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The Systema teacher - Edison, he called himself - had a body meant for fighting, strong but lithe enough to be able to move quickly.
I did not, did not maybe wonder what his abs looked like under his tee, if he had that perfectly cut deep V of an Adonis belt, inviting you to follow the happy trail and find the prize.
Christ.
If I was thinking of some stranger's cock as a prize, I needed to give some serious thought to getting laid.
Sexual frustration was not a distraction I needed.
And yet I was going to go ahead and have a private class with the man who caused the issue to begin with.
I wasn't a sucker for a hot guy.
They were a dime a dozen.
You couldn't swing a stick in Navesink Bank without hitting some random hot guy.
I don't know what it was.
Maybe it was the Romanian features, dark and sexy, the lilt it gave to his voice.
Oh, and that voice.
Really, I didn't even know what to say about it other than it was forged with the sole purpose of liquifying panties.
Gravel and glass.
So deep that he hardly spoke at all; he growled.
If you were, say, a straight man, I could see you having an issue understanding him because you're not completely hanging on every last word like any woman - and gay guy - would be.
And he called me 'love.'
I wasn't a pet-name kind of woman.
I had a name.
And I was cynical enough to think that the only reason you were calling me something other than that was because you simply couldn't remember it.
So it was a bit, ah, disorienting to realize that the one he used made my stomach do a completely uncharacteristic flip-flop.
I had to hope as I gathered my shit out of the locker room that he kept those words to himself when we were training the next day.
I would never let myself live it down if I embarrassed my damn self while trying to learn pressure point immobilization.
If I were smart, I would skip the lesson as a whole. Honestly, it was an expense I could scarcely afford.
Life wasn't exactly expensive down in drugville, but my salary had been stagnant since I got the job, and the gym was bleeding every red cent out of my pocket.
Fifty dollars a week just to get in the door.
Then another fifty per private session.
If things went like they usually did, that would mean I would have three with this hot-as-sin Edison guy, costing me another hundred-fifty that meant I would likely be having my cell shut off until the first of the next month and be living on ramen.
But, well, no one called me. And I had a few minutes left on my pre-paid cell that I had for just this reason. I might not be able to pay the ninety to reconnect my cell, but I could buy a ten-dollar card for the pre-paid just in case the one place that might call me needed to.
And ramen wasn't that terrible if you shopped at this little bodega down by the shore where the college was. They stocked all the fancy flavors for the kids on a budget that prioritized booze over food.
Hell, they even ran two-for-one deals if you watched closely. That was when I usually stocked up. Twenty packets of ramen for less than twenty-five bucks.
Between that and the end-of-the-world sized portion of peanut butter I had snagged at Costco on Meryl's card as a fee for sending me on an errand to pick up fucking napkins on my day off, I would keep my stomach full even if my wallet was full of cobwebs.
I would get by.
I always did.
And I would walk away with a strong knowledge of various pressure points. That could prove invaluable if I somehow found myself losing in my fight.
I wasn't delusional.
There would be a fight.
There was no way this particular man was going to let me walk up and kill him.
For one, he had training.
For two, he would know the second he laid eyes on me that I wasn't there for a social call, to sit over weak coffee and pound cake to discuss the weather and the current divisive political climate.
If he saw my shadow darkening his door, he would know I was there to make him hurt.
And he would fight back.
And he was bigger.
If he caught me off-guard, if he overpowered me, knowing how to incapacitate him with as little effort as possible would come really in handy.
So I was going to keep it in my damn pants, and learn what I could from the Edison guy.
I was not going to fuck him.
Nope.
No matter how much my body was trying to convince me that it would be a fantastic idea.
Ugh.
I hauled it out of my car, shivering a little thanks to the sweat-dampened gym clothes and the cool autumn air, always needing to hike it half a block from my parking spot to the front of my apartment building.
