by TA Moore
The plea sent a shudder of reaction down Jack’s back that ended somewhere tight and tender in his balls. He gave his cock a last jerk, the ache of it almost uncomfortable, and then reached out to grab Danny’s cheeks and pull them apart. The pucker of his asshole tightened as the cold air reached it, and then it relaxed as Jack pressed the slick crown of his cock against it. It stretched open under the pressure, tight around the thickness of Jack’s shaft as he buried himself inside Danny in one hard thrust.
Danny groaned and dropped his head between his shoulders as Jack filled him. His hands twisted into the sheets and his ass squeezed around Jack, warm and firm as it squeezed around his cock. The muscles in his back tightened, taut as cords under his skin. Despite the need that ached in Jack’s hips and thighs to just pound into Danny, to fuck him breathless and compliant into the bed, he held back for a moment.
Just until Danny’s shoulders loosened and he rocked back against Jack in silent encouragement. Then he hooked his hands around Danny’s hips, anchored in the jut of his hipbones, and thrust into him with rough, eager strokes. His hips slapped hard against Danny’s ass and jarred him forward each time his cock slid deeply inside him.
Danny fell back onto his elbows as he braced himself against the mattress. He groaned desperately and pushed his ass back to meet each thrust. Sweat slicked their bodies and seeped out of Jack’s freshly soaped skin as they ground against each other.
Heat pulled at Jack’s balls—a dull, almost too tender ache as they got ready to spill their load again with each hard stroke. It itched under his skin with a prickle of sensation along his nerves that settled tight and vibrating in his gut. He leaned forward and grabbed Danny’s shoulder to pull him back up onto his knees. The wiry length of Danny’s body pressed back against Jack’s chest as Jack’s cock was buried deep inside him.
“You’ll never want anyone else the way you do me,” Jack promised against Danny’s throat, words punctuated with the scrape of teeth. “I’m the only one who knows you like this.”
He reached over Danny’s hip and grabbed his cock. Thin skin pulled taut around the solid shaft creased under Jack’s fingers as he dragged his hand down in a quick, rough stroke. There was probably a smart retort somewhere in Danny’s head, but all he could muster was a ragged groan as he bit down on his lower lip.
Jack rocked his hips in two slow, deep strokes, his thighs taut as he stretched up onto his tiptoes to get his cock in deeper. He felt Danny suck in his breath and the taut tug of his stomach and spread of his shoulders in reaction.
“Please,” Danny groaned as he reached back and tangled his fingers through Jack’s hair. He turned his head, and Jack felt the graze of warm, damp lips across his temple. “I need you.”
That was enough to wrench Jack right up to the edge until he could feel himself balanced on the brink of orgasm. He spilled them both back down onto the bed, legs tangled around each other, and pressed his mouth against the crease of Danny’s shoulder as he hammered his cock into him. Danny squirmed, caught between pushing back into each thrust and the urge to grind his cock into Jack’s tight fist.
He came first with a spill of thin, sticky come that smeared Jack’s fingers and dripped onto the bed. It was Jack’s name on his mouth, as close to a prayer as any wolf with pride would spit out, as his cock twitched and his balls tightened. His breath hissed raggedly between his teeth, and he grunted into the mattress, as Jack worked his cock the last few strokes to orgasm into Danny’s ass and it fluttered around him in reaction.
As he came, pleasure wrung roughly from his gut as his balls cramped, he bit down on Danny’s shoulder, his mark chewed into the swell of muscle in the smell of his spit and the shape of his bite. Sweat salt and blood stung on his tongue, the sharp intake of Danny’s gasp a pinch of pleasure on its own.
This was his—Jack sprawled boneless and comfortable over Danny’s back. He licked the blood off Danny’s skin and growled annoyance when Danny finally jabbed him in the ribs to make him move. They lay on the bed, legs lazily tangled, and waited for whoever would be the first to come hammer on the Old Man’s front door for solutions.
“Nothing has changed,” Danny said. He pressed a kiss to Jack’s throat. The cut Lach’s knife had opened had healed, but the ache was still there under the bones. Danny’s kiss didn’t ease that, but Jack appreciated it anyhow. “Nothing has to change.”
