Page 3 of Double Shot
Sadie followed me. She threw herself into the gym. The weightlifting didn’t really appeal to her, but the cardio routines and the elliptical did. I started teaching her what I knew. There were plenty of weapons in the safehouse arsenal, so we started with stripping and cleaning literally all of them. Then we set up an improvised shooting range up on a ridge near the surface shed. She was a passably good shot, and with practice she could be good. If she wanted to be.
I also taught her some hand-to-hand, being careful to not repeat my mistake in our first lesson, where she had kicked me in the balls and left me on the ground.
It had been a good month of this, more than three months after the battle and our flight up the bay, when we came together again. It had been a mundane day, pancakes and bacon from the pantry, pistol practice, then we both did our cardio. After we were warmed up, I’d had us working on grappling and wrestling. I was showing her how to break out of holds when we kissed.
It wasn’t love or passion, it was just…need.
The kiss was short, and there was almost no foreplay. She slipped from my hold like I showed her and executed the reversal perfectly. Then, she was straddling me. We both became aware of it, both sweaty from effort.
She grabbed me through the shorts I was wearing, and her hands were not gentle as she pulled my cock out. She pulled her own shorts and panties to the side and sat down on me, driving my cock up into her. I made a grunt, and then she was riding me like I was some rodeo bronco.
It didn’t last too long. Her intensity, me being caught off guard again, I blew my load quickly. It was agony, the pain that throbs in a way that makes it feel so good, as she rode me after I had come. When she ground out her own orgasm, she stood up fairly quickly, dripping my own cum down on my shirt. I felt a little used, but at that point, just having that physical connection was a gift enough.
While I was lying on the mat, listening to her walk away, I was struck by a thought –was this what it was like for her, in the living room, pressed against the glass?It had been completely impulsive and insensitive. I felt a weird sensation in my chest.Guilt?
The feeling was fleeting, and for that, I was thankful.
I let her shower alone. That seemed like what she wanted. I threw my spunk-stained shirt in the corner and spun the pedals on the exercise bike until I heard the shower cut off. Fifteen minutes on the treadmill, and I knew she would be out of the bathroom by then. Then, thank God, I was able to shower myself.
This place was no resort, it was a bunker. The shower didn’t have the same pressure or heat as the old bathroom in Indigo City had, and the hot water didn’t last as long. Washing the funk and sweat off me felt oddly purifying. How had we gone so long without each other’s touch?
* * *
“The news saidthat should be the last snow of the winter,” I said, picking through a frozen dinner tray. It was some tragedy of chicken and rice that was a disgrace, but most of the good MRE packs were gone. The winter had felt like it lasted a lifetime.
“That will make shooting easier. My hands won’t go numb as fast,” she said, obviously disinterested in her microwaved calories. Unlike me, she had eaten most of it already. She knew what it was like to be hungry, and I had long been spoiled by the pretentious fare he loved to make.
“Nothing has happened. No one has made a move against us. No one has been chasing after us.” I looked up.
“No one,” she agreed.
“That means that they aren’t looking.” I pushed some peas into a wad of potatoes. “Which means they aren’t worried about us now.”
“So, what does that mean?” She stood up and carried the tray to the compactor.
“That means it’s time to get back to work.”
“What, just start taking contracts like you used to?” Her tone was incredulous.
“No, not that.” I frowned. “Not at all. We have plenty of money and places to go. I’m talking about a different sort of work.”
“I don’t know that being a jet-setting assassin is really in my future,” she said with a twist of her lips.
“Yeah, I don’t really see it either,” I agreed. “But I want revenge.” I pushed the tray away from me. “I want their heads on a stick and their blood watering the ground.”
“Revenge?” she echoed. She was hesitant, but I could see something in her eyes, that old mettle.
“Oh, yeah.” I nodded. “Specifically, against the Escadrille Cartel. I couldn’t care less about the Russians and the Triads.”
She stared at me for a long time and finally set herself back on her heels.
“What if the reason they aren’t after us is because they’re all dead?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That was a massive explosion, and what if theyalldied in it?”
“Come on, Sadie,” I chided. “We know for a fact they didn’t.”
“How?” She was being stubborn, her chin raising, that glint in her warm brown eyes, the fire I used to love to warm myself by when we were teens.
“If a drug lord like Chauvignon was killed or arrested, it would be all over the news. The only thing that was on any of the major outlets was the explosion and all the low-level assholes the ICPD and Department of Homeland Security picked up, and the body count of how many were carted off to the morgue.”
