37. It’s Knot You, It’s Me
It’s Knot You, It’s Me
Present Day
Cian
Ishot out of bed like my ass had been lit on fire.
“Shit! I’m late.” I didn’t know exactly how late, but I knew I’d overslept. I grabbed my watch from the shelf in the bathroom. “Shit, shit, shit.” Two twenty.
“What are you doing?” Mash said, his voice groggy with sleep. He yawned, stretched out his spine, and his hand dropped to his morning wood. We were both naked.
“We’re late for the luncheon,” I called back, doing my best to ignore Mash’s little whimper as his grip moved up along his shaft. I pulled on clean underpants.
“Luncheon? You sound like your folks.” Mash’s eyes went wide, he let go of his dick, pushed himself to a seated position. “Ah, fuck, I didn’t mean that. You’re nothing like—”
I cut him off. “Thanks, but I don’t have time for this. I was supposed to be at Clem’s by midday.”
“It’s just the pre-shift scran-up. It’s not formal. People arrive whenever they wake up,” Mash said, settling back down now that he’d consoled himself he hadn’t offended me.
“But I told Clem I’d help her.” I pulled on a clean pair of jeans, a T-shirt and shirt combo, and my brown boots because the other ones were probably a biological hazard at this point. Definitely not fit to be worn in a place of food preparation.
“You’re allowed time off. She’s not even paying you,” he whined, wrapping his fingers around his cock once again and closing his eyes. “Oh, fuck.”
No, dammit, he was so distracting. “Mash, can you stop wanking for five seconds so that we can—”
There was a knock at the bedroom door.
Mash’s response was to remain exactly as he was—cock out and in hand, his other arm wrapped backwards over the pillow.
I cracked the door open a fraction and peered out.
Riley stood there, face beetroot red. “Oh, thank fuck, you’re dressed. I thought I was intruding on—” She cleared her throat. “Clem’s looking for you, by the way. She asked me to find out if you’d overslept.”
“I did. I’m so sorry. Can you tell her I’ll be there in fifteen minutes?”
“No problem,” Riley said.
I closed the door behind her.
Mash threw his pillow at me. “Hey, do you wanna watch me come?”
Yes. “No time.”
He rolled his eyes. “It won’t take long. I’m really good at this.”
I ignored him and finger combed some Wolfwax into my hair.
“Don’t you at least want to know what I’m gonna think about?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Fine. Go ahead.”
“You fucking me, and we’re both wolves.” He dragged his hand upwards and cried out. Damn it, now I was gonna have to chef next to his sister with a semi.
“Request?” he added, sobering suddenly.
“Yes?”
“Would you do that? Would you fuck me as a wolf? Tonight?”
“Um . . .”
Sex while shifted wasn’t something a werewolf could fully consent to. It was different when two shifted weres fucked because they were both equally out of it—see also, two drunk people having sex—but I would be aware. I would feel as though I was taking advantage of him.
“You want that?” I asked.
“So fucking much.” His hand didn’t stop moving.
“You realise you can’t fully consent to that? Like . . . it’s a little rapey.”
“It’s not rapey if I consent right now, is it? Am I gonna have to beg?” he said.
“No, of course not. Don’t beg.”
“Oh,” he whined, his movements stalling.
“You want to beg?”
In answer to my question, Mash slid off the bed and landed on his knees at my feet. “Please, Bangers. Please knot me in wolf form. I will be such a good boy for you. I’ll make you feel so good, plus I’m so fluffy and huge you can use me as a big pillow to recover on.”
Triple damn it. “Yes, okay. Fuck, that sounds hot.”
“Yes!” he punched the air, and I accidentally breathed in the scent of him—of me on him. I should have told Riley to give us forty-five minutes.
“You’re going to make me so late for my cheffing gig.” I sucked in a breath. “Get on the bed. How’s your asshole?”
Mash hopped up. “Great. Gods bless my rapidly healing werewolf sphincter.”
