Chapter 13
Dustin
I rolled down the back door of the U-Haul truck and made sure the latch was fully engaged.
Behind me, the last two of the Chicago wolves, Rick and their Third, Nathan, watched me silently.
I locked the office door behind me and held out the keys to Rick.
“Since you’re claiming this as your territory, I assume you’ll protect the property until the landlord does his inspection and lets me off the lease. ”
Nathan swiped the keys from my hand. “That’s for Alpha to decide.”
“I will trust your Alpha’s sense of honor, then.” I bowed my head as if in respect.
The Third made a sour face but slipped the key ring into his pocket.
“I’ll call you,” I told Rick, ignoring the Third again. “It’ll take me a few weeks to find a location in a new town, get a phone and an office. Once my new darkroom’s ready, we’ll start with a session on photo-manipulation. Unless your Fixer already covered those techniques with you?”
“Only the basics,” Rick said. “Sounds like a plan.”
I gave them both a jaunty wave as I swung up into the cab of the truck. “Thanks for all the heavy lifting. See you around.”
I wasn’t surprised to see a sports car pull out from a parking space down the block and fall in behind me.
I figured the Alpha would have more than one of his men see me out of his territory.
I waved at them out the open truck window as I turned onto the freeway heading north.
They stuck with me for a mile, then took the next exit ramp.
Odds were, there was another car behind them that I wasn’t supposed to see.
Evasion didn’t make sense, because I was heading home and they knew where that was, so I simply waved behind me a couple of minutes later on principle.
I hadn’t spotted which one of the trailing cars they were in, but they didn’t need to know that.
It only occurred to me a few miles down the road that I’d thought of Darville as home. No, actually, I’d thought of Wade as home. No lie. I hadn’t had a true home in a lot of years, but this felt right, all the way to my core. Pack. Home, my wolf agreed.
The drive north went slower with a loaded truck than in my car, but I stuck to ten miles under the speed limit and tried to enjoy the sunshine.
I had jugs of developer and fragile equipment in the back.
Slow and steady was the way. After fifteen minutes, I guessed that the green Chevy van, the only vehicle not to pass my slow ass, was probably the Chicago wolves.
If they were still behind me when I hit town, I’d lead them on a bit of a chase for fun.
But on the outskirts of Darville, the van pulled in at a turnoff and headed back south, respecting my claimed territory, at least for now. I waved and continued on my merry way.
The widening of the main artery through town was needed.
Traffic slowed, becoming stop and go without any actual cause.
As long as construction stayed on the correct side of the road, more power to them.
I turned off into Wade’s neighborhood, taking a closer look at the buildings, businesses, streets, and alleys.
This would be my new territory and I’d learn every inch of it soon.
I hadn’t been able to tell Wade exactly when I’d be arriving, just given him a ballpark, but he stood on the sidewalk out front, chatting with a young woman who was trying to corral two hyperactive boys.
As I watched, Wade snagged the one trying to climb onto the slanted stair rail.
The boy’s pout turned to a grin as Wade swooped him through the air before setting him on solid ground.
The other boy reached up, clearly begging me too, and Wade gave him a whirl of his own.
He'd be so good with pups. Not an option for us as two men and lone wolves, although Wade was bisexual. Would he someday want…? My musing was cut off as he spotted me and smiled like the sun coming out.
Worries for another year. Or decade.
I couldn’t park, so I stopped in the street and hit my hazard lights. Immediately, two cars began a blare of horns behind me, because we might be an hour outside Chicago but the attitudes didn’t change.
Wade jogged around to the passenger side and climbed in. “Hey, you.”
“Hey.” I didn’t kiss him, there on the public street, though I wanted to. “Did you find a place?”
“Yep. Garage and storage combo. Halfway across town, though.”
“Direct me.” I eased forward accompanied by the continued honks from the jackass behind us.
The storage facility Wade located had lockable garages for people to store their cars, boats, or other valuables.
It was damned narrow and low for the truck, but I eased my way in.
Tomorrow, we’d take half the day to unload, and I’d return the truck to U-Haul.
Today, I’d spent hours loading and cleaning, and three days without Wade. I had no patience for that shit.
