Little Wolf (22 page)

“Tim.” Nathaniel touched his throat, the barest brush of two fingers, but it was grounding. It made Tim stop and breathe.

“That feels good.” No point in denying things, not when just speaking made Nathaniel’s woodsy scent spark hotter. “Keep doing that.” Fuck saying please. Nathaniel’s fingers were steady, and he could hear Nathaniel’s heart, fast, but still calm. It was surprisingly easy to concentrate solely on the feel of Nathaniel’s hand. It was probably some dominant were behavior. Tim didn’t even care.

Nathaniel, thankfully, listened to Tim and kept his hand there. “Tim, if you want to talk about it—”

“Are you kidding? This is embarrassing enough.” Tim wanted to shut his eyes. Nathaniel was helping. He was always helping. It didn’t make Tim feel any less pathetic. He ducked around Nathaniel and headed toward the house, missing Nathaniel’s hand already. “In fact, let’s go in and eat and pretend that none of this happened.”

Nathaniel didn’t seem as if he approved of that plan, but at least he didn’t argue or stop Tim from going in the house. Tim looked at the spot on the couch where he’d jacked off last night, then pulled the bag with his book in it close to his chest. When he turned, Nathaniel was closing the front door behind him. He looked at the couch too and then at Tim.

Tim kept his gaze steady through sheer force of will. “I’m sorry I called you an asshole before.” A Dirus could apologize if the situation warranted it, and this one did. Nathaniel appeared surprised. Tim screwed up his face. “Okay, for
all
the times I called you asshole. Well, not
all
the times. You might have deserved it once or twice.”

“Tim,” Nathaniel interrupted. “Don’t get soft on me now. I wouldn’t know what to do with you. Sure, you’re difficult, and you have bad manners, but I’m used to that now. I even like it. Although I will admit that for months now, I’ve been thinking you were just an incredibly,
incredibly
awkward virgin, and here I find out that you are more awkward than that.”

“Hey!” Tim snapped his head up. Nathaniel ignored his glare of outrage with the confidence of… of Nathaniel Neri, Lord of Wolf’s Paw. Tim glared at him and kept his chin up. He was a fucking Dirus, after all, for whatever that was worth.

“But none of that is your fault, and I can understand that.” Nathaniel met his glare head-on and gave him a smile that was a bite in itself. “Frankly, it makes you interesting. You aren’t like any other were I’ve met.” If that was a compliment, his amusement made it a lot less emotional. So did the rest of what he had to say. “I don’t know that I’d want to know a sweet version of you. Might be boring.”

Tim abruptly stopped shaking. He was being teased—teased, at a moment like this, with all his miserable failings out in the open. Knowing that Nathaniel was probably doing it on purpose to distract him didn’t make it any better.

“Suck it, Neri,” Tim practically snarled, and lurched forward when that made Nathaniel’s eyes light up. “You haven’t begun to see awkward!” He was little, but a threat was a threat, and he was going to be taken seriously here.

“That a challenge?” Nathaniel asked. Tim wasn’t sure if Nathaniel’s heavier breathing was in his imagination or not. He thought not.

“Motherfucker, I could
destroy
you with awkwardness if I wanted to,” Tim shot back, breathing heavier now too. He was aware that he was being ridiculous, that none of this situation was Nathaniel’s fault, but did Nathaniel have to be so reasonable and sarcastic and perfect about it? “I might have
just
learned how to properly differentiate scents, but trust me, I know how to be an awkward asshole.”

“Was that ever in doubt?” Nathaniel leaned down to say it in his face. He was such a dick, and no one in town had any idea. Nathaniel was a sarcastic jerk, and only Tim got to see it.

Tim nearly growled. “I am going to take this book and find out what parts of were sex turn me on,” he announced, watching Nathaniel’s pupils go big and dark. This was no longer like being near a comfortable, safe fire in a fireplace. Inhaling was like breathing in around a forest fire. “Then I’m going to think of you and get myself off.” Tim’s head was spinning, his cock was hard, but he wasn’t thinking about his uncle anymore. He was too focused on Nathaniel, who made a choked noise, not exactly a growl, but close enough. “How’s that for awkward?”

