Chapter 5 - Rampage
This is just a job.
That's what I tell myself as I watch her process what I just said, watch the way her breath catches when I mention touching her, watch her eyes go slightly wider behind those glasses before she gets control of herself again and says it's fine.
This is just instruction. This is what I do with every student who comes through here needing to learn how to protect themselves.
There is nothing different about Chloe Marsh except that she's paying for private lessons and she showed up at the fights and she's standing three feet away from me right now looking nervous and determined in equal measure.
Except my cock is already thickening.
I haven't even touched her yet. Haven't moved toward her. Haven't done anything except tell her what we're working on today, and my body is already responding like I've given it permission, like the six days I spent trying to convince it that we were absolutely not doing this meant nothing at all.
I touched myself twice last night.
I haven't touched myself twice in one night in…
I genuinely cannot remember the last time.
Masturbation is maintenance for me, something I do occasionally out of physical necessity, quick and efficient and entirely disconnected from anything resembling desire.
But last night I was hard before I even got my hand around my cock, and I came thinking about her, about those brown eyes looking up at me, about what sounds she'd make if I pushed her down onto the mat and spread her legs and—
And then three hours later I was hard again.
I took another shower. Cold water, practical thinking, reminding myself of all the reasons this was a bad idea. It didn't help. I ended up with my hand on my cock again, stroking myself in the dark while my brain supplied increasingly detailed images of exactly what I wanted to do to her.
This morning was worse.
I woke up from a nightmare, the usual one, the desert, the ambush, the sounds, and my cock was hard before I was fully conscious.
I lay there in bed with my heart racing and my body aching and I couldn't separate the adrenaline from the arousal, couldn't tell which was a response to the nightmare and which was a response to the fact that in a few hours she'd be walking through my door again.
I touched myself in the shower. Fast and rough and I came so hard I had to brace myself against the wall.
And now she's here.
And I'm already getting hard again.
This is a problem.
"We're starting with situational awareness," I say, forcing my voice level. "Most attacks happen because someone wasn't paying attention. They had headphones in, they were looking at their phone, they were distracted. So, first rule: stay aware of your surroundings."
She nods. She's listening, her whole body focused on me in a way that most students aren't in their second lesson. Most people are still nervous, still getting comfortable with the space. She looks like she's trying to memorize every word I say.
"Second," I continue, "if someone grabs you from behind, your first instinct is going to be to pull away. That's wrong. That's what they expect. You want to do the opposite. You want to step into them, create chaos, use their surprise against them."
"Okay," she says.
"I'm going to demonstrate," I say. "And then you're going to practice on me."
I move behind her.
My cock is pressing against my shorts now, not fully hard but getting there, and I am deeply grateful that she can't see me from this angle. I stop a foot behind her, close enough to teach but not close enough to touch.
"I'm going to grab you," I say. "Arms around your body, pinning your arms. This is the most common rear attack position. When I do, I want you to notice where my weight is, where my balance is. Don't panic. Just notice."
"Okay," she says again.
I step forward and wrap my arms around her.
My cock goes fully hard the moment I make contact.
Fuck.
I'm pressing against her back, my chest against her shoulders, my arms around her body, and she's so much smaller than me that I could lift her off the ground without effort.
She's soft everywhere I'm hard, warm everywhere I'm touching her, and my brain is immediately doing the thing where it supplies helpful images of other ways I could be holding her, other positions where her back is against my chest.
Focus.
"Feel where my balance is," I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intend. "My weight is forward. I'm leaning into you. That's your advantage."
She's breathing faster. I can feel it, the rise and fall of her chest against my forearms.
"Now," I say, "you're going to drop your weight suddenly. Bend your knees, drop straight down. It'll surprise me, break my balance. Then you drive your elbow back into my ribs, hard as you can. That creates space. Then you turn and run."
I let her go and step back.
My cock is throbbing now, pressed uncomfortably against my shorts, and I am extremely aware that if she turns around right now she's going to see exactly how not-professional I'm being about this.
She doesn't turn around immediately. She's standing there processing what I just showed her, and I take the opportunity to adjust myself as subtly as possible, trying to shift my cock into a position that's less obscene.
It doesn't help much.
"Your turn," I say. "Grab me from behind."
She turns around and looks at me, and something flickers across her face. I don't know what it is. Nervousness maybe. Or something else.
She walks behind me.
There's a pause, and then her arms come around my body.
She can't get her arms all the way around me.
I'm too broad, her reach too small, and her hands barely meet on the other side of my chest. But she's trying, pressing herself against my back to get as much contact as possible, and the feel of her body against mine is doing absolutely nothing to help the situation in my shorts.
"Good," I manage. "Now I'm going to demonstrate the defense."
I drop my weight, bend my knees, break her hold easily. She stumbles back slightly and I turn to face her.
"Again," I say. "And this time hold tighter. Don't let me break free that easily."
She comes at me again.
This time when her arms go around me, she presses herself fully against my back, her breasts against my spine, her body flush with mine from shoulders to thighs. She's squeezing tighter, trying to actually restrain me, and I can feel every inch of her.
I demonstrate the defense again, slower this time, so she can see the mechanics. Drop weight, drive elbow back. I stop short of actually hitting her, turn and create distance.
"Now you," I say.
I move behind her again.
This is just instruction. This is just teaching. This is what I do. I wrap my arms around her, and this time I can't keep my hips back far enough. My cock presses against her, and there is absolutely no way she can't feel it. She goes still. Completely, utterly still.
I should step back. I should apologize. I should end this lesson right now and figure out how to never see her again.
Instead, I stay exactly where I am.
