1930's  California

Senior year.  Even for a kid with a past like Bud White, it had held a certain allure.  He was quiet.  Had few friends.  Was intelligent, if somewhat lazy about applying himself.  His test scores were above average but his grades remained borderline acceptable; always just enough to keep him from both trouble and praise.  By that time in his life, he was a kid who knew how to work the system.  And being noticed never brought anything but trouble. 

He excelled at sports, losing himself in the physical challenges the games presented and in the fraternal bonding that so often appeals to teenage boys.  Even ones who think they're better off trusting nobody but themselves.  He fought more than most, but not as much as the majority of kids lost in the nightmare system of revolving foster homes and erratic stints at the state's facilities for orphans.

To the adults in his life, teachers and caseworkers mostly, he was an anomaly.  He often saw them speaking about him in hushed tones, wearing pained expressions of concerned pity as they were caught between feeling sorry for him and waiting with nervous apprehension for him to snap; something his burgeoning physicality only seemed to reinforce.  Especially with women.  He hated it.  He hated them all.   

It's terrible.  Just so sad.  You heard what his father did?  How does anyone recover from that sort of thing?

No mother.  No father.  Victim of abuse.  Poor dear.  Just another damaged kid.... Never had a chance, did he?  

Blood always tells.  Look at the father?  That boy's a thug, too.  Mark my words.  It's only a matter of time before he kills someone.

Bud White thought they could all go fuck themselves.  The naysayers and the annoying bleeding hearts who just wanted to 'help the children'.  He hadn't really been a child for a long time and he didn't want anyone's help... even if it meant shutting off that small part of him that ached for a mother's tender care.  A soft hand on his brow.  A gentle kiss to soothe away the hurt.  

He had few memories of his mother.  And most of them were bad, stained by the presence of his father.  Drinking.  Yelling.  Hitting.... worse.  What few good memories he did have were buried deep.  Wrapped up somewhere safe where nobody could touch them.  Sometimes not even him.  There were times it felt almost like the good ones seemed to grow dimmer over the years while the bad ones only seemed to grow more prominent.

Maybe blood did tell?  

He liked to fight.  And he was good at it.  Especially when they deserved it.  It seemed to come boiling up out of him; this wild beast that he couldn't really control.  It earned him respect.  And a lot of detention.  He liked the way it made him feel.  Strong.  Powerful.  Just.  It scared him too.  Terrified they were right about him.  That he was just like his father.  Even he wasn't sure of the limits of his temper or his strength.  Neither had been tested to their full capacity.  Not yet.  He could feel it growing in him though, spreading and twisting through his body as it grew heavier and more powerful. 

He wasn't that skinny little boy anymore.  Now he was tall and lean, somewhere between boyhood and the mature young man he would become.  He had golden skin and sun streaked hair, as all boys did then.  California summers.... and blessedly, the beach was free.  There was something about the power of the ocean that equalized all of them, rich and poor alike.  He could bum a turn on a surfboard and show off just like the rest of them, thumbing his nose at danger and trying to outdo the other boys.  The only difference was that they often had picnic baskets or went for burgers and drinks at the soda shop in town while he pretended not to be hungry and desperately hoped nobody would hear his stomach growl. 

Mostly, he was just killing time, waiting for two things; emancipation from the state when he turned eighteen and graduation.  He looked forward to that freedom even though it scared him.  Where would he live?  Would whatever job he worked be enough to pay for things like food and rent and electricity? 

But Bud was smart.  He had a plan.  Intended to go straight from graduation to the recruiting office.  Marines.  He thought it was a good plan.  Instant entry into a brotherhood that would give him family for life, clothe him, feed him, train him.... He might even get to see the world.  Which, admittedly, wasn't as much of a draw as the prospect of three squares a day. 

He imagined himself in that revered uniform, black jacket and blue pants with that blood red stripe down the side.  Shiny black shoes and a snowy white gloves.  He dreamed of how he'd be respected by everyone, even deferred to by younger boys who wanted what he had; a first for Bud who'd never had a single thing anyone else had ever coveted.  In his mind he also imagined having his pick of the pretty girls he'd seen fluttering around those soldier boys with their sharp haircuts and smart dress blues. 

Bud liked girls, even if he didn't really understand them.  They were something of a mystery to him, conversely exciting him and frightening him.  He had kissed a few, even felt one up... but while part of him liked it, part of him was confused.  His own experiences told him that men did bad things to women.  He didn't want to do bad things to them... but he couldn't make that mesh with what was in his head.  How he thought about kissing them and touching them and fucking them.  Surely, what he thought about couldn't be considered 'good'? 

Ironically, for that naïve time, Bud knew more about sex than most of his peers; knew more about the ugly dark side of it, anyway.  The state homes were filled with kids just like him.  And most had a story as bad, if not worse, than his.  Tales that were whispered at night by children emboldened by the dark, or muttered as they slept.  He saw little girls of twelve or thirteen pregnant with babies of their own.  He saw bruises and cigarette burns and scars.  Heard about girls whose daddies made them share their bed and boys who were fondled and sodomized by 'special friends'.  He saw women beaten by their husbands and knew girls younger than he was who turned tricks for food or money or drugs. 

Even when he overheard his foster parents having sex, all that moaning and creaking and grunting... he knew they both wanted it, but it sure didn't sound like they were enjoying it; and still, listening to it made him hard for some reason he couldn't quite work out. 

By the time he was seventeen, he'd seen so much of the dark side of life that it was little wonder why intimacy made him uncomfortable.  He'd kiss a pretty girl and get hard... and then what?  He wasn't stupid.  He knew there was a difference between sex and abuse.  He just didn't know what it was, nor did he trust anyone enough to ask.  Sometimes it made him laugh to think about it.  Imagine raising his hand in class and asking his pinched-face science teacher to explain that one?  He figured she'd probably never had any in her life. 

Mostly though, it just made him blush.  He hated that unsure feeling.  Hated the not knowing.  Hated the confusing urges driving him, even as his hand still wormed down into his shorts at night, rubbing and stroking until his body was wracked with sharp spikes of pleasure.  He was a person who liked things in black and white, probably because when he knew exactly what was expected of him and where the lines were drawn, there was less a chance of him earning a beating for crossing some invisible line he couldn't see and didn't understand. 

The only problem was that everything that had to do with sex and girls and intimacy was never clear cut in terms of white and black.  It was all shades of gray that he couldn't distinguish because he'd never lived anywhere long enough to learn those curious social complexities.  He was a moth afraid of the flame that drew it.    

Everything changed for him the fall he turned seventeen.  Not just that he was nearly free.... just one last year of school to complete... but that was the season where all his dreams were ground to dust.  While playing football with a pack of neighborhood boys, he got tackled and fell hard.  He heard a crunch and felt something snap.  A moment later, excruciating pain shot up his leg.  He grabbed his knee, cursing and panting.  Trying not to scream.  Trying not to cry like a little girl.  Hoping nobody noticed he couldn't keep his eyes from watering as he writhed on the ground in agony.  It just hurt so damned bad. 

