by Anna Martin
Ah, neutral territory. “You’re hungry?”
“I could eat,” Leo said with a shrug and a smile.
“Okay. We can do lunch.”
It felt surprisingly good to lead Leo back into the house, where it was warmer and more comfortable than the barn. Leo was so laid-back it made Jackson nervous, which definitely didn’t make sense. Right now not much made sense. He quietly pushed his emotions aside to be dealt with later.
“How did you end up living all the way out here?” Leo asked as he took a seat at the kitchen table.
Jackson laughed as he went to the fridge to get the pot of soup on to reheat, then started fixing the sandwiches. “I was more interested in the barn and the stables, to be honest. I don’t use the second floor of the house.”
Leo looked up. “What, not at all?”
“Nope. It’s all closed up.”
“Isn’t that weird?”
“Valerie thinks so. My sister. She says it’s creepy.” Jackson slid the first sandwich onto the griddle and started on the second. “The couple who owned this place and built half of it couldn’t use the stairs when they got older, so the first floor was entirely converted so they could live down here. The bathroom and everything is all down here. When they moved to a retirement home, their kids just closed the place up, and they both passed away ten years ago. Maybe more. The kids couldn’t bear to sell the house for a while after. When I bought it, there was quite a lot of modernizing to do.”
He flipped the sandwiches neatly, stirred the soup, then turned back to Leo.
“My family chipped in, helping out with the decorating and renovating. I always thought it would make a good family home, if I ever decided to settle down and have one.”
That suddenly felt like a weird thing to say, partly because there was definitely a societal expectation for him to settle down and reproduce with his soul mate, and partly because that soul mate was a man. Leo wasn’t exactly going to gestate their kids.
“Do you like that sort of thing? Renovating, I mean.”
Jackson turned back to the stove and started ladling the soup into the two bowls. “I like making things. My dad’s the same. Renovating sort of fulfills that desire, to a degree. I prefer making things from scratch.”
He flipped the two sandwiches onto the chopping board and neatly cut them in triangles. He could just about balance it all to carry it over to the table.
“Ta-dah,” he sang, setting it down.
“Looks good. As is this.” Leo saluted with his bottle of beer.
Jackson grinned. “Thanks.”
They ate in silence for a while. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though. However hard it was to admit it to himself, Jackson was incredibly comfortable with Leo. That didn’t happen very often. He wasn’t a people person.
Jackson mopped up the last of the soup with the crusts of his sandwich. It really was good soup. He made a mental note to thank his mom. She didn’t need to know who he shared it with, though. Not just yet.
“I know this has been hard for you,” Leo said, apropos of nothing. “I’m sorry. If I can help… make things easier? Just let me know.”
“If I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.”
Leo left not long after. He had offered to help Jackson clean up, which Jackson declined, and Leo turned down Jackson’s offer of more beer to take home with him. Apparently he and his roommate drank more wine than beer.
Jackson locked up the house and headed to bed earlier than he normally would. He was a night owl by habit, and running his own business, not answering to anyone else, hadn’t broken him of the desire to sleep in.
Most nights he stayed up until 2:00 a.m., unless he knew he had to be awake in the morning for something specific. It was barely midnight. A good time to do some research.
Kissing Leo had unlocked his curiosity in a way Jackson hadn’t expected. He’d kissed plenty of people in his life, had sex with plenty more. He liked to think he was a good kisser. Kissing his soul mate was the same, in a way, as most of the other times he’d ever kissed someone.
Except it totally wasn’t. Leo was his soul mate. That kiss had meant something.
They weren’t teenagers anymore, so that kind of kissing usually led somewhere. Jackson didn’t expect sex, not from anyone, not unless it was something they wanted too. He was quite happy to admit he knew nothing about gay sex. Well, he knew about the mechanics. But not how to make it good.
