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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EIREN THOUGHT THE wolf looked even hotter here in her room, for whatever reason. He seemed bigger than he had out in the woods, maybe because she’d only had trees to compare him to out there and in here, she could see how he was just a little too big for all the furniture. He had that big, fluffy tail too, and it was kind of massive.

He was just looking at her, though, rubbing his jaw and looking her over, as if he wasn’t really sure what to do with her, even though he’d just admitted he was there to fuck her. “What about your room service?”

“It’s on its way, I guess.”

“I mean, we should wait until—you’re only wearing a robe.” His gaze went right to her cleavage.

She smirked. “Just noticing that? I was in the shower.”

“Just commenting on that,” he said. “I definitely already noticed.” He came closer. “You almost washed all of his scent off.”

She started. “What do you…?”

He pushed past her into the room. “You’re making me crazy, that’s the thing. I’m not crazy, never crazy, not like this. I don’t do this, and right now, I’m possessive and jealous, and that’s not even me .”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Right, you said that last night, how this wasn’t like you. And maybe I should have indicated that I am a little bit adventurous. But really, what were you expecting from a doe who was so willing when you chased her and dug your teeth into her skin while you attacked her?”

“I didn’t attack you,” he said in a low voice. He sat down in the one easy chair in the room. “Or, whatever, maybe I did, but you liked it.”

She decided not to dispute this.

“You want me to leave?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I might… I might be attracted to the wrong kind of man. So, I probably should make you leave.”

He settled into the chair, sprawled out, legs spread, tail thumping thoughtfully against the floor between them. “I’m the wrong kind of man, huh?”

“Well, you seem emotionally unavailable and not that interested in me and very rude and dismissive—”

“I am interested in you, though.” He pointed at her. “Actually, that’s what’s strange. I don’t get like this about women, but with you… I’m losing it. I’m out of control and a little obsessed and—did he make you come? I mean, I’m sure he did, and I think you made yourself come when we fucked, because you put my hand—but tell me I did it faster than him. Lie, but do it convincingly, if you don’t mind.”

She let out a laugh, because she had not been expecting that speech. “So, you smelled that I had sex with someone else when you came in here—”

“No, out there, when I tracked you,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “I see.” She went over and sat down on the bed. “He didn’t make me come.”

“You’re just saying that,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “No, uh, if you were lying, you would have tried harder. You were matter-of-fact about that, so you’re telling the truth. Good. Good, I’m glad he didn’t please you.”

“I just feel stupid about it,” she said. “This is what’s wrong with me, see? I want an adventure, but I don’t stop to ask if I’m even having fun during the adventure, you know? It’s like, I can’t stand going back home to the four walls where I spend every waking day of my life—I work at home, see? So I don’t leave much. And I don’t even want to leave until I do, and then I’m kind of… I probably need professional help.”

“I work at home, too,” he said.

“I’m a freelance graphic designer,” she told him. “I make ads and book covers and logos and all sorts of things. I have regular clients.”

“I write code,” he said. “Programming.”

They gazed at each other.

“So, what is it about me that makes me so different?” she said finally.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s probably why I’m here with you now, trying to figure that out.”

“What if I don’t want you back?” she said.

“You just said you did,” he said. “But you think I’m bad for you. However, you like things that are bad for you.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“You’re interested in them, anyway,” he said.

There was a knock on the door. “Room service.”

She got up, opened the door, and brought in the tray, thanking the guy at the door and giving him a tip. She came back and looked at where he was sitting, in the only seat next to the table. She thought of letting the buck have sex with her to be polite. She thought of Rora, unable to wake up the guy to give her more room on the bed. “I want to sit where you’re sitting.”

He eyed her for a minute. His tail twitched. Then he got up out of the chair and gestured for her to sit down.

She sat, putting the tray on the table. She had ordered a portabella burger and french fries. The burger was wrapped in foil and she was glad. They tended to be sloppy, lots of juice. “Going to watch me eat?” Wow, that had come out more sultry than she’d intended.

His mouth curved into a smile and he sat down on the bed and gazed at her. “Yeah.”

