Chapter Twenty-eight
Later that evening, after they’d decimated the food Pat had cooked as well as the wine, Ethan stood at the kitchen sink rinsing plates and loading the dishwasher. He heard the door slam behind the girls and then Pat joined him a minute later, a solid presence at his back, not pressing in on his awareness but still something he was aware of in a way that had to be the result of their mystical wolf bond. It still made him roll his eyes, if only to himself to think about it, but Ethan was slowly coming around to accept the reality. Or maybe, he was just running out of reasons to fight it. It took a whole lot of energy to resist the wolf, and he had to ask himself in light of everything he’d learned recently, in light of everything that had happened, why did he want to resist in the first place?
Pat—Ethan struggled to think the word still, but—Pat loved him as much as a man who had known him for eight months, who had followed him around the fucking globe, who had seen Ethan at some of his lowest lows and in his most brilliant moments, could. And despite months of butting heads with one another, the wolf loved him and wanted to be with him.
Ethan had a super hot, smart, loyal man obsessed with him and he had been so damned afraid of feeling anything, of being weak, that he’d done his best to push Pat away at every turn.
Well, he’d acted like an idiot and he’d had his reasons for it, but he was coming out the other side now and it felt…
He felt good. Light. It wasn’t just Mallory’s news about Ali, but that helped.
Still, he’d kept these thoughts so far safely tucked away inside his own head, and Pat was still operating with a sort of learned care that made Ethan’s chest and neck flush. It had been a long time since anyone had ever really felt enough for him to treat him with care, and even if he didn’t need it now, the fact that Pat was trying…
“You don’t have to do that,” the wolf protested, still standing on the other side of the kitchen.
“You cooked. It’s the least I can do considering.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Pat replied, sounding frustrated.
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. He’d been filling the sink with hot water and soap to soak the roasting pan Pat had used for the pork and his hands were covered in fluffy suds. Without giving himself time to second guess the impulse, Ethan raised his right hand and flicked soap at the wolf, all it took was a breath of magic—not as strong as it would have been if he’d used his left hand, but still responsive now that he didn’t have a vampire trying to choke the life out of him—for the missile to cross the distance, exploding in Pat’s face. The wolf sputtered, staring at him in disbelief.
“Are you twelve?”
Ethan shrugged. “Don’t act like I’m martyring myself here, I was going to let everything soak and then probably forget about it, so you’d still have to finish cleaning up on your own.”
Pat rolled his eyes and grabbed a towel off the rack to wipe himself clean. “I’m surprised you don’t just…” he waved his hand around in a figure eight.
“And what? Bippity, boppity, boop? I’m not Sleeping Beauty’s fairy godmother.”
“My mistake. I mean the resemblance alone is—”
“Oh, fuck off,” Ethan snapped, but he was grinning despite himself, and the wolf was standing closer now, almost within touching distance. He turned off the water and snatched the towel from Pat to dry off his hands.
The wolf nodded at his cast. “How does that feel?”
“Fine. Don’t worry, I’m being good and not getting it wet.”
Pat nodded absently, and it looked like he was gearing up to leave Ethan alone again, but the mage was still riding the wave of his own personal realization combined with Mallory’s news and suddenly it just felt ridiculous to let the wolf put distance between them again. If he wanted things to change, then Ethan knew he had to be the one to change them. He’d trained the wolf well and now he had some untraining to do.
“You’re smiling,” Pat said with a curious tone to his voice.
“Am I?” Ethan replied, touching his own face and surprised to see that Pat was right; he was smiling. He laughed, if awkwardly, and snagged the sleeve of Pat’s sweater before he could walk off. “Hey. What else did you have planned for this evening?”
The wolf gave him a confused look.
“Work? I mean, do you need to go into the station or anything?”
“No. I hadn’t really planned anything. You?”
Ethan spread his empty hands and shrugged. Trying not to over think things—he didn’t have much experience acting like a couple—he closed the distance between them and very carefully placed the hand not covered in a cast on Pat’s chest. He felt the wolf let out a shaky breath, pale ice-blue eyes darting over his face like Pat couldn’t believe that he was touching him, or like he didn’t know how to respond. And maybe he didn’t, Ethan realized, thinking back on their last disastrous night spent trying to fuck one another and how he’d—
He cleared his throat and met Pat’s eyes. “I need to apologize to you.”
The wolf was already shaking his head, but Ethan curled his arm up and around Pat’s neck, holding him in place. They stood close together but not too close. A respectable amount of closeness for a respectable and serious conversation.
“No, I do. The other night. When I came home from the club—”
Pat had his jaw clenched and couldn’t seem to meet his eyes anymore, but Ethan knew he had to get this all out now before he chickened out again. If they were going to move forward, he had to wipe the slate clean between them.
