by Selena Scott
She tossed him one of them and he caught it. She watched as he lifted the fabric and sniffed at it. “It’s a better color than this,” he said, pointing at the neon blue shirt he currently wore.
“Yup. I got you a few pairs of these, too.” She pulled out some athletic joggers, tight at the ankle, with roomy pockets and a stretchy waistband in case his scar tissue was painful there. She tossed a pair his way, dark blue to go with the dark gray shirt she’d thrown to him.
“And these,” she said as she tossed a pack of black athletic socks in his direction. “And, um, these too, because I wasn’t sure what your, um situation was.” She tossed the ten pack of modal cotton underwear she’d splurged on for him. She figured, with his injuries, comfort was paramount. Unfortunately, comfort didn’t come cheap and she didn’t figure that any of the lost and found clothes that MSCC had provided him were particularly soft.
He sniffed each item of new clothing, but just looked at the packet of underwear. “What are these for?”
“They’re underwear.” She blinked, realizing that no one had been through this with him yet. “You wear them under your pants.”
He stared at her. “Humans wear tiny pants under their regular pants.”
“Well … it doesn’t normally sound so stupid, but yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of hygiene? Comfort? Aesthetics?”
He opened the package and pulled out one pair of the black boxer briefs. “What’s aesthetics?”
“In this case it means how something looks.”
“Humans like the way these tiny pants look?”
She tried not to laugh because she could tell that these were genuine questions he was asking and she didn’t want to shut him down the way she had at the restaurant last time. “For the most part, yes.”
He looked back and forth between the underwear in his hand and Ida. “And you’re wearing these right now?”
Her cheeks flamed. How quickly this conversation had taken a left turn. “Um. First of all, that’s a very personal question to ask someone. So, uh, just make a note of that for etiquette reasons. And yes. I’m wearing underwear. But women’s underwear doesn’t usually look like that.”
“How are they different?”
Ida blinked at him. She was confused. Dawn had led her to believe that both Orion and Phoenix had ventured into human territory in order to have sexual liaisons with women. Yet he’d never seen a pair of women’s underwear before?
She added something to her list for him. As soon as they got him better accommodations, they were going to have to get him some internet access. Because this boy was sheltered.
“Here.” She pulled out her phone, navigated to the Gap Body website -the least racy underwear she could think of- and handed it over. “That’s generally what they look like. Sometimes women wear fancier ones. Or sexier ones. For, um, different reasons but …”
She trailed off, realizing that he wasn’t even remotely listening to her anymore. His nostrils flared as he looked at the images on her phone, his eyes going dark. He licked his lips. Oh, Christ. She’d accidentally turned him on. With the tamest porn of all time. It was Gap Body for god sakes! His head was going to explode when he discovered internet porn.
After a minute he handed the phone back to her. “I get it now. Aesthetics. It looks good.”
She cleared her throat. “Right. So all those are clothes for you and you can wear them whenever— Phoenix!”
Ida stared openmouthed at the man who’d just stripped himself naked in front of her very eyes. It had happened so quickly she hadn’t had time to protest before he was standing there in nothing but two mismatched socks. His shirt had come first, then his jeans, and there hadn’t been anything under those.
She smacked her hands over her glasses, jamming the frames into her eyes and nearly blinding herself in the process. But even blindness wasn’t enough to erase the memory of his gigantic dong hanging between his legs. Holy crap. That thing looked lethal. Yet another reason why he was not her type in the least. She liked men with friendly looking equipment. Not dicks that looked like they’d wage war against her lady parts.
She took a deep breath, her eyes still closed.
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot,” he mumbled and she heard the sounds of him shuffling back into clothes. “Dawn doesn’t like it when me and Orion get naked either.”
Ida guessed that Dawn’s discomfort with her brothers’ nakedness came from a very different place than Ida’s, but she didn’t bother clarifying. “It is an extreme social faux pas to get naked in front of someone without their permission.”
Her voice was shaking slightly and she hoped he didn’t notice.
She didn’t hear him moving anymore but she still didn’t take her hands down.
After a long minute, he spoke. “The way I look is … scary to you?” His voice was quiet and toneless.
She was confused. “What do you mean, scary?”
There was another long pause. “The scars.”
“Oh.” She immediately dropped her hands out of surprise. He stood there, shirtless still, his new shirt in one hand, his dark eyes boring into her. The second he realized that she was looking at him, he tilted his body away from her, hiding his left side. She didn’t sense shame there, it was truly like he didn’t want to scare her again.
“No,” she said softly, rising to her feet. “Your scars aren’t scary to me at all. Honestly, I didn’t even notice them.”
I was too busy staring at your monster cock.
She hoped he didn’t notice her pink cheeks.
“Oh.” He didn’t look like he understood, but he said nothing as he slipped the shirt on over his head and smoothed the fabric.
“Do you like the clothes?” she asked after the quietness between them had started to get awkward.
“Yes. They’re soft. And not ridiculous colors.”
“Good. It’s custom to say thank you after someone has given you a gift.”
“Thank you,” he said absently, obediently, as he turned the pockets of his pants inside out, inspecting them.
