HEAT SUFFUSED Josh’s body, but there was no clear meaning attached. He knew he felt pleasure and a shitload of endorphins, but there was also embarrassment and shame. He’d been jerked off by his kidnapper, and he’d liked it. Hell, he’d asked for it. How fast did Stockholm syndrome kick in? Probably not within the first few hours, and yet here he sat, completely boneless in the man’s arms, missing the feel of his captor’s hand on his dick.
And what a hand it had been. Thick, hard, with the right grip. The calluses were sweet, and the feel of the big man surrounding him had taken him to an orgasmic peak he’d never experienced before. So did this mean he was well and truly gay? Or really twisted?
“How do you feel?” Nero’s voice rumbled low and sweet through Josh’s body. Both the man’s hands were now stroking Josh’s arms, up and down in a soothing, almost lazy rhythm.
“You did it too,” Josh said, the confusing words spilling out without filter.
“What?”
“I felt it. You….” Exploded like a teenage boy. “You came too.”
Silence. Josh wondered if the man was going to lie about it, but eventually Nero sighed. “Yeah, I did. That happens sometimes. Don’t think about it. Think about your body. How does it feel?”
Like it had just had the best orgasm of his life. But Josh didn’t say that. Instead, he focused on the heat on his skin, the gentle skim of caresses up and down his arms, and the steady heartbeat behind his back. Nero’s solid ka-thump, ka-thump was like the beat of a big drum. It made him feel safe on a subliminal level. And no matter how many times he told himself that he couldn’t get comfortable, that he didn’t trust this man as far as he could throw him, he couldn’t deny the way that ka-thump felt against his back.
“I’m good,” he said.
“Then I’m going to get up and get something to clean up with. You okay with that?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I can—”
“Stay right here. You feel good right now, but Mother used to faint if she stood up too fast. So do us both a favor and relax. Let me take care of things right now, okay?”
“Okay.”
Nero shifted, drawing his leg out and twisting his large body around. “I’m also going to heat up some broth for you, so this will take me a moment. Please don’t try to get up or run away. The windows and doors are locked, and you’re likely to end up passed out on the floor. I swear I’m not trying to hurt you.”
That harmonic resonance was back in the guy’s voice, so he knew Nero was speaking the truth. He really was trying to look out for Josh, even if that meant jerking him off on the couch. God, he squirmed internally whenever he thought about that, so he gave up the fight. He didn’t have the mental resources for it. And though he’d likely damn himself for it later, Josh nodded and closed his eyes as he relaxed back against the cushions.
Nero spent a moment helping him readjust some throw pillows so that his back was supported, and then Josh exhaled happily while someone else took care of him.
His mind went blank as he listened to Nero moving around the kitchen, putting something in the microwave. And then there were all those bathroom noises before his heavy steps returned to the couch. Josh opened his eyes to see the big man looking awkward as he hovered with a thick washcloth in his hand.
“I’m going to clean you up, okay?”
Josh could have done it himself, but when he’d given up, he’d done it all the way. He nodded, then closed his eyes in pleasure as the warm fabric brushed across his chest and belly. Then it slid lower, and he was already thickening in anticipation. But that was too far to go. A first ejaculation could be put down to being overwhelmed. A second would be intimate, and so he stopped Nero with a raised hand.
“I got it,” he rasped. And he did. He took the cloth and cleaned up with a few quick swipes; then, while Nero took the cloth back, Josh tucked everything away. He even pulled his T-shirt on while Nero went back to the kitchen. By the time the big guy returned with a bowl of dark broth and saltine crackers, everything looked normal and yet felt totally weird.
“It’s bone broth,” Nero said as he sat down on the coffee table and held out the soup. “Take it slow, but eat it all.”
Josh meant to reach for the soup. He really did. His hands went out and his mind said, Take the soup, eat it all, get strong enough to get your head on straight. But he watched with a kind of dumbfounded shock as his hands went to Nero’s face instead. And while the big guy was leaning forward to pass him the soup, Josh pulled their faces together for a kiss.
