Tentatively, I stepped forward and unsheathed the iaito in one smooth motion, making sure the immediate cut would precede my foot and yet that the stance was secure and stable before the sword hit its imaginary target—a true challenge in coordination and body control. My posture would be low enough to conceal my feet’s position under the folds of the hakama. The tip of the blade arrives first, I reminded myself when I let...

Chesha Neko (Cheh-SHA neh-KO) Jada Versailles was an easy woman to hate. Her hair looked like she got up early to wash, blow-dry, and curl it. Her nails weren’t chipped. Her clothes looked expensive. How could she walk in heels that high all day? She appeared, to most people in New York City, like a beautiful, professional woman of exotic ancestry who had never suffered any hardship in her entire life and never would. Her...

Hannah, what have you gotten yourself into? This was the only thing I could think on the way to Michael’s apartment. The last few days flashed through my mind in a total blur, a tornado of excitement and lust and fear and awe and so many other things all colliding. All my romance novels have this cliché: “It’s so wrong, but it feels so right!” That’s just where I was now, about to turn my back on my loving parents, my boy...

Zyra walked into the gym in her usual attire, a cute blue sports bra and short spandex shorts. Looking around at all her fellow martial artists working hard in various stations, she remembered fondly the days of group workouts before she started her amateur career and got her trainer. Cid, standing in the corner, as usual, would be hard to miss if he didn’t stand above everyone by a foot at least. He had been a part of th...

"Let me off here," Lynn said quietly.Dutifully, I pulled over the SUV. The afternoon Tennessee sun baked the dusty asphalt and brightened the lush greenery to either side. But to me, there was a darkness around Lynn, as if she were fading into the coming night."Are you sure?" I asked softly."Yes." She got out, pulling that ridiculous case out of the back seat.I gave her one last look: a thin young woman, just 5'3" and 105...

Seth Vaughn had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was in the fifth or sixth or seventh…it didn’t matter for she was captivating. Clad in red, and smiling…seemingly at him. “You here…Hello!” a familiar voice yelled jarring him from the beauty before his eyes. Seth looked at his trainer, Pops McKensie. He used to train boxers, but as time passed, Pops saw the writing on the wall, and started dealing with martial arts. Soo...

The Workout Charlotte loved the Sunday workouts at her martial arts school. It was an informal class, where the students were not lined up in rows. Instead the two instructors, a good looking young Korean guy and a good looking British guy about her age, would break the class up into small groups who would do bag work, light sparring or grappling practice. Charlotte was one of the older students, a woman in her 40s. In fa...

My friend and I saw him for the first time in front of our school. He was there to teach self defense but he wasn't dressed in some lame-ass costume with patches sewn all over it like those tards at the mall. He looked normal, well if normal includes muscles that pressed against his shirt and ink covering his arms. I wasn't the only girl to notice him. The black girls made a bee line for him. Something about a guy who kno...

Robert and Martin were two high school students, 19 and 20 years old, sitting on a Tuesday afternoon in an almost empty Starbucks cafe. Summer had just begun and there were no classes. The young men were planning to work a bit during the summer, in order to earn some much needed extra cash. However so far, neither of them had managed to find a job that he considered worth the trouble. So they now sat at their table compla...