“No, I can’t—” Eli was shaking his head as close to panic as Cooper could imagine him looking. “You don’t understand how close the Trust and the ruling packs work. Your boss and the Park pack have been allies for a long time. But your other colleagues belong to other packs. The werewolf community is smaller than you understand and gossip travels. You get the Trust involved and you might as well send that recording out in a chain email to every pack on the continent. I can’t take that risk.”
Cooper nodded, because unfortunately Eli had a point. “What about the Park pack? Isn’t that the whole appeal? They’re supposed to take care of you?”
Eli looked down at his hands, tugging restlessly on his thumb so that it almost looked like it was infinitesimally gliding up and down his wrist. With a fresh wave of amazement, Cooper realized that might actually be what was happening. “Helena and I...don’t see eye to eye on this particular matter, and how best to approach it. If at all possible, I would like to handle this on my own.”
Cooper frowned. On the one hand, he couldn’t believe that was the whole story. On the other, he was hardly the poster boy for wanting to get Helena involved in things or felt like encouraging anyone else into feeling...beholden to her.
“The only option is to find that recording,” Eli continued. “I searched his house but couldn’t find anything. He must be storing it somewhere at the zoo, he must. He doesn’t go anywhere else and he’s far too controlling to bear being separated from it for long.”
“The zoo is a big place,” Cooper said.
“Yes.”
“The recording is probably stored on, what, a phone? Or even something smaller?”
“The speed with which deductions are flying around this room is truly dizzying.”
“I’m just pointing out the difficulty of the situation,” Cooper said.
“It would be less difficult if I could get closer. Find out where he spends his time,” Eli said, sounding frustrated. “But I can’t risk James scenting me before I can find the recording. I was shifted today trying to get locked in overnight out of pure desperation.” He smiled. “But then a new friend of an old friend dropped by and presented a better solution.”
Cooper frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“While I’ve developed a great deal of skills over the years, I am rather dismal at sticking my nose in other people’s business. But as I stood there wobbly-kneed and teary-eyed under your cruel interrogations this afternoon, a thought struck me. You, my pretty little whippet, are very good at being nosy. In fact, it’s your entire job and I want to hire you.”
“I’m not a private detective.”
“That’s fine. I wasn’t planning on paying you anyway. Will you help me?”
“Look,” Cooper said. “I want to, I do. And I don’t even object to the idea that finding the recording and destroying it is very possibly your best option. But I’m not the right person to do that.”
“You’re a morally gray, perpetually meddlesome human who turned his back on his people’s own unjust system of law to work for a secret werewolf agency that exists solely to investigate violent crimes against werewolves. You also seem to be unusually adaptive and unmanipulative as you’ve spent the last couple of minutes watching me pull my own thumb off without a single hint of disgust or calculation toward personal gain. Yes, clearly none of this is applicable to my situation at all, I’ll go ask someone better suited.”
“Meddlesome?” Cooper protested weakly, but he was wavering.
“All I’m asking is for you to drop by and take a peek around. Find out his routines. Where he spends his time. Ask a couple of questions. Hell, narrow it down to five possible places and I’ll do all the actual searching myself.”
Cooper started to argue, but Eli interrupted. “Please. I can’t—I don’t know what to do. I need help. Just...one try.”
Cooper bit his lip. It was clear Eli was desperate. His need was real and Cooper hated the idea of him taking this on alone. What options did he have? “All right. I’ll go back to the zoo tomorrow. Take a look around. No promises, though.”
Eli grinned. “Oh, you are lovely. Really just an angel. Not a bit like the rumors.” He toasted him, took a sip of wine, and wrinkled his nose immediately and coughed. “Ghastly. Ollie bought this, didn’t he? He’s such a snob.”
Cooper shot a pointed look at Eli, who rolled his eyes. “Darling, surely it’s obvious by now that this”—he flourished his hand dramatically—”is just an elaborate defense. While Oliver was born offensively elaborate.”
