"I see it," she said.
"I know you do." His lips brushed the shell of her ear. Not a kiss. The ghost of one, the promise of contact that hadn't arrived yet, and Emily's arms were still but the rest of her was coming apart.
"Trigger," he said. "The most important fundamental."
His right hand slid down her arm to her hand. His index finger found hers on the trigger guard and guided it to the trigger itself. The contact was precise. His fingertip on hers, the lightest possible pressure, introducing her to the mechanism that would make everything real.
"You don't jerk the trigger. You don't slap it. You don't rush it." His voice was in her ear, his body against her back, his finger on hers on the trigger, and Emily was vibrating at a frequency that had nothing to do with the Glock 19. "You press. Slowly. Carefully. Precisely. The most important thing in the world, treated like the most important thing in the world."
"Jake."
"Any disturbance you cause moves the gun. Moves the shot off target." His finger pressed hers, the smallest increment of pressure, taking up the slack in the trigger until she felt the resistance of the wall. "So you press through with care. Withpatience. With absolute attention to what's happening under your finger."
Emily's breathing had gone shallow. Her whole body was focused on the single point of contact between his fingertip and hers, the trigger between them, the target downrange that she could barely see because every nerve she had was aimed at the man pressed against her back.
"When it breaks," he said, "let it surprise you."
The trigger broke. The gun fired. The recoil pushed back into their joined hands and Emily felt Jake absorb it with her, his body bracing hers, the isometric tension holding them both steady as the sound rolled across the clearing and disappeared into the pines.
The steel target rang.
"Follow through," Jake said. He hadn't moved. His body was still against hers, his finger still on hers, the gun still raised. "Most people think it's over after the shot. They drop the gun, check the target, move on. But the shot isn't finished until the sights come back."
He held her there, with the sights settling back onto the target, the recoil absorbed and the sights recovered, and Emily understood.
"You don't give up on it early," she said.
"You don't give up on it at all." His lips found her neck, just below her ear, and the contact sent a shock through her that made the Glock's recoil feel like a whisper. "You see it through. You let the sights come back. And when they're back on target, you reassess and determine your next move."
Emily lowered the gun. Set it on the bench. Turned in his arms.
His eyes were dark and focused and looking at her with the same precision he'd been teaching her for the last twenty minutes, and she realized that the entire lesson had beenforeplay conducted with the patience and attention of a man who understood that the trigger press was the most important part and you never, ever rushed it.
"My next move," she said, "does not involve the Glock."
Jake's mouth curved. That slow, knowing expression she'd fallen in love with in a conference room three months ago, the one that said he was three steps ahead and had been waiting for her to catch up.
"Range is cold," he said.
"Range is very, very hot."
She kissed him. Pulled him down to her by the back of his neck, and the kiss was nothing like the ones she'd given him in federal hallways and everything like the one she'd given him the first night they'd stopped pretending. His arms came around her waist and lifted her onto the shooting bench and she wrapped her legs around him and the ammunition cases rattled against the wood and neither of them cared.
"You planned this," she said against his mouth.
"I planned the lesson." He was under her shirt now, palms flat against her spine, pulling her against him. "This part is improvisation."
"You're a terrible liar."
He laughed against her mouth.
He pulled her shirt over her head. The morning sun hit her skin and he followed it, tracing the lines of her shoulders, her collarbones, the places he'd mapped a hundred times and still explored like they were new territory. Emily reached for his shirt and he let her take it, and the scars were there in the sunlight, the knife wound on his left side and the bullet crater below his collarbone, and she put her mouth on each one because they were part of him and she wanted every part.
His breath caught. She felt it against her hair, the stutter in his rhythm, the operator losing his operational calm because herlips were on the damage he carried and she was loving the places that had tried to kill him.
"Em."
"Platform," she said against his skin. She pushed him back onto the bench and straddled him. "Stable. Flexible. Mobile."
