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CHAPTER SIX

RORA ARRIVED AT the bar and plopped herself down in front of the sparrowkin bartender. “What’s a mocktail that doesn’t look like a mocktail?” she said plaintively.

The sparrowkin gave her a smile. “Cranberry soda? You say it’s a cranberry vodka if anyone asks.”

“Perfect,” said Rora, squaring her shoulders and looking around.

Oh, look, there was Tawny in the courtyard with some appetizers. The other doe had her back to Rora, however. Rora would go after her once she had a drink.

But when her drink arrived, Rora couldn’t see Tawny anymore. She looked around for a while, seeking the other doe but never seeing her.

“Come here often?” said a very deep, nearly velvet voice.

She turned to see he was there, her stag, the one from earlier with the rugged features and the silver in his black hair. Her lips parted. “Oh. Hello there.”

He looked down, tilting his impressive rack of antlers, sheepish. “It’s a terrible cliché of a line, of course, but I meant it as a joke. I suppose it’s not funny.”

“No, it is,” she assured him, smiling.

“I’m Bruin,” he said.

“Rora,” she said.

They shook hands.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink, but you don’t look as if you’re ready for one yet,” he said.

“This is a virgin drink, anyway,” she said, and then felt heat rush to her face at having said that word.

“Well, that’s likely intelligent,” said Bruin. “Drinking too heavily always makes these weekends worse, I can tell you from personal experience.”

“Because you do come here often,” she said.

He laughed, bowing his head again, embarrassed. “Well, I’m not sure what admitting that does to your impression of me.” He lifted his gaze and his stormy eyes met hers. “I’m not sure what impression I could be sending by talking to you at all, of course. I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

“Really?” Something impish rose in her. She smiled over the lip of her cranberry and soda, mischievous. “Is there something very, very bad about talking that I don’t know about?”

“Well, it’s the implication that I want to do more than talk to you, I suppose.”

Her breath caught in her throat. This was… different. Men her age—boys her age—did not talk that way. They never once admitted that they were pursuing anyone at all, as if they were at once attempting to keep all their options open and also too frightened of rejection to declare themselves. “Is that what you want?”

His mouth curved into a positively sinful smile. “I shouldn’t say the things I want, I don’t think.”

She leaned towards him. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. Her whole body pointed at him. Her knees did, her toes—her legs were crossed over the bar stool—and her fingers—her hands were resting on her knees—and her breasts and her nose and her ears, she felt them flicking towards him. She drew in a breath and let it out. “Well, I’m absolutely scandalized, then,” she said softly.

“You look scandalized,” he agreed, nodding. “You look positively shocked in the worst way.”

“I never would have expected it of someone like you. You seem so…” She reached up to tap her forefinger against her lower lip, unsure of who this woman was who was speaking, where she’d come from, any of it. I’m not like this, she managed inside her head. “Trustworthy,” she decided.

His smile widened, looking less sinful and more gratified. “Do I now?”

“I was thinking so, yes,” she said. “But appearances can be deceiving, I suppose. Here, it turns out, you’re quite dangerous.”

“I don’t know if I’m dangerous,” he said. “Unless you like that sort of thing. I think I’d be quite motivated to do anything you wished to the best of my ability. But here I am, admitting things I shouldn’t. You seem to have that effect on me.”

She tucked her head down against her chest, and she felt something she’d never felt before. Powerful. Powerful and pretty and desired. It was a heady sort of thing, she realized, and she’d been rather craving it all this time. Now that it was happening, it was like having been famished for all her life and suddenly being served a feast. “You really shouldn’t be saying things like that to me.”

“No?”

“No, I think I like them too much.” She turned away from him, embarrassed, wishing she hadn’t felt so free to speak. She sucked down some of her drink through her straw.

“If that’s meant to discourage me, you should know, it doesn’t.” His voice was careful now, though, and she realized it was because he’d read her body language.

She jerked her head up to look at him. “I… could you tell me something? It might sound sort of crazy.”

“I have to admit, I like crazy,” he said.

“Is there something about me, something, maybe the way I smell or some sense you get about me, when you’re close to me that…” She didn’t even finish the sentence. Suddenly, she could see how absolutely foolish she’d been all this time.

It wasn’t her.

It was them.