“He’s not,” Cooper defended. “He’s just...” Easily enamored with beauty, softer and more delicate inside than anyone else could ever guess from looking at him, a bit of a secret hedonist—
Eli made a small noise of disgust. “The dreamy look on your face right now could star in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I feel ill.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised that a man who spent the evening creeping around my bushes scaring my cat before breaking into my house and demanding I do him an enormous, illegal favor is relentlessly rude to me, but somehow I am.”
Eli gave him a curious look. “While you may not have caught me at my best this afternoon, I generally don’t engage in creeping in the underbrush or terrorizing helpless animals. Why would you think I did?”
“I heard something...” Cooper trailed off. Frowned. “I guess it was a raccoon getting into the pumpkin after all. Oliver would know. He’s good at—”
Eli stood suddenly and left the bedroom.
“Wait, where are you—” Cooper stumbled out of bed, remembered his nudity, and hurriedly put some sweats and a T-shirt on. He was just beginning to follow, poker in hand, when Eli returned. “What happened? Did you just check outside?”
“Check outside?” Eli looked appalled. “I think you have me mistaken for another wolf in your life. No, I merely decided it might be a good idea to secure your window which mysteriously came to be unlocked approximately forty minutes ago.”
“You came in through a window?” Cooper asked.
“And landed in a charming little library of sorts with a very comfortable-looking couch that should make a perfect bed for tonight.”
Cooper blinked at him, taking a moment to process the meaning. “You want to stay here? Overnight?” He looked at Eli suspiciously. “Look, if you’re coming on to me, I have to cut you off right now.”
“Ah yes. Laying bare the worst traumas of my life to my ex-lover’s new boytoy. Seduction 101.” Eli rolled his eyes so dramatically that Cooper wondered if he was slipping again. “My god, read the room.”
“The couch isn’t very long,” Cooper warned.
“If you were paying any attention at all, you’d know I can get a lot shorter. Besides, I’ve slept on worse. Speaking of whom, if Ollie finds out I potentially led trouble to your door and then left you undefended, you’ll have two crimes on your hands.”
* * *
The way the last twenty-four hours had gone, Cooper would not have been half surprised to wake up to Eli perched on his knees or rooting around in his underwear drawer. Fortunately, he woke alone and much later than usual. Without even getting out of bed he could tell it was a beautiful day. The air had that still, bright and clear quality. The sun shone through the windows and Cooper could hear crows angrily berating something or other. He could also hear the TV on downstairs and, remembering his houseguest, wondered if he might need to revise the prediction of a beautiful day.
Still in sweatpants and a T-shirt, Cooper didn’t bother getting dressed before going downstairs. Concern for what Eli was getting up to unsupervised outweighed any desire to feel a little more put together when facing him.
Formality seemed a moot point anyway after they’d polished off the rest of the wine bottle last night, both too hopped up on adrenaline to go to sleep right away. Eli had seemed determined not to
reveal anything else about himself and kept the conversation focused on prying into Cooper’s past relationships. His romantic and sexual histories were normally not things Cooper would share with another person—he mostly avoided thinking about them himself—but if there was one thing about Eli’s situation he could easily empathize with, it was how gross it felt to expose so much of yourself, to be so known by someone without learning anything in return—the inequity of it. The vulnerability, the paranoia that the other person was laughing at you, pitying you. Opening up had obviously been hard for Eli; Cooper didn’t want to make it worse.
So he’d talked. He’d talked about his first girlfriend Sophie, now married to his brother—Incestuous!—his first boyfriend in college of one short month who had been sweet, if a bit stiff, and very vanilla—Are you absolutely certain you weren’t dating a waffle cone? He’d even told him about his first partner in the FBI who was older, much older, someone intended to be a mentor, who had been a mentor as a successful queer man in undercover...he’d just also liked Cooper’s dick a lot, at the same time.
Eli hadn’t quipped about that one. Maybe beneath Cooper’s light words, he could sense a glimmer of the darkness, if only just the part that reflected his own story. The joy and loyalty of recognizing someone like you, that led to letting down certain guards, twisting certain hurts even deeper.