“No, listen to me. The other night, when I came home from Le Sang, I wanted you to fuck me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ethan cupped the back of the wolf’s head, feeling him tremble and that guilt was back, but this time he knew he had only himself to blame. The wolf had given him his heart weeks—no, months ago—and Ethan had handled it roughly, without consideration, and he could blame it on inexperience, but he was a grown-ass adult. He should be more careful by now. He was going to be more careful from now on, he told himself.
“You didn’t,” he repeated, shaking Pat a little to make sure he paid attention to what he was saying. “I’ve been in a bad place since we got back to the city, and I haven’t been as kind to you as you’ve been to me, and I’m—fuck, I’m sorry, okay?”
“It’s been a lot for you,” Pat said in a low voice.
“Yeah, it has. But you’ve been here with me this whole time, and I need you to know that I appreciate that.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m sorry for how I’ve acted. And I can’t promise that it might never happen again, because life can suck. And we all have low points, and sometimes those low points stick around for a while. But I’m grateful that you stuck around too. That you’ve been trying—and I know you’ve been trying even though I haven’t made it easy.”
Slowly, Ethan felt the wolf’s big hands slide up to cup his sides, hardly exerting any pressure. But they were standing so still and close together it felt as though every touch were amplified a thousandfold until he could count each individual one of Pat’s eyelashes and feel every breath moving through his lungs into Ethan’s as though they were his breaths too.
“And the other night was not your fault. I asked you for something and you tried to give it to me. It’s not your fault that I wasn’t being honest. With myself, let alone with you. And that was a really fucking shitty thing to do.”
Pat’s fingers tightened on him, pulling him a fraction closer.
Ethan ran his fingers through the short dark strands of hair framing the wolf’s neck and sighed.
“I wish I could say it to you, but I don’t know if—”
“It’s fine,” Pat interrupted him. “You’re fine. I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
“I do care about you. It’s weird.”
He felt Pat shift his weight, could picture the confused grimace on his face.
“I’ve never really done this before, unless you count Christophe.”
The wolf made a grumpy noise, and Ethan grinned.
“Yeah, I know right. So it’s weird and I’m not going to be very good at it, but you should know that I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here, with you, and try to figure out where this leads—” but his words were swallowed up as Pat wrapped both arms around him, drawing him in close until Ethan’s face wound up smashed into his shoulder, lungs full of their combined scent that must have been overpowering to a werewolf’s nose, but had somehow started to smell like home to him. He sagged into his partner’s strength, cast cradled gently between them.
“I’m glad,” Pat said in a rough voice that might have been a little wet, but if it was then Ethan chose not to comment.
Ethan could feel them approaching the edge of his comfort with this, standing in the middle of the kitchen just holding one another without either making a move to turn the embrace into something more. Another relationship aspect that made Ethan feel out of his depth, but the wolf didn’t show any sign of letting him go, and even as he started to feel awkward—like he should be backing away and putting space between them—it also felt really nice.
Pat made a noise, something between a sigh and a whuff, that sounded almost fond and said, “Do you want me to let go?”
“I can’t quite decide,” Ethan replied, flushing at his own honesty.
“I like touching you.”
“I’m very touchable.”
“Yeah,” Pat replied in a low voice, almost growling it into the side of his head.
Ethan met the other man’s eyes and caught his breath at the heat he saw there. “I don’t supposed you’d be interested in touching me in some other less family friendly places?”
“Do you want me to?”
They weren’t precisely of a height, but in their bare feet, Pat didn’t have all that much on him so it was no work at all for Ethan to angle his head and press their mouths together in a soft kiss, just relishing the feel and taste of the wolf’s plush mouth against his, contrasted by the catch from their stubble scraping together. It sent shivers down his spine, and Pat’s hands spread out over his back, working their way under his sweater. Ethan pulled out of the kiss, feeling a twitch of interest in his cock for the first time in what felt like an age, and grinned.
“Is it too weird if we fuck in your cousin’s bed?” he asked, breathless and thinking about all the things he wanted to do with the wolf’s body.
Pat cocked his head and replied, “Fuck it. We’ll buy them a new one when we move out. You’re sure?”
Ethan nodded, and then he was lifted off his feet and carried bridal-style out of the kitchen. He huffed as the wolf mounted the stairs. “This is entirely unnecessary.”
“Don’t care,” Pat grumbled and deposited him on the rumpled bed in the master bedroom.
In the days since Ethan had been released from the hospital, the wolf had been keeping his distance by sleeping on the couch downstairs, leaving Ethan alone every night to toss and turn with his mending bones and his tumultuous thoughts. Now he worked to wiggle out of his shirt and pants, eyes trained on Pat as the wolf stripped off his own clothes. His cast wasn’t helping anything, and he winced as his bones twinged.
“Here,” Pat said, reaching for his jeans. He eased the zipper down over Ethan’s cock. He skimmed the worn cotton down and off Ethan’s legs with hands that felt almost burning against Ethan’s skin.
