Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “Mmm,” Park said, closing his eyes. “In a bit.”

  Cooper watched him and felt a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. Outside the storm was raging and they were dangerously entangled in an investigation with no hope of backup, but in here, studying Park fight off sleep, Cooper thought there wasn’t a single person he’d rather be stranded with. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Park’s shower-warm chest.

  Ask him now. It wasn’t particularly romantic, no fancy restaurant, champagne or hot air balloon. But that wasn’t really them anyway. And he didn’t want to make it a big deal. Cooper was already sure of their relationship as it was. Some people wanted to get married, some people didn’t. Either way, it wasn’t vital to a successful relationship. He could...just float the idea. They could laugh about it. What’s the worst that could happen?

  He slid his hand slowly but firmly over Park’s low belly, where a waistband would be if he were wearing anything. “Hey,” he started, and the word barely made it out of his suddenly dry throat in one piece.

  Park’s hand came down on Cooper’s arm, and when Cooper looked up, he saw Park’s eyes had reopened and he was studying him, concerned.

  “Are you having another episode?” he asked.

  “Episo—” Cooper squawked, dismayed. “No! I’m not—”

  But Park had already flipped him over onto his back and was peering at his pupils. “You’re breathing so fast.” He paused, and Cooper realized one sneaky hand was lightly pinching his wrist. “And your pulse is out of control. That’s it.” Park sounded furious. “That’s three times today you’ve gone funny for no reason.”

  “Gone funny? Are you going to offer me smelling salts?”

  “I’m going to get Mutya. She can take another look. If she says we need to get you to a hospital, I’ll figure something out. Hiking into town might be the best bet.”

  “Oliver,” Cooper protested, pushing him off. “I’m fine, for fuck’s sake. I was just...umm...”

  Park peered down at him patiently, and Cooper felt his face heating. “Just feeling cuddly and, you know—” he coughed “—err, amorous.”

  Park raised an eyebrow.

  “And not because I’m sick, either,” Cooper added hastily.

  Park stared at him for a long, serious moment, then looked toward the window, out at the storm, with a slight sigh. “I’m trying not to be controlling or...overbearing,” he said. “But I’m worried about you. Ever since the river you’ve been a bit... Well, I’ve been worried.” He tried to smile and it came out a bit crooked. “Can’t it be my turn to worry about you sometimes?”

  “Sometimes?” Cooper muttered. He sat up, pulling his legs out from under Park’s and took his hand. “Oliver, look at me.” He took a deep breath. Asked himself if he wanted to have this conversation now. He knew if he asked Park to trust him and drop it, he would. He knew it. But was that what he really truly wanted?

  “Something happened when I was in that river. Well, no, nothing happened-happened, I just kind of had a moment. A moment when I thought Jacob Symer was attacking me again.”

  Cooper couldn’t look Park in the eye. He honestly wondered if asking him to get married would have been the easier conversation to have. “I mean, I know that’s not possible. But the moment I felt Vanessa’s teeth on me, it was like I was back in that alley. I kept kicking her and kicking her and then I just shut down. It was too much.”

  He shook his head and focused on Park’s thumb moving in slow circles on the back of his hand. “I didn’t feel like myself after, you saw that, but I don’t think it was just shock. Vanessa suggested... I might be carrying some more effects from that, uh, attack, than just this.” He gestured vaguely toward the scars on his stomach. “You know.”

  He felt oddly reluctant to say PTSD to Park. Felt a nonsensical guilt. Not because he thought he should be better than that. The opposite. Park had lived through a difficult childhood, loss, his own traumas and countless attacks himself. What right did Cooper have to complain about this one bad thing? Logically he knew that’s not how it worked. But since when did guilt ever care about logic?

  “Anyway.” Cooper laughed awkwardly. “I think that’s why I’ve been sort of...unsettled since then. Emotionally, I mean. So please let’s not go hailing off into the night in search of a hospital.”

