"Let me off here," Lynn said quietly.

Dutifully, I pulled over the SUV. The afternoon Tennessee sun baked the dusty asphalt and brightened the lush greenery to either side. But to me, there was a darkness around Lynn, as if she were fading into the coming night.

"Are you sure?" I asked softly.

"Yes." She got out, pulling that ridiculous case out of the back seat.

I gave her one last look: a thin young woman, just 5'3" and 105 pounds. Her low-waisted, destroyed cut-offs revealed lean, tanned legs, naked down to her wedgie sandals. A short white tee teasingly flounced over an equally tan waist devoid of fat. A firm bra made the tee tent out invitingly, beautifully framed by her ass-length blonde hair. She adjusted her shades, bangles and necklace; then gave me a little wave.

Habitually dutiful, I obeyed the unspoken command and drove away, leaving her there with that antique suitcase. Driving back to the motel, in my mind's eye I saw her there, thumb out, stepping into the road for each passing car. I knew she would find a way to turn down kindly women, harmless old men and silly teenagers. She would look for single men with gimme caps and dirty shirts; the kind who'd talk to her tits and crotch.

She'd pick a dangerous one who'd say "Git'n" first, and ask "Where?" later, if at all.

I almost drove through the only light in town because I had to wipe my eyes. At the motel parking lot, I opened up the floor cargo, and took the two matt-black cases to the motel room. I looked sadly at the two other suitcases still in the closet, and sat down at my laptop on the desk.

I tried to re-edit my story from the interviews two days ago in Atlanta, but my mind kept wandering. I tried to get inspired by the lesbian site where I contributed, but no cute ideas or snarky rejoinders came to mind. Instead, she did.

* * * *

I remembered two days ago, Lynn with me in Atlanta. How she'd get up early each morning, just like every other day, and spend hours doing her morning dance. She once explained that it was Jujutsu combined with Tai Chi. She could have called it Tchaikovsky to me. It was graceful, exquisite, awesome. Sometimes blindingly fast, but mostly slow, every limb perfectly controlled. Lynn moved like liquid gold, hair swaying as legs bent and spun, arms cocked and tilted in odd but attractive ways. It wasn't a martial art - it was pure beauty in motion.

I knew fitness. I visited the gym myself, trying to keep my Army Strong bod in shape. With an Armored Division shoulder tat, I got respect. It didn't hurt to be 5'10" and 165 pounds of muscle with kinked hair shorter than Halle Berry as Jinx. I sensed the guys wondering if they could be James Bond to my Jinx. To them I was always polite and distant. I was friendlier with the girls, of course, but never on the make. I already had a woman far beyond my dreams.

That night in Atlanta, when I returned from the interviews and megabytes of sound bites, Lynn was waiting, ready for dinner. We found a small, family Chinese place. She was too excited to politely listen to my stories first. She talked about the dojos she'd visited, the sparring matches she'd had. I didn't really follow the terminology. It was clear that once again, older, vastly experienced masters had been floored, figuratively as well as literally.

I knew the scene. I had gone with her a few times. I'd watched them start polite, suggesting that perhaps she might wish to work with one of their pupils. Each time, after a succession of pupils, the master himself would stand before her. They would bow and she'd dance with him. Nobody could touch her except where and when she wanted. Those touches often led to either his embarrassing fall, or a blinding flurry that ended with mutual bows and a modest smile on Lynn's face. Just as inevitably, there was a polite invitation into the office, a request for her to teach, which she would just as politely decline. After additional bows and signs of mutual respect, we would leave. I was the big black lug, tagging along with the tiny blonde master dancer.

"I got a partnership offer today," Lynn had explained. "Imagine, me at 25, a partner in the most respected dojo in Georgia."

"Did you take it?" I asked, my fearful inner sub peeking out.

Lynn had laughed, "Oh, of course not. I'm totally content. We make a great team."

I smiled thankfully. "Do I need to spill this soup on you to prove it?"

Lynn gave me a calculating dom look. "You're a bad girl for just thinking that!"

The conversation moved on to my day, my interviews, which always seemed to interest her. But I knew that wheels were turning in both our minds as we considered what might happen later in the evening.

* * * *

Yes, I admit it. I have a secret kinky side that opens up to butch women. I think that was part of my decision to join the Army before going to Yale. After college I settled in NYC to make a rep as reporter. At a lez dive bar, her in a leather vest, me in a miniskirt, Lynn made eye contact with my inner sub.

That first night, at my place, she prowled my bedroom like a tigress, demanding why I had ball gags, cuffs, spreaders, and all the rest. I still remember being naked, mouth firmly gagged, locked ankle and wrist onto a bar. I was putty in her hands. Although half again her size, but she could flip me around effortlessly. She kept me on the edge for hours, and it seemed like I came for hours more.

