Page 22 of Stags

CHAPTER SIX

RORA ARRIVED ATthe bar and plopped herself down in front of the sparrowkin bartender. “What’s a mocktail that doesn’t look like a mocktail?” she said plaintively.

The sparrowkin gave her a smile. “Cranberry soda? You say it’s a cranberry vodka if anyone asks.”

“Perfect,” said Rora, squaring her shoulders and looking around.

Oh, look, there was Tawny in the courtyard with some appetizers. The other doe had her back to Rora, however. Rora would go after her once she had a drink.

But when her drink arrived, Rora couldn’t see Tawny anymore. She looked around for a while, seeking the other doe but never seeing her.

“Come here often?” said a very deep, nearly velvet voice.

She turned to see he was there, her stag, the one from earlier with the rugged features and the silver in his black hair. Her lips parted. “Oh. Hello there.”

He looked down, tilting his impressive rack of antlers, sheepish. “It’s a terrible cliché of a line, of course, but I meant it as a joke. I suppose it’s not funny.”

“No, it is,” she assured him, smiling.

“I’m Bruin,” he said.

“Rora,” she said.

They shook hands.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink, but you don’t look as if you’re ready for one yet,” he said.

“This is a virgin drink, anyway,” she said, and then felt heat rush to her face at having said that word.

“Well, that’s likely intelligent,” said Bruin. “Drinking too heavily always makes these weekends worse, I can tell you from personal experience.”

“Because you do come here often,” she said.

He laughed, bowing his head again, embarrassed. “Well, I’m not sure what admitting that does to your impression of me.” He lifted his gaze and his stormy eyes met hers. “I’m not sure what impression I could be sending by talking to you at all, of course. I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

“Really?” Something impish rose in her. She smiled over the lip of her cranberry and soda, mischievous. “Is there something very, very bad about talking that I don’t know about?”

“Well, it’s the implication that I want to do more than talk to you, I suppose.”

Her breath caught in her throat. This was… different. Men her age—boys her age—did not talk that way. They never once admitted that they were pursuing anyone at all, as if they were at once attempting to keep all their options open and also too frightened of rejection to declare themselves. “Is that what you want?”

His mouth curved into a positively sinful smile. “I shouldn’t say the things I want, I don’t think.”

She leaned towards him. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. Her whole body pointed at him. Her knees did, her toes—her legs were crossed over the bar stool—and her fingers—her hands were resting on her knees—and her breasts and her nose and her ears, she felt them flicking towards him. She drew in a breath and let it out. “Well, I’m absolutely scandalized, then,” she said softly.

“You look scandalized,” he agreed, nodding. “You look positively shocked in the worst way.”

“I never would have expected it of someone like you. You seem so…” She reached up to tap her forefinger against her lower lip, unsure of who this woman was who was speaking, where she’d come from, any of it.I’m not like this,she managed inside her head. “Trustworthy,” she decided.

His smile widened, looking less sinful and more gratified. “Do I now?”

“I was thinking so, yes,” she said. “But appearances can be deceiving, I suppose. Here, it turns out, you’re quite dangerous.”

“I don’t know if I’m dangerous,” he said. “Unless you like that sort of thing. I think I’d be quite motivated to do anything you wished to the best of my ability. But here I am, admitting things I shouldn’t. You seem to have that effect on me.”

She tucked her head down against her chest, and she felt something she’d never felt before. Powerful. Powerful and pretty and desired. It was a heady sort of thing, she realized, and she’d been rather craving it all this time. Now that it was happening, it was like having been famished for all her life and suddenly being served a feast. “You really shouldn’t be saying things like that to me.”

“No?”

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