“How much longer, Taran?” My patience is starting to run thin. I have this guy with ties to some bad people, who was involved with some really nasty shit with a friend of mine and I have to act like his nursemaid?

“Is that big of a burden on you?” Taran leans back in his chair so far it squeaks frantically like it’s ready to break in half.

“Yeah. No. Maybe. Shit.” I sag against his desk and cross my arms in a sulk. “It’s cramping my style.”

“Even though he’s your fated mate?”

My mouth falls open. “Varos is a gossipy shithead.”

Taran laughs and slaps me on the thigh. “Just keep an eye on him a little while longer, Sako. Get in his apartment, see what you can find out about him and if something jigs his memory. We know very little more about him now than we did when he first took a runner out of that house. Make him sleep on the floor if you want to punish him.”

Taran is no help at all and I storm out of his office to the echoing sound of his laughter.

Carlo is waiting outside the shop for me. Even though he represents everything going wrong in my world right at the moment, I can’t just turn him out, even if Taran gave me the go ahead. When I think about him and who he is, I get angry.

Then I look at him and his bewildered expression when I’m a jerk to him and I feel bad about it. I really don’t want him to go.

If I’m truthful, he’s quiet and respectful and nice to be around.

I stop just outside the door and slip my jacket on. “All right. Grocery store and then back home. We’ll go as soon as we can to check out your apartment.”

Carlo stands and follows me to the bike. He tightens his helmet and waits for me to start my bike before climbing on behind. His arms go around my waist and any irritation I feel melts away at how natural it feels to have him riding behind me.

* * *

Carlo is already up and has breakfast ready for me when I crawl out of bed. I swallow some coffee and tear at my bagel on the way down the stairs. Taran gave me the day off so I can do this. Hopefully, something will come of it. Not just for our sakes but for Carlo’s.

The manager at Aspen Heights smiles when she sees Carlo. “Morning, Carlo,” she says with a blinding toothy white smile. “What can I do for you?”

Carlo shifts nervously from foot to foot. I know it’s because he feels like he should recognize her and he doesn’t. We agreed the night before that he say as little as possible about his amnesia and play it off as just being forgetful.

“Yeah, so, I was like at this club, right?” he starts, giving her a shy smile. “And I managed to lose my keys.”

“Of course,” she says with a laugh. “There will be a fee for replacement of $15. Let me get the spare and the paperwork.”

When she disappeared in the back of the office, he gives me a bewildered look.

“What?”

“I just didn’t think it would be this easy.”

She’s back out again before I can respond. They square away the key issue and I put out the cash to get the duplicate. We drive through the complex to his unit. They’re duplexes with manicured lawns and prim precision of everything having a place and everything in their place.

It’s so far above my experience it makes me itch uncomfortably. I’ve never been around this kind of money and was never made to feel welcome in those segments of society that did.

Carlo looks at the key as we stand in front of the door. He has this funny look on his face, like he’s uncertain. “Hey, you okay?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Sako. What if I find something I don’t like? What if I find that I’m really a bad person and that I’ve done some pretty horrible things? I mean, I get that I have already,” he gives me a wan smile. In fact, he looks close to tears. “But…I don’t know if I can deal with me being more of a bad person than I am, you know?”

“Let’s not borrow trouble,” I say and I rest a comforting hand on the back of his neck. He ducks his head to wipe at his eyes. “Before we start getting all judgey, let’s see what’s there.”

He draws a shaky breath and nods. “Right. Sure.”

The key slides in the locks and turns with ease. He pushes the door open on a very tastefully decorated home. “Wow. I really wasn’t expecting this.”

I didn’t either. It’s an interesting dichotomy. I didn’t think that wolves were all that worried about things like taste and class but this place has it. It’s not ostentatious or gaudy. It’s very simplistic in design, using open spaces really well. Almost like art.

We shut the door and he stands there with this awestruck look on his face. “I’m not sure where to start.”

“Go with your instinct,” I tell him with a gentle push forward. I have my own agenda in what I’m looking for but I will still keep an eye on him to see if anything does, in fact, trigger any memories. “Start with the bedroom. That’s the most personal room in the house,” I prompt him.

