Straight to the Heart

by Samantha Hunter

  She’d certainly seen enough accidental shootings during take-downs and drive-bys to know that last one could have the most tragic consequences of all.

  Ben’s target range was basic, but set up against the backdrop of a short, sandy bluff surrounded by trees and rocky outcrops that would catch any stray bullets, not that she expected that he missed often. Watching his hands expertly and confidently handle the weapon was almost erotic for her.

  “Okay, I know you know how to shoot it, but actually hitting something you’re aiming at is harder than you think,” he continued.

  She hoped she looked apprehensive as he handed her the gun.

  “You comfortable with the slide? A lot of women have a hard time with it, but it’s not so much muscle as technique.”

  “Yeah, the guy at the shop showed me how to do that. He sold a lot of his guns to women, I guess, so he had some tricks for doing it easily.”

  Ben nodded. “Awareness is the key. It might sound zen, but with guns, you have to be completely in the moment, completely aware of everything. Where your hands are placed, where it’s aimed, the pressure you are exerting on any given part of the weapon, what’s around you.”

  She looked away. Everything he said sounded sexual to her need-saturated brain, and she tried to focus. It was difficult as he wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t already know, and her mind kept fixating on him.

  “You can’t be distracted by anything in your environment,” he said. “You get too comfortable or forget to be aware of the power of the weapon, that’s when bad things happen.”

  She couldn’t be more aware than she was right now, not so much of the weapon, but of the man standing far too close, his big hands closing over hers as he repositioned her grip.

  The touch sent her heart racing, and she didn’t realize she was holding her breath.

  “One more tip?” he offered.

  “What?”

  “Breathe. It’s reflex to hold your breath, tense up, but you really have to relax into it, feel your body, your posture. Let the gun become part of your hand.”

  She smiled. “You sound more like a yoga teacher than a shooting instructor.”

  “You do yoga?” he asked, sounding interested, his voice close by her ear.

  “Some,” she said, trying to control her breathing, but his nearness was throwing her off.

  That worked to her advantage in this case.

  “Me too,” he said, surprising her.

  “So let’s go over some basic stances, even though in defensive situations, most people shoot from whatever position they’re caught in. What you’re doing with your upper body is more important, but it’s good to learn the basics, anyhow. They teach you balance and form,” he said.

  By the time he worked her through the three or four basic stances—using his hands to move her arms and torso, his foot to push her feet where they should be, sometimes edging his thigh against the inside of hers—Joanna wasn’t sure she could hit a target if she tried.

  Her hands shook slightly by the time she lifted the gun so he could show her how to aim. She was so turned on, though he likely thought it was nerves.

  “You okay?” he asked, noticing.

  “I think I was better off before—now I’m nervous about remembering all of this stuff,” she said.

  “You can come out and practice with me every day. You’ll get better and the movements will be more natural. You’ll be safer and everyone else will, too.”

  “So now I aim and shoot?”

  “In a minute. Don’t be in such a rush. Take your time.” She heard the smile in his voice, though he was standing behind her. “Your sights on this have been pretty well adjusted, so you just need to know how to use them. They do that for you at the shop?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, you should learn to adjust them yourself, to account for windage and other factors, but we’ll do that another time. For now, back to basics.”

  “What next?”

  “Focus on this one, the front one,” he said, and she took a deep breath, already lining up her shot reflexively. Her father had started teaching her to shoot when she was seven. She and Jarod had both garnered several youth marksmanship awards by the time she was fifteen, and the marshals had honed those skills to a fine point.

  Joanna loved to shoot, and she even thought she might go into firearms instruction with the USMS sometime if she ever quit her job, but that wasn’t going to happen for some time.

  Still, her body wouldn’t be denied, settling in as she lifted the gun into a familiar pose, her breath slowing and deepening as everything slowed down around her. Ben was talking and she knew she had to fight against her training, but it was hard.

  Nature would help. There was a good wind coming from the west over the desert, and she knew how to throw her focus off very easily—closing her eyes, she thought about Ben behind her, his hands placed lightly on her waist, and how he could slide those hands over her front, touch her in ways she was dying for—

  The blast went off, and she felt his hands grip her hips, helping her absorb the recoil. She let herself stumble back a little, as she might if she weren’t used to it.

  “What did I hit?” she asked, holding her hand up to her eyes, letting her gun hand fall loose, the gun flailing around—she made sure her finger was off the trigger, but it was a common mistake with new shooters.

  Ben immediately corrected her, taking the gun and reminding her to keep both hands on the weapon, her finger off the trigger, keeping it pointed at the target or the ground.

  “Remember, you need to be aware all the time,” he chastised gently, looking deeply into her eyes as if to drive the point home.

  Oh, she was aware, all right. Her body was absolutely singing with awareness.

  “Okay, sorry. It was just exciting. What did I hit?”

  “That dead tree stump over there,” he said, grinning.

  It was yards off the target.

