A Question of Fate

"All right, who's first?"

They each took a turn. John felt that more than a few of them left their foot resting on his groin a little longer than necessary. He looked over at Awilda who smiled and again gave him a wink.

After she helped him to his feet, Awilda went through five other scenarios, each one escalating the violence used to subdue the attacker. In the final set-up John was sitting on her stomach with a knife at her throat. The counterattack was so quick that he never saw it coming. Before he could force the rubber knife onto her throat, he felt his knife hand being forced up and to his left. At the same time her right leg came up under his left armpit and her left leg pushed his hip backwards and then continued over his shoulder. Suddenly he felt excruciating pain in his right elbow as her legs pushed down on his body, her hips moved upward off the mat as she pulled his knife hand down onto her chest.

"This is called an arm bar. It is extremely painful and can result in permanent injury," she said as she released his arm.

Each person in the group got to do it in slow motion, with Awilda positioning each point of the counterattack.

Once again, she helped a very weary John to his feet.

"That's nearly the end of class for today. Remember in today's world, everyone needs to be able to defend themselves, especially you ladies out there. Here at the New Age Fitness and School of Self Defense for Women, we will teach you to take care of yourself in any situation.

"Now I want to show you two of the more advanced moves I teach at the school. John, please try to attack me, anyway you wish." As it was those many years ago John's response was a headlong charge to try to take her off her feet. As he made contact with her very muscular body, he felt her arms close around his body like a giant python. Her arms and legs appeared to be everywhere at once, squeezing him into a tighter and tighter ball, his arms and legs useless to defend against her. Awilda, on the other hand, out of sight of the class, was slowly manipulating his lower body until she could feel his growing erection against her leg. She gazed deeply into his eyes and blew him a kiss as she felt it twitching.

After a minute she turned to the class. "Do you think I should let him go or hold him for a while longer?" All of women shouted out to hold him. "You people are mean."

She released and helped John back to his feet. It was a good thing that his gym shorts were black because there was a small wet spot near his crotch. Awilda announced she had one final move to show them. She turned John sideways until he was facing her then pulled on his right arm as she fell backwards. Throwing her right leg over his head and her left leg against his chest, she twisted her body taking John off of his feet, doing a somersault in mid-air before ending up flat on his back with Awilda's heel resting on the tip of his nose as she secured the arm bar. A collective gasp escaped from most of the group, as John screamed out:

"Willie! I give up, please stop, I give up."

Awilda released the arm bar and spun around until she was lying on his chest.

"Willie? You called me 'Willie'... David? Is it you?" Seeing the affirmative look in his eyes, she practically screamed out, "David, you found me."

That's when the kisses and tears started.

When she could finally compose herself, she turned to the astonished class.

"This is David; he was going to be my boyfriend in high school, until his family moved away. I haven't seen him in nearly eighteen years."

She still had him pinned beneath her as she continued, "Let's give David a nice round of applause for being such a good sport and taking so much abuse. Thank you for coming tonight, see you all next week."

Awilda helped a dazed David onto his feet and gave him a bone-crushing hug.

"John Richardson? Why didn't you tell me who you were right away?"

"I wanted to get to know you again. You might have changed. When you never answered my letters, I just assumed that you didn't really want to hear from me again. I felt it was necessary to win your heart before I told you the truth."

She wanted to tell him that she never received any of his letters, but that was all in the past. Before he knew what hit him, he was on his back once again, as she looked down over him.

"You wait right there and don't move. I'll be right back; I just want to lock the front door."

David had just removed his shirt, when most of the lights in the gym went dark. He could just make out her nude figure as she re-entered the room and lay down next to him.

"I've been waiting for eighteen years to do this and I'm not going to wait a second longer."

Epilogue:

Willie and JD, as they finally decided to call him, made love several times that night, the first two on the mats in the gym, and the final time upstairs in her bed. In the morning after their run, she packed a bag and they drove to his house.

"JD, this place is magnificent! It must have cost you a fortune. Where did you get the money?"

"I told you I worked for Microsoft; well I took half of my compensation in Microsoft stock. When I left I was worth over five million dollars. This place was a steal at only half-a-mil."

"JD, I have a little bit of a confession to make, too. When I married my husband Chad, I had no way of knowing that he was dirty. Maybe I closed my eyes to it or was just too infatuated with an older man to see him for what he was. Anyway, when he was killed, I inherited everything, including all of the rental properties that he had invested in; plus, almost eight hundred thousand dollars in cash. For the last six years I've been living off only the cash. I bought the building where I live with about half of the money that I got from selling my house in California. I've been banking the cash from the rentals, about ten thousand dollars a month."

"Ours is not going to be a marriage," JD said with a chuckle, "it's going to resemble more like a merger. Let's send our parents first-class plane tickets and have them come out here for the wedding."

"Where, when?" she asked.

"We'll do it in late summer or early fall. Whenever you like; just let me pick out the location."

At the end of September, before the rainy season and before the air could turn cold, the men gathered at JD's house; all three dressed in tuxedos, waiting patiently for the limo to bring the women from Willie's now-empty apartment above the gym.

Just before the car arrived, his father slipped an eye mask over his son's eyes.

"Remember, it's bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the wedding."

When the limo finally arrived, the fathers guided the blindfolded groom into the back seat. The drive to the Chapel of the Holy Cross took less than three minutes. As they drove up the long circular drive to the top of the outcropping of rock on which the Chapel was built, Willie commented, "The sign said they closed at four today. How did you manage this?"

"It's amazing what you can do if you make the appropriate donation."

At the top, the limo turned around in the tiny lot and faced back towards the way they had come.

The wedding party got out of the car and the three couples stood facing the Chapel on the far side of the small plaza. For the first time JD got to see his bride. Dressed in a sleeveless white gown that hugged her body in all the right places, she looked more beautiful than she had ever looked before. The wedding party arranged themselves as previously discussed, her parents on her side and his parents on his side. A man and a woman exited the Chapel and approached the wedding party. The woman was a minister with the New Age Church of God and the man was their photographer.

As the ceremony began, the photographer began doing his job, taking pictures of the party with a majestic curtain of red rock as a backdrop, soaring nearly three hundred feet above their heads.

After opening remarks, the minister got to the most important part.

"Do you, Willie, take this man, JD, to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold, in go times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part."

"I Do."

"And do you, JD, take this woman, Willie, to be your lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, in go times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part."

"I Do."

"You will now exchange rings as an outward sign of your love and fidelity."

"Then by the powers vested in me by the State of Arizona and by the Creator, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride."

When the ceremony was over, they all stood marveling at the sight before them: the red rock mountains in all their splendor, shining in the glow of the setting sun.

At the most expensive restaurant in town, the three couples eat and drank until they could barely move. It was like an early Thanksgiving feast.

When Mr. Richardson asked JD if he ever planned to go back to work, JD answered, "I already have a job. I'm the official demonstration assistant at the New Age Fitness and School of Self Defense for Women. My job is to get beat up and dominated by my beautiful wife, and I won't have it any other way."

THE END

As always thank you for reading my stories. Remember your comments are greatly appreciated; they are the only compensation an amateur storyteller like me receives.

SR