LITMIR.BIZ

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fighting until one of them yielded – nine times out of ten, it was Alex. Sometimes the fight was over in a few seconds; some mornings it took fifteen minutes. Two months ago, she’d cracked a bone in his wrist while blocking a punch, and a few weeks back he’d badly bruised two of her ribs. There had been regular welts, abrasions, strained tendons and ligaments. But she was a better fighter now than she’d ever been. More wary, more observant, and once the fight began, she was quicker, meaner, more willing to bring things to a sudden and complete conclusion.

      Jason stepped forward, palms raised, shrugging.

      She was settled into a relaxed watchfulness. Not tense, not overflexed.

      ‘I mean it, Jason. Today’s not good. I’m bushed.’

      ‘Okay, okay.’

      He straightened from the cat stance, shook out his arms like a swimmer loosening up on the starting blocks, half-turned to give the old man a friendly wave, then spun back, lunged, leading with his left foot, a mae-geri, the basic front kick.

      Day-one stuff. Ten-year-olds just off the street, getting their first lesson, learned a front kick. So Alex discounted it, waited for the punch or roundhouse flying kick that was coming next. But the mae-geri was real, his left heel cracking into her solar plexus, taking her down.

      And before she could roll, he was on her. Saddling her at the waist, hands at her throat, thumbs digging in. The daylight going yellow, then gray. Two seconds from blackness. And she slung her right leg up, hooked her heel against his throat, levered back.

      Then it was his sixty-pound superiority against her wider hips and stronger legs. Her better angle of attack.

      It was shootfighting now. A karate spin-off. Submission combat. What happened when you were forced to the ground. A whole new array of techniques, flips, sweeps, suplexes, arm bars, chin locks, chokes. They’d only been training for a year in shoot-fighting. A tough, bruising, eye-gouging year. This was street stuff, innovative, brutal. A lot of squirming, some elementary wrestling holds, whatever worked.

      At that moment, she was losing the leverage battle, her heel slipping against the oily sweat of his neck. Jason grunted and tried to twist the last inch he needed to free his neck and finish choking her into unconsciousness.

      ‘Give,’ she grunted.

      ‘Me or you?’

      ‘You!’ she said. ‘Surrender.’

      ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me do it.’

      She felt a subtle softening in his grip, that familiar hesitation of the prudent teacher trying not to harm his student, and in that split second she locked her knee and straightened, thrust him up and to the left, and broke his hold, sending him sprawling. She scrambled to her feet, and in the instant he was recovering, she knee-dropped to his throat, easing back at contact, blunting the strike so she didn’t snap his neck. Then gripping a handful of hair in her right hand, she tipped his head back so his Adam’s apple was fully exposed.

      ‘If you so much as flinch, I’ll snap your spindly neck.’

      ‘I’m thinking clean thoughts,’ he said.

      ‘Get that smile off your face. I see any teeth, I’ll break them.’

      ‘Tough broad. Good with the patter.’

      ‘Bet your ass I am. I’ve studied with the best.’

      ‘And sexy, too,’ he said. ‘Great calves. Ballerina legs.’

      Abruptly, she released him and stepped back.

      ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Excellent escape and counterstrike.’

      She let out a long exhalation and flopped down beside him in the sand. Both of them were breathing hard.

      After a full minute, he said, ‘You didn’t try to block the front kick.’

      ‘It seemed beneath you.’

      ‘You missed the obvious, Alex. You can’t let your sophistication become a weakness. Just because you’re experienced, you can’t forget first principles. And you’ve got to forget it’s me. No habits, no expectations. That could’ve killed you on the street, Alex. You’ve got to see what’s right in front of you. No more, no less.’

      ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay, okay.’

      They stared up at the sky and watched the blue seep back into it. The water stirred along the shore, churning up the early-morning fragrances of seaweed and tar and the mild lavender of driftwood warming in the sun.

      Then he was up on his elbow, peering down at her. He brushed some sand from her forehead, combed a strand of her black hair into place.

      ‘Don’t,’ she said.

      ‘Don’t what?’

      She took a quick breath, blew it out. She stared up at the clear blue.

      ‘I can’t do this anymore, Jason.’

      ‘What?’

      Alex swept the hair from her face while Jason propped his head on his hand and looked into her eyes.

      ‘We’ve got to stop this. These workouts, or whatever you call it.’

      ‘What’re you talking about? Just because I let you win now and then, you think you don’t need me anymore? You’re dumping me.’

      She shook her head and tore away from his stare.

      ‘You’re expecting something more, and I can’t give it.’

      ‘More? More what?’

      ‘You know what I’m saying, Jason. Don’t make it harder than it is.’

      He didn’t like what he saw in her face, and he turned back to gaze at the sea.

      ‘Oh, come on. This is exercise, that’s all. Skill versus skill. Testing each other, pushing the limits.’

      ‘Bullshit. Don’t kid yourself.’

      He shook his head, sighed.

      ‘So what’s this about? Stan lay down the law? He want you to give up martial arts, stay home and work on the marital ones?’

      ‘Stan’s never said a word. This is my decision.’

      ‘This is just a workout, Alex. Staying sharp. Primed, focused.’

      ‘It’s becoming more than that. We both know it.’

      ‘Well, yeah, I wish it were. I’m not going to deny that. But I’d say we’ve been doing a damn good job of keeping it sex-free so far. Both of us acting responsible, very adult.’

      He turned back to her, fixed his eyes on hers, then abruptly swung his leg over her waist and saddled her again.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Get off me, Jason.’

      But he brought his face close to hers, held it there, vulnerable to anything she wanted to do.

      When she didn’t move, he tilted down and pressed his lips against hers. Alex kept her mouth rigid, fighting it, but gradually the hard knot in her chest relaxed and began to melt away, and after a moment more she yielded, lips loosening, finding the fit. Softening and opening, a whisper of breath passing between them. His tongue moving in, slipping past her lips. A moan from one of them – she wasn’t sure who.

      She heard the surf and the raucous laughter of a gull and the insistent shriek of her blood. Then she drew her head away, twisted hard to her right, arched her back and bridged, stepped over his left leg with her right, and pried out of his grasp.

      On her feet, breathing hard, she looked down at him. His knees were bent, hands locked behind his head as if he meant to do a few dozen sit-ups.

      ‘Now that,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t exercise. That was kissing. There’s a hell of a difference, Alex.

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