by Lia Silver
There was another pause. “Hold on. I’m not done. I have nightmares about combat, and I wake up having a panic attack. The next day, I’m exhausted and my head aches and my body aches and my hands shake and I feel anxious and I’m sick to my stomach, and if I force myself to eat something anyway, I throw up. Sometimes it’s so bad, I can’t even drink water.”
Laura couldn’t believe Roy was saying all that—and in front of DJ, too, who sat with his eyes wide and his mouth open, not even fidgeting.
He went on, “The stuff with the lights and so forth dates from when I was reported MIA. The PTSD, from about three months before that. Yes, I have a partner. No, no children. Okay. Thanks. Hang on a second.” Roy turned to Laura. “What’s the address here?”
She told him. He repeated it into the phone, then hung up.
Roy rubbed his forehead, then straightened up. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look ashamed, either. “Never say the military can’t move fast when it wants to. I just got awarded one hundred percent disability. Backdated. So that’s that. At least I can pay my own way now. Honestly, I think I earned it.”
Laura put her arm around him. “You did earn it. And that was incredibly brave.”
A pink flush crept across Roy’s cheekbones. “Don’t make too much of it. Lots and lots of veterans have to give that sort of report.”
“Minus the electric lights,” said DJ.
“And the cars—Hey!” Roy jumped up. To Laura’s astonishment, he was grinning. “DJ, give me your keys.”
DJ tossed them to him. “If you trash my Harley, you’re buying me a new one out of your disability checks.”
“But…” Laura was torn between not wanting to be a spoilsport and not wanting to see Roy hurt and disappointed. “It’s a motor vehicle. And it’s noisy.”
“It’s not enclosed,” Roy pointed out. “Like the bed of a pick-up truck. It’s worth a try.”
“I have something for the noise.” DJ unzipped his bundle, rummaged around, and handed Roy a pair of earplugs. He must have noted Laura’s skeptical look, because he told her, “I didn’t buy them at the supermarket. They’re ballistic hearing protection. Marine-issue. The yellow side muffles percussive noises, like gunfire, and the green side cuts out machine noise, like fighter jets taking off. Either way, you can still hear ambient sound, like voices.”
As Roy tore outside, the keys jingling in his hand, Laura turned to DJ. “Did you plan to have him ride your bike?”
“No, I didn’t think of that,” DJ replied as they went after Roy. “I brought the earplugs so he could fire a gun. I thought we’d be going on one last mission. How’d it go, by the way?”
That ship has sailed for me too, now, Laura thought. It was still hard for her to imagine DJ killing anyone.
“Rough,” she said.
“Yeah. I figured. Sorry I didn’t make it.”
“Where were you looking for Roy?”
DJ gave her a rueful glance. “Bettles, Alaska. Population twelve. Temperature negative seventy Fahrenheit.”
“Negative seventy?” Laura echoed. “Roy owes you big-time.”
They joined Roy at the end of the driveway. He had the plugs in his ears, green side in, and was eyeing the motorcycle like it was a lottery ticket.
“I could barely take sitting in a car with the engine running, before it was even moving. So I thought I’d start the bike and see what happens. If it feels anything like that…” Roy eyed Laura resignedly. “I’ll forget the whole thing.”
Laura wasn’t much of a believer, but she sent a prayer up to anyone who might be listening: If there’s anyone out there who looks out for werewolves and Marines, give Roy a break.
She closed her right hand around his, crossed every finger on her other hand, and held him in the pack sense with all her strength.
She remembered how unnerved she’d been when she’d realized that the pack sense also transmitted emotions. But if you were in a pack with someone in the first place, you knew them well enough that the pack sense rarely conveyed anything you didn’t already know. She didn’t need it to tell her that Roy was hopeful and anxious and determined and bracing himself against disappointment.
He got on the bike and turned the keys in the ignition. It was loud even to Laura, and he winced. But in the pack sense, he felt more like he had when he’d spoken on the phone than he had in the back seat of the car; she could steady him without having to take extreme measures.
