I Got Stung

"I know you're working today, but is there any chance of seeing you at some point? Maybe for lunch?"

There was so much more he wanted to say, but he stopped and hit 'send'.

Robyn was crazy busy but still took a second to see who sent the text. Just in case. When she saw it was from Trey, a wash of warmth flooded over her. It was strong enough to cause her to stop everything she was doing and respond.

"Trey! I was just thinking about you! I have 30 minutes for lunch. If you don't mind the food court, we could grab a bite there. Is 12:30 okay?"

A reply of "Yes! See you there!" came back before she could set the phone down, and another, stronger wave of warmth hit her immediately.

"Wonderful! See you then!"

Trey was at the food court by 12:20 and slowly headed toward Penneys. He got to a bench in front of the store and went to sit down when he saw a beautiful woman in a very nice dress heading his way.

He smiled and waited for her to notice him. When she did, her reaction to seeing him caused a minor stir just below the belt.

"Trey! Hi!" she said as they moved toward each other.

Without hesitation they held out there arms and embraced like old friends.

"Wow. You look...great!" Trey told her as he gave her a polite 'once over'.

"You, too," she replied, admiring the nice shirt and dark pants he was wearing.

"Guys are pretty boring. You, on the other hand, are anything but."

Robyn laughed the way she had the day before, unaware of just how happy she felt.

"Thank you, but you do not look boring. Trust me, okay?" she told him as the laugh continued.

"You hungry?" he asked as they headed toward the food court.

"I could eat," she told him.

Trey insisted she choose the kind of food, and Trey ordered the same thing she did then led her to a table where they sat down.

"This is a very pleasant but unexpected surprise," Robyn told him with a smile before taking a small first bite.

"Does that mean you didn't expect to hear from me?" Trey asked with a little laugh before taking his first bite.

Robyn smiled again and told him, "I'll admit to hoping you might call."

"You just didn't really think I would, though, right?"

"Let's just say I wasn't disappointed when I got your text."

"The truth is I woke up thinking about you," Trey told her. This time there was no smile on his handsome face, and another 'bath' of something pleasant made her feel flushed.

"Maybe you only think you're feeling better," she said, downplaying his comment.

"No, I'm definitely doing much better, and I can't help but believe that has something to do with a beautiful woman I kind of...ran into yesterday."

Robyn briefly looked at him, smiled sweetly, then said, "I'm really glad you asked me...texted me."

"Yeah. Me, too," Trey told her before making small talk for a few minutes.

The time flew by in an instant, and as Robyn checked the clock on her phone, she apologized for having to go.

Trey picked up both trays and dumped them then walked with her back to the store.

"This was really nice, Trey. Thank you, and thank you for lunch."

"It was my pleasure," he told her with a warm smile.

"I should get back to work," Robyn said as they stood face to face.

They hugged again, and just as Robyn turned to leave, Trey reached for her arm and said, "Would you maybe like to go out some time?"

Robyn needed a moment to realize what he'd just said, but once her brain processed the information, she told him she'd love to.

"Yeah?" a very happy Navy pilot replied.

"Yes. Definitely."

"Great. I'll call you, okay?"

"That would be very okay," a smiling Robyn told him.

They stood there again looking at each other when Trey moved closer, touched her lower arm again, then shocked Robyn when he smiled at her before kissing her. The shock was so strong she didn't respond at all, and Trey assumed she was offended.

"Sorry," he told her a little sheepishly.

But if Robyn had been surprised, Trey was blown away when Robyn moved closer and kissed him.

"I didn't mind at all," a smiling assistant manager told him before actually walking away, a huge smile on her pretty face and a tingling sensation coursing through her body.

"Dang, gurl!" a stunned Trey Donovan said very quietly as he watched her, the sound of her heels clicking on the tile floor the only other thing he heard from her.

Trey was all smiles as he left the mall, and on the way home he turned on the radio. It was actually Sirius XM, but that wasn't important. What was important was the song he heard when he selected the '50s station; a song that made him laugh out loud because of the meaning it conveyed on several different levels. The first words he heard were near the end of the song:

"If I live to be a hundred and two, I won't let nobody sting but you. I'll be buzzin' 'round your hive every day at five, and I'm never gonna leave once I arrive."

