Should have Put a Leash On It (12 page)

It began as a gentle rhythm that set Micah’s body on fire and had his dick rigid and pulsing. With every agonizingly slow thrust Rylan managed to drag over that spot inside him and Micah was just a few more moments away from begging Rylan to pound him into the door. Micah tried to push back, to force Rylan to go faster, but the shifter’s grip tightened and they growled at each other.

Micah never thought he’d be in this positon, but the least Rylan could do now that he was, would be to damn well please him. He didn’t want gentle and easy, Micah wanted Rylan to take him hard and fast until he howled. His wolf was almost as close to the surface as Rylan’s was. And he wanted primal.

He pushed back again and Rylan bit him this time.

The small punishment only made Micah wilder. He shoved himself away from the door as Rylan pumped into him and moaned when Rylan’s balls slapped his ass. Micah did it again even as Rylan growled dangerously. He was past the point where he was thinking rationally.

Snarling, Rylan picked up the pace. They growled at each other some more as they both got closer to their peaks and from outside it must have sounded as if they were killing each other. But he wasn’t worried or even thinking about any audience they might have now. All Micah cared about was following this rabbit hole until he reached salvation.

Rylan became a feral, loving beast, hammering into him with a strength Micah respected and that stole his breath. His arms shook with the force of the thrusts and it was exactly what he needed, what they needed.

Rylan slammed inside him one more time before biting down on his nape. His back bowed and his wolf howled. Micah came again, shooting his seed all over the door.

It was like everything clicked into place. Micah leaned against the door and reached back to clutch at Rylan, trying to keep them connected for just a little longer. Rylan withdrew his teeth and nuzzled the mark. Micah’s breath caught as Rylan pulled out of him. That part would take some getting used to.

They collapsed in a heap and Micah turned around. He dragged Rylan, who was limp and all but purring, into his lap. The shifter had his eyes closed and Micah’s wolf sat back in contentment. Both sides of him could feel Rylan becoming more settled and knew the pack bond was healing itself.

“Micah?” Rylan’s surprised voice told him the wolf had retreated and the man was back in control.

Micah rubbed his cheek against the top of Rylan’s head, smiling at the smell of apples. He wanted as much of that scent as possible all over him and he wanted Rylan covered in his scent, too, so that everyone would know he was taken. Possessiveness was another alien emotion to him.

“Hmm. How are you feeling?” This must be what it felt like for the others. Remy, Zeke and Saffron always seemed so...whole with their mate. Right now Micah felt like he could climb a mountain or swim an ocean.

Rylan leaned into the touch for a moment before pulling away. “What just happened?” Everything came to a screeching halt.

The happy, weightless feeling sank like a lead balloon in his gut. Micah tried not to jump to conclusions and leaned around so that he see Rylan’s face. “You don’t know?”

“I know we had sex. But I feel like I’m missing something,” Rylan said with a wrinkled brow, his face scrunched up like he was trying to remember.

What had happened between them was the most intense, earth shattering experience of his life and Rylan didn’t even remember. It was too much and his wolf was too close to take another blow to his pride. So he did the only thing he could do. The thing he did best when confronted with something he didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry, I have to go.” Micah pushed to his feet, unlocked the door and ran, leaving Rylan calling after him. He felt like the world’s biggest idiot for believing this had meant more than fixing Rylan’s pack bond.

Micah swallowed the mouthful of burning amber liquid and lowered his glass back to the bar as he scented Zeke coming up behind him. “I’m surprised to see you, I thought Asher was the nominated speaker for me.”

Each time one of the seven of them needed help, but wasn’t choosing to get it, another of their siblings was nominated to make them talk. It was a bit like the CIA. Except without the waterboarding.

Usually Asher was his nominated agony aunt, just as he was Sage’s. Zeke was Asher’s, Remy was Zeke’s, Saffron and Rosemary were each other’s and Sage used to be Remy’s, though that was a little uncertain now. They mixed it up sometimes if there was someone with more experience with whatever the issue was, but usually stuck with the same person.

