After Hours by Cara McKenna Page B

pointing to a nurse and an orderly. They both looked a bit
     wary, but surely they didn’t share the fear that had me so unnerved—the fear of enjoying
     touching this brute far too much.
    I watched as they ran drills with Kelly, and tried very hard not to think about getting
     drilled
by
Kelly. Then it was my turn, me and another young LPN.
    “Legs,” she said. We’d been taught to “call” our intended target, much like shouting
     “I got it!” in a baseball game to avoid colliding with one’s teammate. It meant I
     was on arms. Big huge scarred-up Kelly Robak arms. When the moment came to grasp them,
     my hands were nowhere near big enough to get a decent purchase on his obscenely thick
     biceps. Lordy me.
    He went down pretty easy the first time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he smiled at me.
     With the side of his face pressed to the mat, it was tough to tell.
    “Enjoying yourself?” he asked, like he’d come upon me reading on a park bench.
    “I am. Maybe I’ll order you a white wine, while you’re down there,” I said, too quiet
     for anyone else to hear.
    Now he was definitely smirking. “With a straw, I hope.”
    “A funnel.”
    “Touché.”
    Audra shouted her approval of our technique and we let Kelly go. We switched legs
     and arms, then it was time to rotate again. I was tiring, my back achy from all the
     bending, shoulders grinding in their sockets. This was a hard-ass job. A decent workout,
     though, if dampened by the possibility of bodily harm.
    “Let’s try some headlocks,” Audra said after a water break, some time later. We’d
     just rotated back into Kelly’s tutelage and I eyed his arm yet again, imagining it
     clamped around my windpipe.
    “Trainees, attack your trainers, and trainers, break free in slo-mo.”
    I swallowed as Kelly turned to me first. With me at five-three and him at least a
     foot taller, it was easier said than done. I’d look less like an attacker than a scarf.
    “You want a stepstool?”
    I rolled my eyes. “I’m not
that
short,” I said as I circled around him. “You’re just way too tall.” I looped my arm
     around his neck, having to press my chest flush to his back to reach. Goddamn, he
     was warm. And hard. And huge.
    I felt his hand on my forearm, demonstrating for the other trainees in my group. His
     fingertips seemed to dawdle at my wrist as he spoke, casual as a woman might caress
     a garment at a store, admiring the fabric. Surely I was imagining that.
    “Basic move,” he said, and I felt each word vibrating in his throat. “She’s using
     her right arm, so I’m going to use my left to get free. This isn’t the time to panic.
     Erin and I aren’t a great example, but usually your head’ll be pretty close to your
     attacker’s, and thrashing around is a great way to concuss yourself or the patient,
     or pull a tendon in your neck. Steady and calm’s the name of the game.”
    Steady and calm. I could feel the muscles in Kelly’s broad back, feel his heat and
     his breathing, smell his perspiration.
Steady and calm,
I repeated to myself.
Bet that’s not how you fuck.
    “Pretending she’s got a good squeeze on me,” Kelly went on, “I’m going to turn my
     head just slightly, to keep blood flowing through the carotid artery.”
    He said some other stuff, stuff I really ought to have been paying super-close attention
     to, but it was hard with us pressed together . . . even in the incredibly unerotic
     setting, with potentially lifesaving information being imparted, even with a hangover.
     My body was pretty sure that its very existence balanced on its chances at rolling
     around with Kelly’s body in a non-training situation, and told my brain to fuck off.
    He got free—who knew how—and when the next person’s turn came to put Kelly in a headlock
     I tried to take mental notes. But his expression was nearly as distracting as his
     body, his mean face strained from the exercise and reminding me of how it might look,