No.
The whisper of a name came back once more, like a half-remembered dream that wouldn’t leave him alone—a soft sigh of a sound—but sharp, a bite, a laugh, a musical note.
Man and red-wine leaves tangled together.
Allum. Ari.
Ari.
And he was back inside his human shell, his self. Felt the chill of dawn stirring against his bare skin, the brick scraping skin soft from disuse, goosebumps prickling up his body. And he hugged that name to him like the warmth of a dying fire.
Ari.
A man who hypnotized him from the very beginning, who sold what he needed to stay human. It was time to pay him a visit.
Chapter Two
A shop bell rang overhead, sharp and jangling his confused senses. Sorrel flinched away, skidding into the little shop.
Its warmth enveloped him, along with the smells—familiar, soothing. Sorrel inhaled deeply. The little shop could easily be mistaken for a florist from outside. Inside, tin after tin overflowed with plants, their dried flowers and stems reaching out to grab anyone who walked by. The ceiling bristled with more still, as well as beautifully woven charms, all made from plants.
Sorrel let out all of the breath he’d been holding, relief trembling through him.
“You’ll scare away business like that.”
A deep voice, smooth as butter, one Sorrel would know anywhere. He peered around a tin, plucking at its contents.
Ari leaned against an open doorway in the back of the shop, lips a thin, bemused line. He looked just as devastatingly handsome as the first day a shady colleague introduced them. Ari’s long hair coiled around his bare neck like oil on his deep copper skin. His features were almost as sharp as the look he gave Sorrel.
As the two stared at each other, neither bothering with greetings, Ari’s dark eyes shamelessly roamed down the entire naked length of Sorrel with only mild surprise.
It finally occurred to Sorrel that maybe he should’ve found clothes, but animal instincts still tangled with human, confusing things and leaving him with double impressions. Both were in agreement though—what an attractive person.
“Ari,” Sorrel said with a strange, scratchy voice, and immediately cleared his throat.
“Sorrel,” he drawled back, then pushed off the doorframe. “Figures you show up now.” His dark eyes glanced down Sorrel’s body once more. “And naked,” he added, the hint of a laugh twisting his irritation. He waved a dismissive hand at Sorrel—tattooed rings circled every finger, tattoos Sorrel wanted to investigate intimately. “I don’t have any allum for you.”
Allum was a highly coveted, highly illegal herb, a deep-red plant with powerful leaves and more powerful seed pods. A tiny dose would help someone like Sorrel bind the threads of himself and bring him fully back into his body. Too often, the person retreated too far into their mind to be reached—a fact that had been exploited for centuries to create compliant slaves who did everything without question, without motive, without need.
It still moved around behind the scenes—weres or those sympathetic to them, sketchy hypnotists and junkies looking for heavier stuff all wanted it, but it proved tricky to grow. Ari was the only one Sorrel knew who bothered to try.
Sorrel frowned and stepped a little closer. “None at all?”
“None. Come back another time.” Ari glanced at his naked crotch again. “With pants.”
Light reflected off something outside, glinting into the shop.
Ari looked up sharply, all good humor vanishing. Before Sorrel could turn to look or even leave, Ari grabbed his shoulder and hauled him behind him. “Hide,” he hissed, pointing at the open door behind them.
Sorrel stumbled, blinking in confusion.
“Go, go!” Ari stabbed at the air, glaring at him as if he were a disobedient dog. “And don’t come out.”
Resisting the urge to sulk or deliberately ignore him, Sorrel hurried through the little doorway in the back.
The shop bell jingled, and he heard a low voice rumble. Then, Ari’s voice mocking, “Darryl.”
Keeping care to move slowly and quietly, cursing the lack of fur, paws, muscles built for stealth, and ears made for eavesdropping, Sorrel pressed against the wall, ear turned to the shop opening.
“You here for something?”
“What? Come on, Ari, just— I need more, all right?” The man’s voice had the mumble of a sleep-talker.
“I have charms, if you’re stressed. Or some mother-in-law tongue—tastes nasty, but—”
“Stop shitting with me!”
Sorrel eased forward, inching his eye around the corner.