Well, it was a combination, perhaps, but between herself and the boys she’d interacted with, they were both young and inexperienced and lacking in confidence. And—of course—two people who had no confidence and who felt awkward created nothing but more awkwardness together.

“What?” he said, and he sounded gently amused.

“Never mind,” she breathed. She turned back to him. This man, this older man, who was beautiful and rugged and confident and capable of reading her signals and responding to them, she wanted him. She swallowed. “Are you, um, busy right now?”

“Not in the slightest,” he said.

“You…” Moon and sun, she could not say this. She looked into his eyes, and then she adjusted her gaze lower, and she asked his firm, hard jaw. “You want to fuck me?”

He let out a very noisy breath.

She cringed, but she was smiling. She was embarrassed, but she was lit up, too. She was powerful. She was pretty. She was desired. She met his gaze now. “I don’t know if I want… out there… in the field , you know?”

“Right,” he said. “It can be a bit bracing, not the most comfortable of situations.”

“It’s why we’re here,” she whispered. “We have rooms, though, so…?”

He looked her up and down, scratching his jaw very slowly, and she couldn’t breathe. Her heart was pounding far too fast, and she began to think that she must fill this silence between them, must babble out something, must give him a way out of the conversation because she had been far too forward, and maybe there was something repellent about her. But then he was speaking, “Well, it’s the same as in the field, though, hmm, little doe? If you change your mind, you say so, no matter where we are or what’s happening. And I think we should go to my room so you can flee to safety, to your own room, to a sanctuary I’ve never entered, if necessary.”

She liked that, and she nodded. “Yes, that’s good.”

He held out his hand to her.

She took it and he helped her off the stool. Now, on her feet, looking up at him, she felt very small and he seemed to loom over her, quite tall, quite large, quite…

“I’m not dangerous,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

“Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t have picked you if I thought you were.”

“I have no idea why you chose me,” he said, lifting her hand to plant a kiss in the middle of her palm, a kiss that she felt all the way through her, that made her shiver, “but I’m lucky you did.”

They left the bar, and he guided her into the elevator, one massive hand resting on the small of her back and then gently against the curve of her hip. She leaned in and caught a whiff of the smell of his aftershave, and she liked it. It was spicy and male, and he was so coiffed and gentlemanly.

She waited to feel regret on the elevator, to feel a rush of worry that she was making a mistake. But she didn’t. She only felt giddy and alive and pleased.

She looked up at him and found him studying her, looking thoughtful.

“You’re regretting this,” she said, wincing.

“Oh, there is nothing like regret in me,” he said. “I’m debating whether I should ask how old you are.”

“I can tell you how old—”

“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve decided it’s better not to know.”

“Really?”

He looked forward, drawing in a breath, nodding. “Might make me hold back, and I can tell that’s not what you want from me.” A pause. “Also, your red leaf earring?”

She touched it, running her fingers over it. She’d put it in before coming downstairs to the bar.

“You should know I had a vasectomy.”

She was startled. She looked at him sharply, but he was staring forward, not at her. “Are you… do you have a mate? A wife? A pair bond?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “Anyway, I wouldn’t… you don’t have to trust me about that. We’ll still be careful, but I thought it might reassure you—”

“Why?” she said.

He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, he never said it. He let out air, his chest deflating. “Let’s not do that either,” he said eventually, in a thoughtful voice. “We wouldn’t do that in the field.”

“Not do what? Not talk about ourselves at all?” Her voice was quiet. She wasn’t sure if she liked that, actually.

The elevator door opened.

He gestured for her to go ahead.

She left the elevator. He came after her. His large hand brushed her back again as he steered her to the right. They walked down the hallway.

At his door, he opened it, and they went inside together.

He turned on the light.

His room was bigger than hers. He had a little kitchenette tucked into one corner. She stepped inside, looking around. “So, no personal information, that’s what you’re saying? Just meeting each other like strangers?”

“Why me?”

She turned around to face him.

He was standing just inside the door.

“You won’t tell me anything about yourself,” she said. “Why should I tell you?” Besides, he hadn’t seemed insecure downstairs. Why was he getting that way now? She didn’t like it as much. She didn’t want to reassure him. She wanted him to reassure her.

Nervousness began to rise in her.

He took a step towards her. “You could have had anyone you wanted.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re young and lovely and so perfect,” he said, closing in on her. “You’re a stag’s wet dream of a rut.”

