Harley couldn’t help it, he gasped and stepped back, not in disgust but in dawning realisation. “You were the one in the room, in the hospital bed. I saw you, touched your hand, but your head was bandaged and what parts of your face that weren’t covered was swollen.” Harley stared at him in wonder as Val paled. “I’m so glad you didn’t die. I worried, but pride kept me from asking anyone about you.” Harley’s lip curled as he sneered at his own cowardice. “And I was scared. I hadn’t told anyone I’d left my rooms. I thought about you, but was just too chicken to ask Nathan who you were and if you’d be okay.”
“You saw me like that?” Val rasped. “Hooked up to a machine and useless?”
Harley figured that by ‘useless’, Val meant helpless, or weak, which were things a man like Val would never want to be, or be seen as. “Not useless,” Harley corrected. “You were healing, and I couldn’t stay away. I snuck in and touched your hand, and I felt things that scared me, so I ran and hid in my rooms until I was told I could come back here. You have nothing to be embarrassed about, whereas I acted cowardly.”
“No, you were scared, and traumatised, understandably so in both cases, Harley.” Val touched his hand lightly, and need zipped through Harley.
“It doesn’t matter, I should have at least found out who you were and how you were doing.” Harley hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d left his rooms, not after protesting that he was so terrified and hated all the shifters. “I was a jerk, but look at you. You’ve healed so quickly.”
Val tipped Harley’s chin up with one finger and lightly kissed his lips. “You weren’t being a jerk. Stop calling yourself names. You’d suffered at least as much trauma as I had, just in a different manner. And yes, shifters heal fast, but I was in a coma, something that no one had ever heard of. Our medical knowledge of what we are is limited by our need to stay hidden. Guess the doc at least learned that there are some injuries we can’t heal from, like having our eye punctured by a chunk of metal or our femur shattered. I’m lucky to be alive at all, and lucky too that my leg wasn’t amputated. As for my wolf, well, maybe you won’t hate me as much, considering I’m a flawed shifter who can’t shift. Possibly never.”
Val sounded broken over that, Harley heard it in his voice even though he kept a neutral expression in place. “I’m not that hard-hearted, Val. I’m just not. I have a lot of anger at shifters, yes. Some of the things Dobson did, had done to me, have really messed me up.”
“Did he rape you?” Val asked, straight on and without hesitating. It shocked Harley, because everyone else tiptoed around using that word.
“He didn’t penetrate me,” Harley started before growling in frustration at himself. He’d just done what everyone but Val had. “He didn’t rape me, but he made me t-touch myself, use m-my f-fingers—” Harley had to stop and press his hand to his mouth, because something gross was trying to crawl up from his stomach and splatter on the floor.
“This way,” Val told him, gently touching his hip. He pointed to an open door and Harley ran into the bathroom, then he was sliding on his knees and grabbing the toilet as he heaved. Damn it, he’d decided he wasn’t ready to talk about it, and yet he’d told Val something he’d told no one else. Something he’d tried not to think about, because while Dobson hadn’t used his body to violate Harley’s, Dobson had still violated him in other ways.
“Harley, I have you,” Val said, and Harley could only retch as Val held him tenderly, tucking his hair behind his ears and rocking so slightly it was almost unnoticeable. “I have you. I wish I could kill him all over again for you. I would. I would.”
Harley coughed and spat, too exhausted to be humiliated. He slumped back against Val, his stomach finally empty. It took him three attempts before he was able to speak. “He had one of his men shift, and put those teeth to my throat. If I didn’t put on a show he said he’d let them have me to do whatever with. I didn’t know what else to do except what he said to. So you see, he didn’t actually rape me, even when he let one of his men shift and mount me like he—” Harley just couldn’t finish that. “He didn’t do it.” But the shifter had been stimulated, his erection impossible not to feel as he’d rubbed against Harley.
“I’m so sorry.” Val kept touching him, gentle sweeps of his hands over Harley’s stomach, his arms, even his legs, but never going too close to his groin.
