by C. L. Stone
“Do you have real bullets?”
“Do you really want to ask me that question? Of course there’s some here.”
“Who are you training? And why?”
He looked up as he stuffed a wire brush into the barrel of the gun. “We’re the good guys, little thief. Stop talking like you’re trying to figure out if we’re not.”
“Bad guys think they’re good guys, too.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Guess it depends on where your morals are, or which side of the law you’re on. You’ve been on the bad guys’ side too long.”
“I’m not—” I stopped short, realizing I was falling into what I was just telling him. “I had good reasons.”
“There’s always a reason,” he said. He finished his cleaning and started piecing the gun together again. “It’s why we have training, not just shooting practice.”
“There’s a difference?”
He placed the gun down in the case. “Training involves psychology, not just technique. For example, let’s say you had a gun.” He shoved the case across the table to the corner and within my reach. “And I have one.” He tugged one of the others toward himself. “Let’s pretend we’re at the grocery store.” He opened his, displaying a Ruger, bigger than I’d seen in person and I guessed it to be a .45.
I opened up the gun case. A .38 automatic was inside, a Smith & Wesson logo on the handle. The cartridge wasn’t in place, so it was clearly empty. His was, too. And since he’d just cleaned them, there wasn’t anything in the chamber. Still, I didn’t touch it knowing these things could kill.
He lifted his, pointing it toward one of the posters at the wall. “I’m robbing the store. I’ve got it in the cashier’s face. You’re in the line next to us. What do you do?”
I frowned, not really amused. “Run away?”
“Ernt!” He made a wrong answer buzzer noise. “I’ve already got my gun out pointed at someone’s head. But if I hear motion ...” He snapped the safety off the .45 and swung his arm until the end of the gun was pointed to one of the targets behind my head. “I’m already a step ahead of you. What do you do?”
I remained quiet, unsure.
“I’m robbing the store,” Raven said. He wriggled the gun toward the wall. “I’m getting all the money. People are scared, on the floor. I’m screaming at the nervous cashier. Kids are crying.” He got up, walking the long way around the table, coming to stand by the bed, the gun still pointed at his target. He loomed over me. “You’ve got an automatic in your pocket. You’re possibly the only other person in the store with a gun. What next?”
I frowned. I had an answer, but I didn’t like it.
“Come on, little thief,” he said. His brown eyes were intense and unrelenting as he stared at me. “Stand up. Show me what you can do.”
My heart pounded in my chest, and I rose slowly, leaving the gun on the bed. I stepped away from it so I was standing clear.
“You’ve left your gun,” he said.
“I know.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not going to use it?”
“No.”
The corner of his mouth lifted and he stepped closer, toe to toe with me, enough so my breasts brushed up against his chest. He angled his elbow, until I felt cool steel at my temple. I didn’t have to look. I knew he had the gun pointed at me. “Why not?”
I resisted the urge to back away, staring back into his face.
“Why Kayli?” He leaned in, until his nose hovered over mine. His dark brows furrowed as he challenged me with his eyes. “I’ve got the gun.”
“But you aren’t shooting,” I said, trying to sound calm even with my heart thundering. I could smell gun oil and a musky scent from his body. His chest moved as he breathed heavily, in and out, brushing against me. A reaction stirred in my nipples and I tried to ignore it. I wasn’t afraid. I was excited, my skin electrified. Because of the guns, or the threat of violence, or maybe just him; I didn’t want to think of why.
“I could shoot,” he said, the tip of the gun pressed into my temple. “One wrong look. One little breath in the wrong place, I might just make the pull.”
“But you aren’t,” I said. I tilted my head away from his gun, and the gun followed until I was looking away from him at the floor. “You’re not shooting. You’re only pointing a gun.”
“So?”
“So if I start waving a gun, you will shoot. Isn’t it better if I let you take the money and leave?”
His head leaned in, his lips traced my ear. His nose shifted through my hair. “Is it? Are you sure?”