The ride to the hospital was a blur, as was pretty much everything after they stuck a needle in his arm.  So, the good news.  He would walk again.  Bad news?  As a ward of the state, he got the cheapest medical care available.  No frills.  No specialists.  There was an operation coupled with extensive physical therapy that had a shot at restoring his knee but nobody was going to piss away that kind of money on a kid like him.  Without it, the Marines would never take him.  And the doctors?  They weren't even going to tell him.  Some medical student let it slip by mistake while he was making rounds, some offhand comment tossed out absently as he left.  The door swung shut.  And for the first time in a long time, Bud cried.

And to think, he'd actually been looking forward to his senior year.  Hoping he might make some kind of a mark.  He was on the varsity football team.  Or at least he had been.  There would be no games for him this year.  No after game parties.  No pretty cheerleaders throwing their arms around him and jumping with glee when he scored.  No kisses under the bleachers.  All he got was a pile of broken dreams, a cast, a pair of shitty crutches... and a doctor's warning.  'Walk on it in the next six weeks and you really will be a cripple, son.'

Fucking doctors.

It was enough to scare him.  He did his time and then a few weeks more.  Nobody was about to pay for physical therapy but he got a list of exercises from the little asswipe intern who cut off his cast and he did them religiously every day, no matter how much they hurt or how stupid they made him feel.  The fear of being a cripple was a powerful motivator.  By winter he was walking without any noticeable limp.  By spring, he was trying to build his strength back up and make money by taking odd jobs, mowing lawns and doing yard work in some of the more affluent neighborhoods.          

And one sunny Saturday morning, that's how he met Mrs. Hanna Benson.  She saw him working in the yard across the street and called him over.  She looked so cool and fresh, standing there on her pristine white porch in a pretty linen dress.  Her creamy skin looked like it had never seen the sun or done a lick of real work.  She was curvaceous with golden hair and honey brown eyes.  He thought she might be nearly thirty.  In truth, she was closer to forty.  Rich women always looked younger than they were.  Money might not buy happiness, but it sure bought looks.

She asked him how much for the yard.  He was desperate for money, but somehow, when the number came out of his mouth, it wasn't even close to his usual rate.  Part of him was thinking 'You shitbird!  That lawn is huge... you know how much you're going to lose?  How many other yards you'll have to do to make up for this?'  But another part of him was thinking he'd have done the job for the price of getting to look at her all day on that porch and feeling that strange electric tingle of pride whenever he felt her eyes linger on him.

Mrs. Benson didn't look at him with either contempt or pity, the two most usual reactions he garnered from adults.  No, there was something else altogether in her eyes when she looked at him, something he was only on the cusp of understanding.  It wasn't adoration or fear or any number of a handful of other emotions he could identify. 

She looked at him - in his eyes - when she spoke to him.  And he liked it.  For once, he didn't want to be invisible.  Her voice was soft, cultured.  And it came to him then, standing there in the green grass of her lawn while the sun beat down on his shoulders.  She wasn't talking down to him.  There was respect in her voice.  It was the way she might have spoken to any tradesman who was there to do a job for her.  Unconsciously, he stood taller even as he felt his cheeks heat a little.  He was wishing he hadn't been so hasty to set a price... but somewhere inside him was this little voice telling him that a man stands by his word. 

He got the job.  

"Well, thank you...."  Mrs. Benson hesitated and Bud kicked himself for not giving her his name straight off, like how a man would have done.  And then it was his turn to hesitate.  His name was Wendell.  He hated it because his father had chosen it.  They made him use it at school, at least that's what all the teachers and caseworkers called him.  It was his mother who'd called him Bud.  She'd never liked 'Wendell' either.  Some vague wispy memory of her whispering 'my buddy' into his ear when his father wasn't around flickered through his head.  She would gather him into her arms and rock him, crooning to him that everything was okay, that she wasn't really hurt.  That he was brave and strong and good.  That he was her buddy.  That they were in it together for the long haul.  That she'd never ever leave him....

Bud stuck out his hand and lifted his chin.  "Bud.  Bud White, ma'am."  

She put her hand in his.  "It's nice to meet you, Bud."  She shook his hand firmly.  "And it's Hanna, not ma'am."

"Yes, ma'a-" he stopped abruptly, ducking his head for a brief moment before looking up at her through his lashes with a bashful grin.   

It was the first time she'd seen him smile.  Her eyes traced the strange jumble of features he hadn't yet grown into.  Some were almost too feminine.  His long dark lashes and soft pink lips drawn into a slight moue seemed an almost impossible contrast between his square jaw, cleft chin and thick eyebrows.  He had thick stubble on his cheeks too.  Combined with his voice, his stature, the breadth of his muscular shoulders and the narrowness of his lean hips, his body screamed testosterone and virility. 

He was a beautiful boy on the verge of becoming a formidable young man.  She couldn't help but notice he was more developed than the other young boys who frequented this neighborhood on the weekends, looking for work.  Hanna wasn't naïve.  She knew some of them were looking for something else as well.  There were a lot of rich bored housewives here.  Not Bud though.  He seemed to be struggling just to find himself, much less anything else.  There was an air of sadness about him.  Like he was a bit lost.  Hanna understood.  She often felt that way herself.  The only thing worse than living in her husband's shadow was his indifference.  Sometimes she thought they hadn't had a real conversation in more than a decade.

Fourteen years ago she'd had a miscarriage that had left her barren.  From that point on, her very politically minded husband hadn't considered her a true wife, able to do her duty by him and give him a child to carry on his name.  He had his eye on a high position in government and aspirations to be a senator one day.  A divorce would never do for that... and so these last fourteen years, she'd turned a blind eye to his numerous affairs, which in all fairness to him had probably existed long before she'd ever lost their baby. 

At a time when most of the country was struggling to put food on the table, Hanna was wearing pearls and furs and hosting teas and fancy cocktail parties.  She was the very picture of an affluent man's trophy wife, genteel and elegant, but it was a very lonely existence and she'd long since gotten over the guilt of taking a bit of pleasure where she could find it. 

Bud was disappointed when she went back inside her grand old house.  The job seemed a lot more like work when he was all by himself.  Just his fucking luck, he thought sourly, toiling away under the hot sun.  The vegetation took the brunt of his frustration.  His stomach growled and he paused to peel off his sweaty shirt and drink lukewarm water from a jug he'd brought.         

From behind snowy voile curtains, Hanna watched the coltish young man gulp thirstily before wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.  Her mouth watered and she idly wondered how long it had been since her husband had broken a sweat doing honest labor.  There was little doubt he worked up a sweat at other less noble pursuits, even at times coming home reeking of stale sex and expensive perfume... but ever the lady, she would only nod and slip silently away.

