by Jana Downs
“You can take whatever you need and don’t hesitate to call me if you have any additional questions or concerns. So I’m assuming your decision is to make him yours?”
“That’s the plan,” Hope said. “We have the initial chemistry, and I think with time nature will give us contentment given enough time.”
“Your courtship won’t be easy,” Mustang warned.
“Are they ever easy?” he asked.
Mustang chuckled. “I suppose not.” He smiled. “Well, that’s all I wanted to talk to you about. Ready to eat?”
“Please.” His mouth watered at the thought of Mac’s BBQ. He put it on the list of places to take Steve when he finally got to unwind the fear that was eating his mate alive.
Chapter Five
Steve wrestled with the dog in the living room while he waited for Hope to call. He was actually excited to see the guy. Maybe it was because he didn’t throw terrifying Dom vibes or maybe it was because he just hadn’t been around Hope long enough for him to start treating him like an escaped convict. Whatever the reason, he looked forward to chilling out with someone he found attractive and relaxing.
Mine. His wolf had repeated that word more than once since he’d opened his eyes in the forest and found Hope by his side. He wasn’t stupid. He’d read that stupid handbook cover to cover ten times over. He knew what that meant.
Uneasiness washed over his contentment. Mates, especially ones that thought of themselves as dominants, expected certain things. He swallowed. He’d never let anyone tie him up. The thought broke him out in a cold sweat as his memory tried to pull him back into a hot room in a windowless cabin hidden in the woods behind a big two-story house that looked more Gone with the Wind than Wrong Turn.
Chaos trotted over to him and lapped his hand. It was enough to break him out of the train wreck in his mind.
He chuckled, the sound self-deprecating. “I’m okay, meanness.” He scratched Grayson’s pup behind the ears. Mustang certainly knew what he was talking about when he’d named the little shit Chaos. He was intermittently sweet and obnoxious. “You’re a Sour Patch Kid.”
Chaos snuggled closer, licking away. Steve let the furry mongrel comfort him as he breathed through his panic. He kept his mind on nice, neutral subjects. The smell of the soap Mustang had used to bathe the puppy, the way the sort fur felt against his cheeks, and the warmth of the sunshine as it shone through the big bay windows of the living room took up the entirety of his thoughts as the seconds clicked on in an monotonous drive forward.
His phone rang, pulling him out of his meditation. He let go of Chaos and reached for the phone where he’d left it on the coffee table.
He swiped his finger across the screen to answer. “Hello?”
“What’s wrong?” Hope asked.
Steve blinked. “How did you know?” He hadn’t thought his voice had really betrayed anything.
“Something in your tone. What’s wrong?” Hope repeated. He used the same sort of tone Mustang did when he got all growly and overprotective.
“Settle down, Cujo. I’m fine. Just having a little bit of PTSD bullshit up in Mustang’s living room. Speaking of, how was your powwow with him?”
“Don’t change the subject, boy,” Hope said, a gentle reprimand in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
Steve’s irritation rose a few degrees as his ability to shrug off his fear was slowly chipped away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, that’s a problem then because I’m a big fan of talking things out.”
Steve snorted. “You want me to lay on your couch and tell you my feelings? You’re a vet, not a shrink, and last time I checked, I’m not all animal.” He instantly regretted the snappy words but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back. He was angry and scared and he only knew one way to survive the feelings he was experiencing.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m out front.”
The lack of reaction made him nervous, but he didn’t want to ask why. He was afraid to find out the answer.
“Okay. Let me put the dog up.” They had a kennel in their bedroom that they usually put him in when they had to make a run to the store, so that was where Steve took Chaos now.
He picked up the little fur ball and climbed the stairs back to the bedrooms on the second floor.
“You still there?” Steve asked as he put Chaos into his crate.
“I’m here.”
“Are you mad?” He nearly kicked himself for asking. He shouldn’t have cared if Hope was upset. He’d pushed and he didn’t really have a right to.
Hope sighed. “No. I’m not mad. I’m trying not to be overbearing when everything in me demands that I should be.”
“Appreciate the restraint, bud,” Steve said dryly.
“Are you ever serious?”
“Not if I can help it.” Steve had learned at an early age that life was far too short for heavy things like seriousness.
“You have very persistent avoidance mechanisms.”
“I’m an expert.” Since he’d been all of ten years old, he’d hidden his weirdness with humor. It was just what he did. The older he’d gotten, the more socially acceptable his attitude had become.
Hope chuckled. “Yes, well, I’m the expert on getting under people’s skins. I wonder what I’ll find when I strip away all that humor.”
Fear. Pain. More fear. Yeah… “I’m not that interesting.”
“Says you.” Hope paused. “You know what we are to one another, don’t you, Steve?”
He sighed, securing the catch to the kennel before heading back to his room to fetch his tennis shoes and coat. “Yeah. I know what we are.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“Happily ever after and all that bullshit?”
“Not quite,” Hope said. “It means we have the potential to have the sort of compatibility that other people only dream about, but it takes work. It’ll take the both of us being dedicated to make love happen.”
