Above the Law

Chapter Seven

After the kiss shared between the two, Parker Yates had thought of nothing else. Whenever he was off duty, he would find himself coming back to the run down house and watching her window from his Toyota across the street, his gun sitting in the seat beside him, wondering when he'd use it. He knew he was coming back because of the way her lips moved against his and the way her hair smelt like coconut and not the other reason.

And he told himself that was okay. He told himself it was normal that he'd find himself walking Bear down her street even if he lived twenty minutes away. He wasn't ready to go through with the plan yet.

Yes, he wanted her desperately. He just didn't know when to use his gun.

Welts and bruises. Eden was covered in them. But shame didn't follow the appearance of these marks, not this time. Pride did. Eden and the man in the mask had been training constantly for a month and a half. He'd upped the number of sessions to four days a week at her request. She wanted to get better, faster. But mostly, she wanted to move on to leaning how to handle weapons. She wanted to be able to hurt people who hurt her; she wanted to be on offense, not defense.

She looked around the cold, dark room. It was dull; concrete floors, white walls. There were mats on the floor for training and a punching bag, though he hadn't showed her how to throw a "proper" punch yet.

"Can't we do something more... practical?" she asked after she took a long drink from her water bottle and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

He smiled and stalked over to her, the whites of his eyes shining wickedly. "Like what?"

Her breathing faltered. She didn't like when he looked at her like that. She hated not being able to see his whole face. She didn't like how rough he purposely made his voice. It made him sound... brutal. "Offense," she said quietly. She cleared her throat and tried again, more loudly this time, "I want to learn how to shoot a gun."

The man in the mask wanted to protect her, but he wanted her to be able to protect herself. And he knew that's what she wanted too. She didn't want to be a damsel in distress; she wanted to be a warrior. And, God, that made her all the more alluring.

But she wasn't ready yet, not for the guns and knives, the blood and the scars. He wanted to kiss her skin at least once before it became covered in the scars he would put there.

"We're not doing that yet."

"Why not?" Eden asked, arms folding over her chest. "What if I want to buy a pistol? I should learn how to shoot one."

"For starters, guns are easily traced back to their owners. The barrels of guns leave specific marks on bullets. And second, you can't legally own one. You have to be twenty-one."

"Okay—correct me if I'm wrong—but you can't legally murder people." She was smiling playfully, her eyes uncharacteristically bright.

"Legally," he repeated softly.

They both laughed, an awkward, short, breathy type of laugh. He walked away.

Eden looked down at her hands, hiding the smile on her lips. She liked him; he was easy to be around. Maybe because he didn't know her, or maybe because he knew more about her than anyone, but she liked his company. Why didn't that drawn red flags in her mind?

"Come here," he said.

She did.

He handed her a zip tie. "Tighten this on my wrists." He held his wrists out in front of himself and waited, eyes boring into hers. She fumbled as she tightened them around his large wrists, then looked up with those large, sad eyes. "This is practical. We haven't covered all the basics. Odds are a kidnapper wouldn't put the zip ties in front of you, but on the off chance they do, you should be prepared. Now you want to line up the hard plastic piece that connects the two together with the spot between your wrists." He hunched over and brought his teeth down to the zip tie and dragged it until it lined up where he wanted it. "See? Now you want it as tight as it can go." He bit down on the long, white part of the zip tie and tugged until it looked like his circulation was being cut off and the clicking lessened.