by Kathy Lyons
“Don’t breathe,” Josh rasped. “Toxic.” He wasn’t sure it was actually toxic, but there was no reason to take stupid risks. Or rather take more stupid risks.
“Yeah, we guessed,” Nero answered. “That’s why we hauled your mangy ass outside. And why the hell were you blowing shit up as a wolf?”
Because his senses were more acute as an animal. And part of testing was seeing how things affected the people using them. And the people who would use his fire protection were werewolves. Or they would have been using it… if it had worked.
“Stratos?”
“She’s fine. You’re the one everyone’s worried about. You were closest to the boom. And what the hell are you doing making explosive compounds? You’re supposed to be finding a way to survive a fire bomb, not create—”
“That was my fireproof compound,” he growled. That shut up Nero long enough for Josh to roll onto his back and stare up at the grayish-blue plume of smoke that lifted into the blue Michigan sky. He saw a singed Stratos sitting a few feet away and Wiz looking murderously at him.
“You said it was safe,” the magician snapped.
Yeah, he’d thought it was. But guilt made him snap back with a flippant response. “We’re not dead.”
“Because you were lucky!”
Yes, he was aware of that. Then his gaze caught on Stratos’s as he studied her head to toe. She looked good in a charred, rumpled way. And when she realized he was looking, she gave him a gleeful thumbs-up. “I always wanted to be in an explosion,” she said. “Now I can scratch that off my bucket list.”
“Glad I could help,” he returned. His voice was light, but he and Stratos had developed a shorthand in the days that they’d been researching together. He ducked his head in an apology, and she snorted and shrugged in an “it’s all good” gesture.
Then she waved her hands at him. “What I won’t recover from is seeing all your private bits out and dangling. Cover up, will you? A girl’s got to eat, and no way can I erase that shriveled horror from my brain.”
Oh shit. Yeah, he was lying here naked. Nero was ahead of Josh, though, already covering him with a blanket. Then, after a narrow-eyed look, he shrugged out of his sweatshirt to give to Josh.
“Can you sit up?”
“Yeah,” Josh answered after one last weak cough. “I’m fine.”
A few minutes later he was sitting up, sipping bone broth, and wearing Nero’s sweatshirt, which no longer felt like putting on another blanket. Sometime in the past few weeks, he’d started filling out. And though Nero was always going to be broader and taller, Josh no longer felt like a ninety-pound weakling next to him.
He sipped his broth as others filtered by to check on him. Captain M and Happy gave him a stern and amused look, respectively, then went down to inspect the damage. Bing and Yordan walked past with barely a glance as they followed the captain. And Wiz shot him a final glare before taking Stratos inside to the stable wing of the mansion. That left him alone outside with Nero on what would have been a spectacular day, if he didn’t look at the plume of smoke still wafting out from the blown-out windows of the lab.
“Josh…,” Nero said, but Josh cut him off.
“Save it, okay? I know I fucked up. It happens. In fact, it happens a lot with me, so get used to it or send me packing. Obviously I’m not the guy to solve your problem. You picked the wrong geek to turn furry.” God, never had words burned so badly in his mouth. He wanted to be the guy who fixed things, who had the answers, who came up with the tech that saved the day. Hell, he’d been getting off on the fantasy for weeks. It was what had kept him working deep into the night, and it was the bright image that filled his mind when the numbers didn’t line up.
Except now he knew it was all a fantasy. He wasn’t a brilliant chemist. He wasn’t even a good one—just an unorthodox one who took stupid risks, pushed things beyond the safety limits, and had nearly vaporized himself and Stratos. God, he was such an idiot.
“You probably ought to send me home,” he said glumly, knowing it was true but really, really hoping it wasn’t about to happen.
“Yeah,” echoed Nero as he adjusted himself behind Josh. It was the way they often sat after Josh shifted back to human. And though he didn’t need a full-on orgasm to ground him back into his body, it was always nice to lean back into Nero’s arms and let the big guy surround him. “I can see why you’d think that, but there’s something you haven’t factored in.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“No one thinks you’re going to succeed. So when you blow up the lab, you’re doing what they expect.”
