Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
CALEB
Iwas a menace in the kitchen, but I could wash dishes.
Maybe.
Soap bubbles clung to my forearms as I scrubbed at syrup that had congealed on my breakfast plate.
When it wouldn’t budge, I squirted more soap on it.
The blue streaks ran over the syrup trails and plopped into the water.
I squirted some more, forming a pattern of widening blue circles.
Those environmental disaster people used it to strip oil off ducks. It could handle syrup.
As I watched the circles slide into a blob, something Carlo had said surfaced in my mind.
“Lawyers from America… They come to us for other kinds of filth.”
Apparently, the world really was run by rich a-holes with zero morals.
Setting the plate aside, I turned to check on Jesse. He’d been camped at the kitchen table since we got home two hours ago. More Post-its spread around him. His phone sat next to another orphaned cup of coffee.
I dried my hands and sat across from him. “You should eat something.”
He tossed his pen onto his notebook, a weak smile playing around his mouth. “I think that’s my line.”
I nodded toward the notebooks. “Any leads?”
“No.” He followed my gaze and muttered, “I think I’m wasting my time.”
“We could walk around the city again,” I said. “Try to pick up Ulfrik’s scent.”
“Maybe later.” He pulled a notebook toward him. “I keep coming back to the silver. It should have affected me. Are you sure that’s what you felt?”
Phantom pain wrapped tight around my bones like barbed wire. “Yeah. I mean, I guess I can’t be absolutely positive, but the feeling was the same.”
“But you didn’t see anything?”
I shook my head. Every other vision had been sharp and full color, like I’d been dumped inside a movie. But the door and the mirror had given me nothing but pain and darkness. If the movie was in there, someone had shut off the lights.
I gasped.
Jesse was instantly more alert. “What is it?”
“Just because I didn’t see anything doesn’t mean something wasn’t there.”
He frowned. “I’m not following.”
I leaned forward. “What if I had a vision like usual, except the lights were off? I couldn’t see my surroundings because it was too dark. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” he said slowly, “but it doesn’t explain why you felt like you’d touched silver. Seers observe the future. Or, in your case, the future and the past. But they stand outside of it. They’re not part of it.”
A pin popped my little balloon of discovery. I sat back. “Oh. Yeah. Shit.”
He reached across the table and took my hand. “It’s still a good theory. We have to consider everything.”
“That’s what Little League coaches say right before they hand out participation trophies.”
“I mean it.” He gestured to his notes. “Good historians pull on every loose thread.”
His phone buzzed, vibrating the table. We both looked at it. Jesse looked at me.
I mimed zipping my lips and tossing a key over my shoulder.
His lips quirked. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he murmured. Then he cleared his throat and picked up the phone. “Van der Meer.”
“Good afternoon,” Stefanos said smoothly. “The Council believes you need reinforcements. Emile Laval is booked on the first flight to Rome in the morning.”
Somehow, I kept my mouth shut. But anger crested in a hot tide. Because how fucking dare Stefanos send Emile to Rome? How dare he force Jesse to work with the man who’d busted open his world by revealing the truth about Philippe?
“Emile will help you search for Ulfrik,” Stefanos continued as if he hadn’t just lobbed a grenade over the line. “We must contain him.”
Contain. Such a polite euphemism for kill.
“All right,” Jesse said, his face unreadable. Nothing in his voice betrayed any misgivings or reluctance.
“I want you to meet him at the airport,” Stefanos said. “Until then, you and Caleb stay put.”
“Understood,” Jesse said.
The call ended. Jesse set down the phone.
I stood, dragged my chair around the table, and sat next to him. “Are you okay with this? I’ll gladly call Stefanos back and tell him to go fu—”
“It’s fine,” Jesse said, taking my knee in a light grip. “Emile has never bothered me. Like a lot of werewolves, he’s a loner. He’ll do his job without any fuss.”
I nodded even as doubt lingered like floaters after a hard tackle. “Did Emile and Philippe—?” I stopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t— You don’t have to—”
“It’s okay,” he said, taking pity on me. “As far as I know, Philippe had a sexual relationship with every man he turned. But many of the wolfseekers he made died before he turned me, so it’s possible some of them weren’t willing to give him what he wanted.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as if he recounted something from one of his history books. But this was his life, not some dusty battle from hundreds of years ago.
“What did he want?” I asked, feeling like I held something fragile and expensive. I had to be so careful not to break it.
