To win a fight, you have to know your opponent.

Situational awareness is the best weapon in the tool of any fighter – doubly so, if you’re a woman. So, what do I know? What do I see?

The world is still and grey as Martin and I circle one another in this remote area of the park. The grass is bright with morning dew, soft under my sneakers.

It gives it all a surreal atmosphere, like we’re in some feverish liminal place – even though the adrenaline pumping through my veins tells me that all of this is acutely, dangerously real.

In and of itself, this situation isn’t really new. I’m a woman who likes to run in the grey gloom that precedes the sunrise. I’m a female athlete who likes to spar with men, and beat them. Sexual harassment, threats, outright sexual assault – of course it’s something I’ve experienced before.

A non-trivial percentage of the men who attend my classes are just looking for any excuse to get physical contact with a woman… and a fraction of them has more elaborate, predatory designs on his mind when he joins. This is also not new.

But the attack itself?

There tends to be a pattern in the way men do these things. A man looking for a target to rape will try to vanquish me quickly, even if he knows I’m a martial artist. No, especially if he knows that. He will not want it said that I gave him a run for his money, that he had to work hard to put me on my back.

At the same time, there will be a lurking fear in his eyes – fear that maybe this girl is more than he can chew. That he’s going to fail. All the more reason to make it quick, and banish the fear, protect his masculinity.

So, he’ll usually charge at me, lumbering and overconfident and stupid, over-reliant on the element of surprise… once gone, he has nothing else going for him.

Putting such men in their places, breaking their noses, sitting them back on their ass, keeping them in an arm-lock as I wait for the cops to show up, is an incredibly affirming thrill.

But you must never grow complacent. When the pattern is broken, you have to notice – and Martin breaks that pattern.

He knows me, he’s seen what I can do, he’s attended some of my classes. And yet, he hasn’t looked for the element of surprise at all.

He just showed up along my usual running path, crossed his arms, and plainly told me, “Hello, Dawn. I’m going to rape you now.”

He always meant to try and do that eventually, I know. He signed up, looked like a clumsy doofus for a few classes, and then flunked out. But the moment the word rape left his mouth, I knew that it had all been a ruse to study me up close… and perhaps, to make me underestimate him.

I don’t fear men.

One of the major benefits of knowing self-defence is that I’m no longer a woman who lives in fear of the dark, of going out on my own even when the streets are deserted. But the unsettling calm in his voice as he said that… it did give me pause.

But only for a moment.

Now, I’m on familiar territory, circling him slowly, taking in as many details as I can. He’s not charging me, I notice. He’s not rushing in, making it easy for me to leverage his own momentum and mass against him.

So, what’s his game? And how do I foil it?

I briefly consider if running is an option. I may be prideful, but I’m not stupid – you fight when no other contingency is available, regardless of how good you feel your odds are. But could I outrun him?

He’s in shape, probably no more or less than I am… but he’s also taller, long-legged, and while I’m still catching my breath from the run, he looks fresh and well-rested. No running, at least not yet.

That just leaves one course of action.

My kick flashes fast and sudden. I’d been hovering just out of range for that, which usually lulls my opponents into a false sense of security. But I can step forward and kick before they have time to react.

Men typically have more reach than women – another advantage I can nullify using my legs first. And my kicks hit hard.

Instead of his temple, however, my foot meets only air. Martin ducks out of the way, smooth and elegant, seemingly without breaking a sweat. For such a big guy, he flows with surprising agility.

No, not the meat-headed idiot he pretended to be as a novice at all. This man is dangerous. This man is a methodical fucking creep.

A predator.

“Come on, Dawn,” he says, dancing away from me. “You really gonna try the basics on me? I find that offensive, I’ll have you know.”

“Here’s how this works,” I say, my eyes never leaving his as I wait for his own move. “The moment you threaten to rape someone, you lose the right to be offended by anything they say.”

“I suppose that’s fair. Although…” he says, nonchalantly. “I wasn’t threatening.”

Then, the lockstep dance of the fight takes over my world.

I get in the zone, and so does he. We punch and kick and cut and duck, parring each other’s blows, looking for leverage on one another, and denying it to each other. It’s not just the flurry of movement that engulfs my self-perception, fast and dizzying as it is.

It’s the calculus of the fight. Sub-conscious processes like reading each other’s body language, anticipating moves and countering them, or countering the counters, a level of analytical and instinctual thinking that comes only with a combination of talent and experience…

And, like me, Martin has both in spades. That much is undeniable now. He adapts to everything I do, countering every strike, every kick, with chilling precision. He can’t get past my guard – but I can’t get past his, either.

