6. Chapter 6 #2
“Don’t.” The hoarse pain in Lee’s tone made my chest ache. “Don’t do that thing where you pretend you don’t know I’m queer. Where you act like it never happened. Not again.”
“I’m not,” I told him as gently as I could. “We need to talk. But we both know a hungry werewolf is a short-tempered werewolf. I want to talk, not fight.”
“All right. Let me wash my hands.” Lee disappeared into his small bathroom. He took longer in there than mere hygiene required, but after five minutes, he came out, his hands clean and hair combed, his washed face still as stone.
“Sit.” I told him. “Eat.”
“Yes, sir.”
We blinked at each other as that echoed a long way back. “I was only Eleventh,” I pointed out. “I don’t think you ever said sir to me.”
“Except to annoy Jonas.” Lee hesitated. “After I left, did he…?”
“Beat the crap out of me fair and square? Sure,” I said easily. “He was already ninth by the time I left home. Kid had some moves in a fight, even if he was a skunk.”
“Ah.” Lee picked up a sandwich and bit deep into it, gave a snort like he was surprised how good the flavor was, and dug in.
We ate in comfortable silence, like this was just one more meal of the hundreds we’d shared.
Zipper came hurrying in to beg a piece of ham from Lee’s sandwich, then devoured the morsel with little growling noises and trotted around to my side of the table.
“Your dad just gave you some,” I told the weasel. “I’m not a soft touch like him.”
Zipper sat up on his hind legs, crossed his front paws, and squeaked at me.
“Well, hell.” I liberated a small fragment of meat from my own meal and held it out.
Zipper grabbed the treat and scurried off.
Lee laughed. “Not a soft touch. Hah. You always were.” He sobered, his voice softer. “You always were a kind man.”
I’d done a lot of things in my life that were far from kind, but I didn’t want to be that man to Lee. I ate the last bite and pushed my empty plate aside. “Can we talk?”
“I guess so.” He led the way to the living area and pointed at his couch. “Sit.” As I obeyed, he took up a stance across from me, arms behind him in parade rest, chin raised. He looked like he expected me to hit him and was determined not to hit back.
My heart ached. “Don’t you want to sit down?”
“No. Go on.”
My turn to tell the truth. Sweat slipped down my back, itchy between my shoulder blades, damp beneath my arms. I wondered if Lee could smell it.
If he could see the quiver of fear inside me I was fighting to hide.
I gathered my courage in both hands. “After you ran off a couple of hours ago, I had… not a memory, but a… a recollection of that night. I believe what you said.”
“I’m not a liar!”
“No! Of course not! I didn’t mean that. Just… everyone recalls an event a bit differently. I wondered if something I thought was innocent seemed less so in your eyes, but now I know you were right. I did kiss you.”
“And?”
I ran my tongue over my dry lips. Lee’s gaze dropped to my mouth, then fastened back on my eyes. I swallowed. “And I’m not disgusted or running away from that idea, or whatever you think of me.”
“All right.” He didn’t change his tense posture.
“I served with a couple of queer men. Or do you say homophile?” I tried to recall the other terms I’d heard, but most were meant to humiliate, not identify.
Lee shrugged. “I’ve heard the word homophile maybe twice. Homosexual’s awfully clinical. Heard someone on the radio use ‘gay’ recently. Never felt all that gay to me. I stick with bent, or queer. The packs want to call me that? I’ll own it.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat. This felt like slogging through hip-deep mud while under fire, something I had way too much experience with. “I know in the packs, queer is supposed to be this terrible thing to be violently purged.”
“Yep. Like losing your marbles,” Lee pointed out. “Remember Lester’s bondmate?”
I flinched at the memory of Dad calling for the death of a senile old woman, because there were things about the packs I would never miss. “Right. What I’m trying to say is I don’t think of you that bad way. Never have, never would. Or any other queer wolf.”
“Like yourself?”
No, don’t take this conversation there. Not now. Not yet. I scrambled for a safe answer. “I like women.”
“Some queer men do. Question is, do you like men too?”
Memories bombarded me again, sharper and clearer. Lee’s mouth. Lee’s hands. And in truth, other men’s hands too, on board a ship with no women for miles, male fingers rough and strong on my— I swallowed hard. “Is that relevant?”
“Some men like both. And it’s relevant to me.” Suddenly, Lee took two steps forward and fell to his knees in front of me. “It’s very relevant to me, Micah.”
I couldn’t breathe. Heat rose in me, a wave that could burn me from the inside out if I let it. I remembered that vision of a younger Lee on his knees, his eyes burning gold. Now older Lee looked up at me and his wolf hadn’t risen, and yet his moss-green gaze was even harder to resist.
