Sword Play
A reply to Nella of 's call for gym/martial arts-themed smut fic of 4,000 – 5,000 words. Well, MsEstora's already done a fabulous self-defence themed one, (it's called Of Destiny and Desire – go read it) and as my martial art is fencing and Kadam mentioned that his "great skill is with the sword" I decided to take that to its natural conclusion. I make no apology for any wordplay and/or innuendo I include in this piece, when you're a fencer of any nationality they are par for the course and I don't imagine Kadam would be any different. I do however apologise for the serious law of corn-ing going on. It's kind of necessary when you're explaining about fencing. Watch out for my Pumpktoberfest tribute!
Things which you may wish to google image search before you start: "Fencing lunge" and "fencing plastron."
NOTE: When you get to * in the text, you should start playing Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. Don't if you don't want to, but you'll be missing out :P Apologies for where the flow is a bit dodgy, that's where I had to remove song lyrics to comply with this site's copyright guidelines...
I figured if I was going to be playing at being Indiana Jones, I should have some of the fitness to match. It's all well and good being able to operate a pump without too much lactic acid burn the next day, but if my little adventure in the Kanheri Caves of "oh what the the hell was that, and why is it trying to kill me?!" had taught me anything, they had taught me that I'd better get physical. Fast. Clearly Mr Kadam had considered the possibility that I might want to level up with the mansion's gym at some point, because among all my new clothes were a pair of sweatpants and a grey tank top.
When I got to the door of the gym, I could hear music. Loud, 80's rock-type music. And a lot of loud irregular thumping against the floor. Maybe Ren was in there... I opened the door and there was a figure in full fencing clothes and that helmet thing with the mesh that they wear. They were stood in position, - knees bent, back straight with his legs side on and his torso facing forward. He had a long thin sword, like one I vaguely remembered from some Musketeers movie I'd seen once, in his gloved right hand. He darted lithely backwards and forwards in time to the music, with small controlled movements of his sword arm. Suddenly he took at step and he lunged at the target. He hit it and immediately recovered back into his starting position.
It was mesmerizing. Could it be Ren? Nah, at this time he was probably sleeping in tiger-mode. And this man was taller, more muscular and toned, more... Svelte. That was the word. And this man radiated a sense of centred calm and focus that Ren (bless his stripy tiger socks) simply doesn't have. The guy may be hot, but that can only get you so far. Especially with all the creepy unwanted PDA... The man noticed I was there and straightened up immediately, showing just how well the fencing jacket emphasised his physique, and those white breeches certainly... Left little to the imagination. He looked at me and removed his mask. There, with his hair damp and messy and his face a little flushed and sweaty, was Mr Kadam. My jaw didn't drop, but it was tempting.
"Miss Kelsey!" He called over the music. He walked over to the sound system in the corner and switched it off. "May I help you?"
"Um, not really I just wanted to check out the gym," I explained hastily (trying not to stare at the way the white fabric clung to his torso in all the right places, like his shirts did). "I'm sorry, I didn't know that you were going to be here – I'll come back later." I made to close the door.
"No!" He called out. "I mean, you can stay – should you wish to. Miss Kelsey." He added my name with a dull flat tone. I frowned and walked towards him.
"You know, Mr Kadam, you can just call me Kelsey. All this "Miss Kelsey" stuff makes me kinda uncomfortable."
"You always call me "Mr" Kadam," he shot back with a raised eyebrow.
"Because you never gave me your first name," I countered, turning my head a little to the side. Like a challenge. Like I was flirting. Wait, was I flirting?
"Anik. My name is Anik. It means "soldier," so I was doomed from the start," he joked.
I smiled and tossed my hair off my shoulder. (Seriously, Kelsey, what's with the flirting? You have never flirted this naturally before! When you talk to guys, you are an awkward inadequate mess! So why is it so natural with him?) I held out my hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Anik. I'm Kelsey."
With what can only be described as a sparkle in his eye he took my hand and shook it.
"Hello Kelsey. Welcome to the jungle!"
"No thanks! Been there, done that, got the trauma!"
We laughed. His warm hand was still wrapped around mine. We had a moment of just staring at our entwined hands, as the laughter died on our lips. He let me go.
"So, you fence?" I asked, attempting to dissipate the tension.
"Yes, amongst many other things. But all forms of sword play have always held a deep attraction for me, fencing in particular. Give me a foil in my hand, and I am a happy man." His fingers curled around the handle of the blade. "Who do you think taught Errol Flynn how to fence? Maid Marian?"
"No!" I exclaimed. "You lie! No way!"
"Maybe it's true, maybe it is not," he conceded with a wolfish grin. "But I can teach anyone how to fence. Him included. Perhaps."
