51
ATTICUS
“What role would you want to play?” I asked.
I was lying across the sofa, my head rested against the arm behind me. Thais was lying in the same position on the opposite end. I was massaging her foot. We had been talking for an hour about fighting and armies and war.
“I’d fight,” she answered straightaway. “I wouldn’t want to sit back while everyone else fought, or hide in a basement with the children and the elderly. I’d fight right alongside you.”
I stopped massaging her foot long enough to say, “No way in hell would I ever let that happen,” and then my hands went into motion again.
Thais’ mouth fell open with a little burst of air, followed by laughter. “That would be my decision, don’t you think?” she argued, lightheartedly. “Who are you to keep me from becoming a great warrior who dies in battle and is remembered throughout history like Achilles and Alexander the Great?” She waved her hands in a dramatic fashion. I could detect a rush of tamed laughter rising up in her throat but she contained it.
I laughed, however, tossing my head back once.
“That would be some feat.” I brought her foot up to my lips and kissed her toes.
Pretending to be offended by my comment, Thais pushed her foot toward me in retaliation.
“Oh, so you don’t think I could be a warrior?” she challenged. “I could fight just like you.” She pursed her lips, crossed her arms over her chest, and wrinkled her nose. “Just like being a fisherwoman—I could be and do anything that you can be and do, Atticus Hunt—that includes fighting in battle alongside men.”
I just smiled, proud, and in complete agreement with the iron feather on the sofa.
I kissed her toes again. “I know you could,” I said, and then set her foot down between my legs. “Believe me when I say that I know you could do anything you wanted. But as much as it turns me on to think of you as my shield maiden”—I leaned forward and kissed the top of her bent knee—“I would never want that for you, and quite frankly, I’d do whatever I had to, to stop you from trying—even if I had to duct tape you into a cocoon in a barn, or lock you away in storm shelter.”
She pressed her foot into the flesh of my inner thigh, and pinched my skin between her toes.
“Ouch!” I grabbed her leg and yanked her toward me; her neck slid away from the sofa arm as her body slid between my legs.
Thais cackled as her hands grasped the sofa cushions beneath her. “Let me go!”
I dug the tips of my fingers in her sides and tickled her until she was breathless and red in the face; her legs thrashed around on both sides of me.
“What are you gonna do about it?” I taunted, tickled her harder, knowing that if I didn’t stop soon she’d probably piss herself.
THAIS
Desperate to break free, I drew both of my feet back, knees toward my chest, and shot them forward, spearing Atticus in the midsection. In a bizarre flurry of muscled, hairy legs and big feet, he tumbled sideways over the sofa and landed on the floor with a thu-thump! “Oomph!” he said, and I heard him laugh. “Where’d that come from?”
I rolled off the sofa onto my hands and knees on the floor and pounced on him. Straddling his waist, I tried to return the cruel treatment and dug the tips of my fingers into his sides. Unsuccessfully.
“Ugh! You have to be ticklish!” Frustration mixed with laughter rose up in my voice.
But Atticus just looked up at me, grinning so broadly it made me want to smack him.
Finally, I gave up, drew my arms up and crossed them over my stomach. I felt my hair wild around my face, the springy waves frizzed; a few strands rose and fell in front of my nose, stirred by my breath.
“One of these days,” I warned, “I’ll find something to use against you.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” He beamed with confidence.
I nodded once, as if to underline my own confidence. “Yes, I will,” I said, rounding my chin. “And if all else fails, I’ll just shoot you.”
Atticus’ eyes widened. His mouth fell open. He laughed under his breath.
“Wow, from tickling to shooting—that’s quite a stretch. A bit harsh, don’t you think?” His hands were fitted on my hips.
“Maybe,” I said with the casual shrug of my shoulders. “But sometimes harsh things must be done.”
In two seconds, and a whirlwind, I found myself beneath Atticus, him straddling my waist; his hands pinned my wrists against the floor.
He smiled cunningly down at me.
I smiled sweetly back up at him.
“Well then why don’t you shoot me now?” he invited. “If you’re so confident—and so sure you could bring yourself to do it—shoot me now.” He leaned in once and brushed his lips across mine.
“Maybe I will.” I grinned.
“Then do it.” He released my right hand. “If you can reach my gun on the floor by the sofa, then by all means.”
“But I don’t need your gun,” I sassed.
“Really?”
I nodded my head against the floor in response.
“Well, I’m waiting,” he mocked. “Shoot me.”
I manipulated one corner of my bottom lip tensely between my teeth, trying to contain a smile.
He released my other hand, and pressed his palms flat against the floor beside my shoulders. Leaning over, he peered into my face, waiting, taunting me.
I raised my right hand between us, folded my three bottom fingers toward my palm, pointed my index finger straight out, my thumb straight up, then pointed the ‘barrel’ in the center of Atticus’ chest. I cocked my thumb and said in a nasally, high-pitched voice, “Pew! Pew!”
