by Jana Downs
Evan shuddered, the scent of his arousal hanging thick in the air. “We’re not fucking.”
“Oh sugar, we’re never fucking,” Brandon drawled. “When I touch you, it’s going to be a damn near religious experience.”
“Why?”
He tilted his soon-to-be mate’s chin up so their eyes could meet again. “Because sex either blows your fucking mind or it’s not good enough. I aim to rock you to the core, beautiful.”
Evan’s face broke out into a smile. “You already do that.”
The admission made Brandon that much more pleased with the man his animal had declared as his. If he had his way, in a few weeks’ time Evan would be his and everything would be as it was supposed to be. He just needed to show some patience in the meantime.
* * * *
Evan had slept like the dead and had required almost an entire pot of coffee before he was able to drag into work, thirty minutes late and blurry-eyed. He hadn’t gotten home until after four, and when his alarm had gone off at six he had just groaned and rolled over.
“You look like shit,” Collin said, depositing another Starbucks coffee on Evan’s desk. “Did you stay up playing on your hacker thing again?”
Evan shook his head. “Nah. Great date.” He smiled despite his misery. “Best date ever, as a matter of fact.”
“Did you find your mate?” Jude asked, popping his head in the door. “You smell different.” He inhaled deeply, sniffing the air. Ever since he’d become a shifter, he had been more receptive to scents in the air. “Ooh someone got lucky.”
Heat scorched Evan’s face. “Stop being so nosy, asshat.”
“He is your mate!” Jude squealed, doing a little happy dance. Collin joined him a second later, laughing. Their joy on his behalf made Evan grin.
After a few more minutes of his two best friends acting like a pair of crazy people, they settled down enough to turn on him again. “So was he good?” Jude asked, leaning against his desk. He’d gone home and slept with his mate from day one, so it was understandable that he assumed that Evan had done the same.
Evan shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t sleep together. Mutual blow jobs does not full-on sex make.”
Collin pouted. “Yoda, you are no fun. I wanted dirty details.” He sighed in the same exaggerated fashion he used when he was giving Evan a hard time about his complicated programming. “You know I live vicariously through your sex life.”
Evan snorted. “Sex life? What sex life?”
Collin giggled. “Well, I am now that you’re mated.”
“He’s not mated yet,” Jude corrected, grinning. “But I want to know the second it happens. When are you seeing him again?”
“I don’t know, vultures,” Evan hedged. “We’re going to take it kind of slow.”
Jude blinked, his grin dissolving into a frown. “Why?”
“I don’t have the best taste in men,” Evan reminded. He rolled his stylus over the surface of his desk.
“None of us do,” Jude said, shrugging. “But the thing about dating shifters is when it’s right, it’s freaking amazingly right. You need to trust your judgment when it comes to matehood, man. Did he fang out on you when you were together?”
He nodded.
Jude echoed the motion. “Then it’s real. Trust yourself.”
That was easier said than done. “Go on, both of you. I need to work.”
Collin sighed. “Fine. Keep us updated.”
He always did.
Left alone at last, he sipped on his coffee and tried to get some work done. Unfortunately, he just couldn’t seem to concentrate on the program in front of him. He didn’t want to build databases or anything else that the company was requiring him to do. He sighed. He wasn’t getting anywhere with this.
He logged off the network and brought up his Hackverse profile. BlackJoy was on so he messaged him.
“Hi.”
BlackJoy was typing. “Enjoy yourself last night?”
Evan smiled, touching his lips. “Yeah… Best. Date. Ever. He’s mine.” The words felt fantastic to type. “I can’t trust it yet, but I have hope.”
“…So what’s he like?”
“Perfect. I wanted to tell you last night, but I was too tired.” He hesitated, feeling suddenly strange to be talking to another man about Brandon. The way he flirted with BlackJoy and the way he’d felt about him just yesterday didn’t seem right given the fact he’d found his mate. “Anyway, I gotta get back to work.”
“See you tonight for a challenge or two?”
Again, Evan hesitated. He knew it was stupid given the fact that it wasn’t a date. “Maybe. I don’t know what I’m doing tonight. I’ll TTYL.” He logged off before BlackJoy could reply. He’d never felt weird about the other hacker before, but now he did.
“What is wrong with you, Cartwright?” he asked himself, muttering the question under his breath. He needed to work out what he was going to do and how he was going to feel about the BlackJoy/Finding a Mate situation and then make a firm decision.
A few hours later, he picked up his phone and checked his messages. Two from his mother telling him she expected to see him for Thanksgiving. Nothing from Brandon. Fear bubbled up in his gut. It was an unreasonable reaction, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made the wrong move, upset him in some way, done something to warrant the shifter shrugging off their connection. He drummed his fingers on his desktop, debating with himself over whether or not to call Brandon.
As if summoned by his wayward thoughts, his phone rang. His heart skipped a beat as he saw the caller ID. “Hi, Brandon,” he greeted, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Hi, beautiful. I am really glad you answered your phone. I got called in at five this morning. Work is a mess.”
Evan frowned. “Why? What happened?”
