Old Enough To Know Better (6 page)

He loved women, no if, ands or buts about it.  There was never any question in his mind about his sexual orientation, from as far back as he could remember.  As he’d grown up – and up, and had filled out into a pretty bulky, muscular guy, all of that testosterone and sexual drive and basic male instincts had needed to go somewhere, and he had been lucky enough, during those formative years, to have gotten close to Catherine’s husband, Clint, with whom he credited the fact that he’d been able to navigate around a lot of the pitfalls of youth that his other friends hadn’t.

Clint had treated him as a man from the beginning, even though he’d only been about fifteen when they’d started hanging out together that summer in his garage.  They’d talked about everything, but one of their frequent topics, since it was always and forever on Finn’s adolescent mind, was women.  He’d adopted nearly all of his attitudes about women – well, those that his mother hadn’t already instilled in him – from Clint:  a man never ever hits a woman in anger or with his fist, and only uses his strength to protect his loved ones, but also that there would be one woman that he would find who he would need to love and protect and guide above all others, and she is the one he would want to be his wife.

And Finn had known, even from that early an age, that the woman for him was Catherine, and, beyond some casual dating, he’d really not bothered to look much for anyone else.

She’d appeared infrequently in the garage, but always with some sort of baked treat, and coffee for her husband, whom she always greeted warmly with a genuine kiss and true love in her eyes, and milk for him.  She, too, treated him as an equal and never spoke down to him or changed the caliber of her language.  Once, when she could see that he was confused by her choice of words, she’d gone into the house and come back with a dictionary that she’d said he could keep, and she’d helped him look up the word he’d been uncertain of the meaning of.

She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen at that age, and she still was, now, today, twenty years later.  Nothing had changed as far as he was concerned.  He’d stayed away as much as he could, knowing she was with the man she loved, and had ended up caught in California for longer than he’d intended due to business.

But he was home now.  He’d come home deliberately, although he’d always intended to eventually, to claim her.

And she looked like she’d seen a ghost.  She was both pale and bright red at the same time, looking about seventeen in those disreputable pink sweats and that T-shirt that made him want to catch her and show her that he could be at least as good for her as Clint was.

Maybe better, in a different way.

He knew she was freaking about the age difference, and he knew his mom probably would, although he really couldn’t see why. He didn’t care one bit, and he’d deal with the both of them in good time.

Catherine first, of course, in all things.  That was the first tenet that Clint had taught him about serious relationships with women.  And he had talked to him about just plain old sex, but he didn’t dwell on it, saying any idiot could get laid anytime they wanted, that that kind of thing was entirely unimportant in life.  Love was what was important, who you loved and how you loved them.

Your woman comes first, above your job, above the rest of your family, above yourself and your comfort.  Always.  You have to always do what’s best for her, even if it’s not what’s best for you.

“You left because of me, didn’t you?  I was making you uncomfortable.”

Damn him.  Wasn’t the younger generation supposed to be self involved creeps?  Where was one of them when you needed them?  Cat refused to look up or say anything.  Maybe if she just concentrated hard enough, squinched her eyes hard enough, he’d go away.  It had never worked on Clint, but maybe younger men didn’t have such good defenses built up against things like that.

Finn reached out and lifted her chin forcibly, but gently, although her eyes were still clenched closed.

Suddenly, she opened them.  “Damn, you’re still here.”

He chuckled.  “Sorry to disappoint you.  You’re going to be hell on my ego, I can tell.”

Cat sighed, looking everywhere but at him.  “You have to go away, Finn.  Now.  Please.  Just . . . go away and we’ll forget this all happened.”

She didn’t think that there was any room between them, but he took a small step towards her.  She could feel the heat of him, the already somewhat familiar scent of him.  Her body remembered him from that blasted dream and began to respond automatically, to her disappointment, and she found it was something she could not control.

“Nothing’s really happened . . . yet, Catherine,” he whispered huskily, cocking his head to one side, as if he was going to kiss her, but not quite getting to it yet.

