by Selena Scott
Quill was starting to take this personally.
“We’re here,” he told her, stopping in front of a large, many-windowed building taking up almost an entire block.
She took a step forward, a frown on that plain/pretty face of hers as she peered through the windows, trying to figure out where the hell he’d taken her.
He saw the moment she figured it out. And honestly, it kind of made up for everything else. Her wide eyes expanded, a gasp caught in her throat. One hand came up into the air, as if to reach through the glass and grab at the display of books behind the shiny pane of glass.
“It’s, uh, a bookstore,” he explained unnecessarily. “Called Powell’s. Biggest in the country, I think. But yeah. It’s cool. Wanna go in?”
She was already walking toward the doors when he caught up with her.
Again, Quill zipped his lid and just concentrated on following Dawn through the store. She was so freaking quick. And good at blending in. And hiding in plain sight. And the store really was huge. It took all his concentration not to lose her.
She zipped through section after section. Seeming to stop at random, yank a book off a shelf and flip through it, her eyes lit up with excitement. She carefully put each book back and then she was zooming away.
It was the manga section where she finally sat down. The colorful illustrations seemed to completely arrest her, her fingers tracing over the words on each page. She sat on the floor with a pile of pulled books next to her and Quill decided to make himself useful by choosing some books and bringing them over to her so that she wouldn’t have to get up again and again.
When the pile of books around her was at least twenty high and she’d leafed through each and every one and her eyes were the size of half dollars and Quill’s stomach had started to rumble they’d been there so long, she clutched a book to her chest and finally gave him her attention again.
“Can you,” she started, then stopped, gathering her courage. “Would you teach me how to read?”
He stared at her. For a long minute. It wasn’t that he’d never heard her voice before. It was that the combination of her steady eyes on his face, and that unexpectedly husky tone was a little bit… unsettling.
Her voice was sexy.
Annoyingly so.
And the very first thing she’d said directly to him had been an ask. One that he wanted to give her. Something swelled in his chest at the thought of being the one to give her this.
The idea was almost as sexy as her voice was.
That was annoying too.
“Uh. I could help you with that,” he said quietly, though he had absolutely no idea how to teach someone how to read, having never done it before. “I’m sure there’s a book here that could show us where to start. Why don’t you pick one of these out, we’ll find a book on how to teach someone to read, and then we’ll go get some lunch.”
She clutched the book at her chest so hard her knuckles went white. “What do you mean I get to pick one?”
“I’m buying you a book.”
Those eyes of hers were seriously poisonous. Just holding her eye contact was making him weak and woozy.
“But hurry up and choose because I’m hungry.” He couldn’t keep the bite out of his tone.
She nodded immediately and, to his surprise, started to put the books back on the shelves exactly where he’d pulled them from. She couldn’t read, he knew, so she wasn’t alphabetizing them. No, she was doing this from memory. His respect for her grew another few inches. She was obviously a smart cookie.
He helped her put the books away, her clutching the one she’d chosen, and then they tromped off together to find a few books on reading pedagogy. He found two no problem and guided her to the check out counter. It was only there that he inspected the book she’d chosen.
He’d expected her to choose the largest or most colorful book, seeing as the pictures were the only part she could currently understand. But she hadn’t. She’d gone for a stylized manga, mostly black and white, about a young girl and a shadowy creature that seemed to protect her from the cruelties of the world. The young girl was drawn so innocently. The shadowy creature was drawn so spookily, obviously not a creature entirely good or entirely bad. Complicated.
Quill eyed the side of Dawn’s face as he swiped his credit card and wondered how much of the story she’d been able to glean from the book. He wondered what had drawn her to that particular story.
They were sitting down the street in the Whole Foods cafeteria area, hot bar lunches steaming in front of them, when she spoke again.
“Thank you for taking me there. And thank you for my book.”
His eyebrows raised as an unanticipated pride swelled within him, warming him wholly and completely. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you liked it.”
Just then, the group of homeless people from before sidled past the window and caught his eye. He decided to take a risk here. She’d shown that she wasn’t completely ignoring him after all. And he’d apparently done right with his choice of an outing. He decided to press her, just a tiny bit.
He opened his mouth, to ask her again about her interaction with those people from before but, shockingly, she beat him to the punch.
“You called them homeless, before.” She nodded her head toward the group of people on the other side of the glass.
Quill nodded, scrambling to pick up the thread of the conversation, wanting nothing more than to engage with her. “Yeah.”
She pushed fried rice around her takeout container. “I think that’s a human concept. Being homeless. I think of them more as… migratory. Nomadic.” She pursed her lips. “Scavengers, maybe. It’s not more or less than someone else’s place in life. It’s just different.”
“You’re describing them as part of the animal kingdom, not as a part of human culture.”
“Well,” she said in that husky voice, bobbing her head from side to side. “Three of them are part of the animal kingdom.”
