Fearless

by Maren Smith

  The pre-dawn sky was little more than a blanket of grey, dotted only by the brightest stars and the thinnest line of golden amber along the tree-studded horizon when Noah gave up on sleep. Pulling his jeans on, he grabbed his cellphone and padded barefoot out on his front porch. Sneaking around the side of the house to make sure her windows weren’t open, he followed the screened-in veranda all the way around, putting the entirety of his house between her and this conversation.

  “Hello,” Garreth said around a mouthful of something. The upbeat jingle of a McDonald’s commercial was singing in the background before it cut abruptly to a much more obnoxious car commercial.

  “Get you in your tucker?” Noah asked.

  “Just sat down to dinner,” his American friend confirmed, “but that’s all right. Wish you could be here. Hadlee makes a mean spaghetti sauce. Homemade meatballs, too. I’m going to have to step up my exercise routine or I won’t be able to fit in my leathers before the year is out. What’s up? How’s she doing?”

  “Sleeping still,” Noah deflected, making the effort to sound far more cheerful than he felt.

  “That’s good. She barely slept the whole time she was here. The last couple days or so, I don’t think she slept at all.”

  “I could tell. If you’ve got a moment, though, I’ve got some questions.”

  “Shoot,” Garreth said between bites.

  “This bloke she ran away from…”

  “Ethen.”

  “Right. This bloke, is he the same fellow what was harassing your lady the night I attended your club?”

  “Black Light, yeah. He’s been banned now, thank God.”

  “She was his submissive too?”

  “He had four at one time. He’d make them come to the club naked, except for the halters they wore and these black leather animal masks. Called them his ‘Menagerie.’ Each was a different creature.” Garreth wasn’t eating any more, and the sound of a tv commercial in the background grew abruptly fainter as, presumably, Garreth relocated himself to somewhere quieter to talk. Perhaps somewhere out of Hadlee’s earshot, although Noah only knew that because he would have done the same. “He had a pony, a puppy, and then Kitty.”

  Leaning against a porch post, Noah stared into the growing amber and pale pink of the distant horizon. “And Hadlee?”

  Garreth cleared his throat, but it wasn’t enough to hide the tight anger when he finally answered. “He called her his pig, and yes, we’re still working on that. The man’s a son of a bitch. I can almost guarantee, whatever you are imagining happened between her and Ethen, it’s not dark enough. Literally every inch of her body was a bruise or a welt the night we picked her up, damn near naked, in eighteen-degree weather. It’s a good thing he’s been banned. I don’t think I could stop myself from killing him if we ever met face-to-face again.”

  The only clear image Noah had of Ethen’s face was that moment he’d stepped in to stop the man who had grabbed Hadlee and shoved her into a wall. The more he thought about it, the more he seemed to remember the man harassing them here and there throughout that evening. At the time, he’d thought it little more than an annoyance. The scale of the abuse, however, was clearly greater and deeper than he’d known.

  “Did you ever take Kitty under your protection?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s why I brought her into my ho… wait a minute.” Noah heard the arch of incredulous eyebrows in Garreth’s voice as he said, “Do you mean as my submissive? No. Hell no. I would have thought that the last thing she’d either want or need.”

  After what he’d seen last night, every gut instinct Noah had was screaming the opposite. Or was that simply wishful thinking? He rubbed his eyes, scrubbing a restless hand down his face. His palm rasped across last night’s beard growth, seeming obscenely loud in the quiet of a morning only otherwise broken by the waking of local insects and the birds that would soon be hunting them.

  “All right,” he said, more for Garreth’s benefit than anything else. “In any case, she’s here. She’s doing well.” He paused a moment, but even before he finished his own inner debate on the wisdom of not keeping his next comment to himself, his mouth was open and moving. “How long has she been sick for, do you know?”

  “Sick?” Garreth didn’t sound so much startled as he did carefully neutral.

  “Yeah.” Noah decided to specify. “Could be motion sickness, I suppose, but she spent most of yesterday unable to hold anything down until tucker time. Thin as she is, I reckon it’s been going on at least a while.”

