Honey Lane sat on a tall stool in the corner next to Zach’s kitchen counter, sulking as she watched him walk slowly around the table at which sat a girl and two boys between the ages of 7 and 10. The dour silence of the spacious industrial loft suggested more that the children were completing a college entrance exam with a severe proctor, rather than completing Valentines to be distributed in class the following Monday.
Honey crossed her long legs and sighed again, earning a piercing glare from Zach. She had been looking forward to helping Zach’s niece and nephews with their Valentines for weeks, and now she was only allowed to observe it from five feet away. She crossed her arms and sighed again. This was the worst punishment ever.
Zach continued circling the table, trying not to notice how Honey’s folded arms pushed her breasts together, the neckline of her fuzzy sweater dipping between them. Beneath the soft woven folds, the silken white skin of her breasts probably still bore the red marks of his passion, his teeth and lips remembering the feel of her shuddering with pleasure under them only moments before his sister dropped her kids off for the afternoon. Jesus Christ… she just uncrossed and crossed her legs again, totally oblivious to the way she flashed him an upskirt every goddamn time she did it. Unless she wasn’t oblivious to it… with Honey, it was hard to tell.
Zach could tell that Honey was just dying to hop down from the stool, scamper over and huddle with Amarie, Fallon and Logan, as they wrote their names on the stupid little perforated papers and stuck a pencil through the pre-punched holes for a stupid commercial holiday that was supposed to celebrate love. Honey would ask them questions about their classmates, help them choose the right stupid Valentine message for the right classmate, put stickers and shit on the cards, and generally sprinkle that fairy dust that she seemed to bring to anything she did. She was a born nurturer and would make this whole thing magical for the kids, but it couldn’t be helped. Honey had scared the shit out of him and she needed to learn a lesson. It would be hard, but he just had to be strong. She would not be getting out of this. Not this time.
“Done!” Fallon yelled, slamming his pencil down on the table.
Logan looked up from where he was working on his third personalized Valentine message, apparently trying to sign each of them in rudimentary calligraphy, and frowned, “You just put ‘F’ on all of them,” he said in disgust, “It looks like you’re giving them a bad grade…” he said, shaking his head and returning to his careful scrivening.
“I am. Everyone in my class is a jerk. What are these things supposed to mean, anyway? All these cards sound stupid. Like you’d really walk up to someone you like and say ‘Let’s swing!’ I haven’t asked a girl to swing in years. I’m too old for swinging,” Fallon griped, looking at his Spiderman sticker cards.
A snort of suppressed laughter came out of the corner of the room, followed by the sound of a body collapsing to the floor in a fit of coughing. “FOURTH FUCKING PLACE! ON YOUR FACE, MAGGOT!” Zach roared. In the corner, hidden among the gym equipment, Zach’s friend and loyal wingman Terry promptly scrambled up into pushup position again without a word.
“Thirty-two,” the children said in unison, prompting Zach to put another dollar into a large money-stuffed jar labeled “Language Arts Scholarship” in the middle of the table.
Amarie sighed and looked longingly over at Honey, who smiled ruefully and gave her a little wave from her stool. “Why is Miss Honey on the naughty stool, Uncle Zach?” she asked.
“Cards,” Zach ordered, walking over to block Amarie’s view of Honey with his massive body. Amarie resignedly turned back to signing her pink and purple mermaid cards that came with scented tattoos.
Zach knew Amarie would be a problem. She adored Honey, and there was very little that Amarie’s big brown eyes and reddish curls couldn’t talk him into. She had a tender heart that couldn’t believe anyone deserved to be punished… especially not someone as soft and sweet as his Honey. Goddammit.
Honey leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the tightly muscled wall of Zach’s back, then reached her hand up under his t-shirt and began gently scratching him. She could feel the warmth of his skin seep through the tight cotton, and smiled as she snuggled into him, still grazing her fingernails across the skin of his back. Zach’s mind flashed back to this morning when her nails were not so gentle as he pounded into her tight, wet pussy, her nails digging deep, scoring his flesh in her ecstasy.
A noise of pleasure escaped him before Zach disguised it as a barking cough, and quickly stepped away until he was a safer distance away from the irresistible vixen sitting, most deservedly, on the naughty stool. Shaking his head to clear it, Zach tucked his t-shirt back into his jeans and folded his arms. “Miss Honey is on the naughty stool because the other day when I got back from the race in California where I had to drag Terry’s ass across the finish line in FOURTH PLACE BEHIND THE FUCKING BUBBLEHEADS,” Zach ranted, before pausing to collect himself and continuing, “I go over to get Miss Honey at her apartment and find her giving a fucking haircut to a naked guy in her fucking living room!”
