“Holy hell, how many of those have you got?”
“You kidding? I went through the LA public school system. I’m just getting started. Like you need to,” he said, pinching Bruce’s taut nipple. And while Bruce bucked in reaction, Laddin kept talking. “You must have done it with your friends when you were a kid. Didn’t all eleven-year-old boys go into a back room and spit-shine their water pump? Yank on the crank and whack the weasel?”
Yeah, so there had been some of that when he’d been young and randy. “We called it ‘visiting Miss Michigan.’” He held up a hand with his fingers together. “Because the state is shaped like a hand.”
“And the UP has that very pointed shape.”
Bruce hadn’t thought about it that deeply, but he supposed it applied. “I had a friend who called it ‘teaching Cyclops the lambada.’”
Laddin tilted his head. “Not bad. Gives it a bit of an international flavor.”
Bruce chuckled. “I think it’s a global phenomenon.”
Laddin grinned as he straightened, moving away from Bruce’s shoulder. “How ya feeling now?”
It took a moment for Bruce to check himself. He remembered the protocol he used to go through as a paramedic, checking a patient’s vitals and doing a head-to-toe inventory. He used it now and was disappointed to realize he felt good. His heartbeat was steady, his breath was even, and his legs and even his toes had heated up.
He shook his head to clear it. There had to be a reason he was suddenly feeling better. The electrolytes in the sports drink he’d finished had probably kicked in. That was it. It couldn’t possibly be because Laddin had snuggled up tight to his side.
“Better,” he said quietly. “More solid.”
“You grounded into your body, and all it took was a little raunchy talk.” He gave Bruce’s shoulders a squeeze. “See? Now you don’t need to shuck your corn.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “Good one, right? Didn’t think I’d know that one, did you? Since I’m city-born and -raised.”
“I grew up in Indianapolis. That’s not exactly Mayberry.”
Laddin drew back, taking his arm and his heat with him. “Where?”
“It’s from a TV show my mom used to love. We’d watch the reruns together.” He let his head drop back onto the straw bale. “It was filmed in black and white.”
“Ugh. You guys in the Midwest are living in the Dark Ages. You know that, right?”
“Not me. My mom. And yes, we know.” Although in his mother’s case, it was more like the Denial Ages. But rather than think about that, he shifted against the straw bale, feeling strength come back into his body. His hard-on was still hungry, and he really missed Laddin’s touch, but it didn’t seem like his only lifeline anymore.
He watched as Laddin jumped up from the floor, brushing off his pants with quick swipes of his hand. Bruce took his time pulling on the sweatpants, doing his best not to gasp when the fabric skimmed over his dick. It made no sense. He was hard and horny, and he was watching Laddin as if the guy were the newestPlayboycenterfold. Bruce had always noticed cute guys before, but he’d never had such an overwhelming reaction to one.
“You said my brother was like… that he needed….”
Laddin dug into the trunk again and pulled out a T-shirt with a wolf emblem on the front. The thing was all wavy hair as the creature howled to the moon, and beneath it were the wordsWulf, Inc. “A blow job after every shift?”
Bruce’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
Laddin laughed as he threw the T-shirt at Bruce. “Not after the first few times. That didn’t stop him from wanting one, though.”
Bruce couldn’t imagine his brother as one of the crass crew—the guys who talked nonstop about sex with bad jokes, crude references, and stupid double entendres. His brother had never been that lame, and the idea that Josh had turned into some beast that needed to rut all the time just reinforced his need to get his brother out of here.
“It’s the Nero guy, isn’t it?”
Laddin smiled, his expression growing wistful. “They’re cute together, aren’t they?”
Cutewasn’t the word he’d use. What he’d seen was a lot bigger and much more dangerous. They were consumed by each other, trapped in each other’s spheres and unable to break free. He had no doubt that Josh thought he loved Nero. His brother was naïve that way. When he fell, he fell hard and gave his all. As a kid, Josh had always obsessed over things, while Bruce had scrambled to keep their father completely unaware of the fallout. Josh’s first dive into chemistry had been when he tried to recreate the experiment that created the Flash. That had cost Josh all his hair and all Bruce’s allowance as he tried to hide the damage to the basement. As time wore on, Josh’s experiments had gotten more sophisticated, but his habit of completely immersing into whatever—or whomever—was still there.
Bruce, on the other hand, knew better than to trust the first kindhearted guy who showed up. Sure, Nero pretended to cherish and protect his brother, and the sex was probably off the charts. But he’d also turned Josh into a werewolf, talked him into risking his life, doing God only knew what, and most telling, he’d destroyed Josh’s relationship with his family.
Or he’d tried to. Bruce was still here for Josh, and he was going to do what he should have done from the very beginning: protect his little brother. And if that meant diving into Josh’s nightmare world of werewolves and other monsters, then that was what he was going to do.
But first he needed to learn the lay of the land. He leaned back against the straw bale, consciously relaxing his pose, as if all he needed was a beer and a plate of nachos. “Give it to me straight. What exactly does it mean to be a werewolf?”
Laddin echoed his pose, only he settled onto the fender of the car as he stretched out his legs. “It means you can turn into a wolf.”
