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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

RORA DID NOT hear from Stockton for what felt like an eternity.

Maddeningly, the person who did keep texting her was Bruin. He wasn’t angry at her. He wrote a long text about how he understood why she felt she had to tell Stockton, but that now his son was not speaking to him, not coming out of his room, skipping classes and calling out of his internship.

Even though Bruin didn’t outright accuse her, she felt guilty.

But she didn’t text him back. She felt as if he had attempted to draw her into a kind of conspiracy against Stockton, and she knew she could never have been part of that.

She knew if she didn’t respond, then Bruin would eventually stop texting her, but every time she thought that, she felt a stab of pain, because she’d be cut off from any information about what was happening, she wanted to know.

However, she didn’t know what to say.

Frankly, the open-endedness of it was driving her out of her damned head. She had to sit around and wait for Stockton to work through this. He had all the power.

It was infuriating.

The problem with waiting was that he would get distracted by something or someone else in the meantime. The problem with waiting was that he would go on living his life and she would go on living hers and they would not be connected to each other. The problem with waiting was that they would both get more and more used to not talking, not seeing each other, not being with each other.

Sure, it would also mean that whatever pain he was feeling over finding out she’d lost her virginity to his father would fade.

But so would the good feelings he felt about her.

All of it would fade.

Damn. It.

Anyway, what about her pain? What about how this made her feel?

She thought about going to her mother to spill her guts and decided her mother would not even understand. Then again, she didn’t think her friends would either. None of her friends had been through something like this, she didn’t think. They would probably tell her that this was what came of getting into things with friend’s exes. Maibell’s dating Stockton had made him off-limits. She was just reaping the consequences.

Except that was not the case, and Rora knew it.

So she sent a text to Tawny and Eiren, saying she needed to vent and asking if they would mind a wall of text on their phones.

Tawny texted back that they should all go out to dinner together, her treat. She said she’d love to have some girl time.

That was when Rora remembered that the other two women had said things about how they didn’t have much in the way of female friends, hadn’t they?

Well, Rora decided she was doing a good thing for Eiren and Tawny, then, getting them out of their shells and giving them the chance to connect. She promised she would listen to whatever their problems were, too, as long as they would help her out with hers.

They went to a local Chinese restaurant, and they got crabless crab rangoon and vegetarian spring rolls to eat while they waited for their entrees.

Rora spilled everything, while gesturing with her glass of ginger ale, sipping at it in between pronouncements. “And anyway, what about me? What about how this makes me feel? Why does Stockton get to act like it’s so much worse for him than it is for me?”

“Yeah,” said Eiren. “Totally.”

“Why is it bad for you again?” said Tawny. “You got to have sex with the hot dad and the hot son, right?”

“Well, no, because we never did actually get around to penetration, me and Stockton,” said Rora with a sigh. “But okay, yeah, they did both go down on me.”

“And?” said Tawny. “Who was better? Experience or youth?”

“Well,” said Rora, chewing on her bottom lip. “Stockton improved with a little coaching, you know?”

Both of the other women giggled.

“Obviously, you’re falling for Stockton,” said Eiren.

“Yeah, but why?” said Tawny. “We met him, and he was, you know, tentative and sort of tongue-tied. Not a beacon of confidence.”

“Well, I don’t want that in a man,” said Rora. “I mean, I think what I want is someone that I can feel safe with, and how do you feel safe to be vulnerable around someone who won’t be vulnerable with you?”

Both women looked a little troubled, but neither said anything.

“I mean,” Rora pressed on, “I read a lot of romance novels. In those stories, a girl always falls in love with a guy who’s powerful or rich or really together in some way. He sails in and makes things better for her. Even if he doesn’t physically rescue her from danger, he rescues her in some other way. He takes care of her. And I thought I wanted that, but now I realize what I really want is to be with someone who doesn’t think I need rescuing, who sees that I’m imperfect and doesn’t try to fix me, just accepts me. And if he’s imperfect, too, I don’t mind. Maybe I like that.”

Eiren furrowed her brow. “Hmm. You don’t have to fix yourself to be in a relationship? A relationship doesn’t fix you?”

“Yes,” said Rora firmly.

