POV: Ivy
Thomas called it a family bonding weekend, but Cecilia treated it like a public execution I was expected to attend with a grateful smile.
By Saturday morning, we were standing in the mud of a sprawling private equestrian estate just outside the city limits. Thomas and my mother watched from the elevated clubhouse terrace, sipping coffee, while Kyle stood fifty yards away, speaking in low tones with the estate’s head stable manager.
Cecilia appeared beside me, immaculate in polished leather boots and a tailored riding jacket. She looked completely in her element. I stood rigidly in faded denim and scuffed sneakers, painfully aware of the divide between us.
"You do ride, don't you?" Cecilia asked, tapping a leather riding crop rhythmically against her thigh.
"No," I replied, keeping my eyes fixed on the distant tree line.
Her perfectly glossed smile brightened with malicious delight. "How unfortunate."
"For whom?" I asked, leaning my back against the wooden stall rail.
"Thomas rented this entire property because he desperately wants us to spend time together," Cecilia said smoothly, though her eyes remained entirely cold. "Refusing to participate would be incredibly rude to your new stepfather. There is nowhere to hide out here, Ivy. You cannot just lock yourself in a storage closet when things get uncomfortable."
It was a carefully laid trap dressed up as high-society etiquette.
A nervous stable hand led a tall, heavily muscled chestnut thoroughbred out of the barn. The mare tossed her massive head, her dark eyes rolling wildly as she stamped a metal-shod hoof against the concrete pathway.
"Duchess," Cecilia announced, gesturing with her crop. "She is perfectly gentle."
The stable hand opened his mouth, gripping the leather bridle tightly. "Miss, actually—"
Cecilia cut him off with a vicious glare. "She is perfectly fine for a beginner, isn't she?"
He looked deeply uncomfortable. "She has not been worked in the paddock today. If the young lady wants a calmer ride, I can switch her for one of the older geldings."
"I am not getting on her," I stated, pushing off the wooden rail.
Cecilia lowered her voice, leaning directly into my personal space. "Of course you are not. You would much rather stay in the dirt and prove Kyle exactly right about you. He already knows you do not belong in this tax bracket. Go ahead. Prove him right."
I glanced toward the open paddock. Kyle had turned his head in our direction. Even from fifty yards away, his dark, calculating stare felt like a physical weight pressing down on my shoulders. I was entirely sick of being treated like a fragile, unwanted problem that this family had to manage.
"Fine," I said, snatching the leather reins from the stable hand.
He spent several frantic minutes adjusting the metal stirrups, warning me not to pull the reins too sharply if Duchess became anxious. I forced myself to project a calm I did not feel, hauling myself into the stiff leather saddle. Duchess shifted instantly beneath me, feeling like a mountain of vibrating, explosive energy.
"Easy," I murmured, gripping the saddle horn so tightly my knuckles turned white.
Heavy hoofbeats approached from the left. Kyle rode over on a massive black stallion, reigning the beast to a halt right beside me. He had shed his usual corporate armor for a dark riding sweater that made his shoulders look impossibly broad.
"You do not know what you are doing," Kyle stated flatly, his dark eyes taking in my white-knuckled grip.
"Your absolute confidence in my abilities remains touching," I replied, refusing to look down at him.
"Get off the horse, Ivy."
Cecilia laughed, riding her pristine white mare closer. "She is perfectly fine, Kyle. Stop trying to scare her. Thomas wants a picture of us heading out on the trail."
"I am not scared," I lied.
Kyle looked directly into my eyes, his jaw tightening. "That is exactly the problem."
"Look over here, girls!" Thomas shouted from the clubhouse terrace, waving his phone enthusiastically.
I turned my head instinctively toward the sound of my stepfather's voice.
Behind Duchess’s flank, heavy leather cracked sharply against horseflesh.
Duchess let out a deafening, panicked shriek. Her massive front legs launched off the ground. The entire world tilted violently backward, and I pitched dangerously toward the horse's tail, grabbing a desperate fistful of coarse mane.
Duchess’s front hooves slammed back into the dirt, and the terrified thoroughbred bolted.
The leather reins burned straight through my bare palms. Wind roared in my ears, instantly swallowing the shouts echoing behind me. The mare tore across the open, frost-covered field, heading straight for the jagged, dense pine tree line at a breakneck speed. Every frantic stride slammed against my spine, throwing me completely out of rhythm until my sneakers slipped entirely out of the metal stirrups.
"Whoa!" I screamed, clamping my knees against the saddle.
A low-hanging oak branch whipped past my shoulder, missing my skull by mere inches. I flattened my upper body against Duchess's sweaty neck, squeezing my eyes shut.
