Never Say Never

by Carolyn Faulkner

  And she felt him relax beneath her until she very nearly fell right off his lap.

  "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for you to think of that. Sometimes, I'm just so stupidly oblivious to other people's feelings. I'm truly, really sorry that's where your mind went."

  "S'okay."

  His voice was husky, though, and she suspected he was tearing up.

  For what she had thought was an emotionless, rotten bastard of a man, he was proving to be so much of a better person – all round – than she was, and she had to chuckle at the thought.

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  Suddenly, she sat up, turning sideways in the chair, encouraging him to do the same thing so that they faced each other.

  He'd moved, but looked confused. "I thought that you didn't want to see me."

  Stevie looked down once, then back up at him. "You told me a couple of months ago, weeks, months, I'm not sure, that you thought we should get married."

  She trailed off because he looked completely bamboozled, not enthusiastic as she'd expected, and that made her seize up with nervousness.

  But she was entirely unprepared for him to slide off the chair and onto one knee, reach into the pocket of his dress pants and pull out a ring box. Ignoring the fact that she was hunched over, laughing hysterically and calling him a Boy Scout, he popped the small box open, and there was the most gorgeous ring she'd ever seen.

  "Stevie Ophelia Coolidge, I know I'm asking for entirely too much from you, entirely too soon. And I know I don't deserve the honor of being able to love you and cherish you and protect you, but could you see your way to making this very humble, very undeserving schlub the luckiest man on the planet and agree to become my wife?"

  She paused, not because she was unsure of him, but because she was unsure of herself.

  Then a big smile broke over her face and she leaned down to kiss him, saying, "Yes, please!"

  The ring was a beautiful but not ostentatious solitaire diamond that sat in the middle of pretty shades of pink tourmaline that formed the petals of a small flower around it. "I remembered how much you used to love to talk about your family's vacations in Maine, and I know you love pink, but I also know you can be a bit of a traditionalist and would probably want a diamond, so I designed this for you. The petals are Maine pink tourmaline. The diamond is unremarkable, except that it's pretty good." He found his lips smashed by hers, and the word "quality" got quite crumpled in the mash up.

  When they were again sitting in each other's arms in the big recliner, Stevie asked, "How long have you been carrying the ring around with you?"

  Finally, it was his turn to blush. "I don't think I want to tell you."

  Her eyes narrowed at him. "Then I think I absolutely have to know."

  "When did we meet?" he asked, only half-laughing.

  Stevie's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and she shoved him in the chest with both hands. "Get out! You did not have this that long!"

  His eyebrows shot up and down and he looked sheepish, catching her hand to play with the ring as it sat on her finger, where, when he was feeling particularly down, he'd figured it would never, ever reside. Trent cleared his throat and came clean. "Not quite that long, but not very long afterwards."

  "But I hated your guts!" Her eyes filled with tears that spilled over without her permission.

  "I know." He nodded serenely, his heart clenching that she'd used the past tense, and he didn't even think that she realized it, or perhaps ever would.

  But that was okay. As long as he had her by his side.

  That got him another, harder shove. "Oh my God, will you stop being so damned Zen about things? That is really friggin' annoying to us drama queens, you know."

  He smiled, and that made her happy. "I quite like having a drama queen to annoy."

  "Well, you're too effing good at it. Cut it out."

  "What's it like to make love to a fiancée who's a drama queen, I wonder?" he mused out loud.

  "Ugh. The worst. She's only in it for herself. She'll use you and leave you in the dust, still hard and throbbing and wanting nothing more than to be...inside…her…"

  He'd started kissing her passionately, leaving off only to say, "Not mine. Mine is much better behaved than that, because she knows what will happen if she's not."

  Chapter 7

  Her father was over the moon with the news, but he did sound more tired than she could ever remember him sounding.

  "You should have the wedding here."

  He meant her childhood home, which was a beautiful big house in a very nice neighborhood.

  "I don't know, Dad, we really haven't talked about specifics yet. We haven't even set a date."

  "Well, I just want you to know that the house is here, if you should decide you want to use it."

  "Thank you, Daddy. That's very generous of you."

  When she told Mo, she got about ten minutes of laughter before the other woman calmed down. "No offense, Trent," she yelled at him over Face Time.

  "None taken," he yelled back, in the midst of cleaning up the table and the kitchen. He loved her dearly, but when she cooked, the place ended up looking like a war zone, so he always had his work cut out for him after he'd enjoyed a good meal, not that he minded, really. He looked at it as the price of getting to eat a great meal.

  To him, it was just another aspect of taking care of her, and he was very happy that she wanted to take care of him by cooking. He was an "a place for everything" guy. She was a "Lemme just shove that in there to get it out of my way" kind of person, although he had hopes of converting her, he knew he had to accept her as she was.

  Messiness – as long as it didn't turn into dirtiness – wasn't a spankable offense.

  "Of course, you have to be my maid of honor."

  "Are you asking me or telling me?"

  "Which will work?" She could hear Trent snorting at that from the kitchen.

  "Either – of course I'll be your maid of honor!"