She took a bite. She chewed.

He stared at her.

Her tongue darted out to get a little of the mayo on the burger.

His smile widened, showing off his sharp teeth.

She set the burger down and looked him over. “Are you thinking about… eating me?”

His smile slid away from his face. “Well, I wasn’t.”

A rush of something hot went through her belly, and she wasn’t sure if the sensation was unpleasant or not.

“I think that’s horrifying, you know,” he said in a low, rasping voice.

“Do you.” She picked up the burger again.

“That’s not why,” he said, and his voice was rumbling, deep, certain. “Not why I want you, I mean. I’ve been with preykin before, and it’s never been like this.”

“But you said you’ve never been with a deerkin.”

“True,” he said.

“I don’t get hot from the prospect of being hurt,” she said, taking another bite of her burger.

“I never said that,” he said.

She chewed and swallowed. She licked her lips again and he made a noise in the back of his throat, and that hot, not-entirely-unpleasant feeling went through her again. “I trust you.”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I mean, I trust you not to take an actual bite out of me,” she said.

He just gazed at her.

She ate more of her burger. “You could reassure me.”

“I could,” he agreed. “Here’s the thing about that. I’ve always heard about how people go off with that kind of thing, like something gets triggered in the back of your brain, some switch that turns you half-feral. But it had never really happened to me before, so I guess I wasn’t sure if that was real. Then… you. And I think it is real.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t hurt me,” she said. “You even waited until you had what I would term enthusiastic consent.”

“Good for me.” He furrowed his brow. “It did not feel like that to me. I did not feel like I was waiting or that I was even in control of myself. So, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t know why I’m here.”

“I thought you were here to have sex with me again.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Right now I want to eat.”

He smiled again. “I like you. You’re funny.”

She didn’t think she was. Sometimes, she tried making jokes in her creative work, and her clients almost always shot it down. In her spare time, she drew strange and complicated, intricate pictures. She had a following of exactly twenty-eight people on Instagram who liked these weird digital drawings she did.

Once, when she was in her twenties, she’d done an exhibition, with actual paintings, ones she’d done in acrylics on canvas, ones that she’d priced too high, like other “real” artists. She hadn’t sold a single piece, not even towards the end when she’d marked them all down to fifteen dollars.

But that was the way it was, of course. There were the things in life that you wanted, and then there were the things that people wanted from you. They didn’t overlap much.

“I do want you,” he said. “But not if you’re afraid of me.”

She looked him up and down and her stomach did that hot rush of unpleasantness again. “I think I am afraid of you.”

“Okay, yeah, maybe I can smell that,” he said, chagrined.

“I like it, though,” she said, also chagrined.

“Good,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” A long pause. “Much.”

She snickered.

“I’ll stop if you say,” he said, but he said this to her cleavage, not her face. “I promise.”

“I trust you,” she said, sighing. “But I don’t know how smart I am in that way.”

“So, you’ll let me,” he said.

She gave him a knowing smile. “I’m thinking about it.”

RORA PROBABLY SHOULD have argued more with Stockton about buying her things, but he was so insistent that it wasn’t anything, that they were just friends, that she decided to let it go.

She made a mental note to pay for something else to make up for the price of the books. At some point, she’d buy his dinner or something. Then everything would be fair and equal between them, the way it should be between friends.

They started back to the Center together, but they were waylaid when they came to a little street fair, probably set up precisely to be a tourist trap for the deerkin who were staying at the Center this weekend.

There were pavilions with cookies and cupcakes, a bakery stall, and a few little stalls with jewelry.

She and Stockton got separated. He was looking at some knives with handcarved wooden handles, and she was examining strings of glass beads.

“You like that?” said a voice at her ear.

She looked up to see that a vulturekin boy was standing there. She said boy because she was pretty sure he was maybe sixteen or seventeen, not yet full grown, but plenty big, and with those beady vulture eyes. There was an unkind set to his beak, but she told herself that maybe she was being prejudiced, assuming ill-intent because of her preykin instincts to shy away from predatorkin.

