by Jez Morrow
What had he done?
He wanted more than anything to go back.
But what he wanted did not matter.
He could not drag Jack Reed into his world. The danger was clear and it was present. Martin was probably going to die for real this time.
Jack. Oh God, Jack.
Martin knew he had probably hurt him. But he could not drag him into this, even when he would give anything to be in that strong embrace again.
He would give anything but Jack’s life.
For what Martin needed to do now, he must be alone.
Chapter Four
Jack worked in a hollow haze of disbelief. Lonely. He had heard that people missing a limb felt the itch of their missing part long after it was gone. He felt half his soul missing. It itched, ached, called out to be restored to him. He fought off the impulse that came to him every other minute to track Martin Winter down. To call him. To confront him. To just ask him why.
His heart knew better. Martin would not be hunted.
Jack shook himself out of the fog. He got up from his desk and headed out to meet some friends for lunch.
The sunshine was warm, the wind cutting, as he walked out to his car.
The cell phone vibrated in Jack’s pocket. He flipped it open, answered, “Reed.”
He expected to hear one of his friends. But the unfamiliar voice introduced herself tersely, “DC pound. We have your dog.”
Jack was about to tell the woman at the pound that he did not have a dog, but he caught himself in time.
Oh no.
He asked carefully instead, “What is your location?”
* * * * *
Dressed in his winter uniform, Jack Reed walked into the dog pound. The wind gust at his back from the door’s closing kicked up his dark hair, pushed his officer’s cap forward. He took off the cap, tucked it smartly under his arm.
His entrance caused a small stir, not just among the caged dogs which all started barking. Workers turned and looked and didn’t turn back to work.
In service dress blues, Lieutenant Commander Jack Reed cut a daunting figure. Handsome. Official.
In one of the many cages which lined one wall of the facility sat a docile silver gray wolf wearing a dog collar. A pendant, shaped like a dog bone, hung from the wolf’s collar. Jack crouched down to see his own cell phone number engraved on the dog bone pendant. Made him feel like they were going steady.
Jack put his hand to the stout wire mesh of the cage. He wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t dare. And he didn’t know what to say anyway.
The wolf lowered its head sheepishly, its topaz eyes contrite, embarrassed.
“Jack Reed!”
Jack recognized the voice on the phone. He looked up to see a clerk moving from behind a counter.
The clerk was perhaps fifty years old, fit. She looked like a country girl in a city uniform.
“Stay right there,” she commanded, as if telling a dog to sit. She bustled to the back, through a door marked “Employees Only”.
Jack, still crouched at the cage, glanced aside to the topaz eyes on level with his. He murmured, “Are we in trouble, Martin?”
Jack stood up as the animal control warden stalked forward from the back room. The man regarded Jack coldly. He refused to be intimidated by the uniform, by Jack’s height, by Jack’s muscular build. He glared straight up at him and said accusingly, “This animal has been shot.”
Both Jack and Martin carried their human scars into their wolf forms, so the silver wolf inside the cage bore the distinctive scars that only came from a bullet, even though it had been Martin the man, not Martin the wolf who took both shots.
Jack quickly improvised an answer to explain why his pet dog would have two bullet scars. “Yeah. Some jerk with a gun mistook him for a wolf.” He turned to the animal behind the mesh. “I thought for sure I’d lost him.”
“You’re telling me this is not a wolf,” said the warden, his bushy, brambling eyebrows sky high.
Jack shook his head as if he had no idea about that. “He’s a mutt I picked up from the roadside. I don’t know why he was abandoned. He’s a pretty good dog. Though I wouldn’t trust him around poodles.”
“He’s a perfect sweetheart,” the woman clerk called, hurrying from the back room with some paperwork. She set the paperwork down on the front counter, then brought Martin out of the cage on a leash.
She crouched nose to nose with Martin and scratched him behind the ears. “He’s such a good dog.”
Martin wagged his tail, trying to look as sweet and doggie as possible.
