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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

LYALL WASN’T SURE if it was because he thought that she had broken his heart or because she was just so unique, such a complete and perfectly sexy package, but he started thinking about her when he jacked off instead of looking at porn, and he started jacking off more often than usual.

He didn’t typically think about sex that much, really, but every day that week, the week after she didn’t want his number after all, he rubbed himself in the shower and thought about how hot it was to scent her and have her and fall asleep in her and everything else.

And then, Saturday morning came, and he was polishing himself off in the shower with the help of some conditioner that he didn’t even like because it smelled too heavily of pine, but it was a good, very good, lubricant, especially in the shower when water made all of that difficult, and…

He got a knot.

He didn’t even feel it happening, not in his penis, not at first, he felt it with his fist as he was rubbing himself, and then he felt it in his cock, felt that he was swollen there, and he was right on the verge of coming, because that was when they happened, obviously, and he was surprised but he was also right there, so…

He just rubbed it, rubbed conditioner all over it, squeezed his palm around it, and then he had this dynamite orgasm and then it, uh, did not go down, of course, because they didn’t.

He stood in the shower, staring down at his knotted up dick, and he started to panic.

What the fuck?

“Okay, this doesn’t mean anything,” he said to his new knot. “You’re here because she turns me on or something, that’s all, but not because I’m going to, like, mate this fucking preykin girl.”

He wasn’t sure what would be worse to his family—that he was a lone wolf like he was now or if he mated outside of the species. Not that he even cared what his family thought, of course, because he didn’t. But he was attached to his identity as a lone wolf, and he didn’t even know how to be anything else.

He got out of the shower, and he was still knotted up. He dried off and got dressed, and he was still knotted up. How long was this thing going to stay like this? He wanted to look it up on the internet, but instead, when he got out his computer, he pulled up her social media page again.

He sent her a friend request.

Then he looked up how long it would take for the knot to go down. Ten to twenty minutes, the internet said.

Twenty minutes?

He thought about being connected to the little preykin’s pussy for twenty minutes and then realized he’d already fallen the fuck asleep inside her, so he would probably not even mind such a thing, would like it, would really like it.

He made coffee, and she had accepted his friend request and sent him a message. I thought we were agreed that thing with us last weekend was just a fling . And then a winking emoji.

What was he supposed to say? That he couldn’t stop thinking about her? That he was jerking off to memories of her twice or three times a day? That she had given him his first fucking knot?

What are you doing right now? he settled on.

Lol, seriously?

If you get here in twenty minutes, I might have something to show you.

Then, nothing. Nothing for a long, long time, until finally she typed back, Okay. On my way.

AFTER COMING WHILE holding Stockton’s antlers, while his mouth was between her thighs, Rora lay in bed with him, in his bedroom, for some time. She lay her head on his chest, and they talked about television shows from their childhood that they both had liked, giggling over shared memories, and she felt close to him.

But eventually, she knew she had to leave. “I can’t just sleep here,” she said to him.

He touched her face. “Yes, you can.”

“No,” she said, smiling up at him, pressing her body into his, “I can’t, because I don’t ever do that, and my ma will get worried and she’ll give me hell about it. And if I tell her I have a boyfriend…”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Right. My ma wouldn’t like it either. Me settling down with a doe, it’s a threat to everything. I’m supposed to put my mother first, my sisters first, my nieces and nephews. That’s my family.”

She nodded. “Right. And I’m supposed to grow up, get a job, and stay right where I am, and pay them all back for funding my education, you know?”

“Yeah.” He touched her forehead. “Yeah, okay, I get it. But also, am I your boyfriend? For real?”

She giggled, pressing her face into his bare chest. “I mean… not if you think we’re going too fast or if I’m freaking you out or whatever.”

“Not freaked, not at all,” he breathed into her hair. “So, we’re official, then? Yeah?”

She tilted her head back and grinned up at him, so happy it felt impossible to contain. “Yeah.”

They kissed again, and the kissing got intense and horizontal, him over her, pressing her body under his in the bed. They were naked; he was hard.

