Livia Lone

47-THEN

She was still seeing Colton. He had been intimidated by their first night together, but not so much that he didn’t want to try again. Over time, Livia got used to other positions. But she found that nothing was better than turning the tables, taking control the way she had that first night. At a minimum, to come, she had to be on top. And as much as Colton wanted it, oral sex was out of the question. She didn’t enjoy the vulnerability of having it done to her, and even the thought of doing it for Colton was a sickening flashback straight to the deck of the ship at night, the smell of curry and diesel fuel, the scratchy Astroturf under her knees… all of it.

On balance, though, she felt good about the relationship. She was secretly proud that she could have any kind of sex at all, after what had been done to her. And that she could actually enjoy it was practically a miracle. She thought she’d just see how it went and not think too much about it.

By spring semester, though, their romance had cooled. Part of it seemed like jealousy on Colton’s part: he hadn’t done well enough in events like the Grand Slams and the Pan Ams to qualify for the Olympics, while Livia’s wins in those events kept her in the running. But part of it was Livia’s own growing dissatisfaction with the relationship. After the rush of that first night, the sex, even when physically adequate, just wasn’t overall as fulfilling. Knowing what to expect in bed, having a routine, seemed to… well, if not ruin it for her, then at least diminish the experience.

She started dating other guys. But whatever it was she needed, she found it wasn’t something she could satisfy just with other students, and she started going farther afield, taking new risks. She had bought a used Ninja, like Rick’s, and she would ride it out to some of San Jose’s seedier bars, the ones far from the SJSU campus, the kinds where students knew they weren’t welcome. She was pretty, she knew that, and a lot of men fetishized Asian women. Inevitably, some tatted-up day laborer or construction worker would sidle up next to her at the bar and ask if he could buy her a drink. These were rough men, bigger than most of the students she knew. They worked with their hands, they weren’t masters of the universe and weren’t going to be, and they didn’t like hearing no from a woman. Especially after they’d bought her a drink. And taken her to a motel, or back to an apartment, which in their minds entailed a certain quid pro quo. Many of them fought back when she flipped them off her and straddled them, giving in only when they realized they were still going to get laid, just not quite the way they’d expected. Mostly they seemed to treat it as a crazy new experience, like something they’d see in a porn movie, though maybe not one they would have thought to rent themselves. She’d give them a fake name and number afterward and never see them again.

One night, she let a guy who called himself Park buy her a drink, even though she wasn’t sure about his vibe. On the one hand, he seemed normal enough. He was pretty solid-looking, but clean and well groomed, not tatted up or anything like that. She’d learned that past a certain point, most guys at least tried to be persuasive, and many let their attempts at “persuasion” get a little too aggressive. But that tended to be more of a heat-of-the-moment phenomenon. It wasn’t a kink for them; it wasn’t a conscious plan; they’d just gotten so tantalizingly close to what they craved, they couldn’t stand to have it taken away. She told herself this guy might be like that, and that would be fine. At any rate, he didn’t have the predator feel she recognized. Still, there was something… missing about him, a kind of weird blankness in his eyes or affect she couldn’t place. Whatever it was that was off, she decided to ignore it.

It was almost a very costly mistake.

The moment he’d locked the motel door behind them, he turned to Livia and as casually as if he were brushing back his hair shot an uppercut into her belly. She’d been unprepared for anything like that, and though she was in top judo shape, it still knocked the wind out of her. She doubled over and staggered back. Her legs hit the bed and she sat heavily on it, holding her stomach, realizing belatedly this was no run-of-the-mill, potentially date-rapey sort of guy. No, this guy was a freak, like the ones Alice Vachss fought to put in prison. Livia tried to scuttle away, and again, with no emotion at all, the guy hit her across the side of the head with a massive, openhanded shot. It blew her onto the bed on her side, but years of jiu-jitsu muscle memory kicked in and she twisted to her back. She went to kick him, but he was already inside her legs. He hit her again, his face as expressive as if he were doing a math problem or playing tic-tac-toe, rocking her head back, causing an explosion of white behind her eyes.

If he’d known what he was dealing with, he would have pressed his advantage then and continued to hit her until she was unconscious. But he miscalculated. He thought he’d hurt her enough, and cowed her enough, to get right to the main event. He shoved up the skirt she was wearing and tore away her panties, then unbuckled his belt and started opening his pants.

And suddenly, he was Skull Face, and Dirty Beard, and Square Head, and Mr. Lone. He was all of them, and the red haze descended, and the dragon awoke.

She scooted forward and bumped against his pelvis. It surprised him-he was ready for her to try to pull away, not to push closer. Before he could figure out what was happening or how to react, she jackknifed her body, slamming her legs into his back and driving his torso forward into her arms. She underhooked one arm and overhooked the other and scissored her legs behind his back, then hung on for a moment while he struggled to shake her loose, catching her breath, getting her bearings, waiting for her opportunity. He was strong and managed to slam her back, but she let him-it didn’t matter, the mattress absorbed the impact.

He slammed her again, then a third time. “Fucking bitch,” he said, and she could hear his breathing was already getting labored. “Let me go or I’ll fuck you up for real.”

He tried to reach down with his right arm, and she knew instinctively he was going for a weapon. She kept the overhook tight, tying up the arm, and waited.

He went to slam her yet again. She felt it coming-he obviously didn’t know what else to do, and was flailing now. As soon as his body tensed, she opened her guard, hooked one of his knees, and flipped him on the bed, rolling on top of him into the mount. He had no training, and instinctively scrambled to his stomach to try to establish some sort of base. She let him, taking his back. Keeping her left leg across his stomach, she reached around his throat with her right hand, took the left side of his shirt collar, shot her right knee up into the space between his arm and the back of his neck, and leaned back while jamming the knee forward, forcing his throat forward into the shirt cloth cutting across it. A variation of okuri eri jime, a strangle she liked. A sound came from his throat, like broken glass grinding, and then the cloth cut in more deeply, silencing him. He groped back for her with his left arm, and she swam her own left inside it, keeping it away from her. His right arm was trapped under his body, and now all he could do to save himself was twitch and vibrate. Which was not going to be enough.

“You going to fuck me up now?” she panted, straining to crank the choke tighter. “You going to fuck me up?” His left arm waved weakly, as though requesting a timeout or a do-over, then went rigid, and then went limp, along with the rest of him.

She held him like that for a long time. She could have let him go. If she had, he probably would have wakened at some point after she had gone. But she didn’t want him to waken. She knew she wasn’t the first woman he’d done this to.

But she could damn well make sure she was the last.