“No,” Jack said quietly, because everyone got to lie their own way.
When Jack asked Danny when they’d last been together under his da’s roof, he already knew the answer. It had been his birthday, a month before Danny left. Even as Danny had straddled Jack, sweet and long, easy muscle spread out for him, he’d had the offer from university folded away in one of his books. He’d known he was going to leave the Pack and not see Jack again, because he couldn’t stay and still be Danny.
And nothing had changed, had it?
The sound of a fist on the door downstairs saved him from having to admit he had no answer.
Chapter Fifteen—Danny
“I DON’T know,” Ellie said. “That wasn’t something that Lach told me. Told any of us, as far as I know.”
She sat on the low, scarred stool in the middle of the Old Man’s living room. Her head was tilted back submissively to show her throat to Jack, her eyes tipped down and to the side, so she wasn’t even looking at him. The handful of the Pack Jack had handpicked to have their say—the accusers, the survivors, the wronged—stood around her in a rough, judgmental circle.
Danny sat to the side, not quite part of it, but no one was ready to face down Jack and get him thrown out.
“You were willing to sell the Pack out to the prophets,” Jack said skeptically. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the Old Man’s desk. “And you didn’t even know why?”
Her eyes flickered to him and away. “He was the Numitor,” Ellie said. Behind her Kath growled, an angry scratch of noise in the back of her throat. It made Ellie cringe, for which Danny had some sympathy, but she didn’t back down. “I did what I was told. Besides, you were exiles, and the rest were only dogs. Not my pack.”
Kath clipped her around the ear with the back of her hand. “You don’t get to make that call,” Kath said through gritted teeth. “And Lach had no claim to be Numitor.”
“So you get to make that call?” Ellie asked sarcastically. She ducked her head to avoid another slap and beat her fists against her knees. “You didn’t tell him that to his face, though, did you? No, you were a good wolf and fell in line. Same as me.”
Kath grabbed a handful of blond hair and yanked Ellie’s head back to roughly expose the tight line of her throat again.
“And you know why.”
Bron, in a borrowed coat that hung down to her thighs, curled her lip in a toothy, humorless smile. “And I wasn’t a dog or an exile,” she said. “Neither were the children.”
A mutter of agreement ran around the room. Danny bit at the inside of his lips to hold back a cynical comment about how disposable he was. He didn’t doubt his mam would have tried to save him, or that she’d mourn if he was gone, but would she have bent the neck for his sake or put the Pack at risk?
Danny doubted it.
The future of the Pack lay in their children, and even if Danny had a bit more interest in women than Jack did, a dog couldn’t sire a wolf. It didn’t help. Danny raked his fingers through his hair, which was overgrown and tangled in knots from Jack’s hands, and tried to swallow the sharp edges of that.
He could have sworn it never used to bother him this much. Too many years away had weakened his tolerance. Or maybe it hadn’t. He’d left, after all. If it hadn’t bothered him back then, he could have stayed.
Danny glanced sideways at Jack from behind the glasses he’d retrieved from the bathroom sink—sharp green eyes and the compact, lean lines of a body that had been wrapped around Danny an hour before. If he could have stayed, back then, he would have, wouldn’t he?
“And I’m asham
ed I didn’t help you,” Ellie said. “But that was the prophets’ doing, not Lachlan’s. There wasn’t anything we could do about them other than do as we were told so they didn’t end up an object lesson.”
“Yeah, well, one of those dogs managed to get us out,” Bron said caustically. “So maybe they’re more useful to the Pack than you.”
This time Ellie bit her tongue. Jack glanced away from her and at Danny, as though the backhanded compliment had reminded him he was there. Bron followed the direction of his gaze and glared at them both.
“For what that’s worth,” she said caustically, and then irritably blew a stray curl out of her face. “And what does that mad old bitch want with my pup? It’s not even out of my belly. It might not even live that long.”
