Chapter 33
Greer
Koen’s behind me, holding my arms steady as the cold metal of the gun warms in my hand. His breath against my ear isn’t helping me focus at all as he instructs me to close one eye to hone in on the target he placed across the way.
“Focus, pretty poison,” he grumbles, and I nearly whimper.
“I can’t. Not with your hand where it is…”
His hand over my thigh, its fingers lingering closely to my sex, has my body burning.
“You’re a fiend.”
“Takes one to know one,” I mock back.
My arms are jelly after this morning’s fighting training that he worked me through in the gym, now he’s got me holding a handgun, practicing shooting it, enough not to be an expert marksmen, but to know my way around the thing if the necessity presents itself.
Old me would’ve been opposed to learning this skill, but the new me, the me who’s become a part of a trained killer’s life, sees the requirement of such a skill.
Before starting this life lesson of his, he stressed the necessity of safety, and he showed me all the fundamental techniques to keep myself and those around me safe with a gun in my hand, which is laughable, knowing he’s training me to kill if necessary.
He then helped me get into what he called the proper stance.
“Make sure your grip is tight,” he whispers, and a splash of something filled with lust and heat travels my spine.
“I think I need you to step back if you want me to get this right.”
“Mm. I think you need to learn how to shoot under pressure.” His hand slides between my thighs, cupping my sex in a possessive grip that rivals the one I have on the gun in my hands.
My gasp echoes through the woods surrounding us.
We’re on the back of the property, in a clearing that seems to be used for this specific purpose.
His teeth nip the outer shell of my ear. “Aim.”
I fix my posture and grip that had fallen lax because of the pulsing of his hand over my center.
“Breathe out,” he instructs, still tormenting my pussy that’s currently weeping for more of his attention than he’s giving.
“Now, pull the trigger.”
My eyes narrow, staring down the target. Suddenly, I’m transported away from Koen’s hands, away from the reality my physical body is rooted in, and I do as I’m told.
A recoil of power reverberates through my hands, then travels up my arms, into my shoulders, and I sway on my feet, my ass pressing firmly into where Koen’s sporting a massive hard-on.
“Fuck, that was sexy. Follow-up shot, show me you won’t fall apart after the first one.”
He nudges me forward, and I don’t hesitate.
I shoot the gun once more, my heart no longer hammering in my chest.
After a few more shots, Koen pulls down the target and shows me where my bullets pierced it.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s great for your first time.”
Thrilled with myself, I smile when he kisses my forehead.
“You’re going to be sore later. Maybe some time in the hot tub would do you good,” he says.
“Only if you come.”
“Poison, you know I’m working a case. I can’t keep letting you distract me.”
Even so, he’s hovering over my lips, having dropped the target to the ground, completely forgotten.
I hear as the paper sheet drifts off in a gust of southern wind.
“I’m not trying to distract you; I’m trying to ground you. To give you something to fight for.”
“That makes me weak.”
I pull back and look up at him, thinking he’s kidding.
His face is stoic, sadness living in his eyes like an ever-present reminder that he’s damaged.
“How does it make you weak?”
“Because all I can think about is you—even when I shouldn’t be. You’ve become quite the little distraction.”
I can’t help but mewl into him like a fucking schoolgirl who’s just been told she’s pretty, the reality of the danger my existence poses to him lost on me momentarily.
I open my mouth to argue, and a shout from the house alerts us that we’re no longer alone kissing in the woods, and the reality of life and all the threat it poses comes crashing down on us.
The walk back to the house is quick and filled with tension, and we find Chase sitting with steepled hands in his lap and a slick grin on his lips as we drop our entwined hands to our sides.
“What did you find?” Koen asks, and I fold up the target paper I retrieved before following Koen back here, focusing my eyes elsewhere so I don’t seem too eager to be in their conversation.
“Nothing more than we already have, I just thought we were going to go over strategy at noon,” Chase says, his eyes narrowed and flicking between us.
“We are.”
“Well, it’s three in the afternoon, so I got a bit worried. Thought you might’ve taken this one here and removed her pretty flesh.” Chase winks at me as I look up in horror.
“No. Don’t have time for that today.”
I gasp, snapping my gaze in Koen’s direction. “I’ll have both of you know that I’m armed and dangerous now!”
Chase rolls closer. “Oh yeah?” He snatches the target paper away from me, whistling. “Stone cold killer, this one.”
“Do not mock me!” I squeal, snatching the paper back from him.
Koen busts out laughing, and both of us freeze in place as if we’ve seen a ghost.
“Her face,” he laughs, wiping tears from his eyes.
Chase looks at me, horrified. “What have you done to my friend?”
“Me?! I didn’t do anything. I think he’s finally cracked.”
“Oh,” Chase argues, “he cracked a long fucking time ago.”
Koen stops laughing, staring between us. “I don’t think I like you two being friends.”
Chase scoffs. “Well, too late. I’ve claimed her as my honorary bestie from henceforth. Besides, I think she’ll be far better company than you.”
“I saved your life,” Koen argues, all humor gone from his tone.
It takes us both a minute and a look shared between us to decide if he’s joking before Koen’s lips slip into a slick grin.
“You saved his life?” I ask him, but this takes the temperature between us down ten degrees, and all laughter and joking gets shoved aside.
Chase clears his throat. “He did.”
