Animal Instincts (Gilded Knights Series Book 3)

by Emilia Finn

  “You tired?” He strokes gentle patterns against the ball of my shoulder, and every minute or two, presses a kiss to the top of my head. “You feel pretty damn relaxed, Tabby.”

  Grinning, I slide my palm across his chest, touching, memorizing, meditating almost. “Uh huh. I’m ready to sleep.”

  “It’s only like…” He moves a little, checks the clock on the bedside table, then drops back into place and sniggers. “Nine o’clock. Did you know that?”

  “Nope.” And yet, a yawn overpowers my grin. “Feels like midnight. Aren’t you tired?”

  “Mm.” His stroking fingers come up to my hair. He’s so gentle. So attentive. “I’m completely spent, but I don’t wanna sleep yet.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “I’m not ready for today to be over.”

  “You’re not?” I adjust so I can look up.

  All I see at first is the underside of his jaw, the five o’clock shadow that is still so perfectly trimmed, then as Beckett adjusts too, he shows me a heart-clenching smile.

  I’ve only really known the arrogant version of Beckett. The sex-fiend. The ladies’ man. Of course, he’s still the same person he’s always has been, but now I get to see his vulnerabilities too. His sweetness. His shyness.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Because this is the first day of the rest of our lives,” he murmurs in answer. “The first day you said yes to me.” He angles down and presses a kiss to my lips once I lift my chin and oblige. “It’s the first day you told me you love me,” he adds quietly. “I don’t wanna go to sleep at nine, and forfeit three hours of this day all because I’m a little sleepy.”

  “So, what? You’re gonna stay awake staring at the ceiling till midnight?” I tease. “Great use of your time, Rosa.”

  “Nuh uh.” Without wasting a second, Beckett grabs my weight and drags me up to straddle his hips. Instantly, I’m met with his solid length and a choice to make; slide on, or act coy.

  My breath hums through my chest, fire races in my blood. Re-energized, I reach between us and take his cock. In one breath, he groans at my touch. On the second, I line us up and begin sliding down. On the third, we both moan as heat races in my veins.

  “Fuck.”

  “Such a good choice,” he hums. His hands are large. They wrap around my hips and stretch up to touch several of my ribs. But despite his size, his strength, his desire, he’s gentle with me. Firm, but so very gentle. “You chose exactly what I hoped you would.”

  Purring, I rest my palms on his chest and ride. It’s slower than earlier, calmer, but no less potent. “Feels so good.” I let my head fall forward. My hair curtains my face. It blocks my view of the chest I’ve dreamed of far too much, of the eyes that beguiled me the moment we began working together. The smile that makes panties disintegrate.

  A loud whickering neigh sounds from somewhere outside in the dark. One then another. I keep gliding over Beckett.

  He reaches up and tucks my hair behind my ears, exposing my face, and grins when our eyes meet. “So fucking beautiful.”

  “Mm.” I lean forward and press my lips to his.

  Graciela whinnies a second time. A pained cry that tugs at my stomach. But still, Beckett’s hands control my hips. My movements. My pleasure.

  Graciela calls out a third time, and Beckett growls.

  “I fucking knew this was gonna happen.” Our eyes meet for a single beat, pain throbs in his gaze, then he shakes his head when I smile and lift off his lap. “I fucking knew it.”

  Losing him sends my body into a type of freefall. A loss of senses. A mourning of pleasure. But I scramble across the floor and snag my jeans with a grin, because I can hear exactly what Beckett hears.

  “The baby is coming,” I singsong.

  “One more night,” he snarls. “I just needed one more night, then you and I could be gone, and it wouldn’t be my problem.”

  “And yet, she’s calling for you.” Amused, I grab my shirt and shrug it on while Beckett pulls his jeans up. He’s quick, smooth, and not at all happy about it. “You said you wanted to stay awake.”

  “Fuck you!”

  I burst out laughing as he brings his shirt over his head and down to cover his torso. We’re both sweaty, tired, and somewhat gross from not showering after what we’ve done tonight, but we dress in less than a minute, shoes on in the next, then Beckett snags my hand and stomps toward the door.

