She Won't Take it Quietly

Keisha was a lucky woman, really.

It was easy to take the good things for granted. She had her stable home, her stable job at the grocer's and her stable mind. And now, lately, she had gotten her hands on a stable boyfriend.

She watched as Mark stood up from the bench and put his hand to one of the bowling balls. The muscles in his hand flexed and tightened, and she could see the subtle bulging of his arms, but he hefted the ball smoothly, as if it weighed nothing and he had all the time in the world. It had been the same way the first time she had convinced him to let her take him to bed. He had lifted her in his arms and held her as she braced her feet on his sides and took him in. She had felt weightless, safe. Free. It was a fond memory.

Mark cast the bowling ball in one measured, graceful movement. The spin was a little heavy, and it narrowly missed the last two pins. Mark acknowledged his mistake with nothing more than a self-deprecating quirk of his eyebrows and sat easily back down.

The next member of the bowling club got up to make their throw, but neither Keisha nor Mark watched. Having taken his turn, he now had eyes only for her.

"I see what you mean about a double standard," he said. "But it's hard to fault people of the past for not having all the answers. It's hard to come up with the truth under pressure."

They discussed the life before the revolution, back when men had ruled the world purely through their ability to intimidate. "I guess so," said Keisha. "But it's not like they couldn't have known. Even back then, there were people who knew it's wrong to oppress women."

"Maybe," Mark came back. "But at the same time, there were women who had it wrong too. Back when the revolution was still happening, there were women reactionaries."

Now Keisha looked over her shoulders for prying ears. This kind of talk was not outlawed—it was a free country, after all—but people liked to remember the revolution as a morality tale, of men abusing women and then getting their comeuppance with a world where women ruled instead. That there had been men and women on both sides was a fact, but it wasn't a popular one. Keisha could have said it and gotten little more than some dirty looks, but if anyone had heard Mark say it, it would be bad for him. Even here in this little bowling alley in this quiet little town, the revolutionary authorities made their overbearing presence known. Posters on the wall showed rough-looking men, armed with knives and guns, leering at the female viewer. 'Don't let it go!' screamed the caption. 'If you see suspicious male activity, call the rape hotline immediately.'

Maybe those posters had been necessary before the revolution, but now, it was just too much. After all, young men were under so much suspicion that they always kept themselves in check. It was women, Keisha thought wryly, who were dangerous. One female accusation of harassment and a man's job was in jeopardy. A single, pregnant woman needed only to name a man, any man, and he would have to choose between a shotgun wedding and being run out of town.

Thankfully, Mark trusted Keisha not to abuse him that way. With her, he was open, comfortable. He listened more than he talked, but when he did talk, he did so thoughtfully. She liked that about him.

It was an extremely pleasant evening, until the exact minute Maggie walked in.

Maggie was one of those women who acted like her theme song was always playing. She wore a cowgirl hat whether the sun was shining or not, she favored black leather vests and tan riding boots, and not one, but two revolvers hung on her hips. She tipped her hat up for boys she liked and tipped it down for people she thought she was too good for. She swore too much, set things down too hard, threw open doors and then slammed them shut again and just generally made herself a nuisance. Once, Keisha had thought that Maggie had seen too many westerns, but then learned that she was a daughter of the Sarah Washbasin Ranch. The cowgirl theme was not an act, as she did indeed know how to ride a horse, tie up cattle and shoot those guns she carried. But it was still ridiculous, the way she waved them around.

Maggie didn't bother to rent shoes or reserve a lane. Discarding all pretense, she walked up to Mark, tipped up her hat and said, "Was wondering when I'd find you again."

Mark made a concerted effort to ignore her, and Keisha helped as best she could. "Will I see you at my place on Wednesday?" She asked him. It was a formality— their Wednesday meetings were a weekly ritual that did not need confirmation.

Mark chewed his upper lip, almost as if he was frustrated with her and not Maggie. He gave his one-word agreement.

Keisha gave him a goodbye kiss and took her leave. As she left the bowling alley, he followed. That was a little clingy of him, she thought, but not as rude as Maggie, who brazenly followed along as if she had been invited.

