9
Spence
Ididn’t sleep a fucking wink last night after leaving Abigail’s apartment without her tucked under my arm. It would feel more natural to me to pick her up and bring her home, rather than leave her dazed and angry in her bathtub.
Why did I tell her to come to me, when I’ve already decided I don’t do virgins? I don’t do innocent. I don’t do feelings.
And she admits; she doesn’t do anythingbutfeelings.
Do I think I can change her mind?
Doesshethink she can changemine?
What the fuck am I thinking when it comes to this chick? And why can’t I walk away when we both know I damn well should?
Gunshots ring out through my bunker-like place of business. The shooting range I busted my ass to build and get up and running. The place I double insulated, so my friends could shoot freely and not worry about intruding ears. The place I personally laid the foundations to, knowing it would be my new base once my friends took up residence in the town just a few minutes away.
The whole place is open to the public to come and learn, but my clientele is mostly my friends, and surprisingly, the local PD. They don’t advertise the fact they come here, but they take up my lanes every single day. Sometimes it’s the chief, sometimes it’s his deputy, and when they’re not here, it’s their chick cop making me want to slam her against the wall and fuck her out of my system.
Put a girl in uniform in front of me, give her a gun and twenty-twenty aim, and I’m like a rabid fucking dog wanting something to claim. But I never did. Not with Libby Tate. Because she was in uniform, she had a gun and twenty-twenty aim, and I don’t have a death wish.
Sometimes, off-limits is fun. Temptation makes things more exciting, and the payoff is sweeter. But other times, off-limits is just off-limits, and it doesn’t take a genius to know when something is a bad gamble.
Abigail is… walking a razor wire between a good and bad gamble. I don’t know if she’ll be my greatest conquest, or the beginning of my downfall. I don’t know if we’ll destroy each other, or if we’ll create something neither of us could expect.
She has fire in her heart. She has the attitude that turns me on and suggests that she’s not quite as delicate as I sometimes think. She’s still tiny, breakable, mild. But her fire bolsters her, it builds her up and makes me think she could be my equal.
I have the physical strength.
She has the mental.
And maybe between us, we might spark a wildfire that neither of us could have predicted.
I close my privacy door, the door that leads from my shooting range and into my private home and headquarters. I have an apartment built within my bunker, a one-bedroom space with all of the living essentials, but without the pretty little knickknacks I saw on the way through Abigail’s home last night.
She had a leather couch not too dissimilar to mine, but on the ends, she had fancy lamps and fluffy throw blankets.
I don’t have any of those.
She has a large screen TV not different from mine, but beneath hers, she has little decorations on display. Ornaments, souvenir shop bits and pieces that tell a man at a glance all of the countries she’s visited.
I’ve visited half of the world’s countries in the last ten years alone, but I have no souvenirs to show but a jagged scar on my left ribcage, and a slight limp when I’m exhausted and don’t want to walk anymore. Abigail has trinkets, pretty things, dust collectors that would annoy the shit out of me if they were laying all around my entertainment system.
But I asked her to come to me anyway.
Gunshots grow louder as I cross my building and head toward the firing lanes. I know who’s here; I always know who’s on my land. So I don’t bother slowing as I approach the couple who stand side by side.
Jay wears camouflage pants and heavy boots similar to mine. His broad chest stretches a plain black shirt, and a dark beanie molds around the shape of his head, despite the fact it’s not cold in here. He chooses to wear hats around the clock, as a kind of defense, I think, and a way to cover up the injuries that should have ended his life a little more than year ago.
Sophia stands beside him in jeans that fit like a second skin, combat boots that always look out of place on her ballerina feet, but in the same breath, they look exactly right, because she might be the most badass chick I know. She wears a tight shirt with sleeves that go to her elbows, and at the ends of her hands, a shiny silver Glock that Jay demands she know how to use.
Sophia was never inept to start with, but she’s more of a mental and technological warfare kind of girl. She’ll take you down without leaving her desk, and though she knew long before she met Jay how to use a gun, it was never her first port of call. But since being back in town, he brings her down here several times a week to make sure her skills are honed. He’d prefer she knows how and not need it, rather than need it, but have no skill and no hope of getting out of a situation.
Jay isn’t the type to tell her to cower in the corner while he takes care of business. He teaches her his strengths, just as she teaches him hers.
They stand side by side now, with earmuffs covering their ears, glasses over their eyes, and a kind of silent competition going on between them as they aim and fire at a single target hanging fifty feet away.
Jay shoots, and then Sophia shoots and tries to place her bullet in the hole Jay created.