“Bear claw,” I said, voice low. “Want proof?”
I held up my left arm, the scars stark in the sunlight, then lifted the hem of my shirt. Another set of ragged marks slashed across my chest, older but no less brutal.
Her eyes widened, just for a second, then she blinked. Once. Twice. Like she’d seen a ghost.
She took a step back, her composure slipping. “You can’t have a horse on the beach,” she said again, quieter this time. “Not this one.”
I nodded, tipping my head. “Thanks for the tip.”
I nudged Flapjack forward, not caring if the cops showed. I could handle them. Play dumb, flash some credentials, mention the kind of work I did.
But it didn’t come to that. She didn’t call anyone. She just stood there, watching me ride on, her eyes burning a hole in my back.
I kept going, Flapjack’s stride steady, the ocean roaring to my left. But my mind wasn’t on the beach anymore. It was on her. That look in her eyes—part spark, part fear, part something I couldn’t name. It stuck with me, like a splinter I couldn’t pull. I’d sworn off women, maybe for good, after too many years of scars—literal and otherwise.
But something about her, about that moment, made me want to know what she’d seen when she looked at me. What had made her back away. What had made her blink.
The wind picked up, tugging at my shirt, and Flapjack snorted, tossing his head. I patted his neck again, grounding myself.
“Easy, buddy,” I said, voice low. “We’ll figure it out.”
But I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the beach, the meeting at Dominion Hall, or the woman who’d just burned herself into my head.
3
NATALIE
Isaw the horse first.
At Isle of Palms, you learn to categorize shapes out of the corner of your eye—umbrellas, coolers, toddlers with plastic shovels, teenage boys who pretend not to notice the tide grabbing their ankles. A draft horse doesn’t belong in that catalog. He was too big, too black, too … calm. He moved like a ship, not a beach toy, shoulders rolling, hooves sinking deep and steady as if the beach had been poured to carry him.
Then I saw the rider.
He didn’t belong either.
He was a head taller than every man around him—even seated. His mass was poured into a T-shirt that didn’t have anything to prove. Quiet, contained, the kind of size that didn’t preen because it didn’t have to. The wind tugged his shirt just enough to flash dog tags, and under them—something curved and dark, strung on a leather cord. A claw. Not the neat little hook you’d buy at a tourist stand. Bigger. Thicker. Predatory.
“Hey,” Owen said beside me under his breath, half laugh, half warning. “That’s new.”
“You can’t have a horse on the beach,” I said, already moving.
I was halfway across the packed sand before I registered that my hands had gone hot. My pulse ticked under my throat like I’d sprinted, but I hadn’t. It was something else. Heat under my skin, low and insistent, ridiculous given the salt sticking to my calves and the grit in my boots. Earlier, I’d had an orgasm with a toy that felt like a DMV clerk. Now my body lit up because a stranger rode onto my beach like a ruinous fairy tale.
He reined to a stop when I stepped in, not because I scared him but because he made choices, and stopping was one.
The horse dropped his head, dark eyes flicking over me with … curiosity. The man’s gaze did the same. I felt it. Not a leer. An inventory. A calm, clinical sweep that still somehow set off sparks under my skin like a match struck on wet stone.
“You can’t have a horse on the beach,” I repeated.
He tipped his chin, the smallest acknowledgment. “Didn’t know,” he said. The voice was low and steady, a mountain road. “Thought it was a public beach.”
“It is. For humans.” My tone came out sharper than I’d planned. I was aware of my badge clipped to my belt, the salt in my hair, the way the wind was trying to make a mess of the ponytail I’d made mean on purpose. “Not horses.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile, but something that suggested he remembered how. “Don’t go anywhere without my best friend.”
He patted the horse’s neck, and the animal leaned into it. Something pinched in my chest so fast I told myself it was the wind.
“You new in town?” I asked. I couldn’t pin what unsettled me more—the size, the quiet, or the way both looked like discipline instead of ego.
