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Omar flipped me off. “I’m taking the training wheels off, Angel,” he warned, and his next shot, at the farthest target, hit dead-center while mine went a little low. My brother smirked at me. “Call it a tie?”
“In what world is that atie?” We turned, and Lili was standing in the doorway between the range and the small ready-room where we stored the extra clips and ear protection. Emma stood beside her, clutching at a small carrying case. Her shoulders were tight; she resolutely didnotlook my way.Fine, I thought.We can play it that way. “Angel’s scores still beat you even if he messed up the final shot.”
“What are you two doing here?” I asked.
Lili gave me a look that accused me of being deliberately obtuse. “Target practice,” she said. “I’ve been teaching Emma self-defense. Did you think that was going to stop at just hand-to-hand?”
I hadn’t actually considered what Lili might be teaching Emma. “You went over gun safety, right?”
My baby sister’s annoyed expression was slipping into true Castillo anger now. “Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked. “Of course, I taught her gun safety. We also went over how to take one apart and put it back together.”
“I can do it in less than five minutes,” Emma piped in, though she still wouldn’t look my way. I blinked: it was an impressive time, almost as good as mine.
“So, can we join you?” Lili asked.
I glanced at Omar, who shrugged. “Do what you want,” I said.
Lili smiled, all sharp teeth and sarcasm. “You’re sokind.” She motioned for Emma to step into the lane next to mine. They unpacked a smaller handgun and laid it out on the tray along with two extra magazines. “Okay,” Lili said. “What do you do first?”
Instead of answering with words, Emma picked up the gun, checked that it wasn’t loaded, and then she racked in a loaded clip. I couldn’t help but watch her; while some of her movements were shaky, she had obviously taken Lili’s lessons to heart.
Heat pooled in my gut, and I did my best to shake it off.We haven’t spoken properly since our fight, I thought. That was the only explanation for getting hard at the sight of my wife handling a gun. “Are we shooting, or what?” Omar asked.
I nodded, but my eyes kept sliding to Emma. Lili was walking her through how to sight down on a target. I fiddled with reloading my clip while Emma took her first shot. She brought her arms up like Lili instructed and squeezed the trigger, but her eyes closed at the last second, and the shot flew over the target entirely. “Damn,” she swore.
The urge to go over and wrap my body around hers and show her how to aim was nearly overwhelming. But Lili was already doing just that, and I shouldnotbe jealous of my sister, but as I put my eyes back on my targets, I put holes in all three of my paper targets’ heads. “Damn, Angel,” Omar said from beside me.
“I think that makes me the reigning champion, right?” I glanced at my brother. “Unless you can do better?”
“Ican do better,” Lili said from the next lane. “Do you mind if I go teach my brothers a lesson?”
I heard Emma’s laugh. “Have fun.”
Lili moved into my lane, and I backed up to give her space. My siblings took these competitions seriously; Padre had demanded it of us when we were children, and it had stuck.Backing up also lets you look at Emma, my mind whispered to me, but I wasn’t going to look at her.
Less than a second later, my eyes darted to her. She was reloading her magazine with bullets, and when she was done, she set it on the tray next to the unloaded gun, ready for Lili to come back and resume their lesson. Unthinking, I stepped beside her. “Can I show you?”
Emma peeked up at me, and there was heat in her eyes. A little bit of anger, sure, but I knew what desire looked like on my woman. The look sparked that pooling heat in my belly. “Lili will only be a minute,” she said, but her tone was breathy, wanting.
I shook my head. “I’ve seen a shoot-off between her and Omar last for more than an hour before,” I said. I gestured for her to pick up the gun. “Go on,” I said. “I want to see how you do.”
“Angel —”
Whispering did no good with the ear protection on — everything we were saying was already muffled — but I leaned in anyway. I knew what my breath on her skin did to her, the way it could make her tremble to be touched. “Show me what you’ve learned,mi esposa.” Emma shivered, and when she reached for the gun, her hands shook a little. “Steady,” I told her.
Emma took a breath, and then she picked up the gun, inserted the clip, and racked a bullet into the chamber. When she aimed, I put my arm around her and steadied her. “Before you take a shot,” I said, “take a breath and visualize someone that you’d want to protect. The target is going to do them harm if you don’t stop them.”
She didn’t acknowledge that I’d spoken, but I felt her take a breath before her finger went to the trigger and squeezed down. A hole appeared in the center mass of the target. Not dead-center, but in a respectable spot for someone who had only just begun shooting. “You’re a quick study.Sigue así.”
Emma kept shooting until the clip was empty again; she hit the target more than she missed it. Each time she squeezed down on the trigger, I pressed against her a little more. When she sat the gun back down, she whirled in my arms, eyes blazing. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. Her words were nearly drowned out by Omar and Lili commencing with their own shooting competition.
“What?” I asked. “Can’t a man enjoy how well his wife performs for him?”
A blush spread across her cheeks and nose. “I wasn’tperformingfor you,” she hissed.
“No?” I asked, teasing. “So you didn’t want to show me just how good you could do?”
“Why should I care what you think?” The words were harsh, but the venom was missing from her voice. Instead, she sounded breathy. Needy, almost.