“Someone hacked our system through an old back door one of my guys added to access the newer databases, the ones you didn’t work on. There is personal information all over the Internet and Humans First is asking other bigoted assholes to boycott our businesses and calling for their more violent members to openly attack us. The FBI guys are on their way and working on shutting down the leaks onto the net, but the company president asked us to implement a new system and make it damn near impenetrable.”
“You want my help,” Evan finished for him. “They couldn’t get into my side of the system.”
Brandon sighed into the phone. “I’m really sorry to call you and ask for something like this. I wanted to call and woo you, but things are just a fucking mess at present. I will buy you dinner for the rest of your life and be your unflinching servant from now on.”
“I’ll be down in twenty. Let me tell the guys and I’ll be on my way.” He paused. Was it okay to add something personal? “Can I see you tonight after we finish?”
“I’d love that, beautiful. I have something to tell you anyway.”
“Okay. Nothing bad I hope?”
“Nah. Just something about me you don’t know.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you in a minute.”
“Yep. Bye, beautiful.”
“Bye.” He hung up the phone. Good thing he hadn’t felt like working anyway.
Chapter Four
Brandon sat him down in a chair next to him the second he arrived, ushered in by the little shifter receptionist at sHarmony’s downtown quarters. The guys had no problem with him skipping out early from work. As one of the owners, he rarely got much grief from Collin and Jude. Both men were very understanding and knew they could count on him to actually make his deadline in a pinch.
His attention stayed focused on the task at hand despite his mate’s close proximity. There would be plenty of time to fawn over his shifter’s striking blue eyes and dimples. For now, they worked as one mind, building and securing sHarmony’s system once more. It only took a few minutes of working with Brandon before he started to get the feeling he’d seen some of these techniques at work.
“Do you play on H
ackverse?” he asked, not looking up from his screen. The other security guys and the FBI agents had filed out a while ago, so Evan imagined that it was well past quitting time. However, the puzzle wasn’t complete, so he couldn’t stop working.
“Yeah. I do,” Brandon said, typing some code before glancing up.
Evan caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and did the same. “What’s your screen name? I think we might have played together before.”
Brandon’s lips twitched. “You’d be right. I’m BlackJoy. I tried to tell you earlier, but you logged off before I had the chance. There was some lag time between when I got my orders from the president and when the FBI guys arrived and thought I could catch you on Hackverse.”
Unease circulated. “That’s a hell of a lot coincidence.” He paused. “So you just tracked me down after you saw my work here?”
Brandon shrugged. “They call it fate for a reason. I didn’t lie to you. I tracked you down in the system after I saw your work. However, your work has a pattern to it. I thought I recognized it. It took me a minute to piece together the fact that you were WrightTrigger.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Evan demanded. He’d had ample opportunity.
“Would you have thought I wasn’t a creepy stalker if I would’ve told you right off the bat that we’d been talking for weeks online?” Brandon countered. The man had a point, but still. It was just weird.
“I don’t know if I buy the whole ‘fate’ angle,” he murmured, turning his attention back to the screen.
Brandon huffed. “Then you don’t believe in mates? It’s a statement of fact that you can’t have a human become a shifter unless there is a mate connection between them. There is physical proof of fate. Who is to say that we weren’t always meant to me?”
“I think it has more to do with biology. Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it isn’t science.” He didn’t know if he bought that entirely either, but it was a good argument. I’ve known him for weeks. He knows a lot of secrets about me. In a way it was a relief, but on the other hand, he felt a little unbalanced, like Brandon had the advantage for some unknown reason.
“Call it whatever you like,” Brandon said, not committing to it either way. “Strange things happen when mates are involved. I’m glad it ended up being you though. You’re all I ever prayed for.”
Evan turned his head in surprise. “You pray?”
Brandon raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”
Evan shrugged. “I just didn’t think that a lot of shifters did considering what people like Humans First say about shifters.” They said shifters were unnatural abominations and they had dedicated a good amount of time, energy, and money into a campaign against them, often using religious texts as proof of their argument.
“People say a lot of things when they’re confronted with people unlike themselves,” Brandon reasoned. “Bigots have said similar things about minorities, immigrants, and people who were gay. Shifters are just next on the list of unfamiliar people who they’re afraid of. I don’t take religious advice from fools who are scared of their own shadows.”
Evan had nothing to say to that. He had a point. “So you really think fate led us to one another?” It was a terribly romantic idea. A little silly perhaps, but a pleasant one.
“I think there are stranger things in heaven and earth than can be imagined by people like me.” Brandon looked at him, a serious expression on his face. “Are you angry with me for not telling you about our online connection initially?”
“I guess not,” Evan said after a moment’s hesitation. “I do think it changes things slightly.”
“Oh?”
“It means I know you better than anyone other than my best friends. It means that I’ve waited over a month to touch you.” He deliberately turned back to his monitor and ignored the curious look Brandon was throwing his way.
“And what does that mean exactly?”
“It means that we don’t have to go as slow as I originally planned to.” He clicked the next line, highlighting some code with a click of his mouse. “It means that when I finish this program, I want you inside me.”
Brandon’s low groan of approval was exactly what he wanted to hear.