It took a moment to absorb that, but when he did, it felt like another punch to the gut. “Well, geez, thanks, Coach. Should I go slit my wrists now?”
Nero pinched his thigh hard in response.
“Ow!”
“Don’t go getting all huffy. Listen.”
Josh rubbed the side of his thigh. “I can’t hear you over the throbbing in my leg.”
“Bullshit. You love that.”
Well, maybe. Rough sex was one of the best parts about being a werewolf. Pain and pleasure mixed in a wild cascade of sensations, and if it ever got out of hand, they both healed fast. Plus, it never got too out of hand.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “It’s hard to hear over my throbbing lower parts.” Which was true. His erection was already heavy against his thigh, and he wasn’t wearing anything on his lower half except the heavy blanket. It would be so easy to start rubbing backward against—
“That’s not what you need right now.”
Undeterred, Josh pressed himself against Nero’s hot cock. “Are you sure?”
“Would you stop? I’m about to tell you something you don’t know.”
“Ha. I know everything.” It was a lie, obviously, but it felt good to settle into their usual banter where he was the smart one and Nero was the dumb jock. It wasn’t remotely true. Nero was incredibly smart about people in a way Josh could only imagine, but it was nice to pretend. “Go ahead, Obi-Wan. Teach the young Padawan.”
Nero didn’t respond to the jibe. Instead, he continued as if Josh hadn’t said a word. And that, too, was part of their pattern. “Did you know that the first werewolf in your line is still alive?”
“Bullshit,” Josh said with a snort. “The first werewolf in my line was born in the early 1800s. I checked.”
“Yes. And he and his mother are still alive.” Nero leaned back against a bench, adjusting his position so that he had back support while still managing to tuck Josh close. “His mom is… different. She’s the magical power in the line, and where she gets it from is well beyond my brain. But he—in his own words—was a screw-up from the very beginning.”
Josh mentally ran through the early reports he’d read for a mention of his ancestors. There was a whole lot of hero worship for a guy named—
“Ever read anything about Wulfric and his mother, Lovina?”
“Of course. They were the ones who brokered the alliance between the fae and the shifters in the late 1800s.”
Nero shook his head. “Yeah. They’re still alive. She was born in the late 1700s. He was born in 1815, I think.”
“No way.”
“They mostly keep to themselves nowadays, only coming out when the shit really hits the fan. That means you may meet them sooner rather than later, the way things are going. Anyway, according to Wulfric, he screwed up everything he touched for a hundred years or more.”
“That’s modesty.”
“No, it’s fact. You know why we never do fairy deals?”
“Because fairies have their own agenda?”
“Because Wulfric screwed one over, and the fae have long memories.”
“Ouch.”
“The point is that—according to your own living, breathing ancestor—screw-ups are the only people who ever get anything done because they think differently. They don’t see or don’t count the risks, and everyone underestimates them.”
“
Which is a really fucked-up way to pick a teammate.”
Nero chuckled, a tiny bounce in his chest that jostled Josh’s head. “Yeah, well, he didn’t pick you. I did. And I think the best way—the only way—you’ll ever figure out the answer is if we all get out of your way. You included.”
“You get that I just blew up the basement, right?”
Nero exhaled. “Yeah, I know. And it scares the shit out of me. But Josh, you’ve got to understand that we don’t expect you to succeed, and that’s why you will.”
And wasn’t that a clever turn of phrase? Too bad it did jack shit for his self-esteem. He didn’t want to be a screw-up. He wanted to save the day for Nero. Because Nero needed a way to survive a demon fire blast, and Josh wanted to be the one to give it to him. But he couldn’t. Not because he was a screw-up, but because he wasn’t good enough.
“Josh—”
“Do you know why I love being a PhD student?”
“Because you like playing with things that go boom?”
