For his part he understood that she was reasonable enough, but still suspected that the reason she had been promoted had been so the company could claim to have a certain number of women as managers. (Given the current “equality drive”, he could be forgiven for thinking that way, too.)

They were both professional enough not to let their mutual wariness affect their work, and they got on tolerably well, always observing the niceties of office behaviour. So it was just one of those coincidences that led to a clash.

The general manager decided to move various departments around, and Sue’s had to go a few rooms down along the corridor. As is customary, the men did all the lifting of the furniture. It so happened that a few tables were really awkward to carry, and Dave found himself struggling with one. You had to put your hands out at roughly the ten-to-two position, lift, and mind the metal base didn’t hit you on the shin.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, before leaving the room. Then they heard him call for a colleague, Adrian, to give him a hand, before cursing and calling out, demanding where he had got to.

Sue wasn’t in the best of moods anyway. She found the whole idea of the move pointless, and all the noise around was distracting her and the girls from their work. She sighed, tutted, and then told the girls crossly, “This is going to take all day. Oh, to hell with it, I’ll take the dam’ thing myself.”

Yes it was difficult and heavy, but not insurmountable. She held its sides, stood back a little, braced, and raised it. Then she marched out bearing it, to the claps and cheers of the girls.

“Mind out,” she called to Dave and Adrian down the corridor, as she carried the table along it, and then to her right into the department’s new room. Adrian went back to the office, but Dave followed her in.

“What are you trying to do?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry?” Sue asked, breathing heavily after the exertion.

“You’re trying to belittle me in front of the rest, aren’t you?”

Sue thought for a moment before answering, then nodded. “I can see that it might look like that to you, but it wasn’t meant.”

“Oh, yeah? Is that why the girls were all clapping and cheering?”

“Ah.” Sue winced, recalling it. “Look, why don’t you go and have a cigarette? I assure you I didn’t mean it like that, and they won’t laugh or poke fun at you when you come back. I’ll make sure of that.”

But Dave was insistent. “Ever since you got the job instead of me, you’ve set out to undermine me in front of the others.”

“That’s not true! You’re paranoid. I admit I should have thought more carefully just now, but I did it on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t meant.”

Seeing him glower, and shake his head, she lowered her voice. “Look, if you’re still sore about it, there is another way to settle it … privately. Are you interested?”

“It depends.”

“Well, I’m an amateur MMA fighter – wrestling mainly, though I do a bit of all round stuff as well. I belong to the local women’s club, but a member can hire the ring privately for an hour or so on a quiet evening. No one need know. Give it some thought over your cigarette. I must go back now.”

*****

Why did Dave agree? He was applying for other jobs as it was. If he got offered one he could be away soon, and that would be the end of the dismal business. Certainly he felt temporarily affronted, but not enough to resort to fighting. No, there was something else. He had to admit it to himself: he found her strength exciting, even to the mundane level of carrying a table that he had struggled with. Then when she told him she was an amateur MMA fighter, well…

It was a month before Sue could hire the ring. This suited Dave. He stopped smoking, went running, and did a bit of rudimentary training in self-defence – something that he knew a bit about already. She had booked it for a Wednesday evening. When that day came, and he dropped paper clips and spilled his coffee at work, she was as quietly efficient as ever. They agreed to go there after work, and while Sue drove she discussed an upcoming merger their company was having with a former competitor, and asked Dave his opinion of it.

“Here we are,” she told him briskly, letting them in with her key. “Now, your changing room is over there, where you’ll find spare shorts. I’ll get changed over here, and I’ll see you in the ring in a couple of minutes.”

*****

“Is this a joke?” roared Dave, once they were both in the ring, “Look at me! Shorts, you said! This is a bloody loincloth!”

“If it is a joke, it’s a good one,” countered Sue, laughing. “You should have brought you own shorts. This is my leotard.”

This was deliberate, and it drew his attention to her body. He was looking at one powerful woman! She stood confidently, hands on hips. She didn’t emphasise her muscles, because she didn’t need to. At the same time, she had the abundant curves and full breasts of the classic female form.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he answered, poised in a fighting stance.

With startling speed, she spun away from him on her left foot, super kicking with her right, and hammered his jaw, which sent him reeling. His teeth snapped together, and he had to concentrate his mind against dizziness. As if helping him to recover, she slapped his face hard, and he recoiled as if he had been punched.