* * * *
Sexy minx. Bratty, sexy minx. Brandon had no idea how he was supposed to concentrate on finishing the task at hand when Evan was going to make comments like that. He was intensely grateful that Evan wasn’t angry with him for not coming right out and saying that he knew Evan was WrightTrigger, and he was even more grateful that he wasn’t going to have to torture himself for another few weeks as Evan got used to the idea of having sex with a shape-shifter.
“Brandon?”
“Yes, beautiful?”
“You need to finish your section so I can close this out. We can double-check it tomorrow with a full team.”
Brandon cursed under his breath. “Sorry. All my blood migrated south whenever my mate decided to throw himself at me.” The mind games were something he wouldn’t tire of. He loved Evan’s playful teasing.
“Hmm, I did no such thing,” Evan said, smiling softly. “I haven’t moved from this chair.”
“Mind games.”
“As I recall, you enjoy those mind games. Didn’t you tell me more than once that you were turned on by my mind?”
Brandon grinned. “I did and I am. However, you might also recall that I like to play the games myself.” He schooled his face to a suitably serious expression. “When I finish, I will bend you over this computer desk and fuck you full of my cum.” Evan gasped and Brandon’s lips twitched. “In fact, by the time I get done with you, you’re going to beg for it.”
Evan swallowed, the movement convulsive. “But I thought if you did that, you’d turn me.”
“There is a possibility if I fucked you bare, but without a bite and with a condom on, probably not.”
“But what if…” He paused, swallowed hard. “What if I wanted you to?”
“Don’t tempt me, beautiful. We’ve only just met in person. I don’t want to rush you and for you to freak out later. Becoming a shifter is nothing to take lightly.”
“Hey, Brandon?”
“What?”
“I want you to go ahead and turn me. It’s not another step in a relationship. If we’re mates and we sleep together, that’s it for me. That’s why I wanted to hold off. However, we’ve been dancing around this for weeks. Tell me you didn’t feel it beforehand and I’ll concede to keep waiting.”
Brandon swiveled his chair toward Evan. This was a vastly different tune than he was singing this morning. “I won’t turn you yet, Evan. You can be angry with me if you must, but I really don’t feel like you’re ready for it.”
Evan huffed and turned off the monitor he was looking at. “It’s not very fair that you’re the only one with power here, Brandon. You knew about our connection before. You have the ability to give or withhold the ability to shift. What exactly do I have here?”
“My word that I will do everything to make you happy and the knowledge that you are the only one with a queen still on the chessboard. You can walk away at any time so long as I don’t bind us together.” It would be agony to watch him walk away, but Brandon would respect his decision to do so. Humans had more flexibility in their chosen mates than shifters did. His animal would mourn, but he would survive, albeit painfully.
“That’s not much compensation.”
Brandon shrugged. “That’s all I have, beautiful. Command me to do anything else and I will bend over backward to please you. Don’t ask me again until you love me.” He knew that it would be torture, but he truly believed that Evan would second-guess his decision if he didn’t have the strong emotional connection in addition to the physical one.
Evan was quiet for a long time, and Brandon was afraid that he really and truly had pissed the other man off. But the expression on Evan’s face wasn’t angry, more thoughtful, so Brandon kept his mouth shut as his human pro
cessed it.
Finally, Evan nodded. “You’re right. I want more than just the physical chemistry between us. I want the intimacy.” They were already intimate in a lot of ways. They had a friendship, a lot of things in common, and an intense physical attraction. However, love would be a nice addition to their already considerable list of positive attributes. “But we’re still having sex.”
Brandon burst out laughing at the addition to Evan’s statement. “Why so eager, beautiful?” Not that he was complaining. He wanted Evan like he wanted air in his lungs.
“Because I went to bed at 4:00 a.m. with a hard-on the size of the empire state building even after getting the best blow job of my life,” Evan grumbled. “I can’t sleep like that, man. I woke up humping my pillow.”
He couldn’t resist the bubble of laughter that escaped. He couldn’t help it. The mental picture was humorous, more so because he knew exactly what kind of position he was in. “Agreed,” he said. “I woke up with cum smeared all over my belly like a teenager after his first wet dream. I’ll satisfy you and myself, beautiful. I promise.”
“Good. I’ll hold you to that.” Evan pointed at Brandon’s screen. “Are you done yet?”
“Not quite.”
Evan sighed loudly. “Can you hurry it up, Joy? Some of us have been adjusting hard-ons for half an hour now.”
Brandon gave a sloppy salute. “Yes, sir. Let me get on that right away, sir.”
Evan’s lips lifted upward into a grin. “Now that is more like it.”
Minutes passed, and Brandon’s irritation grew. He wanted his mate beneath him. The code started looking like gibberish to him as his arousal took precedence over securing sHarmony’s website and personnel files. Evan pushed himself to his feet before circling around behind Brandon’s chair. He was intensely aware of the human’s scent as he circled to Brandon’s back.
Warm arms wrapped around his chest from behind, and Evan’s lips brushed the side of his neck, making him shiver. “That’s it. Almost there. A few more lines of code and you’re golden.”