Only he had been capable of making her feel safe enough to suspend the incessant protective activity of her brain, and allow herself to feel. Why couldn’t she be more authentic, more in-the-moment? More like everybody else? Only her husband had understood. She’d always been made to feel a little guilty because she could do that. That’s how she could get to this point, able to react and think about her reaction at the same time.

She lived too much in her head, she thought. I smile.” If you just substituted scream for smile, it was dead on. She couldn’t help thinking of a line from an old British movie with Peter O’Toole: “I stand outside myself, watching myself watching myself. He needed to see them that’s what his sort fed on. In her current state of mind, that is, the state of mind she’d been in up until a few moments ago, the most natural thing would be for her to shut down, turn inward, feel nothing. It was against all her, for lack of a better word, instincts. She was his, and he would do what he liked with her. The assault on her rear was about pure domination. The first attack had been the introduction, devilish and, in its own way, subtle.

It was a purely physical response anyway. The next challenge presented itself almost immediately. She’d have to really work to prove him right. He only had an inkling right now, that she was something special. They were palpable, if you knew how to face facts.

Maybe even a level on which they could connect. She’d be doing the world a favor, and, unlike usual, not even charging for it.Īnd she knew, knew with a completely non-rational certainty, knew the moment she felt him inside her, that she was one of the few people who might possibly be able to do this. Because she could tell right away, this guy really needed to lose. Well, that didn’t matter, did it? It wasn’t about her life really, was it? It was about winning and not letting the other guy win. She just needed to keep her head when appropriate, appear to lose it when appropriate, and find out what she could about him.

But there was no time for self-recrimination now. But she’d let the security go lax after what happened, especially here, at her solitary, bayside getaway. And while there’d been something worth protecting, they had taken great care to do so. She’d always known their line of work was dangerous. She couldn’t think about that now either.

Break Her by B.G. Harlen