The door creaked open, and the woman from the pub peeked her head inside a second later. Her eyes narrowed when she noticed how Killian breathed heavily, how his wheelchair was positioned, and the set of Cash’s face. It hadn’t softened. If anything, it had hardened.
“Should I get the gun?” she said in all seriousness.
“You get a gun,” I said, “and we’re going to have problems, you and me. I’ll put an arrow straight through the wrist holding up the gun and not think twice about it. I’ll aim higher if it comes to it.”
I narrowed my eyes against hers, and after a second, she stepped inside, taking a seat between Saoirse and Killian.
The room became quiet, no one speaking, no one moving, all eyes on Cash. He hadn’t spoken a word the entire time.
Then he cleared his throat. “You sit before me, both of you, and tell me that my mother lives, and my brother knew it, but no one told me until today. Until I came here searching for answers to questions that were given to me by an enemy. You treated me worse than the dead.” He tapped the table a couple of times. He stopped. “Consider me dead then. Get out. All of you. Now. Or she will need a gun.”
29
Cash
My wife stood out against the ragged Irish coastline, her bow raised, arrow pointed, the wind moving through her hair. The color of it matched the fire left behind from the setting sun.
Her quiver was full of arrows, and a green feather fletch drifted in the wind, landing at my feet. I bent down and picked it up, holding it between my pointer and middle finger.
Seven targets were lined up outside of the farmhouse, and as she moved and released with a quickness that was hard to process, she hit the center seven times in a row. It only took a few seconds for her to reach for the arrow and set up the shot, for the arrow to fly through the air and strike its target, and for her to have already moved on to the next one.
At the rate she loosed arrows, it would only take her a few seconds to clear out a group of full-grown men.
Keely Kelly was not, by any means, to be fucked with.
She’d had an arrow pointed at my chest the first time my eyes met hers, and she claimed a heart I’d had no fucking clue I had.
“Can you shoot?” Her voice carried with the wind.
“A gun.” I grinned.
Her grin matched mine. “Don’t worry. You have me if there’s ever an apocalypse.”
“Grand,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets, going to stand closer to her.
She laughed, and a gust of wind swept her hair up. I moved the pieces from her face, tucking them behind her ear. Her eyes closed and she shivered, her shoulders coming up toward her ears. She put her chilled hand over mine, squeezing.
“Stand here,” she said, nodding to where she was.
I stood in front of her and she stood close behind me. She handed me the bow and helped me line up the shot, then handed me an arrow.
“Let’s see what you can do,thiefof my heart,” she said, her breath warm in my ear. She was watching me over my shoulder.
“How am I supposed to do this with you breathing down my neck?”
“Does this bother you?” Her voice was low, breathy, too fucking seductive.
When she aimed, it didn’t even seem like she had to concentrate, or narrow one eye to be able to see better out of the other one. I lined up the shot again, and as I went to release the arrow, she reached around and grabbed my cock, blowing in my ear at the same time.
The shot went wild in a crazed arch and stuck in the ground.
I’d never heard her laugh so hard. I turned around and she pointed at me. “Your face!” She laughed even harder, but she was trying to make the same face I was. Maybe pissed, but it was hard to tell when she couldn’t keep a straight face. She was almost wheezing. When she could breathe normally again, she said, “You’re not used to being tripped up by a woman, right, Marauder?”
I set my body flush to hers, sliding my hand up her back, feeling the tremble beneath her skin when I touched her. I took another arrow from the quiver. Turning, I set the shot up once more and loosed the arrow. This time it went straight, connecting with the target, but a smidge to the left of her center hit.
“Not bad, my heart,” she said from behind me. “Not bad at all. I sense some potential.”
She said it casually, like she hadn’t called me something other than what she had been calling me—Kelly, marauder, bastard, thief of her time or heart. It felt the same as the first time she’d ever called me Cash.