Ari’s back was to him, shoulders back and hands relaxed against the counter with deceptive ease, the exact opposite of ‘Darryl’.
Darryl’s bald head gleamed with sweat, and his clothes had seen better days. It was hard to imagine the sleepy-eyed man as anything more than harmless—except for his tattoos. In a world where tattoos meant more than just decoration, his screamed danger.
He scratched one now, a rune on his neck, as if he meant to dig it out of his skin. “Come on, Ari—”
“Darryl—”
“You’re the only one who sells it around here, you know, man?”
Ari folded his arms, chin snapping up. “Nothing illegal’s sold here, so unless you’re buying something…” He made a shooing motion with those tattooed fingers.
Darryl opened his mouth, but his eyes snagged past Ari, latching right onto Sorrel, who felt phantom hackles bristle. Ari glanced back at Sorrel like a punch, tensing.
“Wait wait,” Darryl said, his sleep-voice dropping to a whisper. “Nothing’s sold here, do you mean…?” He pumped his fist in the air crudely.
Ari nearly punched him, fist a sure trajectory for Darryl’s jaw, but he shoved him back at the last moment. “Get out.”
Darryl moved as if drunk, feet and legs fighting against themselves. “What?” He stumbled backward under another shove. “I can suck you off real g—”
“Get the fuck out of my shop.” Ari grabbed Darryl’s collar and hauled him to the door, ignoring Darryl’s mumbled slurs and seeking hands.
Right before they reached the door, Darryl grasped toward Sorrel. “Help me out, m—”
Sorrel snarled, a not-quite-human sound, and Ari shoved Darryl out into the morning, slamming the door behind him.
Before Sorrel could say or do anything, Ari whirled, scowling across the room. “This is why I’m not helping you junkies anymore.”
Naked, with his thoughts still full of violence and instinct and allum, Sorrel said, “I’m not a junkie.”
Ari said nothing at first, every line of his body speaking his doubt. “If you say so, Mr. Regular.” He sighed, the fight leaking out of him. “Anyway, you should go too.”
Go where? Sorrel wondered, and a part of him answered something without a word, just memories of mountains and solitude and peace, so full of longing that it almost drowned out the simple word home. But when he thought home, the word sounded like Ari.
Sorrel snapped back into the room, back to where he stood naked in the doorway under Ari’s seeking eyes that no longer flicked meaningfully downward. Sorrel’s breath caught, his heart again murmuring the word that wasn’t just a word.
The man cautiously slunk over to Sorrel with an achingly human look in his eyes that Sorrel couldn’t read.
“How long were you gone this time?” Ari murmured, brushing his fingers across Sorrel’s forehead. ‘Gone,’ he said, not ‘shifted’ or ‘running crazy in the mountains.’
“Too long,” he said, breath catching again and again.
Ari’s fingers filtered into his hair, brushing out his shaggy bangs. “Yes, I see that.” Whatever he did see made an unhappy crease in his brow. “You can’t keep doing this.”
Human emotions were too much of a puzzle for Sorrel on a normal day, and now he struggled to even keep up with the constant fluctuation of shifting moods, nearly gasping against whatever pain
twisted his chest.
“Well.” Ari snapped his hand away and stepped back as if studying him for a solution. “I just want to make it clear first, I don’t take in strays. Animals are too much work, and people can’t be trusted.” He lifted a sharp eyebrow. “But you’re not exactly either right now.”
Sorrel slowly licked his chapped lips, sampling the dead skin, the leftover crust of his past days, and couldn’t deny it.
“And do you have a place to stay?”
Sorrel shook his head.
Sighing, Ari sent him one last look, his brief warmth already fading.
“Let’s get you clothes.” Ari nudged Sorrel out of the way to slip into the room. “Unless you want to be naked,” he added over his shoulder.
Sorrel drifted after him, watching him as he dug through a chest of drawers. He watched the way Ari’s coppery skin gleamed in the low light, the peek of spine over his shirt and how it rippled with his movements.
