by Kathy Lyons
How he’d longed to be right where he was now, settled in his suite in a mostly silent mansion. He could read, relax, surf the internet, or even stream a Miami Heat basketball game. They might even be playing right now.
But he didn’t move from where he sat at his desk, staring out the window at a Michigan winter landscape—snow on the lawn, snow in the trees, snow drifting down prettily from a cloudy white sky. This was the perfect time for a pack run through the forest. The snow might bite a bit between the toes, especially when it was more ice than snow, but the rollicking good time more than made up for any discomfort.
Too bad he didn’t have a pack to chase snowflakes with.
Fucking A, he hated the silence.
As if in answer, he heard footsteps come down the hall. They were too heavy to be Captain M’s and too light to belong to Wiz. That meant it was a newbie who didn’t understand what it meant to come to his door. He already guessed it was Josh because no one else would dare, but whomever it was would learn the mistake. Nero readied a throwing knife.
No time like the present to make his point.
Knock, knock. “Nero? It’s me, Josh. We need to talk.”
Thunk.
Perfect throw, dead center. He knew that the point of his knife had shoved through the door to appear right next to where Josh had knocked. Take that, recruit.
Better yet, he heard the gasp.
“That’s emphatic,” Josh said through the door.
Take the hint. And just in case the guy didn’t, he threw another. Thunk. This time the point protruded right where Josh had knocked.
“That can’t be a werewolf skill. I’ll bet you learned it young. Cool.”
Nero frowned. Did he think this was a conversation? Apparently so, because he kept talking, proving he had a death wish.
“I’m coming in. We need to talk.”
Thunk. Thunk.
Two more knives right by the handle.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re big, bad, and surly. But I need my hands to do your research, so keep your pointy objects away. I’m coming in.”
There was a lock on his door, but Nero never used it. His knives were usually enough to keep people away, and if there was an emergency, he wanted his team to be able to run in. Clearly that was a policy he’d have to reevaluate. Because Josh turned the knob and opened the door, and Nero hadn’t the heart to stick him with either of the extra two knives he had at the ready. Of course, Josh had done the smart thing and stepped to the wall side of the door before opening it, so he wasn’t an easy target either.
Well, he’d never thought Josh was stupid. But then the guy just walked in and shut the door behind him.
“I could gut you in so many ways,” Nero growled.
Josh actually rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”
“I could!”
“I know you could! But I’m here to talk, so put away your big, bad wolf act and let’s talk, okay?”
“Go away. I’m watching a basketball game. And you need to figure out magic fire.” He flipped open his laptop as he turned his back on Josh. Why exactly he was being so surly, he wasn’t sure. Truthfully, he was grateful for the guy distracting him from his morbid thoughts, but he kept his jaw locked tight and his back aimed to the intrusion, steadily typing in what he needed to get to the streaming service.
Fuck. The Heat weren’t on. Bulls versus Cavaliers. Whatever. He folded his arms and pretended to watch. Meanwhile, all his senses were tuned behind him. Josh hadn’t said anything. Was he that scared? Good. Except the more the silence stretched on, the more Nero wanted to know what Josh was doing. Why wasn’t he being annoying and trying to get Nero to talk about his feelings or something? That’s what Captain M and Gelpack had both tried to do… which was why he’d taken out his throwing knives and had put more holes in his door.
Except Josh wasn’t talking. There was rustling and poking into things. He was sure of that, but the TV was loud enough that he couldn’t tell for sure.
He finally couldn’t take it anymore. Nero spun around in his seat to glare at Josh. Except the guy wasn’t where he expected him to be. He certainly wasn’t cowering like he should be. Instead, he was poking through the stack of books and magazines littering the floor all around the bed.
Nero’s suite was just like all the other bedrooms in this wing. He had one large room that allowed for a bed, a desk, and a closet, plus a bathroom. In his case, that meant a king-sized bed and a lot of floor space, because he didn’t really have anything else except for some clothes in his closet, a laptop on his desk, and reading material everywhere. He ought to get a bookcase. He kept intending to, but he wasn’t one to keep stuff around. Once he read something, it was in his brain, so he threw out the magazines or gave the books to the library. What remained all over his floor was stuff he intended to get to but hadn’t had the heart.
No need to read Car and Driver anymore because Pauly wasn’t around to discuss engine details. He’d learned cooking from Mother, and weird recipes weren’t fun without her to critique the disasters he created. Coffee’s passion had been sports, sports, and more sports. The Sports Illustrated was actually his subscription. Which left Cream’s true adventure addiction. They told each other tales of derring-do and tried to get the other to guess if it was true or false. At this moment, Cream was ahead, thirty-seven correct guesses to Nero’s thirty-five.
He’d never get the chance to catch up unless Josh figured out how to defeat magical fire. But what was the guy doing? Squatting down to inspect a long-buried Scientific American. Josh tilted his head as he opened it to the cover article and started singing softly that song from Sesame Street: “One of These Things.” Nero didn’t wait for the rest of the song. “You don’t know jack about what doesn’t belong in my room,” he snapped. “But I’ll tell you, okay? You. You don’t belong in here.”