By the look in Maggie's eye, Keisha could tell she had designs on Mark. He would probably give in. Keisha knew she should not blame him. Men, after all, were weak when it came to sex. But she had to admit, it still bothered her.

*

Mark loved Keisha. It was not just lust, but sincere, heartfelt love. But damn that woman, why didn't she have sense enough to drive him home?

It didn't need to be all the way. Just far enough to shake off Maggie and give him a valid excuse not to speak to her. Now Keisha drove off alone, leaving him to the she-wolf. He turned to face her.

"Thought she'd never leave," said Maggie. "I almost missed you. I know you didn't mean anything bad by it, of course."

'Shit,' thought Mark. 'Shit, shit, shit.' He was in the same situation he'd been in a half-dozen times before. If he refused Maggie, she would make it her mission to denounce him, to frame him, to destroy his reputation and his life. The gay rumors and rape accusations would start flying. Other women, who didn't like Maggie but still respected her for some reason, would start warning each other that Mark was woman-shy, a man-child, a deviant to be avoided. Without Keisha to be his getaway driver, Mark's best option was to appease Maggie.

He went through the motions. He gave neutral answers to everything she said. Maggie threw innuendos back at him. She drew physically close. She looked at him with that hungry-but-not-all-there look that made him sure she was mentally stripping him. Finally, she put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Wouldn't be a proper evening if I didn't invite you home, now would it?" And there was no socially acceptable way for him to refuse. He went with her.

It didn't help that Maggie excited him. A part of him liked the way she looked at him, made him feel like he was worth obsessing over. Back at her ranch, in her room, when she hung up her guns and threw off her vest, he felt a stir in his groin. Just the sight of her in nothing but a shirt and jeans made him quicken. Then the rest of it came away.

"Like what you see?" she said.

'Shit,' thought Mark, again. He did indeed like what he saw, and he had let his attraction show on his face.

"I take good care of my body," she said. "And now, I'm gonna take good care of yours."

Once, Mark had seen a documentary film showing a spider eating a moth. The spider enwrapped her prey until it couldn't beat its wings, then she kept wrapping, kept clenching. Her legs didn't jerk on the body and stop, the way a human does when she ties a knot. The spider's legs kept pulling, but slowing as she pulled, as if trying to crush the moth.

That was how Mark felt beneath Maggie. After she stripped him and laid him on his back, she didn't ride him—so much for that cowgirl style, he thought! Instead, she wrapped herself around him, clung to him, breathed in his face, devoured him with her eyes. She wasn't in a hurry to have sex. Mark would have appreciated that, except he knew it was only because she liked possessing him even more than she liked taking him.

But soon, she did want to take him. She didn't say anything, but only looked menacingly into his eyes, her head perfectly still as she positioned her naked body over him. He glared back at her, refusing to be intimidated. If she noticed the hostility on his face, she didn't acknowledge it.

She sat on him, enveloped him, and the pleasure began. The primal part of Mark, the part that wanted to cheat and submit and do anything for more sex, sang out, and Mark could not entirely keep it down. He loved being ridden. He loved feeling her soft, tight flesh squeeze his prick. He even loved being lain back and dominated. He would never admit it out loud, not to anyone, but the pleasure was undeniable. The heat of the moment burned away his righteous dishonesty and revealed the truth for only him and Maggie to see.

She put her hands on his shoulders, bucking with savage strength, and he lost control. He sighed to the rhythm of her movements. He made those soft, special grunts that he made without conscious thought, a habit he had formed to please women. He would not have done it purposefully, but with Maggie astraddle him, he could not stop himself. She had taken control.

He lost track of Maggie. She climaxed and kept coming at him so quickly he had no time to rest. He lasted as long as he could—he knew all the tricks—but Maggie was determined to wring him out, and it was a struggle no man in the world can win.

His orgasm built for minutes, he felt himself fly over the edge as if a hammer in his gut had just struck a primer. He cried out, tensed his muscles underneath her, screwed up his eyes and finally spent into the condom.

Maggie slowed, breathing long, high-pitched breaths. She laid herself on top of him again, her heat and sweat pressed against his. She rewrapped her arms around his chest and stayed there. Her only words were, "I'll wait until you're hard again."

