Feeling his balls tighten, Cooper urged Park’s head all the way up and off him, memorizing his flushed sex-drunk face, the way his wet, swollen lips stayed parted, gasping, and the incandescent gold of his eyes as he pleaded, before pulling him back down onto his cock and spilling deep in his throat.
Park swallowed it all, keeping him warm in his mouth and breathing roughly now through his nose, until Cooper had enough and eased him off and tugged him to his feet.
“Against the desk,” he ordered, guiding Park to lean back on the wood surface. He grasped Park’s dick—shoved out of his slacks, hard and leaking—and stroked him to completion. Park came quickly after that, arching against the desk, crying Cooper’s name behind bit lips.
Afterward, they both collapsed back onto the desktop, breathing heavily.
“I love you,” Park said, holding him against his chest. “Really love you. I mean it.”
“That’s awkward, ’cause I’ve just been joking this whole time.”
Park yanked on the back of his sweaty shirt. “Porcupine. Why do I have such a soft spot for bastards?” He scooted down to press a kiss to Cooper’s forehead, and froze.
Then shifted a little to the right and sniffed at his eye intently. “Who the—?” He pushed Cooper away, holding him at arm’s length. “Can’t I leave you alone for ten minutes without someone fucking licking you?”
“Nah.” Cooper grinned and stretched, his muscles loose and warm and all of the evening’s previous fears faded with endorphins. “Or didn’t you notice? I’m very lickable.”
Chapter Nine
Cooper stroked a sleeping Boogie in his lap. By the time he and Park had cleaned up and made it downstairs, the last of the guests had left and Cooper was able to slip out and spend some quality time with his cat. He felt guilty leaving her in here alone all day, but really it wasn’t much different from when he worked and left her behind in the apartment. That used to make him feel guilty as hell, too. He’d spent a lot of time overcompensating by buying her toys she never played with and fancy beds she never slept in. Eventually Cooper had realized he was projecting his own loneliness onto her.
When he’d first started with the BSI, he’d drifted away from the few friends he had. No one understood why he absolutely could not talk about his new job. No one had the patience for his anxiety, which had gotten drastically worse after being gutted by a werewolf and having his whole understanding of reality turned upside down. His apartment became his haven and his prison. It kept the people away.
But it also...kept the people away. Eventually the only thing about the place that made him happy was Boogie.
Park had changed that. Well, he hadn’t cured Cooper’s anxiety, obviously. But having Park there, living with him even just temporarily, had reminded Cooper what a great apartment it was. The windows let in more light when Park drank his coffee by them in the morning, people-watching. The shower got hotter when Park crowded up against him and blocked shampoo suds from dripping into his eyes. The kitchen smelled better when Park was baking challah bread, even after Cooper found out the secret ingredient was puréed butternut squash and refused to speak to him for the rest of the day.
Challah incident aside, they’d gotten better at communicating, too. Case in point: after that spontaneous blow job, Cooper had actually told him about his conversations with Sylvia and Geoff, and Park had only cursed at the heavens twice before agreeing Cooper could look out for himself. It was leaps and bounds beyond where they’d started, and Cooper was wondering if it was time to, well, take another leap.
Behind him he heard the door open and close, barely noticeable except for the cold air that trickled inside. “You keep following me down here late at night, I’m going to think you’ve got a barn sex fetish,” Cooper said.
“I hope not.”
Cooper stood and spun at the unfamiliar, female voice, sending Boogie hissing to the floor. The woman from the market, still wearing her sunglasses, stood a couple feet away.
She walked toward him with her hands held up in placation. Cooper was reminded of himself with the deer by the road, soothing a skittish prey animal. I could hurt you, but I won’t. Not right now.
He took a step back. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The woman stopped. “I just want to talk, Cooper.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about the Park pack.”
“That doesn’t apply to me.”
“You’re not dating Oliver Park?”
“He’s not part of the pack.”
“But he’ll never be free of them. Not really.”
Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?” he repeated.
The woman reached into her jacket and he took another step back, bumping against the table. He racked his brain to remember if there was anything in those drawers he could use as a weapon. Stupidly, he could only picture jerky.
“Easy,” she said. “I’m just showing you my badge.” Sure enough, she pulled a small leather wallet out and flashed him a badge with an insignia Cooper didn’t recognize. Something Canadian, maybe?
“Am I supposed to believe you didn’t just pick that up at the Halloween store?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “My name is Agent Bennet. I’m undercover. For the Trust.”
Cooper frowned and tried to take another, more subtle step back. “I didn’t realize they had agents in the field.”
“I believe you know my boss, Margaret Cola. She met you in Florence, Maine, after your partner was arrested for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to—”
“Yeah, what’s your point?” Cooper interrupted, the sick feeling every time someone mentioned his old mentor rolling his stomach. “That doesn’t prove you work for the Trust. A lot of people know all about that case. Believe me.”
“Do a lot of people know Oliver Park was assigned to the Florence case in order to investigate your involvement in the crimes?” Cooper stilled and the woman smiled. “No. I didn’t think so. And what would you call his work at the time, if not a field agent?”
