Little Wolf (10 page)

Tim was a little awestruck, but Nathaniel had that effect on people. Nathaniel looked at Tim, then worked his jaw and turned to face the road as they headed off onto an even smaller road that suddenly opened up into a clearing with a house in the middle.

It was more of a cabin than a house, but like something in a magazine. The cabin was on the slope of one of the low foothills, and to one side Tim could see through the trees to a meadow below. Behind it were more trees that left the cabin in cool shadow. A porch wrapped around half of the house, with wooden chairs and a bench by the front door, as if people often sat outside to look at the view. The cabin had a chimney, though no smoke to indicate a fire, and along the ground, where the sun was probably just starting to warm the dirt, were flowers.

He was so surprised by the flowers that he didn’t move when Nathaniel parked next to another sheriff’s department vehicle.

Nathaniel shut off the truck. “You don’t make things easy, I’ll admit that,” he said shortly, and Tim twitched and waited. Nathaniel took a breath. It didn’t make his voice any gentler when he went on. “But easy things aren’t worth much.”

“You have a bunch of those kinds of sayings to make weres like me feel better, don’t you?” Tim got the words out after almost a minute of sitting in silence and wanting to squirm until the warmth inside him was gone. He didn’t need more reasons to crush on the sheriff, he really didn’t, and it was easier to imagine Nathaniel memorizing proverbs than to think he meant what he was saying—not that easy things were worth much.

Nathaniel snorted. “There are no weres like you.” Tim was about to be insulted and reply with something hopefully devastating when Nathaniel got out of the truck. “You don’t know how to be afraid,” Nathaniel added as he closed the door.

Tim stared after him, then shoved open the passenger door and practically fell on top of his bags. “I… what?” He shut the door. Well, he slammed it. It made Nathaniel look at him. The truth slipped out. “I’m afraid all the time.”

“I know that.” Nathaniel snorted again, because apparently Tim was all sorts of amusing. Tim narrowed his eyes. Nathaniel rolled one shoulder, then looked at Tim as if it was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment. “I can smell the fear on you, and I have since the day we met. I can see your pupils dilate, and I can hear your heart beat. I know you’re afraid, and I know… I know that you’re afraid of me and not just whatever drove you here.” He stopped to rub his neck, then met Tim’s gaze again. “But that has never stopped you from getting in my face.” He gave a shrug that didn’t seem casual. “You stand in front of me and you don’t know how to be afraid.” Nathaniel said those words again, and while it could have been a comment on how Tim failed even at being scared, he didn’t think it was.

“Hmm, I actually got you to be quiet. How cute,” Nathaniel added, his voice as soft as puppy fur, and then he came over to take Tim’s bags from him, both of them in one hand. He appeared as if he was debating picking Tim up, too, and carrying him across his threshold.

Tim recovered his wits enough to glare at him. “
Cute
? Is that a small wolf crack? And stop it! I can walk up stairs,” he insisted, and didn’t know how to react when that only made Nathaniel smile at him, that same dopey, sleepy smile from the station. “Stop acting like I am making your morning by being here,” Tim ordered as he followed Nathaniel to the porch. He had an urge to puff up and make himself look bigger.

“No.” Nathaniel was almost gleeful, as if he knew that. If the people in town could see him when he was this tired, he wouldn’t be so popular, Tim decided, because they would realize Nathaniel was as weird as anyone else, maybe weirder.

Nathaniel pushed open the door, which wasn’t locked, naturally, and nodded for Tim to walk in first. Tim glanced around before he did, because a few pretty smiles weren’t going to make him forget everything.

The house was big on the inside too. The door opened up into a living room dominated by a large couch and a big-screen TV. There were stuffed armchairs and a desk in one corner under a window, with a computer set up on it. In the other direction was a short bar and a large, open doorway to the kitchen. The kitchen had a long, plain table, the kind a family would use in a commercial.

From the living room, there was a hallway lined with doors.
Bedrooms
, Tim thought with a dry swallow, then wondered how many weres had stayed here at one time. He could smell traces of them, most of them varied and distant. The house seemed old, older than Nathaniel anyway, like a family had once lived here.

