“You should become a secret agent. You race cars, you’re a marksman. Do you know how to jump out of airplanes?”
“Anyone can jump. The question is: do you know how to land?” Taylor asks slyly. He takes me through how to load and empty the gun, how to flip the safety, and all of the general precautions. “Alright, this is a small caliber pistol, so you won’t have to worry so much about recoil. I think this is the one I want you to keep in your condo.”
“You want me to keep a gun in my condo?” I whisper as if anyone could hear us.
“Well, it wouldn’t make sense for me to teach you without giving you one.” He clips up a target sheet of a zombie, which is unusually tongue-in-cheek of Taylor, and presses a button that zips it away. “Here.” He hands me goggles and earmuffs. “Now relax your shoulders and hold firm, but take a deep breath before you squeeze — don’t pull — the trigger.”
“I’m going to kill us.”
“You’ll be fine. Now I am going to stand over here,” he says, backing away to the corner.
“Taylor!”
“I’m kidding!”
“Okay, here I go.” I take a long, drawn breath out and try to squeeze — not pull — the trigger. Honestly, I don’t know the difference. A shot rings out and I hit the very bottom corner of the target. “Woohoo!”
“Woah there! Gun down during celebration dances. We’re not the Taliban here.”
“It looks like I have successfully shot that motherfucker in the thigh,” I gloat.
“Okay, go at it. You want to aim for the center of mass — gives you the best chance of hitting your target.”
I start to let loose, feeling more in control and powerful with each squeeze of the trigger. Taylor’s right, this might be just what I needed to snap me out of the jumble of scattered thoughts brought on by the most recent news. My shots don’t land perfectly, but they move closer to the center with each attempt. Occasionally, I go to the head for fun and even land one. Whenever I look over, I see Taylor leaning against the wall to my side with his arms crossed, a look of amusement on his face.
“Your turn. I wanna see you shoot this thing.”
“You sure? You seem to be having fun.”
“Yeah. I like to watch,” I say flirtatiously.
“Put that one down there. I’m going to grab another one.”
I lay down the gun and switch places with Taylor. He grabs a larger gun, slides a magazine in the handle and pushes it in forcefully with a loud click. Watching him so intently prep the weapon, his muscles contracting and relaxing as he moves, his taut ass under the navy lounge pants, his intense and masculine focus, makes me really horny. Holy shit he looks so fucking hot right now.
“Stand back Shy, the shells go flying around with this one.” He raises his arms with the gun in hand, the lines of muscles in his arms and shoulders clearly defined, and pulls the trigger. This gun is much louder than the one I was shooting. He unloads his gun on the target, forming a small circle of bullet holes in the chest of the very unlucky zombie. When he puts the gun down, I can’t resist; watching him hold the gun and just fucking own it like that makes me want to get on him right in the range. My desire surprises me, as I have never found guns particularly interesting or appealing. Slowly I walk up to him from behind and wrap my arms around his hips, sliding them down his frontside onto his penis. I rub my hands over the soft fabric of his pants as it stiffens underneath my touch. He turns around.
“Does Ms. Scared of Guns want to fuck in here?”
“Something about that was really hot.”
He picks me up and sits me in the other empty shooting lane, whipping off my shirt, massaging my breasts and sucking on my nipples. “Fuck, Taylor.” I whip off his shirt to reveal his strong, lean torso. He pulls my hair back, so that my chin tilts up.
“You want to do something dangerous?” He asks, the flecks of green in his eyes seem to glow devilishly.
“Uh huh,” I gulp, both terrified and exhilarated by the proposal.
“No questions then. You’re gonna do what I say.”
I nod and he walks out of my line of vision. I swear I hear him mess with the guns, making my heart race in anticipation. I haven’t the slightest idea what he has planned for us and the idea it involves a gun only confounds me more. He returns with a large revolver that we hadn’t used. Its barrel is long and not too slender, but not too thick. The look on his face is dark and mischievous. He glares at me with his smoky stare, his nostrils flaring.
