Page 35 of Saddle and Scent
He steps closer, and for a moment it’s like standing downwind of a campfire: the wet woodsmoke, the crushed pine, the chemical thrill of lightning in the air. It’s suffocating in the best way, and I hate how much I want to inhale. To just bury my face in the shirt and let everything else fall away.
Instead, I ball my fists and say, “If you’re going to keep hovering, at least have the decency to pretend it’s for your own entertainment.”
He actually cracks a smile at that, quick and razor-edged.
“You ever consider you’re not as unwatchable as you think?”
My cheeks go radioactive. I want to believe it’s from the cold, but I know better.
“You ever consider you’re not as irresistible as you think?”
He shrugs.
“Most days, I try not to think at all.”
The storm’s intensity ratchets up, the rain coming now in horizontal slashes.
Callum glances at the horizon, then at me, then at the corpse of my truck. He looks like he’s about to say something monumental, but what comes out is this:
“You should get inside. You’ll catch hypothermia.”
“I don’t get sick,” I say, and immediately cough on nothing.
The universe’s sense of irony is relentless.
He just watches, the smile gone but not forgotten. He steps away from the truck, reaching into his saddlebag. I brace for him to offer more unsolicited help, but instead, he produces a battered old thermos and unscrews the top. He pours a shot’s worth into the lid and hands it to me.
“Here.”
I sniff it.
“Is this actual coffee, or did you fill it with motor oil to keep your testosterone up?”
He shrugs, the barest glimmer of humor at the edge of his mouth.
“Only one way to find out.”
I take the cup, swallow, and am immediately rewarded with the double punch of scalding caffeine and what has to be the ghost of a cheap bourbon.
It warms a line straight down my throat, and for a second, I could almost kiss him for it.
Almost.
He caps the thermos, wipes his hand on his jeans, and then does the thing that makes my brain do a hard reset: He shrugs off his flannel—another one, because apparently every Alpha is issued at least three per season—and tosses it over my shoulders.
It lands with more precision than a drone strike, enveloping me in fabric that’s warm, thick, and absolutely reeking of him. The inside is lined with the ghosts of every fire he’s ever sat beside, every horse he’s ever brushed down, every night spent awake while the world slept. It is, in all possible ways, the realest thing I’ve ever felt against my skin.
He doesn’t look away while I process this, doesn’t give me the grace of averted eyes. He stands there and lets it happen:the slow, humiliating flush of comfort, the immediate drop in adrenaline, the way my body—traitor that it is—settles into the sensation of being cared for.
“That’s…not necessary,” I mumble, even as my fingers lock on the front and pull it tighter.
It nearly swallows me whole.
“Didn’t ask for necessary,” he says. “Just didn’t want you freezing to death before I got my shirt back.”
“You assume you’re getting it back,” I say, which comes out more as a whimper than a threat.
He laughs, low and short, then turns and swings himself onto the horse in one effortless motion.
