Despite the gentle weight of her hand, the muscle beneath her palm only tensed. A heat crawling up through his insides, pooling in his throat, as Max leaped, teeth bared, to the defense.

(If you dare to assume that I have done anything less than taken his affections and returned them...)

"I don't know him," Wyatt rumbled, his usual drawl clipped in the vise of his jaw. Wyatt knew him only in the distant way any of them knew the victors, their faces impossible escape - that one's especially, with the new statue sitting in the Tower lobby. "Where exactly does he get off even tryin'--"

(...you sell Monsieur Earp short. He is in more of a place to use you than you are him.)

He jerked, spine straightening and stiffening sharply, as if someone had just stuck him in the back with a sharp, hot blade.