She’s Got Range

A Sapphic Romance — by Aurora North

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📖 Book Details

Pairing: FF · Sapphic
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Length: ~102,000 words
Distribution: Wide
Series: Hollow Point #1

💋 Tropes

Age Gap · Touch-Her-To-Teach-Her · Stoic × Troublemaker · Slow Burn · Repressed Sapphic Awakening · Praise Kink · Power Exchange · Touch Starved · Forced Proximity · Hurt/Comfort · Found Family

Elena Voss has three rules: stay still, stay sharp, stay in control. Skye Navarro has one: get under her skin.

Elena Voss runs the most exclusive private shooting range on the Olympic Peninsula. Former Marine. Designated marksman. The kind of woman who has built her entire adult life on one principle: slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and I do not have involuntary motion. The principle has held for fifteen years.

Then Skye Navarro walks through her front door.

Master-class USPSA shooter. Twenty-eight. Recently dropped by her sponsor after a viral mic-drop at a national match. Looking for a private range to rebuild her career — and a teacher who can see what no one else has.

What starts as a six-week technical refinement plan becomes the longest, slowest, most precisely engineered seduction either of them has ever survived. A hand at a hip. A hand on a sternum. A breath cycle counted in fours. A calendar negotiated on a front step at six-fifteen on a Friday evening in late April. And the one woman Elena trained herself never to want — turning out to be the only one she can’t take her hand off of on the count.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Find the rhythm.

You’ll love this if you enjoy:

• ✓ Stoic, controlled MC × bold, troublemaker MC
• ✓ Age gap with a younger top who knows exactly what she’s doing
• ✓ Touch-her-to-teach-her stance corrections that go on for two months
• ✓ Praise kink and the working-voice “good”
• ✓ Slow burn that earns every page of the payoff
• ✓ A repressed sapphic awakening at thirty-six, in her own building, on her own clock
• ✓ Power exchange that switches who’s in control by the room
• ✓ Found family, queer community, and a butch range manager who calls the shots
• ✓ HEA with a wedding, a New Year’s Eve at the cabin, and a future you can feel landing

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Read the Bonus Chapter 🔥

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.

Chapter One

Elena

The range came alive before the sun did.

Not the lights — those stayed low at this hour, recessed cans throwing soft amber over the front desk and the long polished concrete corridor that ran back toward the bays. Not the fans, either; the HVAC ran twenty-four hours, a low hum I’d stopped hearing my second week in this building. What came alive first was the smell. Hoppe’s No. 9. Brass. Coffee. The faint mineral chill of the safe room when I keyed it open at five-fifteen and pulled the morning’s pistols out one at a time.

I worked alone. That was the only way to start the day.

Six pistols on the long oak table in the back office. A roll of shop towels. A jar of solvent. The bore snake. The microfiber. The old Marine Corps habit, twenty years deep, of laying everything out left-to-right in the order I’d use it.

The first pistol was mine.

A SIG P320, plain Jane, slide already locked back. I ran the bore snake through three times — cleaner than it needed to be, but I cleaned it anyway. Wiped the rails. Ran the rag down the slide and held it up to the desk lamp and turned it under the light, because there was a particular shade of gun-clean my hands knew before my eyes did. Today the slide was that shade.

I set it down.

Outside the window behind me, the cedars were doing what cedars do in October on the Olympic Peninsula. Standing very still in the dark. Dripping. Waiting for it to be light enough to be called a forest again.

I did the next pistol. A member’s Glock 19 he’d left for inspection. Then the Staccato. Then the two house guns we kept for women’s defense classes. By the time the sky outside had gone from black to slate, I had every pistol on the table broken down, cleaned, reassembled, function-checked, and back in the safe.

It was six-oh-four when I poured my coffee.