I shivered warmly. He was so close and at the same time, I sensed he was toying with me. It almost scared me how much it turned me on. I breathed in slowly to focus. “I’m sure I wouldn’t start waving a gun at someone trying to steal money and run away. If I had to rob a store like that, I wouldn’t shoot. I’d just want the money. So if as a bystander, I shoot, you may be so panicked, you start shooting everyone. If I stay quiet and let you leave, you might have the money, but no one’s been hurt.”
He backed his head up. The tip of the gun eased at my temple, and traced down my cheek, sliding further along the side of my neck. I straightened, finding his brown eyes.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s not often I get the right answer on the first try,” he said. He smirked. “Then again, you do think like a criminal.”
I grunted, rolling my eyes.
“That’s not a bad thing. Training honest men to think like a criminal is much harder. No one wants to turn their minds to always thinking at that angle. Everyone wants to be the hero and find the right solution, and win all. Letting a criminal get away for now is hard for honest people to consider.” He raised the gun tip until he had the barrel planted under my chin, drawing it up until I was looking back at him. “But if you’ve already got the criminal instinct, then you don’t have to think. It becomes natural. You can’t be one step ahead of the bad guys if you’re spending too much time trying to figure out what they’re up to, or worse, play the hero and try to save everything. The real world doesn’t work like that.”
I pressed my lips together as he locked me into looking at his face. His square jaw was set. The ring in his lip glinted under the light. “Do you think like that?” I asked, although my voice was softer than I wanted it to be. “Like a criminal? Is that how you can train them? Are you one? Or did you use to be?”
His eyes narrowed into slits for a moment. He pulled the gun away from my chin, but lowered his face until his nose hovered over mine. “You ask too many questions,” he said. He pulled back, hitting the safety on the gun, turned and walked around the table again. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “There’s Coke in the fridge.”
I huffed. "Do I look like your maid?"
"Do it or I'll tell Axel you tried to take my wallet."
I grunted. Go figure. Making the low man on the totem pole play fetch. I stomped out of his bedroom, but part of me was relieved for a little break. I breathed out slowly after I left the room. Did I just let him point a gun at my head?
And why wouldn’t my heart stop pounding?
AXEL
I glanced at Corey on the couch, who was tuned into his phone again. I sighed, thinking it would be easier and faster to just do what Raven wanted and try to make him feel like an ass for asking by being nice.
I padded in my socks to the kitchen. I tightened Raven’s jacket around my body, shivering at the chill in the apartment. It felt weird to open someone else's fridge. When I did, I paused and stared. The inside was filled with food. Leftover containers. Sodas stacked on the bottom shelf in organized bins. Fresh produce. My mouth watered and my stomach rumbled at the sight. Marc was getting pizza? He had so much food here.
A noise behind me made me think Corey had entered the kitchen. "Did you want me to get you a soda, too?" I asked.
"I'll get my own damn soda if I want it," said a voice, smoky and severe.
I turned still holding the door
to the fridge open. Axel stood a mere inch behind me. I felt the need to back up, but I couldn’t move. I was surprised he had gotten so close without me noticing.
He wore blue jeans, black boots and a dark button up shirt. The upper buttons of the collar were undone, revealing the lines of his collarbone underneath and the start of a black tank undershirt. His long black hair was combed back away from his face and he had removed his glasses, leaving his dark eyes unchallenged.
He cocked an eyebrow. "Who's getting you to play fetch?" he asked in a way that told me he had a suspicion but wanted me to confirm.
I wasn’t too sure if I should lie. Was he worth protecting? "Raven."
“Funny. From what I’ve heard, Miss Kayli Winchester isn’t the type to let someone else tell her what to do.”
“He said he’d tell you I’d stolen his wallet if I didn’t.”
His eyebrows lifted. “If you manage to get that wallet, you can keep whatever’s in it.”
