Chapter Five
Fireside Attraction
A rest stop would’ve been good. Lunch would have been better. A lot of things involving rest, food and water would’ve been good, but super tracker just kept going on relentlessly. I’d been panting practically the whole time in my effort to keep up with her and my sides were beginning to really hurt along with everything else. This was turning out to be the boot camp march from hell.
To take my mind off the effort and pain of keeping up with her I thought on the mystery that was her and why I was so overcome by her. The attraction part was easy, she was stunningly beautiful, but was she fully human or was I forming an attraction to something not real?
She looked pretty real to me. The shifting supple grace of her body in front of me was harmony itself. Her robotic arms and legs moved seamlessly along with the rest of her in effortless power over the uneven terrain. The arms became real at just above the elbow and her legs became real just above her knees. Perhaps she was missing some of the original parts, but what she still had was all the torment I could handle.
All day I’d wished that the armor suit she wore wasn’t so skintight, while the other half of me had reveled in how tight it was. Either way it hadn’t made running any easier all day I grimly acknowledged to myself. I found myself liking her blonde hair too, which was odd, as I’d never really cared for white women or blondes before.
Her pace started to slow, as we came into a clearing in the higher part of the jungle where there was more bare rock and less vegetation. “We stay here tonight.” She said simply, as she came to a stop.
“Sounds good!” I huffed out quickly, as I stumbled to a stop bending over to take the pressure off my sore lungs.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a small quirky grin briefly light up her face. It was clear to me that she was having fun at my expense. Not such the stoic robot after all. Actually there was very little roboticness about her other than what could be seen. She was very much a real life person outfitted with some rather alien looking appendages, but human all the same.
“I’ll go get us some food why’ll you make a fire.” She said.
I nodded and watched her head off into the darkness not liking for her to be out there alone in the dark, but in all truth the jungle had more to fear of her then the other way around. I glanced around the still clearing and then up into the heavens.
I was downright honest with my Creator for a moment, “I want her. Do you have any objections to me staking a claim on her?”
There was no answer on the slight breeze or in the quiet corridors of my heart. I’d take that as a no, until further notice.
No that wasn’t right.
I looked back up into the early night sky, “Sorry about that. I promised You my commitment, as a single man, until the day you provided me a wife, with the understanding that that day might never come. I humbly would like to know, is she the one? I can’t live without You Jesus in my life, but I can live without her and my commitment is to You. Can I take this relationship any farther?” To my shame I guess I really wasn’t expecting an answer again, but I got one.
“You may. Be kind to her. I will bless the union, even as I am eager to grant the desires of a faithful servant to come to pass. Share your faith with her and give her the hope that she lacks and accept her as she is and love her even as I always have.”
At some point I’d fallen to my knees and the words spoken to me registered with a Divine weight and a corresponding responsibility. I stayed on my knees for quite a while. This was going to be a big change in my life. The change I had been hoping to experience for a long time.
It was fully an hour later when Flicker returned with a taper already skinned and gutted. The sight of it got my stomach churning in anticipation. I started butchering it and was further surprised, when Flicker upended a small pack she wore and rare tropical fruit tumbled out in abundance.
I picked one of the odd looking fruits up and took a bite. I’d never had anything that tasted like this before. The fruit had flavor beyond belief!
“Do you like it?” Flicker asked.
I glanced at her, “I love it, but you shouldn’t have gotten it. You must of had to climb the tallest of trees to get fruit like this.”
Her eyes averted away slightly, “It was nothing.”
I reached out to touch her shoulder and her eyes flashed back to me startled, “You could have fallen easily. Even you with your extra abilities would be hard-pressed to survive such a fall.”
Her look was defensive, “What do you care?”
“I care very much. You helped save the world with what you did at the tower in Africa a year ago and today you saved my life and besides either of those two notable things you’re an amazingly gifted and beautiful woman and a lot more should be said of you than that you fell to your death, while picking fruit in the forest canopy of an obscure area of an Amazonian jungle.”
