Little Wolf (35 page)

He should take his time, learn what he was doing, but Albert was gasping and flushed with arousal, and it didn’t seem right to make him wait. They were both already waiting, weren’t they? The emotions were all there for Tim to identify, to name.
Longing
was ripe in the air between the two of them, but it wasn’t for each other. Albert’s grip on Tim was bruising. Tim tugged him down to take his mouth in a kiss, and firmed his grip on Albert’s cock, wanting to feel seed on his stomach, needing more than the soft mouth against his.

When he turned his head, Albert was happy to breathe against his throat, but there was no hint of teeth, no openmouthed, heavy kiss. Tim whined at him as he turned his wrist in order to better get Albert off. He would have said he was doing something wrong, because it wasn’t like with Nathaniel, not at all, but they were both panting, and Albert’s dick in his hand said plainly that Tim was doing all right so far. Yet
yearning
was everywhere, an ache for more than this. He knew he was getting hard again, but that was secondary to making the pining scent go away, even if only for a short while. He dropped down and followed the taste of
unrequited
until the salt was in his mouth.

Albert was no longer so soft and gentle as he grasped at Tim’s hair. Tim didn’t have to lick much, barely got a chance to try to suck the cock in his mouth before there was come on his tongue, surprising him and making him choke.
Sex
, Tim’s mind recognized, that’s what the mellowing, warm glow of a scent was, sex. There was nothing else for Tim’s senses to find, yet they were still searching for something else, for more.

He whined again when Albert pulled him off his dick, then opened his eyes in a daze. Looking up afforded him a view of the faint imprints of Tim’s hands at Albert’s thighs and along his stomach. Albert was panting and staring at Tim with glassy, bright eyes, brown with a yellow hue where the light hit them.

Distantly Tim knew he had stinging scrapes across his chest, that he was painted with his own come. He knew it like he knew the sun was setting and where. Nonetheless he blinked several times and sank farther down onto his knees into the dirt, where he scrubbed at his face and then wiped his hands on anything available. His throat was sticky.

“I can’t see him like this,” he realized out loud, and then remembered he was hard again, and if he waited, Albert would be too. But Albert wasn’t reaching for him. He was swaying forward as if he wanted to fall to the ground right alongside Tim. Tim suspected nerves more than the sex had exhausted both of them. Or maybe it was draining to deny your urges for so long no matter what you were doing.

Tim looked out again, through the trees, but there was no one else but the two of them.

“So that was sex,” he remarked, his tone more final than he’d meant it to be, not that Albert seemed offended. Albert blinked at him, a little out of it, and Tim grinned. A moment later Albert grinned back, then dropped lightly to the ground to sit next to Tim.

Tim considered him while yanking his shirt into place, which made him think of Nathaniel doing the same outside his truck. He bit off a growl. If he was going to think about Nathaniel no matter what, or who, he did, then he might as well be doing Nathaniel.

He reached over and tugged at Albert’s shirt, since Albert didn’t seem to mind his nudity and Tim was having a moment of revelation that did not need the added confusion of lusting over Albert’s bared skin.

He wondered if Albert wanted to touch him some more, but now that things were calmer Albert was keeping his eyes away. He was scanning the trees too.

“Where’s Graham today?” Tim tossed out and would have said Albert’s flinch was due to guilt, even without the benefit of smelling it.

Albert stiffened his shoulders. “Studying,” he explained. “He’s worried he won’t be good enough for college. He’s decided to attend on the East Coast.”

“But….” Tim didn’t know which part of the statement to object to first, only that an objection felt necessary.

“I suggested he visit the library today,” Albert interrupted. He shared a significant glance with Tim, then returned to studying the ground.

Tim spent a moment zipping up his fly and wiping futilely at his stomach. He suddenly wanted to know a lot of things, and Albert had the answers. Albert was old wolf, and until this very moment, had been as big a virgin as Tim. It might even have been part of the reason Nathaniel had thrust Tim at him. Nathaniel was thoughtful, even when he didn’t want to be.

“Albert,” Tim wondered aloud, “did you invite me out here just to fuck?” He nearly went hot at his choice of words. It didn’t describe what had just happened at all.

