"Do you want to punch something?"
Cadance stopped pacing her husband's office to look at him, her mouth still half-open from the rant she had been in the middle of. She replied with an unintelligible sound as her mouth clipped shut.
"I mean, well." Shining Armor rubbed the back of his head and a sheepish look crawled over his face. "It helps me when I'm frustrated."
"Punching things?" Her nose scrunched up.
He gave a half-shrug with one shoulder. "Kind of. Combat training in general, really, but it's hard to imagine you with a sword."
The left corner of her mouth twitched. If she'd been in a better mood, she might have jumped on that innuendo. Instead she released a befuddled puff of air and resumed pacing.
"This isn't the sort of problem I can just punch away. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is being an absolute—“
"Prat, I know," Shining finished in a soft voice. He stood up and placed both hands on his desk to lean over it. "Sweetheart, come here."
Cadance stopped and remained where she was. She eyed him with the wariness of a wild animal. "Why?"
He chuckled. "So I can give you a hug."
Her hackles raised and she felt her face screw into a scowl. "I don't want a hug. I want to—I just—argh!" She scuffed the heel of her shoe against the floor. "Maybe I do want to punch something!"
Shining perked up. "Yeah?"
She glanced at him, away at the wall, then up at the ceiling. "I've never punched anything in my life, but, yes, I want to punch him in his smug little face."
"I can help with that!"
"Shining." She leveled a stare his way as he came around the desk. "I'm not going to punch the minister, in the face or anywhere else."
"I know, I know, but come on." He took her hand in his and gave it a small squeeze before tugging her toward the door. "Trust me."
The words were a temporary salve to her frustration. If there were anyone she trusted, it was him. With her heart, with her life, and, apparently, with her fists.
He lead her through several halls of the castle until they arrived at a room that smelled of sweat and sawdust and musk. Cadance frowned and stopped at the doorway, her hand falling from his.
"The training room?"
"Yeah." Shining went over to a cabinet and pulled out what looked like a leathery pillow block. "You're going to punch this."
She took a few steps forward, but kept an uncertain distance from him as he strapped it to his forearm. "Why?"
The grin he gave her hadn't changed from their high school days. It showed both teeth and gums, crinkled his eyes, and made her heart flutter.
"Trust me?"
She felt a flush crawl up her neck as she shifted onto the balls of her feet and nodded. "Yes, okay, all right. I'm going to punch... that."
"Strike pad."
With an indignant huff, she rolled her eyes. "Well, that's not a very clever name. You could at least call it a punch pad for the alliteration."
Shining laughed, resting his hands on his hips. "It's for more than punching. Take off your dress and, in the next thirty minutes, I'm going to show you how all your problems can be solved through vigorous exercise." His brow waggled for good measure.
“Take off my—“ Her brow rose. “And what if someone walks in?”
“Right, right.” He jogged over to the doors and she heard the click of their lock snapping into place. “Better?”
She grumbled senseless noise as she reached back to pull the small bow undone, and the dress seemed to sigh as its tight lacing slackened. Beneath it, she wore a modest undershirt and leggings that went down to her calves; in case of a wardrobe malfunction at an inopportune time, she was not going to be caught flashing her panties.
Those were for her husband’s eyes only, thank you very much.
“Okay.” He walked toward her, his gait a little off as he bounced from foot to foot with each step, shaking out his arms. “Ready?”
She wasn’t sure. “Of course.”
When she attempted her best imitation of a fighting stance, he went perfectly still.
And then he laughed.
“Baby... no.” He stepped closer to her and took her hands in his. “You’re not ready at all. Okay, we’ll start with the basics.”
She huffed with indignation as embarrassed heat filled her cheeks, but nodded nonetheless.
Learning the basics was more difficult than she anticipated. Apparently, everything mattered, from the positioning of her feet to the angle of her hips. He taught her how to clench a fist without risking a broken thumb and made her drop in and out of stance until she could get it all right from memory.
Finally, he let her throw a punch. Slowly.
“This is distinctly not relieving my stress,” she said with no veiled exasperation as she failed, again, to twist her arm at the last moment in time.
Shining gave her a soft smile from over top the block strapped to his arm that she barely rapped with her knuckles. “I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “I don’t care about my stance or form or getting it perfect. Can I please just punch it for real already?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” His legs shifted to brace himself and he nodded. “Give it your all. Just remember the Minister’s pointy little beak of a nose and—“
Whump!
As her fist connected with a satisfying sound, the leather rasped across her knuckles with a slight burn.
A grin spread across her lips. She pulled her arm back, then threw her whole body into it, keeping each instruction in mind this time. The noise and burn were louder and stronger, and she huffed a surprised, happy exhale with it.
