looking dame', 'hot and with a great smile', and 'along with other attractive benefits'. Guys in college, those he brought home on vacations, or who saw him with her at Corps' parade days in the early times of his enlistment, had said the same thing.

He knew it too, felt his father was a lucky guy and they had helped him get to where he was now. His stepmother had fretted, and his dad had been bursting with pride, but all of that never did ease away the sense of longing for someone to blot out the bad memories of what he'd seen and, worst of all, had done. There was no shell thick enough to protect you from that.

He had yet to meet a girl, or young woman, who could take the stories he might get to telling after they'd broken through his protective shell and told them some of the things that had scrambled his mind. Mom, or Natalie as he so often thought of her, was his soulmate and comforter. But even with her, he had never really let the words flow and that his memories aroused. He'd just wanted her to be there and for him to know that she was, in glorious flesh, and not to be heard on a cell phone link along with a picture that had Kevin and his sisters also in view.

Yes, he'd gotten to wanting to be with her and the comfort Natalie once brought when he'd been in a tussle at school, or after a football game and he needed mending. Those times had long gone or had they, he now thought. Did you regress, if you'd been battered, as PTSD took hold and you got to behave like someone else? Had your mind been taken over by demons, that you couldn't shake off, and you looked to others for an answer or for comfort?

He reckoned that Natalie, with her winning ways and shapely figure, was the one to help him through to the other side.

Natalie moved to stand close to him as she saw Connor's intense look of concentration as he gazed at the screen of his iPhone.

'Bad news?' she asked and met a moment's startled look upon her. One hand rested on his shoulder as he sat at the breakfast bar, the food she had put out for him left untouched. 'You've gotta eat darlin'...'

'I've gone days with little or nothin'. so it's no big thing now,' he answered sullenly. 'You goin' out, or will you stay here?'

'I was going to do some shopping. You could come along and keep me company? I'd like that and we can talk. It will help me to see how I can help you through whatever's bothering you.'

She did not move as he put an arm around her waist and drew her to him, her thin cotton V-neck tank-top vest tucked into her jeans and its large metal buckle almost flat against her tummy. He put his head to her breasts, and she slowly put an arm around his shoulders. His embrace upon her tightened and she felt his breaths on her skin.

'Connor, darling?' she asked in some dismay and in response to his overt claim upon her. She felt a tightening in her throat. 'Tell me what's wrong?'

'I...I just need to hold on and get back to some reality. I thought I'd find it here and with you.'

Natalie was dismayed by how he pressed his face to her breasts, outlined so perfectly under the ribbing of her vest. She had been quite unaware of what had been at work in him. The independent young man she had seen mature into a lean, broad-shouldered, and tall marine was now clinging to her like a youngster needing comfort. She drew him closer, her mothering instincts now fully deployed. She was unaware that she had been made to stand between his legs as he sat at the breakfast bar, on a bar stool, and that his arms now held her as never before.

He looked into her eyes.

'I sure thought of you and how you could help me when I got back. I thought of nothin' else on that damned plane, with the noise and the smell of dirty bodies around me. All of us sweating and swearing...guys off their heads laughing that we'd gotten out after we'd kicked some ass.'

'I know darlin' after I saw some of the pictures on the news,' she soothed, her fingers brushing over his face and his eyelids. She felt them flutter and then shut. 'You're away from all of that for a while and you'll mend. Your father and I, along with your sisters, will see to that.'

'You're the one to do that, the only one.'

She gasped as he buried his face against her breasts once more. His breaths were harsh and the press of his mouth to her nipples was questing and urgent. Natalie couldn't help but shiver in response to these aberrant claims on her body that his lips and then his hands aroused, as he tugged at her vest and his fingers were then on her skin. 'I'm here for you, but you can't do that, darlin', you should know that you can't.'

'A special woman's love...a mother's comfort is what I need. I came home for that and to be with you, and the others too. You mended me, often enough, before.'

Natalie felt her lips tremble as she heard his explanation for his dissolute behaviour spilled out.

