by JL Merrow
“Take it off yourself.”
Fucker. My fingers trembled and slipped on the buttons, and I yanked the shirt off roughly, as if I wished Christoph could feel it when the seams parted with a rip.
“Shh,” he said into my neck, and I almost came apart right then. His hands were on my shoulders, steadying me, and God, I needed them. They felt cool—but the rest of him was burning hot. I could feel every inch of his bare chest, a hairsbreadth away from my back. When the hell did he take his shirt off? I didn’t realize I was pulling away from him until he pulled me back, the almost pain of his fingertips digging into my flesh comforting me. Grounding me.
A jolt ran through me as our bare torsos met, his chest against my back—and simultaneously, I felt the hard bulge of his erection through our pants. I jerked, startled, and put my hands on the wall either side of the window to steady myself. If anyone walked along the alley below and looked up, they’d see me silhouetted against the window. It shouldn’t have made me harder, thinking of that. But oh, God, it did. Like this was a public claiming.
“You want this?” Christoph asked, his hands on my shoulders loosening their grip but not quite leaving me.
I wasn’t certain of much anymore, but damn, I knew I wanted this. Needed it, even. “Yes,” I said, but it came out as a croak. “Yes,” I said again, louder.
Christoph let out a long, shuddering breath that rolled across my skin like a tsunami. His loose hair fell across my shoulder as he leaned down to kiss my feverish skin. I shivered, and his hands ran softly down my sides and around to the fastenings of my jeans. With a sure touch, he opened them up and pushed them down my hips, leaving me in my way-too-tight underwear. Every featherlight brush of his hands against my cock was torture. I could hear my own breathing turning ragged. “Take them off too,” I stuttered.
This time he left off with the smart-ass comments and just did what I’d asked him to. I guess he’d figured out my hands were shaking way too much to get the job done. Slender fingers insinuated themselves beneath the waistband of my underwear and eased it over my swollen cock. It should have been a relief—but the lack of even the scant friction provided by damp cotton left me feeling bereft, abandoned. “Touch me,” I begged.
Christoph ghosted his hands over my hips, those long fingers teasing at my groin but never quite touching where I wanted them to. Where I needed them to. My hips bucked involuntarily, and the tip of my straining dick touched the cold window pane, sending a jolt of electricity along my spine and leaving a wet mark on the glass. I moaned. Christoph’s hands stroked around, started to knead my ass. “Oh, God…” My hips bucked again, and this time it wasn’t an accident.
“Halt.” Christoph’s voice was harsh, raw. “Don’t move.”
He backed off. As I stood there, still and obedient, with my dick out to the world, I heard the soft, beautiful sound of his clothes coming off. I spread my legs a little wider in anticipation, desperate to feel him inside me. For fuck’s sake, I hadn’t even seen his dick yet. Not the way it would be now—hot and hard, dark with engorging blood. My whole body was sensitized, aching for his touch, and when he placed his hands back on my hips, I nearly jumped through the goddamn window.
“Shh,” he said again.
“E-easy for you to say,” I stammered. One of his hands was circling, and a long, thin finger brushed my crack. “Stop teasing me.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” There was the ghost of a laugh haunting the back of my neck—and then he grabbed me around the waist and swung me away from the window and onto one of the beds.
I landed in a sprawl, facedown on the comforter. “Fucker!”
“Of course.” He was on top of me, caging me in with his long, long limbs. “I thought that was what you wanted?”
He seemed to want me on my hands and knees, but I was damned if I was letting him have it all his own way. Wresting myself out of his grasp, I twisted, turning over, until I was half sitting, half lying on the bed, my weight on my elbows. Christoph backed off a little, kneeling between my outstretched legs. When he turned his head away to the left, I shifted so I could reach forward and grab his chin with one hand. “Look at me,” I told him, although it came out sounding more like a plea. “Look at me, damn you.”
He let me turn his face until the scars were clearly visible. I could remember finding them repulsive, but the revulsion was gone like it had never existed. They were just there. Part of Christoph now. I dared to stroke my thumb over the jagged ridge closest to his mouth, and he closed his eyes, breathing hard. “Hey, look at me,” I whispered.
