By the time they finished another hour later, he was floating unassisted and letting her gently tow him around one end of the pool by his shoulders.
At some point, Badger and Beck must have gone to bed because the lights in the house had been turned off. Dewi kissed him and smiled. “Wait here.” She climbed out, went over to a set of switches near the sliding glass doors that led to the dining room, and turned off the lanai and pool lights.
When she returned to the steps, she smiled down at him as she shucked her bathing suit. “Ready for the reward part of our session?”
He attempted to scramble out of his bathing suit right there and fell over into the water. It wasn’t until he popped to the surface again sans bathing suit, which he lobbed onto the pool deck, that he realized he hadn’t panicked when he went under.
“Hey! Did you see that?”
She nodded as she descended the steps and walked over to him. She draped her arms around his neck. “Yes, I did. I’m very proud of you.”
Something warm and hot swelled inside him. Not even passion or lust, which were present aplenty, but something more. Something deeper. Something unfamiliar.
How long had it been since someone had told him they were proud of him? Well, besides Dewi.
He pulled her to him, kissing her. The feel of her warm flesh against his hardened his cock. She wrapped her legs around his waist and wiggled, positioning herself perfectly. He grabbed her hips and sank home, swallowing her moans of pleasure.
Buoyed by the warm water, he gently fucked her like that, letting his release slowly build inside him even as he felt her muscles contract around him through one orgasm, then another. Only after he brought her to a third climax did he let go, harder and faster until his release rolled through him and he sank home deep inside her.
They ended up on the steps, still clinging together. She looked up at him with a sated smile. “So how do you like swimming?”
He shrugged. “I could get used to it. I guess.” He grinned.
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday morning, Ken nervously followed Dewi along the path through the pines. She carried a heavily laden cloth grocery bag slung over one shoulder, and a plastic case he assumed held guns.
“Are you sure I really need to learn how to shoot?” He’d never fired a gun before. Not even in a video game.
“Yes. I want you to be able to defend yourself. Once you can confidently handle a gun, I want you to take a class and get your concealed weapons permit.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “What?”
When she realized he wasn’t following her anymore she turned around. “What?”
“What’d you say?”
“What? You mean about getting your carry permit?”
“I’m going to have to carry a gun?”
She walked back to him. “No, I’m not going to require you carry a gun all the time. But there might be times I need to know you’re safe and I will ask you to please carry one for my peace of mind. I can’t do my job if I’m always worried about your safety. Please? Not to mention there might be times Beck or I need you to bring us something, and you might not legally be able to do that unless you have a permit. All right?”
He stared into her mocha eyes. It wasn’t all right, because he hated guns. Hated violence.
Yet he thought about the sight of her in the Publix parking lot, about wanting to fuck her brains out right then and there.
I’d do anything for her to make her happy. He sighed. “Okay.”
She brightly smiled. “Thank you.” She rose onto her toes and kissed him before turning to continue their trek. “Besides, I’m going to teach you more than just shooting.”
“Like what?” he asked as he set off after her.
“Bowhunting, kni—”
“I don’t hunt.”
When she stopped again and turned, he realized he’d said it harsher than he’d meant.
“Archery, then. I wasn’t going to make you shoot an animal.”
“Oh. Okay.” He thought about it and nodded. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind that. Archery, I mean. Not actual hunting. There’s a sort of gracefulness to archery.”
She brightly smiled. “Good.”
“What was that other thing you’d started to say?”
“Knife fighting.”
His good feeling blew away like a leaf in a stiff wind. “Say what?”
She motioned for him to follow her. “We won’t use real knives, don’t worry. Not for training and sparring. I want you to know how to defend yourself.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “In as many ways as necessary. If you saw a child being attacked, would you stand by and let it happen?” She faced forward again.
But not before he’d caught the slight hitch in her throat. “Dewi,” he said.
She stopped, but didn’t turn. He caught up with her and slipped an arm around her waist, feeling her tension, her worry.
Her fear that something might happen to him because of who she was, and she might not be there to protect him.
He kissed the side of her neck. “Please stop envisioning all the bad things that might possibly happen and think about the good things.” When he felt her stiffen, as if to rebut, he added, “Yes, I’ll let you teach me whatever you want. And I’ll do my best to learn it because I love you and I know that me knowing those things’ll make you happy. But you have to let me be who I am.”
She turned to look up at him. He didn’t miss the brightness in her eyes that she tried to blink away. “I never thought I’d feel like this about someone before. The thought of losing you rips my damn heart out. I just want to make sure you’re going to be here for a long, long time.”
He nuzzled his nose against hers. “I will be. I promise.”
The small gun range was made up of a concrete-block shelter where two shooters could stand and fire at the same time, separated by a concrete partition. While open to the air on the sides, the entire range was covered by roof made of sheet metal. The far end of the range was a reinforced bunker of concrete, sandbags, and a large mound of dirt.