It irked Harley in a way, as if he were now untouchable in a sexual manner, and he cursed and caught Val’s hand, jerking down to cover his limp cock. “I’m still a man. I still—” He pushed, trying to feel a hint of arousal. All he ended up feeling was stupid. He tried to shove away from Val, but the shifter kept him in a loose hug, murmuring soothing sounds and stroking, comforting, gentling him. “I don’t want to be fucked up. I just want to be a whole person again.” What was he talking about? Complaining about, when Val had suffered so much worse?
Val rumbled wordlessly for a moment, petting Harley’s chest, spreading warmth from his big palms into Harley’s bones. “I understand. I know you didn’t mean it as a jibe against me. When I tell you I understand, I mean it, too. Dobson took something from me I will never get back—my sight in my left eye, a whole, pain-free leg, maybe even my wolf—he scarred me, and I can’t hide it. I live in a society where the strong heal and there are almost no scars, so I am a freak, certainly. To some. I don’t want to be one to you, Harley, and you’ll never be weak, or less than a man, to me.”
Then Val sighed, his moist breath tickling Harley’s neck. “And, this might change your mind and make you hate us all over again. I’m not sure, but you said you couldn’t help but touch me the first time, then you had to come after me at the club, and again when I tried to send you away?”
“Yeah,” Harley mumbled. “Weird as hell. I mean, the attraction I felt—feel—towards you is like none I’ve ever experienced before. I can’t even fight it, not even when I was trying to hate shifters. It’s the reason I don’t, why I had to rethink my views and face the fact that I’m being a bigoted asshole. I just—man, you’re gonna think I’m a stalker or something, but I swear I’ve never been like this with another guy.” Harley turned, and Val helped him, didn’t try to hold him now, as if he knew what Harley needed. Harley knelt between Val’s legs and framed his cheeks with his hands. “It’s like the thought of being without you terrifies me. I don’t know if I’ve developed some new mental issues due to what happened, or what. But I panic thinking of you leaving me. Now, I know that sounds crazy as hell, and you probably want to run out—oomph!”
The rest of Harley’s words were swallowed by Val as he slashed his mouth over Harley’s. He thrust his tongue between Harley’s lips with a sureness that brought Harley’s cock to full staff immediately. Harley moaned and locked his hands together behind Val’s neck. He tipped his head to the side, sinking into the kiss, offering himself to Val, only to have the confusing man pull back. Harley blinked open eyes he didn’t remember closing and saw Val chewing on his bottom lip. “What? Why are you looking like something bad is gonna come out of your mouth?”
Val huffed and patted at Harley’s hands as if silently asking to be released, so Harley let him go. It took Val a moment, and he looked like he wanted to groan more than once, but he got up from the floor and sat on the side of the bath tub. Harley stood and, for lack of a better place, put the lid down and sat on the toilet. “Tell me.” Whatever it was, he would rather know now.
Val glanced nervously around, not quite meeting Harley’s eyes. “I think, maybe, it’s possible—but it’s hard to be sure, because my wolf isn’t, I can’t feel him very much. I mean, he’s there, but he’s, it’s like he’s coming out of a sleep but isn’t awake, kind of.” Val groaned again and dropped his head in his hands. “God, I sound like a babbling idiot. I just mean I think it’s possible we might be mates, destined for each other.”
Harley frowned. “What was that? Can you raise your head up and say it again?” Because surely he hadn’t heard right the first time.
&
nbsp; “I said,” Val tipped his head up enough to look at him, “that I think we might be mates. It would explain the instant attraction, and normally I would be panting after you more than I am, but everything shifter about me is fucked up!” Val roared the last two words and slapped his hands against the tub. “God damn it!”
“Yeah, God damn it,” Harley repeated, stunned and trying to figure out what he was feeling. Not scared, or freaked out. In fact… “That makes me feel better, I think.”
Val rolled his eye up at Harley. “How in the hell does that make you feel better? Fuck, I wish we had the mental link mates have.”
“Mates have, what? Like telepathy?” That was kind of cool, and sure would prohibit lying and cheating, wouldn’t it? If they were really mates, and if Val recovered from the accident enough that his wolf could be felt. Or did Harley have to become a shifter? He had heard horrible stories about how that could be done.
