Page 116 of Stags

Then, in between, they’d be knotted together, and they’d talk. They’d talk about all kinds of things. They talked about their families and their jobs. They talked about the art they both made. They talked about how both of them could not see themselves with children. They talked about true crime documentaries, which they both liked, and abnormal psychology, because they both had theories about psychopathic tendencies, and maybe that was because they were both “loner types” as she’d put it, who didn’t attach well.

But neither of them were violent, of course. Neither of them were psychopathic. They made theories to prove to themselves that there were differences between themselves and people who did things like that.

But this was only because they both felt some kind of uncomfortable kinship with the personality type, he thought.

Maybe this was why he knotted for her. Maybe because she was like him, mirrored him, was similar to him in so many, many ways.

Except, they were different.

She had this side to her that he didn’t have, the side she said was impulsive, and the side he just didn’t understand. The side that propelled her out of her house and out into public to do brash things like join in a sex rite—which was how he’d met her, obviously—or less risky things like sing karaoke or go on a pub crawl.

He never wanted to do those things, and she never asked him along, but he hated that she did them without him.

The first time he found out about her having done that, he said to invite him along next time.

So, she did. She said she had an itch and she was going out to a club to go dancing.

He didn’t like clubs. He didn’t like people. He didn’t like lights. He didn’t like loud music.

He hated it.

He made her leave early, but she didn’t mind, because he pulled his car over to fuck her in the backseat on the way home, and she had this orgasm that smelled like sweat and fear and her and that broke over him in a way that made him lose his mind. He came like moondamned cannon fire inside her. They were knotted up and they had to sit in the back of his car for way too long.

That was the night he bit her. Like, broke the skin a little and licked it, licked her while she was bleeding and she tasted sweet, sofuckingsweet.

She said she should make him jealous more often.

“Was I jealous?” he said.

“You don’t like me dancing with other men,” she said.

“Was that dancing or just them all trying to scent you?” he had growled.

She’d thrust her ragged skin into his mouth for him to lick, and said, “I’m your preykin, though, Lyall, yours,” and she’d tasted so fucking sweet, and he’d licked her and licked her.

And maybe some part of him liked it, liked how out of his head he got for her, liked getting out of control, liked the sparks made from his possessiveness and her running away from him, always running, always wanting him tochase.

Wasn’t that the way between prey and predator, after all?

Even so, even if they both liked it, he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t all go sour at some point.

Could it last?

Before, he wouldn’t have cared. And he didn’t know if it was the knot or his own idiot self or the way it felt when his phone pinged and it was a message from her, or how easy it was to talk to her, or how sweet her blood was on his tongue or…

He cared now.

That was all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

RORA DID NOThear 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.

---