They were going to do it, and she knew it, was certain of it as she felt their pelvises making contact like that, and her only worry about it was that it was late already, and that she was going to be getting home in the middle of the night.

And then, she thought that if her mother hadn’t texted her now, maybe her mother just wouldn’t notice if she didn’t come home. It wasn’t like she wasn’t an adult, anyway. It wasn’t as if she had to get permission to stay out all night. Still, she never had stayed out all night, not just left in the morning and never come home.

But then, he stopped, throwing himself off her, lying on the other side of his bed and panting at the ceiling. “Okay, you’re trying to leave,” he said. His cock was pointing at the ceiling too.

She just looked at him, feeling taut all over, feeling excited, feeling…

He fixed her with a look. “Hey, Rora, we have time, you know. No rush. We don’t have to do everything tonight.”

She liked that. She smiled.

“When we, uh, when we make love? I want it to be perfect, so let’s wait and do it right, yeah?”

“Okay,” she said, nodding.

She got dressed. He did too, because he was going to walk her out. They had both driven here from the bar earlier. Her car was parked on the street out front. It took them a while, because they got distracted, kissing each other, pressing into each other.

By the time she was walking out of the room, she felt floaty and happy and tired.

They went through the apartment—it had two floors—downstairs, going past the door to Stockton’s dad’s study, which was open and there was a light on inside, but she didn’t think anything of that, and Stockton didn’t either as they walked past. He was talking about how he was going to take the elevator down with her, and she was saying he didn’t have to do that, and then the study opened.

And she couldn’t breathe.

Bruin stood in the doorway of the study and looked at her, his eyes wide.

“Hey, Bruin,” said Stockton.

Bruin didn’t say anything. He was just staring at her, looking at Stockton’s hand on her body, the way Stockton had his arm around her. Then his gaze seemed to settle on her mouth, and Rora wondered if her lips looked reddened and kissed. She wondered if her hair looked mussed. She put her hand there, trying to tame it, comb it down with her fingers. She was blushing.

“I wanted to introduce you, actually,” said Stockton. “This is Rora, and we’re, um, well, we actually are officially dating. Ma won’t like it, but I thought you’d want to meet her.”

Bruin swallowed, turning his gaze on Stockton. “Dating.”

Rora hadn’t known. Did Bruin think she had known? No, he could see how shocked she was, he could see how this had unsettled her.

Bruin turned back to her, sticking out his hand, his expression changing. “Nice to meet you, Rora. I’m Bruin.”

Rora’s lips parted. “We should…” She looked up at Stockton, at the way he was smiling at her, that look in his eyes, and she wondered what happened if he knew that she’d lost her virginity to his father. Probably, nothing good. She took his hand, then, and she shook with him. “Nice to meet you, Bruin,” she said in a strangled voice.

He withdrew his hand quickly after the handshake, like she burned him. “You’re on your way out?” He wasn’t looking at her.

“Yeah, just walking her to her car,” said Stockton.

Bruin rubbed his forehead. “Well, it’s late, so…”

“Yeah,” said Stockton.

Bruin caught her gaze for just a second, looking concerned, looking devastated. Then he backed into the study and pulled the door firmly shut.

Rora’s heart was pounding.

It pounded all the way down the elevator and it pounded when Stockton kissed her goodbye and it pounded as she drove home.

When she got back, her mother wasn’t even awake, so maybe no one would have noticed if she had stayed out all night. There were two texts. One from Stockton, saying that he missed her already. And one from Bruin.

It’s Bruin. I got your number off his phone. Borrowed it with some other excuse and wrote it down. I wanted to say to you that I’m sorry for what happened between us. I don’t know what I did that made you leave that night, but I can guess. I’m not asking for forgiveness, but I need to tell you I know I was wrong.

She felt an two warring tugs within herself—one to reassure Bruin that she was all right and another feeling, that she should ignore his texts, that Stockton would feel betrayed if she communicated with another man, one she’d been intimate with.

But it was Bruin who’d put her in this position, forced her to lie to a man she was building trust with.

So, she texted back, We shouldn’t have lied to him.

There was no immediate response.

She texted, I’m going to text him now and tell him the truth.

