Tom hesitated. “Not like Bennett would. But if she thought there was no other way to keep shifters safe long-term? I think she might.”
Bryce let out a breath, almost a growl. “Hell. So you’re telling me, Jesse’s going to be co-opted to support someone’s agenda? That they’ll claim his support for something he might not believe in, make him the face of their campaign?”
“You didn’t hear this from me,” Tom said. “But if Jesse feels that’s what’s happening, that he’s being misrepresented, he needs to get out there early, hit the broadcast media. Get his views on record.”
He shouldn’t undermine Steadman like this, but, although she cared, she was a strategist. She played the board. Jesse wasn’t a person to her—he was a lever to use.
Tom shoved his hands into his pockets. “He deserves better than to be used as anyone’s token.”
When Bryce turned to look at him, something close to admiration showed in his face.
And for an instant, Tom wondered. Had he been seduced from his path by wanting Bryce’s approval? By wantingsomething more than his approval, because the way that man looked in a pair of blue jeans did something to Tom. He didn’t think Bryce had deliberately set out to compromise him, but somehow, the time he’d spent with this pack had swayed him emotionally.
But then, he thought about it some more as he leaned against the rails of the corral and looked out at the view. The essence of working on the Hill was compromise. The fact that this compromise was personal made him no different from every other person in the place. The only difference was this was the first time he’d let his standards waver.
As he looked at Bryce, who was shading his eyes, slight wrinkles showing at the corners as he gazed against the sun, looking like he belonged on this land, he thought that putting Jesse first didn’t feel like a compromise. It felt like the right thing to do.
BRYCE
As they rounded the back of the barn, the sharp tang of freshly sawn pine reached them, along with the thud of wood on wood. Bryce squinted against the sun and spotted Colby loading a length of lumber into the trailer hitched to the ATV. Sweat darkened the back of his t-shirt.
Shit. It didn’t matter how often Bryce told him, Colby still thought he had to earn his place in the pack.
“Hey,” he called, “you trying to earn overtime or something?”
Colby whipped around, startled, before relaxing when he saw them. “Didn’t seem right to leave it.”
Bryce wandered over, keeping his voice quiet so that only Colby would catch his words. “You know you don’t have to prove anything to anyone, right?”
Colby’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he bent and picked up another beam.
Bryce let it go. Pushing wouldn’t help, not when trying harder was how Colby kept himself upright. He didn’t seem to understand that by saving Tristan, he’d secured his place here. So far as Bryce was concerned, Colby could spend the rest of his days sitting on the porch, sipping margaritas. Hell, Bryce wouldmakehim the margaritas. But Colby was still figuring that out.
Bryce turned back to Tom, offering a half-smile. “We had a delivery problem. Truck couldn’t get up to the outbuilding, so the lumber’s been sitting here ever since.”
Tom looked at Colby, then back at Bryce. “You want a hand?”
“Wouldn’t say no,” Bryce said. The distractions around the councilors’ visit had resulted in lost time when they should have been working.
Tom stripped off his shirt, revealing a torso that shorted out Bryce’s brain into a haze of heat and want. Lean, defined muscle under sun-warmed skin—Tom looked like someone who’d never once missed a gym session or a late-night run. Only Colby’s presence stopped him from reaching out andtouching.
“You’re pretty handy for a bureaucrat,” he said, desperately trying to sound as if he wasn’t a puddle of lust on the ground.
“Don’t know about that, but I work out,” Tom said. “Keeps things moving.”
Bryce ran his eyes slowly over those tanned, bare arms again. “Sure does,” he agreed, a slow smile on his face.
And Tom—for an instant his eyes flared dark, and then his tongue flicked along that lower lip that had Bryce so fixated.
If Colby hadn’t been there, Tom would have found himself pushed up against the nearest surface and kissed within an inch of his life. Or maybe Tom would be the one pressing Bryce back against the wall of the barn with his body, his tongue fucking Bryce’s mouth, because the way he was looking at Bryce…
But Colbywasthere, and also? Really not a good idea to finally give in when Jax and Matt might come around the corner any time. Because hewasgoing to give in. He wasn’t sure anymore why he’d even been fighting this to start with. He could trust Tom, he knew that now. Maybe not with the fact they knew about Cale’s pack, but that would be easy enough to keep locked away. He could trust him with everything else.
Bryce let himself look just one moment longer, then he met Tom’s eyes, a promise oflaterin his own, and turned away, walking over to the lumber and willing himself to calm down.
“How do you want this loaded, Colby?” Tom asked, a hint of gravel in his voice that wasn’t normally there.
Anddamn, it was hot that Tom had the emotional intelligence to defer to Colby. Most people would have looked to Bryce, the pack beta, for direction. Maybe it wasn’tquitethe hottest thing about Tom, because there were so many to pick from, but it was up there.
