Page 112 of Westin

“What…what happened to the horses?”

He laughs once, taking my hand and leading me to the bed. He sits, pulling me into his lap as his rough fingertips brush back my hair.

“You know, for all your fight, you’re so fucking sweet, Diane,” he says. “The horses were fine. I took them both back, and one of them is my gelding, Rocky. The other is retired.”

My fingers tighten on his shoulders. He uses his insistent head to push mine to the side again and kisses the dip beneath my ear.

“I don’t feel sweet,” I whisper.

“You are,” he murmurs. “You’re like sugar, darling. Especially between your legs.”

He needs to stop kissing me so I can think straight.

“So…what happened to Clint on Sovereign Mountain?” I gasp. My mind races, trying to remember the details. “Did you and Sovereign kill him too?”

“Now, why would I care about Clint?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?” I say. “Tell me.”

He’s got my shirt pulled down from my naked shoulder. His mouth drags over it, kissing down to the swell of my cleavage. Against my thigh, his desire is hot and barely restrained.

I wriggle. He keeps me still with hard hands.

“I’m asking a serious question,” I press.

“Goddamn it, Diane,” he says under his breath.

My nails come out, piercing his skin. “Do you think I want to be fucked by a man who kills anyone who crosses him and lies about it?”

He goes still. Then, he pulls back, and his eyes are narrowed. “I told you that I shoot tin cans for a living, and you know what that means.”

“I wish you’d say the words out loud.”

“Why? So God and Diane Carter can judge me?”

I pull my hands back, but he grabs them and holds them steady.

“Because you’re asking me to give up control,” I burst out, my voice shaking. “You want my body and my heart and everything, but you didn’t tell me the truth.”

He sets me on the bed and rises. “I kill people,” he says. “I killed Clint, I helped kill Thomas and Avery, and I’ll kill anyone who gets in the way of me again. That’s how it’s been and always will be. How do you think this ranch got where it is?”

Everything clicks into place, and it’s making me sick. He laughed a little too long when I said I wished that Avery would go up to Sovereign Mountain and die. I was joking—apparently, he wasn’t.

Now, his reaction makes sense. I should have realized they killed Clint the minute I saw them break in and shoot Avery.

“You and Sovereign killed Clint,” I say slowly. “Because of the feud?”

“Yes,” he says. “And because Sovereign met Keira and wanted her.”

My head spins. What the fuck is wrong with the men on Sovereign Mountain? It seems they’re both in the habit of walking into other people’s lives with the decorum of a bull in a china shop, just bursting in and taking what they want. I know Westin, despite pretending like he had a conscience, never intended to give me up.

“Did you ever stop to think about any of it?” I breathe.

“What does that mean?”

I stand, pacing to the other side of the room. He hurt me; not the way Thomas or David or Avery did, but he hurt me all the same.

“I’m so young,” I burst out. “And you just took everything in one day. You knew who you were then, and I didn’t…I didn’t know who I was sleeping with. I’d never even been kissed before that day.”

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