Page 113 of Stags

When they got there, she pushed him backwards on her bed, undid his belt, freed him and used her mouth on him.

He wasn’t entirely sure what had prompted her to be that way, but he was also not going to complain.

STOCKTON WAS WAITINGoutside the building after Rora’s last class of the day. He wouldn’t have resulted to ambushing her like this, except he was anxious.

It had been days since he’d walked her to her car in the middle of the night with the taste of her still on his lips, with the imprint of her lips on the most sensitive part of his body.

And she’d been evasive ever since. Waiting much longer than she usually did to respond to his texts, claiming she was busy when he tried to set up a time for them to hang out, and he kept telling himself he was imagining things, but he couldn’t help but feel panicked.

He’d done something wrong. He must have.

He kept thinking about how she’d had to explain to him to lick her clit, that he’d been so stupid as to not understand how to go down on a woman, and he was sure he’d ruined everything.

But then hehadgotten her off, and it hadn’t seemed as if she was dissatisfied afterwards, so he hoped, if he could just see her, then he could put all his worries to the side.

When she saw him, she looked startled.

He fell into step with her.

“You, um, aren’t at your internship today,” she said. “It’s Thursday. You’re on campus on Thursdays.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I knew this was your last class today, and mine was over an hour ago, so I thought I’d hang out and surprise you.”Because otherwise, I was worried you’d try to avoid seeing me.

She tried to smile at him, but she looked harried and couldn’t seem to make the expression reach her eyes. She looked away, instead. “Listen, Stockton, this afternoon, I’ve got a lot of reading to do, so I don’t know if it’s a good time for me. I’m sorry.”

He drew in a sharp breath, and then he just said it. “I think you’re avoiding me.”

She looked up at him, her eyes very wide, and there was a long moment, a very long moment, long enough that when she said, “No, absolutely not,” it rang entirely false.

She seemed to realize this and she grimaced.

“Hey,” he said, “if you’re not feeling this anymore, that’s okay, but I would appreciate it if you could tell me why.”

She let out a long, slow moan. She looked around, shaking her head, tucking her hair behind one ear, nervous. “Not here. Can we talk… somewhere else?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The coffee shop near campus?”

“Not somewhere public.”

“My place?”

“No.” She practically snarled it.

He stiffened.

She winced. “Um, fine, the coffee shop. We’ll sit in one of the tables in the back. That’s probably best.”

He felt entirely off kilter, in a fierce feeling of ever-extending panic. Something was wrong. She was going to end things. His instincts had been right, and he had half-convinced himself he was being stupid about it, but everything was awful.

They walked to the coffee shop mostly in silence. They bought drinks; he tried to pay for hers; she wouldn’t let him. This made him feel vaguely nauseous.

When they sat down, his heart was pounding in dread.

“I…” She clutched her coffee cup with two hands, and she wouldn’t look at him. “You remember that when we saw each other at the Center, you pretended you didn’t know me?”

“This is about that,” he breathed in understanding. “Of course, you must be realizing now that all the things that I did—”

“I might have done something similar, sort of, when I ‘met’ Bruin at your house. I pretended not to know him, but Idid.”

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