“Yeah, good idea.”

It’s almost as if he’s afraid to touch anything. Pictures in frames hang along the walls down the hall leading to the bedroom. I’m surprised that the images are not of family but of a group of young men together at various places and times of their life. Some of the men in the pictures I recognize when Carlo had searched for the names he remembered. Friends who are now dead.

His bedroom is in a bit more disarray than the rest of the apartment. Like he had gotten out of bed one morning and dressed hastily, leaving before he could make his bed.

Carlo goes to his closet and opens it. “Holy shit. Whoever I am now, I’m either making really good money or someone is bankrolling the shit out of me.”

I peek over his shoulder. The suits are not the cheap off-the-rack kinds. It’s hard to tell if they’re tailored; I wouldn’t know a tailored suit if it fell on me, but the material is nice. They’re expensive, whatever they are.

Even the casual clothing indicates some coin was dropped on them and not bought at the local department store. “None of that triggers anything for you?”

He shakes his head and backs away. “Nothing.” Next, his attention is drawn to the bureau. Digging through the drawers doesn’t turn up anything until he gets to the bottom one. “Look at this,” he says, pulling something out. “There’s a whole bunch down in there,” he says, holding it out to me.

It’s a bandana. On the surface, it doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. But in looking at the rest of them, they’re all the same. The exact same bandana pattern.

I pull several out and place them on top of the dresser. “I guess you like this style?”

“No,” he shakes his head and grabs a handful. In the hall, he flicks on the light and holds it up to one of the images. “Gang colors.”

Son of a bitch, he’s right. It’s there, plain as day. One of the images has him and all his buddies, all wearing the same bandana on their heads. “It makes sense. You mentioned you and your friends all joined the organization at the same time, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember much after that, other than the pitch they used to recruit us.” His eyes narrow before he squeezes them shut.

I wait patiently until he opens them again. With a shake of his head, he indicates he still doesn’t remember.

He unfolds one of the squares and something small hits my foot. We both look down and see a rectangular shape near my boot toe. He bends to pick it up, holding it to get a better look at it in the light. “Is this—”

I take it from him and turn it over in my hand. “Looks like a thumb drive.”

Carlo glances back into his bedroom. “I don’t remember seeing a computer. Have you?”

“Nope. But it was folded up in one of these,” and I hold up the bandanas.

“Think that guy Ronnie can figure it out?”

“I’m pretty sure he can.” I pocket the small thumb drive, and he heads back to the living room and I head to his bathroom.

Nothing stands out there or in the linen closet. It all looks perfectly suburban.

When I get to the living room, he’s standing in front of the TV cabinet, holding a small figurine of a clown. It’s not one of those creepy ass clowns that manages to freak most normal people out. It has big doe eyes and a sad expression with this ridiculously large, red nose. In one of the hands, it’s clutching the strings of brightly colored balloons. He turns to me and smiles. “I remember this. I found it in a…” his head shakes slowly as he reaches into his memory. “Pawn shop. We went to a pawn shop to pawn something…fuck if I remember what we’d stolen but it was there on this shelf surrounded by cheap shit. I remember thinking it was so out of place in its surroundings. I guess a lot like I was. I…”

He sets it down and combs through his hair in frustration. “It’s gone now.”

Carlo stumbles to the sofa and collapses onto it. His hand smooths over the cushion. “It’s really intimidating to know I lived like this. It just seems out of character for me.”

“What is in character for you?” I flop down next to him. “At this point, you don’t know who you are or have been for the past several years, right? So who knows?”

“You mean other than dead friends?”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I offer him a wry smile.

“I’m sorry, Sako, I’m trying to remember. It’s not coming.”

It is a little disappointing that he doesn’t remember more but something tells me that getting his memory back is going to be a long process. “Don’t push it,” I say, resting my hand on the back of his neck again. That’s a move, I have noticed, that appears to calm him.

And it does so again.

He blows out a breath and the tension bleeds from his shoulders. “The doctors aren’t sure I’ll ever recover my memory. I feel like I’m letting you down. I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, you remembered the bandana thing and the clown,” I point out reasonably. “That’s a start.”