“Well, you don’t have a relationship, right, Eiren?” said Tawny.

“I have an exclusive sexual arrangement,” said Eiren. “Which involves knotting, and I am a fan.”

“The wolf?” said Tawny, eyes wide.

Eiren smiled, spreading her hands. “What can I say? The wolf came back for more.”

“With knotting,” said Tawny. “I still hate you.” She lifted a shoulder. “Even though, you know, things are going all right for me as well.”

“How?” said Eiren, grinning.

“I, um…” Tawny blushed. “We’re interrupting Rora, who needs our support.”

Eiren pointed at her. “We are coming back to talk about this.” She turned to Rora. “But you do need our support. Go on, tell Tawny why it’s awful to find out that you lost your virginity to your boyfriend’s dad .”

Rora moaned, burrowing her face in both of her hands. “It is awful. I feel so ashamed of myself.”

“You shouldn’t!” Tawny exclaimed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But that’s the feeling I have,” said Rora. “It’s shame. Like, it’s beyond embarrassment. It’s so much more intense.”

“If anyone should feel ashamed,” said Eiren, “it’s that Bruin guy for trying anything with you.”

“No, I mean, I got myself into that,” muttered Rora.

“He was definitely too old for you,” admitted Tawny.

“I can’t just talk myself out of feeling ashamed, anyway,” said Rora.

“Sure, you can,” said Tawny. “If you don’t need to feel ashamed, you can stop.”

“Maybe you can,” said Rora.

“Anyone can,” said Tawny.

“Well, when I think of being in the same room with both of them again,” said Rora, “what I feel is a deep, deep bad feeling. It’s horrifying. Looking at both of them, and knowing I’ve seen both of their penises? Knowing I’ve kissed both of them? Knowing they’ve both seen me naked?”

Tawny winced. “Okay, I see your point. It’s awkward, for sure.”

“Yeah, but Bruin isn’t interested in you,” said Eiren. “I mean, not beyond just whatever happened with you. And maybe you don’t even have to be around Bruin.”

“Well, I do, because otherwise, I don’t know where it is that Stockton and I would even spend time together. I’m not bringing him home to the family household, with all my nephews and cousins running all over the place, and my aunts telling us we shouldn’t even be dating, right?” said Rora. “So, going to his house, his dad’s house, is the best place, but then Bruin is there, and…” She shuddered.

“It sounds sort of awful,” said Eiren. “Maybe that’s a sign. I know you’re enjoying this idea of accepting how imperfect this guy is or whatever and him accepting that in you, but… maybe you deserve something a little bit better than imperfect.”

“Gotta go with Eiren on this,” said Tawny. “Maybe you just date someone else.”

Rora’s shoulders slumped. “But Stockton and I had this connection… he bought me books.”

“I’m not saying right away,” said Tawny softly. “This part, it sucks. You have to grieve and you have to go through the pain and sometimes it just feels like it’ll never end. But it does. And there will be someone else.”

“She might be right,” said Eiren gently.

Rora looked back and forth between the two women. She supposed she hadn’t thought of it that way, but it was true that while Stockton was having time getting used to her not being in his life, she’d have that time, too. She had thought that, since she’d gone to the rite a pathetic girl who thought she was very damaged, that she’d just go back to that. But she was different now. She had changed. She would never be that girl again, regardless of whether Stockton wanted her.

“And it just comes back to the fact that it’s Stockton who has to get over it,” said Rora. “My options are to sit around waiting for him or to decide to move on. I hate it, because what I think I really want to do is to fight for him.”

“Really?” said Tawny. “You want to fight for the guy who didn’t contradict you when you said you were tainted? He needs to get over it, and you can’t do it for him. You can’t make him step up. He’s got to do it himself. I say make a clean break. It’ll hurt for a while, but not forever. You’re stronger than you think, Rora.”

“But he’s insecure,” said Rora. “I was the person that made him feel safe, and—”

“He needs to get over his insecurity,” said Tawny.

“But I’m insecure too,” said Rora. “So, how can I demand that from him when I feel it every single day?”

“I do get that,” said Eiren, nodding. “There’s something to be said for being two people who are both struggling, but having each other through the struggle, you know?”

