Anger burns through me, and my skin feels like it’s on fire from it. I am going to murder her.
I have trained for this.
And I flip into a different self.
She wants to grab me, but I am faster. I take a step forward, grab her arm and pull her to my side, and now it’s her crashing into the wall. I spin around and bring her arm to her back, holding her in a lock between the wall and me.
She gasps from the pain.
“I am so going to murder you,” I whisper. I don’t even recognise myself; there is all this anger, all the rage.
She steps onto my foot with her heel, and I scream in pain and let go of her. She pushes me back, and I slam backwards into the opposite wall. I have her forearm pressing against my throat, and the tip of a knife biting into my skin where the carotid is. The scent of her heavy perfume rolls over me as she presses me backwards against the wall.
I hear Kat shout something, but I don’t care.
Her chest heaves up and down heavily, just like mine.
A grin appears on my face because I haven’t fought with anyone for months, and I have actually forgotten how much fun it is.
“You are what the dogs leave on the streets,” she says with disgust in her voice.
I chuckle darkly and spit at her, full in the face. The look I get could murder me alone.
“You have Sicilian fire, undoubtedly,” she says as she takes the hand with the knife to wipe off the spit—exactly what I counted on.
I box her in the sternum; she gasps and stumbles back. I grab the wrist from the arm with the knife and press. I have force in my grip because I lift three times a week. Heavy. She is slim, and while not untrained, she is a lightweight compared to me.
She tries to remove my hand by digging her nails into my skin, but I don’t care about scratches. I feel like high from what I am doing. There is no anxiety, no fear, no nothing, except this feeling of invincibility.
The knife falls from her grip as she grunts from the pain, and I kick it away without breaking eye contact with her. I like to see the pain in her eyes. And it’s because I do, that I don’t see her hand coming, that hits flat into my throat. I cough and stumble back from the pain it causes; I let go of her. It’s one of the spots the body is most vulnerable.
She pushes me back, and I’m hitting the wall behind me—hard. She presses me into it with her body, her hand closing around my throat, her knee between my legs.
We are both panting, our chests heaving up and down against each other. She is so close I can see every single one of her lines and pores.
It’s the first time I take her fully in. Those dark eyes I am lookinginto. The eyes that are almost black. Fiercely burning me with anger.
Somehow, my eyes wander down, just for the briefest of seconds.
She has these high, prominent cheekbones that many would kill for, and these full lips, red, slightly smeared and besmirched by the blood that has run from her nose and now dries on her skin. Lips that are slightly parted.
I gasp in because a tingling sensation rushed through me, reaching my core. And it scares the shit out of me.
My eyes shoot back up.
She looks at me, tilts her head, and wanders with her lips over to my ear without touching my skin. A shudder runs down my spine.
“You filthy little whore,” she whispers in my ear as I close my eyes, and my head falls slightly back. “I’ll destroy you slowly in ways that will make you beg me to kill you.”
I gasp in, but there is not much air as she closes her hand around my throat.
My core burns as never before.
“You were saying?” she asks me, but I don’t have words. Or air. Her hips press into mine, and I roll mine against her without consciously knowing it.
I don’t know what is happening to me.
A shot is fired, she pushes herself off me, and I snap back into myself.