It turned out Clem didn’t mind at all that I’d missed work. In fact, she only wanted to check we were okay after not seeing either of us for the rest of the party.
“It’s not like Mash to miss a piss-up. I thought maybe you guys had a fight. You know . . . because of Sam, but now I know better,” Clem said, not so subtly sniffing me. “So, you finally did the marking properly, huh? You smell good and all, but I’m gonna have to stand over there. You smell too much like my baby bro, and it’s giving me the ick.”
At the luncheon slash scran-up, we stuffed our faces with roasted wild turkey and potatoes, and afterwards we went back to the house to chill out. We watched a Lucy Stirling movie in the sitting room with the rest of the pack. Mash and I crowded onto the love seat together, his arm draped over my shoulder the whole time. His fingers tickled the bottom of my wolf ear, either to remind me to keep them wolfy and furry because everyone was around, or because he liked the soft feel of them.
I spent the entire movie—some road-trip comedy about a family trying to get to Gryphon World—breathing in the scent of him, and then praying I wouldn’t chub up at the smell.
I failed. Had to sit for an hour and forty minutes crossed legged. I kept thinking about tonight, about fucking Mash in wolf form. I saw none of the film.
Not that anyone was concentrating on the action. Kimmy and Dylan were having a quiet but enthusiastic debate on which Lucy Stirling movies were the best, and whether it was really her boobs in The Last Bark, or if they used a body double.
Felix and Juno were not-so-quietly arguing over who would shift first, and if tonight would be Felix’s first shift.
Juno said, “No.”
Felix said, “Go suck a bag of dicks.”
Clem said, “We do not say ‘suck a bag of dicks’ to your twelve-year-old sister.”
To which Felix reluctantly apologised, and Juno flipped him off behind Clem’s back.
Riley tapped away at a laptop.
Sean made several popcorn runs to the microwave, only devoting his full attention to the screen for that one scene when Lucy strips off behind a bush to wash in a river which then turns out to be infested with crocodiles and also somehow winds up being on national news.
And Rita dozed in an armchair.
Only Mash watched it. It wasn’t a rom com, but he’d seen this one countless times. Ordinarily, he’d make lewd comments about Lucy “getting it” but he kept quiet, laughing at the funny moments, or else watching me before they happened so he could share my joy.
After the movie finished, we chatted and ate sandwiches. Sunset was over an hour earlier than last month, so at about seven o’clock we headed to the marquee.
“You sorted out your little tip problem?” Sean asked as we bid Rita good evening and began the five-minute walk to the tent. It was a dry but overcast day, meaning that there would be no visual cues like the moon. The other wolves would simply start shifting, and I would just have to follow their lead.
“Tip problem?” Felix said, muscling between Sean and me.
“Uh, yeah, um . . .” I began.
Clem saved me. “At the restaurant. There was an issue with the tips not being properly divided amongst the kitchen and wait staff.” She turned to me. “Have you fixed it?”
“Sure have,” I said. “At least I think I have.”
Felix, obviously bored with all the grownup shop talk, sped up his pace so he could flick his sister on the back of the head. “Mum told me you’re actually a simulacrum. Do you know what that is?” I heard him say to her.
“So, how did you do it?” Sean asked once his kids were out of earshot.
“Partial shift. Like with the ears . . . just in the dick skin . . . area.” I said.
“Genius,” he said.
“Makes it bigger too,” Mash added with a wink.
“Do not forget, once we’re shifted . . .” Mash leaned in close, still holding eye contact. We were mid-stripping off all our clothes and placing them into the little Mash Cassidy labelled cubby. Me, neatly. Mash, stuffing them in haphazardly in any manner he fancied, including chucking his scuffed to fuck trainers on top—on top!—of his hoodie.
“Yes?” I said, encouraging him to finish his sentence.
“I will need to you fuck me, and fuck me hard with your huge wolf cock.” He looked over my shoulder. “Oh, hi Nana.”
