Ian's Choice (Wolves' Heat)

by Lynne, Odessa

  Craig responded without words, just lifted his weight off Ian with one muscled forearm against the mattress and reached between them for Ian’s cock. He started jerking Ian off at a deliberate pace, and with Craig’s cock still thick in his ass and his warm hand around Ian’s cock, Ian came quickly, all over his chest and belly with a shocking lack of reserve.

  “Yes,” Craig said, and then leaned down, and for the first time covered Ian’s mouth with his in a filthy wet kiss that Ian found entirely too hot considering why he was actually here.

  And then Craig started it all again. Apparently the wolves didn’t have a refractory period in any way similar to humans because it was nearly two hours later before the glassy-eyed look faded from Craig’s gaze, his cock began to soften, and the uncontrolled rutting that accompanied his every orgasm ceased.

  Craig pulled his cock out of Ian’s ass finally, and Ian sighed out a tired groan, exhausted to his bones. This kind of unrelenting fucking couldn’t be good for his ass. The run through the forest, the near constant flow of adrenaline that hadn’t ended until he’d realized his submission had ensured he wouldn’t be hurt, the sex—not the ordeal he’d expected, by far, but exhausting all the same. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep.

  Craig rolled over and collapsed on the bed, and then reached out to drag more than one pillow up against him. Ian stared up at the ceiling and felt the air swirl around him, drying his sweat and cooling his skin.

  He knew the heat cycle wasn’t a continuous thing but that it lasted several weeks, almost as long as a month. So he wasn’t under the impression that he was going to get up and walk away at this point, but he honestly didn’t know what to do other than lay here, except…

  Craig hauled him close, tucking his head on Ian’s shoulder and throwing a leg over his thighs. Awkward, considering what he’d just been thinking.

  “I need to go to the bathroom.” He had an ass full of semen; some of it had already soaked into the bedding below him. He was sticky and filthy, and he needed to take a piss. And he wanted a drink of water.

  Craig lifted his head, grunted, and backed off Ian. He waved in the general direction of a door in the farthest wall away from the room’s only set of windows. “Shower if you want. There’s hot water.”

  Ian glanced at Craig. He nodded. “I will.” A shower was a good idea even if he was almost too tired for one.

  He moved to the edge of the bed and then paused before he stood, looking back over his shoulder. Craig had closed his eyes and seemed to be well on his way to falling into an exhausted sleep of his own. Ian reached down for his jeans.

  “Don’t bother with them,” Craig said without opening his eyes. “You need to sleep for a while when you get back.”

  Ian dropped the jeans and went to shower.

  Chapter 4

  Later, when he was lying in the bed with Craig again, after a nap and more sex, staring into the darkness of the early predawn hours, too wired up to sleep yet despite his tiredness, he thought about the disparity between what he’d expected when he’d been caught and what had actually happened.

  Nothing made sense, not in the way he thought it should, and the more he thought about his expectations and how they’d been set, the more certain he became that someone had been lying to him. Not overtly, because most of the big picture had played out exactly as he’d been taught it would, but in all the little details.

  Behind him, Craig’s cheek pressed into his shoulder blade, his nose a hard knot against the underside of Ian’s arm. The weirdness of Craig’s desire to continually sniff at Ian’s skin and hair didn’t escape his notice. It was one thing to have someone tell you these things happened, but to experience such a blatant example of his own irresistible appeal was something else entirely.

  He finally gave up and let himself fall asleep, tucked in tight against a wolf he knew he was supposed to hate but wasn’t sure he did.

  Bright morning sunlight brought him awake, too early and much too soon after he’d fallen asleep. He mumbled out a gruff denial, “Not now,” but mostly because he wasn’t an early riser by nature anyway and didn’t have a grasp of what he was saying.

  Then his situation hit him hard, and he jerked fully awake.

  His stomach grumbled.

  “Eat this.”

  Ian sat up, his back sore and his thigh muscles tight. The chase through the woods had obviously been harder on him than he’d thought, or else the vigorous sex had stretched out more muscles than he’d realized. Somehow, sometime during the night, Craig had piled more pillows around him and he had to shove a few of them aside just to reach the edge of the bed.

  He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “What are you doing?”

  Craig held out a piece of cheese, cut small enough to fit into Ian’s mouth in one bite. “Feeding you. I mated you. Now I’m taking care of you until I mate you again. Open your mouth.”

  Okay. Another form of submission maybe?

  Ian opened his mouth.

  He ate an entire plate of cheese, cooked sausages, and rice, every bite of which was hand fed to him. Craig gave him a glass of water to wash down his breakfast, and Ian drank all of it.

  When Craig had finished feeding him, Craig pushed away from the bed, took the plate, and left the room.

  It was the opportunity Ian had been waiting for. He slid off the edge of the bed and knelt beside his jeans. He reached up into the leg from the bottom and found the small pocket that had been sewn inside and took out the small phone, one of the smallest available and about as untraceable as they came. He turned the phone on, waited while the notifications popped up, and then opened the message log.

  A single text message had arrived last night.

  Did you locate?

  Ian stared at the screen, rubbing his thumb along the edge. The phone had the standard tracker installed, and he could only assume from the question that the tracking signal had been blocked as expected.