The next few times were just as good. I was the willing orchestra that she conducted. We went to dinner, her in a suit, me in my backless halter dress with high slits on both sides. At dinner she insisted I give her my panties, right there at the table. "That little side string peeking through the slits is distracting."

After pocketing my panties, as she spent the meal describing my naked body and all the kinds of coming someday. My thighs were squishy with desire by the time we got home. Inside the door, she undid the halter's top tie and the whole dress slithered to the floor. I spent the rest of the evening in just heels, an armbinder, hard nipples and a hot pussy. She had me worshipping her clit. Then she bent me over the table, filling me with a butt plug and strap-on while I screamed out orgasms into a thick leather gag. That night she stayed for breakfast. In the morning I watched her dance for the first time.

Lynn was the perfect dom to my sub. Her pussy was the most delicious in the whole world, especially when she squeezed my head between her thighs. She was also open-minded. She even rode my Sybian once, because she wanted to see how the other half lived. Her judgment: "I like your mouth better."

She moved in the next week. No U-Haul was needed. Lynn only had a few bags and even less dishware than me. But she did have that battered old suitcase, which she kept like a talisman. She lived for her art: her dancing. Gradually, I discovered that she was a legend in New York dojos. In those circles, she was accorded the respect of an international celebrity. She was polite with all while teaching here and there to make money. Her trash talk was reserved for lez bars, needy subs, and arrogant street punks.

It took a while to discover her prior life.

"Jujutsu, and later Tai Chi, was all I had back in Kansas," she explained.

"It was just me and the art. They all laughed at me because I liked both Chinese and Japanese. But they really aren't that different if you approach them in a certain way..."

I learned that she was a state champion in both at 16. That upset her Dad, who told her no more competitions. Her mother, already half dead from cancer, begged her to stop. "You're a nice girl, not a fighter."

The year after her mom died, Dad found her in bed with a girlfriend. At his first roar, the not-so-wholesome farm girl grabbed her clothes and scampered away. But when he tried to grab Lynn and "shake some sense into her," he found himself lying on the floor in the corner. He said get out and never come back. She left and never did.

She'd bummed her way east via dojos, teaching whenever she needed money. But she didn't compete. Her Chinese-Japanese fusion "bastardized the purity of the art." It was unwelcome in competitions where perfection of form was everything. She grew her hair long as a tease - the tiny girl who gave an opponent something to grab.

Finally, in New York City, she came into her own.

* * * *

I had take-out Chinese in the motel room, compulsively checking "Find Friends" on my phone. I google-mapped her location to a Denny's where she probably was eating dinner. I wondered if she'd found a guy, or was eating alone.

This had happened before, and each time my heart sank. But it was something she needed, an inner urge she couldn't deny. Here in Tennessee, a gun-toting redneck thug triple her size worried me. I knew it was silly, but my imagination supplied infinite horrible scenarios.

Eventually my smartphone updated. She had moved from Denny's to a location on the outskirts of town. I wasn't sure how long she'd been there. Street view revealed a seedy area, mostly cheap manufactured homes on cinderblocks. It looked like she'd found a bubba.

To calm myself, I unlocked the cases from the car and did a quick check of my hardware. The tiny P3AT, barely over 5" long and just eight ounces, was simplicity itself. The faint smell of gun oil eased my nerves as I carefully checked each round. I made sure the feed was clean and smooth, tested its laser, then its fit in the padded cloth clutch, barely bigger than my smartphone.

The big two-pound Sig Sauer was comforting in a different way. It was the heavy artillery. Each of the fifteen rounds of 10 Mike-Mike could stop a linebacker on meth. The hollow points weren't much use against body armor, but as a consolation, the laser sight made headshots a breeze. The P226 Sig wasn't just a special forces favorite, it was mine too.

Lynn had giggled at my pistols when she first saw them.

"I can fight too," I explained, "just in a different way."

"Oh, I understand. We each have our methods," was her response. "They complement each other, just like we do. In the zombie apocalypse, you can protect me." This was a reference to how she'd protected us from group of unsmart guys had tried to go for us one night.

The weapons check was done. Before nine PM I was in black tights and dark jacket, big African boobs squeezed into my firmest sports bra. I waited because it was still early. My mind drifted back to the Sandpit: Iraq 2007. There it was sleep by day, alert at night. You conquered the fear with numbers: fives and twenty-fives before you open a Humvee door; four-stack on an entrance to clear a room. I was Three-Bee, for Big, Bad Bitch. It was a joke of course. Like everyone else, I was just doing the job. Women weren't infantry, but when troops were needed, you went. The HQ company went out, just like everyone else. Since then, I'd wondered if I would start getting hair-trigger anger, emotional numbness, nightmares or flashbacks. But no, I just remembered, like I remembered my professors at Yale.

