“It’s about fucking time, Danny-boy! Don’t worry about running, I’ll do it solo, I can see you’re otherwise occupied! We can do this another time. And now, I have a 10K to run, so I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, usual table, yeah?”
I nodded and he grinned once more, shaking his head.
“You lucky fucker! I dunno, if you fell in a barrel of shit you’d come up with a gold sovereign between your teeth and a winning Lotto ticket in each hand! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids!”
With that parting shot, he jogged down the corridor and disappeared around the corner.
Sherry rubbed her leg along mine, and danced her hands over my stomach, before nipping my ear and patting me on the backside.
“Come on Danny, it’s my day off today, and yours; what shall we do? I know, why don’t you take a girl out and show her a good time? You buy me brekkie and I’ll… well, you’ll see!”
As I turned around, Sherry let the towel drop to the floor and I was treated to the glow of her full magnificence in the full light of a perfect day, and it was a heart-stopping sight, one I’ll never forget. My hands went all by themselves to hold her by her waist before slipping down to cup and squeeze her perfect bottom. She was just as I had always pictured her, her flawless skin glowing with health and the taut firmness of youth, her eyes as bright, as alive as I remembered them, and her short boy-cut quiff, black and glossy as a raven’s wing, emphasised how fair and flawless her features were. In every way I could imagine, she was utterly perfect, and I drank in the vision of her beauty, a thousand times more and better than memory had painted her.
“Never again, baby boy, I’ll never let you go again! You’re going to marry me, remember?” she murmured as tears welled in her huge, perfect eyes. “You’re mine, Danny, you’re my own Danny-boy, and I’ll never leave your side again, I swear!”
Kissing the tears from her eyes, and tasting the wine of her lips once more was all I wanted to do, forever, and I sensed the truth of her words all over again; she was there, with me, and this was it, we were us now, and it was forever.
She grinned, and gently tweaked my nipple.
“Go get your shower, baby, I need breakfast, and I want to be seen with you, so move it, soldier!”
I grinned back, and, as I wanted to be seen with her, I ‘moved it,’ dashing into the shower and shaving as I showered to save time. That done, I dressed as quickly as possible, scraped my fingers through my hair, the closest I was coming to combing it, and I was ready to rock and roll. Sherry was already dressed in the striped top and skin-tight leggings she’d showed up in, her hair was once more sculpted into the perfect quiff she always wore it in and her jacket was belted around her waist, showing the world what a tiny waist she really had.
“Where do you want to eat, baby?” I asked her, and she grinned.
“The Piazza, they do a really nice breakfast, or they did, and there’s a Starbuck’s there, still need my coffee, Danny, some things never change!”
We headed off to the Piazza; they did do a nice full English breakfast, and it was fresh, too, not the grease-soaked remnants I’d eaten elsewhere.
We were chatting quietly outside over a coffee when suddenly a group of students wandered up, and one huge guy, probably a 4th Year man judging by his age, came walking over to us and clamped hold of Sherry’s shoulder.
“Hello babe, I was wondering where you’d gone, I see you came back to me, come on, let’s go!”
Sherry pushed his hand off her and took my hand.
“Go away Michael, Danny and I are busy!” she flared, making the hulking lout grin nastily.
“I’ve got unfinished business with you, so come on, and you, feller, just piss off, me and my girlfriend are busy!”
“I am not your girlfriend, I never was, so leave me alone or…” said Sherry, and Michael grinned nastily.
“Or what, you’re going to ask this wimp to help you? Yeah, right, just get moving, pal, I want to talk to my girlfriend!”
I stood up.
“You heard her, now piss off, we’re busy, so get your meat-hooks off my fiancee.”
Michael moved up close enough for me to smell his breath and stared in my face.
“Be smart, little boy,” he sneered, reaching for me, “this is between me and my girl; she’s not your ‘fiancee’, okay, so just fuck off, why don’t you.”
I slapped his hand away as I stood up.
“Listen, fuck-nugget, my fiancee told you to leave, I’m telling you to clear off, so why don’t you just go swing your micro-dick somewhere else? Just piss off back to wherever it is you go to do whatever it is you do and quit pestering us, there’s a good moron, eh?” I said as insultingly as possible.
I saw the rage rise in his eyes, and his hands reaching up to grab me, so I gave him the knee in his balls just as hard as I could, and I know how to deliver a proper, powerful Khao-Trong straight knee-strike, it was the first Muay Thai kick I’d ever mastered; it’s normally a belly strike, but he was a good six inches taller than me, so he got it lower down and his eyes goggled as it mashed his balls. As he gasped in agony and hunched forward, the heel of my left hand came up as hard as I could under his chin and slammed his teeth together, scrambling what brains he had. As I spun away from him, he got a downward elbow strike from my right arm, my dominant arm, hard enough in his kidney area to hurt plenty and probably make him piss blood for the next few days. Michael hooted and dropped to his hands and knees, and I couldn’t resist such an open target so I gave him an instep kick in the crotch like David Beckham taking a shot at goal.