Eventually, when the conversation seemed relaxed, Cooper had tried to do some digging back, but after Eli started telling him about how the son of an oil tycoon he’d been having a tumultuous affair with had driven off a cliff, developed amnesia and been given facial plastic surgery by his identical twin, Cooper finally realized he was just patching together old Dynasty plotlines and kicked him out for the night.
Downstairs he found Eli looking frustratingly fresh faced. He was sitting crossed-legged on the living room floor, eating eggs out of a mug, watching what looked like some other soap opera while wearing nothing but boxer briefs and one of Park’s sweatshirts filched from the laundry room. Boogie was purring in his lap and barely cracked an eye open in acknowledgment when Cooper walked in. Unbelievable.
“Find everything you need okay?” he asked sarcastically.
“I left you something hot in the kitchen,” Eli said around a spoon, not looking away from the TV. “Should probably go check on it before it boils over.” He waved him away dismissively.
Cooper just rolled his eyes, unwilling to spar before caffeine, and made his way into the other room. Then froze, astounded. “Oliver?”
Park was standing at the stove poaching eggs. He looked up and smiled. “Finally. I was beginning to worry El—”
Cooper walked right up and hugged him. Park cut off, clearly surprised. He felt wonderfully warm and wonderfully solid. Basically, just the ordinary qualities of any living person, so it was a mystery why holding him felt so goddamn extraordinary. Why Cooper, not much of a cuddler, felt compelled to hold him tighter.
Park seemed bewildered by the sudden urgency of his affection as well and held very still as Cooper buried his face in his neck, breathing in and out. When Cooper kissed the skin there, Park shivered and let out a small, pleased sound so sweet that Cooper felt it resonate in his core.
“If you’re buttering me up to break the news about your overnight guest, it’s too late, the jig is up,” Park said, a little brokenly as Cooper delicately nosed along the tendon of his neck.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If I wanted to butter you up,” Cooper said, kissing the hollow of Park’s collarbone, “I’d do something more like this.” He dragged his lips up his throat until he could mouth at the soft, vulnerable spot below the chin and felt Park go boneless against him. Cooper kneaded his hands gently up Park’s back, enjoying the play of powerful muscles there, the obvious strength, docile and trembly beneath his hands. “I didn’t think you’d be home until this evening.”
“Took an early flight. Wanted to surprise you,” Park murmured. “Thought you might be”—he inhaled sharply when Cooper nipped him—”lonely. Bored. Without me. Should have assumed you’d pick up another case. Another man.”
Cooper pushed him back against the kitchen counter and kissed him for real, enjoying Park’s obvious eagerness, his unguarded pleasure, the slightly less controlled edge to his kiss and touch and body. Cooper felt briefly tempted to go to his knees. An unbelievable power rush to know you could utterly wreck someone with a simple stroke, squeeze, suck, rhythm. To be privy to the unique code that unlocked every last one of their defenses. The very thought of Park, vulnerable and begging as Cooper took him apart with his mouth, sent a heat wave through his veins.
But they did have a guest in the next room.
Cooper pulled back, putting some space between them and waited until Park’s breathing evened out and his eyes fluttered open before speaking. “I don’t have a new case. Or man,” he added, though it hardly seemed worth saying, since Park was clearly being facetious.
Park cleared his throat. “Yes. Eli filled me in,” he said in his most tightly controlled, emotionless voice, but Cooper still caught the dark expression that passed over his face. “He said you promised you’d go to the zoo again today. Try to help. That was...kind of you.”
Cooper shrugged, uncomfortable. “It only seemed like common decency.”
“Decency is not very common,” Park said, turning back to the stove. “I’m coming, of course.”
Cooper smiled. “Of course,” he said, noticing a package on the counter. It wasn’t too large, about five by eight inches, and the usual anonymous cardboard.
“So, I couldn’t help but notice you apparently haven’t bought a single grocery since I left last week,” Park said, changing the subject.