This was the part of the day I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Voss Precision, before opening, was the closest thing I had to a chapel. The ceilings in the main corridor went up to fifteen feet, exposed beams of cedar I’d milled myself from a windfall on the back of the property. The walls were warm gray concrete. The lanes — eight indoor, three outdoor, one fifty-yard rifle bay we’d opened last spring — sat behind heavy soundproofed doors that closed with the satisfying thunk of a vault.

Above the front desk, in a clean black frame, was the only piece of decoration I’d allowed myself when the place was being built: four words, white on black, no flourish.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

I sat at the desk with my coffee and watched the parking lot light up gradually, gravel turning silver as the security floods came on automatic.

Mara had said it first. Not the saying — the saying was Marine Corps, older than either of us. But she’d said it to me, the first day we trained together, when I was still hesitating on transitions because I was afraid of being wrong. Voss. Stop looking at the target like it’s going to grade you. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Find the rhythm.

I drank my coffee.

The first car of the day was Mari’s truck — a gray Tacoma with a Cedar Hollow Pride decal in the back window and a kayak rack on top. She pulled in at six-twenty, like she did every Tuesday and Thursday, and walked through the front door at six-twenty-two carrying two croissants in a paper bag and a coffee that wasn’t for her.

“Tell me you’ve eaten,” she said.

“Coffee.”

“Not eaten.”

“Mari.”

“Voss.” She set the bag on the desk. “If you fall over and die from low blood sugar, my entire life gets worse, and I’m telling you that selfishly. Eat the croissant.”

I ate the croissant.

Mari leaned a hip on the desk and watched me chew with the satisfied attention of a woman who’d raised three brothers and a wife. She was forty-two, five-foot-five, butch in a way that read more carpenter than cop, hair cut into a clean fade. She’d been my range manager for three years and my friend for five. Her wife Tess made the croissants, which was the only reason I kept eating them. They were obscene. There was butter in them like a personal attack.

“Schedule,” she said, sliding a tablet across to me.

“I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen a version. Holly redid it. The new orientations got bumped to nine instead of ten because Wyatt’s class is at eleven and we needed the bay turnover. Fine?”

“Fine.”

“And you’ve got two new members in for the orientation cycle this morning, plus three more throughout the week. Holly’s running orientation. You’re not on it.”

“I’m always on orientation.”

“You’re on one orientation a week, Voss. Holly’s been certified for six months. Let her cook.”

I swallowed the last of the croissant and reached for the tablet.

The list was clean. Two new members today. Five for the week. Mari had highlighted the names and ages and referral chains the way she always did — Mari ran member vetting like a state department, and I trusted her instincts more than I trusted my own on the hospitality side of the business. She knew who was going to fit and who wasn’t. She’d told me to turn down a sitting state senator last year because the man’s eyes had snagged on Holly’s chest in a way Mari didn’t like, and I’d turned him down without asking a second question. Word had gotten around. The waitlist had gotten longer.

I scrolled.

Daniel Park, 47, referral from Ridge.

Susan Aoki, 51, referral from the women’s defense intake.

Two more for Wednesday. Two for Friday.

I scrolled back up.

There was a name in the Friday slot I’d missed.

Navarro, Skye. 28. Referral: USPSA — internal.

I read it again.

I read it a third time.

I set the tablet down.

“Mari.”

“Mm?”

“This Navarro on Friday.”

“Yeah?”

I looked up.

Mari was watching me with the specific squint she got when she was about to be a pain in my ass. “Oh, do you know that name.”

“Skye Navarro.”

“Yes, El. Skye Navarro.”

“USPSA Production. Top twenty national, twenty-three season.”

“Twenty-four, actually.” Mari sipped my coffee, which she had stolen at some point, and set it back down with a clink. “Top fifteen. Sponsored by Atlas until the spring. There was a thing at a match. She said something on a hot mic. Atlas dropped her. She fell off the circuit for like six months and then surfaced up here. Apparently she’s gunsmithing part-time at Halverson’s place in Seattle and looking to start training again. She put us as her first choice. Wrote a whole letter in the application. Holly almost cried; it was very polite.”

“And we approved her.”