  Garreth was quiet for so long, Noah pulled his cellphone back far enough to check that they were still connected. “Jesus, you don’t think she’s pregnant, do you?”

  “Nah,” Noah said, with far more certainty than he currently felt. “Like I said, could be motion sickness. She had just got off a plane after more than a day’s travel, layovers included. Could be a summer-flu or stress, or any half a dozen other things. Give her a couple days to relax and no worries. She’ll be right, mate. Have a g’night, you and your lady love.”

  “Keep us updated,” Garreth replied, not at all sounding comforted.

  “You know me, blokey.” Noah let his tone grin, but all hint of it was gone when he ended the call.

  Watching the sun creep over the horizon, he thought for a long time on what he wanted to do, on what a responsible bloke would do, and longest of all, he thought on what he probably would do. Maybe it was a good thing Garreth really didn’t know him well. Oh, they were friends, the way two mates got to be after playing with the same submissive for a night, followed by months’ worth of affable conversation on the cello. But how well did one bloke really know another after that sort of subtle socialization?

  Maybe that was for the best. Because if Garreth had any inkling the plans now taking root in the back of Noah’s head, he had a feeling his American friend would be on the first plane to Oz and he’d be coming to punch Noah square in the nose.

  Before this day was out, Noah suspected he might actually earn every cartilage-crunching ounce of force behind that up-and-coming blow.

  Australia made its third attempt on Kitty’s life before she even had a chance to get out of bed. The morning sun was high, shining squarely in through the crack in her bedroom curtains and across her closed eyelids. Her hands, still clutching the strap she’d stolen from the closet last night were cramped from the grip she’d held on it all night long. But as the brightness across her eyelids began to pry her from her sleep, and the ache in her knuckles filtered in beneath the retreating hazy of her dreams, it was that seductive scent of old leather as she breathed in and started to stretch that, for the first time in months, lent her comfort. She’d always loved the smell of leather.

  She rolled sleepily onto her back and at last opened her eyes. She felt peaceful. Relaxed. Right up until her blinking, slow-to-focus eyes fixed on the large black thing crawling slowly across the ceiling directly above her. It had eight legs. Widening, her eyes locked on it. A spider! The biggest spider she had ever seen!

  Whether it was by accident or by evil fucking design, the spider lost its grip. Kitty didn’t even have time to sit up before it landed with a plop directly on her chest.

  Kitty exploded out of bed, throwing spider, blankets, strap and pillows everywhere. She first fell on the floor and then crab-scrambled to get as much distance from her and the wildly fleeing spider as she could. She lost sight of it under the bed. She didn’t care. She bolted from the room. The bathroom was open. So was Noah’s door. Not seeing or hearing any hint of him, she ducked through the open door and slammed it shut behind her.

  Hands pressed over the battering ram that her heart had become, she backed all the way to the tub. Her eyes cast nervous glances all over the room, but nothing in here was big, black or crawling. Everything was brightly lit. Morning sunshine poured in through the high and narrow window above the toilet. Everything was clean and peaceful, and slightly dated. Like her grandmother’s house, back when G-ma had been
alive. Blue stripes on white floral wallpaper reminded her strongly of the 1950s. So did the matching peach-pink tub, toilet, and sink.

  But, at least there were no spiders.

  There were also no clothes. There was, however, a tan bath towel and, confronted with the choice of wrapping that around her and going back to her now uninhabitable, arachnid-infested bedroom, she opted for the towel.

  Her heart was still pounding harder than normal and her palms were sweating. She rubbed them against her towel as she cautiously ventured out again. She listened, but everything in the house was silence. Outside of it, however, she could make out the muffled strains of Dire Straits So Far Away playing on a distant radio, the beats of which were steadily punctuated by an unusual popping sound.

  Noah’s bedroom door was a-jar. What must he have thought when he got up this morning to find her bedroom door standing open? Hopefully she’d been covered enough that he hadn’t known she’d been naked. For the life of her, she could not remember what parts of her might have been exposed or not before the spider landed on her chest.