We hauled down the overhead door of the unit and applied my padlock. Once that was secured, I slung my small bag over my shoulder and looked around. “You think there’s a place nearby we can catch a cab?”
“There’s a phone at the gas station.” Wade gestured at the booth along the wall of the cashier’s hut across the street. “Or we could catch a bus. Although we’d have to change twice.”
“No way.” I bumped his shoulder, hard, in place of the hug I wanted. “I need to get back to your apartment as soon as possible.”
“Hungry?” Wade grinned, making that an intentional double entendre.
“Very.” I strode toward the phone booth, and he fell in at my side. “Any news you didn’t want to say over the phone?” We’d both been aware of sharp werewolf ears around my apartment when I’d called him.
“Mina Kawashima says the mayor’s been in a filthy mood for the last three days. The planning meeting happened yesterday. Mina said she took notes, like always, and there was no mention of switching around the road-widening project. All systems go on the version that stays the hell out of our laps.”
“Success.”
“Sounds like it.” Wade looked up at me. “Thanks to you. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“That’s why you need a Fixer in your life.”
“I really do.” Wade stepped back while I slipped into the booth, found a taxi company in the phone book, and called for a ride.
“Six minutes,” I told him, glad to leave those stuffy glass-walled confines.
“Anything you didn’t want to say outloud?”
I wished we could talk about us, but the street corner really wasn’t the right place.
I scanned to make sure the nearest possible ears were on the attendant pumping gas, and kept my voice soft.
“Nothing big. We’ll keep calling Shawn and Zay from payphones.
No trips to Canada for a while, sad to say.
Let Chicago get bored with what good little wolves we are.
Rick’s young, but he’s scary smart. I don’t want to focus his attention the wrong way. ”
Wade sighed. “Damn it. I was hoping for more time with my brother, but compared to a month ago? I have no complaints. Are you sure you’ll get enough private eye business to stay afloat here? Especially if you’re paying separate rent?”
“I’ll make it work. I’ll have to cast a wider net, be willing to travel around a bit more since I can’t go into Chicago, but small towns are no less secretive than the city.” I laughed. “If I get strapped, I can always blackmail the mayor for money.”
Wade blinked. “You wouldn’t.”
“Of course not.” Not with you as my conscience, anyhow.
I’d grown up breaking the law and had no scruples about doing it again in a good cause.
I’d count on my honorable Wade to help me figure out how good a cause was.
I couldn’t resist saying, “The mayor’s too well known and connected. I’d blackmail Rosswurn.”
In response to Wade’s stare, I gave him a nice bland face, wide eyes.
He laughed, although not quite solidly, like he still wasn’t sure I was joking, and thumped my shoulder.
Well, he was right not to be sure. I wouldn’t blackmail anyone for money for me, but if Wade ever got desperate, Rosswurn wouldn’t know what hit him.
“I’ll offer my photo services to the local paper too.
Investigative reporting. Second income stream. Anonymously, of course.”
“If you say so.”
“Don’t worry about me. I always land on my feet.”
To my surprise, Wade turned and grabbed me in a tight hug. “You sure do, but I’m going to worry about you now and then all the same. I’m allowed.”
For a moment, I let all the tension of the last three days— of dismantling my home under the eyes of strange wolves who’d want to kill me three ways from Sunday if they knew who I was or what I’d done— melted away in Wade’s arms. I slumped and let him hold me.
Comfort like I’d seldom known seeped into my bones.
Until he said, “That might be our cab,” and stepped back.
We rode in silence back to the apartment, other than Wade pointing out the occasional landmark.
I tipped the driver well and got out. Except for the one bag, I’d left my stuff in the truck for now.
Wade had brought the most important parts of my life back with him three days ago, and they were waiting for me in his apartment.
Mr. Kawashima climbed the front steps slowly ahead of us, and I reached past him to pull the front door. Wade ducked around us and held the inner one open. “Thank you.” The old man peered up at Wade. “Mina tells me that whatever you did seems to have saved my home. Thank you for that too.”
Wade gave him a shocked face. “Me? I didn’t do anything.
” But he held a finger to the side of his nose like in that new Paul Newman movie The Sting.