He opened his laptop and felt a knot of shame twist in his stomach. He didn’t have any hang-ups about porn, but this wasn’t about getting off. He had sites bookmarked for when he wanted that.
As long as terms like “cocksucker” were still used as insults, Jackson thought he’d probably never feel entirely comfortable thinking about those acts. There was definitely a macho element to parts of werewolf culture that wasn’t confined to males. Being competitive, aggressive, physically stronger would always be seen as an ideal. Being smart, quick, intelligent were just as important.
Weakness, in whatever form, was considered failure. Even though the soul mate bond would be deemed more powerful and revered than anything else, the fact that his mate was a human man would raise eyebrows. People would wonder, even silently, who was the dominant partner.
While he wasn’t going to change society overnight, Jackson thought he could probably think about sex. With Leo.
Who was a man.
He needed help.
Jackson opened an incognito window (even though no one else ever used his laptop and probably never would) and hesitantly typed “How do I have gay sex” into the search bar.
He was expecting a flood of porn; instead he got a selection of fairly interesting-looking articles. And a Wikipedia entry. Jackson snorted to himself, deciding that this was possibly the least offensive thing he could read.
“Wow,” he muttered under his breath. “Wow.”
He skimmed through the first few paragraphs, giggling at the phrase tea bagging, blanching at the word rimming, and forcing himself to keep going when he felt slightly overwhelmed by the whole thing.
He switched to another article. Then wished he was back at Wikipedia.
For the next hour, he browsed a variety of sites with different information on what to expect when having sex with another man. Some of it didn’t seem to be so different from what he usually did when fucking a girl—go slow, check in, lots of foreplay, lots of kissing. All those things were totally fine by him.
The thought of giving a blowjob was too much, so he shoved it out of his mind and instead went to the proper porn.
Well, Pornhub.
Everything about gay sex seemed so intense. Jackson flicked through the first few pages, watching a few clips, not really sure he knew what he was doing. It was like some poor Pornhub employee was watching over his shoulder, clucking disapprovingly at his choices. Or his inability to make a choice. He just didn’t know where to start.
Jackson snapped the laptop closed and viciously pushed it away. He shoved his shorts the rest of the way off and scooted down on the bed. Watching other guys have sex was strangely uncomfortable. It was too voyeuristic, even though he wasn’t exactly a stranger to porn.
The reality was much better than fiction too.
He closed his eyes and grabbed his cock, giving it a firm squeeze. He began to get hard, and when he closed his eyes, his mind kindly supplied him with the memory of Leo’s knowing smirk.
Warm blue eyes.
The light dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose, almost too faint to see when he was more than a foot away.
Soft smiling lips that were so careful when they brushed over his own. Leo’s hands pressed to Jackson’s chest, the way he rose up onto his toes to deepen the kiss.
Jackson replayed it all, over and over, then let his imagination take it further.
With his eyes closed, it was easy to picture taking hold of Leo’s hand and tugging him into the house, to his bedroom, and closing
the door behind them. Shutting the world out so there was nothing left in existence but Jackson and his soul mate and the things they could do together.
He thought about gently pushing Leo back onto the bed, then covering Leo’s slim body with his own to make the next round of kissing even better. Leo’s hands would be in Jackson’s hair, gripping his neck, squeezing his shoulders; maybe he’d moan a little when Jackson kissed down his neck.
Oh God.
What if he was loud? Groaning and gasping and begging for more while Jackson undressed them both, licking at Leo’s pale skin, which was surely dotted with more of those sweet, gingery freckles.
Jackson pumped his cock harder, rubbing his thumb over the sticky precome that was gathered at the head. His balls were throbbing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d jerked off just to the pictures in his mind.
He wasn’t quite sure how to get around the whole “my soul mate’s penis” thing just yet, so he skipped ahead to just being inside him. By then Leo would be all shivery, clinging to Jackson’s back as he gently pushed in over and over, tight wet heat around his cock, Leo’s mouth on his neck, the quiet, broken sobs as he shuddered through his orgasm.