“Okay,” he said finally. “What are you doing here, Agent Bennet-undercover-for-the-Trust?”
“Same thing you are, I think.”
Cooper huffed. “To support a loved one through loss?”
“To investigate the murder of Joseph Park and attempted murder of Helena Park. Don’t try to look surprised. I know you know all about it.”
“How?”
“I already told you, I know everything about this pack.”
“Why, then? What interest does the Trust have in the Parks?”
She snorted and walked toward him. “That’s like asking what interest the knights have in their king.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s supposed to be the king in this simile?”
Agent Bennet pursed her lips. “Use your head.” She gestured at the map on the table. “What do you think this is, a place mat? The Park pack rules this land. All of it. They built a small country for themselves. What good agency operating smack in the middle of their kingdom wouldn’t want to keep an eye on that?”
“But they’re not the only big pack in that area,” Cooper protested. “They’re not even the only big pack here in Port Drove. The Rosettis—”
“Are subservient to the Parks. Practically employees, or worse. Every fucking wolf from Quebec to Pennsylvania is, whether they’re part of the royal family or not. At least for now.”
Cooper stared down at the map, barely seeing it. So the Park pack were some kind of ruling class and had completely taken over the northeast of the continent. Of course, he’d suspected they were...something. But suspecting and hearing them described as a good old-fashioned oligarchy were two different things. And Park had always made it sound like his family was just one of many large and thus respected packs. There’d been no h
int of the Rosettis being under their control, had there? Or was that what he’d meant when he’d said there were plenty of wolves who might harbor a grudge against his family? Control bred resentment.
Cooper frowned. “What do you mean royal family for now?”
“The pack is vulnerable. Its alpha was murdered and his successor has yet to claim control.”
“Helena seems pretty in control to me,” Cooper muttered.
“Not yet. There’s a process to go through. Rituals and customs. Her place can still be contested by anyone outside the pack. Or by anyone within.”
“A precarious time,” he muttered.
“More than you can imagine.”
“Is that why the Trust is here? Do they oversee...things like this?”
Agent Bennet smoothed her hands over her jacket, watching him. “What do you know about the WIP?”
Cooper had to reach back to a conversation he’d had with Park last fall when they were in Jagger Valley. “Wolf Independence Party, right? I know they don’t like the way things are done.”
“Apt, if ridiculously vague,” Bennet said briskly. “Wolf packs used to be no more than families protecting their property. But with human population growth, the advance of technology and the loss of habitat, our world got smaller and packs got bigger. More...corporate. Stronger packs were able to grow their territory by taking over other’s land while allowing the local packs to continue living there, under their control.”
“Like a wolf merger?”
“In a way. Some ‘companies’ grew more than others. Take a guess which.”
“The stupidly rich and privileged ones?”
Bennet nodded. “The WIP was first formed as a counterbalance to that. They believe packs like the Parks hold too much power. And that wealth should not immediately put you in the position to make the rules and be judge, jury and executioner with zero regulation or fear of retribution.”
Cooper crossed his arms. “Are you trying to tell me the Parks are executing people?” he said sharply.
“Maybe not. But they’re certainly not above physical intimidation to maintain their empire.”
She sighed and smoothed her hands over her jacket again. A nervous gesture? Some kind of tell? But for what? “I’ve been working undercover with the WIP for some years. Recently there have been...whispers. Rumors that a change in power is coming. That a plot was in action that would change the way wolves everywhere are governed forever. I ignored them. The Park pack is an...institution. Not something that can be toppled overnight.”
She took another step closer and lowered her voice to an almost intimate murmur. “And then Joe Park was murdered. Helena Park was attacked. And the Shepherd returned.”
Cooper felt his heart beat in his throat. That was the second time tonight he’d heard that word. The first had been a throwaway line at the height of Geoff’s anger and he’d barely even clocked it. Had dismissed it as some kind of slang for the BSI or the unchecked ramblings of rage. But to come across it again, only hours later, plus the way Agent Bennet said it in a hushed tone—half reverent, half loathing—made him afraid in a way he didn’t fully understand yet. Like opening a terrible secret you’d kept from yourself.
“Shepherd?” he asked reluctantly. “What is that?”
“You mean who. The Park pack’s territory has grown two hundred and eighty percent in the last seventeen years—two hundred and eighty percent. How do you think they did that?”
“I don’t know, fun advertising?”
Agent Bennet’s lips twisted into a sneer she couldn’t hold back. “You’ve spent some time with the family now. Who do you think conquered the other packs? Who claimed their land, repressed the protests and disciplined the uprisers? Any guesses?”
Cooper didn’t move.
“Joe? Helena?” she continued. “They’re figureheads: powerful, yes, but old, their fighting days long over. What about their children? Head-in-the-clouds Lorelei run an empire? She can’t even keep her own son standing on two feet. Marcus?” She laughed coldly. “The physical manifestation of too little, too late? The self-righteous martyr still bringing up the one time he dared stand up for himself in his long, empty life of quivering and bowing to anyone with one vertebra of spine?”