Flicker stared at me out of a pair of shocked blue eyes and almost reflexively she touched a lock of her hair with a metallic finger. She glanced at the shifting interplay of her metallic fingers and then back at me, as if she couldn’t understand something.
I handed her a piece of her hard earned fruit and then I put the meat onto skewers to cook over the fire, as she silently ate her fruit all the time watching me. I watched her in return, as much as she watched me. We both seemed curious in some way about each other.
When the meat was done we ate until we were full, gorging on both the meat and the exotic fruit. In some ways I don’t think I’d ever tasted anything that had the quality of the meal that we shared together.
I’d seen a small stream over to the left of us before dark and digging in my pack I found a bar of soap and pulling it out I walked off into the dark, as she continued to watch me. Out of view of the campsite I slipped off my clothes and gratefully washed the sweat and grime of the past several days off. I washed my shirt off to, but I left my pants alone.
I headed back to the fire bare-chested. As I stepped into the light she glanced up at me with the same desiring gaze, as Jane Worthy had. Here were two white women without any racial hang-ups. I wished I could say the same of myself.
I hadn’t been interested in Jane, but Flicker……
I had never seen white skin look so good on someone before and I had certainly never imagined pledging myself to a person of her color. One just never knew the path you would take in life, until it occurred sometimes. I did know that I didn’t have a single regret, as I looked down at her now.
Flicker’s face flushed rosy and she glanced away. I knelt down by my pack and gazed at her intently, until she met my eyes.
“That suit looks……. Comfortable.” I added tongue-in-cheek.
She snorted and gave me a dirty look to which I responded by chuckling.
“Why don’t you take it off?” I suggested softly.
She gave me a quick nervous look and to keep the mood light I quickly added, “Unless of course you’re afraid of me taking advantage of you.”
Her fingers flexed and a small smile played about her mouth, even as I smiled fully at her. She could rip me apart without half trying and we both knew it.
She was female so I diabolically used it against her to further convince her, “You could take my soap here and go wash off and wear this spare shirt of mine, while your clothes dry. It’s a good chance to freshen up some.”
Those were the deciding words it seemed. She abruptly stood up and turned two dials on her sides that I hadn’t noticed before. The stiff body armor fell to her feet as loose and flexible as a bed sheet, as the electric charge that had held it conformed to her de-initialized.
Flicker’s face was the color red, as my eyes traced up her smoothly muscled thighs to the tight shorts she wore on up to her tight T-shirt. I stood up and walked around the fire to her, as she watched me come toward her warily.
Her T-shirt had little rips and snags all over it, “Is it hard to get this off by yourself?”
She looked away her eyes emotional, as she nodded.
“I’ll help you if you want.” I offered slowly.
She looked back to me her eyes turbulent, but she didn’t say no. I brought the T-shirt away from her, as I grasped one cool metal alloyed arm and pushed it down through the whole of the sleeve and then the other arm. Not sure if I wasn’t going too far I grasped the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up over her head.
She had a full chest bound within the confines of a sports bra that showed prominently with the rapid rise and fall of her breathing. We were both breathing hard. I soaked in the sight of her near nakedness and wished that the sports bra and the shorts were gone to. I was getting ahead of myself, but it was hard not to.
“Be kind Utah. Be kind.”
I took the mentoring words whispered into my consciousness to heart and my passion turned to concern, as I noticed something I hadn’t in my former passioned gaze upon her. Her skin was so white that I hadn’t noticed the deeper white of the scar lines.
I touched her bare shoulders and ran my fingers down her upper arms feeling the raised outlines of skin, until near where metal and tissue were fused together above the elbow the buried lines came up out of the surface of her skin to reveal fiber-optic like cords that plugged into her artificial arms. Glancing down I let my hand run down over the skin of her toned belly, but there were no scars. On her sides however they were deep scar furrow after furrow that edged around from her back to head downward to slip beneath the band of her shorts, only to reappear flaring around her whole thigh to come out of the surface in a meshed array of cords that fused into the artificial legs just as it did at her upper arms.