Perhaps she'd have cared more about his infidelity if they'd ever been in love.  They hadn't.  They got along well enough, a give and take built on years of a sort of cool regard, which at times almost resembled affection, yet to call each other friends would be something of a stretch.  They had what could probably, at best, be called a comfortable arrangement.      

The real truth was that it was a small price to pay.  Most of the marriages in their circle of friends were similar, handled more like a business arrangement than affairs of the heart.  To Hanna's way of thinking it was a satisfactory trade.  She had never known poverty, nor did she wish to.  And even if she had some vague aspiration of escape, who would ever hire her?  She had no marketable skills to speak of, and it was certain nobody would ever pay her to look pretty hosting afternoon garden parties or to plan a menu or direct servants.  She wasn't much good at anything else.  The only real thing of value she owned that was hers alone was her body, and she'd sold that to her husband years ago. 

If she left him it was likely she'd wind up selling herself on some street corner in some rundown part of town she most likely had never even been driven through.... No, it was better this way.  Better to be one man's possession than a whore to everyone who had a fistful of money and a hard cock.  At least this way she got to choose her lovers and in the long stretches between, she lived life as comfortably as possible in her cool gilded prison.

Her fingers trailed down the gauzy white curtain, a caress suited more to a man than a drape of expensive fabric, but in Hanna's mind, it was the strong thick arm of her young laborer that she was stroking.  He was a fine big boy; a real workhorse, but for all his size, his pants hung a bit loose.  He still had that coltish leanness of youth.  Big hands.  Big feet.  Big soft bulge behind his fly.  He seemed more developed than most of the young men who worked for her, more so than most his age she imagined, though she was unsure if it was his physical bearing that gave her that impression or the fact that he just seemed older somehow.  An old soul. 

Or maybe it was that he hadn't shot his mouth off like so many of the other young bucks did.  He didn't swagger or pose or brag.  In fact, he hadn't said much at all.  But for all the maturity that lent to him, it was a real pity.  That boy had a voice made to seduce women.  A real gift, like his eyes.  Hanna had seen that unusual color once, in a painting of the Mediterranean.  How she'd gazed at it.  It was the closest she would ever come to experiencing the exotic delights of foreign ports.  Her husband would never waste precious time on something so frivolous as travel. 

In her own way, Hanna had struck back for that disappointment.  Given free hand and a nearly limitless supply of money to decorate their home, she'd filled it with paintings of all the places she dreamed of seeing.  Paris and Milan complimented the gray silk damask in the parlor.  Venice presided over their dining room with its watery blues and greens, purple shadows and pinky sun-warmed highlights.  The colorful spires of St. Basil's Cathedral peeped from between palm fronds in the conservatory.  The painting with the sparkling sea the color of Bud's eyes hung in her private sitting room, arranged precisely so she could sit on the tufted aquamarine bench where a warm shaft of sunlight fell every afternoon at a specific time.  She would close her eyes and dream she was somewhere under the Tuscan sun, usually in the company of a handsome man, whom this afternoon she imagined to look very much like Bud White.

Still, while Bud hadn't said much.... when she'd brought him some lemonade in the heat of the afternoon, she had caught him stealing glances at her with a hungry look in his eyes; something she supposed could actually mean a lot of things.  However, despite his youth, he had a definite presence.  He reminded her a bit of the racehorse her husband had purchased a few years back.  He'd taken her to see his new acquisition and she'd felt much the same in the presence of that big powerful animal as she did standing in her thin linen dress next to Bud White.  He too was a wild thing, powerful and unpredictable. 

Not at all the usual sort of young man she took as a lover.  He wasn't safe, nor did he appear as maneuverable as some of the boys she'd known.  He was already more impressive than most grown men.  And one day... one day very soon, he would be a formidable man.  He was on the cusp of it even now.  It wasn't brawn or brains he lacked.  It was simply experience.  And that was one of the very few things Hanna had to give away.  That... and tart icy lemonade.          

He was back the next Saturday.  And the Saturday after that.  While most people liked the chase, the build up, the seduction.... it had always been the part Hanna liked the least.  It made her feel uncomfortable, like she was enticing some skittish wild creature closer and closer before she sprung her trap.  It made it all seem so very sordid.  She was not a spider and Bud was most definitely not a fly.  For some years now even though she had enjoyed the pleasure she'd found with her young virile lovers, she'd felt a deep longing to be held in a man's arms, to be driven before his passion, possessed with a mastery far beyond the grasp of any mere boy.  Hanna wasn't sure if it was luck or providence that had put Bud White in her path that summer.... but she intended to make the most of the opportunity.

Her chance came on the fourth Saturday in June.  Hanna was jealous of the summer sun that had been lucky enough to kiss his body a golden brown.  It was a hot airless day, a real scorcher, but it hadn't been the sun rising to its zenith that had prompted Bud to strip away his shirt, it was the telltale flutter of the voile curtains that told him she was watching him strain and sweat.  Did she like what she saw?  He hoped so.  He wasn't vain, but he was proud of his strength and knew it to be exceptional.  Every coach in every sport he'd ever played had told him so.  The realization that it was good for more than pounding his opponent was a heady revelation. 

He wondered if it was as appealing to her as her softness was to him.  Emboldened by the idea, he made a bit of a show of stripping off that hot summer afternoon, taking care to be sure her eyes were on him before he slowly dragged the shirt up and off, using it to wipe away the sweat stinging his eyes and then to hide the furtive adjustment he was obliged to make as his heavy cock stirred and grew.  He was more aware of it than ever it seemed, and to be sure working with a semi-erect penis was hardly enjoyable... yet for some unfathomable reason he seemed unable to stay away. 

Back in his cramped over-crowded room, just the thought of Saturday with Hanna was enough to give him the kind of fearsome granite hard erection that stuck out like a railway spike, so stiff and unyielding he couldn't even push it flat against his belly to hide it in his torment.  Christ, was that even normal?  His longing for the answer to that question was second only to his intense desire to feel Hanna's small white hand stroke him there. 

A tame thought, but then he shared his room with three other teenage boys.  When he could steal a few precious minutes of privacy, one thought and one thought alone dominated his mind.  His body would shudder and shed its gift in thick jets of creamy white, and as his hips surged forward forcing his spurting cock deeper in his fist, he would think about burying himself in Hanna.  A desire he was instantly guilty for the moment he was once again capable of rational thought.  It was so very confusing.  There wasn't much that triggered the uncontrollable rage inside him more than seeing a woman used cruelly, and he had a hard time reconciling that with what he wanted from Hanna.  It bothered him terribly.  He already suspected he might be like his father and it only seemed to underscore that conclusion in the worst way imaginable.

Blissfully unaware of the agonizing struggle happening inside of Bud, Hanna continued to play with fire.  The sticky heat of the airless afternoon made her even more restless than usual as she watched Bud slowly strip away his shirt.  She stared openly at his body, but it wasn't the swell of his genitals under his shorts that held her attention or even the rippling corded muscles banding his thick chest.  It was the glimpse of the golden brown hair under his arms and the fuzzy trail spearing down from his navel that made her heart trip erratically in her ears.  She was tired of young hairless lovers.  The stubble already shadowing his jaw combined with all of that hinted at what lay hidden under his shorts.  Hanna imagined a manly luxuriant furring of hair framing his impressive cock. 

