A Mate for Phoenix

by Selena Scott

  “Why do humans kiss?”

  Her eyes grew wide as she processed the question. He was still stretched out on her couch, his legs stretching almost all the way to her hip, his arms spread wide, his eyes on hers. She gulped.

  Gathering her thoughts, she tried to answer this as professionally as possible. “Um. Lots of reasons. As a greeting. As a way of saying I love you. A way of expressing attraction.” She cleared her throat. She really wished he could read and she could just point him to some trusty internet resources. “Foreplay,” she whispered.

  “What’s foreplay?”

  Her cheeks flamed but she was determined not to shame him for asking. “It’s, um, the things you do right before sex. When you’re touching and, um, otherwise getting ready.”

  His eyes narrowed in confusion as he cocked his head to one side. Silence stretched on and Ida prayed this awkward conversation was now over. It was really possible that Phoenix should have been paired with Quill. Or some other mentor who could answer these questions without feeling like a pervert because her panties were wet.

  His voice finally broke the silence. “In which way did you kiss Watt?”

  Ida’s brain stuttered as she tried to catch up with the turn in the conversation. She gaped at him and he picked up the remote control to flick the television off.

  “I— How— You—” She clapped her mouth closed, completely stymied.

  Phoenix just calmly observed her, his eyes dark and unblinking, but not disturbing the way she used to think of his gaze. “He’s my physical therapist.”

  “Watt is your physical therapist.” She’d known that was his job but it hadn’t occurred to her that Watt and Phoenix would know each other. Phoenix knew like six humans total! And one of them just had to have been a guy she’d crashed and burned with? Oh lord. Just her luck. Then something else occurred to her. “Wait a second. He told you that he kissed me? How unprofessional!”

  Not that she could really talk, considering that she was about one breath away from incinerating her panties.

  “He’s my friend. We talk about a lot of things.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “You talk too?”

  He smirked. “I mostly listen while he talks.”

  But the smirk fell off his face and the serious expression resumed. Ida knew that he wasn’t going to forget about the question he’d asked her. He really wanted to know the answer. She cleared her throat. “It was a goodnight kiss. That’s all.”

  “So, that’s an acceptable reason to kiss someone? To say goodnight?”

  “Yes. Usually at the end of a date.” She thought of how best to explain it. “But it should be mutual. You should both want it. And it never hurts to ask if it’s okay to do it first.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “So, it wasn’t a -what did you call it?- a foreplay kiss?”

  Ida was sure that her cheeks were as pink as bubblegum. “I think that it was for him? But, um, not for me.”

  Phoenix’s face shut down. “I don’t get it.”

  “He just was moving a little fast for me is all. I could tell that he wanted to … take things further, but I wasn’t there yet. So, for me, it was just a goodnight kiss.”

  “He was kissing you very fast?”

  Ida forced herself not to groan. This conversation was borderline humiliating. “No, he was just— look, there’s lots of different ways to kiss somebody and the way he was kissing me showed me that he wanted to have sex. But I wasn’t quite there yet. So I stopped kissing him and went into my house. Is that enough info?” She said it all very fast. The only reason she didn’t burst into flames of embarrassment was the fact that he was slightly leaned forward, listening very carefully. Like he was seriously trying to learn.

  He huffed and sat back. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Well, maybe it isn’t something that can be explained with words. Maybe it’s just something you’ll have to try out on your own.”

  He frowned at her. “I don’t want to try that. Kissing is utterly pointless to me. I’m asking you questions about it because I truly have no idea why a human would want to do it.”

  Ida gaped at him. “So, you’ve never …”

  He shook his head.

  Ida looked away for a second. He’d never kissed anyone, or seen a woman’s underwear. Yet, Diana had seemed fairly sure that the brothers had made their way into town to have sexual encounters. But what kind of sex could someone have that didn’t involve kissing or underwear?

  She looked at him askance. Was there any chance that he was a virgin? He certainly reeked of sexual energy. Just look at him, sprawled on the couch like that, all open body language and piercing eyes and big body. He looked like he was specifically designed to be a sex-haver. But then again, he’d spent almost every day of his life in his wolf form up until six months ago. Sex might have been hard to come by. And plenty of people were still virgins in their late twenties for all sorts of reasons. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she ever heard.

  “Humans make this kind of thing so complicated,” he said after a minute. “Why can’t sex just be sex? It’s plenty pleasurable all on its own.”

  So … he had had sex. She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to figure him out. She wondered how much she could ask. It wasn’t really her business.

  “What?” he asked her, apparently reading a question in her expression.

  “Nothing. Not appropriate for me to ask.” She waved a hand in the air and reached for the remote, intending to turn the television back on. But he nudged her hip with his socked foot.

  “Come on. Ask me. You won’t embarrass me.”

  She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “You talk as if you’ve had sex before.” She cleared her throat and forced herself to make eye contact.

  He nodded curtly. “I have.”

  “But you’ve never kissed someone or seen women’s underwear in real life.”

  “Right.”

  “I really don’t understand how that’s possible.”

