Page 20 of Holding Out

“Well, yeah,” she repeated.“Don’t flatter yourself, Ambrose.”

That made him laugh.“Oh, honey.Just you wait.”

“Arrogant bastard.”

But the truth was, his teasing had licked under her skin, like so much else about him.

The moment stretched to awkwardness, and she looked away.When she turned back, he was examining the string of his bow.

“You still offering that archery lesson?

“Hell, yeah.Walk with me.We’ll collect the arrows.”

She fell in beside him.

“When you approach the targets, you always need to make sure no one’s shooting.It’s easy right now because we’re the only ones here, but sometimes it gets a little more complicated.”

He tapped the target at the base of one of the bristling arrows.“You want to grab the arrow close to the target face, down low on the shaft,” he said.

She wasn’t someone who heard double entendres everywhere.Or at least shehadn’tbeen, before playing Taboo the other night with Griff.Something about him wrapped everything up in sex.Add to that the fact that he’d actually agreed to have sex with her—

Yeah.She was thinking about shafts.And grabbing them down low.She couldfeelher cheeks getting pink, and she cursed the fact that she blushed so damn easily.

Were words supposed to do that?Creep under your skin, down your spine, along your nerve endings?Were they supposed to light you up like a Christmas tree?

While she’d been getting wet over skinny sticks with feathers on the end, Griff had pulled the arrows from the target, collected them in a fist, and turned back up-range.

She followed him back, suddenly wishing she’d said something.Some brilliant sexy teaser about how she always liked to grab low on the shaft.Something provocative enough to make him drop the arrows, take her in his arms, and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.

She’d never been kissed till she couldn’t breathe, but she suspected Griff could have that effect on her.

“Stand here,” he said, toeing a sandy spot on the ground.“This is the foot marker.”

He gave her an arm guard and showed her how to strap it on.“You don’t really need a chest guard.It’s just to make sure the string doesn’t catch on your clothes.If you were hunting or fighting it would be a bigger deal.”

He stood behind her.“Is this okay?”

“Is what—?”

He wrapped his arms around her so that the bow was in front of her and lifted her left hand to the grip.She was hyperaware of his body behind hers, solid and hot.

He showed her how to nock the bowstring into the cleft at the end of the arrow shaft.

Cleft.

Not a word she’d ever heard used.Or used herself.Or contemplated.Not a word she would have said was sexy.But with him standing just behind her, his breath against her ear, his hands guiding hers, it was a word that could lick itself right into every lastclefton her body.

If she turned around right now—

But she couldn’t.The way they were standing, and the bow in her arms, froze her in place.

“And then you draw it back, tight—”

He wrapped his hand around hers, drawing her fist back, and the string with it.Now she made herself focus on the bow and arrow, because it was taut in her arms, and it didn’t feel like something to mess around with.Its contained energy was fierce.

Like the man behind her.

“See this?”he said, and he drew the arrow back a little further, until his fingers brushed her mouth.

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