Michael was first up. Dani rolled over in bed and found his spot empty but still lingering warmth suggested that he’d vacated it only a few moments before. She stretched and opened her eyes. She allowed the morning to wash over her senses. A warm breeze was making floor length curtains to her left billow gently. The air carried the aroma of the ocean. Dani closed her eyes again and let the soft wind caress her skin as she kicked off the covers. She focused on sounds - the soft rustle of leaves from trees outside the door, children laughing and squealing on the beach, steady rolling rhythm of the tide beyond that. The ceiling fan above the bed creaked occasionally. Nowhere could she detect any hint of technology, of cars and motorcycles, distant police and emergency sirens. New York city had soul and character for sure, but it was bliss to escape to the sun and surf of Thailand.
Dani sighed, remembering her family’s outrage, “Danielle Baptiste! It was bad enough that you would run away to New York to pursue the dance career, look where that landed you, and now you’ll run away from pursuing even that? What do you hope to find in Phuket?”
“Sharks, culture … maybe even find myself. I don’t know.”
What she hadn’t expected to find was Michael. Six foot four, if he was an inch, solid and the kind of pure-blood Hawaiian who seemed to have lived their life on the beach. She had insisted that she could take care of herself the first night they’d met - the party had turned ugly after some Norwegian tourists had drunk too much of the local brew and started pestering her. It might be easy to mistake her tall blond frame for a “Scandinavian Goddess” or “Valkyrie” or whatever else they had called her. Initial positive comments had degraded into cat calls, ever more lewd as the drink had taken hold.
Michael had stepped in the middle of things and received a right hook to the jaw for his trouble. She pulled him away insisting that they were idiots and not worth it. On their way out she scooped ice into a napkin and pressed it to Michael’s lip. She’d taken him out of the party and started back toward her hotel, only to hear thundering steps from behind.
“Hey, bitch. Bring your lap dog back here.” one had shouted.
Dani flexed her left hand feeling the connections between bracelet and slave ring unwind. The caress of the living metal was that of a lover who knew her every move and anticipated her desire. She felt the bracelet on her wrist give a little wriggle and more of the living metal tendrils embraced her knuckles - no need to scare everyone. A second viewpoint overlaid her own, looking from waist level backward, giving her perfect warning of the approach of three angry Norwegians. The red gem at the centre of the bracelet glowed bright in the dark as she spun in a dancer’s pirouette and brought her now metal-encased knuckles into contact with the temple of the running man. He hit the ground before he knew what was going on. His two companions skidded to a halt either side of them. Michael went low, a wrestler’s dive into the other man’s mid-section and slammed him into a parked car. Metal dented and glass broke as they brawled.
Dani’s assailant circled with caution born of his friend’s unfortunate experience. He was wary of stepping inside a circle defined by what he gauged as punch or kicking distance for someone with her grace. Dani knew better - experience beyond her own years - and kept eyes alert for his first move. The living force anchored to her left wrist urged caution with an underlying lust for battle to be joined. Dani slapped it down.
Something tall slammed into her from behind. The stink of alcohol and cigarettes enveloped her. Sweaty arms pinned her from behind. An awareness of “I told you so” rose up alongside metal rushing out from the bracelet and shredding the arm of her blouse. In mere moments silk gave way to living steel. Bare female forearm to to armour modeled on classic 14th century french Vambraces with three vicious spikes that Dani drove backward into the torso of her attacker. With smooth grace she pulled free of his falling corpse and into a diving roll aimed at the last Norwegian. The vambrace morphed and thrust itself forward of her dive, an upward sword thrust through the groin. He crumpled. Behind her she heard a groan. Michael! She urged the bracelet to return to sleep and thankfully it complied.
“Are you OK?” she asked, helping the big man to his feet and steering him away from the three bodies.
Michael leaned on her and groaned, reached for his head and came away with blood on his hand. They stumbled along the street, out into a crowded market and fell into a cab.
“Where to?” the Indian driver asked in a crisp home-counties English accent. Dani smiled as she saw a tiny iPod shuffle clipped to his blue turban with tell-tale white earbuds in his ears.
Michael groaned again.
“Drunks cost extra.” the cab driver said.
“Home.” Michael said, groggily.
“Sure thing Mate. Where’s that?” the cabbie asked.
Michael paused, breathed a few times deeply and collected his wits.
“You … you own that place?” the cabbie asked, incredulous after Michael explained where they were heading.
The home turned out to be more of an estate - starting with secluded private beach, a small jetty with a yacht moored beside it and a sprawling home that opened onto the beach. Guards at the gate buzzed the car through and a private physician met the cab at the door of the house.
Dani’s belongings were moved from her own hotel to a guest room at the house the next day by staff. Days spent in the ocean, on the yacht, she couldnt have asked for more. Michael never saw the fight beyond his face-plant into the trunk of a car. The local news service reported a mugging of three tourists, and that was the last anyone heard of the incident.
Dani sat up in bed, pulled on one of Michael’s shirts (that turned out to be ridiculously oversized on her) and padded barefoot out to the kitchen to see if he’d made her breakfast.