Little Savage

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  “Hey there, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Take a breath, Lisle, relax yourself. You’re not alone in this.”

  She took that deep breath. But more than the deep breath, Daniel’s unwavering tenacity eased her nerves. She looked to him for strength and feeling that, her body began to unwind and she even managed a feeble smile. Though tears were forming in her eyes, she remained composed and spoke in a steady voice, confessing everything she knew to be true about herself. “I may be a genius with that box of chips and wires; in there I can be as efficient and ruthless as Daniel Broc. I feel like a cocky bitch when I zap those computers. I’m like a god wreaking havoc on the world’s evil with a few silly keystrokes. It’s all so simple, neat and tidy. I walk away feeling satisfied, even proud. But the feeling lasts about fifteen minutes—maybe. That cocky bitch is not me,” she sounded resentful just speaking of herself. “I’ve tried to be that bitch in the real world, but she only gets slapped down by the truth, again and again and again. That woman is not me. Maybe a tiny piece, but I hardly recognize that piece when my face isn’t glued to the computer. Without that, I can’t dredge her up no matter how hard I try. The computer wizardry is a gift. When you get down to the truth about me, I don’t care about the fucking box, or the ruthless thugs I destroy. None of that really matters to me. It’s what I do because I can, because for an instant I feel powerful.” She paused, her face filled with sadness. “Then I’m slapped back to reality. The reality is the real obsession, the one that haunts me every day of my life…” Tears began to fall from her eyes, and though her voice had nearly dropped to a whisper, the passion behind it was unflinching, “…I’m dying inside wanting to be loved and cherished.” She took a breath and stared into Daniel’s cool blue eyes. “I want you so much to want me. And not as a toy or something intriguing to study, but want me as a man wants a woman.

  “I know how to hack into computers and do all kinds of malicious damage, but out here where people live and breathe I’m just a raw wound that needs someone to hold me and make me safe. To care about me. I want that someone to be you—and I don’t even know why that is. I never know what to say to you or how to act. I get confused and afraid, and then everything spins around in my head until I-I,” she gulped back a sob, “until I explode. And now you’re angry with me again…” She didn’t even try to hold back her tears.

  Daniel could see her thoughts starting to spin; she’d closed in on herself again. Pulling her from her huddled misery, he drew her into his arms and held her tight. “Hush, girl.”

  She clung to him as if she’d never let go. But then, the sobbing dwindled to an occasional whimper and after a long silence she spoke again, her head still tucked into his chest. “That was the wrong thing to do, wasn’t it? Putting that site up…I mean really wrong.”

  “I don’t know, Lisle. Maybe, maybe not,” he said as he gently stroked her hair. “That’s quite a scheme you have going.”

  “You going to take me back to the woodshed?”

  He chuckled “You’d probably like that. And I may.” She pulled back and looked at him. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red and swollen. “You have some misguided thinking to correct, girl. And we’ll get to that soon enough. But for now, just let me set your fears to rest, if that’s possible.” He lifted her chin with his hand, not letting her turn away. “As for wanting me… let me remind you, I’m not a demonstrative man. I’m often gruff and thoughtless and overbearing, which I assume you love on some level. I can be cruel, which is not the man I’d like to be, but you may need to live with that from time to time. But as far as wanting you? What I told you yesterday,” it seemed like a hundred yesterdays had passed since they’d spoken of this, “Those were not empty words, not a pacifier to keep you in my house because I had an agreement with Marcus to keep you safe. What started as an obligation has turned into something very different. I’ve tried ignoring it. I certainly didn’t want to overwhelm you as you’re trying to figure out the life you want. However, it’s become clear to me over the last few weeks that bowing out of your life would be impossible for me now. I love you, Lisle. As much as I’m capable of loving any woman. I don’t throw words like that around and you won’t hear me say it often. But I’d be kidding myself and lying to you if I denied how much I’ve come to care about you—and I don’t mean the lonely mixed up girl in need of compassion. I mean the woman hiding inside.”

  He saw a spark in her eye he’d not seen before—must have been the mention of love.“Telling you this makes me vulnerable,” he added, “and I hate that. But there you have it.”

  She offered up a sheepish grin, which was nice to see. Maybe she actually believed what he said was sincere. He certainly hoped so; he didn’t know how to describe his feelings any better than he had.

  “We’re both a little dysfunctional, aren’t we?” she said.

  Oddly put, he thought, but he couldn’t disagree. “Yes, I suppose we are.”

  “Alice would say we deserve each other.”

  “I’m sure she would. I’m sure she’d have plenty to say about karma and redemption and all her mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus. What I’d prefer to know is what Lisle thinks.”

  She pursed her lips and thought a moment. “Hum… what I think is—” she started to giggle, then bashfully lowered her head.

  “Look at me, Lisle,” he gently demanded.

  She peered up again. “I think I’m going to plant the memory of what you just said inside my mind and let it grow and get bigger until I actually believe it in here.” She patted her heart.

