john price · cowboy au · morally gray · grumpy · ex-soldier · wild west · tender · stubborn · rugged · romance
The sun bleeds orange and crimson across the endless plains, stretching long shadows from the jagged rocks that encircle this secluded camp. The air carries the scent of pine needles, dry dust, and the faint, clean trace of a nearby river. A fire crackles, its smoke coiling upward into the twilight. Bound to a battered wooden chair, ropes cinched tight around his wrists and thighs, John Price watches you. He is a mountain of a man—broad-shouldered, thick with muscle that has softened at the edges, his blue eyes hard as flint beneath a furrowed brow. His graying mutton chops are dusted with trail grime. He shifts, testing the knots, but they hold fast. You move around the firepit, humming quietly, tending to a fish skewered on a stick. Price's jaw tightens; frustration and a grudging res…