Meanwhile, Josh pulled his hands back to his sides and then sat more upright on the bed. He didn’t cover up, but he wasn’t flaunting himself anymore either. Nero pulled on sweats, sat down on his desk chair, and stretched his bare feet out on the bed to come within inches of Josh. He ached to touch the man—even in so small a way—but he held himself back. He wanted to leave the possibility open and allow Josh the choice of whether they touched again or not.
“I grew up in Florida,” he said. “First in Miami, but after my mom ODed, my sister and I were sent to my grandparents in Jacksonville.”
“Whoa.” Josh sat fully upright. “That’s quite a beginning. How old were you?”
“Nine. My sister was six. It made for a rocky start, but my grandparents did the best they could. I knew a lot of people who had it worse.”
“And there are starving kids in Africa. Doesn’t make your experience any better or less painful.” Josh stretched out a hand and squeezed Nero’s ankle, and damn if that didn’t make Nero’s whole body warm. “I’m sorry.”
Nero smiled, taking a moment to feel the heat of Josh’s hand and the warmth of his gaze. Then he had to force himself to keep talking or get lost in the sweetness of the moment. “My teen years were awful. Gramps and I always fought, and Gram didn’t know what to do with me. She had her hands full with my sister, who went through more phases than the moon.” He arched a brow at Josh to show him that he could make moon jokes too. Josh quirked a brow at him but stayed focused on the story.
“What phases?”
“Goth one day, preppie the next. Punk, pink, retro, and I don’t even know what. Gram said she was searching for her own identity, but I thought she was trying to drive us all crazy.”
“This her?” Josh grabbed the one family picture he had in the room. All the others were of his team, but there, half-forgotten on a stack of books, was a framed photo of everyone at his last football game. Gramps and Gran looked as usual—like they belonged in the fifties—and his little sister, Rachel, had been in her studious phase, complete with fake glasses and a high bun. It hadn’t lasted more than a couple of weeks, but the persona had gotten her through midterm exams, and so he supposed it had served its purpose. Anyway, he stood in the middle with a big grin as he looked at his cheerleader girlfriend, who was taking the picture. She’d dumped him right before Christmas break, but he’d had fun with her before then. So that made this one photo the frozen moment when everything had been good—or at least, it had seemed so—until everything went bad.
“That was a good day,” he said. He’d lost his virginity that evening, so honestly, it had been a great day.
“What are they doing now? Do they know that you’re… that you….”
“She’s just started in Miami as a forensic analyst.”
“Cool! Real-life CSI.”
“And no, they don’t know.”
Josh nodded as if he expected that. “What do you tell them?”
He swallowed. “They think I’m in jail for murder.”
To his credit, Josh didn’t even flinch, but he did take a moment before he quipped, “Well, that’s not what I expected you to say. Care to elaborate?”
Not really, but he did it anyway. “It was right after high school graduation. We all went down to Miami to have fun on the beach. The police told my family that I killed my best friend in a bar fight and am now in a special rehabilitation program oriented at teens.” He shrugged, though the movement was forced. “That was ten years ago.”
“So what really happened?”
It was gratifying that Josh didn’t seem to have any doubts that the official version wasn’t the truth. Nero wished he had the same faith. “We got into a bar fight with werewolves. He was killed, I was bitten, and then….” He shook his head.
“Orgy?”
He shook his head. “I remember burning up, like waves of heat inside and out. I think I went rampaging as a wolf with their pack, but I don’t remember much of it.” Thank God. “I woke up hungry somewhere in the Everglades. We ate, had sex, and ate some more. And then Daryl’s team showed up.”
Josh nodded as he became more animated. “I read that case file, but it didn’t say much. The team stalked and killed most of a group of lycanthropes. It listed three new recruits, and you were one of them. That’s it.”
“That’s because there was nothing else to say. We were given the choice: join up or die. I joined up, as did Raoul and Vanessa. Raoul tapped out as soon as he proved he had control. He married into one of the southern werewolf packs and is doing great. Vanessa didn’t handle things as well.”
“Couldn’t give up the… taste? The report said that most of the pack had to be put down because they’d never live without blood. Those were the exact words: ‘Never live without blood.’”
He knew. He’d read the file. “That’s a known problem with the lycanthropy virus. There’s nothing like the taste of blood. It’s like life on our tongues, and….” He shook his head. “Sometimes we become addicted.” He constantly watched himself for that need. The good news was that demon blood tasted nothing like human, so he and his team specialized in the nonhuman problems. Or they had.
“Was that Vanessa’s problem?”
“No. She had the other problem.” The same one that sometimes haunted him. “What she did—what we did—before we were stopped….” His gaze canted away until he was looking out at fluffy white snowflakes drifting lazily down. “I was lucky. I don’t remember much beyond flashes.” Blood. Screams. The taste of raw flesh. “She remembered it all, and she couldn’t live with it.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah.” His gaze went back to Josh where he sat with a serious expression. “She killed herself a year later.” Another body in the lousy human-to-werewolf transition statistic. “It’s something to remember when you meet a virus werewolf. We all have an ugly history behind us. I was fortunate enough not to remember it.”