  Her body lightened, as if layers upon layers of defenses and safeguards had fallen away in a matter of seconds. They’d be back, he was sure, when her insecurities started to sneak in again. But she smiled more broadly than he’d seen her smile in days. And when her keen eyes swept across his face, and she cocked her head in the coy cute sexy way she had, saying with a look of happy puzzlement on her face, “You think of yourself as a stodgy old bastard, don’t you?” He knew that a more mature Lisle was actually on the rise.

  He laughed. “A stodgy old bastard? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. But you’re more than old and stodgy.”

  He wasn’t sure about the implication here—if she thought she could change him she’d end up cast out with all the other women who’d tried that. “Yes well, we’ll get to that eventually. We got passed a big milestone today. Let’s dwell on that for a while. As for right now, I have a few calls to make and I want you out of my hair. Go see what Abby is up to, maybe you can be useful. And have Albert come up and see me. ”

  “Useful, yes, I’ll make myself useful.” She grabbed for her coat, her sketchbook and pencils, then paused before she opened the door to leave. “The calls are about me, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know you don’t have to be so guarded with me. I mean, if you need me to explain anything, walk someone through my system, answer questions, I would gladly do that.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” He was already pulling out his briefcase and moving through the computer, about to make his first call.

  “And Daniel,” she caught his attention again. “I love you, too. You may think this is silly, but I knew what I wanted the day we met. You asked me my real name and I knew then. Sometimes I think you’re just another fantasy, but you’re not. You’ve been the man I needed. I know that my feelings won’t change. I may still be a little goofy in the head, and you may have to take me down hard to bring back my sanity from time to time, but if you can put up with my quirks, you won’t have any problem from me. I’m pretty good putting up with stodgy old bastards like you.”

  She moved into hall without waiting for him to reply. She left him with lots to think about, but rather than stew over whatever had just transpired, he got to work. Ten minutes later, after making a call to Marcus, he rose from his chair and went down the hall to the bathroom to take a leak. He was out of the room no more than a minute or two. When he returned,
he spotted something on the bed he’d not seen before. Either Lisle had left it and he hadn’t noticed till now, or she’d snuck back into the room while he was out.

  He picked up the small rectangular drawing, torn from her sketchbook, and stared at Lisle’s tiny artwork, renewing his amazement over the painstaking skill that had gone into the drawing. This one stuck a little deeper than her others. Two small beetles sat side by side amid tall brown grass, looking between woody stalks and limp shoots toward a bright yellow light on the horizon beyond—sunset? sunrise? Difficult to tell. But that really didn’t matter. In the bottom margin, she’d written in her odd cursive ‘you’ and ‘me’ and had drawn two arrows connecting each word with one of the two beetles above.

  His heart stirred a moment, then he forced back the feeling and returned to work.

  Later that night, Lisle crept back into the room, slipped into bed naked, cuddled up and fell asleep. He’d seen her enter, but they didn’t exchange a single word. An hour later, he joined her in bed, drawing her from a sound sleep to soundly fuck her ass. He used her hard and within seconds had her groveling in the throes of pain and pleasure like a woman possessed. Finished with her, he fell back against the mattress. Lisle fell back asleep and Daniel quickly drifted off.

  Still not a single word had been exchanged.

  ***

  The next morning, while Daniel made phone calls, Lisle spent her time following Abigail around the house and farm, doing whatever small tasks the woman gave her. In the kitchen she cut up vegetables for a soup then cleaned the dishes and scoured the sink. Outside, she washed down dirty gardening pots to store for the season, then helped haul two bushels of potatoes from the garden to the root cellar. Late in the afternoon, she returned to the guest room where Daniel and been locked away all day, and stood stunned for a moment seeing him tossing clothes from the bureau into his suitcase.

  “We’re leaving?” she asked.

  “No, I’m leaving You’re staying here.”

  She practically went limp. “Oh, sir, please… couldn’t I go with you?”

  “No, you can’t go. But I’ll be back, no more than a day or two, if that. And I want you sane. You understand that. No freaking out.”

  “Oh, I won’t!”

  He searched her face, finding no crazy vibe in her expression. “Good. While I’m gone, you keep your cell phone with you 24 hours a day in case I call. I may not. But, day or night, if I need some explanation about your furtive internet activity I’ll want your straightforward answers without worrying about you being in a panic or doing something foolish. Can I count on that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right.” He seemed reasonable satisfied. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. And keep this in mind, if you don’t behave yourself, you won’t have to wait for my return. Albert won’t put up with your antics and he won’t hesitate to take you to the shed.”

  “Yes, sir.” She shivered from the top of her head all the way down her spine. “But honestly, truly, I swear, I won’t freak out.”

  He studied her for a moment more, and satisfied with what he saw he went back to packing.

  Lisle watched as he finished, then zipped up the suitcase and lifted it to the floor. He’d already packed up Brauer’s computer and placed it in the trunk of his car where it was out of Lisle’s reach. No matter how secure she seemed at the moment, he wasn’t going to take any chances with her.

