Connor paced. There had been two pressing reasons for being in Micah’s room. The first was that he wouldn’t put it past the vampire to leave in the night. His human half didn’t like that idea, his wolf half even less. Which led him to reason two, why he was contemplating forcing his way into Micah’s room and laying between him and the door. Every time he got near to Micah, he was pulled closer by an invisible thread, the animal inside him begging to be nearer. How was he supposed to fight what was more than just half of him, but the whole of who he was? The scents of the house around him were confusing. Food and other people, but a higher note, a single scent that he could pick up from all those others—Micah.
Angry with himself he tried a shower, but thoughts of Micah in front of him on his knees had him stroking himself to completion quickly. In the throes of orgasm he was picturing Micah’s slim form pressed against him, kissing him, and when he’d finished he slid down the side of the wall and sat cross-legged under the hot spray. He was fucked.
He could no more deny his wolf than he could his own nature. There was something about Micah that spoke to all of him. What he had said about the dead man, Ethan, had been words teeming with love and pride and so much affection for what was an unbreakable bond between Ethan and Joseph. Micah hadn’t hurt Ethan, and that single realization was way more dangerous than Connor wanted it to be.
He had a job to do. Three more successful retrievals and he was heading for a control position or the chance of leaving the Retrievers with his debt cleared. His career was flying and he was happy. Just three more contracts returning the guilty for punishment, and he was finished with this scrappy chasing through the forests.
What if they aren’t guilty? Micah says he isn’t guilty and I believe him.
Bending his head, he allowed the frustration to well up inside him. He’d never questioned Glitnir like he’d never questioned his parents’ right to live outside the city and its rules. Was it so wrong for him to be so easy and accepting of everything? Why hadn’t he questioned the jobs he’d had before? Could he accept that Glitnir was flawed and that they had missed that Micah was actually innocent? Was it the Court’s fault or was it that the evidence found was so damning that no one ever thought it could have been planted?
Out of the shower and toweled dry, he opened his bedroom door into the quiet corridor. Without hesitation he tried the handle of Micah’s door. It opened easily. Stepping into the dark room, he could make out Micah propped up on pillows, silently watching him. He closed the door and leaned back against it. He wanted to ask questions and get his head around what had happened to him. To find out why his wolf was so territorial and wanted to be close to Micah so bad.
He couldn’t.
Instead he allowed a shift, and in wolf form, leaped in one move onto the wide bed. Micah huffed when a paw caught him in the middle of his chest and he wriggled over to one side of the bed. The scent of Micah was overwhelming. Turning three times to organize the covers on the opposite side of the bed to Micah, Connor finally laid nose to tail just inside Micah’s reach.
“Okay,” he heard Micah say softly. “Everything will be okay.” Micah scratched his fur at the back of his neck, and with everything right in Connor’s world, he slept.
Opening one eye to a brightly lit room, Connor stretched and shifted back to human. The bed was empty and Micah was across the room in the bathroom if the sound of running water was anything to go by. He realized it wasn’t morning light that filled the space around him, but two ceiling lights that cast an orange glow to the room. He yawned and padded over to the bathroom, willing away his morning erection so he could take a piss.
Managing to at least aim correctly, he finished and washed his hands and then leaned back against the basin to wait for Micah to finish. He’d never asked Micah why he was small. The average vampire was over six and a half feet and thin as rakes, yet Micah probably barely topped five ten, and while not huge was definitely lithe and toned. He was pretty. For a vampire.
When he realized he was standing at the shower door with his hand on the catch he cursed his wolf. Damn thing was pushing him to do things he didn’t want to do. Then the door opened and Connor came face to face with a wet, totally naked Micah and suddenly his body agreed with the wolf in his mind. He saw the evidence of where they had fought dug deep into Micah’s side and compassion welled inside him, only to be pushed aside by a desperate need to mark the man again. Micah hadn’t said it hurt, not since Al had tended the wound. Vamps healed fast, maybe not as fast as wolves, but fast enough.
“What do you want?” Micah snapped.
In a violent and sudden motion he had Micah pinned to the wall of the shower cubicle and was kissing him. The heat between them was instant as Connor ran his hands over Micah’s skin. Micah squirmed against him and it took a while for Connor to realize that Micah was pushing him away.
“Stop doing that,” he snapped. “I don’t need you like this. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“This isn’t complicated, Micah.” He circled his hand around Micah’s cock, which was fully erect and hard and dripping with shower water. “You want to fuck me. I want you to fuck me.” Connor couldn’t fathom why Micah didn't understand this. The sex between the two of them promised to be hot and instant and so fucking satisfying.
