Mothers and Daughters Pt. 03

Nate wanted to tell her she was never in any real danger, but he knew reasoning wasn't going to work. Briana was having an emotional collapse, and he had to deal with her on that level. He'd seen others experience it in combat, and no amount of logic snaps you out of it.

Nate sat down beside her, and started putting his arm around her. She pushed back, but he easily overpowered Briana, and hugged her firmly. She let out a wail so loud Nate was worried the apartment neighbors would hear, but he didn't let go. He continued hugging her, and her wails faded into inconsolable sobbing. "I ... was ... so ... scared!" she cried between sobbing breaths.

"I know," Nate whispered, and he started rocking her gently in his arms. She allowed it at first, and then matched his motion, rocking together. She continued crying a long time.

"He was going to ... with that ...," she couldn't finish her sentence, referring to the massive black dildo. When her crying melted to sniffles, Briana moaned "you must think I am such an idiot."

"No," whispered Nate releasing his hug on her so they could look eye to eye. Her red eyes were swollen, and her face was awash with tears. "Why do you even say that?"

She looked into his eyes. "You took on three guys with knives, and it wasn't even close. And then," she gestured toward the stairs, "you and Pavlina get it on tonight like ... I don't know ... like nothing happened, and here I am – a sniveling coward shaking like a baby."

"Briana, you can't look at it ..."

"The truth is," Briana interrupted, "nothing bad actually happened to me. Here I am, a total wreck after nothing happened." She pursed her lips and blew out a raspberry, and rolled her eyes at herself.

"Briana," Nate looked into her eyes, "you had every reason to feel terrified. Those men were dangerous, and if things had gone differently ..." he let the sentence finish itself. He paused. "You are having a valid emotional response right now," Nate explained to her. "I've seen it in combat. I've seen soldiers crumple like wet rags, not because of what happened to them, but what might have happened to them."

He paused for a moment. "Do you want to know the scariest thing that ever happened to me?"

"What?" she asked, half curious and half expecting being treated like a simpleton.

"When I was a stupid teenager, I had this girlfriend who lived out on a farm. One day I got lost on my way to see her, and I was blazing down this back dirt road – going way too fast. I could see this intersection up ahead, and it had a stop sign, but I could tell the stop sign was facing the cross road, it wasn't my stop sign. Anyway, as I got closer to the intersection, my road made a hard bend to the left. I hadn't seen the bend before because of the tall grass alongside the road. I nearly lost control just on that turn, but I managed to stay on the road, and that's when I realized the stop sign was for me. There was no way – absolutely no way – I could stop in time – I was doing like sixty miles an hour on this old dirt road, so I hit the gas hard and crossed a really wide paved road with four lanes and paved shoulders. It turns out I crossed a major highway, and just after I reached the dirt road on the other side, I looked in my rear view mirror, and I watched two 18-wheeler trucks pass each other in opposite directions at the exact spot where I had just crossed only half a second earlier." Nate paused for a moment. "I stopped the car, and I started to shake like a leaf in a tornado. Nothing happened," Nate explained, "but in the moment after I crossed that road, I realized how amazingly close I came to dying. I got out of the car and barfed in the tall grass."

Nate paused for a moment. "It's not about to what happened. What scares the shit out of you is what might have happened. It is okay to be emotional about that."

"That's really the scariest thing that ever happened to you?"

"Yes," Nate lied.

"Pavlina's not scared," Briana snapped. "She seems happy and normal. And look at you," Briana opened her palm toward Nate. "You look like you just ate a turkey sandwich." Nate wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean.

"We each deal with stress in different ways," Nate explained. "Trust me when I tell you, this incident will change Pavlina, even if she does not show it tonight or admit it. As for me," Nate continued, "you know what I used to do for a living. I knew we were never in grave danger."

"So, what do I do?" Briana asked.

"Let it out," Nate assured her. "Don't hold it in. Cry if you need to. If you need to scream, scream into a pillow to muffle the noise for the neighbors. But for God's sake, don't hold it in. I've seen people do that, and it eats them up on the inside until there's nothing left."

"I want to hit someone!" Briana croaked in a low, menacing voice.

