by Greg Curtis
But the distrust remained. The criticisms and sharp retorts. The physical slanging matches as they each showed off their strengths and pointed out the other’s weaknesses. Beneath their calm exteriors they were like two cats spitting in an alleyway, always waiting to have another go at each other.
During the mornings they each bit their tongue and sucked it in, each waiting to pounce on what the other said; waiting for that single remark, that tiny proof that each was going to betray the other. Their conversations were like chess games, with each pushing forward pawns, waiting for the other to strike first so they could hit back harder. Their time at the gym and the swimming were all variations on the same theme.
The afternoons were like rest periods, where they each caught their breath before the next round. And when ironically they kept discovering more and more about how similar they were. The evenings were a return to feuding as they confined themselves once again to the four walls of the house. The continual proximity just made it worse. And the nights were just an endless wait while they rallied the troops, till morning when hostilities would resume.
The worst of it was that they were both intelligent people. They both knew what they were doing and they should have been able to work their way through it. But they weren’t able to. They found themselves trapped in a cycle of anger and mistrust, and they couldn’t seem to find their way out.
Despite that it was also only when they fought, when they tested each other’s metal that they were truly at their happiest. It was as if they were designed specifically to spar with each other. David had always thought himself a reasonably sane human being, but something in Cyrea just drove him nuts from time to time, and it was only when he came close to fighting with her that he felt alive. Excited as he had never been before. Until his reasoning returned and beat him up, that was.
Cyrea felt it too. He knew it even if he’d never dared ask her. And he saw it then as she approached him. It was more than just the smile on her face as she approached him, the way she stalked him as if he was her prey. It was an energy that radiated from her as she came to slay her dragon. The same energy that was filling him.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” It was both the truth and a lie, and above all else, the very worst thing to say. Cyrea’s fur bristled as she heard his words and he knew she was angry at the concept of losing to him. Angry at his casual assertion that he would beat her. And possibly angrier at the thought that he just might. But he was still much larger and more powerful than her, well trained and very experienced. The odds surely had to be in his favour.
He learned the opposite as she struck like a snake, crossing the half dozen feet between them in a flash and then throwing him across the room in a judo style flip. He landed in a heap at the other end, and looked at her, upside down. For a long while he wondered about the wisdom of getting up, but he knew he would.
“What makes you think you can?” The smile had become a grin as she clearly gave herself first points. It was a good throw. Slowly he rose to his feet, watching her every instant of the time, wondering how she could be so fast. Clearly her recovery from injury had been more far-reaching than he’d expected. And she knew it.
“I mean, I don’t want to fight you.” He tried to sound calm, but he was still reeling from the flip. “It can only end up hurting us both. Why can’t we just be friends?” Finally it was the truth, and yet it sounded completely false even to him. Deep down he did want to fight her. To thrash her. To teach her a lesson she’d never forget.
“You mean, that you think you’re so much stronger than I that you would squash me like a bug.” Cyrea was angry again and it showed. And she was frustrated, they both were. One way or the other it was time to get this over with so they could move on. It might be uncivilized, it might be damn near barbaric, but they needed to establish a pecking order. To prove once and for all who was top dog. He knew it even if he didn’t want to admit it. She knew the same.
“Or you mean that I’m not important enough to waste your time on. So unimportant that you’ll even break your word.”
“No! Never! What word?” For once he was genuinely confused.
“You said you’d fight me in a week, when I was recovered. A week has passed and I’m fully fit. Now you want to back out.” He cringed as he remembered the words. They had been spoken in anger, flippant and probably stupid, and he truly hadn’t meant them. But as he looked in her eyes he knew that there would be no acceptance of that.
“All right, all right. But we need some rules.” He slowly took off his shoes and socks and threw them towards the far wall. His jacket followed shortly after. This was going to be tough, but at least she was listening.
“No deadly blows, no maiming or injuring, and we fight to the point where one of us has to yield. Okay!” She nodded and he could only hope she accepted his words at face value. To be fair, in the past week she had restrained herself admirably with screaming matches kept to a minimum, and not once creeping up on him. She could obey his rules when she chose, even if she thought they were total crap. Now would be the ultimate test of her self-control. And his.
Carefully he moved into an ancient karate pose, and gestured for her to come. He knew there was no getting out of this anymore. Not after he’d opened his big mouth and insulted her fighting prowess. In her shoes he would have felt exactly the same. Besides having given in to her demands he felt the anticipation growing inside him. Something very dark and primitive in him wanted to fight. Wanted to beat her. To make her submit.