“You mean that they’re shifters?” He looked over his shoulder at the group. It would make sense. A lot of shifters were homeless or destitute these days. The internment camps of yesteryear had been hellish, degrading, dangerous places, but when they’d been shut down, many of the turned-out shifters literally found themselves with no place to go. Shifters made up a huge amount of the homeless population. But still, how the hell would Dawn know whether or not they were shifters?
“Three of them are. One squirrel, one coyote, and … I think the other one was a raccoon? I’m not sure, the varmints are sometimes hard for me to tell apart.”
The breath momentarily left Quill’s chest. His hands tingled at the fingertips. The course of his life rapidly shifted direction. “Hold on. You’re telling me that you can tell who is a shifter, and you can tell what kind of shifter they are?”
“Oh. Yeah. You can’t?”
“No.”
Of course he couldn’t. He’d never in his life heard of another shifter being able to do that. The possibilities opened up before Quill. He’d thought that Dawn was just a stepping stone, a task to simply endure while he got to know the brothers.
His eyes fell to Powell’s bag on the table next to them. The books on reading. Her sharp brain. Her ability to hide and blend in and identify one shifter from another. The book about an innocent girl and a dark creature, undecided on whether or not to protect her from the world, or take her from it.
His eyes found Dawn’s again.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d underestimated her.
***
“So, this boyfriend thing. It’s like a mate?” Orion asked as he gripped hold of Phoenix’s hand and practically hauled him up the craggy trail.
Phoenix knew that were Watt or Ida to know that he was tromping around a backwoods trail on his crutches, they would call him crazy. But to Phoenix, staying cooped up inside was what would really drive him crazy. He needed the outdoors. It was his true home. As much as he loved Wren’s place, the scent of dying leaves, t
he stink of decomposition, the sound of fresh, rushing water, wind, chill, sun through the trees, encroaching twilight, these were the things that made a home a home to him. He knew that he would heal much faster if he could get time out in the great outdoors.
Orion agreed with him and practically hauled and dragged him through this entire hike a couple of times a week. His older brother was the only person whom Phoenix would accept this kind of help from. The only person for whom Phoenix could be certain pity was not a factor in the least. Orion simply wanted his brother to be well and to get well.
“No. I think husbands are more like mates,” Phoenix said with a grunt as he fell into step alongside his brother, willing his breath to even out. He ignored the pain in his left side and just kept trudging along.
“So, then what is a boyfriend?”
Phoenix shrugged. “I think it just means that we have sex with each other and not other people.”
“Oh.” Orion nodded, like that made sense to him. “I can see why you’d want that with Ida. She’s sweet. And cute.”
Phoenix nodded. She was both of those things. She was also confusing. The other night, after all the kissing, they’d gone down to the kitchen, had long drinks of water, and then she’d left.
He’d sort of been expecting for them to have sex after all that. His body certainly wanted them to. His erection hadn’t gone down until the next morning.
Maybe there would be no sex with him until he was her boyfriend? Maybe she was waiting until he got that job and then could officially ask her? Jeez, he hoped Diana would hurry along and find him some employment. Phoenix was no expert on the human body, but he didn’t think his body could withstand this sort of restraint for too much longer. He might get a permanent injury. Dick strain. Or something.
He made a note to ask Watt about that.
Maybe this whole thing was going to be just as complicated as the whole kissing thing. The touching thing. All the ways that humans showed each other what they wanted. The slow climb toward sex.
“Orion, do you know about kissing?”
“Sure,” his brother answered, brushing aside a low hanging branch as he hiked. “I like it.”
“Me too. How did you find out about it? I didn’t really know until Ida showed me.”
“A woman kissed me a few years ago. She showed me a lot of things I hadn’t known about.”
A light went on in Phoenix. His brother knew some answers! This was great news! He was tired of having to ask Ida for everything. He’d prefer to surprise her with things he’d learned on his own.
“What sort of things?”
“Humans like to touch a lot when they have sex.”
“Right. I learned that the other night.”
Orion turned and looked at Phoenix through squinted eyes. “Do you know what porn is?”
Phoenix shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
A boisterous grin lit up Orion’s face. “Oh, brother. I’m about to make your year.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s something I learned about a few years back as well. A woman I was with showed it to me. But since then, I’ve had no way to access it. Then Diana gave me this.”
Orion reached into his pocket, pulled out something shiny and black that made the sunlight spear into Phoenix’s eyes. Phoenix stopped in his tracks and stared. “Hold on. You have a phone?”
“Yeah. After the last mentor quit on me, Diana decided that she didn’t want me out in the world completely ‘unarmed’ as she put it. So, she gave me this phone and showed me how to make it do stuff.”
“Don’t you have to be able to read to use a phone?”
“No. Not really. Look.” Orion pushed a button with his big thumb and then held the phone up to his mouth. “Phone. Call Diana.”
A moment later there was Diana’s irritated voice on the other end of the line. “If I’d known you were going to call me six times a day I’d never have given you that damn phone.”
Phoenix’s eyebrows raised. He’d never heard Diana sound so unprofessional. She must really hate Orion.
Orion smiled at the phone. “But without the phone I’d be alone and defenseless in this big, scary world.”
She scoffed. “We both know you’re about the furthest thing from defenseless.”
