by Jools Louise
“Easy, honey,” Thomas said quietly to Cody. “They were victims as well. Listen to what they’re telling you…and see how they were treated.” Cody backed off a little, taking a deep breath to calm down.
“We were forced to do what we did,” Lash said, glaring right back at Cody. “They said they took our families and threatened that they’d hurt them if we didn’t. We didn’t hurt our charges, but you’re right, they were children when we first saw them. Teenagers, anyway. We’ve been guarding them for ten years. Before that, I don’t know where they were held.”
“David might know something. He may recognize your ex-wife. Maybe he heard something, a location. She needs to be hunted down,” Murphy said in a growl. “She needs to be made to pay.”
“She kept telling Ethan that he was paying for his father’s sins and showed him pictures of you,” Lash said hesitantly, keeping a wary eye on Cody. “She didn’t hurt him physically, but she did a number on his mental state. He had fire, though, telling her she was a vicious bitch and that his dad would find him. He punched her one time and spat in her face.” Lash smiled at that, his amber eyes gleaming with amusement. “She told him he was just like his father, Cody, and she looked forward to Cody seeing what had been done to both his brats.”
Murphy felt his friend freeze, saw a look of understanding cross his face. He knew Cody had been told that Ethan was not his, on the day Cody had left Marissa after he’d had enough of her whining and self-absorption and multiple affairs. Lash had just confirmed that Ethan was indeed Cody’s son, despite what that bitch had told Cody, purely out of spite.
“She lied,” he told Cod, and received a nod in reply.
“We need to hunt her down,” Cody snarled. “I want to dance on her entrails, while she watches, then take her apart piece by piece, starting with her fucking tongue.”
Murphy hugged his friend, felt the man relax slightly, and felt the deep anger trembling through Cody’s big frame. Murphy would not help the bitch Marissa when they caught up with her. He’d hold her down if necessary for what she‘d done to Cody and her sons.
“How is Ethan?” Lash asked, flinching when Cody let out a roar and lunged for him, his control on his temper fraying fast.
“No, Cody!” Thomas said, grabbing Cody and dragging him back, then right out of the room. “You’re attacking the wrong person, buddy,” he said, needing all his strength to hold Cody back. The man was barely containing his jaguar, wanting to kill someone it perceived a continued threat to a young man he shared blood with, but had never met.
“Dad?” Douglas said, his voice quivering as he timidly emerged from one of the rooms farther down the corridor.
“Douglas,” Cody said, barely audible. Thomas literally felt Cody reining himself in, felt the effort it took his friend to not lose all control and rip the place apart. Cody was a strong, vicious feline, capable of doing someone serious damage. He had never seen Cody so enraged and feared for the man’s sanity. If his cat took over, they would have a big problem.
“Good man,” Murphy said approvingly. “Keep it together, man.” He held on to Cody, letting him come back down to earth, feeling the subtle relaxation in Cody’s muscles, which were tense and hard as granite.
“Ethan’s awake, Dad,” Douglas said, his eyes teary. “He wants to see you. He wants his dad.”
Cody flinched, then nodded to Murphy, indicating he was in control again. He eased out of his lover’s strong grip and turned to his youngest son.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Cody told Douglas, looking remorseful.
“It’s okay, I feel the same way.” Douglas smiled, coming to hug Cody tightly. “She said the same things to me, that I was going to pay for whatever my father had done to her.” He rested his head against Cody’s big chest, his thin arms clutching at Cody’s shirt. “Personally I think she’s a whack job in need of some serious therapy.”
Thomas gave a startled laugh at the deadpan delivery, watching Cody lighten up even more, a smile creasing his handsome face. “Baby,” Cody said gruffly, “I think she’s way past therapy.”
“When we track her down, maybe we could introduce her to Cassidy,” Douglas said helpfully, earning a laugh from both everyone this time. Cassidy was a female cougar shifter who had a no-nonsense, no-fools approach to life. She was fiercely protective of all the kids who had been in her care and had killed one female who took childcare too lightly.
“Yeah, Cassidy’s justice is pretty severe when it comes to mamas hurting kids,” Cody said and pressed a gentle kiss to his son’s forehead. “Before we do that though, how about we go meet Ethan?” He smiled and took Douglas’s hand in his, and then the pair walked into the larger ward where the nine seriously sick patients lay.