Then he nodded mischievously toward the soda bottle in my hand. “I know you’re thinking it. Do it.”
My heart started pounding excitedly, but I was still intimidated by this idea. I had entertained the thought, but given that I didn’t know these guys very well, I didn’t want to start pushing too many buttons.
But he was the boss, wasn’t he? He was telling me to do it.
I started shaking the bottle, feeling the pressure bulge in the plastic. Foam started up near the top cap but settled deceptively while still contained.
“Go on,” he said, as cool as if asking me to recite a passage from a textbook. He tilted his head toward Raven’s bedroom.
I trailed him to the doorway, and stopped short when Axel stopped, nearly bumping into him.
Raven was bent over a gun. He had a radio on nearby playing what I guessed was Russian rock music.
Axel knocked his knuckles against the doorframe.
Raven picked up his head, turned around. He nodded to Axel and then looked at me, spotting the bottle. He put a hand out reaching for it. “Need something?” he asked Axel.
I crossed the room putting the bottle in Raven’s hand, and tried to appear casual about taking a step back from his table, as if to get out of the middle of the conversation that had nothing to do with me.
“Those guns ready to go yet?” Axel asked.
“Two more to go.” Raven squeezed the top of the bottle and twisted the cap. The soda nearly shook in his hands.
A geyser formed and the top popped up into his palm. Cola erupted around his hand and over his clothes, dripping to the floor. Soda splashed against his face.
“Shit, fuck!” Raven grabbed the bottle, jumping up and running to the door. “Out of the way.”
Axel leaned right and left, blocking Raven from leaving his bedroom, as if pretending to get out of his way, but being completely uncoordinated. However, he did it so smoothly and with such precision that you could tell his bumbling was a farce, as if Axel would never be so clumsy.
The result was the spraying fountain of soda got over Axel’s shirt and mine, including the jacket. Axel didn’t flinch. I stepped back against the wall but couldn’t help the grin on my face, though at the same time, felt the desire sweep through me to be as cool and as collected as Axel appeared to be.
“Fuck, Kayli. Look at the mess,” Raven said.
“I expect you to clean it,” Axel said. “She’s not your errand boy.”
“I was just teasing her!” Raven bellowed at him. He squeezed the top back onto the bottle. “Look at my floor. I’m going to need a steam cleaner.”
“It’ll be coming out of your budget. Your Academy training should have taught you better.”
I wanted to ask what the Academy was, but my mind was reeling. I suddenly felt bad about ratting out Raven. It was a pretty big mess. And what a waste of a soda. “Where’s the towels?” I asked, trying to make peace. If we had to work together today, I didn’t want to do it on bad terms. “I’ll go get them.”
“There, Raven,” Axel said. “Girls can be nice if you give them a chance.”
“I know she is,” Raven bellowed at him. “I was just messing with her for hitting me.”
Axel shifted his intense gaze my way. “You hit him?”
I winced. “It was part of the deal.”
Axel smirked. “Good.”
“What?” Raven made a fist and planted it next to his temple. “It’s not okay to tease her but it’s okay for her to beat the shit out of me?”
“She’s a girl. If she manages to ‘beat the shit out’ of you, you’re going soft.”
“Hey,” I said, unsure which one of us that was meant to insult.
Axel turned on me, he opened his mouth and then stopped as his gaze lowered from my face to my shirt. I thought at first he was checking out my boobs, like most guys do when they look down.
Instead I followed his eyes. My shirt was covered in soda. Even my shorts were soaked.
Axel’s mouth dipped in the corner. “Your clothes are ruined.”
“It’s her own damn fault,” Raven said.
“It’s no big deal,” I said. I wiped my hand across the shirt, and then felt guilty as cola dripped to the floor. I eased the jacket off my shoulders.
Axel pinched the edge of the jacket. He passed it to Raven. “Get this cleaned. I’ll get her some new clothes to wear.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said.