Michael screamed and folded over while his stunned posse of hangers-on watched their boss-man writhe in agony on the plaza floor, cradling his pulverised balls and vomiting while the front of his jeans darkened. I nudged him with my foot.
“What are you crying about? Big man like you wants to yank women around, should be able to take a big hit like a man. Come on boy, take it like a man. You know what they say, ‘Go big or go home?’ That’s a really good idea.”
One of his friends caught my eye, so I crooked a finger, beckoning him closer.
“Tell your girlfriend down there next time he talks to my fiancee I’ll put him in a wheelchair, understand? Now you’d better get him to Accident and Emergency, I think I turned his balls from outies to innies, they might need to yank them out again… if they can find them…”
We walked away hand in hand as Michael’s friends stared after us, while Sherry looked up at me in confusion, her mouth an ‘O’ of surprise.
“How did you do that Danny? Michael’s huge; he’s twice your size! I never saw anyone do that to him, that was… scary, but it felt good, I bet we never see him again! Really, Danny, how did you do that?”
I smiled right back at her.
“I’ve been doing this for years now, you must remember, surely? I started when I was still in school, Taekwondo, with some Mixed Martial Arts training, a little Muay Thai, Hapkido, Filipino escrima, anything that worked, all mixed in and shaken around. After you left it was all I had, so I just kept at it. My Sabum, my Taekwondo instructor, didn’t believe in limiting us to any one rigid style, so we learned pieces of everything, and we were encouraged to put them together any way that worked. In a real street fight no one cares how you deliver a punch, nobody’s taking notes or giving marks for style, all that matters is that you walk away in one piece and hopefully don’t die.”
Sherry frowned, and her fingers caressed my face…
“I never saw anything like that before, it was… amazing, but no-more, please? I don’t want you to get hurt, not now I’ve finally got you…”
I squeezed her reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, I won’t; I was just showboating to make him and his friends think twice about coming back for seconds. If they’d all jumped me I would have been one dead chicken, believe me, which is why I took out that idiot first. My Sabum always tells us, if we’re outnumbered, go for the leader, take him out of the game and his followers will hesitate. Then you run away before they catch on, just dig-up the Hell out of there! Michael’s just a lumbering idiot; he’s obviously only ever used his size, but bulk and muscle isn’t enough, and he just found that out. Who knows, perhaps next time he’ll keep his mouth shut, mind his manners, and keep his hands to himself. Are you going to be okay?”
Sherry was still looking strangely at me, obviously still puzzled at what had just happened, and how fast, but then she smiled and nodded, so I pulled her closer and slipped my arm around her neck so I could look into her beautiful bright eyes, seeing the question there.
“Baby, don’t worry, I’ll be careful, really, I have to be; even though I’ve been doing this four years now, I’m still not good enough or stupid enough to take on half the guys and girls I train with. It takes a lot of time and discipline, and I just don’t have enough of either; I just do this to keep fit and in trim. I can’t smash bricks with my hands, or break boards with my feet, kick someone’s kidneys out of their ears, or come off all athletic and leaping around like Jackie Chan or Jet Li. All that stuff’s for show-offs, but I do know enough to take care of myself, and you too, and that’s enough for me. I have some speed, I can take a hit and my Sabum says I have enough restraint to not kill someone or hurt myself. She says I have ‘inner discipline,’ which helps with my studies, too, and that’s really all I wanted out of all this.”
Sherry grinned and hugged herself closer to my side.
“I want you to know, Danny, I never went out with him. He just never let me alone. He’s just a brainless thug, but at least I know my fiance can look after me!” She laughed, and poked me in my side, in my ticklish spot, making me jump, the way she used to do when we were young. “And I still know how to make you say ‘Uncle,’ Danny-Boy!”
*****
Walking through the campus, I was gratified and more than a little jealous of the number of guys who checked-out Sherry, but she grinned and slipped her hand into my back pocket, squeezing and massaging my buttock.
“Calm down, Sir Galahad, I’m with you, and they’re only looking. Besides, all those cute little freshers staring up a storm at you? You see me getting worked up over it? No, you don’t, because I’m not. I KNOW you’re with me, so chill, Danny-baby!”
I ‘chilled,’ because she was right, I was just being over-sensitive, after pining for her for so long, and finally having her to myself, and by the time we’d found a table at one of the little coffee shops I was back to just drinking her in and marvelling at how, just when I needed her most, she’d come back into my life.