“What the hell?!” I spun around, my heart racing, my hand over my meat because there was no way I could survive under the beady gaze of Mash’s alpha and keep my foreskin magically vanished.
Mash began laughing. Rita wasn’t there, she didn’t even shift any more. Fuck’s sake. We were still alone in our part of the marquee.
“Shit yourself,” he said. “But for real. You promise you’ll do that?”
“Well, I can’t promise.” I took my glasses and my watch off, and stashed them in the cubby so I didn’t forget like last time. “Because circumstances might be different in a couple of hours, but . . . I’ll try. Besides, there’s no lube in the forest, and even if there was, we won’t have opposable thumbs to apply it. Or stretch you.”
“What if I suck you first, get you nice and wet?”
I closed my eyes and tried to push the thought far from my mind. The last thing I needed was to get a stiffy in front of one hundred now somewhat familiar to me wolves.
“If you don’t fuck me, prepare for me to beg. I can’t guarantee that I’m not a total dickhead when shifted. I bet I beg.”
“I mean . . .”
“I actually love begging,” he continued. “It’s hot as fuck. Oh shit, I’m getting a sem—”
As though moving without instruction from my brain, my finger bridged Mash’s lips closed. “Why do I put up with you?”
“Because you love me,” Mash said, muffled. He licked my finger, then pulled away to stuff his shorts, with his underpants still moulded to the crotch, in the cubby.
Well, that was true.
“Ooh,” Mash said after a few moments of me staying silent. “I can feel the shift. It’s happening.”
With that, the noise levels in the room picked up through the gears until the collective howling was so loud I thought my skull might pop. The only way to deal with the volume would be to wolf up myself and join in.
Around me bodies sprouted fur, skeletons cracked like glow sticks and elongated.
Mash grabbed my face. “Before I shift, I need to ask you something.”
“Yes, I’ve already said, I’ll fuck you if I can,” I said. Shouted actually, over the howling.
“No, that’s not what I was going to say.” He made a pained face, and I felt his fingernails transform into claws, digging at the flesh under my chin. “Whatever you do, whatever I ask you to do, no matter how much I beg . . .” He yelled, and the back of his neck erupted in sandy blonde fur, his hackles rose. “Fuck. Whatever I ask you to do, do not—and I mean it—let me bite you.”
“What?!” I said, but Mash was too far into shifting to have heard me. He let go of me and fell to the ground. He twitched and writhed, his arms and legs doubled in length, he grew a snout. A few seconds more and he was standing over me in his massive, intimidating as fuck wolf form.
“Come on, loser, we’re doing werewolf shit,” he said, and bounded towards the exit.
I spared one look around the giant marquee to make sure nobody was watching. I spotted Felix and Juno with the rest of the unshifted cubs. Felix was chatting to a boy with dark brown skin, smiling, looking happier than I’d seen him since I’d arrived in August. I wondered if the other boy was Jacob.
But I had little time to think about it. With a pop, I shifted into my wolf form and bolted out of the tent before any of Mash’s relatives could stick their cold noses into my anus.
“Mash!” I yelled into the darkness.
Wolves darted off in every direction. White and silver and brown blurs against the shadowy trees. I caught a flash of sandy-blonde fur, and I followed it.
“Mash!”
It took me about ten minutes to catch up with him. Any time I got close, he’d fucking run off again, until I thought I’d lost him completely.
Mash appeared beside me as if from nowhere. He closed the gap between us and rubbed the top of his head along the underside of my jowls.
“You look so cute as a wolf,” he said to me.
“You also look very cute,” I said back to him.
“Wrong. I look majestic as fuck.” He sighed. “I wish I’d remember it all, you know? I wish I could do what you do. That I could shift whenever I felt like it and just . . . be free. I’ve always been jealous of you.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, but not like in an I hate you way, because I could never hate you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Are you hungry?” He turned on his tail and began jogging off in the other direction. I raced to keep by his side. “Want some venison?”
“I don’t want to kill a deer, Mash.”
