Page 70 of Don't Puck Him

I fall off, not into darkness, but into a whole new path, brimming with wonder and intrigue.

36

HUNTER

Wren climbs into bed next to me. She immediately wraps her arm around me and slips her head in between me and the book I’m reading. I sit there as she smugly gets herself comfortable.

“You’re worse than a cat,” I say.

“You’ve read enough,” she replies.

I mark my place and set the book aside, then begin stroking her hair. “Well, at least you’re cute.”

“I know.” She looks up at me and smiles. I give her a quick kiss.

“How are you feeling?” I ask. Obviously, she’s doing well enough to be silly, but there’s also something a little bit sad about her, or maybe just tired. Either way, I want to check in.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “It feels like everything’s been chaotic the whole time I’ve been here. Meeting you, falling in love, fighting with Cash, finding out about Cash, thinking I was going to have to leave, and now finally having everything fixed. It’s like everything’s finally settling down into a routine for the first time, and I’m just sort of getting used to that.”

“It’s a pretty nice routine we’ve fallen into, at least,” I say, hugging her to me.

“I think that’s what makes it feel so weird,” she replies. “It almost feels like it’s too nice. Like something has to go wrong.”

“Nothing has to go wrong,” I tell her. “And if it does, I’ll be there to protect you from it.”

She sighs happily. “You know, maybe it’s silly, but it really does help to hear that.”

“It’s not silly,” I say. “You’re mine. Of course it makes you happy to remember that I’ll take care of you.”

She gives another happy sigh. We lie there together. At some point, I should get up to turn out the lights so we can actually go to bed, but it’s nice to just lie here, too. That’s my favorite part of being with Wren. These simple, comfortable moments of quiet. With anyone else, I’d be on my guard, trying to think of something to say. But not with her.

At some level, I think I feel the same way that she does. My drama with Cash doesn’t match hers, of course, but frankly, drama is comfortable for me. I dealt with drama and being disliked through most of boarding school. I’ve never had someone as close to me as Wren is. Someone with whom I can share the parts of myself I’m used to hiding. Someone who understands what I really am, not who I pretend to be.

When that crisis about her tuition hit, there was a part of me that expected it. A voice that said, of course your relationship with her was never going to last. Why would you ever expect it would?

But then it got fixed. And here Wren is, still lying on me, still sharing my apartment. And now I think maybe this is the way it should be. If we can beat that crisis, why can’t we beat them all?

“I want you to mark me,” she says suddenly.

My first reaction is confusion. For a moment, I’m not even sure exactly what she means. “Mark you? Like how?”

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I just want you to do something to my body. Something permanent. Something that will show I’m not just yours for a little bit, or until someone better comes along. That I’m yours forever.”

“You are mine forever,” I reassure her. “And as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anyone better than you.”

“I know that,” she says. “I mean, I think I know that. No, I know that. I just like the idea of being able to see it. To just look down and… well, you get it.”

I nod. “I do. But you are talking about some pretty intense stuff there. I want to be sure you’ve really thought it through, and it’s what you want. I don’t want to hurt you. At least, not in a way you don’t like.”

The two of us have had a lot of time to explore sex and kink, together and apart. I’m always a little surprised by just how enthusiastic she is, how she plunges into things other girls only wanted to dabble in. At first, I thought that she was just a freak like that, but I’ve realized that’s not it at all. It’s because the two of us are closer than I ever was with any of the other girls I’ve dated. It’s me just as much as it is her.

Of course I’ve thought about marking her flesh before. When my fingers have run over it, I’ve thought about what it would feel like to cut into it. When I kiss her, I’ve imagined biting, not carefully this time but hard enough to pierce and rip. I would love to see myself written on the smooth surface of her skin.

But only if she really wants it. Only if it means to her everything it would mean to me. Only if she accepts it fully.

“How would you do it if you did?” she asks.

“There are a few ways,” I answer. The images start to run through my head. The mark itself is only half of the fun of something like this. It’s also about the moment of making it. Of pushing her body through her pain until something breaks. Something that takes time to heal. “If we want to be mild, the easiest way would be a piercing or a tattoo. We’d agree on something and then hire a professional to actually do it.”

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