“I don’t know what I like.” My words emerged on a tiny breath, barely audible to even our wolf ears.
“Do you want to?”
Staring down at him, the first twenty years of my life passed through my head, moment after moment of Lee at my side.
His strong grip, hauling me up from where I’d fallen.
His grin, cheering me when I’d screwed up.
His shoulder under my cheek when I fell asleep on a school bus, knowing no one would mess with me when I had Lee there.
His mouth, tasting of whiskey and myself.
I leaned forward, leaned down, and braced my hands on his shoulders. The bulk of his muscles flexed under my fingers. He tilted his face up but let me make all the moves.
With our mouths inches apart, I hesitated. That was Lee, familiar and yet different, lips thinner, cheekbones squarer, body far more solid under my hands. But those eyes were the same.
Do I really want this? The answer to that question came with leaning one more inch, with the dry touch of my lips on his.
He knelt there, passive, waiting, and yet that simple kiss lit me up like fireworks.
I deepened the kiss, getting my first taste of Lee.
Second taste. Twenty-five years apart and yet so well-known that his flavor resonated through me.
I moved one hand to the back of his head and the soft slip of his hair under my palm was familiar too.
I broke the kiss, pulling back enough to see him better.
The gold had risen in his eyes now. I looked inside myself, wondering if my wolf would resist this offense to centuries of tradition, but all I got was a sense of contentment.
Pleasure. My wolf had no problem with me kissing my best friend.
“So-o?” Lee managed to keep his face expressionless, but his voice shook.
I licked my lips. You coward, you knew already.
A lifetime of hints cascaded over me, of times I’d turned away from that knowledge.
I hadn’t ignored that soldier I’d met in peacetime out of embarrassment for a moment of weakness, but in recognition of how alike we were, and how unsafe that felt. “I guess I’m a little bent too.”
“How little?”
Recklessness hit me, a sudden need to understand where this was taking me. “Your room has a bed and curtains that close tightly, yes?”
“Not a very big bed, but yes.”
“Let’s test out the answer to your question.” My stomach quivered with fear but something in me also sang with hope. I stood and headed toward his room. In the doorway, I paused and looked back. Lee still knelt on his rag rug, watching me. I cleared my dry throat. “Coming?”
A sudden grin lit his face. “I hope so.” He pushed to his feet and stalked toward me.
His posture reminded me that he was bigger than me, stronger and, in truth, probably more dominant, if he ever Challenged me.
I backed into the room. Lee pulled the door shut behind him, closed the drapes over the windows, and turned to me in the dim light.
He seemed to hunch, drawing his shoulders in as if to look smaller.
“You’re in charge here, Micah. Never doubt that. We won’t do anything you don’t want.”
“I don’t know what I want.” The words came out thinner than I intended.
“We’re gonna figure that out.” Lee looked me over. Even in human form, our wolf eyes helped us see in dim light. I could make out the little groove of uncertainty between his brows, a hint of worry about me that I wanted to erase.
“Shall we undress?” I asked. “If I remember that night, we shed the clothes pretty early.” Stripped off the sweaty, whiskey-soaked fabric and touched…
“It was hot as Satan’s armpit that day, but yeah, good idea.
” Lee unbuttoned his shirt and slid it off his arms, baring those biceps.
Then he hauled his undershirt over his head and exposed his wide, furry chest. His nipples crinkled in the cool air, fat brown nubs on the planes of muscle, bigger and more notable than when we were boys.
He unbuttoned the waistband of his chinos and frowned at me. “This feels a bit one-sided.”
A flush heated my cheeks, which I hoped he couldn’t see in that light. I tugged off my borrowed T-shirt and stripped down to my skivvies. By the time I’d fully kicked my Levis off my feet, Lee was down to his underwear too. “Bed,” I suggested, to get past the awkward staring.
“Sure.” The bed was a single, but Lee stretched out against the wall, propped up on one elbow, leaving the lion’s share of the mattress to me.
I lay down facing him. “Now—?”
Lee cut off my question by kissing me.
It turned out this part I was good at. Other than his size, kissing Lee was no different than kissing a woman.
Well, his size plus the hunger that drove us both to wet roughness, his hand fisted in the back of my hair, mine cupping his neck.
When we ran out of breath, I pulled away, covering my shaken exhilaration with a quip. “That went okay.”
“I have an idea.” Lee pushed me onto my back and leaned over me.
“What?” Arousal and anxiety warred in me.