“No, nugget brain, I’ll do the killing. I need to show you how big and strong and awesome at hunting and providing I am. Me Mash, me kill deer. You Bangers, you eat deer, then fuck me in the ass at the ravine.”
I laughed. “In all seriousness, I’m far too lucid to eat a raw animal. Like, I don’t even know where you start with that.”
“Easy, you start with the guts. Most nutrients there.” He jogged off again, stopped, waited for me to catch up.
I thought about eating deer intestines and all the partially digested leaves and fruits sitting around in their digestive system. My stomach roiled. “No thanks, I’ll pass, but don’t let me stop your fun.”
His tail was still wagging, so I doubted how much I was spoiling his fun. “Wanna go piss on stuff? I’ve been saving up my pee all day, and we could do with reinforcing the southwest border,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, and his tail wagged even faster.
Once our bladders were empty, we padded over to the closest clearing. I could hear distant howling and smell other wolves nearby, but not so near we were at risk of being overheard. Good, because I needed to talk to him.
Mash nuzzled me again, pushing his head under my chin. He didn’t stop at his neck, though. He continued, rubbing his entire back against my throat until his tail tickled my ears.
“The tragedy of being a wolf is I can’t kiss you,” he said. “I really love human kissing you.”
“Yeah?” I pushed my nose into the fur around his scruff. He still smelled of our bond. “Tell me more.”
“No, because if I think about it too much, I’ll want it more.” Mash hopped up onto a flat rock in the middle of a clearing. I recognised this spot as the one we’d sat on ten years ago tying sunflowers to a metal arch. “But okay. Your lips are so soft. Softer than any girls I’ve ever kissed, and I don’t know how that’s possible because your beard is scratchy as fuck. Especially after I’ve just shaved. You always taste like mint and like . . . you taste like you smell. Or you smell like you taste. But after we’ve scented each other.”
I jumped up on the rock and sat next to him. Mash rolled onto his back, his front paws bent up, his bollocks on full display.
“I wish you could shift right now and give me a belly rub,” he said. We both knew I couldn’t. The risk of being spotted was too great.
I lay down on my tummy, my face tucked in close under his.
“Do you remember when we kissed at Zach and Kai’s mating?” he said, his voice quiet.
My heart hammered in my chest. “Yes. What about it?”
“When I kissed you then, that’s what you tasted like. Like the scent of us. I didn’t realise until last night. I thought when we did the scenting in my apartment, you smelled familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. You know, after we kissed that first time, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The kiss, but also the taste of you, the smell. I never felt like that with anyone else. It was like, I dunno, electricity in my veins. Like you were giving me life. Like I was a phone on two percent, and you were the charger.”
“Mash,” was all I could say. The word no louder than a whisper. I’d felt all those things too, and I realised Mash was right. His kiss tasted like the scent of us. “I thought about that kiss a lot too.”
“Did you think about it whilst wanking?” he asked. Trust Mash to instantly turn it into a sexual thing.
“Yes.” Might as well be honest. Wasn’t like he’d remember any of this in the morning, anyway.
He growled and rolled onto his front. “Me too. I thought about it loads. Still do.”
Okay, I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to find out what his last comment before shifting meant. “What did you mean when you said you would bite me? Were you talking about mate bites? Why would you want to mate bite m—”
“Are you gonna fuck me now or what?”
“No. Mash, I need to . . . we need to . . . clear some things up first.” We needed to talk.
I needed to know if he’d meant what I thought he’d meant.
Mash stilled. He apparently decided that this particular conversation was a deal breaker, and pushed to his feet. He bounded down off the rock and into the nearby treeline.
I gave myself thirty seconds to compose my thoughts before I chased after him.
“Mash, wait up!”
“Are you gonna fuck me?” he called back.
“No, we need to talk.”
He ran off again.
Branches snagged in my fur, and I felt the first few drops of rainfall pattering my snout.
I was already done with being a wolf. I wanted to be a human again, in a human bed, with a human-ish Mash, so we could have a sober conversation about us and his feelings.
