Bleacke's Geek (Bleacke Shifters) (25 page)

Ken hoped Dewi would forget about the swim lesson, but no such luck. After dinner and following another call to her brother, she cornered Ken in their bedroom. “Ready for your first swim lesson?”

“Not really, but do I have a choice?”

She tried a little pouty lip. “Please?”

“Oh, come on. Fight fair.”

“Do you have a swimsuit?”

“Yes, I do have one of those. I used the hot tub at my apartment a few times. And I like going to the beach. Not that I’ve been in a while, because I haven’t had a car.”

Her eyes widened. “Ooh! I know a beautiful beach down in Sarasota County we can go to.”

He tried and failed to keep the frown off his face. “You won’t make me swim, right? I don’t mind wading.”

“No, I won’t make you swim.” She slipped her hands around his waist. “At the beach, that is. Tonight you start learing how to swim.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Otherwise, we’ll have to put up one of those kiddie-proof fences around the pool to keep you out.”

He laughed at her playful grin. “All right, all right. Let me get changed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

She actually wore a one-piece suit for the start of his lesson. He frowned. “I thought you promised me a naked instructor?”

“I did, but later. As a reward. I want you to learn how to swim.”

She led him down the steps into the pool, which at its deepest wasn’t more than five feet deep. “First, you need to get comfortable feeling water on your face.”

“You’re not going to hold me under, are you?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“Never mind,” he grumbled.

He felt the dark fury building inside her. “Is that what that asshole did to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s get this over with.”

He could tell she did want to talk about it, but she let it drop. “I want you to close your eyes, hold your breath, and sink below the water for a couple of seconds.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to learn not to panic when you’re under water. Half the battle is learning how not to panic.”

Reluctantly, he did, pinching his nose closed and waiting until the water was nearly to his eyes before closing them.

Almost immediately he felt fear closing in as his pulse spiked. He shot up out of the water, gasping for air.

When he looked, Dewi still stood a few feet away, watching with concern on her face but not making an attempt to approach him. “You okay?”

He shook his head. “Why do I have to do this?”

He suspected she barely kept from rolling her eyes. “You have to learn not to panic,” she gently insisted. “Try it again. We can’t go any farther until you learn this.”

It took the better part of an hour, but he finally got to the point where he could sink below the water and patiently wait there until he felt the need to take a breath without remembering the feel of Dave’s fingers cruelly digging into his scalp and holding him there.

“Good. Now you need to learn to float. For this part, you have to trust me. I won’t let you sink.”

He nervously nodded. She gently coaxed him to lean back in the water as she kept one arm securely under his shoulders, and the other under his waist. At first he wanted to grab onto her, certain he was going to sink. But after twenty minutes of her patience, he realized he was able to float on the water if he relaxed his body and kept his breathing steady. He still felt her arms, waiting, under him, there to keep him from sinking.

By the time they finished another hour later, he was floating unassisted and letting her gently tow him around one end of the pool by his shoulders.

At some point, Badger and Beck must have gone to bed because the lights in the house had been turned off. Dewi kissed him and smiled. “Wait here.” She climbed out, went over to a set of switches near the sliding glass doors that led to the dining room, and turned off the lanai and pool lights.

When she returned to the steps, she smiled down at him as she shucked her bathing suit. “Ready for the reward part of our session?”

He attempted to scramble out of his bathing suit right there and fell over into the water. It wasn’t until he popped to the surface again sans bathing suit, which he lobbed onto the pool deck, that he realized he hadn’t panicked when he went under.

“Hey! Did you see that?”

She nodded as she descended the steps and walked over to him. She draped her arms around his neck. “Yes, I did. I’m very proud of you.”

Something warm and hot swelled inside him. Not even passion or lust, which were present aplenty, but something more. Something deeper. Something unfamiliar.

How long had it been since someone had told him they were proud of him?
Well, besides Dewi.

He pulled her to him, kissing her. The feel of her warm flesh against his hardened his cock. She wrapped her legs around his waist and wiggled, positioning herself perfectly. He grabbed her hips and sank home, swallowing her moans of pleasure.

Buoyed by the warm water, he gently fucked her like that, letting his release slowly build inside him even as he felt her muscles contract around him through one orgasm, then another. Only after he brought her to a third climax did he let go, harder and faster until his release rolled through him and he sank home deep inside her.

They ended up on the steps, still clinging together. She looked up at him with a sated smile. “So how do you like swimming?”

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday morning, Ken nervously followed Dewi along the path through the pines. She carried a heavily laden cloth grocery bag slung over one shoulder, and a plastic case he assumed held guns.