“Yeah, something like that. Kind of sensing each other’s emotions, although the bond is supposed to get stronger and the mental link does, too.” Val ran his fingers through his hair then grimaced when he reached the back of his head. “Forgot about that. I think the cut’s already healed.”
“Why didn’t you heal there?” Harley didn’t mean to be rude, but he didn’t understand why there was a scar since shifters did heal so quickly.
Val shrugged. “Datura, probably. It’s a plant that is toxic to us in even small doses. Doc thinks maybe Dobson dusted his vehicle with it or something, got it on me somehow. That, and I was lying there with a chunk of metal in me for a while. As fast as we heal, sometimes that’s a bad thing. Parts healed that would have been better off not healing so fast. Because of the foreign object, as Doc Shania called it, sticking in me, vessels and tissues began healing around it and it totally screwed up everything else once the metal was removed. It was just a clusterfuck of reasons, I guess.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m just trying to understand.” Harley stood then walked to Val. He traced the silver scar. It felt soft and cool under his fingertip. “I meant it when I said this doesn’t detract from your looks at all. I’m sure you were handsome before, but with the patch, and this? Devastating, babe. Utterly.” He bent and licked the thin line and Val shuddered for him very prettily. “Oh, I think I like making you do that. A lot.” Harley licked again, then kissed Val’s scar. “Let me clean this blood off you, then…”
Val took his hand, brushed his knuckles with warm lips. “Then what, Harley? Don’t think you have to do anything. I do believe we are mates, and I’m sorry you got a damaged one—”
“Stop that,” Harley sniped, tugging Val’s ear in reprimand. Val gave him a startled look and sputtered as Harley talked on. “No. You don’t get to insult yourself any more than I do. Yeah, we both have wounds, but that doesn’t mean we’re damaged. We’re just…altered, maybe.” He was never going to win any prizes for talking, that was for sure.
“Altered.” Val seemed to consider that for a moment then he snickered. “You know that’s another way of saying a dog or cat is neutered or spayed, right? I don’t want to be altered.”
Harley clenched his thighs as his nuts tried to crawl up inside his body. “No shit. I mean—”
“I know what you meant, and I get it.” Val eased himself up gingerly. Harley hovered and tried not to be obvious about it. “But, I do mean it about us not having to do anything. I’m not sure I could do a lot just now, except lay there.” Val’s eye widened and he flushed from his forehead to his neck. “Uh.”
Harley, a strict bottom, suddenly began thinking he shouldn’t be so set in his ways. He had to work through a few things before he would be comfortable being fucked, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try something new, did it?
“You want me to fuck you?” he asked for clarification, because Val sure seemed nervous all of the sudden.
Val shifted his weight, grimacing when he put too much on his left leg. “Uhm. I think so?”
“You think so?” God, the man was just kind of adorable, especially when he chewed on his lip like that.
Val nodded.
Harley didn’t know whether to shout with joy or tremble with fear. He’d never once fucked anyone.
Chapter Nine
Val’s world had been turned on end, or rolled over, turned on its side—he didn’t have enough clichés to toss around. He’d gone from moving away from his pack under order from his Alpha Anax to finding out the man he was supposed to guard unobtrusively was most likely his mate. Not to mention he’d blown Harley, and fought another shifter—“Shit!”
“What?” Harley asked as he jumped back like Val had poked him. “We don’t have to do that. And I told you, I haven’t exactly been safe, or I don’t know if I have been. I planned to get tested tomorrow.”
“It’s not that,” Val said as he waved a hand in the air. “I got this,” he touched the knot on his head, “when the shifter we saw attacked me. He’s huge, and I don’t know him, and he seemed, I don’t know, odd. Odder than we usually are,” he corrected quickly, because Harley probably already thought he was off his damn rocker.
“I came back because I didn’t want you facing him alone.” Harley came closer until he was standing toe to toe with Val. “Not because I think you’re weak or anything, but because I’ve seen how vicious shifters—some shifters, I mean—can be. And that scared me. I didn’t want you hurt, and you got hurt anyway.”
“Not bad,” Val murmured, touched by Harley’s concern. “It’s probably down to a little bump now. The thing is, he can scent me, I’m sure, and he was looking for you, I think. He said some weird shit, I can’t remember exactly. I think the hit to my head rattled my cage more than I first suspected it did.”