'Those times were different, darlin'.' She continued to linger in his embrace. It held no threat save for the disorder in her that his touches aroused, and that Kevin would go out of his mind about if he ever knew what had happened between them. She sure wasn't going to say anything. 'You never said it to me, darlin' in quite that way, ever. You made your own way and closed me out so often that it hurt. I wanted you to be free and to live your way but knowing that your father and I were here for you if you ever needed us.'

'You said nothing...'

Connor let her go and she stepped away, brushing a hand through the tumble of her hair. Natalie failed to find any other words to describe her boy's look upon her now, other than that of a man lusting after a woman. Her vest shaped her and the jeans she'd chosen showed off broad hips and strong thighs. Her man told her often enough that she had an hourglass figure and that he'd love her, forever, if she kept it that way. But she knew that was all talk and his ways to tease her and then to love her.

Natalie sought her bag and the keys to the family's Ford Expedition utility car. Kevin had taken her compact to save fuel on a day spent further away, and out of town, than usual. She was hoping that he would call her and soon. Their boy was acting up, really strange, but she wouldn't tell him that, just yet, and maybe never.

Connor stood close once more and she met his doubting look. Perhaps what he had done in coming onto her, of all people, had finally registered. 'Let me drive you if I tag along?'

'Yes, of course, darlin', if it helps.' She'd do anything to take his mind off her.

He had his father's slender, high-cheeked face and broad forehead, the shock of brown hair cut to an even stubble save at the top of his head. His father's had its first signs of grey and it was unruly, lending her man such distinction to her ways of seeing him. She had felt the strength in Connor's long-fingered hands, just like it was with Kevin, but his body was lean, Kevin's softer but not yet given to fat.

'Being with you does that, it helps me. I need to get another take on what's happened if I'm ever going to mend or the Med Board will have a say in where I go from here on in. I want to reconnect with what's real.'

Then don't touch me the way you did just now, she kept from saying. 'Has it gone so far?'

'No, but I hurt bad so help me when I ask it, okay?'

Natalie heard the sudden flare of belligerence in his tone. The self-assured and hard Marine Corpsman had become someone else, dependent or expectant of wayward consolation, but could she really be thought of as the only one to mend him?

'This is good, I'm glad that I can do something with you.'

Connor stroked the bare skin of her arm as he drove along the tree-lined road that would bring them to the shopping mall.

'I wish you'd tell me what's wrong up here,' she answered, softly, and on a moment's touch to his cheek, then his head. She felt the coarseness of his hair stubble before easing in her touches.

'I may in time, We'll have to see how it goes.'

'Your father will want to be there and to offer his help too.'

'I said we'd see on that, Mom!'

Connor took in, at a glance, a trim-figured woman, her sandy blonde hair cut to shoulder length and turned up at the edges, her skin lightly tanned and her smile all the more radiant. He saw a thin gold chain at her throat. It hung onto her breast bone, the faintest of age creases to be seen on her skin, between her wonderfully firm and rounded breasts, her nipples just to be seen pressing against the fabric of her vest. She loved jewelry, and always wore bangled bracelets that were now to be seen sliding over slender arms.

He sure was into her, a voice somewhere telling him that it was so wrong to feel the way that he did; in wanting her and the special comfort that he believed she would bring. She, Natalie, had rebuffed him, back at the house, but she'd done so gently.

'I just want some order and I need to find that somehow.'

Despite his state of mind, Connor drove assuredly. Natalie heard his soft, deep-voiced confession, even if it was not meant to be so. She felt the fierce clamp of his hand on hers as she again reached out to him and hoping to settle his mind in this simple way. It was difficult not to keep doing that, her maternal instincts raging as never before. Somehow she had to find a way to console him in both body and mind, not just pander to a reckless whim. 'I'll help you, you know that I will but don't know how, darlin'.'

They slowly drifted into easier talk as he drove and Natalie had time to look at him, to imagine the layers of the young man that he had become being peeled away and for her to see once more a vulnerable side to his nature, made worse by what he had gone through.

