She’d meant it as a joke, but Gage must have thought she was serious. “I’ve considered it, but it’s damn hard finding women who can fit the specific requirements I’ve put in place for the team. I’m always looking, though.”
When they got to the armory, Mac leaned back against the counter and watched as Gage took several pistols and boxes of ammo from one of the safes and packed them in a soft-sided bag about the size of a carry-on.
“Are you really that worried I’m a bad shot?” she asked, enjoying the view as he bent over to pull out some hearing protection. Damn, what she wouldn’t give to see him do that naked.
He turned to give her a curious look. “No. Why?”
“Well, you warned everyone to stay away from the shooting range. I figured you were worried I’d miss the target and accidently hit someone.”
She tried to sound casual about it, but honestly, she was a little concerned about the possibility of screwing up.
Gage picked up the bag, then held open the door for her. “I never said you’d be the one shooting them.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as they walked along the sandy path to the shooting range he’d pointed out the day before. “So, you were just making sure we had some privacy?”
He grinned. “I thought you might be more relaxed if it was just the two of us.”
She smiled back at him, keenly aware of the familiar heat swirling in her tummy again. Target shooting as a form of foreplay—who knew?
* * *
Gage stood behind Mackenzie, steadying her arms as she aimed the small .22 automatic he’d started her on. She was actually better at this than she’d given herself credit for, especially when she realized that not every handgun was so powerful it’d put her on her ass to fire it. The .22 was the perfect gun for her because it wasn’t too loud, didn’t have much recoil, and was easy to aim. And now that she’d figured it out, she was starting to enjoy herself.
He knew he sure as hell was. Mostly because Mackenzie had a bad habit of leaning forward when she pulled the trigger. It helped her line up the sights, but made for an unstable shooting base. On the bright side, her unorthodox stance did cause her butt to stick out nicely. And as close as he was standing, that ass of hers was doing some interesting things to his focus as well. At first he tried to keep his rapidly hardening cock from grazing her bottom, but that quickly became impossible—he was simply standing too close to her.
He would have felt bad about getting hard during a shooting lesson if it wasn’t for the fact that Mackenzie was just as turned on as he was, maybe more so. He knew because he could smell her arousal. That uniquely feminine scent was so heady and overwhelming that it was almost hard to see straight, much less instruct her in the finer points of handgun use.
Worse, his mind kept slipping to the idea of how much better she’d smell if she was naked. It’d probably bring him to his knees.
He swallowed a groan and tried not to think about it. Yeah, like that was going to work. His hard-on was threatening to rip through the front of his uniform pants to get closer to her. He wasn’t doing a good job of thinking about anything but how tempting Mackenzie smelled.
After coming downstairs and finding Mackenzie’s scent all over the filing room, he’d realized that last’s night’s dinner had done nothing to dissuade her from pursuing her story. He’d known right then that he’d be spending the next several days working his ass off to keep her distracted. Of course, he’d assumed he’d spend the time distracting her the old-fashioned way, not the sexual way. But hey, this way was much better anyhow.
“I don’t think I’m doing this right,” Mackenzie complained. “I’ve only hit the target a few times.”
She fired the last bullet in the clip, missing again.
He reluctantly moved away from her to reload the magazine. He would reload the four others she’d already fired while he was at it. She loved the little .22 and had gone through the first fifty rounds in nothing flat.
“You’re doing better than you think. It’s just that the bullet holes are so small, you can’t see the holes in the target.”
“You can?”
She squinted at the target. God, her face was so cute when she scrunched it up like that.
“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s just because I’ve been doing this for a while. Trust me, you’re putting almost all your shots on the paper.”
She picked up one of the magazines and loaded it, her hands moving more confidently than they had the first time. “Yeah, but I was aiming for the center of the target. What am I doing wrong?”
He watched as she slid the magazine back in the pistol and released the receiver. Damn, she was getting good at that. “Let’s see how you shoot this magazine. Then I’ll give you some ideas on how you can improve.”
Gage took up the guide position behind her that he’d been in before. Mackenzie didn’t complain. Hell, if anything, she pushed her jean-clad ass back a little more than necessary, just so they’d be in close contact. Man, this woman was dangerous. She could turn him to mush with no effort at all. The scary part was that he could actually feel that tingling in his gums that told him his fangs were trying to slip out. Her mind-numbing scent practically had him on the edge of losing control.
Damn, he hadn’t experienced control issues like this since he’d first turned years ago. And if her rapidly beating heart was any indication, this attraction wasn’t all one-sided—she was feeling the same way. He’d thought so last night, but he hadn’t been sure of anything until they’d gotten on the range.
He
