CHAPTER EIGHT

Animal Instinct

Max stared down at the last in that string of text messages.

Muscles: I didn’t mean to hurt you.

They were all still there, waiting for him.

He reread the whole stream.

He tossed his phone from hand to hand. His ears got hot.

Finally, unable to resist, he typed back, fingers shaking slightly – defensive and childish.

Max: I can’t help the way they look.

Immediate response.

Muscles: Who cares how they look? Do they hurt?

Max stared at that line for a long while. What’s going on?

Max’s phone rang.

“Fuckin’ A, Bryan, you actually want to talk?”

“Max.” Bryan’s voice was gruff, raw. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk that much, because silence immediately descended.

Max thought about hanging up. Except that he did want to talk. He always wanted to talk. “Look, you idiot. It happens when you hit puberty and can’t control quintessence. All us sumages get them. Mine are so extensive because I handle so much power. Or that’s what they tell me. It’s just the way it is. Did you miss the part where I’m broken? A failed mage. Screwing up quintessence always has consequences.”

“Do they hurt, Max?”

Why was he so obsessed with that? “Only when I’m Placing a Surge, then, yeah. They hurt.”

“Please let me see you again.”

“Bryan. They aren’t going anywhere. They won’t heal. It’s how I am. Trace lines will always be there. I can’t be with someone who’s disgusted by the way I look naked.” Max’s breath hitched. “You have to know that.”

“What?!” The wolf sounded genuinely shocked.

“I saw you. I saw your face. That morning, when you woke up and looked at me.”

“That wasn’t you! That was me.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“No. Max. No! I thought, that night, when I touched you all over, not knowing they were there, that it caused you pain. I thought…they looked so raw. They looked like they hurt. I thought I hurt you!” His voice had risen. He sounded a little hysterical.

Max’s own memory of that morning hitched and shifted. “You were disgusted with yourself?” He whispered it.

“I thought I hurt you!”

The werewolf repeated it like this should make perfect sense. Max frowned. “Well, you didn’t. Not until you looked at me with that face.”

“Only face I got.”

“You know what I mean.” Max was too wound up to be pert with him.

The werewolf’s voice went slightly huskier. “Max, you’re the hottest man I’ve ever seen. I don’t care about your scars so long as you don’t suffer when I touch them. I can’t…”

A stutter while his kindhearted beastie tried to find the right words.

“I can’t stand the idea that I’d hurt you.”

“I don’t get it. Why so upset about them, then?”

Bryan sighed on the other end of the phone. “I’m a Beta. It’s… Damn it Max, why is this so difficult? I don’t know enough about you. Why didn’t you tell me about the scars? Why didn’t you tell me it was a sumage thing?”

“Why didn’t you tell me this was a Beta reaction? Why didn’t you give me insight into all the stuff I don’t know about werewolves? I can’t predict this kind of thing any more than you can. I don’t know what you don’t know, Bryan. I don’t know how you’ll react. Frankly, you behaved like all the others. Except, it seems, not for quite the same reason. Can you tell me now what to expect next?”

“You’ll let there be a next?”

Max considered. “I need to see your face to know whether to believe you.”

“You’ll let me in?”

Silence.

“I’m coming over right now. I’ll stand naked in your driveway if that’s what you want.” Bryan hung up.

Max cleaned his apartment. And looked up some online articles on Beta werewolves. And cleaned his apartment some more. And didn’t put on deodorant. He thought about it. But he didn’t.

* * *

Biff should have gotten a speeding ticket, that’s how fast he rode.

“You got here quick.” Max opened the door for him. “Where are you staying, anyway?”

“Outer Richmond. Friend of a friend’s place.” Drag queen. Ghost.

Max nodded and gestured for him to sit.

Biff didn’t want to sit, but he did it to make Max feel better. He examined his sumage from under his lashes. Taking in all the parts of this man that he’d let himself not see. Or perhaps he’d been blinded by his nose, and then he’d been blinded by….well….a blindfold.

Now Biff realized that Max’s jerky movements, the angles of him, that awkward shell, wasn’t a front. It was a defense. Max’s fast verbal volleys were flinches in disguise. The harsh beat of his flirtation, that was shame. He was ashamed of himself. This magnificent man.

“I wasn’t rejecting you, Max. I swear I wasn’t. I was just so frightened. We had this glorious thing—”

Max arched a demanding eyebrow.

Biff looked at his own hands, because they made no demands, and forced himself to continue. Max’s scars needed his words to heal. He had to try.

“Well, glorious for me, and then to realize I’d been in it alone. You’d let me do this to you rather than with you.”

