Chapter 21 Arro #2
Hardening myself against him, I decided he could shag the entire class, and I couldn’t give a damn.
I was, of course, lying.
And I also knew Mac would not tell me he loved me if he was sleeping with a student.
Get over yourself, Arro. But my eyes refused to move from Mac and the woman.
The young woman returned to her place in the front line, and Mac faced the class to address us. He searched the students until he found me in the back. “Arro, can you come to the front, please?” He looked at the young man before him. “Luke, do you mind letting Arro take your spot?”
“Not at all.” The guy was amiable and smiled at me through the others before he headed to take my place.
Hesitant, I passed him with the most grateful smile I could muster and took his spot right smack bang in front of Mac.
Wonderful.
Feeling attention on me, I glanced to my left to see the young woman who’d just flirted with him eyeing me with curiosity.
“Right.” Mac clapped his hands. “Let’s warm up.”
Everything went all right for a while. I mean, compared to my fellow beginners who had been taking the class longer than I had, I needed to limber up a bit.
But Mac didn’t focus on me for most of the stretching session, walking around the group, adjusting other people’s form.
In fact, it lulled me into a false sense of security.
I thought maybe he’d stay away because he understood his presence confused me.
We finished up stretching and sat almost cross-legged, except Mac instructed us to press the soles of our feet together. The goal was to stretch the muscles at the top of the inner thigh, but I didn’t understand how until …
“You want to press your knees toward the floor to increase the stretch,” Mac’s quiet voice rumbled in my ear. Ignoring the answering goose bumps, I stiffened at the feel of his heat at my back before he pressed his large palms to my knees and gently pushed down.
The muscles immediately burned.
“Feel it now?” he murmured, his lips brushing my earlobe.
My breasts tightened, followed by an erotic flip deep in my belly. Holy crap.
I gritted my teeth and said through a fake smile, “Yes, now get your fucking hands off me.”
To my irritation, Mac chuckled, a rumbly, sexy sound that, combined with his hands on my legs, caused further inappropriate tingling at the apex of my thighs.
Bastard.
He eased away and instructed, “Keep pushing those knees down.”
His departure allowed me to breathe and concentrate again.
Honestly, by the time we’d finished stretching, I felt like I’d had a full and proper workout and was ready to go home.
“Right. We’re going to go back to some basics today, since we have a few new students who missed the closed guard lesson.
Guard is any position where we find ourselves bum on the ground with our legs in front of or wrapped around our opponent.
You have closed guard, full guard, half guard, and open guard.
Closed guard is a fundamental guard type in jujitsu, and tonight, I’ll demonstrate with our new student Arro, and then you’ll work in pairs, taking turns as the opponent. ”
I barely heard the end of his sentence, because all that kept repeating in my head was “I’ll demonstrate with our new student Arro.”
“Uh …” I let out a grunt of disbelief. “I’m not sure what is happening.”
“I’m fighting for you.”
Oh, I understood now! The bastard was playing dirty because he knew I was so physically attracted to him, it would distract me from all else.
“Arro, will you join me on the mat, please?” He wore a bland smile, but I saw the glitter of mischief in his eyes as he strode past me.
Trying not to glare, I followed him and caught the young woman, whose name I’d overheard as Annie, glower sullenly as I passed her. One other new student, a woman in her mid- to late-thirties, gave me a sympathetic and bolstering smile.
I joined Mac on the mat, hoping the look in my eye communicated the many ways I was fantasizing about eviscerating him.
By the wicked laughter in his, I assumed he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Okay, Arro, lie on your back, please.”
At my hesitation, the laughter in his expression died. “This is useful. Please.”
With a sigh, I laid down on my back, staring up at the high ceiling with its harsh strip lighting.
“Right.” I heard Mac say, and I dropped my gaze to watch him as he towered over me, directing his words to the class.
“We need to know how to do this for competition, but this is also useful training if you ever find yourself in a real-life attack. We’ll go into that after we demonstrate the grapple.
” He stepped toward me and lowered himself to his knees.
It was suddenly a little too hard to breathe as he took hold of my thighs and instructed, “Wrap your legs around my waist and lock your ankles.”
My cheeks heated at the suggestion because my body seriously loved it. “What?”
Mac held my eyes as his voice rose for the class. “For closed guard, you wrap your legs around your opponent’s waist and lock your ankles behind their back to maximize your leverage.”
He waited.
Finally, with a sigh, I looked up at the ceiling while I wrapped my legs around him and locked my ankles. Mac leaned into me, his hard stomach pressing between my thighs, causing several types of frustration.
I startled when he grabbed the front of my tank top with both hands.
His expression was reassuring as he murmured, “We’ll get you a gi for next week.” Then louder, he explained to us all, “There is a center area of control here. We’re both attempting to keep our arms inside the other’s. Inside control equals dominant position. Everyone understand?”
There was a murmuring of yeses as I tried to ignore the feel of Mac’s stomach muscles flexing against me as he moved.
“So my arms are inside Arro’s, but Arro needs to get her arms inside mine.
Your job, Arro, is to break my grip so you can get a dominant grip on me.
Raise your arms, elbows bent, palms out …
good. Now, the hand closest to your upper body is the grip you need to break first.”
Concentrating on his instruction helped me forget our intimate position because, feeling his weight on me, I realized how powerful this information was, now more than ever.
If an assailant as big as Mac attacked and got me on the ground, I wouldn’t know how to get out from under him. The thought was scary as hell.
“Now, you want to break my grip by pulling that arm up and out toward my fingertips. Take your opposite hand and grab hold of my wrist.”
I did that.
“And then slip your other hand under my wrist to steady yours.”
Once I did that, Mac nodded, pleased. “Good. Now push my wrist upward—and stop.”
I did with his arm raised and stretched out toward my head.
“When you release me, you can push my arm away with the hand that was holding your wrist, and this brings your arms inside mine, exactly where you want to be.”
Once we did that, Mac made me repeat it several times until the movement was fast and fluid.
Then he had me grab the lapel of his gi and bring my knees forward, which brought his face against my chest. That broke my concentration more than a bit as he turned his cheek to talk to the class.
My heart was pounding, and I knew he must hear it.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about, don’t think about it.
If Mac felt my entire body tense, he didn’t react to it.
He continued his instruction with professional aplomb.
He told me to adjust my hips slightly to the side to bring my leg on top of his back to help keep him down.
The lesson seemed to go on for ages until eventually, Mac had taught me how to free myself from him and get back on my feet.
We repeated it until I could do this smoothly, and a surge of pride and self-sufficiency flooded me.
Still, as the class paired off to practice, I muttered so only he could hear, “You had to choose me, aye?”
This time, Mac’s expression wasn’t teasing.
“Aye, because more than anyone else in this room, I need to know you can do it. I need to know that if anyone comes at you, you can handle yourself. I care if my students learn self-defense. But you’re not just a student.
You’re the woman I love. And if you can’t protect yourself against an attacker and something happens to you, I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison. Because I’ll kill the fucker.”
That shut me up.
Because I knew deep down, he meant every word.