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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RORA SAW STOCKTON coming out of the field, back onto the courtyard, his hand at his shoulder, red seeping through his fingers.

She rushed forward. “You’re hurt!”

Stockton looked up and saw her. “Oh, hey, Rora, this is just great.”

“What happened?”

“No, no, it’s not a big deal,” he said. “It was totally an accident, and I’m a fucking idiot, and I just need to find some first aid—”

“Let me help you find first aid,” she said. “I actually know about this. They covered this in orientation.”

“I had to go to an orientation, too,” he said. “This is really embarrassing, and—”

“You’re bleeding .” She glared at him.

He didn’t say anything else.

She led him through the courtyard and back towards an area where there were workers set up at a desk, and they handed over a first aid kit readily. Someone offered to assist Stockton, but he took it and went off into the restroom down there on his own.

When he came out, she was waiting for him.

He had taken off his shirt, since it was bloody and torn, and she got an eyeful of his bare chest, which made feel her embarrassed and timid, and also to think he he was actually very nicely put together underneath his clothes. He was lithe and tall and wiry.

She talked to her toes. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Really? I don’t get it. I don’t think, if I were you, I would want to be around me at all.” He sounded rueful, tired.

“No, it’s not like that,” she said. She lifted her gaze.

He was staring right at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You were bleeding. I know you. I couldn’t just let you run off on your own with, you know, blood . That’s not the sort of person I am.”

“Yeah, okay, well, I fell down and tripped and got stuck on someone else’s antler, someone who was, you know, in the process of… doing someone out there.”

She made a sympathetic face. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have been looking, but I was, and that was why I tripped and…” He made a gesture with both hands, like he was wiping all of this away, palms down. “Anyway, I’m done.”

“Done with what?”

“With this weekend. With that whole thing out there. I don’t think it’s for me.”

She turned to look out through the windows at the field. “Did you, um, with anyone?”

“No,” he said. “No, not even close.” A pause. “You?”

She turned back to him, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I want to go out there in the field and, um… it’s outdoors .”

“Right?” He gestured with both hands. “It doesn’t even seem comfortable.”

“Yeah,” she said, giggling. She twisted her fingers together. “I mean, I might have… the first night. But I went to his room, and not, um…”

“Oh, of course you hooked up with someone in a bed,” he said. “Because you’re a girl, and there are just men here, trying to fuck.”

She giggled. “I mean…”

“But trust me to go to the one place where it’s guaranteed you score with a woman and fail at it.”

She shook her head. “No! You shouldn’t think that about yourself.” Did everyone think these things about themselves? Did everyone assume they were inherently flawed? “Besides, you and Maibell, you guys were together for ages. So, you have proof of concept. You know you’re wantable.”

“Do I? Because she cheated on me.”

“But only once,” she said. “And during the season, so…” She scrunched up her nose. “Sorry, never mind. I always thought when she was explaining it that her excuses weren’t really that good.”

He sighed, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“But, I mean, you don’t say that to your friend. You just support her,” said Rora. “Anyway, I think it was on her, not you. And I know she liked you, because she regretted it, and she wanted to make it work.”

“For a while, she did.”

“Well, she said that she didn’t think you really, like, forgave her,” said Rora.

He groaned.

“Sorry,” said Rora. “Anyway, I think seeing you just made her feel guilty or whatever. But I don’t know, because I was never super close to her, anyway. She and I would sometimes hang out in the same groups, and she’d talk to everyone, but we weren’t the kind of friends who would meet up and hang out one-on-one or send each other deep, personal texts or whatever.”

“Yeah,” he said. He fingered the bandage at this shoulder. “Uh, I need to get a different shirt, but… would you…? I mean, what are you doing right now?”

“Me? Nothing. I was waiting around to see if Tawny and Eiren came back from the run, and maybe we’d go to lunch or something, but I haven’t seen them.”

“Those are the does you were with the other night?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Would they mind if, uh, you and I went to get lunch?” He lifted both hands. “If you want to, I mean. If you don’t—”

“Oh, I want to,” she said, shrugging. “Sure.”

“Cool,” he said, flashing her a grin that made her think he was actually really handsome. Had she not noticed that before? Was it because he was half-naked?

She scolded herself for being such a slut as to find two men attractive in the span of two days.

Not a slut, she told herself. It’s not like I’m going to have sex with Stockton.

It would be wrong, wouldn’t it?

She was friends with his ex. It would violate the girl code.

Yeah, totally safe. Finding him handsome meant nothing. She was quite well satisfied for the weekend.

“We could meet in the lobby?” he said. “In, uh, twenty minutes or so?”

“Works for me,” she said, smiling at him.

EIREN LET HERSELF get caught by a stag out there in the mid-morning run.

He took her over a tree stump, her bent over, balancing her hands on it, ass in the air, and it was almost exactly like being caught by the wolf the night before and yet completely different.

It didn’t feel very good.

It kind of hurt, because she wasn’t very turned on and therefore not very wet.