“Now, jab with your other arm, but keep it close to your face. It’s your defense, so it’ll catch someone off guard if you attack with it.” He raised his free arm and held a fist level with his face, then struck out the back of his hand toward her to demonstrate.
“Got it.” As soon as the pad was in place, she repeated the motion. It felt awkward to use her off-hand, but he seemed pleased with the effort.
The pad moved between the two positions to indicate whether she should punch or jab. Once we was able to switch between the two seamlessly, he lowered the guard to his side.
“Ready to kick?”
Her heart was drumming loudly in her ears. The grin returned, wider and a little more feral, as she nodded eagerly. “Yes!”
And so she added two kicks to her repertoire: one that swung her leg around to hit the side, and the other a frontward and downward strike at the knee.
“Sometimes,” Shining explained, “you have to incapacitate your opponent. Wreck their knee. Knock them down.”
Sweat started to roll down her neck and the small of her back, but she kept throwing herself fully into the workout. Where the pad went, she followed with the appropriate attack until she didn’t even think anymore. Her arms and legs were moving as if of their own volition.
In the middle of a shift between a jab and a downward kick, she noticed something had changed. She froze, the sight interrupting her instincts with thought.
Shining’s brow went up when she didn’t move. “Honey? Everything okay?”
Her eyes remained pointedly fixed on his crotch.
“Oh. Uh.” He laughed, voice a little strained with embarrassment. “Ignore that.”
"You're into this?" she asked—more like gasped, really—and ran the back of her hand over her forehead. "Why?"
Shining raised the strike pad for her to throw a punch, and she did. "I don't know!"
She squinted at him and, as the pad shifted again, she jabbed. "Wait." She dropped her stance to squint so hard she could barely see through her lashes. "Did you drag me into this because you have a fetish?"
"No!" He laughed, lowering his guard. "I swear, this was completely for you. The fact that I'm hard as a rock right now is as much of a surprise for me as it is you."
With a thoughtful but suspicious hum, she glanced down at his crotch again. The haze of anger had already faded, leaving her pleasantly open to the turn of events.
"So, then." She placed her hands on her hips, then started to shift them to hook her thumbs into the waistband of her leggings. “You wouldn’t mind if I took these off. Since I’m burning up.”
His eyes flicked down to watch her hands and his lips parted into a half-grin. “Up to you.”
As she tugged them down, she gave a little shimmy of her hips for good measure. One long leg stepped out, pale skin stark against the dark cloth, followed by the other.
Today, she wore a cute pair of lacy pink panties that hugged the curve of her hips and swell of her cheeks. They were terribly ill-suited for a training room that was primarily dark leather and dust, but the way Shining’s lower lip sucked between his teeth made it seem like the perfect pairing.
He moved the strike pad into place and said with a little husk in his voice, “Kick.”
She complied more for show than with force. She felt the way her muscles tightened through the upward swing of her leg, followed by the jiggle when her shin connected.
Then he grinned and glanced at her chest. Without so much as a word, she eagerly ripped the shirt over her head and tossed it aside. The matching pink bra pressed her breasts together into full mounds, and when she threw the next punch, their motion caught her notice and his eye.
”This is silly,” she said, straightening back up. Just as he started to deflate, she continued, “I like this bra. I don’t want it to get covered in sweat.”
His face lit up and he quickly nodded. “Oh, yeah, no, yeah. You should take it off.”
“And my panties.”
“And your panties.”
That was how she ended up naked. And how she ended up accidentally missing the guard with a half-hearted kick, because she couldn’t stop watching his face as he watched her.
The audible swallow bobbed his adam’s apple, which directed her attention to the throbbing of his pulse against his neck.
“I think I like this shirt.” He undid the pad’s straps so he could slip his shirt and the one under it off. “I don’t want it to get too sweaty.”
“Or your pants,” she purred more than said.
He nodded, shoving them and his briefs down in one quick tug. His cock was thick with arousal as it bobbed lightly from the sudden exposure.
She licked her suddenly dry lips that were a stark contrast to the warmth tingling between her legs. Muscles clenched instinctively, a faint twitch resonating deep within her loins.
“Do you want to keep—“ she started to ask, but he closed the distance between them and cut her off with a hard press of lips, his body flush against hers.
Well, she didn’t mind being interrupted when it was like this. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his tightened around her waist, and they clung to one another as if they had been separated for weeks.
Months, even, based on the desperation in his rutting hips, the heat in his hard length as it slid against her stomach.
“I just, I didn’t expect,” he breathed against her as he dragged his lips down to her jaw and scraped his teeth against it. “I didn’t know it would be so hot.”