  Park was quiet for so long that Cooper finally felt compelled to check he wasn’t doing something quintessentially Parkish like self-flagellating for not realizing and helping sooner, or worse, feeling responsible for something another wolf had done. But when he looked up Park was just nodding seriously, clearly thinking, as if Cooper had presented him with any other clue on a case he needed to puzzle out.

  “All right.” Park picked Cooper’s hand up and kissed it. “Thank you for telling me. I want to help, if that’s okay. Is there anything I do that makes it worse?”

  “No,” Cooper protested. “I don’t—I don’t know really.” He hesitated. “I think I’m going to give therapy another try. You know, real therapy and not informal chats with murder suspects while using a false identity. Seems like the literal least I can do.”

  “I think that’s great,” Park said earnestly. “Do you want help? I can make some calls about who’s good. My cousin used to work with—”

  Cooper leaned forward and kissed him mid-sentence. “Did anyone ever tell you how sweet you are?” he said when he pulled back a bit.

  Park blushed and looked at him through lowered lashes. “I’m not sweet.”

  Cooper kissed him lightly again. More of a brush of his lips against Park’s. “The sweetest,” he murmured, meaning it.

  He felt Park’s hand slide around his waist, and Cooper shuffled forward into Park’s lap. He nibbled lightly along Park’s jaw to his ear while his fingers trailed lightly over Park’s collarbone.

  There was a knock on the door. They both stared at it, shocked. Cooper was ready to assume it was the wind until it sounded again.

  “Hello in there!” a man’s voice called.

  Park stood making a gesture toward Cooper to stay behind him. He wrapped his towel around his waist, covering the bare beginnings of his erection as best as possible, and opened the door.

  “Sorry, excuse us, but it’s brutal out here.” Terradas and De Luca bustled right into the cabin past Park, both in heavy-duty raincoats with their hoods up. “Oh,” De Luca said, eyeing Park in his towel and Cooper still kneeling in bed. He grinned slowly. “We didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

  “You didn’t,” Cooper said, standing and joining Park by the door, and felt Park’s arm immediately fall around his waist. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No,” De Luca said smoothly. “We were on our way back to the lodge and saw your lights on.” He gave Park a careful look again, though this one felt less sexual appraisal and more like he was sizing up a horse he wanted to bet on. “We haven’t formally met,” he added holding out his hand. “Daniel De Luca. My mate, Victor Terradas.” Park shook both their hands, introducing himself as Andrew Preston. “I’m not familiar with that name. Small family?”

  Cooper tensed. De Luca had asked it with genuine, friendly curiosity. The same genuine, friendly curiosity he’d had at lunch when he’d asked Cooper the exact same question. If he had to choose whether De Luca had truly forgotten or whether he was setting up a trap, Cooper had a nice bit of cheese in that cooler he was happy to lend him.

  “Large, actually. But they’re all up north. Canada, mostly,” Park said, thank god.

  “But you live in DC now,” De Luca said.

  Park acknowledged that with a shrug, refusing to volunteer additional information.

  De Luca just smiled widely again. “Isn’t it wonderful, the interesting people we’ve been meeting at this place? Such fun. We were heading for a dip in the hot tub when we saw your lights on. Something about a blustery storm
outside that just makes me want to sink into some hot water. I insist you join us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Park said. “But we’ve had a really long day.”

  Behind De Luca, Terradas’s eyes widened in shock and the quiet man seemed to become even more intent on Park. “Yes,” De Luca just said solemnly. “Paul told us about you two getting lost in the rain and that poor, poor human ranger. He said you were the ones who found him, driven off the road.”

  Well, then. That certainly answered the question of how quickly word would spread. The answer was even faster than Cooper had anticipated. Considering Paul’s reluctance to move the body onto lodge property, Cooper had assumed he didn’t want anyone to know. Instead he had gone straight to De Luca with the news. Cooper filed that fact carefully away.

  “So dreadful,” De Luca was saying. “The sort of thing to give you nightmares. Which is all the more reason you must come relax with us.” His tone didn’t leave room for refusal.