The pleasure faded, and Mark felt a different kind of heat crawling up his spine. This girl had cornered him and then hustled him to her bed, and now she didn't even give him the courtesy of pillow talk. She could only think to use him as a cushion while she waited for him to recharge the only part of his body she cared about.

He was cheating on Keisha for this! The thought enraged him. Keisha deserved better. He deserved better. And yet here he was, the pleasure toy of this exploitative bitch. He hated it because she got into his mind, fooled him into thinking he liked her. She had harnessed that part of him that was attracted to her and used it to wrench him out of his own life and into hers!

And all the while he thought this, his cock recovered. Every few minutes, Maggie would reach down and give it a few gentle squeezes to see if it was ready. Each time, it wasn't, and she went back to lounging on his chest. Every time she squeezed, he felt a little spurt of unwanted pleasure.

His anger burned itself out, boiled down to a sour feeling in his stomach. With the red mist gone, he looked at himself and admitted something he didn't want to believe.

He was furious with Maggie, yes. But Maggie was only his scapegoat. What he really hated was himself, for lacking the courage to refuse her.

*

Keisha resisted the urge to look at the clock. She sat in the loveseat in her living room, paging through a moderately interesting novel while waiting for Mark to knock at the door. He was due in five minutes, and usually arrived exactly one minute late. She turned another page. Three more minutes...

Then she heard the knock. Despite herself, she checked the clock and saw that the appointed time was still two minutes away. She padded curiously to the door, doubting that it was him.

It was indeed him, dressed to please. A tight shirt and a stylish but tasteful waistcoat wrapped around his body, with nicely pressed pants drawing her eyes down to his neat shoes. It was covered, but she knew that underneath the button on his pants was a zipper that ran all the way down the inseam, promising her easy access when the time came. And the subtle bulge told her he was ready to provide it.

But there was something off about him. She peered into his face and found the problem in his eyes; he was smiling, but he was trying a little too hard to smile. Something was bothering him.

"Keisha," he said, "are you alright?"

She snapped back to the present. "Oh, yes," she said, "Everything's fine. Come in, please."

Something was definitely bothering him, but he kept up his appearance. He asked her about her week and listened to the answer.

The news on his end seemed all to the good. The community college had accepted his application to major in electrical engineering. "It's a good MR degree," he said. "It stays away from politics, so no one will mind a man doing it. It pays well, so it can support a family, and the jobs exist almost everywhere, so to be with the right woman, I can move anywhere. Or," he added pointedly, "stay right here."

The two cooked and ate dinner together, trading fun anecdotes and opinions on trivia. He told jokes, and she laughed at them only partially because they were funny, and mostly because they came from him.

Then it was time to turn up the heat. He brought it up obliquely, she answered him in code, and they started gathering up the dishes.

In bed, a sudden energy seemed to take him. He did not rush the foreplay, but as he put his arms around her, there was a kind of fierce intensity in his taut fingers, in his stare, in the way he drew in breath through his teeth.

But how could she complain? He played his fingers over her middle, then cradled her face and kissed her with such force that she fell onto her back. She undid one of the buttons of her blouse, signaling him to do the others, and he undid each one with obsessive focus.

Now he stroked her and kissed her all down her chest. She bathed in the attention. In the back of her mind, an alarm sounded. He wasn't showing any special interest in her breasts like he usually did. He was not enjoying his time with her, but instead making a frenzied effort to make her feel as much pleasure as possible. She loved it, but why was he doing this? But then he shimmied away her skirt, then her panties, and the worries fled from her mind.

She closed her eyes. First, she felt his hot breath. Then his lips, already warmed up from kissing her, gently graced her thighs, her abdomen. Her pussy. Then his tongue came out. Warm, wet streaks of pleasure washed into her. Delight trickled through her system.

Soon, the heat became too much. She slowly sat up and petted his head to signal him to stop. He sat up, and she unwrapped him, revealing his flat chest and stomach, and then, as she turned him to face away from her, lowering his pants from his toned ass and legs.

"There's something we need in there," he said, pointing to the pants.

