Oliver uncurled his fists and even smiled. “Hey, guys.”
“We’re playing paintball!” Noah made a gun with his fingers and pretended to shoot them into the air like he was a gunslinger from the wild, wild west. “It’s so fun! You get to wear these outfits and a helmet and you get to shoot a gun that’s filled with paint! You can be on my team!”
My first thought was no. My second thought was hell, no. I looked around for their dads and found them strolling towards us across the gravel parking lot like slow-motion superheroes. With the way they moved, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see an explosion behind them. So, my third thought was holy hot damn.
“We’re going to shoot guns?” Oliver looked up at me and then back at Noah. “With paint? Will it be messy? I read about this once and it sounded messy.”
Ben grinned at Oliver and squatted between the kids, his hand automatically ruffling Beth’s hair. “You get to wear this uniform that keeps all the mess off of you. When we’re done, you leave the uniform here and it’s not your problem anymore. Does that sound okay?”
I was already mentally preparing to take Oliver to get ice cream and explain to him that it was okay that he didn’t always like what other kids liked when he nodded. I did a doubletake. “You want to play, Oliver?”
He nodded again. “I want to try.”
Cole looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “What’ll it be, Miss Morgan? The boy wants to play. What about you?”
I opened my mouth to explain that I’d hang out with the girls if they didn’t want to play but they shut me up with their enthusiasm. Both Emma and Beth turned into pure chaos as they screamed about shooting their dads. They proved I’d been wrong to assume that because they were girls they wouldn’t want to play. They looked like little soldiers ready to go to battle.
“The pressure is turned down for the kids. It won’t hurt if- and when- they get hit.” Luke reached over and tugged the end of my braid. “So? Feeling brave? Want to take us on?”
“Will you be on our team, Miss Morgan?!” Emma jumped up and down, her energy at levels that I could only dream of.
“Sure! Why not?” Famous last words, probably.
The three men looked just as giddy and excited as Noah and the girls did. Oliver was more reserved, of course, listening to a high school student tell us the rules, but he was doing the finger tapping thing he did when there was an excess amount of energy coursing through his little body. He was excited in his own way and that soothed something in my heart I hadn’t even known needed soothing.
“Nervous?” Cole stood tall and proud, clearly a man who expected to walk off the paintball field a victor.
I let a small smile settle over my face. I was a shark in waiting and they had no idea. He wouldn’t be leaving the field a victor. I shrugged, the oversized coveralls shifting noisily around me. “A little. Try not to be too hard on me.”
His smile widened. “I thought you liked it hard.”
I scoffed and slapped his arm before turning away so he wouldn’t see the blush on my cheeks or the war in my eyes. The thing they didn’t know about me was that I’d been raised an Army brat. I’d spent the first eighteen years of my life with a father who treated bedtime routines like other men treated survival camp. He made sure I brushed my teeth, sure, but he also talked to me about guns and war tactics used in famous battles from history every night. By the time I was five I’d learned to aim a BB gun and hit my target every time.
Had I needed Cole’s self-defense training? Not even a little bit. My father still called me every Sunday night with a certain fatherly fear in his voice that made me itch to stay safe so he wouldn’t ever lay down and think he’d failed me somehow. I could take care of myself. I could take care of Oliver. I just didn’t advertise it because it was its own secret weapon in the way that I could pull it out at any time and shock the hell out of whoever might’ve been determined to hurt me or Oliver. Or…I could pull it out and show off to the three men I’d let go at me like a pin cushion next to a lake on a hot summer night.
The airhorn was loud as it went off but it kicked my brain into a different time of my life, a time when weekends meant training just as hard as Dad pushed his soldiers and running through the two mile obstacle course on base that he’d specifically had built to test people’s endurance and willpower. By fifteen I could finish it when about half of the newer soldiers couldn’t.
I made the decision to shed the coveralls pretty quickly. I needed to be quiet and I couldn’t stand the rub of the material on my skin anyway. I was positive I wouldn’t get any paint on my clothing so I wasn’t worried. The kids all ran together towards a makeshift shelter, their laughter and squeals filling the arena. I crept around the outside perimeter, keeping low, and managed to position myself behind the guys. They were all standing together in a lump, talking about giving me and the kids a chance to get a few shots in.
I smirked to myself and aimed my gun at the back of Cole’s calf. I was hidden behind a few barricades and I’d given myself room to get out of there as soon as the paintball hit and then I did just that. I fired the shot and then tucked and rolled into a low squat before scurrying to a different hiding spot. The grin on my face wouldn’t dim even slightly. I’d heard the hit, heard the shocked noise that came from Cole, and then the quiet awe that was him understanding someone had just snuck up on him, a retired SEAL.
“What the fuck?”
The rules were that you stayed alive until you’d been hit three times. I could’ve taken all three hits but I wanted to play. I worked my way back around to the kids and nearly scared them half to death when I popped up beside them. Only Oliver didn’t seem surprised to see me.
“You guys want to shoot your dads? Follow me. Stay down and quiet. I’ll show you where to position yourself so you can get them but they can’t get you. Ready?” I grinned when they quietlycelebrated the idea of taking their dads down and fist bumped the three babies I hadn’t birthed. To my surprise and delight, when I looked at Oliver, he was holding his fist out to me like the others. War had no time for crying, though, so I bit back that image to feast on later, when I was alone in bed and could cry about the simple gesture. “Come on. Remember, heads down.”
I couldn’t contain the old eagerness that came from receiving praise for how ruthless I could be on a battlefield, praise from a man who’d never praised his daughter for anything else. It made me stop and shove my fingers in the dirt under my feet to smear it across my sweaty face like war paint. The kids, minus Oliver, did the same with their own ruthless little grins. Their dads had no idea who was coming for them.
34
Cole
I stared down at the many colorful splashes of paint across my body and tried to make sense of things. I’d gone into paintball thinking we’d ease Callie into it and go easy on her and the kids but that kindness had quickly been repaid with a bloodthirsty wildcat who’d flashed me a grin so sexy after pelting me in the chest that my dick had turned to stone. The first round had ended so fast that I had just stood still, looking around like a newb. By the second and third round the three of us dads were actively working to take Callie down but she’d still walked out of Splat Happened with mud on her face and not a single drop of paint on the clothes she’d worn while taking us out.
My dick was still throbbing at the thought of her turning into a trained assassin but my pride stung. I was a fucking Navy SEAL. Retired, but still. I’d spent a decade of my life in the most dangerous places known to man. I’d survived and kept my team alive through more missions than I cared to remember. I’d beengood. Somehow, she was better. She’d been a fuckingghost on the field, hungry for victory, with a look in her eyes that said she’d floss her teeth with our bones after she devoured us. Honestly, she was a little scary and I’d never wanted her more. I wanted to fuck that fight right out of her, watch her face turn soft as she came, and then challenge her so we could do it all over again. I wanted her to pin me down and fucking ride me until neither of us could breathe.
“Man. What the fuck just happened?” Ben stealthily adjusted himself and rolled his shoulders. “She went from a sweet teacher to a fucking hitwoman in the blink of an eye. I feel like I just escaped from being hunted by an apex predator. Why the fuck am I so hard for that?”
