Rogue of Rome

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

CALEB

“And it looks like we can expect scattered showers into this evening.”

My suitcase lay open on the bed. My backpack sat beside it, already stuffed with the things I’d need on the plane. I looked up from the T-shirt I was folding and raised my eyebrows at the television mounted on the bedroom’s far wall. “No shit.”

As far as I could tell, England had three types of weather: rain, heavy rain, and rain with a grudge.

The forecaster flashed a smile as bright as her hair, which was a color I’d only seen in sports drinks and roadside flares.

Her dress was a buttery yellow that should have clashed but worked somehow.

Not that I knew anything about fashion. People loved to think gay dudes were born knowing their way around a color wheel, but that gene must have dipped when I was in the womb.

I’d also played college football for four years, and my wardrobe was limited to compression T-shirts and running shorts that came in a three-pack.

“Looking at the rest of the week,” the forecaster said in a clipped accent, “temperatures will remain chilly overnight with some rare winter thunderstorms popping up over the weekend. It’s shaping up to be quite an eventful January.”

Sighing, I tossed the shirt into my suitcase and pulled another from the basket of clean laundry on the bed. The lettering was faded, the blocky “Hale Valley Christian College” almost indecipherable. But the football in the center had survived, along with the “two-time national champions” boast.

The T-shirt was my last tangible link to my old life in New York, which seemed like it had happened a thousand years ago instead of two-and-a-half months.

I didn’t play football anymore. Didn’t attend classes.

Didn’t have to drag my ass out of bed before dawn to avoid seeing my parents.

Didn’t hit the stadium to run gassers while Coach Gannon barked orders through a mouthful of sunflower seeds.

I didn’t do any of that stuff anymore. Because I wasn’t human anymore.

Thunder rumbled outside, drawing my gaze to the window. So much for rare. From the sound of it, the winter thunderstorm didn’t plan on waiting for the weekend.

Balling up the T-shirt, I pitched it back into the hamper and went to the dresser.

“Socks, socks, socks,” I chanted under my breath. Jesse preferred ankle socks, but I was a crew-length diehard.

His half of the drawer was like a small textile military operation. Ankle socks were sorted by color, each pair rolled and standing at attention in a neat row. Whites, blacks, grays. Knowing Jesse, he’d probably alphabetized them by brand.

My half was…not as neat.

I dug in, unearthing a single white crew sock. Another moment of digging revealed a gray pair loosely folded around each other. When I had a mix of white and gray, I shoved the drawer shut and swung toward the bed. My reflection in the mirror above the dresser brought me up short.

The same face I’d seen for the past twenty-three years stared back at me. Same nose. Same spray of freckles I hated. Same boring blue eyes. My blond waves had grown out enough to brush my nape.

But the guy looking back at me had put on muscle in a way that the old Caleb Lawson—the one who’d survived on dining hall food to avoid eating at home—hadn’t been anywhere close to.

My shoulders strained the seams of my Henley, and my chest was auditioning for the next Marvel movie.

I hadn’t checked my height, but I was probably closing in on six-foot-two these days.

Coach Gannon would have spit out his coffee and demanded to know what I’d been eating.

The answer was simple: whatever Jesse van der Meer put in front of me.

My mate was a former chef and current hottie.

He didn’t do anything halfway in the kitchen.

Eggs were never just eggs. They were fluffy-ass omelets stuffed with ham, cheddar, and chives.

Toast was thick slices of sourdough smeared with butter and homemade jam.

His cinnamon rolls were the size of my head and topped with cream cheese frosting good enough to lick off your fingers.

Yeah, my man was excellent at topping. Cinnamon rolls. Pizza. Me.

Desire flared to life in my chest like a pilot light. In the mirror, my eyes went an icy blue, the irises glowing like I’d dropped a couple of mini flashlights into my skull. Which, weird, but also kind of cool. It wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to me since I turned furry.

Five months ago, I’d been a college senior limping my way toward a business degree I didn’t really want. Then a rogue werewolf had bitten me on a jogging trail and turned my life into a confusing shit show.

Jesse had been sent to track the rogue and found me instead. Lucky him. My inner wolf, which was apparently something of a slut, had taken one look at his thick pecs and catastrophic hotness and said mine.

I hadn’t known it at the time, but werewolf law had required Jesse to kill me. Rogues couldn’t pass on magical gifts, and the wolves they sired were incapable of shifting from human to wolf.

