Arrow to the Soul (15 page)

He turned, grabbing the leg she was in the process of kicking toward him and he caught it in midair. She stopped, now hopping on one leg as he held the other one close to his side.

“Do not do this, Adam.”

His name on her lips was the hottest foreplay he’d ever engaged in. He was so hard his head spun. All the blood vacated south, straight to his dick.

“You want me, Saya. I can smell the scent of your arousal. The heat of your pussy against my hip is like a brand. Tell me you do not want this,” he demanded.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” She was pleading and a part of Adam crumbled at her feet.

She was taking him apart a piece at a time.

No
! He wouldn’t allow it.

He leaned toward her once more, still holding her leg, and let his rage flow free.

“You could never hurt me. You are a killer, everything I hate and nothing I could love. Could you kill me? Oh, I’m sure; after all, it’s what you do best.” Acid dropped from his words and her face closed off in reaction. “But hurt me? You could never get close enough to do that,
Arrow
.”

He dropped her leg and stepped back. She veiled her eyes and Adam wanted to yell at her to look at him, but he’d done enough damage with words he never should have voiced.

“I want you so much I can’t breathe for it and you are everything I’ve worked against. You take life as if you’ve granted it. No, Arrow, the only hurt being dispensed will be by me if you continue down the path you’re on.”

He turned as self-disgust curled through his gut. Her voice stopped him at the door.

“You have given me your truth, now let me give you mine,” she said softly. “My body wants yours but my wants will not kill me. I have taken life and will continue to do so, but if you ever touch me again, I will set my arrow against your chest and rip your heart from it.”

He opened the door but turned before he left. The sight of her naked body in the weak light from the bathroom nearly unmanned him. The truth beat at him and before he could stop it, flowed from his mouth. “I will touch you again, Saya. I will
have
you. And you’ll beg me for it. That’s a reality we both need to come to grips with.”

Adam closed the door behind him, knowing he’d set the course for a string of events that would change his life. There was nothing to be done for it, so he made his way to the library for a stiff drink. Anything to take away the sting of what just happened.

•●•

Arrow dressed slowly, the scene from moments ago weighing down her movements but drawing her spine straighter with every breath she took. He’d been there when she’d stepped from the bathroom. So large and still in the shadows of her bedroom, she’d smelled him before she saw him.

She recognized she was attuned to him in ways she’d never been to anyone else. It was an anathema to her yet one she couldn’t control or fight. His words reverberated through her mind, pinching and pulling, stinging and heating.

She wasn’t alone in her desire and yet never had she been so very…alone. He wanted her body but hated her for it. She did too. But hate was a defeatist emotion and one she wouldn’t allow herself.

Arrow wanted to run, workout, train, but in the end she turned off the bathroom light and sank to the floor of her room, retreating into her mind. It was by far the safest place. The darkness called to her and she answered. Though it smothered her, she let it flow over, around, and in because Arrow
was
the darkness. And darkness was all she would ever know.

Chapter Fourteen

U-ki wa, kokoro ni ari.
Joy and sorrow exist only in the mind. Arrow repeated the refrain over and over as she hit target after target. She tasted the truth of it in the remnant ashes of last night’s pain. Adam Collins cut her deeply, and by the time she’d come out of her meditative state she’d been as she was before she’d ever met him.

Cold. Calm. Death.

She’d risen before dawn, meeting Bullet at the bottom of the stairs and they’d headed for the range. Bullet seemed to sense Arrow’s withdrawal and no words were spoken between them. The whir of cameras in the woods surrounding them could be heard above their silence and Arrow had the insane urge to place
ya
in each of them. They reminded her of the cameras Joseph had placed in the mountains of Arequipa. His eyes watched them all the time. She and her sisters felt him with every breath they drew.

How Arrow longed for her homeland. The mountains of Japan rose majestic and powerful above the earth—they were different than the jagged peaks of Peru. There were no cameras in her mountains, nothing but the illusion of freedom. She would never voice her longing, but Arrow wanted peace.