This gave Sue an opportunity to stand in front of him, seize his wrists, and haul him up and over her back in a sort of forward suplex. She worked the momentum of his body over hers perfectly. Certainly it required strength; but it demanded just as much instinctive response to her opponent’s movement and weight, because she was unable to see him. When he had almost completed his trajectory, she held him in the air for a few moments, and smiled down at him, before letting him land on his back.

“I can’t let her do this to me,” Dave thought frantically. He leant on his side towards her, and grabbed her wrists. She responded with her foot in his face. The more he hauled, the greater the harm to his face. But that didn’t suit her for long, always preferring a more active role.

Securing him in an unorthodox pin, Sue held his right wrist while she half-smothered his mouth and nose with her other hand, and used her bottom to anchor him to the canvas. This was doubly handy, because she was able to rub it against the front of his flimsy loincloth, thus adding to his discomfort. He uttered muffled sounds of protest.

“Oh yes, there’s definitely a sexual element to mixed fighting,” she explained, “but do I use it for pleasure, or to gain advantage… or both?” she added, as an afterthought.

Employing another singular pin, Sue now held his wrists in each hand, and knelt on his right arm. This served three purposes: it secured him to the spot; it weakened his arm; and it enabled her to dominate him psychologically as well as physically.

“I haven’t had a good mixed fight for ages!” she informed him, looking into his eyes. “Do you like strong women, Dave? A lot of men secretly do.”

Curse her, she was smiling, Dave thought. He shook his head from side to side, grimacing, and trying to avoid those mesmerising eyes of hers. Damn her, she was half-flirting! But it wasn’t the giggly guessing game that he was used to from girls; this was a woman who fought rough, and would seem to make love in the same way.

Sue now graduated to a more conventional pin, the schoolgirl. She loved that pin! There was no better way to torment a male opponent. He couldn’t escape her eyes now – well he could, but he ended up staring at her breasts if he did, which made things worse. She shamelessly pushed her sex against his, with her face just inches away and directly above his own. She moved lower still, so that her large breasts rubbed against his chest.

“Oh yeah, it turns you on, doesn’t it?” she murmured. It did, too. She ground her middle against his, and he noticed her breasts wobble slightly. If he wasn’t careful …

She sat up, still toying with him, and smiling. She put her hands on her hips, and Dave for no apparent reason recalled her in the office, giving them a “pep talk”. Oddly, it struck him for the first time that it was natural for her to be in charge. He even liked the thought – why was that, after all his secret bitterness?

Sue sighed, “Still, this is a fight after all …”

While he had been dreaming, she had been working him onto his side with the pressure of her legs. With a sudden movement, following her comment, she tipped him onto his front. Facing away from him, she hauled his legs up and over each other, locking them in the crook of her left arm, with her left leg between his legs, in a sharp shooter.

Dave roared in pain. Sue reached down with her right hand, and cupped his balls beneath his loincloth, applying pressure that hovered between the sensual and the dangerous.

“Do you like that, Dave?” she purred. “I may be as strong as most men, and I may be able to fight better than a lot of them, but it’s still a woman’s touch, isn’t it? Oh, you do like it! We hey!” So saying, she whipped his loincloth off, and threw it out of the ring. Dave gritted his teeth and tried to think about the pain in his legs – an indication how great the effect of her hand’s manipulation was.

But the warrior in Sue decided it was time to return to pure combat. She released his legs, relinquished her hand’s hold, and knelt on his left shoulder, hauling his arm up into a twist. Again, Dave yelled. Her tactics were perfect. She had weakened his right arm earlier, and just a moment ago both his legs. Now, she punished his left arm. Again, Dave ground his teeth together, but this time it was in response to the torture. Further and further she forced his forearm at a perverse angle from his upper arm. Maintaining the agony on his arm, Sue now crouched and worked Dave to a kneeling position.

“Another man who likes strong women!” she laughed, indicating his erect penis. “You like getting beaten up by the lady boss, don’t you?” Trapping him in an arm bar now, she brought her right arm down hard, and chopped the top of his arm, imprisoned in the crook of her left arm, before turning her attention to his other arm and twisting it behind his back. She now had him by both twisted arms, in a variation of a double chicken wing.

Never letting up the assault on Dave’s arms, Sue now let go of his right one, gripped his left with both hands, and started spinning round. Faster and faster she went, until even she began to feel a little dizzy; whereupon she let go, and Dave went running with the momentum into the ropes.

Was he trying to escape? He certainly looked as if he was about to part the ropes. Well she wasn’t having that, and ran to prevent him.