  “You’re coming with me.” Grumbling, he steps through the landmine of dinner plates and serving containers. “I’m spending my three hours with you, whether you like it or not.”

  “Charming.” I’m teasing. Taunting. But my heart races anyway, and my lips quirk high. “Who’s to say she isn’t calling for me, anyway, huh? Maybe she wants a lady helper.”

  “She wants me. All the ladies do.”

  “Har-har.” I roll my eyes and glance down to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything important in our rush to dress. Shirt and jeans. Shoes and socks. My hair dangles loose, annoying me before we even start, so I grab a hair tie and snap it around my wrist, then I look to Beckett. “Ready.”

  “Yeah.” He swings the door open, only to jump when Samara waits on the other side, her fist lifted to knock.

  “Argh!” he cries out. “Kid!”

  “Graciela needs help.” For the first time since being here, we’re met with a scared little girl, and not the freakish child from a horror movie. “She’s hurting, Mr. Rosa.”

  “We heard her,” he sighs. No longer mad that he’s been forced to help, Beckett wraps his fingers around mine, but rests his free hand on Samara’s shoulder and turns her into the hall. “Lead us to her?”

  He knows where the mare is, of course. But he gives the girl a job, a purpose, and helps her feel just that little more in control of an out-of-control situation.

  Tomorrow, when we have a healthy mare and foal, Samara can say she helped.

  “Sure.” Samara wipes tears from her eyes and darts forward. “This way, Mr. Rosa. She’s in the barn.”

  “We’re gonna need to wrap her tail.” Whether he speaks to me, or to himself, I don’t know, but Beckett’s eyes remain low as he plans his next job. “Did your dad lay straw in the stalls today, Samara? Or shavings?”

  “Straw,” she calls back and shoves through the door leading off the kitchen. It’s pitch-dark outside. Not even the moon or stars shine through the cloud cover. “Fresh straw just this afternoon, since Graciela’s colostrum started leaking.”

  “Great work.” Beckett pulls me forward, hurries me along, but somehow makes it so we’re strolling in the darkness. “Can you help me out on this?”

  “Of course.” My heart thunders, races, sprints with glee. “I’ll take—”

  “If you could wrap her tail,” he cuts in. “And probably get hot water and clean rags. We’ll need to wash her up, disinfect, make sure it’s safe. If she’s already lying down, I’ll have to make sure she isn’t too close to the stall wall, otherwise I won’t have room to work.”

  “You?” I slow our walk and try, I try so hard to ignore the pang of pain in my heart. “Room for you to work? And I’ll wrap her tail?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes swing around in the darkness and meet mine. “What’s wrong? We gotta hurry.”

  “I’m being delegated to hairstyles and clean-up crew? Are you fucking serious right now?”

  “What are y—” Then it clicks in his brain. His eyes widen, and his tongue darts out to moisten dry lips. “Tabby, I didn’t—”

  “I’m still the assistant, you’re the vet, and my education is useless.”

  “No! I didn’t mean… I didn’t…”

  “Come on, Mr. Rosa!” Samara stops at the door to the barn and watches us bicker on the lawn. “Can’t you hear her?”

  Graciela whinnies into the nighttime silence. A hoof smacks against a wooden stall wall.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” Beckett murmurs. “I didn’t… it’s habit. But I meant no disrespect.”

  “So you
’ll let me deliver her?”

  His brows shoot high. “What?”

  “You trust me to do it, right? You trust me, period? Means you’ll sit on your hands and let me deliver this baby.”

  “But…” He swallows as all his worst nightmares come to fruition. “This is my patient, Tabby.”

  “No it’s not!” I throw my hands in the air in frustration. “She’s not your patient! She’s a horse on a hobby farm at a B&B we just so happen to be staying at. She’s having a baby, she has two vets onsite, and you know damn well it’ll all work out, especially if we work together.”

  “Mr. Rosa?” Samara grows impatient. “Come on!”

  “Okay,” he calls to her. His voice starts off strong, but it grows softer, weaker, as the word stretches out. “I’m coming. Just…” He draws a deep breath. “Just give us a sec.”

