Bloodlust | lrh

17. Get out

"Shoot faster." Luke instructs the shockingly talented girl. He's taken her back to the training facility for the third day in a row.

The guys have already been briefed on the plan for raiding Skylar's safe house, so his main focus is on getting Soka ready. He caved after she passed his sniper rifle test.

"I need to aim though." Soka contests, giving the boy a confused look. She doesn't understand how she's supposed to be accurate if he wants her to just shoot nonstop.

"You have the aim of a marksman I think you can figure out how to hit a target faster." Luke brushes off her comment. He wants to push her, even if she doesn't think she can pull it off.

Soka lifts the gun and pulls the trigger as fast as she can. The bullet hits one of the outer circles. She throws the gun onto the counter and groans, now frustrated that she's not excelling at this part.

"This is ridiculous." She mumbles.

"It's not ridiculous. You wanted to come with us and if you're going to be cover you need to be able to pull the trigger before someone else does it first." Luke says, now irritated himself. He regrets agreeing to this.

"I'll have time to aim a little longer than two seconds." She protests, flailing her arms in annoyance.

"Do you want to see one of us get shot through the scope? You have to be faster." He raises his voice at her.

"Show me how to be faster then!" She raises her voice back, her annoyance turning into straight up anger.

Luke glares at her and grabs the gun off the counter. He gets three shots off before she can even blink. When he slams the gun back on the counter the girl sees three new holes right in the center of the target.

"Keep shooting." He says, eyeing the girl. She picks the gun back up and takes a deep breath before aiming, her body slowly recovering from how flustered that sight made her.

She's competitive, she always has been. If Luke can do it, she needs to do it better. She lifts the gun and fires three times like he just did. A smirk appears on her face when she sees there's barely any paper left in the center circle.

"When you stop complaining you make progress." Luke says sarcastically. He watches her put the gun down, the recently familiar feeling of his pants getting tighter creeping in again.

"I wasn't complaining." She mumbles. He takes a step closer to her and sees her shift uncomfortably.

"Then what do you call whining about it being impossible?" He asks, his head dipping down to look at the girl as she stares at anything but him.

"I need a break." Soka hurries away from the boy before she makes a fool out of herself. She could feel her stomach knotting up, and as soon as she steps away it starts to go away.

Luke watches her leave with a smirk. He basks in the glory of being able to rile her up so easily. All it takes is a simple stare and standing within a couple feet of the girl and she gets flustered.

***

The whole house sits in the living room one last time before the raid. It's the morning before, and they're all sleeping during the day so they can hit them that night. Luke's gathered them to go over it all one more time.

"I want to draw them out now that we have Soka." Luke explains, the plan changing significantly since the last time they discussed it. "Ashton, Calum, hang back outside. I want to gas them, draw out as many as we can. Intel says there are at least ten guys. Mike and I will mask up and go get the rest."

"How am I supposed to cover you if you're inside?" Soka asks.

"You're not covering us. You're covering them." Luke says, pointing to Ashton and Calum. She nods, even though she gets a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.