She'd already seen it once, by accident, as she stumbled across him relieving himself against the thick gnarled trunk of an old oak tree in a secluded corner of her yard.  He hadn't seen her and she'd dashed away, hand pressed over her mouth, but the image had stayed with her for days.  She worried over it endlessly, wondering if she was some kind of deviant for being aroused by what she saw; by the casual familiarity with which he held his thick cock, by the sight of the stream of urine arcing carelessly from his tip to wet the trunk, even by the size of the wet patch itself.  Had the years in her gilded prison warped her somehow?  She'd even enjoyed his little half smile as he swerved to spray in the direction of some crickets chirping under a nearby bush. 

Every night since then, when she heard the crickets she would think of him and of the wet stain he'd left behind on the dry earth.  It seemed a very primal thing and made her think of his beautiful body spurting forth a very different kind of fluid.  She wondered if he'd sigh with pleasure the same way afterwards... or maybe he'd give her that same half smile? 

For all her faults, Hanna read the male sex very well.  Once they shed their virginity and the secrets of what happened between a man and a woman had been tasted, experienced and savored.... they changed somehow.  Hardened, if almost imperceptibly.  Perhaps it was because they'd had their primacy over a woman confirmed, or maybe it was because they had also tasted the ultimate weakness along with the ultimate domination in those vulnerable moments after they'd spent themselves in a woman's arms.  Hanna was more inclined to believe the latter; that they changed, found that hardening of their emotional self almost instinctive because they feared the power that women had over them in such moments. 

It amused her.  Men ruled the world.  They always had- and they always would... and yet it was upon men that nature seemed to have played the cruelest joke of all, making them as helpless as babes at the one moment they most wished to appear strong.  Perhaps not a fair trade for millennia of living under a man's rule, being denied the right to own property, to work, to vote, to even have power over their own lives.... and yet Hanna couldn't help but think maybe that was part of the reason men had treated women that way since the dawn of time.  However strong a man was, a woman would always know his most vulnerable weaknesses.  Maybe women were always destined to be punished for that?

One thing was for certain, however.  Bud White was lacking that awareness, that imperceptible shift from boy to man.  Oh, to feel him taste that sweetness in her arms and hold him to her in his helpless languor afterwards.... in those precious moments before he rose up, changed forever.  Her deeper thoughts skittered away as the vision of Bud working under the hot sun gave rise to much less lofty thinking.  Would he come inside again today?

He'd gone from taking his lemonade in the dappled shade of the old oak to sipping it in the shade of her porch to shifting a bit uncomfortably as he drank it in the relative comfort of her sunny kitchen.  Last time had taken the enticement of food, but she didn't know a growing boy (nor a mature man either) who could ever resist cookies warm from the oven.  Today she'd left the windows open so he could hear the oven's buzzer when it went off.  It made her smile to hear his bounding shuffle on the porch followed by his soft knock.

"Come on in," she called, busy fixing him up a plate and fussing with the lemons in the pitcher.  He may only be a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but even so... she prepared for him as she would receive any important associate of her husband's. 

He didn't come in.

"Bud?"  She heard a muffled answer through the door and wiped her fingers on her apron as she pulled it off and went to the door.  Why wasn't he coming in?  She knew it wasn't her husband that had spooked him.  He'd called earlier with an excuse about working late.  Which meant he was entertaining his current ladylove at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.  Hanna doubted he'd be home before midnight.  She knew his routines.  Whenever he had a new mistress it was sex all afternoon long at the Biltmore and then cocktails afterwards so he could show her off.  It was something of an unwritten rule.  Friday nights were for the wives.  Saturday nights were for the mistress.

In any case, Hanna was surprised Bud's rangy frame hadn't come loping in long ago.  When she opened the door, she found him standing off the porch, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, twisting his shirt awkwardly in his hands.

"Bud? Won't you come inside?"  He'd done an incredible amount of work already.  Surely he'd worked up a fierce hunger?  She didn't know too many boys his age who weren't ravenous all the time.  "I made cookies.  Ginger snaps."  They were his favorite.  It was one of the very few pieces of personal information she'd managed to get out of him last time. 

His eyes flicked up through his lashes and for just a moment she saw him start forward but then he ducked his head back down and shook it.  "I shouldn't.  Don't want to dirty up your house."

For a moment Hanna was confused.  He wasn't any dirtier than he'd been last time.  A bit sweaty, a bit of dust and grit here and there; a streak on his jaw, a swipe along his forearm where it looked like he'd brushed up against the dirty bark of some tree... but on the whole, he was quite passable.  And then he unwound his shirt from his arm and a few drops of blood fell into the grass.

"Bud, your arm!"  Hanna jumped forward.

Bud took a few steps back instinctively.  "S'nothing.  Just a scratch."  The pain was negligible.  It was the embarrassment of appearing so clumsy before her that really hurt.  Stupid fucking nail.  He hadn't even seen it while he was trimming the branches in that old tree until it had carved a wicked gash in the fleshy part of his forearm.  To make matters worse, when he grunted with pain and jerked away awkwardly to free himself, he'd twisted his bad knee.  Just a twinge of that sort of pain in his leg was enough to shake him up pretty badly.  He knew he shouldn't have been climbing that stupid old tree... not with his bum knee still on the mend... but he'd done it anyway. 

Afterwards he'd had a few frantic moments where he'd been afraid to even take a step, so scared he might have reinjured it.  He'd almost cried with relief when he calmed down enough to realize it was fine.  Just a twinge.  He wasn't even limping.  He'd actually given it a worse tweak falling in the shower not long after they'd let him come home.  Still, he felt like the biggest fool stand there in front of Hanna, dripping blood in the grass.  Wrapping the scratch back up in his shirt, and wholly relieved his folly hadn't crippled him for life, he was more than ready to have some cookies and wash them down with some of her fine lemonade.  The scratch really was nothing to him.  Young men were so wonderfully resilient.  He just didn't want to worry about bleeding all over her fine white kitchen while he ate.

"Just a scratch?"  Hanna didn't seem to share his lack of concern.

He shrugged.  "If you don't mind, I'll just eat out here..."  He trailed off at the look on her face and ducked his head again.  Shit.  Way to go, White.  Always fucking up a good thing...

"Of course I mind!"  His head shot up in just enough time to see her reach for his good arm and he suddenly realized her intention.  She didn't want to lay into him for his stupidity... she wanted to tend to him.  With a shy half smile, he allowed her to drag him inside.  It was a new experience for him, being mothered by a woman who was clearly intent on looking after him even while she treated him like a man.  He was starved for that sensory and emotional warmth that seemed to pour out of her like water.  She cleaned his scratch and fed him up, refilled his drink and put something antiseptic smelling on his arm that stung like a son-of-a-bitch but stopped the bleeding all the same.  Bud just grunted and reached for another cookie. 