  “I don’t want to have this fight over and over again.” My throat grows tight as emotion balls and threatens to choke me. “I don’t want to have to shout to be heard. I don’t want to be doubted, when there is absolutely no proof at all I’m not a skilled vet. In a lot of circles, it might even be agreed that I’m better at this than you are.”

  “Tabby, I didn’t mean—”

  “No, you didn’t mean. It’s habit, an old habit that you’re going to have to work on. And in the meantime, I can be patient. But things have changed since you last worked. You told me you love me,” I choke out, “and I said it back. You’re not representing Lakeside right now, Beckett. Your phone isn’t ringing. You do not need an administrative assistant tonight. And if you dare demand that I be that for you, then I’m walking.”

  His face pales. “Walking? Walking where?”

  “Home.” I shrug. “Away. To the lake, maybe. Somewhere I won’t be made to feel useless and incompetent.”

  “Tabby—”

  “Graciela is in pain,” I point toward the stables when she whinnies. “She needs help. She got damn lucky when a vet drove onto her property this week, and everyone knows Doctor Rosa will get her through this. But you don’t get to brush me into the corner whenever you’re not taking me to bed.”

  “I love you, Tabby.” Beckett’s eyes glitter with fear. With hurt. With pain. “I do.”

  “And I love you.” I step forward and take his hands. “But to love means to wish happiness for your other half. It means to hope and pray and encourage me to be all I can be.” I glance toward the barn. “Me joining you on this does not take away from your happiness one iota. But you saying I can’t do the very thing I was born to do, my passion, my heart and soul…” I press our joined hands to my chest, “That’s you robbing me of my happiness, all because of your own greed and want to be the star of the show.”

  “I never meant for it to be like that,” his voice crackles. “I swear.”

  “At Lakeside, it’s your show, Beck. I know that. And though I’ll whine about it, there’s nothing I can say or do to change it. It’s your circus, and that makes you the ringmaster. No one can take that away from you. But here,” I look up to the clouds, to the threatening rain. Looking down again, I meet his eyes. “Here, you have to share, or you have to let me go.”

  “No.” His eyes grow wider with fear. “I’m not letting you go. I only just got you.”

  “And you’ve spent the better part of two months harping on about how Mark doesn’t value me the way he should. How he doesn’t put me first, or encourage me to be happy.”

  “He doesn’t! He’s a selfish fuck.”

  “But don’t you see?” A fresh tear drips from the corner of my eye. “You don’t get to talk the talk, Beckett, but at the first chance to walk the walk, you shove me aside instead. Not out here. Not in Switzerland.”

  “Fuck.” He closes his eyes. Screws them shut when Graciela cries out in pain. Then when she silences, he opens them once more and nods. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He pulls me in and crushes me into a rough hug. He presses a kiss to the top of my head, then pulling back, he swallows and holds my gaze. “Together.”

  “Together?” My heart jumps. “You promise?”

  “I promise.” He tugs me in once more and slams a kiss to my lips. “Completely and truly together. Zero doubt.”

  Now my heart soars.

  “Let’s go.” He drags me across the lawn at a run. His smile is too large, his giddiness palpable in the air. “But I want it on record I never meant to shove you aside. I’ve been a one-man show for a long time, Tabby, and changing habits is hard.”

  “It’s on the record.”

  “And I never meant to make you think I doubted you. Change is hard!”

  I laugh as we skid to a stop outside Graciela’s stall. My blood hums with anticipation. With excitement. With delight. “She’s already lying down.”

  “She’s a little close to the wall,” he mumbles. “Could be better, but it definitely could be worse.”

  “So we work together.” I tug Beckett’s hand and pull his attention to me. “We’ll work together.”

  “Yeah, we will.”

  He unlatches the gate and gently moves around a teary Samara. She climbs the fence with lithe movements and perches on the top, but she doesn’t come inside the stall the way Beckett and I tiptoe in.

  The girl has been told a million times in her life to stay out of the stalls, I guess. It’s too dangerous to be inside alone with a fifteen-hundred-pound horse. One wrong kick, one sneeze that startles an unsuspecting beast, and a child is likely to die.

  “She’s gonna be alright, isn’t she?” Samara wipes her sleeve beneath her nose and watches us with hypervigilant eyes. “She’s not gonna die.”