A puff of a sigh and Max folded himself down into the small chair opposite. Close enough that the smell of him, the warmth, was like a benediction. But not close enough for forgiveness.

“Silly wolf. You know I enjoyed myself – you kind of swallowed that fact.”

Biff wouldn’t allow this to be made light of. Not yet. “Yeah, but the rest of the time, I was all about my need to mark you. I thought every touch or lick or…you know…” Words fled him, so he pushed back the side of his upper lip with one finger, to show the canine there. “…caused you pain.”

“No, Muscles. I liked it. I liked it all. It didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite. Okay?”

Biff risked a glance up, caught the truth in those blue eyes. Believed it because he wanted to so badly. He let relief flood his body, his blood injected with light. His eyes prickled and he was grateful Max wasn’t a werewolf, to smell the tears that lurked there.

“I take it BDSM is not in our future?”

Biff smiled, looking back at his hands. “You could wail on me if you liked. Might help me feel better. You had the blindfold. You into that?”

Max gave a dry chuckle. “No, not really. Not from either side. I don’t mind you taking control a bit, though. I’m not into those muscles purely for decoration.”

Biff was overwhelmed with the idea of holding Max down by the wrists, or with one arm across that smooth chest while he took whatever he liked. Tasted where he would.

He looked up, forgetting some of his guilt. “Yeah?” It was odd how much Max took up of Biff’s reality. Like he was more in focus than any other person.

Max laughed fully this time. “Whoa there! We can’t go spinning back into that again so quick.”

Biff glanced at the man’s lap. “You sure?”

“Won’t solve anything. And I need to know more. I need to know that won’t happen again.”

Biff nodded. A fair request. “Okay.”

Max reached across the miles that separated them and took his hand.

Biff inhaled. He’d been not scent-hounding out of respect. But touch was permission.

“You took a shower,” he said, sounding pathetic.

“I went for a run. And it’s been three days. I could hardly go to work smelling like spunk.”

“You run? Of course you do, that body.”

Max squeezed Biff’s hands, both of them in both of his.

Biff focused on the way Max’s tan fingers interlaced with his own larger, blunter, whiter ones. He noticed how the sleeves of Max’s shirt were long enough to cover his wrist bones completely. Biff moved his thumb to push the cuff back. The first of the scars started there, just after the carpal bone. Hesitantly, glancing between his thumb and Max’s face, he brushed over one angry pink line.

No flinch of pain met that. Max’s blue eyes stayed wide, intent, focused on Biff.

“Is it a Beta thing?” Max asked. “This need not to hurt?”

“Maybe. Maybe just me.”

“Yet you said you used to fight for your Alpha?”

“Still would, though now we have Judd and Kev. I don’t enjoy it. Never did. Not the way they do. It was mostly when we were kids.”

“What is it you do, Biff? I mean in society.”

Biff was oddly delighted by the banality of the question. “Medic. EMS. At least I was. I’ll need to get recertified for California.”

“Of course you’re a medic. Can you guide a healing shift?

“Yeah. For encouragement. Can’t force the shift, though.”

Max nodded. “How are you with non-pack shifters?”

Biff let him divert the conversation for now. “I’ve not much experience, but I’m trained for it.”

“Can you do a savage healing assist?”

“Yep.”

“Cool. I’ve never seen one done.”

“Still interested in quintessence, even though you can’t access it properly?”

“Well, yeah. Quintessence is kinda cool. It’s not to blame for my scars. Not really.”

“Would you tell me about them?” Biff tried not to sound too hopeful in his need to understand.

Max sighed but kept hold of Biff’s hands.

Biff carefully, cautiously ran his thumb under Max’s sleeve again, to the place behind the wrist bones where those scars began. It was a small victory that Max didn’t tug down his sleeve. He let Biff’s thumb continued its lazy exploration. He allowed a touch that started out as a question to become a caress. It doesn’t hurt him, it really doesn’t. And a reassurance.

Biff waited and hoped. He wasn’t afraid of silence and he wasn’t compelled to fill it. That was Max. Part of this contorted, fragile Max, part of what made him wonderful, and frenetic, and alive.

“Mages aren’t like werewolves. We aren’t made, we’re born. And I come from a long and pretty inglorious line of major asshole Surges.”

Biff waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, Biff felt compelled to make a correction, to ensure understanding went both ways. “We’re both.”

“Both what?”