Nero’s body stiffened a moment, but only for a fraction of a second. And even so, his mouth was never hard. His lips were full and sweet as they moved across Josh’s with gentle confidence. And when Nero’s tongue pressed forward, Josh surrendered to him with openmouthed abandon. He let the guy touch him everywhere—tongue, teeth, and the roof of his mouth. And as excitement heated his blood, his own tongue came alive. It thrust forward, then ducked back. He dueled and fought for dominance while his heart pounded and his hands began to grip. He angled Nero’s head and he surged forward, thrusting into Nero’s mouth like a man demanding his due.
And to his utter delight, Nero gave way. He opened up for the kind of foreplay Josh loved. Give and take, surrender and dominance, a back-and-forth that had him rising off the couch to pursue this further.
Nero was the one who broke free. His breath was coming hard as he jerked back. And then he cursed with a sharp bark of surprise. It took a moment for Josh to realize why. The guy had spilled hot soup on himself and rapidly set the bowl down before shaking off his wrist. The skin there was flushed red, and Josh had the strongest urge to lick it better.
Nero didn’t give him the chance. He was already straightening up, away from the coffee table, and dropping the crackers. A second look told Josh that he’d spilled half the soup on his pants and more onto the floor.
“Damn it,” Nero muttered as he stripped off his shirt and dropped it onto the carpet to soak up the spill. “Mother is going to bitch about that. I swear her human nose can smell spilled—” His words choked off, and for a moment the guy froze. He was crouched in front of Josh, his glorious torso flushed as he pressed his shirt into the carpet, but his whole body went rigid. And then Josh looked at his face and felt his heart lurch at the naked grief. Nero’s mouth was open in shock and his eyes were wide. A sheen of tears reflected the light, but not a single sound or movement shook the frozen tableau. It was as if Nero held his whole body rigid in fear of what would come out if he relaxed any part of himself, even for a second.
It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. He’d seen grief like this before. Mother was gone—probably dead—and the event was so recent that Nero’d forgotten for a moment that she wasn’t here.
Well, shit. Whatever else was going on, Josh instantly felt bad for someone in the depths of that much pain. So he reached down to finish sopping up the spill. He gently tugged on Nero’s wrist and spoke in a gentle tone.
“I’ve got this. Go clean up.”
Nero pulled himself together with visible effort. His body tightened and he shook his head. “You’re the new wolf. It’s my responsibility to care for you.”
And responsibility was clearly a big deal to this guy.
“I’m fine, and your pants are a mess.” He touched Nero’s chin and caught his gaze. Damn, if ever a man looked lost, it was this guy. He was alone and yet still fighting with everything he had to hold it together, to do his duty, to be the alpha in charge. “I’m good,” he repeated. “Get cleaned up.” Then he sighed. “I don’t think I’m going to run away anytime soon. There’s so much to learn here.” He let his lips curve into a rueful smile. “And I’ve never been able to resist that.”
He saw doubt cross Nero’s features. The man suspected a lie, but his exhaustion overrode any suspicion. Nero was simply too tired of fighting to question Josh’s apparent surrender. He nodded.
“I’ll… um… I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take whatever time you need.”
Nero didn’t respond. He’d already grabbed his shirt off the floor and headed into the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a roll of paper towels that he tossed at Josh before he headed off down a hallway beyond the entertainment center. Bedroom wing, maybe?
Meanwhile, Josh finished cleaning up the mess, then carried his soup and crackers back to the kitchen. He felt stupidly weak but was able to slurp down the rest of the broth. That warmed his belly and steadied his head, but it did nothing for his chaotic emotions. He’d gone from trying to kill Nero a half hour ago to feeling tender empathy for the guy’s pain. And he had no answer for the lust that happened in the middle.
And none of it even touched on the Big Bad in his thoughts: the idea that he might be a werewolf, and WTF did that mean?