The grin vanished from Atticus’ face, promptly replaced by a frozen, unemotional stare. He just looked at me for a moment, blinking—(I never stopped smiling)—and then he threw his head back and roared with laughter. He fell off of me and onto the floor, and he laughed until there were tears in his eyes.
I sat upright next to him, laughing with him until there were tears in my eyes.
After the laughter faded, I laid down beside him; we stared up at the ceiling together. For a long time neither of us spoke.
“Atticus?” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Can you…” I broke off, too bashful to say it.
“Tell me,” he encouraged. “Can I what?”
My face flushing with heat, I buried my head between his armpit and his chest so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes. “Well…I wanted you to do that thing you did last night.” His hands squeezed my bottom more firmly.
“What did I do?”
“You know…”
“Well, I did a few things to you last night,” he said, kissing my head. “Which is it?” I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to, to know that he was grinning.
My cheeks were on fire; my lips were pressed into a hard line. I hated it that I was so embarrassed about these things!
“Of course I’ll do it. But are you sure there’s time? Jeffrey might surprise us and come back unexpectedly.”
“I think there’s time,” I answered, hoping that was true.
Atticus got up from the floor and crouched in front of me, fitting his fingers behind the elastic of my panties, and he slid them off.
“Is this what you were talking about?” he said as he spread me apart with his fingers.
Um…yes… He dipped his head between my legs, moving the tip of his tongue over me. I gasped sharply, but still could not answer out loud. Oh yes, Atticus…that’s it.
“Or was it this?” he said, and I felt two of his fingers enter me.
I moaned and whimpered and tensed and Oh dear God…
Then Atticus said, “Or was it both at the same time like this?” His tongue caressed me while he moved two fingers in and out of me.
What happened to the time? One moment I was experiencing euphoria, and the next, I was staring at the ceiling again, wondering how it could’ve been over so quickly.
“Atticus?” I said a few minutes later when I could speak.
“Hmm?” He lay with one arm propped behind his head, the other laid across his chest.
“Do you remember Petra?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I remember her.”
I pictured Petra’s beautiful face, her long, blonde hair and kind blue eyes. I thought back to those days I spent with her locked in that room in Lexington City, seeing the scenes in my mind as if they’d happened only yesterday.
“What about her?” he asked.
“Well,” I began, taking my time, “she was having a lot of sex with that soldier before…well, before he was killed that night.”
Atticus’ head tilted to the side; he looked right at me. But I kept my eyes on the ceiling—what I was about to propose made my insides rock-hard and my mouth dry.
“Yeah?” he asked, giving me a nudge.
“He did something to her,” I said, “and…well, it sounded like it hurt really bad, but she seemed to like it a lot, too.”
“Well, what was it?” he asked, suspiciously.
I flushed. “He…well, he took her in the…other place.”
He repositioned his back against the hard floor, but I got the feeling it wasn’t the floor making him uncomfortable.
“Yeah, well,” he said, “it does hurt like hell.”
I edged my way closer and laid my head on his arm.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he told me straightaway.
“I was just curious.”
“Well, then believe me when I tell you it’s painful and you won’t like it. At all. No matter how much Petra liked it. Or pretended to.”
“But how do you know I won’t like it?” I raised my head from his arm and propped my face on my knuckles.
“I just told you,” he countered, looking at me intensely. “It hurts like hell.”
“But how do you know how it feels?”
“Because I’ve done it.”
My face screwed up; my eyebrows crinkled and stiffened. “You’ve done it?” I asked, shocked.
“What—no!” he snapped, realizing. He sat bolt-upright on the floor. “God no! I just mean that I’ve done it to a couple girls, and they didn’t seem to—just, just no.”
I laughed under my breath.
“This won’t end like the blowjob, Thais. You keep messing with me,” he warned, “and I will tickle you until you piss yourself.”
He laid back down. “Did you really want to try that, knowing that it’s painful?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Well, I just wondered if men prefer that.”
“You mean you wondered if that’s what I prefer.”
I shrugged. He’d guessed it spot-on.
“No,” he told me. “I think most men are perfectly happy with old-fashioned sex—some feel lucky to get it at all.” He paused. “But that girl, Petra, she was…well, she was different from you.”
“In what way?”
“In every way,” he said promptly. “We’ve talked about this before—Look, what Private Brock did to her was degrading.”
I just looked at him, waiting for him to explain.
He sighed. I could tell that everything about this conversation made him uncomfortable.
“He never would’ve loved her,” he explained, “or treated her with any kind of respect. He used her because he knew she would’ve done anything because of the situation she was in.”
“So then sex back there is degrading?” I asked.
He shifted uncomfortably again. “No. Just what he did to her.”
I stared off at the wall, picturing Petra again, remembering how quickly she changed from a kind, motherly young woman, to a dangerous one ready to jab a pencil in my throat.
“I feel bad for her,” I said. “Do you think someone like Petra, who has fallen so far, can ever turn their life around? Can anyone turn back anymore?”
ATTICUS
I swallowed, recalling how far I had fallen.
“I hope so,” I answered, thinking of Evelyn.
