by JC Holly
After a few minutes of staring, Luke slid the card into a drawer. Not yet. Maybe in a few days.
It took two hours to get Johnny’s stuff together and bagged up, leaving Luke with barely enough time to grab a shower and a cup of coffee before he had to leave for work. On the bright side it meant he wouldn’t spend the day thinking about exes and lewd acts in public washrooms. He tossed his jacket on and headed out of the door and into his car.
He arrived at the shop five minutes late, and by the time he was parked up and sat at his desk it was more like ten minutes. Thankfully nobody could call him on it. Perk of owning the damn place.
The phone rang and he grabbed it on the first ring, grateful for the distraction.
“Clarke’s Auto Repair. Owner speaking.”
“Somebody’s in a bad mood.”
Luke smiled. “Not anymore. How’s my favorite girl?”
“All the better for hearing your voice. Now tell me what’s up.”
Delilah. Short, sassy, sarcastic, and didn’t take shit from anyone. She was who Luke wanted to be when he grew up, only with a penis and smaller tits. He’d only known the woman for a couple of years, but he couldn’t ask for a better friend.
“You don’t want to know,” he said, looking up briefly as one of his mechanics walked past the door.
“Don’t want to, or you don’t want to tell me?”
“The second one.”
“Tough shit,” she said. A door thudded somewhere. “I’m on my way.”
“Fine. Bring doughnuts.”
While he waited for Delilah to come bearing snack food, he decided he’d best show his face on the main floor of the garage.
Unlike most auto repair companies, the roller shutters that let cars in off the street were always down. Anyone who needed work done would head to the reception first, which was offset from the repair bay, and then a mechanic would open a door to let a car in.
The reason for this was that people driving past may be somewhat alarmed if they saw one of the mechanics hoist the back end of a car by themselves while another checked underneath.
Every employee of Clarke’s Auto Repair was a shifter, as well as a member of Luke’s pack. Not that he liked to call it a pack. It wasn’t like they followed any particular rules or had many meetings. If anything important needed discussing, they would meet up, but otherwise Luke considered the group to be simply a collection of friends.
“Luke!”
The call came from one of the pits dug into the floor to allow for access to the bottom of cars. He wandered over and leaned over the edge to find Chris, Mark, and Carl around a milk crate strewn with playing cards.
“We not busy, then?” he asked, an eyebrow cocked.
“Nah,” Chris said. “Got most ’em done last night, mostly. Just waitin’ on their owners.”
“Delilah’s on her way over.”
“Yeah, we heard. We intend to whistle and shout incredibly lewd comments.”
He grinned. “She’ll like that.”
She always did. Delilah was one of very few humans that knew Luke and his boys were shifters. When she’d found out, she didn’t even blink. She did, however, mention that she would expect many compliments whenever she happened by, and a discount on future repairs to “keep her sweet.”
By the time the woman in question arrived, Luke was back in his office, boots up on the desk and tilted back in his chair.
“Move ’em or lose ’em,” she said as she dumped a huge box of doughnuts and two coffees onto the desk.
She’d decided to dress up for the chat, it appeared. She wore a slinky black dress with a thick belt across her middle. The handbag that hung from her arm looked like it cost more than some of the cars in the shop, but it was a fake. Her wavy black hair was tied up and somehow she didn’t have a single follicle out of place. She did a little twirl as Luke took her in, then sat opposite.
Mark appeared in the doorway and Luke handed off the rest of the doughnuts.
“Smelled ’em coming,” he said, grinning as he headed back toward the rest of the guys.
“Damn shifter senses,” Delilah said. “Always have to dial back on my perfume when I come over or you all bitch at me.”
“You smell great!” came a call from Chris in the other room.
“Heavenly!” shouted Carl. “If I weren’t married, I’d be banging you right now!”
There was a yelp, presumably as Carl’s husband, Chris, hit him with something heavy.
“And don’t you fuckin’ forget it!” Delilah called back. “So, what’s up, Luke?”
“Johnny.”
Her smile faded. “Want me to close the door?”
He shrugged. “No point. Shifter senses, et cetera, et cetera.”
“True.” She sat opposite him and took one of the doughnuts he’d grabbed. “What happened?”
He started at finding the texts on Johnny’s phone and ended just before the club. Delilah sat and listening, a pout deepening as he went on. When he was done he sat back and sipped at his coffee, grateful for the distraction.
“So,” Delilah said after a few moments of silence. “Want me to go fuck him up?”
Luke nearly choked on his coffee. “That’s touching, but no. I want nothing to do with him. It’s bad enough that he’ll be in the house later picking up his stuff.”
“Well I’ll be there when he is,” she said. “I promise not to hurt him, but I wanna make sure he behaves. Plus, I want to glare.”
“Thanks. It’s appreciated.” He handed her his keys. “I doubt he’d do anything dumb, but on the other hand, I doubted he’d ever cheat, so what do I know.”
She reached over and hugged him with one arm, the other holding her coffee. “So, what did you do after? Break some stuff? Maybe howl at the moon?”
Luke snorted. “No. I, uh, I went out.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I know that look. That’s the look of guilt.” She leant forward again, brow raised. “Tell!”