It was hard to think with her this close.  Pressing in on him.  Touching his arm.  Christ, he could smell her hair.  And when she sat down so close and the scent of the antiseptic faded, Bud thought he could smell her skin too.  He opened his legs slightly to accommodate the bulk of his cock as it started to stir.  Breathing out slowly through his mouth, he fought for mastery and lost. 

Reaching out a finger, he touched her.  Somewhere not exactly wrong, but not exactly right, either.  Hanna shivered as she felt his finger slide up the inside of her wrist to stroke the sensitive skin there.  So soft.....

None of her would-be summertime lovers had ever made the first move.  Under his fingertip, Bud felt her pulse beat faster and smiled as he observed his burgeoning power.  The heady rush got more consuming when he felt her cool fingertip run over his skin..... until he realized she was lightly tracing the white scar on his shoulder.  The one his father had given him with a bottle meant for his mother.

The wild tingle of arousal spiraled into something else when she brushed it again with her thumb.

"Where'd you get this?"    

His chin came up.  So did his blood.  He wasn't about to answer that question.  She hummed softly at him, trying to encourage him and trailed her fingers over his shoulder to another scar.  It made him mad.  So he kissed her to shut her up, just exploded out of the chair without thinking, pushed her up against the wall and kissed her.  Hard.  Just like he'd been dreaming of all day.  For weeks, if he was honest.  All he'd needed was that one little push.... 

Imagine Bud White before he'd learned that iron control that made him such a damned good cop?

Her body was small and slight and easy manipulated by his massive strength.  She pushed at him... and yet her mouth was open, her tongue dancing with his even while she struggled in his arms.  He felt her resist and then yield to it... to him.  He felt like a man for the first time; using his strength in a way he never had before... and being shamed because of it, but liking the power all the same. 

Is that what being a man was?  A thousand conflicting things swirled in his head and the sudden realization she loved what he was doing confused him even more.  One of his large palms cradled her head.  The other was wrapped around her back, pulling her tightly against him.  Her hands were clutching at him as if he was an anchor and he was aware, even if only on some subconscious level, that the subtle melting of her body against his signaled not just submission, but willingness... even acceptance.  He was also aware of his cock throbbing between them, impossibly hard and jutting out awkwardly.  She was so much smaller than he was and yet it seemed to find the perfect place to nestle against the soft-hard mound of her pubic bone.  She made a low noise in her throat and he stepped back, unsure whether to listen to the urges driving him. 

Hanna saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes and knew that it would soon be gone forever; he just needed her to inaugurate the act that would take it from him.  How liked a big overgrown boy he seemed in that moment... but the heavy stubble under her palm reminded her he was also very much a man.  She touched his cheek.  "You know what you're doing?" she whispered softly. 

Color suffused his cheeks and he looked down at his feet for a moment, embarrassed.  He said nothing, just shook his head and angled it up to look at her through his lashes. 

"Come with me."  She tugged on his hand gently.              

Hanna was unprepared for his response.  He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and cradled here against his broad chest, letting her feel his strength, letting her know that while he may not fully understand what was about to happen, he wasn't without a considerable bit of his own power.  Hanna recognized it for what it truly was.  Inside him, the naïve boy was shifting back and forth with adult masculine urges he was feeling.  Sometimes he was shy, even hesitant, and at others blatantly aggressive, not quite sure of himself but wholly committed nonetheless.  Hanna smiled inwardly at that telling, adult, masculine trait.  What a man he would be one day.

Bud said only one word.  "Where?"

Hanna smiled.  There could only be one answer to that.  "The attic."  He didn't put her down.  He just let her point the way and took the stairs two at a time with an easy grace and careless show of his strength.  Young men often notice the effect they have on women... but they are so often blind when it comes to themselves.  She envied his strength, even as she luxuriated in the way it heightened her own sense of femininity. 

Up and up he climbed, past all the other rooms with the exotic foreign paintings.  Every time Hanna took a new lover (Bud White would be the eighth in thirteen years) she chose a different room.  In the absence of a warm family home, it was Hanna's way of filling each room with happy cherished memories.

She thought of lovely blond Jason when she sat in her husband's dark study under the imposing paintings of London's tower bridge.  The spicy ethnic colors of the guest room brought to mind swarthy Alberto and their lovemaking on the chaise under a cluster of paintings of Morocco.  Beautiful shy David had loved her in her very own bed, below a painting of climbing roses covering an English cottage....  The attic had no painting.  She wanted to remember Bud White for Bud White.  

It was a hot, stuffy room.  Silent.  Dusty.  Crates of junk were piled high against the unfinished walls.  Boxes of her husband's old papers nestled next to toys she'd bought for the nursery she'd never been able to fill.  A rocking horse rested against an elaborately lavish dollhouse, that now no doubt served as a home for small rodents.  There was an old faded mattress at the far end of the attic, flat on the floor in the brilliant square of light let in by the only window.  It was Hanna's real retreat.  Her secret place.  She'd hidden in her attic at home when she'd been a little girl, too.  She liked to come up to the attic to think... to cry... sometimes just to listen to the rain.  As a little girl, she used to like to sneak out on the peak of the roof and flap her arms, trying to gather the courage to jump and see if she could fly.  Sometimes she still had that urge. 

Bud put her down but didn't let her go.  She couldn't say how long they stood there in the oppressive summer heat, sweaty.... breathing hard... just outside the square of deep golden light.  Hanna bent and pulled a soft faded blanket from an old dusty box, shaking it out to spread over the worn mattress.  A million dust motes glittered in the warm afternoon light.

Bud ignored them all and simply said "Why me?"       

Hanna shrugged.  "Why not?"  She held out her hand in invitation.  "You want me and I want you."

She looked him in the eyes as she said it.  Bud nodded and put his hand in hers.  It was the first time anyone had spoken to him so plainly and openly about attraction and sex.  Was this how adults talked?  It was a world away from the dirty sniggers boys at school made while boasting and light years away from the nervous giggles the girls he'd taken out had made in the dark back row at the picture show.  He liked the directness.  He was a sensual creature with a longing for those finer tender things.... he was simply unable to articulate it.  

He was aroused and excited, but nervous too.  He feared desire, mostly because it was as powerful as his anger.  And just as unpredictable.  Perhaps even more so, as he had far more experience with rage than he did with passion. 

He barely spoke.  She would ask him things... and he would nod.  If he did nothing, the answer was no.  Hanna was good at reading men and could work out that he wanted to do certain things and that he wasn't quite sure about others, but was too proud to say so.  He liked kissing and was good at it... but he'd stopped her from undressing herself so he could be the one to do it.

