“You’re telling me to mind my own business.”
“Yeah. I am. If you don’t like it, then get out of my house.”
He liked to be involved, to make himself be heard. He wanted others to know his opinion and to respect him.
But maybe he had been wrong to do so. If this was how Moody felt during a very inconsequential conversation, he couldn’t even imagine what his unwelcome opinions might have done to others who were sharing something more serious.
He wanted to make others feel like he knew everything, that his opinion was worth something, but what if he had been wrong? What if all those other topics had been scones, something he couldn’t understand but passed judgment upon anyway?
It was such a stupid thing, and yet it all made so much more sense to him now.
He couldn’t understand Robbie, couldn’t see things as the omega did. And had he ever tried?
No.
But he had made observations anyway. He had called Robbie lumpy, when in fact he was probably exactly the way he was meant to be.
“Okay,” he said.
Moody folded his arms, his posture closing off. For some reason, that hurt Ulysses to see and feel. This was what the old Moody would have done, because he was dealing with Ulysses, who hadn’t changed a bit since they last talked to each other.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… okay. I see your point.”
Moody blinked and then shook his head, dripping his arms down by his side again. “I never thought I’d hear that, coming from you. But, good. I’m glad. Now, Charlie has maybe another 20 minutes left in her nap before she’s going to start waking up. She’s like clockwork. And she’s been teething.”
I understand all the bite marks now.
“And we’re going to have a playdate with Cain and Knox shortly after that.”
Cain was the second-in-command from Shadow Claws, Destiny’s right-hand man. He was a large part of the reason that the dynamic between Shadow Claws and Lethal Freedom started to change, because he had fallen in love with a member of the enemy named Ralphie. The two of them had had a pup, a little boy named Knox.
“Isn’t Knox a toddler now?”
“Yeah,” Moody said. ‘Pretty much. But he likes to hang around with Charlie. Thinks he’s so grown up compared to the baby. But all that means you have about 20 minutes to talk to me about whatever it is that made you come here.”
Ulysses pulled in a deep breath. This was it. No holding back now, not after everything he had already gone through after entering this house. “I got in a wreck on my motorcycle. Totaled it. Totaled me. My ex saw it happen and he’s been helping me. I got mad at him for no reason and felt bad about it. He’s a touchy-feely kind of guy and I thought, to make it up to him, I’d do something touchy-feely in return.”
Moody waited, his eyebrows slightly raised. He clearly had no idea where this was going.
Ulysses pushed on, feeling more and more like he wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. “I didn’t know what to do. And the only person I could think of who might be able to help me was, uh, you. You’re in touch with your emotions, I guess, is what I’m trying to say. I wanted to see if you could… teach me.”
The corner of Moody’s mouth curved upward at a sharp angle. His eyes glittered with amusement again. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
“I want you to teach me how to write a poem.” Now that the hardest words were out, he felt much better. The suspense was over. What would happen now was going to happen and there was nothing he could do but go with it. “I know I’m not going to be able to write anything good, and I could do it anyway without your help. He’d still like it. But I want him to know that I really, really tried as hard as I could.”
“Did you come here because I just got picked up by two publishers?”
“What? No. I didn’t know that.” Ulysses paused, then reached for something else to say. He had no idea about what being published entailed, or anything like that. So, he could either say nothing, or he could go along with it. “Congratulations.”
“That’s not really important, I just wanted to gloat about it because you used to make fun of me for it.” Moody smiled again, and this time it was just as perfect as before. “Okay. Let’s talk. I’ll tell you what I think, but I won’t help you write it. The words have to be yours.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re going to try a scone.”
Ulysses felt himself start to smile and this time it wasn’t forced at all. “I don’t say no to food.”
Moody fetched several pieces of paper from somewhere else in the house, upon which were several of his poems that were going to be published in the middle of next year. He sat them down at the kitchen table and they talked for nearly half an hour.
Well, Moody talked. Ulysses ate his scone and listened. When the conversation ended, he had formed two very distinct opinions.
The first was that Moody glowed when he talked about what he loved.
And the second was that scones were the shit.
Only when the baby started to fuss loudly enough to be heard all the way in the kitchen did they realize how much time had gone by. Moody looked up at the clock on the wall and then pushed back in his chair, sighing a little. “I think we’re done here, Ulysses.”
“Can you just call me Lee?”
“What, do you think we’re friends now?” Moody asked, gathering up his papers and tapping them against the table so they stacked neatly.
Ulysses considered the question and then he shook his head. It was getting easier now to admit that he didn’t know things, which was not something he would have ever thought possible. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
Moody paused, then also shook his head. “Maybe not friends but we had a pretty nice conversation together without any arguing or insults. If only you could be a little more like that all the time, then I could see us getting along better.”
For some reason, this made Ulysses’ heart skip a couple of beats. He didn’t think he had ever had someone he just got along with before. He either liked someone or he despised them, and even when he liked someone, he didn’t want them to get the impression he was weak or anything. This rapport he’d built with Moody was something entirely new.
“I think I’d be fine with that.”
“Good,” Moody said. “Because I’d be interested in knowing how your ex likes your poem. Stop by again sometime and let me know, okay? Just know that if it’s a failure, I blame you and not my teaching skills.”