“You cheated, Miss Honey?” Fallon gasped in disbelief, at the same time Logan called out “Thirty-six!”
Zach fished a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and put it into the jar, taking a one out for change. A foot stomped on the floor and he glanced up to see Honey with her hand raised in the air, outrage written on her face. He raised his hand, blocking his view of her face and the heart-melting effect it had on him, and looked away dismissively. “He was not naked! Cade had a towel on!” Honey yelled in protest.
Zach strode over to her, took her chin in his hand, trying to think of something harsh and authoritative to say, but got distracted by her plump lower lip instead, remembering how it felt to suck it between his own and have her open her mouth, hungry to accept his tongue. He could smell the faint strawberry scent of her lip balm and closed his eyes, clenching his jaw in an effort not to kiss her. “No talking on the naughty stool,” he murmured, his eyes dipping down to let his gaze rove over her soft breasts, loosely wrapped in her fuzzy sweater. Honey smirked and kissed his palm.
“Miss Honey would never cheat,” Amarie said with resolute confidence. Honey nodded in agreement and thanks to the young girl, tossed her long hair over her shoulder and grinned up at Zach.
“Towel or no towel, I still saw Cade’s nuts when she was goin’ after him with the Flowbee,” Zach explained, turning from Honey as Logan opened his mouth with a look of question, “And no, ‘nuts’ doesn’t count as a swear,” Zach finished, pointing at Logan.
Zach resumed his rounds of the table, continuing his story. “So, of course, I reacted like anybody else who saw another guy’s nuts in his girlfriend’s living room, and she has the balls to tell me not to yell because it’s not good for Cade.”
“I think ‘nuts’ should be fifty-cents… ‘balls’ too,” Logan said, thoughtfully. “They might not be swears, but they are… indelicate.”
Zach turned to Honey and silently mouthed the word “indelicate?” to her, a discomfited look on his face. Honey bit her lips, and another snort of laughter erupted from the corner where Terry was still in starting push-up position. “FOURTH PLACE, MAGGOT! YOU GOT NOTHING TO LAUGH ABOUT EXCEPT THE SIZE OF YOUR—” Zach roared, before pausing and breathing deeply and continuing in a calmer voice. “Anyway. Turns out, this guy Cade just got back from a tour and was dealing with some PTSD when he saw another guy’s balls in his living room, too, only his girl wasn’t exactly giving the other guy a haircut. So, after a bit of trouble, he was living on the streets. No job. No money. Nothing. Then, a few days ago, Honey sees him eating some of the food she left out for a stray cat,” Zach said, his voice constricting as his throat tightened. He turned away from the kids to hide his face for a moment, only to meet Honey’s deep blue eyes and a whole new set of problems… like not remembering anything he was talking about before. She reached up and stroked his cheek, and then he felt all the blood in his brain drain down below his belt. Fucking hell.
“Miss Honey helped him, though, didn’t she?” Amarie said expectantly, more as a statement than a question.
“What? Yeah. Of course, she did,” Zach said with exasperation, looking down into Honey’s face, and trying not to laugh at her stubbornly set jaw. “Miss Honey never fucking heard of “stranger danger,” or met a wreck of a person she couldn’t care about. So, she takes this ‘Cade’ in, feeds him, gets him washed up, takes him shopping at the Salvation Army, and then takes his ass to the library to write up his fucking resume and apply for jobs, for cryin’ out loud,” Zach said, putting another two dollars into the jar before Logan could remind him. “When I got there, Cade was there in her living room with his nuts showing under the towel, getting a vacuum cleaner haircut, because he’d gotten a job interview with a moving company.”
“Yeah, but if she wasn’t cheating, I don’t see what she did wrong,” Fallon said, applying a scented mermaid tattoo to the back of his hand. “Is this what mermaids smell like?” he wondered.
“Yeah, well, just as I was cooling down, this ‘Cade’ starts in on me for letting Honey stay in that piece of crap apartment of hers and taking in homeless guys. Even had the nerve to ask me what woulda happened if he’d been some addict, or worse, if someone that got to thinking that she was his girlfriend?” Zach said, folding his arms and looking down at Honey, who looked quite unrepentant.