  Still Park began to refuse. “I don’t—”

  “Actually, babe, a soak with some jets sounds really great right now,” Cooper said. “Should we meet you up there in fifteen minutes?”

  De Luca grinned again. “Perfect. You’d do well to listen to your mate, Andrew. He seems to know how to have a good time.”

  “Yes, he certainly keeps me on my toes,” Park said mildly. Cooper plastered a large smile on his own face.

  After they’d left, Park turned to him. “One man’s fun is another man’s intensely risky, harebrained, foolhardy—” He cut himself off. “De Luca is dangerous for reasons completely outside this investigation, suspicious of us and clearly after something.”

  “Which is exactly why we go along with his little fact-finding mission. De Luca is also a man not accustomed to people defying him. So when you tell him no, he’s just going to become more suspicious. You’re too similar to see it.”

  Park looked offended. “I’m nothing like him.”

  “In the sense that he’s a man used to being feared and pandered to, yes, you are. When was the last time you agreed to something you didn’t want to do for no other reason than to appease someone else?”

  “Ten seconds ago. Maybe you missed it. It was when you called me babe and told me we were going hot-tubbing with the territorial De Luca pack’s two most dangerous lieutenants.”

  “If this is you agreeing, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Cooper murmured. “Come on. You said yourself, it’s a little too big a coincidence that they showed up this weekend. We need to find out why they’re here and what they know.”

  Park bit at the scar on his lip. “Okay, you’re right. But do me a favor: let me take the lead in there.”

  “When do I ever try to take over the lead?”

  “I’m going to let Dr. Joyce deal with that blatant denial problem you’ve got,” Park said, and Cooper huffed. “These aren’t just any wolves, Cooper. The De Luca family isn’t as established as mine, but they rose to power quickly because they’re tough. Celia De Luca has a reputation for being fair. So fair that she’ll watch you drown because it would be an unfair advantage to help anyone outside her own pack. These aren’t people you want to piss off.”

  “Why, Mr. Preston,” Cooper said. “What on earth do you think is going to happen in this hot tub?”

  “I think you’re going to keep me on my toes,” Park said resignedly.

  “Maybe. But later I promise I’ll let you keep me on mine.” Cooper winked.

  * * *

  If there were other guests venturing out of their cabins to socialize while the storm raged on, Cooper didn’t see any. The spa area of the lodge was deserted, though the lights were set to their relaxing dim and soothing music drifted through speakers, so he didn’t feel quite like they were breaking in.

  De Luca and Terradas had brought a bottle of sparkling wine and plastic cups, and were drinking in the hot tub when Park and Cooper arrived. The muggy air of the pool room felt blissful after the chilled rain that had whipped them the entire walk from the cabin.

  “Finally!” De Luca said, toasting them. “We were beginning to worry you’d blown away.” He had taken his glasses off and it made his face look different, older and sharper. Cooper could clearly see him studying Park strip in that same calculating way as before, eyeing his strong body and myriad of scars. So intent was he on Park that Cooper nearly made it down to his bathing suit and into the tub without attention until Terradas touched De Luca and murmured something, drawing his attention to the scars on Cooper’s stomach.

  De Luca was visibly taken aback. “Oh, you poor thing. What happened?” he asked.

  “It was a long time ago. Mugging,” Cooper said dismissively, quickly sliding into the water, slow adjustment to the heat be damned. The less time spent studying his body, the better. Park, on the other hand, stayed perched on the edge, intentionally or not forcing everyone to look up at him.

  “Did you know him then?” Terradas asked Park, in his quiet but beautifully melodic voice.

  “No, it was before we met,” he replied.

  “Hmm, did the police ever catch the mugger?” De Luca looked slyly between the two of them. “Or did anyone...catch him?”

  “Not that I know of,” Cooper said quickly. Under the water he wrapped a hand around Park’s ankle.

  “How terrible,” De Luca said, though he sounded a bit like he’d just heard a wonderfully titillating ghost story. “Though, on the bright side, I suppose you were already aware of our kind by the time Andrew came along.”