I’ve got a real fight on my hands, this time.

"Getting tired?" he asks, smirking as he sidesteps my latest lunge.

I take a moment to file away the information – he has enough spare capacity to talk while fighting, though as far as attempted mind games go, this one is pretty clumsy. I would have been in trouble long ago, if destabilising me was that easy.

I don’t respond, though, save for a grunt as I parry his punch and try to grab his forearm. He weasels out of the way. Let him read into my silence whatever he wishes. If he thinks it’s because I’m flustered or overloaded, so much the better – he might underestimate me.

"That’s fine, you don’t need to talk,” he says. “I know folk wisdom says women are good at multitasking, but in my experience, it’s the opposite. Your little brains get overtaxed very easily.”

Now, that flusters me. Maybe a mistake, but maybe not, because I’m so pissed off that I feel even more energy answering my musters, powering my dodges and my kicks.

"You can’t fight nature,” he continues. “You’re just a woman after all.”

The roaring of my own blood fills my ears. I grit my teeth, like some feral animal. Misogynist. Rapist fuck. I will end you.

"I’ve put down every man who’s ever told me that," I snarl. “Down on his ass.”

“This man’s right here,” he says. “Come and get me.”

I launch myself at him.

Even as I do, I wonder what the hell I’m doing. It’s as if I’m not fully in control of my own actions. Is this what it feels like, to lose your cool? I’m never like this. I’m always in control.

But not now. My own charge plays out in slow motion before my eyes. I take it all in, the fluidity of my own movements, the toned strength in my muscles, the glistening of my sweat in the slowly rising light.

And Martin’s eyes, cool and calm and dead, watching me.

Even a rash charge like this would not be necessarily be a bad thing, in most circumstances. Men who assault women do not expect aggression in return. Even one moment of hesitation can be all I need to make my move.

But Martin does not hesitate. He’s been studying my guard all this time, trying to break past it, to force an opening. And now, he’s got his chance.

It’s all so slow and so fast at once. He steps forward to meet my own thrust, and his left arm begins to wrap around my head, one swift uninterrupted motion like flowing water. His right arm reaches for my left, grabbing it, and before I know it, my footing is gone, and the ground seems to shift under my feet.

I’m falling.

He falls too, on his back, the soft grass wet with morning dew softening his landing, and I’m pulled right along. My right arm hooked under his left, but my head suddenly free – his right arm shooting to block my left before I can gain leverage.

Then, he flexes his hips – powerful, I can see the ripple of his muscles – and my head is no longer free. His legs, two rods of pure muscle, snap shut around my head like the jaws of a predator, and then he shifts his hips, cutting the angle, until his right shin is pressing down on the back of my neck.

And then his left leg hooks over his right, and just like that – the triangle choke is secure. Textbook execution for him… and a moment of holding the idiot ball, for me. The embarrassment bites just as his chokehold does, and I don’t know which one hurts the most.

God. How could I be so inexcusably, unbelievably stupid? And if I had to make one such stupid mistake, why did it have to be now, with him?

"Just like a girl, to lose your cool and stop thinking like that,” he says, and there’s no mockery in his tone… just matter-of-fact observation. “You’re all fundamentally the same. Hot-blooded. Hysterical. Responsive. It makes you easy to beat… and, in time, easy to tame.”

I want to roar in frustration, righteous anger, defiance. I want to growl in rage at my own stupidity, at my rookie mistake, and it’s not fair that I should pay so dear a price for one misstep… but I should save my breath, because I’m in his chokehold, and no amount of feminist pride will let me ignore the fact that I’m in trouble.

Just as the scream claws up my throat, it stops dead cold, because Martin’s grip on me begins to tighten. If there is ache building up in his muscles from the constant application of pressure, he’s not showing it. His calves and thighs bulge hard and unyielding, like they’re made of steel, constricting me like a predatory snake.

With his right hand grabbing my left wrist, and twisting it away from me, my leverage is virtually nonexistent. I have no practical way to apply any kind of opposite force. I’m a ragdoll at his mercy, my breath being masterfully controlled by his body… the ultimate expression of physical dominance.

That thought courses through me, like a shiver. It makes me feel… something with no name, beneath the anger, the shattered pride, and beneath the fear.

Trapped between his legs, each breath coming shorter than the last, I see the tent pitching in his pants, mere inches away from my face. I can smell the musk.

He’s going to rape me, and I can’t stop him.

"Look at you," Martin says, but his words sound distant, so distant as I keep struggling to draw out each breath. "So brave and defiant before, and now nothing more than a whimpering, broken thing. Tell me, Dawn, how does it feel to have your world come crashing down around you? To know that your precious ideals were nothing more than a delusion?"

