House of Night 09 - Destined

and smile. Oh, and Lenobia, I’d ’preciate it if you’d stop callin’ me Mr. Foster.” He tipped his hat to her, added a smile and a long, slow, “If you please, ma’am.”
    Lenobia only raised an eyebrow at him. She gave Bonnie a squeeze with her knees and made the same kiss noise she’d heard Travis making. The mare responded with no hesitation. They moved off smoothly. The wind had continued to pick up and with the warmth this evening Lenobia was reminded of spring. She smiled. “Maybe this long, cold winter is over, Bonnie girl. Maybe spring is coming.”
    Bonnie’s ears flicked back, listening, and Lenobia patted her wide neck. She pointed the mare north and rode along the stone wall past the broken tree that had been the site of so much pain, past the stables and arena. They rode, alternatively walking and trotting, all the way to the place where east joined north, in the corner of the rectangle that encompassed the campus grounds. By the time they’d reached the corner, Lenobia felt she had Bonnie’s rhythm and her trust. She turned the mare so that she was pointed back in the direction from which they’d come.
    “All right, my Bonnie big girl, let’s see what you’re made of.” Lenobia leaned forward, squeezed her knees, kicked with her heels, and made a loud kiss noise while she flipped the ends of the reins on the big mare’s butt.
    Bonnie took off like she thought she was a quarter horse out of the roping shoots.
    “Ha!” Lenobia shouted. “That’s it! Let’s go!”
    Bonnie’s huge hooves drove into the ground. Lenobia could feel the mare’s powerful heartbeat. The warm night air whipped her hair back and the Horse Mistress leaned even farther forward, encouraging Bonnie to let loose—to give her everything.
    The mare responded with a burst of speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a creature who weighed two thousand pounds.
    As the wind whistled around them, lifting Lenobia’s long silver hair in time with the Percheron’s mane in that magickal dance that melded horse to rider, Lenobia thought of the ancient Persian saying: The breath of heaven is found between a horse’s ears.
    “That’s right! That’s exactly right!” Lenobia yelled, and clung to the speeding mare’s back.
    Joyously, freely, wonderfully, Lenobia moved as one with Bonnie. She didn’t realize she’d been laughing aloud until she pulled the mare in and circled her, finally coming to a halt, blowing and sweating, beside Travis and their bench.
    “She’s magnificent!” Lenobia laughed again, and leaned forward to hug Bonnie’s damp neck.
    “Yeah, I told ya it’d be better after that,” Travis called to her, catching Bonnie’s bridle and echoing Lenobia’s laughter.
    “What couldn’t be? That’s so much fun!”
    “Like riding a mountain?”
    “Exactly like riding a beautiful, smart, wonderful mountain!” Lenobia hugged Bonnie again. “You know what? You really do deserve all those cookies,” she told the mare.
    Travis just laughed.
    Lenobia kicked her leg over the saddle to slide off Bonnie, but the ground was much farther away than she’d anticipated. She staggered and would have fallen had Travis not caught her elbow in his strong grip.
    “Steady there … steady girl,” he murmured, sounding like he was speaking to a spooked filly. “Ground’s a long ways down. Take ’er easy or you’ll have a nasty fall.”
    Still feeling the sweet adrenaline rush from her run with the mare, Lenobia laughed. “I don’t care! The ride would be worth the fall. The ride would be worth anything!”
    “Some girls are,” Travis said.
    Lenobia looked up at the tall cowboy. His eyes had lightened so that they weren’t just hazel anymore. They were flecked with an olive green that was distinctive and light and unmistakably familiar.
    Lenobia didn’t think. Instinct drove her. She stepped into his embrace. It seemed Travis had stopped thinking, too, because he’d dropped Bonnie’s reins and pulled Lenobia into his arms. Their lips met with a kind of desperation that was part passion, part question.
    She could have stopped herself, but she didn’t. She allowed it. No, more than that. Lenobia met Travis’s passion with her own, and answered his question with desire and need.
    The kiss went on long enough for Lenobia to recognize the taste and feel of him, and for her to admit to herself that she’d missed him—missed him desperately.
    And then she began thinking again.
    She only had to