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“She’s five-seven,” he told the boy and Kimberly’s bubble popped.
“Hey?” She poked Dean. “I’m five-seven and a half. Where’s my half?”
Dean smirked. “The last half inch doesn’t matter, Kimberly,” he had the audacity to tell her. “Nobody cares about the half.”
“What about you?” Michiko asked him before Kimberly could retort. “How tall are you?”
“He’s six-foot and a half.”
Dean’s head whipped her way so fast she was surprised he didn’t flip the sucker off its hinge. “Hey! I’m six-one,” he told her.
Kimberly snatched her uniform off the counter with a smug grin. “I thought you said that last half inch didn’t matter?”
“She’s got you there, Dean,” Sam said and chuckled. Even Michiko and the phone-obsessed teen cracked a smile.
“Ha-ha, just go get changed,” he grumbled, and Kimberly smiled all the way into the women’s locker room.
By the time Master Kato made his appearance, Kimberly and her men had changed and were standing on the side of the large floor-sized mat in a room walled with mirrors. They’d been instructed to remain motionless and silent once Kato entered, though Kimberly thought the man’s presence alone would’ve assured that, instructions not necessary. She gulped as he approached the kneeling woman in the middle of the mats.
He didn't speak—he didn't make a sound—he just attacked. With a loudkiai, the man raised one foot and brought the heel down right where Michiko's head had been seconds ago. With a roll, she was on her feet facing him, hands raised and ready to fight.
Michiko lunged. Fast as a cat, she evaded and advanced, lashing out with blurring speed. Kato was faster. Every swing, every kick, every punch from her dagger-like fists was met and blocked by her Master. Long black hair swirled in a banner of onyx as Michiko fought with lethal balletic grace. She punched; he blocked. She kicked at his head and Kato caught her foot only to send her spiraling face first to the mats. Michiko was up with less than a second to spare when his heel stamped down a hairsbreadth from her face.
Kato took the offensive then. Fists and feet flew with such mastery it was apparent he’d been holding back until now. Michiko met him strike for strike. He grew faster, hit harder, and still, she persisted. The sounds of limb meeting limb were like sticks cracking together. When Kato got past her guard and landed blows, those shots rang louder still.
Kato delivered a body shot that sent the small woman to the mats with a hard slap. She flung her legs up, braced her hands on the floor by her ears and sprang to her feet. After rolling to her toes, she flew at him in one fluid move. Michiko climbed her master’s body like she was Spiderman and had her legs around his head in the time it took Kimberly to blink. Looking as though it were a perfectly choregraphed dance move, Kato gripped her arms, rolled, and somehow, they both came out of the roll on one knee facing each other once again.
They were breathing heavy by this point—Michiko more so, but she wasn’t making it easy for her Master. Kato had sweat gleaming on his brow and upper lip, and he beamed with pride every time she sneaked under his guard and landed a blow or dodged one of his. The mutual respect was as awe-inspiring as the battle was fierce.
When Master Kato finally let Michiko go, she lay panting and prone on floor. The three observers were spellbound as they watched Kato circle her once more. His naked torso gleamed with sweat and glowed red where his pupil’s blows had landed. He barked a sharp command in Japanese, and Michiko pushed herself to her knees and shed her top.
As she calmly and methodically folded it and placed it neatly to the side, Master Kato strode to the back wall and selected two long canes that looked as lethal as a pair of whips. Kimberly clutched Sam and Dean’s hands as fascination and fear grew in equal measure. The martial arts had been violent and captivating; as the Master approached Michiko now, bearing those lethal-looking sticks, the atmosphere in the room took on a whole new dimension. There had already been a sexual undercurrent to the grappling, the energy so high, Kimberly had been caught up in the beauty of the lightning-fast moves. Now all that tension, all the energy each blow had intensified was simmering in the air around the combatants.
Kato said something in Japanese and Michiko held out her hand.Swish-snap-swish-snap!He brought the canes down over her open palm in such rapid succession she didn’t have time to close her fingers between the blows. He issued another command, and she raised her other hand for the same treatment. Kimberly was in awe that Michiko had offered up her first hand, let alone the second.
He had her extend both arms out to her sides next, and as she knelt with her head bowed and that curtain of hair obscuring her face, Kato went to town.
He moved so fast it made their wrestling match seem as if it’d been in slow motion. The canes whistled and blurred as they sang through the air. He reddened every inch of her outstretched arms top and bottom with drumroll speed. Michiko never flinched. With a mastery like Kimberly had never seen, Kato worked his way over her shoulders next. He wielded those sticks like a world class maestro. The canes became indistinguishable from one another at that speed. The snick and snap of wood meeting flesh accompanied the whir and whistle. Her slender back reddened then swelled with welts. Michiko neither moved nor uttered a sound.
He came to some sort of crescendo; his strikes started to land harder, faster, and he began to grunt with each brutal blow. Now she flinched.Whack!A hard one clear across the shoulder blades.Wham!Another directly in center of the back. Then with two loudkiais, he slammed the rods down on the bottoms of her upturned feet. And the room was silent but for Michiko’s frantic breathing.
It wasn’t over. Kimberly could hardly catch her own breath as Kato spoke again. Michiko swept her hair over her ruined back then reached for her feet. She arched gracefully with her hands clasped tight to her abused soles and her head hung back in a pose any yogi would be proud of. Her small, dark-tipped breasts stood high on her ribcage and Kimberly actually feared for the woman as her master took up position.
The first thwack of the cane landed across her chest, and he left it there, from rounded shoulder to rounded shoulder. Kimberly’s heart raced as he slowly dragged the wood away, digging in the tip as he went. Michiko didn’t move; her breathing increased, and Kimberly could hear her now. Small involuntary sounds that escaped from behind clenched teeth. Kimberly couldn’t tell if they were from pain or pleasure.
He moved to the tops of her thighs next and brought those rods down over her legs from knee to hip so fast they were just a blur of white above her.
Michiko arched into the first strike on her bare abdomen like she’d been dying for him to get there. It sliced over her hips, right above her waistband and bloomed an angry red.Swish-smack!Another one hard right over her belly button, and she cried out for him.
Another and another, the hits came faster, each strike louder than the last as Kato worked his way up her ribcage. When the first blow landed on her pretty breasts, she groaned as the mounds wobbled and bounced from the impact. Kimberly clutched at both Sam and Dean as Michiko’s small breasts reddened and trembled under the lashing. Finally, Kato landed one last hard lash right over her tightly budded nipples, and Michiko let out a cry that was both anguish and unmistakably ecstasy.
Kimberly was breathless as the echoes of the last whip strikes bounced off the walls. Michiko stayed where she was even as her master returned the canes to their position on the wall.
“That is enough of a display for your friends.” Kato spoke in a cool lyrical voice, the accent of his native tongue wrapping each word in a blanket of poetry. “You have done well. Go. Let one of the others attend to you now.” He offered no words of praise or touches of affection—he simply waited for her to bend forward and touch her forehead to the floor at his feet before she hopped up and walked away without a backward glance.
Master Kato finally acknowledged their presence. “Michiko requested we perform like monkeys in a zoo for you, yet she refused to tell me why.” He approached them with a catlike grace and steely-eyed determination that made Kimberly want to kneel just as Michiko had. The man oozed a lethal sort of power that she’d never encountered before.
“If she didn’t inform you,” Sam told the shorter man, “it’d be overstepping for us to fill you in.”
