see them, I knew they were still in the store. “They aren’t gone yet,” I murmured.
“No. They are up front now—at the cashier. They should be out of here in a few minutes,” he drawled. He moved around me, curling one hand around my wrist and commandeering the cart with the other hand. “Come on. I’d rather not continue to lurk in the feminine hygiene area.”
“But you do it so very well…”
We didn’t leave for twenty more minutes.
I think we had every employee watching us for signs we were shoplifting by the time we headed out. I made sure to pay for the reading glasses I’d used, even though I dumped them in the trash on my way out.
While we killed time in the store, Damon added more to the cart—protein shakes. About twenty of them. I eyed them narrowly. “Those are going to fun to haul around with the water.”
“I’m hauling them. You’re drinking them.”
“Wow. All twenty of them?”
He didn’t respond as he added a couple of boxes of those meal bars designed to help with a weight loss program to the cart. “Are you trying to tell me I need some help to maintain my girlish figure?”
“They’ve got calories and protein and they’ll serve well enough if you start to crash. Hopefully you won’t have to hide the way you did yesterday, but if you do…” He shrugged.
“If I had my damned bow, I wouldn’t have been hiding at all,” I muttered, more to myself than anybody else. I would have taken those men out, one by one. Just for the sheer fun of it.
Hunting—
Rage choked me and I had to swallow it back down as the itching returned to my palm and I could hear the sweet, sweet melody of the sword’s call at the back of my mind. I am here, I am here—
Yes. She was there, and I wanted her so badly—
As we stepped out of the store, I pulled my sunglasses out of my vest and slid them on, following Damon across the parking lot.
“Just how good are you with the bow?” he asked.
I stared at his back. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
“No. It’s the question kind of question…as in, I ask it and I want you to answer.” He popped open the trunk and gave me a narrow look.
Rolling my eyes, I snagged a couple of the bags and dumped them into the trunk of my car. “I’m good.”
“How good? As much as you are with your sword?”
A faint smile curved my lips. “You know, you’ve never really seen me with my sword, so you don’t really know if I’m any good or not.”
He shrugged, tossing a couple of cases of water into the trunk like he was throwing around pillows. “I watched you practice.”
“Practice is easy. Almost anybody can learn to hold a sword if they put their mind to it.”
“So are you telling me you’re no good with it?” He started breaking into the supplies. “Grab the backpacks.”
I hauled them out of the trunk and dumped them in front of him. “No. I’m damn good with it.”
“Yes. I imagine you are. Besides, you’ve managed to get it in between you and me a few times. That’s not something an amateur would be able to do. So…back to the main question. How good are you with a bow?”
“Better than I am with my sword.” I shrugged and reached out to the touch the blade in question. “The sword…she’s mine. She’s part of me.” She came to me— I wasn’t going to tell him that, but she was mine. “I’m a talented swordswoman, and I’ll get better. But I’ve got a gift for the bow. Always did. Swordplay, I learned through trial and error, sweat, blood…”
Broken bones, pain—I paused, swallowing as I shoved all of that back in the tight box where I’d fought to keep those memories confined. They didn’t belong out here, in the light of day, in the present. I’d left that horror behind. I wanted it lost, in the depths of memory, not out here taunting me. “But I was always good with my bow. Much to the disgust of my aunts, I was actually one of the best they’d ever worked with.”
A hand touched my cheek.
As he guided my face around to his, I blanked my face.
He said nothing. The pad of his thumb stroked over my lip.
I felt naked standing there. Stripped bare.
And I was having a very hard time thinking of him as the asshole I