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The sound echoes through the immediate trees, but the foliage protects it from spreading so that only we hear it.

I feel him pulse inside me, once, twice, three times. His whole body shudders against mine.

My ass clenches around him as he comes, and Lucien moans quietly, halfheartedly pumping into me as he comes down from his orgasm.

He leans his forehead against the back of my jacket and stays behind me, breathing hard. He doesn’t pull out. I think he wants to stay connected to me for as long as possible.

I don’t want to rush him, but I’m getting cold. The sweat and lube on my skin is cooling rapidly in the winter air, and my exposed ass is freezing.

Eventually, he pulls out, and I feel suddenly empty.

He tosses the condom into the undergrowth.

“Lucien!” I snap at him, turning around.

“What?” he asks, already tucking himself back into his pants. “We can’t take it back with us.”

I stare at the condom lying in the dead leaves and realize he’s right. But I wonder if anyone will find it later and figure out what we did here. If Billy will come through and see it and know. The thought makes my stomach twist.

I push the thought away and pull my pants up, wincing at the soreness.

As I button my jeans, a familiar thought sits in my chest, heavy and uncomfortable.

I’m not his first.

Someone taught him how to open me up like that, how to make it feel good instead of just painful.

The thought shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. I’ve known he has experience. He told me he had a teacher. But standing here in the cold woods with my pants just fastened, the weight of it feels heavier. Every touch was a lesson someone else gave him. Every whispered word was practiced on someone else first. Every technique was perfected on another body. I want to ask again who it was. I want to know what Lucien looked like when he touched them the way he just touched me.

The jealousy is irrational and unrelenting, cutting through the afterglow. But more than the jealousy, I want to be the only one from now on. I want to erase whoever came before me. I want Lucien to forget he ever existed. But first, I need to know who he was.

Lucien sits on a fallen tree trunk and looks up at me. His gray eyes meet mine with an expression of complete satisfaction. His cheeks are flushed from exertion, his dark hair slightly disheveled where my fingers were tangled through it moments before.

“I meant it,” he says. “Thank you for coming here.”

I sit next to him, still feeling open and sore. “I like being near you.”

“Well, you know how I feel about you,” he says, and I sense he wants to say more.

I feel the heat in my cheeks and look away.

The crack of more rifle fire signals they’re moving closer to us. It’s louder now, maybe a quarter mile away.

“Lucien,” I say urgently. “Who was he?”

His expression tells me he knows exactly what I’m asking. He looks away, shakes his head, and then says, “Let’s go.”

He lifts his rifle and walks toward the flat open land where the trees thin out. I follow him with my rifle, and once we’re out in the open, we wait for the others. The sky is lighter now, the gray giving way to pale blue at the edges. The cold feels sharper out here, without the trees to block the wind. Then I see all five of them, grinning and bouncing as they walk toward us across the clearing.

“We got one!” Austen yells out, pumping his fist in the air. “Fucking huge boar!”

“Woo-hoo!” Alex yells, his voice echoing.

They get close enough so they don’t have to yell, and I can see the excitement on their faces. The adrenaline. The performance of masculinity and conquest. Lucien shifts immediately. His whole body language changes, shoulders back, chin up, with an easy grin spreading across his face.

“Hell yeah!” he says, and his voice is different, louder, cruder. “That’s what I’m talking about! Where is it?”

His dad answers, “Billy’s got it. He’ll field dress it for us back at the clearing.”