by Gabi Moore
“Of course. I hear you guys have really nice washrooms,” she said, and gathered her papers in a neat pile. I wanted to grab her, throw her down on this desk and ravage her, to hell with the papers. Instead I listened patiently as she chatted about this and that.
The other students started arriving soon after and our little meeting was forced to an end. But in my mind the Saturday class was her class. The class I found myself putting the most effort into. The one time in the week I could touch her. She had a way of welcoming everyone in, of making the students feel comfortable. I don’t know how she did it, but she made the whole thing just come together somehow. The gym came alive with buzzing chatter and soon I was up in front of them, ready to start the class.
“Morning everyone,” I said. “Today we’re recapping everything from the last lesson, and, like we agreed, we’ll be doing a little light sparring at the end, just for fun.”
I looked over to her face amongst the other women. She beamed back and gave me a thumbs up. I’ve slept nights in dark, flooded ditches while insurgents threw petrol bombs at us and each other. I’ve tiptoed through minefields and watched men blown up one footstep in front of me. I’ve rappelled down mountains and up them again and at no point through any of it did I ever imagine I’d be here, in a room full of women in neon sports bras in a brightly lit gym downtown.
We moved through the lesson plan for the day, and to my relief, it was going well. The women seemed to be having a good time, everyone was learning, it was amazing. Though I couldn’t do anything about it right then, I felt a warm glow of appreciation for Kate, who was really behind all of it. Her voice rang out in my mind as I wove my way through the class: “you’re not in Afghanistan anymore Max. What you’re offering these women is a feeling of control and safety, remember that” and “most women have a strong aversion to getting physically hurt, you’ll lose customers if you make the whole thing look too macho” and “you look the part, so play that up. Wear your camo pants. And your dog tag. They’ll pretend they don’t notice but believe me, they do.”
That last one stuck with me as I walked up behind her and her exercise partner, dog tag swinging across my chest. Working mostly behind enemy lines, I couldn’t remember the last time I wore my tag. But I was happy to wear it, if it meant she approved.
“Ok, everyone, let’s switch partners for a second and try that move out again.” I knew the class number was uneven and I’d have to step in to pair up with her. We played this little game every week. She pretended to look around in vain for another woman to team up with, and when there wasn’t one, she turned and looked at me all flustered, shrugged and said, “looks like it’s you and me again” and we both smiled like idiots at one another.
We went to the front of the class to demonstrate the move, and though I was cool and composed and focused on the mechanics of the thing, another part of me was fixated solely on the way it felt to have my hand on her waist, and then on the swell of her lower thigh. By now I could recognize her scent in a lineup – soft, powdery – and even though I was gentle and tried by best not to hurt her in the least, her small body always tensed up firm during moves, like she was a little spring coiled up tight. I was pleasantly surprised by how strong she was. And by surprised I mean …turned on.
We wrapped up the class and Kate kept things friendly and flowing in that hard to pinpoint kind of way only she could. Soon, all the students had left and we were alone again. She had returned from the locker rooms, showing no sign of having wrestled it out with a room full of sweaty women a few moments before, and came to find me in the upstairs office once more. I was just closing up and turned to leave when we literally ran into each other in the doorway.
“Oh, sorry, I—”
“Whoops!”
And just like that we were pressed up against one another. It wasn’t that we had accidentally touched. It was that neither of us did anything in particular to stop it from happening. We just stood there, noticing that the other one hadn’t moved away. And then a few seconds passed and it was too late to pretend it was just an accident at all, and another half second passed and I was sure I’d go crazy if I didn’t lean forward and press my lips to hers.
But she wriggled away and blushed, staring hard at the floor and clutching her bag close to her body. She looked like she was desperately trying to think of something to say, something that would explain all of this, and give her an excuse to leave now even though as far as I was concerned, we were the only ones in the whole world at that moment. Why wouldn’t we want to take advantage of that? I couldn’t help my eyes glancing over at the empty desk behind me.