Ari slammed the drawers shut and paused for only a moment when he caught Sorrel watching. When Sorrel didn’t look away, Ari’s mouth twisted in a little smirk before he shoved the clothes to Sorrel’s chest and leaned in close enough that his breath whispered against Sorrel’s neck. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Thanks,” Sorrel said, finally wrenching his gaze away from Ari. “So,” he mumbled as he climbed commando into the well-worn jeans, “Darryl?”
Ari leaned against the wall, an eye on the store. “What about him?”
“Who is he?”
“He’s no Sid.”
Sid… Memories came up, of a rowdy man who took a shine to Sorrel for reasons he couldn’t fathom when they were at the clinic together, the man who had introduced Ari and Sorrel so many months ago. “Sid,” he repeated, sampling the name in his mouth. It tasted foul. “What happened to him?”
Ari’s eyes glinted dangerously from the shadows. “He’s your friend. Don’t you know?”
Sorrel straightened, shirt poised to go over his head, and didn’t miss the flick of Ari’s gaze down his chest before he buried it in his shirt. “I don’t have friends.”
With a laugh, Ari shook his head. “No, you don’t, do you?”
Things needed to be said, words bumping against memories against animal. They crowded up inside Sorrel. I am not Sid. I am not cruel. I— The rest had no words. And as his own mouth struggled, Sorrel shuffled across the short distance to Ari until he was within touching range, where his body could say what his mouth could not.
Sorrel wasn’t much taller than Ari, but Ari tipped his sharp chin back at Sorrel, managing to look down his nose at Sorrel. He didn’t flinch away, eyebrows up in silent question, a challenge.
Fingers catching Ari’s wrist, Sorrel bumped his forehead against Ari’s, inhaling, exhaling. I am not Sid. I am not Darryl. I am Sorrel. I missed you.
Heat wicked off Ari’s body this close. He felt the sharp swell of his chest, his shallow breaths quickening. He pulled out of Sorrel’s hold and gently pushed him back. “Hm.”
Once again, the guarded look snapped up in Ari’s eyes, the sideways glance that asked him questions he couldn’t understand. Ari’s breath caught as if he was about to say something, but instead, the distant smile slid back on.
“I’m working now.” Ari backed toward the doorway, backward into the dim shop interior, into the shadows that danced with the dozens of swinging, dangling charms spinning in their unfelt breeze. “Just … stay out of trouble.”
Sorrel wondered what sort of trouble he could possibly get into, but knew if he asked, Ari would have ten answers ready, so he nodded.
Alone, Sorrel simply inspected the circular room and its trappings.
Ari’s entire life lay in the little room he entered. Shop and home were the same, and he stood in a modest apartment, a kitchen on one side, his narrow bed shoved in an alcove on the other. Plants tumbled off the kitchen counter with tools and things he didn’t recognize heaped around them. Tidily stacked books piled up in one corner. Otherwise, the place was sparse—except for the rich scent of Ari that decorated it better than anything could have.
He drifted to the bed and, with a furtive glance at the empty doorway, sniffed its sheets, took in the scent of Ari. Even as it stirred him up, he hurried away from it, ears and cheeks burning as he cursed his own stupidity.
Without anything to do but prowl, Sorrel prowled. He paced the circular room, stared out the window, dozed. He inspected the little potted plants by the window, some further along than others. A notepad sat next to the only pot without sprouts, frustrated scribblings documenting the many failures in trying to get a new allum plant to grow.
When the walls of the circular room grew smaller and shorter and the ceiling lower and the air stifling, Sorrel tore himself away into the small forest of the main shop before he could discover that he could actually get into trouble.
Ari, sitting in a ray of sunshine, hunched over the front counter. A frown sat on his lips as he concentrated on his task, plaiting three leafy stalks together. The stalks didn’t want to stay where his hands told them to, but he pinned them with a practiced hand.
A moment later, Ari’s gaze darted up and his frown deepened. “Hold on.”
Sorrel nodded, the urge to flee already dying down as he watched those fingers.
Ari’s elegant hands weren’t delicate, calloused and knobbed from years of labor, but beautiful ringed tattoos curled around every first knuckle. As he worked, Ari’s concentration wobbled, and every time it did, his eyes went straight for Sorrel.
“What?” Ari finally asked, adjusting his hold on the half-made charm.