I closed my hand over her shoulder to turn her to see her back, but she resisted me. My eyes found hers only to see that she was crying.
Her lips quivered as she said, “Please don’t! I want to stay pretty in your eyes!”
I wiped the tears from off one porcelain cheek, my fingers black against her skin in opposite color to hers, but somehow perfect in terms of connection. I met her watery gaze, “You will always be beautiful in my eyes Flicker.”
I tugged on her shoulder and with an increase of tears slipping down her face she obediently turned, her head sinking down to her chest, as she pulled her hair around to her front over one shoulder.
‘Oh God have mercy!’ I thought, but I kept from saying it out loud just barely. It was already abundantly clear that she had a very low opinion of herself, which I wanted to break down instead of enforce.
The firelight should’ve revealed the sensual arched plane of a female’s unblemished back, but instead it revealed an ugly interlaced patchwork of scars too numerous to even count. It was a horrendous butchery to behold, but it wasn’t what dominated her back the most in terms of shocking scenery.
Her spine was literally encased in a steely matrix of alloy metal the same as her arms and legs. No thought had been given to the cosmetic appearance of the changeover by those who’d butchered her. Her back was literally torn apart.
The steely casing that protected her spine tapered off into the small of her back and disappeared from view. My eyes drifted down to her toned and well proportioned rear, which appeared to have gone untouched from the butchery above. It gave me the opportunity to say something positive into this setting, when all she could think of would be a negative.
“You’ve got one hot derrière girl!” What I’d said was the truth, but maybe I’d infused it with a little bit more enthusiasm than I would typically. I really wasn’t the kind of guy to comment on a woman’s assets whatever they may be.
At my words her head had sharply turned to look at me over one shoulder. She stared at me in an incredulous fashion. I met her gaze honestly and responded, “What? It’s true!”
I moved away from her then and picked up my extra shirt and the bar of soap, which I then gave to her. Hesitantly I offered, “If you leave-year-old clothes by the stream I’ll wash them for you after you’re done.”
She had the look of a befuddled little kid and gently I pushed her toward the stream. She started to go, but then mumbled something.
“What do you need?” I asked quickly.
She turned her back to me and in lieu of an answer she gestured to the back clasp of her bra. My hands rose to unclasp the back of the bra, which I imagined was something else that was very hard for her to do. The deep red impressed lines that my action revealed echoed the fact that the bra hadn’t come off for a while.
It was hard to ignore the ridge of cold metal that my fingers brushed against in the act of releasing her. How someone could survive such a procedure was a miracle in and of itself. The pain had to of been unfathomable. She stepped away from me into the darkness holding her bra in place with a metallic hand.
Strangely it wasn’t the desecration of her back or the shifting metallic rhythm of her arms and legs that held my attention as she walked off into the dark. She really did have a perfect bottom.
I looked up, as she stepped back into the firelight and swallowed. Her hair was all wet and well somehow she looked really good in my shapeless oversized shirt. She was tugging rather firmly on the hem of the shirt, which is when it dawned on me that my shirt was all that she was wearing.
I had said I would wash her clothes hadn’t I. Quickly I left the fire and headed out into the darkness eager to escape our little campsite that had suddenly gotten much too hot to handle. There was still light overhead enough to see by and I found the little pile of clothes easy enough.
I stared a moment at the little pile of clothes. I had done a lot of wild and promiscuous things throughout my teenage years, until God had gotten a hold of me in my early 20s and straightened me out. Of all the erotic experiences I had philandered my way into none of them were even half as erotic as what I was experiencing now with just the feel of so intimate an item of simple cloth and lace in relation to the woman that I wanted most of all the women the world had to offer.
A profound truth occurred to me then and it was this, there is a lot to be said in involving asking God for help in the search for a lifelong mate with which to share your life, dreams, and passions with.
I knew what it had been like without God and now I knew what it was like with God’s influence and blessing. Everything was more powerful in feeling, emotional intimacy, and pureness of spirit. How had I not waited to experience this the first time?
