Sumage Solution GL Carriger

by G. L. Carriger

  Max grinned as they bickered, evaluating Tank from under his lashes. The big man seemed uncomfortable. Max raised a questioning eyebrow at Bryan.

  Bryan leaned in and whispered, causing Max to shiver. “No one knows. We’re thinking probably bi, but you see how he is.”

  Tank glared from his corner. “I can totally hear you, and you know that. We all can. Except maybe Marvin.”

  “Hey, I’m part aquatic, not handicapped.”

  Alec brought them all back around. “We’re supposed to be getting to know Bryan’s new friend here.”

  “Ha! Now you’re calling him Bryan.”

  “Shut up, Kevin.”

  Max tried to make his eyes big and innocent – he knew their color made strangers uncomfortable.

  Suddenly Alec smiled fully at him. Max actually felt his breath catch. The Alpha had the most amazing smile, open and generous, hazel eyes twinkling, his eyeteeth way more canine than human. Max felt stupid under its light, as if he would do anything to keep him smiling. Holy shit.

  He blinked but the smile was still there.

  Marvin reached over the divide between the two couches, across the narrow coffee table, and patted Max’s knee in a consoling manner. “I know, it’s kinda overwhelming, isn’t it?”

  Max forced himself to focus on the merman, feeling Bryan shift against him in a way that might have been understanding, or discomfort, or jealousy. “Do you get used to it?”

  “Nope. Alpha.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know, right? Imagine dating it. Hard to keep him from getting spoiled. I just want to give him whatever he wants, like, all the time. I mean, just look at that adorable mug.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” objected the Alpha in question, sounding only a little guilty and putting away the smile – thank heavens. “And you do fine. From my perspective, you seem to get what you want most of the time.”

  Marvin fluttered his lashes at his mate. “That’s because I’m brilliant and you adore me.”

  Bryan said, again in Max’s ear, “Now my brother will be charming. Brace yourself.”

  And Alec was. Very charming. He asked Max polite, nonintrusive questions about growing up in Sausalito. About the secrets of the Bay Area. About his work with DURPS.

  Max tried to be as polite and charming as he could in return. Which was totally exhausting.

  Eventually, pizza finished, Bryan stood and began to steer Max toward the door.

  “Leaving so soon?” trilled Marvin.

  “Hell, yes. I’m surprised he didn’t run the moment he saw you lot.” Bryan handed Max his coat.

  Max didn’t object – he was grateful to escape.

  “I wonder, brother dear, if I might have a quiet word.” That was the Alpha, sly and oily.

  Bryan looked mutinous until Alec smiled and he melted.

  “Fine.”

  “Oh, not with you. With Max.”

  “No.” Bryan didn’t miss a beat. His arm slunk protectively over Max’s shoulders and he practically forced him out of the door.

  “STAY.”

  Bryan froze against Max, almost like stone. Max lurched at the sudden stillness midstride.

  He turned his head, and all the others were frozen too, except Marvin, who was looking big-eyed and wringing his hands.

  Alec said, in his normal voice. “I promise, I won’t damage him.”

  Bryan shook himself. “Careful, Alpha. You don’t control my forgiveness.”

  “Noted. Max, would you walk with me down to the beach and back?”

  Max would rather Place a Surge than go for a stroll with this werewolf. He looked helplessly at Bryan.

  “You’re casting me to the wolves?”

  “I’m so sorry, baby, can’t resist VOICE.”

  “Will you mourn me when I’m gone?”

  “Forever.”

  “Oh, stop it, both of you.” Alec didn’t throw on a jacket, just walked out the door and expected Max to follow. Max followed. Not because he had to. Or because Alec was Alpha. But because he was Bryan’s beloved brother, and Max owed him something for Bryan’s sake.

  They strolled for a few blocks in silence.

  Finally, Alec cleared his throat and said, tentatively. “I know I don’t look it, but I am Alpha.”

  Yes, I heard the VOICE was what Max wanted to snap back. Instead, he evaluated Alec carefully and saw all the grace that really was power and the charm that really was charisma. Command lurked under that pretty, nerdy exterior. Every part of Alec said follow me. A werewolf yellow brick road.

