Touch me?
Take me?
Kill me?
I didn’t want to find out.
So I didn’t sleep.
Not a single goddamn second.
At some point, my body gave up.
I didn’t mean to sleep, just meant to rest my eyes. But the next thing I knew, I was floating, my head against soft moss, the night sounds quieted to a hum. And he was there.
Brute.
But not as he was in the cave.
In the dream, he was clean. His hair, still long, fell loose like silk down his bare chest. His eyes glowed in the dark, and he moved toward me slowly, reverently, like I was some sacred offering he couldn’t wait to desecrate.
He didn’t tie me up this time.
He knelt between my thighs and kissed the inside of my knees. Licked the sweat from my belly. His fingers brushed over my nipples and made me gasp. Gasp loud enough I startled myself awake.
My wrists ached.
My chest rose and fell in quick, shallow bursts.
And my thighs…
Wet.
I was fucking soaked.
I lay there, horrified and humiliated, pressing my legs together to stifle the heat still burning between them. I turned my head. He was still sleeping, unmoving, his body bathed in early morning shadows.
But even asleep, he looked like heknew.
And I hated the part of me that hoped he did.
While he left for the day, I stayed in the cool cave. I felt safer than out in the open in an African jungle. Every time I stepped out past his camp, I saw a reason to stay inside, like a giant fluorescent bug or weird, scary reptile.
When the savage returned, he escorted me outside to relieve myself. I was starting to think he had some weird fetish of listening to me pee, when a poisonous-looking snake slithered right over my polished red toenails. I screamed bloody murder. Brute caught it with his bare hands, conked its head with a rock.
I thanked him profusely. Maybe the big guy just knew how dangerous the jungle was.
When we made it back to the cave, he pulled on the ropes on my wrists and untied them again. Maybe he was convinced I wouldn’t leave the cave without him. He skinned the snake and roasted it over the fire. When he offered it, I felt it’d be rude of me to refuse. Snake tasted divine, like a skinny chicken from what I could remember from the days before I was vegan.
I could scarcely believe I was eating meat, but what choice did I have?
After that, Brute became a steady guy. Every day he’d hunt, come back, and cook over the fire, feed me some roasted monkey or something. He knew how to bring home the bacon and then some. He’d always bring a pot of water for us to drink and sometimes to bathe in. He even brought me exotic flowers and small gifts like rocks and bones.
Days blurred. I didn’t know if it was Tuesday or Thursday, or if it even mattered anymore. I was sunburned in weird places and couldn’t remember how long it had been since I’d heard another voice, other than my own. My phone was gone. My sense of time, gone. Some mornings I woke up wondering if I was dreaming all of this. If Brute was a figment of my own pathetic brain trying to give me what Chris never would.
I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face once darkness fell and the fire went out. Every night he’d stroke his massive erection and then let me cuddle next to him for warmth, for safety.
With the alternative being a tiger eating me or fighting with Chris, who never wanted to commit, I was okay. I was alive. And Brute was committed.