He shrugs and tips over to lean his head on my shoulder.

It’s really endearing that he’s trying so hard to uncover memories, even though he suspects that it’s not going to paint him in a good light. I really have to give him credit; I don’t know of many people who’d try this hard.

I give him a friendly shake. “I guess we should go grocery shopping so you’ll have stuff to eat here.”

His head jerks up, his eyes wide in panic. “What? You mean here here?”

“There is no other here.” My brow furrows in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…Sako, I don’t…I’m not ready to stay in this apartment.” He looks wildly around the living room. “It’s creepy to be here, like I would be living in someone else’s house, even though it’s supposed to be my place.”

“Are you saying it’s creepy to be staying at my place?”

“No, that’s different.”

I chuckle softly. “I’m not sure how.”

“You’ll be there. And I’ll know it’s your place. That’s real. This is my place but it doesn’t feel real to me.”

It’s funny how instead of being annoyed that I can’t seem to get rid of my guest, like I was first thing this morning, I’m actually a little relieved that he wants to come home with me again. When I’m not focused on who he was and see him for who he is, I find myself attracted to him on a deep level that is only experienced as a fated mate.

Those are at odds within me.

Regardless, my parents instilled right from wrong within me and I know on an instinctual level what I need to do. “Let’s grab some of your gear and head back, then. We’ll come back again a few times in the next several days and see if anything shakes loose.”

“Thanks, Sako.” Carlo lifts his head and it puts our faces close. I can see the gold flecks in his deep brown eyes. My shower gel is a subtle layer beneath the scent that is only familiar as his. My inner dragon reacts strongly to it, rising up in protest that I fight giving in to my instincts.

Carlo clears his throat and slowly pulls away to rise to his feet. It takes me several deep breaths before I’m ready to follow him into the bedroom to help him pack.

He digs around in the bottom of the closet to find a duffel bag. We search the drawers for the stuff that he’d need, which isn’t much. Other than clothing, we have already bought him everything else.

After stuffing several shirts and jeans, he lifts it onto the bed and zips it shut. “That should do me for a few days.”

“A few days?” I burst out laughing. “You packed half the shit from the drawers.”

He joins in laughing. “You never know when I’ll need the extra underwear.”

“Then you don’t want to know what I do with my underwear.”

“Dude, I’ve been living with you for a week, I already know.”

“Oh ho! Digging around in my underwear drawer, have you?”

“You don’t wear underwear,” he says with a grin.

“Oh my gods, how do you know that?” I’m laughing so hard I have to sit down at the foot of the bed. “You’ve been watching me dress?”

“Good grief, Sako. It’s not like you’re exactly shy about your body.”

His face is red now, which is even funnier to me.

“Copping a look now and then?”

Carlo stammers, his eyes wide. “It’s kinda hard to avoid it. You’re nice to look at.”

That admission warms me, even if his discomfort at having been caught sneaking peeks is funny as shit. I put a hand out and hook the waistband on his jeans with my fingers to draw him close. It forces his knees to bump the mattress between my spread legs.

To keep from toppling forward, he rests a hand heavily on my shoulder. I knock it away and pull, dragging him down to the mattress with me. He flops on top of me with a whoosh of breath.

We’re nose to nose now and his heart is beating so rapidly that I can see it throb at his pulse point, right below where I would put my bonding mark on him. One breath stretches out into the next before he slowly lowers his mouth to ask tenderly for a kiss.

My dragon wants to be anything but tender. I beat back my instincts to claim and rise to slant my mouth over his. He moans softly, his hands sliding into my hair. It’s a very possessive move, at least by dragon standards, which makes me wonder just how the whole bonding thing works with wolves. Not that it matters right at this moment because the hard line of his cock is pressing firmly against my hip. His desire is plain as if he said something to me.

My answering desire is just as eager.

I rolls us to pin him beneath me, pulling his hands away to pin over his head. I lift out of the kiss long enough for one final sign that he wants this and as if reading my mind, he nods. He looks so incredible there, mouth slick from saliva and just slightly bruised from our kiss. His cheeks are flush a deep pink.

Oh yeah, everything looks really good from where I’m lying.