She left that text conversation and pulled up her texts with Stockton. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Her phone beeped. It was a response from Bruin. He can never know.

She bit down on her lip.

Three dots came up at the bottom. Bruin was typing something.

When it appeared, it said, Can I call you? I’m not good at expressing myself in text form. Guess I’m too old.

No! She did not want her phone to ring in this house and she did not want other people to hear and possibly wake up.

She made a split second decision to dial the number that Bruin was texting her from.

As it was ringing, she thought that she could have simply turned down the ringer on her phone. Damn it.

“Hello?” said Bruin on the other end.

Oh, sun and moon, that voice. A flood of strange sensations went through her, hearing it again, and they were not all unpleasant. She felt awful and confused. “Hello,” she said. “Look, I left that night because I was too timid to wake you up and tell you to scoot over or move your leg. I simply didn’t have room on the bed. And then I tried to leave you a note, but I couldn’t find a pen. I don’t know what you think you did, but I’m fine.”

He let out an audible breath on the other side of the phone. “Oh, I see. I’m very sorry, then. You should have woken me, because—”

“Oh, none of that matters!” She was speaking in what amounted to a forceful whisper, because she didn’t want to be too loud. “I have to tell him.”

“You can’t,” he said, firm. “Listen, regardless of your reasoning for leaving that night, what I did with you was selfish. There was a moment when I almost stopped it all, because I was seeing what I was doing with you, using you, thinking only of my own pleasure. You didn’t deserve that experience as your first time. You deserved something else. I—”

“No, no,” she said, insistent. “If you had rejected me, it would have only confirmed my worst fears. I thought no one would ever want me. I needed someone to want me, to take me, I needed to know that I was worth having. I don’t regret it, Bruin. I wouldn’t have been ready for Stockton if you and I hadn’t—” But she broke off, her voice twisting at the awful irony of that. “But now everything is ruined.”

“It doesn’t have to be ruined. We simply don’t tell him, and you and I never speak of it again. I needed to convey my apologies, and if you truly don’t regret it, then everything is all right.”

“Nothing is all right. If he ever finds out that I lied to him about this, he will never trust me again.”

“If he finds out that I had sex with you, it will destroy him. I don’t know how well you know my son. If you just met him at the rite—”

“No, we know each other from school. I know him pretty well, actually. I’ve known him for over a year, at least.”

“Well, then, you know that he’s painfully insecure, especially when it comes to his prowess with women. You know that girl he was with, Maydell or whatever her name was, she destroyed his belief in his own ability to please a woman. If he finds out that he has to compete with me, his own father, over you—”

“He doesn’t!”

“Exactly, he doesn’t. But that is how he’ll see it. And I know him, and when he thinks he’s not up to something, when he thinks he’s inadequate, he doesn’t have the courage to try. This will devastate him.”

She was quiet, the awful words of Maibell coming back to haunt her, that Stockton had only picked her because he was too insecure to think that he could have any other girl.

“Please, let’s not do anything hasty,” said Bruin. “Please, trust me on this, it’s better if he never knows.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Think about it, at least. Give it some time.”

What did it hurt to think about it?

She swallowed. “All right. I’ll think about it.”

EIREN WAS HUNGOVER .

She had valiantly spent the week doing nothing except working, working on advertising images and branding logos from the time she woke up until the minute she fell into bed, for days.

Until Friday.

Friday, she couldn’t.

So, she knocked off early, around noon, and she let that impulsive side of her lead her.

She ended up getting drunk in a bar in town that afternoon. When it was time for dinner, she ordered bar food, filling her stomach with grease and cheese and breaded onion rings and more alcohol.

Then, she didn’t know, things got fuzzy.

She barely ever blacked out when she got drunk, not anymore. She was too old for such things. But she had woken up in the bed of a coyotekin, no real memory of their coupling, none at all, though she could see that she’d clearly gone for something in the canine family because she was trying to deal with the loss of Lyall the wolfkin, who had fucking rejected the fuck out of her.

She crawled out of the coyote’s bed and left without saying goodbye or waking him.