“Werewolves are born and made. You need the gene for it, but you also need the bite. Something in the saliva, doctors say, will activate latent savage abilities and allow first shift. It’s dangerous. Not everyone survives. If you don’t have the werewolf gene, you certainly won’t, but even with it, some of us are – I don’t know – weak, I guess. No one thought Alec would make it. Not even Alec. And we have another one, Colin. Delicate. But they both survived.”

“Does it hurt, to be made wolf?”

“Every time.” Biff wanted to share this with Max. Max who claimed that his scars didn’t hurt. What had the internet called them? Trace lines.

“Every single shift?” Max cocked his head, showing the fine curve of his neck. No trace lines there.

“Yeah. All the bones in our bodies break and reform. It hurts. It’s also our survival.”

“Savage healing.”

“Exactly. We use it every time we shift.”

“Useful. Odd choice, though, to become a medic.”

Biff shrugged and tried to explain the complexity of his nature in one short sentence. “I like helping people.”

“I’d love to see what you look like as a wolf.”

Biff hung his head. He wasn’t a particularly handsome wolf. Just like he wasn’t a particularly handsome man. “You should see Alec, he’s beautiful. Or Judd. Or Lovejoy.”

“I’d rather see you. The tracers hurt me as well. But only when there’s a Surge about. I get a little twinge if there’s a Siphon or Sluice in action. Too much quintessence in the air. It’s like an ache and an itch rolled in one and crawling over and under my skin. But I’m made to Surge, so that’s what my trace lines respond to most.”

“Tell me more.”

“About the pain?”

“I’d rather not think about that.” Biff shuddered. His own skin prickled at the idea of Max hurting in a way Biff couldn’t stop, couldn’t repel, and couldn’t take on in his stead.

“Me neither. So, more about the way it works?”

“You’re born to it?”

“I was born to be a Surge and then I failed.”

“How did it happen?”

“Puberty hit, my voice dropped, and I told my dad I was gay. Then he basically blasted me with quintessence.”

Biff held his breath. He knew homophobia. He’d fought for Alec and closeted himself because of it. But what father tried to kill his son just for being gay? Okay, right, my father tried to kill Alec. But Butch is an asshole idiot.

Max continued. “Maybe it was a test. Maybe it was out of fear. Maybe it was just hate. I don’t know. My dad was complicated. Perhaps in my gayness he saw the end of his glorious line? You see, another Surge could have used quintessence to form a shield, just deflect a blast like that. So, when he hit me, I did what I’d been taught. I reached in and pulled at the quintessence to protect myself. Or I tried to.”

Max’s blue eyes were unfocused and distant. Watching a memory of himself.

“It didn’t work. It felt like a net of pain burst all around and inside me. God, it hurt. And I’m not sure if that’s because I was trying too hard, or the sheer volume of my father’s blast. Or just the tracers forming for the first time.”

Biff squeezed Max’s hand, encouraging him to continue. Trying to imagine the boy Max was, built for this one thing, and failing so spectacularly to be what was expected. To be trained and taught all his life to become a Surge, and end up sumage instead.

“Why no scars on your face or hands?”

“Or feet or cock? I don’t know. Nobody does. Something to with circulation.”

“And they only hurt when you work quintessence?” Biff had to make absolutely certain.

“Only then. It tries to split me open, like the trace lines are seams and the quintessence wants to bloat outward. Because it’s not my abilities that I’m working with, you see, it’s someone else’s already-used quintessence. My body knows it’s wrong.”

“Could I help?”

Max laughed. “You are a sweetie, aren’t you?”

Biff felt his cheeks flame. “It’s not that, it’s just I have this odd feeling like I should be able to help.”

* * *

God, he really is the most adorable thing, this big, sheepish werewolf.

“I think that’s likely just a residual emotional connection. You know, from your first time with a man and it being so good and all.”

“Yeah?” Bryan looked up through those long lashes, his hazel eyes accepting everything because Max wished it, not because he believed him. “Good?”

“Yeah. Very good.”

“You smell amazing, did you know that? You aren’t meant to. All mages are bad, coolant and chemical and flameless fire. But sumages are usually the worst, like the sweet has gone rotten.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Max flinched. “But not me?”

“Naw. Brown butter and caramel, most of the time. Spiced rum occasionally. Most places.”

“Not everywhere?”

Bryan’s eyes flicked over his body, going from neck to crotch to feet and then back to crotch. “Not everywhere. Though that’s good too, in a different way. I wouldn’t mind checking, just to be sure.” His voice slipped a little lower, became a little scratchier.

“You’d not mind, huh?” Max tried to pull himself back. Something twigged him. Why do I smell good to a werewolf? That’s not normal. I usually don’t smell good to any hunting shifter. That’s why I’ve never fucked one before. “I wonder if I smell good to your whole pack.”