  Kitty shuddered, her whole body undulating with revulsion. Backing from both bedrooms, she retreated down the hall, only to spy something that paused her at the kitchen’s side entrance. The coffee maker was sitting on the counter. Beside it, was a grinder with a serving of fresh coffee beans in it, and a carafe filled with water but not yet emptied into the dispensary. Cream, sugar, and two cups had been placed beside the coffee maker. It was as if Noah had started the process, only to become distracted and walk away.

  Should she finish it? Back in her other life, it was Pony who made the morning coffee. Kitty had only ever done it twice, both times only because Pony had been so sick she couldn’t stand and Ethen had restricted her to her room so she wouldn’t infect the rest of them.

  Outside, both the music and the popping continued unabated. Kitty looked to the coffee maker again. Most people didn’t get mad if house guests helped out a little here or there, and really, she wasn’t a house guest so much as a roommate. Who knew how long she’d be here? She ought to help whenever and wherever she could.

  Except he hadn’t asked her to.

  In fact, last night he’d told her not to and she’d done it anyway. Was he upset that she’d disobeyed? Nothing in the kitchen let her know either way.

  Ethen would have been upset. Well… Ethen would have been upset by the dirty dishes too, but he would have been far more upset at her for disobeying a direct order.

  Noah wasn’t Ethen. Something that could not have been more clearly contrasted simply by the fact that she had been awakened by a spider instead of by him, grabbing a fistful of her hair and dragging her on her knees to the kitchen, scolding and whipping her every step of the way to make sure his reprimand struck home.

  He hadn’t asked her to do anything. She should keep her hands to herself and stay out of his kitchen.

  But the coffee was only half made, and something about that stuck like a thorn inside her far deeper than all the reasons she could think of not to tiptoe up to the coffeemaker, pour the water into it, grind the beans and start the machine brewing. After all, if he was mad about something she did, he would say something, wouldn’t he? It was okay to help out where she could. It wasn’t like she was rearranging his furniture. All she’d done was wash a few dishes and finish what he’d started with the coffee. No big deal.

  She backed away from the coffeemaker once she’d got it started, rubbing her sweating palms against her towel-wrapped stomach, feeling both nervous and yet… helpful. Which was more than she had felt with Hadlee or Garreth. Ashamed as she was of that uncharitable thought, the truth remained no matter what she’d tried to do, one or both of them had stopped her. ‘Oh no, don’t worry about the dishes. I’ll get those later.’ ‘No, no. You’re our guest, not our maid. You don’t have to pick up after us.’ Hadlee was her friend. Garreth was her boyfriend and seemed perfectly nice in a lot of ways, but every day in their company made her feel more and more like an outsider. More and more useless.

  Well, she wasn’t useless now, was she?

  It was just coffee, she told herself and turned from the counter. Facing the stove and refrigerator now, she paused all over again when she saw the frying pan and spatula sitting on the forward right burner and the short stack of two plates, knives and forks stacked on the left. On the counter was a silver toaster, a loaf of bread, butter tin and tube that read, ‘Vegemite.’ There was also a bowl of eggs and package of thick bacon pieces that were more like slabs than the American-cut slices she was used to. And it was all sitting there. Set out. Waiting.

  For her to make breakfast? He hadn’t told her to make breakfast. There was no note, either. He could have set it all out while waiting for her to wake up or for himself to get done doing whatever he was doing…

  What was he doing?

  Hugging her towel, Kitty crept through the second kitchen archway, edging between the massive dining table and built-in china hutch, to peek out through the half-open drapes into the yard. She saw the radio first, sitting on the white-painted front porch rail, blaring its ‘80s music out into the yard where Noah was standing—no, not standing, dancing—step dancing, in form-fitting jeans, crocodile boots and worn tan hat, and a white t-shirt that fit him in a way that was at once loose and yet a second skin. She could see the ripple of muscle playing across his shoulders and back, bunching and flexing in his biceps as his arms moved to the beat, rising and falling, snapping out the rhythm with each of the whips he held, one in each hand. That was the source of the popping. Not one crack at a time, but two and three snaps to each fluid movement as he turned and stepped, and tapped his way through to the end of that Dire Straits song.

