by Tamsin Ley
After a heartbeat of uncomfortable silence, Renee asked, “How’s Ivy-Jane?”
Lori waved a manicured hand. “Black has it under control. He has the touch. But then, you already know that.”
Heat flooded Renee’s face, and she turned to retrieve her coffee mug. Sex with Black had been mind-blowing, satisfying in a way she’d never expected or experienced before, and a big part of her resented that others seemed to want to belittle it—first Saul, and now Lori. She decided to play innocent. “He seems like a really good vet.”
As if she hadn’t heard, Lori continued. “Women like you come and go. But Black’s special. I can’t have you breaking his heart.”
Renee’s desire to play nice burned away like a flash of gunpowder. She spun, her chest tight. What right did this woman have to judge her? “I didn’t exactly get the impression you liked Black all that much.”
Lori shrugged. “I have a duty to protect my herd. Whether I like them or not.”
“Well, I do happen to like him, so you can just bugger off and mind your own business.” Renee’s blood boiled. Partly because Lori rubbed her the wrong way, and partly because she didn’t want to face that she really did like Black. A lot.
Lori’s hands rose in front of her, palm out. “No need to attack me. I’m only looking out for my own. Your grandfather understood.”
Renee’s urge to jump in the Chevy and drive right over this bitch warred with her need to have answers. “If Grandfather knew about shifters, why didn’t he tell me?”
“The herd’s only refuge is this ranch, and your grandfather used our dependence to his advantage. How do you think he kept this place running without paying a dime in wages? Though I have to give him credit for keeping his promise to Gloryanna.”
Frowning, Renee looked out over the empty parking area and silent morning pastures as if she might find the answer there. She hadn’t considered how everything had continued running in the time since her grandfather’s death. Finances had never been her thing. “What are you saying? That you’re slaves?”
A smirk twisted Lori’s face. “What do you call a worker who doesn’t get paid?”
Renee grit her teeth, refusing to take Lori’s bait. “Volunteers. No one’s forcing you to stick around.”
“Ah, there she is. Old Toliman’s granddaughter.” Lori’s lip curled. “Deluding yourself that keeping the herd’s secret justifies the exploitation of its members.”
“I never said that.” Renee clenched her hands into fists at her sides.
Lori’s face sobered. “Then prove it. Join us.”
“How?”
“Marry Black.”
Taking a step back, Renee shook her head, unsure she’d just heard correctly. Marriage? In what kind of fantasy world was this woman living? But then, in what kind of fantasy world were centaurs and shapeshifters real? Black was something other than human, something more. Who knew what the rules were in this crazy version of reality? And she had been fantasizing about making a home on the ranch with him. “We just met two days ago.”
“Time’s meaningless.” Lori arched an eyebrow. “Prove you consider us equal.”
“I don’t have to marry someone to consider them equal.”
Lori smiled. “Look, I know you like Black. And he obviously likes you. The truth is, he’ll never really be part of this herd, in spite of being Gloryanna’s grandson. I’m trying to look out for him.”
Renee frowned, not appreciating Lori’s subtext. “Why? Because he’s different? What I’m hearing is that you don’t consider him equal.”
Confusion brushed across Lori’s face, but she recovered with a look of pity. “I respect his dedication to the herd. It’s just that the herd’s very particular about bloodlines. There are so few of us left, we have to be choosy about our breeding partners.”
“First of all, I’m not a breeding partner.” Renee advanced on the tall woman, even though she had to look up into her face. “And second of all, there’s nothing at all wrong with Black. He’s perfect just the way he is, and you’re a fool if you can’t recognize that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check on Ivy-Jane.”
Brushing past the woman, Renee stomped out of the garage, all thoughts of leaving the ranch gone.
HAPTER NINE
Black bolted awake to the slam of the barn’s side door. Small, angry footsteps made a beeline for Ivy-Jane’s hospital area. He sat on a straw bale just outside the open stall door with his back propped against the wall, eyes closed. He’d been unable to keep Renee out of his mind, even as he’d tended Ivy-Jane and withstood Lori’s recriminations for revealing himself.
