Page 43 of The Warrior
Hans smiled and slid a finger down my arm. It made me jerk back. I wasn’t used to men touching me. My father would have cut his fingers off, and Magni would have beaten him for touching me without permission.
“I’m sorry,” he said and tucked his hand in his lap. “Do you prefer to be the aggressive one?”
I shook my head to get my mind to work. “What? You have to be delusional if you think I invited you to have sex with me.”
He tilted his head. “Ah, I see. Is this where I pursue you and you pretend not to want me?”
“Huh?”
Hans narrowed his eyes, thinking, and then he pushed me back with decisiveness using both hands on my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I protested while pushing back. But Hans kept fumbling around on top of me, trying to kiss me.
I punched him square in his face, making him cry out in pain. “Get off of me.” I bucked and kicked him to the floor, where Hans curled up with his hands covering his nose, making whimpering sounds.
With every hotel fully booked because of the earthquake we’d been staying with people that had volunteered through a public system to take strangers in for a night. Hans slept on a couch while I’d been in a guest room.
“Shhh,” I shushed him. “Be quiet, you’re waking up the whole house.
Hans scrambled to sit up, his fingers dabbing at his nostrils to check for blood.
“Don’t look so offended,” I told him. “You were way out of line, and you only got what you deserved.”
“But all the signals were there,” he defended himself.
“What signals?”
“You’ve made several sexual references today and you told me I should try sex.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t say you should try sex withme.”
“Oh…” Hans got up and dusted himself off with a pout. “I see that I’ve misread the situation, but there was no need to assault me like that. I could report you for your aggressive behavior, you know?”
I got out of bed to stare him down.
Hans cleared his throat and moved to the door. “Don’t worry, I’m a big enough person to forgive you.”
Looking down my nose at him, I spoke in a sharp tone. “Goodnight, Hans.”
“Goodnight.”
When he finally closed the door behind him, my shoulders relaxed and I went back to bed. With restless energy, I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, wondering how in the world Hans could have gotten the impression that I wanted to have sex with him. At least I was certain he would never make that mistake again.
I’d only dozed off a little when Magni called me around three a.m. It alarmed me that he would call me at this time of the night and sitting up straight, I answered, “Magni, what’s wrong?”
“Laura, it’s me.” Magni’s voice was slurred and the hologram above my wrist was too dark for me to see his face.
“Are you drunk?”
“Pretty drunk.”
“Magni, what’s going on?” I turned on the light, not liking the sadness in his voice.
“I’m calling you to say goodbye.”
“You’re calling me to say goodbye?” I repeated, since his speech was so slurred he was hard to understand.
“That’s right.”
