Chapter 2 Beau
TWO
beau
Riding Ghost Pepper should’ve been the hardest thing I did tonight. The bull was rank, mean, and has thrown nearly every rider that has ridden him this year. Give him another year, and he’ll be crushing Bushwhacker’s record—and still, I nailed it. Rode him clean. Scored the best ride of the year.
Adrenaline still pounds through me, and usually I fucking love this high. A good ride is better than sex. Well, maybe. But all of it got washed out the second her scent toyed with me.
I’d been catching it all night—just a ghost of it, a whiff here and there.
I thought I was imagining things. But when I saw her as I slid onto Ghost Pepper, I nearly lost all my focus.
I knew the scent I’d been getting all night was her as soon as our eyes met.
Even over the several yards that separated us.
Sweet buttercups and vanilla laced with a creamy note—a mix so warm and sharp it cut clean through her blockers. All Omegas have to have them to be staff on the Arena grounds.
It felt like summer sunshine, sugar-sweet and decadent, heady and consuming. At complete odds with the stern, no-nonsense professional glaring up at me from the alley.
I had less than a moment to wonder why she leveled that glare at me before she spun on a dime and bolted, clearly trying to disappear.
When she turned to leave, my Alpha went crazy. I’ve had years of practice managing my nature, but the little Omega turned me upside down. It took everything I had not to race after her, like predator and prey.
Chase. Chase. Claim.
The need to have what was so clearly meant for me eclipsed everything else, so intense I nearly stumbled. I jumped down, prowling after her, my body buzzing, the desire racing straight to my cock so good I almost groaned.
And then, when I got close enough to see those storm gray eyes, every last shred of common sense I owned disappeared.
I’ve never been much of a gentleman. Never seen the point in worrying about what people think of me.
Never gave two fucks about social norms. But her scent was too damn good—too tempting not to want to lean in and take a bite.
I had to shake my head, hard, just to keep the fog of her scent from pulling me deeper.
But when she touched me… It felt like a branding iron, burning straight through cotton and into skin. One palm and my body was gone—sensation and need shooting straight to my cock, bypassing my brain altogether. Every part of me was going haywire.
I’d just had the ride of my life, but all I could think about was how that curvy little spitfire with ice-blonde hair and stormy eyes might sound if she moaned instead of snarled.
What in the actual fuck was happening?
When she stalked off, boots kicking up little angry clouds of dust in her wake, I damn near followed. Had she looked back at me, she would have been over my shoulder and out of the arena before she could tell me to fuck off.
But she didn’t even spare me a backward glance, giving me no opening I could exploit to chase after her. Just left me drowning in the alley, her perfume turning my brain to jelly and my dick to steel.
I had to adjust myself right there in the shadows.
Fuck.
I duck to the wash station, desperate for air, for space, for anything that isn’t her scent curling through me.
Eyes on the prize. That’s what I keep telling myself. A clean end to my career. I’m the Saint, and I need to go out as a champion.
The Saint of the Circuit, that’s what they call me now.
The cleaned-up cowboy. The PR redemption story.
Twelve months of hands off the opposite sex, head down, smiling for the cameras.
Twelve months without a single slip. No whiskey, no brawls, no buckle bunnies sneaking out of my room before sunrise. Pure as a fucking nun.
I press the pedal at the hand sink, bend low, and splash cold water over my face until it stings. Thirty seconds with her and my brain’s mush. My grip on the basin is white-knuckled, eyes squeezed shut.
Two months. I’ve got two months to win the whole goddamn thing.
And I don’t have time to waste on pussy.
No matter how good I know she’d taste.
No matter how perfect it would feel to sink my knot into her until neither of us remembers where we end and the other begins.
Nope, absolutely not. I will not be acting on that thought.
When I straighten up, shaking water from my hair, I catch movement in my peripheral vision. Through the gaps between the wash station and the holding pen fencing, I can see her—the spitfire Omega—near the stock pens, clipboard in hand, all business.
But she’s not alone.
Mark Felton stands too close to her, his body language all wrong.
Predatory. His head tilted down toward her like he’s sharing a secret, but everything about her posture screams discomfort.
Her shoulders are rigid, her stance defensive, like she’s bracing for a blow.
And her face is a blank mask, devoid of… anything.
My Alpha perks up, hackles rising. I can feel her distress like a physical force.
I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I can see her face from here—and when Felton reaches out like he’s going to touch her arm, she jerks back so sharply she nearly drops her clipboard.
That’s when the growl starts building in my chest.
Felton laughs, and the sound carries across the fairgrounds, mean and satisfied. He says something else, gesturing toward the office trailers, and the little color left in her face drains completely.
Every instinct is screaming at me to get over there. To put myself between them. To make it crystal fucking clear that whatever game Felton’s playing ends now.
But before I can move, she’s walking away with the controlled pace of someone who refuses to show weakness. Felton watches her go, his gaze tracking her ass like a predator sizing up prey.
The sick fuck is enjoying her discomfort.
I’m halfway across the space between us before I even realize I’m moving, but by the time I reach the spot where they were standing, she’s gone.
