Page 24 of Little Bird
“Taryn!” I mutter. “I’m serious! Sam did me a favor loaning me a gun and?—”
“You two okay back here?” a voice asks, half a second before Sam appears through the door to the shooting range.
I jump away from Taryn so abruptly that I know it looks unnatural, and watch Sam’s eyes move between the two of us, considering.
“Absolutely,” I say. “She took the gun before I put the safety on. I was just fixing that.”
A lie. I didn’t need to have my arms around her to fix the safety. And the way we were struggling was, to be honest, the opposite of safe.
“Right,” he says slowly. “I’m trusting you to be safe, Gabe. Don’t disappoint me.”
Don’t disappoint him. The phrase takes all the wind out of my sails, and I nod, suddenly solemn. He leaves, thank God, and I turn back to Taryn, my own face serious.
Hers is anything but, though. She’s working hard to suppress her laughter but it’s not working, and one look at her flushed cheeks and glowing eyes and I’m fizzing with giggles again, my heart flying in pure sixteen-year-old glee at being out fooling around with my best friend. God, this is all so familiar and safe, and the feeling of actually belonging with someone is...
A revelation. I don’t use big words as a rule, but it’s the only one that fits.
I feel like I’ve finally come back home after four years of wandering lost in the woods. And if I thought I was terrified before, I didn’t know anything.
“Here,” I say quickly, putting the earmuffs over her ears. “If you’re going to shoot, you’ll need these.” I adjust her grip on the gun, showing her where to put her fingers and how to secure the base of it in her hands, then take her by the shoulders and turn her toward the target.
“What about you?” she asks, her voice far too loud.
I chuckle. She can’t hear herself speaking, then, which means she won’t hear whatever I say. I answer anyhow. “I shoot in the forest without earmuffs on all the time. I’ll be fine.”
She somehow feels that I’m talking, though. “What?” she asks.
Even louder.
And now I’m laughing again. It’s just so ridiculous. I don’t answer, though. Instead, I move her toward the line marked on the ground and gesture down toward it. She nods and puts her toes on the line, then lifts the gun in front of her. I do some more adjusting—mostly unnecessary, and just an excuse to touch her—and then step back, leaving her to it. I expect her to take a few wild shots and miss everything, giving in to her usual need to be in control of herself.
Instead, she turns to look at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide and nervous.
“I don’t know how,” she says, and this time her voice is quiet.
“Just pull the trigger,” I say, and when she frowns, I demonstrate with my hand. “Hold the gun with one hand. Pull the trigger with the other.”
She just stares at me like I’m speaking Greek, her face a mask of nerves. “I don’t know how,” she repeats. “Help.”
God dammit.
This girl.
I don’t bother answering her, because she can’t hear me and she’s got her mind made up. I step toward her again and get right behind her, turning her back to face the front. And then, against all my better judgement, I wrap my arms around her and pull her back until I can reach the gun myself. I wrap my hands around hers on the gun and feel that she’s actually shaking.
Christ, I thought this girl could do anything she wanted but put a gun in her hands, and she’s shaking and asking for help.
I steady my hands around hers, using my arms to cage her in, and feel her breathe out slowly. The shaking stops. Her shoulders relax. She leans back against me slightly, like she’s looking for the comfort of my body, and something inside me turns on. A light I haven’t felt in years, and one that I thought I’d lost. I feel warm and cold at the same time, chills chasing each other across my skin, and my heart starts beating so hard I’m sure she can feel it in her back.
She does. She presses against me more firmly, like she’s trying to give me the same comfort I gave her moments ago. Her back arches slightly, driving her shoulders hard against me, and within moments I realize that the movement is also pushing her ass into my groin. A million images flash through my head—Taryn in my lap, her lips on mine and my heart telling me we should have done this years ago—and I rock my hips. It’s not a conscious decision.
Hell, it doesn’t even feel like a choice.
It’s my body reacting to her without my brain’s involvement. My soul recognizing her as my person and reaching for her. Doing whatever it takes to bring her home again.
In that moment, I realize that I’m hard as steel, my cock aching badly enough to drive me to my knees, and that my hands have dropped to her hips to pull her back against me. A few easy moves and I could turn her and claim her mouth again, reminding her where she belongs.
Reminding myself that this is home.