“Are you sure I really need to learn how to shoot?” He’d never fired a gun before. Not even in a video game.

“Yes. I want you to be able to defend yourself. Once you can confidently handle a gun, I want you to take a class and get your concealed weapons permit.”

That stopped him in his tracks. “What?”

When she realized he wasn’t following her anymore she turned around. “What?”

“What’d you say?”

“What? You mean about getting your carry permit?”

“I’m going to have to carry a gun?”

She walked back to him. “No, I’m not going to require you carry a gun all the time. But there might be times I need to know you’re safe and I will ask you to please carry one for my peace of mind. I can’t do my job if I’m always worried about your safety. Please? Not to mention there might be times Beck or I need you to bring us something, and you might not legally be able to do that unless you have a permit. All right?”

He stared into her mocha eyes. It wasn’t all right, because he hated guns. Hated violence.

Yet he thought about the sight of her in the Publix parking lot, about wanting to fuck her brains out right then and there.

I’d do anything for her to make her happy.
He sighed. “Okay.”

She brightly smiled. “Thank you.” She rose onto her toes and kissed him before turning to continue their trek. “Besides, I’m going to teach you more than just shooting.”

“Like what?” he asked as he set off after her.

“Bowhunting, kni—”

“I don’t hunt.”

When she stopped again and turned, he realized he’d said it harsher than he’d meant.

“Archery, then. I wasn’t going to make you shoot an animal.”

“Oh. Okay.” He thought about it and nodded. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind that. Archery, I mean. Not actual hunting. There’s a sort of gracefulness to archery.”

She brightly smiled. “Good.”

“What was that other thing you’d started to say?”

“Knife fighting.”

His good feeling blew away like a leaf in a stiff wind. “Say what?”

She motioned for him to follow her. “We won’t use real knives, don’t worry. Not for training and sparring. I want you to know how to defend yourself.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “In as many ways as necessary. If you saw a child being attacked, would you stand by and let it happen?” She faced forward again.

But not before he’d caught the slight hitch in her throat. “Dewi,” he said.

She stopped, but didn’t turn. He caught up with her and slipped an arm around her waist, feeling her tension, her worry.

Her fear that something might happen to him because of who she was, and she might not be there to protect him.

He kissed the side of her neck. “Please stop envisioning all the bad things that might possibly happen and think about the good things.” When he felt her stiffen, as if to rebut, he added, “Yes, I’ll let you teach me whatever you want. And I’ll do my best to learn it because I love you and I know that me knowing those things’ll make you happy. But you have to let me be who I am.”

She turned to look up at him. He didn’t miss the brightness in her eyes that she tried to blink away. “I never thought I’d feel like this about someone before. The thought of losing you rips my damn heart out. I just want to make sure you’re going to be here for a long, long time.”

He nuzzled his nose against hers. “I will be. I promise.”

The small gun range was made up of a concrete-block shelter where two shooters could stand and fire at the same time, separated by a concrete partition. While open to the air on the sides, the entire range was covered by roof made of sheet metal. The far end of the range was a reinforced bunker of concrete, sandbags, and a large mound of dirt.

She set the grocery bag on the ground and the plastic case on the ledge in one of the shooting bays, where she opened it. Inside lay two handguns.

“These are nine millimeters,” she explained as she took one out. “And yes, for the purpose of our lesson today, you have my permission to handle them.” She ejected the clip and a chambered round and handed it to him, grip first. “First rule of handling guns—always treat them as if they are loaded, even if you know they aren’t. Second rule, you never point a gun at something or someone you don’t intend to shoot.”

He smirked. “What about the ground?”

She rolled her eyes at him, but gave him a smile. “You know what I mean. I hope.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.” He didn’t like the feel of the gun’s weight in his hand anymore than he had the other day in the kitchen when she handed him one.

She went over the parts of the gun with him and showed him how to load it. Then she opened a storage bin under the ledge and withdrew a paper target with an outline of a human on it, two pairs of shooting glasses, and two sets of shooting muffs.

She hung the target over a piece of cardboard dangling from the overhead pulley system, and hit a switch on the partition to run it ten yards down the range. “Put the glasses and muffs on. Always use those for target practice.” She donned hers.

When she had put her shooting muffs on, she took the gun back from him. “Stand to my left,” she said. “The shells will eject to the right.” She immediately took aim and he flinched with each shot as she emptied the clip into the target. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of gunpowder and hot shell casings.

“That was loud,” he said,

She smiled. “It usually is.”