Well, they’d work more on eye contact during thank yous later. For now, she’d take what she could get.
CHAPTER FOUR
Phoenix stayed quiet as she drove him a few neighborhoods away. In his opinion, Portland required too much time in the car. Everything was so far apart. He wondered how much harder it was to ride a freestanding bike than an exercise bike at physical therapy. He didn’t think he’d ever want a car. No. He wanted to feel the wind.
He didn’t ask where she was taking him because frankly, he didn’t care. He didn’t want to spend time at his shithole of a room and he didn’t want to be in public. Also, he didn’t really like being in her car. He figured their options were limited and the less he argued the faster it would all be done with.
She pulled up to a very tall, skinny house that reminded Phoenix of the fancy cakes he’d recently seen in the front window of a bakery. The whole thing was peachy in color with white curlicues lining every edge. There was a sign hanging out front and Phoenix knew that meant it was a place of business, not someone’s home. Though, with his inability to read, the sign offered him no more information than that.
“You’re gonna love this, I swear,” Ida promised as she led him up the rocky path toward the front door.
He suspected she was picking her way over the rocks so carefully in order to show him the best path for his crutches to take without appearing as if she were showing him. Smart lady.
He made it up the stairs just after she did and just in time to see a very tall, very thin woman with purple, spiky hair throw open the door.
“Wren!” Ida tossed her arms around the woman and the woman hugged her back just as fiercely. “Thanks for seeing us so last minute.”
“It’s not a big deal, sis.” The woman cocked her hip out and narrowed her eyes, her gaze glancing up and down Phoenix’s body.
“You’re the troublemaker, I presume?�
�� she said, her large eyes naturally half-lidded. She had the kind of face that looked like she was in the middle of laughing at a joke you’d never get.
Not only did Phoenix not understand whatever the joke was, he also didn’t understand the question she’d asked. He looked at Ida.
“Play nice,” Ida instructed the woman. “Phoenix, meet my best friend, Wren Suede. Wren, meet Phoenix Wolf.”
“Wolf,” she said drily. “How original.”
“I didn’t choose it,” Phoenix said. He was telling the truth. He’d almost burned alive in a forest fire and opened his eyes thirteen days later to find that he was in human form in a human hospital and someone had given him a human last name. Not a lot to be done about that.
Wren shifted forward and Phoenix caught her scent. His awareness flared. “What kind of shifter are you?” he asked.
She eyed him for a moment, as if momentarily surprised that he’d sensed that. “Raven.”
Ravens and wolves had no animosity toward one another in the wild, though they were both occasionally known for scavenging the same foods. Either way, despite the strange color of her hair, Phoenix decided she posed no threat to him. “Are we going inside?” he asked Ida.
“Yes.” She bustled him in and when he got there, he had no more answers than when he’d stood out on the porch. He was standing in a room with a bunch of mirrors and complicated looking chairs in front of each mirror. It was synthetically bright in there and there were all sorts of sharp looking instruments in cups.
“Nope,” he decided instantly, turning away from the room and headed back toward the front door.
He heard Wren laugh but it was Ida who got in his way. “What do you mean ‘nope’?”
“I mean there’s too many sharp objects for me to be in here.”
“Sharp …” she trailed off. “Those aren’t weapons! They’re just for cutting hair!”
He blinked at her.
“Wren is a hair stylist. She’s just going to wash and cut your hair, and your beard if you want it.”
“A hair stylist.”
“She does people’s hair for a living.”
“Why would I ever want my hair to look like that?” He pointed candidly at Wren’s purple spikes. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized that they were probably rude. But thankfully, Wren just laughed and walked over to lean against Ida.
Phoenix cocked his head as he watched the purple haired woman drape herself over Ida’s shoulders in a way that both women were obviously comfortable and familiar with.
“I don’t give all my clients purple hair, dummy. I can do anything you want. I cut Ida’s hair.” She tugged lightly at the ends of Ida’s red hair and for some reason, Phoenix didn’t resist the impulse to do the same thing. Watching someone else touch Ida made him want to touch Ida. He leaned forward and tugged at her hair the same way that Wren had. It was softer than his own hair, the ends slightly tickly.
He dropped his hand. “They gave me a haircut at the shelter a few months ago. After the hospital.”
“I don’t imagine that was a very pleasant experience,” Wren said drily. “Let me guess, they forced you into a chair, didn’t give you any choice and then shaved you bald?”
Pretty much. Yeah. That had been exactly what had happened. He’d been in too much pain and still too weak from his recovery to do much protesting. He’d left feeling humiliated. He didn’t like thinking about it now. He shrugged.
“Well, I promise I won’t do anything like that to you. If you want your hair to be long, I’ll just clean it up a little on the sides and straighten out your beard. I’ll be gentle and it won’t take long.”
Wren stepped forward and held out her hand for a shake. Phoenix paused, but then leaned forward and shook her hand. She had a nice, firm grip and he didn’t sense danger from her, but he still didn’t like the contact. He wasn’t used to touching in his human form. In his wolf form, he could butt his head against her, sniff her. If they got to know one another well enough, he wouldn’t even have a problem sleeping next to her for warmth. But human touching still felt foreign to him.
