The shower had turned on, and I thought about going and climbing in with Nate. He usually loved that. I’d wash his hair and his back, kiss his shoulders, let him relax and start to lean back against me, that incredibly sweet little ass of his pressed against my thighs, my hard cock against the slippery small of his back.
I didn’t actually need to get in the shower with him to be hard, it turned out.
For a moment, I hesitated in front of the bathroom door. If I went in there I’d end up fucking him in the shower, whether we’d been fighting or not. But he’d shut the door. He wanted space. Every cell in my body ached to have no space at all between us, but maybe he’d be in a better mood if I left him alone. Maybe? Christ. The bond wasn’t telling me much. It mostly swirled with confusion. His and mine both.
No. If nothing else, a few minutes might help me figure out how to say what I needed to.
I crossed the couple of feet of creaky floor to the kitchen area of the cabin, flicking on the overhead light and grabbing aclean rag to wash myself up a bit. Nate wouldn’t want muddy snow streaks in our bed. And I sure as fuck planned to get him there. He usually listened better when I had him knotted down—I mean, he rarely listened at all otherwise.
By the time I’d gotten myself cleaned up and started a pot of coffee, a basic gesture of love for Nate that he’d recognize no matter what mood he’d gotten into, he’d shut the shower off and gone suspiciously silent, even to my alpha werewolf ears.
What the fuck was he doing in there?
I’d gotten about one millisecond from breaking down the door, claws itching at my fingertips with the urge to protect my mate, I didn’t even fucking know from what—his toothbrush? The termites he kept complaining about?—before the bathroom door opened and Nate stepped out, a towel wrapped around his waist and water still dripping from his curly hair onto his shoulders, little rivulets that I wanted to lick off of him.
“You made coffee,” he said. “Thanks.”
Okay, now I knew something was badly wrong. Formal gratitude for a mundanely thoughtful act? Had that silence in the bathroom been some freaky alien race beaming Nate up and replacing him with a robot replica? Except robots wouldn’t want to get wet in a shower, right? Damn it. That was the kind of hypothetical question Nate would debate with me on a normal day, one of many reasons why I fell more in love with him on every single one of them that passed.
“I’ll get you a cup,” I said politely, because this was far from a normal day.
I reached into the cabinet for a couple of mugs, ending up with one that saidAsk your veterinarian about Frontline Plus today!,which I could only assume he’d Sharpie’d on a day when Arik had pissed him off, and another with a simple drawing of a hand with its middle finger upraised. That could’ve been aimed at anyone. Realistically, probably me.
“Hey,” I added, trying to lighten the mood, “I know they were kind of smelly and all, but they’re adorable kids, right? You looked so fucking cute holding them.”
Nate had crossed to his dresser and opened the top drawer, and as I spoke he went absolutely, rigidly still. With all that gorgeous bare skin on display, he looked like some fancy statue, weirdly frozen forever in the act of finding a clean pair of underwear.
“You know I don’t really do children for more than a couple hours at a time,” he said after a second, his voice incredibly strained. “I don’t want kids. We can’t have them. You can’t knock me up, you know that, right?”
Okay. Those alarm bells weren’t just ringing now. Whatever those spinning light things were, with klaxon sirens. That’s what he had going on.
I had to stay calm. Gently coax him into telling me what I’d done wrong.
Only Nate sayingknock me upsent a flash of un-fucking-believable lust straight down into the base of my cock where my knot would form. It actuallythrobbed. My fangs dropped. Nate, with that usually smooth, flat stomach of his all round, filled with what I had to give him…
I’d thought about it once or twice.
Okay, maybe a little more than that, and if you counted those years of being a fucking pining loser and all the depraved sexual fantasies I’d cooked up on lonely nights, maybea lotmore than that.
Before I could think or even blink, I’d hopped the kitchen island and crossed the room in two big strides, fetching up right behind Nate, claw-tipped hands on the dresser and caging him in. Touching him would have to wait until I’d gotten my partial shift under control. But I’d be damned if he’d go anywhere until then.
“What the hell, Ian?” Nate demanded. He shoved back against me, but I didn’t budge. Obviously. And the thrust of his round, towel-clad ass against my erection made a growl start, low in my chest. “I’m getting dressed. We’re not having sex while we talk about how I can’t have children!”
“Okay, so don’t talk,” I said, and bent my head down, nuzzling into the nape of his neck, right behind his ear. He had the softest skin. I flicked my tongue out and savored the way he shuddered and leaned back into me a fraction, as if he couldn’t resist me any more than I could resist him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with kids. I don’t want to talk about you not having them.”
“You liked seeing me with that baby. You just said so. Of course you don’t want to talk about it, you never want to talk about anything that you’d rather not think about. Ian—fuck, Ian…”
I’d made it down to the curve of his throat. And pressed closer, crowding him up against the dresser, bending my knees to get my cock lined up where it wanted to go. The towel in the way only made it hotter. Thinking about lifting it up, what was under there…
Actually, fuck yes.
Instead of standing upright, I went all the way down on my knees.
And instead of pulling the towel off, I pushed it up barely enough to expose the curve of his ass. My claws still hadn’t cooperated. I had to use my face to spread his cheeks, prising him open with my tongue, breathing hotly into the crease where I knew that sweet hole was hiding from me.
Not hiding for long. Nate loved this too much to keep arguing—loved it almost as much as I did. With a hitched, muffled moan of surrender, he bent forward over the dresser, pushing his ass out like he was desperate.
“Hold yourself open,” I growled into his skin, nipping at one cheek. “I can’t control my claws when you’re like this.”