“Running away, Dave? Aw, scared of a girl, are you?” she jeered, thrusting him back into the middle of the ring. “Come on Dave, hit me. You’re angry with me, remember? I got the job that you thought you deserved. I made you look ridiculous in front of the girls. So come on Dave, hit me!”

He punched; she swerved. He tried again; she blocked. Dropping to one knee, she back-punched with her left, catching him severely under the chin and on the throat. Breathing painfully after the blow to his throat, he played for time, attempting to grab her. But she fended him off with her left hand, and cracked him a beauty on the chin with her right. Her punch propelled him backwards, and he struggled to stay on his feet.

“Care for a bit more of a woman’s touch?” she mocked, ramming her left fist into his stomach. Dave doubled up. She must now intensify the attack, she knew, and give him no chance of any recovery.

She punched him in the mouth. Once again the force of the blow made him totter, and his lips felt as if he had been stung by a bee. But even in his crisis, he noticed that she fought with measured strength. She always seemed to keep some in reserve.

“Oh, Dave, that’s the ultimate humiliation,” she laughed after her next punch, “getting a black eye from a woman! Dear, dear!”

Dave swayed, punch-drunk. With one foot jabbing behind him at his calves, and with her hands locking on his head, Sue forced him to lurch forward. All she had to do was to help him on his way. She linked her hands, thudded her right arm and elbow into his kidney, and he landed with a slap on the canvas. She positioned herself astride his back, sitting on it, slipped her legs under his arms, and pulled. This raised them both until he was on his knees, with her bottom digging into his back, bending him further backwards. It was an agonising combination of a double arm twist and a backbreaker.

“This is my own hold,” she panted with the effort. “I never thought of a name for it until now, but I’m going to call it ‘Boss Lady’. What do you think?” Dave thought she was a sadistic bitch, but didn’t say so. Instead he groaned as pain engulfed him. She had now damaged every part of his body that counted – some of it several times over – and they both knew it. He tried to move to ease his suffering, but it only made it worse. He felt the strain all over: his legs buckled under the pressure of maintaining the position, his arms were being wrenched again, his back was bent unnaturally, and the burning in his arms tore through his ribs.

At last she released him, but it was only a fleeting respite. He sprawled on his front, gasping, and she lay above him, hooking his feet and legs through hers, forming a lock, and seizing his wrists. Then she swung them both 180 degrees, so he was above her, facing upwards, in a romero. From a distance, the two of them resembled a frame; close to, an observer would have noticed the effect of her steadily increasing the pressure. It was his joints that endured most of the torture. His ankles and knees had to withstand supporting a position that nature never intended them to. Then again, his back was being pulled once more against itself, while his stomach was being forced upwards.

Sue let him tumble to his side. That hurt too, even if it did afford some relief. Maintaining the initiative to the last (and they both realised that wasn’t far off) she locked his right leg between her legs, and crossed her arms over his head and neck in an anaconda. His remaining strength was ebbing away, and all his effort went towards being able to breathe.

But it wasn’t enough for her. She let go and grabbed his right arm with both hands, stretching it into an arm bar, with her left leg trapping him by the neck and throat. He had had enough. He just wanted it all to end, but something within him refused to tap. He knew it was stupid, but there it was. She could tell instinctively and helped him.

“Had enough?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he faltered.

Sue stood up in triumph, raising her arm as if they had an audience. Then to emphasise his defeat, she placed her foot on his still-erect penis. He half-sobbed with the sexual message this transmitted. She knew, of course.

“Come on Dave, just one more throw,” she chuckled lifting him onto her shoulders, seemingly for a body slam. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

She carried him as far as the ropes, hooking his feet over them, and holding his head in her right hand. Then the fingers of her left curled around his penis.

“See, I said you wouldn’t regret it,” she reminded him. “Ah, it’s that woman’s touch again, isn’t it Dave?” she continued, working away. “I think you secretly enjoy being thrown by a woman. Many men do. Well, you know, it turns me on too. I LOVE dominating a man. It makes me go all … oh, dear! You were excited!

Letting him fall gently this time, she stood over him once again for a celebration, and then all of a sudden became the department head again.

“All right Dave, I’m going to have a shower, and you’ll obviously want one too. I’m going to sign you off sick for tomorrow and Friday. That’ll give you the weekend as well to recover, and hopefully for the swelling to go down on your eye and your mouth. If it doesn’t, we’ll just have to say you had a row when you were out Saturday night.”