Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (2 page)

Good. He did not want to be remembered forever as the dork he’d been in high school.

He smiled. “Hey, Mr. Elliot. A cappuccino and one of those, please. The coffee shop must get a lot of fairy customers to stock that many sugar cookies.”

“You home for good?” Mr. Elliot handed over the cookie on a plate, then went to make Zeki’s drink. “Your dad comes in sometimes. Always gets those cookies too, when we have them.”

“My dad? Really?” Zeki’s dad was the head chef at the Hotel Las Flores and appreciated quality foods the way Zeki swooned over the delicate touches in elaborate spellcastings, but he didn’t generally eat many desserts. Zeki took a tiny bite of his cookie, which had been iced to look like a waning crescent moon. “I have relatives of my mother’s out there where I went for holidays and breaks when I wasn’t working, but he would come out and visit. He would talk about town, but he didn’t mention any new love for desserts….” He trailed off at the rich taste of butter where he’d expected overwhelming sweetness. He licked at the icing and the sugar dissolved on his tongue, leaving him momentarily stunned.

He suddenly, strongly, wished for someone to share the cookie with him, and stared at the half-eaten treat in his hand until Mr. Elliot returned with his cappuccino.

“Patio won’t be free for long,” Mr. Elliot warned him, though there was still enough of a spring chill in the air to warrant a sweater, and sitting outside didn’t sound comfortable. Zeki didn’t get a chance to ask why Mr. Elliot would assume he wanted to sit outside before Mr. Elliot went on. “Glad you came back.” Mr. Elliot’s smile was warm but distracted, and from the way he looked up when the bell over the front entrance jangled, Zeki assumed he was about to get a rush. Maybe he was suggesting Zeki avoid it by sitting outside.

Zeki took his coffee and cookie out to the patio, as recommended. The patio was a cemented rectangle surrounded by a low hedge. Main Street was visible from his position, although the patio faced a side street that ran between the library and the firehouse. A motley group of chairs with a few tables were scattered around, as if the romantic couples might sit together inside but the patio was for groups and loners. That made it perfect for Zeki. He took a seat near the corner and considered Wolf’s Paw as he remembered it and as it was now. Workmen were setting up banners along the streetlights on Main Street, pastel in color, for spring. They looked sweet too. He honestly didn’t know what to make of that. The Spring Thaw was a festival devoted to pairing up, sure, but usually people thought that meant sex. Or at least, Zeki had, when he’d been dying to go and hoping against hope a certain someone might ask him.

He tried not to frown. He didn’t want to spoil his mood by remembering his dateless high school years. At least one person had been happy to see him and taken note of his new appearance. Shallow it might be, but Zeki had been surrounded by werewolves from age thirteen on. Knowing that people might notice him for being something other than a geeky nerd was a small comfort.

With the brisk spring air and his coffee clearing his mind, it seemed stupid to have been hoping someone from school would see him and… be amazed at his appearance, or something. But that’s exactly what he’d been doing, lingering around town, sighing at window displays. Zeki should be above that sort of thing. As if his high school crush was going to turn the corner and take one look at him, or sniff at him, as it were, and realize Zeki had grown into a sexy and highly educated wizard, and be impressed enough to ask him out. Right.

None of that was ever going to happen. He’d managed to alienate himself from the kids his age on his first day of school by asking what he had thought was a reasonable question, and as a consequence had spent his teen years alone, aside from the other kids in his online amateur witch forums.

Zeki took another bite of his cookie and couldn’t decide if he should have taken a smaller one to savor it or a larger one to get more in his mouth. He chose to eat the rest of it in a single, delicious bite, then wondered what it said about the state of his life that, of all the things he should be thinking about, like his future, finding a job, unpacking his stuff, he was most interested in a sugar cookie.

He didn’t get long to think about it. The patio was starting to fill up. He drank his cappuccino while covertly glancing around at the people joining him, mostly ladies, mostly weres. Several of them appeared to be together, but they all seemed to know one another. They were visibly surprised to find Zeki among them, but he sipped his drink and feigned not to notice while he thought about what he ought to do next.