“Wouldn’t insta-love be much easier biology-wise?” Steve drawled.
Hope laughed. “I’m sure our animals might be behind the idea, but the human part of us is overly complicated. Besides, I do like the idea of having some choice in the matter.”
It was a bizarre attitude to have in a culture where true mates were seen as the perfect matches even if there was no love lost between them. “Do we?”
“Do we what?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“There’s always a choice. We haven’t bonded yet, Steve. If you want to walk away from me now, I would survive. But, you need to tell me now if you want to do that. I’m logical enough to understand at this point, but if we get much more involved…”
“I get it,” Steve said, shoving his sock-clad foot into his sneaker. “It’s an all-or-nothing deal. I have to be honest with you, man. I’ve never had a forever kind of relationship.” He’d always been in the mindset that he had a long time to think about things, to play around before he would be forced to be a grown-up. The shit that had happened to him in the past six months made him not really want to play anymore. Despite the joking manner he exuded, he didn’t really feel playful anymore.
“So the question remains. Does that still suit you or are you ready for something different?”
“I’m ready for different. I can’t guarantee I’m going to love you.” He couldn’t do that. He hadn’t loved anyone, not even himself, in longer than he cared to think about. “It’d be nice to feel safe though. I like the idea of steady.”
“I can be steady,” Hope whispered. “You’re mine, Steve. I’ll take you however I can get you.”
Steve wasn’t sure that was fair to Hope, but he couldn’t bring himself to protest. He slipped his other shoe on and then headed toward the door.
“I’m coming out. I’ll see you in a second.”
“All right. See you then.”
“Bye.” Steve hit the End Call button and stuck the
phone in his pocket. They needed to lighten the mood a little bit. Some animals and some chill time were definitely in the cards for him in the near future.
* * * *
The drive back to Hope’s office was spent listening to the top twenty on the radio and exchanging musical opinions with fervor as they discussed the sad state of the music industry and the fact that real rap consisted of far more than anything Drake could produce. Finding out Hope listened to rap was a pleasant surprise and an unexpected one at that. Who would’ve thought the mild-mannered veterinarian was a rap connoisseur?
Roughly thirty-five minutes from getting picked up at Mustang and Grayson’s place, they pulled into a small parking lot in front of a gray and light-brown building with a large sign up front with a dog and cat hugging the words Fins, Paws, and Claws Animal Hospital.
“Cute name.”
“My nieces and nephews picked it out. I wanted it to feel light and community oriented,” Hope admitted. He really was a sweet guy. It was obvious even after the short time they’d known one another.
Hope cut the engine and then unbuckled his seat belt. “Are you excited to see the menagerie?”
Steve nodded. “Hell yeah. I’m all about the animals. It’s like having a pet shop at your disposal all the time without the compulsion to actually bring them all home.”
His mate laughed. “Yes. That’s mostly true. Wait until we get a few sickly kittens in here that need homes. You’ll want to take them all home, guaranteed.”
He unbuckled his own belt. “Can’t wait for that.” Mustang would have kittens if he started bringing home cats. He almost wanted to do it just to watch the big Alpha squirm. He still giggled when he thought about the absolute look of horror on his mug when the guy had handed off the new dog to Grayson’s happy face.
Hope let them into the darkened clinic a few seconds later, black bag filled with God knew what in hand. The entryway was a lovely travertine tile that carried into the lobby where gray chairs were divided by the walkway in two sections, one for cats and the other for dogs if the little signs were any indication.
Steve’s gaze zeroed in on the tanks in the dog section, and he walked over to them without preamble.
“Those are poison dart frogs,” Hope supplied. “I inherited them from a friend of mine when he moved out to Arizona. The tank to the right is for the African Bullfrog. He’s a fatty.”
He took his time looking over the brightly colored amphibians. The bullfrog was massive. “What do you feed him? He’s huge.”
Hope stepped behind him, a little closer than was entirely necessary. “Feeder mice, fish, sometimes crickets. He’ll eat pretty much anything that will fit in his mouth.” Steve snickered like a thirteen-year-old, which earned him a flick in the back of the head. “Behave. I’m trying to.”
Hm, that was the most interesting tidbit of information Hope had shared thus far. “That sounds exhausting.”
“Behaving?” Hope asked, laughter in his tone.
“And boring,” Steve continued. He hadn’t behaved since he’d turned eighteen and he didn’t really have any intention of correcting the trend. Mustang’s constant irritation was a testament to that.
“There are rewards to behaving, mate,” Hope rumbled, running a single finger down Steve’s spine. Despite his best intentions, he shivered at the contact.
A subject change was in order. “All right, show me the rest of the menagerie.” His gaze caught on a plaque between two tanks that showed a picture of Hope with a parrot on his shoulder grinning at the camera. The text below the photo told the story of Hope’s journey from hopeful student to his adventures in veterinary medicine.
“What kind of name is Hope anyway?” he asked as he scanned the plaque. “Were your parents hippies?”