“I went to a bar and got some action.”
“That explains the guilt.” She held up a hand as Luke went to reply. “Rebound sex always has that effect, especially same night rebounds. Believe me, I know it well.”
“Yeah, it was a bad idea, but I was horny.” He shrugged. “That’s how most of my bad ideas start.”
“And mine!” Chris called from the other room.
“See what I mean about the door?” Luke smirked. “I think I need a run tonight. That always helps.”
Delilah raised an eyebrow. “We talkin’ treadmill, or ‘look out, bunny rabbits’?”
“The latter.”
“Then I’m not going with you. My dog always gets pissy when I come back with wolf fur all over me. I’m sure at least a couple of the guys will go.”
She was probably right. While his pack was hardly the most organized, they loved to run together, which worked out since Luke hated running alone.
The area they lived in wasn’t the most green, but there was a great wooded area only a half hour’s drive away that nobody ever visited. They’d once tried to club together with another pack and buy the land so that they could preserve it, but the cost turned out to be considerably more than they could afford. In the end they’d decided that if someone tried to build over the woods, the pack would simply move.
By the time Delilah left, Luke was in a considerably better mood. He sat back in his chair, flipped on the portable TV he’d had mounted next to the office door, and waited for the end of the day.
* * * *
By the time Brandon woke, the morning was well and truly over, and afternoon had begun to rear its head. He scratched at his hair as he hauled his complaining body to the bathroom, then stepped into the shower. The water did nothing to wake him up. In fact, it made him even more relaxed. With a mutter about deadlines, he cranked the heat setting to cold and stood under the arctic water until the last vestiges of sleep fled from his shivering body.
Awake, he turned the heat up just
long enough to wash his hair, then switched off the shower and made for the kitchen, by way of the towel rail.
The answering machine flashed the number 1 at him and he hit play as he peered into the fridge in search of some sort of breakfast pastry. His cat, Spike, rubbed against his leg, then tried to climb into the fridge and chew at a plastic bag. Brandon nudged him aside gently, but it made no difference to the determined animal.
“Hey, it’s Michelle,” the answering machine played back. “Wondering where you are with that article. Call me back.”
Brandon groaned loudly enough that Spike mewed in reply.
“The editor again.” He grabbed a couple of Pop-Tarts and shooed the cat away as he closed the door. “She seems to think that I should give her work before the last day. Madness.”
The article, some fluff piece on modern technology, was almost finished. He’d been working on it the night before when he had taken a coffee break and then decided to go out and have fun instead.
“And look how well that turned out,” he muttered as he dropped his pastries into the toaster.
With a resigned sigh, he called Michelle back and left a message on her machine, making up an excuse about his Internet, then telling her she’d have it by the end of the day. Once he’d hung up, he grabbed his breakfast and headed to the living room where the laptop was still set up on the table beside a cold cup of coffee.
“This is the life, eh, Spike,” he said as he sat on the sofa. “Working from home.”
Most of the time it was vastly superior to his time working in offices and stores, but there were occasions when he’d much rather have dragged himself to the car and driven to a desk somewhere. It was a lot harder to goof off, then, and that’s what he needed sometimes. Working by yourself, when surrounded by all manner of distractions like TVs, games, movies, and porn—ye gods, the amount of porn he’d watched in the first year—was not easy.
“Money’s money,” he told himself, then booted up the laptop.
The words were hard to find, but he pushed on anyway, and within a couple of hours the work was done. He saved the file and sat back, sipping at his second cup of coffee. Spike hopped onto the sofa beside him and nudged him affectionately with his head. Brandon scratched him behind the ears and the cat curled up on his lap.
“Okay, so it’s not so bad a life.” Brandon smiled and stroked the cat some more.
After a few minutes of bliss, the cat bounced off his lap for no good reason, leaving scratches on Brandon’s thighs. He took it as a sign to reread his article and send it away sooner rather than later, and got back to work.
For some reason his mind wouldn’t stay on topic, and instead kept wandering back to the night before, in the club. The beautiful man and his big, beautiful…
“Damn it,” he muttered, as he focused on his work. “Edit now, daydream later.”
It didn’t help. He kept going over the previous night.
He’d been sitting where he was now, writing the article he was now editing, and was bored out of his skull. He hadn’t been particularly lonely, but he was horny. He’d been single for a few months, and that was more than long enough to go without sex. At first he’d shaken off any notions of going out. He hated the idea of one night stands, for the most part, as he couldn’t shake the worry that he’d end up with a weirdo. That’s when he’d decided upon the club. It had a reputation for a reason, especially its bathroom. Even then it took an hour for him to work up the nerve, but once he was ready, he left straight away, not even pausing to tidy up.
Now that the next day had arrived, he had mixed feelings on the whole thing. Yes, it had scratched an itch, and yes, the itch was scratched by a frickin’ Adonis, but he couldn’t shake the whole sleazy feeling. It wouldn’t be so bad if he knew the guy or was intending to get to know the guy, but he doubted he’d ever see the guy again. Especially since Brandon had no intention to ever set foot in that club again. After all, the whole club had to have known what he and the other guy were up to in the stalls. Hell, a couple of guys looked like they were planning to do the same thing when he’d gone after the man.