"Oh yeah? Well, I've been meaning to up my offensive game. Teach me. If you think you can." The gauntlet had been thrown down.
He gave me an appraising look up and down. His eyes lingered long and deliberately over every piece of me, every look of his black coffee eyes felt like a warm caress over my flesh. Finally he met my eyes. I shivered. The lower half of my torso seemed enveloped in a tingling, warm sensation which I had never felt before. Breathing and standing up straight all of a sudden felt like very difficult tasks.
"Your wish is my command. Kelsey." He said slowly. I shivered again.
He guided me through a warm up and gave me some of what he said was Nilima's old kit. It was a little big, but the breeches were perfect and surprisingly stretchy and comfortable. I was acutely aware of how... Clingy they were. Honestly, I could have been wearing nothing! Next Anik gave me a safety talk. He took me through all the gear and why I should wear it in that order. He had just finished explaining the function of the one-sleeved under-shirt (a "plastron") which covered half your chest, when all of a sudden he stopped himself short. He flushed a little and ducked back into the cupboard, he came back holding two little plastic concave discs.
"When you put your jacket on, there will be two little pockets on the inside. You need to slip these in there; they will, um. Well. They're chest protectors. Even though there's a button the end of the sword, and protective equipment, it would still hurt your chest quite a bit if you were to take a hit there."
"Ah," I said taking them. "Wouldn't anything prodding those, would we?"
"Indeed no." He half-smirked and I felt my cheeks go very, very red. And that tingling, warm sensation from earlier was back.
He finished explaining away the kit, the three different kinds of swords (foil, épée and sabre), and their respective target areas, (the torso, the entire body and anywhere above the waist) he set me to learning footwork.
It was horrible at first. Getting my feet at precisely the right angle, the right width apart, with the correct weight distribution once I had squatted down a bit, was a nightmare. Anik kept having to physically place my feet in the right place. And then the thigh burn, oh god the thigh burn. I thought my quads were in good shape until I started fencing. When I complained, Anik merely laughed and said if it wasn't hurting I wasn't doing it right. After I finally got the basic "en garde" position right, he showed me how to step forwards and backwards, (apparently there's a very precise method) and eventually – when he was satisfied that I wasn't "stomping like a pregnant elephant" any more – he taught me how to lunge. And I did. Again. And again. And again. Until he was satisfied that I could lunge and recover perfectly.
"Okay." He said eventually. "Shake it out and get some water, then get out your glove and mask. I'll show you how to parry next. Then we'll do some lunges at the target." If my jellied legs could have jumped for joy, they would have; I finally got to have a go with his sword! I mean, a sword! Because the swords belonged to him... I'll shut up.
"What's with the music? You had some on earlier." I asked as I took a swig of my water.
"In fencing, you should never keep the same rhythm of footwork. You'll be predictable, and predictably you'll lose points. I find doing footwork exercises to music helps with mixing it up."
"What were you listening to today?"
"Billy Idol. The song..." He smiled mischievously. "It reminded me of someone."
"Oh?"
"Yes, some frustrating someone. Someone who has been frustrating me to tears and driving me to my sword more and more these days."
"Maybe you should drive them onto it?" I said, thinking of duels and grudge matches. Instead his smile became, well. The best adjective to describe it would have been naughty.
"Perhaps I shall do just that. We shall have to see."
Then he helped me suit up. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but his hands seemed to take their sweet time as they travelled up and down the plains of my back to do up the zipper. Suddenly it was just that bit hotter underneath all of those clothes.
"Parrying," it turned out, meant lots of different ways to whack another sword out of the way. To "riposte" meant stabbing the other person after stopping them from doing the same to you. It felt so counter-intuitive to stab Anik where he was pointing on his chest. I either hit too weakly, ("If the button doesn't go down on the end, you won't get the point!"), or off-target all together, ("It's a foil! It's vital organs only!")
"Okay, good job." He said after a while. "Let's work on integrating your aim with your footwork and lunging."
We walked over to the white, circular target board mounted onto the wall and it was all I could do not to laugh when I saw what was in the centre: A small black heart. The idea of using a heart for target practice was indescribably funny to me. It had absolutely nothing to do with my feelings for the man next to me. No, not at all...
Anik instructed me to get into en garde position in front of the boards and to obey the instructions he yelled out while he walked over to the sound system. The same song as before started up. *
"Back!" I heard him yell over the music from behind me. I obeyed. "Step, back, back! Step, lunge! Hold!" He came over to examine my position. I nearly dropped the foil when he did,
He wasn't wearing a shirt. He had taken off the fencing jacket, he was still wearing the plastron underneath – but it only covered one bicep and one side of his chest, with the straps straining round his muscular torso. You could see where he cinnamon skin, gleaming with sweat, met the high waistband of his breeches. Hot did not cover it. He examined me coolly, analytically. I thanked God that I was wearing my mask. My face would have betrayed the litany of bad things I wanted to do with him.
