I'm Garnet, and I walk out of that grain shed with my mouth still hot and my shirt buttoned wrong, and the whole fucking yard turns to look at me.
Hedda laughs loud enough that it lands like a slap on the back of my neck.
My hands won't stop shaking, so I get maybe ten steps before somebody falls in beside me.
Cobb: You look like a drowned cat. Here, take this before your teeth start rattling.
The flannel comes off his shoulders and lands on mine, still warm from him, and it smells like diesel and soap.
Cobb: Keep it. You're shivering and I run hot anyway.
Garnet: For shit's sake, Cobb, I'm not a stray you have to keep warm.
Cobb: Then call it me being selfish. It looks better on you than it ever did on me.
I almost laugh. It's the first warm thing that's happened to me all day, and I pull his jacket around me like a dumbass.
Then the yard goes quiet in that one particular way I'm starting to know in my gut, and I don't even have to turn around.
Rhett comes across the mud like a storm with boots on.
Rhett: Take it off.
Garnet: What?
Rhett: His jacket. Off your shoulders. Now.
He doesn't wait for me to move. His hand closes on the collar and he hauls the flannel down my arms, fast and rough, and it takes my sleeve with it.
Cobb: Alpha, it's cold out here. That's all it was.
Rhett: Shut your fucking mouth before I forget I like you.
He balls the jacket up and pitches it hard into Cobb's chest, and the smack of it carries all the way across the pens.
Rhett: You don't put your clothes on her.
Rhett: Not your jacket. Not your hat. Nothing. She's not to wear another man's things. Ever.
Hedda: Oh, this is rich. He won't claim her, but nobody else can put a coat on her.
Hedda: Fuck, Rhett, you gonna tag her ear next?
The laugh rolls around the pen fence and comes back to me, and my face goes so hot my eyes sting.
I try to step around him and he shifts one boot, blocks me with his chest, and that feels worse than a hand on me.
Rhett: I said no. You hear me?
Garnet: I heard you. So did every wolf in this yard.
Something in me snaps clean in half. I get both palms flat on his chest and I shove him with everything I have.
He barely rocks. One boot slides a step in the mud, and that's the only give I get out of him.
Garnet: You don't want me, fine. But you don't get to stand there and growl like a dog over a bone!
Garnet: I'm not a bone. I'm not a stray. Pick one, you bastard!
He catches my wrist. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough that my heartbeat jumps right under his fingers.
He pulls once, I come half a step, and then his hand is on my jaw and his thumb drags my chin up.
He isn't kissing me. He's staring at my mouth like it's a door he's not allowed through.
Rhett: Say that again. Quieter.
Garnet: You first, you coward. Say one true thing out loud.
His breath goes hot across my lips, his eyes go dark, and my knees turn to absolute garbage under me.
For one whole heartbeat I think he's going to do it. My mouth is already open for him.
Then his jaw locks and he lets go of my face like it burned his hand.
Rhett: Go to the shed. Wash up. You smell like him.
That's my answer. The man would rather choke on his own tongue than say it out loud.
Garnet: You're a fucking coward, Rhett.
I walk away with my chin up and my whole body screaming at me to turn around.
The worst part isn't that he stopped. It's that I wanted him to keep going in front of every wolf in this pack, and he knew it.
And I felt his hand shake when he let me go. He's twice my size, and he shook.
He almost kissed me over another man's jacket in front of everybody. So does he punish me for that, or does he finally open his mouth?