He was looking forward to spending more time with his dad. Zeki had been so focused on finishing his studies and making the most of his opportunities that he’d taken every extra course and seminar he could, which hadn’t left much time for visiting home. But staying in town meant he’d have to get a job, and there was hardly anything here to suit his qualifications—although he noticed the town still had no official wizard. Witch, wizard, sorceress, brujo, whatever the title, it all meant the same thing, a practitioner of magic, someone with a natural talent and the training to use it reliably. What style of magic depended on culture, more than anything else.

Werewolves probably assumed their strength and healing would save them if any magical unpleasantness happened. Zeki snorted at the thought. He’d read stories of the human version of magic being turned against dragons and demons. Werewolves might think they were invincible, but they were not.

Anyway, if he was going to stay for a few months, he should try to get some kind of a job, even if only to get out of his dad’s hair.

“Anyone sitting here?” a fortyish werewolf asked, then sat down in the empty chair by his table without waiting for an answer. She was followed by several of her friends, who pulled closer until Zeki was surrounded. Every single one of them was his height or taller. Some were wearing plain shirts and jeans, others had on suits or uniforms. The lady next to him was wearing a long dress and chunky jewelry in what looked like the style of some of the tribes in the Southwest, although Zeki didn’t know which one. She had the body of an Olympic track and field champion and brown eyes that reflected gold when she turned her head. “Good choice,” she praised his location, while gesturing across the street at the firehouse.

Zeki belatedly, and with some slight embarrassment, recalled one of Wolf’s Paw’s other traditions.

Once every two weeks when the weather was nice, the firefighters would open the great firehouse doors and come outside to wash the fire trucks. It sounded innocent. It was not. It meant a dozen or so incredibly fit humans and weres slowly, deliberately washing every inch of their gleaming red fire engines, usually while wearing pants, suspenders, tight T-shirts, and nothing else. They used hoses and far too much soap and everything, everyone, had always been left soaked to the skin by the end.

The firefighters made it a rule to never acknowledge the crowd of people ogling them from the coffee shop across the street, although most of them were werewolves and undoubtedly heard every lustful whisper and pounding heart.

Teenaged Zeki had never made it outside to watch, but rather stared through the window from over the top of his book while wondering feverishly if the town was out to kill him. The firefighters had no reason to do it. They could have made a calendar like a normal town when doing a fundraiser. The display was probably some werewolf thing. Some human version of what frolicking, flirting true wolves in the wild might do.

Zeki swallowed the last of his cappuccino. He licked foam and chocolate dust from his lip, and the woman closest to him smiled. Her smile had a lot of teeth in it.

“You’re new.” She wasn’t asking.

Zeki had been sniffed out his first day in his new school too. He hadn’t taken it well then, but he had learned control in recent years. He sat still, reminding himself it wasn’t personal. She was being polite in speaking to him instead of silently communicating with the others over his head. She even made a point to sniff the air in a noticeable fashion.

One of her friends sniffed him too, although he was already talking. “No, he’s not new. This is Dov’s son. He went to school here and he’s been back East studying”—a small hush seemed to fall over the patio crowd at the man’s next words—“
human magic
.”

Zeki kind of enjoyed the chorus of loud sniffs and how everyone then immediately rubbed at their noses.

“You practice magic,” the first werewolf observed, as if that hadn’t just been said.

Zeki wasn’t hiding anything. He raised his hands, turning them to display the sigils and runes and lettering he’d had inked into his skin to help him focus and offer additional protection with his trickier undertakings. “I’m a practicing wizard, yes, or witch if you prefer.” He met her stare, fully conscious of how weres could react to eye contact like that. He wasn’t challenging the leader of this little pack, but he wasn’t going to back down because weres imagined the way humans used magic made their noses itch.

He was good, damn good. He’d spent nearly every waking moment for five years studying, training, or researching. When he began his work on his own, he would be the best of the best. But he was clearly never going to build a clientele in this town.

He held her gaze long enough to demonstrate his lack of fear at her strength and the strength of her pack, aware his only slightly elevated heart rate would give that credence, and then smiled without any teeth. “I’m staying with my dad while I think things over.”

Perhaps holding his own with her had been a bad move. She studied him with more open interest now, and she wasn’t the only one. Zeki winked at her, outright grinning when she gave a start. Yeah, he wasn’t built like a werewolf, with all that power and defined muscle, the remarkable height, or those fierce, beautiful eyes, but he wasn’t bad to look at, and he’d learned a lot in the past few years.