* * * *
“Ethan,” Cody said as he entered the ward quietly. He glanced over at the other beds, seeing the patients lying asleep, monitors silently measuring vital stats, IVs hooked up to provide essential nutrition and hydration.
The young man in the bed closest to the window turned his head, his eyes still shielded by lightweight goggles. The lights in the room dimmed and curtains were placed on the windows to blot out most of the sunlight streaming in.
“You’re my dad.” Ethan uttered a statement, rather than a question, and Cody nodded, moving closer.
“I am, Ethan, I’m Cody Horton,” the big shifter said, walking quietly alongside Douglas, then sat beside Ethan’s bed.
Ethan sighed, his throat working. Cody could see a mixture of emotions playing on the young man’s face, the most evident being relief. “I kept telling myself you would come, that you would find me, despite what that bitch told me,” he said, swallowing with difficulty. Cody immediately reached for a sipper cup with a straw sticking out of it and helped Ethan drink a tiny amount to lubricate dry lips. Ethan smiled faintly and sighed again. “I’m so glad you came. I’d almost given up hope.”
Cody gulped back tears, irritated that he was such an emotional wreck right now. He needed to be strong for his son, not a weeping wuss. “Ethan, I’m sorry I didn’t come. Marissa told me you didn’t survive, that you were stillborn. She played me so good, kept me distracted so well, I didn’t question what she said. Then, when I tried to leave, she told more lies.” He placed his fingers over the thin ones clutching the sheet. “We searched these tunnels for months, Rafe and I, trying to find places the cult had hidden people, but they destroyed evidence, and we only just found this last place by accident. I’m so, so sorry we failed.” He ducked his head, feeling tears on his face, not bothering to wipe them away. He was surprised Ethan and Douglas didn’t hate him. He wasn’t much good at protecting them.
He felt thin fingers on his face as Ethan lifted his hand from the sheet, tracing the lines of Cody’s cheekbones, jaw, and chin and then smoothing over his damp eyes.
“Dad, they did a really good job of hiding us, so nobody would find us,” Ethan said, stroking Cody’s cheeks gently. “They moved us into that last place when they knew you were getting close. They knew who I was, and they had no intention of you ever seeing me alive. None of this is anyone else’s fault but the evil bastards’ who started all this. The cult and good old Marissa who cared more for revenge than her own sons.” Ethan sounded bitter now, a hard edge of anger on his face. Then he closed his eyes, looking utterly exhausted by the effort to speak. A second later he was fast asleep, his breathing even.
Cody studied Ethan’s face, seeing a slight tinge of pink to the man’s pale skin. He was still emaciated, after only three days’ freedom, and it would be a long, long road until he recovered fully. Lex was concerned about long-term effects and had suggested the possibility of Ethan and the others being injected with the shifter virus, courtesy of Joe McKellar, the ranch owner, or Mick, who also possessed the ability to convert human to shifter. It was a unique ability and not shouted about in case the wrong people got wind of it. The wolverines had said none of these men were shifters, so perhaps that was a solution. Cod
y would ask Ethan at some point if he wanted to be injected. Shifters’ ability to heal and be immune to most human diseases, meant his chances of a full recovery were far better. In his emaciated state, and with the possibility of organ failure, he could still die or get a nasty infection since his immune system would be compromised from lack of nutrition.
Ethan’s face was framed by thin, lank brown hair. His eyes were the exact same shade as Cody’s and Douglas’s, which Cody was thankful for. It meant Ethan would see Cody’s eyes, not Marissa’s when he looked in the mirror.
He sat for about an hour, just watching his son, his mind churning with all that had happened. The cult’s legacy of lost souls just went on and on. When would it end? Sighing, he kissed his son on the cheek, gently stroking a finger across his dark eyebrow, then left to find Thomas. His lover was helping Pace search for Marissa using the old files from the town hall. The two ex-partners finding their old groove and working well together. He knew Thomas didn’t want to be a policeman again, but he had some serious skills as an investigator. He hoped they found something soon. They also needed to speak to others about her, hoping earlier victims had seen or heard something.