The clerk stood up, reluctantly passing the leash to Jack, and confessed, “I was hoping you wouldn’t show up.”
Jack nodded, “Yeah, how can you resist a schmooze like that?” He tried not to show the depth of the emotions warring within. Mostly he was just achingly grateful to have Martin at his side.
The warden cited Jack for not having a dog license, for not having a rabies vaccination on record, for not having his dog on a leash and for letting his dog roam.
Two hundred dollars poorer, Jack left the pound with his newly licensed dog, Lassie.
“Um, you know this is a male dog,” the clerk had said when Jack had given her his pet’s name for the record.
“So was the actor who played Lassie,” said Jack. And to Martin, “Heel, Lassie.”
* * * * *
The animal sitting beside Jack in the car transformed into a beautiful young man, naked except for the dog collar around his neck. Martin rubbed at the rabies vaccination site behind his neck.
The absurdity of the situation caught up with both of them and they both started sniggering through their noses as Jack drove.
“Lassie?” said Martin, insulted.
“Hey. I bailed your furry ass out,” said Jack. “You had that coming, Lassie.”
And you owe me one here, Lassie!
Martin craned his neck ‘round to check the backseat. “You wouldn’t happen to have any spare clothes in the car?”
“What’s wrong with what you have on?” said Jack.
Jack turned his head from the road for a quick glance at Martin—a truly stunning figure, his artistically sculpted muscles finely honed to sharp definition. His flat abdomen looked splendid in daylight, as did those long athletic legs with a fine haze of blond hair on them. Martin’s long cock was half hard now and intriguing.
DC traffic was not the place for distractions while driving. Jack faced quickly forward before he could plow his BMW into a street sign.
“I could bite you,” said Martin scowling.
Jack pulled into the parking lot of a big box department store. He ran inside to buy a sweatshirt, jeans and loafers in Martin’s sizes. It had the strange feel of one of those bizarre missions you ran after midnight in college with the guys.
Upon his return, Martin pulled off the tags and got dressed in the car. He slouched way down in the seat, his legs up. Jack glimpsed a flash of short golden hairs on bronzed skin just before Martin’s hard, taut calves disappeared into new denim. Martin’s angular hips thrust up as he pulled up the jeans. Jack felt his own cock trying to salute him.
Martin zipped up, took off his dog collar and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. He slid his feet into the loafers.
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Feel like talking now?” Jack asked.
“No,” said Martin.
Jack couldn’t say that didn’t sting.
“Okay, where to?” Jack asked at the wheel.
Martin nodded forward. “Just drop me on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“No. Where are you going? I’ll take you.”
“Stay away from me, Jack.”
Jack knew he must look like he’d been stabbed. He felt like it.
Martin’s face was a determined mask, his posture all business. His voice betrayed some softness, “Jack, it’s not safe to know me.”
Jack finally let himself get angry. “If that’s really why you ran, then s
crew that, Martin! Let me stand with you. If it’s something else—” He broke off. His voice was going shaky and he would not allow it. He refused to show weakness. And he refused to believe Martin had no more interest in him. He damn well knew better. “I don’t know if I deserve an explanation, but you’re sure as hell going to give me one.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jack. I can’t—” Martin’s thoughts seemed to get stuck together in a jumble. There was too much to say, so he skipped over all of it. “I just can’t. I have to go. Stop the car.”
Jack pulled over to the curb and parked. A big lump clogged his chest with the kind of anger that fills you up and just sits there. His face was burning. He tried to keep both hands on the wheel.
Martin reached for the door handle.
And dammit anyway, Jack’s hand made a motion to take Martin’s arm. He stopped himself short. Jack was not going to turn into a stalker and was not going to detain Martin by force. He withdrew his hand and resorted to quiet words. “Please stay.”
Martin opened the car door, put a foot out to the curb.
Jack’s world stopped. Anger, sorrow, hurt, bewilderment sat on him, crushing him.
