In the next room, Braden climbed into bed. A moment later, she heard his heart rate slow and his breathing grow steady. He was already close to falling asleep, while she’d probably be lying there awake and frustrated for hours. How the heck could men change gears so quickly?
“Dreya?” he called, his voice barely above a whisper. “Can you hear me if I talk this softly?”
“Uh-huh,” she said softly, then realized she was going to have to speak louder if she wanted him to hear her. “Yes, I can hear you.”
“Good. Because I wanted to make sure you had one thing straight before you fell asleep tonight.”
“What’s that?”
“When I pulled away after kissing you and you said it was good that at least one of us still had some control. I want you to know that resisting the urge to drag you off to bed was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Instead of saying I’d see you in the morning, what I really wanted to say was I hoped there was enough room in your bed for me. I just wanted you to know that, okay?”
Dreya smiled to herself and fluffed up her pillow. Why did it make her feel better knowing he’d come close to losing control, too? Maybe because if she had to lay here awake half the night, it was nice knowing he’d be lying awake just as long.
“Thanks,” she said.
Then she tugged her blanket a little higher and closed her eyes, thinking delicious, if very erotic, thoughts.
* * *
“Do your best not to shoot me, huh?” Braden said with a smile.
Dreya thought that was anything but funny, especially since they were standing outside something known as a shoot house, about to start a session of CQC—Close Quarter Combat—training using live ammo. In that regard, her partner wasn’t joking. If she weren’t careful, she could end up shooting him. Even if she didn’t hit him, she still had to worry about taking out Clayne or Danica, who’d be walking around on the catwalks that overlooked each room of the shoot house she and Braden would be moving through.
Dreya was definitely of the opinion that this kind of room clearance training was way too advanced for her, especially since the first time she’d ever fired a real gun had been this morning, exactly eight hours ago.
Surprisingly, she’d enjoyed shooting a lot more than she would have expected, mostly because Braden had gone to great lengths to help her pick out the right handgun for her. The basic 9mm Glock 19 was the perfect size for her hand, didn’t kick too much, and was easy to use.
It had also helped that Braden had stood right behind her through the first ten or fifteen clips of ammo, keeping her body in the right posture and steadying her arm. Having him so close, they were practically touching, had been seriously fun. Yes, she knew she should have been focused completely on the task at hand, but it turned out that shooting guns with Braden was kind of sexy.
But just because she’d been able to handle shooting holes in stationary targets set out at distances ranging from five to thirty yards didn’t mean she was ready to get all SWAT cop and go kicking in a bunch of doors and shooting her way through a house full of simulated bad guys. Whatever happened to the concept of learning to walk before you tried to run? But like Braden had said last night, these people at the DCO were going to push her, and right now, that meant sending the two of them through this CQC course.
She stifled a groan. Thinking about last night was a bad idea, because it totally distracted her. Not that it took much to get her thinking about that kiss they’d shared before going to bed. It had been the last thing on her mind when she’d fallen asleep last night and the first thing she’d thought about the second she’d woken up this morning. Seriously, that had been one memorable kiss. Dreya only hoped that after her five-day recruitment period was up, she and Braden might get a chance to make a few more memories as amazing as the one from last night.
Beside her, Braden grabbed two sets of foam earplugs from the table and handed one to her.
“Don’t overthink this, okay?” he said, his voice calm and steady. “We’ll do this the same way we did on the walkthrough, moving slowly and carefully. I’ll go first and cover the far left of the room, then sweep to the right corner. You immediately follow behind and cover the hinge side back corner first, then the knob side corner.”
That was exactly the way he’d explained it on the walkthrough, and Dreya had barely understood it then. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax, putting Braden’s words into simpler instructions in her head. Basically, he would charge in first and worry about what was right in front of them, while she covered him by essentially dealing with “bad guys” who might be hiding behind the door, trying to shoot the first person through the door, namely him.
It had sounded scary tough on the walkthrough, and now that she was carrying a live weapon, it sounded even scarier. No, none of the pop-up “bad guys” in there would be shooting at them. But if she and Braden didn’t communicate well, this could get dangerous.
He glanced at her as he slipped into the heavy tactical vest they would both be wearing for this exercise. “You’ll be sweeping right across my back as you clear from one side to the other, so I’m trusting you, okay?”
She nodded as she tightened the straps on her own vest. The fact that he trusted her enough to let her carry a live weapon behind was important to her. She wouldn’t let him down.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she said.
As she and Braden approached the shoot house in the fading light of day, he turned to give her a look. “No pressure or anything, but I think I just saw that guy you pointed out to me at breakfast—John Loughlin—walk up to the observation level. It looks like the big boss is going to be watching us.”
She groaned. “Great. Someone else for me to accidently shoot.”
Braden chuckled. “Don’t worry. You’ll do fine. You just stay on my ass and focus on covering me. I’ll worry about getting us through the house.”
Dreya nodded. Sounded like a fair deal to her. She definitely had no problem sticking close to his ass. It was sexy.
She pushed that thought out of her head and rolled her shoulders a few times, settling her tactical vest into place. Not only would the vest hopefully protect them from any stray round that might ricochet off of something hard, it also carried the sensors that would ring off if one of the targets “shot” them. She and Braden would lose points each time a sensor went off.