“I don’t want your pity,” Christoph growled, a fierce challenge in his eyes.
“No pity,” I agreed. “Just a fuck.” His face seemed to close off a little. I panicked, thinking maybe I’d blown it. “So fuck me already,” I snarled, cupping my hand behind his neck and pulling him down toward me.
For a moment, he resisted—then his body turned pliant, and he unfolded himself down against me. Our cocks met, and I groaned aloud. His weight was on me, pressing me down into the mattress, and damn, but it felt good. I found his mouth and kissed him, hard, tasting subtle spices and a desperate hunger to match my own. When I finally let him go, we were both panting. “You ever fuck in wolf form?” I asked.
Christoph gave me a slow smile. “No. Maybe we should try it sometime.”
Sometime in hell, maybe. That thought got lost with all the rest of them as he bent his head to my chest. He peppered my skin with gentle nips and bites that turned more savage as he reached my nipple. I arched up against him, all but begging him to hurt me, mark me. Suddenly I couldn’t wait, couldn’t take this slow. “Need you,” I gasped, pressing up with my hips to illustrate the point.
Christoph muttered a curse and pressed back, sliding back up me until our faces were level once more and his cock like a heated iron bar jabbing into my hip. I slid a hand in between us and maneuvered a little until I could wrap my fingers around both of us at once.
“God, that’s good,” Christoph gasped into my neck. “Don’t stop.”
“Wasn’t…planning…to,” I panted, working us both roughly with my hand as his teeth grazed my ear. The heat between us was incredible, our skin slick with sweat. I could feel everything—the cheap cotton sheets beneath me, their rough texture oddly grounding. When I pressed my mouth to Christoph’s shoulder, the taste of salt and musk made me bare my teeth, hungry for more.
“Don’t…stop…” Christoph’s voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it—and then he bit down hard on my shoulder, his whole body tensing. For a crazy moment, I was right back in the forest that night we’d met—and then I was coming so hard it nearly killed me.
Chapter Seventeen
As we lay there, afterward, the reaction hit, and I felt like a coward. I’d been scared—too scared to let him in. In more ways than one. Didn’t he deserve more than just half of me—tonight, of all nights?
Something twisted inside me. Half of me or all of me—was there really all that much difference? And maybe it was better this way. Chances were, this time tomorrow he’d be dead. Maybe it was better to keep it casual, keep it from going too deep.
All I knew for certain, though, was that I felt like a coward.
“Are you Jewish?” Christoph said, stroking my shoulder. I guess he’d noticed I was circumcised. Guys in Europe tend to assume that means something.
“Yeah, but I’m not religious. My folks never bothered keeping kosher and all that crap.” Hell, I hadn’t even gotten a Bar Mitzvah. I’d been pretty pissed about that at the time. A guy in my class at school walked away with a fortune from his. Then again, my relatives were tight bastards anyhow.
“Do you believe in God?”
I’d have stared out the window, but it had gotten dark and there was nothing to see out there anyhow. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Shit, you want a list? Start with the Holocaust and work down from there.”
He stretched out, all long
and lean beside me. I was on his right, so all I could see was the good-looking side. He looked damn good, but suddenly I wanted to see the other side of him, the side that looked like a bomb had hit it. I shifted restlessly, and maybe he read my mind again as he turned on his side to look at me full-on.
It was weirdly steadying. “Remember that brother I told you about? Ben was five years older than me. He was a great guy—taught me how to ride a bike and pitch a ball, all kinds of shit like that.” He’d been more like a dad to me than a brother, what with Dad being so busy at the hospital all the time. “When a bunch of losers in high school started beating on me for being a fag, he went to all of their houses and gave them a talk about tolerance and understanding and how he’d beat the crap out of each and every one of them if they ever did it again.” My mouth twisted. “When he went away to Yale, I cried myself to sleep that night.”
“How did he die?”
Fuck, I couldn’t get comfortable. “Did they put rocks in this goddamn mattress?” I muttered, turning on my stomach. I felt way too vulnerable like that, so I sat up instead. “Meningitis. He woke up with a headache the day after he graduated, but hell, he’d been celebrating. Even he thought it was just a hangover.” I ran a hand through my hair, the curls trying to trap my fingers.
