Retaliation: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (8 page)

All of this throws off my aim, and another arrow goes high, hitting only the upper edge of the target. Thankfully, I haven't put any arrows so high as to totally miss the safety backstop, although I have no fucking clue how I'm going to get that one down from the wooden beam at the top.

“Your pull is good, but your aim point is way off,” I hear behind me, and I turn to see Carson standing in the field behind me, his own bow in hand, dressed as I've never seen him before. Normally, he dresses like you'd expect an art dealer to dress, not quite prissy, but certainly cultured. I've seen him in jeans once or twice this week, but normally it's twill and tweed for Carson. Not that it makes him look weak. He still makes my knees go watery when he looks at me with those silvery eyes of his. The contained power, the self-assured glances, the contemplative questions hidden in his face and his eyes, like he's trying to decide if he can truly share himself with me the way I think he wants to. It's heady.

But now, in the golden red twilight, he's not the cultured art dealer. Instead he's wearing heavy BDU pants and jungle boots, along with a long sleeved t-shirt that hugs his slim, but still muscled torso. He's got a forearm guard on his left arm, and his right hand is partially covered with a three finger shooting glove. “I said that you're shooting high.”

“No shit, Robin Hood,” I reply, taking another arrow out of the quiver I've staked to the ground. “Takes a while to adjust to new stuff, you know. Especially when you've got more accessories than a pimped out Lincoln on this thing.”

“You know you can take them off,” Carson says, coming next to me. He holds out his hand and I hand him the bow, and he examines it. “What's screwing you up?”

“Loaded question,” I reply, grinning, but at the look in his eyes my grin falters. “Okay, fine. I learned bare bow. All this extra stuff is a giant fucking mess.”

“Okay,” Carson says, reaching into the quiver he's got strapped to his right leg. He pulls out a tiny Allen wrench and starts taking off the sight before simply unscrewing the other pieces. It takes him about three minutes before he hands it back to me, mostly stripped. “I can't take off the arrow rest, that's held on with adhesive. Besides, I'd recommend that you shoot off it anyway, otherwise it can fuck with the arrows.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking the bow back before setting it against my quiver stand. “Help me retrieve what I shot?”

“Sure. Then five and fives? I wanted to get a little work in, too.”

“Deal.” I head toward the target area, and with a little difficulty pull out the eight of the nine arrows I can reach, pointing toward the tenth high above me. “Sorry about that one.”

“I'll get it tomorrow,” Carson says. I struggle with the last of the arrows, and he takes a little rubber gripper out of his quiver and grabs the shaft, pulling it out easily. “Nice accessory, I got it as a throw in last time I bought arrows.”

“Didn't think you had any problems with grip on your shaft,” I tease, and Carson's face goes dark. “What? Just giving you shit.”

“That's exactly why I came out here, actually,” Carson says, handing me the one arrow I missed. His face is solemn, and I see the protective side of him flaring up in the sunset light. “Melissa told me about your little work session in the barn.”

“Yeah... I feel bad about that,” I admit, walking with him toward the shooting line. “I keep forgetting that she doesn't have the same sense of sarcasm I do.”

“She doesn’t do sarcasm,” Carson counters, his voice intense. He steps to the shooting line and takes out his first arrow and brings up his bow, nocking the arrow before drawing. He holds his draw for two seconds then lets fly, his arrow thwocking home dead center of the target. “And she's letting you into her life more than anyone, other than me. Faster, too. She's vulnerable right now, Andrea. I don't want to see her hurt.”

“You think I want that?” I ask hotly. “I like her, too! I've felt like crap since I let my mouth get away from me in the barn.”

“I know,” Carson says, drawing his next arrow. He shoots, and again smacks the middle of the target. “Which is why I'm asking you to please try and control that wiseass inside you. I can take it, and I understand why you do it. But with 'Lissa, just be honest. She can understand and appreciate honesty.”