  “I know you’re Alpha,” said Max.

  “Biff knew from the start. Did he tell you?”

  Max nodded.

  Alec kept going. “Funny, he knew before I did. When pack, or jocks, or homophobic assholes jumped me, he was there. Always. Pushing back. He fought them all. Fought them while I ran. Until I was old enough to fight alongside. And yet that, that fighting, it’s alien to his nature. You have to know that.”

  Max nodded, realizing finally why Alec was so wary of him. Max swallowed the bitterness of self-loathing. “He doesn’t like to hurt people.”

  “So, you can understand why I must tell you something.” Alec sounded so casual. “If he comes back to us again wrecked by your insecurities, I will see you ripped apart at the seams like tissue paper. And my mate will take your component parts so far out and so deep into the ocean, your ghost will neither rise nor rest and your bones will never be found – mage or not.”

  “That’s fair,” Max said, because it was. “Although I would not be missed. No need to take such elaborate precautions.” I have no pack, no family to vow vengeance over my remains.

  What Alec gave him next was not at all what Max expected. “Poor sumage. The world let you get lost, didn’t it?”

  Compassion. Worse than threats or accusations. Max comprehended in that moment Bryan’s fierce loyalty to this man.

  Max shuddered, feeling forsaken and sad. Not really for himself, but perhaps for the boy he’d once been. Before. Before he failed to be Surge and everything changed.

  The Alpha continued, his mellow voice a barbed lure. “You can’t take my brother with you into the enchanted forest. Find Grandma’s house on your own.”

  Max quirked a humorless smile. “You calling me Little Red Riding Hood and your brother the Big Bad Wolf? Doesn’t that mean he’s going to eat me?”

  “Only if you’re lucky.”

  “I don’t believe that’s how the story goes.”

  “And that’s the source of your problem, isn’t it, Maximillian Barker?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not writing your own story, you’re living with the disappointment of failing someone else’s outline.”

  Fucking Alphas.

  “You want to keep my brother? Grow up.” Alec returned Max to the doorstep of their borrowed home and, like the king he was, walked regally inside.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Enchanted Repercussions

  Biff was worried. Max wasn’t talking. They drove the half hour back to Sausalito in complete silence.

  I should have waited. No one was ready yet.

  Biff chewed his lip. It’s just, they’re all mine to look after.

  He didn’t know how to break silence – he lived there. So, instead, he crowded Max backward across the darkened interior of his tiny apartment, pushed him with sure gentleness to sprawl atop the bed, followed him down, covered him.

  Max immediately twined himself around Biff, vine-like and desperate. All wanton need, lost to it in a way he’d never been before. Alec had done something to shake him. Shake his confidence in them.

  “What did he say?”

  Max only whimpered into Biff’s neck. His cock was hard against Biff’s hip. His face was wet against Biff’s throat.

  “Max, please?”

  “He warned me away, but nicely. He’s right.”

  “He usually is. It’s very annoying, but not if he told you to leave m
e. That’s not…” Biff lost his words to the horror of it.

  “No,” agreed Max, burrowing more against him, as if he wanted inside Biff’s skin. He was fierce with it. Almost as if it were Biff threatening to leave.

  Biff kissed him, tasting salt and desire and guilt. Max was frightened of what he might do. Of what he could do. To Biff. To them, to the newness of this relationship. Biff decided to put a concerted effort into allaying that fear, or at least distracting him from it.

  He nibbled at Max’s mouth, explored all the contours of tongue and teeth, until new desperation replaced the old. Until Max’s breath was hitched and panting and he was writhing more than clinging.

  They stayed with silence after that, or at least without speech – swimming in the small noises of pleasure. Biff took his time, stripping them both, Max passive and heavy-lidded, licking his lips as Biff licked his skin.

  Biff did everything that Max had done to him the night before, only longer and more. He took his time learning shapes and textures, inside and out.

