“Dating?” I stop in my tracks. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just starting to think about it.” She says as she turns to face me, studying me closely. “I’ve always been quite fond of Myles, that librarian you met.”

  “Myles?” I say in disgust. “He’s not good enough for you!”

  “I think he’s a nice man.” She says, her eyes narrowing. “Does this bother you?” I stand there stewing in hurt arying to find my words. “Ohhh no. Sweetie. You are bonding with me, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not.” I say even as the ache takes a grip of my tle heart. “He’s nice.” I turn and step away to look out over the park, though I saw none of it. “He’s a nice man. You two will be…perfect together.”

  “Baby?” She lightly touches my hand. It took all I had not to recoil from it. “Talk to me?”

  “I’m happy for you Heather.”

  “No. You’re hurt. I hurt you.”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Please don’t lie.” Out of the er of my eye I just make our her worried expression. “Baby. You know we ’t be together, right?”

  Stubbornly I refuse to look her way, my eyes locked on a building in the distance. “You seem to know it.”

  “I do. I do know it.” She says sadly. “Elliot, I am twenty years older than you. Twenty years! Ten maybe, but twenty? It’s just…it’s too much.”

  “Why? Why is it too much? What’s wrong with it?”

  “What isn’t wrong with it?” She retorts. “People already think I’m your mother. If you and I were a couple people would say that I am robbing the cradle. That you’re just my little boy toy.”

  “What if I want to be your boy toy!”

  “Elliot, please. I know this is happening quickly. Stop. Think.”

  “You said being different isn’t so bad. Why ’t we be different?”

  She sighs. “You’re not thinking clearly. The honey is clouding your…”

  “It’s not the damn honey!” I snap far louder than I meant to as I shoot her a gre before looking away again. I just couldn’t handle looking into those eyes right now. “You keep talking about that stupid honey. Yeah it’s nice, but I don’t care if I ever get another drop! It’s you I want!”

  “Oh! Elliot…”

  “I like you, Heather. Okay? I like how…you talk to me. How you call me baby and handsome and all the hings you say. I like how you touch me and how you tell me to do things. I like how you look at me. I like when you call me yood boy. I like cooking with you aing with you. I even like shopping with you! I like how different you are and the different things we do together. I like everything about you, Heather!” My shoulders sag as I let out a long breath. “’t you see that?”

  “Yes, baby.” She says softly, wanting to touch my arm but for the first time worried about how I might react. “I see that. I feel it. I like you too, Elliot.”

  “Then why ’t I be…?” My head sags. “Why? Am I really so bad?”

  Stepping closer she takes a light grip on my arm. “Look at me?”

  “No.”

  “Please?” I look up into her warm brown eyes. Laying her hand over my cheek she just holds my gaze for a long moment. “I uand.” Tears begin to well up in my eyes despite me trying to hold them back. Against those eyes I owerless to hide my emotions. “Oh, my sweet boy.” She pulls me into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

  In her embrace I find the fort to blink away the tears even though she was the source of them.

  “e here.” She whispers. Leadio the bench, which sat uhe sprawling boughs of an old sycamore tree. She sits me down theles in beside me, my right haightly in both of hers atop her p. “This is all my fault. I found this special young man, wounded and alone and vulnerable, and I that thought that I could help. I found an orphan and I thought I could…fort him.” She shakes her head sadly. “Instead I just took advantage of him. Because he was alive aiful and funny and sexy and sweet and strong. That man needed someone. I thought I could be that someone. Instead I’ve messed it all up.”

  “You never…”

  “I did.” She says firmly before her voice softens again. “I thought I had it under trol. I was wrong and now I’ve hurt you. All because I was selfish and couldn’t trol my urges. You just…you make it so difficult.” Bringing my hand up she kisses it then ys it ba her p. “What’s happeniween us ’t be allowed to happen, Elliot. For your sake.” Keeping my hand held she slips an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s py out our fantasy for a moment. Let’s say we give in to our desires and I make you mine. And I do mean mine. You would practically be my sve.”