All that’s left is the lingering trace of her scent—fainter now, but still there, and the acrid notes of distress in it calling to every primitive part of my brain.
“McCrae.”
Felton’s bark snaps me out of it.
“Just who I was looking for.” His splotched face is twisted in contempt and rage. He's pissed, but honestly, that’s kind of his standard operating procedure. He’s built like a feed sack and just as charming, eyes narrowing as they flick toward where she disappeared.
“You want to tell me what all that was with the James girl?” His voice is pitched low, leaning in like he thinks throwing dominance around will work on me. My Alpha doesn’t even bother to rise. He’s second-tier at best. A boy playing at being a man.
But her name on his lips does get under my skin, and I’m still struggling with seeing him crowding my Omega.
The thought stops me cold. My Omega? Where the fuck did that come from?
I roll my shoulders back, plastering on the easy smile I save for press conferences. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the bullshit, McCrae.” His lip curls. “You were all over the James girl in front of half the damn arena.”
I ignore him, but my jaw ticks at the way he says her name, like he has a right to it. Like she belongs to him.
“I’ve had my eye on that one for a long time,” he grates out. “Been waiting for her to come home where she belongs. You’d better keep your distance if you know what’s good for you.”
My hands curl into fists before I can stop them. The possessive way he talks about her, like she’s some prize he’s been saving, makes something dark and violent rise in my chest.
“She’s not yours, Felton, or anyone’s for that matter.”
His smile turns predatory again. “Isn’t she?
We go way back, Willa and I. I’ve got plans for that girl, and they don’t include you sniffing around her.
” He steps closer, voice dropping. “So why don’t you do us all a favor and stick to what you do best—ride the bulls and keep them happy, or you may find yourself in early retirement. ”
The threat isn’t a new one. Felton has been using his position over me for as long as I’ve been on this circuit.
“Don’t forget our deal, McCrae.”
“Fuck off.” I shoulder past him, but he can’t resist a parting shot.
“Willa James may smell like first-class pussy, but she’s an uptight bitch.”
I stop dead. And he barrels straight into my back.
Rage detonates inside me.
I spin, towering over him, my full six-foot-five eating up every inch of space he tries to keep between us. My fists flex once, twice, as I barely hold myself back from breaking his fucking jaw.
“Listen close, Felton.” My voice is pure gravel. “I don’t know what sick game you’re playing with her, but it ends now. Stay the fuck away from Willa James.”
His nostrils flare, and something shifts in his expression—a flash of possessive rage that he tries to hide behind bureaucratic authority. “Is that a threat, McCrae?”
“It’s a promise.”
“Really?”
I expect him to throw a punch to meet my challenge, but instead a greasy smile lights his face, and a sinking feeling of foreboding fills me.
“Here’s how this works,” he continues, stepping closer. “You will stay away from her, or I will make your life very difficult.”
He pulls out his phone, scrolling to something that makes his smile turn predatory.
“Funny thing about modern technology. Cameras everywhere these days.”
My blood turns to ice when I see the photo. Willa and I by the pens, from moments ago, her hand on my chest, our faces inches apart. I tower over her, her body engulfed by mine. The angle makes it look way more intimate than it was.
“One carefully timed shot,” he says conversationally. “Looks to me like the league’s poster boy is sexually harassing a female employee, doesn’t it? Poor little Omega intern, cornered by the big bad bull rider.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Doesn’t matter what happened. Only what it looks like.” His thumb hovers over the screen. “Sexual harassment by the Saint of the Circuit? The sponsors would eat that shit up. Headlines for weeks. Your season over, her reputation destroyed. Two birds, one stone.”
Heat floods up my spine, every Alpha instinct demanding I wipe that smug look off his face. But he’s not done.
“You think sponsors will care about ninety-six-point-eight when I’m whispering in their ears about ‘concerns over your treatment of women’? You think the APbrA board will want a liability like you around their female staff?”
The calculating bastard. He’s been planning this. The threat rolls through me like ice. Because he’s not wrong—my reputation is hanging by a thread, and he knows it. There isn’t a news outfit out there that would believe me.
My jaw works, grinding so hard I might crack teeth. Every instinct screams at me to end him right here, right now. But the calculating part of my brain—the part that’s kept me alive this long—knows he’s got the power to follow through.
For now.
“We understand each other?” he asks, backing away with that satisfied smirk.
My jaw works, grinding so hard I might crack teeth. “What do you want?”
“Good choice.” He tucks the phone away. “I want you to stay the fuck away from James. Get in my way, cross me on this, and I’ll bury you both so deep you’ll never see daylight again.”
He takes my silence as agreement.
“Good boy. Keep it that way.”
Then he’s gone, leaving me alone with my rage and the lingering scent of her fear.
I drag in a breath, hold it, and let it burn on the way out as I try to push back the tide of white-hot rage that’s threatening to pour out of me. God, I hate that man.
The press is waiting, cameras ready to splash my smile across headlines by morning. But all I can think about is the terror in her eyes when she saw Felton. The way she’d gone pale as death, like she was seeing a ghost.
Or a monster.
Whatever history they have, whatever hold he thinks he has over her—I meant what I said. This ends now.
Even if it means risking everything I’ve worked for.