* * * *
Cody fell apart later that evening, sitting up in bed, sobbing into Thomas’s big chest. His lover’s hands stroked tenderly across his back, brushing kisses soothingly over his damp cheek, letting him release the grief he felt, the terror at nearly losing both his sons.
“I’m so sorry,” Thomas murmured gruffly. “If only I’d told you about Douglas sooner, you might have found out about Ethan, too. You would at least have been alert to her lies, and you would have checked on other shit that she told you. I’m so, so sorry.”
Cody felt his sobs subside and lifted his head. “No, Thomas, it would have made no difference. These people have hidden their activities for a long time, and it’s only recently that we’ve uncovered what they were doing. They had contacts all over, in the highest levels of government who assisted in covering up their sick operation.” He kissed his lover tenderly, lovingly. “Even if you’d told me, if I’d confronted her, she would have come up another plausible lie, some document to prove they were dead or not mine.”
Thomas wiped his eyes, reaching for a tissue by the side of the bed. Offering Cody the tissue, he waited for his lover to clean himself up, discarded the tissue in the small bin next to the bed, then gathered him close again.
“Baby, her bitterness and greed are her downfall,” Thomas said after a while spent holding each other, exchanging soft kisses and languid caresses. “She failed, didn’t she? Now you have a loving partner and two sons, and she can’t touch them. They survived, and so did you. Wherever she is now, she’s still the same miserable, twisted person she always was, by choice. You’ve moved on and are successful, smart, sexy…and you have the sexiest lover around.” He peppered kisses across Cody’s face, smiling when Cody gave a low groan of contentment, then fisted their bare cocks together and began stroking them lazily, with a firm little twist at the top of the upstroke, enticing out beads of fragrant pre-cum.
“I love being here with you, sexy lover,” Cody declared, his lips opening over Thomas’s chest, sucking on one small flat nipple and urging it to aching hardness. Thomas gasped out, growling impressively. “I love the feel of you.” A sharp nip came next, followed by a long, wet stroke of a tongue. “I love the taste of you.” Another nip, another lick. “I love everything about you.”
Thomas moaned as Cody lifted up again, then they began some serious necking, hot and slow, then hard and desperate, Cody’s fingers wet with pre-cum, still pumping steadily.
“Aaaagh,” Thomas cried out, coming in a burst of steamy cum, spurting over both of them.
“Yeah, baby,” Cody laughed huskily, coming with a guttural groan of pure bliss, smelling the blend of cum and sweat that lay around them in a fragrant cloud. “I really, really love it when you come all over me.” He nipped at Thomas’s lips, then began to lap at the drops of cum that had reached Thomas’s sexy chin, meandering on down, following the trails of liquid bliss, cleansing his lover in the most intimate way. By the time he had wandered his way all the way down to Thomas’s beautiful cock, the man was aroused again, so Cody treated him to a blow job, reaping the rewards as Thomas came hard a second time.
Exhausted by the events of the day, Cody finally rested, surrounded by his lover’s arms again, and went to sleep with the taste of this beautiful man still on his lips.
Chapter Six:
The Surprises Keep Coming
Thomas and Cody had their trailer to themselves, with Douglas electing to stay at the clinic for a while the following night, sitting with Ethan and the other patients there, along with David, Chaz, and the other young shifters, helping Lex.
The two big men lay on the couch, with Thomas underneath, Cody lying between his legs, back to Thomas’s chest. Thomas’s fingers threaded between his lover’s, and he nuzzled Cody’s cheek as they stared at the television with its blare of sound and color, not focusing at all on the show.
“Lex told me the men might end up permanently blind,” Cody said after a while, sounding depressed. “I keep thinking that if only I’d searched harder. That if we’d only found the Feenan ranch or the trophy ranch sooner, Ethan and the others would have been saved. They were down in that fucking tomb for eighteen months, slowly starving to death, treated like they were already dead.”
Thomas rumbled soothingly, kissing Cody’s shoulder, his upper body bare and his lower half clad only in loose sweats. “Baby, they made very sure to move those boys when you and your Two Spirit crew got too close. From the timeline, four years ago they were taken to the tunnels, and then when Joe found David, and then the tunnels, they kept just one step ahead of you, moving those boys from one place to the next. You would have no clue you had anyone to even look for, given that Marissa told you so many convincing lies.” His fingers moved down Cody’s abs, raking through the fine covering of hair, which led to other interesting places below the waistband of Cody’s sweatpants.
