What a load of bullshit. “And why should the woman have to wait for the man? So he can be the hero? I’m sorry, but women are just as awesome as men. We don’t need to be rescued all the time.”
She whimpered, her face pinched as tears filled her eyes. The woman seriously had some issues, but that was nothing I could help her with at the moment. I just wanted to get out of here.
“Look, just scoot over here and put your back to mine. We can undo each other’s ties. Honestly, it would be a little insane if two strong, capable women waited around for men to show up.”
That seemed to spark something inside her. “I guess.”
But she still wasn’t convinced.
“Claire, it’s fine to have your fantasies, but we’re actually stuck in a concrete jungle right now. Do you really want to wait and see what happens?”
“They’ll come,” she said confidently.
“I’m sure they will, but I’d rather not wait to find out what happens in the meantime. We have a short window to get ourselves out of here. If we don’t untie ourselves by the time the men return, we can wait for your lover to rescue us.”
“Husband,” she corrected. “And he really is Superman.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure he is.”
A grin crept across her face. “And Batman. And sometimes even Spiderman, but the webs really get in the way.”
I finally caught on to what she was talking about and grimaced. “Gross.”
“Not even a little. Let me tell you, there are things?—”
“I really don’t want to know,” I cut her off. “Can we just get on with it?”
“Fine,” she sighed, scooting on her butt over to me.
Her fingers fumbled at the ropes, but it was pointless. Neither of us could move our hands in the right direction to actually do anything with the ties. After five excruciating minutes where all that happened was my shoulder being pulled out of joint, I gave up on that idea.
“I’m telling you, we just have to wait for the guys.”
“I’m not waiting for a bunch of men to show up and save the day! That’s just ridiculous. What we need to do is get our ties at the front of our bodies.”
“Brilliant idea!” she said sarcastically. “We’ll just call the bad guys back and ask if they can tie us in the front instead.”
“Would you just listen? I’ve seen it all the time in the movies. All we have to do is slip our arms around our butts and pull our legs through. It’s that simple.”
“Have you seen the size of my ass?” she laughed. “Fat chance of making that happen.”
“How would you know? Have you ever tried it?”
Sighing, she turned on her butt to face me. “Fine, let’s do this.”
I rolled backward, over my arms, then lifted my butt to give my wrists room to move. I wiggled and jiggled, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my wrists to move low enough to slip my butt through.
“Any luck?”
She grunted, cursing as she tried and failed to get her arms over her ass. “I told you my ass was too big!”
That wasn’t the problem, but I wasn’t giving up. I continued to writhe, determined to get my arms over my ass. “My arms aren’t long enough! How do they do this in the movies?”
“Well, first of all, they’re stick thin. Second, they probably work out for a living. Third, they probably dislocate their shoulder to do it. And four, they must have monkey arms because there’s no way my arms are long enough!”
I sucked in a breath and tried one more time, squeezing my ass cheeks in until finally, my arms slipped around my cheeks and?—
“Oh God,” I whispered.