Except I’d shifted. Jesse had helped me through it—along with helping me make a clean break from my parents.

And when the werewolf Council of Elders had tossed us both in a prison cell and put me on trial to prove I lacked control, I’d somehow turned their attack inside out and projected visions of the past and future all over the chamber.

So I had a gift, after all, and a rare one to boot. Surprise, assholes.

But I hadn’t been able to summon a vision since. Not once. Most days, it was hard to convince myself the visions in the Council chamber had ever happened. If Jesse hadn’t witnessed them, I might have dismissed them as a dream or just wishful thinking.

Light flashed outside. A second later, thunder boomed in the distance. On the television, the weather forecaster tossed her long red hair over her shoulder.

“That’s all for me. Tune back in at nine for a peek at the month ahead.”

I snorted. My money was on more rain. Crossing to my suitcase, I dumped the socks on top and returned to the dresser, where I rooted for underwear.

Jesse wasn’t certain how long we’d stay in Rome, but the Council had rented us a house so I assumed we’d have access to a washing machine.

Still, it seemed wise to pack extra. I couldn’t predict what kind of fuckery awaited us in Rome, but I could at least tackle it in clean underwear.

Scooping up five pairs, I shuttled them to the bed and stuffed them next to my T-shirts.

I’d worn boxer briefs since high school but lately I’d experimented with bikinis that hugged my junk and framed my ass like a painting.

The first time Jesse had walked in on me shaving in them, he’d nearly swallowed his tongue.

It was worth hauling extra underwear across Europe to see Jesse van der Meer slack-jawed and drooling.

Smiling at the thought of it, I grabbed my phone charger from the nightstand and shoved it in one of my backpack’s side pockets. My phone from New York had gotten lost somewhere between France and London, but Jesse had bought me a shiny new model from an Apple store in Knightsbridge.

The man himself appeared in the bedroom doorway, his dark eyebrows pulled tight as he stared down at his own phone.

At six-foot-three, he had to duck slightly to clear the frame.

His hair was a rich, dark brown. His eyes were the same color, but they went gold when he was angry…

or aroused. A thin gray sweater had given up trying to contain the muscles in his chest and shoulders.

Something about his frown made apprehension stir in my gut. I waited for my Spidey senses to tingle or for some kind of prophetic vision to pop into my head.

Nothing. As usual.

“What is it?” I asked.

Jesse looked up. His brown eyes traveled from me to my suitcase and back again, and his expression softened even as the frown lingered.

“Stefanos just sent a message,” he said. “He wants us to go see Sterling Moray before we leave for Rome tomorrow.”

My chest tightened, a phantom porcupine throwing out quills left and right.

I didn’t have a concrete reason to dislike Sterling Moray.

I’d never even met him, but I’d heard him speak to Jesse on the phone.

He was powerful and rich, with the kind of money that made owning a private jet a casual thing.

Everything I knew about the witch had come secondhand from Jesse.

And maybe that was the problem. Jesse had done Sterling a favor years before he met me—a favor big enough for him to reward Jesse with the gift of telekinesis.

And when Jesse had tapped Sterling for an emergency plane ride to get us out of the States, the witch had readily accommodated us.

Coolly British, he’d sounded amused over the phone.

Familiar. He knew Jesse in a way I didn’t.

Was I jealous? Fuck yes. But I was keeping that shit to myself. Jesse and I were two months into a relationship. Not enough time for me to be openly deranged about him.

“Did Stefanos say why?” I asked.

Exasperation flitted across Jesse’s face. “Stefanos doesn’t like putting things in writing, especially over text.” He pocketed the phone.

“Could you call him?” I asked. “It’s shitty to make us show up for a meeting when we don’t know what to expect.”

Jesse shook his head. “Stefanos won’t put us in harm’s way.”

I folded my arms. Jesse glanced at my chest, and little flames of desire licked through my veins. I might have flexed my biceps a bit as I held his stare.

“You mean like when he had his goons beat us up in France before they dragged us to London and threw us in prison?” I asked. “That Stefanos?”

Jesse came to me and pulled me into his arms. And I let him because there was no version of him I’d say no to. At least, I hadn’t found one yet.

He brushed his knuckles over my cheek. “Things are different now, babe. You have a powerful gift.”