I wanted to grab Wade in a hug. He wasn’t as handsome as Paul, but then almost no men were.
Wade was even better, though— protective, and warm-hearted, and damned good to look at, and mine.
Mr. Kawashima laughed at him. “Okay. I get the message. Still, thank you.”
The old man headed down the hallway, and we let ourselves into the stairwell.
“Do you want me to tell them it was your doing that saved the building?” Wade asked as we started climbing.
“God, no. You be the local hero. I’ll be the power behind the throne.”
“Without a throne.”
You could be my Alpha, if you want. I let that idea go until we were out of the stairs, down the hall, through the door, and safely in Wade’s apartment with the lock thrown. “Welcome home,” he said. I turned, about to reply, but Wade grabbed me, kissed me, and all other thoughts fled.
His mouth was paradise, hot and welcoming, his tongue demanding entrance.
I wrapped my arms around him and slammed our bodies together, heavy muscle versus lean, my height over his, but his strength answering mine.
I remembered that moment outside the phone booth, the realization that I had Wade’s support through bullshit large and small.
I wrenched my mouth away to say, “We need to talk, but first we need to fuck. Like, now. Bedroom?”
“Yes.”
We kissed each other down the short hallway. I swung Wade in my arms so his ass bumped the bedroom door open, and froze. Where his narrow single bed had been now sat a big double, maybe even a king size.
Wade gestured with his chin. “Like it? I paid extra for next-day delivery.”
“You, sir, are a genius.” I nudged him into the room and shut the door behind us. Once I’d closed the curtains, making sure we were safe, I turned back to face him.
Wade was already mostly naked, stepping out of his jeans with his shirt discarded in a heap on the floor, and his shoes kicked over near the door. His erection tented the front of his boxers as he untangled his feet from the denim and tossed the jeans aside.
He still wore socks. I took three strides over to him and dropped to my knees. “Let me help you with those.”
A little frown wrinkle developed between his brows, but he stood still as I slid my hand from his knee down his calf, then lower, taking the sock with it.
“Hand on my shoulder,” I guided him. “Foot up.” I eased the sock off his foot, flicked it over my shoulder, and kissed the inside of his thigh as I set his foot on the floorboards.
His scent came richly to me there, so near his groin, and I wanted to wallow in it.
Instead, I said, “Other foot,” and adjusted my weight over.
When his feet were bare, I took hold of the waistband of his boxers and dragged them down.
His cock snagged in the elastic, then sprang free, the head already emerging from its foreskin.
I reached for him, closing my fingers around his shaft. The thickness of him in my hand made my whole body hum.
Wade cupped my head between his hands and tilted my chin so I met his eyes. “I…” He swallowed and licked his lips.
Mate, my wolf noted. Tell him.
The words that had echoed in my heart when he kissed me in my Chicago bathroom, when he hugged me there outside the phone booth, when he welcomed me home in the hallway, rose to my lips. “I love you.”
He threw his head back and laughed.
I pulled out of his hands and sat back on my heels.
Instantly, he dropped to his knees as well, reaching for me, clasping my hands in his.
“Sorry. No. Not laughing at you. Especially not at that.” He kissed my knuckles, left, then right.
“I love you too. I was just, well, getting up the nerve to ask you to fuck me, when you said that. My brain exploded.”
Everything Wade had told me sang along my nerves. I was achingly hard. “You want me to fuck you?” You love me?
“I think so? But we should talk—"
“No. Absolutely, we should fuck first, and talk afterward.”
Wade chuckled, but this time I didn’t take it wrong. “I can’t promise I won’t chicken out.”
“You can change your mind any time.” I got to my feet, reached down, and pulled him up against me for a kiss. “Get on the bed.”
“How?”
“On your back.”
“We can do it like that?”
“Your porn education is clearly insufficient. Indeed we can, Grasshopper.” I laughed as he swiped at me for the Kung Fu nickname. “Lie back, put your feet on the bed, and slide them apart and up toward your ass.”
Wade dragged down the covers, then stretched out on the sheet, following my directions. “Like this?”
“Hell, yes.” I could almost get off just from watching him give himself to me. “Exactly like that.”