"Remember," I whisper, my mouth close to her ear. "Drop your weight. Drive your elbow back. Create space."
She's not moving. She's barely breathing.
"Chloe," I say.
"Yes," she says, and her voice is barely above a whisper.
"The defense."
"Right. Yes. Sorry."
She drops her weight suddenly and drives her elbow back. It connects with my ribs. Not hard enough to hurt, but solid enough that she's clearly understood the concept. I let her go, and she turns and steps away, putting several feet between us.
Her face is flushed. Her breathing is uneven. And she's not looking at me, not quite, her eyes focused somewhere around my collarbone instead of meeting my gaze.
She felt it.
She absolutely felt it.
"Good," I say, because I need to say something, because we need to keep going, because the alternative is acknowledging what just happened and I cannot do that. "That was good. Let's run it again."
We run it again. And again. And again. Each time I grab her, my cock presses against her back. Each time, she goes still for just a half-second before executing the defense. Each time, neither of us acknowledges what's happening.
After the fifth repetition, she turns to face me and says, "Where did you learn how to fight?"
The question catches me off guard.
"What?"
"Where did you learn," she repeats. "How to fight like that. Like you did at the Pit."
I don't talk about this.
Not to anyone. Not the few people in Blackwater Falls who've tried to make conversation. Not to the therapist the VA sent me to. Not even to myself most days, because thinking about it too much means going back there, and I've spent eleven years trying very hard not to go back there.
But she's looking at me with those brown eyes, waiting for an answer, and something about the directness of her question makes the usual deflection stick in my throat.
"Military," I say finally.
Her eyebrows raise slightly. "You were in the military?"
"Three tours. Infantry."
"Where?"
"Middle East mostly. Afghanistan. Some other places."
She nods slowly, processing this. "That's where you learned."
"Yeah."
"And the fights? The underground fights?"
"Came later," I say. "After I got back. Needed somewhere to put it."
I don't elaborate on what *it* is. She doesn't ask. But something in her expression changes, softens slightly, like she's understanding something she hadn't before.
"Is that why you moved here?" she asks. "To Blackwater Falls?"
"Cities were too loud," I say, which is the simplest version of the truth. "Needed somewhere quieter."
"And you opened the gym."
"Yeah."
She's quiet for a moment, and I realize we've stopped moving.
We're just standing here on the mat, both of us sweaty now from the repetitions, both of us breathing harder than we should be, and I should tell her to get back into position, should keep teaching, should maintain the professional distance that keeps this from becoming whatever it's threatening to become.
Instead, I lower myself to the floor.
I sit with my back against the wall, knees bent, arms resting on my thighs. The same position I've sat in a thousand times in a thousand different places, the position that lets me see the whole room, the exits, anything that might be coming.
She looks at me for a moment, surprised, and then she sits too.
Not next to me. She chooses a spot about four feet away, far enough to maintain space but close enough that we can still talk without raising our voices. She pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and looks at me.
"Can I ask you something?" she says.
"You just did. Several times."
A small smile touches her lips. "Can I ask you something else?"
"Depends on the question."
"Does it help?" she asks. "The fighting. Does it actually help?"
No one has ever asked me this before.
People assume. They see the fights, they see me win, they see the way I move in that ring and they assume it's about dominance or money or some kind of adrenaline addiction. They don't ask if it helps.
"Yes," I say.
"With what?"
I look at her for a long moment. Trying to decide how much truth to give her. How much of the worst parts of myself to show someone who's sitting here trusting me to teach her how to be safe.
"The noise," I say finally. "In my head. When I'm fighting, it goes quiet."
She nods like this makes perfect sense to her. "I get that."
"You do?"
"Numbers do that for me," she says. "Accounting. When I'm working, everything else goes away. It's just the numbers. They make sense in a way people don't."
I hadn't expected that. Hadn't expected her to understand, or to offer her own version of the same thing.
"You're an accountant," I say.
"Yes."
"In Blackwater Falls."
"Yes. I moved here about two years ago. Saw a job opening and took it."
"From where?"
"A few towns over. I wanted somewhere smaller. Quieter."
"You didn't grow up here."
"No. Did you? Grow up anywhere, I mean."
"Pennsylvania," I say. "Small town. Left when I was eighteen. Joined up right out of high school."
"Your family still there?"
"No family," I say. "Not anymore."
"I'm sorry."
I shrug. It's an old wound, the kind that stopped bleeding years ago but never quite healed right. "It is what it is."
We sit in silence for a moment. It should be uncomfortable, this pause, this sitting on the floor of my gym with a student I can't stop thinking about fucking. But it's not. It's almost... easy.
"Why did you come here?" I ask. "Really. To the gym. For lessons."
"My ex," she confesses. "He won't leave me alone. He shows up places. Texts constantly. I don't know how he always knows where I am, but he does. And I—" She stops. Takes a breath. "I wanted to feel less afraid."
"He hurt you?"
"Not physically. Not yet. But I don't know if that's because he hasn't wanted to or because he hasn't had the opportunity."
"Have you gone to the police?"
"And say what? That my ex-boyfriend texts me too much? That he shows up at the grocery store when I'm shopping? They'll tell me to block his number. Get a restraining order maybe, if I'm lucky. And then what happens when he violates it?"
She's right. I know she's right. I've seen enough to know how this goes, how the system works, or doesn't work, for situations like this.
"How long?" I ask.
"Since we broke up? Three months. Since he started doing this? The same day I ended it."
Three months. She's been dealing with this for three months, and she's still showing up, still living her life, still trying to feel safe in a world that clearly isn't.
"I'll teach you," I say. "Everything I know. By the time we're done, he won't be able to touch you without regretting it."