Eli’s body shook as he made a broken sort of mewling sound, and that was it for Julien. He gasped a warning, and Eli retreated until just the tip rested on his tongue, which he flicked with assassin precision. Helplessly, Julien emptied his balls in his mouth, head rolling back to slam painlessly into the door. He didn’t think he’d ever feel pain again. He couldn’t even remember what pain was, at the moment.

  “God,” Julien said, stunned, and looked down at Eli, who had sat back on his heels again with a sharp, self-satisfied smile. He might have looked as calm and collected as a cat if not for the rigid dick poking out from his waistband.

  “Come here,” Julien said, patting his thigh, and Eli stood gracefully. That self-contained watchfulness was back and when Julien reached for him and pulled him close, Eli spun in his arms until they were pressed front to back and deftly laced their fingers together so that he could be the one to control Julien’s hands over his own body.

  Fine by him. What problem could he possibly have with Eli’s round ass pressed up against him, his sweet-smelling hair just under his nose or his surprisingly soft hands on Julien’s, showing him exactly how he wanted to be touched. Moving one up his belly and chest, brushing over tight nipples, and the other down, to cup his hardening dick.

  Julien began to massage him there wordlessly through his briefs, and Eli made a small helpless sound as his eyes closed and his head tipped back against Julien’s shoulder. He dropped that hand, allowing Julien to stroke and tease him on his own.

  “That’s it,” Julien said. “Let me.”

  Eli shuddered slightly against him and his left hand inched Julien’s incrementally upward to land on his collarbone. Julien let him control the pace of that, moving where he was moved, while his right hand continued to palm him, then carefully pulled his pants and underwear the rest of the way down. Eli’s breathing increased and their left hands took a somewhat larger leap, so that Julien’s was now resting around the base of Eli’s throat with Eli’s own hand holding it there still in a trembling death grip.

  Julien turned his head and pressed a kiss into Eli’s hair, wrapped a hand around his cock. “Is this for me?” he said, testing the weight and texture, experimenting with different grips, then dipped to tease his balls the way he liked himself.

  Eli nodded slightly, licked his lips.

  “Very nice,” Julien said, and watched Eli’s swollen lips part slightly and his eyelashes flutter shut against his cheek.

  Julien pulled his hand off Eli’s dick, gripped his chin and gently swiped his thumb over his mouth, forcing those lips farther apart for just a second.

  Eli’s eyes opened and he stared up at Julien hungrily. Julien did it again, slower this time, and when Eli opened wider, he fed him his two fingers. Eli instantly began to suck on them, eyes slipping closed again in pleasure and making small, pleased noises.

  “Jesus, you like to use your mouth.” Julien pulled his fingers away slowly and watched Eli chase them, lapping at the tips until he couldn’t reach and dropped his head back with a frustrated growl so animalistic it was honestly shocking. Julien laughed, half startled, half horny as hell that he could have such an effect on him. Watching all those layers fall away made him feel more powerful, more in control than any receptive mouth or vulnerable throat.

  God, he wanted Eli to remember him. Remember him like he was right now with the flattering light of good sex to soften the mistakes they’d make down the line.

  He took hold of Eli’s dick and began to stroke him off. It was absurd to have felt nervous about this. Bodies were bodies. As similar and as different as people were.

  “That’s it. Fuck my hand now. You earned it,” Julien added as Eli thrust into his grip, grunting. “So good for me on your knees, looking up at me like I asked, swallowing my—”

  Suddenly Eli moved their left hands up to squeeze his own throat under the chin. His whole body trembled and he made a small, strange whining sound before biting down on his lip viciously and beginning to come. With no better options, Julien caught it in his hand and murmured gentle nothings all the way through, until he gave his final twitch and slumped against Julien’s chest.

  Julien held him upright and studied the only sliver of face he could see beneath his own chin. Perhaps it was the angle, but he looked...different like this, relaxed and mindlessly nuzzling at Julien’s neck. Of course, Eli would be the only person whose features got sharper post-orgasm, unlike every other slack-jawed plebian in the world, Julien thought fondly, and without thinking, pressed a kiss to his brow.