When he was finished, she asked him if he wanted to touch her breasts.  He nodded, weighing her creamy white flesh in his big hands.  He touched her softly, almost reverently.  She asked if she could touch him too.  Another nod.  Her fingers slid down his belly and into the tawny scruff of kinky pubic hair.  His cock was so big and thick.  She told him that and he blushed, his hand tightening on her breast as she stroked down his impressive length.  His body pleased her.  From the tone of her voice, maybe even awed her a little.  His chest felt tight with pride, like he'd passed some kind of test.

She pulled him down beside her on blanket where they kissed and explored each other slowly in the warm golden sunlight.  For all of Hanna's dislike for the chase itself, those first moments of sexual discovery were her favorite, finding out what moved him as a man, experiencing the beginning of what would become his sexual identity; seeing the things that hinted at the kind of lover he would grow into with time and experience. 

Is there a bigger adventure than that?  No foreign land could ever be as exciting.  Some people mapped the world.  Hanna mapped a handful of beautiful young men on the threshold of adulthood.  Who is to say one of those experiences is somehow less than the other?  Though Hanna secretly longed to travel the world, in her heart she believed her version of exploring to be deeper of the two.  She'd seen thousands of paintings of the world... but not one that had ever captured what she felt wrapped up in Bud White's arms. 

He liked to have his nipples touched and kissed.  His armpits were ticklish.  He'd squirmed and frowned at her when she blew a teasing breath over the wispy ginger hairs.  He preferred to rub his cheek against the soft slope of her breast rather than to suckle at her nipple.  He was quiet, sighs and murmurs but no real words.  His feet were sensitive... but it was massaging his scrotum that drew a groan from his silent lips.  He didn't like to be held down or restrained in any way.  He wanted to be the man.  Hanna wondered who had made him feel so powerless that he had such a marked aversion to it now. 

Bud wondered about himself too.  He had his father in his head, partly as a demon but partly as wish fulfillment too.  What boy doesn't (at least in some small way) want to be like his father?  He equated his father with the idea of power.  His mind had been shaped to accept the idea that the role of a man was to be dominant and powerful.  He didn't want to be violent but he knew there was a tie between violence and sex.  He'd seen it perpetuated on his mother often enough as a child.... but now feeling that desire for himself coupled with the knowledge a woman might welcome a man's rough power, encourage it even as Hanna had with his savage kiss downstairs..... it was so confusing.  Young men rarely dealt well with mixed messages and Bud was more sensitive than most in that regard. 

He craved the tender affectionate touch he'd been denied for years.  He wanted to rub his face against her and feel her hold him.  He also wanted to hold her down and push inside of her and thrust and thrust and thrust until that white flashover made the world disappear.  It was frightening.  Afraid of where that road might lead, Bud tried to pour himself into his curiosity about her body instead of having to think about what was happening inside his own, which gave the appearance of both patience and a desire to delay his own pleasure for that of his partner. 

It was a first for Hanna.  But then, she'd known Bud was different right from the beginning.  Most of her young lovers had been much more interested in penetration than foreplay, at least the first couple of times.... though few had managed it without ejaculating first; either in her hand or her mouth or simply out of the sheer excitement they were in fact about to make love to a real flesh and blood woman.  She wondered if Bud would.  It was flattering in a way; the knowledge her partner was so excited he couldn't control himself.  Besides, it only made them last longer the second time around.  God bless young men and the wonderful mechanics of their eager bodies. 

His hand was between her legs, rubbing softly.  Ticking through her downy hair, testing the slippery feel of her wetness between his fingers, exploring her with one finger and then two... how very young he seemed then, eyes closed, lips drawn into a moue of concentration.  He seemed like a boy... and like a man.... and like an animal too as he followed his nose.  Bud's head was spinning.  The musky scent of Hanna's arousal hung thick in the hot still air of that dusty old attic.  He wanted to get at it.  Not just to satisfy some youthful curiosity about the hidden secrets of a woman's body, but also to satisfy some deeper compulsion driving him to lap and suck and taste, to bury his face between her legs and feast on her. 

Half listening to her soft direction and half listening to his own inner voice, he opened her legs and scooted down, kissing and biting and sucking as he went.  The novelty of it was exciting, but not nearly so exciting as seeing her hands clench in the blanket as her body twisted and writhed.  It made him feel better about his own shaky control to see her so completely lose her own composure.  It drove him on, too.  He liked what he saw and tasted, but he liked the feeling it gave him inside even more.  He could be a man for her. 

He licked and sucked, using his tongue and fingers like she'd showed him.  She clung to him weak and trembling, mewling with pleasure.  Calling to him with little cries and pants now instead of words.  He paused simply to stop and look at everything, from her tightly closed eyes to the pink flush on her chest to the soft downy hair between her legs to the folds hidden below.  Her lips were plump and fleshy.  One was slightly bigger than the other.  Her easy acceptance of her own flaws made him more comfortable with his own and he smiled that secret half smile as he kissed first one and then the other and then slipped his tongue between them, following the pungent intoxicating scent to its source. 

Rubbing his thumb over the little button of flesh she'd showed him, he pushed his tongue deep inside her, marveling at her taste and the way his touch made her body shake and judder.  He took particular notice of the way she clawed the blanket and tossed her head from side to side as her whimpers became a series of breathy little moans which became one big long cry of pleasure as she rode his mouth to a thundering release.  Hanna floated away in a cloud of intimate thoughts about how she felt so close to him just then and how she wished they could just crawl inside each other.  Bud's thoughts were much more graphic.  His tongue flickered in and out.  He imagined it was his cock and when she cried out, clutching at him as her tight little hole spasmed on his tongue and her honey flowed into his mouth.... he was lost.

He felt it happening in his own body and was unable to stop it.  Sharp tension spiraling tighter and tighter.... unbearable pressure... and that pulsing fluid rush and the blissful overwhelming pleasurable relief of orgasmic release.  His hips worked, thrusting forward futilely into nothingness as he ejaculated onto the blanket below, spurting again and again and again... it felt like it would never stop.  He slumped forward, using her soft thigh as a pillow, rubbing his hand absently up and down her side as he caught his breath.  She was dazed too, still floating back to earth from her own orgasm.

Bud was ashamed.  Well, at least part of him was.  Part of him was relieved.  He'd been very close to losing control of that wildness inside of him and that frightened him more than appearing like some naïve fumbling jerkoff who blew his wad just from touching a girl.  Flipping a corner of the blanket over the wet spot, he scooted up to take her in his arms.  If he was lucky, she might not even realize what he'd done.  He was still hard.  Not the painful too-hard erection he'd had before... but still impressively firm.  Bud wasn't really surprised.  He rarely had any privacy and when he did, it wasn't uncommon for him to masturbate to orgasm two or three times without ever losing his erection. 