It might not. If it did, she might not live long enough to see. Wolves lived a long time, but they lived hard and the Wild took its tithe. Danny didn’t particularly want to think about it. He couldn’t stand his little sister—the sharp-nosed apple of their mam’s eye, a sneer given legs and a mouth—but he loved her. Nothing should happen to her.
“She claims she’s pregnant,” Jack said. He curled his lip at the thought.
The glimpse of his teeth made Danny’s shoulder remember to ache under his itchy sweater. He ignored it as he leaned forward, interest hooked. When the prophets brought Jack and Gregor to the hospital, he’d stayed as far back as he could. In the cold the sheep hadn’t stunk nearly enough for him to feel confident it would cover his scent.
Not from her. Danny still woke up to dreams that this—his thumbs and his legs, the words in his throat and his freedom—was a dream. He was just a dog, his brain slower every day, on the end of her leash.
“Is she?” he asked.
Wolves, after all, lived long.
Jack made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Even if her womb hadn’t dried up years back,” he said, “what man in his right mind would touch that? She looked like something that rolled off a barbeque.”
On her stool Ellie shuddered. “I thought she was beautiful,” she murmured.
Jack looked at her as though she were mad. By the door, James, whose son had been taken but not found, spat on the floor. “Her child. Your child,” he said bitterly. “Why should I care when none of you brought my son home?”
“That’s no one’s fault,” Kath said. “The Wild—”
“Fuck the Wild,” James spat. His mate gripped his arm with one hand and tried to soothe him with what little emotion she could spare from her own grief. It was brittle and distracted. James yanked his arm free and swung his red-rimmed, furious gaze around the group. “And fuck all of you. All of you got your children back—alive, whole, here—and Kath’s dog even found its way home—”
Someone growled. Danny thought it was Jack and then realized the scratchy sound came out of his own throat. James glared at him and seemed to swell with anger as he hunched his shoulders and tensed his muscles.
It would have been intimidating, but…. Danny had fought monsters, he’d fought Job in the plague-skin of a dead wolf, and he’d spent too much time stuck in his own hide for his temper’s sake. What was one grief-struck wolf compared to that?
Danny wasn’t stupid. He knew, if it came to a fight, James would wipe the walls with him. It just didn’t scare him anymore.
“I have a name,” he said bluntly as he straightened up off the stool. “So you can call me Danny or he, or you can shut your—”
It was Kath who stepped between them, her back to James as she faced Danny down.
“That’s enough,” she snapped as she took a step closer and gave him a shove. “Maybe I didn’t teach you prudence, Danny, but I know I taught you manners. Apologize.”
Danny snorted.
“Your dog needs to spend a night in a muzzle,” James rasped out. “Lach might have been a poor excuse for a Numitor, but that he got right. Dogs have their place, but it’s not here.”
“Da would disagree,” Jack interrupted. He sounded angry, probably with them both.
“Your da’s dead,” James spat. He laughed when Jack snarled at him. “You expect me to care about your feelings? I served the Old Man well. I was loyal, but he was old. He had decades under his belt. My son didn’t even get five. Until he’s back, Jack, fuck your mourning.” He turned to pin Bron with a hard look. “And fuck you too. You think I care more about what’s growing in your belly than my own lad? Why? It probably won’t even live. Gregor’s other child didn’t.”
“The fuck?” Danny blurted, his voice sharp and oddly clear as shock brought the professor out of him.
At the same time, as though to underline Danny’s shock, Bron backhanded James across the face. Her knuckles split his cheekbone and knocked him back a step. He shook his head, blood splattered on the floor, and he instinctively pulled his fist back.
“No!” his mate cried out, her emotions snapped back into focus. “That won’t help him!”
She grabbed James’s arm and the scruff of his neck to wrestle him back. At the same time, Kath shed her dress and pulled her other skin on as she crossed the room, from woman to massive, thick-furred wolf, and put herself between James and her daughter.
James threw his mate off and swung a kick at Kath. She absorbed it against one heavy shoulder and sank her teeth into his leg. Blood stained his jeans as she bit down into the meat of his calf. James snarled and staggered on one foot as he tried to shake her off, but it didn’t work. She braced her legs against the floor and threw her head from side to side to tear the wound open.