  Eli’s eyes opened immediately, catching the moonlight in such a way that it was hard to tell the iris from the whites, then abruptly shrugged out of Julien’s arms. He stepped deliberately away, keeping his back turned and running his hands over his own hair, face and chest as if nervously smoothing wrinkles out of his very body.

  “Well,” Eli said finally, without turning around. “That was...”

  Julien would have given nearly anything for him to finish that thought. Yes? That was...wonderful? An erotic journey that will linger in the mind long after the curtain has closed? An engaging story impeded by uneven performances as one principal vastly outshone his costar?

  But it seemed the reviews wouldn’t be coming in. That was fine. Julien had done more with less.

  He tentatively touched Eli’s back. “You okay?”

  Eli finally looked at him with a small, wry twist to his lips. His eyes were closed off again. “Okay? I would have suffered less losses down the hall with a sign on the door saying Sweet Pea, Do Your Worst.”

  “What do you mean?” Julien demanded, alarmed. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Only my mystique. My reputation as an enigmatic character may not have survived all that...exposure.”

  “Oh.” He felt an immense wave of relief. Eli couldn’t have put his bombastic walls back up faster, but surprisingly that didn’t bother Julien. He liked this version of him, too. It was starting to get hard to imagine a version of Eli he wouldn’t like. “Don’t worry about that, I still think you’re baffling.”

  Eli huffed and belatedly reached for his pants. “I should get going.”

  “I’d feel better if you stayed tonight. Safety in numbers, and all that,” Julien said hastily, and held up his hand. “You can tell your enigma I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Please,” he added, and mentally kicked himself. Hell, speaking of showing way too much of oneself.

  Eli was eyeing him way too closely. “All right. For the sake of safety. There’s monsters about, you know.”

  Julien suppressed a grimace and gestured at his filthy hand. “I need to...”

  By the time he’d cleaned up, Eli had curled up in the center of the bed and was lightly dozing. His eyelids only just cracked open when Julien pulled back the covers as if this was old routine for them, as if there was nothing to worry about, or bad coming with the dawn.

  It seemed like the simplest thing in the world to lie beside him.

  Chapter Ten

  The power was back on, but the clock had reset to a flashing midnight. Eli watched the red numbers and imagined a countdown, counting backward from twelve. As soon as he hit zero, he would get up and go. Go to his own room where he could shift and rest and maybe even reflect on his own choices, just for a change of pace.

  When he hit zero, Eli started the count over from twenty. Then fifty. Then seventy-five. But his body was beginning to protest, and when he counted off the last numbers from one hundred on slipped claws, Eli forced himself to get out of bed.

  Behind him Julien didn’t stir, curled up on himself in an uncomfortable, protective-looking position, a stern look on his face even in sleep. He looked a bit like one of those children who frowned when frightened, and Eli suddenly disliked the idea of him waking up alone. Just until morning then. But he would still need to shift, and soon.

  Eli deliberated, but the promise of fresh outdoor air and all the smells it brought with it beat out a warm bleached bathroom any day of the week. He closed the curtains to the balcony and then slipped outside unnoticed, opening and closing the glass door with a soft whoosh. It wasn’t the largest space, but relatively empty at least. No chairs or tables to maneuver on all fours. Just the same flowerpot that was on all the balconies, tucked in the corner with its single dead stem sticking up out of frozen dirt. There was a good inch or so of snow collected across the wood boards, but the icy unpleasantness under his toes faded as he dropped into his shift. The instant relief felt so sweet he almost whimpered. He hadn’t been in fur since, when? The day before yesterday? No wonder he was all out of sorts, making poor choices and losing control.

  Sure, that was why. And it had absolutely nothing to do with stupidly handsome Julien, or the way he’d laughed out loud at the very idea that Eli was anything less than dangerous, or his easy acceptance of Eli’s inability to maintain, well, Eli during astonishingly good sex, or the astonishingly good sex, or the way Julien’s eyes lit up in a way that was nothing like a wolf’s whenever Eli was saying something particularly absurd, or biting, or...anytime he spoke at all, really.

