Page 3 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
He drops his glass to the table and shrugs on his jacket, striding to the door and not looking back.
Chapter Two
“Hey there, baby. It’s good to see you too,” she says, nuzzling her face against Maddock’s, and tickling the soft fur beneath his chin. The horse rubs his face against hers and she chuckles. “Does that feel good, baby?” she says, scratching him more firmly and watching as his ebony eyes drift shut in pleasure, his long spider like lashes flickering
“He’s a horse, not a baby,” Sara calls out from a couple of stables away.
“You’re my baby, aren’t you?” she says, ignoring the other woman. “Shall we go for a ride, then?” She unhooks the stable door and walks inside, gliding her hand over the horse’s silky grey body and lifting the saddle onto his back. She mutters nonsense to him as she reaches under his belly and fastens the buckle. Maddock shifts from one foot to another. He might be old these days, but he’s still as eager to get out into the countryside, and she smiles to herself. His excitement is always infectious and she knew he’d make her feel better.
Last night’s incident at the pub has cast a shadow over her mood this morning and she hasn’t been able to shake it off. It descended last night and she assumed it would be gone by the morning. But it wasn’t.
She slips the bridle over Maddock’s head, and he grunts as she fits the bit into his mouth. “I know, I know,” she says, leading him out of the stable.
“Where are you headed this morning, Amy?” Sara asks, striding out of her own stall, brush in hand, the other resting on her hip. She’s a thin, tall woman with perfectly coiffed hair, a set of pearls in her ears and a string tucked over the collar of her camel turtle neck. Amy peers down at her own clothes, her worn breeches, her scuffed boots and her faded jacket.
“Probably up onto the down and around the dyke.” Amy pats Maddock’s neck, avoiding Sara’s disapproving gaze.
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
Sara huffs in irritation, kicking at a stray piece of hay on the path with the toe of her riding boot, so well polished, Amy can almost see her reflection in the leather. “You know that’s not safe. Especially with that old horse.” Maddock used to be her mother’s horse and then she hurt her back and he’s been Amy’s for the last five years. It was fine at first, but then came the revelation of her designation and Sara’s attitude swiftly changed. She can’t take it out on Amy directly though, she can’t let it be known that she is prejudice like that, although there is the odd little comment she makes now and again, especially when no one else is around. So instead all her viciousness and vile is directed at Maddock. Continually making comments about his age, about how he is soiling the reputation of her stables. Amy would like to move him but her mum is paying the bills and everywhere else is more expensive.
Amy shrugs. Sometimes she rides out with Emily or Jim, but today she wants to be left alone with her thoughts.
“I have my phone and I’m only going for an hour. Gotta a lunch time shift.” She doesn’t wait for Sara’s response, hoisting herself up into the stirrups and onto the horse’s back, trotting away down the lane as soon as she’s seated.
It’s a clear day, not a cloud in the sky, but the September sun hangs low in the sky, casting long shadows over the lanes. Maddock’s gait is light as he trots gleefully downhill, and she bounces in the saddle, her hands tight on the rein, and they trot in and out of mellow light and dark shade and then through the tunnel off trees, the world around them stained green.
It’s good to be out in the fresh air, where she can gaze out across the freshly ploughed fields and over the low hedgerows, up towards the Down covered in thick forest, the leaves that drunken green that signals they are on the verge of turning to reds and oranges. It helps to clear her head, which is just what she needs after last night.
Five years.
Five years it’s been since she’d last laid eyes on Jack Johnson. And yet he still has the ability to make her heart stutter in her chest and her stomach somersault in disarray. She thought she was over all that. That her feelings for him all those years ago had been some silly schoolgirl crush. After all, just about every girl in the village and at school had a crush on Jack Johnson. But now, after seeing him again, she’s not so sure.
He’d looked strangely the same and yet so different. His pale blue eyes — the colour of early morning skies — had that dreamy quality they’d always had and the one time he smiled, his stubbled cheeks had dimpled just the way they always did. But somehow he’s gotten bigger, broader, taller, more muscular and stronger. She hadn’t been able to help her gaze from skirting all over him, admiring how good he looked. Better even than he did back then.
But it’s different now, isn’t it? Something new between them that hadn’t been there before. Their dynamic. When she was a girl, being around him had done funny things to the pit of her stomach. Delicious swoops that had whipped her breath away and there’d been many nights she’d lie in her bed imagining Jack Johnson.
Last night had been something entirely different. First there had been his scent. Invisible and inaccessible to her before, now so strong, so powerful, it had hit her as soon as he’d entered the pub. A scent that shook her legs as if it had blasted through the door and plummeted into her. A scent that swirled around her and swum into her nostrils, into her mouth, dissolving onto her tongue and entering her bloodstream. She shivers, remembering the flavour of it.
Her body had reacted to it instantaneously even before she’d turned around and seen who it belonged to. No other Alpha scent has had her nipples hardening and her stomach growling in hunger like his did.
And then he’d spoken to her in that deeply Alpha voice and all the desire swamping her body had amplified.
Her experience of Alpha’s is limited. The way her body reacts to them still so new. She has to engage her rational brain when one is near, fight every instinct otherwise she’d be on her knees for them, probably in their bed, in a flash. It’s hard, but she’s getting better and better at controlling it. But Jack?
They reach the foot of the hill, and Maddock’s pace slows as he climbs the track under the old trees, the ground damp and sticky with mud. Soon he’s puffing, and she leans forward to rub his neck.
Yes, he’s getting old. She hates to acknowledge it, but he’s finding it harder to carry her up the incline.
To the left is the bridle path that leads down to farmer Widham’s land. It used to be a favourite of hers, but not anymore. Not since it became public knowledge that she’d presented as an Omega. Now he curses at her whenever she rides past his land. He probably thinks she can’t hear him. He’s half deaf and has no idea how loudly he speaks. But she heads the other way instead, skirting along the old stone walls of the estate.
She tries to keep her thoughts on the path, on Maddock and the burn in her thighs and her core, but her mind keeps drifting back to little flashes of Jack. How stiffly he stood there. How he refused to step close to the bar. How his nostrils had flared despite he’s obvious best efforts. How he’d rammed those pills into his mouth.
At the summit of the Down, she draws the horse to stop, and slides down, coming to stand beside him and leaning into his strong body, gazing out over the stretching Sussex landscape; the dark of the meadows, the dusty brown of the harvested fields and the dark patches of forest. Plough line stretch over the fields rolling with the land and the river curls like a ribbon where the earth flattens. She lets her gaze flow away to the hazy horizon where the sea twinkles, a tiny star bright under the sunshine.
She can’t imagine being locked away from here. Taken away, forbidden to roam free in this landscape. The very thought of it makes her throat constrict and she can’t breathe. She wonders what that must have done to Jack. What kind of man he now is. It wasn’t just his physique and his scent that had changed last night. There was something in those blue eyes of his too. Something dangerous. Like a predator coiled tight, ready to spring. And something else too, something sad.