She set the grocery bag on the ground and the plastic case on the ledge in one of the shooting bays, where she opened it. Inside lay two handguns.
“These are nine millimeters,” she explained as she took one out. “And yes, for the purpose of our lesson today, you have my permission to handle them.” She ejected the clip and a chambered round and handed it to him, grip first. “First rule of handling guns—always treat them as if they are loaded, even if you know they aren’t. Second rule, you never point a gun at something or someone you don’t intend to shoot.”
He smirked. “What about the ground?”
She rolled her eyes at him, but gave him a smile. “You know what I mean. I hope.”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” He didn’t like the feel of the gun’s weight in his hand anymore than he had the other day in the kitchen when she handed him one.
She went over the parts of the gun with him and showed him how to load it. Then she opened a storage bin under the ledge and withdrew a paper target with an outline of a human on it, two pairs of shooting glasses, and two sets of shooting muffs.
She hung the target over a piece of cardboard dangling from the overhead pulley system, and hit a switch on the partition to run it ten yards down the range. “Put the glasses and muffs on. Always use those for target practice.” She donned hers.
When she had put her shooting muffs on, she took the gun back from him. “Stand to my left,” she said. “The shells will eject to the right.” She immediately took aim and he flinched with each shot as she emptied the clip into the target. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of gunpowder and hot shell casings.
“That was loud,” he said,
She smiled. “It usually is.”
He looked down the range. The target now sported large holes where the head and heart should be.
She ejected the clip and laid the gun on the ledge. “These guns hold seventeen ro
unds standard.” She reached into the grocery bag and withdrew a box of ammo. She showed him how to load the magazine and then she stood behind him while he held the empty gun in his hand and sighted down it toward the target.
“I’ve never shot one of these before. I mentioned that, right?”
“I know,” she gently said. “It’s all right. I don’t expect you to become a perfect shot. I just want you to be able to safely use one if you ever need to.”
She showed him how to stand, how to hold it, how to close one eye and line up the sights. “You’ll want to flinch at first when you shoot. That’s normal. You’ll need to learn how to balance keeping a firm grip on the gun while staying limber enough not to let it jerk your arms around.”
“That sounds hard.”
“It’s not. Not after you get used to it.”
She made him load the gun and jack a round into the chamber. Then, after he took a few deep breaths in a futile attempt to relax, he squeezed the trigger. The shock of the recoil, combined with the noise, made the gun jerk in his hands.
“Shit!”
There were no new holes anywhere on the target.
“It’s okay,” she said gently. “Tell me what you think you did wrong.”
“I picked up a gun,” he muttered. Then he had another thought. “So where do you buy your silver bullets from?”
Her brow furrowed. “Huh?”
“Isn’t that what you had to shoot that guy with?”
She laughed. “That’s Hollywood myth. Shifters are tough, but we’re not impervious to injury. I put one between his eyes into his brain, and another into his heart. If you ever want to kill a shifter, go for the head first. It’s easy to miss the heart or the head, but at least if you’re aiming for the bridge of his nose, or his eyeball, you’ve got a chance of taking him down with one shot.” She smirked. “Unless, of course, you’ve got a sharp sword in your hand. Then just take his head right off.”
He hoped he didn’t look ill. “No silver bullets, huh?” He hoped she didn’t realize he was just stalling for time.
Her smirk curved into a full-on smile. “Nope. Hollow-points. More effective and a lot cheaper. Well, we’re not using them for practice. These are regular rounds.”
She stepped behind him with the length of her body pressed against his and distracting him. She slid her hands down his arms and covered his hands with hers. “Try again,” she said. “Don’t think about the gun. Think about the target. And think about how every time you hit the target, that’s an extra minute I’ll spend going down on you later.”
Now his cock stiffened in his pants. “That’s playing dirty.”
“I’ll play it however I have to for you to relax and try to enjoy this.”
He let out a snort, but he tried again. This time, a small notch appeared at the lower right corner of the target.
“Hey!” He looked closely. “I hit it!”
“Yes, you did. And yes, that counts. I don’t care where you hit the target, just that you hit it.”
By the time he’d emptied the clip, he’d put twelve more rounds into the target. Only two of those had hit anywhere inside the outline of the human, but he felt like he’d accomplished something.
She took the gun back and reloaded the magazine. After retrieving the target, she hung a new one and ran it down the range.
“Try again,” she said with a seductive smile. “At this rate, you might have me on my knees for an hour.”
His cock, which had grown moderately soft, immediately sprang to life again. “Maybe I’ll have you on your knees right here,” he growled.
A wicked grin curled her lips as her eyes narrowed. “Hit that target with all seventeen rounds in that clip, and I’ll drop to my knees for you right now.”
His breath caught at her sultry tone of voice. Turning, he grabbed the gun and, without thinking, emptied the clip.
She stood beside him and counted. Five of the hits had landed inside the outline, but there were a total of seventeen holes in the target.