He began signing along to the 1958 hit by Elvis Presley then boomed out the refrain.

"Cuz I'm done, uh-uh—I got stung!"

By the time he pulled into his parking space, Trey had forgotten all about his sinus infection. For that matter he'd forgotten about everything else except Robyn Crawford and her kiss; a kiss that made him feel like he'd just been stung, too. She'd been stung by a bee, but that kiss was no less a sting to one young Navy pilot who laughed again when he wondered if her 'sting' contained a kind of 'love venom' as he realized that for the first time in his life he might be on the verge of falling in a love with a woman. And a very unlikely woman at that.

When he got inside he sat down then pulled out his phone and did something very similar to what Robyn had recently done.

"Dad? You busy?" he asked when his father's baritone voice came on the line.

"Not for you, Hotshot," his father told him. "What's goin' on?"

"I met someone," Trey replied.

"Maybe I better sit down. My old ears thought you just told me you met someone," his dad said with a chuckle before asking his son to tell him all about it.

Trey started off with the sinus infection and finished a few minutes later with the song on the radio.

"Sounds like a sign to me," the retired Marine fighter pilot said with another chuckle.

"Yeah, the song was a bit much, but what do think about...the whole thing?"

"You know I don't have enough information to answer that, right?"

"Sure, but you're the best man I know when it comes to first impressions. So based on what I've told you, is there any chance this could be real?"

His father got serious then tried his best to explain.

"I can't answer that, either, Trey. But the only other time I can remember you thinking things were serious was when you went to your first dance with a girl in the 9th grade."

Trey moaned then said, "Oh, right. Amanda Walker. Yeah, I was head over heels in love with her. For two weeks."

His dad laughed again then said, "Look, son. You mentioned the age difference, and no pun intended, that's not a small thing. But love isn't something you can evaluate using calculus or the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It's a heart thing, and well, the heart can be tricky."

Trey wanted to say something like, "Gee, thanks, Einstein." But the truth was, his dad was right. Only he could decide if Robyn was 'the one' or even if she was worth pursuing. His father was also right about the age difference. It wasn't a couple of years or even five. Or ten. And yet no one had ever made him feel the way Robyn did.

He laughed when he said to himself, "Not even Amanda Walker."

Trey sighed then told his father he agreed.

"Just take things slow, okay?" the retired colonel advised. "Get to know her, and in time, you'll be able to answer your own question."

Trey thanked his dad for the sage advice then asked how he was doing and spent another 30 minutes or so just BS-ing with his father before being passed off to his mom and talking with her for another 10-15 minutes while avoiding the subject of the beautiful, older woman in his life altogether. It wasn't that he thought she'd be upset or give him an earful, it was more that this was an area where he felt more comfortable talking with his father, and that's all there was to it.

By the time he hung up, something inside of him told him Robyn was not only worth pursuing, he had the feeling he didn't want to live without her in his life.

"Hi, beautiful," he texted a few seconds later. "I'm still smiling from the very pleasant surprise you gave me when we said goodbye. I was wondering if there might be some kind of 'potion' in your kiss, because I can't think about anything else since it happened."

He thought for a moment then wrote, "You mentioned wishing you could fly. Well, the good news is I just happen to know how, and I would love to take you up this weekend. The base has a flight club, and I can rent a plane for an hour or two. Would you possibly be interested?"

He found an emoji with crossed fingers indicating his hopefulness then hit 'send'.

When the text hit, Robyn was working on inventory, but she, too, was obsessed with what had happened before she and Trey parted company, so the second her phone buzzed, she stopped and checked it.

Her heart was pounding as she replied just seconds later.

"YES!! I would love to go flying with you!"

Trey smiled when he saw the enthusiastic response, and her follow-on text made him even happier.

"I also wanted to tell you that I feel exactly the same way about our kiss. Well, both of them, but the look on your face after I kissed you was priceless! And ever since, I haven't been able to see or think of anything else other than the look on your very handsome face."

Robyn added a blushing emoji then hit 'send' and prayed she wasn't moving too fast.

"I'll take your word on the 'handsome' part, but I'm very happy to learn that you had the same kind of reaction as I did."