Bryan gave a funny little growl. “I certainly hope not. I’m not the only gay one, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Max,” he grumbled, “we’re not solid yet. Maybe after we fuck again you can tease me.”

“Well, let’s fuck again, then. Anything to give me more teasing options.”

Bryan pounced, grabbed him, and fell back to sit on the couch once more, only now with a new and improved Max-shaped blanket sprawled atop him. He buried his face in Max’s neck. His chin was scratchy and his breath hot. Max supposed he would have to get accustomed to this. If he was lucky. The werewolf huffed him, inhaled him.

Bryan groaned. “Okay, maybe after we’ve fucked a lot, you can tease me. And then you can meet my pack.”

Max tensed up. That was basically like being told you’d be meeting the relatives. Only all Bryan’s family were large and male and turned into slavering beasts once a month.

A wide, warm palm caressed his back in slow comforting circles, easing the tension. “Pack can wait.”

Max expected Bryan to turn into the aggressor then. After all, he’d grabbed first, but the werewolf seemed content just to cuddle him. While Bryan’s cock was certainly interested in taking things further, the man himself stayed calm.

Max ground against him, trying to give him ideas. Encouragement.

Bryan’s touch remained light and gentle. Perhaps he was still afraid of causing pain.

I’m going to have to show him it’s fine.

Max didn’t mind. He could be the aggressor too. And now he knew for certain that he’d have a hard time physically damaging Bryan.

He leaned back into the support of that large hand.

The werewolf held him suspended like that, pierced by a hazel-eyed look of inquiry.

“Yes, Muscles? What do you want? Use your words.”

Bryan gave him an ironic look. “Can I see you? Would you take this off?” He plucked at the hem of Max’s shirt with his free hand.

Max frowned. But why not risk it all now, before he became too addicted to those pleading eyes? He unbuttoned the shirt cuffs. Bryan, after a moment’s hesitation, began at Max’s collar, unbuttoning down the front, his big fingers fumbling a little. When he was finished, he smoothed the shirt off Max’s shoulders, eyes following the lines of his tracers. Frowning.

“They’re faded a bit from last time.” He accused, as though angry with the reliability of his own memory.

Max nodded. Relieved that it was only a question and not something worse. “Yeah, if I didn’t disPlace a Surge for a long time, they’d eventually turn white. I work around all manner of mages, civic and savage, so they often activate a little. Keeps them…fresh. Raw-looking. I know a few sumages who took to isolation, cloistering themselves away from mages and shifters, just to avoid the pain.”

“Not you?”

“I’m no weakling to absent myself from society for a little sting here or there.” Screw ‘em all, Max always thought. I’m not going to hide like some social embarrassment. He’d stayed. Close to his father. He’d built himself a life, dating men, working a menial government job, rubbing both in his dad’s face. “Fuck ’em.”

“Ah. Of course.” The werewolf nodded, amused. He smoothed one of the lines with a finger. His eyes fixed on Max, searching for a reaction.

Max reacted, shivering at the touch. Feeling a trail of heat that had nothing to do with his trace lines.

Bryan smiled, showing a bit of canine. Max thought he saw his lover’s eyes flash yellow before the werewolf lowered his lashes and bent forward.

He licked the lines. Intent, focused. Following them over Max’s chest. He lapped at his nipples, softly with the flat of his tongue, and then rougher when Max responded with a tiny moan. He moved on down, following the lines as if they weaved a pathway. Over the muscles on Max’s stomach, the V formed by his hip bones, dipped into his belly button. Max gasped and shivered a little but mostly just watched, fascinated, as the man worshiped his scars. Like they were a road map laid out just for him.

Bryan paused finally.

Max realized then that he was clawing at Bryan’s massive shoulders, encouraging him or trying to get him to stop, Max wasn’t certain which. When Bryan paused, Max yanked him up for a kiss. Blistering with gratitude and possibly terror.

The werewolf sighed into Max’s needs, allowing him to take. The broad muscles under Max’s frantic scrabbling hands relaxed, relieved. Silly boy, he was still worried about causing pain.

Max kissed him with encouragement then. Putting aside his own fears in an effort to allay Bryan’s. He pushed himself back and off Bryan’s lap, and stood to strip out of the rest of his clothing.

“You can follow them anywhere they lead. It won’t hurt me. I like it.” I love it and I fear it and it is way too intimate. But you need to know it doesn’t hurt me, and I need to know it doesn’t disgust you, so I’ll risk this thing. Max tried not to think about how much it opened him to this man. How much he was allowing that he’d never allowed before.

