Bounty

Chapter 10
Tell me who/what you are
Large beads of fresh sweat slid slowly, almost cautiously, down the valley between Alex’s breasts. They seemed to be teasing him, saying taunting words like “Don’t you wish you were me right now?” as James watched them make their way down the “path of enlightenment”. He bit his lower lip and forced his eyes back up to the much darker ones that bore into his own like drills searching for the coal of which their color likened. He nearly jumped when her right eyebrow rose.
Did she see me checkin’ her out?
He hoped not, but the smirk on her face proved that his hopes were like ships, dashed upon the rocks of the shore of knowledge. (I like that one…anyway)
“Enjoying the show?” she asked as she straightened up from her fighting stance and crossed her arms across a still heaving chest.
“If the sight of you sweating in a sports bra and basketball shorts is considered a show.” Which in my book it certainly is. “Then slightly.” He retorted as he too stood up right.
She smiled around her hungry intakes of breath and shrugged her brows. “Good. I was thinkin’ maybe I should fight all my opponents like this. Let my boobs distract them while I cuff ‘em and bring them in for questioning.”
Though he could tell she was joking it would be a good distraction. “A very valid plan.” He answered. It was true. The very sight of her in a black sports bra with her hair pulled back into that messy ponytail, sweating more than profusely, with her golden brown skin glistening and her tight abs on show would make any man stop and forget his prior plans of world domination. At least all the men he knew, himself included. “But what about the female bounties? What would be their downfall?”
“Well some of them have been known to not mind a little peep show via Alexa Jones, if you know what I mean.” James did, “But for the other ninety percentile, I’m thinkin’ maybe bringing you along on those missions wouldn’t hurt anything.” She shrugged. “I mean if anything I’d get my money’s worth.”
He smiled and glanced down at himself. He guessed maybe the sight he was giving her of his sweaty body in basketball shorts and a white wife beater was enough to stop at least two busses coming from an all girl college. “Eh.” He said on a purposely-dismissive shrug. “Maybe.”
“Anyway.” She said after sneaking herself another look at his chiseled chest and catching one more glance at those obloquies of his. She slid back into her stance, bending at the knees and turning her right palm to him. “Can we get back to training here or are we still talking like we just met at the Sizzler?”
He smirked and eased back into a fighting stance of his own, one completely opposite of Alex’s. He stood up, moderately straight, and placed his left hand out in front of his body and setting his right foot firmly into the blue training mat. “Let’s dance.”
She smiled, an actual genuine smile. Not a smirk or a wider smirk but a smile, no teeth were showing but he would get that out of her later. She lunged, quickly and without any real warning. It was simply a “one moment she’s just standing there, and the next she’s flying at your head top speed” type of thing. James braced to parry the punch that the way her body was positioned hinted she was about to throw, but drop stepped at the last moment when she twisted suddenly in the air and instead was sending the sole of her boot in a crash course with his head. He put a fore arm up on instinct to block his face from the blow that would have surely caved it in, and soon realized that doing so was a bad idea. His forearm, which was bruised already from a previous blow she’d sent to it with hers, took the brunt of the kick but didn’t stop it from hurting like nothing he’d ever felt before. He grunted as he flew through the air a good five feet before hitting the hardwood floor at the edge of the safety mat and sliding another two.
Looking up at the ceiling he thought two things. One: that he guessed it was only called a “safety mat” if you stayed on it and two: he had never been hit by, or for that matter been in the presence of, someone who could hit like that. Here he was, a young man, full of promise and the best training the government could provide and then some, and he felt like he’d been run over my a Mack truck that hit him then backed up and hit him again. He groaned and knew that if he wouldn’t have been “a little more than human” as he liked to call it, his arm would have been in one place and the rest of him would have been somewhere else. That or her boot would have gone right on through his bones.
James heard her chuckle and the light squishing noise as she took steps on the mat then the even lighter tapping when her boots touched the floor while she moved over to him. Her face came into view over his head. Her smirk said more than James was sure she had ever said in her entire life. She reached out a hand to him. “Nice wipe out.” She said as James let her help him to his feet. “A little too nice if you ask me.” Before James could question her he had found himself pressed up against the wall of the plainly painted training room with his lungs being starved for air from the vice grip she had on his throat, and was that her index finger on his Adam’s apple? He grunted. Yeah it kind of was.
“What are you?” her voice was low and more of a whisper than a tone in itself.
For some reason, one of which to this day he has no idea, he mustered the courage to be evasive and choked out, “I could ask you the same thing.”
Needless to say, she didn’t take that all that well.
James grunted as he was thrown against the wall again, even harder this time. “Don’t make me ask you again.”
His eyes met hers and found them more than surprised when the green orbs were not filled with fear like she had expected but rather with determination and power. “Alexa,” his fist slammed Alex’s face so hard that it forced her to the ground, thus letting go of his neck. He landed calmly on his feet, “Don’t make me hurt you.”
She wasn’t facing him but James could pretty much tell that she didn’t much like what had just happened. Plus she growled. Usually when someone growls at you, it’s a pretty good hint that this is about to be a long night. She proved it in the next moment when she had tackled him and was sitting on his chest with a leg on either side of his body, pinning both of his arms to the floor. She punched him one good time in the face to show that she meant business.
Yeah like the homicidal look in her eyes didn’t get that message across clearly.
“Look. I’m willing to forget about the fact that you hit me in my face and made my lip bleed, and spare your life but only if you answer this question correctly a swiftly, ok?” He didn’t say anything but she didn’t need an invitation. “What the hell are you?” she asked again. But this time she said it slower taking the time to enunciate every word carefully.
“I- I…” Could he really risk this? Telling her the truth could mean extraordinary danger for the both of them, but it would, in fact, be less horrifying that to die at the hands of the woman he’d been mentoring for three years. Not the one he was secretly in l- no he wouldn’t go there, not again. He sighed. “I… I can’t.”
She made a buzzer sound, and raised her left fist, “Wrong answer.”
“Wait.” He stopped her just as she was about to deliver that blow to his head. “I can’t tell you here.” He looked around, and then whispered another two words that grabbed Alex’s attention and her curiosity and never let go. “They’ll hear.”