She bit down on her lip, shaking her head.

“Too vulgar?” he said. “You know what we’re about to do, don’t you?”

“N-not too vulgar,” she whispered. “You like me, but that doesn’t mean… it’s why I chose you. Because you want me.”

“Anyone would want you.”

She wanted that to be true, so she didn’t contradict him. She lifted one of her shoulders. “Well, you’re very…” She looked at his antlers. “Rugged.”

He smirked, reaching up to slide his fingers over her cheek. He cupped her there with his palm. His hand was so big that her face was engulfed. She let out a breath, and it hitched. He bent down, so that their noses were nearly touching. “You like the look of me, little doe? Truly?”

“Obviously,” she gasped.

“Yes, or you wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have been so forward,” he murmured. “I want to kiss you now.”

She shut her eyes and offered him her mouth.

His kiss was somehow gentle and firm at the same time. He took complete control of it, but it was like a sweet opening, petals unfurling into the sun, his tongue soft and wet as it nudged its way against hers.

When he broke the kiss, she didn’t move, her eyes still closed, her lips still parted.

He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip and wrapped one thick arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. “All right?”

“Mmm,” she said, her eyes fluttering open. Suddenly, the words were bubbling out of her. She was saying them so fast she was practically tripping over them. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I wanted—I thought—but then my friends said I shouldn’t lose my virginity in the woods, and then you—and now…” She caught sight of his expression and the words died in her throat.

“Did someone put you up to this? Is this someone’s idea of a joke, some kind of set up from a porn video? You’re a virgin who came to me because you want me to make sure your first time is satisfactory? Seriously?”

She nodded.

“That doesn’t happen in real life, little doe.”

“You think I’m lying to you?” Now, she was getting a little bit annoyed. “I was hoping… better than satisfactory, also?”

He let out a booming laugh, throwing back his head, throwing back his antlers.

“It’s not a joke!” she protested.

His laughter died out as he studied her expression, reading the truth of it there. “Well, then,” he said, his voice velvet again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

EIREN WANDERED OUT into the field around 11 p.m., an hour before the midnight run was supposed to begin.

No one stopped her.

She supposed it was allowed, going off into the field early. She supposed that there weren’t a lot of rules to this event. Well, no. There were a ton of rules, but the reason for the rules was different.

Typically speaking, rules were put in place to keep people from doing things.

These rules made things permissible that weren’t typically permissible in regular society.

Maybe sex was always that way.

She wandered through the field, and then into the woods, idly brushing her fingertips across the leaves which were starting to turn yellow and red and orange and started to fall, starting to crunch under her feet. She walked and she thought.

Civilized people couldn’t just let sex happen, after all.

Sex was madness, savagery outright. It was an affront to all social organization, to propriety in general.

Sex had to become tightly controlled in order for society to work.

If you had a society in which people were just walking about wanking each other all the time… well, you couldn’t.

Could you?

So, no, you had these things, things like this, like letting the steam out of a boiling pot. Here, in the space of these little perimeters, all is permissible. Have wild and wanton sex, do what you will, run and chase and let it all go. But only within the rules.

The rules were there not to stop her, though, but just to let people feel as if they were still moral. If you followed the rules, only did the mad savagery during the appointed time, then you were still a civilized person.

That was why they didn’t care if she went out into the field early, however.

If she wanted to admit she wasn’t civilized, they didn’t care.

After about twenty minutes of wandering through the woods and thinking pseudo-philosophical thoughts that might be mostly nonsense, Eiren determined she really wasn’t drunk enough for this and decided she should probably go back and get another drink.

But then…

Something stopped her from doing that. It had been one thing to boldly walk out into the field before the run began, to disappear off into the darkness, shaking her tail at any stag out there watching, daring them all to follow her. That had felt exciting, somehow, but going back in and getting another drink, it didn’t feel that way at all.

It felt like an admission of defeat.

She kept walking further and further into the woods instead.

She noticed a few of the breeding lairs that were set up out here. There was one that was inside a little cavern. She could see it because it had a light burning in there—a kerosene lantern, it turned out, when she got closer—and inside, there were cushions and blankets and a little curtain that could be pulled closed for privacy.

