Page 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“SO, HOW LONG ago was your divorce?”

Tawny was curled up on his chest, lying on her bed in the hotel room. Her clothes and Athos’s clothes were strewn here and there, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed this, being in someone’s arms, the closeness, the way strong male arms enclosed her and made her feel small and safe. “Finalized last year,” she said. “You?”

“Uh, more recent than that, six months ago,” he said. “I said shitty things to you about yours. I’m sorry.”

“No, you were sort of right,” she said. “I mean, it’s not a consolation baby or anything. I always wanted to have a kid. My husband was a squirrelkin, so we couldn’t have a kid naturally, but we were both on board with the artificial insemination thing, and then, when it came down to it, he balked. The more he dug in his heels, the more it became the most important thing to me. And he got to resent that. We’d have these arguments where he’d go on about how I wanted a baby more than I wanted him…” She sighed heavily. “And, sadly, at that point, it was true.”

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “He shouldn’t have misrepresented that to you if he knew how much it meant to you.”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking about how, just yesterday, she was still so angry with him over it. But now, melting into Athos’s arms, feeling a man’s body on her body, she remembered how much she liked romantic companionship, how much she liked sex, how much she missed this. “But I wonder about what you were saying, about how men don’t feel like women need them. He couldn’t give me a baby without medical assistance. It was all I wanted. It probably made him feel worthless.”

“Not an excuse,” said Athos. “I never meant any of that crap I was saying as an excuse.”

She looked up at him. He was half-sitting up against the headboard, his antlers pointing up at the ceiling. She idly wondered if it was hard for bucks to sleep on beds with those things, and thought it was even stranger that this was something she didn’t know about the males of her own species. There was a lack of intimacy between men and women in their culture. It made everyone a little lonely, didn’t it?

“You’ll be an amazing mother.” His eyes were closed. “You seem like the kind of person who does anything she sets her mind to. I bet if there are obstacles, you just bulldoze them.”

She smiled. “Kind of, yeah.” She snuggled into his chest, shutting her own eyes. “You might be wrong anyway. We might actually need you.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Women,” she said. “We might need men.”

He chuckled softly. “My wife’s—my ex -wife’s—way of life is all based around pair bonds. Romantic pairs make up swan society in this way where it’s practically sacrosanct. There’s a complicated mating ritual, all sorts of various traditional steps, each with expected protocols and certain gifts and deferences you’re supposed to make. Obviously, I didn’t do any of it right with her. In the beginning, I don’t think she cared, because I think she was enjoying being rebellious and young and… I don’t know. Maybe she had an antler fetish.”

Tawny giggled. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“In the beginning, I did feel like…” A long pause. “No, it wasn’t like she needed me , it was like we needed each other. We fit together. We were a unit, her and me, and there was this special perfection to it. And then, somehow, she stopped feeling that way about me. I didn’t stop feeling that way about her, though. I still felt as if—”

“Sun and moon!” She lifted her head to look him in the face. “You’re still in love with your swan ex-wife.”

His eyes opened. “I don’t think I am, though, that’s the thing, but I don’t know if I should say why.”

She raised her eyebrows, expectantly.

He visibly blushed, breaking their gaze. “Lay back down.”

“Now you have to say it,” she said.

His gaze flitted up, caught hers, and then went to the ceiling. “It’s because of you.”

Her heart went out of rhythm. She lay her head back down on his chest. “No, it’s not. It’s just that I’m probably the first woman you’ve been with since, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re just working through that, because you didn’t want the divorce,” she said. “You know, in any break-up, the person who does the breaking has an easier time of it. It’s always hard being the rejected party.”

His fingers trailed over her hair, over her bare back. “I don’t know,” he said in a scratchy voice. “I feel like I was missing out all this time, on this, on sex with a doe. It feels right in this way that it never felt right with her? I mean, if that makes you feel better, that it’s some kind of savage species-on-species thing, maybe that’s it.”

“I’ve only been with a buck once before this,” she said. “And there’s something about it, you’re right, something…”

“What?”

“I have an antler fetish, what can I say?” she smirked, drawing a little heart on his chest, right around his nipple.

He laughed, a deep reverberating laugh that shook them both. “It’s also… this is kind of fucked-up, too, I think, but I really, really like the idea of getting you pregnant.”

“I gathered that,” she said, amused. Then, softening, “I like it, too.”

“So, uh, if it doesn’t take, you should… we should… I mean, would you be at all interested in…?”

She lifted her head to look down at him again.

“Can I see you again?” he said, grinning at her.

She grinned back. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” She was realizing this man was kind of deeply insecure, and that he threw around all of his cocky bravado to try to hide it. On paper, that sounded utterly unappealing, and maybe… maybe it was. Maybe she was cock struck, just liking him in spite of all his flaws because of the haze of chemicals in her body that had been wrought from all the orgasms and his touch and the way it felt to be wrapped up in him.

Well, she could get out of it at any time, she decided. Seeing him again didn’t mean anything.