"Oh, I definitely did!" Robyn texted back immediately.

Trey realized he was as hard as a rock when he read this latest reply.

"I've never met anyone quite like you, Robyn Crawford," he told her.

"Nor I you, Trey Donovan," she texted back.

"I'll call you tonight and see if we can find a time that works to go buzz around on Saturday."

"Or...you could just come over for dinner," a very hopeful Robyn texted back.

"Or that!" Trey wrote.

"Is six o'clock okay?"

"I'll be there," Trey replied, adding some smiles this time.

Neither of them were aware that the other person said, "Yes!" at almost exactly the same time while feeling happier than they ever had before in their lives. Or in Robyn's case, not since her late husband had proposed to her, but this was a very close second.

Trey called the base flying club as soon as he finished texting and reserved a PA-28R-200 Piper Cherokee for Saturday morning at 10am, hoping that would work for Robyn. The two-seater would allow him to let her take the controls without endangering them or the plane, and an hour rental was just $150 which included fuel, an extremely reasonable price. Especially for something he felt the woman he couldn't stop thinking about would enjoy immensely.

Trey left a few minutes early so he could stop by the Orange Park Florist on Park Avenue before it closed and pick up a bouquet of red roses before stopping at a wine store and buying a bottle of merlot. It never occurred to him he didn't know what she was serving until he got to her front door, but he had the feeling she wouldn't mind no matter what might be on the menu.

Whatever he was thinking was forgotten the moment she opened the door.

"Hi!" a smiling Robyn told him.

When Trey didn't move, she asked if he was okay.

"Um...yes. I'm fine," he told her without taking his eyes off of her.

"So...would you like to come in?" she asked, knowing that she'd chosen well with regard to what she was wearing or at least how she looked.

"Yes. Definitely," he replied as he held out the flowers.

She went to take them, but Trey lowered the bouquet, moved closer, then softly kissed her first, and to his delight, Robyn kissed him back.

"Now you can have the flowers," he told her with a smile.

"It was worth the wait," she assured him as he held up the wine while explaining his lack of forethought.

"As it turns out, I'm making spaghetti and meatballs, so merlot is perfect," she said as she led him to the kitchen.

"Speaking of perfect, you look...perfect," Trey let her know.

Robyn laughed happily and thanked him for the compliment.

She was wearing a sleeveless, round-neck, crop top that was a very pale yellow in color; so pale it may have been off-white, but that's not what Trey was looking at. What he was trying not to look at was the way it hugged her amazing figure, especially around two soft, large globes on her chest. She was wearing a high-waisted pencil skirt with it, so there was only the slightest little gap between the two items of clothing, but just that tiny strip of her body told him she was anything but 'a tub'.

Robyn knew she could still wear something this revealing, but she agonized over doing it as she thought about her age; an age at which women didn't often wear such things. But then, most women her age weren't falling for men who were a decade or more their junior. She, however, was, and in the end, she felt it was worth the risk.

Her body wasn't as hard as it had once been, and she was the only one who knew the extra five pounds were there, so she made the decision to give it a whirl. Based on Trey's reaction, she was very happy that she had.

Still, it kind of felt 'shameless', and that caused Robyn to say, "It's a little much, huh?"

Before Trey could answer, she looked down at herself then said, "Or maybe a little too...little."

That gave Trey the ability to look at her again, and this time he looked at all of her from the form-fitting knit top to the three-inch heels she was wearing.

"No. I'm sticking with perfect," Trey told her with a smile that made her tummy do a flip flop.

Again, Robyn felt a little self conscious and said, "I think after, you know, the kiss...and our texts, I just wanted to try and make you think I was younger than I am, and..."

Trey moved closer to her then put a finger over her glossy lips and said, "Shhh. You don't need to look younger, because you look amazing, Robyn."

"For my age, right?" she said, unwilling to let it go.

Trey moved even closer then put his arms around her waist and said, "I don't give a dam...a rip...about your age."

Robyn laughed at his self-correction, but loved that he cared enough not to swear in front of her.

"Even if it's..."

She then remembered that he'd seen her driver's license and stopped talking.

"I forgot. You know how old I am, don't you?" she said very quietly.