“Please, Finn.”  She didn’t want to sound like she was begging him, but that’s how it came out anyway.  She wanted to put her hands up and push him away, but she didn’t want to touch him, so one ended up on the counter on either side of her, and he immediately covered them with his own, trapping them there, but not hurting them in the least.

His mouth was dangerously close to her ear.  “But we probably do need to deal with the fact that you just told me that you had to get back to the house when you really didn’t.  And the fact that it was running through your head to tell me a fib about you having a headache, or cramps or something like that, just to throw me off the scent of you, off the fact that you want me, but you don’t want to admit it yet.”

How in hell had he known that?  Was he reading her mind?  Were they teaching that in schools nowadays?

Her startled look, the first time she’d met his eyes since he’d trapped her there, gave him his answer, and he smiled down at her, almost triumphantly, but not quite.  “I’m glad you didn’t say it, though, because that would have been an out right lie, and it would have been that much worse for you.”

“What would have been –” she barely got out before she found herself several inches off the ground, held securely against him by his left arm around her waist as he arched his back just a bit, and his free right hand came down on her largely unprotected bottom.  She’d had the sweats she was wearing for years, and they’d grown so thin they were quite threadbare in most spots, apparently especially the seat of them, since she yelped and yipped as loudly as if he was spanking her on the bare.

Which didn’t deserve thinking about in the least, despite the fact that it kept creeping into her mind at the most inopportune times, like right now.

It wasn’t a long or arduous spanking, but it made its point and, worse than that, it was damned embarrassing for her, especially since he’d accomplished it so blasted easily, to say nothing of the fact that his rock hard arousal was pressed unrepentantly into her soft tummy the entire time.  In fact, she would have sworn it had grown throughout the process.  She had naturally tried to arch away from his swats, which meant that she ended up pressing herself obscenely up against him, even when his palm wasn’t on her bottom.  The spanking was quick, but it was very effective.  He had her butt sizzling in just a few swats.  She was afraid to wonder who he’d been taking lessons from, or, worse than that, who he’d been practicing on!

But the worst part of it was less the physical pain of the spanking than the fact that it wasn’t Clint who was administering it.  If she’d really wanted just to be spanked by any old person, she could have found someone on the Internet to do it for her.  They weren’t that far from Boston, and she was certain that, if she looked hard enough, she could have found someone to accommodate that particular taste.

But it had never been just the spanking that had turned her on.  It had always been that Clint was spanking her.  That her husband loved her enough to take his time and spend his energy to correct her that way.  That idea had never ever failed – despite the severity of whatever discipline he decided to deliver – to make her slippery, and she had absolutely no interest in finding out whether anyone else had the same effect on her.  In fact, exactly the opposite was true.  That was something sacrosanct between the two of them that she never expected to share with anyone else, which was why she hadn’t sought it from anyone else, why she hadn’t actively looked for another partner, knowing that, in a vanilla relationship, she would be compromising – subverting – a very deep part of herself.

Finally, he set her down and stepped slightly away from her.

Despite the fact that there was no triumph in his eyes, that he wasn’t gloating or obnoxious and that he hadn’t even tried to touch her since he’d brought her feet very gently to the floor, Cat was seething mad.  No one spanked her but Clint.  No one.  It just wasn’t done, and this young pup had tread upon sacred ground.  He wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t even her boyfriend, and he wasn’t likely to become either of those things.

Finn could see that she was angry in the way her fists were clenching and unclenching at her sides, and, out of respect much more so than fear of any physical reprisal, he took a small step back.

Cat, who had been staring at her feet trying to collect herself and marshal her anger, raised her head and her hand at the same time, cracking her palm across his face and watching his head snap to one side with complete and utter satisfaction that was unlike any other she’d ever experienced.  She wished she was a man for the first time in her life, so that she could beat him to a bloody pulp.

“Don’t you ever touch me again.”  She walked to the front door, opened it, and stood next to it.  “Get out.”  Each word was enunciated perfectly, leaving no room for interpretation.