  Eli shook his body, disgusted. He wouldn’t have looked at you like that if he’d actually caught you slipping into a monster right there in his arms. Eli didn’t need to imagine the revulsion, fear and violence that would have filled his eyes then. He’d seen it before in others.

  He’d seen a shadow of it in Cody’s eyes that evening, and he didn’t even know the extent to which Eli was different. In theory. Eli was beginning to suspect someone in this circus knew a hell of a lot more about werewolves than they were letting on. The gasoline had wiped out any hope of catching the scent of the kitchen intruder, but Eli would bet anything that claws had carved that word into the wall.

  Thief. It would help knowing what had been stolen. Nielsen’s maybe mythical treasure? That would rule out De Luca and her minions, if there even was such a thing. She had no need for money. Blue Tail Lodge’s territory, on the other hand? That was far more likely to be on her wish list. But the place was about two seconds away from foreclosure anyway, and if anything, this campaign of horrors seemed to be pushing Annabelle further and further from any rational decision making and convincing her to stay.

  Eli stretched his legs out behind him one at a time, thinking, and sniffed absently at the dead flower in its pot.

  Then there was Cody. One might say he had stolen the life Ian had had here. Cody and Annabelle were clearly involved somehow. There was something vaguely possessive in the way she watched him, scolded him, ran after him. A dynamic that apparently echoed what she’d had with Ian. And though she might not have the same intensity of feeling for him that she had for Ian, Cody still seemed pretty certain that wherever Annabelle and her riches went, he would be able to follow. He might even be right.

  That is, unless Ian was alive.

  There was no question that Cody had been the most worked up in the kitchen. Though interestingly that had begun before he’d seen the word on the wall. Eli had caught the scent of Cody’s anxiety as soon as he’d walked in and it had skyrocketed the moment he’d seen that statuette.

  Which raised a whole other question: What was Ian Ackman doing carving werewolves?

  He could be closer to the De Luca pack than those pictures had shown. He could even be a wolf himself. Which would explain his ability to disappear without a paper trail. Ruling packs held that power and more. He could have been meeting with Nia in the tower to buy a new life, away from here. It would have required money. Quite a lot of it, in fact. And somehow Eli didn’t think Annabelle had spotted Ian a loan so that he could leave her behind. He might have stolen the money from Annabelle. And instead of an affair, Cody might have taken those photos as evidence that money was leaving Blue Tail. But if Ian was the thief in question, who—

  Eli heard a sharp cry from the inside the room. He stood into skin as quickly as he could and fumbled the door open, fingers clumsy from the abruptness of his shift. Julien was sitting at the far edge of the bed, with his back to him, bent over with head between knees, breathing heavily.

  Eli scented the dark room for danger, but they were alone. There was nothing but the stinging smell of fear so strong and unappealing it almost overwrote the sex lingering in the air.

  Eli padded toward him and then stopped a couple feet away. “Julien,” he said cautiously.

  Julien jerked upright with a small gasp and looked over his shoulder at Eli, black eyes wide and wet. “You’re—I didn’t realize you were still here,” he said, and hastily swiped at his own face.

  “What’s wrong?” Eli asked.

  Julien shook his head quickly. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

  Eli hesitated, but Julien’s hands were trembling where they were clutching his thighs and his heart was beating so quickly it made his own hurt. Eli slowly walked closer and sat down on the bed’s edge beside him. They sat like that in silence for a moment.

  “It’s really nothing,” Julien said finally, without looking at him. “I’m not even actually upset. I just get nightmares sometimes. And then I wake up like this.” He laughed harshly and added under his breath, “Reason number three hundred and eighty-two why I can’t do one-night stands, because this is honestly humiliating.”

  “How often?” Eli asked. Julien just shook his head. So, often. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “God, no,” Julien said, voice cracking. He covered his face and ground the balls of his hands into his eyes and blew out a long breath. “Fuck. Sorry. I’m just...so tired.”

