Page 24 of Revelry (Cowgirls Do It Better #2)

“Don’t give me any ’tude, boy. Tate wants to make your shoes all shiny and new so come on,” I whispered to him. He flicked his ears at me and I sighed, reaching into the bag hanging next to the stall and pulling out a couple of sugar cubes.

“If you get cubes, are you gonna behave for Tate?” I shit you not, Fitzwilliam nodded. The cubes were hoovered off my hand with a brush of his lips and a tickle of whiskers. Then I was bringing him out and walking him to the spot Tate indicated.

“I’ll leave you to it, if that’s okay?” August called. I nodded and then she was gone, leaving me and Tate alone with the horses.

And his leather chaps.

And those slutty little glasses.

I took a seat on an upturned bucket and watched as Tate said hello to Fitz. The stallion didn’t flick his ears or tail in warning, if anything he welcomed Tate’s touch. I watched, amazed as Tate lifted his hock smoothly and pulled it between his knees, inspecting the shoe.

“He’s not an asshole with you,” I blurted out.

Tate shook his head, a snort slipping out and the sound filled me with joy. “Grumpy recognizes grumpy I guess.”

I shook my head. “You’re not grumpy, Tate.”

“Oh no?” He began tugging off the old shoe, muscles clenching in his forearm at the strain.

My mouth ran dry. “Uh, nope. I think you fake it.”

No response.

“You want people to think you’re grumpy so they leave you alone. But I’ve seen snippets of the real you.”

He snorted again but refused to look at me, and dammit why was I needy for his attention? I didn’t like the way I felt, so I distracted myself by heading over to his instruments. They were laid out and all meticulously clean and in order. I picked one up and Tate’s head swiveled in my direction.

“Don’t mind me, get back to your horsing or whatever.”

He narrowed his stare. “Horseshoeing.” He paused, his mouth open to complain before I arched a brow at him and he reluctantly turned back to Fitz’s hoof.

“How often do you change the horseshoes?”

“How often have you seen me do it?” he asked, dropping Fitz’s hoof and coming over to the bag.

He didn’t keep his distance, he put us right against each other, me craning my neck to look up at his rugged face.

He frowned as he searched in his bag for a tool, then flicked his stare over to me as he saw it was the one I was playing with.

I smiled and held it out to him. Our fingers brushed as he took it from me, and I bit back a whimper at the roughness of his skin.

What would it feel like on my body, on my breasts, between my thighs?

He stalked back to Fitzwilliam, apparently unaffected.

“This is the third time,” I answered.

“In how many months?” he asked, bending and scraping out the hoof in a violent way but Fitzwilliam just casually waffled on his hair and nibbled the back of his shirt, unbothered.

“Three.”

“Bingo.”

He finished scraping it out and headed to the forge, taking out one of the shoes inside and bringing it over to the anvil and grabbing a hammer.

He brought the hammer down in sharp strokes, twisting the shoe this way and that, molding it into shape.

The force rippling up his bicep and making me clench my thighs.

I turned away from the blatant porno going on and played with his tools some more, picking up a weird hook thing that made my insides twist.

I heard Tate click his fingers three times and when I glanced up, he was watching me, his eyes on my hands and his tools but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t snap at me not to play with them like a child.

He was different, calmer.

“You’re less cranky today,” I observed.

He lifted the shoe and inspected it, his brows furrowing, eyes squinting behind the glasses before he blew on it, his lips pursing and my insides squeezed tightly. God, did this man even know what he looked like? How sexual every little thing he did was?

I continued inspecting his tools, trying to figure out what they all did.

Tate went back to Fitzwilliam and when he fit the shoe to Fitz’s hoof, the sizzling sound turned my stomach.

Tate pulled the steaming shoe away and filed the hoof off before coming over to me and I held out three nails to him, knowing what came next.

He cocked his head at me before taking them. “Thanks,” he said softly, putting them between his lips and grabbing three more. I watched as he hammered the nails into Fitzwilliam’s hoof while the horse didn’t bat his ridiculously long lashes at all.

Tate finished Fitz and then did the rest of the horses. It was fascinating to watch how he worked, how he approached each horse differently. How he saw me playing with the tools and even clicked his fingers but didn’t comment, like he accepted my own brand of chaos in his world.

By the end of it, I was a sweating, panting, needy mess. I needed a cold shower, or fifty. And that’s when I had the idea.

“Let’s discuss our Fagenda. Shall we go on a hike?”

He regarded me quizzically. “A hike? That’s it?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “That’s it. I figure sometimes we can do Tate fun and sometimes we can do Gertie fun which is a bit more extreme.”

“What’s extreme fun?”

I shrugged. “Bank robbing, cliff diving, jumping out of an airplane, you know, the usual. But don’t worry about that this week, it’ll be Tate-level fun.”

“But I don’t like hikes.”

He came over to me and I craned my neck once more to look up at him. “That’s because you haven’t hiked with me.”

He arched a brow, like he knew there was more to it but chose to let it go. “Fine. A hike sounds…wonderful.”

“Great!” I bounced on the spot. He went to take the tools from me, and I zipped the bag up, handing it to him. He took it, his hand immediately going to the zipper, I knew he would want to rearrange them himself.

I covered my hand with his. “Trust me, Tate. Leave them.”

His hand twitched beneath mine, his long fingers flexing, wanting to scrutinize what I’d done and rearrange it but I held his dark stare. His gray eyes melted to a swirling silver.

“Trust me, please,” I whispered. I could see him waging a war in himself, but I needed him to trust me and allow this little indiscretion. Allow himself to not check, to trust in others and not control everything.

He grunted and shoved the bag under his arm as he carted out the forge.

I watched as he loaded up his truck and then he unzipped his tool bag.

I wasn’t hurt that he didn’t trust me, it would take time, but he would eventually.

He inspected it meticulously and then shook his head when he realized I’d packed each tool away exactly as it should be.