Renee’s cherry-blossom scent filled the air, and the footsteps silenced. He could feel her energy while she stood there watching him. Was she frightened of him? He didn’t blame her. Yet he didn’t smell fear as the silence stretched longer and longer. He smelled the rich scent of arousal. He let her continue to look a good sixty seconds before drawling, “Morning, sunshine.”
She released a startled squeak, then whispered, “Is that some sort of shifter sixth sense, knowing when someone’s watching you?”
He sat up, a bleary smirk on his lips. Millie and the foal were asleep just inside the stall, so he kept his voice low as he rose. “You weren’t exactly treading lightly when you came in here.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Renee cleared her throat and shifted her gaze toward the open door. Her face was flushed, and her shoulders heaved as if she’d been running. “How’s the little one?”
He dusted hay from his jeans while he stepped away from the stall. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, but what he felt most naked without was his hat, which was still at the camp site. “Her leg’s only sprained. She’ll be up and around in a day or two.” He plucked a tickling thread of hay out of the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m more worried about her mental trauma.”
“I can relate.” Renee bit her lip.
Black felt himself frown, and tried to smooth his face without much success. There was so much to say now that the secret was out. But he didn’t know where to begin. “This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out.”
Renee shook her head. “I still don’t understand why Grandfather couldn’t tell me.”
Black glanced behind him toward Millie. She lay beneath a chevron blanket in human form next to Ivy-Jane, one hand resting on the foal’s shoulder, her long, dull gray braid lying limp on the hay behind her. Her chest moved in the steady rhythm of sleep, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she was listening. Lori hadn’t lifted the ban on talking about the herd, but Renee already knew so much. Enough to be dangerous, as Lori had put it last night. Well, there was no going back. The secret was out. The only direction now was forward, right? With or without Lori’s approval. Besides, this secret was Black’s as much as hers. More so, maybe, because he had even more to hide.
Moving forward, he took Renee’s arm and led her from the stall toward the pyramid of bales at the end of the barn. The loose straw on the floor prickled his bare feet. He headed toward an alcove where he sometimes retreated to satiate his un-herd-like desire for privacy. “Ask me whatever you want.”
She glanced around, but didn’t resist his guiding hand. He sat on a platform of bales he’d covered with a horse blanket, pulling her gently down next to him and trying to hide his disappointment when she chose to keep several hand-widths of space between them.
She twisted her fingers in her lap, her gaze on him guarded. “Lori wants me to prove I don’t mean you harm.”
His eye twitched. Of course Lori’d been on the prowl to catch Renee before he could this morning. Who knew what kind of lies that witch had already fed Renee about the herd? “Stay away from her, all right?”
“Why?”
“She bites. For real. Please, just stay away.”
To his relief, Renee nodded. “All right, I’ll try. But she’s an in-your-face kind of person, isn’t she?”
That made him chuckle. “That’s one way to put it.”
“
She said you’re Gloryanna’s grandson. Wasn’t that the last herd leader?”
He nodded.
“So, I take it she hates you because you’re, like, a prince or something? A threat to her leadership?”
“A prince? No, we don’t have royalty. I’m just a half-breed stallion. And besides, the Lead Mare’s chosen by vote.”
Her nose wrinkled in an adorable frown. “And they chose Lori? Why?”
“The herd respects Lori’s knowledge of the outside world.” His carefully phrased answer was the produce of a lifetime of ingrained respect for rank, but left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Renee rolled her eyes. “I don’t think she knows as much as you give her credit for.”
“Lori was captured as a foal and broken to ride like other domestic horses, which is humiliating for a shifter. When her first shift came over her, she escaped and lived on the streets until she found us. She spent years hiding among humans, hiding her shifter nature, learning about their ways.”
“She didn’t know how to get back to her family? How sad.”