She took the gun from him and set it on the ledge. After glancing up at him she dropped to her knees, put her muffs and glasses on the ground, and tugged his zipper down.
He fell against the concrete partition with a moan and plunged his fingers into her hair as she worked his cock free of his briefs and jeans. He had just enough time to realize she made the same content shnurfly noise she did when chowing down on raw meat before she swallowed his cock to the root.
“Ah!” He closed his eyes as she dug her fingers into the back of his thighs and held on while he took over and fucked her mouth. She flicked her tongue against the underside of the head as he withdrew on every stroke, keeping her lips tightly sealed around his shaft.
It didn’t take long for him to feel his climax building in his balls. “Get ready,” he groaned.
She made that happy sound again and held on even more tightly as his release exploded from him. She stayed with him, sucking every last drop out of him, refusing to let go even as his grip on her head loosened and he wondered if his knees would give out.
When she finally sat back on her heels and looked up at him with a playful smile, his instant worries that he’d been too rough vanished.
“That,” she said, “is something we should do more often. And no, you weren’t too rough with me. If you haven’t guessed yet, I kind of like it rough some of the time .”
Ken let out a laugh as he tried to catch his breath. “I don’t think I can survive going another round like that right now.”
She carefully tucked him back into his jeans and tugged the zipper up before standing and kissing him. “That’s okay. I think that’s enough shooting for today. I want to always end these lessons on a happy note for you.”
“Don’t you mean a happy finish?”
She wolfishly grinned. “That too.”
* * * *
As they walked back to the house, she asked, “Do you feel like another swimming lesson this afternoon?”
He started to say no, then thought about it. If he could tackle shooting, swimming should be easy. “Sure. Why not?”
She cast a glance at him over her shoulder. “Badger and Beck won’t be back until late this afternoon.”
Despite the fantastic blow job she’d just given him, his cock stirred again. “Then I suggest that once we get back to the house your clothes should disappear, don’t you think?” He blinked. What the fuck did I just say?
But she laughed. “You betcha.”
* * * *
Sunday morning, Beck and Badger went to the Peckinghams’ house to pack up their belongings in preparation for loading them into a moving truck.
Ken stood next to Dewi’s motorcycle in the garage and stared down at it. She’d just pulled the dust cover off it. “Do we have to take the motorcycle?” he asked.
“It’s like riding a bike.”
He swallowed hard. “No, it’s not. A bike can only go as fast as you pedal it.”
She tried a little pouty lip. “You won’t ride with me?”
“I’d rather start with short trips down the driveway and back. Dewi, I love you, but honestly? I’m still getting used to how you drive a car. I’ll need three changes of shorts just to make it down to the beach if we’re on a motorcycle. Please?”
“Okay.” She slowly put the cover back on.
He pulled her to him, kissing her roughly, waiting until he felt her begin to melt against him. “How about I drive? We’ll take my car. You’ve done all the driving. Let me be the guy for a while.”
She laughed and looked up at him. “Okay. Point taken.”
“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, my bowels, and my clean pair of briefs.”
Two hours later they were standing on the beautiful white sugar sand of Blind Pass Beach on Manasota Key in Englewood. He watched as Dewi stood there with her face turned into the gentle breeze blowing in off the Gulf, eyes closed as she took deep, long breaths. “Isn’t that great?” she asked.
“The salty sea air.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I love the ocean. I come down here every chance I get.”
“Can I ask a dumb question?”
She slipped her arms around his waist. “There aren’t any dumb questions.”
“Why not go to a beach in Tampa? Or St. Pete?”
“You don’t get this. The ones on Tampa Bay, they smell like the bay. Mucky, mixed with diesel and gas and stuff that washes into the bay from the storm drains.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “This is sweet, pure, salty sea air. Not to mention it’s not crowded like up there. And look how clean the sand is.”
He had to admit, for a beach this beautiful, there were a surprisingly small number of people there. In the parking lot sat maybe twenty cars besides theirs.
They walked north up the beach, holding hands. “I wouldn’t mind a house down here one day,” she said.
“Why not move?”
She let out one of those cute, wolfish snorts. “No room right now. I need land. I need to be able to not worry about looking over my shoulder all the time.” He didn’t miss the dark cloud that flitted through her mind and across her expression.
“What do you mean by that?”
She shrugged. “I make enemies. I told you that. So does Beck. We need the ability to train. And most of the pack is located up in the Tampa area. That’d be a hike, driving that every day.”
“True.”
She stopped and bent over to pick something up. She straightened, a smile on her face as she dropped it into his palm.
“What is it?” He examined the tiny, black, triangular item.
“Shark’s tooth.” She bent over again and picked up another one. “This area is world-renowned for them.”
An image flashed through Ken’s mind, of Dewi bending over to pick up a shark’s tooth, then offering it to a young child. A little girl with her mother’s beautiful mocha eyes and his hair.
He shook it off to find Dewi staring up at him, curiosity visible even behind her sunglasses. “You all right?”
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