Cody sighed, his head falling back against Thomas’s shoulder, turning his head to kiss his lover. Thomas obliged, using every bit of love he felt for his lover and infusing the kiss with tenderness, compassion, and over thirty years of caring. Cody opened for him, groaning softly, hips hitching slightly when Thomas delved beneath his waistband, gripping Cody’s hardening cock in a gentler clasp.
“Let me love you, baby,” Thomas said against Cody’s lips, sipping from Cody’s sweet mouth, stroking his tongue against his lover’s, wet and delicious and hot as sin. Thomas’s fingers stroked gently along the thick, plump flesh of Cody’s dick, dipping into the tiny slit that was starting to moisten, using the fluid to lubricate the thick, silken rod under his fingers.
“Love me,” Cody begged, then turned quickly, straddling Thomas’s legs, the kiss turning hungry and urgent with a fierce passion that took Thomas’s breath away. “I’ve loved you for the longest time, and I was too stupid back then to reach for it when I should have,” Cody growled, biting at Thomas’s lower lip. Thomas gasped out loud, then groaned when Cody slid his pants off, then ripped away Thomas’s thin boxers, the only thing Thomas wore. Fisting their cocks together, Cody pumped both large dicks, stroking firmly, his mouth fused to his lover’s. They’d been building up to this for days, weeks…years.
Thomas closed his eyes and his big arms went around his lover, pulling Cody closer. “I love you, too, baby,” Thomas said gruffly. “I’m glad we’re together now, when you know who you are and aren’t afraid to prove it.” He smiled when Cody gave a low growl, then kissed him harder, eating at Thomas’s mouth avidly. Panting, Thomas gave himself over to his lover, feeling sweat bead his big body, their slick cocks sliding together in Cody’s strong fist.
Lying along Thomas’s body, Cody marked his lover with his scent, using his whole body to caress his partner. Bare flesh glided against bare flesh, their sweat-slicked skin adding to the eroticism. Tho
mas had not been promiscuous over the years and had been with a handful of lovers, but nothing compared to this full-body contact, this making love with every part of your being. He was human, not shifter, and had taken control of their loving so far. Cody was taking control now, though, little purrs rumbling from his throat, and Thomas smiled to himself, glad Cody’s jaguar was enamored as well. It could have been awkward loving Cody the man when Cody’s cat was chomping at his ass.
“Baby, I need that fat cock inside me,” Thomas begged, writhing beneath his lover, breathing hard when Cody began kissing him all over, moving downward and rasping his tongue across taut pecs, pebble-hard nipples, and then over ripped abs until he reached the trunk of Thomas’s aching cock.
“I want your cream first,” Cody snarled, then sucked the first four inches of prime dark meat into his mouth, leaving Thomas shouting for joy. Cody was proving a natural at blow jobs, his cheeks hollowed out as he sucked pre-cum from Thomas’s slit with greedy fervor. Swallowing a few more inches, Cody hummed and slurped his way up Thomas’s thick length until with a shout from Thomas, he had all eleven inches down his maw, working his throat muscles diligently against the massive dick.
Thomas thought he may pass out—the guy was a pro at deep throating. Most guys took one look at his girth and length and backed off, or only managed half the length. The exquisite feel of Cody’s hot mouth surrounding all eleven inches was one he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. He groaned loudly, his big hands stroking gently through his lover’s short, soft hair, gripping gently as Cody eased back, then bobbed up and down, sucking hard. With a shout Thomas came hard, his balls drawing up, loading the gun, then he shot his load in thick creamy strands, filling Cody’s hungry mouth until he finally jerked to a stop, collapsing back into the couch cushions.
Cody popped the softening cock from his lips, then licked a languid trail back up Thomas’s body, taking his time at Thomas’s taut nipples, then with a tongueful of cum, he kissed Thomas in a sloppy, cream-filled mess of a kiss. Thomas gripped the back of Cody’s head hard, mashing their lips together, his fingers gripping the man’s rock-hard butt.