But the clang of metal and the sounds of activity across the street drew everyone’s attention away as the great doors of the old firehouse opened. Zeki’s heart kicked as it hadn’t when staring down a were a minute ago. His sudden urge to squirm didn’t stop him from watching a series of tall, hot weres half-dressed in their fire-gear assemble outside the firehouse while two other firefighters drove the trucks forward. He was going to look his fill now that he wasn’t thirteen and constantly popping boners.

No one could hide something like that from werewolves who could smell arousal. The only reason he’d never actually died from humiliation was the weres’ complete absence of reaction to natural bodily functions. He’d long suspected the weres in town would have been more concerned if a teenage boy
hadn’t
sported wood at awkward moments, because not once had any of them so much as twitched in his direction.

In a drunken confession to his sophomore year roommate, he’d admitted it was the one thing he admired about the weres he’d grown up with, aside from their wild beauty. They reserved shame for things truly deserving of it.

Their silence now was slightly unnerving. Obviously this ogling ritual was different from a bachelor or bachelorette party, but Zeki remembered this event involving more talking, casual chitchat with leering. Then he realized the talking couldn’t commence until the firefighters were hard at work and could pretend not to hear it. Not that any of the firefighters as much as glanced their way as they checked equipment or pulled down their suspenders to remove their shirts.

Zeki let out a breath. He’d picked a good day to come home.

Strong, hale firefighters were displaying themselves for the enjoyment of their audience. And maybe it was the spring air, but they weren’t being as coy about it as Zeki remembered the firefighters being in the past. One of the women bent over to pick up a bucket and gave a completely unnecessary wiggle. Others tugged their suspenders into place over their bare chests or pushed them down slowly to let them hang over the backs of their thighs.

Some of the firefighters were staying dressed. Zeki was going to lament that until the first spray of the hose “accidentally” got one of them. Suddenly, well-sculpted muscles were displayed through soaked, thin white cotton. Zeki allowed himself a low hum for the width of the shoulders, the earthy brown, strong arms, the sheer height and mass that signaled
werewolf
more than anything else short of the man shifting to a wolf on the spot. Shiny black hair, long enough to be bundled loosely at the nape of the werewolf’s neck, looked like it would be smooth and easy to draw his fingers through. Zeki wondered how long that hair would be if he tugged it free, if it was dripping with water now, leaving trails down that broad back. The thought drew his attention to the ripple of muscle and the jut of the shoulder blades beneath the wet T-shirt.

One of the other firefighters called out something not exactly apologetic, but the firefighter Zeki had been studying turned to answer with a smile on his face anyway.

Zeki sat up straight and clutched at his knees. His stomach flipped with cold nerves, which he distantly thought was strange, because his fingers and toes were prickling with heat. He swallowed to wet his dry mouth and couldn’t, not with his throat locked.

“I know, right?” the male werewolf closest to him commented, no doubt listening to Zeki’s skyrocketing pulse. Zeki didn’t think he was the only one on the patio breathing hard, but he felt like it, blushing hotly like he hadn’t since his first time touching another person intimately. For the sake of his dignity he tried to look away, but his eyes were immediately drawn back across the street.

Three of the werewolves surrounding him sighed in unison. “Theo Greenleaf,” one of them murmured. Zeki couldn’t tell if they simply enjoyed saying the name or if it was for Zeki’s benefit.

He couldn’t speak to tell them it wasn’t necessary. Zeki was well aware of who Theo Greenleaf was. One year younger than Zeki and so one class below him all the way from middle school to high school, Theo had always been unbelievably attractive. Even for a were, he’d been handsome and tall. But of course he would be. He was a Greenleaf. Greenleaf was the last name many of the pre-Columbian shifter families had adopted in past centuries when the human government had demanded a surname. To most humans the name Greenleaf meant a family of Native ancestry, a tribe deliberately unnamed to create confusion. To weres, Greenleaf meant old blood shifters with tremendous strength, who weren’t necessarily related, who didn’t want the human federal government aware of their exact background. A group of them called Wolf’s Paw home, and all of them were impressive, even by werewolf standards.