  His hesitation cost him his chance to reply and before he had typed anything, he heard Craig’s footsteps at the top of the stairs.

  Ian quickly turned off the phone and put it back into the hidden pocket in his jeans. He scrambled to his feet and had just made it back to the edge of the bed when Craig pushed through the half-open door.

  Craig’s eyes flickered between Ian and the floor, but he continued into the room. He closed the door behind him.

  Ian leaned back on his elbows, legs folded over the side of the bed, thighs slightly parted. “There are other humans here, aren’t there?”

  Craig gave him an appraising look. “They wandered into my territory after the heat cycle started.”

  “So. You have them in the basement or something? I heard Second and Third—”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, names I gave your two betas so I could keep them straight.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m surprised you’re so—” Ian frowned, genuinely curious. “Your behavior isn’t what I think of when I think of lust crazed.”

  Craig smiled, and the look he gave Ian disconcerted him enough to make him sit up and feel his self-assurance drain away. He hadn’t cared much up to that point that Craig wore a clean t-shirt and black trousers similar to those he’d had on last night while Ian sprawled naked in front of him. Suddenly, the inequality of their state of dress seemed a lot more significant.

  “Heat cycles come and go during the heat season. The worst usually comes toward the end when it becomes imperative we seed offspring. We’re not like you humans. We’re sterile except during the heat season. It keeps the population under control.”

  Ian made a mental connection. “Because multiple births are normal with your females and then the gestation is shorter. There’d be too many little wolves running around to keep up with.”

  “I’m sure that has something to do with it.” Craig stopped in front of Ian. “You know a lot about us. More than most humans I know.”

  “I’ve always found your kind fascinating. I
was sixteen when you arrived. It seemed like the most amazing thing in the entire history of the world. And I was there.”

  “We owe humans a great deal. But we can’t pay forever for what’s happened. None of this has been intentional.”

  Ian had the most uncomfortable feeling Craig was talking to him as a representative of humanity. He wasn’t sure he liked that. He also wasn’t sure he liked what it might mean.

  “A lot of people have been hurt,” he said carefully. “They wish you’d never come. They want you to go away.”

  Craig just stared at him.

  With a cautiously even tone, Ian added, “They don’t care how you’re driven away, only that you go.”

  “When we settled here, we gave away too many resources. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We’d been looking for a home for a very long time. Earth was a gift from the universe. The fulfillment of a prophesy.”

  “Really?” Ian knew he hadn’t kept the skepticism out of his voice as soon as the word left his mouth, but Craig reacted with nothing more than a steady gaze.

  “With as many religions and belief systems as you humans have, I think your short-sighted disregard for the words of our Diviners makes no sense.”

  “They’re of interest to some. Just not all.” Ian crossed one arm over his chest and rubbed his opposite shoulder. Funny how naked he felt just then. He kept thinking about that damn text message, how he was going to reply, who might see it, and how he felt strangely protective of the wolf standing in front of him, even though he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t.

  “Do you find me as fascinating as you find the rest of my kind?”

  Ian looked up, startled by the intimate question. He cleared his throat. “You’re not what I expected.”

  “Probably not, considering some of the propaganda I’ve seen being spread around. Turning tragedies into cautionary tales. Lies and deceit meant to twist us into monsters. The structure of our society seems to be an affront to humanity’s sensibilities. Our ways are different. Some of those differences are significant but they’re our ways. They’ve worked for our people for more years than humans have had language.”

  “Some of those ways are unacceptable to humans,” Ian said. He saw Craig’s nostrils flare at the challenging tone. He shimmied back on the bed, leaving himself exposed and open, and watched the harshness fade from Craig’s expression.

  “You scare me,” Ian said, being bleakly honest with both Craig and himself. “I’m out of my depth with you.” He shouldn’t have gone into the woods last night. He knew that now. This was turning out to be more than he could handle, and the sex was the least of his concern.

  He wasn’t good with the philosophical questions, hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to work things out in his head. He didn’t think he could discuss this with Craig without challenging his authority and right now, during the wolves’ heat cycle, was not the time.

  “You have no right to judge the fundamental structure of our society just because you don’t like it the way it is.”

  Submit, he told himself, feeling anger rise up, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Those ways have been shoved down our throats. When you first came, no one knew that was going to happen. We have the right to reject the imposition of your ways onto us. But when we do, we die for it.”

  Craig came at him, mouth open in a fierce roar that sent Ian scrambling for the other side of the bed. He rolled but came up short when Craig grabbed his ankle and hauled him right back to the edge of the bed with one wrenching jolt.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. With no thought to anything but instinct, he threw his arms up to guard his face and expected to have his fucking throat torn out like he’d seen Craig do to the other wolves in the forest.

  But the death blow didn’t come. Ian lowered his arms slowly to the sound of his heart beating fast and almost painfully hard and the harsh breathing from Craig, who was leaning over him, his eyes half-closed and his dark claws extending from the tips of his flexing fingers.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Craig said, the strange cadence of his tone of voice obvious even through his accent.

  It took more guts than Ian wanted to admit to himself to relax enough to ask, “What?”

