When I got there, there were no guards outside. All around were telltale remains of splattered paint everywhere. The guards had all been taken out. That’s when I knew we were probably screwed out of this piece of the map. Nevertheless, I decided to check inside just to be sure.

When I rounded the corner and peered into the darkness, I saw a vague movement and heard a gasp from the corner of the shack. And then the most gut-wrenching, earth-shattering pain exploded from my balls. I doubled over, gasping for breath and almost dropped my weapon. I’d been ambushed by the enemy on my own territory and it had been a low, low blow.

It was a nut shot and I was about to pay a terrible price for refusing to wear a cup for paintball.

“Fuck!” I screeched at least an octave higher than my normal voice as I crumpled to my knees, struggling through waves of pain to hold the gun and take aim on my attacker.

“Don’t shoot!” came a familiar voice out of the shadows. She dropped her gun and got up to pull me inside with her. “I’m sorry. I thought you were another Blizzard person.”

Emilia.

“I can’t believe you just shot me in the balls,” I ground out between clenched teeth to keep from crying like a little boy. I probably sounded a lot like a little boy at that point. She must have been really pissed about those flirty interns.

More likely, she had just aimed and shot without knowing who I was or without even waiting. I assumed she must have been here during the ambush that had taken the guards.

“The map,” I choked out, fighting the waves of pain still spasming out from my crotch. Fuck it hurt.

“Adam, I’m so sorry,” she said, reaching up to take off her mask—a big paintball no-no.

“Don’t ever take off your mask,” I breathed, sitting down gingerly next to her. “Or someone will do to your eye what you just did to my nards.”

“I still have the map piece, but it was close. They ambushed us and I holed up in here and held them off. But I think they’ll be back.”

“Well, thanks to your not-so-friendly fire, our team is now without a general.”

“I’m a medic. I can heal you.” She was a medic. Of course she was. She reached into a belt pack and pulled out a red streamer, which she tied around my left arm—a sign that I had been wounded and then healed by a medic. Only medics carried the red streamers and were allowed to use them. They only had a certain number of them and a person could only be “healed” once.

“Still not going to help my balls you just shot up. Jesus, I know you’re mad at me, but fuck.” It still hurt like hell and so I was going to bitch at her about it. Why not? Might as well get some mileage out of it.

“I can go to the health station and get you an icepack—” she said, standing up.

I grabbed her arm to keep her there. “No, someone will shoot you and then we’ll be out a medic and a map piece. Besides, do you actually think I’m going to sit here with an icepack on my nuts? Jordan and Heath would never let me hear the end of it.”

She sat down beside me with a huff. “I don’t suppose I can do anything to help?”

I couldn’t resist. “Kiss them better?”

She picked up her gun.

“Fuck, don’t shoot them again. I was just kidding.”

“No. Someone’s got to cover us. They’ll probably come back if they figure out I’m still here.”

“Where is it?”

“I stuffed it in my bra.”

I made a grab for her chest. “Let me see.”

She slapped my hand away. “Don’t give me a reason to dish out another nut shot.”

I grinned at her and rested my head back on the wall behind me, letting out another groan. It was just sore, now that the majority of the initial bone-wracking agony had faded.

“I’m not, you know,” she said. I looked at her, waiting for her to continue. “I’m not mad at you,” she clarified.

“Really. You shot my junk for fun?”

She laughed. “You know full well I didn’t know it was you.”

“I thought you were pissed about the interns,” I blurted. Hell, if she wasn’t going to bring it up, I would. I wanted to know what had been going through her mind when those girls had clustered together and wanted me to put lotion on them.

“What about the interns?” she sidestepped.

“Oh, I dunno, something about rubbing them up with lotion.”

“You missed a great opportunity there. A couple of them are really pretty.”