“I should—”
But I kissed her before she could finish. I don’t know how my body found its way to hers but kissing her felt so much easier than not kissing her. I could feel her chest freeze against me as she stopped breathing, and the whole universe shrunk down for a moment to that warm spot where our lips connected. I think she must have tried to protest for half a second but that melted away and just became a soft whimper. I couldn’t stop my hands from reaching around to pull her closer. I just wanted all of that gorgeous body pressed up as close to me as possible. I couldn’t help but tilt her head in my hands to kiss her more deeply, couldn’t help by snake my hand down her toned back, so my fingers could trace their way to that inch of bare skin where her shirt ended…
“Max, we can’t,” she breathed, and tore her lips from mine.
“Yes we can. We can do whatever we want,” I said and leaned in to kiss her again. But I had lost her. That crackling moment of passion between us was over before it started. She was shaking her head.
“But why?” I whispered.
She had haunted my thoughts for weeks. Hell, she had haunted my dreams. And I knew that she couldn’t have kissed me the way she just did if she wasn’t feeling what I was feeling right now. I reached gently for her to stroke my fingertips along her cheek, and she instantly flinched away from me. She actually recoiled away from me, so quickly it couldn’t be anything more than a reflex. I was taken aback. She looked at me with sorrowful eyes, as though I had discovered some horrible secret of hers.
“That’s why,” she said, and pulled out of my grasp. Before I could speak again she had turned and was walking back down the staircase.
“Kate, please don’t go.”
She turned to flash me the same pained expression.
“We should just keep things simple, Max. I …I want to, but I think what I need is just to get my head straight,” she said, staring up at me from the steps below.
“But things are simple. Just kiss me. What could be simpler than that?”
“I think I’m… my ex. I think he broke something in me, you know? I just want to make sure that the next time I get involved with someone, I do it properly…”
“You’re traumatized. I get that.”
“Jeez, I’m not traumatized.”
“Yes you are, Kate. I know it when I see it. Trust me.”
She looked up again at me and it took every shred of willpower in me not to kiss her again.
“If it makes you feel any better, I know what you’re going through. I can’t speak about it but my last mission was …difficult. Things happened back there that took me months to even get the guts to think about again. I felt like I’d never be the same again after… it doesn’t matter though.”
“What happened?” she said. She took one tentative step up towards me. My heart fluttered madly in my chest. I wanted her so badly.
I sighed loudly as I tried to think of the words to describe the mess that had been the Last Mission. The mission that was such a spectacular failure that five of the eight men on our squad filed for relief from duty afterwards and came back home. And the other three never got the chance. How could I tell her about the things we’d seen over there? The long dark nights where we all had to try to keep one another from going insane? The torture? The hunger? There was no dignified way to describe what we had gone through.
“I lost my button compass,” I said at last.
“What?”
I sat down on the step and laced my hands in front of me.
“I gave it to a guy on my team. A good guy. Brett Johnson. Built like a tank and twice as mean. I leant it to him. He threw himself on a grenade to save the rest of us. I never got my compass back.” I had no idea where any of it had come from, or why that memory of all memories suddenly came to me now. But I noticed she had sat beside me and now had her hand resting on my thigh as she listened.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I looked at her.
“It’s the past, Kate. Let’s go home together. Come with me, right now. I’ll cook for us. We’ll get some wine.”
I put my hand on top of hers and squeezed.
“Yes. I want to, Max. I do. I need time though.”
We got tangled in one another’s gaze. I understood where she was coming from. I knew what it felt like to wake up screaming, to get startled fifty times just going to the supermarket, to wince at human touch…
“Will you kiss me again though?” I said quietly.
The naughty smile on her lips nearly killed me.
Chapter 12 - Kate
“When are you coming home, baby girl? I miss you.”
“Uh, when hell freezes over?”
“God, listen to you. You don’t even have a job there, you could pack up and come over tomorrow if you liked.”