Albert gave Tim that stare he usually got from Nathaniel, the
You’ve missed some obvious were detail, Little Wolf
, stare. “Sort of.”

“Because I’m totally without any significant experience?” Tim was not going to think about coming in the street. He’d survived this without any lasting embarrassment. He was going to focus on that. He hadn’t lost control, and he hadn’t come in his jeans. He hadn’t made Albert bleed, much. There was improvement.

The tilt of Albert’s head said Tim had gotten something else wrong. “No. I knew about that after your scene in the street—” Albert swallowed nervously before his next words. “—with the sheriff. And if you’d gotten experience after that, I wouldn’t have. But no. It was, well, you don’t really like me. Not like that.”

If Tim was supposed to protest, he was too shocked to. But he managed to convey his confusion fairly well, he thought. He shut his mouth.

Albert seemed to find that funny. “I know you like me.” He gestured at his still-opened jeans. Tim had a few moments to study Albert’s dick and remember having it in his mouth, however briefly. His pulse kicked up, and the wolf, more insistent than ever, wanted to pounce on Albert and try that again, slower this time. Albert continued to talk. “But you don’t like me the way you like the sheriff.”

Tim jumped to attention. “Yeah, about that—”

As if Tim hadn’t spoken, Albert went on. “That made you safe, if you don’t mind me saying so. I needed someone safe to be with. The others in our group are young, and they aren’t… they’re too close, if that makes sense.”

“I… yes,” Tim agreed, and turned to have a better look at Albert. Here he’d been thinking of Albert as sweet and naïve, and instead there was a bit of a Machiavelli behind his blushes. “I’m safe because I like you, but I don’t
like
you.”

“You’re also kind of confused about a lot of things. So am I.” Albert slumped down. Tim moved over, and Albert slumped in his direction. He propped himself against the tree with their shoulders pressed together.

Tim gave him the side eye. “How are you confused? You were raised knowing this stuff.”

“I think most people are confused about these things.” Albert pulled his jeans up.

Tim was torn between sadness at not going at it with Albert again and relief at not having to. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed it; it was that he hadn’t enjoyed it as much as he’d thought he would. He frowned. “Have you been talking to Nathaniel? That sounds like something Nathaniel said once. What is the point of heightened senses and instinct if we are still completely confused?”

“You know the answer already.” Albert startled Tim by taking hold of his wrist and bringing his hand up. He stared at Tim’s palm for a while, then slanted a look at Tim. Tim turned away. Everything his uncle had taught him went out the window at that knowing glance from Albert Greenleaf. “Instinct, the wolf, tells us what to do. The rest you have to reason out yourself.” Albert heaved a breath. “Or suffer through.”

They sat in silence while Tim slid his palm over his knee. “I came with you for practice,” he blurted, so honest his uncle would have been disgusted. “Practice I cannot get with the person I want to practice with. Which I guess is why you came here too.”

Nathaniel had his reasons. Tim even understood them. But he didn’t like them. It would serve Nathaniel right if Tim stayed out here and blew Albert all night.

He wouldn’t. But he should. He glanced at Albert. “Can I ask about you and Graham?” There was always something between them. Or rather, there
wasn’t
something between them. Something was always missing.

Albert slumped even farther against Tim and the tree. Tim pushed back, mostly to keep Albert up. “Graham’s younger than he seems” was all Albert said for a while.

“But he leads all of you, doesn’t he?” Tim was not following.

“Yeah.” Now Albert was resting his head on Tim. Weres had to stop being so touchy-feely. Tim had no idea what to do in response but sit there. “Age doesn’t really matter about things like that.”

In other words, some were born to lead. Tim nodded, which only depressed Albert more. Tim didn’t remember sighing this much at eighteen but attempted to radiate sympathy anyway, in case Albert was paying attention.

“But Graham is even more unusual. I meant it when I said he’s younger than he seems. He might call the shots, in his way, but he’s younger than the rest of us. He skipped a few grades. He was raised here, so no one minded him being were, the way they didn’t like me back at my old schools because I’m Crow and a being, but no one really likes a kid breaking the curve on all the tests, you know?”

