“If you’re thinking of getting it on,” Josh drawled, “I’m really not in the mood.”
Sadly, that was true. There was no indication that Josh’s dick was doing anything under his towel. “Actually, I’m here to level with you, but we have to keep our voices down. We can’t have the other recruits hearing this by accident.”
“Uh-huh,” Josh intoned as he leaned back against his dresser. His taut abs were on display, and there was moisture pebbling in his light dusting of chest hair. He stretched his long legs out in front of him. If Nero had ever wanted an image to jerk off to, this was it. And the arch to Josh’s brows said he knew exactly what he was doing to Nero’s libido. “So the artful arrangement of you naked in my bed is just convenient?”
Nero shrugged. It was and it wasn’t, no sense in denying it. “Listen for a moment.” He dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “The goal of training at this stage is to get you to shift back to your wolf. We do that by pissing you off, like Yordan did with Bing.”
Josh’s eyes widened, which showed he was listening.
“But you’re not like most recruits. The more angry you get, the more in your head you get.” He lifted his chin. “How many different plans do you have for getting even with us?”
Josh’s lips curled in a truly evil grin. “A dozen aimed at humiliation, seven will maim, and countless lethal ones, but only two are practical.”
Well, that was scarily detailed. “Which means we have to find a different way.”
Josh folded his arms across his chest. “How about explaining the process to me?”
“That won’t work. It’s different for everybody—”
“It’s a place to start—”
“And all I can say is that I let myself go wolf. Or human. I want it and I’m there.”
Josh threw up his hands. “You’re all fucking naturals, which makes you lousy teachers.”
Nero couldn’t argue, but he could share his experiences from when he’d first shifted. “Remember when I told you that I was bitten in a bar fight?”
“You came to in the woods with your entire pack.”
“Such as it was. Pack means a whole lot more to me now that it did back then.” He leaned forward on the bed. He hadn’t bothered with a sheet to cover his nakedness, and he was pleased to see Josh follow his movements with his eyes. Nero wasn’t exactly ugly, so maybe there was interest there. He sure as hell was enjoying his view of Josh.
“I was kept alive by a girl with more sexual appetite than I’d ever experienced. Hell, more than I ever thought possible. Anyway, she smelled like lust, and at seventeen, that was all it took. If she was a wolf, then I went wolf and we did it that way. If she was human, then I shifted to two legs and took her that way. Or her friends. Or they me.”
“Wow,” Josh breathed. “Sounds like every teenage boy’s fantasy.” There was envy in his tone that Nero was quick to squash.
“Like I said, pack means a lot more to me now, and endless sex gets boring.” He flashed a rueful smile. “My brain doesn’t crave the constant stimulation like yours does, and even I got tired of it.”
“My brain will shut up for some things.”
Nero smiled. “Good. Because that’s exactly my plan.”
“Come again?”
“We need to get you into your body. For you, that means touch, caresses—”
“Sex.” It wasn’t a statement so much as a snort of derision.
“Hear me out. The girl who smelled like lust taught me a lot of things too, including how to trigger the wolf sex drive.” He pointed at the desk and the thick stack of papers there. “So we can sit here and fill out all of Yordan’s paperwork, or you can let me do everything she did to me. Every wolf trigger I know—”
“Sexually.” There wasn’t derision in his tone. It was more like heavily layered doubt.
“Yes.”
“You want me to shift into a wolf during sex.”
Nero nodded. “It’s a dominance thing. I’m not going to let you get off as a human. You’re going to have to go furry to get your release.”
Josh’s brows rose into his hairline. “You want to have sex with me as a—”
