Chapter 74

Fighting, real fighting, had two very specific facets to it. You didn’t necessarily need to be strong, though it helped. You didn’t necessarily need to be skilled, though that helped too.

To win a fight, Marc knew that he needed Will to hurt the man in front of him. That was the first key facet. Many people thought they had that sort of will, but didn’t. Others did, but could only manage to do it from a place of advantage, never face to face. Cheap shots, sucker punches. Then they would turn into cowards when confronted directly. There were even some people who were trained and skilled in a martial art to extreme degrees, but all that training was for competition - scoring points. Friendly sparring. When faced with the need to truly strike an opponent with the intent to do damage, or to push a limb past its breaking point rather than wait for someone to submit and call ‘Uncle,’ they folded.

Then there were people like Liam, who wanted to make people hurt. Who relished in it, at least a little. Marc had no doubt that Liam had been in enough fights that he wasn’t going to simply back down and run like a little dog with its tail tucked between its legs.

Marc did not come across as a violent person to his acquaintances and co-workers. Even his friends wouldn’t have thought of him as violent.

Driven? Certainly. Focused? Absolutely. Determined, undoubtedly.

But there was a power in the ability to commit violence. An intoxicating power. One that he had never indulged in this way, but that he knew was there.

Marc was a violent man by consent. Rough sex was a kind of violence. A kind of power, a kind of threat.

BDSM. Sadism - deriving pleasure from causing pain. A simplified definition. Of the four letters involved, it was the third highest on his list when it came to his sex life. But there were other, non-physical forms of sadism. Marc was ruthless in business and took pleasure in that ruthlessness even as he went about his business with a kind of honour. He wasn’t intoxicated by hurting his dear Felicity, but he knew the balance of pain could enhance the pleasure for her and he took pleasure from finding and working that balance.

Liam came forward, fists raised in a boxer’s stance, his cheek a bright pink from the vicious slap that Marc had applied. The slap would have hurt the man, and Marc was perfectly happy for that to be the case. Almost more importantly, the slap would have embarrassed him. Here they were, fighting in front of a small crowd of criminal elements, in front of one of his bosses if Marc’s guess was correct that the skinny Italian man was only junior to the swarthy one upstairs. Marc had slapped Liam to open up a fistfight over a woman. It was an insult, even if it had almost as much physical impact as a punch.

Marc stepped back smoothly as Liam advanced, his feet feeling the cement floor through his socks. He almost wished he’d taken the socks off as well and worried about them slipping.

The second key factor to fighting, other than Will, was understanding spacing.

How far from him to the opponent? How much reach did either of them have? Where was it dangerous to be, where was it safe to move to? But not only the spacing between the two men but also the space around them. Was anything going to get in the way? What were the environmental factors?

What was stored in those mysterious boxes at the other end of the warehouse?

Two children fighting in the schoolyard often simply clashed together in a flail of limbs. No skill, no sense of spacing. A professional fight broadcast on television could be considered a chess match comparatively as two highly skilled and trained fighters traded blows as they sought an advantage in their spacing. Eventually, one would find that advantage and land a devastating blow, or ‘shoot in’ and attempt to take their opponent down into a grappling scenario by closing the distance at the right time.

Marc didn’t know what sort of skills Liam had beyond raw experience and a decent idea of a boxer’s stance, hands up to protect the face and light on his feet with knees slightly bent. Putting the man off kilter emotionally with the slap gave Marc some hints, though.