Of course, if she did have his fawn growing inside her—and that thought made something flip over in her chest, a tight and good feeling that also frightened her—that could make things complicated.

Custody battles in the deerkin community were few and far between, but when they did make it to the courts, the law tended to side with allowing fathers rights to their children, even if it violated deerkin cultural norms.

There was an understanding with the rite, of course, that participating in this way, the traditional way, meant that you would do things the traditional way.

“You know, it, um, it could have taken,” she said. “You’ve come inside me what? Four times?”

His expression changed into something both hungry and fond at the same time. “True.” He reached up and put his palm against her cheek. “That’d be awesome, though.”

She melted, her grin getting too wide for her face. Moon and sun, how much she’d wanted a man to be like this about making a baby with her, how much she’d wanted it to be a dual effort, both of them excited by it, both of them actively wanting it. No, no, no, Tawny, try to rein yourself in here. Be rational. “We could get out there and realize we actually really do hate each other, though.”

His hand slid away from her face and his expression went wistful. “Yeah.”

She lay her head back down on his chest, wishing she hadn’t said it, feeling like she’d just burst a bubble.

“If, uh, you don’t want me around, even if… you call all the shots, you know? I’ll bow out of it, whenever. Say the word.”

She nodded, reassured, saddened, though. “Maybe, even if it doesn’t work out, but if I am, you know, pregnant, there could be, um, like, I could send you pictures or updates or something?”

“You’d do that?” He tightened his arms around her.

Fuck, she was screwed, wasn’t she? How could she deny this sad, lonely man his own child? When had she started caring about him? Did he even deserve this kind of empathy from her? What exactly had he done except say absolutely offensive things to her, fuck her senseless in a mostly degrading way, and then… Worship my pussy on his knees? Her smile was back.

There was a dinging noise. A phone notification.

“Mmph, was that mine or yours?” he said.

“I’m going to ignore it,” she said.

“I should check,” he groaned. “I was supposed to look out for Stockton, but I completely abandoned the poor kid.”

She sighed, getting up out of bed. “Okay, okay, reality intrudes.”

Together, they sorted through their clothing until they both found their phones. It was her. She had a text from Rora, asking if they were still going to do dinner together that evening?

Wow, was it close to dinner time? She had come up here right after lunch, and… she checked the time. Yeah, maybe.

“It’s my friend Rora,” she said. “Who I maybe abandoned. She’s so young, and she had some kind of odd and maybe problematic experience with an older stag last night. I should probably go have dinner with her.”

“Huh,” said Athos.

“Huh?”

“Just, I talked to an older stag who was feeling guilty this morning about deflowering some pretty young thing last night.”

She sat up straight. “You think it was with my friend?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s the rite. It’s the season. It’s a sex weekend. There’s a nonzero chance of that happening more than once, right?” He settled down on the bed, and she found herself enjoying his nudity, the casual intimacy of it. “Is your friend all right? Because this stag guy I talked to, he thought he really fucked up. He felt bad. He said she was really forward and he got caught up in it.”

She eyed him. “When you were thinking about this weekend, were you thinking you’d get some very young doe tail?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Young people don’t come to these things. It’s easy to get laid when you’re twenty-four, right? You got to be old like us to feel hard-up enough to lower yourself.”

She sat down on the bed, too, thinking that he was right, now that she thought about it, that the participants had skewed older, mostly people in their thirties, she thought.

“To be honest,” he said, “I always wanted what they have.”

“They?”

“The predatorkin,” he said. “And the birdkin and all of that. The mates, the nuclear families, the whole fantasy of it. I know, maybe it’s just appropriation of the dominant culture. I know all the arguments about how we get messages our whole lives that our own way of life isn’t preferable. But I just always thought my uncles seemed so lonely. My mom, too, after all of us kids were gone. Then my sisters started having fawns, and she was occupied with that, but…”

“People with mates are lonely, too,” she said. “We both tried it, didn’t we? We both got married and it didn’t work out.”

“Yeah, good point,” he said. “I just mean, I don’t know why I came to this thing at all, really.”

“You were trying to get over your ex-wife,” she said. “Maybe I’m going to be a rebound, what do you think?”

“Don’t think that,” he said. “Don’t think I’m wired like that.” He regarded her. “But, uh, go have dinner with your friend. I should probably take a beat here. I can… be intense.”

That made her chest do the little flip again. Don’t fall for this guy, Tawny, not this guy, she told herself. She texted Rora back, saying she was in and asking what time they should meet and where.

EIREN GOT THE text and set her phone down.

“What was that?” said Lyall.

She had finished swallowing his semen maybe fifteen minutes before. She was still lit up from the wolf sex. “Nothing.”

“You know, if you have things you need to do, I’m not trying to keep you from them,” he said.

“Except if those things involve letting bucks fuck me,” she said.

He gave her a slow, satisfied grin. “Well, you said you wouldn’t do that.”