Hanna sighed blissfully.  "That felt so good, Bud."  He smiled but didn't meet her eyes.  "Did you like it too?"  Jesus, did she know?  Hanna felt the tension in him and smiled.  She thought he might have come, although he hadn't lost his erection.... which had thrown her a bit... but the tension in his body at her innocent question gave him away.  Normally Hanna would have just laughed it off but something told her to tread carefully with Bud.  He was more complicated than most and seemed to need that fragile veneer of composure.  No.  Now was not the time for that lesson.  It would keep for another sunny Saturday afternoon.  The summer was young.

"I liked feeling you," was all he said.  It was more words than he'd strung together since she'd invited him inside for cookies and lemonade. 

"I liked feeling you too, Bud."  She kissed his jaw and neck, peppered his chest with little kisses that made him smile, though she wondered if it was because he'd realized she wasn't going to press him for an answer.  His secret was safe.  For now. 

Throwing an arm behind his head, Bud watched her kiss and touch him.  Seeing her astride his hips, nuzzling and stroking him was more erotic than any dirty pinup he'd ever seen in his life.  He began to relax, simply enjoying the sight and feel of her.  He wasn't yet aroused beyond the limits of his endurance.  There was plenty of space between him and the beginning of the danger zone. 

Between her little kisses she was talking to him.  Telling him how big and fine he was.  How much she'd liked what he did to her with his hands and mouth.  How good he felt holding her.  How safe he'd made her feel.  How she liked his funny moles and hairy armpits.  She even called his cock beautiful.  This time he didn't blush under her praise, he swelled with pride instead.  He'd pleased her.  Now she was pleasing him.  That was something that made sense, something he could wrap his mind around.  He put his free hand into her shiny hair to hold it back so he could see.  And because it tickled. 

Hanna stopped her line of kisses at his navel.  "You want me to keep going?"

Was she fucking kidding?  He nodded and she laughed.  He knew it would give his nonexistent control a run for the money, but there was no way he was going to pass up the pleasure of that opportunity. 

"Good."  His eyes caught hers and Hanna saw the question there.  He'd never imagined a woman would actually want to put her mouth on a cock.  "Bud, you have a beautiful body... and I want to touch and kiss you here," she stroked his cock and he shivered, "as much as you wanted to do it to me."  Bud seriously doubted that.  He was only just beginning to realize sex wasn't something a man did to a woman, it was something they did together because they both wanted it.  But then he felt her warm breath and soft lips and a warm, wet, sucking, flickering heat.... and he threw back his head and groaned.  Loudly.  Appreciatively.

Hanna giggled.  Bud felt it and it made him giggle too.  The sound surprised Hanna.  It was as incongruent with her image of Bud as was his long lashes and pretty rosebud mouth.  She liked it instantly.  But his giggles died away, becoming soft groans as she suckled, teasing the prominent flared ridge, the sensitive vein beneath... even mouthed his scrotum, taking each testicle in turn into the warm cavern of her mouth.  When he started shaking and his low groans had become panting grunts, she turned him loose and crawled back up his body. 

His hands held her tightly, almost too tightly for all his attempts at tenderness and she knew he needed to be inside her.  Now.  He was already rolling her over and climbing on top, even as that thought passed through her mind.  She wondered if he'd stop and ask about needing a rubber.  That he didn't almost seemed endearing in a strange sort of way.  He was a tenderhearted young man, but he was still a young man.  The thought of babies and protection had probably never even crossed his mind.  She'd show him how to put on a condom another time.  She wanted to plant the seed in his mind though, so the next time he was with someone, he wouldn't be so foolish.

His hand was on his cock, ready to guide it in.  Her hand covered his, slowing him down a little.  "It's okay.  You don't need to use anything..."  She saw the spark of comprehension in his eyes.  "I had an operation a long time ago.  I can't have babies now."  She'd learned long ago that it was better to say it like that.  If they felt sorry for her, for her plight, it made them feel too attached to her.  It was better that they thought it was her idea, even if it left some of them a little cold.

Bud blinked.  "You don't have a scar."

Hanna was a bit stunned.  He'd noticed that?  He was even sharper than she thought.  Not one of them had ever noticed that before.  The sudden realization of the depth of his awareness of her prickled sharply behind her eyes.  Someday, some woman was going to be very lucky to call this man's heart hers. 

"It wasn't that kind of operation," she whispered, rubbing his tip against her weeping flesh, hoping it would distract him.  Hanna suddenly felt vulnerable in a way she hadn't for a very long time; in a way that had nothing to do with sex.  "Help me, Bud.  If you make the tip wet and the push in really slow, it will help me take you in...."  She wasn't sure if she was talking for his benefit or hers. 

He did as she asked, eyes closed with his tongue on his lip, deep in concentration as he strived for control.  It felt so good.  His body was telling him to just bury himself in that slick inviting heat as fast as he could.  Hanna's breath caught as he pushed in another inch.  Bud bit his lip. 

"That's right.... slow... just like that...."  His eyes opened.  Hanna smiled and touched his cheek tenderly.  He was far too big not to be mindful of what God had given him.  And he'd hurt her if he wasn't.  "You're so big and fine..."  He sank in another inch and they both groaned softly.  "...but if you take your time with this part, what comes after it will be better for both of us."  He was following her direction, but only barely.  Tiny beads of sweat clung to his upper lip.  "You feel me adjusting to you?" 

Bud closed his eyes and was mildly surprised at the realization he could feel something different.  She was tight but her walls didn't grip as hard as they had before.  She felt softer, more creamy inside now.  Jesus.  It could get better than this?  It already felt like the top of his head was going to lift away.  He pushed, inch by inch, until he couldn't go any further.  Was he too big?  Bud sighed softly.  Hanna simply smiled and lifted her legs to wrap them around his lean hips.  He slid in the rest of the way with an obscenely satisfying grunt. 

He'd done it!  He wasn't a virgin anymore.  The thought was fleeting, and yet still filled him with pride.  Awe too.  He was inside a beautiful woman who made him feel so good.  One who wanted to touch him and kiss him and even now was holding him so tight and stroking his back and arms.  For one painfully embarrassing moment he thought he might cry. 

She was kissing him and rocking under him softly.  He could feel her legs moving too, a tiny foot stroking up the back of his calf.  A cool white hand squeezing his butt.  He became aware he was feeling the need to move too.  To thrust.  He withdrew experimentally and pushed back in.  White spots danced before his eyes.  He'd never felt anything so good in his life.

"Yes... more...."  Hanna's soft encouragements told him she'd liked the way it felt too.  

Bud was unaware of it, but there was a smile on his face.  Hanna saw it and knew that with each stroke now he would become more confident.  More aware of his power.  More sure of her reaction to it.  Hanna could feel it happening, just as she could feel him try different kinds of strokes as he learned what he liked and what she liked too; rocking, grinding, slow, fast, deep.... 

He tried and discarded several before falling into a recognizable rhythm; first he'd push deep and rock against her, in a motion that must have stimulated his head strongly where it rubbed against the sensitive mouth of her womb.  Just when she thought she wouldn't be able to stand it another moment, he'd change; withdrawing to start a series of long deep thrusts that thudded his body against hers with force.  Each time he switched from one to the other he seemed to only gain in intensity.