  He busied himself with his chore, all the while keeping a weather ear out for her, and Mo, of course, immediately latched onto the idea of her bachelorette party.

  Mindful of Trent, who was being unobtrusive but couldn't help but overhear the conversation, Stevie demurred. "Well, I don't know…"

  "Trent!" Mo wasn't going to let that set. "Trent!"

  "Jesus, I'll get him already, stop yelling."

  "Yes?" He turned up at her elbow and Stevie handed him her phone.

  Mo saw the dishtowel over his shoulder and asked, "What were you doing?"

  "Cleaning up the kitchen."

  Maureen groaned. "I knew I fucking hated you. But please tell her that she has to have a bachelorette party, anyway."

  Without so much as a second's hesitation, Trent surprised the crap out of her and did exactly that. "You have to have a bachelorette party. Do it up right. Go to Vegas, if you want. I can get you a nice suite at the Wynn. As a matter of fact, I'll pay for whatever it is that you decide you want to do. No limits."

  Maureen groaned, loudly. "I cannot tell you how much I fucking hate that you're such a goddamned good man. Can I have some DNA so I can have you cloned, please?"

  Trent just chuckled and handed the phone back to Stevie, who was still surprisingly tentative about the whole thing. "I'm not sure, Mo. We haven't even really decided what we're going to do or when."

  "That's bullshit. You heard him. He's footing the bill. We should go to the fucking moon, or at the very least, Australia. It's his dime."

  "I'm going to table that idea, for now."

  Maureen sighed elaborately. "Fine. But you're not getting out of it."

  "Fine, we'll do something. I just don't know what."

  "Well, congrats, my dear." Then she whispered very loudly. "I think you're getting one of the few good ones, you know."

  Trent overheard that, and Maureen saw him handing Stevie something.

  "What's that?"

  "He brought me a glass of after
-dinner wine."

  "All right, that's it. I can't stand listening to this any longer. My ovaries are killing me. Later. Bye."

  Seconds later, she found herself gathered onto his lap. "Hey, how come you don't get all bent out of shape at Maureen's potty mouth?"

  Trent removed the wine glass from her hand and pulled her down for a kiss, growling, "Because she's not mine."

  Just because they were engaged didn't mean that she was going to slack off on her quest to get to know more about him. In between moving into his place, which he finally insisted upon, she had been very surprised she'd been able to hold him off from that decree as long as he did, making casual wedding plans, work, and being fucked into the mattress every night, she did what digging she could.

  He was so closed-mouthed. He listened to her rambling on about stuff, actually listened and could repeat it back to her. But he almost never volunteered information about himself, whether he was ashamed to or because he thought she wouldn't want to know, she wasn't sure.

  She did ask him, occasionally, but he seemed so uncomfortable when she did that she stopped doing it.

  She was curious, though, and she didn't intend to find out anything that wasn't public knowledge. She wasn't going to go through his phone or his browser history. She just wanted a little more information about the man she'd agreed to marry.

  She wasn't an idiot, though, and she didn't necessarily want him to find out what she was doing. Her bottom was sore enough – almost perpetually – and she wasn't at all eager to find out his opinion of her little investigation, however innocently she would classify it.

  So she wracked her brain, when she wasn't writing tests or entering grades or spending her own time at parent conferences that most parents didn't bother to attend or her own money on supplies for her classroom, about who she could talk to about Trent, preferably someone who was as neutral as possible.

  The only name she could come up with wasn't necessarily all that neutral, as far as she knew, and that was her father's old secretary, Mildred Beverly, who had retired gracefully when her father had stepped down, since Trent was going to bring his own secretary.

  Both the new and the old CEO had seen to it that she was given a very generous retirement package, and a lovely sendoff, and as far as Stevie could remember – granted, she wasn't at all involved – there didn't seem to be any animosity involved in her leaving.

  She was in an assisted living place now, but still sharp as a tack. Stevie went to visit her and was surprised to be greeted like a long-lost daughter.

  "You grew up so pretty, dear."

  That kind of thing always made her feel so embarrassed because she disagreed so vehemently with the sentiment.

  "Thank you."

  The septuagenarian proved to be a trove of useful information.

  What she found out had her walking around in a daze for quite some time. It was a Saturday, and Trent was out of town until Tuesday. Considering what she'd learned about him, she was kind of glad, even though his big place – obviously bought with a family in mind, this was not the spare, antiseptic apartment she would have thought he would have had – was quite lonely without him, and everywhere she looked she was reminded of him.

  She always seemed to end up in the family room, which was a big, comfortable room with a large sectional sofa, enormous big screen TV, every possible game console known to man, board games filling in one side of the built in bookcases, books of all sorts filling the other.

  And in the back of it was a baby grand piano. When she'd first seen it, she'd been drawn to it like a lode stone because she enjoyed playing.

  But it wasn't the piano itself that had struck her when she drew closer to it.

  He'd brought her there after she'd accepted his proposal, almost forcing her to because he wanted her to decide whether she liked it or whether they needed to look for another place.

