Page 22 of Texas Hold Em'
I tipped my head back to exhale upward. “Even an orgasm can’t stop you from complaining, huh?”
She blushed and smiled. “Shut up.”
I nodded down at her bloody knees. “We should get you cleaned up.”
She pointed at a gash in my hip from where I slid across the pavement. “You too.”
I flicked the ash off the end of my cigarette. “I have rubbing alcohol in the bathroom.”
She turned, showing me her bare, perky, perfect ass, and shimmied across the apartment to the bathroom, where I heard her rummage through cupboards.
“It’s in the red kit,” I called.
While I finished my smoke, Carrie brought the kit out into the living room and unpacked its contents on the coffee table. I joined her after cleaning myself up, and we sat in front of each other on the hardwood floor, naked, dabbing at each other’s cuts with alcohol-soaked cotton swabs.
“Ow,” Carrie hissed as I hit some road rash on her elbow with the alcohol.
“No pain no gain.”
She jabbed my hip with her cotton swab.
“Watch it!”
“No pain no gain,” she mocked.
I snorted. “Cute.”
She glanced up at the warehouse windows. “The sun is going to come up soon.”
It had to be close to five thirty in the morning. Somewhere along the way I’d completely lost track of what time it was. I didn’t much care about the minutes ticking by as I sat on my floor with a beautiful girl, dabbing at her wounds.
I couldn’t deny that I was in awe of her.
One minute she was gentle and feminine, and the next she was a smashing hit at Jackson’s and blending effortlessly in with the group, and then she was rolling to her knees returning fire after I crashed my bike, and hitting every mark.
“It was pretty incredible how you handled yourself tonight,” I told her.
She watched me with apprehension. “Is there a ‘but’ coming?”
“No.”
“Well in that case, thank you.”
I chuckled. “My brain was a fucking mess. I didn’t have my head on straight and there you were, already firing perfect shots and saving our asses. How’d you do it?”
Carrie shrugged as she pressed a bandage onto my hip with gentle fingers. “I was the best shot at the Ranger Academy. I broke records that were almost eight years old. Nobody has yet to beat me in following classes.” She sat up straighter. “I’m an expert marksman and proud of it.”
“As you should be. When did you first learn to shoot?” I pressed gingerly at the bandage she’d applied to my hip while she began packing up the first-aid kit.
“My dad taught me.”
“Was he a Ranger too?”
Carrie shook her head. “No. School teacher actually.”
“Really?” That surprised me. “A school teacher who taught his daughter how to fire a gun. There’s a story there.”
She smiled wistfully and zipped up the medical bag. “My dad raised me on his own. My mom abandoned ship when I was two and left him for another man who whisked her away to Florida.” She scoffed and shook her head. “Stupid woman. It all fell apart for her, of course. The man she cheated on my dad with cheated on her, started another family, and left her high and dry in a one-bedroom condo with nothing to show for herself. She called my dad back, wanting to make amends and have a chance to repair her relationship with me. I was ten by that time and never really felt like I was missing a parent. Dad filled in all the empty spaces for me. So he left it up to me, and with every passing year, I knew more and more that I wanted nothing to do with her. She hurt him too badly. She made her choice.”
