Page 40 of Painless
Fourteen
MARIPOSA
Ten minutes after seeing Reaper off, I stood next to Gunner and his bike with no clue on how to bring Freyja along. Naturally, she was sitting in my spot right behind Gunner.
"I dunno how you expect to hold on with just your claws." I scratched the base of her tail. "The bike goes pretty fast."
"Maybe she's got like, Wolverine claws," Gunner laughed. "But then she'll slice my seat to ribbons, which would suck."
"Can we stick her in your saddle bags?"
"Don't think she'll fit. They're filled with stuff we need." He still wouldn't breathe a word of what we were doing. "It'll be bumpy and loud in there, anyway. She won't like it."
I picked up the black kitten, turning her belly-up in my arms like Gunner had earlier. "What are we gonna do with you, huh?"
She squirmed, twisting and batting at the zipper on my jacket. When I lowered my arm to put her down, she twisted onto her feet and jumpedup. Her claw snagged at my zipper pull and yanked it halfway down my chest. Then she jumped again, into my jacket.
"Freyja, what are you doing?" I laughed.
Gunner turned around just in time to see the kitten-sized bump wriggling under my jacket. Freyja finally oriented herself and stuck her head out just above where the zipper opened.
"Well, that's an idea," Gunner grinned with a scratch between her ears. There was no ignoring how close his fingers were to my breasts. "She's secure, protected from all the rattling. The noise probably won't bother her too much."
"You gonna stay put in there?" I looked down to ask her. She licked my chin, but was otherwise completely still. "I guess we're good," I relented, looking back up at Gunner.
He held my gaze as he leaned toward my chest ever so slowly. His lips curved in a tiny, wicked smile as he placed a soft kiss on Freyja's head, his nose barely brushing my cleavage.
Sensation rushed to my nipples, aching for a touch,histouch. But he pulled away and returned to face forward on the bike.
"Hold on, girls!" He hit the accelerator, bringing the machine to life with a roar. With a roll of his right shoulder, Horus took off flying.
I slid my arms around his waist, leaving some space between his back and my chest so as to not squish the cat. "Don't I get a kiss?" I teased, my lips touching the side of his neck.
He grinned at me over his shoulder. "If you're good."
The first portionof the ride was short. Gunner pulled up to what looked like abandoned horse stables, just a few miles outside of Sheol. Freyja popped out of my jacket and shook her fur out as we came to a stop.
"Grab the case in there for me, will you, baby girl?" Gunner nodded to the left saddle bag as he popped out the kickstand and swung a leg over the bike.
I unbuckled the top flap and pulled it open. A plain, plastic box sat conspicuously on top, but when I went to pull it out, the box felt like it weighed fifty pounds.
"Holy shit, what's in here?" I huffed, cradling the box against my body.
"Ammo." Gunner opened another case on the bike seat, and held up a matte-black handgun. "We're target practicing."
I shouldn't have been surprised. He did mention teaching me how to defend myself.
"So this is the educational portion of our outing?"
"Might be the fun part too," he smirked, slamming a magazine up into the pistol grip. Sure enough, the horse stalls had been converted into a makeshift shooting range. Metal casings littered the dirt floor. The frames of the stalls stayed intact to designate each range. Walls on the sides and far end had been knocked out, with targets placed in the field behind them at various lengths. Gunner led me to one with a closer target.
He laid the gun on the stall door and patiently explained its parts and their functions. After I successfully repeated everything back to him, he showed me how to load it, then had me do it myself.
I’d always hated the sound of gunfire. It meant there was a chance I couldn't save someone, no matter how fast or efficiently I worked. Invented hundreds of years ago, guns were still one of the most effective ways of killing people, or injuring beyond repair.
But when Gunner aimed the gun at the target and fired two shots through the center ring, none of my old feelings resurfaced. When he handed the weapon to me with an encouraging smile, something else surged through me when I held the weight of it in my hand.
The script had flipped. Now I had just as much power as the next piece of shit who wanted to enslave me.