“I’d blame me, too,” Ulysses agreed, heading over to the front door with Moody in his wake. He inspected his boots as he put them on, frowning a little. Maybe they were a bit grosser than he previously thought.
Maybe talking to Moody like this had opened his eyes more than he even knew.
He opened the door and started to step outside, then paused with one foot still hanging in the air. “Hey, Moody?”
“Yeah?”
“That was a pretty damn good scone.”
Then, he left without waiting for a response. His heart was jumping a little bit in his chest again, nerves getting to him about something that really should have been no big deal to say.
He felt Moody’s smile follow him all the way across the yard and down the street, to the bus stop where he gratefully sat down to wait. He picked up a newspaper that someone must have been reading before tossing it down on the bench when their bus arrived. The wrinkled pages were opened to an article about yet another stolen car, along with statements from a police officer on how to prevent such things from happening.
Ulysses looked at the words but he wasn’t really paying much attention to them. His mind was whirling, working over the new information shoved into it, testing out ideas for the poem he would give to Robbie.
7
Robbie looked down at the piece of paper in his hand, not really sure what he was supposed to make of it. He looked back up at Ulysses, who was standing in
front of him on his porch with a hopeful glimmer in his eyes. Something about the alpha seemed different, softer around the edges. It wasn’t really his appearance so much as it was just a general sense of his demeanor and purpose, which was extremely interesting.
It was only a few days since they had last seen each other, yet the way Ulysses looked made it feel like a lifetime.
The sky outside was just turning from sunset to dusk, the tropical colors dulling to deeper shades of gold and that interesting dark green which can only be found in the sky above an evening ocean. The air which filtered in front the outside was at once chilled and damp, perfumed with a salt tang. Robbie had just been settling in to listen to the news, which was a guilty pastime of his. He hated much of what was shown, but tuning in every so often gave him a very real sense of his own luck and privilege. He didn’t have to deal with so many of the horrible things that were happening in the world, putting his troubles into perspective. A bad day at work seemed just a little insignificant when you were hearing about the latest death toll of some attack in Israel, or Syria, or wherever it was the media was focused upon that day.
There had been a knock at his door, startling him so much he almost dropped his mug of tea. He had gone over to open the door, without checking out the peephole. He saw Ulysses and before he could say a word, Ulysses had thrust this paper into his hand with a gruff, “Here.”
Now, Robbie asked, “What is this?”
Ulysses shuffled his feet in the manner of someone who has been caught and will now have to explain something he never imagined he would need to. As Robbie’s daycare dealt mostly with children between 2 and 10 years of age, he was quite used to seeing this.
Ulysses cleared his throat, then visibly gathered his courage. There was something very, very endearing about this. All the things Ulysses had done when they were together, he did them without so much as a thought or a care. Now he was clearly shy, or at the very least uncertain.
“I’m aware that I hurt your feelings, last time we talked,” Ulysses said. “I acted without thinking, and it’s been brought to my attention recently that I need to do more of that. Thinking, I mean. I need to think more.” He cleared his throat again, then pushed on. “I also realized I never paid much attention to you, the way I should have. I didn’t try to understand you. I just… Anyway, I wanted to make it up to you in a way that you would probably appreciate. So, I wrote that for you.” He nodded to the paper that Robbie held. “It’s a poem. Please read it? And if afterwards you still hate me, I’ll leave and never bother you again.”
This short speech, delivered so hesitantly and yet so truthfully, completely went against everything Robbie knew about Ulysses. The alpha must have really had a change of heart or done some soul-searching, had his eyes opened in some way to be able to see things like this.
The things Ulysses said were more than enough. Robbie already forgave him, would have forgiven him in a heartbeat even if all the other man had said was that he was sorry. Such things didn’t come easy to him, so the amount of effort he was making was huge.
But to go out of his way to write an entire poem?
Robbie felt tears prickle in his eyes, a tremulous smile curving on his lips. His heart fluttered and warmth filled him entirely, from top to bottom.
Lifting up the paper, he looked at the poem. The entire thing had been written painstakingly by hand, the letters blocky and over-accentuated in the way they will be when someone with terrible penmanship is trying to be legible.
The title was “Perfect The Way You Are.”
The poem was written free-form style, with no real set pattern and only a couple rhyming words. It seemed to be an extended and clunky metaphor, comparing Robbie to a rustic scone. The words “buttery” and “lumpy” made an appearance within the lines, odd choices which seemed to have been chosen with only the purest of intents.
Objectively, it was a terrible poem, clearly written by an amateur who had no idea what he was doing.
And Robbie loved it.
Ulysses looked so hopeful when Robbie looked up from his poem, that brusque and careless mask he wore having been shoved to the side to reveal an earnest man who had full faith in every word he had written. His hazel eyes were wide, reflecting back the living room lights so that the hidden colors in the depths of his irises were revealed. Green, brown, blue and gold, a kaleidoscope of a gaze.
An urge came over Robbie, so suddenly and so powerfully he had no way of stopping himself from doing what he was about to do. He stepped forward and reached out with both arms, wrapping them around Ulysses’ shoulders and hugging him tightly.