"I may have peeked," a smiling Trey Donovan told her.

"And yet you're still here," she said, as she put her arms around his neck.

Even in heels, Trey was still two inches taller than her, and that was just one more thing she loved about him. And so far, she loved pretty much everything about the handsome, young Navy flyboy she was wishing would kiss her again.

Evidently, her mind was read or perhaps Trey just wanted the same thing, because he slowly leaned in then once again, he softly kissed her.

"I am still here, and I'm thinking I'd like to be here as often as you can stand to have me," he told her.

Robyn smiled at him then told him she could probably stand to have him there a lot.

"I might even like having you hang out at my place," he told her as though that was kind of iffy.

"Oh. Well, that's very magnanimous of you," Robyn said as she pulled back a little and opened her eyes wide as though she were serious.

"You're like a drug," Trey told her. "Did you know that?"

"That's funny. I was thinking that about you."

"Yeah? A good drug or a bad one?"

"Um...how about a...dangerous one?" Robyn offered as she tried not to smile.

"Well, like any good drug dealer, I let you have a sample for free with the hope that you'd come back for more."

"I see," Robyn replied.

"Yeah. But from here on out nothing is free."

"Oh. That sounds...serious. So...how do I go about paying for more?"

"Does that mean you want more?" Trey asked very seriously, keeping the game going.

"I'm kind of already hooked, and I don't want to go into withdrawals, so...yes. I think I'd like some more."

"In that case, you and I may have to um...spend some more time together."

Robyn didn't say anything, she just tilted her head a little in expectation of an explanation.

"Yeah. You might need to spend some...quality time with me. Later on."

"I see," she said as though this was very serious. "And if I do that, then I can have some more of my favorite new drug?"

"As much as you like," Trey told her very quietly as their eyes locked and danced.

"I...I should warn you that I have a very big appetite for such things."

"Oh. Then perhaps I should talk to my...distributor...and make sure I have enough on hand."

Robyn leaned in then kissed him for 2-3 seconds before pulling away and tossing her dark, shoulder-length hair as she did.

"You should definitely do that. And if I were you, I'd order a little extra. Just in case."

Trey couldn't see her smiling this time, either, and she couldn't see him looking at her tight little waist...or the rest of her, for that matter.

"I'll do that," he said before she ended their back and forth by asking if he wanted her to sprinkle garlic salt on the French bread she was about to butter.

"As long as we both have some, sure," he told her.

Trey had had spaghetti and meatballs many times before, but he'd never tasted anything quite like her sauce or the flavor of the meat.

"This is SO good!" he told her after the first bite. "What's in this?"

"Minced garlic and Parmesan cheese?" she said as though it were a question. "Oh. And black pepper with some dried parsley and a touch of oregano."

Trey was eating another bite and couldn't reply. But his 'Mmmmm' said it all.

It had been so long since Robyn had really cooked for anyone, and even longer since she'd felt like this about any man. Her body ached to be loved, and as much as she yearned to be with him, that other part of her brain kept warning her that he was too young. That he'd love her and leave her and worst of all, she'd be left with a broken heart and feeling like a fool.

And yet after a second glass of wine and a full two hours of conversation that danced around the area of intimacy a time or two, she melted into his arms when he set her wine glass down and kissed her. It began as another soft, slow kiss, but the moment she offered him the tip of her tongue, it became deeper and more passionate.

Within seconds, the passion spilled over from lips to hands that began caressing and squeezing, causing Robyn to moan softly as Trey's hand cupped her breast and gently kneaded it. She, in turn, reached for him, and was rewarded with a very large bulge that responded to her touch even through the material holding it at bay.

"I need a fix in the worst possible way," Robyn told him when she knew she couldn't hold out another second.

"I have plenty of what you need," Trey promised her before both of them laughed and hugged and kissed some more.

Robyn stood up then took her young lover's hand and said, "I know a very private place where we can make this...transaction happen."

"Oh. Well...lead on!" Trey told her as she took him to her bedroom where she shut the door behind them.

"I knew sex was nice, but this was incredible," Robyn told him an hour or so later as she snuggled up close to his hard, young, naked body which she found equally incredible.

"I thought you said it had been a long time since you made love," Trey said.