Page 115 of Stags

“I don’t know! I don’t know anything right now!” he exploded. He got up from the table, taking his coffee with him. “Just… I can’t.”

He walked out.

When he got back home, Bruin was in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher, putting forks away.

Stockton stood and watched him, wordless, looked at his father’s girth and broad shoulders and his impressive antlers and thought that his father had no issues knowing how to make a woman come, undoubtedly, and his stomach roiled.

Bruin looked up, caught his expression, and slowly set the forks down on the counter. “Sun and moon. You know. She told you.”

Stockton shifted on his feet. “I wish she hadn’t. I wish I didn’t know.”

Bruin came across the room and placed a hand on his shoulder.

Stockton shook him off. “Don’t touch me.”

Bruin backed off, bowing his head.

Stockton tore past him, hurled himself into his bedroom, and shut the door. He sat down on his bed, right in the spot where he’d sat while she’d knelt between his thighs and used her soft, perfect, wet mouth on him. He sat there and he sobbed.

LYALL SLEPT ATher house.

Not just once, either. He had never done anything like that, never gone to a woman’s house and just been there.

He had to admit that he never stayed long in the mornings though. He’d wake up, and she wouldn’t be in bed anymore. She’d be out in her living room, perched at a desk in the corner where she had the literally largest-screened computer he’d ever seen, and she had this little pen and tablet thing, which worked like a mouse. It let her draw things on the screen. She would be there, already working, telling him there was coffee if he wanted it.

Sometimes he’d get coffee and sit and watch her work while he drank it.

But usually not, because she wouldn’t talk to him when he was there. He’d try to talk, and she’d be distracted, staring at her screen.

“You trying to get me to leave?” he said once. He didn’t know if he wanted to leave. Her house smelled like her and he liked being close to her for whatever reason. Probably the same stupid reason she gave him a knot.

“No,” she had replied, like he was crazy.

“I’m only saying because you get up and start working, like you want me to leave you alone.”

She had given him a look. “I thought this was the way we both wanted this.”

Maybe she was trying to teach him a lesson, but he didn’t think so. He thought she just didn’t feel like dropping her entire universe because he happened to be around. She was going to do her thing, regardless. Or maybe she liked to make her art. Or maybe shewastrying to get rid of him.

It was odd because she was a submissive little preykin when he wanted her to be, doing everything he said, shy and sweet and obedient.

And then, there was this other part of her, this part who was kind of defiant. Who wouldn’t obey if it killed her. Who would cut off her nose to spite him.

Did she hate him? He wondered about that sometimes. When she got that spike of fear in her that smelled so damned good, that went right to the root of his cock, was there an element of truth in the way she felt about him with that?

But it didn’t matter if she did hate him.

She was his.

She was his little preykin. He got a knot forher. Her and no one else. And she let him have her over and over again, falling to pieces in his arms, eager to be fucked, eager to be claimed.

There was something about it, though, something.

It wasn’t just sex between them.

True, the sex bracketed everything. They’d set up a time to see each other, usually texting each other earlier in the day, usually near lunch, but they’d agree to meet later, sometime after dinner or something, and then she’d come to him or he’d go to her.

And when they saw each other, it would be a collision, bodies against each other, scents wild on the air, intense and ready and right down to it.

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