She was getting out of the shower when she saw the notification of a friend request.

It was stupid to accept it, stupid to send him a message, stupidest of all to agree to go to his damned house.

But she showed up, hungover, showered, but still pretty sure she was leaking the scent of liquor from her pores.

He met her at the door and yanked her inside, baring his teeth at her. “You just can’t stop letting other men fuck you, can you, little preykin? You have a greedy little pussy, don’t you?”

“What? You’ve been celibate here or something?”

“Obviously,” he growled. “I’ve been jerking off and thinking of you, twice a day, sometimes more.” He took her hand and slid it into his pants.

“You’re being very forward,” she panted.

He nudged her hand down until she realized that he had a knot.

Her eyes widened.

“That’s what you do to me,” he growled in her ear. “Even if you can’t stop spreading your legs for anything and everything.”

“Not fair,” she squeaked. “You left me there, and you said you didn’t want me—”

“Did you let bucks fuck you that night? The next morning?”

“No, I promised I wouldn’t!”

“No one else, ever again.”

She yanked her hand out of his pants. “You don’t get to tell me what to do with my own body.”

“So, you have no intention of being monogamous, that it?” He put his hand on the back of her neck and pushed her through the house.

She was sputtering. “Where are we going?”

“I’m going to need to put you in the shower to get the stench of coyote off you, obviously,” he grunted. “And I need to… I don’t know, come all over you or something, so that you smell like me, because you’re mine.”

“I do not belong to you,” she gasped.

They were in his bathroom, and the mirror was fogged up, and he’d obviously just got done showering.

She looked around the bathroom, which was nice. There was a deep soaking tub in the corner. The shower head was one of those wide square-shaped ones. “Is that, like, your first knot, then?”

He pushed her hair away from her neck and examined the place where he’d had his teeth in her. It was healing. He fingered it, and that made her shudder. “Yes.”

“I mean, does it really have anything to do with me?”

“I was thinking about you when it popped up,” he said. “I was masturbating and thinking about you. I can’t seem to get off these days unless I think about you.”

She swallowed hard. “Wow,” she breathed. “I’m not saying I can’t be monogamous, you know.”

He smirked. “You don’t deserve me.”

“Are you insane? You don’t call me or talk to me and you say that there’s nothing between us—but I still lay in bed all alone and think about how I’m keeping my pussy empty for your sake that night—and then I’m so upset about it, I have to drown my sorrows hardcore last night, and now I don’t deserve you?”

“I do not want to smell another man’s come on you ever again,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes. “Is that clear?”

She just swallowed. That was clear, and very hot, and she liked it. “That mean you like me, Lyall?”

His smirk deepened. “I think you might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Now, take off your clothes.”

She really wished she was not so hungover. She wanted to enjoy this, and she felt achy and her head was sore and she hadn’t slept well. But maybe the hangover made her less capable of resistance, who knows? She undressed for him, right there in his bathroom, just took everything off while he watched.

When she was bare, he turned her around and bent her over the sink and ran his fingers through her tail.

She mewled.

He trailed his fingers over the curves of her ass and then delved down to touch her lower. He slid a finger inside her pussy and continued stroking her tail.

She quivered. She moaned.

“No,” he said, tugging on her tail. “I want that scent back, preykin. Do I have to scare you?”

Her stomach turned inside out.

“Good,” he growled, delving his finger deeper into her. “That’s very nice, little preykin. That’s just what I want from you.”

He finger fucked her and yanked on her tail for only a few more minutes before letting go of her, sliding his finger out of her, licking it clean and shoving her into the shower. “Scrub yourself,” he told her. “I’ll tell you when you can come out of the shower.”

“You know, I’m not sure if you were always this bossy,” she said to him.

“You want my knot, doe?”

Her breath caught in her throat.

“Shower,” he said, nostrils flaring. He left the bathroom.

She got in the shower and washed herself, using all of his shower products, figuring he wanted her to smell like him, and even though he’d said she should stay in there until he told her to come out, she turned the water off and dried off on one of his towels on her own.

He appeared in the doorway. He was naked. “You don’t do as you’re told, do you?”