“There’s that, yes, but there’s something else too.” He took a deep breath and finally said the one thing he rarely admitted to himself, much less anyone else. “In a university lab, we fail 99.99 percent of the time. It’s expected. We’re trying new things and guess what’s going to happen next. Most of the time we guess wrong. And even when we get it right, it’s because we did something wacky, then looked backwards to figure out how it happened. Then we write the paper pretending that it was what we planned all along.”
“And you call us screwed-up.”
Josh snorted. “It’s why I’ve never finished my dissertation. The minute I write my paper, I’ll have to go out into the world where they expect me to succeed. Against ridiculous odds.” He twisted to give Nero a dark glare. “And then you step into my perfectly wasted life and turn me into a werewolf where—bam—you want me to guess right against even more ridiculous odds. And you know what else? To make sure I really fuck it up, you put people’s lives on the line. If I screw this up, good people die. Your pack died.” Josh twisted to look at the thinning stream of smoke. “I’m not cut out for this.”
Nero exhaled, his breath hot as it wended around Josh’s ear and ruffled his hair. Then he said one word. “Okay.”
That brought Josh around again so he could look Nero in the face. He even sat up to study the man’s body in detail. Nero’s expression was relaxed, his body hard, and his eyes taking on a slightly lascivious feel, probably because the motion had rubbed hard against his erection. But for the first time, Josh wasn’t in the least bit interested in sex.
“That’s it? ‘Okay’?”
“Do you want me to try to talk you out of how you feel?”
“You can’t. I suck.”
Nero shrugged. “How about I suck you off instead?”
“What? Nero, didn’t you hear me? Ever since that first night, you’ve been telling me that I was recruited to solve your demon blast problem. I’ve seen you hover outside the lab watching me. Hell, I’ve seen you praying—actual on-your-knees praying—that I find an answer yesterday. And now that I tell you I can’t do it, you’re all, ‘let me suck you off’? How much of that smoke did you inhale?”
Nero rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t praying. I was talking to…. There’s this pompous fae prick I talk to sometimes. He likes it when I’m on my knees, begging for more time.”
Josh waited a beat for Nero to explain, but nothing else came out. In the end, Josh had to push him both verbally and with a poke to his ribs. “You are going to explain that, right?”
“No, because there’s nothing to tell. I saved the asshole’s life in a bar fight once, and he owes me. Er, owed me. Past tense. Anyway, the fae honor their debts, but they do like it when you’re on your knees asking them to pay up.”
“There is way more to the story than that.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Nero rubbed his hand over his face. “Josh, what do you think is going to happen when you figure out how to defeat the fire bomb?”
Josh frowned. It was pretty clear that Nero was hiding something, but Josh knew he wouldn’t get more now. So he allowed the distraction and tried to look ahead to his future. So far his entire focus had been on figuring out magic and mixing it with chemistry. Even defeating the fire bomb was secondary to this beautiful new playground of alchemy, which he got to explore. Sure, he was working night and day to solve Nero’s problem, but he was also learning such amazing things.
Nero squeezed Josh’s arm and answered the question himself. “I take your solution and disappear. You….” He swallowed as his gaze cut back to the mansion. “All of you are going to have to decide on your future. Will you work with us or find a wolf pack somewhere else?” His jaw clenched as his eyes drooped and his hands fisted against Josh’s hips. “This is an in-between time before everything gets reset. None of it is permanent. I want you to solve this problem, but even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change….” He cut off his words, but Josh could all but read the rest off his lips.
“It doesn’t change what you feel about me. You didn’t expect to like me, did you? All of us were just another mission. A means to an end.”
Nero nodded.
“But now you feel for us.” He pressed the flat of his hand to Nero’s chest. “You feel.”
“I always felt, Josh.”
“Grief. But what about love?”