  “Sve?”

  “Sve, addict, worshiper, pything, I could go on. You would be whatever I wanted you to be.”

  “But…you’d look after me? Like that queen bee?”

  “Would I ever! Oh, I would be a benevolent Mistress and I would love you like nobody has ever loved you but make no mistake, you would be mine.” She says as her arm unsciously tightens around me. “Your need for my love, my approval and my cum would overwhelm everything else. Everything! It would be till death do we part whether you liked it or not. A life sentence. I would e you.”

  “e me?”

  “pletely.” She looks out over the park at all the pying children and happy families. “We would have some happy years. Love, panionship, friendship, and sex, sex, sex! People would talk, as they do, but we would be so entranced with each other we’d barely notice. It would effect things though. People would look at us differently, treat us differently. You might not get the opportunities you should just because you’re different. Or you’d pass some up just so that you could be with me longer. I’d hate to see that incredible potential of yours squandered on this selfish old dame. And my children would be angry with me. Extremely angry. Liam might even cut me out of his life pletely. God, he practically has already. This could put him over the edge. I could lose my son!”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “It could happen.” She says. “The years pass by. You’re thirty, in the prime of your manhood, and I’m a fading fifty. You’re forty, the time where your career is s and you should be raising a family, and I’m sixty and looking at retirement. You’re fifty, still strong with many years in front of you, and I’m in the su of my seventies. And then…I bee ill. cer probably, it runs in my family.” She says grimly. “I y there slipping away. My children and, God willing, grandchildrehey there with me? Maybe not.” She turns to look at me with hurt eyes. “And you, my prean, you would be there. And I would have to pass away with the pain of leaving you behind with nobody to look after you.” She lets out a long shuddering breath. “And the suffering you would feel…oh Elliot, I ot describe to you what it was like when Alexander died. He tore a piece out of me, baby. He tore out the best part of me and took it with him.” Tears flow down her cherub cheeks. “I couldn’t do that to you, baby. Not to you!”

  “Oh, Heather!” This time it was me hugging her and soothing the tears away. As I hold her weeping into my shoulder my mind is swirling. I’d hought about any of this before. All I’d thought about before was that I wanted her. I wao be hers. I wao be addicted to her. I just never sidered the ramifications.

  After a short time she poses herself and sits up again. “Hahhhh.” She breathes. “You and I ot fall in love. We ot bond. No matter how much we both want it. You will have to leave before that happens.” Tilting her head she looks at me in that pure, ad way she had and strokes my hair. “I don’t want to lose you, Elliot. But this o end. Soon. Before it’s too te.”

  “No!”

  “Hopefully not forever.” She says. “If I do find another man and if I choose to bond with him then you and I remain friends.” She squeezes closer. “Maybe even more than friends.” A smile pys at her lips as her fiease through my hair. “Maybe you could, I don’t know, rent a room from us? We could shop and cook like we do. Go for walks like this. You could fix things and tell me about your day over supper, like you did tonight? You could even bring yirlfriends over so that I could meet them and make sure they’re good enough for you. And maybeee…you could let me look after you in that special way that other men won’t?”

  “Um, and where would Myles be in all this?”

  “Myles, or whomever I’ve bonded with, would be there too.” She says. “He’ll do whatever I want him to do. Eveing another man live under our roof.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not like it sounds. You and I could never have sex. Not sex sex anyway. Once I’ve bonded I’ll only have that kind of attra to my man.” She says. “But I could love you, Elliot, and take care of you like a man like you should be. We could even py on awhile. A little bath or cuddle every now and then. Wouldn’t that be could be our little secret.”

  “I, um, I don’t know what to think.”

  “I know, baby. This is hard.” She sighs. “This is so hard. I never meant to end up here. I don’t have the answers, Elliot. All I know is that I don’t want to hurt you. I want to protect you.” Bringing my hand to her heart she whispers. “But I don’t want to let you go.”