Epilogue #2
The trigger broke. The gun fired. The recoil pushed back into their joined hands and Emily felt Jake absorb it with her, his body bracing hers, the isometric tension holding them both steady as the sound rolled across the clearing and disappeared into the pines.
The steel target rang.
"Follow through," Jake said. He hadn't moved. His body was still against hers, his finger still on hers, the gun still raised. "Most people think it's over after the shot. They drop the gun, check the target, move on. But the shot isn't finished until the sights come back."
He held her there, with the sights settling back onto the target, the recoil absorbed and the sights recovered, and Emily understood.
"You don't give up on it early," she said.
"You don't give up on it at all." His lips found her neck, just below her ear, and the contact sent a shock through her that made the Glock's recoil feel like a whisper. "You see it through. You let the sights come back. And when they're back on target, you reassess and determine your next move."
Emily lowered the gun. Set it on the bench. Turned in his arms.
His eyes were dark and focused and looking at her with the same precision he'd been teaching her for the last twenty minutes, and she realized that the entire lesson had been foreplay conducted with the patience and attention of a man who understood that the trigger press was the most important part and you never, ever rushed it.
"My next move," she said, "does not involve the Glock."
Jake's mouth curved. That slow, knowing expression she'd fallen in love with in a conference room three months ago, the one that said he was three steps ahead and had been waiting for her to catch up.
"Range is cold," he said.
"Range is very, very hot."
She kissed him. Pulled him down to her by the back of his neck, and the kiss was nothing like the ones she'd given him in federal hallways and everything like the one she'd given him the first night they'd stopped pretending.
His arms came around her waist and lifted her onto the shooting bench and she wrapped her legs around him and the ammunition cases rattled against the wood and neither of them cared.
"You planned this," she said against his mouth.
"I planned the lesson." He was under her shirt now, palms flat against her spine, pulling her against him. "This part is improvisation."
"You're a terrible liar."
He laughed against her mouth.
He pulled her shirt over her head. The morning sun hit her skin and he followed it, tracing the lines of her shoulders, her collarbones, the places he'd mapped a hundred times and still explored like they were new territory.
Emily reached for his shirt and he let her take it, and the scars were there in the sunlight, the knife wound on his left side and the bullet crater below his collarbone, and she put her mouth on each one because they were part of him and she wanted every part.
His breath caught. She felt it against her hair, the stutter in his rhythm, the operator losing his operational calm because her lips were on the damage he carried and she was loving the places that had tried to kill him.
"Em."
"Platform," she said against his skin. She pushed him back onto the bench and straddled him. "Stable. Flexible. Mobile."
He gripped her hips. His eyes were wide and dark and the controlled confidence she loved was cracking at the edges, the fissures showing a need underneath that was raw and hungry and all hers.
"Grip," she said. She took his hands from her hips and placed them where she wanted them. His fingers flexed against her and the sound she made was involuntary and the sound he made in response was lower and rougher and neither of them was thinking about firearms fundamentals anymore.
"Isometric tension," she whispered. She pressed forward against his hands. He pressed back. Equal forces. Neither dominant. The balance between them that had existed since the first day, the push and pull that made everything solid.
"Sights," she said. She held his eyes. Put her hands on his face, held him there, made him look at her like he'd made her look at the target. "Right where I want it."
"Emily."
"Trigger." She rolled her hips. Slow. The most important fundamental treated like the most important thing in the world. "You don't jerk. You don't rush."
"You're killing me."
"I'm teaching you."
His laugh was broken and beautiful and she swallowed it with her mouth and her hands found his belt and his found hers and what came next was not patient.
It was not slow. It was the moment after the trigger breaks when the world compresses into sound and heat and recoil, and Emily rode the wave of it with him, his hands on her hips and hers braced against him, the shooting bench creaking beneath them, the morning sun on her back and his eyes locked on hers because follow through meant you didn't look away.
They came in the same breath, Emily first with a sound that scattered birds from the nearest pine, Jake an instant later with his forehead pressed to her collarbone and his arms locked around her like the recoil of what they'd done required both of them to absorb.
Stillness.
The clearing held its breath. Pine and gunpowder and sun-warm skin.
Emily's forehead dropped against his. Their breathing synced.
Slowed. The world expanded back to its normal size around two people sitting on a shooting bench in the middle of nowhere, tangled together, the Glock cooling on the wood beside them.
"Follow through," Emily said.
Jake laughed. Low, the one that came from somewhere deep. His hand came up and tucked her hair behind her ear, and the gesture was so tender after what they'd done that she felt her throat lock.
"How was my form?" she asked.
"Your form." He pulled back far enough to look at her.
His eyes were soft and wrecked and he was looking at her how he'd looked at her the first morning in his kitchen, eggs and coffee and Ranger between their chairs, the expression that said the ordinariness of what they had was the extraordinary thing. "Your form was perfect."
"I had a good instructor."
"You had a patient instructor."
"Same thing." She kissed him. Slow, this time. Unhurried. The kiss after the shot, when the sights have come back on target and you're reassessing and determining your next move. "So. What's my next move?"
Jake Walsh looked at the woman sitting in his lap on a shooting bench in the middle of forty acres of Florida pine, the woman who'd learned to shoot a pistol and then used his own fundamentals to take him apart, the woman who'd walked into his life three months ago and rearranged every piece of furniture in it, and he smiled. The real one.
"Again," he said.