Tawny scoffed. “Please. You are both way too willing to settle for things that aren’t good enough.”

“In a romance novel,” said Rora, “a girl can’t fight for the guy.”

“In the real world, if a woman has to fight for a man and he won’t fight for her, it says something about the man,” said Tawny.

Rora sighed, feeling defeated. “Maybe it does.” And she didn’t want to face that, so she turned to Tawny and said, “Okay, back to you. Go back to what you were dodging!”

Tawny groaned. “Oh, fine. I’m in some kind of thing with Athos. Actually, the truth is, he told me about a conversation he had with Bruin at the Center that weekend, and we speculated on whether it was you or not, Rora, but I never said anything because I was hiding Athos like a deep, dark secret!”

“Athos?” said Rora, confused.

“Wait, that buck you thought was horrible, the one you took to task about weaponized incompetence?” said Eiren, giggling.

Tawny nodded, grimacing. “He is, you know, incompetent, I guess? But he’s also, like…” She threw up her hands. “I get the feeling that he’s maybe just genuinely lacking in self-esteem to a degree? I wonder if I’m too hard on him.”

“That guy?” said Eiren, laughing. “Too hard on him?”

Tawny groaned. “I don’t want to be the cliché who says that he’s sensitive deep down or whatever, but…”

“He’s sensitive deep down?” Eiren teased.

“He used to be married to a swan,” said Tawny. “I think he wants a pair bond. I think he wants a family, like a two-parent family. And I’m letting him, you know, try to get me pregnant on a pretty regular basis.”

“Whoa, he’s the sperm donor?” said Rora.

Tawny squared her shoulders. “I can be hard on people, you know?”

Eiren considered this.

“I mean…” Tawny looked at Rora. “Just in this conversation, I have told you more than once that you need to do things differently, haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” said Rora, “but I know you. That’s just how you are.”

“Just how I am,” muttered Tawny.

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” said Rora quickly.

Tawny pointed at her. “There. That.”

“What?” said Rora.

“You’re afraid of me,” said Tawny. “People always are, eventually. And in relationships with men, it always gets to this point where… but I think he thinks he deserves it.”

“We’re talking about Athos now?” said Eiren.

“I think he thinks he’s pointless, that all men are pointless, and that he has to listen to everything that I say, or else he’ll…” Tawny dragged her hands over her face.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Rora.

“Neither am I,” said Eiren. “Do you really think people are afraid of you?”

Tawny looked back and forth between them and Rora watched something vulnerable cross her expression for one moment. But then, just as quickly, it was gone. “No, I guess that’s ridiculous. Anyway, if people would just get themselves together and not fuck up, I wouldn’t have to tell them that they fucked up.” She shrugged. “It’s obviously their fault. It’s obviously Athos’s fault.”

“Okay,” said Rora.

“Well, it’s been a while,” said Eiren. “Maybe you’re pregnant already.”

“Maybe,” said Tawny. “But I can’t seem to take a pregnancy test.”

“What do you mean?” said Eiren.

“Like, I try to buy them at the store, and I just can’t seem to make myself put them in the cart,” said Tawny, making a face.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to talk about me anymore,” said Tawny. She rounded on Eiren. “Let’s talk about you and the wolf.”

Eiren raised both of her hands in surrender. “Hey, I am fine. I don’t need to talk.”

“It’s just an arrangement,” said Tawny.

“Yes,” said Eiren very pointedly.

“And you’re just fine with that.”

“Yes.”

“Forever?” said Tawny. “Don’t you want to settle down at some point?”

“We both like true crime documentaries,” said Eiren, shrugging. “We both work at home and we both are alone a lot of the time and—and the sex is molten-level hot.”

Everyone laughed.

“Does a person have to settle down?” said Eiren.

“No,” said Tawny. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, obviously.”

“So, maybe I don’t want to.” Eiren took a very big gulp of her drink.

It was quiet.

Then Tawny shrugged. “Fine. You’re happy. I’m happy. Rora will eventually get over this and she’ll be happy. We are all fine .”

“Damned straight,” said Eiren, perhaps a tad too forcefully.