“Not usually, no,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s a reason I work for myself, you know.” Her gaze went to his crotch. His cock was lying there, soft.

He nodded. “I do know.” He lifted his fingers and crooked them, beckoning her.

She scampered over to him. “What happened to your knot?”

“Needs to expand inside you,” he said. “Do you not know how this works?”

She shrugged. “You can’t just, like, wrestle it in, force it into my pussy?”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s possible. You want to try that?”

She shrugged again. “Sure.”

“Sure,” he echoed, grinning at her. “That coyote you were with didn’t have a knot for you?”

“I… don’t remember,” she said. “I was very drunk on account of being heartbroken and all.”

“Heartbroken, huh?”

She cringed. “Forget I said that. I didn’t say that. I don’t even like you. You seem incredibly unlikable, Lyall the wolfkin.”

“ I seem unlikable, Miss Fucks-Everything-In-Sight?”

“That really isn’t fair,” she said.

He guided her out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. “You make me possessive is the thing.”

“Well, that sounds like a you problem,” she said.

He shoved her face down on his bed and swatted her bare ass.

She let out a squeak.

“I mean, maybe,” he said. “Maybe it’s my problem. I don’t know. Don’t move.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Don’t move?”

“Yeah,” he said, stroking a hand over his cock. “Lay just like that.”

“What are you doing? Jerking off on me?”

“Uh huh,” he said. “I told you I wanted to. Do you remember that? I want you to smell like me. I want to mark you.”

“Like I’m your territory?”

“Exactly,” he said, and he was hard now and he was jerking his dick quickly, back and forth, as she gazed at him.

She shouldn’t like that, should she? She should find that gross. She should feel demeaned. She should tell him not to. She should leave.

Instead, she watched and made little gasping noises when he painted her ass cheeks and back with his semen.

Then he stuck his cock inside her.

He was still hard, after coming like that?

Shit.

He made her put her knees up on the bed, so that her ass was up in the air and he knelt behind her, and he fucked her and cupped her mound, squeezing it, rubbing it, tapping it. “Want you nice and sensitive and ready to come,” he told her. “But I don’t want you to come, not yet.”

She didn’t tell him that whatever the fuck he was doing to her, cupping and squeezing her mound, it was definitely going to make her come, very definitely . She didn’t know why it was so good, not exactly, maybe it was because there was an array of different sensations or maybe it was because it was all providing some kind of indirect clitoral stimulation from the best of angles or maybe it was just him, because it was too easy to come around his man.

She was up on her elbows, knees bent, jammed full of wolf cock, letting out little moans and sobbing breaths as he moved inside her.

His little taps on her mound were becoming more and more like spankings, and she liked it.

He was jamming his cock in and out of her, letting out these little growling noises.

She was going to fucking come. She was getting closer and closer. Everything felt far too good, like she was trapped in an ever-tightening tunnel of warmth and goodness. She wanted it to constrict on her until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

“You ready?” he panted behind her, his voice strained.

She thought he meant to come, and she said, “Please, yes, please,” and then remembered that he had told her he didn’t want her to come. But she was right on the edge now, feeling her pussy start to tighten in anticipation.

And then he jerked into her, deep, deep into her, and she realized he meant to ask if she was ready to be knotted, because it was happening.

She let out a surprised noise as his cock thickened there, just inside her opening.

“Fuck,” he said, also sounding surprised. “ Holy fuck.”

He was coming, she realized. But in that moment, she was also overtaken by the feeling of his knot lodging in her. It was big and thick and sealed inside her, and it also pressed very nicely up against the internal wings of her clitoris, so that as he moved in her, his knot was rubbing her in a very sensitive place.

And he was coming, and his cock was jolting inside her, jerking against all sorts of lovely places, and his knot was rubbing her and rubbing her, and he tightened his hand around her mound and squeezed her and—

She came, too, but when she clenched on his knot, her sensitive, swollen clitoral wings rubbed on it, and it felt insanely good, and she climbed up another rung, as if her orgasm was a ladder.

“Bad preykin,” he rasped, tightening the way he squeezed her mound. “You are not supposed to come.”