But most of them were actually made of camping materials. Several of them were tents. A few more were made of pop-up pavilions with the sides closed in.

She looked into these, out of curiosity mostly.

They were for breeding, after all, and she wasn’t here to be bred.

After a time, they seemed to thin out, and there weren’t anymore to be found.

Eventually, she came to a fence. It wasn’t well constructed. It was made of wood and wire—not barbed—and it was rusted in places. One of the wooden posts had fallen down, creating a perfectly welcoming path to walk over the fence.

The fence probably was meant to be the boundary of the Center’s grounds, and if she went over the fence, she was probably leaving the rite behind, and she didn’t need to do that, did she?

She saw a light off in the distance, through the trees.

The woods continued beyond the fence, but maybe only for twenty yards or so, if the light was any indication.

What was that light?

What was out here?

She wanted to see. She’d go and investigate, and then come back over the fence and wander back to find some bucks to get busy with. That was the reason she was here, wasn’t it?

She crossed the fence rather than answer that question.

When she did impulsive things, she did not always know why she’d done the things.

Later, she’d figure it out.

It was always for some reason she would swear that she would never do anything. It was because she wanted some thing that she was deeply ashamed of wanting. It was because she was denying herself something and telling herself she didn’t mind being denied it, and she always—it turned out—did mind.

She would rather not face this element of herself.

She walked over the fence.

She went to investigate the light.

It was the light of someone’s living room, it turned out. There was a house here, with a porch, and there was a light on, and she had definitely better go back inside the boundaries of the fence because—

Well, the someone who lived here happened to be on the porch.

She looked up at him.

He was a wolf.

His tail was bushy and gray and slowly moving back and forth, not really a wag, but an even-handed movement as he sussed her out.

He was broad and furry and he had pointed ears, but wolves usually looked like that. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He had teeth, sharp teeth, and she wasn’t sure why she was noticing that.

He moved forward, coming to the edge of the porch. He clutched the edge of the railing and peered down at her. “You seem to be lost.”

“Yeah, I walked too far,” she said. She pointed behind her. “There’s a… a deerkin thing going on this weekend—”

“I know about it,” he said. His voice was gravelly, almost a growl. She liked it. Was it because he was standing above her, with the light behind him like that that he seemed sort of… majestic?

“Right,” she said. “Of course you do. You live here. Happens every year, so…”

He nodded, staring down at her.

And then, neither of them moved much or said anything for a long time. It was too long. There was a point in which silence became awkward and this went past that immediately. There was another point in which silence ceased to be awkward and began to become some other form of communication, and they seemed to segue into this quickly.

She looked up at him, and she couldn’t stop noticing things about him. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and she could see the gray fur on his chest and he had a muscular, broad chest. And then she noticed how his arms filled out the sleeves of his shirt and then, oops, why was she looking at his crotch?

She smirked and met his gaze again, but he seemed to have realized how she’d just been checking him out, and his expression was amused.

She was embarrassed.

He lifted his chin, as if he liked that. He looked down on her, still majestic, predatorkin .

It had been over a hundred years since society was segregated between predator and prey, but when it had been, predators had the choicest of everything, the best lands, the bigger houses, more money, the best jobs…

Things were better now, but predators were still predators and she was still prey, and there he was, up there, with the light illuminating his fur.

She worried her top teeth against her lower lip.

His chest rose and fell with his breath.

They still weren’t saying any words, and she was now realizing this was beyond awkward, but she couldn’t break away, and she certainly couldn’t speak.

He leaned even further forward, digging his fingers into his porch railing. He sniffed the air.

Her body tightened at this, for no reason that made any sense, except that she liked the idea of his smelling her for some stupid reason.

No.

She liked the idea of her scent affecting him.

His expression changed.

Oh, it had . Her breath caught in her throat.

They looked at each other, sizing each other up, and his head jerked in a way that made her freeze up, an instinctive prey response, and this flooded her body with some other sensation, both pleasant and frightening.

And he scented that too, and his muscles all tightened, as if he were going to spring out onto her.

She let out a noise in the back of her throat.

He snarled.

She could not move. She could only blink, her heart beginning to beat wildly in her chest.

“Run,” rasped the wolf.

His voice seemed to unfreeze her. Her limbs worked, coming unlocked, and heat and blood pumped through her body.

She ran.