Page 33 of Double Shot
I pulled back, fixing his keen green eyes with my own.
“I know you don’t want that,” I said. “I know you want to protect me.” I looked to Kyle who was staring at me with his guarded obsidian gaze. It was the way a predator eyes what they think might be prey but aren’t sure. The way they look at something and try to decide if it is something to be eaten or that will eat them. That last was different, that last was new, and I welcomed it.
“I know you want to protect me, too,” I said, not wishing to discount the feelings I knew he had for me. “But this?” I waved my hand in front of me. “Keeping things from me? No, I won’t tolerate it.” I looked back to Conan and laid my hand gently along the side of his face, his eyes slipping closed and he looked so very tired as he turned his face into my light touch.
“I’ve hadeverythingtaken from me. Time and time again. I was there, in the thick of it, and you can’t take that back from me. Just like I won’t let anything take you from me again.” I kissed him then, lightly, gently, a chaste press of lips.
“I’m done with being the sad girl with nothing,” I whispered against his mouth, still loud enough that I knew Kyle could hear it. “I won’t lose either of you,” I said. “And if there’s a risk that it might happen, then damn it, I want to be there. I want to share in that risk too. It’s only fair.”
“What, one for all and all for one?” Kyle asked with a sarcastic smile. “You think we should be like the three musketeers?”
“One, I’m kind of surprised you know any classical literature references at all,” I said dryly. “And two,yes.” I tore my eyes from Roan’s questioning and calculating gaze and faced Lach’s predatory grin.
He pointed a finger past me at Conan and said, “You’ve been a bad influence on her, mate.”
I looked back to Conan who was smiling softly. “I’m alright with it in this particular instance,” he said. “It’s about time I had a point over you.”
“Ha!” Kyle gave a mock laugh and took a sip from his glass. “Never happen,” he half-sighed, half-muttered. Conan’s smile broadened slightly; he had scored a point there.
“You can’t keep cutting me out of the dangerous stuff,” I argued, ignoring their banter, letting my eyes drift to the coffee table in front of us. It was a piece of oval glass set on a red and blue patterned rug against the darkly colored tiled floor. There was a chess board frosted onto its surface, a box underneath presumably holding the pieces. I thought of Hal and my dreams.
“I’ve spent all this time thinking you’re my knights, white and black,” I said softly, my gaze unfocused, my mind conjuring up the scratched and chipped stone table on that summer day in Indigo City. “But I think I’ve been wrong, maybe you’re my kings,” I said, looking up to consider the both of them. My gaze met Conan’s because I knew he would be the one that would take the most convincing.
“The queenisthe most powerful piece on the board,” I said and Roan’s gaze softened, his arms tightening around me just that little bit more as he looked me over.
“They’d never expect it,” Kyle said, rattling the ice in his glass. Conan took a sip from his own. Whiskey of some kind or maybe Bourbon by the smell of it… I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. I could never afford that kind of expensive liquor. What liquor I had was either scavenged from the dregs of a label-less bottle, or shoplifted from the bodegas – cheap vodka samples in a hundred flavors, discounted wine coolers in open top bins – and I shuddered at the thought of the oversized cans of malt liquor that were so painfully cheap that Ihadbeen able to afford them.
I didn’t know if I should be worried that he was drinking, but by the same token, I think I should have worried more if he hadn’t been. What, with what he’d been through… with what we’d all been through in our own ways…
“Expect what, mate?” Conan asked distractedly, his expression one of precise studiousness as he searched mine out and I tried valiantly to keep my expression neutral. I wanted to win this argument, after all.
“Her as part of the team,” Kyle answered.
“They’re already scared shitless of what the two of you can do, could you imagine if there were three?” I asked.
Conan smiled, and I looked up to Kyle who held the mirror of it on his own lips.
“I doubt we’ll be able to train you upthatfast,” Conan said.
“I already know some of it,” I said defensively.
“We can split the difference,” Lach said assertively. “She’s a great shot with a rifle. I trained her myself, sure, but some of that was God-given talent.” He fixed Roan with a look and raised his scarred eyebrow. “You want her as far from the action while still in it? Teach her how to snipe. She can be our angel from above.”
Roan looked a little startled, as though the suggestion was some sort of revelation. We sat patiently and let him think about it for a time and finally he dragged in a reluctant breath, letting it out in an explosive whoosh and said, “Aye, I think you’re on to something there, mate.” He paused a moment the wheels turning and murmured, “Our very own Lyudmila Pavlichenko.”
I didn’t know who that was, nor did I care when I appeared to be gaining ground. I ignored the name for now and I nodded. “And no more cutting me out of the rough discussions and planning,” I said. “I know you want to protect me, and part of that is you teaching me how to protect myself and keeping me informed on what to expect. I think we’ve already proven prior methods haven’t worked.” I said the last gently, without reproach, but it needed to be said.
Roan nodded a little sadly and sighed. “Agreed,” he said and while he didn’t sound exactlyhappyabout it, he didn’t sound completely miserable either.
I snuggled into him and laid my head back down on his shoulder and murmured, “Now go back to talking about whatever you were talking about before I came in here.” Kyle looked down into his glass, his smirk growing into an infectious smile that spread to my face.
“So, where were we?” He cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at Conan.
“Bugger all,” Roan muttered, and he knew he’d been defeated on this one. He took a fortifying breath and downed the last of whatever was in his glass and set it aside on the flat arm of the chair, freeing up that hand again to hold me close. “I suppose we should discuss a training regimen for our little Poppet, yeah?”
“I suppose you should,” I said with determination. Kyle laughed.
“Now whose been the bad influence on her?” Conan muttered darkly, but he took any sting out of the comment by turning his head and pressing his lips to my forehead.