  On the way there, she'd asked him how long he'd had the house, and he'd said for at least ten years.

  When she saw what was on the piano, she knew why he'd bought it – for her.

  There were decorations on the piano that proved to be pictures of varying sizes, some landscape, some portrait, some small, one, what looked to be a twelve by sixteen.

  And they were all of her.

  Every single one of them.

  Her high school yearbook picture. A pic of her throwing her cap up in the air at her college graduation. Her as a bridesmaid at a friend's wedding, all dressed up, hair and makeup done professionally and looking just about as beautiful as she was probably ever going to get. A picture of her, squatting on the floor, opening a birthday present as a little girl of about four. A picture of her with her mother that she hadn't seen in years.

  Trent had drifted towards her a bit hesitantly when he saw her stopping to stare at the pictures of herself. "If you think it's a bit stalkerish, we can take them down."

  "I-I don't know what I think of it, really. I've never seen so many pictures of myself in one place."

  He was uncharacteristically looking at the floor. "I really tried to stay away from you. I knew how you felt about me, and I didn't want to antagonize you, although sometimes I couldn't help myself. These pictures...they were my only connection to you, besides your father."

  "Perhaps we could spread them out a bit, at least," she said a bit uneasily. "And I will be taking pictures of you that we can add."

  He was notoriously camera shy, but he nodded anyway.

  As she'd taken a seat on the bench and began to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow, she asked cheekily, "What did all the girls who paraded through here think of this?"

  He leaned against the piano. "All the girls?"

  "I wasn't trying to keep tabs on you, of course, but one hears things."

  "One does?" he asked, grinning at her.

  "My father once commented to me about the impressive parade of women on your arm, mentioning that none of them seemed to have – how did he put it? Staying power."

  He'd dropped a kiss on her shoulder, saying, "Because none of them were you."

  Since she'd moved in, she'd forcibly interspersed some pics of him, and she had either moved or completely taken down some of the pictures he had of her that she didn't think were particularly flattering. But she still ended up there, thinking about what she had learned about him and staring at the images of herself and of them that were frozen in time, acutely aware that there were none of him that were younger than a few months ago.

  He knew her schedule, and as he was travelling, he texted her just about the time he figured that she would be getting home.

  Good afternoon, my love. Please take off all of your clothes as soon as you get home. I want you nude when I walk in the door.

  I didn't think you were getting home until late. Your plane doesn't even arrive until nine, does it?

  Stevie waited for a reply for him that was very long in coming, and that wasn't a good thing.

  When it came, it just said, "..." which was the equivalent of the look he would give her when he thought she was arguing entirely too much, and she had probably managed to argue herself right into a punishment.

  She hurried to reply to him.

  I'm sorry, Trent. I'm doing as you said right now.

  He liked thinking about her disrobing in their bedroom and wandering around their house naked. Thoughts of that would make his plane flight bearable.

  Good girl, but you know I'm going to have to remind you to be more obedient when I get home, I'm afraid.

  She sent him a sad faced emoticon.

  Yes, Trent.

  When he finally deplaned in town, collected his luggage and was on the road, about fifteen minutes or so from getting home, he sent her another text.

  On my way. Can't wait to have you in my arms again. Go to our bedroom. Find the lube, lie back, and play with yourself. But you are not allowed to cum. Continue doing so until I get home. 15 min.

  She glanced at the clock as she obeyed him. It was going to b
e the longest fifteen minutes in her life.

  It turned out that she was so involved, so concentrated on what she was doing – on trying to hold herself back – that she didn't hear him come in until she felt as though someone was watching her, and she looked up at the door to their bedroom and there he was in the doorway, watching her avidly.

  He dropped his briefcase with a heavy thud and reached for his tie.

  Stevie tried to get up, but he shook his head and she automatically lay back down. With a tilt of his head, he let her know that he wanted her to continue doing what she was doing, and her fingers wandered back between her legs.

  One of his favorite things to do was to watch her bring herself off. She had been charmingly shy about it at first. Apparently, none of her other lovers had the voyeuristic streak he did, but, as far as he was concerned, that was their loss.

  Seeing her spread out before him, touching herself in a way that no one – not even he – would ever really be able to do, not with that kind of self-knowledge that came from owning the equipment.

  He loved seeing her small hands manipulating her overheated flesh, wondering just how different it felt from when he touched her there, gathering as many pointers about what she liked as he could file away in that steel trap mind of his.

  Trent stood at the end of the bed, watching her, his hand already rubbing the bulge at the front of his pants. Then, after losing his clothes, he climbed onto the bed and stretched out in front of her spayed legs, enjoying the action close up.

  "Please," she whimpered, her eyes begging him.

  "Please what, my darling? You know I would deny you nothing it is within my power to grant you."

  "I just want you. Trent. Just you."

  Shifting a bit closer to her, he gave her what he knew she wanted as her index and middle fingers continued to whip back and forth over her clit, leaning over her a bit and pressing two big fingers into her entrance, practically cumming at the sounds she made and he wasn't even inside her yet.