“The way she tells it, you wouldn’t feel pity. She’s tough—tougher than most equines—and not afraid to stand up for what she wants.” Or to force her will on others, he thought. “The herd was in chaos after Grandma died. Lori stepped in and took over and no one ever complained.”
“So if Lori’s not worried about you taking over her leadership, why’s she treat you so badly?”
Black shrugged. “The herd always tolerated me for Grandma’s sake. But I’m different. Deformed.”
“You’re not deformed.” She pulled herself back to look at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’ve heard of centaurs in Greek mythology. I’ve never heard of horse shape shifters. They’re the deformed ones. Besides, aren’t you all the same in human form?”
He smiled, appreciating her spunk. “Yes, but horse form is how we determine rank. While the rest of the herd can exist together day and night, horse and human, I can’t because an outsider might see me. I never get a chance to fight for rank.”
“But you could rank as a human. You’re even a vet. That has to give you as much street cred as Lori. How come they didn’t choose you?”
He shook his head. “Besides being a centaur, I’m male. Stallions can’t lead the herd, not like the Lead Mare does.”
“Why not?”
“Biology, I guess.” Sighing, he tried to formulate how to describe herd hierarchy. “Herd society is sort of like a game of chess. The queen is the most powerful piece. The Herd Stallion—the king piece—has limited power.”
Renee looked at her hands a few heartbeats before she met his gaze again. “You said you’re a half-breed. Does that mean you’re half human?”
He should have known she’d ask, but for some reason he wasn’t ready. Most of the time there were hidden barbs when someone brought up his heritage, and he found it difficult to rein in his knee-jerk response to her perfectly innocent question.
“I’m sorry.” She scooted closer and leaned her cheek against his biceps. “That was rude. I shouldn’t have asked.”
The contact dissipated his instinctive shield, replacing it with a surge of feeling in his chest he couldn’t define, but that made him want to nuzzle against her neck and breathe deeply of her essence, preferably with his cock embedded in her wet heat. He settled for putting one arm around her, pulling her close to his bare chest. “Don’t be sorry. It’s a perfectly honest question. And I want to tell you.” He put his chin atop her head and rested there a moment. “I’m… I need to start at the beginning. With my mother. Grandma said my mom wanted more than a podunk ranch could give her. She wanted to go back to the herd’s nomadic roots. So she left. The herd hadn’t been here at the ranch very long at that point, but that’s a different story.”
Renee readjusted her position, turning her cheek so she could gaze up into his face while he spoke. One hand slid up to rest palm-down over his heart. The contact of her smooth skin may as well have been a lasso around his soul.
He covered her hand with his free one, wrapping his fingers around hers, and continued talking. “My mom kept in touch, sent postcards from cities across the country, even made it to Alaska. The letters stopped suddenly without reason. Your grandfather helped search, I guess, hired an investigator to track her down. No luck. My mother had disappeared. Then, a couple of years later, a hospital in Chicago called with bad news. Or as Grandma liked to say, miraculous news.” His chest ached with the memory of his grandma’s voice in his ear while he sat on her lap as a child, and he clutched Renee’s hand all the tighter against him. “Mom had given birth to a healthy baby boy. She’d told doctors the name of the ranch on her dying breath.”
“Oh, Black!” Renee pulled her hand free and wrapped both arms around his waist, squeezing.
“That was the one and only time Grandma ever left the ranch. To retrieve me.” He cleared his throat. “But to bring this story back to your question—we have no record of who my father is. The logical assumption is that I’m half-human.”
Renee’s shoulders rose and fell in a deep breath, her voracious hug remaining firmly in place around his waist. “I can say from personal experience that there’s nothing wrong with you being human.” Her breath was hot against his chest. “You’re sexy as hell.”
A laugh crawled up his chest and rolled from his mouth in an unexpected release. How could she make him feel whole in so few words? “Sexy, huh?”
Renee eased up on the embrace, fingers tickling over his bare skin, and murmured against his chest. “Incredibly.”
“You’re not put off by my centaur?”
She pushed him back against the blanket. “Mmm. That only makes you more sexy. I like to ride.”
