“Who said I was interested in him?”
Craig’s mouth popped open. Thomas couldn’t be saying what Craig though he was saying, right? “What?”
Thomas gave Craig a sly grin and Craig could have sworn the man actually winked at him, but the flicker of the light coming from the TV wasn’t enough for him to be a hundred percent positive.
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?” Craig didn’t even know what they were talking about anymore. His mind was still stuck on the hint Thomas had just given him, wondering if he’d heard it right or if he was just deceiving himself. Not that he wanted Thomas that way. Really.
“For talking with Elias. I’ve been having a hard time lately, and I know he didn’t take it well. I wasn’t there for him when I should have been, and I’m glad he could open up to you, at least.”
Craig’s eyebrows rose. If Thomas weren’t right in front of him, he would have thought he was talking with a completely different man. The man wasn’t showing any traces of his earlier anger, and he had opened up to Craig even if he didn’t know him. Could what he’d said before be true?
Craig let his eyes run along Thomas’s body. He’d already seen the man at the small gathering the day before, but what with the way he’d acted, Craig hadn’t really taken him in consideration for anything more than a fight. Now, though, his stomach was doing flips in his belly at the images running through his mind.
He could imagine all too well how Thomas’s pale hands would look on his own tanned skin, how rough and strong they would be as they touched him.
Craig shivered, hoping Thomas hadn’t noticed the reaction he was having. Even if Thomas had been coming on to him, it didn’t mean Craig had to fall in the man’s bed, especially not after the way Thomas had talked to Jago and his fucked-up behavior. If Thomas really wanted Craig, he was going to have to ask—only then would Craig think about it. Yeah, right.
“So, did you talk with Elias?”
“Yeah, and with Laura.” Craig gave Thomas a confused frown. “My wife. Well, ex-wife I guess.”
Thomas sighed and leaned back into the couch. One of his hands rose and tweaked at his ridiculous mustache and Craig could see it was an unconscious gesture. Thomas looked tired and older than he had before, and Craig wanted nothing more than to comfort the shifter in some way and make his worries go away.
Craig looked at his hovering hand as if it wasn’t his. What was he thinking? Had he really been about to hug Thomas? That would probably end up with Thomas pounding his ass into the ground, and not in a good way, and Craig couldn’t do the tests Kameron required him to do with broken limbs.
He let his hand fall back on his leg, but Thomas had noticed the motion and turned to look at him. Their gazes locked and a spark of desire ran along Craig’s spine, making his skin tingle with the need for Thomas to touch him.
He didn’t move when Thomas turned on his side, nor when the man slowly leaned toward Craig, his intention clear. Craig’s brain was screaming at him to stop Thomas, to find out what the man wanted from him before Craig let him do anything, to be sure Thomas really was separating from his wife, but Craig couldn’t seem to be able to actually move away.
Thomas was so close that Craig could now see just how blown his pupils already were, and they hadn’t even kissed yet. Instead of moving away, he leaned toward the wolf shifter, stopping only a few inches before they touched. He was going to wait for Thomas to make the last move, just in case the man changed his mind.
Thomas didn’t.
He moved in, closing the small distance between them, and pressed their lips together.
* * * *
Thomas was elated that Craig had allowed him to kiss him. It was only a press of the lips, because he was scared to death to push too much and make Craig run away. The man didn’t even know Thomas was gay, and he also had just admitted he was married with a woman, so Thomas was conscious that Craig had more reasons to push him away than to encourage him to continue.
It looked like the bond between them was already at work, though, because Craig didn’t try to distance himself, not even when Thomas moved back a little to look at him before kissing him again. If anything, Craig leaned even more into Thomas and Thomas startled when he felt two warm hands landing on his hips. It was enough to make him gasp, and Craig had no problems taking advantage of it.
He pushed his tongue into Thomas’s mouth and Thomas went from being the aggressor to submitting to Craig’s mouth. Kissing a man was confusing, incredible, and so very different from kissing Laura, or maybe it was because Craig was Thomas’s mate. It was harder and more demanding, but Thomas didn’t really care what exactly made the difference—he just knew he loved it and wanted more. He was just scared to move, scared to send Craig running.
Their lips remained together for what seemed both a long and short time, but Thomas could feel Craig slowly withdrawing. He wanted nothing more than to continue, but he also knew they needed to talk, although he didn’t know if he wanted Craig to know they were mates yet. It made Thomas feel strangely vulnerable, and he wasn’t sure he would like the power Craig would have over him if he knew.
Craig moved away, but one of his hands remained on Thomas’s hip. Maybe he didn’t want to run away after all.
“So, what brought this on?”
Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it back. He wasn’t sure how to answer the question, but he had to. “The reason why I...” He swallowed, the sound loud even under the noises coming from the TV. “I told Laura something I should have told her years ago. That’s why we decided to go our own ways.”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with you kissing me.”
“Not exactly.” It was on Thomas’s lips, the want to tell Craig they belonged together, but he couldn’t seem to make the words leave him mouth. “I’m gay.”