“He was too late getting treatment,” Christoph said softly. It wasn’t a question. Hell, it didn’t need to be.
I shrugged, but it was kind of jerky. “You asked why I don’t believe in God. If shit like that can happen to a guy like Ben—what the hell is the fucking point?”
He kissed me.
On the shoulder, but shit, it was still a kiss.
I felt like I’d been running up an escalator that had broken down, and it had suddenly started up again—in the wrong direction. Like I’d gotten on a plane to France and ended up in China. “I don’t love you,” I blurted out. Maybe if I said it out loud, it’d be true, and I wouldn’t have to deal with that loss again.
“I know,” Christoph said softly, and the hollow space I’d just dug inside me got a little bigger, the pain a little sharper. “It’s all right. I don’t expect anything from you.”
And that was just it, wasn’t it? The story of my whole useless life. I’d spent it making damn sure no one would ever expect anything from me. Funny how they all still ended up disappointed anyhow. “I’ll come with you tomorrow, okay?” I said it fast, before my better judgment could wake up and smell the cyanide. “But it doesn’t mean anything. I just—it’s just crazy, you going after the whole damn lot of them by yourself. It’s suicide. So I’ll come with you—but that’s it. After that, it’s over.”
He didn’t tell me I didn’t have to go. He didn’t even ask me if I was sure about it. He just pulled me back down and slipped his arms around me, kissing me again on the shoulder.
After a while, unbelievably, we slept.
We were woken up late the next morning by some asshole banging on the door and shouting the place down. I staggered out of bed to open the door just as one of the Turkish ladies came up the stairs to see what the racket was about. She took one look at me, threw up her hands and stomped off, muttering. Shit. I guess I should have remembered to put some pants on first. I glared at Jon, who’d woken me up and hadn’t even had the decency to shield my junk from her horrified view.
“Leon.” Jon looked like crap. Sunken eyes really didn’t go with the whole surfer-dude look. I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside the room.
“Jon, I—wait a moment while I get some clothes on, okay?” I hunted around on the floor for my jeans but gave up on the shirt, pulling a fresh—well, fresh-ish—one from my backpack.
Christoph was way ahead of me there, sitting on the edge of the bed half-dressed already. I wasn’t sure if I was glad or sorry the whole question of how to behave to the guy the morning after had been taken out of my hands.
“I want to be like you,” Jon said.
“What?” I stared at him, my fingers faltering on the buttons. “Like me, how?” If he’d suddenly decided to embrace his inner Judy Garland, he must be more screwed up over Silke than I’d thought.
Jon made an angry gesture, or tried to. It’d have worked better if his hand hadn’t been so shaky. “The wolf thing. I want that too. I want to be with Silke. You have to do this for me.”
“Hold on a minute. I told you, Silke’s not like us. She’s…” A proper wolf. “When she changes, she turns into a wolf. Just like the real thing. I mean, we saw wolves at the zoo, and they looked just like her.”
“You left her in the zoo?” His eyes wild, Jon lunged at me, hands outstretched, but I dodged him easy. I stood wary for a moment, but he just sank down on the bed with his head in his hands. “You fucking asshole.”
“Jeez, will you listen to me for a minute? We left her with some werewolves, okay? They run the security at the zoo. Not with the actual wolves,” I added to make it crystal clear even to a guy running on empty as much as Jon obviously was. “Christoph figured she’d be better off with her own kind.”
Jon spun around to turn the daggers in his eyes on Christoph. I could have kicked myself. Nice going, Leon. Way to drop your boyfriend in the shit.
Except he wasn’t my boyfriend, was he? I’d made it pretty damn clear to him that wasn’t what I wanted. God, I was so fucked up.
Christoph didn’t look too fazed about Jon giving him a hard time. I guess he’d probably just see it as a warm-up for the main event. Which, by the way, I’d managed to forget about for the last five minutes. Heaviness hit my chest like a love tap from a wrecking ball, and my legs turned to Jell-O. I sat down on the bed across from Jon before I fell down. Shit. Did I really agree to go with Christoph on his suicide mission last night?
