“Mm.” Leon let their arms touch from wrist to shoulder. The heat between them was immediate, a slow simmer that had nothing to do with sunlight.
“So,” Leon said eventually, voice casual. “Assuming we make it back to the ranch without getting abducted by any more paranoid wolves or eaten by bears, how long d’you think before you’re cleared to do anything strenuous?”
Karl turned his head, eyes sliding over Leon with open appreciation. “Depends what kind of strenuous you mean.”
“The kind that starts horizontal and ends with me not walking straight,” Leon said, and then, because Karl’s gaze had gone molten, he decided some more teasing was in order. “I mean,assuming that’s on the table. Maybe you just want to recover to patrol your territory again.”
Karl didn’t laugh. He turned fully toward Leon, eyes still locked on his, and reached to brush Leon’s hair behind his ear with surprising gentleness. The rough skin of his fingers caught against the shell of Leon’s ear, and he shuddered.
“It’s not just on the table,” Karl said. “It’s the whole damn feast.”
Leon swallowed hard. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Leon said, faintly annoyed, “Well, thanks for that. Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day with a hard-on and no privacy.”
Karl grinned. “Good. We’re even.”
Leon felt the smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Not quite. You’re sitting there looking disgustingly smug while I suffer.”
Karl looked deeply unrepentant. Almost cat-like, in fact. “Guess we’ll just have to make it worth the wait.”
Leon groaned. “You better not be one of those ‘delayed gratification is good for the soul’ types.”
“Depends. You up for a test of endurance?”
Leon’s smile was slow and wicked. “Honey,” he said, “I’m a cat. We invented patience. Doesn’t mean we like using it.”
The air between them was still thick with want, and he pushed a little closer against Karl’s side, feeling the curl of something hot and sharp in his belly at the press of smooth warm skin against his. The firmness of Karl’s muscles that led to him thinking about—
About absolutely nothing, actually. He stared determinedly up at the branches of the tree overhead as Ruth approached.
They needed to get out of here, to have privacy and time. Away from interruptions, away from pups demanding Karl’s attention, away from everything except one another. And a big bed.
Leon could do patience. He just didn’t want to.
KARL
The two wolves sent to the nearest town wouldn’t be back for at least another day, but it seemed he and Leon had been conditionally accepted. Hailey stopped by late in the afternoon to invite them to eat with the rest of the pack that evening.
Karl had to bite down a grin at the horror on Leon’s face. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he’d gotten to know Leon well enough to read his mind—eat with a bunch of wolves? Some of whom had pups, loud andmessy?
“Thank you,” he said smoothly, “but I think we’d do better staying here, so I can rest my leg.”
Ruth brought them supper not long after. She was still full of questions about Jesse, laughing when Karl told her about Jesse’s sugar addiction.
“Hasn’t changed a bit,” she said, her voice catching on a sob. “His father was like that too. I don’t know how he never put on a single pound.”
Pain flickered in her eyes at the mention of her mate.
“Did he have a grudge against chickens too, Jesse’s dad?” Leon asked.
Karl had no idea when he’d picked up on Jesse’s vendetta against poultry. That cat noticedeverything.
Ruth blinked, totally lost. “Given that he never met a chicken in his life,” she said slowly, “I really couldn’t say.”
But her eyes were brighter again. Leon, ever the strategist.
* **