“And why do I do it, Dr. Phil?” I ask. Carson fires his remaining three arrows before answering. When he does, there's no desire in his voice, none of the dark attraction that I've been feeling. Instead there's an intelligence, a wisdom that sounds more suited to someone older than his twenty-five years, and it's just as attractive and sexy as the other feelings I get from him.

“You do it to protect yourself. We've all got our compensation methods. I spend way too much time and money on target shooting skills that have very little real world application. Well, my pistols might actually get used, I hope not though. But I shouldn't need to spend nearly fifty thousand dollars on pistols and about half that on archery and crossbows just to get decent enough to protect my sister. Your shots.”

I take my place on the firing line, nocking my first arrow, and try to use what I can recall from the mess that was my last ten, taking my half-breath and holding it before letting fly. Not too bad, my horizontal drift is fine, but I'm still high, though not as bad. I adjust, and over the next four arrows I walk my shots down, the last one burying in between two of his arrows in the X ring. “That's more like it.”

A pattern emerges as we keep trading groups of arrows back and forth. With his familiarity with the gadgets, his groups are tighter, but I'm not far behind. After letting one arrow go that hits with a distinct sound on impact that tells me I actually hit one of his tightly grouped arrows, he whistles softly. “You've got talent.”

“All sorts of it,” I agree, smirking. “What? My sarcasm extends that direction, too. Maybe I'm still trying to cover some feelings.”

“Maybe. Maybe I am, too,” Carson says, the two of us walking toward the target. We see the X-ring first, and Carson shakes his head. “Shit. One of my carbon fiber shafts, too.”

“You've got the cash,” I reply, pulling my arrow. I look at the tip, which is unblemished. “So what are you covering up?”

“Hmm?” he asks, pulling his arrows. I follow suit, but one of them is deeper, driven through the foam padding of the target and punching into the plywood backer. I tug, but my hand starts to slip, and Carson's there, his hand over mine. As soon as our skin makes contact, we stop, looking at each other in the sunset. His eyes gleam, and he unconsciously licks his upper lip. Letting go, he steps back, shaking his head. “All right, fine. Fuck it. Andrea, I'm having problems dealing with the fact that I'm so attracted to you that I feel like I'm barely in control of myself whenever we're in the same room. Hell, I was wondering if I could even come out here to say something to you about Melissa. Don't tell me you don't feel the same way, I see it in those amazing eyes of yours.”

“Eyes? You're the one who's got a set of silver-grays that leaves me feeling asthmatic, and you're talking about my eyes?” I ask, glad to at least let it into the air. “You know, in case you were wondering.”

Carson sighs and looks at the arrow shaft in his hand, then whips it down, the point burying into the ground at his feet. “So what the hell do we do? Because the one thing I want to do about this is the one thing that I feel is the wrong damn thing to do!”

“And what is that?” I ask. I'm feeling a bit better, I'm used to having men off balance, but I'm still not totally back to normal. At least this isn't one-sided, I can be happy about that.

“What I want to do is see if those lips of yours are as soft as they look, and to find out if that olive tan of yours is natural or sun-enhanced, and if it is, how far it goes,” Carson says, eyes burning with desire. Immediately I'm breathless again, my heart thudding in my chest and a knot twisting deep in my guts. I want him too, but I know what he's going to say. “But I can't!”

“Why?” I ask, and he shakes his head. “Jackson told me today, we don't share any DNA.”

“Yeah, but you and Melissa do. And 'Lissa is as much my sister as anyone could ever be, regardless of what a DNA test would say. We've forged our bond through the tears we've shed together, and the nights I hold her as she goes through what she goes through. We've shed blood too, both me defending her, and her defending me. I've protected her, and I will protect her with every drop of my blood if need be. Before you stepped out of that van and started searing my dreams every night for the past week, I was totally ready to spend the rest of my life doing just that. I'd take care of my sexual needs some other way.”