Shocked by the outbreak of violence, Ellie jerked to the side and fell off the stool. She squirmed on the flagstones, onto her back and away from the fight. Jack grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her out of reach before he waded in. She showed her throat to him in submissive gratitude, and James finally ripped his leg out of Kath’s jaws.
His leg was tatters of muscle and meat, his jeans shredded. Blood puddled under his feet as he grabbed Kath by the throat and waist, ignoring the snap of her teeth that tore his arm open, and threw her at the wall. Then he reached for Bron.
Danny cursed under his breath and scrambled to his feet. He dove across the room to the Old Man’s desk and grabbed the shotgun leaning up against the wall next to it. It was old and rarely used—just to scare birds away when they got on the Old Man’s nerves, but enough for him to make a show of himself by chasing them in his fur—but it was clean and well-oiled.
The Old Man always believed it was a virtue to maintain your weapons, even if you didn’t really need them.
Danny pointed it at the puddle of blood around James’s feet and pulled the trigger. The recoil smacked the butt back against his hip, and smoke belched from the muzzle. Buckshot pocked the old granite slabs of the floor and punched a few holes into James’s foot as well. Danny had never had to aim before. The Old Man didn’t want to eat the gulls or the crows, so all he’d sent Danny—or whatever dog was playing assistant that week—out to do was make a loud noise at the sky.
The unexpected noise made everyone flinch, their ears even more sensitive than the birds, and James swung his head around to glare at Danny. His lips peeled back from teeth that looked too cluttered for his mouth, his fangs pushed against his gums as his wolf tried to get out.
“You think that will stop me?” he asked thickly as he stepped toward Danny. Bron took a step after him, but Kath—human again—dragged her back. “Go on, then, boy. Shoot me and I’ll take that thing off you and—”
“How long will your eyes take to grow back?” Danny asked as he lifted the shotgun to his shoulder. Faced with the steady, black barrel of the weapon, James, despite his faith he’d survive the shot, hesitated. “How fast will your spine stitch itself back together to get your legs working?”
Bron shoved Kath away. “Not fast enough,” she answered for James. “I’ll have his throat before he stops pissing himself. I don’t care if they’re dead or a dog, you keep your mouth off my brother and my baby.”
Doubt flickered over James’s face, and he uncomfortably shifted his weight on his mauled feet.
“You wouldn’t dare,” James said. “You know I’ll get back up and beat you worse.”
Danny bared his teeth in a dog’s grim smile. “When did that ever stop me?” he asked.
“And you won’t get back up,” big, genial Craig—who was barely above Danny in the Pack because he didn’t like to fight—said in a soft, dangerous voice that sounded odd from him. “Those dogs you don’t think should be in our pack? They saved my daughter. I like them better than I ever liked you, James.”
James turned awkwardly to glare at him. “And my boy?!” he demanded. His voice cracked. “Why didn’t they save Greer when they were about it, then?”
“He never got there,” Ellie said. She leaned against Jack’s leg, her head on his thigh, and visibly defied the need to cringe when James turned his glower onto her. “The prophets lost him, and the Wild took him. He wasn’t there to bring home.”
James’s face flushed red and twisted. It could have been rage or grief. Jack stepped in before the emotion could decide what it was and gripped the back of James’s neck.
“We’ll find Greer,” Jack promised as he held James in place. He dug his fingers into the tense cords of James’s neck. “We’ll bring him home. But first we have to end the prophets and put the Wild to rights. Otherwise he could be lost in the miles between one step and the next.”
James shuddered and relaxed, his shoulders slumped and his chin dropped. Tears spilled down his cheeks as he decided on grief. He leaned against Jack, relieved to let go of the responsibility. That was part of the comfort of the pack—that you could let someone else make the decisions if it got too much for you.
Danny had never accepted that, but he could acknowledge the attraction.
Jack let James grieve for a second, then kicked his bloody feet out from under him to put him on his knees. He dug his fingers into the scruff of James’s neck and bent down to growl in his ear.
