In my dream last night, we’d been sparring together, getting all sweaty and tangled up until we were suddenly kissing. I’d licked along his salty skin until I reached the erection tenting his athletic shorts. The rest of the dream had progressed in filthy images and imagined sensations. His hard cock in my mouth. The fullness when I sank down on his thick shaft, starting to ride him…
“I’ll shower and make us some sandwiches,” Dean said. “I was thinking we’d spend some time in the sniper’s nest this afternoon.”
I sighed. “Yep. Sounds good.”
An hour later, we crawled into the sniper’s nest we’d made on a hillside. The vegetation was thick enough here to break up the sight lines. We were dug in to keep below the ridgeline, with stones reinforcing the depression and netting woven with branches and native grass to camouflage where we lay.
I could now take apart the sniper rifle in a matter of seconds. Reassemble it. Clean and inspect it. Almost every day I practiced aiming through the scope, often with Dean lying pressed against me, correcting my body position and teaching me the right way to breathe. To wait and watch for a shot.
Of course, I couldn’t actually take a shot with a live roundyet. It would be a long time before I was ready for that. Even lying in a prone position was hard for me, since I had to be careful about putting pressure on my injuries.
But I hadn’t seen Dean fire the rifle either, not even to calibrate it. He’d said there was far more to being a sniper than pulling a trigger.
Through the rifle scope, I watched a family of deer grazing unaware in the meadow below. The deer had no need to worry. I was only observing. The rest of me was all too aware of the man beside me.
I wasalmostused to lying this close to Dean without getting distracted. Not quite, but almost.
I’d never spent so much time with someone just being quiet. Sometimes those silences were comfortable. Sometimes fraught with tension.
Okay, there was always tension.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked today. Because I still wanted to know him, even just as friends. I wanted anything of Dean I could get.
“How I swore I’d never pick up a weapon again, but it was easy. Feels like I never left.”
His tone was even. I remembered the conversation we’d had the night we followed Woodson to the strip club.
You didn’t kill them because you enjoyed it.
And his response:You think I didn’t?
But if Dean had thought I would be horrified, he was wrong. I’d accepted his past the same day he told me. He was the one who couldn’t accept himself. Couldn’t let himself stay in one place. Be happy.
Couldn’t give us a chance.
“Do you ever have regrets?” I asked.
“About leaving that life? No. Not about that.”
“What do you regret?”
Dean’s arm shifted, and I knew he was touching theleather cord he wore on his neck. Then he blew a stray hair from in front of his face. “For one, letting my hair get this long. It’s out of control. It’s starting to bug the shit out of me.”
I laughed, pushing away the disappointment of his changing the subject. “If you have clippers, I can cut it for you. Did you know Stephie wants to go to beauty school after she graduates? She wants to be a hairstylist.”
“No kidding.” His grin was soft in the dimness. “Good for her.”
“She makes me watch all these online videos with her. I picked up a few things. I’m not saying it’ll be a great cut, but your hair would definitely be shorter.”
“Doyoulike my hair long?”
Ugh, what a question. Of course I liked it long. It was hot. “Yeah. But I like it short too.”
I felt him looking at me. I checked the scope, watching the deer again as they snacked on meadow plants and heat spread up my neck.
Was it weird of me to offer to cut his hair? That was a thing friends did for each other, right?
Of course, not like I’d let him anywhere nearmyhair with a pair of scissors, but…