  Mission accomplished.

  “It would help a lot if you had opened your eyes,” he added.

  “How did you know I had shut them?”

  “Rookie reflex, but you need to keep them open, both of them, not one, like you sometimes see on TV. You need your depth perception. Let’s try again, and when you’re done, keep the gun pointed but your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.”

  She swallowed hard, aiming this time for a spot a little to the left of the center of one of the targets. She went wide—on purpose—but hit the background of the target.

  “Way better,” he said encouragingly, squeezing her shoulder. “Let’s finish the clip. Take it slow, at your own pace.”

  She managed to spin a few more sexual fantasies of Ben, very handily throwing off her focus even as it aroused her to no end, but she’d have to deal with that later.

  For the moment, she needed him to trust her with this gun so that he would let her take it back. She managed to get closer to the center of the target on the last two shots, and followed all the safety rules.

  When the clip was empty, she turned, smiling brightly.

  “That was fun, let’s do some more,” she said eagerly.

  She needed to fire off another clip to work off some of the heat that lusting about Ben all afternoon was causing.

  “Sure, you’re doing great,” he said enthusiastically, letting her reload on her own this time.

  She made sure to mess up once or twice, taking deep breaths to steady her “nerves” and now and then sending a wild shot into the bluff. He corrected her grip, and she liked how his hands helped hers, guiding her actions.

  Stepping back now, he left her on her own, and she managed to get one shot dead-on. Unable to help it—Joanna could only force herself to miss for so long, and it made sense that she might hit the target at least once, just according to the odds.

  She did a girly hop, happy with her accomplishment.

  Checking the safety was on, she handed him the gun in the way
he had instructed her. He took it, looking at her with a warm smile.

  “That was great, but why don’t you show me how an expert does it?” she suggested, and stepped back, allowing him a chance to shoot.

  He smiled, and she saw the glint in his eye that communicated his love of the sport as well as his acceptance of the challenge.

  “Don’t let this discourage you,” he said. “I’ve been trained to do this, and I’ve been shooting for a long time.”

  “Don’t worry, I know,” she said, smiling widely from where she stood, several feet behind him.

  When he took his position, adjusting the sights and finding his stance, she could have cared less about his shooting.

  She was free to admire the effortless way he handled the weapon, and how the sun brought out reddish highlights in his gorgeous hair. She liked how his shoulders bunched as he lifted the Sig, and the play of muscles at the back of his neck, where she was so tempted to kiss him. Then he stilled and almost appeared to stop breathing as he unloaded several quick shots in a row.

  All of them dead-center, almost on top of each other, blasting a single, huge hole in the center of the paper.

  “That was…impressive,” she said, and it was. She could match him, but she’d met few people who could shoot as well as she could.

  He smiled, taking the clip out of the gun, making sure it was empty and putting the safety on before he holstered it.

  “One of my favorite things to do. I have several firearms in the house. If you really like it, I can teach you to use them,” he said.

  She bent to help him clean up casings.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  He looked up when she did, and the strength of the attraction she experienced was like a magnet, made many times stronger by the afternoon of shooting and feeling him touch her, imagining all of the things she’d like to do with him.

  When they stood, the next thing she knew she was plastered up against him, his arms so tight around her she thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe. But she didn’t care about that, as the kiss they were sharing was so encompassing that air was not a concern.

  His hands were everywhere, in her hair, down her back, over her backside, pulling her tight against him and letting her feel that he was as turned on as she was.

  She moaned into his mouth, wanting more, wanting to go deeper, to crawl inside him and have him inside her, too.

  “I can’t seem to keep my hands off you for long,” he said, his hands now slipping up inside her T-shirt, running over her back, down her spine to rest at the edge of her jeans.

  “I know, me neither,” she confessed. It might be the first honest thing she’d said to him all day.

  Then they were kissing again, and this time it was slow and deep, his tongue rubbing on hers, and she sucked him into her own mouth, feeling a groan rumble up from his chest as she did so.

  The sun was setting low on the horizon. She had forgotten how long they’d been out here. When she drew back and looked at him, his ruggedly handsome face against the blue, blue desert sky, her heart flipped in a way she hadn’t ever experienced before.

  His hand came up to hold the side of her face, an achingly tender gesture that had her turning into his palm, kissing him there. She could smell the gunpowder mingling with his scent, and it aroused her even more.

  None of this was acting. None of this was fake. She wanted him more than she wanted her next breath, and she realized she was willing to risk whatever consequences came with that—short of putting him in danger of course. But suddenly, taking in how he was looking at her, as if she was all he could see in the world, she was willing to risk him hating her later, losing her job, losing her heart. It would be worth it.

  “Come out with me tonight,” he said, jarring her focus. She’d expected him to ask her to bed, back to his house, but not…out.

  “Where?”

  “Dinner, someplace quiet, away from here.”