She took another step closer. “How about Stuart? The man who abandoned the pack to be with the human lover who turned on him as soon as she discovered what he was and tried to murder him and their only daughter?” She ran a hand down the side of her own neck, exactly where Stuart’s scar was. “He had to scrape and beg his way back into the pack before they agreed to fix his mistakes. You think they’d trust him to fix theirs? Or maybe Oliver’s father, who ran away from his family the first chance he could and died still fighting against everything they stood for?”
She sucked her teeth, mock-pityingly. “What disappointing progeny for poor old Joe. Still, he had his second chance with the grandkids. Didn’t he get so, so lucky that he got to raise them all himself. A little do-over.”
Agent Bennet leaned forward, and Cooper could see his own tense face in her sunglasses’ reflection. “Go ahead, guess. Which of his brand-new children do you think Joe groomed to be his perfect little soldier?”
He wanted to shove her away. Wanted to yell at her to get out of his face. But he couldn’t move. Cooper could feel the drawer of files at his back. Here in this barn, where Joe would take Oliver and teach him about his duty to nature.
There’s more than one way to be a wolf. That’s something I didn’t understand until I was much older, after I’d already wasted years and years.
“Good,” Bennet said, straightening and backing away. “Now you’re finally caught up.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checking the time. “I have an appointment to keep.”
“Wait.” Cooper had only been silent for a couple minutes tops, but his voice came out rusty and broken, like he’d forgotten how to speak. “That’s it? What do you expect me to do now?” Now that you’ve completely knocked my world off-kilter.
“I should have the last piece of information I’ve been waiting for after tonight. I’ll contact you soon. In the meantime, you can work on finding out the Shepherd’s next move.”
“What do you mean, next move?”
“I just told you he’s the most powerful and feared werewolf on the east side of the continent. The position of alpha for the richest, most coveted pack is ripe for the taking. Don’t tell me you don’t see a connection. Or haven’t you wondered why he really doesn’t want the BSI poking their noses in?” She saluted lazily. “The king is dead. Long live the king.”
Cooper reeled back. “You think Oliver is going to try to take over the pack.”
She smiled at him coolly. “Why not? Everyone has a theory. Assigning a new alpha is bigger than reality TV in this world. Why do you think so many wolves came today? For the finger food? The kind and hospitable hosts? Because Joe was so loved?”
She laughed. “They know the Shepherd has returned and is more than capable of taking control from Helena and any other Park who defends her. Some want that. They’d welcome the consolidation of power. Others think his showing up with a human lover has weakened him too much and want the Rosettis to take the throne. Others are just hoping for a good, long fight so they can rise in position during the chaos.”
“Oliver just wants to go home.”
“That’s what the Shepherd told you—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“—but he didn’t tell you any of this. So do you still trust him?”
He stared at her stonily, refusing to answer, and eventually Bennet shrugged. “One last thing. It’s very important that I stay undercover. If you tell any of the family I’m here, including Oliver, I’ll tell them you were the one who called me in. They wouldn’t like that, you know, outside interference.”
Cooper raised hi
s eyebrows. “Are you threatening me, Agent Bennet?”
“Just informing you of my plans. If you find that threatening, I suggest you adjust yours accordingly.”
* * *
Cooper was lying in bed with the lights off when Park slipped into the room, well after midnight. He’d been speaking softly with Stuart in the kitchen when Cooper had finally left the barn. He’d stayed there a long time after Agent Bennet left, at first just stroking Boogie and staring at nothing in particular. Then he’d opened the file drawer.
He’d stood there looking at the closed files and their little colorful tabs without touching for a long time. One step further and it would officially be too far to turn back. Too much to bury out of sight and out of mind. Aren’t you past that point already?
He’d grabbed a file at random and read.
Iana Lopez. 44. Mate: Male wolf. (See G. Lopez). Children: One post-shift male. AQ: 71%. Pack: Eight adults. Five post-shift children. One pre-shift.
There were dates of when the pack was “acquired” about ten years ago now, coordinates of the land they’d controlled in Western Mass and a list of alliances with other wolves in the area. Iana had two sisters in a pack less than fifteen miles away, which made their territory “easily accessible to us.”
There was a paragraph of notes at the back of the file describing Iana’s personal weaknesses, strengths, her fears, hopes and desires for the pack, which had been used to gain her allegiance. Apparently she had an abusive ex-boyfriend who continued to stalk and harass her. The human police were no help. They refused to believe Iana. Threat removed, the notes said.
It was ridiculously easy to recognize Park’s handwriting. When they were living together, he would leave Cooper little notes around the apartment to cheer him up.
Movie tonight?
Proud of you for putting on pants. Can I help you take them off?
Stay out of kitchen! It’s a surprise. P.S. Can smell your lies so don’t even try it.
He had a funny way of writing his t’s like backward j’s. Overly fancy like a typewriter, his private school showing through.
Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Page 17