I can’t answer, not even in my head. The more my brain gets oxygen-starved, the more I panic, and the more I panic, the less I breathe. I flail uselessly, crawling at the grass, willing my battered body to obey my commands and carry me away from this nightmare.

But the analytical part of me can only note dryly that it’s counterproductive.

The rage is almost gone, now. In its place lies the fear, the fear that he might kill me, the fear that he will rape me. He’s bested me. I’m his prize. There is something so sexual and masculine about his triumph, the way his muscles are subduing mine, the way his controlled aloofness is snuffing out my female pride.

The way his erection is pressing against my nose, through the fabric of his pants.

It’s so humiliating. It’s not supposed to end like this. Misogynists don’t get to have their way with a feminist. They don’t get to nullify her self-defence knowledge, to just pin her down against the grass and, and, and…

My world spins.

I find myself released, as the dimness that was descending on my vision suddenly begins to clear. I suck in breath like a drowning woman, coughing and spattering, absurdly grateful for each lungful. I can feel my eyes tear up, my face feels like it’s on fire, and it’s all I can do to just lie here, strangled and defeated, while Martin slithers away from me and rises to his feet.

With a gentle kick, his booted foot rolls me over on my back… and then, it lands against the hollow of my throat.

His boot twists this way and that, the grooves under the sole digging into my flesh, cutting off my breathing, pinning me to the ground. I choke around it, feebly, weakly. Harmlessly.

“I’ve taken ownership of your breathing,” he says, calmly. How can he be so calm? “I’ve let you breathe a bit, but know this – I can take it away any time I want. You know I can. Draw the relevant conclusion, girl. Appease me, behave with appropriate reverence, and you can keep your breath. Defy me, and…”

His leather sole grinds harder against my throat, and the weak, pathetic guk that escapes my lips alongside what’s left of my air makes me sound like a pathetic animal, a defeated, whimpering bitch.

He’s right. He’s defanged me. The act of taking my breath away has instilled a deep-seated wariness in me, the instinct to respect his strength.

I fear him.

And it’s getting harder and harder to deny that there’s a fire in my gut, one that doesn’t stem from fear, but from the idea of the winner, claiming his defeated opponent as a prize…

I used to fantasise about that sort of thing sometimes, but I was always the winner. This, this…

He knows.

His boot still planted on my throat, he crouches down, tying my wrists together in a tight, coarse wire that makes me wince. And then, his fingers travel down, swiftly lowering my jogging trousers and my panties, exposing my sex to the cool morning air.

I shiver – and not just from the cold. I close my eyes in embarrassment at the slickness he finds when his fingers begin to explore me, which has nothing to do with sweat.

God. How did it get to this? When I woke up this morning, I was proud, and strong, and free. Now I’ve been beaten into submission, I’m bound and pinned, and my cunt is exposed to the air…

And it’s making me wet. I’m pathetic.

He laughs, then, but there’s no genuine mirth in it. Just the cold. “Your body knows you better than you know yourself, bitch. It likes it when your feminist mouth is shut and you’re brought to your knees... so to speak."

I let out a startled mewl as his fingers toy with my sex, giving my clit a few hesitant strokes, gauging my reaction. He seems to approve of my mewl – so feminine, so demure. His boot relents at that, just a little, and I immediately recognise that for what it is – reinforcement.

Somehow, that’s even more terrifying than ‘just’ being raped and then discarded. He has plans. I see it in his eyes, the way they study my reaction as I breathe in. Beating me wasn’t enough, he intends to train me?

Like I’m some fucking wild horse that he’s finally reined in, and that he now intends to tame? To break in?

Why does my body spasm at that? Have I just humped his hand?

“You understand, then,” he says, softly, softly. And then, in one burst of explosive motion, he lifts me, turns me over in the air, and slams me back down on the grass, face-down this time.

Once again, breath is driven out of me. Now, this is my chance, I need to move now, to get to my feet and start running, but my body won’t obey me anymore, and I’m just not strong enough –

And then, the push comes.

His body weight pins me as he unceremoniously enters me. It’s painful, and I grit my teeth, but it would be much worse if I was just scared, if I wasn’t wet for him… if a part of me wasn’t ready to welcome him in. Which is the worst defeat of all.

"Tell me you want it," he growls, his breath hot in my ear.

I clench my teeth, refusing to give him what he wants to give up without a fight. With a low growl of frustration, Martin slams his hips forward, one meaty hand pressing my face into the grass.

Into the dirt. Firmly and securely pinned under the overwhelming might of male physical superiority and fuck!

