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The entire time Rachel had been learning how to fire the wrecking gun, she’d been fully aware of Duncan sitting twenty feet away. The man was starved from two weeks on a couple of drips and a feeding tube, so of course he was pounding down a burger and fries.
But the way he looked at her kept her abdomen tightening and releasing and apparently in constant expectation of fulfillment.
The foreplay in the hall behind the med-bay hadn’t helped at all. Her mind kept returning to the feel of his body pressed against hers, his tongue in her mouth, his cock trying to push between her thighs. The latter had been a challenge with both her dress and his leather kilt in the way.
Which meant that from the time Luken had started teaching her how to use the gun, part of her mind had become fixed on Duncan.
Yet somehow, that hadn’t affected her shooting ability at all. She didn’t know what it was, but she had the oddest affinity with the wrecking gun.
Though she wore a thick leather pad at her shoulder, she ached from taking the recoil in the same place over and over. But she sent healing energy to the muscles and bones in a constant flow and couldn’t really complain. She’d also become fully aware that her most essential power base had surged and whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was becoming even more powerful than ever before.
Gideon had once shouted at her, as brothers often did to younger sisters, You need to take responsibility for what the Creator has given you. To deny your gifts is a slap in the face to all we hold dear.
She hadn’t been able to answer him then and she honestly didn’t know what to say now. Her personal drive to live a simpler life, one that she’d begun to create for herself on Mortal Earth, still lived within her as her most important desire.
Maybe her attitude toward preternatural power generally would be very different if Second Earth hadn’t been caught in a war that had been going on from the time she and Gideon ascended.
She hated the war with a passion, what it turned men into, like her ex-husband, now deceased. He’d been a monster, following in Carlyon’s lead, treating women like dogs that needed to be kicked. Often.
Luken handed her back the weapon and she once more adjusted her stance and the set of her shoulders as she leveled her gaze down the sight. The target, a thick, large stack of straw with a bullseye on the front, asked her to pull the trigger.
She squeezed, the sound deafening as the shotgun shell exploded into the straw, blowing pieces everywhere. She quickly sent healing energy to her ears.
“Okay, you’ve got all the essentials now.” Luken held her gaze, his blue eyes intense. He was an excellent instructor. “And I can sense just how much raw power you have. So, why don’t you try using that power and see what a wrecker gun can really do.”
“You sound as though you have no doubt I have the ability to add a charge to the gun.” The wrecker guns were designed to accept an ascender’s power and the resulting explosion was the sound she’d heard when the wreckers had fired on her a second before she’d folded Duncan to HQ.
Was she really going to do this?
“Hey, you’re the woman with a Fourth Earth shielding ability. So, no, I don’t have even the smallest doubt. And Gideon always said that between you two, you were the gifted one.”
She huffed a sigh. “And I suppose then he complained that I wouldn’t make war.”
Luken caught her elbow, forcing her to look at him. He was frowning and serious as he said, “Gideon never said anything about you that didn’t reflect how much he loved and admired his sister. And if anyone disparaged your absence from the war, he was all over them like flies on shit.”
Gideon. Dammit, now her eyes burned. What he said to her in private, he apparently never stated in public. She loved her brother so much. They’d come from a big family, but they were the only two of their number to ascend.
Rachel nodded and once more leveled the shotgun. “So, how do I access my power?”
“For whatever reason, I find it helps to focus on my wings and what it’s like to release them. That gets the power flowing. You’ll see. Once you do that, the power will drift down your arm and connect, then the wrecking gun will do the rest.”
Rachel drew a deep breath and called to her wings. The familiar answering rush of power flowed exactly as Luken had said. Only instead of prepping her wings to release, the same power drifted over shoulders and down her right arm, straight to her trigger finger.
The moment that power connected with the weapon, she could feel the charge forming in the gun.
“Wow.”
“Yep, you’ve got it. Now fire.”
Rachel pulled the trigger and the resulting explosion made her jump. The entire target blew apart, scattering straw high into the air.
“I did it.”
Luken whooped loudly. He turned to Duncan and called out, “What do you think of your woman now?”
Duncan gave a shout as well.
She turned to him and smiled, then sent additional healing to her eardrums because the wrecking gun, with a charge, was unbelievably loud.
