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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TAWNY GOT A text from Athos on Tuesday at 5:00, two hours before they were supposed to meet for dinner. He was stuck at work, and he claimed he had done everything to get out of it, but he would probably be there too late for dinner tonight to make any sense. Would she reschedule for Wednesday?

Wednesday wasn’t good for her, because she had an event that evening, so she countered with Thursday, and he said he could do that.

She wavered between trying to concentrate only on work and spending too much time reading long posts on trying-to-conceive forums, which weren’t much help, because there wasn’t much from deerkin women, and the biologies of various species varied quite a bit. Apparently, deerkin women didn’t often have trouble with this kind of thing.

You went into a season ready to get knocked up, and sometime in the course of the six weeks of it, it happened, at least that seemed to be the consensus.

At nine o’clock Tuesday, she got another text from Athos. I’m finally done with work, he wrote. I’m thinking positively filthy thoughts and they’re all about you.

She wasn’t one for sexually suggestive texts. It made her feel uncomfortable, as if thoughts like that should only be spoken aloud, not committed to printed words, ensconced forever, re-readable later.

She should have shut that kind of talk down.

Instead, she texted, You could come over. Make all those filthy thoughts reality.

Hell, yes.

She texted him her address. He was there in ten minutes.

She thought maybe it would be awkward, but it was only frenzied. He was in the door and touching her. They were kissing. They stumbled, holding onto each other, into her living room. He made her sit on the couch and he got on his knees to put his mouth on her while she used his antlers to steer.

“You’re going to come for me, Tawny,” he said into her pussy. “And then you’re going to thank me for your orgasm and then you’re going to beg me to breed you, and if you ask very nicely, I will fuck you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she groaned. “Yes, please, sir.”

He fucked her twice.

Once with her bent over the couch and the second time, in her bedroom, but with her braced up against the wall, like the time when they’d done it outside with the tree trunk. They never made it to her bed.

Afterwards, he told her he had to be at the office at an uncivilized hour the next day, and he didn’t want to disturb her sleep, and that maybe he should just go.

“You’re trying to just hit it and quit it?” she said pointedly. “That’s just like you, isn’t it?”

“Uh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “In point of fact, it is not like me. I want to stay, but you said that thing earlier.”

“What thing?” She glared at him. They were standing in her bedroom together, totally naked, both of them, and she realized it was vaguely ridiculous to be fighting without clothes.

“That thing about your pillows?” He pointed at the bed.

Oh, maybe she remembered that. He’d commented on them, and she’d said not to touch them, because she had a particular way she liked them and nothing annoyed her more than men who couldn’t respect the symmetry of bed pillows. “I was joking.”

“Yeah, I believe that,” he said, deadpan.

She sighed.

“Come on, be honest. You have a very comfortable and very regimented little sleep ritual here, and I’m just going to be in the way. You want to sleep alone. Admit it.”

Her lips parted, and she tried to protest.

“I don’t mind,” he said with a grin. “Sleep alone with your pillows. Just don’t try to get out of dinner on Thursday.”

“I would never,” she said. “ You’re the one who canceled our date tonight.”

“Admit it, kick me out, Tawny,” he said, his voice low and lilting. “Tell me you want me to go.”

She put her hands on her hips.

“You’re very fucking gorgeous when you’re angry and naked,” he said.

“I’m not angry,” she protested.

He just laughed.

So they kissed for a while, naked, her pussy just dripping with the way he’d filled her up, and then… he left.

She fell dazed into bed, alone, happy, and sated, and sort of glad that he wasn’t going to be there to contend with in the morning, because she was used to her routine.

She lived alone, not in her mother’s house, but she had figured she’d move in with her family for a while, at least until her fawn was five or six and in school. Then she could arrange childcare with her sisters or her mother and probably get her own place again. If she wanted. She had thought maybe she’d end up liking it, living with family, even though she never had before.

She liked her space.

Did he just understand this about her?

If so, wasn’t that kind of a good thing?

Yeah, but if she was pregnant, she was going to have to give up her routine and her space and everything else.

She felt a stab of panic at this thought, suddenly.

Do I want to be pregnant?

Athos’s semen slipped sloppily out of her, taunting her that it was too late to be taking it back.

THE DATE COMMENCED on Thursday between Tawny and Athos, and it went off without a hitch. They met up for dinner. If she’d worried it would be awkward or strange between them, it absolutely wasn’t.

He was excited to see her, complimented her dress, said she looked absolutely amazing, and grinned at her while they made small talk over the table, talking about their weeks and their jobs and everything else.

He seemed charming and handsome and didn’t say one jerkish thing, and she felt off-kilter about it, but she couldn’t say why.

She pointed out when he picked up the wrong fork. “That’s the dessert fork. You work in, using the utensils on the outer edges first. It actually makes sense.”

He set the dessert fork down, grinning. “Ooh, it makes me kind of hot when you criticize me.”

“That wasn’t criticism,” she muttered. “You’ll know it when I criticize you.”

He smirked. “I look forward to it.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

She couldn’t help but feel unsettled by that, too, but in a good way, a way that made her feel a little excited and also, well, accepted, somehow. Like he was really looking at her and he understood her.

