She watched him move toward the door. Two weeks of this. Every morning, the same ritual: plate, proximity, departure. As if feeding her was permissible but staying to watch her eat was a frontier he couldn't cross.
He stopped at the threshold. His hand rested on the doorframe, and he turned his head — not fully, just enough that she could see the unscarred side of his profile, the sharp line of his jaw.
"Would you like to ride into town with me after breakfast?"
She set down the bread she'd just picked up. "I'd love that. I haven't seen anything past the estate grounds."
A single nod. He left.
Davn took a sip from his mug. His eyes tracked Rhaezon's departure, then slid back to November.
"He's been planning that question since yesterday," Davn said.
November bit into her bread and said nothing, but something warm spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the cooking.
The stable waswarm with animal heat and the low grinding hum of kethral settling after their morning feed. November rounded the corner and found Rhaezon in the center aisle, cinching a saddle over the broad grey back of Kethos, the most even-tempered of the estate's riding animals. The saddle was larger than anything she'd seen on a horse — wider, with a deeper seat to accommodate the kethral's rolling six-legged gait — and Rhaezon's hands moved over the straps with unhurried precision.
He looked up. His eyes tracked from her face to her boots and back in a movement so fast she almost missed it.
"Are we riding together?" she asked.
His hands stilled on the cinch. He glanced toward the adjacent stall, where a smaller kethral — a dark slate female named Yreth — stood with her ears swiveled forward, watching them both with that unsettling attention.
"I can saddle Yreth, if you'd prefer your own mount."
November looked at Yreth. The kethral was beautiful — compact for her species, well-muscled, with the fine neck scaling that caught light like hammered metal. On Earth, November would have been in that saddle without a second thought. But Yreth was not a horse. The six-legged gait, the lateral roll, the completely different center of gravity — she'd been watching from the ground for two weeks and she still hadn't mapped the rhythm of it in her body. In the stable yard, on familiar ground, she'd consider it. On unfamiliar roads, at distance from the estate, with terrain she couldn't read — no.
"Together would be safer." She kept her voice practical. "I haven't ridden one yet. I don't want my first time to be on open roads I don't know."
Reasonable. Sound. Entirely logical.
Rhaezon turned back to Kethos and adjusted the stirrup length without comment. If he had an opinion about the arrangement, his face didn't betray it. He swung up into the saddle in a single fluid motion, the kethral barely shifting under his weight despite the fact that he was six feet seven inches of dense muscle. His thigh settled against the saddle's curve, and he extended his hand down to her.
She gripped his forearm. His skin was hot under her fingers, hotter than she'd expected, and the muscles beneath flexed as he lifted her weight with an ease that made her stomach drop. She swung her leg over and landed in front of him in the deep saddle.
Oh.
His thighs pressed against the backs of hers. Warm was not the word. He radiated heat through the leather of his trousers and the fabric of hers, and the contact ran from her hips to her knees in an unbroken line. Her back settled against his chest — broad, solid, rising and falling with controlled breaths — and she fit there. She fit against him like a key turning in a lock she hadn't known existed, the curve of her spine finding the hollow of his sternum, her shoulders tucking just below the shelf of his.
She was not going to think about that.
His arms came around her to gather the reins. Both arms bracketing her body, his wrists near her hips, his chest a wall of heat behind her. She could smell him. Something clean and mineral, like stone after rain, underlaid with a warmth that she was beginning to associate specifically with Drakon.
Kethos shifted beneath them, eager. The kethral stepped forward, and the rolling gait sent November off-balance. She tipped, grabbed for the saddle horn, and the world lurched sideways.
Rhaezon's arm locked around her waist.
His left arm, the one on his damaged side, the arm that should have been weaker but wrapped around her with a grip so sure and so immediate that she understood: this was reflex. Bone-deep. The arm stayed. His hand spread flat against her stomach, fingers wide, holding her secure against him as Kethos settled into his stride.
He did not remove it.
They passed through the estate gates, the guards nodding, and the road opened ahead. Packed earth winding down through the plateau scrub toward the clustered rooftops of the market town below. Rhaezon's arm stayed around her waist. The kethral's rolling gait pressed her back against his chest with every stride. His breath stirred the hair at the crown of her head.
She kept her eyes on the road. She kept her hands on the saddle horn. She did not lean back into him.
Much.
The market townwas chaos and color and noise, and November couldn't stop looking at it.
