“Then it’s done.”
She picks up the charcoal pencil. Rolls it between her fingers. “Your ranch. Is there room for me?”
“The whole house is yours.”
Then her full, real, devastating smile makes my chest ache.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll come to the ranch.”
I nod. Pick up my coffee. Drink it.
I’ll have prospects at her apartment within the hour to get her things.
CHAPTER 9
SHELBY
My clothes arein drawers that belong to me.
Not a dresser in a clubhouse room. Not a bag I never unpack. Actual drawers, in an actual bedroom, in a house with a porch and thirty acres of desert and two horses I’ve already named, even though Saber told me they already had names.
They’re Butterscotch and Penny now. He’ll get over it.
Trapper and another prospect brought my things from the apartment yesterday. It took one trip. Two garbage bags of clothes, a box of kitchen stuff I bought at the thrift store, and some toiletries. That’s everything I own in the world, and it fits in the bed of a pickup truck with room to spare.
Kyle would say that’s pathetic. Kyle can go fuck himself.
I’m on the porch with my charcoal pencils and the big sketchbook, drawing the barn. The roof slants on the left side, and the wood is silver-gray and splitting. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever put on paper. I’ve been at it for an hour, shading the shadows under the eaves, when the screen door opens behind me.
Saber sits on the step next to me. He’s in jeans and a black t-shirt, no cut, and his hair is damp from the shower. He smellslike soap and coffee, and the combination is messing with my concentration.
He sets a flat box on my lap. Plain cardboard. No ribbon.
I look at him. He’s watching the barn, not me.Open it,his jaw says, even though his mouth doesn’t move.
I open it.
The cut is heavy black leather. The front is plain—no rank patch, no title. I flip it over.
PROPERTY OF SABERin white stitching across the back.ASH VALLEYHELLBORN KINGS,beneath it in smaller letters.
Property.
My hands go still on the leather.
Weeks ago, that word would have sent me running. Kyle made me his property. But Kyle branded me without asking.
Saber is handing me a choice and waiting to see what I do with it.
I run my thumb across the stitching. The leather is stiff and new. It’ll soften with wear. It’ll smell like me eventually, the way his smells like him.
I put it on.
It’s too big in the shoulders and too long in the torso, and I don’t care. I pull it closed over my tank top.
I’m shaking.
Saber turns his head. His eyes move down the cut and back to my face. The corner of his mouth lifts, barely there, but I made his face do that, and I’ll never get tired of it.