  “Oh, right,” Cooper said, surprised. He was vaguely offended by the “bright side” comment but ignored it. Mostly he was just struck by the thought of meeting and falling in love with Park if he hadn’t been attacked and hadn’t learned of werewolves’ existence. If he hadn’t been working for the BSI. When would Park have even told him something like that? I’m a Scorpio. Werewolves are real and I’m perhaps the most infamous one of them all. I have a big ole sweet tooth. No, not exactly first-date conversation. But would he have said something before they lived together? After?

  “You were not afraid?” Terradas asked. He was sitting very close to De Luca. They were practically in each other’s laps. “With such a violent introduction to our kind, how could you know it would not happen again?”

  Beside him Park shifted and then eased himself into the water and onto the bench beside Cooper. The tension and annoyance in his body responsible for half the steam rising from the tub, at least. “No, I wasn’t afraid,” Cooper said distractedly, ignoring the second question which felt way too weighted. “That wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Not fair, no, but—” Terradas shrugged in that such is life sort of way.

  “Kyle is very brave,” De Luca said, chastising his partner. “Look at him. He just found a dead man and he’s not the least bit shaken.” Cooper started to protest, but De Luca spoke over him. “Any idea what happened?”

  “I don’t think we should be talking about it,” Park said.

  “Don’t talk about it? You make it sound like it might be criminal,” De Luca said, observantly. “Was it not an accident?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Who would want to hurt him?” De Luca fired back.

  “I didn’t even know the man.”

  “But you fought with him just this afternoon.”

  Park glanced at Cooper, clearly startled. “I didn’t.”

  “No?” De Luca cocked his head, a caricature of confusion. “That’s not what the masseuse, Reggie, said. She’s been telling everyone how nobly you distracted the ranger while she struggled to not lose control of her shift.”

  From the rapid back-and-forth mere seconds ago, De Luca had suddenly slowed to something lazy and vaguely dangerous. All of Cooper’s senses were on high alert.

  “Being a distraction and fighting are hardly the same,” Park said careful
ly.

  “Of course not,” De Luca agreed. “But young Miss Reggie also said the human ranger put his hands on you.” He ran his own hand over the surface of the water. “Was she lying?”

  “It was nothing,” Park said dismissively. “He’s a weak man desperate to feel in charge.”

  “Not anymore,” De Luca said, bluntly. “Luckily for poor, dear Paul.”

  “Is that why Paul invited you here?” Cooper asked, and felt more than heard Park’s fond but exasperated sigh beside him. Across from them, De Luca and Terradas had frozen, surprised, and even the water itself seemed to smooth and quiet.

  “Sorry.” Cooper laughed self-deprecatingly. “Maybe I’m wrong. I’m new to all this. I just thought that was the reason for this ‘big packs controlling little packs’ stuff. Protection.” He blinked, face fixed in perfect innocent confusion and felt Park’s hand settle on his thigh under the water in a “wait” gesture.

  “No, you’re not wrong,” De Luca said eventually. “Paul did ask us up here a week ago. He was interested in pledging the retreat to my sister, but as it turns out his mate, Vanessa, was not. And now it seems any threat they might have felt from the law has driven off the road.”

  “He’s hardly the only officer around,” Park said evenly. “If anything, there will be an even greater investigation now.”

  “I disagree,” De Luca said. “Not if it really was an accident.”

  “Enough,” Terradas scolded. “How morbid we’ve gotten. This is not relaxing conversation at all. And before you’ve had a sip of drink. Daniel, get them wine.”

  De Luca laughed. “You’re right, my love. How rude of me.” He leaned over the edge of the tub to refill their own cups and pour two more. Cooper couldn’t help but notice he didn’t appear to be wearing a bathing suit. Whether that was because wolves were generally less concerned with nudity—they had to be, they were constantly needing to get naked around each other—or because Cooper had completely misinterpreted the nature of this invite was unclear.