Kai’s heart sank. He thought he was going to be stuck there for days, miles from the nearest town, with a companion who made painting the ceiling seem like fun. Feeling he needed a little space, he told her he was going out for a cigarette.

He took a few pulls on his cigarette and then stared through a gap in the bushes – there, straight ahead, was an MMA cage. The setting was surreal. Here was this dull girl, worrying about the planet and everything being “sustainable”, with one of those brutal arenas in her garden. He had to ask her about it when he went back indoors.

“Oh yes,” she answered calmly, “it’s where I get rid of my frustration and resentment at all that’s wrong in the world.”

“You mean, you actually go in there and fight people?” he was aghast.

“Of course, we practice in there. I’m in an MMA club. Why, do you want a fight?”

“What? Of course I don’t!”

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged. “It might have been fun,” she finished thoughtfully, and Kai could see she was measuring up a potential opponent, calculating his weight and so on.

“Apart from anything else,” he protested, “I haven’t got any shorts with me.”

“That’s no bother,” she answered, “a lot of guys fight naked in there anyway. It’s completely screened off from the neighbours.”

Kai weighed things up. What else was there to do? “Oh, what the hell,” he changed his mind. “Okay, let’s do it.”

*****

“What the hell?” he thought again to himself, wishing he’d been a bit friendlier to Charlene when he saw her in her silver “fighting leotard”. Indoors, she had been wearing shapeless clothes, which gave no indication of her figure; now she looked dazzling. She had a perfect, Marilyn Monroe-type figure: round, medium-sized breasts, narrow waist, and the sort of bottom (he thought) that you just wanted to give a friendly tap to. Not the sort of person he thought of as a natural opponent.

She, however, seemed to have no such second thoughts. Wearing her stiletto-heeled silver boots, she stood a little taller than him and stroked him under the chin.

“I promise I’ll go easy on you,” she said, trying to goad him. “I’ll even give you the first shot. Come one, try and hit me.”

Kai accepted the invitation and missed. Charlene slipped out of the way of his right fist, which went over her shoulder. A left strike from him met a similar response. She was aiming to frustrate him into a genuine rash shot. Nor did she have long to wait. When he aimed too high with an attempted left cross, she knelt on one knee and let him feel one from her in the stomach instead.

It was a moment of waking for him as much as the discovery of the MMA cage had been. The environmentalist who cared so much about polar bears and retreating ice caps punched him hard in the stomach. Kai had had his share of brawls, like a lot of young men, and this girl packed a punch as powerful as any he could remember.

Not only that, but she knew how to exploit pain, and struck him cruelly in the same place with her right fist. Going easy on him? Yeah, right! He doubled up around her fist, groaning and feeling sick with pain.

He had to do something, not least to take his mind off the fact that she had hit him twice and hurt him considerably. Swearing, he launched a furious left, which she infuriatingly dodged again. If he could only get her once, he reasoned to himself, it would be enough. The same thought may have gone through her head, as she watched his arm overshoot beside her.

Kai tried a right hook; Charlene jerked her head back and responded with a third blow to his stomach. The bruise she had created made a useful target and her aim with her left fist was spot on. Kai opened his mouth in a silent scream.

Charlene took the fight to him. Hitherto, her strikes had been in response to a move from him. Now she judged it was time for her to attack, and she got him lower in the stomach this time with her right. Leaning forward, she seemed to lose her right fist in her opponent’s belly.

She was wearing him down with body shots and he did the worst thing he could do, although it was a natural reaction. He stooped forward, trying to absorb the pain. It’s what his instinct told him to do, but unfortunately his brain didn’t say, “Watch your chin” at the same time. Charlene punished his mistake with a stupendous left uppercut. She cracked him under the chin and dazed him. He seemed to stray in and out of consciousness while still – miraculously – remaining on his feet after some staggering.

Just when he appeared to emerge properly from this twilight world, she got him on the chin again, this time with a palm strike. Holding him by the right hand in her left hand, she gave the flat of her other hand greater purchase in this brutal assault on his already tender chin. His whole body seemed to jar with the vibrations starting from the palm of her hand. If Charlene didn’t have a hold of his hand, he would have fallen on his back.

Kai punched unconvincingly with his left. But she had slowed him down to such an extent that it was no problem for her to catch it and swing her left elbow sharply into his nose at the same time. His eyes filled with tears, and he thought she must have broken it.

He was at the “Bitch” stage of losing a fight to a woman. Shouting it at her, while fighting to stem the tears, he flung another despairing left punch in her direction. All she had to do was to step back out of the way. What she didn’t have to do was to kick him in the balls at the same time. Nevertheless, it’s what she did. One smart, stiletto-heeled silver boot smashed into his balls, making him roar with agony.

Kai couldn’t react. The pain rendered him helpless. Useless. Charlene had time to move behind him and seize his right arm. She locked it behind him and bent his hand back with her right hand, in turn locking his wrist. With her left hand holding his arm just below his shoulder, she was able to bang her elbow into the back of his neck, pushing him downwards.

Kai dropped to the mat on his front, but she kept hold of that right hand and arm, intensifying the wrist lock. For good measure, she pushed into his right shoulder with her left knee, just in case he tried to get up. Indeed, from his left side he looked as if he was about to start push ups, but never went beyond the first stage.

In any case, Charlene pulled him partially up when she was ready. Keeping a hold of that right wrist, she hauled him up so he was kneeling on the mat. On one knee herself, she hooked her free, left leg over his neck and left shoulder, forcing his head downwards so that it was on the mat. In this form of octopus, she was able to prevent any counterattack, trapping his left arm, while she placed huge strain on his neck. At the same time, she kept the intensely painful wrist lock going on his right hand. Kai shrieked as she pulled his right arm further back by his wrist.

When she finally released him, he was weakened and trembling too much to respond. His body was a mass of pains, all seeming to compete with one another to be number 1. Yet she hadn’t finished with him.

In the most elaborate pin any wrestling enthusiast could ever hope to see, she lay across his upper body in a curve which demonstrated her suppleness. Linking her arms around his left arm trapped it in a position which bent it backwards from the elbow, pushed down by her body weight. At the same time, her curved middle ensured that her legs scissored his neck and locked his right arm, as if in a triangle choke. Not only that, his neck was pushed startlingly backwards, while he struggled to breathe.

Kai had been wrong about Charlene on many counts. Of course, he couldn’t be expected to know she was an enthusiastic mixed martial artist, seemingly with the strength of a lioness. But he had put her down as a goody-goody who never had any fun, because she was too preoccupied with “saving the planet”. Once again, she now proved him wrong.

Forsaking that complex pin, she nevertheless kept the head scissor going in a reverse form, and spoke to him for the first time since entering the cage:

“God, it really turns me on to beat up a man!” she exclaimed, while intimately engulfing his face. “It’s okay to do this, because we’re not blood relations, so come on weakling, do your stuff!”

Where Kai found the energy even to do what she demanded is a mystery – on the other hand, the fact that he had no choice might have had something to do with it. She ground into his face, moaning and seeming to growl, clearly already stimulated by the wrestling. Now sitting directly over his face, she reached her climax with a shudder, and raised her right fist in an ecstasy of triumph and gratification.

Eventually calming down, she stood over the defeated male and prodded his chest with her stiletto heel. Smiling broadly, she told him, “See, I said I’d go easy on you,” before placing her boot on his manhood and flexing over him.