My hands were sweating, so I had to wipe them a couple of times on my jeans before I reached up and let him put the heavy gun into my hand. “Oh God,” I whimpered.

His hands closed over mine, holding them tightly. “Remember the safety button, and whenever you’re ready, go.”

I took a couple of deep breaths to try and steady my nerves. When I realised that it wasn’t going to get any better, I flicked the safety off, aiming for the target and shot all six bullets in steady succession. It actually wasn’t as bad as I had expected it to be. The whole dream thing must have distorted it in my head. Deep down though, I knew that having Ashton there was the key, he was the only thing keeping me together.

Wordlessly, he took the gun and changed the cartridge for me. The whole time, his arms were around me securely. After shooting another six rounds, I finally put the gun onto the counter and breathed a sigh of relief. Ashton turned me around and hugged me tightly, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m so proud of you. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it when we were at the car,” he congratulated.

I smiled back. “Neither did I.”

“Let’s see your skills.” He pressed the button, calling in my sheet. I smiled, not actually that bothered where my shots had gone, I was just happy to have overcome my fear and not crumbled under the pressure of it. As it turns out though, I’d done pretty well considering my hands were shaking. Almost half of my shots were within the outline of the body.

“Are you gonna have a go?” I asked, eyeing the gun cautiously. It was weird but I wanted to see him in action. The couple of times that I’d seen him with a gun he’d looked menacing, yet sexy in a weird way.

He shook his head. “Nah, it’s okay,” he replied, shrugging.

I wasn’t expecting the disappointment that settled over me. “Oh come on, I haven’t seen you shoot yet.”

His head cocked to the side, regarding me curiously before he finally nodded. “You,” he pointed to me, “there,” he continued, pointing to the side of the booth where we were standing.

I grinned at his order and did a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”

He laughed and walked over to me, taking my ear defenders and putting them back on for me before trailing his fingers across my cheek softly. “Don’t move.”

I gulped and nodded in agreement as he walked back to the counter, sending off a fresh target off into the distance. He didn’t stop it at the point I had mine at; instead, he sent it all the way back to the other wall, a solid sixty feet away.

The way he stood was sexy as hell: one leg back, knees a little bent, slightly turned to the side and arms out front. I could just imagine him standing like that in his uniform that I’d seen in that photo. Talk about mouth-watering, I mused.

I saw him glance at me from the corner of his eye before he picked up the gun, aimed and squeezed off six shots, changed the cartridge and then shot the other six, all in the space of about fifteen seconds.

My mouth popped open in shock because it had all happened so fast. He turned back to me and laughed. I was vaguely aware that my eyes were wide and that my mouth was hanging open in awe of what I’d just seen. I’d actually never seen anything so sexy in my life.

He put the gun down and motioned me over to him. “Go on then, pull it in.” He nodded at the recall button.

I pressed it and we waited while the paper made its way all the way back to us. When it stopped, I was a little lost for words. Every single shot that he’d made was on point. In fact, he had made two little groups of shots, one on the centre of the chest and the other in the centre of the head. He had grouped the shots so closely that it actually looked like two large holes instead of twelve little ones.

“Holy shit, that was incredible,” I gushed, still looking down at the paper in awe.

He shrugged as if it were nothing. “You forgot I was a badass?”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “How did you even do that so fast?”

“Practice, lots of practice,” he winced as he spoke, probably at the memory of being made to shoot continuously or something, like when he’d told me about having to swim all night as punishment for pulling a prank.

The training academy that he went to sounded like torture; I had no idea why he’d liked it there so much. “And you can honestly say that you enjoyed your training?” I asked incredulously.

He nodded, putting all of the guns and equipment back into the box. “Yep, best time of my life,” he confirmed. “Well, up until that point anyway.”

I raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Up until that point?”

“Yeah. You’re the best time of my life now,” he replied, closing his hand over mine and walking off to the reception without waiting for me to answer.

A blush crept over my face as I bit my lip, fighting a smile. My heart was crashing against my ribs because of how sweet that comment was. I knew he was only joking around, as usual, but for some reason his comment made my skin prickle with excitement.

The days passed quickly. Ashton and I were growing closer and closer the more time we spent together. I was just so comfortable with him now that I didn’t even pay attention to how close he was to me. The pretending to be a couple charade seemed to be getting easier and easier, and I actually couldn’t seem to get through the day without a few of his hugs. His arms were comforting to me in a way that I never expected.

Since that night when I thought he’d left, Ashton and I had shared a bed a couple of times. Of course, we had the swanky new sofa bed in my room, but that night after going shooting, I hadn’t wanted to be alone so I’d snuck over into the sofa bed with him, just needing to be comforted. The next night I just asked him to sleep in with me because I was actually becoming addicted to that safe, contented feeling that I got whenever his arms were around me. I slept so much better when he was snoring in my ear. Luckily, I’d managed to contain my slutty side that liked being in his arms way too much.