Page 25 of Stags

“Yes, or you wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have been so forward,” he murmured. “I want to kiss you now.”

She shut her eyes and offered him her mouth.

His kiss was somehow gentle and firm at the same time. He took complete control of it, but it was like a sweet opening, petals unfurling into the sun, his tongue soft and wet as it nudged its way against hers.

When he broke the kiss, she didn’t move, her eyes still closed, her lips still parted.

He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip and wrapped one thick arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him. “All right?”

“Mmm,” she said, her eyes fluttering open. Suddenly, the words were bubbling out of her. She was saying them so fast she was practically tripping over them. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I wanted—I thought—but then my friends said I shouldn’t lose my virginity in the woods, and then you—and now…” She caught sight of his expression and the words died in her throat.

“Did someone put you up to this? Is this someone’s idea of a joke, some kind of set up from a porn video? You’re a virgin who came to me because you want me to make sure your first time is satisfactory? Seriously?”

She nodded.

“That doesn’t happen in real life, little doe.”

“You think I’m lying to you?” Now, she was getting a little bit annoyed. “I was hoping… better than satisfactory, also?”

He let out a booming laugh, throwing back his head, throwing back his antlers.

“It’s not a joke!” she protested.

His laughter died out as he studied her expression, reading the truth of it there. “Well, then,” he said, his voice velvet again. “I’ll see what I can do.”

EIREN WANDERED OUTinto the field around 11 p.m., an hour before the midnight run was supposed to begin.

No one stopped her.

She supposed it was allowed, going off into the field early. She supposed that there weren’t a lot of rules to this event. Well, no. There were a ton of rules, but the reason for the rules was different.

Typically speaking, rules were put in place to keep people from doing things.

These rules made things permissible that weren’t typically permissible in regular society.

Maybe sex was always that way.

She wandered through the field, and then into the woods, idly brushing her fingertips across the leaves which were starting to turn yellow and red and orange and started to fall, starting to crunch under her feet. She walked and she thought.

Civilized people couldn’t just let sex happen, after all.

Sex was madness, savagery outright. It was an affront to all social organization, to propriety in general.

Sex had to become tightly controlled in order for society to work.

If you had a society in which people were just walking about wanking each other all the time… well, you couldn’t.

Could you?

So, no, you had these things, things like this, like letting the steam out of a boiling pot. Here, in the space of these little perimeters, all is permissible. Have wild and wanton sex, do what you will, run and chase and let it all go. But only within the rules.

The rules were there not to stop her, though, but just to let people feel as if they were still moral. If you followed the rules, only did the mad savagery during the appointed time, then you were still a civilized person.

That was why they didn’t care if she went out into the field early, however.

If she wanted to admit she wasn’t civilized, they didn’t care.

After about twenty minutes of wandering through the woods and thinking pseudo-philosophical thoughts that might be mostly nonsense, Eiren determined she really wasn’t drunk enough for this and decided she should probably go back and get another drink.

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