Rora furrowed her brow. Had this girl time been very helpful, actually?

brUIN WAS STUNNED when Rora appeared at the door to his apartment one Saturday morning. He kept telling himself to stop texting the poor girl. She wasn’t responding to him, and he knew that was a sign he should leave her be. But he kept feeling as if what had happened with Stockton was his own fault.

As a parent, he knew he could not fix everything for his child, but that didn’t mean that some stubborn part of him didn’t feel compelled to try.

When she arrived, he thought she might be there to tell him to lose her number.

But she asked if Stockton was there.

“He’s in his room,” said Bruin. Where Stockton had been now, for nearly a week. The boy had finally roused himself, over the past few days, to return to his internship and to his classes, but Stockton seemed numb and almost hollowed out, like he’d been dealt some kind of crushing blow and he didn’t know how to even stand up straight anymore.

Bruin didn’t want to be one of those old men, the kind that railed about how the younger generation was too soft and too sensitive, but he couldn’t help but think that when he was his son’s age, he would have been too ashamed to show his own weakness to have behaved in this manner.

Maybe it would have only meant that he was burying his pain instead of dealing with it, but there was something to be said for distracting oneself in the face of a setback, something to be said for standing up and facing the world with bravery.

He kept these thoughts to himself, however, as Rora resolutely went past him and up the staircase to the second floor of the apartment. Bruin probably shouldn’t have, but he followed her. She marched to Stockton’s door, which was shut, and she banged on it.

“Go away, Bruin,” came Stockton’s voice from within.

“It’s me,” she said.

The door opened. Stockton was wearing a pair of plaid pajama pants and a wrinkled t-shirt. His hair was mussed. He looked her over, shaking his head. “I told you I needed time.”

“I know,” she said. “But what about what I need?”

Stockton blinked at her. A few moments passed and then Stockton simply shrugged.

“Let me come in,” said Rora.

Stockton looked over her head at his father. “No, let’s just all talk about this together, why don’t we? Since we’re all so very, very close now, and we’ve all seen Rora’s tits.”

Rora’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare be like that. This is between you and me, Stockton.”

Stockton came out of his room and shut the door behind himself. He folded his arms over his chest and lounged there. “You two, tell me about it. Tell me what it was like between you. Did she make those little breathy noises when you made her come, Bruin? Rora, is my dick bigger or is my dad’s bigger?”

“Stop it.” She glared at him. “You don’t get to do this. You are acting like it’s some kind of competition. It’s not.”

Stockton sighed. “Why? Because you pick me?”

“Yes, I do,” she said immediately.

Stockton straightened up. He looked over at his father and then back at her. “But look at him, Rora, look at him, and look at me, and look at you . You would have to pick him, because I’m skinnier and younger and I have less money, and I don’t know what I’m doing and—”

“No, that’s exactly why I don’t want him,” she said. She glanced at Bruin. “No offense.”

“I’m not offended,” he said. “For me to be with a girl like you is to relish some kind of power differential. It’s not what I want. It’s not who I am. It was selfish what I did with you. Even if you and Stockton weren’t together, it still would have been selfish.”

“Power differential.” Stockton rolled his eyes. “You have some kind of ego, Bruin, don’t you?”

“Do I have an ego, son, or do you have a crippling lack of self-worth?” Bruin countered.

Stockton let out a noise of disbelief. He put his hand on the door knob, as if he was simply going to exit the conversation. But then he paused and turned back to Rora. “You didn’t finish. Why don’t you want him?”

“When I met Bruin, I was looking for some man to rescue me,” said Rora. “I was looking for someone to prove to me that I was desirable and worthy and good enough.” She gave Bruin a helpless glance. “Maybe it was selfish on my part.”

“No,” said Bruin.

“But when I’m with you, Stockton…” Rora chewed on her bottom lip. “You said you didn’t want me to be yours. You said you wanted us to belong to each other. We are equals. We’re the same. And that’s why I pick you.”

Stockton lifted his chin.

“I have a crippling lack of self-worth, too, you know,” Rora said.

As if in spite of himself, the corners of Stockton’s mouth pulled upwards.

“Anyway,” she said, “I couldn’t just sit around waiting on you any longer. I had to come and say that.” She paused. “But I guess now, having said it, I should, um, go.”