Getting undressed while stretched out is not as easy as when standing but I don’t want to waste any time with useless moving around. Apparently neither does Carlo. He manages to work my shirt off and get my jeans undone before I interrupt pushing his shirt up to place biting marks down his chest on my way down.

He whimpers and wiggles around, his hips bucking when I try to work his jeans open. “Sako, gods please, don’t…just…I need to feel you in my ass. I need you to fill me up.”

Well, who am I to deny him what he begs for so prettily?

Lifting to my knees, I pat his hip. “Turn over.”

He obeys instantly, presenting his ass to me. I take just a moment to appreciate how damn delicious he looks in jeans before I reach around to undo his jeans and jerk them down his hips. I get them down his thighs when his scent hits me like a freight train. It awakens every hot button instinct in me to knot with him as soon as possible.

That will have to wait. We have things we need to work out before then but I’m not wasting this opportunity.

My fingers enter his ass and he moans loudly into the bedcovers. His arms reach overhead to find purchase as he shoves back against my hand. I twist and curl my fingers to hit that pleasure spot within him. His yelp dissolves into a moan. “Someone is eager for some deep dick, huh?”

Carlo’s answer is to impale himself on my fingers.

His slick coats my fingers. Clearly I don’t need to wait any longer. I work my jeans down my hips and drive my cock home with one thrust. Carlo lifts to his hands and braces as I set up a punishing rhythm.

Feeling his body grip me like a glove is just what I needed. The deep ache of finally coupling with him is a relief. With every slap of my hips, he hisses my name until it’s a chant that rises in volume until there is no distinction of when my name ends and begins again.

Bracing on one hand, I reach around to grasp his bouncing dick and start to jack along the shaft. Carlo releases a keening cry as his cock throbs in my hand, coming all over his sheets. The tight grip he has me cinches down to the perfect level of friction I need to finally cut loose myself.

Lost in motion and sound, my orgasm insistently winds its way up my legs, coiling in my lower back. My dragon hisses in pleasure, wanting me to take it further and do what my instincts scream. Right as I approach the edge, I press one final time, my knot slipping in his ass and tying us together.

Once locked together, my orgasm finally breaks over me like a wave and I buck in one final time, shouting as I empty into him.

We are frozen there in that moment of time before I dare take a breath. Gently, I takes us both down to our sides, my knot still caught in his body. Laying there in the silence, I stroke a hand along his back in slow petting motions, feeling as his breathing slowly relaxes. Once my knot goes down I pull out and roll on my back.

Carlo rolls with me and we’re both there on the bed, hanging half on and half off the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. “That was intense.”

I chuckle. “A little.” After a few moments to let our breath catch up with us, I rock to my feet and pull my jeans on. He’s still there, staring at the ceiling. “Everything all right?”

Now I’m worried. Random hookups aren’t a problem for me. It’s about sex, about feeling good, about having fun. Some guys tend to be a little more serious about it. It occurs to me that Carlo hasn’t given off the vibe of being a casual guy.

And here I am, handling this with a cavalier attitude. In my defense, I have to keep this distance. I still know nothing about him and there’s that small part of me that warns my heart that if he gains his memories back, what are the chances that he’ll go back to his toxic thinking about mythical shifters?

In the face of it right now, it’s hard to say.

He finally gets to his feet and pulls his clothing back together again. “Thanks. I guess I needed that. After weeks being pent up in the hospital, then the apartment, I needed something to take the edge off.”

It was said so casually that my suspicions are confirmed. “Hey,” I say, “it’s okay to have a spontaneous hook up every so often.”

Carlo nods. “I guess. It’s just weird is all. I’m not sure what my preferences are over that.”

I’d guess that as a wolf, he has the same proclivities to finding a mate as all shifters do and he takes it as seriously as Nyve has.

“Let’s get back to the apartment and see if Ronnie has anything new for us.”

“Sure.” Carlo rolls his shoulders. “Let me hit the bathroom and then we can go.”

“Make sure you have your keys.” While he does that, I grab his bag and head for the living room.

On the way by the TV cabinet, I grab the clown. He should have something that brings him pleasant memories.