  Craig ignored the question to bury his mouth and nose against Ian’s groin, his breath hot against Ian’s skin. Ian gave a half-hearted yelp, still too nervous to have a handle on his reactions.

  Then Craig climbed onto the bed with him, wedging his knees between Ian’s thighs and dragging his cheek along the trail of hair up Ian’s stomach, until he’d crawled up Ian’s body and they were face to face.

  Craig’s cheeks and jaw were smooth, the beard that would have normally covered half his face kept away with the wolves’ equivalent of shaving technology, another technology they’d shared with humans but which had never been widely adopted for individual use. Ian couldn’t afford the salon visits so he still used a razor. He probably needed a good shave; it had been a few days.

  The tip of one of Craig’s claws scraped over Ian’s chin. “You’re so delicate. So breakable.”

  “Yes,” Ian said. “Compared to you. So I’d rather you not do anything that might break me. If that’s okay with you.”

  Craig’s lips turned up and Ian tried to decide if the fang-like show of teeth was a sign of humor or something darker. For his own piece of mind, he decided to go with humor.

  “You argue with me, but you still submit.”

  “I do submit. No matter what I’m saying, I’m submitting. Now if you’ll just remember that the next time my mouth gets away from me, when you’re not as, ah, rational, and, uh, what are you doing?”

  Craig seemed to be mouthing at Ian’s collarbone, his teeth scraping back and forth over the jut of bone, his tongue dragging across Ian’s skin in a way that made Ian want to arch his back. His cock started to react.

  “You smell so fascinating, so warm and dark, with a sweet tang underlying everything else, a perfume that steals my thoughts. I want to mate you. ” Craig raised his head, and a streak of morning light slashed across his cheekbones and forehead. He ducked down before Ian could make out anything in his expression. “We’ll mate,” Craig said forcefully. “You’ll belong to me. Mine.”

  The emphasis on the word “mate” and “belong” and “mine,” spoken in the wolves’ language, made Ian feel like he was missing something, some nuance that had been lost in translation. He knew the wolves had many words for mate, just like many of their other words had duplicates. The wolves’ language was a complex and nuanced thing, and Ian’s grasp of it wasn’t the best.

  “Is your—this is your heat cycle coming back on you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never left. But yes, the desire to fuck you again is growing faster than I can control it. I don’t want to control it.”

  “Okay,” Ian said, drawing the word out slowly.

  “We’ll mate,” Craig said again, and Ian didn’t know what to make of the strange quality of Craig’s voice.

  “We’ve been mating. A lot. Hours and hours of it. My ass is sore from all the mating.”

  Craig’s brow furrowed. “Mating and fucking aren’t the same thing. You fuck a heat mate but you don’t mate one.”

  “Okay, wait. You’re using two words in your language that translate to the exact same word in mine. So that’s—I don’t understand. Last night, you said you were going to mate me. I thought that meant you were going to fuck me. Because you did. A lot. Now you’re saying we’ll mate and it’s supposed to mean something different? I’m lost. Obviously I’m missing something.”

  “It means I’m going to keep you. You won’t be leaving after the heat season.”

  “Okay, that’s no—”

  Craig growled, the vibration low and harsh and damn near unending and it was hard to think straight when his entire body tingled and his skin broke out in goose bumps and all the fine hairs on his arms and legs and neck raised.

  Submit.

  Ian’s d
enial died on the tip of his tongue as his sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time to stop his mouth from saying something stupid. “That’s not going to happen” would probably get him killed, crossing over from entertaining argumentativeness into outright rejection.

  “That’s great,” he said, and he was proud of how he didn’t sound sarcastic at all. “I always wanted to be mated.”

  Craig shifted and the fabric of his trousers rubbed across the tender skin of Ian’s dick. Craig held himself up over Ian, but the distance between them was so small that even breathing brought Ian’s very naked body into contact with some part of him.

  “You don’t die because we want to kill you. You die because when heat sets in your scent makes us lose control and forget ourselves. That doesn’t happen with our own kind. We forget how breakable you are when we’re running on nothing but instinct. If I couldn’t feel your submission in the way you move against me, the way you smelled when I was inside you last night, the way you cried out with your own pleasure, I would have already had my claws in the back of your neck holding you down. One of my people would have understood what that meant, and known what to do, how to react, and they would have healed the wounds later, but you, you would be dead.”

  Ian’s throat felt tight and he swallowed, the sound audible. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing, and Craig continued.

  “I shouldn’t have any control at all with you right now, not with your scent driving me so wild I can hardly breathe for wanting to fuck you. I want to get lost inside you. I would have already given in to the urges if you were any other human. So, we’ll mate, because you give me back my control when I shouldn’t have any, and you’ll continue to submit because that’s the only way you’ll make it through this heat cycle without getting yourself killed.”

  Ian huffed and looked up, catching Craig’s gaze. “And when the heat season ends? I don’t go back to my life.”

  “I will be your life.”

  “That’s very—Ow! Why’d you bite me?” Ian reached up to rub the spot but Craig clamped his hand around Ian’s wrist and pushed his arm down against the bed so Ian couldn’t move it again.