  His face tightened down. “We would leave the bar, go somewhere private, usually her house. She’d get naked, we’d get into the position and have sex. Then I’d leave.”

  Ida felt a little faint. “The position?”

  “Yeah.” Now he was looking at her like she was the crazy one. “The sex position. The one you have to get into to have sex.”

  “And what position is that exactly?” She was equally intrigued and horrified.

  His brows battened down. “She’s in front on her hands and knees, I’m in back. Sex.”

  Wow. It all became stunningly clear to her. Most likely the only sex he’d ever witnessed in his life had been between animals. With the male of the species mounting the female from behind. It might have never even occurred to him that there was more than one way to do it. He’d never even heard of foreplay until today! Holy moly.

  Ida faced front and let her mind race for a moment. A hundred questions scanned past. Should she correct him? Find him a picture book about sex? Just butt out and let him figure this stuff out on his own?

  A solution came to her.

  “I’m gonna schedule another meeting with Quill for tomorrow or the next day. I’ll hang with Dawn and you and Quill can … talk.” She’d make sure to prep Quill on the situation and let him handle it however he was going to. That was going to have to be good enough. Because this conversation was very close to crossing lines, if it hadn’t already.

  “Why?” he asked her skeptically.

  “Because there’s some things he’ll know how to talk to you about that I don’t know.”

  He frowned. “I don’t want to talk to Quill about sex.”

  “Well. It might be better than talking to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m getting all …” she pointed to her cheeks to the hair that was starting to stick to the sweat at the back of her neck. “Nervous.”

  “Talking to me about sex is making you nervous?”

&nb
sp; Damn him. He looked more like a wolf than she’d ever seen before. His eyes pierced, her, unblinking, confident.

  She sighed in what she hoped sounded like exasperation. “Yes. It is. Because it is a sensitive subject and I’m no expert.”

  “You haven’t had sex?” he tipped his head to the side, obviously trying to understand.

  She frowned. “Yes, I have. But I still don’t know how to talk to you about it. There’s a lot to, um, fill you in on and I’m not the person to do it. Quill will know how.”

  “You’re saying there’s a lot I don’t know.”

  She cleared her throat. Apparently he thought that sex was only a doggy style affair, so yeah. “I think you’d benefit from a sex ed course of some kind. But maybe a conversation with Quill to start out.”

  “What don’t I know? It never seemed that complicated to me.”

  Now he was looking a little agitated. Great. She’d aggravated his injury and now she’d aggravated him emotionally. She wasn’t winning any awards for mentorship today.

  She cast about for a way to describe it. “There’s more, um, variety than you think. Just like there’s all those different ways to kiss someone? Well, there’s all different ways to have sex with someone, too. Different, um, things you can do. Different positions. It’s all a part of a greater, ah, tapestry of, um, pleasure.”

  Oh, god. Tapestry of pleasure? She sounded like a middle aged health teacher trying to encourage her young students that sex could fun! But only with condoms, after the age of eighteen, and with enthusiastic consent. It wasn’t the coolest that she’d ever felt in her life. Luckily it effectively doused her libido.

  She popped up. “Okay! Time to take you home!”

  He looked like he wanted to argue, but he said nothing, just grabbed his crutches and took one last look around her house. The ride home was very quiet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Phoenix remained very confused about his conversation with Ida even as he crutched his way into physical therapy that evening.

  He found, however, one upside was that he no longer felt bad about Watt. Now that he understood a little more about why humans kissed, he no longer felt the fog of confusion surrounding the knowledge that Watt had kissed Ida before.

  It also helped that she hadn’t felt the same way about the kiss as Watt apparently had. He still didn’t really get why someone would want or need to kiss before having sex, but he could understand Watt wanting to have sex with Ida. She was attractive, he’d begun to realize, despite the silly glasses and clumsiness. She had a body type, short and very soft, that he’d never been attracted to before. But the more he got to know Ida, the more he viscerally understood why someone would want to have sex with her.

  He didn’t begrudge Watt the urge.

  That didn’t, however, explain the immense relief he felt at the fact that Ida hadn’t reciprocated the feelings toward Watt. She had every right to have sex with whomever she wanted, just like the women that Phoenix had slept with had every right to sleep with him. But still, he just didn’t like the thought of her and Watt together.

  “Dude, you’re in never-never land tonight!” Watt crowed as he snapped his fingers in front of Phoenix’s face. “You all right? Never seen you so spaced.”

  “I’m all right. I just had a confusing conversation today.”

  “About what?” Watt asked, flopping down on the mat next to Phoenix and running through the preliminary stretches along with him.

  “Sex.”

  “Ah! Do tell, my friend.” Watt waggled his red eyebrows at Phoenix and Phoenix couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Wolves don’t kiss. And I’m trying to figure out why humans do and what it has to do with sex. The answers I got were not satisfactory.”

  “Well, no wonder. No answer you’re ever going to get will be satisfactory. It’s something you have to experience. Seriously. If we went out and found some chick for you to kiss, you’d understand the whole thing in like half a second.”