Nate stood up, left the room, and went to the hallway closet. To Briana's surprise, he returned with a pair of boxing gloves. "Put your hands out," Nate said. Briana waved Nate off in embarrassed dismissal. "No, really," Nate assured her, "this will help. I promise." She held her hands out, and Nate tied the gloves on. "Stand up here," he said, moving to the middle of the open floor. Briana was still wearing her yellow dress, but had taken Nate's jacket off.

Nate stood across from her. "Hit me here," he said, tapping his left shoulder. She hesitantly moved forward, and barely touched him. "Good," Nate encouraged. "Now harder." Briana put a little muscle into it, but it still felt more like a tap. "Again, but harder," Nate ordered, and this time she stepped into it, and delivered what Nate might consider a pre-warm-up light jab. "Come on," Nate now egged her, "there is nothing you can do to hurt me, so just let it go."

With that, Briana took a hard jab at his shoulder, and actually forced Nate to rotate his shoulders a degree or two. "Harder," Nate yelled. She took another shot, but Nate was bracing for it, and it barely affected him.

Nate switched to German. "Hit me!" he barked in German. Something stirred in Briana's primordial region of her brain. The German command reminded her of the incident at the stairs, and this time Briana turned off all the inhibitions, took one step back, and then stepped into a solid cross to his left shoulder. The impact surprised Nate, and his shoulder involuntarily rotated at least 10 degrees. He recovered quickly, and yelled "hit me again!" in German. She stepped back and into him with another hard jab. "Again!" and again, and again, Briana was gritting her teeth. Her eyes were filled with fury, and she was breathing hard with purpose.

Nate then said in German, faking the Romanian accent as best as he could, "I am the man who will rape you, then I will kill you, and then I will defile your dead body – hit me!" Just then, Pavlina's head poked in the bedroom door – she was curious what the 'hit me' calls were all about. Nate's peripheral vision sensed the movement, and he looked over to see what it was.

Briana snapped. A part of her brain, called the Amygdala, took over. It is a small, dense region of neurons passed down through two million years of evolution that triggers the fight-or-flight response. Briana was no longer in Nate's bedroom. She was a terrified girl standing at the bottom of the courtyard stairs. But this time Briana wasn't a cowering victim. This time, her Amygdala was fighting back. Briana didn't see Nate standing in front of her. Instead her Amygdala saw the revolting man who wagged his tongue at her and threated her with his two foot weaponized penis. In a blaze of unholy fury, Briana stepped into her punch, rotating her hips then her shoulders, leveraging her entire body weight into a vicious right cross. It was just about that exact time when Nate was distracted by Pavlina's head movement coming through the doorframe, and in the split second it took for Nate to look across the room, he didn't realize Briana's right hand was aiming for the dead center of his face.

Nate's neck snapped backward. Unprepared for this assault, his eyes welled up with impact on his nose. Nate instantly realized what happened, and chastised himself for being distracted for even that brief instant. He raised his hands to his face to deflect a second blow, his eyes watering too much to see.

But Briana's Amygdala wasn't done. This time Briana backed up two long steps, and then took a giant stride forward, planting her left foot on the floor, and then Briana swung her right leg through an arc, connecting her right foot solidly into Nate's groin. This was not your garden variety solid kick in the nuts – Briana unleashed a 60 yard punt that hammered Nate's testicles flat.

With his hands to his face and his eyes still watering, Nate didn't see the kick coming, and he grunted hard upon impact. Nate reflexively bent forward in pain. Meanwhile Briana's Amygdala was spoiling for the final blow. Briana took two steps back again.

"BRIANA!" Pavlina screeched a high octave at the top of her lungs. "Briana stop!" she yelled again from the bedroom door.

The higher cognitive center of Briana's brain heard the dire urgency in Pavlina's screeching, and it wrestled with her Amygdala for control over Briana. For a full second, Briana stood motionless – frozen – as the two parts of her brain fought over what to do next. Her cognitive center prevailed, and Briana suddenly came to, only then realizing what she had done to Nate. "Oh my God!" she cried in disbelief, and brought her gloved hands to her mouth. "Nate," she moved forward and put her glove on his bent over shoulder, "I am so sorry."

