Page 18 of Stags

He thought about asking his brother if he could come and stay with him for the weekend, but he thought his brother would spend too much time crowing about how he’d been right. Lyall couldn’t bear an entire weekend of I-told-you-so.

Besides, the first weekend wouldn’t be bad, he thought.

And it wasn’t as if he was some kind of maddened wolf, some out-of-control man of prey. It happened sometimes, he knew. Wolves, hawks, coyotes, all sorts of creatures could go into it, a kind of frenzy that seemed triggered by scent and instinct.

But the law didn’t care about instinct. If he were to go mad and kill a deerkin, he would go to jail for the rest of his life.

That will never happen,he thought, staring out at the trees.

In the distance, far off, he could hear the strains of music at the Center, the deerkin get-together before the midnight madness of their breeding ceremony.

His tail twitched.

Maybe it was best to go inside now.

CHAPTER FIVE

RORA TRAILED BEHINDEiren and Tawny as they walked back from the restaurant towards the Center.

She was thinking about the stag, the one with silver in his hair, the one who was probably old enough to be her uncle, and she was thinking all sorts of horrifying thoughts about him.

Moon and sun, she hadwinkedat him.

What was that?

She didn’tdothings like that.

Neither of the older women had noticed, thank goodness, but she had the uneasy feeling that she had opened the door to something, something she wasn’t sure she was even ready for. But she didn’t feel frightened, that was the thing. She felt a kind of agitation, true, but it was curious, excited, eager. She wasn’t afraid of that old stag.

He didn’t look like her uncles, that was the thing. Her uncles had drooping bellies and drooping antlers and they had scraggly beards with gray in them and whenever they put their reading glasses on, they perched them on their noses and squinted. Her uncles were dear to her, of course. They were the safest stags she knew.

This wasn’t like that, because this silver stag might be old, like her uncles, but he had a trim waist and long, flowing black hair streaked with gray and a firm hard square jaw. If there were lines on his face, they only made him seem rugged, more masculine somehow. He had broad shoulders and his gaze was piercing, his eyes a stormy color like the sky in summer.

Too many romance novels, Rora,she chided herself. What a poetic description.

Yes, but she didn’t read those kinds of romance novels, the age-gap kind. She had always assumed it was because of being deerkin. You had to have some kind of daddy kink to be into that, right? Deerkin didn’t have relationships like that with their fathers, even though she had to admit that uncles and great-uncles often played fatherly roles in fawns’ lives.

Anyway, she might be attracted to that older stag, sure, maybe, but it wasn’t daddy kink. It was, um, he seemed virile and experienced and sort of…

Craggy.

That was the word.

She didn’t really know what it meant. She got out her phone and looked it up. Yes, there. It was what she meant, a man’s face that was attractive in a rough way.

But it was more than that. Because he was older, it softened him in some way. A rugged young buck might be frightening, but this stag seemed as if he might have enough life experience to know how to be gentle with her, especially since it was her first time and she didn’t know what to expect.

He seemed trustworthy. Yet, appealing.

She mused over that.

Well, she was getting ahead of herself, clearly. He was far too old for her. If he did take advantage of her, that would mean he was not trustworthy.

Or would it?

Tawny reached back and pulled Rora up between the other two women. “You’re quiet.”

“No, I’m not,” said Rora.

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