  Before Phoenix could respond, or even really consider the wisdom of that statement, Watt was bouncing up and squinting across the gym. “Hold on, I see an old client of mine and I think he’s about to wreck himself on that deadlift. Gimme a sec.”

  Phoenix sat alone, still stretching and thinking. Maybe Watt was right. Maybe he should just find some pretty girl and —

  “You’re a shifter, aren’t you.”

  A man sat down next to Phoenix and leaned back on his palms, eyeing him from toes to hairline.

  The man had a closely shaved head and tattoos on his fingers. There was a cold look in his eye that Phoenix immediately distrusted.

  He didn’t answer the man, just turned his head away and kept stretching, though his body had noticeably tensed.

  “You don’t have to answer me. I know you are. I can sniff out your kind from a mile away.”

  Phoenix’s eyes tracked back to the man. He knew, from the scent, that this man was not a shifter. Just a hateful human.

  “Let me guess,” the man said. “You’ve got no money to your name, barely got any social skills, and now you’re just living fat off my tax dollars? Yeah. I’ve heard this story before.”

  Phoenix felt rage rise in his blood stream and it wasn’t because of the man’s words as much as it was the man’s toxic, angry presence.

  “Listen,” the man said. “If you ever get sick of being a useless drain on society, you give me a call. We can put you to work. Make you a little money.”

  The man shoved a piece of paper into Phoenix’s hand and rose.

  “Everything all right here?” Watt asked, a frown on his face as he stood over Phoenix, as if protecting him.

  “Peachy,” the man replied. “Just making friends.”

  Watt’s eyes tracked back and forth between the man and Phoenix. Phoenix said nothing.

  “Right. McGrath, why don’t you come with me.” Watt took the bald man by the arm and dragged him away from Phoenix.

  Phoenix watched through narrow eyes as Watt and the man exchanged terse words at one end of the gym. When Watt came back he was frowning more than Phoenix had ever seen him frown before.

  “If that guy talks to you again, you let me know,” Watt said, holding out a hand to help Phoenix stand up.

  He looked to one end of the gym where the man still stood, watching him and he felt something uneasy trip its way down his spine. “Right.”

  “All right. Let’s get on with the session, yeah?” Watt led Phoenix over to the treadmill. “And afterward, we’ll hit a bar or two, find some PYT for you to kiss.”

  Phoenix’s eyebrows rose. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. He didn’t mind the thought of finding someone to kiss. Maybe it would even be good for him.

  ***

  The agent was finally back at his home. He lay down on his bed and looked at the ceiling for a long, long time.

  He knew he needed to call the Director, to give an update. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. There was something about Phoenix Wolf that felt different than the other recruits, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  On paper, Phoenix was a perfect candidate for the program. He was naive of human culture, ignorant to the dangers of the world. He was also in an incredible amount of pain. Something that always made candidates easier to shape and mold and inoculate to the discomforts of acclimating to the program. And best of all, if they got their hooks into Phoenix, there was a very good chance that Orion and Dawn could be enticed as well. Three for the price of one.

  The agent had been observing Phoenix for a while now and been encouraged by what he’d seen, his chances. But the interaction today had almost gone horribly awry. That asshole at the gym shouldn’t have interrupted them. He’d nearly wrecked everything.

  The agent picked up the phone and dialed the Director’s number, his thumb hovering over the send button.

  He couldn’t afford another mistake. He was very aware what would happen if he made another mistake.

  *
**

  Phoenix did not enjoy loud music. He did not enjoy the taste of alcohol. He did not enjoy crowded rooms filled with creatures whom he didn’t know.

  In short, he didn’t enjoy bars. Something he’d forgotten until he’d stepped inside one with Watt.

  In the past, bars had been a means to an end for him. The equation had been simple. Shift into human form, wash body in stream, dress in his father’s old clothes, walk down the mountain to the nearest town in the evening, enter bar, find attractive woman, start talking to her, touch her a little bit, wait for her invitation to leave, leave with her, have sex, go back up the mountain.

  All of it had had such a point. This however? Did not have any sort of point that Phoenix could tell. People draped themselves all over each other, screaming in one another’s ears, and from what he could tell, very few of them were leaving together.

  Human rituals. So apparently important. So stubbornly opaque to him.

  “Stop scowling at all the pretty girls!” Watt shouted in his ear as he came up to Phoenix, holding out a glass of water, since Phoenix had refused his offer of beer.

  There were pretty girls around? Phoenix had yet to notice any. He glanced around and was surprised to note that there were, in fact, several sleek, thin, dark haired women scattered among the crowd. The kind of woman that he’d been attracted to in the past. In fact, the only kind of woman he’d ever had sex with before. It was kind of weird that he hadn’t even clocked them.

  Instead, he found his eyes catching more on the curvier women who populated the tables and dance floor. And on one woman in particular with her coppery hair. Seemed his type was changing. He wasn’t a fool enough to wonder why.

  “Sorry,” he grumbled back to Watt. “I’ll stop scowling. But don’t chat up that python shifter anymore. She’s not in control of her shift. Wouldn’t want her shifting during sex by accident.”