Orion’s voice dropped an octave. “Are you saying I’m dangerous?”
Phoenix looked back and forth between the phone and his brother’s face. Maybe… Maybe he’d misinterpreted Diana’s tone. Because it didn’t seem as hostile a conversation as it had at first. It seemed an awful lot like Diana and Orion were flirting with one another.
Huh.
“Did you call for a reason?” Diana said in a brisk tone that didn’t quite cover her breathlessness.
“Nope. Just wanted to hear your voice.”
She sighed, long and loud. “Goodbye, Orion. Don’t be late for your mentor meeting this Saturday.” And then the line went dead.
“See?” Orion said, as if absolutely nothing unusual had just happened. “All you have to do is press that button and then tell the phone what you want it to do and it can do it for you. No reading necessary.”
“Wait, what does that have to do with this porn thing you were telling me about?”
They broke through to the vista at the top of the trail and the brothers plunked down side by side on a large, mossy rock. Orion pulled his pack off and handed out a sandwich apiece. “I’ll show you when we get home.”
He still had that goofy smile on his face that Phoenix wasn’t sure he exactly trusted. His brother, after all, was known to love a good joke.
Phoenix took a deep breath and tipped his head back. He let the mossy scent on the air soothe him. He let the sunlight nourish him. He let the food in his mouth linger on his tongue. He wiggled his toes in the soft athletic socks that Ida had bought for him, his shoulder pressed firmly against Orion’s. This was what enjoying the outdoors in human form felt like.
“You know I wouldn’t mind if you shifted, right?” Phoenix asked quietly. “I know it must be painful for you. Just like it’s painful for me.”
“I know you wouldn’t mind. But… I’m not going to shift until you can. Except for the full moon, of course.”
Which was rapidly approaching. It would be the sixth full moon in this new world. Phoenix surreptitiously stretched his leg and side, wondering if it was possible that he was fully healed enough to make the shift this month. God, he hoped so. He missed his wolf. And being stuck in human form on a full moon was excruciatingly painful. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. “That makes no sense, Orion. You should be shifting.”
“I want to know how it feels for you, Phoenix. If I can understand a little bit better, what it’s like to be fully human, without the shift, then maybe I can understand how to help you get better. You’re fighting two battles, brother. One to heal your injuries and one against the need to shift. Let me fight one of them with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ida pulled her door open in surprise. “Hi!”
“You came to mine the other night so I get to come to yours tonight and it’s not mooching.”
Phoenix crutched himself into her house without waiting for her to invite him inside. Ida was surprised by his logic, but she couldn’t fault it. Also, she was really freaking happy to see him. Go figure. “How’d you get here?”
“Bus. Wren told me which lines to take.”
He grimaced a little as he kicked off his shoes.
“You’re in pain today,” she said, immediately worried.
“Went on a walk with Orion.”
“Oh.” Ida pictured Phoenix’s strapping older brother. He practically had legs long enough to cross a street in two strides. She figured a walk with Orion would be enough to make anyone a little sore. Let alone a someone who was supposed to be resting and relaxing and healing from a traumatic injury. “Come over to the couch.”
Ida hurried over in front of him, pushing pillow
s to one side of the couch to make room for him.
He plunked down and propped up his leg, tossing his crutches to the side, his dark eyes turning toward hers. “Can I—“
“Yes,” she cut him off, sitting carefully next to him and letting herself sink down, get lost in those dark eyes, let her lips open against his.
It was wonderfully familiar and wonderfully new all at once. Every time they kissed, he did something new, unexpected. He didn’t kiss like other men kissed. This kiss was deep and slow, nothing mechanical about it. He usually touched her with the heated curiosity of a novice. But tonight he was kissing her as if he were drawing something from her, filling up on something only she could give him.
Honestly, it was hypnotizing her. She felt lazy and kiss-drunk, every muscle in her body going lax even as some dim awareness was reminding her that the hottest man to ever walk the earth was stretched out on her couch at right that very moment.
His tongue was lazily, deeply petting at hers, his hands resting lightly on her back, his head moving back and forth into her in a wave-like rhythm. She was drifting, in a cloud, high on him—
“Is your phone the kind that you can watch porn on?”
Every lazy, drifting feeling immediately evaporated as Ida burst out laughing. She sat up and fixed her hair, trying to read Phoenix’s expression and failing. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Orion said he’d show me what porn was today. He said it would help with my questions about sex. He watches it on the phone that Diana gave him. I wanted to learn about it and then come surprise you with all the new stuff I knew. But by the time we got home from our hike and I ate dinner, I was too anxious to come see you to stay at home and learn about porn. But I’m here now, so if you have the kind of phone that Orion has, then maybe you could teach me about it.”
Her brain stalled out. Part of her was still surprised any time that he made a long speech like that. She was still partially wired to think of him as the cold-eyed hottie who was content to let her sweat and jabber on to fill the silence. But she had to let that image go because that was not the Phoenix she knew anymore. The Phoenix she knew was curious and not the most talkative, but he held his own.