Craig chuckled and the warmth that had been on Thomas’s hip disappeared. He longed for his mate’s hands to go back where they had been, to feel more of them, possibly under his clothes, but he was skating on thin ice at the moment. He couldn’t tell Craig they were mates because he knew the man would think he was the reason Thomas had finally admitted the truth, and he might not want Thomas after that.
“How long have you known? That’s why you’ve been acting weird lately, right? Because you realized you were gay?”
Thomas frowned. “What do you know about how I’ve been acting?”
Craig’s left eyebrow rose. “What, you think I don’t talk with the other pack members? Not only has Kameron told me you’ve been a dick for the last six months or so, but Zach, Duncan and a whole lot of other people backed his story, not that I thought he was lying. I saw what a bitch you can be the other day, remember?”
Anger flooded Thomas’s mind. Who was Craig to tell him he had been acting like a bitch? Who was he to judge Thomas when he didn’t even know the entire story? Mate or not, no one had the right to do that. No one knew how Thomas had had to hide who he was for the past twenty years, how he’d had to build a shell around himself to survive it, to not lose the true self he was desperate to not show.
“You have no right to judge me.” Thomas hands balled up as he desperately tried to stop himself from doing something he would regret. Not hurting Craig, no, but yell at him, possibly break something. The last thing he needed was having Kameron on his ass for punching a hole in his coffee table.
“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t know if that’s what’s been going on with you, but even I can see that you neglected your son.”
It was too much for Thomas. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck gives you the right to tell me I’m not a good father?”
He was on his feet faster than he would have thought possible, already heading to the door. He couldn’t afford to stay in the same room as Craig, not when his mate was basically telling him he was a shitty father and an even worse man.
“Hey, I’m sorry. That’s no
t what I was saying. There’s no need to have your panties in a bunch, you know. It’s not like my opinion counts anyway.”
Thomas closed his eyes and kept his back to Craig, unsure if he had the willpower to stay away if he looked at him. Even though he wanted nothing more than to run, his wolf was whimpering for their mate. It wanted to say yes to whatever Craig was saying just to have him agree to be with them, but while Thomas might have fallen low in the past months, he wasn’t so low that he would beg his mate to be with him.
Still. He had to know.
“So the kiss didn’t mean anything to you?”
“What should it have meant? You want to get laid, I want to get laid. It’s not like you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”
Thomas’s wolf whimpered at the rejection, and while Thomas wanted to convince himself that Craig was doing it because he didn’t know they were mates, he wasn’t able to fool himself. If Craig didn’t like him even with the bond between them, what were the odds that he would be happy to find out about it? What were the odds that he would want Thomas?
“Right. Of course.”
“Thomas? I’m not trying to be a dick.”
“Of course you’re not. I have to get going.”
Thomas didn’t wait for Craig to talk again. He wasn’t going to wait to have his mate reject him even more fully than he already had—he wasn’t sure his heart could take it, not after the day he’d already had. After talking with Laura, he’d had to explain to Carissa that he wasn’t going to live with them anymore—he hadn’t told her why yet, though, and he wasn’t sure he had managed to convince her it was going to be permanent. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to sleep in the alpha’s house in the past months, and he suspected that his daughter thought he would go back home the following day. Fat chance of that.
Thomas looked at the chart on the wall to see which rooms were currently empty. He wouldn’t have had to do that a few days ago, but the shifters Zach and Craig had brought home were still living there, and Thomas didn’t want to barge in on them, even if they were sleeping.
He grimaced at the chart. Just his luck that all the rooms were occupied and full, and of course, the only free spot appeared to be in the room Craig slept in. Now Thomas had to decide if he’d rather sleep with the man who just rejected him or shift and sleep on the porch or in the woods. He honestly didn’t know which option would be the worse, but Craig decided for him when Thomas heard him turn the TV off and head his way.
He hurried to the back door and opened it as silently as he could, slipping outside. At least it was the middle of summer and he wouldn’t freeze his balls off.
Chapter Four
Craig wasn’t sure what exactly had happened the night before, but he knew he felt guilty about it, and that fact made everything even more complicated. Why would Thomas be upset that Craig had taken their kiss not that seriously? And why did Craig care about how Thomas had taken it?
The thing was, Craig had acted like he didn’t care, but nothing could have been further from the truth. When Thomas’s lips had touched his, his heart had rocketed as if it had been about to jump out of his chest. His hands had trembled and his brain had turned off, leaving his heart and his dick in the lead.
It definitely hadn’t been a normal reaction to a simple kiss, not even if Thomas was the sexiest man Craig had ever seen or touched. Craig had waved the kiss away, thinking Thomas was just experimenting or something like that, but the man really had seemed to take his dismissal too hard for it to be just that.
“You’re thinking awfully hard. I think I can see smoke coming out from your ears.”
Craig smiled at Jago, but his mind was still on Thomas, and what he now thought of as The Kiss. He groaned and thumped his forehead on the kitchen table. Great, now Craig was thinking like a thirteen-year-old girl having her first crush.
“Craig? You do know I’m still here, right? I mean, I know I’m not exactly your type, but I’m still smoking-hot and it doesn’t do any good to my ego to be dismissed that way.”