  “A date? Shouldn’t we be at the bar tonight?” she asked, and then felt her face warm. She didn’t date too often. Mostly she met guys she knew somewhere, and then they went home together. Sometimes not even that. Dating meant you were trying to get to know someone, maybe hoping for something more.

  “Yeah, a date,” he said, smiling. “I think they have enough help on tonight to spare us. You up for it?”

  She smiled back, knowing she was making a critical mistake, but she wanted this. And she would be with him, which was the point of her being here, right?

  “Yeah. Shooting works up an appetite,” she said, the words coming out far more sexually than she intended, and in the space of a breath, they were kissing again for several more long, hot minutes, before they broke away, panting and smiling.

  “Okay, I guess I should shower. I’ll meet you up at your apartment in an hour or so?” he said.

  She grinned. “Maybe I should meet you at your car. We might not make it out of the apartment if you come up.”

  Desire, surprise and humor lit up his eyes as he laughed, nodding in agreement.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Joanna’s heart was slamming as she walked back to her apartment, thinking about what she had in her meager suitcase to wear out to dinner. Dating wasn’t something she had counted on. She caught Lisa on her way through the kitchen.

  “Hey, I wonder if you might be able to help me out with something?”

  Lisa, happy to be a coconspirator and apparently very happy to help her get ready for a date with Ben, met her back at her place a half hour later with several dresses.

  “Here—you can keep these. After the kids, my shape changed a bit, and well…they’ll definitely look better on you,” Lisa said, laughing, though Joanna thought she looked in great shape.

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it,” she said with a smile, fully intending to give the borrowed clothing back at another point in the future, but it would come in handy now.

  “You have fun,” Lisa said with a wink, and Joanna went quickly through the clothes, finding a simple blue dress that she thought would work, neither too fancy nor too casual.

  It fit her like a glove.

  She went into her suitcase, dug out a delicate gold chain and fastened it around her neck. It was a graduation gift from her father that she only wore on special occasions. She always kept it with her, one of her most cherished possessions.

  She paused, wondering what to do with her gun. She preferred to wear it, but for tonight, she’d put it in her bag. She had to keep it close, but the last thing she needed was Ben finding her carrying again. He’d have no reason to see inside her bag.

  Ready, she took one last look in the mirror and headed downstairs to meet him, more excited than she expected she ever could be about going on a date.

  BEN FOCUSED ACROSS THE SMALL table on Joanna, something he’d been unable to stop doing since they’d gotten in the car.

  At the Lucky Break, she always looked good—always sexy in her short skirts and painted-on jeans—but tonight, she was elegant and classic in a pretty blue dress accompanied by a simple chain at her throat.

  It occurred to him it was the first time he’d seen her with her hair down, and the way the silky strands moved over her shoulders was doing ferocious things to his libido.

  She told him Lisa had lent her the dress, and the chain was a gift from a relative, but hadn’t elaborated more than that. He didn’t dig. Apparently she had painful things in her past, and he didn’t want to unearth them tonight.

  They sat in the back at a cozy Italian place he knew in Midland, where the food was good and the atmosphere was friendly and romantic. He’d wanted to sit near the window, but Joanna had preferred a table closer to the rear of the place. More privacy, she said.

  He thought he caught her once assessing the space, as if noting the exits and entrances, but when he asked, she told him she was looking for the restroom.

  He felt like an idiot.

  Still, there had been a mome
nt while they were shooting, something that itched at his senses. Something in the way she stood when she took one of her shots, something in the way she moved that made him think she wasn’t as new to marksmanship as she pretended.

  Why would she do that?

  Her shots had been off, but not too wildly after the first few, and she’d shown quick progress. He supposed what he had seen was potential—some people had natural talent for it—and she could be very good with practice.

  “You seem deep in thought,” she said, smiling at him over a glass of red wine. Her cheeks were warm from the drink and he hoped, from the company.

  She was absolutely lovely, and he was a moron for sitting here thinking about shooting instead of romancing her into his bed at the end of the evening.

  They could have headed straight there from the range, as hot as things were between them. They both wanted it, and the ruse of waiting was over. However, it was important to him to do more than take her back to his bed and work off a little steam. He wanted this—to spend some time getting to know her first. To have some time with her.

  He wasn’t going to think about why that was so imperative just yet.

  “Just taking you in,” he said honestly, and refilled both of their glasses. “You look pretty amazing.”

  “Thanks, but it’s making me wonder what I must look like back at the bar,” she responded with a grin.

  “You always look good,” he said. “Maybe too good, if all the guys who watch you are any indication.”

  “Good for tips,” she quipped.

  “Long as they keep their hands off,” he said, also lightly, but feeling very possessive as he did.

  “They do. Really, almost all of them are really nice, down-to-earth people. Several married and from your parents’ ranch, as you already know,” she said.

  “Yeah. We run a tight operation, no smoking, no fights, no drugs. Granddad always ran the place that way. People come in to have fun, food, dance, but no trouble allowed.”