Finn cleared his throat and ran his hand throat his hair, standing there in her kitchen for a moment, uncharacteristically indecisive, then he walked out the door.  Cat slammed it behind him, and didn’t look out the window to see whether or not he’d looked back to see if she’d looked out at him.

He’d gone straight to his car, but there was a small smile on his face that he was glad she wouldn’t see.

For her part, Cat had dissolved into tears, which she was very happy she hadn’t done in front of him, and ran into her bedroom, throwing herself onto the bed and crying until her eyes were swollen shut and she fell into a deep, but disturbed sleep, where Finn, yet again, awaited, with his eager hands and fingers, and this time, mouth.

She awoke in a cold sweat in the middle of a Finn induced orgasm.  The doorbell rang, twice this time, and she gathered that that was what had awakened her.  She walked to the door slowly, hoping that she wasn’t going to have to fend off Finn.

But it wasn’t him, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the slight let down feelings she was feeling.  What it was, instead, was a florist with a huge bouquet of at least two or three dozen long stemmed lavender roses and baby’s breath in a gorgeous arrangement in a big vase.

She tipped the delivery man and took the flowers in to put them on display in the middle of her dining room table, wondering who in the world could have sent them.  The card said “Catherine,” and that should have been her first clue.  The card simply said, “I’m sorry.  Finn.”

She had half a mind to throw them out, but they were just too beautiful.  How had he known that lavender roses were her favorite?  She couldn’t resist leaning over to smell a particularly pretty bloom.

But the roses weren’t enough to assuage her guilt about what had happened between them, despite the fact that, intellectually, she knew she bore no fault whatsoever, and she began to spiral into a bit of a depression, despite the fact that another bouquet that was just as elaborate – with another variation of an apology – arrived the next day, and the next, until she was beginning to run out of places to put them.

And her friends were beginning to call repeatedly, probably because she hadn’t been able to find the gumption to pick up the phone when they’d called the first time, either.  Jane was threatening to come over, and that was all she needed.  How, exactly, was she going to explain to Finn’s mother that her son was sending her huge bouquets of flowers?  That would not go over well.

Instead, he appeared on her doorstep one morning, when she threw the door open, figuring it was the florist.  And it kind of was, because he was carrying his latest bouquet, but it was wildflowers this time; she recognized them as the ones that grew near his mother’s house, as well as a casserole dish.

“Mom thought that you might not be feeling well so she sent over your favorite chicken casserole.  Feed a cold, feed a fever.  That’s my mom,” he smiled.  “Are you sick?” he asked, not waiting for her to invite him in, but opening the inside screen door gently forcing his way in by din of his sheer size.

Cat frowned; she disliked being bullied.  “I thought I told you not to come back here?” she said discourteously.

“No, you said I was never to touch you again, and to get out, but you never said I couldn’t come back.  Besides, I’d ignore it anyway.”  He made himself right to home, putting the casserole in the fridge.  “I have a very good aural memory.”

Cat just stared at him, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

“A-u-r–” he spelled.

She glared at him grumpily.  “I’m familiar with the word.”

He nodded.  “I should have known.  Your intelligence is one of the things I’ve always been attracted to about you.”

She decided she was going to let that pass.  Suddenly, she was hungry.  She shouldn’t have been surprised considering she hadn’t eaten much in several days.  “Which chicken casserole?  The one with the stuffing and the mozzarella or the potatoes, carrots and onions?”

“The latter, I think. Do you want some for breakfast?”  She was in what he assumed passed for pajamas, although it could be hard to tell with someone who didn’t have to work.  Sweats and T-shirts were the order of the day.

“You have to stop sending flowers.  It’s beginning to look like a funeral home in here.”

Finn came to stand in front of her and realized that she looked thinner than she had, almost alarmingly so, and decided right there that she needed to eat something, so he turned back to the fridge and put some of the casserole into the microwave for her without waiting for her answer.  He’d feed it to her bite for bite, if he had to.