Tim had never taken a standardized test. But once out in the real world, it hadn’t taken him long to realize that most others, human or being, did not care for the smartest person in the room, and humans feared those who were different. He nodded again, deeper this time.

“He was this kid in a high school filled with horny weres who were nearly adult.” Albert grew softer. “I think he buried himself in studying and hasn’t really looked up since.” His voice was nearly gone. “He’ll leave soon.”

“You aren’t going with him?” Tim, on the other hand, wasn’t soft. He was a tactless sharp object. He couldn’t help it. He literally could not think of Albert without Graham, though he didn’t know why.

The expression on Albert’s face when he turned to Tim was misery, plain and simple. “You sense it too, don’t you?” Before Tim could ask what “it” was, Albert went on. “I’ve been trying to tell myself it’s in my imagination, but with you just now it was even worse. There’s something there. It’s why I wanted to talk to you. I figured you would know more than anyone else in town.”

Tim gestured in frustration, but it was lost on Albert.

“Graham doesn’t sense it. Maybe that’s for the best.”

“Know about what?” Tim finally sputtered, getting his thoughts in order. “That you like him?” God, was he supposed to advise the lovelorn now? As if Tim knew anything. He had insulted Zoe the one time he’d tried.

Albert was oblivious to Tim’s blundering. “Sometimes he’s Graham, like always, which is good, but other times he smells like… like, I can’t put it into words, except, the most amazing scent in the world.”

Tim stopped breathing for long enough that even a distracted Albert glanced at him in concern. Tim put a hand to his chest, recalled that he was still covered in drying come, and went cold. He wheezed.
Most amazing scent in the world
. “Does that mean something?”

“Oh yeah,” Albert murmured unhappily. “And it’s getting worse. I want to sit on his chest with my head on my paws and watch him and breathe in that scent. Sometimes it makes me so horny I have to leave. Other times I want to curl up next to him and fall asleep while he reads. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Nope,” Tim agreed, blanking on everything else but the way his heart was beating at the idea of setting up camp on top of Nathaniel.

“Graham doesn’t do anything, whatever I do. I don’t think….” Albert sniffled, Tim would swear to it, but asking felt inconsiderate to Albert’s pride. Tim pushed his shoulder into him, literally acting as support, and figured that would have to do. “I don’t think I’m the same to him. I can’t tell, and even if I could, he’s…. he’s still in high school.” Albert was starting to get louder. “I
definitely
can’t ask my mother. She’ll freak out and start, like, making plans. I’m young. I can’t do
that
yet, and I have things to explore before I settle down.”

It would have been more convincing if he hadn’t whined at the end. But he stopped talking, and Tim belatedly realized he was supposed to offer help of some kind.

“You’re both young,” he commented. He wasn’t that much older than Albert, but he’d seen a lot. It was only in interpersonal relationships that he lacked all skills. And in the matter of his werewolf senses. And with sex. Tim should not be giving anyone advice.

But Albert had come to him. It was Tim’s turn to sigh. “Look, it’s about experience, right? You need the knowledge to recognize… things.” That’s what Nathaniel had said, and one of Nathaniel’s many jobs was dispensing advice to troubled weres. “You have to be ready. If you’re ready, you recognize it. If not, you don’t.” The advice was vague nonsense as far as he could tell. Tim wasn’t even sure about the value of experience, because he hadn’t needed experience to know Nathaniel got him hot. Though it was probably good to get his official first-time jitters out of the way with someone a little less, uh,
Nathaniel Neri
.

“Oh?” Albert appeared to think over the words as if they meant something very specific indeed. After a few moments, he gave Tim an apologetic shrug. “They write books about our bodies, but nobody ever talks about this stuff. I guess they think it’s all spiritual and shit. It’s why I wanted to ask you.”

So Tim was rather matter-of-fact about his desires. He licked his lip but did not bite it.

“Maybe it isn’t anything else.” Albert was apparently trying to convince himself of something. Tim was fairly certain most people’s first times did not end with a discussion of romantic feelings for other people. Strangely, he didn’t mind. “Maybe this is love,” Albert mused, making Tim jump all over again, “as though love isn’t bad enough.” Albert rolled over dramatically to bury his face in Tim’s neck. “I don’t know what to do.”