  When Biff found Max’s prostate with his well-lubed fingers, Max found his words. They were garbled curses of need and praise. Biff pressed them out of him. He’d never had anyone come apart beneath him like that – it was so beautiful.

  Finally, Max composed a sentence. “If you don’t get that fucking horse cock inside me right the fuck now, I’m going to fucking…”

  It wasn’t a particularly cohesive sentence but Biff got the gist. He slathered on lube, figuring it was better to have too much than too little. He was so hard, he suspected he’d last about five seconds but managed to surprise himself. Sinking inside Max, at last, particles of joy slid down his spine, holding him there on that pinpoint of pleasure. There was nothing separating them – they breathed together.

  Max keened and arched until Biff was entirely within him. Then there was total silence. Biff wondered hysterically if by filling his sumage with his cock, he’d also filled him up with his silence. Experimentally, he withdrew.

  Max stayed mute, blue eyes wide and fixed on him, like Biff was his tether to reality, like if he moved or spoke, he would snap free and drift.

  Biff sank back inside him and Max’s eyes went glassy.

  “Breathe, Trouble.” Biff’s own voice sounded foreign to him, rasping and raw.

  Max gasped in.

  Biff retreated again, then pushed back into his mate. Mate. Oh no. I can’t, but... Mine. My mate. Slowly, greedy for a perfect moment, he shifted the angle slightly, until Max closed his eyes and moaned, began chasing Biff’s dick with his ass.

  There.

  Another moan.

  It was, without a doubt, Biff’s favorite sound in the universe. So, he moved again just right. More moans and a tiny whimper.

  Biff bent Max in half so he could reach the side of his neck with his mouth, so he could suck up five hickeys in the shape of a paw mark on that one patch of skin he’d claimed as his own. All the while, he paced their lovemaking with long, slow strokes. Then, very carefully, as though forming a circle around the hickeys branding Max, Biff bit over the paw-print mark. Not too hard, just exactly enough.

  Mate. Mine. Us. This. Always.

  Max’s whimpering stopped and without further warning, without a shift in pace, or another noise, his neck muscles corded under Biff’s teeth and he began to climax, endless spurts.

  The smell of spunk caused Biff to climax too, thrusting deep into that warm, spasming channel. Max’s ecstasy tore his own orgasm from him before he was ready, so fierce and unexpected he thought he might actually pass out. He was struck by the fantasy that they were forming a chain of cum, his own pushing into and through Max, then out Max’s dick, as if they shared even that. There was no point where he stopped and Max began – they were just one circuit of pleasure.

  * * *

  Max was drowning in an imaginary lake of champagne, pinpricks of aftershock lapping against him. Only Bryan’s weight, as he collapsed over him, kept Max afloat. Kept him breathing.

  Their lovemaking hadn’t been mind-blowing so much as mind-imploding, and Max sank so far into himself, he forgot. Forgot Alec’s criticism, forgot his fear and self-loathing. Forgot to defend against the rush of himself. That in a state of profound release came exposure. With Bryan’s caring mouth stealing away misery.

  What snuck in to occupy the void was a better version of himself. The good, confident, whole Maximillian filling the broken one up. For one moment, with this one man, he was the Max That Could Have Been. Squeezed into a new and better form, around a heart shaped like a wolf.

  Max flinched away from that. Couldn’t think about it or what it meant. Returned instead to the amazing sex. The act itself was so much safer than the emotions it engendered.

  So, the sex is wonderful. Now what?

  Bryan lay on him, heavy but not too heavy. Careful werewolf, he was holding much of his weight with his arms. Max wished he wouldn’t. I should like to die smothered in those muscles. Max gloried in the press of Bryan’s skin, a gift of warmth and reverie.

  How is this so perfect? Max knew he liked sex, but it was as if Bryan had read a list of his wants beforehand and done every single one of them in a row. Checking the boxes, one kiss at a time.

