I look at him with affection, thinking about how weird it is that he doesn’t put things together sometimes. Prime example is the fact I told him I’d happily bottom for him, and he’s acting like I’d only ever top.
As we put the rest of our gear in back, I realize his lack of focus makes perfect sense. It’s been a terrible year for him, and he deals with stress by shutting down, literally falling asleep when things get to be too much. Fuck, if I have to repeat a few things to him so that he gets it, I’m more than happy to do so.
We hop onto the UTV and start down the caliche path.
“Hey,” I say, palming the back of his head. “I like being your big strong man, but like I told you in the shower, I’m vers. I like flipping shit on its head. You said you wanted that, right?”
His smile is shy, and when he looks up, the sun hits his whiskey-colored eyes perfectly. He bites his lower lip. “Yeah…I do.”
Keeping one eye on the path, I lean over and kiss him. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
His smile hits me in the chest like a brick, and I’ll do anything to make him smile like that again.
We drive about a half mile until we get to a large field set up with bullseyes on bales of hay at various intervals. There’s no coverage, just divots in the ground where people stood or, from the looks of it, lay down to take their shots.
I no sooner put the vehicle in park than Rafi hops out and wrangles the rifle down from the mount. He walks right up to the divot he likes best, flicking down the balance legs for the rifle I didn’t even know were there. He gently places the gun on the ground, then lies down next to it, resting his cheek on the stock and peering through the scope. He grumbles and spends the next several minutes making adjustments, muttering something about assholes who spend money on huge guns with shaky legs and nothing on their scopes until he finally settles into a view that—I guess?—is good enough, and from his prone position looks up at me, smiling. “This will be fun.”
He goes back to looking through the scope, then holds out his hand, demanding, “Magazine.”
I open up the backpack DB handed to me and set two magazines and several clips next to him. He looks over at the bag, then back at the rifle. “Actually, can you give me the backpack?”
He takes it and sits up, rifling through it before grabbing a notebook and pencil, plus a thing that looks very much like a sock filled with dirt. He happily rearranges things, bringing up the legs, resting the gun on the backpack and the dirt sock, and readjusting the scope. Looking about as happy as a pig in shit, he settles into place, drops one of the rounds into the chamber, then loads the magazine blind.
It’s probably a bad idea to interrupt a guy on a rifle, but I have to know. “Why did you drop the round in the chamber if you were just going to load the magazine?”
His eye glued to the scope, he makes a small adjustment before he answers me. “We were taught to practice readiness at all times.”
I nod as though I understand, but I don’t, and it’s fun to see this prickly, soft, contradiction of a man in a whole new light. I realize with a small stutter in my chest that he’s trusted me with the uglier parts of his recovery, but here, in this context… He’s serious as a heart attack. He’s even doing something weird with his breathing, and I don’t even know if he realizes he’s doing it. All of a sudden, the nervous, vibrating man I’ve come to enjoy over these last six months is still, focused. Even the cicadas have quieted down to watch him.
I take my position next to him, binoculars at the ready to see where his shots land.
“Fire downrange,” he says, his voice quiet but clear as a bell.
The softthootof the rifle, followed by the confident, lightning-quick up-back-forward-down bolt action is the sexiest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.He pauses, waiting for my verdict, which shakes me out of my reverie, and I realize I wasn’t ready for him. I swallow, my throat dry but my dick wet. I chuckle, rubbing the back of my head. “I was, uh, distracted there for a moment. Didn’t see where it landed.”
A cocky little grin splits his face, and he looks up at me with an eyebrow raise. He shakes that adorable little butt of his, teasing back, “Distracted, huh? I’m going to need your eyes downrange to make sure this is going where I need it to. Though, I could tell from the scope that I hit the target at a hundred.”
“A hundred feet? That’s amazing,” I say, my voice husky. There’s a not-small part of me that wants to knock the gun aside and cover his body with mine until we’re both panting, postorgasmic messes in the brown Texas dirt.
He writes down a quick calculation, then looks back through the scope, that proud little smile still tugging at the corner of his lips. “That’s a hundredyards, baby. Three hundred feet.”
I let out an accidental grunt. His body starts to vibrate with laughter, and he shakes his head. “Put a pin in it, sweetheart. I want to get through these targets, but let’s explore whatever that grunt was later.”
I raise the binoculars to my eyes, more motivated than a dieter on New Year’s Day. “I’m ready for you, babe. Fire in the hole, or whatever.”
He chuckles to himself, then does the weird breathing thing again, stilling his body with extraordinary control. He hits two shots close to center before hitting bullseye on the two-hundred-fifty-yard target, then moves on to the five-hundred-yard target. He adjusts, but his first shot misses, and the next are slightly off bullseye, though well within the center part of the target. He curses to himself and makes another calculation and adjustment, firing off two more rounds in quick succession, the bolt action making my dick twitch while he puts the bullets exactly where he wants them.
I’m beginning to understand why he got so turned on watching me do the thing I’m good at. It’s visceral, watching someone you’re attracted to control life and death. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of his scope, but being on this side of it is…heady.
Things start to get really interesting with the increasingly longer targets. Interesting as in…his shots aren’t just precise—anyone can hit a bale of hay in a field—they are spectacular. When I say the bullet landed in the middle of the target, I mean it landed perfectly in the middle of the bullseye. Not only do I want to tear off every bit of his clothing, but if DB finds out we have a good sniper replacement, he’ll be relentless. When it comes to Rafi, I know the feeling.
As I’m trying to figure out if I have enough patience to wait until the bedroom to get naked, he looks up at me, his beautiful white smile against his shimmering brown skin fucking blinding. Every part of my body is a nervy mess; even the T-shirt skimming my nipples has me biting my knuckles.
Get nipple piercings, they said.
It’ll feel great, they said.
Note: Yeah, they feel fucking amazing, but it took me months after getting the piercings to be able to control bonering up in public. It felt like high school all over again.
