Fury
* * *
Zara’s a natural at boxing.
She’s agile and moves fast. She’s got good reflexes and the confidence to use them. She listens to everything I say and tries what I suggest.
The thing she really has going for her, though, is that she’s not afraid of it or of hitting hard. She wants to fight.
This instils confidence in me that I’ll be able to help her learn to defend herself, because when you teach a person who doesn’t wanna fight, they use those skills to evade and avoid fighting, but when you teach these skills to a natural fighter, they’re gonna use them to fight.
And that’s what she needs: to fight her way out of the fear holding her back. She’s building her mental strength with her shrink; I’ll help her build her physical strength.
“Oh my God, this is so good!” she says after we’ve been going at it for an hour. Her face is flushed, her eyes are bright, and she’s breathless as she collapses on the floor in my garage. The thing I can’t stop looking at, though, is the smile prettying up her already beautiful face. I don’t think I’ve seen her smile this much since I’ve gotten to know her.
I jerk my chin. “Get up, we’re not finished.” I’m pushing her hard because I think she needs it, but also, I think she can handle it.
Sucking in deep breaths, she says, “I’m not sure I can.”
I reach down and pull her up. “You can. The minute you say you can’t, you can’t.” I hold up my punching mitts. “We’re gonna do some footwork again. After that, we’ll take a quick break.”
Her eyes widen. “Dude, I’m tired. I need longer than a quick break.”
“You’ll get ten minutes. Then we’re gonna jump rope for ten minutes. Then you’re done.”
I expect her to argue with me, but she doesn’t. She does glare at me for a beat, but she does the work and makes it through. And then, she’s really fucking exhausted, which was my goal. Her body is flooded with adrenaline thanks to her anxiety and fear; the exercise will help her get rid of it.
“You’d make a good PT if King ever runs out of work for you,” she says after I take her back upstairs and pour her a drink of cold water. “But for real, you’re a little hard-core. I thought for sure I was gonna pass out at one point.”
“But you didn’t, and now you know what you’re capable of.”
“I’m going to have to get a punching bag and some gloves.”
“Don’t get anything without asking me first. You need the right shit. And you can use my stuff whenever you want until you know for sure you wanna keep at it.”
She grins at me and then motions between the two of us as she says, “See, friends. You let me use your stuff; I let you come over and hang out with me at midnight. We’re definitely friends.”
Christ, I want far more than a friendship with her, and that’s some hazardous shit right there. Zara is a relentless siren that I’m finding increasingly hard to keep my distance from. However, I at least need to keep her firmly in this friend zone she keeps talking about.
“Okay, I need to go do some shit, so I’ll drop you back at home.”
She drains her glass. “I just need to use your bathroom.”
At my nod, she leaves me to head down the hall. I decide to change my shirt and head into my bedroom.
After I change, I exit my room and make my way out to the front of the house. As I near the front door, I lock eyes on Zara, bent over, ass in the air as she retrieves something she dropped.
“Fuck.” It falls from my mouth before I can censor it. I’m an ass man, and that is one sight I wish to Christ I’d never seen. It’s fucking tattooed onto my brain now.
She straightens and turns to me.
We don’t move.
The moment turns into an unbearably long one in which I go to fucking war in my head.
I want nothing more than to close the distance between us and kiss her. When she takes a step toward me, and then another, and another, I shake my head and growl, “No.”
She doesn’t listen.