It didn’t feel awkward. It felt like tight pants and flushed skin. They were both panting. Tim had the faintest realization that he might have gone too far and didn’t even have ignorance as an excuse this time. It was a lot for one day to realize that his uncle hadn’t loved him like he’d thought and that Nathaniel wanted him.

Wanted him, even with everything Tim wasn’t. Tim eased away a step, out of shock. His thoughts were racing, but his body and instincts kept pointing him toward Nathaniel. “I mean it,” he repeated, startled. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

This time the sound that came out of Nathaniel was definitely a growl. “You don’t know what you’re saying to me.” He sounded angrier than he should have, considering he’d started this. But he had probably started it knowing if he got frustrated enough, he could go into town and get laid whenever he wanted.

“It’s not my fault I don’t know what I’m saying,” Tim said, instead of what he was thinking.

Nathaniel visibly tensed before forcing his gaze away. “I forget,
sometimes, that you don’t know. When you do that, I respond, and then I realize….” He looked down without completing the thought. If he noticed Tim’s hard-on, and Tim didn’t see how he could miss it, he didn’t comment. He let out a rumbly sigh. “You must be exhausted,” he remarked, then turned toward the kitchen. Tim imagined pouncing on him from behind and licking his neck, getting a rise out of Nathaniel in order to hear that low growl he made when his scent sparked the hottest. Tim wanted to know what happened after that, but then without warning he was furious again that he didn’t know.

“Exhausted?” Tim was shaky with adrenaline and unresolved lust, but he supposed when that faded and he had time to think, he would be tired. He wasn’t ready to rest yet, though. He felt… he felt like he could run for miles. Just run and run and not think about anything more complex than the smells in the wind and the position of the sun.

He watched Nathaniel poke around in the kitchen and wondered if he would bother trying to cook or if they would end up eating something raw.

“You are so weird,” Tim murmured, though he was the strange one. Nathaniel was exceptional, which was a nicer word for weird.

Nathaniel snorted without turning around. “You promised to be the most awkward of awkward virgins, and I encouraged you. I’d say we’re both weird.” He had one hand tight on the refrigerator door, and either the distance or the refrigerator itself seemed to chill him. “Don’t, though.” He didn’t say what, but Tim could guess.

He wasn’t begging Tim not to fantasize about him, but Tim saw it for what it was, a soft spot, a
weak
spot. Tim had warned Nathaniel not to show him a weakness, and Nathaniel had anyway.

Tim wanted to think about it, figure out what it meant, why he wasn’t acting on it, but nothing was going to make him think clearly right now. He couldn’t demand answers from his uncle, and he wasn’t exactly ready to seduce Nathaniel. That left him standing there with a boner and a book of porn waiting to help him with that problem.

Tim wet his lips and thought about jacking off while Nathaniel was still in the house, thought about being loud and desperate like he’d been the night of the full moon with that wolf howling in the distance. It hadn’t been a good feeling, despite coming his brains out, mostly because it hadn’t been enough. That howl had made him ache.

Nathaniel didn’t want Tim forever, but he did want him, and that was an unbelievable turn-on. Tim could rub himself against the couch and watch Nathaniel’s grip go even whiter. But Tim wasn’t Luca. He could mess with Nathaniel, but he wasn’t going to.

“Maybe I should go,” he began uncertainly, and Nathaniel stepped away from the fridge and shook his head.

“I will.” He walked to the front door without looking at Tim. “I’ll bring dinner back.”

“Wait!” Tim called out and stopped him before the door closed, only to immediately feel like an idiot. He bowed his head seriously, admitting to his own weakness. “Thank you.”

Nathaniel acknowledged his words with a short, tight smile before closing the door firmly behind him.

“Y
OU
’
RE
QUIET
this morning,” Nathaniel commented as he drove, and it was only because Tim knew him better now that he was instantly suspicious of the question. Sure enough, Nathaniel shot him a look that managed to be frustrated and amused at the same time. “All worn out?”

Nathaniel had returned to the house around midnight last night, dripping wet and shirtless, with a dead deer over his shoulders. He must have tried to clean himself up in a stream or something, probably thinking Tim would freak out at the sight of blood. Clearly, he’d wanted to give Tim plenty of time alone, but also just as clearly, he hadn’t thought about Tim’s reaction to seeing him shivery damp and bloodied from a fresh kill. Tim hadn’t expected to have a reaction to it either, so that was understandable.