In a strange way, tonight felt like another op, without body armor. It was a mission into white bubba land. I'd driven the route in google twice, memorizing it. So, predictably, I wanted something to happen. By midnight I was about to drive out to that damned house.

The phone tweedled. It was Lynn's number.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Come get me," Lynn's voice was calm. "I'll try to wait outside, but he has friends coming."

"Gotcha pinpointed, on my way." I was out the door, into the car and driving as fast as I dared along the familiar route.

I got there just after two pick-ups stopped in front of the house. A half dozen big, white guys jumped out. I rolled in quietly behind them, lights off, and slipped out. The Sig was comfortable in my hand. As I moved through tree shadows I saw Lynn open the door. She was wearing nothing but that goofy bullet bra and her G-string panties. The bubbas did a double-take on the front step, confused. I heard her quiet, polite voice trying to calm them. The big guy in front wasn't buying it.

"Lemme see Frank," said loud and hostile. I was close enough now to hear it all. My black hair, clothes and skin made me invisible. Besides, Lynn had their full attention.

"Naw," Lynn said, calmly and quietly. "Y'all go home. Leave it ta me 'n' him." It wasn't a great southern accent, and they sensed it.

Loud and hostile moved forward, stretching out a paw to grab her. Lynn was moving, fast and smooth. She danced through and around all six of them. They were surrounded by a pale beauty in the waning moonlight, weaving a trail of curses, groans, yelps and thuds. She touched each of them, but they never touched her. Then I was beside her, looking at six on the ground, groaning but not permanently injured. Loud and hostile draped over a bush, unconscious.

"Lemme get my stuff," Lynn said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. One guy rose tentatively on one arm. My gun hand swiveled onto him, its laser targeting red on his crotch. He squeaked and froze. A fresh urine smell wafted into the air. Then she was back, clothes in one hand, old suitcase in the other.

I walked her to the car, watching over my shoulder. A couple guys were trying to crawl into the house. I drove us away, without lights until the highway. She silently dressed beside me, then crawled in back to return my tools, safely unloaded, to their cases and the cargo floorboards.

* * * *

Back at the motel we showered together. She was shaking a little. It got stronger as I toweled her off. Shakes were a new thing. Normally she was quiet and calm afterward.

"After an op, I usually had the shakes." I said, trying to make it seem normal. Then I kissed her on her neck. She always smelled so good after a shower.

She didn't seem to feel the kiss. "This was really bad. I almost asked you in to see the pictures in his spare bedroom."

"Oh?" I asked. This wasn't the first time she'd walked into the mouth of the beast, and shown him the errors of his ways. I was just the backup. I'd never had to use a gun, and hoped I never would.

"He had pictures on the wall. Bad pictures. The things he did to those girls were horrible." She shuddered. "He had his buds on speaker-phone, describing me, telling how he was going to enjoy me."

In a minute she continued. "I'm sure they heard me taking him down and giving him a pressure-point nap."

She had stopped trembling and concluded, "I really wanted to kill him." Talking had helped. "Instead I just made sure he had been recorded, and I had pictures of his pictures.

I hugged her close. "Good thing you didn't invite me in." I'd tried to kill people in Iraq and succeeded. A guy like Frank was as evil as a neighborhood terrorist cell. But Lynn, despite being a thousand times more deadly than me, had never killed.

* * * *

Like the other expedition night-afters, our lovemaking was soft and gentle, without a single kink. I kept my head between her legs until she'd come. She returned the favor, sliding across my tiny curled landing strip to warm my insides. Even my orgasm was gentle; totally different from the muffled screams of submissive me. We kissed and kissed, smelling and tasting each other for what seemed like hours. She went to sleep first, wrapped around me like a cat, her breathing a quiet purr.

We're both early risers and the next morning was no different. Last thing before checkout, I uploaded the important bits using a TOR proxy from the motel net. I included the recording of what he said to her, as well as her pictures of his pictures, addressed to both local and state police.

Then we were gone, north through Kentucky into Ohio. I had an interview about Cleveland's come-back story. There was proofing to be done on the Atlanta interviews, more articles to write, and lezzie bloggers to tease. I looked forward to slipping back into the happy place of being fem to Lynn's butch, sub to her dom. In the morning sunshine, as she drove, I brushed and combed out her hair. I pulled it just once. She was smiling at me in the mirror, shining eyes a promise of sexy kinks to come.