Or maybe now was a good time to tell him how I felt. And if it went badly, he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
“I’m hungry, are you?” he said, slowing his pace.
“No,” I lied. “Listen, we need to talk. About—”
“You’re leaving me.” He stopped at the edge of the creek.
I stopped too, but my heart didn’t get that message. It wanted to flee, across the creek and down the hill.
“Wait, no. You’re not leaving me,” he said. “I’m leaving you.” His tail was flat to his leg. I hated seeing him like this.
“You don’t have a choice,” I said.
He assessed me with his deep-green wolf eyes. “Maybe I don’t have a choice now. But I did. I’ve just made all the wrong ones in my life.”
“What does that mean?” We were walking, following the path of the creek.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” He marched off again.
This cat and mouse game of ours was starting to piss me off. It was clear I wasn’t going to get any sense out of him while he was in this state. I found a gap in the trees and took it. To the left, I could see the corner of the marquee. How had we wound up here?
“Bangers?” Mash called out. “Why are you running away from me?”
“Because I’m not playing this stupid game of yours where you say something, reel it back in, then make me chase you for more. If you don’t want to tell me what this whole mate-bite comment means that’s fine, but quit messing me around.”
Mash stopped walking and fell behind. I didn’t stop. “I’m just not ready for us to be over,” he said.
I slowed, still didn’t stop.
He caught up to me. “I don’t want you to go back to the city. I want you to stay here with me, and be my fake mate forever.”
This time I did stop. “What?”
He scratched the dirt with his paw, wouldn’t look at me.
I waited for him to speak. A weird heavy feeling clung to my chest. It made it difficult to breathe. Rain pattered harder now against my fur. Mash didn’t seem to notice.
“Fine, okay,” he called out. “This is the most selfish thing I’ve ever asked for. Even more selfish than ignoring the call of the alpha for a decade. More selfish than not telling you any of this beforehand, but . . .” He trailed off.
“Mash?” I said, my tone a warning.
“I want you to stay with me. Here. In Howling Pines, as my beta. I want you to pretend to be my werewolf mate forever.”
The world slowed, blurred. Pretend. He still used that word.
“I’m not ready for . . . this to be over. Our friendship,” he said. Friendship. “I know we can still chat on the phone, text, FaeTime, blah blah blah, but it’s not the same. I’m gonna miss you too much. I feel like . . . I feel like my heart can’t handle being that far apart from you. Like as soon as you go back to Remy, it’s going to stop beating.”
“Mash. Fuck.” I didn’t know what to say. I started pacing wide circles. His words bounced around in my head.
I’m gonna miss you.
My heart can’t handle it.
Pretend.
Friendship.
Friendship.
I started speaking, tentatively, because I was fucking afraid. Even though Mash wouldn’t remember any of this conversation in the morning, I was so scared to hear his answer.
“Do you think you’d ever want anything more than . . . friendship? More than friends who fuck?” Can you ever love me the way I love you? I chickened out. He wouldn’t remember, but I still couldn’t bring myself to utter those words aloud.
Mash’s mouth opened to speak, but no sound came out. He closed it. A whole minute ticked by where he decidedly did not answer my question. His gaze was a knife to my heart.
“I didn’t think so,” I said.
“Ci, if you’re asking what I think you’re asking, then no. We can never be . . . I’m not the right person . . . Ugh, you told me once—no, I can’t.” He looked up at the sky and shook his fur, dislodging the rain from his coat. “I take back what I said. I don’t want you to be my fake mate any more. We need to stop this charade now. It’s . . . gotten out of hand.”
Now it was my turn not to say anything.
“Cian.” Cian, not Ci, or Bangers. “What do you want? Out of life, I mean. If you could start over with everything, work life, home life, love life, what would you wish for? What would you change?”
I couldn’t answer his question. “I wish we were humans right now. I don’t want to be the only one who remembers this conversation.” And I didn’t want to have it twice.