“If he finds me, he’ll find us, and we won’t let him hurt either one of us, okay?” Harley said fiercely.
He made it sound so simple, but Val was still worried. That shifter had been damned big and strong. “Maybe you should start carrying a gun. Would you do that?”
“No,” Harley answered immediately. “No. I won’t carry a gun. Maybe a stun gun or something like that. I’d be more likely to shoot myself with a gun, I’d be so nervous.”
“Okay. Okay.” Val made a mental note to call and talk to Alex, the leader of Marcus’ guards. Unless Alex had gone off with Marcus and Nathan, then he’d talk to whoever was left in charge and ask about what options he had excluding guns without explaining why he needed to know.
“My place has a better door, and more locks.”
Val canted his head at Harley’s almost timid admission. Then he remembered, Harley had been abducted out of his apartment. What had happened in there before that? He believed Harley when he said he hadn’t been raped exactly, but Dobson had violated him, in many ways, including making him fear his own home.
“I don’t like being there at night, because that’s when it happened. I thought Dobson was just a one-off and when we got to my place, it was bad.” Harley looked at the wall, as if he could see into his apartment on the other side. “He put his hand here,” he touched his throat, “and choked me. Not fast. Just enough pressure to slowly suffocate me. To make sure I had a while to feel the sheer terror of knowing I was going to die. That’s what always got that sick fucker off, I think. Seeing that kind of fear in others.”
“We can stay here.” Val cautiously stepped around Harley, then stood behind him so he could link his arms around Harley’s waist and pull him back against him.
“No. I’m really tired of being afraid. I’m afraid of too many things, and I don’t want to be. Help me,” he urged, craning his neck and staring up at Val. “Help me to remember who I was before. Help me be someone better.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility, but I accept,” Val said, and he knew then that Harley was indeed his mate. His wolf needed to wake the fuck up, but maybe it was better this way. Fate worked in ways shifters like him seldom understood, but if he’d been at full strength, his wolf strong in him
, who was to say he’d be capable of exercising the patience Harley needed? Not that he’d hurt Harley, but his wolf would be pushing hard for mating, for claiming, for biting and marking and fucking hard and rough. Val wanted Harley, he wanted him badly, but his ability to reason wasn’t being impinged on by the ravaging lust of his beast. He could be patient, and not push, and even do something he’d never done before like let Harley fuck him.
Val was kind of scared about that, but he wanted to give Harley something, some way of being close without forcing Harley to offer himself before he was ready to. Val was scarred physically, but not sexually, like Harley was, and they were both emotional basket cases, but together they would work it out. That was what mates did.
Val stopped nuzzling Harley’s hair. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing, he just sought Harley’s scent, his touch. “We’ll do what you want to do. Nothing more.”
Harley hummed and rubbed against him. “I liked you doing that, nosing my hair, kissing my temple and stuff. It felt good. But, I want more, and I want to have a steel door between us and the world, and three deadbolts, and maybe not have to worry about a hundred boxes and where your towels are. Still need to clean the blood off you.”
“Well, you have several valid points,” Val admitted. He hadn’t thought of those things. “You mentioned that you hadn’t been safe. You need to know that as a shifter, I can’t contract any communicable disease, but you still have to get checked out, Harley. I don’t know if turning you would cure any of the human illnesses like herpes or HIV, or if it’d make them worse or—”
“I don’t want to be turned, not if it means biting each other’s dick when we come. No. No fucking way,” Harley said heatedly. “That’s just messed up, dude.”
“There are other ways.” He wasn’t supposed to know of them, but he did. He knew Marcus had turned Gabe for Mika through a blood ritual of some sort that hadn’t required Marcus to fuck Gabe. Gabe, a human, was also Marcus’ twin brother’s friend, as was Mika. Val wasn’t sure how it’d happened, but he knew it had. Shifters could be the biggest gossips. He’d beg Marcus to change Harley if necessary. If Harley wanted to be a shifter. Val hoped he would, but pushing was something he refused to do.
Bailey Bradford - Southwestern Shifters 06 - Reverence Page 11