She found herself not wanting to look at him back there, huffing away as he jerked himself in and out of her.

Halfway into it, she wanted it over. She didn’t know why she’d let herself get into this.

She knew she was well within her rights to just tell him to stop at this point.

But… it didn’t seem very polite. She might as well just let him come, right? She’d already let him go this far, after all.

So, she shut her eyes and told herself to think about something else.

And then it went on.

And on.

And finally, she was thinking about saying something, like, asking if he was holding on for some reason—sometimes men had this totally idiotic belief that you could be close to an orgasm when they weren’t remotely stimulating your clitoris, and they would go at you, holding off their orgasm, thinking you could come from that. She was going to say that if he could come, he just should. She was at the point where she would probably just lie and say she had already come if he made a thing about it.

She tried not to do that. It only reaffirmed these men’s notion that they could make someone come that way, and it was a disservice to the world at large. Sometimes, though, she just didn’t care.

But then he suddenly yanked his dick out, jerked it several times and spattered his come all over the curve of her ass, which was good. She was wearing a red earring. They were supposed to pull out.

But.

Eeew.

She was now covered in this man’s semen, because she had decided it was polite to let him keep having sexual intercourse with her even when she wasn’t enjoying it.

She sagged into the tree stump, thinking that she was a sad, sad product of the patriarchy.

This is why men are the way they are. They’re entitled because we treat them as if they’re more important than us, she thought tiredly.

And she’d never met a man who would get her off out of politeness, truth be told.

Double fucking standard, she groaned.

She looked back at him. “Wipe it off me,” she ordered.

He blinked at her. “Oh, um… yeah.” He swallowed for a minute, considered, and then stripped off his shirt and did exactly that. “Uh, thanks?”

She smiled at him. “Yeah.”

He balled up his shirt in one hand as she pulled her pants up.

He was gazing at her. “Did I…?” A long pause. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She glared at him. “You got what you wanted, right? We’re good.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Just go,” she snapped. Nice time to develop empathy here, dude, she thought. You couldn’t have noticed I wasn’t into it earlier?

Maybe he had. Maybe that was why it had taken him so long to get off. Maybe…

Fuck.

“I’m really sorry,” he said, and he sounded fucking sorry. “If, um, you had said something—”

“I’m fine.”

“Just, I wouldn’t have if you—”

“I’m not filling out a report on you or anything,” she said. “It’s my own fault. Just go away now, though.”

He toyed with his antlers, eyeing her, as if he was going to say something else. But then, he just turned and walked off, and she felt like shit about the whole thing.

She was going to go back to her room. She was going to take another hot shower and try to wash this whole experience away.

“SO,” STOCKTON WAS saying, “I just want to make sure I’m not putting weird pressure on you or something, because I didn’t mean to.” They were sitting together at a restaurant a few blocks from the Center, eating chips and salsa, which had been brought out to their table when they ordered.

“No, what?” she said.

“I just mean, I only meant this in a friendly way,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of you or something.”

“Oh,” she said. “No, of course not. It would have to be a friendly way, because you’re Maibell’s ex.”

“Oh, true,” he said. “So, you and I, we just basically have to be friends.”

“Totally,” she said.

“It’s only that after all the stupid things I have done this weekend, there’s no way anyone would find me attractive, anyway,” he groaned.

“Stop that,” she said.

He ate a chip, making a face.

“You know, I’m really embarrassed, too,” she said.

“About what?”

“About how I was that one night at the bar when I forced you to sit around considering what was wrong with me after you tried to tell me that nothing was wrong. I’ve been doing that to people, and now I realize, like, nothing is really wrong with me, and it’s the most embarrassing thing on earth.”

“Oh,” he said, tilting his head to one side, his antlers askew kind of adorably. “I don’t you think you should be that embarrassed. I mean, everyone gets in a headspace like that sometimes. It’s normal.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was in that headspace for years.”

“Well, the important thing is that you’re not in it anymore,” he said. “And I should take my own advice, I guess, and not be that embarrassed either. I did stupid shit, too, but it’s not like I murdered someone. I’m being too hard on myself.”

She nodded. “You are. And I am, too. We’ll both stop being so hard on ourselves.”

“The thing is, I don’t even know if I would have wanted to have sex with someone out there like that. I don’t know if I’m wired like that.”

“Wired like what?”

“Like, for casual sex or whatever.” He shrugged. “I mean, this sounds odd, considering I’m a buck, and I know we’re supposed to be solitary and everything else, but I’ve always wanted the opposite of that. And I don’t care how many times someone tells me that it’s just predatorkin indoctrination or some shit, that I’ve just internalized messages from the dominant oppressive culture, it’s not that. I want a mate. I want a family. And deerkin can make that work.”

She ate a chip, looking at him, and thinking everything he was saying was only making him more handsome.

He ate a chip, too. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m asking too much. Maybe if I’m with a woman, I can’t expect her to be faithful during estrus, but… I mean, that’s almost worse, though, because if I end up raising some other fucking stag’s kid as my own—” He broke off. “No, it’d be the same thing as being an uncle—except it wouldn’t, because it would be some kid I wasn’t even related to.”

