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Sovereign.
His email address is printed at the bottom along with his phone number. There’s something so arrogant about him signing only his surname like that. It’s a scrawl, it takes up space, it’s big and loud. It eats up my tiny name that isn’t even correct. I’mMrs.Garrison, not Miss. It feels like he’s trying to make me smaller than him.
I flip the card over and over in my fingers.
Am I afraid of Gerard Sovereign?
Should I be?
When Clint died, he left me the largest plot of Garrison land with the original house on it. And all the land he’d taken from me when we married. It puts me between Avery and Thomas’s land on the front and west side.
On the north and east side, I’m right up against Sovereign Mountain. I’m stuck between the three wealthiest men in the state. Like a fly in a spiderweb. They all have the police in their back pockets and no one would help me if I found myself in danger.
It's a wild country…and I’ve heard what the people of South Platte say about Gerard. He’s a necessary evil, so they do business with him, but when he walks into a room, it goes quiet.
After meeting him, I understood that part.
There’s no law on Sovereign Mountain but his. It’s the reason I barely got any information around Clint’s death. I only knew that he’d been thrown from his horse and run over by cattle while purchasing livestock for auction. The police won’t go out to these remote places, and the coroner is a close friend of Gerard’s.
I get to my feet and double check that the front door is locked. Then I leave the kitchen light on and move through the silent house and up to my bedroom.
I undress and curl up beneath my quilt. My iPad is charging on my bedside table and I swipe it open, typing his name into the search bar. It’s slow—the internet is terrible out here—but eventually it brings up a page of photographs of him.
They’re all from newspapers. In the first one, he’s standing with the mayor of the city at a ribbon cutting event. They’ve both got black Sovereign Mountain hats on. Below it is a photo of him holding a check beside the city commissioner. A hundred thousand dollars for the emergency worker’s fund.
The city might not love him, but they’re all happy to take his money. Funny how that works.
He’s handsome, I have to give him that. Heat creeps up my throat again. He’s got a Hollywood face, chiseled with low brows and a square, stubbled jaw. In the photo, his dark hair is tousled and his ice blue eyes stand out against his black lashes. There’s a grim set to his jaw that I see in the men who’ve worked the land their entire lives.
Like nothing phases him anymore.
Like he’s seen it all. Death, taxes, and everything in between.
My eyes shift over the photo of him standing with the mayor. Gerard Sovereign towers over him. He’s easily six and a half feetof solid muscle, broad shoulders, and thick forearms. He has thick, heavy body that make me wonder what he feels like naked.
My toes curl. I set the iPad up on the bedside table, propped against my water glass. Then I flip onto my side and pull the quilt to my chin.
The painted mare still sits on my bedside table. She’s always there, like a guardian angel, keeping me company, every night since Clint died. Sometimes I take her with me when I leave the house, just so I’m not alone. Tonight, I wrap her in my handkerchief and tuck her into the drawer.
The photo of Gerard swims before my eyes. He’s in a pair of work pants and a Henley rolled up to expose his forearms. His clothes are broken in by his body, hugging him in all the right places. Faded by the sun.
Would it be so bad…to just look while my hand slips under the covers? It’s not like anyone would ever know. The house is empty, the painted mare is put away. My pulse increases, but it’s in the most pleasant way that sends warmth down between my legs.
Fingertips skim over my thighs.
My eyes lock on him, tracing down his thick neck to his broad shoulders. Down his hard stomach to his groin. There’s a very faint rise under his zipper, like whatever he’s got in there is too big to conceal properly.
If I could have him any way I wanted—my fingers find my wet sex—I would let him take me the way he said he had wanted that night. Bent over in front of him. Skirt pushed up…his big hand in my hair pulling my head back until it hurt. I’d let him show me just how much strength he has in that big body.
My fingers speed up.
My lashes flutter and between them I see flashes of him on the screen before I shut them and give into the fantasy. I never came with Clint, and now that he’s gone, I find it’s so much easierto finish when I’m not constantly worried about his temper. Pleasure surges after just a few minutes and washes over me, arcing my body.
Then it’s gone. I peel my eyes open, flushed and sweaty.
I should feel ashamed, but I don’t. Instead, I get up and go to the window, drawing aside the curtain. I can see the hill where my land meets his in the distance.
I wonder if he thinks about me the way I do him.