Josh waited, but he could see it in Nero’s face that he wasn’t going to say the L word. The man’s body was as hard as a stone as he locked his jaw shut. And Josh couldn’t really blame him, because Josh wasn’t exactly blurting out the word himself. Not in the real declaration kind of way. But that’s what was throbbing in the air between them. Love and pain swirled together. Love because they cared for each other, because Josh wanted to solve Nero’s problem and Nero wanted to make Josh feel better about utterly failing in his task. Pain because it was temporary. Pain because no matter what happened, they weren’t going to have a happily-ever-after together.
“What if I stayed here,” Josh said, “and didn’t—you know—blow up the lab again. Then maybe we could keep seeing each other.”
Nero blew out a breath, shaking his head with deliberate care. “I won’t be here. Even if you are, I’ll be… elsewhere.”
“This is the twenty-first century. We could still talk on the phone, maybe meet up in sleazy gay bars and have hot sex in the bathroom.”
“Never. And gross.”
“Never because you’re not a sleazy gay bar kind of guy?”
“Because you aren’t.”
“And gross because you can’t see yourself with me after all this? Because I’m a screw-up, and not in a good way.”
“It has nothing to do with that!” Nero snarled.
And for once Josh didn’t rise to match Nero’s hot tone. He didn’t taunt him or fight him. Instead, he kept his voice level as he asked the next logical question. “Then what is it? Why can’t we be together?”
“Because we can’t.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I can’t explain it to you.” And when Josh opened his mouth, Nero cut him off. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”
That shut Josh up. For a moment. And then he frowned. “My love life is classified?”
“My future is.”
Oh. “Like special ops classified?”
“Sort of.” Nero held up his hand. “Don’t make me lie to you, Josh. Just believe me that I can’t tell you the truth. I want to, but I can’t.”
Josh believed him. Nero looked too miserable to be lying. Which brought them back full circle. Josh was a screw-up who couldn’t solve the problem, and Nero wasn’t going to offer him a happily-ever-after. Hell, he wasn’t even going to admit to the L word because the whole thing was a temporary fling.
What Nero was offering was a suck-fest, but for the first time in weeks, Josh wasn’t interested. “I’m tired,” he finally said. “Maybe I should get some sleep while Captain M figures out if she’s going to
fire me or not.”
“She’s not—”
“Nero, allow me the graceful exit, okay?” Josh pushed up to his feet, wrapping the blanket around his waist so he looked like he was wearing a skirt. Hell, could life get any more embarrassing?
Nero matched his movements, straightening up to his full height with the gracefulness that seemed to come naturally to the guy. “Josh, you’re not hearing me.”
Josh held up his hand. “If I keep listening, I’m likely to blow myself up on purpose. So please, do us both a favor and—”
“I’m not good with words. Not like you are. And I’m sure as hell not that good at talking about personal stuff—”
“Which is weird because up until today, you’ve always known what to say to me.”
“Not true.”
Okay, not exactly true. “Eventually you know what to say to me.”
“So let me take another stab at this.” He took a deep breath. “I need you to figure out the fire bomb thing.”
“I tried!”
“But whether or not you succeed is….” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “It’s completely irrelevant to how I feel. About you. About us.” He took a step closer. “I want you to be happy. And if that means you have to blow up our basement, then okay. If that means you give up and go back to civilian life—”
“I don’t want to leave!”
“Good. Because I don’t want you to either.” He squeezed Josh’s arm. “Look, with everyone else, I’m always trying to read what they want, to be what they need so that I can lead them. It’s not like that with you. This pack is temporary. It’s until all of you figure out what you want to do. Which means I don’t have to fill in for anyone’s lacks. I don’t have to adjust for their needs. I can be myself.” His voice trailed away, and he looked at Josh, but damned if Josh understood what he was trying to say. “I’m myself with you, Josh. And you like me just as I am.”
“Of course I do.”
“There is no ‘of course.’ That’s a big thing for me. That you like me—just me—even when I hover over you or pray to that asshole fairy. Hell, we watch movies together, and I’m even reading your stupid sci-fi books.”