“Mom, I already told you, I do have a job. It’s just a short-term contract but I’m enjoying it. I like it out here.”
“He’s not going to be out until 2019, Kate. He might as well be dead. Is it him you’re scared of?”
I had read the news reports of his arrest and sentencing like it was some kind of dream. I still couldn’t quite believe it. All the time he had been travelling up here to threaten me; he’d had another girl back home. Another girl he was abusing. That there was someone else at all was more of a surprise to me than the fact that he had beaten her too. And now she was in a coma in the hospital and he was in jail for a decade for aggravated assault …and now I had to take seemingly millions of calls from my concerned mother.
“I have as much to be afraid of now as I did before,” I said, which was a not-so-subtle dig at the fact that pretty much nobody believed me all those years I suffered in silence while Derek showed a smiling face to the world and tortured me behind closed doors.
“At any rate, baby, that city is just full of crazies, and I know how you seem to attract people like that…”
“Mom please…”
“I’m just saying. We miss you at home.”
“I miss you too, mom.”
“You need anything baby?”
“Nah. I’m good. But I have to get going.”
“Yeah? You making friends over there?”
“Something like that.”
Silence.
“Mom, I’m fine, I promise.”
“You know that none of it’s your fault, right baby?”
I sighed loudly. My mom had an irritating way of always knowing exactly what was bothering me.
“I know, mom. And I know he might have gotten off much more lightly if I hadn’t reported any of what happened.”
“Ok good. And she’ll be fine. She’s in rough shape but they say she’s gonna be fine.”
“Sure mom. I have to go though.”
I hung up and briefly considered how a woman beaten into a coma was ‘fine’ but pushed the thought out of my mind. I picked up the gift-wrapped box on the kitchen table, took a deep breath and walked out the front door.
Max and I were… not dating exactly. But we weren’t not dating, either. I wasn’t used to men backing off when I told them to, to be honest. I kept waiting to see when he would drop the sweet, decent guy façade and show his true colors. But he never did. Despite myself, despite the fact that I had been nothing but an unrepentant nuisance to start off with and despite him looking like a literal Greek god, he stuck around. He didn’t care that I was ‘damaged’. In fact, he seemed to know what I meant by ‘damaged’ even before I even said it.
I pressed his doorbell and waited. He opened, looked at the present and then at me.
“Hey… what’s in the box?” he said cheerfully. I thrust it into his hands and pushed my way inside.
“It’s for you,” I said. He looked as though he’d never received a gift before. I found myself a seat and watched as he gingerly unwrapped the paper. When he finally realized what it was, his hands froze where they were and he stared at it. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down, just once.
“You… this is…” he said but couldn’t speak. He took it out the box and examined it, hands shaking.
“I know it’s not exactly the same one or anything, but—”
“Kate, thank you so much,” he said quietly. He seemed genuinely touched. It was cheap, in the end: just a simple button compass I had found off an old veteran on eBay. I had done some research and found precisely the same kind favored by the SEALs.
“The guy who sold it to me is retired. He said he took that thing all over the world, so it’s not like, just some soulless object.” He looked up at me with astonishment.
“I think this is the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received,” he said and turned it over again and again in his hands. “It’s just like the one I had…”
If I didn’t know any better I might have said he was choking up a little.
“Consider it a thank you for all that stupid scar cream you bought for me!” I said and watched him closely. I was floored when he lunged over to me and grabbed me in a tight bear hug, squeezing me like his life depended on it.
“Kate, thank you. I’m serious.”
There in his arms, it was easy to remember why I had really come here. Derek was in jail. The business was doing well. I wanted him. He wanted me. Why not?
I ran my hands along his strong back as he held me there in a hug, and soon it changed to something else. I don’t know what made it different, but suddenly his arms around me and my arms around him felt more serious somehow. I didn’t want him to let me go. I could feel his body under his clothing, and he was so warm.