She stretched, basking in that, in his possessiveness, which felt strangely freeing, like being trapped and adoring her own prison. She was a very idiotic person, she thought. This man could not be good for her. “Hey, I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“I thought wolves had, um, knots.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah. Not so much with me. They, uh, they tend to develop after bonding with your mate, when your body decides it’s time to really get down to the business of procreation. That’s the point of them, you know, to hold in the—”

“I know the point of them,” she said, grinning at him. “So, you’ve never had one?”

“Lone wolves don’t sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s supposedly not abnormal, and I shouldn’t worry about it, so I don’t. Have I spent too much time on Reddit threads with lone wolves obsessing over how to get themselves to knot up? Do I sometimes get served very awkward ads on the internet about medication that’s supposed to make knots happen? Yes and yes.”

She was intrigued. “Wow, I had no idea. Do you want one?”

“I don’t want to mate with a woman and get her pregnant and have children,” he said. “And I think something in my cock just understands that. I mean, maybe I’m curious about what it feels like, but it’s not like the base of my dick is the most sensitive part of it, so I doubt it feels that much different. Plus, being stuck to someone after sex seems inconvenient and uncomfortable.”

Right, because he was a real rolling stone, wasn’t he? He did not want commitment, not at all. She gazed at him for a while, thinking that through. Then she picked up her phone. “Um, I might have dinner plans, actually.”

“Dinner plans,” he said in a low voice that bordered on a growl.

“Not with a man,” she said witheringly. “Though you’re one to talk, Mr. Don’t-Tie-Me-Down. It’s very much a double standard here, isn’t it? It’s with two women I met here. New friends. I’m not great at friends, really. I’ve lost touch with most of my good female friends. It’s nice. I should go.”

“Hey,” he said, “I agreed not to fuck anyone else, too.”

“You agreed not to fuck another doe,” she said. “Other species were on the table.”

“Were they?” He considered. “Didn’t realize, but let’s take them off.” His expression was wolfish and territorial.

She flushed, still liking that way too damned much.

“Anyway, of course, you should go out and have dinner with your friends,” he said. “I get it. I’m not great at friends either, really.”

“Shocker,” she said, teasing him.

“Ouch,” he said mildly. “I’ll go, then, let you get ready.”

She nodded, but she didn’t like that. She waited, hoping he’d say something about keeping in touch or seeing each other again or something like that. Was she simply going to sleep here, alone, in this bed, untouched for him, just following his whims?

Damn it, why did that sound so very, very hot?

He climbed out of the bed and started searching for his clothing.

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Do you… want to exchange numbers?”

He turned to her. “Uh, I didn’t bring my phone when I tracked you here. I was a little distracted from practicalities like that. You could write it down, maybe?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding, but hating that she’d been the one to ask, feeling as if it had destroyed that balance she had thought was between them, feeling as if now, everything was tipped, that maybe she wanted him more than he wanted her.

He buttoned his jeans, looking around the room. “There.” He pointed at the pad of paper sitting on the bedside table, the one with the Center’s logo printed on it.

She snatched it up, and then went looking for a pen, thinking of Rora explaining that she couldn’t find one last night. But there were three pens in the drawers of her bedside table, and she selected one. Holding the pen, she hovered over the paper. “I mean, if you don’t want to see me again, if this was just a fling or something, you can tell me. It’ll be easier, I think, if we’re honest with each other.”

Nothing from him.

She wasn’t looking at him. Her heart started to pick up speed, and she hated how needy and exposed she felt in this moment. “You’re being pretty clear about how much you don’t want a romantic relationship.”

“Well, this would be quite the way to start a relationship,” he said wryly. He pitched his voice. “ ‘How’d you two meet?’ ‘Oh, I pounced on her in the woods and fucked her brains out and didn’t even ask her name.’”

She forced herself to laugh. She put the pen down. “Forget I said anything.”

Still, he didn’t respond.

She raised her gaze to his, and now it was a challenge.

His eyes widened, and she could swear he actually looked afraid. “Fine,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Like you said, that’s better. Honesty. No one’s feelings get hurt.”

“Yeah,” she said, lifting her chin.

“Yeah,” he said.

They held each other’s gaze, and their gazes quickly became glares, as if they were both trying to prove something, and she thought what she was trying to prove was that she was, in fact, not vulnerable, even though she was. She was dying inside, hating this feeling, this rejection.

He stalked over to her and snatched her chin between his fingers. He kissed her roughly. His voice was a rasp. “You still don’t let anyone near that pussy for the rest of the weekend, got it?”

She let out a sharp huff of air.

“Say it, little preykin,” he ordered. “Say you’ll honor your promise.”

“I will,” she gasped.

He looked relieved, letting go of her. “Good.” He turned away, shrugging into his shirt, and then she watched him walk across the room, away from her, out of her life, and she wanted to say something, do something, but she couldn’t now, because she had already given it up, been too frightened of being weak and it didn’t seem worth it, now, and she wished that she would just—

He stopped, hand on the doorknob. He didn’t look at her. “What’s your last name?”

“Dasan,” she supplied.

“Eiren Dasan,” he said. Then he repeated it, as if he wanted to memorize it. “Eiren Dasan.”

Then he was gone.