He looked ragingly fit and toned, the short sleeves of his shirt stretched over his biceps, and he sure didn't carry any surplus weight around his waist. His life's work had felt as if he was continually burning that off and routines doing the rest. After so many years, and his absences on deployments, his gaze upon her, whenever the demands of his driving the ute allowed, were only too disconcerting and attentive. In her, he saw the source of the comfort that he needed.

'We could call folks, we know, over for drinks and a barbie. We could celebrate you coming back home to us, safely. We'll all help to make you good again.'

'You'll do that, you, as I've said already,' he answered in an uncompromising and petulant tone.

Natalie paused for a moment before responding to that. 'We'll all do that honey, different people with their different ways helping you but their purpose is the same. It's about getting you mended and clearing your head of what's eating you up.'

'Finding a loving touch after what I've seen and done, that will mend me.'

If he kept on about her place in his thoughts she really would have to tell Kevin. Her stepson was working on her to let him in, to share the comforting heat that she could surely give him but went against everything she believed in and the rules that she lived by.

Would her love for him justify that, and would she concede to his destructive wishes?

She repeated what had been said as they pulled onto the driveway of their home and Connor held out the fob that operated the electric garage doors. He slowed to a stop, the brightness of the day slowly dimming and the garage lights flickering into life automatically and as the movement sensors commanded.

Natalie soon moved to gather some grocery bags, the lighter ones, but she felt obliged to turn. She had heard his sharp intake of breath as she leaned into the car. She now felt his touch on the bare skin of her waist as her vest rode up.

'Connor?'

'You're so beautiful and just as I always remember you.'

She gasped and squirmed to get free of his claims as he stood behind her and felt powerless to stop him embrace her, and then...and then to cup the tumble of her breasts in his large, questing hands. He held her to him, fiercely, before pressing his lips to her neck and then her throat. She turned this way and that in her efforts to break free of these claims upon her.

''No...don't do that! Stop that...don't do that!' she gasped, struggling to keep his hands from her.

Natalie reached up to push on his face and to still the progress of his hands over her body. She was dismayed by his questing touches to her stomach, the brush of his fingers under the hem of her vest that she knew shaped her and had revealed the tumble of her breasts as she leaned into the car.

'You hurt, but what you're doing and have done is crazy! I've always been a mother to you, so what gives you the right or the idea that you can touch me like that?'

Dismayed by how she felt, she grabbed the grocery bags, she had let go of, and rushed into the house, her handbag bouncing off her hip as she scurried away. She soon threw what she carried onto the countertops.

'You're a woman and I need her!' he called after her, shamelessly. Connor was soon by her side, and she felt his dominating presence once more as he detained her.

'Don't...don't touch me, Connor! I've just told you, don't!'

She shuddered out of fear for what he sought of her in his touches. It was unreal what was happening between them and that she'd had no warning of, until earlier in the day. He'd been home for two days already, and she and Kevin had given him space to adjust to only too different surroundings. But now he gave full expression o what was at work in him and what he ought of her. Would he force her into having sex with him, to lose his load in her and find some reprieve from what possessed his tortured mind?

She'd never read of mentally scarred Vets seeking comfort for what ailed them, in this way, and from those closest to them, people who were closer than close. She had lovingly made and nurtured him, with Kevin, and now her stepson wanted to peg her as if she was there for that purpose and that alone should it be asked, or demanded, of her. What he sought was a perversion of all that she believed to be genuine between them.

'Connor, darling...don't, please don't do this,' she sighed as his kisses were felt on her throat and Connor embraced her, his hands soon clenched as he caressed her through the cotton of her vest. When her boy's lips touched her mouth she hesitated, then did not move away. She had thought to talk him out of this, what was happening so quickly, but she felt compelled to kiss him back, as if in protection and to lessen the intensity of whatever would follow between them. She knew only too well how these moments between them would be ended. How to limit their destructive effects upon all whom she loved and cared for eluded her.