After that, I decided it might be best for me to read for a while. Jules was out for most of the day. At lunch time, I fried some bacon and left it on the windowsill, hoping the smell would tempt him to come home. No luck. It was dusk by the time he came back. By that point, I was almost beside myself.

“Are you all right? You’ve been gone all day. I didn’t know if I should come and look for you.”

“I’m fine,” he snapped. His tone was very unlike him, and his hair was disheveled. His eyes were darker than usual. He was not in a good way.

“Do you want to eat something? I made bacon.”

“I already ate.”

The thought of him hunting without me upset me but I couldn’t think of a way to discuss it that wouldn’t make me come across as clingy, so I didn’t mention it. We sat in silence for a long time. At least for me, it wasn’t our usual, comfortable silence. I felt tense and awkward.

“Tried chopping wood,” I said, motioning to the seating log that was now separated into two near-perfect semicircles.

“Told you you didn’t know your own strength.” He didn’t smile at me exactly, but he snorted a quick blast of air through his nose, and it felt like a passable attempt at a display of amusement.

“Are you okay?” I tried again. “I was pretty worried about you last night. And today.”

His shoulders slacked and he looked down at his feet. “Sully, I—I think I’m in heat.” He said it so softly, I almost didn’t hear him.

“What? I mean, how?”

He gave an exaggerated shrug and raised his eyebrows at me in irritation. “How the fuck should I know?”

“Maybe it’s just a shifting thing, ’cause, like, I’ve been pretty horny, too.”

He glared at me for a long, tense moment and then the lines around his mouth softened, and he sighed quietly. “I’ve noticed.”

“So, maybe it’s a normal shifting thing, right?”

“Everyone knows shifting makes you horny, Sully. This is different.”

“Different how?”

He held eye contact for several long seconds. It looked as though he was trying to decide whether to say something or not. He looked away from me but spoke clearly. “My asshole is slick, okay?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no clue where to start, or what he needed to hear. Not only that, the second I heard his words, my gums started to itch, and my fingertips tingled. My arousal was so intense, I could hardly breathe. I felt like I’d been hit in the chest. I felt like I felt that time I fell off the swing. I sat on the bench, digging my nails into the seat so hard, my knuckles went white.