Sometimes I wondered if because I’d left, because I was no longer there for Evelyn the way she was for me, if she lost herself. And I thought of Peter. Did he become a cruel and heartless piece of shit like the rest of the men in Lexington City?
“I hope so…” I repeated.
Thais laid her head back down on my chest; her long hair warmed me like a blanket in an already stifling day, but I didn’t care.
THAIS
I thought more about Petra, and about all the girls who were taken to the city with me; I remembered each of their nameless faces. I hope they’re still alive, I thought. I hoped with all my heart they could find someone special like I had, who could get them out of that terrible place. Someone who would love them and protect them and—Something occurred then, and I felt ashamed that I’d never thought of it before: why women needed someone to love and protect them at all. Why did I naturally think that way? Because women have been oppressed and demoralized and viewed the subordinates of men since humans crawled their way out of the primordial sludge.
Something needed to change—no, everything needed to change. I didn’t want to live in a world like that. Why did men still rule the world, anyway? What gave them the right to treat women like meat and slaves and baby factories? It angered me the more I thought about it—it infuriated me.
I turned to Atticus.
“I would like to learn how to defend myself,” I said.
He glanced over.
“My father taught my sister and me some things,” I went on. “I know some defensive moves—not that they’ve done me any good so far, being captured and all—but I would like to know how to use a weapon. I can shoot and I know how to load a gun and even to clean one, but it might be better to learn to use a knife, seeing as how ammunition is so rare.”
“Your father never taught you to use a knife?” Atticus asked.
I shook my head.
“Not really.”
ATTICUS
I thought on it a moment, having no reservations about teaching her to properly defend herself. I did know how to fight with a knife. And a gun. And my fists. And most important, my head. But I knew other ways, too, and one in particular I thought might be best suited to Thais.
“I’ll teach you how to use a knife properly, but I’d also like to teach you how to use a staff.”
She appeared eager.
“A knife,” I went on, “is too close for comfort—the more distance you can put between you and your enemy, the better.”
“You know how to fight with a staff?” she asked, impressed.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “That was mine and my brother’s thing when we were kids. We used to play with toy light sabers and swords and things like that—thought we were badass—but staff-fighting was our thing. I was thirteen when I made my first one. It was a total failure: too heavy on one end and I carved the hell out of the other end trying to add my warrior name”—I laughed—“but I was still proud of that staff, thought it was awesome, and after that first one, I was obsessed with making staffs. Instead of playing video games when I got home from school, I’d go straight to my room and start carving—should’ve seen the look on my mother’s face when she saw the shavings all over the carpet”—my shoulders bounced with light laughter—“But in no time, Eben and I were fighting with them in the backyard, in the woods behind our house, in the field beside our school. We got really good at it. Snagged my first girlfriend because of those staffs.” I smiled impishly over at Thais, and she grinned back.
“The kids in the neighborhood,” I went on, “would come to watch us after school and on the weekends, and I’d fight my brother ‘to the death’. And then other kids got into it, and then we were holding tournaments—it was so great being a kid.” I stopped, sensed my face was shadowed by nostalgia.
“You were the champion, weren’t you?” Thais asked, beaming.
“No—that title went to my brother,” I admitted. “I beat him a few times, but Eben kicked everybody’s asses, including mine.” I smiled, remembering.
“You must have been very proud of your brother,” she said.
“Oh, I was,” I answered right away. “But Eben”—I sighed, and then skipped to the end of the conversation—“well, he got The Fever and died.”
Washing the memory from my mind, I forced a smile and raised myself on one side to lay like Thais, facing her.
After a moment, Thais, grinning, asked, “So, umm, what was your ‘warrior name’?”
A flush crept up on my face—I had hoped she’d forgotten about that minor, embarrassing detail.
“I was young,” I said in my defense.
“Yeah, so what was it?” she toyed with me.
Finally, with resignation, I said, “In the neighborhood, I was known as…”—I paused, glanced at the floor—“…’The Dangerous Pit Viper’.” My head got fiery hot.
Thais kept a semi-straight face for less than two full seconds, and then a great surge of air burst through her lips—she laughed and laughed and laughed.
“I’m so sorry!” she said, still laughing, still spitting air through the breaks in her fingers.
I reached out and grabbed her, kissed the side of her neck.
“Hopefully Jeffrey will at least find some sandpaper,” I said. “Esra just might have some. I want to make you a worthy staff, Thais Fenwick, future badass when I get done with her, but who will only fight in defense of herself and never in battle because, hell no.” I kissed her neck again, squeezed her tighter.
“Don’t start with that,” she warned playfully, laying her head against my chest. “I hope I never have to,” she said, “but if there ever comes a time when I need to defend you, don’t think for a second that I won’t do everything in my power, even at the expense of my own life.”
“It’ll never come to that,” I said, and then kissed the back of her head.
And please never say those words to me again: at the expense of your own life. Never say that to me again…
“Besides,” Thais taunted, “I imagine ‘The Dangerous Pit Viper’ might need help from time to time, if not for anything other than to keep the bullies off his back because of his cheesy nickname.”
I let her have that one.