“I’m sorry about the fork thing.”

“No, no,” he said, “I get it. You like things to be done the right way. You’ve told me this before. Keep me in line, Tawny.” His lips curved into a smile she could only describe as sinful.

He was charming and handsome and she started wondering if everything was going to work out, like really work out?

He invited her back to his place, and she accompanied him, easily.

There, they sat on his couch, and he lifted her legs and eased off her shoes, and sat there with her feet in his lap, massaging her heels and the balls of her feet as he grinned at her and asked questions about how she was feeling.

She teased him that it was too soon to know if she was pregnant or not, that even if she was, she might still be feeling signs of estrus, and that they might continue all the way through the season, even if he’d bred her successfully.

“So, you’re just saying this because you want my dick again,” he said, rubbing his thumb up between her toes.

“Yes, sir,” she said, pointedly, raising her eyebrows.

“But,” he said, “season really only lasts four more weeks, right?”

“About that,” she said. She would go into various fertile peaks during this season, and then it would end, and it would be colder and darker, and winter would be coming.

“If we manage it, you might not want to see me again,” he said.

“Or you might not want to see me again,” she said. “I may become significantly less horny.” She couldn’t be sure about this, though. When she and her ex-husband had first gotten together, she could swear they’d been in a heightened state together for at least a year, regardless of the status of her fertility or being in heat or whatever you wanted to call it. She’d been ready and willing anytime, all the time… They’d been in love. She’d been young.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think this needs to be about sex.”

“This is about sex,” she said.

“Well, it’s about breeding you,” he said. “Which involves sex. But, you know, I think about you a lot. I have told you already that I like you, and I’m starting to think you might like me, too.”

She couldn’t help but smile at him. “I guess we’ll see what happens. You’ll still be just as horny. Men are.”

“No, I won’t, because it’s partly your scent and reacting to it and everything else,” he said. “Traditionally speaking, bucks are as celibate as does out of season, you know?” It was true that the traditional way of things was to fuck like crazy during the season and then just… stop for the rest of the year, but this was facilitated by the fact that bucks steered clear of does entirely outside of the season, except for does they were related to as sisters or mothers.

“I’m not saying I want to be celibate!” she exclaimed.

“There’s also… it doesn’t have to be like this when we’re together. There are different kinds of sex.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“You know, just there’s filthy sex and sweet sex. There’s sex when you’re turned on and sex when you’re in love. You know, when I was—” But then he stopped talking and shook his head.

“What?” she said.

He doubled down on massaging her feet. “Nothing. I can’t believe I was going to say that.”

“It was about your swan ex-wife, wasn’t it?”

“Birds have sex differently than we do,” he said, nodding.

“Birds have bond-sex,” she said. “I know. I’ve heard about this, how it’s like this weird thing where you don’t even really need to have orgasms, you just find these moments of peak pleasure with each other, where you anticipate each other’s movements and responses and you can read each other’s minds and—”

“I don’t know about reading each other’s minds,” he muttered.

“You want to bond with me?” Her voice was softer than she had meant it to be. She sounded vulnerable instead of aloof and teasing.

“Not if you don’t want to bond with me,” he said.

“Well, we just have to wait and see,” she said.

“If you’re pregnant, are you going to move in with your mother?” he said.

“Probably,” she said.

“I could…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Shut up, Athos.”

“We both have jobs,” she said. “You’re busy.”

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “But I could help, you know, if you like your independence. You’ll be tired, and I could bring food and pay for someone to keep the place clean, and—”

“You’re going to hire me a maid?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” he said.

She just eyed him. “I could hire my own maid.”

“I know that. But you should take my money,” he said.

“Oh, I should, huh?”

“Yeah, take it and like it,” he said, smirking at her.

“Yes, sir,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.

When they had sex later, it was different, and she didn’t know why. She still called him ‘sir’ and he still ordered her around, but there was a softer, sweeter quality to his voice, something that seemed fond and affectionate.

He rubbed her clitoris as he worked himself in her, his body between her spread thighs, and whenever she looked up, their gazes caught, and she liked it, liked looking into his eyes while he was toying with her there, while he held her pleasure in his grasp, while he rubbed her senseless.

Holding his gaze while she found her climax was very, very intimate, and she looked away a couple times, almost unable to handle it, but she’d always go back, meet his gaze with hers again, and her pleasure would surge.

When she went over the brink, he followed her almost immediately.

He tipped over to kiss her and she gripped his shoulders and pressed her body into his, and it was… different.

Good, though.

“Can you stay?” he whispered against her. “I know you might want to get back to your pillows and your routine—”

“I’ll stay,” she said, snuggling into him.

He kissed her temple, holding her tightly against him. “I hope you’re pregnant,” he breathed.

And she whispered back, for no reason that made any sense, “I might be a little scared.”

“Of course you are,” he said, tightening his grip on her. “But you won’t be alone, you know?”

She sighed, liking that. “Will you take care of me? Take care of us? ”

“Yes,” he said, kissing her temple again. “Yes, always, definitely. Please, let me do that.”

She might. She might just let him do that. She might be accidentally falling for him, and she thought it was one of the stupidest things she’d ever done.