Page 17 of My Queendom for a Horse

“The worst part is that he told me that he and Clara, that perfect woman, got divorced. And now he wants to see me.” My hands tighten on the reins. “I should just send him packing. Or maybe use him to get a new loan, a better one, and then tell him off.”

Obsidian whuffles.

“But.” I almost can’t say the words, even to a horse. “But I’m actually kind of. . .hopeful.” There. I said it. I admitted that I’m actually excited to see Sean again, the guy who broke my heart. I’ve never really recovered, and no one else I’ve dated has even come close to him. And now he’s here, and I hate myself for being excited.

“I hate how pathetic that makes me.”

That’s why I pull left.

Sean can wait for me for once.

We race again, clearing fallen logs, ditches, and fences. And finally, I haul on the reins and we stop. “I have to head back,” I say. “But I don’t want to.” I sigh. “And I do want to. I’m a mess.”

Obsidian neighs and paws at the riverbank, making a big muddy streak on the ground.

“Why can’t I fall in love with a horse instead?” I think about how much time and effort have gone into horses in my life. How I just spent all my money on him. “Actually, if I hadn’t bought you, I wouldn’t need to see Sean at all. I don’t know whether to blame you or thank you.”

Obsidian lifts his head up high and angles his face back so I can see him. I lean forward and hug his big warm neck. “You’d never ditch me for some posh rich lady, right? I wish that, instead of a magnificent stallion, you were a human. Is that so wrong?”

A jolt runs through my body, starting at my hands where I’m touching Obsidian’s neck and radiating outward. It zings through me and then rockets back in, like there’s an explosion happening in every cell of my body. I’m flung upward in the air, and then I’m falling. Down, down, several feet down until I land with a splat in the mud.

Except I’m not really in the mud because I’m lying on something, something big. Not horse-big, but big to me.

I shake my head to clear it and look down to try and figure out what just happened.

I’m lying on a saddle.

My saddle.

Obsidian’s gone, like he was just transported out of existence.

It’s just me and this saddle.

Ermagosh.

Wait. The saddle’s wrapped around a person, a very large, very masculine person, and my hands are resting on his very well shaped pectoral muscles. I scramble backward as quickly as I can from the saddle-wrapped man. At least he’s as shocked as I am. He blinks over and over and over, these bright, golden-brown eyes that I’m staring at involuntarily.

My brain cannot seem to process the information my eyes are sending. Nothing I see makes any sense. The man underneath me has long black hair, and from what I can see, he’s absolutely the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life. Or at least, I think he is. There’s a bridle obscuring part of his face. The man spits the bit out of his mouth and says in Russian, “What just happened?”

Luckily, I speak Russian, so I understand him. And now that I can see his face, I realize that I was right. High cheekbones. Sun-kissed golden skin. Pitch black hair. Wildly bright eyes. A curved, richly full mouth. Eyebrows like slashes of coal on a canvas. I need to stop staring and start making sense of what’s going on.

I gather the facts in my overloaded brain. I was sitting on a horse. Then after touching the stallion’s neck and wishing that he was a human, I’m suddenly sitting on the most gorgeous human I’ve ever seen. The answer seems clear.

I’ve obviously had a complete and total mental break.

The man doesn’t exist.

I’ve either been thrown off my horse and I’m in a coma, or I’m still sitting on the horse’s back and I’m imagining this whole thing. I decide to talk to my delusion in Russian in the hopes of convincing myself it’s not real. “I think I’ve had a breakdown.”

The beautiful man talks again, still in Russian. “Were you hurt?”

“Were you?” I ask. “I think I landed on you, whoever you are.”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. Better than fine. I’ve been stuck in my equine form for a very, very long time. It feels great to have two legs again.”

This must be a dream.

Stuck as a horse?

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