Maybe that was why Thomas had looked so bad. Maybe Craig had crushed his ego. Maybe he should have swooned and said it had been the best kiss of his life, especially since it probably had been. Did he really want to be only an ego-stroker for Thomas, though? Wait, was he really thinking about being anything for Thomas?
“Craig! What the fuck?”
Craig’s eyes snapped open when someone smacked him on the back of the head. He looked up only to find a scowling Jago looking down at him.
“Remember me? Jago? Elephant shrew shifter you saved from the bad guys?”
“Hi, Jago. What brings you here in this fine morning?”
Jago stuck his tongue out and held his mug up. “Coffee, actually, and I wanted to chat with a friend, not that you look up for that.”
Craig grimaced. He knew Jago hadn’t talked much with the other shifters, neither the ones Craig had saved along with him nor the wolf ones. He had no problems talking with Craig, though, for reasons Craig didn’t really understand. He would have thought Jago wouldn’t even want to look at him, with him being an ex-guard for the people who had imprisoned him.
“Hey, what did they do to you in the lab?” Jago’s eyes widened and Craig snapped his mouth shut. “Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to be so, so—”
“Insensitive? Rude?”
“Yeah, both.”
“I don’t actually have a problem with telling you, it’s just weird that you’re asking right now. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Me either, to be honest. I was just thinking that you don’t seem to talk much with the other shifters, while you always do with me even if I was a guard for the company, and I thought it was weird, that’s all.”
Jago looked at Craig as if he was stupid. “I actually do talk with the other shifters. I’d just rather talk with you because I like you more.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Anyway, if you really want to know what happened in the lab—”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Jago waved Craig away. “Nothing happened, well, nothing much, although I’m afraid I might have kids somewhere and I don’t know about them.”
Craig gaped. “What?”
“That’s what they did, at least in our lab. Why do you think all the rare shifters were in the same one? They wanted to make their own baby shifters, probably to sell them or something. I guess white lions and pangolins are quite the attraction in the States.”
“Kids? You have kids? They made you...”
Jago snickered. “They tried to, but as you know, the lady was missing some vital parts for me to like her.”
“But did she get pregnant?”
“Nope. From what Kameron told me, they already looked into the shifters that you couldn’t take with you, and the only other Elephant shrew there wasn’t pregnant.”
Craig could see that while Jago was being very light about it, he looked relieved. “What, you didn’t want little Jagos running around?”
“God, no. I don’t want kids, ever. Don’t get me wrong, if they had managed to get the girl pregnant, I would have taken care of the child, but I have no intentions of being a father otherwise.”
Zach entered the kitchen and plopped down on the chair opposite Craig. “Do you know where Thomas is? His son called, but we can’t find him.”
“Isn’t he in one of the free rooms?”
“What free rooms? They’re all full at the moment, except for yours.”
Craig frowned. “He came by yesterday, told me he—well, he told me something and said he was going to sleep in one of the free rooms. I assumed he’d found one and was still there.”
“Nope.”
“You don’t look worried.”
“I’m not, not yet at least. If we still don’t have news by, let’s say... tonight, then we’ll start worrying. It’s not unheard off for a shifter to need to take a run in his animal form.�
� He took a sip from the mug Jago had just place in front of him and closed his eyes, sighing in pleasure. “Anyway. Thomas didn’t pick a fight with you last night, did he?”
Craig suddenly found the scarred wood of the table very interesting. “Uh, no, I wouldn’t say we fought.”
Zach didn’t seem to notice something was off, but Jago gave a perplexed glance. The last thing Craig wanted or needed was someone sticking his nose into what had happened the night before, so he just ignored him, but Jago wasn’t one to let him do it. Jago narrowed his eyes and pointed to his chest, then to Craig’s, and mouthed later.
Craig rolled his eyes and turned back to Zach, who was still talking. “—is today fine with you?”
“Uh, what? Sorry, I got a little... distracted.”
Zach chuckled. “Yeah, okay. I asked you if today would be fine to have that test we talked about yesterday. Nick happens to have a free day, although Duncan is running patrol, but we’re really interested in having Nick and Maxine testing you anyway, so it’s fine for us.”
“Oh, sure. It’s not like I have anything else to do at the moment.”
“All righty, then. I’ll call them back and tell them you’re okay with them. We’ll meet you in the gym at four PM. Is that okay with you?”
Damn, Craig had hoped he would be able to do it right away just to get out of Jago’s claws. “Perfect.”
He stood up and quickly rinsed his mug while Jago and Zach chatted behind him. If he played his cards right, he could be out of the house before the two stopped talking and he wouldn’t have to lie to Jago about what had happened the night before.
Craig didn’t want to tell anyone about it, especially not Jago, not before he had time to understand why he was acting like a teenager in love for the first time.
* * * *
“And who’s the pretty doggy here?”
Thomas opened an eye, then blinked. It took him a moment to remember why he wasn’t in his bed but rather in the middle of the woods, but the moment he did he wished he hadn’t. The memories of the conversation he’d had with Craig the night before popped in his mind, and they didn’t help his mood to get better.
Craig [Gilham Pack: 3] Page 6