A Taste of Honey

1

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 three kids in almost as many 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 bringing so much and she never, once, having to look at another 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 had been the first to be born and she lavished attention on him as any mother would. 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 outgoing and sociable sorts.

She had gotten her answer when her boy 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 mother, 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Connor was coming home, the base commander’s office and welfare telling all families by email that their boys had been withdrawn from theatre and would be given R and R. They would be called in by Corps number and be assessed for trauma and if any specialist help was to be needed, given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 and felt him slowly 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 and she gripped the skin of his chest. Connor might yet come to depend upon her, but she sure couldn’t count on that happening, whereas she could with Kevin.

Her boy was a silent enigma, and the Corps had found a use for him that he never spoke of, but Kevin and he had shot on ranges when Connor had decided on his future. Whatever he knew of rifles and pistols, he’d learned from Connor 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 with someone special.

In a few days she might get an answer to that particular concern.

‘Are you with me?’ she heard Connor groan as he bucked his hips up and found her.

‘Yes! Fill 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…for ever and ever! No one and nothing comes between us!’

She just hoped that it would be so.

Her boy, as she still thought of him, 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.

 

2

He’d never liked to hear it said; that his Mom was a good- looking dame, hot and with a great smile, ‘along with other attractive benefits’. Guys in college, those he brought home in 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 mother 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 really 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 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, and PTSD took a hold and you got to behaving like someone else?

♥

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’…’ 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…let me 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.

‘Connor…darling?’ she asked in some dismay 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…get back to some reality…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 up into her eyes. ‘I thought of you…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…us all sweating and swearing…guys off their heads laughing’ that we’d gotten out…kicked some ass.’

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

‘You’re the one…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 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 they moved under her vest. ‘I’m here for you…but…but you can’t do that, darlin’…you know you can’t.’

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

Natalie felt her lips tremble and she continued to linger in his embrace. It held no threat save for the disorder in her mind that his touches aroused, and that Kevin would go out of his mind about if he ever knew. ‘You…you never said it to me, darlin’…in quite that way, ever. You made your own way, closed me out so often that it hurt…but I wanted you to be free and live your way…knowing I and your father were here, if you ever needed us.’

‘You said nothing…’

Connor eased his embrace upon her, and she stepped away, brushed 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 slender legs. Her man told her often enough 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….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, real 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, darling…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. 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, kay?’

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

 

3

‘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 touch to his cheek then his head. She felt the prick 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…’

‘I said we’d see on that, Mom…’

Connor took in at a glance a slim-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 pressing against the fabric of her vest. They’d be dark against the paler skin of her areolas. She loved jewellery, her bangled bracelets sliding over slender arms. He was into her, a voice somewhere telling him that it was so wrong to feel the way he did, in wanting her and the special comfort she would bring. She, Natalie, had rebuffed him but she’d done so gently.

‘I just want some order…need to find that somehow.’

In spite of 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 the way to console him in both body and mind, not just pander to a reckless whim. ‘I’ll help you…you know I will.’

They slowly drifted into easier talk as he drove and Natalie had time to look at her boy, the layers of the young man that he had become peeled away and for her to see once more.

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; his life’s work 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

‘We could call folks we know over for drinks and a barbie. We could celebrate you coming back home…safe. We’ll all help to make you good again….’

‘You’ll do that…as I said already,’ he answered in an uncompromising tone.

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

‘Finding a loving touch after what I’ve seen and done…that will mend me.’

♥

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 leant into the car. She now felt his touch to the bared skin of her waist as her vest rode up.

‘Connor?’

‘You’re so beautiful…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 then throat. She turned this way and that in her efforts to break free of these claims upon her.

”No…don’t do that! No…don’t do that…don’t!’

Natalie reached up to push on his face and struggled to still the progress of his hands to 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 leant into the car.

‘You hurt…I know that, but what you’re doing and have done are crazy! I’m your mother…so what gives you the right or idea that you can touch me like that?’ 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, soon pushing them 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.

‘Don’t…don’t touch me, Connor…just 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 seemed to seek of her.

She’d never read of mentally scarred vets seeking comfort for what ailed them, in this way, and from those closest to them…those closer than close. She had lovingly made and nurtured him, with Kevin, and now her boy wanted to peg her as if she was there for that purpose and that alone. What he sought of her was a perversion of all that she believed to be real and 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…she knew only too well how these moments between them would be ended. How to limit their destructive effects upon all that she loved and cared for eluded her.

She had to deal with the moment.

He kissed and kissed; he caressed and caressed her body; Connor claimed her and let her know that there was no end to these moments except on his terms. She was angry and fearful. She sought to manage her raging emotions. She also wanted to offer comfort, on her terms if she could.

She put her hands to his face and made Connor really look at her. There was wildness in his eyes, even the sense that he did not really see her.

‘If I let you love me…love with me…will that be enough, Connor?’

Natalie saw him nod. She needed some safety and grabbed her iPhone before she rushed from the room.

 

4

In the cool of her son’s room, so ordered and with nothing out of place, Natalie felt herself shaking. Her boy wanted her as a woman. Connor wanted to undress her and see her naked and to then take her, fill her body with what she had felt he would bring in his pursuit of a lustful, aberrant and for him a restorative rut.

The harshest and coarsest of insults any man could hurl at another, ‘go fuck your mother!’, were to be made real and with her. Propriety, and loyalty to Kevin, vied with a destructive wish to be of help to her boy, Connor.

She watched in dismay as he lifted his T-shirt away. She felt a shiver of fear, or was it out of a reckless longing, for his strong body, as she stood rooted to the spot. He moved to undress her; feeble restraining touches brushed away. They had been more like caresses than touches to discourage what he sought of her.

The tears sprung to her eyes as his nimble fingers tugged loose her bra fastening and he eased her vest over her head. She heard his gasp on seeing the tumble of her breasts as her bra fell to the floor, she hunching her shoulders to make that possible. She had become complicit in his taking of her. The amorous young guy when in college, and his conquests, was pursuing her now and she felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Should she flee or stay?