“Control,” Jesse said. “Philippe needed to be in charge at all times in every room.” He paused, and his expression gentled.
“I get why you might worry, but it’s not an issue.
Whatever I felt for Philippe, time has a way of clarifying things.
Infatuation and love look similar when you’re living them.
” His thumb moved over my knee. “Emile is a decent man. He gave me the truth. I don’t feel any animosity toward him. ”
Some of the floaters faded. He didn’t sound sad or burdened by the past. But he’d opened a door into it, and now I wanted to nudge it wider.
“You’re one of four wolfseekers left in the world.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve obviously met Emile. What about the other two?”
“I’ve met them, but I’ve never spent much time around them.
” Jesse offered a wry smile. “The Council makes the most of its assets, and they get more mileage out of us by spreading us around. Jean Fabri has a house in the Balkans. Andre Von Dach never lives anywhere for long. Last I heard, he was staying in Australia.”
“Philippe turned another Dutch guy?”
“Swiss,” Jesse said. “But everyone knows the Dutch do it better.”
“Do what better?”
His smile turned smug. “Everything.”
I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”
His hand on my knee tightened, and his wolf moved through his eyes. “You absolutely will, college boy, because Dutch is all you’re getting.”
Damn.
A little devil whispered for me to push him until he gave in and took a wooden spoon to my ass. I’d washed two of them while he worked, all kinds of impure thoughts forming alongside the bubbles. It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had.
But he was tired. It showed in the faint smudges under his eyes and the slight droop in his shoulders. He’d been up since five, and our argument and opera house detour hadn’t exactly been restful.
“Hey,” I said, shifting so my knees were tucked between his thighs. “Why don’t we go upstairs and grab a couple hours of sleep? I’ll give you a back rub.” I reached for him.
The second my fingers circled his forearm, the world dropped from under me.
I landed on my knees. Amber light spilled over a plush carpet and my bare thighs. But they were all wrong.
Panic climbed my throat as I stared down at the dark hair on my thighs and groin. I was nude, a whisper of cool air raising goosebumps on skin that didn’t fit.
Because it didn’t belong to me.
The penis between my legs was soft, the foreskin covering the head.
Recognition flared just as dark boots appeared in front of me. My heart thumped hard against my ribs as I let my gaze travel up dark wool trousers and a white shirt opened to show a smooth chest.
A man with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail stared down at me with eyes that were probably blue when his wolf wasn’t in them. But they were an icy silver now, his irises so pale they were almost colorless.
He slid a hand under my jaw, and the edge of his pinky ring pressed hard against my cheek.
“Mon petit loup,” Philippe said in his upper class French, and I understood it because Jesse did.
I breathed with Jesse’s lungs and saw with Jesse’s eyes.
Felt the sting of the welts Philippe had just put across my back.
His riding crop rested on the table behind him, along with his clamps and bowls of hot wax.
The pinky ring was a signet ring, the center stamped with his family crest so he could press it into wax to seal letters or mark my body as his.
Jesse knew these things, which meant I knew them, too.
“Is this how you thank me?” he murmured.
The body I wore trembled. My borrowed heart hammered against ribs larger than my own.
“Non, monsieur,” I said, Jesse’s voice rumbling my throat. Jesse’s body knew what Philippe wanted, and it moved without permission, bending me forward and pressing my lips to the top of his boot.
“Encore,” Philippe said softly.
More. Jesse’s body understood that, too.
I licked all around the toe, dirt and tiny stones from the courtyard catching on my tongue.
The scent of grass and dew entered my lungs.
I worked my way up, and more scents followed, boot polish and hints of manure sticking in my nose and throat.
The welts on my back pulled and burned, but I kept licking, pausing every now and then to press kisses to the damp leather.
Philippe’s sigh drifted down. After a moment, he nudged my mouth away with his toe and presented the other boot.
I licked that one clean, too.
“Look at me,” Philippe ordered. When I obeyed, he was smiling faintly, the candlelight throwing shadows over a face that had always gotten him anything he wanted. The glossy tail of the ribbon in his hair draped over one muscular shoulder.
“Bien.” He used his boot to tap my penis. “Stroke that beautiful cock, petit loup.”
My hand—Jesse’s hand—moved to my shaft, which had plumped under his smile. And I stroked because Philippe wanted it. Monsieur had ordered it, and maybe this time I’d do it right.