  Max talked during sex because, frankly, everyone should talk during sex. It was the stupidest thing in the world to think a lover didn’t need guidance. But what had just occurred was all magical silences. He supposed he’d taken care to show Bryan everything he could by way of example the night before. Boy is a very good student. Christ on a stick. But how had he known how much I love long, slow thrusting? How did this big, inexperienced sweetheart know that sucking up marks on Max’s neck would set him against the edge, and biting him would drive him over? As a rule, Max wasn’t one for pain. Yet Bryan had layered him with sensation, like a puff pastry, so that his teeth on Max’s flesh became that first flaky bite, scattering pleasure like crumbs all over Max’s body. Leaving them both shaking.

  Whoever wrote Max’s preferences had such terrible handwriting, no one before had ever read him correctly. Now this gruff, big-hearted man was the only one who could decipher the text. Who’d bothered to try.

  Max pulled himself out of it. Why overthink magic? He began kissing the wide expanse of shoulder available to him. Eventually, he rolled them over, so he was draped over Bryan, so his werewolf could stop worrying about crushing him. So Max could explore in the afterglow of total satiation.

  He chased the shifting textures of Bryan’s skin, licking beads of sweat, returning again and again to nuzzle his soft chest hair. When he finally made his way up to his lover’s face, it was to find that Bryan wore a half-smile of amusement.

  “What?”

  “Found something that shuts you up.”

  “A good ass-dicking does wonders.”

  “Miracles, even.”

  “Oh, stop it.” A pause. Max took a deep breath. “I’ve an idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you guys should rent my dad’s house. Well, my house, I guess it is.”

  Bryan tensed under him. “You liked my pack more than I thought.”

  “Haw haw. It seems silly to leave it empty.”

  “You forget? It’s enchanted so no one can go inside.”

  “Details, details. I’m sure I can break it. And with a pack of wolves living inside, maybe the mages will leave me alone. You’d be doing me a favor.”

  “You want to pit my pack against a bunch of Surges? Okay, you didn’t like them.”

  “Honestly? No. First, I intend to figure out what the mages want from the place, and then I’ll give it to them.”

  “Sure it’s not valuable or dangerous?”

  Max sighed. “If it exists, it’s probably both. But I don’t feel any kind of responsibility. If whatever it is actually facilitated world domination or major political upheaval, my dad would have already used it, so it can’t be that bad. Let the Surges have it. What good does it do me? I’d rather put the hous
e to use.”

  Bryan sighed. “I can’t deny it’s appealing. Big and perfectly situated for runs, yet close to the ocean for Marvin. But why, Max? Why rent it to us?”

  Because you’ll purge the place, scorch it clean of my memories. “We could work a deal – you guys fix it up, I’ll give you a break on the rent. I remember Kevin talking about construction.”

  “Yeah, we could. But you could sell it, or pay to fix it up and rent it for a lot more than we can afford.”

  “I don’t need the money, frankly.”

  Bryan arched a brow. “Oh, no?”

  “Didn’t you realize I was a poor little rich boy? I don’t really need to work, either.”

  “So, you trot off to your crappy government job every day why?”

  Max shrugged. Because it’s not so crappy. Because I like it. Because my coworkers are the closest thing I have to friends. Because it keeps me in touch with shifters and other sumages. Because it reminds me what I do have and what’s important about it.

  Bryan snorted softly. “You offering it to us as a reward for me fucking you?”

  “You gonna pay rent that way?”

  “Depends. If you fuck me, does that count as a reimbursement?”

  “We’ll have to define terms.” Max grinned.

  Bryan’s hazel eyes turned grave. “You’re seriously offering?”

  “I am. You seriously interested?”

  “I’ll have to talk to Alec, but yeah, I am. Plus I hear the next-door neighbor is a hottie.”

  “Aw. Muscles. Stop.” Max play-punched him. “The enchantment will have to be broken.”

  “Does it let you inside?”

  Max blinked, surprised. “You know, I never bothered to try. Never wanted to go back inside. Dad never made special dispensations for me when he was alive – don’t know why he’d do it when he was dead.”

  “You wanna give it a go?”

  “Not particularly.” Max didn’t need the memories and he did want to see the neglect.

  “It’s just a house,” said his werewolf lover.

  “You’re only saying that because you grew up in a trailer.”

  “Hey, it was a double-wide.”