Zeke sat down on the stool next to him and ordered some kind of cocktail that Micah didn’t quite catch the name of. It had something to do with the beach and sand in uncomfortable places. The bartender mixed it up, filling the tall glass with half a dozen different things that made it look more like a rainbow than something anyone would drink.

“You need to stop ordering girly drinks,” he said with no conviction.

Zeke nudged his shoulder and held the drink up to him. “Taste it before you mock it.”

Micah rolled his eyes, but leaned forward to take a sip. Colorful drinks had never called to him. Whiskey or vodka were his preference, or if he didn’t want to remember the day before—tequila. The last time he’d had that devil drink, he’d given the club he was in a strip show on the bar and woken up with dollar bills and phone numbers stuffed in his underwear. Never again.

Micah swallowed the small mouthful and licked his lips. “Okay, I admit. It’s nice. Fruity and sharp, but you can still taste the alcohol in it.” He lifted his own glass and finished it, wrinkling his nose. It wasn’t as nice now he’d tried Zeke’s.

Zeke obviously saw his reaction and took the empty glass from him, nudging the cocktail at him instead and flagging down the bartender to order himself another. When they both had their drinks, Micah asked a question that had been bothering him.

“Why did Ashlock submit to you earlier, when we were talking about what to do about Rylan?” He just couldn’t figure it out.

Zeke looked at him for a long minute, not even blinking. “Dominance and rank don’t matter when you’re with your mate.”

Micah nodded, but he didn’t really understand. How could dominance not matter when half of who they were was a pack animal that depended on the hierarchy to have a place to belong? It didn’t make sense to him and the thing with Rylan only made him more confused. At the beginning, he’d been very aware of being a beta and Rylan being a second. But in the middle and after when they caught their breath, he hadn’t been thinking about rank.

They sat together in silence for a while, drinking and watching the people coming in and out of the club. There were a few young male shifters trying their luck with a gaggle of women. Most of them had been shot down, but the shifter just moved on to the next person like getting rejected wasn’t a big thing. One actually managed to talk his way into a dance and Micah tipped his glass as the one young wolf male walked past them with a grin of surprise at having got the pretty human girl to dance with him.

It wasn’t long before Zeke started in on the inquisition. “This thing with Rylan. You almost killed Hunter just because the wolf volunteered to sleep with him...” Zeke paused beside him and Micah tensed, wondering what his brother was going to say. “And the dreams, Micah...I’ve only ever heard about mates having that sort of connection.”

Micah’s hand clenched around the glass. “The dreams aren’t about sex.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, especially after what happened a few hours ago.

Zeke clapped him on the shoulder. “Just hear me out. Sometimes Asher and I can dream together, but there’s always the sexual component present. That vamp is just too damn hot for his own good.” Zeke’s expression changed to a dreamy contented smile.

Micah raised a brow and waited for Zeke to come back to the present. It was still odd seeing Zeke so cheery all the time. He and Zeke used to have the same sort of temperament, but now Zeke was well and truly body snatched by the mating bug.

Zeke shook himself out of the daydream with an embarrassed grin. “What I mean is that they can be intense. Asher told me that when Rylan was missing, you got the whole surround sound and scent experience. Sexual or not, only mates have that sort of connection, Mic. It’s no wonder your wolf has been going crazy and picking fights.”

He knew what Zeke was getting at. However, he hadn’t been exposed long enough to the drugs Trevor had been pumping out to Remy’s pack for it to take effect. No matter what he wished, Rylan wasn’t his mate.

He’d love to be able to blame the sting of tears on having way too much to drink, but the sad fact was that he’d only had the one drink before Zeke found him. The rest of the time he’d been trying to sort his thoughts out and run off this need he had to go back to Rylan.

“There’s no mate pull, so save your breath,” Micah said, staring into his drink.

“Okay, I believe you think that. But humor me for a few minutes and answer some questions?”

Micah didn’t comment on the way Zeke made it seem as though Micah was five years old and didn’t know anything. He nodded anyway. The sooner they were finished here, the sooner he could go for another run as a wolf and not think about much he had wanted to stay with Rylan, curled up on his lap.

