Free Light Up the Night by M. L. Buchman

her hands out toward him, side by side with the palms up.
    Bill recognized the game. It was a speed test. Who was faster. Something you did when you were bored and wanted to prove you were still in top form. Well, screw her. He was the fastest in the unit. Let her just try.
    He stepped up and immediately realized this was the closest he’d yet been to her. Even in warrior mode, you could see her smile threatening to dimple, her ever-so-fine hair fluttering in even the mere rising of the deck’s heat. He shut it off and compartmentalized it as only a SEAL could do. Focus on the task, or rather the game at hand.
    He placed his hands palm down over hers, not quite touching, but so close he could feel the heat off her palms radiating against his own. The trick was to pull your hands back before the person jerked their hands from below and slapped the tops of your hands.
    Bill tried not to gloat. It was a game he rarely lost. He hadn’t had his hands slapped in years. Why she wanted to lose at a power game was beyond him. He softened his vision so that it encompassed her whole upper body and face. There was always a tell, a sign, some shift in weight or narrowing of the eyes to telegraph the motion of the opponent’s hands to twist aside, over, and slap down. Plenty of warning to withdraw his own hands.
    Practiced reflex had him jerking his hands back before he was consciously aware of any motion. But he’d barely moved them before his conscious brain informed him there was a sharp pain. It wasn’t coming from his barely moved hands, but rather a very sharp pain in his solar plexus as the air whooshed out of his body making him instantly light-headed.
    It was only as he was trying to fight his body’s natural reaction to keep exhaling, struggling against instinct with his training to pull in that first breath past the pain, that he reconstructed what she’d done.
    She’d already preset for her attack when she’d taken the stance. Her weight forward, her feet braced a half step apart. That way, there had been no telegraphed warning signal. Then, rather than attempting to jerk her hands from beneath his fast enough to slap, which he had to admit might well have succeeded, she’d locked her fingers together and driven them straight into his chest with no warning of a change in posture.
    And it had been so damn fast, he hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t even blame it on the failing light. She was just that quick.
    â€œThat’s what my bird does that you don’t understand. Your training hasn’t prepared you for it. The Little Bird’s job is to be the unexpected point of the spear. It’s a different machine, different thinking, different flying.”
    He managed to stand up straight again, though his body complained bitterly, and he resisted the urge to rub where she’d nailed him. It was an effective way to make an opponent fight one-handed—give them a pain that they would instinctively clutch. That had been trained out of him, but shit, it hurt.
    Patricia O’Malley simply stood there waiting, palms up, perfectly balanced. Ready for another go at it. He considered surprising her just as she had him, but decided that it was a set of bruises neither of them needed.
    What the hell! Common sense had never been his strong suit.
    So, instead of placing his hands just over hers, he grabbed down and captured her wrists. Soft skin registered, and impossibly slender wrists for how hard she’d caught him.
    He barely turned his hip in time to take the brunt of her kick. Though holding her wrists tightly kept his own hands occupied so he couldn’t use them. He went to trap both her slender wrists in one of his big hands, but didn’t have a chance.
    He felt her pull against his grasp, not for freedom, but rather for leverage.
    He barely tightened his gut in time to block the head butt to his solar plexus. It hurt, especially on top of her first strike, but