The rough blanket sank into the straw beneath his shoulder blades. He reached around and stroked the small of her back, letting his fingers slip into the gap between her shirt and her jeans. Her heart-shaped face had an impish grin while her palm skimmed his stomach, downward to his fly. His cock leapt to life at her touch, the scent of her arousal mingling with the smell of clean straw. He curled his fingers around the back of her neck and pulled her down into a kiss. Her mouth opened to him, and he rolled his tongue in a twining dance with hers.
Her hand over his fly cupped and massaged his balls while her mouth fired his blood. He reached around behind her and grabbed her jeans-covered ass, fingers dipping into the hollow between her legs as he palmed her backside. She moaned and clenched her butt, grinding her hips against him. His cock surged again in response. He growled, wanting to be in control. In one easy sweep he lifted her off him and rolled to bring himself on top, resting on his elbows above her. He didn’t give her a chance to complain, but claimed her mouth again, crushing his lips against hers and plunging his tongue within her, tasting her sweet breath with every inhale.
He wanted to feel her skin, to explore every inch of her exquisite body. He thrust one hand beneath the hem of her shirt. Her skin glided like satin beneath his rough palm until he reached her bra and cupped the padding there. That had to go. He expertly slid his hand around her back and flicked the undergarment open, retracing his trail underneath the elastic to her waiting breast. Her nipple was hard and waiting for him. Kneading the soft flesh, he rolled the bud between his fingers.
With tiny, panting breaths, she fumbled at his waistline, trying to unfasten the button. “No,” he said against her lips, catching her hand with his free one and pinning it to the blanket. He wanted to make her come with his hands and mouth alone. He wanted to make her yield to him and beg for him before he mounted her. He wanted to really believe she wanted him.
He caught her other wrist and brought both her hands above her head. Her wrists were so tiny and delicate, he could hold both in one hand. Keeping her trapped, he used his free hand to trace a teasing line across her lips and down her chin and neck to settle between her breasts over her heart. She arched her back, her ribs heaving with passion.
“You are so sexy,�
� he whispered.
She licked her lips, and he wondered what it would be like to fuck that mouth. Whoa, boy. Right now this was all about her. He dropped his trailing finger beneath the partially-raised edge of her shirt and eased both it and her bra up, exposing her breasts. Her pert nipples jutted toward the rafters like a pair of spurs urging him onward. He dipped his head to one, tongue flicking out to sample the very tip. She whimpered, and he relented, taking the nipple into his mouth to tug and suck it into a tight peak. Then he nipped his way across her chest to give the other equal treatment.
She squirmed beneath him, but he held her hands firmly above her head. While he paid homage to her second nipple, he ran his palm over her belly to her sex, cupping the warmth there. Wet heat had soaked through her jeans, and he massaged her with the flat of his hand. She lifted her hips to grind against him, and he increased his speed until he sensed she was ready for the next level. Flicking open the top button, he slid his hand down the front and over her curls. His middle finger found her slit wet and ready, her clit throbbing beneath the pressure of his touch.
Sliding his finger in and out along the slit, he teased more moisture from her, plunging deeper with each stroke until his finger curled and found her opening. Her tight ridges clamped around his finger as he dipped inside.
She struggled against his grasp, her hips bucking in time to his thrusting fingers, searching for more. He continued to tease her opening, sliding over her clit with each stroke. Wetness soaked his hand. She wriggled beneath him, gasping for breath, words nearly incoherent. “I need more. Please.”
He decided to oblige, freeing her hands so he could shimmy the fabric off her legs. Her scent filled the air with the heady flavor of her arousal and he sucked air into his mouth and over his palate, absorbing every juicy nuance. She groped for the buttons on his jeans. He cupped her face and kissed her deeply while she fumbled, each butterfly brush of her hands against his fly nearly sending him over the edge. The release of the buttons eased the pressure his cock had been exerting against his fly, and he had to remind himself to please her first. He grabbed her hands before she could expose him. “Not yet.”