Jackson felt like something sparked off and lit him up from inside as he came, jerking his hips, back arching off the bed.
He wasn’t ready to give up the fantasy, even as he rode the aftershocks of what was an impressive orgasm.
His mind drifted to the easy comedown, kissing lazily, sucking at Leo’s tongue until they broke away, laughing. He thought about pressing his face to the curve of Leo’s neck and just breathing him in, reveling in the closeness of the postsex afterglow. Leo skimming his fingers up and down Jackson’s back, then scratching through his hair.
He thought about rolling Leo over and spooning up behind him, holding him tight as they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms.
Those were not common fantasies for him.
Jackson shook himself out of it and forcefully rolled out of bed, heading for the bathroom to clean up, still naked.
As he brushed his teeth, he looked at himself in the huge mirror. Nothing much had changed in the few weeks since he’d first met Leo. He was the same guy, looked the same, acted mostly the same.
He spat, rinsed, and went back to bed, pulling on clean shorts before curling up beneath the covers. It was still too early for him to go to bed, not if he was going to keep to the sleep patterns he was used to. The orgasm had left him soporific, though, and all he wanted was to finish the fantasy and hold on to that image of Leo sleeping in his arms.
He bottled up all his fears, all the looming negativity and bigotry, and put those emotions somewhere he didn’t have to deal with them. For now, he wanted to fantasize about his soul mate and sleep.
Chapter Six
A MANIC day had turned into an awful day. The type of day where Leo locked himself in a toilet cubicle and sobbed uncontrollably into his hands for five minutes before going out, washing his face, and heading back to work without a lunch break.
One of those kinds of days.
He used his personal phone for work since he hadn’t quite figured out how to untangle his professional life from his social life, so Jackson’s text message arrived at the best and worst time.
I’m in Spokane tonight. You free later?
It had been a couple of weeks since he saw Jackson. First study commitments, then hanging out with his parents had meant he didn’t have time to drive the hour or so over to Jackson’s home. Then it had been the full moon, and Leo wasn’t sure exactly what Jackson did while the moon was high. Mitch did his own thing that Leo was pretty sure involved a lot of fucking, but it was personal, and Leo wasn’t sure how to ask.
They’d sent text messages back and forth, and though all Leo really wanted to do was go home with a pint of ice cream and an enormous amount of tequila, he decided Jackson was probably a better option.
Yeah. Finish at 6. That would be good.
He pocketed his phone, straightened his spine, and put on his “I’m a professional, yes, I am” mask to help him face the rest of the day.
By the time 6:00 p.m. rolled around, things were marginally better. He’d read, but hadn’t had a chance to respond to, Jackson’s message telling him he’d be outside the staff entrance when his shift finished.
He was running late, which normally wasn’t an issue but it left him itchy and stressed as he raced for his locker, grabbed his jacket, and rushed down to the parking lot.
Jackson was leaning against the rear bumper of his truck, quietly playing with his phone. When he noticed Leo approaching, he smiled softly, hesitantly. Then frowned.
“You okay?”
“That obvious, huh?”
Jackson reached out, the movement tentative and clumsy as he almost abandoned it. A moment later Leo flung himself into Jackson’s arms.
“Hey,” Jackson murmured, patting Leo’s back awkwardly as Leo buried his face in Jackson’s neck and fought the urge to cry. “Hey, it’s all right.”
“Sorry,” Leo mumbled.
“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” Jackson said. “I won’t mind.”
“No… no.” Leo pulled away. “It’ll be good to get out.”
“Okay. I was thinking of this little mom-and-pop Italian place. I’ve only been there once before, but it’s really good. Rosario’s.”
Leo gave him a watery smile.
“You know it?” Jackson asked, sounding hesitant.
“My parents have been going there for years. It’s a family favorite.”
“I can find somewhere else….”