“I’ll remember it.” He’d said it so convincingly, I almost believed him.
“Fine.” Fuck, okay. “I just want to feel like I’m finally myself. Not pretending to be something else for someone else, you know?” My chest was heaving. I could stop now before the damage was done, but somehow I knew that wasn’t possible. My honesty was overdue. I couldn’t hide myself any longer.
“All my life I’ve pretended for other people,” I said. “I’ve pretended to be someone more palatable for my parents. Pretended to enjoy a job that’s slowly killing me. Pretended to be your mate—and a fucking werewolf—so you can trick your family into thinking you’re a better person than you actually are.”
“Ouch,” he said quietly. I wouldn’t backtrack, wouldn’t apologise. It was all going to come out now.
“There isn’t even any need for me to keep up this act any more. You’re staying here in Lykos. You’ll eventually get mated off and have cubs of your own. Why am I still going along with this? I should have gone back to Remy weeks ago. No. I should never have come to Howling Pines in the first place.”
He said nothing, obviously sensing more.
“I can’t keep pretending not to be in love with you, Mash. It’s killing me.”
He nodded his big wolf head. Then froze. “What?”
“You’re asking me to stay here with you? To continue pretending to be all those things. Your pretend mate, a pretend werewolf. For how long, Mash? For forever? Or until you find a real mate? Or until your pack quits trying to set you up with perfect women? You could have been happy a long time ago if you’d just listened to them.”
“No, what did you say before then?” he whispered.
“I don’t want to be only your friend, Mash. I want more. I always have.”
He puffed out a breath. Shook the rain from his fur. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. But you . . . you told me . . .”
“Mash?”
“I . . . I love you, man.” He was inching backwards. “But . . . I . . . I’ve been so stupid. I need to think, and . . . I . . . fuck. I can’t right now. My wolf brain is telling me to bite you and keep you here with me, and my human brain is . . . well, it’s a fucking mess at the moment. Maybe we just need time away from each other.”
“Mash, wait.” I had no idea what I wanted to say, how to communicate years of heartache and longing.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. The rain beat heavier onto our coats, splattered mud from the paths onto our paws. “Do I hold you back?”
“What, Mash . . . No, you—”
“You told me once that I held you back. That you could have been happy if it weren’t for me.”
I was gonna puke. “When? When did I say that?”
“Winter Fest. On the Howl rooftop. You told me you could have had everything you’ve ever wanted in your life if I wasn’t there holding you back.”
Fuck, had I really said those things?
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
“Mash, I was drunk. I don’t remember.” It was the wrong thing to say. But too late, it was out now.
Yes, I probably meant it. At the time. But it had never been Mash holding me back. It was always my inability to just let him go, let him live his own life. That was what was holding both of us back. My dependence on him.
“I don’t know what—” I started, but he snarled at me. Actually snarled. My instinct was to cower.
He said nothing. A few minutes stretched into an eternity, his eyes fixed on me the entire time. A low rumbling growl filled the space, mingling with the lashing rain.
And then his whole body sagged. The fight left him.
“You were right. You were always fucking right,” he said.
“Mash—”
“Well, now you can be free of me. I’m sorry I wasted the best years of your life.”
“Fucking hell, this isn’t—”
“I need to go.”
“Go where?” I said, but he was already turning in the other direction and walking away. I took a few steps towards him. “Where are you going, Mash? Mash?”
“Don’t follow me. Please, Bangers, I just need to be alone.” And then, without waiting for my response, he ran.
I watched him disappear into the trees and then I walked back to the house. There was no way to tell what time it was. I guessed somewhere between eleven and midnight. The lights were on in the kitchen and sitting room, where undoubtedly Rita, the elder wolves, and the much younger cubs were camped out.
I didn’t want to disrupt any of them, so I nudged Mash’s bedroom window open with my snout and threw myself inside onto the bed. Immediately back in my human form, I closed the window and pulled the lock across on the bedroom door.
Then I showered, dressed, and packed my bags.