Page 78 of Stags

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I just don’t want to…”

“Be with some kind of girl who’s so slutty as to sleep with two different men on two different nights?” she said in a tiny voice.

“Hey, it’s the season,” he said. “We’re at this rite, so I think the point is to fuck a bunch of people, but, um, I like you.”

“I like you, too,” she said. Which was why hewasn’tkissing her?

“Yeah?” His smile widened. “Do you, really? Really?”

“Really,” she said, shaking her head at him. “I’m confused.”

“Well, I don’t want us to fuck this up, then,” he said. “And it’s already complicated because of Maibell, so I think… we owe it to ourselves to give this a better chance than, uh, than hooking up right away, during the rite, when you’re breaking the girl code. It’s just going to put a pall over the whole thing if we do that. Not to mention, you might not really be ready to do anything with me if last night was your first time—”

“It was!” she interrupted. “Do you think I’m lying?”

“No, that came out wrong,” he said. He squared his shoulders. “Okay, I’m not trying to do some creepy protection thing where I act like I know better than you but I’m just insulting your own intelligence and agency.”

She blinked, still confused.

“What I mean is, if you want this to happen, I am convincible. I will believe you if you say you know what you want,” he said. “But if I didn’t pause here and make sure of that, I would feel like maybe I was taking advantage, and I don’t ever want to do that. I mean, we started kissing after we were both in a heightened state of fear over those birdkin, so…”

She got what he was saying now. She felt a little deflated. She nodded, a little disappointed, but grateful. “You’re a good guy, Stockton.”

“I try to be,” he said. “I don’t know if I always am.”

“I guess if we want to try this, I should probably tell Maibell first. She won’t like it, but she deserves to hear it from me, not secondhand. I’ll tell her that I recognize it could be painful for her, and if she doesn’t want to hang out with me while I’m with you, that makes sense. We’re not that close, really, but it’s not cool.”

“That sounds very mature,” he said.

“Yeah? You think?”

“Totally,” he said, nodding.

“And until then, it would be responsible if we didn’t kiss or whatever, I guess.”

“Probably,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, looking dejected.

“You sound disappointed, but you stopped us.”

“I know,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

“It seemed… organic,” she said. “Maybe it’s like what the rite is supposed to be like. You sparred with the guys who were trying to hurt me and then you spirited me off, and now I’m yours, and we seal that with fucking.”

“I don’t want you to be mine,” he said.

She tilted her head to one side.

“I mean, I want us to be each other’s,” he said.

She crawled across the bed to him. “One more kiss,” she said softly.

“Yeah?” he said, his voice soft, too.

“Yeah,” she said.

ATHOS WAS BEHINDTawny, tugging on her jeans, exposing her underwear and he thought that she looked amazing from this angle. “How do you feel about spanking?” He caressed the curve of her ass with one hand. “I mean, are you that kind of bad girl, one who needs correction?”

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