Ulysses stiffened, and then his body relaxed. He lifted his own arms, though they stuck out awkwardly behind Robbie, like he wanted to do something with them and wasn’t sure exactly how to go about it.
Robbie whispered into his ear, “I never hated you. How could I?”
Ulysses shuddered a little, then finally folded his arms around Robbie’s waist and held onto him. “Probably pretty easily,” he said, his chest heaving from the force it took to get the words out. His breath caressed Robbie’s shoulder, stirred his hair around like a summer breeze. “I’m just a big jerk.”
There was no real response that could be made after that. The truth was that yes, Ulysses had often been a jerk. He would probably continue to be jerkish for a very long time, and it would be a wonder if he ever truly managed to knock that chip off his shoulder. Still, if Robbie could see this side of him every once in a while, he thought the struggle would be worth it.
This didn’t seem like a fluke, as it would have been in the past. This wasn’t Ulysses trying to atone for one mistake so he could earn back favor. This was genuine, true feelings out in the open.
Leaning back a little bit, Robbie looked deep into the other man’s eyes. They were so close. Their bodies lined up so perfectly. Their hips pressed together, their groins lining up. Their stomachs were touching and so were their chests, to the point where Robbie could feel Ulysses’ ribs move when he breathed. He could feel the warmth of Ulysses’ breath, taste the bitterness of strong coffee. Something was happening inside him, something he knew well but had never before acted upon because it hadn’t seemed proper just yet. It wasn’t like he’d been waiting for marriage, but he had always felt like he and Ulysses had never been in the right place to take that step.
Maybe, like Ulysses, he had been a little too stuck in his own ways to be able to look at things from the outside.
“I love my poem,” Robbie whispered. Leaning forward, he gently pressed his lips to the line of stubble on Ulysses’ cheek. The rough texture against his sensitive skin was beyond exciting and he trembled, feeling a rush of heat and tingled flow down his entire body to his groin. His dick stirred around, as if trying to seek out the source of the pleasure, and then pressed forward to Ulysses.
He felt something hard forming in front of him, pressing against his own erection, and he knew Ulysses was feeling the same way.
Suddenly, Ulysses turned his head and caught his lips and they pressed even more firmly together, trying to devour the other’s mouth. Their tongues danced between them, their lips straining together, settling in until they were breathing the same air.
Powerful fingers tangled in Robbie’s hair, stroking up from the nape of his neck to the back of his skull. Steady pressure pulled him in even closer and he was only too glad to obey, his hips starting to sway in a circular motion as his desires took over. He ground himself against Ulysses, feeling shudders of pleasure rock through his body.
Ulysses dropped his hands down from Robbie’s hair, then gripped his ass.
Robbie let out a startled yelp and practically hit the ceiling, he jumped so hard. Surprise quickly fell away, leaving only a rush of overwhelming tingles in its wake. He stuck out his ass and wiggled, pressing himself more against those demanding, grasping hands.
His fingers moving, Ulysses seemed to know exactly where Robbie desired to be touched. His fingers massage
d roughly, dimpling Robbie’s skin through the material of the sweatpants he only ever wore when he was certain he was in for the night. They started high, near the waistband, before wandering almost all the way down to directly between his inner thighs, pressing against that sensitive patch of skin halfway between his sensitive entrance and his hard erection. Then, the fingers wandered closer to the center, meeting and then sliding back so they pressed all the way between Robbie’s ass cheeks.
He rocked and moaned with the attention given to him, feeling his body respond of its own accord as Ulysses raised fire with his touch, stoking the flame deep inside Robbie.
Had he thought he knew this sensation well? He was realizing now he had only glimpsed the beginning. He knew nothing. This was unexplored territory and by god, he wanted to explore.
Clutching at Ulysses’ shoulders, Robbie whispered, “Come inside?”
“The house or you?” Ulysses growled, pushing against him so they stumbled back into the foyer. The door, which he had more or less been holding open with his shoulder, slipped shut securely in its frame.
Those words alone were enough to cause the fire inside Robbie to burn even hotter, making him feel even deeper and more intense things. His dick strained so hard at the front of his pants that he thought the seams might give.
Closing his eyes, Robbie whispered, “Both.”
He gave himself up, let all thoughts cease to be. He was questioning nothing, simply existing, simply enjoying.
Ulysses drew back and then looked around the house for a moment, seeming to take it all in as he considered his next move. Robbie kept all of his attention focused upon the other man, completely absorbed in him. He was so proud of the home he had made, the way all the décor slid so seamlessly together from one room to the next. It was a cozy and inviting place, one where he had hosted several get-togethers, and spent many hours on the phone or computer, arranging things for his daycares.
Right this minute, he couldn’t have given a fuck about any of it. All of his attention was focused completely upon Ulysses, the way he moved, the forms of his muscles, the texture of his skin. Even though the alpha had drawn back, their groins were still pressed together and Ulysses’ hands were still on his ass. Robbie was still grinding, still writhing, still straining towards the completion of his pleasure.
Taming The Alpha: A Wolf Shifter Mpreg Romance (Savage Love Book 3) Page 10