She climbed another rung of her orgasm, a spot higher, another level, more pleasure.

His knot was amazing .

He seized her tail, holding her in place.

She came and came and came, one wondrously sweet volley of trembling little clenches after another, and every tug on her tail made it better .

“Bad preykin,” he said again, but he sounded both tired and sated and affectionate. “Such a bad girl.”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“You’re not even a little sorry,” he said. “And neither am I, really.” He pulled on his cock.

She squealed, because his knot meant that he was stuck in there and it hurt to try to get free.

“Whoa,” he said softly. “Whoa.”

She let out a moan.

He rubbed her lower back, his voice gentle. “Sorry, pretty little preykin. Did that hurt?”

“Don’t try to take it out,” she managed.

“I won’t,” he said, with a rumbling breath. “I won’t.”

They both breathed, their breaths noisy and ragged. His knot was huge and still stimulating her. She whined, unsure if she wanted to rub herself against it or be free of it.

“Trapped inside you,” he said in a tiny voice.

“Yeah, trapped with you in me,” she said.

“You all right?” he said.

“I’m definitely all right.”

“Lie down,” he said, his hands gentle where he’d made her get on her knees. “Relax, little preykin.”

She lay down, and he came with her.

He nuzzled her neck, and she thought of the way they’d been before, in the bed in the hotel, him stuck in her then. He sighed heavily. “This is kind of freaking me out, if you want to know the truth.”

“No, I got that,” she said dryly.

“The knot is freaking me out,” he said, and his voice was unsteady. “I don’t like this, I’m realizing, being stuck in a woman.”

“You definitely don’t want to be tied down, do you, Lyall? Or tied in?”

“I…” He shuddered against her. Then he let out a sigh. His voice was small. “I don’t.”

She wanted to escape, suddenly, but she couldn’t, and she knew that.

“Fuck, what the hell is that scent?” he muttered.

“It’s fine, really,” she said. “It’s the story of my life. It’s not that no one ever wants me, but the people who I want never really want me back. It’s typical.”

“Wait, I want you,” he said.

“Yeah, but, like, against your will,” she muttered.

He was quiet.

“It’s fine, anyway. I’m kind of a loner and I don’t even need a relationship. I don’t know if I even want one. I—”

“I can’t give you a relationship.”

“No, noted, that’s coming through very clearly,” she said.

He sighed. “But I… I… I need to see you again.”

“You mean, you need to fuck me again?” she said pointedly. “You need to knot me again?”

“Yeah,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I do.”

“People do have casual, no-strings, fuck-buddy situationships, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.” He nuzzled her neck again. He sounded helpless. “I don’t want you to fuck anyone else, though.”

“Okay, I won’t,” she said.

“But you just said the thing about casual.”

“It can be casual but also exclusive,” she said. “I want you to be exclusive to me, too.”

“Obviously,” he muttered.

She smiled into the bed. Okay, then.

“Exclusive but casual,” he said softly. “So, we just fuck, and we don’t… have to go to dinner and watch movies together and snuggle and feed each other desserts and buy each other Valentines or whatever.”

“No snuggling, check,” she said in a wry voice. “No gifts.”

“You think I’m a fucking jerk,” he said. “Maybe I am a fucking jerk.”

“I’d rather know the score going in,” she said. “If we’re honest with each other about what it is then we both know. No surprises.”

“You don’t want an exclusive situationship, do you?”

“Well, I don’t know, it might not be that bad,” she said, thinking about it, smiling to herself. “I do really like your knot, you know. I don’t want to give up the knot.”

He rolled his hips against her. “Yeah, okay, good. Tell me more about how much you like my knot.”

She giggled.

“I mean, I like it, too. My knot, that is, and I like the way it feels stuck in you, and I like your pussy a lot too, and it’s just so fucking hot to look down and see you all filled up with me, right here, under your cute little tail.”

She let out a little moan, wriggling her tail at him, wriggling herself around his knot. “How long until it goes down?”

“Twenty minutes tops,” he said. “You look very good with my knot in your pussy, Eiren. Very fucking good.”