Stockton looked down at his pajamas. “Uh, I would ask you to stay, but I am kind of…” He gestured. “Can we, maybe later…?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I’ll text you,” he said.

“When?” she said.

“Less than an hour,” he said.

She gave him a small smile. “If you need more time—”

“No, I just need to take a shower,” Stockton said.

“Okay,” she said.

Stockton went back into his room.

She came down the stairs. She glanced up at Bruin and then away. “This is going to be really weird with us, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” said Bruin. “Worse than weird, I think.”

She made a face.

“Thank you,” said Bruin. “Thank you for coming and talking to him. You’re good for him.”

“We’re good for each other,” she said. “At least, I think we could be. I hope so.”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “We’ll find a way through the weird.”

RORA DID GET a text within an hour from Stockton. He picked her up in his car and they drove around, sort of aimlessly, taking back roads that led them out of town. They wound through fields and forests.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” he offered.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “We can absolutely never talk about it.”

“Yeah,” he said.

And then the silence swallowed them up for some time, and she looked out the windows at the trees going by and wondered what to say now, if she should say anything, or if this was all a lost cause, after all.

“The thing is,” he said, “the past week or so, it’s kind of been all I can think about? I, uh, I keep picturing it, wondering about it, wondering about details, and…”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, maybe I can understand that, actually.”

“I want to ask you invasive questions that I don’t think I have any right to ask,” he said. “It was like that with Maibell, too. I wanted her to give me a blow-by-blow, every second of it with this guy. But with her, maybe I was entitled to know, because we had an agreement that we were only going to be with each other, and she broke it. But I had no rights to you when you were with Bruin, none at all. So, it’s not maybe strictly my business.”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Ask the questions.”

He swallowed.

But then, he didn’t ask her anything.

And they drove.

“Yours is bigger, you know,” she said finally, and she couldn’t help but smile.

He snorted. He glanced at her and then back at the road, grinning. “Okay, then.”

“Sorry, should I not have—”

“But he knew to lick your clit?”

She stopped smiling. “I mean, yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said. He wasn’t smiling either.

“But Stockton, when I went down on you, I didn’t know not to suck, like I didn’t know how to do it either, and you don’t hold that against me, do you?”

He considered, one hand on the steering wheel, the other going up to examine his antlers. “No, good point. Good point.” He put his other hand on the wheel again too and gripped it tighter. “I keep going back to this thing you said to me in the restaurant, this thing about how it was savage or rough or something?”

“Oh,” she said, remembering. “Yeah, I did say that.”

“He didn’t hurt you, right? Bruin’s a lot of things, but he’s not that kind of guy. Tell me that he didn’t—”

“No, he didn’t hurt me.”

“Good. That’s good. But, uh, why, then? Why did you say that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seemed that way. I was surprised at how invasive it was, I guess, and how much I was just pinned down and getting, uh, taken?” She wished, immediately, that she hadn’t said that, so she rushed to say, “But I remember you said this thing, too, you said it could be soft.”

“Yeah, I think about that a lot, too,” he said quietly. “Because when I said it, I was thinking that I, uh, wanted to show you that, I wanted to be the guy who could give you something soft and good. It was the moment when I realized how badly I wanted you, when I said that.”

“Oh.” She liked that. She smiled again. Then, she realized he’d said it in the past tense. “You wanted me. You don’t want me anymore.”

“Uh…?” He glanced at her again. “No, I still do. Actually, maybe, that, uh, that would fix a lot of things, if I did something, anything at all, better than he—”

“But I told you that I don’t want you to compare—”

“It’s just there, though, Rora,” he said. “The comparison thing is there .”

“Well, I want you to do it better, too,” she said. “When can we?”

“When,” he repeated, his voice insubstantial.

“Like, we’re not busy now, so…” Oh, sun and moon, why had she said that? It was ludicrous to think they would fix this with sex. They should really wait and sort through their feelings and have a proper, mature talk about things and wait until they were in a good place before they even thought about doing it.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Now is… but when is not the question, the question is where .”

“Oh, we can’t go to your place, because he would be there, and neither of us could handle that.”

“Definitely not,” he said. “And your place is—”

“Out of the question.”