Billy Idol half-yelled with palpable desire over the speakers. It wasn't just the strain of holding the lunge which was making me shake. Anik circled me, looking every inch of me up and down. It felt like he could see the hot, wet desire that was throbbing at my groin. My stance started wavering. Anik stepped behind me and pressed his chest against my back, laying his arm along mine – apparently holding my sword arm steady. He crouched to accommodate my height. He shifted his position into a shadow lunge, interlocking perfectly with the back of mine. I could feel the ghost of his groin on my ass. I leaned into him. I could barely breathe. To feel him against me, but to be so clothed was frustrating beyond words! And from what I could feel pressing into my ass, he felt the same. At least on a basic, primal level.
"Bend your front knee less." He whispered hoarsely into my ear. I shuddered against him. I straightened my front leg a little. Not only was my position more stable, but I was leaning a little more into him. My thighs were still burning like hell itself, though.I could feel his warm breath against my neck. The lyrics of the song were so in tune to my desires...It was too much. My knees gave way.
A strong pair of arms caught me around my waist. They pulled me up and set me on my feet. Wordlessly, Anik left to switch the music off. I took my mask off. I must have looked like a hot, sweaty mess. But all I could do was mentally call him back. I longed for him back. I longed for his teasing presses and touches to make good on their promise. If his aim was to drive me wild with desire to prove that he could, he had more than succeeded.
"Well done," he said when he back over. "I think we've done enough for today. I don't want to completely finish you off." The return of the wolfish smile said differently. Bastard knew exactly what he was doing.
I got him to unzip me. I ripped off the jacket and plastron as soon as I could, enjoying the sensation of the air-conditioning hitting my sweat-soaked tank top. I grabbed some water, aware of a pair of black coffee eyes staring intensely at the way my top was now clinging. The way my nipples reacted to the cold air through my sports bra. He didn't need to know they were like that before. I frowned at my bottle. The water seemed strangely unsatisfying.
I watched Anik produce a huge beer from his bag. He motioned me over.
"Nothing is more satisfying than a good beer after fencing. And I don't mean that gnat's piss you Americans generally call beer, I mean real ale and craft beer! Here," he offered me the opened bottle as we sat upon the ground. "I got this from some American friends in Ohio. Apparently it's a seasonal speciality."
I took a swig.
"It tastes like banana!" I exclaimed! "It tastes like banana pudding in a glass!" (But the beer was strangely satisfying).
"Really?" He frowned. "Give it here." He took a long, slow sip. "How strange!" He looked at the frog on the label of the beer. "It says here that it's meant to be pumpkin."
"That so?" I was suddenly struck by devilish inspiration. "Let me have another try."
He handed the bottle over. I made my sip slow and lingering. My eyes never left his darkening ones. I let a little of the banana-flavoured sweetness dribble out the corner of my lips. I disengaged with the rim with a little "pop". I ran my tongue and my thumb along my glistening, beer-covered bottom lip. Anik watched me, slack-jawed and his eyes almost black with desire. Two could play at teasing, and I had won.
"Yep." I said in mock-innocence. "Definitely banana."
He took the bottle from my hand and put it far out of reach. He put a hand on the back of my neck and pulled me into a kiss. My heart was working overtime. He was passionate. Exhilarating. All of the good adjectives which were fast leaving my brain. He ran his tongue along the top of my bottom lip, asking to gain entrance. I granted it gladly.
A little moan escaped my throat. I had been kissed before. Never like this. This wasn't just a kiss, it was a challenge. Our tongues darted backwards and forwards between us, a fencing match where the goal was to parry and maintain blade contact. Neither of us was going to lose. Suddenly he pulled me forward and I was straddling his lap. The material of the breeches seemed so thick and yet so thin! He was hard and hot pressed against a warm and tingling part of me that seemed to scream for more contact, more pressure. More. I experimentally pressed myself against him. He hissed pleasurably and bucked his hips up a little. I spread my knees wider and deepened the kiss. He growled and cradled the back of my head; he laid me on the floor and lay on top of me - careful not to crush me with the weight of his almost bare chest pressed against my breasts. I wrapped my legs around his hips, yearning for that closeness. He stared at me intensely, panting softly. I stroked his cheek. He seemed to melt into my hand before I kissed him.
After a minute or so, he pulled back.
"Kelsey," he said throatily. "If you don't want to continue, please tell me. Or, if this is just some spur of the moment thing for you, say no more and we'll forget it ever happened." I could see it cost him to say those last words. "It's up to you. Just tell me. Please."