It was too much to deal with. So he sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and nibbled on saltines. He focused on that one simple act, and before long, he heard Nero come back down the hall. The guy had changed into a navy blue polo and another pair of khakis. His hair was wet, as if he’d ducked his head under a faucet and then towel-dried it. His feet were bare, though, and for some reason Josh found those big dumb feet endearing. Like Fred Flintstone feet. Big and strong enough to run a cartoon car down a freeway on the way to the quarry.
Josh smiled at the image and was even more amused when Nero’s expression turned to confusion. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Just wondering how many pairs of khakis you have.”
“Dunno. Five? Six? They’re professional and casual. Allows me to dress up or down easy.”
For some reason that honest answer tickled Josh’s funny bone even more. His grin widened as he pointed to his empty bowl. “I finished the bone broth. I’m feeling better now.”
As expected, the guy’s expression relaxed and his shoulders eased. He clearly took Josh’s well-being to heart and was pleased by the report.
“That’s good. Give it another fifteen minutes and then try some real soup. Vegetables, definitely. Meat if you can handle it.”
Josh nodded, though an assessment of his stomach told him that heavy foods were out for the moment. Instead, he nibbled on another saltine and waited for his opportunity to learn more about his very interesting captor. It came about three minutes later, after Nero had pulled out carpet spray to douse the area where the soup had spilled, and while they waited for the foaming cleaner to do its work.
“So was Mother your… um… actual mother?”
“What? No. She was a werewolf on my team.”
“Was she anyone’s mother?”
He shook his head. “She never had kids, but she was the only girl here. She used to point at garbage we’d leave lying around or stains that we never cleaned up, and she’d say, ‘Do I look like your mother? Clean up your shit or else.’”
Intrigued, Josh leaned forward. “Or else what?”
“That’s what we asked.” He waited a moment, his focus distant and his mouth curved in delight as he no doubt wandered through his memories. “She said, ‘Or else I’ll leave my shit where you live.’ And she did. Whenever we didn’t clean up after ourselves, she’d shit on our stuff. Real turds, real stinky. We’d lock our rooms, put away our stuff, but if someone left a mess, so did she.” He looked at the floor. “Her nose was really good, especially as a wolf. If you left a mess, it was pretty easy for her to tell who’d made it.” He looked up. “We learned to pick up after ourselves, but we called her Mother as revenge.”
“I suppose there are worse names.”
“Lots. And she had her softer moments, for sure. But mostly she was this firecracker of a woman who gave as good as she got.” He turned away, his movements heavy as he opened a closet and pulled out an upright vacuum cleaner. “I miss her. She… died last week.”
“How’d she go?”
Josh didn’t think he’d answer. Nero was silent as he plugged in the vacuum and sucked up the mostly dry cleaner. He was quick and efficient in his work, finishing up and putting everything away in silence. But when it was done, he crossed to a desktop computer on a nearby table. A few clicks later, he pulled up a picture of himself with four other grinning people at a summer barbecue.
“This was my team.” He pointed to faces. “Mother and her partner Pauly. Cream and Coffee.” He touched each face with a shaking finger, but his voice remained solid. “We got word of a demon eating ice fishers in northern Wisconsin. An easy run by our standards, since most demons are stupid, violent things. Like putting down a rabid dog. They’re dangerous but not that smart. Everything started as usual, and we almost had the thing licked.”
As he spoke, he clicked through other pictures of his team. The summer barbecue was over, and now Josh viewed Halloween costumes, then nap time on the couch while someone drew a fake mustache on Coffee. Cream apparently loved waffles, and then Pauly mugged for the camera from a mountain summit. One by one, the images clicked through until the screen abruptly changed. Instead of grinning faces, he saw black, wolf-shaped smears in a blast zone.
“The demon had some sort of plasma fire. It killed them all in an instant. The only reason I escaped was because I was in the energy state between wolf and man, and even then, it was a rough ride. One second we were doing our jobs, the next—” His voice choked off. He couldn’t even say the words, but then he didn’t have to. Image after image on the screen told the story. They were all dead. He wasn’t.
“And the demon?”