“And not in the back seat of a fucking car, because I told you I want it to be perfect, and that’s not a place for it to be perfect or soft or anything good.”

She looked into the back seat, considering the idea, wondering how they would contort themselves to fit. People did it, right?

“This might be just as fucked up, but I do have an idea,” he said. “And I swear I didn’t start driving out in this direction because I was thinking about it. It really did just occur to me.”

She turned back to him. “This direction…? We’re going out where the Center is, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My father gave me a credit card to use for emergencies, and I think it would be warranted to use it to book us a room there. Which, I know, would mean that you were in a room there, like you were before, and maybe that would be—”

“Fine,” she said. “That would be fine.”

“Okay, then,” he said.

It was quiet again.

“It feels weird, like we negotiated this, and now it’s not really organic or natural, and maybe we shouldn’t,” he said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” she said. “But let’s do it anyway.”

It was still the season, and there was a weekend rut event and the Center was packed full of bucks and does, just like when they’d been there before. When they booked the room, the woman at the desk tried to upsell them into the event, but they said they wouldn’t be participating.

As they walked towards the elevator, he reached out and linked their fingers.

She looked up at him gratefully.

“I’m really fucking sorry,” he breathed. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk about this.”

She shook her head. “It’s understandable.”

“You deserve better,” he said, and he bent down and kissed the top of her head.

She leaned into him. “Okay, well, no pressure, then. Just give me the perfect second time, and all is forgiven. You can handle that, right?”

He chuckled. He put his arm around her. “Yeah, I think I can.”

When they were in the room, he gathered her into his arms, his movements gentle and deliberate. He traced his thumbs over her cheekbones and gazed deeply into her eyes.

“I hate that thing you said in the coffee shop, Rora, that thing about how I was with you because I was lowering my standards.”

Her throat felt tight.

“I hate it, because I know you worry about things like that, I know you think wrong things about yourself, and I see how it hurts you, and I just wish you didn’t have to hurt like that. Because it’s not like that, not at all.”

She shut her eyes. “I’m fat.”

He kissed her forehead. “No.”

“Maibell is—”

“No,” he said again. “No, I love your body. I have told you this, and you seemed to believe me when I did. I showed you the fucking thing on my phone.”

“Yeah,” she breathed. It had been a picture he’d snapped of some woman in a magazine when he was fourteen, he’d said, something he’d looked at and jacked off to, a woman who was voluptuous and shaped a lot like her. You’re exactly the way I picture the perfect woman, he had said.

“Tell me you didn’t show up to my place and say you chose me because you think something pathetic like me is the best you can do.”

She opened her eyes. “No, Stockton, no.”

He gazed into her eyes. “We both have a crippling lack of self-worth, huh?” His mouth curved into a small smile.

She smiled back.

“I hate when you feel it, Rora, because I know just how it feels.”

She kissed him.

He crushed her against him, his mouth moving expertly against hers. When he pulled back, his voice was soft. “I wish I could make it so you never felt that way.”

“But then,” she whispered back, “we wouldn’t understand each other.”

“True,” he murmured, kissing her again. “But I want to see you now. I want to see every inch of your body, and I want you to see how much I adore the way you look.”

Her lower lip was trembling for some reason, and she bit down on it to make it stop. Somehow, it was so much, too much, and she wondered if she’d ever let go of it, really, the insecurity, the feeling of inadequacy. Would it always feel like some kind of sweet revelation when he professed to adore her?

Maybe it was worth it, then.

She sucked in breath. “Well, then,” she said, smiling at him. “Go sit on the bed.”

He raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Okay?”

“Because I’m going to show you this body, and you’re going to sit and watch,” she said.

His features dissolved into a grin. “Wow, really? That’s… I don’t deserve you.”

“You do, though,” she said, and gave him a nudge.

She tried to undress in a slow and sexy manner, but she got caught up when she was peeling off her jeans, her legs all tangled in the fabric, and she ended up falling into his arms, a giggling and half-naked mess.

They squirmed up onto the bed together, her kicking off the remnants of her clothes and him stripping off his own, both of them laughing and kissing and pressing into each other.

He was hard; she could feel it. She feathered her hands over his chest and lower, lower, to touch him.