Hoofbeats thundered furiously on my left side, rapidly gaining ground.
"Ivy!" Kyle roared over the rushing wind.
I cracked my eyes open. His massive black stallion drew level with my runaway mare. Kyle rode low and aggressively in the saddle, his face stripped of every smug, calculating expression I had ever seen. He looked lethal.
"Give me your right hand!" Kyle commanded.
"I will fall!" I screamed back, tears of sheer panic stinging my eyes.
"You are going to hit those trees if you stay there!"
Duchess veered wildly. The dense timberline rushed toward us like a solid green wall. Kyle spurred his stallion ruthlessly, forcing his horse violently closer until our heavy leather saddles were practically grinding against each other.
"On three, let go of the saddle!" Kyle instructed. "One... Two... Three!"
I let go of the leather horn and reached blindly across the terrifying gap between the galloping animals.
Kyle’s large hand locked around my forearm like a steel vise. His other arm swept out, catching me tightly around the waist. With a brutal display of sheer physical strength, he ripped me completely out of my saddle, launching me airborne.
I slammed hard against his solid chest, the breath knocking completely out of my lungs.
Kyle dragged me forcefully across his lap, pinning me flush against his torso while he hauled his stallion’s reins back with his free hand. The black horse fought him for several terrifying strides, its hooves tearing up massive chunks of frosted earth, before finally slowing into a hard, aggressive circle.
Duchess disappeared into the dark timberline.
For a long, suspended moment, the only sound in the freezing air was the frantic panting of the horse and the heavy, rapid thud of Kyle's heart beneath my cheek. I was sprawled sideways across his thighs, shivering violently from the adrenaline crash. His arm remained banded securely around my ribs, anchoring me so tightly I could feel the rigid tension in every muscle of his body.
He smelled of crisp winter wind, expensive cedar, and something uniquely, intoxicatingly male. The scent completely short-circuited my lingering terror, replacing it with a sudden, suffocating awareness of exactly how intimately our bodies were pressed together.
"You absolute idiot," Kyle breathed harshly against my hair.
The words were an insult, but his voice was a low, ragged whisper that vibrated deep in his chest. His large hand didn't release my waist; instead, his fingers flexed, slowly and almost tenderly stroking the trembling curve of my spine, as if he physically couldn't bear to let me go.
I tilted my head up, intending to push him away.
My breath hitched. His face was mere inches from mine. The icy, arrogant billionaire was gone. His dark eyes were blown wide, blazing with a raw, unfiltered intensity that made my stomach drop. His gaze flicked down to my mouth, lingering there for a heart-stopping second, and the freezing mountain air suddenly felt entirely too hot to breathe.
I shoved against his broad shoulders to break the overwhelming, dangerous spell.
"Cecilia hit the horse!" I gasped, trying to slide down.
"You do not climb onto an animal you cannot control just because someone insults your pride," Kyle fired back, his protective warmth instantly hardening back into anger as he tightened his grip to keep me from falling.
"I said she hit her with the crop!" I yelled, my throat raw.
"And I am saying you could have snapped your fucking neck!"
I wrenched my right arm upward, pushing hard against his shoulder to break his hold. The rough fabric of my oversized sweater snagged on the saddle horn, sliding all the way up to my elbow.
Kyle went entirely still beneath me.
His dark gaze dropped instantly to my exposed forearm.
Ugly, mottled purple-and-black fingerprints ringed the pale skin just above my wrist. It was a vicious, undeniable handprint—the brutal mark left by the underground club bouncer three nights ago when he had tried to drag my hand away from the broken glass.
I panicked and yanked my sleeve down.
Kyle moved faster. He caught my wrist before I could hide the evidence, his thumb hovering mere millimeters above the bruised flesh. The furious heat radiating from him vanished, replaced by an absolute, terrifying coldness.
"Who did this to you?" Kyle asked, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper.
Before I could answer, Cecilia cantered into the clearing on her white mare, her perfectly glossed lips arranged into a mask of exaggerated concern.
"Oh my God, Ivy, are you okay?" Cecilia gasped, pulling her horse to a halt. Her eyes dropped to Kyle's hand wrapped around my wrist. "Oh, those bruises. Were those from Eric? You two were always fighting like street trash."
I froze in Kyle's arms. The remaining adrenaline in my veins turned to absolute ice.
I stared at his perfect childhood friend, my mind racing in horrified circles. I had been dragged into Kyle's underground club three days ago. I had moved into the Blackwood estate two days ago. I had spoken to Cecilia exactly twice in my entire life.
I had never told her my ex-boyfriend's name.