He was shaken from his navel-gazing by the phone. He picked it up without even looking at the name. He had a sixth sense when it came to his best friend.
“So, where did you go last night?”
Chapter Three
By the end of the work day, Luke had managed to arrange a run with two of the guys at the shop, as well as two other members of the pack who worked elsewhere. They would meet up by the woods in an hour’s time, Luke heading up there with Chris and Carl, who were known affectionately amongst the pack as “C ‘n’ C” since they went everywhere together. Never really made much sense to Luke. That’s what married couples did, after all.
They waited in the car while he locked up, then tried to set him up with every friend they had on the drive.
“I’m not interested, guys,” he said for the fourth time in twenty minutes. “Like Delilah said, it’s too soon.”
“Nuh uh,” Carl replied. “It’s too early to fuck. It’s not too early to date.”
“Gotta get back on the horse,” Chris said. “Before you forget how to ride it.”
Luke glanced at the pair in his rearview mirror, eyebrow raised. “Given the subject of the conversation, that was a terrible choice of saying.”
“Fair point. Anyway, if you’re not interested in dating, how about we find you a guy to, uh, talk to over coffee. That’s not a date.”
“Nope, definitely not a date,” Carl said, nodding.
Luke glared them into silence, then changed the subject. “Been looking forward to a good run out for a while.”
“Yeah, us too. Rained last time.”
“I don’t mind the rain. As long as I’m running alone, anyway. The smell of wet dog isn’t so bad if it’s only you.”
Thankfully the weather was still pleasant when they stepped out of the car a little time later. A slight breeze brought a hundred scents from the forest, and all three took in deep breaths.
“Nobody about,” Carl said, to the agreement of the other two.
The trio all began to strip off their clothes, tossing them into the back of the car in three untidy piles. If anyone happened across the car they’d no doubt think there was something kinky going on in the trees.
Despite the fact that all three had seen each other naked dozens of times, Luke couldn’t help but admire the pair’s toned forms as they finished undressing and began to stretch. If they weren’t happily married and monogamous, maybe there would have been something kinky going on, Luke thought with a smirk.
Once they were all ready, he dropped his car keys onto the dirt, then turned to face in a direction that didn’t have the two Cs in it. Shifting wasn’t a spectator sport, that was for sure. He crouched and placed his hands down on the ground, then let the shift happen.
There was no skill involved, no years of training to get it right. All a shifter had to do was want it to happen, then hold on tight. That was exactly what Luke did. The pain hit him hard, as it always did, flooding his system and filling every cell of his body as bones broke, muscles reformed, and organs shifted. There was nothing romantic about it, not a graceful shimmer of light followed by a lightly panting wolf standing where the human had once been. It was hard and fast, and nearly killed shifters the first time. It got less painful every time, but no matter how old a shifter got, and how often they changed forms, it always hurt.
After what felt like an age, Luke opened his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. The world came into focus once more, though everything now looked much taller. The scents he’d picked up earlier magnified, and were joined by just as many sounds, all clamoring for attention.
For the first time in years, he threw back his head and howled. Not in anger, or pain, or even happiness. Just because it felt right. Chris and Carl joined him, their voices mingling and filling the quiet evening air. When he turned to face his friends, both were alert, their ears pointing for
ward, their eyes bright in the low light. He nuzzled each of them, then turned back to the car.
His car keys lay where he’d left them, and he carefully picked them up in his teeth, then began to dig a small hole in the dirt with one paw. Once the hole was deep enough, he dropped the keys into it and pushed the dirt back over the top. Satisfied, he took another deep nose full of air and then bounded off into the trees.
Carl and Chris yapped in surprise and were quickly at his heels, one on either side. He glanced at each, and as usual, had to rely on instinct to tell them apart. They both had the same color coat, the same color eyes, and they’d spent so much time together in wolf form that they acted alike, too. The latter part came in handy when Luke’s pack were forced into a fight, as the pair worked in perfect harmony. Anyone who went near them didn’t stand a chance.
That night was about fun, no fighting, though, and Luke sped on through a narrow gap and then pounded up a short slope to the top. The two Cs followed closely, matching his pace with ease. Soon all three were past the tree filled part of the forest and broke into an open area. The few animals that hadn’t fled at the howling now raced away in various directions, and Luke darted after them, getting within biting distance and then jumping away after something else.
Time was harder to gauge in wolf form—watches didn’t stay on legs very well—but it didn’t matter anyway. If they got back to the car too late, Luke would just open the shop late. Some things were more important than work, and this was one of those things.
* * * *
Brandon breathed a ragged sigh of relief as his house came into view and began to pick up his pace. Going for a run always seemed like a great idea at the beginning, but by halfway he always wished he hadn’t bothered. By the time he pulled the key from his pocket and let himself inside, he was gasping for air.
“Fuck…fitness.” he muttered between breaths.
Spike watched him from his flat out position on the staircase, his eyes agreeing with the statement. You’d never catch a cat running for exercise. Toys, fun, or nothing.