A Date With Fate Read Online Free

to look innocent, I was berating myself silently for not trying for the door, regardless of the consequences. My only small satisfaction was seeing him breathing heavier for the first time. My eyes kept dropping lower. I could not stop staring at the sight of his tanned, cut abs above his low riding jeans. They rippled with every breath he took.
    When I am really nervous or really emotional, my mind sometimes goes AWOL and thinks bizarre thoughts as a coping tool. I’m terrible at funerals. I dare not look at anyone who knows me lest they set me off laughing. I have to constantly battle myself not to lose it when I have these whacked thoughts.
    Right now, all’s I could think about while staring at his ridged stomach was how could Muscle Man still be so tan when it was near Thanksgiving? Did he use a tanning booth? Get sprayed? Have his abs “highlighted” to accentuate the definition? Imagining him in a hair bonnet, and giving precise instructions on how to get sprayed tan before his big night out to sexually assault a woman, had me turning my face into my shoulder to muffle my sudden choke of crazed giggles. A small snort escaped, but I hurriedly coughed to disguise the sound.
    The predator staring at me solved my attention deficit problem when I heard the clinking noise of his belt buckle. Without saying one word, he made the desire to laugh curl up and die instantly. He unhooked his belt buckle and started to pull the belt from the loops on his jeans.
    Heart thumping madly, I looked up to see his narrowed eyes watching my face. His black brows almost met in the middle over his fierce scowl. His mouth was a thin line.
    ‘ Oh help me; this is one pissed-off attacker! ’
    I am a baby when it comes to pain. Actually, a baby probably handles pain better than I do. I’m sure my eyes were already opened as wide as they could go after hearing the belt buckle sound, so I didn’t have to fake that. I swallowed hard over the dry lump in my throat. I moistened my lips with my tongue. I blinked and tried for sweetly reasonable; even if it was to tell a lie.
    “Um...Mister, you’ll notice I didn’t take my hands off the bars?”
    He ignored me. He paused, then let go of his belt. Instead, he undid the top button of his jeans and pulled down the zipper. Emboldened with relief at the immediate threat of pain off the table, and ignoring the zipper part, I was done with being reasonable. Sweet has never worked all that well for me, anyway.
    So I jeered at him.
    “I almost think you didn’t have fun getting kicked to the floor by a girl. Hey, you never said I couldn’t throw you off the bed like the annoying, little meat puppet you are.”
    Right then, as I heard myself talking smack, I swear I was having an out-of-body experience. I had a vision of the entire scene as if I was perched up in a corner of the ceiling with a birds-eye view of the room. I saw an angry, tough, and half-naked man looming over a defiant, defenseless, and half-naked woman. She looked tiny sprawled out on the big bed, holding onto the iron bars behind her, and running her big mouth like a lunatic.
    Why do I feel compelled to keep taunting my assaulter against everything I have ever read or been told to do in this situation?
    Maybe I was being strategic and thought I had a better chance with him mad and out of control. Maybe I wanted to prove he could restrain me physically, but he couldn’t break my will. Maybe I’m such a smart ass I cannot keep my mouth shut even if it means getting beat with a belt, or worse.
    So I laughed in his face.
    “Why, I do believe the big man isn’t used to getting his ass kicked to the floor by a ‘little girl’.” I drawled. Then I gave another, much more exaggerated shimmy. “Oh, Muscle Man is so very frightening and so very strong. I’m just shaking.”
    It felt mighty fine to smirk up at him for a change.
    For about two seconds.
    Until all hell broke loose.
    When I had begun taunting him, he seemed to ignore my