Page 105 of Stags

“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?”

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