She wasted no time and came at him in a rush. Her arms were lower down than he expected, swinging wildly. He quickly realized it was just a feint. She was testing him, trying to work out his speed. He let her have her day, and watched as her hand shot back after having missed him by at least six inches. Despite its speed he noticed she didn’t get turned around by its momentum. Nor had her claws been extended. A very controlled swipe. But he in turn very carefully hadn’t reacted, hopefully giving her the impression he was slower than he was.
Her next strike though was something else altogether, as she did a double handed spinning strike from the opposite direction with no warning. It was a speed move designed to catch him in the neck at least once, and then trip him. But she was completely out of luck as it was exactly what he’d expected from her. He stepped directly into her attack, far faster than she would have thought possible of him. Being almost immediately in her face as she spun caused her upper arms to impact against his shoulders, and then bounce back, pushing her off balance.
He took the opportunity to trip her while the momentum of her spin rolled her onto her stomach. She fell like a sack of potatoes, but even as she fell she was still trying to twist in mid-air. She had no hope as her arms were still spinning the wrong way from the impact with his shoulders. He guided her face down to the mat, not giving her the chance to get out of it.
“Had enough? Do you yield?” He put his foot on her backside and applied weight, a lot of it, pinning her from above and behind. He had second and third thoughts about pinning her like that, knowing it would only make her more angry, but it felt so good that he couldn’t resist. Besides he told himself, her anger would go through the roof, keeping her off balance. It was a useful strategy.
Her tail thrashed angrily and her arms struck out repeatedly as she tried to reach him, but his leg was beyond her reach. That plus the string of abuse in whatever language she uttered it told him it wasn’t enough.
“I yield.” She finally spat the words out, but he knew nothing could be further from the truth.
He sighed and stepped quickly away, letting her rise, while he readied himself for her next attack. He knew after her humiliation she would be angry, and she would come back harder than before, prodded especially by the memory of his footprint on her derrière. But hopefully she would be off balance, and her attack would suffer for it.
Her attack wasn’t long in coming. She glared at him and lunged, a direct attack with no fancy spins, and it
almost caught him for its speed. Fortunately she had struck too low again, trying to take out his midriff. He had just the presence of mind to dive over her, push her head down under him and then come crashing down directly on top. They hit the floor with a serious thump and he heard her exhale as the breath was forced out of her lungs. He winced as he heard the sound, knowing from experience how much that ached. But at least it would be a while before she recovered enough to attack again. All while he was sitting on her backside. To add insult to injury he grabbed both her legs and tied them up in his arms. When she did recover she would still be totally helpless, the only weapon she had left to strike at him with, her tail.
“Nice try. But you’re too angry. You forget my height and remember my weight and think me slow. If you’re going to go direct, go level so I can’t push you down or backwards.” He felt silly as he spoke directly into her calves, but he was certain she heard even through her rage. It had been an angry strike, not well thought out, and she was once again trapped underneath him, her arms pinned under his thighs, head forced roughly into the mat, and her entire torso pushed down by his body weight. It was a good lesson and one he was sure she’d learn.
“I yield.” This time she was angry, but with herself. Whether she liked it or not she knew she’d made a mistake. Sighing again he got up and stepped quickly away, resisting the temptation to just lie there and let her suffer. Besides he had begun to enjoy the view and he knew that soon she would have known his enjoyment. Better that she never found out.
In time she got up, and he disliked the look in her eyes. There was a worrying calculation there. She would not go down so easily again. If she went down at all.
The third time she approached more cautiously, cutting the distance between them, giving herself the advantage of her superior reflexes. It was a good strategy. Six inches from his nose she stared him down directly and he knew he was going to take some punishment. A sudden punch in the solar plexus was his first warning, and then suddenly she was completely inside his defences, turning his midriff into a punching bag.
But once again she’d overplayed her hand and forgotten his height and weight advantage. She was too close. He simply put his hand to her forehead, pushed her backwards and again as she fell he rode her to the ground. Once there it was only split seconds before he had her arms stretched out beyond her head on the floor, while his feet looped across her stomach to hold her.
Three out of three. He congratulated himself, but then as a gentle but insistent pressure made itself known to him, discovered with horror he had been too hasty. Much too hasty. Somehow as he had ridden her down, she had slid down lower still and taken his manhood into her mouth. He could feel the razor sharp tips of her fangs as they delicately pierced the denim of his jeans. His back went cold, and he started to sweat, a lot.