He came back to press his face into Ethan’s crotch without anymore preamble.
Ethan twitched and reached for the dark dead, his hips pressing up automatically and shoving his half-hard cock against the wolf’s open mouth. He shivered at the feel of hot breath skating over him through thin fabric and tangled his fingers in Pat’s hair to keep him right where he was. The wolf groaned in answer to his touch, tonguing at Ethan through his boxer briefs with greedy, unashamed abandon that made Ethan flush all down his bare chest. He wished his other hand weren’t out of commission, was dying to run his hands all over Pat’s skin, but he had to content himself with what he had, stroking and petting the wolf as he nosed his way up Ethan’s cock and then hesitated with his thumbs hooked under the waist band of his underwear.
“Take them off,” Ethan ordered, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. He’d had a lot of sex in his life—had enough sex with Pat in particular that nothing about this should have been especially arousing or different besides the prospect of having his cock sucked for the first time in a while—which, to be fair was a very arousing prospect now that he seemed to have found his libido again. But there was something about it, maybe the way Pat moved with unnatural strength and predatory grace, or maybe it was the way he could feel the wolf’s own arousal skating through the edges of the link tying them together, or maybe it was something else that Ethan was too distracted to note, but it all combined into this overwhelming moment that left him panting and breathless, sweat breaking out over his skin while his heart thundered too fast in his chest. And all he wanted was for the wolf to strip him of the last few barriers between them and press their skin together until there were no spaces left apart. Until Ethan couldn’t tell where he ended and Pat began.
Pat obeyed his order either way, easing the shorts over his cock with a reverent look on his face that made Ethan feel hot and self-conscious at the same time. He bent his legs and planted his heels on the bed so that Pat lay sprawled in the cup of his body. The bed shifted beneath them as the wolf ducked down to press his face back against Ethan’s skin. He curled his hands around Ethan’s ankles, touch gentle but firm as he smoothed his fingers over Ethan’s skin, firm where he skimmed the back of his calves and around his thighs, still not enough to distract Ethan from the press of his nose into the dip at his hip, the soft touch of a tongue against his shivering skin—or the noise Pat made when he eased the head of Ethan’s dick into the wet warmth of his mouth.
He couldn’t keep his hips still at the touch, jerking up into the wolf’s mouth with a muffled groan. Ethan let Pat ease his legs up and over his shoulders, gripping tight as the wolf went to work on his cock, working it to full stiffness with a careful determination that made Ethan’s stomach swoop and climb with the pleasure. He pushed his hips in little circles, working himself deeper into Pat’s mouth until very quickly and without warning he felt his body trembling at the edge of orgasm.
“Fuck, stop—you have to stop or I’m going to—”
Pat squeezed the tops of his thighs where he’d curled his hands around Ethan’s legs and glanced up at him from under damp lashes. His lips stretched obscenely around the width of Ethan’s cock, and the mage had to dig his nails into his scalp, the edge of pain, as he clung desperately to the edge. The wolf’s tongue moved over his skin, cheeks hallowing as he sucked a little and sank down on another half inch of Ethan’s cock, all the while without dropping his gaze.
“I’m going to—” Ethan gulped. He reached down and cupped the wolf’s cheek, finger tracing where he could feel himself making a space in his body, and shivered. Pat blinked and grabbed his hand, twining their fingers together as he sucked harder and then Ethan was coming, entire body drawn tight as a bow as it shuddered through his nerve endings, bright flashes of light, and the crackle pop of his magic discharging across his skin.
Cold air against his damp flesh made him shiver, but then Pat was there, crawling up his body until they lay chest-to-chest, the wolf’s arms coming up to cradle his head, fingers soft on his face, and Pat’s hard cock pressed insistently into his belly. The wolf moved against him with sharp little insistent thrusts, just working himself against Ethan’s body, mouth hanging open and his eyes burning into Ethan’s with an intensity that would have left him breathless if he wasn’t still reeling from his orgasm.
“Say my—say my name,” the wolf whispered, “please.”
Ethan wrapped his useless cast bound hand around his back, holding on tight and gulped for air. “Pat—Patrick. Come on. Come on me, please.”
The wolf shuddered in his arms and squeezed his eyes closed, back muscles tensed as Ethan felt him come in a couple of quick jerks against him.
They lay together, sticky with sweat and come, clinging to one another, and for once in his life, as Ethan poked at his own feelings, he realized that he lacked any desire to get up and get out. He tried to flip the edge of the comforter over them but he couldn’t reach it. Pat groaned and sat up just enough to drag it over, bundling them underneath it in a tangle of limbs, and when he was done he pressed his face back into the curve of Ethan’s neck with a satisfied sigh.
“I could get use to this,” Ethan mused, stroking his fingers down Pat’s sweaty back.
“Good,” the wolf grunted and hung on just that little bit harder.