For Clo, who totally asked for it.
It's two a.m. and they've been at this for awhile now, and it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. Round and round they go, the blue mats firm under their feet but slightly slick with the sweat of their mutual exertion. Together they glide through the intricate movements of their dance: thrust and parry, hook and jab, dodge and bob and weave.
She can feel the burn in her arms and legs; it's a good burn, a delicious burn that speaks of exertion and the release of tension and the pumping flow of blood through her muscles. She can feel a different burn lower in her gut, no less delicious, that whispers of exertion and the release of tension and the pumping of his hips between her thighs.
She sees it in his eyes, when he notices the change in her breathing, and then she reads it in the slight quirk of his mouth. But just because they both know where this is going doesn't mean she's just going to let him get there without a fight. But then, she never does.
She always fights, but he always wins, and not just because she wants him to win when they get to this point. He always wins because no matter how good she is, he's always just a little bit better. She thinks that it's because of the differences in their backgrounds. While she was growing up in Manhattan with plays and books and fairly well-to-do parents, he was growing up in Spanish Harlem with playground scuffles and alleyway muggings and a single mother who worked three jobs trying to keep food on the table and a roof over her kids' heads. While she was studying pre-law at Stanford (and later, criminology at NYU), he was working his way up through the ranks of the Marine Corps, serving two tours in Iraq with a Special Forces unit and getting his degree online. She fights because it's her job; he fights because it's his life.
And so it's never really a surprise when he takes her down, as he eventually always does – when he comes out of nowhere with just the right punch or a leg sweep that she just can't dodge and suddenly she's on the mat with him on top of her, pinning her to the slick blue surface with a knee in the middle of her back and his hands around both her wrists.
Most days, when that happens, she laughs, goes limp, concedes defeat.
Sometimes, like tonight, she doesn't; instead, she bucks, knocking him a little farther backward. His knee slides down her back and lands on the mat between her thighs, and he curves his body over hers, his grip on her wrists tightening. "Stop fighting," he murmurs against the back of her neck, and it sends a shiver down her spine – a pure, visceral reaction to the situation in general.
She thinks, sometimes, that she should be embarrassed by just how well this works for her. She struggles again, as he shifts his grip so that both of her wrists are in one of his hands, but he has her and they both know it.
His now-free hand slides down her back, across her cotton tank top, and his fingers slide under the waistband of her shorts. She struggles again and he pauses for just a moment, waits to see if she'll say the word that tells him she really means that she wants him to stop.
But she doesn't say it, and they glide seamlessly into the intricate movements of a different dance. The blue mats are firm under her elbows and knees and his hands are hot and a little rough on her sweat-slicked skin.