“Did you think about him when you were in your former pack?” Zeke’s question hung in the air until Micah nodded in answer.

“Do you think about him when you go to sleep or when you get up in the morning, does your wolf get worked up when you see him, does your heartbeat speed up, do you find yourself wanting to see him even if all you’re going to do is argue with each other?”

Micah turned to glare at his little brother because the answer to all of them was yes. Zeke smiled triumphantly and patted him consolingly on the arm. “One more. Would you have changed places with him without hesitation when he was taken and being tortured by Trevor?”

He slammed the glass back on the bar so hard that other people turned to glance at him. But he flashed his teeth and growled at them and they all quickly turned away. “Of course I would have. I would give anything for him not to have been hurt and to keep him safe.”

Zeke didn’t look overly surprised by his outburst. “My diagnosis is that you, my brother, are completely and irrevocably in love. Even if there isn’t a mate pull, you and Rylan definitely have a connection. From what Remy has said about Rylan, he wouldn’t have said no to any of those questions either.”

Micah blinked. What did that mean?

Micah still wasn’t convinced this was a good idea, even as he raised his hand to knock on Rylan’s door. Gabriel and Liam had scattered the second they saw him coming up the hall. Evidently they weren’t sure whether he was still mad about earlier.

Ordinarily Micah would have played with them and maybe kept their unease going for a few days. But he was too preoccupied to waste the energy.

Before Micah’s fist made contact with the wood, Skylar appeared beside him and caught his wrist. He didn’t resist as Skylar dragged him away from Rylan’s room and down the hall to his and Remy’s room.

Skylar hauled him inside and quickly closed the door to block Micah’s escape. “What is going on? You were supposed to sleep with Rylan and fix his pack bond and now Remy tells me that the two of you did have sex, but that you went AWOL right after and Zeke found you in a bar. Please tell me that you did not go straight from Rylan’s bed to someone else’s. That would really break him.”

Micah held his hands up to ward off the hostility coming from Skylar, then remembered the vampire was blind and couldn’t actually see what he was doing.

“Okay, first of all, this family is really beginning to get on my nerves. Why is everyone suddenly so concerned with every little detail of my life?”

Skylar didn’t back down. The vampire crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Micah like he was a naughty child heading for a scolding. “We’re
getting on your nerves
because we’re worried about you. Remy and the others are scared you still have issues from being caught by that other pack and that all this with Rylan will set off some psychotic break.”

Micah’s argument crumbled at that. “I know they worry, but I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You can take a lot of physical pain, that’s evident from the scars Remy said you still have on your back. It bothers you in the moment, but as soon as it’s over you move on. Emotional hurt, however, I think you have a lot harder time dealing with,” Skylar told him, his blue irises flaring brighter for a second.

He narrowed his eyes at the vampire, assessing him. “Huh?”

Skylar walked over to the set of two chairs sitting next to the window, taking one for himself and patting the other “You’ve known Rylan since he came to live with the pack when he was five, correct?”

He sat down in the indicated chair, his wolf watching the vampire for any sign of a threat. Skylar might have found out about the chocolate stealing.

“Yes,” he answered cautiously, unsure as to where Skylar was going with this.

Skylar wore a tight, dark red t-shirt and a pair of black, no doubt designer jeans. Micah knew Remy had been slowly working Skylar into wearing more informal clothes around the house, but the vampire was a sucker for nice clothes.

“Since mating Remington, I admit that I would like all of our family to be paired off in a similar fashion, but I have been thinking about your situation. I can see—pun intended—that you’re confused and Remy is stuck in the middle between his brother and his best friend.”

He understood what Skylar was saying, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t already know that Remy was torn. There wasn’t much he could do about that.

“Remy told me that before we found Rylan, you were exhibiting the symptoms of a mated wolf who was separated from his mate. I think that Rylan may be your mate. However, I think you are right also that Trevor’s poison hasn’t affected you. Until I know more, I cannot give you an alternative explanation.” Skylar’s smooth voice sounded like the vampire was really worried about him and not because he was Remy’s brother.