She dropped her head back and closed her eyes with a soft moan. “Me punching you?”
His chuckle reverberated in his chest, seeping through into hers. “You, strong and focused and in control.”
“What?” With a weak attempt at an offended huff, she slipped a hand into the tight space between them to take him firmly in hand and squeezed. “I’m always in control.”
There was a low groan that she felt before she heard it, dragged out of him as her thumb swiped along the already wet slit. “This was—nngh, it was different. Feral. Primal.”
“Then let’s be primal.” She pushed herself onto her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “Fuck me, love.”
His whole body tensed at the words and, before she could so much as squeak in surprise, he picked her up with both hands cupping where her arse curved into her thighs. She only had a scant moment to wrap her legs around him before he marched forward, a soldier on a mission.
The angle put his member in perfect alignment against the very middle of her groin, both of them hot and so very ready. She was already slick with eager wetness that heightened the divine slide of his velvet shaft with each step he took.
Without warning, he bent forward to drop her against what she discovered to be one of the weight benches. It was a crude place for a princess to be taken in such a heated fashion.
It made her feel dirty.
She loved it.
He pushed—shoved inside her with one quick, painless thrust. She was so ready for him that the sudden fullness was nothing but pleasure, coaxing a loud cry from her throat that arched as she threw her head back against the bench.
There was no sweet nothings whispered like when they made love on their precious few lazy mornings. He didn’t tease with a gentle escalation, and she didn’t try to press back against him in sync.
She did little more than bounce and moan as he took his pleasure, and that gave her the same in equal measure, if not more.
He thrust in and out of her at a relentless pace, his elbows planted on either side of her to brace himself so he could go hard and deep. There was an occasional slap of his balls against one or both of her arse cheeks when he got the angle just right.
And stars above was all of it right. Right and wonderful and laden with an animalistic ecstasy that threatened to burn her alive. He was so hard that she could feel every inch of him thoroughly within her, so hard that the flared head rubbed against every sensitive nerve.
Once or twice, the frantic movement caused him to slip out, but there was so much slick coating her loins inside and out that his thrust back inside was completely uninhibited. She should have been embarrassed by the obscenely wet noise made by his pounding into her, but instead she reveled in it.
The whole encounter wouldn’t last long, both of them too wound up and too eager for relief to drag it out. Then, without warning, he lowered his head to her shoulder and bit down just hard enough that it was almost too much.
Pain erupted with bliss and it tore a strangled cry from her; she tightened around him, and he pressed his hips flush against her as his release came, his cock pulsing once, twice.
He slumped forward, as if he’d literally spent all his energy into her. And perhaps he had.
For a while, all they could do was try to breathe. The air between them stirred with shallow, hot pants, chests rising and falling in shuddering movements.
Sweat dripped off him and trickled against her skin, the stark cold breaking her out of her reverie.
“So.” She licked her lips. “That happened.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled softly, brushing his lips over what was most likely a red mark. “Sorry?”
Her nails trailed down his back in idle strokes. “Are you?”
There was only a small pause, likely feigned. “Should I be?”
“Only if you are.” This was a game she was happy to play in the blissed-out haze of post sex. Every inch of her skin was tingling and warm.
His cock started to soften and he shifted to slide out of her. “And if I’m not?”
“Well, then, that’s good to hear.” She hummed, nuzzling her cheek against his. “Now I know I can look forward to my next meeting with the minister.”
Shining turned his head so he didn’t laugh right in her face. In a high-pitched voice that certainly wasn’t a good mimicry of her, he declared, “Please excuse me, Minister, but you’ve angered me so much I must go get thoroughly ravished by my husband.”
She couldn’t help it. She imagined the pinched mouth and wide eyes the minister would have, the indignant noise, and she laughed. “It’s a better solution than punching him in the face!”
“Hey, that’s a thought!” He pushed himself fully upright to grin down at her. “That was just from practicing. Imagine the sex if you were punching for real!”
When she made a face as if mulling it over, his playful grin fell.
“Honey, I’m kidding.”
With a little squirming and flailing of limbs, she maneuvered her way out from under him.
He tried to get to his feet, but his knees didn’t seem to cooperate, so he just stared after her. “Baby, wait, no. Don’t punch the minister.”
Though her legs felt that his had the right idea of staying weak and flimsy, she put on a good show of striding toward the doors.
“Wait! Cadance!”
Her hand landed on the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. She looked over her shoulder with one brow arched. “Yes?”
He was grinning again. She struggled not to grin back.
Then he dropped down onto the bench and yawned. “At least put on some clothes first.”