Grabbing the werewolf by the hand, he hauled him to his feet – well, pretended to – and pulled him toward the bed.

* * *

The trace lines ran everywhere. All over Max’s chest and arms, his legs and back. Biff followed them. Wondered if he might learn them, memorize them until they became a familiar pattern, like a daily commute.

They did not decorate his cock but they did network over his balls, so Biff followed them there. Lapping gently, soothing and tickling, as it turned out. Max writhed. Biff held him down with both arms over his stomach and mouthed about, exploring textures and scent, until Max’s poor neglected prick was angry and red with need.

Max was spouting a litany of foul words that finally resolved themselves into “Stop.”

Biff immediately stopped, drew back. Tense. Have I done something wrong again?

“It’s not fair that you’re the one constantly driving me crazy. My turn.”

Biff relaxed. “Okay.” He rolled over onto his back.

Max loomed over him, grinning, all tilted blue eyes and wicked cheekbones.

He didn’t lick. He gnawed and bit. He sucked up hickeys and left teeth marks. It was like Biff was his last meal, and he was bent on savoring the feast. He tested different parts of Biff’s body for sensitivity. The thin skin over his ribs and collarbones, and inside his elbows and thighs. Max clearly liked the places where Biff was blue-veined and very pale.

Biff loved it. Max was marking him in his own way. Biff was back to being filled with shards of toffee – spiky and sweet. They weren’t melting this time, just fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces so they fit into every limb and digit of his body, lodged there, sharp with desire and sticky with wanting.

Max prodded him to turn over so he could explore the back of Biff’s knees, and spend some time on his ass, not in quite the same manner as Biff had done, but with as much intent. Max nibbled and massaged, fascinated by the roundness. Biff squirmed – he wasn’t as smooth as Max. He worried about peach fuzz and… Nope, Max was definitely not opposed.

Max drew one fingernail down the indentation of Biff’s spine, which caused him to arch up involuntarily and tingle all over. He’d never thought pleasure and pain could combine so exquisitely. He wasn’t certain whether it was the sensation itself that excited him, or the smell of Max’s arousal, or the certain knowledge he would be covered in marks, memories of this moment.

Of course, they’ll be healed and gone soon. I hope they at least last long enough for me to see them later in a mirror.

Max chivvied him back over. Biff felt his stomach muscles quivering. He was floating in some strange euphoric place where his prick, near to exploding and dripping with desire, was also somehow not as important as the marking, as the tiny shafts of pain-pleasure Max was causing.

Or so he thought.

Until Max deep-throated him.

“Hell!” Biff nearly came off the bed. Nearly came down Max’s throat at the same time.

Max grinned up at him around his cock, blue eyes twinkling.

Biff collapsed. Panting. Tried to play it cool.

Max did it again, all the way to the root, then swallowed around the head so that Biff heard himself give an involuntary groan, as if protesting his own effort not to climax immediately and disgrace himself.

Fortunately, Max retracted slightly.

“Fine.” Biff panted. “I’m impressed.”

Max did it again.

“And I am going to cum if you keep that up.”

Max kept it up.

Biff did not. He came, quite possibly harder than he ever had in his life.

Max shut his blue, blue eyes in a kind of ecstasy and swallowed with a beatific expression.

Abruptly he popped off. “Holy shit, it’s, like, totally spicy!”

“Valley girl, much?” Biff grinned down at him.

“I got a hint before, but dude, that’s hot.”

“Bad?”

“No way. I’m a three-alarm chili man myself. This is mild. Delicious though, salty, sweet, and spicy. You’re better than the local taco truck.”

Biff looked nonplussed. “I am? So long as it’s not fish taco, I guess.”

“Definitely carne asada.”

“You calling me flank steak, boy?”

“Or maybe if I’m lucky, lengua.”

Biff could take the hint. He grinned. “Fine, then. Now you.” He made a move to flip them over and reverse positions, but Max crawled up his body, leaving a wet smear. “No need.”

“You came from sucking me off?” Biff’s well-milked cock tried to twitch at the very idea.

“What? You think you’re the only one in this relationship who gets off on looking after his man?”

Biff didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around the sumage and tugged him down to lie fully atop him. He arranged Max like a tablecloth, despite Max’s amused grumbling about being sticky and too warm. Biff stroked his hands down Max’s back and ass and thighs, as far as he could reach, pressing him down, enjoying the lean weight, inhaling his scent as if he could be absorbed. Biff didn’t say anything, but he glowed with joy, not because of the sex, although that was wonderful, but because Max had said both relationship and his man in the same sentence.