Page 36 of Voracious

“When do their ears point up?” she asks me as she crouches to pick a rose, sniffs it then tucks it behind her ear. “I’m so glad they have their tails. Why do people crop them?”

“I read that some owners dock them for shows or to make them look how people expect. But I also read that their tails are really thin, so they’re easily injured. It depends, to be honest.”

She nods, and Mum beams ear to ear when she sees me and Stacey holding hands as we walk up the entrance steps, the two pups jumping around happily at her feet.

Ewantakes them into the main sitting room, Mum follows and Stacey’s eyes nearly blow out of her head as she whips the joint from behind my ear. “She could have seen this!”

“She didn’t,” I say. She would’ve killed me. She knows I smoke, but if she found out how regularly I smoke joints, she would lock me up with my dad.

I snatch it back, tuck it behind my ear then gesture to her to go out the back, and we walk over to the pool house.

It’s dark out, but it’s not cold. In my shorts and T-shirt, I sit at the bench near the dock, and Stacey sits beside me, both of us looking out over the loch. “I need to go home tonight,” she tells me. “I haven’t been home in two days.”

I groan and roll my neck until it cracks. “Stay one more night.”

Resting her head on my shoulder, she huffs. “I wish. My brother would kill me if I stayed out again.”

“What’s your brother got to do with you staying out?”

She’s silent, chewing her lip and then shaking her head. “Kyle will say to my dad, and he won’t let me stay over with a boy.”

“Maybe I kidnapped you?”

She buries her head into my neck, her body shaking with a chuckle. “Please do.” She attempts to take the joint from my ear, and I steal it away. “Let me try it.”

“This is a joint.”

She gives me a look. “Duh, I know. Let me try it.”

I shake my head. “Not a chance. It’s weed, Stacey.”

She narrows her eyes, and instead of coming across as scary, she’s cute. I want to kiss the frown from her face.

“And? You smoke it all the time. I just want to try it.”

I contemplate, thinking of ways to stop her, but she takes it from my fingers, gets to her feet and sprints to the dock whereEwan’s boat sits.

I scramble up and chase after her, and instead of being pissed, we’re both laughing as she hides behind a tree, going left when I go right, right when I go left, and finally spinning and running again when she manages to dodge me.

“You can’t even catch me!” she bellows, inches from the dock.

I do catch her, both of us falling to the ground, and I protect her as we roll on the grass, down the hill so we’re hidden, both laughing and out of breath.

“Fuck, you run fast.” I lie on my back, her doing the same, and we both look up into the sky.

“I train a lot.”

“I try to,” I say. “Dezmade me go running with him before and I nearly died.”

I can feel her grinning. “He’s got the build for a runner.”

My head snaps to the side. “Meaning? Do I not?”

She rolls her eyes. “He has anectomorphbuild. He’s lean and slender. You have muscle, therefore you’re more of a mesomorph.”

I feel dumb. “I have no idea what you mean, but by all means, continue.”

“I like learning about the human body when it comes to fitness. I’d love to go to uni and do human biology one day. Do you think you’d ever study?”

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