Sunlight poured across the corral and caught Talon’s coat as he moved, turning the Palomino into something molten and alive. Gold flashed and rippled over heavy muscle, every step smooth and sure, the horse’s mane lifting in the light like flaxen corn silk. Grief hadn’t dulled him. It had been waiting.
Breakneck rode him like an extension of his own body, loose and balanced, boots steady, weight shifting with Talon’s stride as if they’d trained together for years instead of minutes. Just trust and timing and a conversation happening beneath skin and bone.
Beef shook his head slowly, something like grudging respect settling into his expression. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Horse picked him.”
“That’s not riding,” Kodiak added quietly. “That’s partnership.”
Tyler had gone very still.
Blair noticed it without meaning to. The way his shoulders dropped, the way his mouth tipped into something that wasn’t quite a smile. Acceptance. Clean and quiet. He watched Breakneck and Talon circle once more, sunlight burning bright off that golden hide, and Blair knew, without pity, without drama, that whatever chance Tyler had once entertained evaporated right there in the dust and light.
He never looked at her.
She respected him for that.
Preacher’s voice came low, almost reverent. “Some men don’t take a place,” he said. “They’re given it.”
Breakneck brought Talon to a slow halt, one hand resting easy at the base of the horse’s neck. Talon stood tall, proud, ears forward, no tension left in him at all. A working horse again. A partner.
Blair’s chest tightened.
Sunlight slid over them, man and horse, like a benediction, and something inside her shifted, irrevocably. If he could give a grieving animal that kind of direction, that kind of purpose, that kind of trust…
She didn’t even want to finish the thought.
Suddenly she understood. Reading her was what was causing that restraint, and now she had to know why. She just simply had to know.
That knowledge, aching, bright, and terrifying, settled deep, right alongside her desire. She’d never been one to hold back on something she wanted. But the way he was acting meant she was going to have to be careful not only with her heart, but with his until she could hold it in her hands and feel the weight and texture of it, of him.
God. She wanted him in so many ways, a hunger that was deepening with each moment she interacted with him, but could she have him? Would this compromise her principles, and that fear that lived inside her. If she asked for more, wanted more, stopped holding the line, and gave herself over to the temptation of him, would that spell the kind of disaster that marred her past? Leave her alone again with regrets?
He wasn’t just lethal, he was a reckless risk for a heart that was still a little bit wary of wanting too much, but what was too much? How could that be defined with him?
Everything? Was that too damn much?
The week settled into a rhythm that should have been manageable.
Briefings in the morning, maps spread across tables, Blair’s beautiful voice hitting him with physical blows, steady as they chased cartel leads through backcountry corridors and river cuts. Training rides through uneven terrain, horses learning the smell and cadence of men who moved differently. Long days that bled into evenings, meals eaten wherever there was space, work folded into every moment without complaint.
Breakneck kept his distance out of self-preservation.
Christ, it would be so easy if he could just fuck her and move on, but he knew that wasn’t even remotely possible. She had changed him, and he didn’t even know how. He craved way too much for anything as simple as a fuck. He wanted to go so slow the earth stopped spinning, and the stars came out and lingered. She taught him what it was like to be male, her feminine energy transferred to him against his will, forcing him to feel his body right down to every aching pore. He wanted tactile skin on skin that was more than fervor and lust. He wanted to devour her in a way that he’d never thought about another woman in his life. God, her body, yes, the fever in him was raging, but more…he didn’t have the emotional IQ to articulate what that was, and that type of frustration was eating at him like something alive.
It was terrifying how much he wanted her.
Measured, ruthless control was all he had, and fuck if that wasn’t failing him. He found himself breathing deep in the hall when she passed, seeking the scent of magnolia like it was life-sustaining oxygen. He wanted to cage her, bury his nose in her skin, breathe her in until all his bullshit quieted. If that was ever even possible around her.
Every interaction with Blair felt like standing too close to a live wire, wild, dangerous, impossible to ignore, each jolt of electricity turning him on until his desire was agony.
He answered her questions cleanly, masking the effort, met her gaze only when necessary, and never for longer than it took to pass information. It was discipline at its finest. It was killing him.
Ayla was easy, her friendship a balm to his growing obsession with Blair.
Talking to her didn’t cost him breath or sleep. She asked questions, absorbed answers, laughed at his dry humor. There was no gravity there, no pull that threatened to crack him open, nothing but a sister-like feeling that helped immensely for short spurts, at least until Blair took that peace and twisted him into a pretzel just by standing anywhere near him.
Blair watched him with a bruised look that only got worse when she turned toward Tyler. Their conversations were more than professional. He could tell the difference, stroking the fire she knew he was holding back. Every glance between them was charged now, every shared moment loaded with things unsaid.
It showed. At chow, where he barely tasted food. On trail rides, where he rode hard and silent. During chores, where he took on everything without being asked, hauling, repairing, lifting, earning quiet nods from the Mounties who recognized work ethic when they saw it.