“Mind if I take my girlfriend for a spin on your bike?” Roy asked with a grin.
DJ handed them helmets. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Laura had never been on a motorcycle before. She clambered on, transferring her grip on Roy’s hands to his waist under his shirt.
“Hold on tight!” Roy said.
And then they were off down the dirt road, flying over bumps and potholes and branches. Laura clung on for dear life, clutching even harder when they got to the street and the ride smoothed out. That was when everything had gone from bad to worse in the car, but Roy sped up rather than slowing down, whipping around curves, the motorcycle leaning over precariously.
“It’s safe!” Roy called over his shoulder. “It’s supposed to do that!”
“How does it feel?” Laura yelled.
She could tell from the pack sense that his head hurt and his ears were ringing, but that was drowned out in a crescendo of freedom and release, of the joy of speed and movement and the warm touch of Laura’s hands and the cold sting of the wind in his face.
“Wonderful!” Roy shouted back. “It’s like being a wolf!”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Laura
Eighteen Mice
DJ stayed for a week, a whirlwind of energy and chatter. Laura didn’t know whether Roy quietly had a word with him or whether DJ took in the situation on his own, but with his encouragement, pestering, and offers of help, everyone’s lives began moving forward with startling speed.
The pack finally got to go hunting as wolves, which was as much of a thrill as Roy had promised. Roy bought an ultra-quiet motorcycle, which he taught Laura to ride, and a compound bow, which Jim Sullivan taught him to shoot. Laura set up a website for Lupine Investigations and began taking online courses in surveillance, skip tracing, and bounty hunting. Roy studied textbooks on the same topics. The pack found apartments and started job-searching.
By the time DJ left, saying cagily that he’d made a decision about his mate and thanks for the advice, Roy and Lemon, life seemed to be getting back to some kind of normal.
Laura’s dad called in from Montana, or so he said. When she told him an edited version of what had happened, leaving out the werewolf parts, he gave her the cabin and his congratulations, adding he wanted credit for introducing her and Roy, and that Roy was obviously a good influence to have made her end her ridiculous bank teller phase and take up more suitable employment.
The pack moved out of the cabin but dropped by frequently, alone or in pairs or all together. Laura sometimes woke in the night to an empty bed. When she touched the pack sense, she’d find Roy sitting by the fire as a man or running in the woods as a wolf, caring for some member of his pack who was too troubled to sleep. At first she worried that he would burn himself out again, but when he returned, he always slept soundly and awoke refreshed. Being the alpha wolf seemed to agree with him.
For her part, Laura took charge of the pack sense, making sure everyone felt connected and could reach each other when they chose but didn’t have their emotions spill over without intent. She and Keisha drove to LA to pack up her apartment, and kept a regular lunch date on the days that Keisha wasn’t working at the ER. Entirely apart from Laura’s bond with the pack, she and Keisha had bonded as best friends.
A month after DJ left, the heavy tread of Roy’s feet sounded over the floor as he ran from the garage and into the living room. “Look what I found!”
The garage was filled with years’ worth of stuff from the cabin’s previous owner, which he hadn
’t bothered to clean out when Dad had bought the place. Or possibly hadn’t had time to clean out because he’d been fleeing the law or other criminals, which might explain why Dad had gotten such a good deal on the property.
Roy had been sorting through it, throwing out the junk and setting aside anything he wanted to keep or thought Laura might want. He claimed that they needed the space for his Honda Goldwing and Laura’s boxes from her apartment, but she thought that after all his years in spick-and-span barracks, clutter just bugged him.
Roy had dust smeared over his shirt and sprinkled in his hair, and streaks of black grease framing his eyes like war paint. Laura puzzled over that, then realized that he must have been tinkering with his bike, then wiped sweat from his face. At least there wasn’t any grease on his hands now.
Her eyebrows went up when she saw what he’d found: an old-fashioned radio like a teenage girl might have listened to in 1955, lying on the sofa with her feet up against the wall. “You want to try listening to it?”