“Still in the water somewhere. It needs to recoup, recover, reform. We’re not exactly sure. We’re looking for it, but we haven’t been able to find it.” Then his gaze lifted to Josh. “I’m going to kill it. Soon as I’m done with you newbies, I’m going back there, and I’m going to blow that fucker into tiny orange chunks. And then I’m going to piss on every smoldering inch.”
Josh watched Nero’s face, seeing the fierce determination screaming through every cell in the man’s body. If this were a movie, he’d be the first one to applaud. But life wasn’t a movie, and the good guys didn’t always win. All he had to do was look at the ash outlines on the screen to know that. It grieved him to think that Nero had nearly become one of those spots on the dead ground. And if Nero didn’t have something more than fury in his arsenal, then he absolutely would be ash if he went up against the demon again.
That’s what pushed him to poke a man who was so wrapped up in his grief that he focused on pissing over a demon’s remains rather than the steps up to that glorious end.
“So, um, what are you going to do differently so that you can urinate in glory?”
He’d expected Nero to blink and come back to himself. Instead, the man’s expression became laser focused on Josh, and his words were so clear and distinct that Josh felt the impact of the sounds like tiny pebbles against his sternum.
“That’s where you come in. That’s why we disrupted all five of your lives. It was a huge risk, but we had to take it—”
“Who you trying to convince?” Josh challenged, but Nero rolled right over him.
“We need a way to protect ourselves against magical plasma that burns. We need you to….” He took a deep breath. “I need you to get me close enough to take this bastard out. He was easy pickings until the boom. If you can get me through that plasma burst, I’ll destroy the bastard.” Then he slammed a fist down on his thigh, taking out his ferocity on his own body. “I think it was a one-time boom, or at least it’ll take a while to recharge. If you can find a way to protect us from the fire, then we can finish it. We can end this nightmare forever and go back to how things should be.”
His words were coming hard and fast, and Josh wasn’t immune to the resonance of challenge in every word. Nero’s voice rang like a clarion call asking him to save the day, solve the problem, protect the heroes, and be all that he could be in the service of good. Every video game he’d ever loved had a similar beginning.
But this wasn’t a game. Josh couldn’t ditch everything in his life to do what Nero wanted. Even though Nero was as hot and inspiring as a call to action could be, Josh was a slow one to leap. Savannah said he had commitment issues, but either way, he couldn’t jump in. He looked at his hands, not sure what to say.
“I don’t know anything about magical plasma. Hell, I don’t know anything about magic.”
“We’ll teach you what we know. Gelpack said he’d help, and Wiz loves talking to anyone who will listen about what he can do and how.”
Silence hung heavy in the room. Eventually Josh looked up. He couldn’t keep staring at the floor, but when he connected with Nero’s gaze, he saw desperation. Like the man was consumed with the need for Josh to say yes, to take the red pill and step through the looking glass. One little yes and everything would be Wonderland. It was the same passion Josh had seen in Nero backstage before life had gone sideways. And it was a thousand times more intense now that Josh had seen those ash outlines.
Yet he still tried to wiggle out.
“I’m not Einstein. You don’t throw people into a lab and say, ‘I need this. Invent it.’”
“Try.”
No. It was on the tip of his tongue. The whole thing was too much, too fast. Hell no would be a better answer. He was a geek from the Midwest whose most exciting moment in life before today was letting go of the handrail on the Batman roller coaster at Six Flags. Even his greatest moment of glory at MoreCon hadn’t happened. It had been upstaged by these guys.
They’d turned him into a wolf, then thrown him in a cage. He’d been poked with a cattle prod, met an alien, and been jerked off by the wolf version of G.I. Joe. This was crazy. And yet the moment he formed the word no, another word came through his lips.
“Yes. Okay, yes. I’ll give it a shot.”
Nero seemed to deflate before his eyes. He exhaled in relief and gratitude as he abruptly became normal-sized. There was no more verbal resonance urging Josh to enlist in the wolf army. Just a big guy with a hole in his heart whispering the words “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”
Sure he would. Because that was the way with Josh. He usually regretted every one of his passionate impulses. And this was the biggest one of all.