Read Online Fearless by Annie Jocoby - Free Book Online Page A

either. I frankly wasn’t the kind of girl who would be flattered by such a thing. In other words, I didn’t consider myself to be vain. So, being considered beautiful did absolutely nothing for me. Zero.
    Well, unless you considered the fact that I got jobs because of the way that I looked. And well-paying ones, too. That would be the o nly plus to being a thing that was desired. But even that was a bit humiliating for me, because I really wanted to be making a living through my art and creativity, and that was completely extinguished. No, not extinguished. Dormant. That was a better term. Dormant. God forbid that my art ability was gone. God forbid. I didn’t think that I could live for the rest of my life without it. It was bad enough living through these past 8 years without the muse guiding me.
    My mind drifted, as it usually did when I was with a guy, alone. I questioned what it was that I got out of these encounters. It certainly wasn’t for the sex. I didn’t much get into that, to be honest. I guess because my mind was never engaged with these men and boys, and for me, even more than probably most women, I had to connect to someone intellectually before I could feel anything at all below the waist. Thus far, no member of the opposite sex, or Alaina for that matter, had been able to reach my intellect, so the sex itself was something that was a bit boring.
    It certainly wasn’t that I was searching for love. I knew well enough that sex, especially casual sex, wouldn’t lead to love. Nor did I want it to. I had standards, even if they were double standards, and any guy who wanted to jump into bed with me, without knowing me, would not be a guy that I would want to be with in the long term.
    So, what was I searching for in these encounters? Was I searching for a way to feel? To overcome my numbness? Was I just trying to not be alone? Did I fear being alone, because being alone was like death to me? After all, the only thing that I could do, when I was alone, was contemplate my failures. What was going to bring me back into the living? Sometimes I despaired that I would ever be brought back into a place where I actually felt like waking up in the morning.
    I could vaguely understand that I was now naked on this man’s couch. This stalker man, who I never would have thought I would be alone with, was with me, about to be on top of me, and all I could think about was when I could get out of that place and get back into my bed. Not that I was entirely unwilling. No, I would not consider this to be a rape. But I wasn’t engaged, either. It was kind of a netherworld, really. A disturbing netherworld.
    I took a deep breath. I tried to put it out of my mind that this man first encountered me when I was underaged, and he apparently had been obsessed with me ever since. I was Dolores Haze to his Humbert Humbert. Lolita was actually one of the books that I devoured when I was in kindergarten, and it was a book that I have constantly referred to in my mind, as I had encountered many, many men like this Nottingham throughout my life. Creepers, every one of them.
    Not that Nottingham was particularly old. On the contrary, he appeared to be only around 30, maybe a bit older or a bit younger. But 30 would be the median that I would assume him to be. But, when he first saw me, I was apparently 17 and he was around 28. So, yeah, if you put it that way, he was a bit of a creeper.
    Now, he was naked. His lips were on mine. He wasn’t a bad kisser, considering. I certainly had worse in my life. His hands were caressing each of my breasts, and, then, well, he got out the handcuffs.
    Oh, great, one of those guys. Well, I’ll play along. Sometimes it was a little bit fun. A guy would get a bit rough, and, to my surprise, these were actually some of favorite encounters. Probably because it wasn’t the same old same old. I appreciated the creativity, if nothing else, although handcuffs were certainly pedestrian in the big scheme of