“Don’t say a word,” he commands. We’re not in the darkroom, but he is that man right now. He is Master Holden. He slides the gun in his mouth, and I sit on edge, wanting to rip it out of his hands. The sight is terrifying, for a split second I think I could lose him. But what is even more terrifying is the look in his eyes: wild and unafraid. It’s like he has a death wish. I obey and remain silent as he slowly guides the long barrel out of his mouth, a crooked smirk peeking through. He takes the gun and holds it against my face, grazing the cold, wet barrel down my cheek, then across my chest to my left breast, circling my nipple, then down my stomach. My reaction is to suck in, try to keep away from it, but my anxiety only serves to entertain him. He slides it down my legs, stopping right between my thighs.
He presses his left hand on the front of my neck, pushing up against my chin forcefully so I lay back, my head hanging upside down off of the edge. He slides my pants off, then my panties.
“I saw you watching me. You’re turned on by my bad side, aren’t you? You like a bad boy, don’t you?”
“I’m with you, aren’t I?”
“You have no idea how bad I can get,” he says, rubbing the gun between my legs.
“I think I have an idea.”
He whips me back up. “No you don’t. Suck on it,” he says pressing the gun to my lips. I stare down the silver barrel of the gun, trusting that Taylor has removed the bullets, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
“I can’t.”
Taylor cocks his eyebrow, and then bites his lip, containing his dissatisfaction. He dangles the gun by a finger in front of me, signaling he can wait here for as long as it takes me to obey.
I can say the safe word. I can say it. But I don’t want to make him stop, I want him to make me do it. He makes me do things I would never have the balls to do otherwise.
He stares expectantly. He won’t beg and he won’t ask me again.
Hesitantly, I purse my lips around it; it’s cold and firm. At any moment something could go terribly wrong. What if he forgot to remove a bullet? But it’s that danger, that moment of facing something that could kill me that reminds me how badly I want to be alive: to fuck, to scream, to laugh, to cry, to feel butterflies in my stomach. Every cell inside of me brews with nervous energy; it’s probably terror, but I think Taylor and I both have something inside of us, something broken that turns those heightened feelings of anger and pain and fear into unmitigated libido.
Once that initial fear of death subsides, it converts into sexual energy in the way an atom under the right circumstances can trigger the oblivion of an entire city.
And now, I understand that look in his eyes when the gun was in his mouth. It’s that moment when you realize that the thing that makes others squirm is the thing that takes you to your height. It makes you come out of yourself and be free in a way you could never be otherwise. And somehow, it makes you feel powerful.
I gain confidence, I start to suck on it, not like some foreign piece of metal, but like a phallus. “Yeah, baby, suck it like a cock.” The look in his darkened eyes tempts me suck on it harder as I maintain eye contact with him. “You’re a bad girl too. Very fucking bad.”
I pull the gun out of my mouth, smirking as I then push it down back between my legs. I barely cock my eyebrow, almost daring him, but inside, I am terrified. I have pushed things up another level. I am not sure if it’s to test Taylor or myself. Why the fuck are you tempting him?
“If you don’t think I’ll do it, t
hat only means I’ve been much too gentle with you.” He pulls my hips closer to give me more room to lie back and then before I know it, he is sliding the cold, wet barrel inside of me. I gasp in a mixture of disbelief and excitement. I should tell him to stop, but I can’t, because I don’t want him to. He purses his lips around my clit as I moan in a mixture of ecstasy and horror. The thrill of death and sex, those opposing forces coming so close together in one moment make it hard to breathe.
“You are much fucking nastier than I could have ever hoped for,” he says, sliding it in deep,“and that’s a good thing.”
He bites my inner thigh and I let out a yelp. He does it again, harder than the last time. “Taylor!” I pull on his hair. He slides out the gun, puts it down and pulls out his hard dick. Watching him hold it in his hand is one of my favorite sights, as he teases me with it, rubbing it on my labia and clit.