And yet it wasn’t to be for her. Arrow knew that even when Joseph Bombardier was long gone, she would have no serenity. She’d killed too many and hell called to her every day. The only time its summons muted was when she’d kissed Adam Collins.

She retrieved her
ya
from the targets she’d hit and trudged back up the hill, moving farther away simply because she could, and it was a test of her prowess and training with the
yumi
.

“Shall we challenge, sister?” Bullet asked.

Arrow glanced at her sister, noticing a color in her cheeks and vitality in her eyes she had never seen before. Were they not killers, Arrow would have said it was
happiness
. “I believe the last time we did this, I won,” Arrow murmured.

“
Non, ma sœur, j'ai gagné
,” Bullet said with a laugh.

Arrow smirked. “
Ensuite, nous contestons
.”

“First one to hit every target at each level wins. We will go no farther than fifteen hundred yards as my bullets will obviously travel farther than your puny arrows.”

Arrow snorted at that. “Oh, sister, you’ve grown cocky since leaving Arequipa. What shall we challenge for?”

“Truth.”

Arrow nodded, accepting the challenge with dignity, though her heart stuttered. She knew exactly what her sister was aiming for and Arrow wouldn’t let it happen. That truth was hers alone.

Targets were set up at one hundred fifty, three hundred, six hundred, and so on all the way up through twelve hundred yards away. Not quite a mile but pushing it. She hit targets with her longbow and
ya
at thirteen hundred yards but not frequently. Her crossbow traveled farther, but with distance came a loss of accuracy. She’d never heard of anyone hitting thirteen hundred yards as she had. She’d also not worked this new bow with the exception of this morning and the dispatching of Damon last night, but this was a challenge she would never refuse. First Team had grown up engaging each other this way, needing the competition to break the starkness of their existence.

Bullet stood beside her now, her face blank except for the fire in her blue eyes. “There are two targets for each of us at each distance. We will start here as the targets get farther away when we move to the next section. As soon as you finish one set of targets, you will run to the next distance and so on. The final set of targets is twelve hundred yards. I do not believe you can do that distance, sister. We shall see, yes? Whoever hits each target at each distance first, wins.”

“Who will begin the challenge for us?” Arrow asked.

“I will,” Dmitry Asinimov said from behind them.

A group of men gathered on the knoll above them, watching and waiting. They were either brave or stupid. Not many men had seen two members of First Team together in such a way and lived to tell of it. Either way, she and her sister had an audience. Blood began to pump through Arrow’s veins. The rush of the game tingled in her extremities. She put her bow on her shoulder and wrapped her hair in a bun, and then she removed her bow and kneeled on one knee.

“Ya ga massugu tobu to watashi no tāgetto no kokoro o mitashite mimashou
,” she murmured, and then ran her hands along the bow before raising it to her forehead.

“If you’re finished kissing your bow and praying for your arrow to fly straight, shall we get it on?” Bullet queried at her side.

Arrow raised a brow. “Get it on?”

“Yes, sister. Let us do this thing so I can claim my prize.” Bullet’s lips curved and Arrow felt her heart pound.

What she would give to know the momentary freedom of a true smile.

“Mr. Asinimov?” Arrow called out.

“Yes?”

“We await your mark.”

They readied themselves and tension blanketed the air. Arrow fed off her sister’s will and knew for a fact Bullet did the same. For a brief second, the woods of Virginia reminded her again of Arequipa. But it was okay because some of the best times of her life had been spent with her sisters in the mountains of that hell.

“I will count down,” Dmitry said. “When I get to one, I will whistle and that’s your mark to begin.”

She and Bullet nodded.

“
Watashi wa chūdan sa remasen
,” Arrow murmured. I will not break.

“
Je ne vais pas casser
,” Bullet echoed in her native French.

The whistle sounded and Arrow was off, the thrill of using her
yumi
and
ya
flowing through her body like a beautiful tide. She rode it, pulling
ya
from her quiver with a speed she knew many couldn’t follow. One after the other she nailed the targets, even as she heard the report of her sister’s rifle doing the very same. She became lost to them, her motions a symmetry and reflection of her intense desire to meet this challenge…to win. One after the other, distance after distance, and the targets fell by the wayside, impaled with her
ya
, decimated by her sister’s bullet.