“You won’t walk around in soda-drenched clothes this in this apartment,” Axel said. He made a wide step to get around soda, and snagged my arm. “Come on.”
Corey was sitting at one of the computer desks now. He closed a screen as we walked by, turning to us. “What happened? Do you need a hand?”
“Do your thing, Cor,” Axel said with such an ease and at the same time using that stern tone, as if suggesting that he had full command of the situation and has had it all along. “I’ve got her now.”
I swallowed.
I followed Axel to the other side of the apartment, toward his bedroom. I hesitated a moment, already stressed about this situation and now heading into the inner sanctum of a guy who barely knew me at all. It was a wild thought for me to have in the moment, because I had already followed a group of guys to their apartment without knowing much about any of them. Did I consider him separate from the others? He didn’t seem older than any of us. Slightly over twenty perhaps. Maybe it was because they called him “boss”.
And what was he the boss of, exactly?
Maybe I was intimidated because the first time I ever met him, he was completely naked, and I didn’t really hate him for it. It didn’t feel like at school when boys occasionally flashed their parts, or that he did it with any sort of malice. Rather, it felt like he didn’t care in the moment.
And why did his nonchalant attitude make me feel all weak in the knees?
Axel opened the door to his room, stepping aside. He continued on and I paused, hovering in the doorway. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Axel being naked the first time I saw him made it hard to figure out who he was. His bedroom, however, was far beyond what I imagined.
There was a single bed, barely bigger than a cot, pushed to the far side of the room. Above it and next to it were rows of shelves filled with journals, notebook and binders chock full of paper. Some pages were folded and stuck back into the binders, sticking out and baring clips and stabled notes. There were piles of textbooks in a tall floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in topics like biology and physics. There was a desk in the middle of the room, with a laptop and a printer, covered with additional notebooks and binders that were open. All of the handwriting appeared the same on all binders and paper with any writing on it, so I had to assume he wrote every bit of it.
A low dresser and several tables around the room held a collection of glass aquariums. As Axel went for his closet, I moved closer to the dresser, examining the contents. A couple were fish tanks with small fish swimming together. Two aquariums held frogs, one a scorpion and the othe
r I couldn’t see anything inside, but was filled with water and a layer of algae covered rock at the bottom like the fish tanks.
“You’ve got to step up to Raven,” Axel said as he poked around in his closet. “If you let him walk over you once, he’ll do it forever. It’s that Russian blood. They figure out who the alpha is and try to establish the hierarchy immediately.”
“What’s in this one?” I asked. I pointed to the empty tank. “Is it hiding? Or are you going to put something in it?”
Axel leaned out of his closet and looked at me, his eyebrows going up for a moment as if he wasn’t sure what I meant. His eyes followed my pointing finger to the tank. “They’re there,” he said.
“They?” I asked.
He walked back out, having removed his shirt, revealing his very fit, tan body. There was a little bit of hair around the crest of his chest. Probably missed seeing it the first time because he was naked and my eyes had been drawn elsewhere. It disappeared and then there was the firm formation of his upper abs. My eyes followed it to the tiny trail of coarse hair that led down toward his pants.
He wasn’t as tall as the twins, but it was the way he carried himself that made him seem more powerful. Like his voice, every inch of Axel was unyielding and exuded a precise calm without having to say a word out loud.
He flicked off the light from the closet and crossed the room. He pointed to the empty fish tank and reached for the bedroom light switch. “Stand there. Don’t move,” he said.
Oh god. I realized a little too late he was going to turn off the light. The bedroom door was closed. My heart started to thunder and my body tensed, ready to throw punches if this was a trick to try to hurt or rape me. I didn’t get that vibe from him, but I didn’t want to not be prepared in case I was wrong.
He flicked off the light. The room went dark and it was the first time I realized the window that was near the bed must have been covered over underneath the blinds. It took me a moment to readjust my sight, making out just the thin sliver of light coming from around the bedroom door.