“Your pussy is one of my favorite spots in the world. Warm, soft, wet, creamy…I love feeling it clench around my cock, your tight little pussy.” He takes both of his hands and rubs inward circles on my inner thighs as he bites his full lower lip. “I’m going to slide it in slow, I want to savor every last inch of me going inside, of hearing your cute little gasp as I enter you and make you mine all over again.”
“I’m already yours.”
“But every time I come inside of you, another part of you becomes mine,” he whispers.
He keeps his promise, sliding so slowly just so he can tease me. I watch his thickness go in, millimeter by millimeter, it is a thing of beauty. He begins to move his hips rhythmically as I lie all the way back, my head hanging off the edge, upside down. His lips smack as he sucks on his tip of the barrel to moisten it for my clit. As he massages it, he pulls in and out of me. “Tell me you’re mine. Tell me I own you.” I brace the two panels to either side of me as I come telling Taylor exactly what he commanded me to. As I do so, he leans in, bracing my face with the gun still in his hand, and whispers in my ear. “It was loaded, baby.”
And while I should be infuriated, I should smack him right across the face, I don’t know what I am. I just feel a surge of something unfamiliar and strong rise inside of me. I tempted death and fucked its brains out. I am the daughter of Alan-fucking-Peters. I have the boy he couldn’t kill inside of me. We are invincible. The element of surprise as I come only elevates the surrealism of the experience and my moans are interspersed with delirious laughter.
***
Taylor sits at the breakfast bar as I make myself a snack.
“I can’t believe we did that, Taylor. You’re fucking nuts. It wasn’t really loaded, was it? No, it wasn’t.” I coax myself aloud.
“You’ll never know, will you? Telling you would take away the mystique. Plus, it doesn’t matter anymore. Rest assured, all precautions were taken.”
“Except, you know, removing the bullets.” I want to be angry with him, but it’s just not there. I fucking liked it.
He smirks and takes a sip of his water. “Whatever was in there, you surprised me,” he says, punctuating the sentence with a finger point.
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I expected you to freak out, but as usual, you surprised me.”
“If you thought I would freak out, why would you do it?”
“Because I want you to push your limits. That’s why they exist. That’s where you find out who you really are. I know I can push them with you, because you and I, we have something that transcends.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever figure you out,” I say, biting into a pickle.
“Likewise, but that’s what makes us so fucking good, isn’t it?”
“Or so fucking bad.” Taylor cocks his eyebrow at me. “Oh, I brought the shoebox. I haven’t had a chance to look at my baby pics. It’s a big deal for me. Part of the heaping delicious serving of bullshit my mother fed me was that the albums of my childhood were stolen. So I only had one baby photo, everything else from my childhood is from when I was four and older.”
“I don’t have infant pictures either.”
“I guess we were in the same boat. Come look with me. Do you think you would remember how I looked?”
“We were so young. I just remember fragments. Many of which were not the greatest times.”
“I have to say something to you because you need to know it.”
“It’s not about your mom trying to—“
“No. No, It’s about me.”
“Okay,” Taylor says skeptically
“You’re my hero.”
“Oh, come on.” He rolls his eyes.
“No seriously. You were just a boy, up against adults, and you thought of me. You protected me. What a brave little child you were. Really. I’ll love you forever just for that.”
Taylor looks down, sometimes my affection for him is like his glare is to me: too much to take without shrinking away. “Well, I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh my god, have I made Taylor Holden speechless?”
“I guess I knew you were special even then.” I smile at him warmly and walk over to his side of the counter kissing his back, taking in a deep inhale of his scent.
The brown shoebox is old and frayed, the lid nearly useless as its sides have all bent away from the box. Taylor joins me, resting his arm on the back of the sofa and crossing his ankle over his knee. I show him a picture of my mother holding me. “Wow, she did look a lot like you, minus the whole flower child dress. You also have a way better rack.”