  Ready to leave, he grabbed his leather jacket from the back of the chair and gazed across the room to where Lisle stood before the windows looking so slight and insubstantial that he thought for a moment she was no more than a ghost and might dematerialize in a matter of seconds. However, his resolute stare seemed to put substance and flesh back on her bones and even through the dusty rays of sun that surrounded her body with a golden glow, she emerged as a real woman. Her face was filled with concern, but there was not a hint of crazy in her expression or her mood.

  Though in a hurry to leave, he had to stop; he had to forget the urgency and his rising apprehensions to focus on the woman he was moving heaven and earth to protect. He was not a rash man; what he said now he’d been mulling over in the back of his mind since Lisle first raised the subject. It seemed wholly out of place to mention it now, but he couldn’t think of a better time. Perhaps it was because he was leaving her and at times like this she’d proven vulnerable to her anxieties.

  With all that afternoon sun bathing her face, she seemed more like an angel than a dungeon slut. But dungeon slut and needy slave was what Lisle was at her core, at the heart of her soul. There was no fixing that, no healing that, the fact leapt out and stared him in the face every time he saw her. No use denying it, or trying to pretend she could mutate into a different kind of female and leave the troubled female she’d been behind, as if it were a role she could put on and take off like a suit of clothes. There was only one way a relationship between them would work.

  Putting his emotions and expectation aside, he looked into her eyes and asked, “You still want my brand?”

  Initially stunned, she hesitated several seconds then stepped forward, out of the glaring sun into the darker shadows of the room. He saw her face more clearly now; and at the exact moment when her excitement suddenly kicked in, she blurted out an anxious, “Yes, yes, sir, I do!” looking as if she wanted to jump across the space that separated them and into his arms.

  He merely nodded. “Then think about it. Think hard. Make sure there are no doubts, not one reservation. If I ask you again, I want your answer as straightforward as it was now.”

  “Yes, sir.” For a moment she looked as if she was about to explode with joy. But she forced herself to calm, and cautiously made a beeline for his open arms and the goodbye kiss she needed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  She stands at the top of the hill looking down through the trees toward the water shimmering in the lake beyond. Above the treetops, she can see the far shore—just barely. She would like to drop her clothes, go naked down the path to the water’s edge and dive into the deep, chilly pool where the fish swim and seaweed gets tangled in the toes. She asked Abigail about her plan, but Abby just stared at her as if she’d gone mad.

  “It’s October, girl!” she declared, explanation enough for a simple woman like Abigail Pennock.

  She knows that going naked will violate The Pennock’s trust—and Daniel’s, so she’ll wear clothes and not piss anyone off—except for the wild girl inside who, in a happy heartbeat, would still fling convention aside along with her clothes. ‘Later,’ she tells that girl inside her mind and she proceeds with a different plan.

  Even Albert has given her his blessing, sending his old dog Beau with her for company. She pats the dog’s flank and sets off down the path.

  The edges of the woods rise on either side of her, two great columns drawing her toward the water and its mysteries. She makes the journey effortlessly, pretending in her mind that she’s tossing clothes to the side, walking naked into her future as she should. If it were only summer, she thinks, but summer has passed and it’s a winter she faces now.

  Once at the lake, she walks along the water, throws a stick for Beau at least two dozen times before the old dog finally limps back and lays down, figuratively telling her he’s had enough.

  She sits too, on the small dock, facing the far shoreline with her legs drawn in, her arms around them and her head sitting between her two knees as she stares out in silent meditation.

  She’s waited all of two days and half of another, assuaged by brisk infrequent phone calls, and one extended three hour conversation with a network engineer that left her so exhausted that she slept for two straight hours afterwards and was late coming down for dinner. There’s been little from Daniel but terse and hurried words. He’ll never be one for small talk, and that’s good, because she’s no good at it either. It just would have been nice to hear a little warmth in his gravelly voice but he was too preoccupied for that—the curs
e of a busy man.

  She’s made up her mind. She’ll wait here on this dock all day and night until he returns. She will! she says to herself with the kind of resolute determination that used to stick.

  Already she knows this is just a bluff; the wild girl will not get her way this time. Daniel will. If his onus weren’t enough to curtail her natural impulses, she has Albert to think of. He’ll whip her if she gives him any trouble—Abigail will if he doesn’t correct her himself—which makes her long night snuggled up on this beach a farfetched fantasy at best. That’s okay too. Fantasy is okay. Sometimes living inside her hopes and schemes makes her feel safe from the ravages of the real world; and those hopes and schemes will have to suit her today, and every day until Daniel returns. She feels herself in limbo, ready to embark on something new, but unable to go in any direction until the man in her life comes back to her.

  ***

  “You sure took your time.” Abigail didn’t even lift her head when Daniel walked in from the car with his bag in hand.

  “These things take time,” he told her firmly, as he set the bag on the kitchen floor.

  “But you did what you needed to do?”

  “Done. At least as far as I can tell, it’s done. Albert here?”

  “In the barn I think.”

  “And Lisle?”

  “At the lake. She’s spent most of her time there the last two days. Can hardly pry her off the dock, despite the drizzle and wind.”