He tipped back his head, digging his antlers into the pillows, eyes shut, and let out little huffs of air.

He kissed the tips of her breasts, nipped them until her nipples turned stiff. He put his hand between her thighs, whispering that she should make noise whenever he touched something she liked, and she giggled and followed orders, and then she slipped off into a long, slow reverie of pleasure.

It was like being taken off into a warm, spring afternoon, on green rolling hills, all the trees covered in buds, a soft breeze riffling through the branches.

His fingers were teasing her in all the right spots now, because he’d paid attention and continued to touch her in only those spots, and now she was spread out before him on the bed, her knees open as he reached down and expertly pushed her closer to her pleasure.

But then, he suddenly stopped touching her. He rested his hand on her thigh, squeezing it. “I have an idea,” he said in a low voice.

She opened her eyes and rolled over onto her side to look at him. “What idea?”

“You know how, like, we were talking about the most sensitive parts of each other? I was thinking about, uh, rubbing them against each other.”

She considered and then nodded. “Okay.”

“I think if you…” He lay back on the bed and beckoned.

She saw what he meant, and so she climbed up over him to straddle him, her body over his. She had a moment of hesitation, Am I going to crush him? she thought, because she was thicker than he was. And then he seized her hips and tugged her against him, and she felt his strength, and she knew he could take it, and it went through her like a promise.

“There,” he said, and now his hard cock was against the slippery center of her, not inside, but rubbing her right there, and she reached down to sort of hold his hardness against her, to get it in the right place.

He let out an affected breath, moving his hips against her.

But this meant he slipped toward her opening, and she giggled, stopping him from going in yet. “Maybe let me?”

“Okay,” he panted.

She held the head of him against her clitoris as she moved her hips against him.

He gasped. “That’s nice.”

“Yeah?” she said. “For me, too.”

It was as if the breeze picked up, as if it became a bright wind, as if it began to nudge the buds off the trees, as if little petals of her pleasure began to be torn free, torn into a rush of wild, bright goodness. She moved her hips against the pleasure, against his own breathless sounds of enjoyment, both of them working with each other, both of them feeling their pleasure. She chased the breeze, chased it with her hips, chased it until she caught it. Then she pinned it down and rode it and when she finally climaxed, it was like all the buds burst off into the air to fall in surges of wondrous sweetness.

She lifted her hips, angling herself, and Stockton’s cock knew just where it wanted to settle. When she came back down, she sheathed him.

He let out a strangled sound. “I wanted…”

She was still coming. She clenched on him, each clench pulling him deeper up and deeper in, each clench seeming to send more buds of her pleasure wild into the spring air.

“I wanted to get you off like that,” he said.

“You did,” she said. A ripple of clenches went through her. “Feel that?” she panted.

He thrust up into her hard. “Oh, shit, seriously?”

“Seriously,” she said.

And then he fucked up into her in a series of enthusiastic thrusts, and she threw back her head and sighed out her pleasure into the ceiling.

“Wait,” he said, letting out a breath.

“Now what?”

“No, we were supposed to be doing this soft,” he said, very out of breath.

“Fuck that, just come,” she said. “Can you…?”

He nodded, rolling them over, pinning her down. “You sure?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

He didn’t last very long after that. He fucked her with wild abandon, and she liked it, liked looking up at him, at his antlers and the gleam of the muscles in his arms, and the look of pure enjoyment on his face.

He pulled out at the last moment, spilling on her belly, and she touched it and wondered at herself for not having a conversation with him about protection and birth control and everything else. It was possibly because of the rite, she supposed, all that unprotected stranger sex being normalized. They’d talk about it later. He could come in her, though, she thought. She was on the pill, and they’d both been cleared of STDs for the rut weekend.

As long as they hadn’t been with anyone else, and they hadn’t, it should be all right.

He jumped out of the bed and went to get a towel from the bathroom. He wiped her clean, apologizing, and she said she didn’t mind it, that it was okay, not to worry about it.

Later, lying in each other’s arms, he said, “Uh, I guess I have to show you soft sex some other time.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess you do.”

“So, I get another time?”

“Yeah,” she said again, “I guess you do.”