Page 2 of Throw Down

Nate laughed. Something clattered in the background on the other end of the line, followed by a scuffle and a deep, masculine murmur Briar couldn’t make out.He hated pulling Nate away from a hard-earned night off with his brooding cowboy, but not as much as he hated being trapped in a building that was beginning to feel like a tomb.

“You still have power, don’t you?” he asked suspiciously.

There was a smile in Nate’s voice when he replied, “Tucker’s got a backup generator.But so does the clinic. You’ve just got to figure out why it didn’t turn on.”

“Look, just because I reluctantly added some flannel to my closet doesn’t mean I suddenly turned into the type of guy who knows how to fix things.”

“Well, buckle up, sweetheart.You’re about to learn.”

A sudden boom nearly deafened him.It sounded like a thunderclap, followed by a rapid succession of thumps that sent Briar jumping out of his skin.He realized belatedly that someone was pounding on the front door.Forcefully. Very forcefully.

“What was that?” Nate asked.

“Door,” Briar managed after working up the spit to answer.His mouth was dry with fear. “Has anyone called the emergency line?”

“No.” Nate waited a beat before adding kindly, “I can stay on the line with you.But if you don’t want to open it, I won’t make you.”

His concern came from a good place, but Briar didn’t have the grace to appreciate it.Nate already coddled him so much that Briar was developing an irritated facial tic whenever it happened.

“It’s probably a patient,” he said irritably.“I’ll just call you back.”

“You sure?”

He hated that worried tone in Nate’s voice, so he purposely injected a jaunty note of sarcasm when he said, “Don’t worry.If it’s the big bad wolf, I’ve got a rabies shot with his name on it.”

But his hand still shook—just slightly—when he slipped the phone into his lab coat and edged his way across the dark waiting room.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand where Nate was coming from.After all, Nate was the one who’d called the cops and blocked the door while Briar packed a bag in his ex-boyfriend's shitbox apartment.He’d probably saved Briar’s life by getting him out of the city when he did.But that didn’t mean Briar was traumatized, no matter what Nate thought.Even before the disastrous implosion of his relationship with Dax, he’d known not to answer unexpected knocks after dark.Not when they sounded like that, anyway.Not in the neighborhood where he grew up.

But that life was gone. Sweetwater might as well be another planet.A dwarf planet on the edge of the solar system, filled with strange, exotic terrain and so much fresh air it made him lightheaded.Locals acted like they’d just walked straight off the set of Yellowstone, and they all stared at him like he was the weird one.He blamed it on the language barrier.Even after a year, he still hadn’t calculated the distance that got him to yonder or how mad a wet hen might be.But he’d learned to never drink downstream from a grazing herd or to squat with his spurs on.Not that he owned spurs. The only boots in his closet were from a shelf at Nordstrom.

The knock came again, louder this time.So loud that Briar was shocked the door hadn't splintered into a pile of toothpicks. Whatever the ham-fisted ogre outside wanted, he wasn't going away until he got it.

Briar took a deep breath and reminded himself that a little cow town like Sweetwater was the safest place on earth.No one was lurking in the freezing rain, hoping to steal some cats and dogs from an underfunded clinic. He’d be fine…unless some liquored-up good old boys had finally decided he was too queer for their taste.It wasn’t impossible.

He twisted the deadbolt and cracked the door.Stinging raindrops lashed his face, blinding him to everything but ominous darkness. Every streetlight was out, and so were the rows of tidy little shops that stretched around the clinic like spokes in a wheel.Even the moon had vanished behind a quilt of storm-slinging clouds.He couldn’t see a thing.

Then, out of nowhere, a hulking shadow loomed up right in front of him.

“Oh, hell no!” Briar yelped.

He slammed the door—or tried.He might have succeeded if a steel-toed boot hadn’t shot out and wedged itself in the gap.His mind glitched with terror. He set his shoulder against the door and heaved with all his might.All one-hundred-thirty pounds of it.

“We’re closed!” he shouted.

“Not anymore, you’re not.” The man’s growl was like the rip of a chainsaw.He planted one hand flat on the door and shoved, flinging it open so effortlessly that Briar went flying backward. He landed on his ass, and the snake around his neck squeezed reflexively.His temples began to throb.

The stranger kicked the door shut, cutting off the roar of the wind.Briar’s ears began to ring in the abrupt silence. Or maybe that was the pressure in his head.

His reluctant gaze crawled up, and up, and up, from scuffed boots to a pair of grease-stained blue jeans.From his vantage point on the floor, Briar had a direct line of sight to the man’s hands, and he momentarily fixated on them.They were huge, like giant sledgehammers, and edged with visible calluses.Thick veins crawled up his forearms.It was too dark to see much of his face, but Briar didn’t need to see his expression to know he was big and ugly and angry.

Ogre had been too generous a description for him.

“We don’t keep a register,” he blurted, scrambling for his dropped cell phone and climbing to his feet.The man hadn’t made a single move toward him, but his finger hovered over the emergency button just the same.

“Then I’ll pay with a card. But I’m not leaving until you fix her.”

“We don’t—what?”

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