Josh pursed his lips as he appeared to think. “You know about Savannah. You know she’s my best friend, but I don’t think you know how we got that way.” He plopped down on the floor next to the stack that had held the Scientific American and kept talking as if they were chatting over pizza and beer. “We’d been dating for a while, but it never quite clicked. I always held a piece of myself back from her. I knew I had to break it off, but I didn’t know how. We were in college, and I’d gone home for spring break, and that’d been a disaster. I came back angry and irrational, holed myself up in my room, and blew things up in a video game. So there I am, hating everyone and everything, and she comes in and sits on my bed.”
Nero sighed. He knew where this was going. The girl had been patient and eventually Josh spilled his guts and all was made better. “Some people actually prefer being alone,” Nero said.
“Yeah, I know. That’s me, most times. But she just sat there for like an hour. I ignored her because I was being childish, and then she got fed up.”
“Turn off your game?”
“Nope. She broke up with me. Said I sucked as a boyfriend and the sex was awful.” Josh winced at that, but he kept going. “Then she said it was time I understood exactly what she thought of me.” He blew out a breath. “And then she gave it to me with both barrels, holding nothing back. It took about two sentences.”
Nero couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy. He’d had a few exes give him the royal fuck off too. “Sorry. That must have sucked.”
“Nope. She was spot-on. She told me that I was running from my father’s tyranny and that I needed to grow a pair or I’d be in his shadow the rest of my life.” He shrugged. “There was more stuff, but that was the gist of it. It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time. We became best friends right then, way closer than we’d ever been when we were dating.”
Nero shrugged back. “And what does this have to do with me?”
Josh dropped the magazine on the floor, then hopped onto the bed, extending his long legs in front of him. The bastard looked like he was settling in for a long comfy chat, and Nero wanted to choke him for his audacity. B
ut he didn’t have the chance as Josh started talking again.
“The thing is, she split me wide open like a can opener. Told me things I didn’t want to see, much less deal with. Kind of like what you did to me yesterday.”
Oh shit. “We’re not going to be best friends,” Nero muttered, except the words came out more like a growl.
“Probably not,” he said, though his tone was a little too casual, especially with the shrug he threw in, as if he was disappointed at that but didn’t want to show it. “The thing is, you said exactly what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear it.” Then he gestured at Nero. “Sorry about your face.”
“It’s fixed.” He’d shifted early this morning and repaired the damage. Although he was still smarting from the chewing out Captain M had given him for forty-five minutes on how irresponsible it had been to risk his own health just so a recruit could get his fury on. She’d given him a choice then. He could talk to Gelpack about his feelings or he could go brood in his bedroom. Obviously he’d picked the latter.
“Thing is, I can’t help but think about something the captain said. She said you were so damned desperate to be punished.”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t—”
“I know. I think she’s wrong too.”
What?
“I mean, she has a point. Survivor’s guilt can lead to a twisted need for punishment. Makes sense.”
“Not for me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think too.” He stretched his arms out behind his head and leaned back. “You really don’t seem like a masochist to me.”
“Don’t go psychoanalyzing me. I’m likely to put a knife through your thigh and laugh while you try to learn how to shift without bleeding out.” He flashed an evil grin. “When you die, I’ll call it a training accident.”
Josh snorted. “Yeah, not scared. Now back to how the captain has you all wrong….” He dropped his hands down by his sides. “I’ve been reading your case files.”
“What the fuck were you—?”
“Research, remember?”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to be looking at!”
Josh flashed him a happy grin. “Well, without you to stop me, I looked at whatever I wanted to.” He sobered. “You were the alpha of the best Wulf, Inc. team. And like every good alpha, you spent all your time focused on the pack. Its needs, its lacks, its strengths.” He gestured around at all the reading material in the room. “Is any of that for you? What part in here is you and what part is all about the pack?”
None of it. It was all the pack. Even his interest in physics had started because Wiz liked to call them intellectual Neanderthals. No one else cared, but Nero didn’t like his team being deficient in anything. Plus, he had enjoyed learning about science in the purest form. Forget magic. That was just woo-woo shit that he left to the fairies. Even biology was messy in his mind. He was all about force, mass, gravity. Physics in its pure state. Astrophysics, when he could wrap his mind around it.
And chemistry too, though most of it was beyond what his high school class had taught him. Which brought him right back to the guy who was looking way too comfortable in his bed.
“Where is this going, Josh?”
“You’re not trying to get punished. I think you’re trying to be the captain who goes down with his ship.”
“Then I’m a little late. It already sank.” Liar, liar. The truth was that he still hoped to save his team. Hell, he planned on it.
“Yeah, that’s the problem. You’re a captain without a ship. Or an alpha without a pack. That’s why she assigned you to find the new recruits. She’s hoping you latch on to us and stop mourning them.”