I'm knocked on my ass by his honesty, and I can only watch as he yanks the arrow out of the ground, sighing. “But a week ago, you did step out of that van. If you'd been just some girl at the grocery store, or some customer at the art gallery, I'd be able to move past it. You'd have the number one spot in the spank bank, so to speak. But you're not just some chance meeting, disappearing in a few minutes or hours. Melissa doesn't want you to leave, and neither do I. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. No lack of irony there, is there?”

I shake my head and smirk. “No, there isn't. Because I feel the same way. I like 'Lissa a lot. She's a special woman, and every time I hang out with her I want to learn more about her. I don't want to hurt her either. So I will watch my sarcasm around her, and try to just be honest with her. As for you...”

“What?” Carson says, and I smile, not sarcastically but really smile, and I can see how it affects him. He's maybe as caught up as I am, and I know I'm playing with fire, but I can't help it.

“Everything you just said about Melissa, about being there for her, protecting her, sacrificing your own needs for hers... forget your eyes, forget your face or your body, all of which are sexy. Forget that watching you shoot archery is like watching a man in total control of himself and the entire world. I've always found control attractive. But what you just said, that heart that beats inside you... that's the sexiest thing I've heard a man ever say. Ever. I'm fine with holding off for a while, letting Melissa have time to adjust, but I'll tell you Carson, I don't know if I can hold off forever.”

I turn to walk away, when Carson calls out, stopping me. “We can't hurt 'Lissa, Andrea. I won't let that happen.”

I look back, and see the uncertainty in his eyes, and nod. “I agree. I won't ever hurt her, Carson.”

* * *

A
fter talking
with Melissa for hours, it becomes pretty obvious that she and BA are probably the only two people in the house who aren't aware of the unresolved sexual tension between Carson and me. We've been having sort of a girls' night in, sitting around in our pajamas and gossiping. But as we get ready to go upstairs for bed, I'm even more confused. Still, that's about the only drawback of spending time with Melissa.

It's like Carson said when he was talking about her artwork. When I talk with Melissa, it's like being able to see the world the way it should be. It's not always super perky and happy, and there's a lot of darkness in it, but when I talk with her, I always feel like in the end good things happen to the right people.

Carson's out at the gallery helping to set up the event scheduled for a few days from now, but Nathan's on duty again, his quiet presence on the couch reassuring Melissa when we head upstairs. “I'm glad Nathan's here,” she admits shyly as we climb to the second floor. “He and Maverick help me feel very safe.”

“I'm glad,” I tell her sincerely. “Also, if you do have any nightmares, until Carson gets back... would you mind if I helped you out?”

Melissa stops and looks me in the eye, smiling gently. We're just outside her room. “I'd like that very much, Andrea. I hope though that you can sleep peacefully.”

She reaches out, and before I know it she wraps her arms around me, giving me a hug. I'm so surprised I don't do anything at first, but then I return it, and it feels nice. I imagine it's like what a hug from your sister should feel like.

“I love you, Andrea,” Melissa says in her soft voice, and I can hear a hint of the insecurity still there. We let go, and I look at her again, and I know it took her a lot of courage to say what she just said. She's still scared I'll reject her since the only person in her life who hasn't rejected her is Carson.

I know the truth about my feelings for her as I smile and give her another hug. “I love you too, 'Lissa. Sleep well, I'll be here for you if you need it.”

Melissa goes into her room, closing the door quietly, and I watch it for a minute, torn. I do love her, she completes a part of my spirit that even Jackson and Katrina don't, but at the same time, I can't get Carson out of my mind. The way he looked as we shot together, his muscles tight as he held the bowstring back, the control he showed...

“Mmm, it's been a while since you did that.”

I realize I've wandered down the hallway, and I'm standing outside of Jackson and Katrina's room. Their date must have gone well, because the desire in Katrina's voice is hot enough to melt steel. Their door is slightly open, and I reach for the knob to close it and prevent them any embarrassment. At this distance though, I can't help but overhear more of what they're saying.