Chapter 14 #2
“Huh.” Dustin stiffened, then relaxed. “Took me longer. At first, you were a kid to protect, maybe a kid facing the same shit I’d had to overcome. Once you were grown, though, yeah, I had a fantasy or two.”
“We took the long road, but here we are. Shawn’s happy with Zay, and you and me are ready to figure out our own happy.”
“I’m good at problem solving.”
I warned Dustin, “You might have to do a little of that on the apartment next door. I guess Rosswurn posted the vacancy. A family with three kids came by to check out the place yesterday.” I’d done my best to seem like the ominous, surly guy you don’t want to live next door to, although it’d pained me to scare children.
“I’ll get my application in tomorrow. Maybe offer to pay several months up front in cash. Landlords like money in hand.”
“Can you afford that?”
Dustin shrugged. “I still have an emergency fund. Not getting to be with you would be an emergency.”
I chuckled and pulled him closer, loving the way his weight pinned me to the bed.
Mate.
“Stupid wolf,” I said out loud.
“What?”
“He likes you so much, he keeps saying you’re my mate.”
“Huh. Mine does too.” Dustin closed his teeth on my shoulder, a perfect firm pressure.
My wolf hummed his pleasure. I fought the impulse to squirm and make Dustin bite me for real. “I guess we should be glad the wolf parts of us aren’t prejudiced against homosexuals.”
He laughed. “I did some research on wild wolves once, for the hell of it. There was a paper about male-male sex in wolves, like, they apparently do it too. There was even one on gay lions.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise me. “Figures that our human halves are more screwed up than our wolves.”
After a quiet, warm minute, Dustin said, “Have you ever wondered about a mate bond?”
“In general, or… or you and me? Isn’t it too soon?” My breath caught. I wondered if he might take that as a rejection.
“Whoa, yeah, way too soon for a bond that can only be broken by death. No, just in general. What it feels like. My dad said it was like the bond to an Alpha, except more personal and without the absolute power. He knew when Mom had strong emotions, felt when she died, but he couldn’t have commanded her like an Alpha does his pack. ”
I didn’t like to look back, but I told him, “My mom was half-destroyed when Dad died and her bond broke, but she was so strong. She didn’t like the rest of the pack, worried they’d make her marry another wolf.
She traveled all the way to the only other pack she knew of, to ask Alpha to take us in.
She was never the same afterward, so I guess the mate bond could be a curse as well as a blessing. ”
“Alpha bonds, too. I heard packs are traumatized when the Alpha dies.” Dustin scooted over, and I rolled onto my side so we could face each other. “We don’t need a bond, to be together as wolves, do we?”
“Not by my reckoning.”
“I love you.” Dustin brushed a fingertip along my cheekbone. “I want to stay with you because you matter. Not because I’m tied to you. Not because I can’t leave.”
“Agreed.” I caught his fingers in mine and hung on. “Together by choice. No stupid wolves can tear us apart, no bonds to lock us together. Choice, every time.”
“We’ll build something good. A life. This old building full of a human pack.” He grinned. “Maybe the Justice League will ride again in a good cause, even if it’s not to our personal benefit.”
I wondered what Dustin’s slightly flexible morality would consider a good cause, but I trusted him to talk issues over with me. “Like Paul Newman and Robert Redford.”
“I’m Paul Newman,” Dustin said quickly. “He’s better looking.”
“And older.”
“And yet better looking.”
I laughed. “You ever wonder if those two find a dark corner on the set sometimes, and have a walk on the wild side? They sure have chemistry in those movies.”
“Eh. Movies. They’re good actors. But maybe. I wouldn’t mind being a fly on that wall.” Dustin curled in against me, but fidgeted and cursed. “I’m sticky as hell. What do you say, share a shower? Followed by a snack?”
Something long suppressed in me, something that yearned for casual snacks and movie nights, for shared spaces and love that included sticky aftermaths with yawns and itchy thighs from stubble, opened and bloomed like a desert after the rain.
This was the life I wanted. This was the man I wanted it with.
Mate. Told you. My wolf curled into a ball down inside me, tail over his nose, relaxed and content.
I didn’t need any bond to know what Dustin was to me.
“Come on,” I told him, swinging my legs out to sit on the side of the bed, my ass perfectly achy.
“Shower, yeah, if you don’t expect me to get it up again any time soon.
Snacks, definitely. I got those cookies you like.
Afterward, I should oil the door to the stairwell.
It creaks.” I stood, reached down, and hauled him to his feet against me, loving the way the impact of his muscular body made me stagger.
“Come on, mate,” I told him. “Let’s get to work on that to-do list.”