Koen sobers, turning and heading inside, and I know he’s going to need a minute to wrestle whatever demons just clawed their way to the surface and do so alone, so I remain on the lanai with Chase.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
Chase sighs. “It’s alright. I’m shocked he said anything. Fuck, I’m shocked he laughed.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him laugh.” My tone braids with sadness.
“It’s rare.”
“Has he always been this serious?”
Chase’s gaze drops from mine, drifting through the doors Koen left open in his wake. “No. He was the life of our unit, even though he was our commander.”
That news hits me dead center, and now my gaze follows Chase’s as if it’ll bring Koen striding back out the doors.
“That doesn’t shock me. He has this… authority,” I reply.
“He’s a shell of what he was before.”
The sadness in Chase’s tone has my heart bleeding for the man that I’ve come to love, despite how we began, despite the blood dripping from his hands.
Everyone needs that one person in life, their counterpart. And sometimes, those counterparts aren’t who we’d have sought out on our own, so fate has to step in and turn the wheel in the right direction and align the stars.
For me, that’s Koen.
Though I know if we make it through this and I stay with him, in his possession, he’ll never be able to love me back as I do him, and I have to decide if I can live like that.
“Come on, let’s get back inside before the bugs come out and eat us alive,” Chase says, his voice crackling with emotion.
“Yeah… bugs.”
I follow him in, shutting the door behind me.
“Fuck, I really fucked him up.”
Chase’s words have me honing in on the loud heavy-metal music blasting down the hall.
“Where is that coming from?”
“The gym, if I had to guess,” Chase says, rubbing his hands over his dirty blond scruff. “I’ll go see if I can bring him around.”
“No. I’ll go.”
“It’s admirable, what you’ve become to him, Greer, it is. But you don’t know some parts of Koen as I do. It’s probably safer for me to…”
“No. I’ll go,” I double down.
“It’s your throat,” Chase argues. “I’m going to go do some more recon on Koen’s cameras to see if I can formulate some plan of attack for us.”
“Order pizza, too. We’re going to need brain food.”
“Koen doesn’t let us order food to this address; we’re off-grid, remember?”
“Goddamn him and his rules. Alright, I’ll find something to make when I’m done.”
Chase grins. “Alright.”
He rolls past the gym door in his chair as I take a calming breath, preparing myself for whatever version of Koen is on the other side.
My body is already starting to feel the effects of the rigorous training he put me through, my arms burning from the recoil of shooting earlier as I lift my hand to the handle.
I find it unlocked, which is at least one thing in my favor.
The muted music becomes nearly too much to bear as I slowly creak the door open and pop my head inside.
Koen’s back is to me as he lifts up and down on a pull-up bar over and over, his torso bare, along with his feet tucked up and crossed behind him.
Sweat drips off his back as he works at a pace I don’t think is healthy for anyone, even Koen, as superhuman as he might seem.
Apprehension coats my insides as I close the door behind me, feeling much like the bear about to poke the bees’ nest to steal the honeycomb.
He drops down, heaving breaths into his chest before he turns around. The look in his eyes is damn near inhuman, and I’m caught in it as his brows knit together.
“Get out.” It’s firm, and to the point, and if I were a wiser woman, I’d heed the demand for privacy, but the insane side of me, the side that’s currently falling in love with a trained killer, steps closer.
Why do I do so?
Because sometimes someone you love is hurting so immensely, so profoundly, it’s written in the lines of their face and the posture of their body. It’s underlying in their words, even when they hadn’t meant it to be.
Sometimes, they don’t know what’s good for them or how to verbalize their needs, and you have to push against the barriers of their emotions to support them.
He needs me.
“No,” I reply, stepping even closer, hesitantly, but still.
“Greer, you’re being stupid right now. Leave me alone and let me work through this my way.”
“Are you working through it?” I shout over the music before grabbing his phone off the bench beside him and silencing it. “Or are you turning the other cheek?”
Snatching his hand forward, he tries to get his phone back.
I shove it into my back pocket. “No.”
He snarls, his teeth gnashing close to my nose. “You don’t fucking know me or what I’m capable of.”
“I do. Maybe not fully, but if you let me in, I’m willing to learn you.”
“You won’t like me if I let you in, G.”
His use of Allison’s nickname for me signals him shutting me down, but it makes me angry.
I prod my finger into his chest. “I’m here for you. If you want to talk, we can talk. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter; I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Unless I kill you,” he whispers over my lips, his anger breathing down on me like a warm summer wind. “Unless I slit this pretty throat of yours and splash your venomous blood across the world.”
Despite the small amount of fear emanating in my belly at his words, I let out a small moan.
His hand wraps around my throat, tightening. “Aren’t you afraid, my poisonous girl?”
“No,” I breathe.
“Well, then I have failed.”
His kiss slams into my mouth like a crackle of lightning, lighting up all my nerves with an ache I long to keep fizzling the rest of my life, even if the man at the helm of this feeling is Koen.
His tongue presses against my lips, coaxing them open, and I wrap my arms around his neck.
Long forgotten is the need to ask him what happened with his unit before or why he had to save Chase’s life, a new need overpowering it so strongly, I feel like I might die if I don’t give it the attention it deserves.
I need him more than I need to live.
I need him more than I need to be free.
And that fact might get me killed.