"Well," Nate grunted, gritting his teeth in pain, "I did tell you to hit me."

"I ... I don't even know what happened," Briana faltered. "I just ... I guess I just lost control."

"But kicking me in the nuts – I am pretty sure that was your idea."

"Oh Nate!" Briana laughed and cried at the same time. "I really am sorry."

Nate shuffled to the bed and sat on the edge. Pavlina entered the room wearing her black tube top and skirt. She untied Briana's boxing gloves. Nate leaned on the bed, rocking gently forward and backward, trying to ease the pain.

Briana sat beside him, and said softly, "You're right about one thing. I do feel a lot better now."

"I am glad to be at your service," Nate gritted through his teeth.

Briana patted Nate gently on his thigh. "So, do you want another blowjob?" she taunted him with a sly grin.

"Oh God no!" Nate waved his hand. Somehow, Nate didn't find her humor very funny.

"Typical man," Pavlina chimed in German. "With his bare hands he eliminates three armed and dangerous men, but he does not stand a chance against a pretty woman in a cotton dress." Nate grimaced at just how true Pavlina's words were.

"I need a drink," Nate complained in English, standing up unsteadily.

"I think we all do," Briana agreed, and translated for Pavlina.

Nate hobbled down the stairs to the kitchen. The girls followed, and Nate opened a bottle of red wine, and poured out three glasses.

They sat in the living room and chatted about the night's events. "Should we call the police," Briana asked in English. Nate answered in German for Pavlina's benefit, saying no, the risk to the girls was too high. He explained how he had heard people's AeB status can be revoked simply because someone is questioned in connection to a major crime investigation. He also explained how unlikely it was that the Romanians would go to the police.

They discussed their AeB status, until Briana could stand it no longer, and had to ask. "Is that man dead?" Nate explained he might be, but he was not sure. They continued in German.

"Were they really going to rape us?" Pavlina asked this time.

Nate told them he didn't know, but inwardly he was certain their purpose was rape, and much worse. "They were vectoring in that direction," Nate offered his tactical analysis, "but maybe that was just a misdirection – a scare tactic, to frighten us," Nate said instead. "Remember, they asked for my wallet first". The three reconstructed the events of the attack, and considered the possibilities while Nate tried to steer them away from scaring themselves.

"I thought we were going to die when you made us go down those stairs," Briana later mused. "But you knew that was the right thing, didn't you?"

"I needed a place where I could stand between you and them," Nate nodded. "If we stayed in that courtyard, out in the open, it would have ended very badly," Nate assured them.

"How would it have ended?," Pavlina asked.

"As long as they could not get to you," Nate explained, "their only option was to go through me. I had the tactical advantage by being lower on the stairs. Even with the benefit of the knife, his whole front belly was exposed to me, but very little of my body was exposed to him. I could have waited all night, but he could not wait forever – eventually someone would walk along the street and call the police. So he had to come at me, and I used his circumstances against him." Nate paused. "But if we stayed up on the street level, they would have surrounded us. I would not have been able to keep between you and all of them, and eventually one of them would have put a knife to your throat, and then it would be over." The girls nodded as they appreciated Nate's description of the tactics.

"You have killed before," Pavlina assumed.

"I am not at liberty to discuss anything I may or may not have done," Nate answered neutrally.

"But you were in combat," Pavlina reasoned.

"I have been deployed to combat regions," Nate deflected. The conversation fell flat as Nate finished his glass of wine. Pavlina drained her stem glass, and asked for a refill. Nate brought the bottle from the kitchen, and emptied it equally into their three glasses.

The conversation shifted to the Italian restaurant and the meal they enjoyed. The girls remarked on the lovely balcony setting. Nate did not reveal to them that his choice of venue probably triggered the attack.

After two glasses of wine each, they were ready for bed. Nate cleaned up the glasses and turned off the lights downstairs while the girls climbed the stairs, and took turns using the bathroom. Nate was last out of the bathroom, and he entered the bedroom naked, as were the girls already under the duvet. He turned out the bedroom lights, and slipped in between the two girls. Briana slipped under the covers, gently lifted his cock up, and planted a soft kiss on his testicle sack. "Get better soon," she whispered.