  “Go back to bed,” Eli said, touching his shoulder.

  “I’m probably not going to be able to sleep again,” Julien warned, but didn’t resist as Eli gently pushed and prodded him until he was lying back under the covers and then crawled over him back into his own spot. He hissed when Eli’s body brushed his own. “Christ, your feet are ice.”

  “Warm them up,” Eli suggested, and Julien tangled their legs together until Eli’s feet were trapped between his. They lay like that facing one another, and Eli listened to Julien’s still-pounding heart as his feet slowly warmed.

  “Where were you?” Julien whispered in the dark. “Were you going back to your room?”

  Eli studied his expression, his dark worried eyes, then shifted closer until he could press his face against Julien’s chest, flushed hot from his nightmares. The hair there tickled his nose, and he nudged Julien over onto his back so he could rest his cheek flat over his heart instead and felt Julien’s arms wrap automatically around him. “No. Not tonight.”

  Eli’s eyelids began to droop shut, lulled by Julien’s warm fingers moving in long, exploratory strokes up and down his back.

  “Be careful of West,” Julien said suddenly, and Eli opened his eyes again.

  “Hmm? I told you there was nothing suspicious in his room.”

  Julien’s hand had paused and was lingering on the dip of Eli’s lower back, drawing circles into the skin with his thumb. “I believe you. But just don’t...drop your guard around him. Please.”

  “Ah.” Eli snorted and rubbed his cheek over Julien’s chest hair, almost relieved that he was behaving so predictably for once. “You mean don’t drop to my knees for him.”

  Julien’s hand flexed against his spine and he hastily said, “No, that’s not it. Of course you can, ah, do that with whoever you want. I know we’re casual.” He shifted in the bed as if uncomfortable, jostling Eli. “Temporary partners in the amateur sleuthing business. Hardy Boys who hooked up.”

  “Let’s stick with casual,” Eli said. “Catchier. Fewer allusions to incest.”

  “The point is I know it’s not my business. But as your, um, casual, I would be careful of Patrick. Some of the stuff he was saying earlier—I don’t know. It gave me a bad feeling.”

  “Stuff about me?” Eli asked curiously.

  “I think so. Maybe. I don’t know anymore.” Julien laughed shortly, chest jumping under Eli’s cheek. “Ignore that. Just nightmares catching up to me.”

  “About your brother?” Eli asked.

  Julien hesitated, hand drifting to Eli’s tailbone absently. “Sometimes,” he said eventually, and his thumb dug into the muscles there.

  Eli arched into his touch with a groan. “S’nice.”

  “I bet. What do you need all these knots down here for?”

  “To tie my tail on,” Eli joked sleepily. It was something Helena always used to say while playing with the Park great-grandchildren. Here’s where we’ll tie your tail on when hunters cut it off. Here’s where we’ll paste back your ears. Honestly, brilliant alpha or not, how she was allowed near kids at all was a mystery, though it did explain a lot about the adults she’d raised.

  After a moment Eli realized that Julien had stilled. “Why’d you stop?” He pushed into his hand.

  “Sorry.” Julien started massaging him again. “I might have just realized something.”

  “Important?”

  Julien pressed a kiss onto the crown of Eli’s head. “It can wait. I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  Eli hummed, honestly relieved. He was half-asleep as it was. Body more relaxed from even that quick shift than it had been in days.

  “I’m sorry,” Julien whispered into his hair.

  “F’what?”

  Julien was quiet, his big warm hand working over his skin, and Eli’s heavy lids drifted closed. He could listen like this just as easily. He just had to wait for Julien to speak and then he could finally get some sleep...

  ...It was the crying that woke him. Eli opened his eyes, grimacing in the strong morning light. Hours had passed and he’d managed to maneuver all the way onto Julien at some point. He had to crane his head back to see his face.

  Julien was staring at the ceiling with a distant, thoughtful expression on his face, but glanced down when Eli moved and smiled faintly. “You’re awake. Good. I thought of something last night.”

 

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