Page 74 of Stags

“You’re okay,” he said to her.

“I’m okay,” she said, tipping back her face, looking up at him in a way that was desperate.

He kissed her.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and kissed back.

They pulled away from each other, both wide-eyed, out of breath, both still panicked.

“Let’s go back to the Center,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, and they walked together, quite quickly, over the sidewalks and all the way back to the lobby of the Center.

Inside, they went to the elevator bank, and they got inside. He hit a button; she didn’t.

They got out when the door opened and went down the hallway into his room.

He opened the door. She went inside. He shut the door after himself and shook his head, running a hand through his hair, in between his antlers. “What the fuck was that? What the fuck kind of ridiculous speciesist shitwasthat?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You were amazing, though.”

“I could have hurt them,” he said. “I could have hurt them, and I don’t know how I didn’t, but I could have done it, and—”

“You didn’t, and thank goodness you were there, because I couldn’t move. I was just stuck there, rooted to the spot.”

“That must have been really scary,” he said.

She nodded.

He closed the distance between them. “You’re okay, though.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m okay now.”

This time, she kissed him.

But this time, neither of them broke the kiss. They ended up moving through the room, still kissing, and then tipping down onto his bed, horizontal, still kissing, in each other’s arms.

Then she was somehow under him and he was above her, pushing himself up at arms’ length over her.

“Well, this isn’t a super friendly thing we’re doing right now, is it?” he panted.

“She doesn’t have to know,” said Rora. “Maibell, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I could give a shit about Maibell.”

She laughed.

He laughed. “I can stop.”

“I know,” she said. And then she kissed him again.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EIREN WAS STILLeating, and he was still watching her, his gaze intense but almost lazy, too. She felt she was being toyed with, caged in here, in this wolf’s grasp, and he was letting her do what she liked until he was ready to do whatever he wanted with her.

She liked it.

She had started in on her french fries, offering some to him, but he declined. She ate each one, slowly, deliberately, looking up to find his smoldering gaze on her all the time.

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