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"No, not really," she smart-mouthed back. "All I heard was a bunch of blah, blah, blah."
He let out a long sigh through his
nostrils; she could tell he gritted his teeth inside his closed mouth. "Why don't I just show you how the move works," he suggested. "You come at me, and I'll demonstrate the counteraction."
"Come at you?" she repeated in confusion.
"Try to attack me," he clarified and curled his index finger in invitation.
She blinked. "You want me to, like, hit you?"
Malloy sent her a grin. "I want you to, like, try to hit me, DeVane. You won't actually lay a finger on me."
Oh, that did it. He needed to be pounded down a peg or two. Why, an innocent bystander might trip over his inflated ego if they got too close to the conceited deputy.
Convinced she was going to knock him into next week, Willow balled her fist and let it fly.
Two seconds later, she found herself lying on her stomach on the floor, dazed, with Malloy standing above her, looking down at her with his hands on his hips and that same cocky smirk on his face. She closed her eyes and moaned in utter mortification. He'd barely put any pressure into his move, but he'd still been able to fling her to the floor like a limp rag doll.
It was sobering.
Mortifying.
And totally not cool.
Her hand stung like hell where he'd grabbed her and jerked her about, too. She rubbed the red skin around her wrist and gave Malloy an irritated frown. She knew he'd been as gentle as possible, but her entire hand throbbed as if it had suffered from a severe case of carpet burn.
"It's called nerve control," he told her as he stepped back and watched her struggle to her feet.
He didn't even hold out his hand to help her up either, the jerk. Not that she would've accepted. But still, it would've been nice to refuse his offer.
"You want to use the nerves in your opponent's wrist to gain control, or better yet, you just want to do it long enough to distract him so you can get away." He kept talking as if he didn't notice her total humiliation. But then he extended his arm toward her. "Want to take a try?"
Oh, hell yes she wanted to take a try. It would be her ultimate pleasure to flatten Raith Malloy to a pulp.
Reaching out, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and wrenched, but his feet stayed rooted to the floor. He sent her a bland look for her pathetic efforts.
She scowled. "Well, you're three times bigger than me." Talk about unfair.
He shook his head and sent her an intense, heated look. "It's not about size. It's how you use it."
She rolled her eyes. "That's lame, Malloy."
He grinned. "I'm serious. Just watch. And pay attention this time." After lifting her fingers from his wrist, he took her hand. "Crank the wrist, not the arm," he instructed calmly. "You want to keep control of the wrist. Remember... it's all about control."
To demonstrate, he kept hold of her wrist, and by touching only her wrist, he once again spun her around until she moved in whichever direction he prodded, merely by exerting the slightest amount of pressure to the joint holding her hand and forearm together.
She tried to squirm out of the hold, but as soon as she began to struggle, he flipped her back down onto her stomach.
"Damn it," she muttered and smacked her open palm against the carpet as she glared up at the still-standing deputy.
"Like I said," he replied, looking excessively smug. "It's how you use it."
She opened her mouth to spit back something scathing and rude, but her cousin's belly laugh interrupted her. "Oh, I like this guy."
He would. Willow glared toward the sofa as she picked herself off the floor. Kit continued to sit on the armrest, his feet planted on her couch cushions as he grinned and scraped the last of his supper from his dinner plate with a fork.
"Are you still here?" she muttered. When his eyes only brightened and his lips spread mockingly, she spun toward Malloy. "What else?" Her mind no longer wandered but paid rapt attention to every word he had to say. He was not going to fling her to the floor again.