“Are you checking out my mom’s boobs? Gross! What is it with cults? They either dress like Little House on the Prairie or flower children?”
“I don’t think they are known for their impeccable fashion sense.” His light mood around this subject matter is a relief.
“Hey, I think this one is us too!” This picture is of me, shirtless in a diaper, a few straggly soft large brown curls springing from my head, my tiny feet in adult shoes, laughing a belly laugh. Taylor is wearing blue long johns and it looks like he is doing something to make me laugh, but the camera angle doesn’t capture it. “I still can’t believe this is us. I guess we had some good times, despite the situation.”
Taylor shrugs. “I don’t remember many times like that. I wish I could, but at that age, it’s the loudest memories that stick.”
I find another picture, of my mother and his mother, standing side by side, so much youth and beauty wasted. I’m not sure if Taylor wants to see it, so I move it to the back of the pile and continue sorting through the photos. I find a solo portrait of me, I would guess that I was two or three, in a red floral dress. “Here’s another one of me,” I say, passing it to Taylor.
“Look at baby Shyla,” he says observing the picture. “Wait, there’s something stuck to the back of this.” The pictures are old and from the looks of it, have remained untouched in the box for years. Many have stuck together over time from moisture. He carefully peels the smaller photo away from the back of my baby photo and his face instantly transforms when he sees it. His hand trembles, his breathing becomes shallow, his eyes full of dread. The look of terror is raw; it’s as though he sees a ghost, yet he remains transfixed on the image in a trance of sorts. Within seconds, his expressions become more intense: his trembling stronger, his breathing heavier, as if he will boil over if he continues at this rate.
“Taylor?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Taylor?” I raise my voice.
He stops abruptly and looks up at me, his eyes much like when he awakes from a night terror.
“What is it?”
“Nothing…I have to make a call. For work.”
“Taylor, I know it’s not nothing.”
“I’m fine, Shyla. Jesus.”
“Alright,” I say softly.
He stacks the two pictures back together, puts them on top of the pile and stands up to walk towards his office. “You should go to bed anyway, otherwise your sleep patterns are going to go crazy.”
“Yeah,
I guess, but I’m wide awake.”
He glides down the hallway as I take him in, understanding that even asking him to look at innocent baby pictures allows for variables Taylor cannot control. He turns around. “Shy, I forgot to mention. I’d like you to come with me to visit my father this weekend. It’s his birthday and he wanted me to come for a small dinner.”
“Really?”
He nods. For some reason, despite proclamations of his feelings for me, I never expected to meet his father. Not because his feelings for me are not real, but because he has a tendency to compartmentalize so many different parts of his life, and I thought that his father and I might never overlap.
“But…are you going to tell him who I am? He’s going to hate me.”
“I don’t see the point in hiding it. I plan on keeping you around, you know. He is a reasonable person and he also knows I make my own decisions. To hate you for where you came from would mean he would have to hate his own son.”
“Of course.”
When I hear the door to his office close, I reach for the pictures he set down. The one on top is him and me, of course, but the one he reacted to is tucked underneath. Hesitantly, I pull it out from the stack, and I understand his visceral reaction.
It is a candid picture of Taylor, maybe five or six year old, fiddling through a children’s book on the floor. Sitting in a wooden chair hovering over him, watching him, is Alan Peters, intensely glaring at the little boy, his usual deceivingly friendly eyes holding something sinister.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We rise early on Saturday morning for the three and a half hour drive to Randall Holden’s estate. Taylor insists we stay there the entire weekend as the property is vast and the area a beautiful place for outdoor activities. The fall chill is beginning to set in and there is a slight mist in the air, so Taylor wears a navy anorak with worn-in jeans and brown boots. I opt for a army-green canvas jacket with a thick cable knit grey scarf, and a pair of jeans tucked into navy Le Chameau rain boots. We look straight out of a fashion magazine fall editorial spread.
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