“The former sheriff’s,” Nathaniel explained, as if he knew what Tim was thinking. He was at the edge of Tim’s vision, but though he had followed Tim into the house, he hadn’t closed the door behind him. Tim almost thanked him for that but couldn’t think of how. Nathaniel kept on talking in his gentle, careful voice. “He gave it to me when he retired. I guess you could say it comes with the job. It’s something you might have to deal with, others living here from time to time. The, well, the drastic cases tend to end up here.”

Drastic cases
. Tim turned toward him, but Nathaniel moved forward, taking Tim’s bags with him. “Living room,” he said needlessly, since Tim could see that. “Feel free to watch what you want or use the computer. Kitchen,” he went on, as though Tim wasn’t gaping at him for actually giving him a tour. “There’s a phone in there, but once the snows start, the service isn’t reliable. I’ll have to show you how to use the radio. Food in the fridge. We try to take turns with it, but I’m not much of a shopper or a cook.”

Tim had forgotten about Zoe until that moment. He frowned at the empty kitchen. Nathaniel kept walking.

“If you go outside, don’t go far until you have a better sense of things. Then it should be okay, although with your situation, you might want to let one of us know. You can pick any room except for Zoe’s, but only one has blankets and things in it right now.” He opened a door and showed Tim into a small room with a bed and a dresser and one tiny window. He set the bags down and pulled some bedding from the dresser. The sheets smelled like cedar even from a distance, but Tim took them when they were offered and then put them on top of his bags. “Bathroom’s across the hall. There’s another one in my room if you… if Zoe is using this one and you don’t feel like going outside.”

Tim jumped. “Shit, this really isn’t the city.” He hadn’t once thought about pissing outside, but now it seemed like something to do, something he’d bet Nathaniel did, marking what was his. He felt his face go hot and looked away. “So where is your room?” It wasn’t his brightest moment. Nathaniel straightened up, but then he led Tim to the room at the end of the hall.

Tim stopped outside the door without following him in. The room was exactly what a wolf’s den should be, large and comfortably furnished. It was obvious that someone slept in that king-size bed, though Tim tried not to stare at it, or fantasize about it, too much. There were books on a nightstand and a few picture frames. Tim perked up when he realized there were no signs or scents of Zoe in the room. It was all Nathaniel, almost the same as in his truck, only more intimate, like more of his skin and sweat and maybe come were present.

Tim looked up. Nathaniel was standing in front of his bed, the bed he had not fucked Zoe in, because they weren’t lovers, because a were like Nathaniel would definitely have to have his lover in his bed. He would drag them there and keep them there until their scent would linger forever to remind him of who had once been his.

“Oh yes.” It was the first thing that came to mind; Tim couldn’t help that he called it out breathlessly. He wasn’t going to make it without embarrassing himself on a daily basis. He could see that now.

“Tim?” Nathaniel reached for his arm, and Tim flinched. If Nathaniel touched him now, Tim might actually jump his bones.

“Probably not a good idea,” Tim warned him, and just to torment him, Nathaniel stepped closer. Nathaniel’s hands were curled at his sides, so tight with tension they were almost fists. If Tim kept this up, Nathaniel would probably pick him up by the scruff of his neck. At this point, Tim would even be turned on by that.

Nathaniel didn’t seem to notice Tim’s conflicting urges to pounce and run away, or if he did, he was more focused on the
run away
part. “We need to talk.” He didn’t look pleased when that choice of words made Tim cough out a short laugh. With Nathaniel Neri,
not pleased
apparently equaled setting his jaw into a look of intense determination. “Tim, you need to believe I will keep you safe, but I have to know what it is you are running from. You have nothing to fear from me.”

“Okay, yeah.” Tim didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He wasn’t going to tell Nathaniel more than he needed to know, because that was fair and Nathaniel was turning out to be shockingly reasonable. And also because whenever Tim agreed to something, Nathaniel seemed to ease up and relax a little bit, and he
kept
doing it, no matter how many times Tim said yes. It was getting hard for Tim to stop saying it. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You, uh, said you could sleep peacefully now.”

Nathaniel took a second before he answered heavily, like a man truly exhausted, “Better than I have in months.” He meant it, Tim could tell, though Nathaniel didn’t explain why he’d been missing so much sleep. He turned away from Tim and yanked his shirt up over his head, then tossed the shirt onto the bed. Tim fell into the doorjamb with a loud thud that was drowned out by the noises of someone else entering the house.