"Fuck me!  More... harder.... harder...Oh God...."  

Bud was dangerously close to losing control and it scared him.  So did the fact that he'd gotten a bit rough.  Pounding in her hard, holding her down.  Panting, he backed off, eyes wild and unsure.

Hanna rocked him.  "Shh... it's okay, Bud.  You're not hurting me."  He didn't look convinced.  "Women like a man to be man."  It probably wasn't the best advice, all things considered, but Hanna didn't know what was in his head.  She didn't get the point.  Bud did, however.  He suddenly saw a bunch of things he'd witnessed between men and women, even between his parents, in a different light.

But it was penetration that drove him and he started thrusting again even as he wondered what it was women really wanted.  This time her wild cries didn't frighten him.  She was clinging to him.  Telling him to fuck her.  He felt the sting of her nails and a hand at the small of his back urging him deeper.  This time when she struggled and cursed and groaned out 'Fuck me, you bastard!' in the heat of passion, it excited him.

It worried him too, even as he pinned her down, arms above her head and gave in to the wildness inside of him.  Hanna was keening, loving the beautiful boy in her arms and not realizing her innocent words might be doing some damage.  He didn't scare her.  Unfortunately, the first time Bud eventually made love with a girl his own age, his intensity would scare her; and reinforce a preference for older, more experienced partners.  Even worse, it would also reinforce a negative image of himself, and of men in general.           

But in that small airless attic, deep in Hanna's arms, Bud did learn tenderness.  And he learned that sex was not abuse; that even intense sex that bordered on rough could be beautiful and loving.  Feeling Hanna come in his arms was the sweetest moment of his life.  Coming in hers was beyond words.  He shuddered and jerked, holding her tight to him as he buried himself one last time and sighed his pleasure against her neck, all sweaty and rosy pink with his exertions as he filled her to overflowing with his semen.  

They lay in each other's arms a long time afterwards, not talking... just breathing, caressing... listening to the wind blow and watching dust motes glitter in the late afternoon sun.  For Hanna the golden sparkle was more precious than any treasure as she said her silent goodbyes to the boy they'd loved away that afternoon.  When they rose, there was a new surety in him, a confidence he'd never had before and a familiarity, an ease with her as he redressed her slowly, stopping to kiss and touch her affectionately.  He was a boy no longer.

They remained lovers well into the fall.  She fed his spirit; somehow she was a part of all the things he'd wanted for so long.  The mother image, sex, touch, comfort... home.  Though he still had trouble discerning between certain boundaries, he learned about sex and love and tenderness and affection.  And he learned that older women were safer, more grateful and appreciative without expecting too much of him in return.  A lesson that would linger for him well through his twenties and even into his thirties.                  

Usually Hanna's summertime flings ended with the change of seasons but Bud was different.  She was genuinely attracted to him and cared deeply about his feelings and his future.  She mothered him a little, fed him up, encouraged him... she knew it was confusing for him because she was also his lover, but she knew he needed both of those things.  To be honest, he needed a great many more things than she could ever give him.   

They had a special connection.  Bud was bound to have formed some romantic feelings... or rather what he perceived as romantic, but Hanna knew in reality it was simply misplaced emotions.  She saw that and was gentle with him, but reminded him she was old enough to be his mother.  The idea made him feel a little strange and her actual age, thirty-eight, shocked him.  Had his mother lived, she would have only been forty. 

He stayed away for weeks after that, needing time and space to think, to work it all out in his mind.  It was the Saturday before Christmas when he took a chance and went to see her.  If her husband was home he could simply claim to be there to pick up his pay.  Hanna still owed him sixteen dollars for his work in the yard, money he desperately needed.  Bud let himself in the back gate like always and was shocked to see two oily little greasers watching his Hanna through the window, nudging each other and preparing to break in.  One had an empty bag.  The other was swinging a chain. 

Bud saw red.

He'd seen what a chain could do to a woman's face.  And he remembered the feel of it on his own flesh.  His skin crawled, igniting his rage beyond anything he could have imagined.  He wasn't that helpless little boy anymore.  Now he was a man.  And he was going to make them pay.

Bud knew thugs.  Knew how they thought.  Knew how they acted.  He'd lived with more than his share and spent a childhood learning first to outrun them and then to outfight them.  They were just like dogs.  Charge them and they run.  Corner them and they become unpredictable.  In a pack they were dangerous.  But all of that melted into one big red blur as he flew at them in a rage.  The one with the chain went down first.  Hard.  The silent winter morning was broken by piercing agonized screams as Bud kicked him and heard something crunch.  It felt good.... but his rage was far from spent.

He tackled the second one at the gate and dragged him back bodily over the rough ground.  The prone body in his arms started struggling futilely when he saw Bud was aiming for the discarded chain.  Bud didn't even think twice, just shoved his almost healed knee right down on the man's sternum and wrapped that heavy length of chain around his neck once... twice....  and then he pulled.  Hard.  The man's face turned purple.  He clawed at the chain, tongue and eyes protruding grotesquely.

The next thing Bud knew, there was a hand on his shoulder and the world seemed to suddenly come back into focus.  He recognized the man from pictures he'd seen in Hanna's house.  It was her husband.  "Let go, son."  He knew an authoritative voice when he heard one.  He let the chain go slack and the shitbird under his knee gasped for breath.  Bud realized he could hear sirens.  There was a screeching and the sound of men running.  The back gate slammed.  Police filled the yard.  

Then another voice.  "Nicely done, lad."  Hands helping him to his feet.  "You've a real talent there, boy-o."  The voice sounded impressed.   

He could hear Hanna in the background explaining who he was, the boy who came to cut the lawns....  It was funny.  He used to hate being called a boy.  Now that he felt like a man on the inside, where it counted, it didn't bother him anymore. 

Hanna's husband was smiling, nodding to one of the policemen.  "Look at him, Dudley.  Not even breathing hard!  Remember those days?"  He looked around.  "Christ, what a mess.... I've something for your Christmas fund if you can keep this quiet...."

Bud just stood there, watching.  Taking it all in.  The lilting Irish voice was back.  So was the strong hand on his shoulder.  "Have you ever thought about a career in law enforcement, lad?  Something tells me the department could use a good a man like you......"

It was one of the most surreal afternoons Bud White had ever spent.  He got his sixteen dollars, two perps and an invitation to come in and have coffee with two gentlemen who would later turn out to be very influential in California's political arena.  And somewhere in all of that, he managed to find a future too. 

But when he left that day, Bud White also had something neither of them had expected; a real treasure that he horded close, like cup of gold.  He had another reason to visit Hanna.  And when he'd finished school and made it through the Academy, he returned one hot airless Saturday in June to repay the loan that had paid for his training.  That afternoon dust motes glittered in the attic's golden light and Hanna Benson finally held a man in her arms.