He should leave it. Hundred points or not, God Tier or not, there were easier targets in this Village. The Brazilian beach volleyball squad had arrived that morning and were already being sociable in the dining hall in a way that meant the Tally was about to get very competitive very quickly.
But Lex had never, in his entire career, chosen the easier fight. He wasn’t about to start doing so now.
? ? ?
Hesaw Barnaby again the next morning in the dining hall.
The equestrians had commandeered a cluster of tables near the far wall, which was exactly the territorial behaviour Lex would have expected from people whose sport involved controlling a twelve-hundred-pound animal with their thighs. He knew this now because he’d spent forty-five minutes on YouTube the night before watching dressage highlights, which he maintained was strategic research and not at all obsessive.
The horses did little sideways steps. They did a thing called a piaffe, which was essentially trotting on the spot, and the riders sat dead still while it happened, thighs clamped, spines locked, every micro-adjustment invisible. It was, against every expectation Lex had brought to the exercise, genuinely impressive. Though he’d never tell Barnaby that. At least not until he’d cracked a proper smile at him.
The horse dancers now sat in a loose formation, talking quietly among themselves, surrounded by the clutter of athletes in training: water bottles, protein bars, tablets propped up showing diagrams.
Barnaby was at the edge of the group, eating something that looked like it had been assembled by a nutritionist with a grudge against flavour. He was reading from a printed sheet of paper, running one finger down the margin.
He was wearing breeches.
Christ alive, he was wearingthe breeches.
They were white. Tight. Cut close through the thigh and calf, and tucked into tall black leather boots that were polished to a shine Lex could see from across the hall. The fabric sat flush against his legs, outlining every lean muscle from hip to ankle. The seam ran down the inside of his thigh. The material pulled taut across his arse when he shifted forward to reach for his water bottle, and Lex watched the fabric stretch and resettle and thought, with perfect clarity:fuck.
Just…fuck.
The breeches left absolutely nothing to the imagination. They weren’t designed to. They were designed for function, for grip in the saddle, for the clean line that dressage judges apparently cared about. The fact that they also happened to make Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester look like he’d been poured into them by a benevolent and sexually progressive god was, presumably, incidental. A happy byproduct.
Lex stood in the doorway of the dining hall with his tray, fully stationary, staring.
Mick materialised at his elbow. “You’re blocking the door, mate.”
“He’s wearing the breeches.”
“I can see he’s wearing the breeches.”
“Mick.”
“I see them.”
“Mick.”
“Move your legs. Sit down and eat your breakfast and stop looking at the horse man’s arse.”
Lex walked. He sat and ate his breakfast. He did not stop looking at the horse man’s arse, because the horse man’s arse was directly in his line of sight and not having it in view would have required him to rotate his entire body a hundred and eightydegrees. An extremely conspicuous move that he just didn’t want to make, frankly. Happy where his eyes were.
Barnaby turned a page of whatever he was reading. He crossed one boot over the other under the table. His thigh flexed beneath the white fabric, and Lex bit into his toast so hard he nearly cracked a molar.
A hundred points. God Tier. Male, ambiguous. Mates with the actual King of the United Kingdom.
And those fuckingbreeches.
Lex chewed his toast and planned his next move.
Chapter Four
Theboot polish was called Saphir Médaille d’Or, which was a detail so on-the-nose tonight that Barnaby refused to think about it.
He sat cross-legged on the floor of his room with his tall boots braced between his knees, a rag wrapped around two fingers, and worked the wax into the leather in tight, precise circles. The technique was Eleanor’s. She had taught him at eight years old, sitting on the floor of the tack room at Chatham House with a pair of his father’s hunting boots between them, her hands over his, guiding the pressure.Small circles, darling. Let the leather take what it needs.
It was quarter past two in the morning. He did not need to be polishing his boots. The cross-country phase was over. The show jumping was over. The dressage had been over for three days. The boots had already been cleaned once tonight, with the full kit. They were immaculate. He was polishing immaculate boots because his hands needed a task, and if he gave them one that required concentration, then perhaps the rest of him wouldfollow instructions and stop replaying the sound Dorado had made when he fell.