Tim knew it was Zoe, and he was going to turn and acknowledge her as soon as he could get his eyes off Nathaniel’s spectacular back and shoulders.

“That isn’t fair,” he mourned to himself, making Nathaniel the sex fantasy look over his shoulder at him. Tim’s face was on fire and his eyes were dry, but nope, he couldn’t seem to turn away from all that smooth brown skin and muscle. There were no moles, not even a freckle. Tim thought of his own lightly dotted shoulders with despair. The feeling didn’t last long, though, not with Nathaniel watching Tim study every inch of his exposed skin.

As if Nathaniel weren’t virile enough, Tim could see the fine lines of old battle scars. Wolves healed and healed fast, but the scars remained. There were four faint, almost invisible gouges over Nathaniel’s ribs and other slashes across his shoulder blades. What must have been a vicious bite marred the back of his neck. Tim wanted to feel that barely present layer of scar tissue against his lips. He wanted to know who Nathaniel had fought and then lay his own claw marks over the older ones. He wanted to lick everything.

He gave up trying to pretend he wasn’t ogling Nathaniel and wet his lips. “Could you, uh, turn around?”

Yes, he had said that. Nathaniel went very still. But then he inhaled and squared his shoulders and
turned around
, which, okay, Tim couldn’t begin to think of why he would when Tim was leering at him.

Nathaniel stopped when they were facing each other again and lifted his chin. If he was waiting for Tim to speak, he had a long wait, because Tim’s mouth had gone dry. Tim swallowed, noisily, obviously, and felt his gaze skip away from Nathaniel’s burning eyes to his shoulders and then over his furred chest down to his stomach. Skin, begging for Tim to mark it with his hands and his mouth.

“Nathaniel, please,” Tim whined and then jumped to hear himself. He couldn’t have sounded more like prey right there if he’d tried. He thought of Luca and shuddered before turning around.

Zoe was at the end of the hall, frowning at him, or at the both of them, but Tim doubted she would frown at Nathaniel. Tim vaguely glared back at her and resisted the urge to push his palm against his pounding dick.

Zoe was a year or two older and about four inches taller than Tim and seemed to enjoy both facts. If she rumpled his hair again, he would seriously consider attempting to punch her. Of course, a punch would probably hurt him more than her.

Zoe’s creamy skin had a red flush, and she had obviously just thrown some clothes on before coming in the door. Tim spent a horrified, semierection-killing moment imagining Zoe naked before he realized Zoe must have been out running, quite possibly as a wolf, and she had probably put the clothes on for Tim’s benefit.

Zoe stared at them for a moment longer and then rolled her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen, which left Tim with no choice but to look at Nathaniel. Shirtless Nathaniel, with his bare chest and his nipples, and his slow, controlled breathing, and his stepping closer to loom over Tim. Tim’s life was hard as fuck, and yet no one would ever believe him.

Nathaniel’s eyes were intense and stupidly beautiful. “I’m glad you’re here,” Nathaniel told him, taking another deep breath and then exhaling softly. All Tim could do in response was nod. He didn’t really see why Nathaniel would be glad about him being here, unless it put his worries at ease. Maybe that was it. With Tim safer, according to Nathaniel’s alpha instincts, Nathaniel could relax. He seemed ready to fall asleep right that second, which said everything about Tim’s potential sex appeal. He was panting with want, and Nathaniel was practically falling asleep on him.

“You can do whatever you want here.” Nathaniel was still talking, oblivious to how Tim almost laughed hysterically at his choice of words. Tim watched his lips for a while, then went back to gazing into his eyes and shivering at the heat from his body. “I want you to feel comfortable. I called the café, told them you wouldn’t be in today. I also told Zoe you might use magic. She has to get ready to go into work, but she’ll try to stay out of your way.”

At least that brought Tim out of his Nathaniel daze. He winced, because now Zoe knew Tim had human blood too, and unlike Nathaniel, she was sure to say something.

“Zoe will….” Tim hesitated, then cleared his throat. “I can handle Zoe,” he declared boldly, and blinked when Nathaniel reached out and put his hand against Tim’s neck again. His hand felt hot, so hot. Tim opened his mouth. Nathaniel must have felt his skidding, racing pulse under his palm, because he exhaled again and let go.