The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

I take a step closer to the door, muscles tense in case I need to jump away. “Do they judge you for being different?” I whisper. “Do they wish you would be obedient like they are?”

Her foreleg lifts and then st

omps lightly, sending up a small cloud of dust.

“They don’t understand,” I say. “Do they? They don’t know why you fight it so hard.”

She takes a step toward me, and I hold my breath, waiting for something violent. Something wild. Except she only stretches her neck toward me. Softly, softly. I hold my hand out, unwilling to reach past the door. I’m right on the edge, waiting.

Her breath whooshes against my palm.

“Get away from her.”

The strident command makes Gold Rush pull away with an indignant snort, and I jump back in surprise. Sutton is only a dark shadow against the backdrop of sunrise. Hurt clenches my chest, and I take a step back nice and slow. “Are you avoiding me?”

A pause while he crosses the stable to stand beside me. He comes into focus in parts—his golden hair, his tanned skin. His blue eyes. They look hard this morning. “No.”

Except the reserve in his expression wasn’t there last time I saw him. He is avoiding me. “You said you weren’t mad at me,” I whisper, regret a cold rock in my throat.

“Is that what you think this is? Some kind of revenge bullshit?”

“Not when you put it that way. But I don’t know what else it could be.” I don’t know how else to reconcile the charming man who pushed me up against the wall of L’Etoile with the man who had sex with me and then immediately left. The man who sat in my kitchen with a warm smile and then left town to avoid me.

He swears softly, turning away toward the back door of the stable, where a honeycomb of pastures begins. “You shouldn’t have come here. And you sure as hell shouldn’t go near Gold Rush. Not anywhere near her stall.”

“Because she’s been neglected?”

“Because she’s dangerous.”

“Maybe she’ll get socialized faster if you don’t put her in the corner.”

“Yeah? Or maybe she’ll kick hard enough to break the door down.”

“Why are you being so hard on her?”

“Why do you care?” His tone is cold enough to freeze me where I stand, but I have a lot of experience dealing with assholes. I fell in love with one when I was sixteen.

“Because you’re doing the same damn thing to me that you did to her, putting her away when it gets hard, telling yourself that you’re doing it for her own good.”

He takes a step closer to me, his silence heavy. “It’s not you,” he says, and I shake my head.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s not only you.” He looks more than pissed off; he looks shaken. As if my presence here bothers him on a bone-deep level. As if talking about this reaches to the core of him.

“What the hell is going on, Sutton? This is more than competition between two alpha males, isn’t it? I know it is. You’re hiding something.”

He turns away from me, proving the point. “It’s none of your business.”

A few steps and I plant myself in front of him again. “You had your cock inside me a few weeks ago. You played with my clit while you groaned my name. This is totally my business.”

His low growl reaches into my chest. “You could have said no.”

“I wanted you then.” I take a step closer, enveloped in the scent of earth and sweat and sex. “And I want you now. I think you want me too.”

An uneven laugh. “I look at you and I’m hard. You give me attitude, and I’m like goddamn iron. There’s about a hundred ways I want you, and when we’re done with that, I’ll think up a hundred more.”

He doesn’t take a step toward me. Doesn’t move a muscle. “What’s stopping you?”