“If you like that,” he said, “you should see what I have. I have jewelry I’m selling.” He pointed. “Around the corner.”

“You make jewelry?” she said, surprised. He did not seem like the type.

“Yeah, it’s a hobby.” He ducked down his head in such a way, and she was suddenly scolding herself for being this way to the poor kid. He was obviously struggling with his enjoyment of something soft and sweet and pretty, and she should be encouraging to anyone brave enough to go after their bliss when there was societal pressure against it. She determined that she would buy something from this kid, even if it was ugly.

She smiled at him. “Okay, show me.”

He gestured with his head and she went with him.

But when they rounded the bend, they were in an empty alleyway. Empty except for the other vulturekin, who looked older than the kid.

That man moved into her path, blocking her exit. “Well, well, told you they think they’re entitled to everything.”

Now, she was feeling panic well up in her. She didn’t know what was going on.

“It’s disgusting,” the older vulturekin informed her. “Thinking you can have what amounts to a sex party and then take over our town like it’s some legitimate festival. We all know what you’re doing up there.”

She let out a breath. “Sorry you feel that way,” she said, and tried to move past the man who was blocking her exit.

He moved into her path. “I bet,” he said, “you’re whore of a thing, because all of you deerkin are. I bet you wouldn’t take much convincing to let us have a look at you.”

She froze.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

But her thoughts were racing, and she was berating herself, telling herself to scream, to run, to yell for help, to do something.

And she just stood there, dumb and still, and—

“Hey, what the hell is going on here?” It was Stockton.

“Oh, look,” said the teenage vulture. “She has a protector.”

“Fucking deerkin thinks he’s tough,” said the other vulture.

Stockton put down his head like a bull. It was like he glided across the alley, only stopping when his antlers hit the wall, with the older vulture’s face trapped between two sharp points, and an array of other sharp points right in the vulture’s features.

It was silent, the vulture very still, just blinking his beady eyes.

And then Stockton straightened, and the vulture wasn’t hurt, not even touched. He squared his shoulders, but he didn’t say a word.

The vulturekin fluffed his feathers. “Let’s go,” he said to the younger birdkin. Together, they hurried down the alley.

Rora was still frozen, screaming internally, angry at herself for doing nothing.

Stockton looked her over.

Her eye twitched. Her ear twitched. Her whole body twitched. She let out something like a wail, and then she vaulted herself into Stockton, who put his arm around her.

“It’s okay,” he said in an urgent voice that let her know he was panicked, too. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

She wrapped her arms around his midsection.

He held onto her.

“You’re okay,” he said to her.

“I’m okay,” she said, tipping back her face, looking up at him in a way that was desperate.

He kissed her.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and kissed back.

They pulled away from each other, both wide-eyed, out of breath, both still panicked.

“Let’s go back to the Center,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and they walked together, quite quickly, over the sidewalks and all the way back to the lobby of the Center.

Inside, they went to the elevator bank, and they got inside. He hit a button; she didn’t.

They got out when the door opened and went down the hallway into his room.

He opened the door. She went inside. He shut the door after himself and shook his head, running a hand through his hair, in between his antlers. “What the fuck was that? What the fuck kind of ridiculous speciesist shit was that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You were amazing, though.”

“I could have hurt them,” he said. “I could have hurt them, and I don’t know how I didn’t, but I could have done it, and—”

“You didn’t, and thank goodness you were there, because I couldn’t move. I was just stuck there, rooted to the spot.”

“That must have been really scary,” he said.

She nodded.

He closed the distance between them. “You’re okay, though.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m okay now.”

This time, she kissed him.

But this time, neither of them broke the kiss. They ended up moving through the room, still kissing, and then tipping down onto his bed, horizontal, still kissing, in each other’s arms.

Then she was somehow under him and he was above her, pushing himself up at arms’ length over her.

“Well, this isn’t a super friendly thing we’re doing right now, is it?” he panted.

“She doesn’t have to know,” said Rora. “Maibell, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I could give a shit about Maibell.”

She laughed.

He laughed. “I can stop.”

“I know,” she said. And then she kissed him again.