  When it was over, the music paused long enough for him to reset himself. Head slightly bowed, he rolled his muscular shoulders, shook the whips out like long snakes in the dust around his feet, and then AC/DC started up. Thunderstruck. His foot started tapping. He found the beat, and then he began all over again. Fluid, graceful, line-dancing motions that he so effortlessly filled with a whole new accompaniment of tempo-keeping cracks from his whips.

  She caught her breath, suddenly aware that her stomach was tightening and quivering right along with his punctuating music.

  Abruptly retreating from the window, Kitty stood for a moment at the table, hands clutching and tightening and adjusting at her towel, feeling at once hot and flustered and confused and scared, and then stupid because she didn’t know why. Two tiny steps forward could have carried her back to the window for a second peek, but she made herself turn away.

  The heavenly aroma of coffee drifted from the kitchen.

  She hugged herself, knowing she ought to get dressed, but also knowing there was no way she was going back into her bedroom. Not now, possibly not ever.

  She wandered as far as the living room, stopping again between the dark yawning maw of the hallway leading back to spider-infested doom — and the front door, with its multi-paneled glass windows that provided another peak at Noah out in the yard.

  A sparkle of gold drew her eye into the living room. There wasn’t a lot of furniture to stumble around or useless decorations, but there were a lot of display boxes hanging on the walls. In each one, attached to a green-felt backcloth, was a coiled brown-plaited whip with a golden plaque the size of a business card. Noah’s name was engraved on each one, with the division of whip cracking that he’d won—most of which read simply ‘Mens’ Champion’—and the year. There were fifteen of them total, and they spanned nine years’ worth of achievements.

  Scattered among them and along the fireplace mantel were pictures. Some of Noah at various ages; some of other people. Everybody had whips, and one was a newspaper clipping taken from the local paper in which the headline included both Noah’s name and the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where apparently he and others from the Australian Whipcrackers & Plaiters Association had put on the Opening Ceremony and, as the paper put it, opened the eyes of the world to t
he competitive sport of Australian whip cracking.

  She was looking over his framed collection of Guinness World Record titles when the front door suddenly opened and Noah walked in. How she had missed hearing the music shut off, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if he were trying to sneak up on her. The heavy tromp of his boots when he crossed the threshold, took one look at her in nothing but a towel, and abruptly stopped, was damn near deafening.

  To his credit, he didn’t ogle her. He kept his eyes locked with hers and any hint of discernible expression locked tight behind a mask she could not read. It was probably disapproval. It had to be disapproval, though there wasn’t so much as a single censuring note in the way he finally said, “Rule Number Five, love. Admittedly, I did only specify shoes, but in my defense, I assumed you would know to put your clobbers on and not to go nuddy about.”

  Both whips were in his hand, coiled and tied. But every experience she had in regards to whips had taught her how easy it was to make them ready for use again. It would have been so easy, especially with that thought running wild in her head, to be afraid of him. And yet, with his face void of expression, and his tone careful not to be too scolding, he made no move to come at her.

  He smelled like sunshine, too, her brain supplied.

  Like that should make a difference, she wanted the rest of her to argue, but in some weird way… it did make a difference. It was all she could smell, the sunshine, the dust and leather of his boots, the faint spice of his deodorant or soap, and the warm coffee spreading through the house. It made such a difference that, standing there, staring at him with those whips in his hand, her nipples budded into tight little peaks and a single thump of warm neglect pulsed between her tensing legs. She clutched her towel, tightening her thighs in an effort to kill the sensation, but like ripples on a still pond, that thump spread up through her belly, becoming a series of smaller pulses that she could feel steadily throbbing out through her sex and into her womb.

  He was waiting. Expecting her to say something, but her throat was too tight. She thrust out her arm, pointing toward her bedroom.