Rhett. Alpha of Tallowridge. Right now I'm just a man with his shirt hanging open and Hedda's mouth on my cock.
Hedda: You're quiet tonight.
I don't answer. I pull her braid and let her take me deeper.
The tack room smells like leather and horse sweat and her. My hips jerk up and she hums around me, and that hum goes straight up my spine.
Hedda: Gonna come down my throat or on my boots?
Rhett: Keep talking and it's your face.
She laughs, low and dirty, and licks up the underside of my cock, slow. My hand slaps the saddle rack. Fuck.
Heat curls at the base of my spine, that tight pull, that yes, right there, don't stop.
Then the door bangs open, and the wind comes in, and the wind carries a scent.
It hits me in the chest like a horse kick. Bruise and cold sweat and pine. Mine.
Rhett: Stop.
Hedda: What the hell?
I'm already pulling her off me. My hands are shaking. I shove my cock back in my jeans and drag the zipper up over it, and it hurts, and I don't care.
Rhett: Get up. Get dressed.
Hedda: You want to tell me what that was?
Rhett: Nothing. Wind.
I push the door wide and she's there. Small, wiry, mud to her knees, a bucket in one hand and a fresh purple mark coming up on her jaw.
Green-brown eyes. Dark red hair falling out of a mess of a knot. She looks at me like I'm the last door in a burning house.
Hedda comes out behind me, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and laughs.
Hedda: Oh, shit. You brought the stray.
Garnet: I was told to ask about the pen work. I only need the pay.
Hedda: Look at her. She's got a handprint on her face, Rhett. Whoever had her last didn't want her either.
Garnet flinches. Just a tick in her jaw. But I see it, and something in my chest goes black.
I step in close. Her shoulder hits the wall and I take her chin, hard enough that her skin goes white around my nails, hard enough that she sucks air.
Rhett: Who hit you.
Garnet: Nobody. I fell.
Rhett: Bullshit.
My thumb drags her jaw up. She's shaking but she holds my eyes, and her smell goes sweet and hot all at once, and my whole body lights up like a struck match.
Fuck. Fuck. She isn't doing anything and she's wrecking me. My cock is still wet from Hedda's mouth and it's already hard again for a stray who smells like a beaten dog.
Rhett: We don't hire strays here.
Garnet: What?
Rhett: You heard me. Strays bring trouble. You're trouble with legs and a black eye.
Her face shuts down, one piece at a time. And I feel it like I did it with my own boot.
Garnet: I can clean pens. I don't need a bed, I'll sleep anywhere. I'm not asking for anything else.
Hedda: God, she's begging. It's sad.
Rhett: Hedda. Shut your mouth.
Hedda's eyebrows go up. She looks from me to Garnet and back, and she sees something she doesn't like. Women always see it first.
Hedda: Fine. I'll be in the barn. Don't come looking for me with your mouth still dirty.
She goes. The door swings shut. It's just the two of us and the smell of her and my own guilt getting hard in my jeans.
Rhett: Somebody marked you. Somebody with a ring, the way it's shaped.
Garnet: Please. Don't.
Rhett: Don't what. Don't look? Don't ask? I can smell him on you, sweetheart. I can smell the fear. So tell me who I'd be hiring trouble from.
Garnet: Nobody you want to meet.
She says it flat, and her hands are fists at her sides. I turn her wrist over, and there's a bruise in the shape of fingers there too, old yellow and new purple together.
Rhett: This is what I get for being soft. Nothing.
I let her go. She hugs her wrist to her chest like I broke it.
My thumbprints will be on her skin tomorrow.
Rhett: You get one night. In the attic. Then I send you down the road.
Rhett: And if he comes looking, I hand you over myself. I won't lose a minute of sleep.
That's a lie so big I can taste it.
But her eyes come up, wet and furious, and she nods.
Garnet: One night.
She walks out. I stand there with my jeans half zipped and my hands shaking.
Her smell is still in my mouth like I was the one on my knees.