“And that is the problem,” Micah said sadly. “You don’t want me.”
Connor released his hold on Micah and instead caught hold of Micah’s hand and placed it on his own straining erection. Whatever the confusion of feelings inside him for the vampire there was no way Micah could doubt the physical evidence of arousal.
“I want you.”
“Yeah, right.” Micah pulled his hand back as if the touch burned him. “What you mean is your wolf side wants me. Your human side thinks I killed someone in cold blood and wants to drag me back to be beheaded.” Micah was saying this like it was funny, but his eyes held hurt. “I thought we’d connected when we talked before,” he added sadly. “Almost like you could believe me.”
Connor could see this whole thing going south far too fast. He had balance inside him with all of this; he wanted Micah as much as his wolf howled for it.
“I don’t think you understand. Despite what I have been saying there is no wolf side and human side,” Connor said desperately. No wolf shifter really saw themselves as two separate halves even though they described themselves that very way to people who didn’t understand. “My nature is inside me, around me, it is me.”
“But you still think I am a murderer, don’t you, Senior Retriever Connor Strand?”
Connor winced at Micah using his full title and name. He didn’t believe Micah was a killer, but hell if he knew why he was so convinced. It wasn’t just his wolf that felt Micah was innocent. “No. You see…” He stumbled over the words, which wasn’t the best way to convince Micah of anything really. “I don’t think that—”
“Liar. I can see you’re lying.”
Micah groaned low in his throat and bowed his head. He was evidently fighting his own needs and wants.
“I’m not lying, it just took me a while to catch up with what my instincts were telling me. What you said in that passageway, about Joseph and Ethan and how much they loved each other. We did connect. Hell, I couldn’t see your eyes, but I could see your body language, smell the intensity of your scent. I wanted to tell you there and then but you moved and the moment went.”
Micah closed the circle of his fingers and moved them slowly up and down Connor’s cock, running his thumb over the head and resting it there. He remained with his head bowed though and Connor desperately wanted to see his eyes and know the expressions marking his face.
“You really believe I’m innocent?” Micah asked. “Despite your conditioning and your oaths to Glitnir, you can accept they were wrong and that I didn’t, in fact, kill Ethan?”
Connor tipped Micah’s head back and schooled his features into a responsible man instead of hungry, needy beast. He wanted Micah so badly to see he had control, but knew his wolf would be obvious in his eyes. Maybe Micah should see that. Perhaps knowing his wolf was there would be enough to get him to see what they should be to each other.
“I believe you.” The words hung between them and Micah leaned up and captured him in a heady kiss. He deepened it with one hand twisted into Connor’s thick hair and the other hand setting an irregular rhythm of sliding his fingers up and down Connor’s cock. Connor didn’t resist the kiss. His wolf sighed happily inside, and he touched and caressed every inch of Micah’s body that he could reach. His hands rested on the globes of Micah’s ass and he recalled what he’d said last night. An urgent need to confess all spread through him. He pulled back from the kiss.
“This ass is perfect, your whole body…perfect…” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that it wasn’t…” He stopped talking when Micah’s confident fingers strayed back towards his hole and pressed there, and then moved back to concentrate on Connor’s balls.
Using Connor to steady himself, Micah moved gracefully to his knees in the shower and swallowed a mouthful of Connor’s dick straight into his throat.
“Oh fuck,” Connor groaned and looked down at his fantasy from last night come to life. “I’m going to lose it…Micah…you have to…” He was babbling and he wanted more than this. Pushing at Micah he managed to get the vampire to release his sucking, twisting, tugging motion on Connor’s cock.
Surprised, Micah looked up at Connor and Connor roughly helped him to stand.
“Not here,” Connor breathed and kissed Micah deeply. “I want you inside me.”
Connor climbed out of the shower cubicle and pulled Micah behind him. He wanted hard and fast and he wanted now.
“Do you have stuff here?” he asked. Opening the top drawer next to the bed, he found two books and nothing much else. “Where do you keep it?”
Micah huffed a laugh and pulled open the top drawer of another cabinet. He rummaged under clothes and finally pulled out a bottle of slick, triumphantly holding it aloft like a trophy. “I don’t keep it next to the bed,” he offered.