"You women secretly love it rough, don't you? You're nothing without a man to tame you."

My body betrays me. I find myself responding. Adapting to his pace, to his thrusting, warming up, warming him.

His hand lifts from my face, fingers coiling through my hair, pulling it back like a set of makeshift reins. Fuck, he really is taming me, like I’m not a person at all, just some animal who used to be feral and wild, and is now finally being inducted into civilisation.

Physically, mentally and sexually overpowered, and put through a rigorous training regimen, until I can take my rightful place at his feet…

"See? I knew the whole martial arts thing was just for show,” he grunts, fucking me. “You just needed a real man to show you your place. Say it."

I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. Just saying the words out loud would destroy me, and I don’t believe it besides, no matter how wet I am, no matter that he did defeat me, no matter that he’s claiming me…

But then, his hand leaves my hair, and his fingers gently cup around my throat… and that’s all it takes. My eyes widen, my breath catches in anticipation of a choking that never comes. And my defiance drains out of my cunt.

“I…” I say, tremulously, licking my lips, “I need a real man to put me in my p-p-place…”

And when I become cognisant of the twitch in my pussy that greets these words, I know beyond a doubt that I’m fucked up in the head, twisted, wrong, damaged. That I am lost.

“Yes you do,” he growls, and there’s an edge in his voice this time, the edge of hunger.

He starts fucking me more vigorously, then. This must be the epytome of masculine affirmation for him – fight and fuck. Win and dominate. He’s gotten one workout first, and now he’s getting another, and both serve to shut down my ambitions to be seen as an independent human being.

Both serve to put me in my place.

Where I’m still winded and weak from the choking, he’s in the fullness of his strength, it feels as if he’s barely had to exert himself at all. He’s unrelenting in pistoning in and out of me, claiming my sex as his fuckhole, his toy to use for relief without needing to consult me whatsoever.

With my wrists bound and my breath mastered, I’m not even a participating victim in my own rape. I’m just a captive, a thing, unable to move or resist even symbolically. Wet for him, responsive, a slut.  

His hand returns to my hair, grips it, twists, and pulls – much harder, this time. I scream in pain, and his other hand gags me, shuts me up – of course, we’re in public, and he needs me to keep it down. His knotty fingers are so wiry and strong as they wrap around my mouth and nose… he could stop me from breathing with just that. Five fingers. One hand.

That makes me whimper in his palm like a bitch in heat.  

“I have plans for you,” he says, with the same tone he’d use to talk about the weater. “But you already understood that, I saw it in your eyes. You’re not dumb… for a girl.”

Humiliation and pleasure intertwine in my mind, in my sex, in my defeat. Arms safely tucked away, pride dismantled, defiance snuffed out, I’m just a sexually dominated female animal for Martin to fuck into submission. A beast of pleasure and burden, ready for taming. For deconstruction.

From a fighter to a pet…

Martin’s pace picks up further. The casualness of his physical control over me annihilates the last remnants of my independence out of my brain. I’m so weak. He’s stronger, he can take what he wants whenever he wants. He is superior.

How can you be someone’s equal, when he controls your very breath? What choice do you have, except give in?

“That’s it,” he grunts. “Flex your pussy walls. Coax my cum out, get it all. It’s the newest top priority in your life, as befits a woman.”

My body obeys him. With no hesitation, no involvement of my conscious decision-making, bypassing and invalidating my consent completely. It responds to his mastery, the way an animal responds to its trainer…

And that’s when the orgasm hits.

“No,” I try to mumble into his hand, unable to accept the idea, to live with the fact that I’m going to cum from my own rape, who the fuck does that? But I can’t stop it. I can’t control it.

Not like Martin controls me.

Every muscle in my body – but my thighs especially – starts shaking and quivering uncontrollably. I moan throatily and sluttily into the palm of his hand as he compresses me, hand pushing towards him just as his hips push forward, impaling me further on his cock.

Waves of humiliating pleasure ripple across my body and mind like an earthquake – and in turn, they trigger Martin’s own climax. With a final grunt, he cums and cums and cums, coating me with his sperm, claiming me, marking me as his territory. His property. His cum receptacle.

When he lets go, I fall limply forward, face-first into the grass, shaking in the final throes of my treasonous orgasm, of my utter downfall. And for a while, the world fades, and I’m left alone with my defeat, and with my pleasure.

It doesn’t last.

Unceremoniously, Martin lifts me to my feet. My wrists are still tied, but most importantly, my brain feels like a shattered pane of glass. I’m barely aware of him dressing me back up, and I can do nothing but follow meekly, as he drags me by my wrists towards his car.

And towards my fate.