Touching Wren didn’t feel anything like it had felt to have Ida tucked under his arm on the stairs. Or touching the ends of Ida’s hair.
He frowned. Would this ever get less confusing? He doubted it.
“It will really be all right,” Ida reassured him. “People do this all the time. And I chose Wren to help us because she makes it a really enjoyable experience. Seriously, this is one of those pleasurable human experiences I was telling you about. This is something you might actually like about being human.”
He highly doubted that as well, but to refuse right now would be tantamount to admitting he was afraid of the purple haired woman. And he wasn’t. Not really. He was afraid of being human, if anything, and it was a fear he was determined to overcome.
“Fine. Where do we start.”
“We’ll wash your hair first.” Wren beckoned him over to a seat that leaned back into a sink. He blinked at it, certain that he was seeing things. There was no way that she wanted him to lean back like that.
“You want me to lean back, expose my throat, and let you wash my hair.” He let his eyes go dead as he looked back and forth between the two women.
For some reason, both women burst out laughing. “Well, I’ve never thought about it that way before, but yeah. I guess so.” Wren put her hands on her hips and thought for a second. “The washing part doesn’t necessarily require a professional. Would you be more comfortable with Ida washing your hair and I’ll sit across the room where you can keep an eye on me?”
“But I’m no good at it!” Ida said to Wren. “You’re the one with the magic fingers. The whole reason I brought him here was so that he could experience how good all this feels.”
“If he’s not comfortable with me touching him then he’s not going to have a good time no matter how talented my hands are.” She turned to look back at Phoenix with an eyebrow raised. “And trust me, I’m talented. But Ida can make it feel good, too.”
Ida bit her bottom lip as she looked at him. She wore some sort of color on her lips today and it annoyed Phoenix because it made him look at her mouth over and over again. And every time he looked at her mouth, he thought of Watt kissing that mouth. He wondered if her mouth tasted the way that pink candy had tasted.
“What do you think?” she asked him quietly. “We can leave if this is all too much for you.”
For a moment he considered taking the out. But then he really registered the look on her face. She’d be disappointed if they left. And not in him. In herself. She’d gone shopping for him because he’d said he didn’t want to. She’d arranged for him to be at this hair cutting place when no one else was here. Obviously there were ten other seats for ten other customers, which meant that he was here at a special time when he could be alone. The least he could do was try.
“No. It’s fine. I’ll stay.” His eyes flicked back and forth between Ida and Raven. “You wash,” he said to Ida before he sat himself down in the seat.
Ida stepped around him toward the sink and the corner of her poofy-skirted dress caught on his knee. She stumbled forward and he reached out for her waist to steady her, sending his crutches sprawling. He made sure she was steady on her feet before he let her go, his hands feeling warm when he released her.
“Sorry! Sorry.” Ida scampered to pick up his crutches. “Maybe you’re right about the shoes after all,” she muttered.
He looked down and noticed her shoes for the first time that day. They were light blue. Like the turquoise stone he’d found in the mountains once. Their heel was just as high as the hot pink ones from before but there were no straps. They seemed to stay on her feet through some kind of magic.
She turned on the water in the sink and there was nothing else for him to do but lean back in the chair.
He eyed Wren across the room but she just held up her hands in surrender, settled back into a chair herself and clos
ed her eyes. “Wake me up when you’re ready for the haircut,” she muttered, stacking her boots on the chair next to her and letting her eyes drift closed.
“Okey dokey,” Ida muttered to herself. “Water? Check. Shampoo? Check. Essential oils? Check. I can do this.”
Phoenix jumped a little bit when water unexpectedly doused his head.
“Sorry!”
“It’s all right, Glasses.” He forced himself to relax, figuring it was the only way he could probably get her to relax.
The next pass of the water was a bit more contained, more tame, and Phoenix was actually able to register how nice it felt. He’d been taking cold showers in his tiny, dingy bathroom. Because after a lifetime of splashing around in frigid mountain streams, warm shower water had felt foreign and almost dirty. Like standing water warmed by the sun. He couldn’t help but picture algae slicking over his body.
But right now? Algae was the farthest thing from his mind. The water was warm, but not as warm as Ida’s hands as she sudsed them up with something that smelled like flowers. At first her touch was light, so light that he squirmed against the tickle of it. But after a minute, her fingers became bolder. She rubbed at his temples and across his hairline. She massaged the crown of his head and behind his ears. Her hands ducked under his head and supported the weight for a moment, using the slick of the shampoo to rub out muscles he hadn’t realized were tight.
It was when she changed her technique into a light scratch that the low growl started up in Phoenix’s throat. Almost a purr. He couldn’t stop it and didn’t try. His eyes, which had been riveted to Wren across the room, making sure she stayed over there, fell closed. He was sure his hair must be clean by now, but she didn’t stop rubbing at him. After what felt like forever, but also no time at all, she flicked the water on again and rinsed away the suds. Next came a quick rub through his hair with some other flower smelling product. By the time she sat him up, a towel around his shoulders, he felt as lazy and loose as a cat in a patch of sunlight.