“I miss music.” Roy spoke without self-pity, but his downcast eyes made Laura think of rain clouds. “I know it’ll hurt some. But it’ll be worth it. I’ll stop before it gets too bad.”
“What do you like?”
“At this point, anything. DJ used to play music I’d never even heard of, cowpunk and French hip hop and—”
“Cowpunk?” Laura repeated incredulously. “French hip hop?”
“And K-pop and Bhangra and Viking metal—remember, he really is a DJ. If you ever want to hear some French hip hop, you should check out this band called Sniper.”
Laura laughed. “Of course you like the band called Sniper.”
“The name’s a bonus,” Roy replied, smiling. “They’re good. But if the base ever gets around to shipping me my stuff, you’ll see that I have every album Bruce Springsteen ever recorded. Also about forty concert bootlegs.”
Laura couldn’t resist teasing him some more. “And your favorite, of course, is Born in the USA.”
“Good guess, but that’s my second favorite. My first favorite is Born to Run. I don’t care what kind of migraine it gives me, I’m not going the rest of my life without ever listening to ‘Thunder Road.’”
Roy held out his left hand to Laura. With his right, he plugged in the radio, cranked the volume as low as it could go, and turned it on.
She didn’t catch what it was playing, she was so focused on holding Roy in the pack sense. But as he slowly adjusted the volume, she realized that for the first time, he wasn’t falling out of control, unable to slow his own descent. She was still guiding him, but he was doing some of the work himself. It was as if, after hundreds of uncontrolled falls, he’d finally managed to locate and pull the cord on his parachute.
“How are you doing that?” Laura asked, amazed.
“Practice.” Roy’s hand, slowly turning the dial, was as absolutely steady as if he held a gun. “I can feel what you do, and I’ve been trying to do it myself whenever we’ve done this. I guess this was the thousandth time.”
“What’s it feel like?”
Roy’s gray eyes were bright as if he was holding back tears, bright as morning fog hiding a rising sun. “It doesn’t hurt.”
The music came up full volume, playing “Wild Horses.” They sat on the sofa, holding hands and listening. Laura wondered what it must be like for Roy to hear music when he’d thought he might never be able to again, or at least not without pain. She didn’t think she’d ever paid such close attention to a song.
The next song was “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
“Did you slow dance at your prom?” Roy offered Laura his other hand. “Want to dance with me now?”
“No!” Laura instinctively jerked back her hand. “Sorry, it’s a touchy subject. I didn’t go to the prom. Exactly.”
“How can you not exactly go to the prom?”
“You can show up but not make it inside. I was trying out this new glamorous identity as a rich girl who’d come back from a year in France. I even had designer clothes from Paris. All that did was make me a well-dressed outcast. The guy who asked me to the prom did it as a joke he was having with his pals. I was greeted at the door with a banner for the dog show and a blue prize ribbon to pin on my dress.”
“What the hell is wrong with people?” Roy burst out. “I wish I could go back in time and deck them for you. Maybe it’s not too late. You don’t still remember their names, do you?”
Laura marveled that she, the high school dog, now had a stunningly handsome boyfriend who not only wanted to punch out everyone who had ever been cruel to her, but was easily capable of doing so.
Regretfully, she shook her head. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but I already got back at them. That high school helped us put together college applications. I picked the lock on the office door, steamed open their envelopes, and replaced their essays about the important life lessons they’d learned feeding the homeless with essays that were more accurate about their actual hobbies, like getting high and humiliating fat girls.”
“Good for you. And I’m sorry, Laura. That’s terrible. I did a lot of stupid shit in high school, but I never bullied anyone.” Roy looked like he still wanted to go beat the hell out of them for her.
The song ended, and the DJ announced, “Valentine Week continues at KDJK, ‘The Hawk.’”
