Something about their exchange must have excited her. She had made herself the prey, had reveled in the hunt, and even Substance’s flat, dark predatory stare had thrilled her, for it had seemed to Cora that when she surrendered to Substance’s passions, she could tame—for a short time, at least—that which was untamable. The wolves, the bears in the foothills. The flash floods and the river surging beyond its bank. Any of a hundred perils waited on the prairie or up among the hills; any of them might claim Cora or her children in an instant. Substance, at least, Cora could predict and control.