“Jon.” Christoph’s voice made us both look up from our own private pits of despair. “We can’t give you what you’re after. You need to go to the zoo. Speak to anyone in a security uniform. They’ll know what you’re talking about.”
“Hey, hold on, there!” I stood, not liking this one bit. “You’re just telling him to go off and get himself bitten? Don’t you think he ought to consider this some more first?” I wheeled around to Jon. “You’ve only just met the girl! You really think she’s worth throwing your life away for?”
“He won’t be throwing away his life—” Christoph started.
“Butt out!” I sat down on the bed next to Jon and put my arm around him. I couldn’t swear to it, but the temperature of Christoph’s side of the room seemed to drop a couple degrees. It was kind of satisfying in more ways than one. “You’ve got a whole future waiting for you back in the States,” I said. “Are you sure you want to throw that away?”
“Dude, I love her,” Jon said helplessly. “I know we only just met, but it’s like we had a connection, you know? I can’t leave her. Even if she’s a wolf, I can’t leave her. You’re telling me you’ve never loved anyone so much you’d give up everything for them?”
“Never,” I said. I had to clear my throat. With all the lies I told, you’d have thought they’d have gotten a little easier by now.
Jon tried to smile. It mostly just looked sad. “Maybe you will one day. I hope you will.” He got up. “Maybe I’ll see you around, hey?”
Maybe he would. I wasn’t counting on it, though. Suddenly I didn’t want him to go. “Jon—” My throat was clogged up with something, so I coughed to clear it. “Jon.” Shit. What the hell was I going to say to him? “You take care, okay?”
“Hey, man, you too.” He smiled again and clapped me on the shoulder.
Then he was gone.
Silence fell like a shroud on the room. I couldn’t look at Christoph. If I looked at him, he’d know what I was thinking. Know I was scared shitless of what I’d promised last night. If he knew that, he’d offer me an out. Tell me he wouldn’t hold me to it. Because Christoph was an honorable man—and me? I was just a cheap bullshitting coward. If he offered me a chance to save myself, I’d take it. I knew I would.
“Leon—”
I didn’t give him the chance to go on. I couldn’t. “We should get some breakfast. Before we go see Schreiber. Don’t want to fight on an empty stomach.” I still didn’t look at him. “Wanna eat out? I think I may have worn out our welcome here.”
“Leon…” I looked up, and Christoph fell silent. Shook his head. Then he nodded, like he’d just had a whole conversation with himself. “Where would you like to eat?”
Call me weird, but I’d never given a whole lot of thought to what I might want my last meal on this earth to be. I guess if you’d have asked me before all this shit happened, just as a hypothetical question, I’d have said something like lobster or caviar or some other rich crap. Now, though, there was just one thing I was craving. “McDonalds.”
Christoph laughed. I grinned back at him. “What? You’re dissing my country’s national cuisine?”
“Did I say anything? Fine. We’ll go to McDonalds. I’ll buy you a Happy Meal.”
“If it doesn’t come with a toy, I’m not eating it,” I warned him.
“Health-wise, that may be the better option…”
“Hey! I said no dissing the great American hamburger!”
“American? I have friends from Hamburg who may want to dispute that with you—”
“Bring ’em on, pal, bring ’em on!”
We were joking around, sure—but there was a brittle edge to it that ratcheted up the tension rather than relieving it. Any minute now I was going to break and do something stupid, like telling Christoph I’d been lying when I said I didn’t love him and could we please, for fuck’s sake, not go and get ourselves killed now? It was probably just as well there was a knock on the door at that point. I wrenched it open to find Burak on the other side.
He wasn’t smiling. I had a pretty good idea why. Flashing your host’s grandma: never a good move. Not if you want to be invited back anytime in the next millennium. I figured it’d be better all around if I got in there first. “Hey, Burak. Jon was just here—did you see him? Listen, thanks for the hospitality. We’ll be moving out now. Maybe we’ll see you again sometime? Look me up anytime you’re in—shit, I don’t have a clue where I’ll be, but you’ll be welcome anytime. It’s been great.” I looked around and finally spotted yesterday’s shirt, crumpled up under the sink. I shoved it into my backpack, checked I had my shaving kit in there and slung the pack on my shoulder. Christoph followed my lead, jamming his feet into his sneakers.