“Just watching.”
He leaned back on the stool, hooking one long leg over the other. “See anything interesting?”
When Sorrel nodded solemnly, a smile flitted across Ari’s face, but he stifled before it fully formed.
“Well, instead of standing there like a stump, tell me about your time in the wilds.”
Sorrel watched as he leaned over to pluck a length of twine, pinching it and plant together, binding them. His hands moved ruthlessly, almost aggressive, the opposite of the delicate pattern forming.
“Riveting stuff,” Ari murmured.
Sorrel blinked, realizing how long he’d stared again, and shook himself off like shaking off water. “Um.” And as he stood there, he felt like he forgot half the English vocabulary. Words were a tool, he had to remind himself, just like claws. They had use now. “What do you want to know?”
“Just trying to see why you want to go feral.”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t you?”
With a sharp sigh, Sorrel looked down at his hand, flexing it and turning it over, listening to the ever-present echoes of longing and a different body. “I do, but, I don’t think so … I…”
Ari picked up the trailing threads of his words. “So tell me about being shifted.”
“It…” Did everything feel more real? His senses opened up as a mountain lion, able to understand the constant motion of the world around him, the little things, to know his place in it, his security. “Everything is,” he said and cleared his throat, “simple. Hunger, hunt. Food, eat. Fear, run. Anger, fight.” He rubbed his face against that echoing longing.
The braided plants and twine under Ari’s fingers slowly turned into the shape of a charm, the twine guiding the whole thing into a complex-looking triangle. He snorted softly. “Bored, leave.”
“Yeah.” He frowned, catching the ghost of something in Ari’s words. “Something like that. There’s no… Everything means what it is—I mean, does, it’s not…” With another sigh, Sorrel shoved his hand through his hair, chewing on his words.
With an amused twitch of his lips, Ari glanced over Sorrel’s hair before he snipped the twine. Setting the finished charm aside, he propped his chin up and smiled. “So you don’t like dealing with people. You ever shift away when things get messy?”
His voice may have been smooth oil, but his smile co
uld cut.
“Yes.”
Ari slid off the stool, looping the charm over his fingers while looking for a place to hang it. “You can’t run from everything.”
For a fleeting moment, as he watched the tilt of Ari’s long neck, Sorrel did feel the overwhelming urge to run, except not from something, but to. “Yes.”
When the fresh charm dangled with the rest, he looked Sorrel’s way again, and all teasing slid away as their eyes locked in a breathless moment.
“Ari—”
“Sorrel.” Those eyes flashed, dagger-like again, warning him. Daring him.
He took a half step forward, keenly aware of everything. The still warm air, the stir of dust motes in the light that slanted behind them and the way it haloed Ari’s dark hair, revealing the hint of red within it.
Ari’s eyes dropped to his lips, and Sorrel licked them, a movement that seemed to hypnotize Ari.
Another step forward. Ari drew himself up taller, meeting his eyes. This close, he could see the soft flecks of green that circled his irises, bits of spring.
His next step slid his foot between Ari’s, their chests rustling against each other, their hips a single squirm away from touching. The challenge never left Ari’s eyes. Something new glimmered in there, trembling.
Sorrel bent the last few airless inches to him.
Their noses bumped, lips tense under him—and then yielded, parted slowly, and took all of Sorrel’s kiss and tongue in. He tasted heat and fire, all of his existence centered solely around that seductive mouth and the hands that now slid up his back and clutched his shirt.
They clung to each other, hands seeking out strange patterned paths, slices of skin from under shirts, lips sliding sensually over lips—
And Ari broke off the kiss, yanking his head away. He panted, open mouth already swollen from kisses, and it made Sorrel want to kiss him more. For a long time, he stood and stared at nothing, fingers digging holes into Sorrel’s shoulder. He could feel the heat of their hips pressed together, the mutual hardness.
When Ari finally looked at him, his eyes were searching, asking questions, but something darker glittered there. “I have to work,” he muttered and strode off to the greenhouse door attached to the shop. With a clack and a whiff of green moisture, he was gone.
Denying the Alpha: Manlove Edition Page 16
