Page 60 of The Interns

Her shots came in slower succession than his, as expected from a rookie, but they resulted in three bullet holes scattered in the outer ring of the target. He brought his hand to his slightly open mouth and shook his head. “Shit,” he breathed out. He wasn’t even expecting her to hit paper on her first round, never mind the target. That definitely did something for him.

“Damn it,” she hissed, rolling her neck to work her frustration out without breaking stance.

She brought the gun level with her eyes again and took a deep breath before firing off three more shots, hitting the same spot on the target. Damn. It wasn’t just beginner’s luck, his girl was good, and that turned him on to no end. She dropped her stance and slipped her headphones off, prompting him to do so.

“What am I doing wrong?”

He couldn’t keep himself from laughing at her exasperation. “Nothing at all.”

“Then why am I not hitting the target?” She was heated, one hand on her hip and his gun pointed toward the ground, finger off the trigger, and safety on just as he’d taught her.

“You are,” he said, pointing toward the target that had nine bullet holes scattered across the rings.

“Not like you did.”

“Then let’s go again.”

He stepped up behind her and quickly went through the motions of getting her in position again, then he brought his body flush with her back and rested his chin on her shoulder to get her vantage point while he brought his arms around her and placed his hands over hers, tweaking her position ever so slightly. He knew damn well that he’d never gotten this up close with a trainee before, but she wasn’t just any trainee.

“Let’s see how this works,” he whispered in her ear before delicately extracting himself from around her and stepping off to the side again.

Pow. Pow. Pow.

“God damn,” he whispered to himself.

Two just outside of the bull’s eye and one dead on. That was it. Lesson was over. He was now convinced that there wasn’t a single thing she couldn’t do if she put her mind to it, and it was really something to see.

* * *

“Are you sure nobody’s gonna come back here?” Maya whispered breathlessly as she broke away from his lips and roaming hands that were under her sweater and steadily inching upward.

“Positive. Nobody patrols this area,” he said of the wooded area at the end of a dirt road he had pulled off onto since they couldn’t wait the twenty minutes it would take to get from the range to his place.

He leaned back in, lips meeting briefly with hers before they trailed down her jaw, devouring any hint of bare skin he could find while his hands found their way to her breasts for the first time since their first night together. And with that sensation, he was gone, he had memories of his own, but so did his hands and his body, and they wanted to relive them, but she pulled back. Before he could question what was wrong, she gave him a come-hither look and climbed over the center console and into his backseat where she started unbuttoning her jeans and sliding them down her hips. He was dumbstruck at the sight of her undressing herself, completely frozen in his front seat as he watched.

“Come on.” She laughed, shaking him out of his inaction and bringing him back into the backseat with her.

She leaned back, head against the door as he climbed on top of her, kissing her as she reached between them and hurriedly undid his pants in the backseat of his car out in the middle of nowhere like two teenagers who were powerless against their hormones.

“You knew exactly what you were doing back there,” she breathed out between kisses.

“Yeah, and so did you,” he shot back as he pushed himself off of her. “You’re just as bad.”

He slid back across the seat and bent over, pressing his lips to the middle of her stomach before trailing downward. Her muscles tightened and breath hitched in anticipation of what he was about to do. He knew. He knew exactly what he was doing.

30

Maya

Another frame, another spare. Maya pumped her fist and turned on her heel to see Reed standing at the ball return giving her a slow clap.

“If I didn’t like you so much, I’d probably hate you for being so good at everything, Hendricks.”

She sidled up next to him and bumped her hip against his. “Yeah, well you have skills, too, Stanton.” Crazy skills. Like toe-curling, goosebump-inducing, make you lose your mind kind of skills.

“Yeah?”

“Oh my God, yeah,” she whispered back.

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