“You’re late,” he reprimands the youth who appears in the cellar doorway. He can see that Jacob’s out of breath. And striding forward out of the girl’s earshot, moving into a cellar hallway, he chides him, “I give you liberties and you abuse them?”
“My apologies, sir. I had the stallion giving me fits this morning. That brute’s a big tease.”
“Yes, but you’re trained to handle him.”
The young man nods. He’s unlike his older counterpart, a charming rogue in personality with a swift smile and russet-colored eyes that laugh like the sun at the new day. He has broad shoulders, a muscled, gym-built chest—looks like a stallion himself without his shirt—and the customary slim hips and tight ass of a cowboy. The master has raised him from his childhood, the son of his only real friend, dead now