After a moment that lasted forever, Martin’s leg moved back into the car. Martin sat back in the seat and shut the door again. He stared straight ahead. “Shit.” He took a huge breath then admitted without looking at Jack, “I could use help, Jack. It—it could cost you.”
“I don’t care,” said Jack thickly.
“It could cost you your life.”
“You already own it,” said Jack.
Martin inhaled, a small gasp. Jack’s quiet statement hit him hard.
He glanced at Jack, glanced away. The look in Jack’s eyes was too hot to endure. Martin stared at his own feet in their stiff new loafers. “I can’t pretend that night didn’t mean something.”
Jack put the car in gear. “Can we go somewhere?”
“I’ll let you feed me,” said Martin.
Martin hadn’t touched his dog food in the pound.
“Yeah, come to think of it, I missed lunch,” said Jack. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Anything as long as it’s fast and I don’t have to go inside.”
Jack pulled into the drive-thru of a fast-food place. They sat in Jack’s black BMW in the parking lot, eating burgers.
As long as Martin could just stay in this moment with Jack, the car, the food, the passing traffic, life almost felt normal. If Martin had ever known normal.
“How’d you end up in the pound?” Jack asked at last, fishing the last fry out of the bag before stuffing their trash into it.
“I reported to work,” said Martin.
Martin worked at FBI headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. “After over a year, they weren’t entirely thrilled to see me.”
Agents had left him alone in an office while they conferred. Martin’s keen wolf hearing had detected voices beyond the next wall, whispering. They meant to detain him. He tasted their fear in the closed air. Frightened animals were dangerous. Especially those who moved on two legs.
They had left Martin in this room and told him to wait. Martin didn’t wait. He slipped out of the room, down the corridor, down the stairs and ran out a fire door, setting off all the alarms.
Accustomed to frequent drills, no building full of office workers ever reacted quickly to a fire alarm, so there was a great deal of confusion in convincing anyone that there was a real emergency and that it was not a fire, not anthrax, and not a terrorist attack.
Martin’s own coworkers were the first agents to spill out of the building. They fanned out in the streets, searching for him.
Martin kept a dog collar in his pocket just for such a contingency. He ducked into an alley, stripped naked, put the dog collar around his neck, gave his clothes to a homeless man camped by a hot air vent with his cardboard blanket and ran.
The vent man pointed the FBI agents in the direction that the naked man had gone. He did not make any mention the wolf that just happened to run into the alley and out the other way immediately after that.
Having eluded the FBI, Martin got cocky and stupid. While trying to get home he apparently trotted through a neighborhood that had just had it with dogs running off-leash. Animal Control came after him.
Cornered and looking exactly like a wolf, Martin decided that surrender was the wiser course of action. He started wagging his tail, sat prettily and smiled at the dogcatchers. He heeled when told and jumped into the van on command.
“When you’re a wolf, the collar keeps you from getting shot on sight.” Martin pulled his collar out of his jeans pocket. “You should consider one of these.”
Jack turned over the dog bone pendant on Martin’s collar. “You put my phone number on your collar. I’m touched,” said Jack. “I mean that.”
“You’re the only man I trust, Jack.”
“You ran away from me, Martin.”
“I ran away from me,” said Martin. Martin’s whole world was in upheaval. His composure crumpled. His breaths came hard and deep in anguish. “I’m not handling this, Jack.” His eyes blinked fast. He looked at the sun. Squinted. His face crinkled, trying not to cry. A tremor moved his long fingers. He croaked, “When did you know?”
“I think part of me knew from the first time I saw you,” said Jack. “You had that really cute little snarl.”
Martin darted him a hard glare. “If you ever jump on me as a wolf, so help me, I will bite you.”
Jack laughed. “I don’t think the equipment even works when I’m a wolf.”
Martin couldn’t laugh. He asked, solemn, “I mean, when did you know…you liked men?”
“The night I lost you.”
“Not before then?”