“Make me a list of what you want and I’ll go,” Cooper said, picking up the package and turning it over in his hands. They’d fallen into a habit of Cooper shopping and Park cooking since if left to his own devices Cooper often went weeks uninterested in meals that required more than three or four steps, his relationship with food having changed a lot since his gut had been torn up and he’d spent months not being able to eat “real” food.
“Okay. But in the meantime, I was thinking we could go out for dinner tonight,” Park said, still futzing over the stove.
“Mmmm, sure, that sounds nice,” Cooper said distractedly. “Did you bring me home a present?”
“What?” Park jerked around abruptly, looking alarmed before he saw what Cooper was holding. “Oh. No, that’s not me.” His face relaxed and he went back to scooping the eggs from the water and adding them to onions, tomatoes and bell peppers—basically just everything Cooper had been letting go untouched in the fridge during Park’s absence. “I found it on the porch this morning. I thought it was something you ordered.”
“Yes, because between the two of us, I’m the online shopping enthusiast,” Cooper muttered as he exchanged the box for the bowl of breakfast Park handed him, then watched as he popped a claw and made quick work of the tape, and pulled off the top layer of packing paper. Park paused.
“What?” Cooper asked. “What is it?” He leaned closer.
The box was lined with dark green tissue paper and full to the brim with roses. Just the heads, though. All their stems had been clipped. They were all a pretty sort of pinkish-orange color and tightly closed, though that probably had something to do with how they’d been cut.
Cooper pulled one out, manipulating it in his fingers. There wasn’t even the barest hint of a stem left below the bud. Strange. And a bit wasteful. He doubted they’d live longer than a day like this. Though he supposed all cut flowers were doomed in that regard, sooner or later.
Digging in the pile, Park found a small notecard and read it out loud, “To the moon and back again. From your family?”
Cooper snorted. “Two dozen customized roses and an embossed card? What kind of Grey Poupon people do you think we are?” Speaking of... “What abo
ut your family? They’re fancy like that,” he suggested. Odd enough, too, but he left that bit implied.
Park shook his head, scooping out a few buds. “I feel like they would have mentioned it.” He rolled the flowers between his fingers, dislodging a few petals that twirled prettily onto the counter. Coral. That’s what color the roses were, Cooper realized. Looked like all those hours spent on wedding blogs weren’t a complete waste of time.
“I emailed my—Daisy. A couple of weeks ago,” Park said, still looking at the flowers.
Cooper tried not to look surprised. Neither of them had seen or heard from Park’s mother, Daisy Boudillion, since she’d saved Cooper’s life in Cape Breton that February, dropped Park’s wounded grandmother off at the hospital and promptly disappeared.
“I told her we’d got this place and were getting married. Just in case she wanted to”—Park shrugged—”I don’t know, come visit or something. She hasn’t written back yet,” he said hastily. “But maybe she sent this instead.”
“Maybe,” Cooper said gently, because what else could you say? Park and his siblings had spent years thinking their parents, Daisy and Benjamin, were dead, only to find out they’d been lied to. That their parents had left them when they had gotten even more involved in the Wolf Independence Party, those fighting for the end of the powerful established packs like the Parks’. Whether they had left to protect them or just because they couldn’t afford the liability of carting around six children while on the run was unclear. But it was only six years ago, when Park’s father had been murdered, that he and his siblings had learned the truth.
In a strange way, it was the only reason Cooper and Park had even met. It was the catalyst for Park leaving his family pack entirely, for him giving up his life as a professor and joining the Trust in exchange for Cola’s help in tracking down Daisy’s contact information. She’d also been the one to tell Park how his father had really died. One of the members of their small WIP faction at the time had betrayed their group, resulting in an explosion that had killed many, including Benjamin and, ironically, the man who had sold them out. By sheer luck, Daisy had escaped, but still had no interest in reaching out to any of her children. If tragedy hadn’t done it, Cooper doubted an email informing her of some silly, human ritual would.
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