Junebug rolled with Neil on the bed, wrestling for the gun. Neil outweighed her but she had more experience in hand to hand fighting, and whatever the Terran’s had done to her surprisingly dynamic.  Neil also hesitated to strike home and was rewarded with a sharp blow to the kidney. He let out a pained shout and drove his elbow into Junebug’s sternum a heart beat before she smashed her knee into his stomach. Both of them grappled for the pistol but Neils larger hands made that a losing battle. Junebug squeezed the trigger, blasting a bottle of spirits on the side board to fragments before Neil got a leg under her and flipped her towards the wall, she twisted and let the flip bring her feet in contact with the marble wall, let her calves compress and launched herself back over the top of Neil’s sweating body. The gun went off again and plaster reigned down from the ceiling where the heavy round punched into the moulding. Her body weigh wrenched the weapon free and sent it clattering over the onyx inlaid marble floor, though for a miracle it didn’t go off. Neil caught her arm and yanked her back, demonstrating considerable strength to arrest her momentum, nearly pulling her shoulder from its socket. She aimed an elbow at his face but he got his forearm up in time to block the strike with a grunt of pain. Sayeeda rolled on top of him, pinning him with her thighs and drawing back her fist to punch down at his throat. Neil’s fist was cocked back to make the reverse strike and his other hand gripped her throat.

They both paused, shying back from the edge of lethal violence instinctively. Thick coils of powder smoke wreathed the room, in a logic dictated by the complicated air flow. A light mist of vaporized plaster continued to fall from the hole in the ceiling, and fluid gurgled from a punctured bottle adding the tang of some kind of high proof brandy to the tableau. Sweat sheened Junebug’s naked body and a drop collected at the point of her nose and dropped onto Neil’s chest. Her heart thundered in her chest and adrenaline burned so hot inside her she could literally trace the path of her veins through her limbs.

“This isn’t over,” she warned in a cold distant voice.

“Right,” Neil said though she couldn’t have said exactly what he meant by the affirmation.


Suddenly and without conscious understanding of movement, their lips were locked together in a passionate kiss. Junebug was unable to separate the rush of combat from the new circumstance in her mind but she didn’t waste much time trying. Neil, apparently as surprised as she was, seemed unable to decide whether to try to take his t-shirt off or to grip her. Breaking the impasse she gripped the collar with both hands and tore it free with a long riiiiip of parting fabric.