“I approved her. Yesterday. You signed the batch.”

I didn’t remember signing it. Which was the kind of thing I didn’t say out loud, because I always remembered signing things. I’d signed it. I’d just been thinking about something else and the name hadn’t registered.

It was registering now.

Mari’s eyes were on me, friendly and very, very interested.

“What,” I said.

“Nothing.”

“Mari.”

“Nothing!” She held up a hand. “I just think it’s interesting that the name Skye Navarro makes you put a tablet down.”

“I follow the circuit.”

“Mhm.”

“It’s relevant to my job.”

“Mhm.”

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say a thing, Voss.” She pushed off the desk and turned toward the front of the office, croissant bag in hand, tossing the second one in my general direction without looking. “I’m setting up the bays. The schedule’s on your tablet. Try not to stare at the name for too long. It’s weird.”

“Mari.”

“Love you. Eat the second croissant.”

She was gone.

I stared at the tablet.

Skye Navarro.

I pulled up a browser and typed the name.

I knew most of what came up. I’d watched her shoot. Twice. Once in person, a USPSA Area One match in Bellingham two years ago where I’d been there to spot for a friend, and once on a livestream — she’d been on Stage Four at Nationals, a clean run, smooth transitions, draw under a second flat. I remembered her draw because it had been the kind of draw that people talked about on shooting forums for a week afterward.

I remembered her face because — well.

I remembered it.

Now there were a hundred new images. A hundred new clips. I scrolled past the old ones — match photos, sponsor shots, an Instagram grid I did not click on — until I found the one I was looking for. I’d heard about it in passing and not paid attention because I didn’t pay attention to drama.

I paid attention now.

The clip was eleven seconds long. Outdoor stage. Skye in a black competition shirt, braid down her back, ear pro pushed up onto her forehead like she’d just finished her run. A man’s voice off-camera saying something I couldn’t make out. Her face going through three expressions in about a second and a half — surprise, recognition, and then something that wasn’t anger but was harder than anger. Then her voice, very clearly:

“Coach. With all the love I have left for you, which is none — eat shit.”

She walked off frame.

The video had three million views.

I closed the browser.

The sky had gone from slate to the milky pre-dawn gray that meant the day was going to be one of those October days where it never quite became day, just stayed in some intermediate state until dark came back. I liked those days. There was nothing to look at. The work was the work.

I leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling.

Skye Navarro had applied to my range.

Not Tacoma’s range. Not Halverson’s range, which was where she worked. Not the dozen ranges between Seattle and here that she could’ve had her pick of with that résumé and that name. Mine. A private range four hours and a ferry from her job, in a town of seven thousand people, on the edge of a national forest.

I knew why.

I knew because in the world of competitive shooters, my name meant a particular thing. It meant I’d been one of the best designated marksmen in the Corps and I taught now and I taught quietly and I didn’t take social-media-famous students and I didn’t run the ego mill that ate young shooters alive.

If you were Skye Navarro — twenty-eight years old, formerly sponsored, publicly burned, trying to come back without setting off another fire — Voss Precision would be exactly the place you’d choose.

It was the smart move.

That should’ve been the end of the thought.

It wasn’t the end of the thought.

I closed my eyes and counted my breath the way I’d taught myself to count it years ago, when counting my breath had been the only thing standing between me and certain very specific memories. Four in. Hold. Six out. The rhythm worked. It always worked.

When I opened my eyes the office was the office and the tablet was the tablet and the second croissant was sitting in its paper bag at the corner of my desk going cold.

Friday.

I put the tablet face-down.

I got up and walked the length of the corridor to the bays. The lights were on now, soft white instead of amber, and the cleaner smell I’d been imagining was real — Holly had run the first wipe-down before Mari got here. Bay One was open. I stepped inside.

Concrete floor. Target tracks running back to fifty feet. The brass-catcher set into the floor and the heavy black lane dividers and the soft acoustic foam on the ceiling that ate every echo. The smell of yesterday’s powder, faint, ghosting in the walls.