"Oh," she whispered in his ear, "I know." With her chest pressed to his back, she reached into the pocket of the discarded pants, fished out the condom and held it in front of his eyes. She split the packet and brought the rubber down to his sex.

She could not see his cock, but only feel the wet tip, the thin, rubbery skin and the surging heat beneath as she wrapped it with the condom. Then she shifted back, laid him down, and climbed over him. It occurred to her to tease him by pretending to adopt the reverse cowgirl position, but then turn around and look him in the eyes at the last moment. But no, she did not want to toy with his expectations. She knelt astride his legs.

Another moment of doubt struck her. The strained look in his eyes was still there. It was even worse than before. Something was wrong, and he was not telling her what it was. But now wasn't the time to ask; both of them were stripped bare, she was poised over him and the moment was about to pass. She shifted her hips and mounted him.

Now his energy revealed itself. He thrusted into her from beneath, bouncing her from the bed. She yelped with pleasure, a rare thing for her, and ceded a modicum of control to him. They moved together, feeling each other, his zeal and force and desperate love flowing into her. She lost herself so completely that she did not know when he climaxed.

They lay together, hands clasped, breathing in tune with each other. She lazily kissed his cheek, and he rubbed his palm gently up and down her back. But when they made eye contact, she saw that the cracks had only grown wider, and she could no longer ignore it.

"Mark," she said. "You look worried. Is there something that you want to talk about?"

Fear tightened his features. "It's not right to talk about it here."

She forced a giggle. "Mark, there's nothing between us. I mean, there are no barriers. I can see all of you, and you can see all of me. Whatever you're thinking, I promise you can tell me, because I want us to be honest with each other."

He eased his eyes shut, and she restrained herself from saying anything. She waited as he worked up the nerve.

"There is something," he began. "Maggie."

She waited for more.

"She's been... taking me home. And doing this."

"Oh." So the tension in Mark's eyes had been guilt. Keisha felt the animal impulse to punish him, to mount him and ride him to exhaustion again, or to go find Maggie and tear her to shreds. But she tamped them down and kept listening.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "Why did you do that? What am I..." she stopped short of asking what she was lacking. Mark loved getting in bed with her, and he loved talking to her. He loved both of those things with a depth that men were not capable of faking. No, something else was afoot.

"It's not so easy to say 'no,'" he said. "When she corners me and wants to take me home... I don't have a choice. Either I give in to her, or I reject her and suddenly I'm toxic and dangerous. There's nothing I can do."

"You can say 'no,'" she said simply. "It's okay. Why not practice it, right now? Pretend I'm Maggie, and tell me 'no.'"

He laughed, and this laugh was sincere, a release of fear and shame. "How can I possibly pretend you're Maggie? You two are completely the opposite. She takes advantage of me, but you... you are with me, not against me. She's everything I want to get away from."

"I believe you."

"Oh, thank you, Keisha."

"You have to do something about her." Keisha swallowed, not wanting to add what was on the tip of her tongue. But she had just said that they needed to be honest, so she came out with it. "From now on, for us to be together, you can't be going out with her too."

"I understand. She won't take it quietly." He looked weak, then afraid, then indecisive, and then finally asked, "Will you be in the room when I tell her this?"

Keisha shook her head. "I can't steal you from her. It has to come from you." She decided to give him a little encouragement. "Maggie is... problematic. But she's not going to kill you."

"You haven't seen the way she looks at me when there aren't any other women in the room."

"Mark, you're stronger than she is. Just don't submit to her, and you will be safe."

"I'm not worried she'll hit me. I'm worried she'll spread rumors about me. It'll be her word against mine, and her word is worth more."

"Is it really? I don't trust a word she says. None of my friends do."

He sighed, pondering this.

"We're not in high school anymore, Mark. Just because she's pretty and thinks she knows everything, that doesn't mean that she always gets her way. Especially not when you stand up to her. You can do it." She decided to throw in a little encouragement. "Besides, every girl loves a man who's brave."

Those words worked magic. His eyes popped all the way open, and he took a deep breath that straightened his back and seemed to make him grow bigger in her hands. "You're right," he said. "I need to stop cowering around. I'm going to tell her. Tomorrow."