“Not hippies exactly. They were older when they got pregnant with me, so I was sort of a symbol for him in a lot of ways. My mom had been told she’d never have children, and the Alpha refused to allow her to pursue any additional testing or treatment. Before Mustang took over, the pack was significantly more totalitarian. No one had a voice but the Alpha and the Alpha’s favored. Anyway, my father liked to say that I was the hope for the next generation, so that’s what they named me. Mustang took over when I was fourteen, and the whole pack changed. He’s come a long way from the fundamentalist roots we grew up in.”
That was surprising considering how stern and unyielding Mustang could be. It was hard to imagine someone being any harsher than Mustang could be. “That’s a hell of a way to grow up. My parents were just kind of absent. They weren’t harsh or critical. They just sort of let me do my own thing.” He hadn’t spoken of his parents since the whole mess began, and it choked him up thinking of them now. Tears flooded his eyes to be quickly blinked away. The last thing he wanted to do was cry. He’d wasted enough tears on this situation. Bad shit happened and it had changed him, but he didn’t need to dwell on it.
“Are you okay?” Hope asked, no doubt smelling his sadness. Steve still thought the ability to tell how someone was feeling by the way they smelled was bizarre. He knew without a doubt what happiness, sadness, frustration, and pretty much every other emotion smelled like. It was hard to be deceptive in this world. On one hand, it was a relief. On the other, it was irritating at times.
“Steve?” Hope repeated.
Oops, guess I have to respond at some point. “I’m fine,” Steve said, pulling his mind away from the contemplation of his new normal.
Hope gave him another of those looks of his that seemed to see right through Steve’s soul to the root of the problem underneath. “Sometimes you seem like you’re physically here but a million miles away in your head.”
“I’m still getting used to everything I think.”
Hope nodded. “I can understand that.” He motioned toward a doorway past the reception desk that said personnel and patients only. “You want to finish your tour or do you want to head to my office and eat?”
“I want to see your critters,” Steve said. Eating meant sitting and talking, and Steve wasn’t sure if he would be able to steer the conversation away from personal topics.
His BJ buddy led him to the other side of the room where yet more tanks were at. A turtle was sun bathing on a rock under a light while some little feeder fish chilled out in the water below. The other tank was salt water by the look of it and was as big as the nearby bench turned sideways so that it almost brushed the ceiling.
“Your office is awesome,” Steve murmured, pressing his face to the glass of the fish tank.
“You haven’t seen anything yet. The furry ones are in the back. The chinchilla likes to chill out in my lab coat when I’m working.”
He didn’t know what the hell a chinchilla was, but it sounded amazing. He really should’ve gone to school for something dealing with animals. If he had it to do over again…
“Hey, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“You smell sad again.”
Steve sighed. “What do you want me to say, Hope? You want me to cry on your shoulder every time I think about something sad?”
“Not at all. However, I think that maybe it would help to talk about what’s bothering you with someone you trust. I know I might not make the list just yet but I would like to someday.”
“I’m not a talky person.” He’d been taught from an early age not to express those pesky things called “emotions.” He wasn’t sure why every wolf he met was obsessed with letting them into the fucked-up regions in his head.
“Hm, somehow I doubt that is true, mate,” Hope said. “I imagine you wouldn’t miss the opportunity to let me know exactly how you felt about a given subject once you trust me enough.”
Steve stuck his tongue out. “You think you’re a mind reader, huh?” Steve asked, aiming to pull Hope away from heavier subjects.
“A mind reader? No. I read body language, though. You’ve been very hurt and not just by our kind.”
“Drop it, man,” Steve snapped. His wol
f rumbled in protest, tugging at the end of his leash in an effort to get closer to the man he claimed as its own. He bared his teeth, fighting the impulse.
Hope put a hand on the back of Steve’s neck and gave it a squeeze. “Settle down. I’m not trying to pressure you, just making some observations. One day we will talk about it if you decide to be mine. However, that doesn’t have to be today.”
That mollified Steve’s need to rebel somewhat, but Hope’s hand on the back of his neck sent the dual sensation of fear and longing through his chest. He recognized it as the dominant gesture it was, and that scared him more than the thought of having to spill his deepest darkest secrets.
Hope sighed, withdrawing his hand. “And now you’re afraid again. Forgive me. I’m at a loss with you at times. You don’t react like—” He cut himself off.
“Like a normal guy,” Steve finished for him. His cheeks heated as his stomach started to roll. “I know. I told you, man, I’m messed up in here.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “You don’t have to take me out or anything. I’m trouble.” Too late he realized that if he was to bail on this date, he’d either have to ask for a ride back or walk.
Damn this stupid dependency thing to hell and back.
Hope tilted his chin up with a gentle touch to his chin. “Knock it off, Steve. You’re not a broken doll I’m taking home to play with. I respect the hell out of you for surviving what you did. I’m upset because I’m not sure what to do. If I treat you like another submissive partner, you get uncomfortable. Give me a little time to negotiate the learning curve, okay?”
Staring into Hope’s eyes, it was almost impossible to deny him anything. “I’ll try.” It was a good noncommittal response. One he had a sneaking suspicion he wouldn’t be able to maintain for too long if he spent enough time with Hope.
