Furred Lines (Crofts & Creatures)

Chapter 1

Lewis

Iwas a fucking mess. My heart raced, I had sweaty palms, and possible heart palpitations. Could you get heart palpitations because you were about to see the only boy you ever truly loved again after a decade of regularly stalking, uh, researching his social media profiles?

I palmed the steering wheel and forced a deep breath into my lungs.

Some might call the feelings I had nursed for Noah Bright for over ten years an unhealthy obsession. I just called it love. When he shared on his profile that he was coming back to Scotland I was sure I’d have a heart attack.

Maybe I should try to work on my cardiovascular health or just hide at Lone Fox Distillery until he leaves again.

Yeah, that would have been a great idea had I come up with it a week ago and not just while I sat in my car waiting for Ollie to get back with his younger brother.

Why on earth did I agree to drive him to the airport to pick up Noah?

Gods, I sucked. Of course I’d said yes. Ollie was my best friend.

I took another steadying breath and wiped my hands on my jeans. How would it feel to see Noah again? He was still so pretty, that much I knew.

He had aged, of course, but fuck, so had I. And, unlike me, Noah aged like fine wine.

We weren’t teenagers anymore and maybe that was a good thing. It was bound to be less awkward. Although I didn’t know if he still hated me for driving off every single person he had dated in school.

He probably does.

I mean, I hated myself for how I’d behaved back then. I had spent the last year apologising to every person I’d been an asshole to in school.

Ollie never brought it up. He hardly ever talked about Noah anyway, only when he texted him, which was about once every couple of months.

I found it a little odd that Ollie seemed to forget that he even had a younger brother until a message from him popped up on his phone. But perhaps he found it weird how intimately I kept up with my bhai.

Roy and I loved each other. We regularly talked on the phone, and I kept up with his socials, his companies, and, of course, his fiancée Kat. I adored her and had done so from the moment I met her.

I checked my watch to see how much time had passed while I’d been lost in thought. Five fucking minutes.

Damn.

I slouched back in my seat and rubbed a damp palm down my face. My insides churned with nerves.

Maybe I should get out of the car and just do laps of the car park to blow off some of the restless energy?

It had rained heavily in the night and the ground was dotted with puddles. A steady drizzle misted the windows of my truck, and I didn’t think looking like a drowned cat would add to my appeal.

Why the fuck do you even care how you look?

Every single guy Noah had ever shared on his social media had been, well, definitely not like me.

He did date guys from other species, like that slender Chinese Dragon shifter with a silly little mustache and the most gorgeous teal scales I had ever seen and an Austrian guy who had been covered in black feathers from the neck down.

Both had been slender, bordering on the verge of lithe.

Not a single one had ever been even remotely in my height and weight range.

You’re not his type.

Noah had stopped featuring all of these guys eventually and had never addressed any break-ups. But they had looked happy, at least for a while. As much as it had hurt to see him like that with other guys, I had never been able to stay away from Noah’s socials.

I rolled my eyes at myself.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to be happy. I did! It just sucked to see him building a future with someone else. Some part of me clung to the idea of Noah and me and rejoiced when yet another one of his boyfriends had disappeared from his feed.

I bumped my head against the headrest a bit harder than necessary. My mum had always insisted that I had a good heart and maybe I did, but the rest of me was questionable at best.

My eyes fell on the clock on the dashboard.

Ollie left me in the car half an hour ago. He had to be back soon; Noah’s flight had already landed by the time we arrived here.

How on earth am I supposed to make it through the next five months when I can’t even make it through thirty minutes?

My breath was visible in the cold autumn air when I exhaled a long, steadying breath. I turned on the engine and cranked up the heating. Noah came from a tropical island. I didn’t want him to be cold.

Then two figures appeared behind the car, one in a dark green slipover worn over a crisp white buttoned shirt with a tweed scarf, the other wearing an odd assortment of clothes.

Okay, stay calm, Lew.

The only reason why my car door survived the way I wrenched it open was that Roy had treated me to one of Moth Motors’ huge-ass Vortexes a couple of years ago.

My baby brother is the best.

“Oh, hey, Lew. Sorry, it took Noah a while to get through customs,” Ollie called over when I got out of the driver’s seat.

“It’s okay,” I muttered. I had no idea what I’d been expecting, but seeing Noah again catapulted me right back to that warm summer’s day more than fifteen years ago.

Noah had laid with his back on a warm stone, little droplets of water clinging to his sun-kissed skin. His lips had been so soft under mine, and I had felt a jolt of something beyond a thrill igniting my body.

Noah’s dark hair stuck up in the back like it had when we were kids. I’d always thought that no part of him wanted to be tamed, not even his curls.

I longed to run my fingers through those curls, to feel if they were still as soft as I remembered. His hair was longer than before, perfect for holding onto and pulling his head back while—

Oh fuck.

Heaving his luggage into the back of my car was the perfect excuse to bring some space between the two of us. And I realised that he hadn’t said a word to me yet.

You hurt him, what did you expect? For him to fling himself into your arms?

I couldn’t believe how much my best friend’s brother had changed. The photos on his social media hadn’t done him justice at all. He was fucking hot.

Ollie should have warned me, but how could he have known? He hadn’t seen Noah since before I started working for Lone Fox Distillery.

Noah had always been a solid ten, even when we’d been barely teenagers. I had kissed him, just that once, never daring to get closer to him again. That had been the first time I’d ever been truly aroused, and I hadn’t wanted to creep him out.

We were so young.

Not anymore, though. Adult Noah was the stuff of my dreams. He wore a ribbed tank with an open shirt over it, and a pair of ripped jeans that clung to his strong legs, and he had paired them with black biker boots.

Together with the added layers of a chunky cardigan and a blanket-like scarf draped over his shoulders Noah looked like he’d just walked out of one of Roy’s photo shoots.

He was stunning, despite—or maybe because of—his obvious exhaustion.

Fucking hell. Why did I think picking up my best friend’s delectable brother in a ratty pair of jeans and one of my mangiest shirts was a good idea, when he is whatever fucking number is at the top of the scale?

I bet a man like him wouldn’t touch someone like me with a ten-foot pole, so I shouldn’t be worrying about what he thought of me. But I still cared.

I had always craved Noah’s approval, but he’d never shown much interest in me. After the kiss, that was.

He’d preferred his lean, fair-haired Nixen boys.

Not that I’d blamed him. Noah probably thought my talk of us getting married had just been the stupid ramblings of a kid who’d been dealt a bad hand.

Dad gone, raised by a single mum who, as a Tiger hybrid, always stood out and had never felt at home in this climate.

Mum had moved back to India a while ago, and she sent Roy and me regular updates from her life in Kolkata with her new partner Rahul.

Other than our kiss and the rambling about getting married, I’d never let on that I was interested in Noah, or guys in general.

It had taken some time away from our tightly knit community to embrace the pan in me.

Ollie and I had come out to each other a few years ago.

Perhaps that was why we got along so well.

Ollie insisted that Noah take the passenger seat.

Yeah, thanks mate.

Having his scent in my nose and drooling over Noah surely made for a safe drive home. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and tried my best to keep my mind on traffic and not the man sitting next to me.

Crashing the car would make for a terrible second impression.

Thankfully my best friend struck up a conversation with his brother and didn’t expect me to join in.