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~oOo~
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He was back in farless than five minutes, now wearing a pair of grey sweats and a white beater. If he’d put that shirt on in an attempt to cover himself and not be sex on a stick, he’d failed. The beater fit him like skin and the fit and the contrast of the white cotton over his brown skin only accentuated ... everything.
And the sweats? Fuck.
“Hang on a sec,” he said and crossed the room to open and drop two gym mats onto the floor, making a sizable workout space. The swell and flex of muscle across his shoulders and down his arms as he managed the large mats held Siena prisoner.
Then he turned and grinned at her. “Ready?”
She cleared her throat and forced her mind out of the gutter. “Should I take off my shoes?”
“Yep—and socks, if you’re wearing ‘em.”
Feeling awkward and anxious, Siena toed off her sneakers. They were just the cheap Keds knock-offs she wore around the house, so she wasn’t wearing socks. Then she stepped onto the mat and stood before him. “What should I do?”
“Standing there is good. I’ll just show you a few holds and the way to break ‘em. No pressure or anything, just to give you a sense of what we’ll work on first. If you want to do more kinds of training once you’ve got those down, we can talk about that down the road.”
“Okay.” She started to cross her arms, then thought better of it and let them dangle. That felt uncomfortable, too, but the problem was not her arms. It was her everything.
Cooper’s smile faded away, and he looked a bit anxious, too, suddenly. “Uh ... okay. To show you this stuff, I’m gonna have to act like an aggressor, you know? I’ve got to hold you to teach you to break it. That okay?”
He’d told her repeatedly that she was safe, and she finally believed him. “It’s okay. I trust you.”
A flinch of surprise went through him, slight but visible. Then he smiled again and said, “Good. Okay.” Taking a step toward her, he put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to do a standing two-handed choke first. I’m not really going to choke you, but I am going to tense my arms and hands—not to squeeze, just to provide resistance when you try to break it. Okay?”
She nodded, and his hands slid up and circled her neck. Instantly, her heart sped to triple time, and she felt black panic massing in her mind, ready to burst free.
“If I was trying to hurt you, what would you do?” he asked. “Do it, whatever it is, and do it now. You only have five or six seconds before you start to lose consciousness, and then you’ve lost your chance.”
Her first thought was to knee him in the groin, but she couldn’t do that to Cooper. Instead, she grabbed his wrists and yanked outward, then downward, then outward again. At no time in all that did she feel his arms even shake against her efforts. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but her inability to do anything to get his hands from her made her panic flare and clamor.
He let her go, and she let out a sigh of relief.
“I was ready for you to go for my package,” he said with a grin, “but I gotta say I’m not sorry you didn’t.”
“I thought about it, but I couldn’t do it, not to you.”
That grin widening, he said, “I’ll take that as a compliment. And I’ll tell you why that would’ve been risky in a minute. Let’s talk about what you did do—it’s a pretty instinctive reaction. But you’re pitting your strength against mine, one for one, like that. I’m pushing inward, and you’re pulling outward. No offense, but those willowy arms are no match for mine. Breaking a hold isn’t about strength, it’s about strategy. Always. Self-defense usually is—whether you’re a skinny, scared first-grader getting pounded on by fifth graders or a woman in a dark parking lot with a guy on her, strength isn’t going to turn the tables. You gotta find the right points, where the stronger guy isn’t using their strength.”
“Okay, but where is that?”
“I’ll show you. You put your hands aroundmyneck now. And I want you to really squeeze, like you actually mean to hurt me.”
“What? No!”
“It’s okay. You won’t hurt me.”
Siena didn’t know if that was cockiness, but she figured it was true. He was a lot bigger and stronger, and her hands were on the small side. Still, she felt guilty as she did what he asked. His neck felt like granite.
He broke her hold at once, simply by dropping his head and shoulders. Then he spun and was suddenly like six feet away from her.
“My hands are small,” she said, feeling defensive.
“They are. But it doesn’t matter. Two things are working there: The thumbs are the weak part of that choke hold, and the force of the choke is focused inward, side-to-side, so moving perpendicular to the force puts maximum pressure on the weakest point. Two thumbs can’t resist a whole body—not even the thumbs of the strongest man in the world against the body of the weakest woman. Simple physics. Now I’ll hold you again, and you try to break it that way. I’m not going to squeeze, but I’ll hold my hands tight, like before, so you’ll feel the resistance again.”