“No. And I don’t ‘like’ men,” said Jack. “It’s you, Martin. Only you. It’s like living in the night for a long, long time, and there are all these stars, and they’re all pretty. Then the sun comes up and you can’t see anything else but the sun. There is no one else in my sky.”
Martin was looking out the window. Anywhere but at Jack. His mouth opened to speak, then said nothing. He had too much to express. He could not even contain it, much less speak it.
He retreated into suspicion. “You’re telling me you’ve never been with another man and you just happened to have that oil in your nightstand?”
“Oh, that.” Jack had to laugh at him. “Old girlfriend. She was a freak—freak in a good way. I’ve only been with two women who ever cared for taking their loving that way. I don’t see the charm myself—not on that end of it. Jenna tried to get her vibrator up my ass. Blue thing, this long, this big around. No thank you, ma’am. I’m definitely in the not-ever category. I can dish it out but I can’t take it.”
“Then what made you think I would like it?”
Martin hadn’t just liked it. He’d been enraptured.
“I didn’t know, Martin,” said Jack, serious now. “I just hoped like hell. I only knew I had to be inside you.”
Heat darkened Martin’s face. He let his head fall back. He would have been gazing out the sunroof but the cover was drawn shut. “And I need you, Jack. And I never knew.” A tear escaped from the outside corner of his eye. It trickled down his jaw to his neck.
Jack brushed the tear from Martin’s neck with his lips. Martin shivered. The smallest gasp of pleasure escaped him on the edge of a deep male groan.
The sudden eruption of a police siren made Martin start. Jack remained steady. He watched the patrol car speed past the parking lot, wailing and flashing, and on down the avenue. The alarm was not for him.
But the FBI would still be looking for Martin.
He had nowhere to hide.
“I can’t go anywhere,” said Martin. He steeled himself. “I need to go back.”
“Now?” Jack asked.
“Right now.”
* * * * *
Jack drove to the FBI building, parked illegally. In
uniform, moving smartly, he strode through the front door. He took a commanding stance at Martin’s side.
A male clerk sat at the front desk, guarding the locked inner doors. He glanced at the lieutenant commander. He did a double take upon seeing Martin.
Martin presented himself dryly, “Martin Winter to see Executive Assistant Director Cobb. Again.”
The clerk eyed Martin from head to loafers. He dialed four numbers on the phone. “Executive Assistant Director? Um, Martin Winter is here.” He paused for the reply. “Yes, sir.” The clerk carefully set the phone receiver back on its cradle. “Wait here.”
Martin looked up to Jack. “That’s what they told me last time.”
The FBI did not breed warm and fuzzy personalities. Agents were suspicious by profession.
The clerk watched Jack and Martin suspiciously.
Jack heard the sound of a gun cover unsnapping under the desk. He maintained his lordly stance. Speaking with the steadiness of an officer who actually had been under fire, Jack advised the clerk, “You can snap it back up, mister. This isn’t the Gulf and you’re not under enemy fire here.”
The clerk, embarrassed, turned red under his freckles.
The locked inner doors snicked open. Three glowering people came out to the front lobby.
One was a tall, squared-off granite slab of a man whose name turned out to be Special Agent Larry Hunter. Hunter’s tailor probably cut his suits out of cardboard refrigerator boxes. He had enormous hands that Jack never wanted to meet in a fist.
The severe woman, with her reddish curls cut very short, was Special Agent Ann Jefferson. She was probably in her thirties but all those down-turned frown lines in her face added a decade to her looks. Her skirt suit was dark and dowdy, her shoes way too sensible.
The third person was a burly, compactly built Korean-American man of indefinite age. His flat face was utterly smooth, heavy-jawed, lipless. He was Special Agent Moo Park.
Their eyes flicked over Martin, noticing the change of clothing since this morning.
Martin gave a very hard smile. “Jack, meet Larry, Curly and Moo. The three blind mice.”
Ann Jefferson said, “That’s not fair, Martin.”
