Hero is a Four Letter Word by J.M. Frey Read Free Book Online Page A

she’d decided she will weeks back. But if she will sleep with Liam right now . Right here.
    And if she does, will she tell him about that before, or after, or not at all?
    “How do you mean?” he asks, palm sliding towards her inseam. She doesn’t stop it.
    Jen smiles and leans into his arm, parting her legs a little further, inviting him to wander northward. Nothing wrong with some harmless flirting. “Was Margaret the hero, because she rescued Tam Lin? She held on, and was granted marriage with Tam for her courage? Even though he told her how to do it all? How to win?”
    “That’s how the other stories go,” Liam allows, accepting the invitation of her spread thights. “Rapunzel tells the prince how to defeat the witch, the princess on the glass hill rolls apples down to the farmer boy; the captive chooses their rescuer and eventual husband, and tells them how to win. It’s less the challenge for the valiant knight that makes him the hero than it is the woman consciously choosing her mate.”
    “So what, their heroism is empty because the princess has already decided? ‘Oh, that one looks humble, and kind. He’s make a good king and he won’t beat me. I’ll pick him to marry me, but I have to make him think he’s winning of his own cunning and strength?’ Some sort of centuries old mind-games that the Grimms and Perrault never caught on to?”
    Liam grins. “Tell me how it is any different now? Men ask to wed a woman after dating them, after spending months or years proving their worth as a husband, as a father, and the woman is the one with the veto power. She says yes, or no.”
    Jen can’t help but echo his grin. “You make it sound like a meat market. That’s not what it’s like. Besides, sometimes the woman asks the man. Sometimes there is no woman, or no man. Sometimes like my Dad, they don’t want to get married.”
    “I am generalizing,” Liam allows. “But you know what I mean. One person does valiant things to prove their worth, even if those valiant things are just taking out the trash and doing the dishes, and the other one decides they get to keep them or not.”
    “You’re still missing the point,” Jen says. “It’s a marriage, not a property contract. People choose to stay together not because one person wants and the other one consents to being wanted; they stay together because they like each other. They want to stay in each other’s company, make the other one happy, make them smile, comfort them when they’re hurt and take care of them when they’re sad and sick. The other person increases their happiness when they’re around, when the other person does something nice for them, when they do something nice for their partner. They both want and they both consent.”
    Liam leans forward. “Well said, Jennet of Carterhaugh.” His face is so close to hers, his breath a warm puff against her lips that tastes of mint and the bottle of cider they’ve been passing back and forth along the walk. “Will you let me make you happy?”
    “Sure,” Jen allows. A single kiss can’t hurt.
    He leans forward just far enough that their mouths touch. Then he giggles, lips vibrating against hers in a thrilling, delicious sensation that makes heat slide down her spine. “See?” he asks, flesh to flesh, the words smeared against her skin. “One asks, one consents.”
    Before she can answer, he pushes that clever tongue between her lips, and Jen opens for him. Opens her arms, her mouth, allows herself to feel good, to feel for herself, for the first time since her father had passed. Liam kisses the scar on her stomach over, and over, and over again and produces a condom from the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.
    “I consent,” Jen murmurs amid the late autumn roses.
    And Jennet allows herself to remember that she is a human being who deserves good things, and Liam is more than happy to help her get there.

    Jennet is more relaxed than she’s been in probably a decade. She’s just