“Max?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you wanna …should we do this, for real?”
He tried to pull back to look into my face but I held on tight, afraid to let go of the moment. He stroked my hair and then kissed my temple.
“I think I’m ready to move on now. If you’re …if you wanted to …maybe we could see where this went,” I said. Maybe it was time now to see what happened when we didn’t stop ourselves from kissing.
“There’s no rush, Kate. I like you. You know that. Let’s just go slow, OK?”
“Yes. Slow. Let’s go slow.”
Kissing him had been so intense for me I kind of didn’t even think of what could come afterwards. The thought of having sex with this beast of a man was just something strange and hypothetical, not something real that could ever actually happen to someone like me. The only man I had ever been with was Derek. And we all know how that turned out.
“Slow…” I said and the tail of the word got lost on his lips again. Here was a man who used his power for good. A man who didn’t hurt, but who protected and defended against hurt. It was like a revelation to me, to feel the strength of his muscles under his shirt and not be afraid but… turned on. His fingers gently played with my hair and stroked my cheek and neck as our lips played a new game with each other, first his tongue tip advancing and caressing mine, and then retreating so mine could take the lead and kiss him back, a sweet little dance of passion.
An almost painful ache radiated from between my legs. I had hated him once. I had watched him secretly through his living room window and judged him, but now I could admit it: I had really just been afraid. Afraid of strong men, afraid of how deliciously out of control I felt whenever I looked at him, afraid of what might happen if I let go and allowed myself to…
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“Kate, what are you…?”
I didn’t know what I was doing, honestly. My hands had a life of their own, and I was now watching them tear fiercely at his belt with as much astonishment as he was.
“You don’t have to… we don’t have to do any of this now,” he said and put strong hands on my shoulders. But I couldn’t stop. There was a new inertia in my fingertips and they fumbled on their own, possessed, until I had unlinked his belt, pulled it free and tossed it aside to the floor. Hearing it clatter on the tiles was thrilling. I could have stopped to consider what I was doing, but my fingers already had a plan of their own, and were now quickly working his trouser button, till I could yank them down and reveal the soft cotton of his boxer shorts underneath and the faint scent of his skin that drove me wild.
The slight moan in his exhale was all the encouragement I needed. I knew exactly what he had in here, and I wanted it. Oh god, just the thought of holding that gorgeous cock in my hands was making me dizzy. He gently clasped my head in his hands and brought me up for another deep kiss, but my hands couldn’t stop. I peeled down those boxer shorts and released that thick monster of his. I squeezed my eyes tightly into the kiss and let my hands play over his warm, silky smooth skin. He was made of marble. Every furrow and carved ripple in his skin was hard as rock, and when my trembling fingertips grazed that hot, stiff cock of his, I gasped out loud into the kiss.
It felt even better than it looked. It was ridiculously unfair. He was good looking, kind, hot as a calendar model and he was hung like a horse? This must be what it felt like to win the lottery.
He pressed eagerly against me and soon I felt his hands travelling over my body to pull my own clothing off. But I was already far off. Eyes closed, each little sensation throbbing over my body came screeching into the fore, amplified like I was in slow motion, or playing out some delicious dance deep underwater where I could feel the tiny ripples of every breath, every touch.
My top and skirt disappeared somehow in the hunger our skins had for one another and the frenzy we had to get them as close to one another as possible. When I was fully naked and so was he, we pressed up tightly against one another and the relief was palpable. His body was like the most delicious, warm, breathing wall – somehow so yielding but so firm all at once. The sight of his dog tag – still on from the class he had just taught – made my knees weak. I suddenly wanted nothing but to give him everything, to submit fully to this mountain of a man. I had watched him for weeks – I felt like I already knew well each and every muscle in his body – but now I was pressing firmly up against those same muscles, my appreciation for just how well-built he was suddenly taking on a desperate edge. I couldn’t touch him enough. My hands didn’t know where to put themselves.