Page 92 of Stags

Then, the response came up.Not fair of her to dump that on you. That should stay between her and me. Anyway, I tried to forgive her. She dumped me.

I know,she typed back. She had a feeling he’d typed something else out and deleted it. She hoped this thing with Maibell was not going to ruin everything before it ever even began.

You think I should talk to her?

I don’t think you owe her anything anymore. And she said we’re not friends anymore, so I guess I don’t owe her anything, either.

He responded with a one-hundred percent emoji, and then texted,So, now we can go on a date, right?

She sent a heart emoji.Hell yes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TAWNY GOT Atext from Athos on Tuesday at 5:00, two hours before they were supposed to meet for dinner. He was stuck at work, and he claimed he had done everything to get out of it, but he would probably be there too late for dinner tonight to make any sense. Would she reschedule for Wednesday?

Wednesday wasn’t good for her, because she had an event that evening, so she countered with Thursday, and he said he could do that.

She wavered between trying to concentrate only on work and spending too much time reading long posts on trying-to-conceive forums, which weren’t much help, because there wasn’t much from deerkin women, and the biologies of various species varied quite a bit. Apparently, deerkin women didn’t often have trouble with this kind of thing.

You went into a season ready to get knocked up, and sometime in the course of the six weeks of it, it happened, at least that seemed to be the consensus.

At nine o’clock Tuesday, she got another text from Athos.I’m finally done with work,he wrote.I’m thinking positively filthy thoughts and they’re all about you.

She wasn’t one for sexually suggestive texts. It made her feel uncomfortable, as if thoughts like that should only be spoken aloud, not committed to printed words, ensconced forever, re-readable later.

She should have shut that kind of talk down.

Instead, she texted,You could come over. Make all those filthy thoughts reality.

Hell, yes.

She texted him her address. He was there in ten minutes.

She thought maybe it would be awkward, but it was only frenzied. He was in the door and touching her. They were kissing. They stumbled, holding onto each other, into her living room. He made her sit on the couch and he got on his knees to put his mouth on her while she used his antlers to steer.

“You’re going to come for me, Tawny,” he said into her pussy. “And then you’re going to thank me for your orgasm and then you’re going to beg me to breed you, and if you ask very nicely, I will fuck you. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” she groaned. “Yes, please, sir.”

He fucked her twice.

Once with her bent over the couch and the second time, in her bedroom, but with her braced up against the wall, like the time when they’d done it outside with the tree trunk. They never made it to her bed.

Afterwards, he told her he had to be at the office at an uncivilized hour the next day, and he didn’t want to disturb her sleep, and that maybe he should just go.

“You’re trying to just hit it and quit it?” she said pointedly. “That’s just like you, isn’t it?”

“Uh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “In point of fact, it is not like me. I want to stay, but you said that thing earlier.”

“What thing?” She glared at him. They were standing in her bedroom together, totally naked, both of them, and she realized it was vaguely ridiculous to be fighting without clothes.

“That thing about your pillows?” He pointed at the bed.

Oh, maybe she remembered that. He’d commented on them, and she’d said not to touch them, because she had a particular way she liked them and nothing annoyed her more than men who couldn’t respect the symmetry of bed pillows. “I was joking.”

“Yeah, I believe that,” he said, deadpan.

She sighed.

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