We hadn’t been in there very long, so I wasn’t sure that Toby would even be awake yet. The kid took massively long naps sometimes.
When I arrived back upstairs I saw that Libby wasn’t around, but Toby was still asleep on the couch. I double checked his covers and wandered upstairs heading towards my bedroom.
I heard Libby running the shower. Was the gun range that hard for her that she felt she needed a shower to get rid of the stench? Or was it me? Had I overstepped with the kiss?
It was always so hard to tell when to plant the first kiss with a woman. Usually, I would just suggest it. Most women were usually receptive to it, but if they weren’t for some reason then they would politely decline and that was fine. But rarely had I ever had such a long build up to a kiss, so much emotion. I knew that Libby had to be feeling it too.
Looking back now, there had been sexual tension between us since we’d first saw each other. I don’t know why I tried to pretend with myself that it hadn’t been there. It absolutely was. I was just scared of it.
But I had yet to figure out why. What was it about this woman that scared the hell out of me? I’d been through a lot more dangerous things than that.
I stood outside Libby’s doorway for several minutes. I wasn’t sure why. Did I want to go in? Maybe suggest we take a shower together?
I had to laugh at my audacity.
“No,” I mumbled with a laugh.
I went to my room to do a bit of reading before Toby woke up.
CHAPTER 18
Libby
The shower poured over me. I stood there under the hot water, letting it run all over me.
The kiss… it was wrong. Wasn’t it? Why? I kept having this same argument with myself. The kiss was wrong, but it had felt so good. Mason had pulled something out of me and it had helped my shooting. For a minute I stopped thinking of how scared I was and I started focusing on how angry I was. It was almost like I went into a different mindset and I actually left my body. All I could see was the target; all I could hear was the sound of the gun firing round after round. It rang in my ears, bouncing off the walls, even beneath the headphones. I could feel it, hear it, and almost touch it. I was becoming one with the gun and the shooting motion. I’d entered the zone.
Soon, Mason was touching my hand, guiding it downward. And then he was taking the gun from me. I hadn’t realized that the gun was out of bullets. I was just trying to kill the target in front of me, which I could now see was riddled full of holes.
I stared at it. The world around me felt like some kind of a dream that kept shifting between happiness and some random nightmare state. But for the moment I felt happy, because I had taken care of the thing that had been sent to destroy me. Those emotions were retreating from the forefront of my mind and being replaced by emotions of pure happiness.
And then there was Mason. He was leaning into me and I knew what was about to happen. My mind was trying to deal with this new intrusion into the world it had just set up as normal, but I wasn’t afraid or even concerned a little bit. I had thought about this a lot recently. I was glad it was finally happening. It felt right. I was content with this decision.
And I was so glad that it had finally been made by one of us. The back and forth games, the tension, and the overall game we were playing with each other was starting to wear thin on my nerves.
Although, it was kind of exciting. I had to admit that to myself. I was slightly sad to see it end.
But the moment his lips touched mine everything was wonderful. A tingle began to rise over my entire body morphing into a tidal wave of good feelings that I almost couldn’t handle. It was the strangest emotional rollercoaster I’d ever had to deal with and I wasn’t sure when it was going to stop or if I wanted it to stop.
And then it was over. As soon as it had started it was over.
Mason pulled away from me. My mind was just starting to come back to the reality around me. I was stepping out of the dream and regaining myself after the craziness that I’d allowed myself to step into and dealing with the fact that I might have to slip back into something similar to defend myself in the near future because I had no idea when or if an attack on me was coming. I was very much up in the air on this and so far Mason hadn’t been able to ascertain any other details about it from his connections.