She finished a mere fraction of a second before her sister, and her victory was potent. She turned her face to the sky and shouted her victory. “
Watashi ga katta!
” I have won.

“No need to rub it in,” Bullet grumbled at her side. “I have never understood how you always manage to win when my bullet travels faster than your arrows.”

“I want it more,” Arrow answered. And it was the truth. “And I run faster.”

Bullet inclined her head. “Perhaps.”

They walked back to their starting point and Bullet kneeled before Arrow. “We challenged for truth. What I have is yours,” she said solemnly.

Arrow nodded. She knew the men who had watched them crowded around. The brush of their gazes bothered her. Their closeness made her skin crawl.

“You bartered truth, Bullet. There was no need to barter that which has always been shared among sisters,” Arrow said quietly.

Bullet’s head rose, her gaze piercing Arrow with its intensity. “You knew you’d win.”

Arrow nodded. Bullet was broken. Her heart had been overtaken by love and while her duty remained absolute, she was not as she’d been before Rand Beckett. And that was okay, because she had three sisters who would give their lives to protect her.

Arrow kneeled in front of Bullet who remained on her knees. She pulled her bow from her shoulders, kissed it, pressed it to her forehead and held it before Bullet.

“No, Arrow,” Bullet whispered. “I cannot.”

Arrow pressed the longbow into Bullet’s hands and covered those hands with her own. “I crafted it with you in my heart. I made it with intent and I would gift you with the piece of me housed within it.”

Bullet stared at Arrow and Arrow knew everything was as it should be. She was death but she could recognize the softer emotions. She was soulless but her heart realized Bullet was a part of her.

Bullet raised the bow to her forehead, touched it and lowered it reverently. “It is my most prized possession.”

Arrow snorted. “I think not, sister. Perhaps that honor belongs to your Mr. Beckett’s heart?”

Bullet smiled and it was the very first, genuine smile Arrow had ever seen on her sister’s face. She allowed her mouth to lift in response and then she stood.

The fury of their challenge left her with excess energy to expend. “I would train now.”

She spoke to no one in particular and refused to meet the gazes of the men who watched her. Arrow wondered if Adam Collins watched as she and Bullet challenged, but then she squelched the thought.

It did not matter. Adam Collins could not matter. She walked back to the house and made her way to the workout room. She hoped there was another Wing Chun dummy. She had a vicious need to beat the wood senseless.

Her primary target wasn’t an option.

•●•

“Goddamn,” Adam whispered as he sank into a chair in the library.

Rand headed for the bar and poured two drinks, handing one to Adam before he took the seat opposite him. “Yeah…that.”

There were no words to describe what they’d just witnessed. The bond between the women was solid, formed in the fires of hell, and they were each a part of the other. He took a drink of the brandy and winced as it burned all the way to his gut. His hand tightened on the glass and he wished it was her hair.

They’d put on a display unlike any he’d ever seen. Arrow actually hit both targets at twelve hundred yards. Almost a half mile away, and she’d hit them dead center and with such speed he’d barely been able to follow her movements.

That she’d beat her sister, who’d been shooting a fucking rifle, was amazing. That she’d then gifted the loser with a prize had been beautiful to witness. When she’d kneeled, his heart dropped.

Then her words had done something to him he’d never expected. They’d made her human. The slide he’d been taking toward her accelerated and he’d felt the freefall, reveled in it, until he remembered she was the enemy. She was a killer.

“I wonder if I looked like that?” Rand asked into the silence.

Adam glanced at him. “Like what?”

“Lost.”

Adam didn’t bother denying he knew what Rand was talking about. “You actually wore, hell, you
continue
to wear, a perpetual scowl. I believe I would label it fear.”

Rand grunted and took a long pull of his glass. “Fuck you.”

“I’ll pass.”

Rand grunted again and footsteps sounded at the entrance of the library. Adam didn’t need to turn to see who it was. She’d let them hear her and Rand’s face gave her away. Bullet.