“I wish I’d known you in high school. You’d have taken me to the prom for real, right?” Laura asked, as the DJ continued, “And now for the King’s most romantic song—you all know what it is—‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’”
“I’ll take you now.” Roy lifted her to her feet and put her hand on his shoulder. “Let’s slow dance.”
“I never have,” Laura protested, as painfully self-conscious as if she’d been dropped back in high school. “I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy. I’ll teach you. First, close your eyes.”
Laura closed her eyes. Roy’s palm was warm on her back, his presence steady in the pack sense. She’d never been an Elvis fan, and associated him with impersonators and rhinestone jumpsuits; she’d forgotten why he’d been famous in the first place, how deep and tender his voice had been.
“Now, you think about how happy you are to be dancing with me, and how much you love me,” Roy said softly. “And I think about how beautiful you are, and how much I love you. And we sway.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I cry all over your shirt,” Laura said, swaying in his arms.
“You can cry for the both of us.”
Laura didn’t cry, but it was a near thing. They swayed through “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and then “Stand by Me.”
As “Wonderful Tonight” began to play, Roy bent down until his lips met hers. Laura felt his emotions as vividly as she felt the heat of his mouth: love and desire, hope and wonder, tenderness and passion. They were her emotions, too. In the pack sense, he was floating more than falling; she too felt weightless, as if she was dancing on air.
Roy slipped one hand up her shirt, caressing the belly that she’d been so ashamed of all her life. She didn’t need the pack sense to know that he thought every inch of her flawed body was perfect; she could feel it in the ardent touch of his fingers. She leaned against him, letting him keep the sway going. Some song was playing but she paid no attention to it, though she was sure Roy was listening. With her ear against his chest, she could hear the accelerating thump of his heartbeat.
Her breath came faster as he neatly unsnapped her bra, one-handed, and teased her nipples until they hardened under his skillful touch. Laura put her own free hand under his T-shirt, stroking the distinct muscles over his belly and the smooth skin unmarked by scars. When she moved upward, she read all his history under her fingers.
“Don’t let go of my hand,” Roy said softly. “I want to keep the music playing.”
“I won’t.”
His right hand tightened around hers as his left hand unhurriedly caressed her breasts, then again returned to h
er belly. But this time, when he stroked downward, he unbuttoned her jeans, fumbling a little one-handed, and then unzipped them. He reached into her panties and began to rub her, slowly working his way inward. Heat pulsed through Laura’s entire body, and ripples of pleasure ran up and down her spine.
She had no attention to spare for the music and couldn’t imagine how Roy did. It was all she could do to hold on to the pack sense and hold him in it. If he hadn’t been doing some of that work himself, she wouldn’t have been able to keep the connection.
His warm finger, rubbing and stroking, getting her more and more wet, making her tremble and gasp. Another finger sliding into her, caressing her from the inside. Roy’s feelings and sensations, which Laura perceived as vividly as if they were her own: touching her slippery heat, feeling the pulse of her inner walls, his own building desire, his overwhelming delight in the music and her soft curves against his body and his ability to please her, his anticipation of feeling her come against his hand…
Laura hated to stop him, but… “Roy?”
“Yeah?” The pad of his finger, circling and rubbing, teasing unbearably…
She had to concentrate hard to speak. “We’re still in the pack sense. If you make me come now, you will too.”
The circling stopped. “Oh.” He glanced down at his jeans, then laughed. “Right. Talk about revisiting high school!”
Laura giggled. “Did you ever actually…?”
Roy took his hand out of her pants and placed hers on his side, under his shirt. “Keep your hand there.”
As he released her other hand and lifted off her blouse, then her bra, Laura said, “Well, did you?”
Roy tossed her clothes to a chair and kissed her, very thoroughly. She was so caught up in frustrated desire that her head was spinning. But not so much so that she couldn’t tease him. He was so charmingly teasable.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Laura said sweetly, when he came up for air. “I want to hear your embarrassing, sexy high school story.”
Roy pulled off his shirt and sent it to join hers. “Only if you tell me one of yours.”
