“I’m not afraid. I haven’t been pack for so long, those laws don’t control me. And photography is art. I’ve met a couple of artists I was sure were that way, and they had a boatload of talent.”
“Mm.” Lee scooted lower, bent forward and kissed my stomach, then licked where my leaking cock had left a smear on my skin. He hummed again, licking the spot over and over.
“Uh, my prick’s an inch over that way.”
To my surprise, Lee flushed. “I know. I’m just not sure. Last time I was drunk.”
“Last time you were with a man?”
“Yeah. Well, with you. I don’t…” He hesitated. “I haven’t done this since then.”
You what?But of course, Lee was a big, hard man. Most queer guys probably wanted to be the ones on their knees for him, servicing him. I liked that I got to see his softer side.
“You don’t have to do me now.” I ran my hand over his hair, then thumbed his lip. Not that different from a woman’s, except the graze of rough stubble as my finger slid from his lip to his cheek. “Or try whatever you enjoy receiving, and I’m sure it’ll be great.”
“Ah. Except I haven’t done it… from that end either.” He didn’t lift his eyes from my erect prick.
“Nothing? In twenty-five years?” My picture of Lee living his satisfied homosexual life without me vanished in a puff of smoke. A fierce wave of affection and protectiveness ran through me at the thought of Lee, alone all those years.Fuck the packs. Fuck the human laws.Although, despite my sadness that he’d been alone so long, a jealous part inside me cheered. I was not a good man. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, my hands and my imagination. And other men’s hands a few times in the war, you know?” He flicked a quick look upward, and I nodded. “But that’s all. No, um, mouths. And I want this to be good for you.” He seemed paralyzed by indecision.
Tenderness drowned the last of my hesitation. This was Lee, my best friend, and I’d always been the one dragging us into trouble, while he dragged us out again. Maybe that pattern didn’t have to stay in the past. “So we’re equal then, in, uh, sex things with men.” I took a deep breath. “How about I go first?”
“You do what?”
Yeah? What the hell did I just say?But the way Lee’s eyes had brightened made me forge on. “You lie back and I’ll show you the things I like. Unlike you, I did let my dick get out for some sucking fun in the last twenty-five years.”
“With women.”
“Sure. I expect the principle’s the same.”
We froze there, our gazes locked, me on my back in Lee’s bed and him on his knees over me. The entire planet was revolving around us, but in that moment, we were still as stone. Then a smile curved Lee’s mouth. “Really? You want to?”
I don’t know.But I’d never been one to back away from a dare, even when it was me daring myself. “Yeah. I do. Get off me and lie down.”
When we’d managed to swap positions, Lee lay on his back, his shorts off, his whole big hairy body and thick erection laid out for me. I battled renewed doubts. This wasqueer. Homosexual. I couldn’t chalk it up tomen have needslike I did in the Pacific, with a male hand on my dick. If I put my mouth there, I was a pansy, a fairy, all the harsher things I’d heard through the years.
I was separating myself from centuries of wolves, from generations, my father, grandfather.
“You don’t have to.” Lee touched my knee where I bracketed his thigh.
“Do you ever wonder what Alpha my father would say about this?”
Lee snorted. “I knew back then he’d maybe shed one regretful tear after ripping my throat out. ‘Harsh necessity,’ he’d call it, and move on. If it was you?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to guess.”
“Harsh necessity.” I repeated the words. “Yeah, he’d have shed three tears, maybe, but pack always came first for him.” That thought hurt. I’d been the apple of my father’s eye as a child. But once I became pack at thirteen, I’d recognized fast that I came second in his life.
Lee kneaded my thighs with strong fingers. “We’re not doing anything that harms the packs.”
Truth.Down inside me, my wolf stretched and rose, closer to my skin.Good. Pack. Mate.
The last word made me choke.Don’t be stupid,I thought. But my wolf smirked and raised the idea of a pack so far away it fell off the edge of the world, and Lee, here, real, wolf, with me.Good.
I needed to not think anymore. I needed sensations, touch, taste, smell. I scooted down the bed till I could bury my face against Lee’s hairy stomach and inhale. The scent of his skin went straight to my core.Home.The head of his cock bobbed beside my cheek, ruddy and pushed up from the foreskin, a drop of clear liquid welling at the tip. I turned my head and ran my tongue over that drop.
Lee groaned and his body shook under me. The flavor of him burst on my tongue, salty and clean and male and wolf,thiswolf,Lee, more appealing than the taste of any woman’s essence. I licked him again, then slid my mouth over the rounded head, and down, then up with a little suction.
“Micah.” He said my name like it was a prayer. “Please, Micah.”
