Page 83 of Stags

She shuddered, going molten and lost, launching this way and that, ricocheting against bursts of sweetness.

He licked and licked and she arched her head back and could hardly breathe, because it was too good.

He scraped his teeth against her thighs, then, gentle, against the lips of her, and then his tongue again.

Boom.

She exploded.

He pressed his tongue into her clit, letting out a pleased noise.

She made embarrassingly high pitched noises, waves of goodness going through her.

His tongue just sat there, pressing, laying there, heavy on her clit until she was done. When he seemed certain she was done, he pressed his lips against her. “There,” he said, sounding quite pleased with himself.

She tried to get her breath, looking up at him as he was sitting up between her thighs, looming over her.

He put a hand on his erection, proffering it to her, wordless.

She scrambled forward and took him into her mouth, sealing her lips around the base of him

“Very good, little preykin,” and his voice was nearly lethal. “I need you to swallow all of this.”

She did.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“SO, HOW LONGago was your divorce?”

Tawny was curled up on his chest, lying on her bed in the hotel room. Her clothes and Athos’s clothes were strewn here and there, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed this, being in someone’s arms, the closeness, the way strong male arms enclosed her and made her feel small and safe. “Finalized last year,” she said. “You?”

“Uh, more recent than that, six months ago,” he said. “I said shitty things to you about yours. I’m sorry.”

“No, you were sort of right,” she said. “I mean, it’s not a consolation baby or anything. I always wanted to have a kid. My husband was a squirrelkin, so we couldn’t have a kid naturally, but we were both on board with the artificial insemination thing, and then, when it came down to it, he balked. The more he dug in his heels, the more it became the most important thing to me. And he got to resent that. We’d have these arguments where he’d go on about how I wanted a baby more than I wanted him…” She sighed heavily. “And, sadly, at that point, it was true.”

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “He shouldn’t have misrepresented that to you if he knew how much it meant to you.”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking about how, just yesterday, she was still so angry with him over it. But now, melting into Athos’s arms, feeling a man’s body on her body, she remembered how much she liked romantic companionship, how much she liked sex, how much she missed this. “But I wonder about what you were saying, about how men don’t feel like women need them. He couldn’t give me a baby without medical assistance. It was all I wanted. It probably made him feel worthless.”

“Not an excuse,” said Athos. “I never meant any of that crap I was saying as an excuse.”

She looked up at him. He was half-sitting up against the headboard, his antlers pointing up at the ceiling. She idly wondered if it was hard for bucks to sleep on beds with those things, and thought it was even stranger that this was something she didn’t know about the males of her own species. There was a lack of intimacy between men and women in their culture. It made everyone a little lonely, didn’t it?

“You’ll be an amazing mother.” His eyes were closed. “You seem like the kind of person who does anything she sets her mind to. I bet if there are obstacles, you just bulldoze them.”

She smiled. “Kind of, yeah.” She snuggled into his chest, shutting her own eyes. “You might be wrong anyway. We might actually need you.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Women,” she said. “We might need men.”

He chuckled softly. “My wife’s—myex-wife’s—way of life is all based around pair bonds. Romantic pairs make up swan society in this way where it’s practically sacrosanct. There’s a complicated mating ritual, all sorts of various traditional steps, each with expected protocols and certain gifts and deferences you’re supposed to make. Obviously, I didn’t do any of it right with her. In the beginning, I don’t think she cared, because I think she was enjoying being rebellious and young and… I don’t know. Maybe she had an antler fetish.”

Tawny giggled. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“In the beginning, I did feel like…” A long pause. “No, it wasn’t likesheneededme, it was like we needed each other. We fit together. We were a unit, her and me, and there was this special perfection to it. And then, somehow, she stopped feeling that way about me. I didn’t stop feeling that way about her, though. I still felt as if—”

“Sun and moon!” She lifted her head to look him in the face. “You’re still in love with your swan ex-wife.”

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