Tim had never had deer and hadn’t been sure he’d wanted to try. All he had wanted to try the second Nathaniel had walked in was to lick the pink trails down his chest. He’d taken one look, then turned on his heel and gone back into his bedroom, chafing be damned.

Tim glared at him for smirking. “Ha, this is me laughing, because you’re so funny. But since you brought it up, I did do a lot of thinking last night.”

“When did you have the time?” Nathaniel seemed to be enjoying himself. Tim considered strangling him.

“A lot of thinking in between all the times I had my dick in my hand while imagining licking your naked body,” Tim continued in a thoughtful tone, taking a certain pleasure in watching Nathaniel’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel. “Actually,” Tim corrected himself a moment later, “
during
those moments as well.”

“Little Wolf.” Nathaniel’s tone was hard to read, but the warmth of his arousal wasn’t, not anymore. Tim studied him, taking in the tight uniform like he always did, though this time thinking he shouldn’t have started talking about porn in the truck on the way to work. Then again, Nathaniel was literally a porn fantasy—Tim had recognized him as a character in a few of Ramona Greenleaf’s stories. He didn’t think Nathaniel knew.

“Have you ever read those stories?” He wanted to be sure before he said anything else. Nathaniel shook his head, and Tim let out a sigh. His little secret, then. His… and probably half the town’s, and a good deal of the English-speaking world, and anywhere else a translated version might have sold.

“They helped?” Nathaniel was cautious.

Tim gave him another look. “Yes and no. They were about men and women, and I like men more. But those stories….” The Thomas Kirkpatrick photo erotica had been hotter, yet these stories had made
sense
. “They are so casually
were
.” They were truly sensual, and truly filthy, he imagined, to many humans. Weres felt, tasted, the world differently. Tim had never read a book by a were author. For that alone he would read it again someday. “But I’m not sure how I feel about being the girl.”

Nathaniel choked. “
What
?”

“Obviously I’m not a girl.” Tim demonstrated that with a gesture to remind Nathaniel of how he’d spend most of last night. “Even if most female weres are larger and stronger than me.”

“I know I frequently say this to you but….” Nathaniel inhaled, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“The male werewolves in the stories, well, the one male—” Tim coughed. “—they were of a certain
type
.” Tim really wanted to face the side window, but stuck it out with his chin up and his mind on the third, seventh, and fifteenth stories. “You. Your type. They were you.” Any other time he would have laughed hysterically, because Nathaniel clearly did not take that seriously, and he should have.

“And you liked that?” It was lucky Nathaniel had probably driven this road hundreds of times. He seemed distracted.

“Oh yeah.” Tim sighed and nearly slid down the seat as he remembered his first orgasm in particular. The chafing had been an issue, but a short rest to heal and more lube had taken care of that.

“Female alpha wolves exist, you know,” Nathaniel rasped after a few minutes of silence. “Don’t go confusing penetration with human notions about weakness. For that matter don’t think that I haven’t met a few bottom alphas or that an alpha male wouldn’t submit to his mate. Don’t think he wouldn’t want to.”

“Hey, talk to Ramona Greenleaf.” Tim put his hands up, but then let himself stare out the window. “Just because I’m little and the thought of an alpha wolf claiming me as his gets me hot, it shouldn’t mean anything.” He stopped for a moment at the raw sound Nathaniel made. “I mean, I don’t know. It was just a story. Real life is different, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t want people thinking things. I… used to know this were who thought like that, as if because I was little, I should want that from anyone big, and I don’t, okay? I figured that out when I was thirteen. I didn’t want that. I still don’t. Now I know what I want and it’s…. Ramona Greenleaf wrote her stories wrong, for what I want.” Tim pushed away the memory of Luca to think about Nathaniel claiming him. He paused to take a deep breath. They were getting closer to town. “But they really helped me figure some things out.”

“You didn’t like them?” Nathaniel took a hand from the wheel to scratch his nose. Maybe Tim’s scent was at odds with what he was saying. “Ramona Greenleaf doesn’t have a mate.” Nathaniel swallowed as if his throat was very dry.

“Whatever. Her stories were like a very emotional and flowery romantic starting point.” Tim turned in his seat and released the seat belt though they were just entering town and the truck was still moving. He made it a point to shrug as casually as he could with his every muscle tight. “You can kiss me if you want.”