"You won't be able to stop if you carry on, will you?" I asked. He shook his head, I ran my fingers through his hair, and rested them on his cheek. I pulled his ear to my lips. "Then carry on," I commanded in a whisper. I used my legs to pull him closer to me and captured his lips in a kiss.
Before I knew it, he had pulled me up onto my feet and we were holding hands, and half-running upstairs. We came to a door that I assumed to be his. He looked at me, so full of longing and caution. My heart ached for the man that had been alone for hundreds of years and didn't dare to believe a good thing when he had it.
"Anik. I trust you. Please do the same for me; trust that I want this. Badly."
He nodded and gave me a reassuring smile. We entered his bedroom. There was a moment where we stood beside the bed, after we'd taken our shoes off. We just stared at each other. I ran a hand over his glistening skin and undid the straps on his plastron. I pulled it off. I traced a finger over this new territory, brushing against his waistband. Cautiously, I let it continue its journey south over the bulge in his breeches. It was warm and felt like it had a pulse of its own through the cloth. Anik shuddered. He grabbed me and kissed me frantically. He pushed the straps of my breeches aside and pulled my shirt off. He stopped to sigh at the sight of my black sports bra against a torso that never saw the sun of I could help it. He pushed me down onto the bed. I unzipped his breeches as he hovered over me. He withdrew to take them and his long fencing socks off. He stood there, straining conspicuously against his boxer shorts. He took them off.
He leaned over me and slowly undid my breeches, never breaking eye-contact. I lifted my hips as he pulled them sensually down my legs and threw them away. He did the same to my socks. I felt like a volcano on the verge of eruption as he bent over me again. I sat up and kissed him. It felt like seconds passed before I was suddenly stripped of my bra in a few deft movements, and was lying back against the bed. I gasped as he palmed and squeezed one breast, whilst flickering his tongue over the nipple of the other. He grasped it a little in his teeth and sucked, sending pleasure sparking through me. My hips bucked up of their own accord. I felt him smile into my flesh, before he repeated his attentions on the other. I took a sharp intake of breath as I felt and hand massage me through my damp panties. My hands twisted into the covers. Anticipation was killing me slowly.
"Please..." I whimpered.
"Please what, Kelsey?" He whispered in my ear, knowing the shudder it would send through me.
"Please me..." A half-remembered Beatles song suddenly made sense. He pressed down even more and it became almost too good to bear.
"Like that?" He asked with a smile of pure mischief.
"N-no..." I panted. "Anik, I n-need you inside me..." I looked at him hazily. He pressed down again. "Please!" I half-screamed. I didn't know how much more I could take.
He withdrew his hand, taking my underwear with it in a few movements. He leaned over to the night-stand and took out a foil packet. He opened it carefully and rolled the condom down his shaft. He knelt on the bed between my separated knees. I nodded. He leaned over my body and kissed me. He entered me in a few gentle questing strokes.
I gasped as I stretched to accommodate him. He took note of my discomfort and did his best to be gentle. It seemed to pain him more than me. Eventually, all other sensation was replaced by pleasure. My lover reacted accordingly. He varied his rhythm and angle of attack, like a good fencer, taking note of every little gasp and moan of delight that came from my lips.
"Anik..." I softly groaned the name like an incantation.
His discipline seemed to shatter. His name acted like the magic word that made him go as hard and fast as he possibly could. The world became a fog of pleasure I couldn't see through, as something coiled up very tightly within me. I came uncoiled as a spasm shook my body.
"Anik!" I called out as I clawed into his shoulders.
Several jolts pulsed through him as I felt something fill me up. We lay there panting for a while, sweat forming a fine sheen over our bodies. He kissed my forehead and got up to deal with the condom. He rejoined me in bed and pulled me close to put his arms around me.
"Kelsey?" He asked eventually, as I was drifting off.
"Yes?" I replied sleepily.
"Don't leave."
I glanced at his sincere and hopeful face from under my eyelashes.
"No." I told him. "Never."
We fell asleep in each others arms. As we have every night since.
Phew! That was certainly... An experience. Severe editing went on as I realised the original was way too explicit for the guidelines. Thoughts? Still too much? I might have take this down and write a cleaner one...
The characters are Houck's. The beer was Hoppin' Frog Double Pumpkin, as covered by Nella and Maven in one of their Pumpktoberfest reviews; the banana pudding in a glass line was Nella's. Some of the stuff which Kelsey has to do, and which Kadam says are outright copies of things from my first few weeks of fencing, but I would advise that you don't attempt anything depicted here without the proper training, supervision, or safety equipment – even if you're just being daft and trying out the footwork! Any mistakes are, as always, my own.
Remember guys: Consent is sexy!