Connor didn’t care why, all he wanted was to connect. He climbed onto the bed and moved onto all fours. His claws extended a little way, but he willed them back. He liked the idea of sex with Micah including a little claw and a lot of fang, but this time he wanted it to be quick and over and…
“Hurry up,” Connor growled. He looked over his shoulder at Micah, who hovered at the end of the bed with one hand sliding the length of his own cock and his other placed flat on his stomach.
Micah shook his head. “My turn to look,” he said gently. He kneeled on the bed and nudged Connor’s legs wider. One-handed he traced patterns of warmth on Connor’s skin. “You don’t have a problem with a vampire taking you?”
Vampire-werewolf relations were fraught at the best of times, not many who got together had relationships that survived past day one. Wolves, or the ones that Connor knew, were widely acknowledged to be arrogant toppy animals, but he wasn’t like that. He wanted both, he wanted to be buried inside a lover and then at the next occasion be hammered into the bed by that same wolf, vampire, whatever.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Connor muttered.
“Can you lie on your back?” Micah said.
He wasn’t ordering, just asking, but Connor found himself flat on his back with no idea if his wolf had taken a hand in the movement or if Micah was channeling Joseph. Shit no.
“Is Joseph in your head with you now?” Connor asked.
Micah huffed a laugh. “No. I promise.” His laughing stopped and a sudden seriousness wiped the happy from his face.
Connor cursed his stupidity at asking and then felt guilty that he’d even thought like that when Micah was clearly worried.
“We can stop,” Connor said. He imagined the two of them stopping now and his cock was so not agreeing to that plan. Harder than he’d ever seen, it lay on his stomach with the head a little south of his navel. Micah shook his head and leaned over to bury his face into Connor’s neck.
“Joseph will deliberately take the mountain road. We’ll go the short route and be there not much after him even if we leave as soon as dawn. We can’t leave before because the way we’ll go…” Micah quirked his lips. “You’ll see when we get there.”
Connor glanced at the window and the night sky. Unexpectedly there an impetus to making love that he’d never felt before. He made to move onto his front again, but Micah stopped him with a gentle touch.
“No,” he whispered. “You have the most amazing eyes,” he added.
Maneuvering until he was between Connor’s spread legs, he nestled himself until they were groin to groin and he thoroughly kissed Connor until Connor couldn’t tell which way was up. The rest was a dream, Micah using the cool slick to stretch him, widening him for Micah’s cock, and then pressing Connor into the bed and pushing a pillow under his ass. For a second Micah hovered in that position and stared down at Connor as he smiled.
He pressed his cock against Connor, and then using the weight of his body, pushed inside. The burn was welcome, the look of bliss on Micah’s face as he went deeper indescribable, and Connor couldn’t help but tilt his hips to meet each thrust and retreat. When Micah’s hard length slid over his sweet spot Connor could no more hold in his near howl for more than he could ask Micah to leave the room. More. He wanted more.
Micah arched his back out and the rhythm became punishingly fast, deep and Connor had been on edge too much this morning. He wrapped a hand around his own cock and, in two pulls, had orgasm smashing at him and lost all control. The noises he made were raw and he grabbed at Micah with his free hand, his fingers digging into muscle and skin, and watched as Micah cursed and hung on for dear life as his own orgasm knocked him sideways. They held each other close until Micah finally pulled out. He ran a finger through the come that came with him and looked up at Connor with a smile.
“You’re gonna be sore,” he said gently.
“Shifters heal quickly,” Connor replied with a shrug.
Micah looked out of the window and levered himself off the bed.
“I need to get another shower and then you and me have to make a move.” The passionate lover of a second ago had been wiped away by the vampire intent on getting to his brother.
He tried to think of a way to start a conversation while sprawled naked and fucked out on a bed.
“Have you thought that Joseph hid this evidence you need somewhere in the house? Before he left I mean,” he finally asked.
Micah stopped just outside the bathroom and turned to face Connor. He shook his head and closed his eyes briefly.
“The evidence isn’t here,” Micah said simply. “We have to find Joseph.”
Connor rolled off the bed and winced at the pain in his arm, the one he’d sworn he’d seen mangled and broken. He flexed his fist. He glanced up to see Micah looking at the same arm with something like shame on his face. It quickly disappeared, but Connor considered why Micah might be looking at him in such an odd way. He filed it away to ask the vampire about later. Micah evidently had the same idea about talking later as he focused on a shower and then getting dressed in his customary dark colors before waiting patiently at the door for Connor.