“I yield!” He almost screamed it out as he struggled to get away, and was rewarded with a smile on her face. For the longest seconds of his life he thought she wasn’t going to stop. But in the end she let him go while he hurriedly inspected himself. No blood found he started breathing again.
“Delicious.” Her smile grew even wider and he started backing away, giving her the advantage. In twenty years of fighting he’d never even considered anyone trying something like that, and it rattled him.
“You expect me to fight like a human, and you think yourself so superior. You grow careless anticipating me to be where you expect. But please don’t worry. I don’t want to hurt you either, much!” She threw his words back at him and they both knew she was regaining the control of the match. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Not when she was prepared to do something like that. To make it worse he knew she was right, he hadn’t allowed for her to do something so completely different, and she had played him like a sap. She had come in close and let him play his height advantage deliberately, and he had fallen directly into her trap.
Not giving him any time to recover, she attacked with a lightning set of twirls, determined to break what little remained of his concentration. All his years of fighting and training still somehow kept her at bay, as he deflected them. Block after block prevented her fists and feet from connecting, but all the while he was only operating with a fraction of his mind, and as a result going steadily backwards, and she knew it. She was overcoming him with her speed and determination. And the fact that he was still living with the image of her chewing into his balls.
It made him angry. In a fit of desperation he tried a sweeper, ducking and swinging his leg around to knock her legs out from under her. It was an ancient ploy, but it worked perfectly. She fell once more on to her backside, and he quickly rolled her back onto her stomach and pinned her arms behind her back. From there it was a short step until he was sitting on her backside her arms twisted behind her back and she was totally helpless.
“You may be tricky Cyrea, but I’m better. Even when you’ve got me rattled, when you’ve snuck one through, even when you’re putting everything in and a lot more besides, I’m too powerful for you. Too well trained. And you can’t use that trick twice.”
She screamed her fury, a cry that would have put a grizzly bear to shame, and he knew that this time she wouldn’t accept that she was down again. She had been winning and now to be once more on the floor was simply not acceptable. Instead she began trying to rock him off her with a series of violent but useless heaves while he regained his composure and his breath. It was fully ten minutes before she yielded, ten minutes that let him recover mentally and physically while she exhausted herself. Ten wonderful minutes.
“I yield.” Finally she spat the words out and he let her go, reluctantly. Rising to his feet he moved back to his corner of the room and waited. Three to one in his favour. He was still doing okay. Yet this time he was given a little extra time as she started swinging her arms, trying to recover the circulation. About the tenth set of swings he became concerned that he might have hurt her, and a rush of anxiety filled him. But when he asked she just waved him away. The message was clear. His help was not wanted; ever.
Her next assault was what he’d expected her to open with, a simple high-speed rush with claws extended. No dives, no fancy moves, just straight out speed, which she had in abundance. This time he changed his tactics, knowing she would be ready for him, and simply dodged out of the way, feeling her pass by him like a jet fighter. He had just the presence of mind to nudge her shoulder as she streaked by, sending her reeling off balance. She suddenly found herself careening into a wall. It was a big thump as she hit it and bounced off. The wall buckled, and she fell to the ground in a cloud of plasterboard dust, holding her shoulder. He had the terrible feeling she’d broken it.
“Oh shit, are you all right?” He panicked at the thought of her being hurt and the fight just went out of him. Without thinking he went to her to see if he could help and suddenly found himself flat on his back with her claws at his neck while she quickly straddled him. Her legs had somehow looped under his, and pulled them apart, preventing him from rolling her off. He instinctively grabbed at her wrists and held them at bay preventing her from choking him, or clawing his throat out, but in turn she just eased backwards, pushing her entire upper body weight into the downward force of her hands on his throat.
“Quite all right, thank you!”
He wanted to tell her she was cheating, that he had only been trying to help, but she knew that. She had tricked him and there were no rules about that. Especially when he’d already told her she was tricky.
The worst of it was the smile as she knew she was finally winning, and he refused to give up. He simple couldn’t. It was a close contest. He was very strong and she wasn’t that heavy, but trying to hold her away from his throat as she forced herself down on him was difficult. A task that would become more difficult by the minute as his muscles started cramping.
“You yield?” She was asking him early knowing that even now when he still had plenty of strength, he ultimately had little choice, that s
ooner or later his arms must tire, and she would win. Her smile said it all; she had him. She would ask again and again he knew, until he finally yielded, letting her press home her advantage. Then it would be three to two. Still in his favour, but not by much. He had to admire her determination, and the look of excitement in her eyes as she waited for the kill. It was a look he had once worn.