“No, that sounds good,” Leo said, squeezing Jackson’s arm in reassurance. “I’ll follow you over.”
“Okay.”
Jackson didn’t look entirely convinced, but he got into his truck anyway. Leo’s car was parked a few spaces down, and he rushed to get in it, not wanting to fall too far behind Jackson. Rosario’s would be good for him tonight. He ignored the background noise of the radio and instead let his mind drift as he drove over to the restaurant.
When they walked in, the warm, familiar smell of tomato and garlic hit him. Leo didn’t recognize the server who showed them to the small table near the kitchen; she was young, maybe new.
Rose wasn’t new, though. Even with her dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, there was a warmth to her, and her red lips broke into a smile as she tugged Leo out of his seat and into her arms.
“Leonardo!” she cried. “It’s been too long, too long.”
“Hey, Mama Rose,” he said, smiling despite himself.
“Who is your friend?”
“This is Jackson.”
He stood, smiling warmly at her, and offered his hand. Rose grabbed it and pulled him into another shoulder-crushing hug.
“Jackson. Lovely Jackson. Sit down, sit down. I’ll get you some meatballs.”
“And wine,” Leo added.
Rose raised her eyebrow at him.
“I was twenty-two in April,” he said. “I have my driver’s license with me.”
“Okay, okay, I believe you. I’ll bring the Montepulciano. It’s good with the meatballs.”
Leo sat down and leaned back, stretching. “You said you’ve been here before?”
“Only once,” Jackson said. “I didn’t meet Rose, though. She must have not been working that night.”
“Rose has worked every night for the past forty years.”
“I can believe it.”
The first server came back with the wine and a basket of bread. She poured each of them wine into the wide-bowled glasses on the table and left the bottle with them. Leo sipped, pleased with the choice, then sighed.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“It’s not a nice story,” he warned. Oh, he wanted to get it off his chest all right. He just wasn’t sure it was the best thing to unload on Jackson.
“I don’t mind.”
Leo had been working with the litt
le girl for a few weeks. She’d been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition at birth and had been given a life expectancy of only a few days. At two years old, she’d defied all expectations, but had been rehospitalized due to a host of complications.
Her parents knew it was likely the end, that they were going to say goodbye to the child they called their “miracle baby.”
“She loved music,” Leo said. “She was mostly blind, but her hearing was fine. I used to do all sorts of sensory and music play with her. When it came to the end, her parents wanted me there. I didn’t know… I’ve never been in that situation before. I just took my guitar in and sat and sang and played while she died in her dad’s arms.”
He stopped, pushed the tears out of his eyes.
“Afterward they thanked me. Which is—Jesus Christ. They thanked me. What could I say? I’d just watched their daughter die. And yeah, I cared about her too, she was a beautiful little thing. But she was their daughter.” Leo gulped his wine. “I knew a long time ago this was what I wanted to do, to help in some way. But I never knew it would be this hard.”
“I don’t really think I understood your job,” Jackson said. “But the impact you must have on families….”
“I don’t understand it most days,” Leo said with a laugh that felt more like a sob. “Some days I feel like my job isn’t even a real job. The doctors are the ones doing the actual work, really saving lives, and I turn up with a ukulele and a harmonica. I feel like they must all be thinking, ‘Who’s this freaking clown?’”
“I’m sure they understand what you do. Especially if they’re pediatric specialists.”
“You’d like to think, huh? Anyway. Sorry for just dumping all that on you. Probably not what you wanted.”
Jackson shrugged—not dismissively, though. “I was in the area. I’m glad I did contact you now. Sounds like you needed some time out.”
“Yeah. I really did.”
Rose arrived then with two bowls piled high with spaghetti and meatballs, drowned in her famous marinara sauce. It smelled amazing; the perfect comfort food to soothe his soul.
“Here you go,” she said, carefully placing each bowl down. “Big servings for growing boys. You let me know if you need any more.”
