Page 90 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

He stood, his knuckles brushing the back of my hand as he took the plate away from me.

38 - SELF DISCOVERY

Lacey

He came back with coffee on a tray.

"Let's move," he said. "More comfortable in the back."

I followed him through the hall. The sitting room had filled with the smell of the fire he'd lit before I arrived. He put the tray on the table between the couch and the armchair, poured for me first, and took the armchair.

"How's the coffee?"

"Good. What is it?"

"Ethiopian. I'll send you home with a bag."

"Now you're showing off," I teased.

"I have access to bags of coffee. It's one of the few perks I use."

I laughed more than I had in a while. The wine and the fire were unraveling my discipline.

"What did you teach them? The women you taught."

He set his cup down. "Mostly awareness. The hardest skill to teach is not being in the bad situation in the first place. After that, how to be the wrong target. After that, how to get out if the first two fail."

"And if you can't get out?"

"You disable. Eyes, throat, knees. Things that don't take strength. Just placement."

"What about punching?"

He almost smiled. "What about it?"

"What if a woman could hit a man hard enough to hurt him?"

"She can't. The female hand isn't built to deliver damage to a face. It's built to grip and climb. Throw a closed fist at a grown man and you're more likely to break your own hand than his nose." He said it like a thing he'd stopped arguing about years ago. "Pamela took that lecture, disagreed with it, took it again the next week, and disagreed slightly less. By week six she was disabling men twice her size in drills."

I looked at the fire. "I think I could hit you."

He looked at me. "You don't."

"I do. I'm not small. I throw kids around my cath lab all day. They're small, obviously, but they're also wiggly, which I think counts as combat training."

The amusement was still in his face. Under it was the small careful door that had closed behind his eyes at the table when I'd asked about the Army. Both were in the same expression.

"No."

"Light contact. If I connect one, I connect one. If I don't, I owe you another presentation."

"You already owe me a presentation."

"I'll owe you two."

He sat with it, then he stood. "Stand up."

I did.