"Ready."
"Platform first." He moved behind her. "Face the target. Feet wider than your shoulders."
Emily turned downrange and widened her stance. She felt him step in close, him behind her, not quite touching, the proximity a suggestion her body was already responding to.
"Wider."
She adjusted. His foot nudged the inside of hers, widening her base another two inches.
"A platform has to be three things," he said. His voice was near her ear, low, the register he used in the dark when it was late and they were tangled together and the world had contracted to the space between their bodies. "Stable. Flexible. Mobile. You have to be grounded enough to absorb recoil, loose enough to move with it, and ready to transition if the situation changes."
His hands came to her hips. Adjusted the angle. His thumbs pressed against the small of her back, correcting her posture, and Emily felt her breath change without her permission.
"You're tilting," he said.
"I'm distracted."
"By what?"
"You know by what."
His mouth was close enough to her ear that she could feel his breath. "Focus, Counselor. We're just getting started."
He shifted her weight forward, just slightly, until she was balanced on the balls of her feet with her center of gravity low and stable. His thumbs traced the line of her hip bones through the thin fabric of her shirt and Emily's pulse was doing things that had nothing to do with firearms training.
"Good," he said. "That's your platform. Everything builds from here."
He stepped to her side. Picked up the Glock. Checked it again, the automatic ritual, and placed it in her hands.
"Grip." His hands came over hers, wrapping around them, arranging her fingers on the frame. "Dominant hand high on the backstrap. As high as you can get it. Your support hand fills the space that's left." He pressed her palms together around the grip,his fingers guiding hers into position. "Now squeeze. Not the trigger. The grip."
Emily squeezed. The gun was heavier than she'd expected. Dense, purposeful weight.
"Harder."
She squeezed harder.
"Now here's the part nobody teaches." He adjusted the pressure. "Isometric tension. Your dominant hand pushes forward. Your support hand pulls back. Equal pressure, opposite directions."
Push and pull. Give and take. Emily felt the gun stabilize in her grip as the opposing forces locked it into place.
"Feel that?" His voice was low. The push-pull of the grip was undoing her in ways that transcended marksmanship. "That's what control feels like. Not squeezing harder. Not muscling through it. Two forces in balance. Neither one dominant. Working together."
She felt it. In the grip and in her chest and in the space between their bodies where the morning air was disappearing.
"That's us," she said.
He tightened he pressure over her grip. Then he released and moved behind her again.
"Sights." He reached around her, his arms along hers, his chest against her back. He tilted the gun up until it was level with the closest steel target. "Put the dot where you want the round to go. Not where you think it should go. Not where someone told you to aim. Where you want it."
His cheek was against hers. She could feel the stubble, the warmth of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing compared to the chaos of her own.
"Place the dot on the target. That's your sight picture." His voice had dropped to a register barely above a whisper. "Onceyou have it, you hold it. Don't chase it. Don't force it. Let it settle."
Emily stared through the optic. The red dot hovered over the steel target, drifting in small circles that matched her heartbeat. She let it settle, he'd told her to, and the circles tightened, and the dot sharpened on center mass, and she understood that he'd just described the entire arc of their relationship in the language of the only profession he'd ever known.
He'd put his sights on her the day they met. He'd held the picture. He'd let it settle.