  “She’s not gonna die.” Beckett approaches Graciela slowly, kneeling by her face, and pats her neck. “Hey there, pretty girl. It’s showtime, huh?”

  Since he’s gone to her head, I make my way to her rump. Graciela’s stomach quivers from contractions. Her hind leg lifts at an awkward angle, and when I look, I find her vulva swollen and distended.

  Before I can even kneel or touch, a gush of fluid floods the straw by my feet.

  “Stage one is complete,” I tell them both. “I can already see the foal’s first foot.”

  “So get to it.” Smirking, Beckett lies on the floor on his side and cups Graciela’s face against his stomach.

  He strokes her neck the way, only twenty minutes ago, he was stroking mine. He runs his fingertips through her mane, and because of it, my hair tingles. He’s as loving and gentle with her as he was with me moments after lovemaking.

  “I’m sitting this one out, doctor,” he says.

  My eyes whip to his and narrow. “Huh?”

  “I’m gonna be an observer only. I wanna see what you do.”

  “You can’t only observe! I’ll need your strength to pull the foal free.”

  “Consider this your job interview,” he snickers and presses a kiss to Graciela’s forehead. “If you pass, we might rename Lakeside, make it Rosa and Rosa.” He shrugs when my eyes turn to dangerous slits. “Or, well, Rosa and Lawrence, I suppose. If you insist.”

  “Pain in my fucking ass.”

  I rush back out of the stall and sprint to the sinks on the opposite side of the barn. Beckett stays where he lies, but Samara follows me with her gaze.

  I’ve yet to step inside this barn except after our walk today to bring Graciela back; I don’t know where the murder family keeps their supplies… gloves… disinfectant… a fucking bucket!

  “In that cupboard,” Samara points toward a poo-brown space that I kinda expected would be where they keep shoes.

  Whipping the door open, I’m met with a neat array of supplies that calms my racing heart. It’s not all as dire as first expected.

  I snag a box of gloves and shove them between my arm and ribs, then I grab cloths from a neatly stacked pile. I find a sky-blue bucket in the back corner and snatch that, then I toss my things inside to make it easier to carry.

  My heart sprints—with adrenaline, but with excitement
too—as I collect my supplies, then pushing back to my feet, I dash toward Graciela’s stall and dump my things by her back leg. Taking the empty bucket, I tuck my arm through the handle to free my hands, then I reach up and toss my hair into a bun using the tie I grabbed before leaving our room.

  I skid to a stop by the sink, and when I find a hot tap right beside the cold, I breathe a sigh of relief and flip both on. I wait for the water to warm up, letting it go as hot as I can comfortably touch, then I fill the bucket and prepare to wash Graciela’s most private places.

  I haven’t even washed mine yet, but here I am, preparing to do it for the mom-to-be.

  “It’s so refreshing doing this on my back,” Beckett calls out. Taunting. Teasing. “I should do it like this all the time.”

  “You get one free show,” I shout back. “After this, I’m billing you.”

  “Do you hear that?” He turns silent for a moment, so the only sound I hear is Graciela’s pained breathing, and the pulse of my own heart.

  “What?”

  “No phone!” he cackles. “It’s glorious.”

  “Oh shut up.” I roll my eyes and flip the taps off. “You called me more often than I called you.”

  “How many of my phone messages were fabricated, just so you could call me up and hear my voice?”

  “Is this how it’s gonna be? Really?” I rush back to the stall with my bucket, only to find Beckett spooning the fucking horse. “You and me working together is actually me working and you trolling me for a reaction?”

  “Sounds like heaven,” he sighs and plops a kiss on Graciela’s ear. “I can’t wait to try it out.”

  “You know, you’re still all post-coital,” I use the awkward phrase and glance to Samara to make sure she doesn’t understand. “You’re loving on the mare the way you’re supposed to love on me.”

  Beckett only shrugs. “What can I say? I’m a snuggler, and you’re busy.”

  “Idiot,” I snicker. I try to be serious. I try to sound cranky. But my smile breaks free anyway as I drop to one knee by Graciela’s back-end and go to work washing her up.