Josh’s gaze landed on the stack of pictures Nero’d thrown in the far corner of the bedroom next to the bathroom. Framed images of his pack from barbecues to birthday parties. He hadn’t kept a lot of photos. He wasn’t snapping pictures with his phone every two minutes like Pauly, but he had a few. Except that everywhere he looked in his bedroom, in the mansion, even out in the woods, he remembered them.
So he’d thrown the pictures in the corner in an attempt to run from their accusing stares. He didn’t need to see their faces to remember that time was running out. That if he didn’t figure out an answer to magical fire, they really would die.
Seven weeks. That’s all the time he had to find an answer, and ten days of that were already gone. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t see a solution. Which meant it was all on the new recruits who—at the moment—didn’t know their noses from their tails.
And he didn’t need all those damned pictures reminding him of what he already knew.
“I won’t move on,” he rasped. “Not yet.” Because they weren’t completely dead yet. Not until his seven weeks were up. “And you need to—”
“Defeat a magical fire burst. I know. But sometimes not thinking about a problem is more helpful than the full-out attack. And I’m not going to go back to it until I say my piece to you.”
Nero surrendered to the inevitable. Josh wasn’t going back to science until he got this—whatever this was—off his mind. “Fine. Talk.”
“Captain M thinks you need to bond to us.”
“Not happening.” It couldn’t. Because every time he looked at them, he remembered his team. He saw Laddin and thought about how Cream had been the last to join their team, but he’d latched on to Coffee and they’d been inseparable afterward. He talked to Stratos and remembered that Mother had a mouth on her that could make Pauly blush. And that was saying something. Everything reminded him of the ones who had been his life for the past five years. How did he stop thinking about that? And how could a bunch of puny geeks push out feelings so strong that they were both the steel that threaded through his spine and the force that was going to break him into a thousand pieces?
They couldn’t. No one could. And it was unfair for Captain M to ask them to.
“I just got one question for you, and then I’ll leave you alone. Promise.”
“Then get on with it,” Nero growled.
“When we were on the couch. You know, when I needed to be….”
“Grounded back in your body?”
“Yeah. That.”
Nero arched a brow. “Yeah. What?”
“Did you need that as much as I did? Not like I did, obviously. You said you get grounded by eating.”
“I do.”
“But what we did. The touching. The caring. Did you need it too? Like dying of thirst need. Like you’d suffocate without it?”
“You’re mixing metaphors.”
“And you’re ducking the question.” He leaned forward, his body and his gaze suddenly intense. “Did you, Nero? Did you need it too?”
Nero felt his belly tighten as his entire body went still. He could lie. He knew he could and get away with it. He needed to keep the too-smart-for-his-own-good geek away from the inner workings of his mind. But he was so fucking tired of no one understanding what he was feeling. Josh was right. He didn’t want to be punished—he wanted his team back. He wanted to run in the woods with them as they tumbled into the stream. He wanted the camaraderie and the—
“Touching, Nero. Did you need to be touched too?”
“Yes.” A thousand fucking times, yes. But not in a pervy way. Not like he needed someone to jerk him off. He just wanted someone to be with him like his pack had been with him. “Sometimes,” he rasped, “we would go running, and afterwards, we’d stay in our wolf forms. All of us inside, where it was warm, and piled on top of one another. It wasn’t about sex.” Though, honestly, sometimes that happened. “It was about us being together. Physically, all together.”
And now it was gone. And fuck, now his face was wet. Why was he crying? They weren’t dead yet. And still, Josh was relentless. When he spoke, the gentle tone was like that fucking can opener slitting Nero’s chest wide open.
“So when you jerked me off, that was about giving me something I needed.”
Nero nod
ded. “Yes.”
“So can I do it for you? Same thing? Let me touch you, let me give you something. It’s not going to replace them, but it’ll be something intimate from someone who cares.”
Nero jerked forward, but he stopped himself. He wanted it. God, he wanted it with this earnest brainiac of a busybody. But he couldn’t do it so easily. He couldn’t just replace them with him.
“That’s not fair. To them or you.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged. He’d long since given up thinking about what was fair to him.
Josh hopped up from the bed. His long-legged stride was loose, but there was tension in his hands and his shoulders. And his eyes were wide and kind. Only Cream had looked at Nero like that. So damned kind, it had hurt to see him so vulnerable, as if a single harsh word would crumple him. And Josh was wearing that same look. Tentative, nervous, but still determined.
He came and squatted down in front of Nero.
“Are you gay?”
Nero shrugged. “For the most part.” He’d been with members of his pack, of both sexes. It was about the pack. But for him to get really turned-on required a male partner.
“I’m exploring,” Josh said. “So how about we explore a little together? No pressure. No commitment. Just—”
“Touching.”
“And anything else you want to do.”
Anything else? Everything else? Suddenly it didn’t matter to Nero. Trainee, instructor, recruit, abductor. All those words didn’t compute. It was Josh touching his face gently, rubbing his thumb over Nero’s lower lip while he bit his own. Damn, it was so fucking endearing—this nervous possibility and the gentle stroke of someone who cared.
“Ever done it with a guy before, Josh?”
“No. Was going to do it at the con.”
“Are you sure you want—?”