I stood for a minute and let the bay be the bay.

This room had been the first thing in this building I’d built from nothing. I’d designed it myself. I’d argued with two contractors about the lighting and I’d been right and they’d had to redo it. The lane I was standing in was twenty-five feet, the lane I shot in most days, and I could’ve walked it blindfolded.

I imagined someone behind me.

Not anyone in particular. Someone tall enough that her shoulder would brush mine when I drew. Someone who held still well. Someone whose breath I would have to be aware of in order to not be aware of, the way you become aware of the second hand of a clock in a quiet room.

I cut the thought off cleanly.

It went.

But it left a mark, the way a thought like that always did when it had no business being there in the first place — a faint, unwelcome warmth low in my stomach, like a coal I’d thought was out and wasn’t. I’d lived with that coal for a long time. I knew what it was. I knew what it cost to act on it. I knew, with the kind of knowing that wasn’t theory, what happened when I let myself want a thing without first making sure I could afford to lose it.

Mara.

The name came up the way it always did. Unbidden. Unwelcome. With it, the smell of dust and the particular weight of the rifle stock against my cheek and the four-tenths-of-a-second of hesitation that — even now, fifteen years later — I could still feel inside my body like a sound caught between two heartbeats.

I let the thought have its three seconds.

Then I let it go.

I had a range to run.

I walked back up the corridor. Mari was at the front desk, talking to Holly, who’d come in while I was in the bay. Holly was twenty-six, tall, soft, brand-new to the job and absolutely terrible at concealing anything she felt about anyone in real time, which was why she ran orientations — clients adored her on sight, and she could still do the safety talk in her sleep. She looked up when I came around the corner.

“Boss.”

“Holly.”

“Mari said you wanted me running the orientations this week, and I just want to say I will not let you down, I have been practicing, I know the four rules better than I know my own —”

“Holly.”

“Yes.”

“Breathe.”

“Breathing.”

Mari coughed into her fist.

“Friday’s orientation,” I said.

“Yes! I have it.”

“I’ll take Friday.”

A small silence.

“Oh,” said Holly, with the brave, brittle cheer of a person whose feelings had just been hurt. “Sure. That makes sense, she’s a — she’s a really high-profile member and — yeah. Of course. I — yeah.”

“You’ll do the rest of the week,” I said. “I’ll do Friday.”

“Got it.”

“Holly.”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to be fantastic at the rest of the week.”

“Thank you.”

“Mari, the schedule.”

“Got it.” Mari was smiling at her tablet in a way I did not like. “I’ll move you onto Friday. Easy.”

I went back into the office.

I closed the door.

I sat down at the desk.

I picked up the second croissant and ate it without tasting it.

Then I put the tablet face-up again and I looked, for a long, slow minute, at the name that was about to walk into my building in three days.

Navarro, Skye. 28. Referral: USPSA — internal.

The cursor blinked next to her name. Outside the window, the cedars dripped. Somewhere down the hall, a bay door opened and closed and I heard the muffled metal clack of a slide being racked, somebody on the early-bird pass running a function check. The world was the world. The day was the day.

I opened her file.

I read it slowly.

Skye Joelle Navarro. Age 28. Tacoma, WA — current address Cedar Hollow. Five-foot-seven. Right-handed. USPSA classification: Master, Production Division. Three years sponsored by Atlas Tactical, contract terminated April 2025. Currently apprenticing at Halverson Custom Firearms.

Reason for joining Voss Precision (applicant statement): “Because you don’t waste anyone’s time, and I’ve wasted enough of mine.”

I read the last sentence twice.

Then I closed the file.

Then I set the tablet down very carefully, as if it might go off.

Outside, the cedars dripped.

It was six-forty-three in the morning on a Tuesday in October, three days before Skye Navarro was going to walk through my front door, and I was already, in some quiet country-mile-deep part of myself, in trouble.

I got up. I poured another coffee. I went to work.

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