She swallowed the chip she was chewing.

“That’s shitty of me,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand fidelity,” she said.

“No?” He caught her gaze with his, and his eyes were bright and hopeful.

“No,” she said.

“But what if it’s not in our nature to do it?” he said.

“Is it in our nature to live inside buildings?” she said, gesturing with her chip. “To eat in restaurants? Were primitive deerkin grinding corn into meal?”

“Good point,” he said, nodding. “Very good point. We don’t have to do whatever it is that’s natural, do we?”

“We do not,” she said. “And I think some of the best stuff is the stuff that’s not natural, things like paintings and music and interpretive dance.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“So, if we want to pair bond, we can,” she said.

He gazed at her.

“What?” she said. “What’s that look?”

He shook his head and went back to the chips. “Nothing. Nope, never mind.”

“You can’t do that,” she said, laughing.

He shoved his mouth full of three chips, eyes wide.

“Come on, Stockon, spill,” she said.

He swallowed the chips. “Nope, nope, you and me, we are friends. Buddies. So, let’s talk about your conquest. That’s exactly the thing I want to hear about right now. You getting fucked by someone else.”

She sat up straight. Oh. Because, um, he was maybe not so cool with them being only friends? Truthfully, she was thinking that his insistence on wanting to be faithful, to have a pair bond, to have a family… well, it wasn’t making him less appealing, let’s say that. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t anything.”

“No?”

She dipped a chip into the salsa. “I mean, should I tell you details or something? Would that help?”

“I… don’t know.” His voice sounded scoured. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

She grinned. “I guess so.”

“You guess so? That doesn’t sound like a rousing endorsement.”

She felt herself flush again. Well, this wasn’t going anywhere, couldn’t go anywhere, because he was the ex of a friend, so she should make it so it was impossible for anything to happen between them. “Truth is, it was my first time,” she said. “I know that most people aren’t twenty-one when they get around to losing their virginity, and they don’t do it with a strange stag or whatever, but I’m kind of pathetic.”

“No, you’re not,” he said.

She shrugged.

“I’m only thinking that it would have been nice for you if your first time could have been with someone who you loved is all, because… because that’s nice.”

She nodded, ducking down her chin.

“He didn’t, like, hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “It didn’t hurt, but it was…” She considered. “It was different than I thought it would be. I thought it was going to be, like, softer somehow?”

He leaned forward, listening intently.

“It was more savage than I thought,” she said. “It was more raw or something.”

“It can be soft,” he said.

She flushed again.

“On second thought,” he said, clearing his throat, “this was a very stupid subject change. I shouldn’t have gone here.”

“Okay,” she said. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s not you, it’s…” He shifted on his seat. “I thought it would make me feel differently. When Maibell told me she was with another guy, it made me want her less, so I thought if we talked about that, with you, it would… help.”

“Didn’t it?” Don’t ask that, don’t push him. He’s admitting that he wants you.

“Not really, no,” he said.

She grinned at him. “Me too, you know.”

“You too, what?”

“I want you, too,” she said. Wow, lose your virginity and you just start saying things out loud, don’t you?

His lips parted.

She shrugged. “But we can’t, clearly. Girl code.”

“Yeah,” he said in a choked voice.

“Anyway, we’ll just have to start talking about baseball or something,” she said, giggling.

“Why?” he said.

She was caught off guard. “Why what?”

“I’m pathetic and I pretended not to know you, and I acted… there’s nothing about me to make you want me.”

Huh. Wow, this was interesting, getting this from the other angle, wasn’t it? She surveyed him, thinking about what to say, how to say it. “I think that’s part of it,” she settled on. “The guy I was with last night, he was too much for me. I felt afraid to wake him up when he was taking up too much room in the bed. It was like we didn’t feel like equals, you know. But you.” She shrugged. “I don’t think I want to be with someone perfect, not in the end. I want someone more like me.”

He grinned. “True.” His hand snaked across the table and he seized her fingers. “I liked it, that night, when you were just so intent on this idea that no one wanted you.” He squeezed.

“You liked it?” She shook her head. “You couldn’t have.”

“It was kind of cute,” he said with a shrug. “You were so solemn about it. So obviously wrong and so serious. You really thought you were right and you had given a lot of thought to it, and you don’t get a lot of people who are willing to accept that about themselves and just carry on. I liked that .”

This, shamefully, made tears spring to the back of her eyes. She had to work hard to swallow them. She didn’t want him to see how she was overreacting to one stupid compliment. It was only… it was maybe the best compliment she’d ever gotten.

He let go of her hand. “Sorry.”

“No, you don’t have to—” She reached for his hand again.

He had already moved his hand halfway across the table, but he stopped moving it.

They gazed at each other.

His hand lurched toward hers.

And the waitress was there with plates full of burritos, and they both sat up straight on their sides of the booth and stared at their food and not each other.