All of my experiences up till now with love and passion seemed empty and tasteless in comparison to the bold richness that was unfolding in my life in the course of but a single day. Thankfully I truly was free of my past mistakes thanks to the atoning sacrificial blood of Jesus that had washed all my sins away.
This time would be done the right way. This time I would focus on pleasing God before I pleased myself. A good place to start doing that was to pray, as I was but a weak man faced with a powerful temptation sitting by my fire awaiting my return.
Flicker glanced up as Utah came back into the firelight. He still hadn’t put a shirt on and she let herself gaze in appreciation. She liked the sight of strength. It reminded her of her brothers and the few treasured memories she still had of her father.
She tugged on the edge of the shirt, as he leaned down to her and said, “These are pretty much dry.”
He laid her shorts down beside her before moving away to lay out her other close to dry by the fire. He then turned away with his back to her to wait and she quickly rose to step into her shorts.
“Okay.” She said husky voiced and he turned back around and she sat back down by the fire quickly glancing away from him, only too aware of her bare thighs.
Silence ensued and she reached up to get a tangle out of her hair. The tangle of hair was knotted up royally. It was impossible!
One metallic finger shifted into the form of a blade and she sliced through the knotted up hair tangle. Several locks of hair fell to the ground and she jumped with surprise, as Utah called out gruffly, “Hey!”
He sounded angry. Why was he angry?
Flicker stuttered over her words, “I had a tangle and I don’t have a brush.”
“Well that’s not the way to do it!”
Before she could even respond he was up on his feet coming over to her to kneel down behind her. She was unprepared for the feel of his fingers combing through her long hair. Her long hair was one of the few vanities that she still had.
Her hair really was more trouble than it was worth and she had debated more than one time about hacking it all off. She held still, as Utah worked the tangles out gently but firmly. She really appreciated what he was doing.
“Don’t be cutting off your hair again like that!” Utah said reprovingly.
“Okay.”
Why was she listening to him?
His fingers left off stroking through her hair to move down upon her scalp in a pressured massage. She almost groaned with the pleasure of his massaging touch. Back and forth all over her head, her ears, her temples, even her jawbone and face. His touch was absolutely divine.
Sweat rolled off my face, as I worked back away from her face to her scalp again. I didn’t think she knew how much noise she was making. I was quite curious as to how she heard at all. Sometimes I caught her reading my lips, but other times she’d heard me without seeing my lips. It was a mystery.
It was rewarding giving her a massage and yet very frustrating. Innocently meant or not the sounds she was making was like listening to an erotic soundtrack over and over. It was pretty hard to listen to and keep acting like a disinterested third party, but that was the sum total of the game for now.
Cautiously I let my fingers work down the back of her scarred neck to either side of the exposed alloy metal that encased her spine. Her moans grew deeper, but I felt hesitation to continue given the sheer mass of scar tissue that I felt beneath my fingers.
“I’m not hurting you am I?” I asked wanting to be sure.
Her voice came back to me in a husky whisper, “Don’t stop! Oh please don’t stop!”
I didn’t. As I worked away gently but firmly on the healed over scar tissue she gradually crept over, until she was lying on her front. I massaged rhythmically across the roughed up terrain of her back. My thought was that surely I had to be hurting exposed nerves, but instead it seemed like I was relieving a great tension within her.
She lay melted against the rocky ground beneath her in a deep sleep. I didn’t stop though, because she was asleep. Her moans and sighs told me that she was very much still enjoying the attention and I liked giving it to her. I doubted that she’d had any attention in a long time and it was good to give.
I decided to stop because the urge to continue the massage on down to her bottom was becoming overwhelming. That would be more about me than of any benefit to her. What was the use of tormenting myself any further than I already had this night?
I turned away from her and lay down to stare at the stars overhead. Patience it seems at times can be the hardest of all lessons to learn, often because it requires patience. She was dead to the world and I was very much throbbingly awake. It wasn’t fair.