Little Wolf (4 page)

Interpreting and following sounds had always been easy for Tim, but scent was different. He’d never been taught to identify scents or to tease out strands of smell from the breeze in order to track them. Tim could, mostly, tune out noises he didn’t like to focus on what he wanted to hear, so if he really wanted to, he could learn scent. All he needed to know was that there weren’t universal names for scents. Of course, in addition to learning a small, helpful thing, he also wanted to distract Sheriff Neri. The sheriff, Tim was convinced,
softened
in minute ways when Tim asked him questions about were things. Tim wasn’t above using that if he had to. “Each were creates their own names for things, right?”

“How we interpret things is personal, different for each were. Some can’t determine meanings and some can. For those that can, it’s like having a better understanding of a language.” The sheriff relaxed his other hand, his full mouth almost forming a smile for a second before he frowned again. “But in Albert Greenleaf’s case, I can tell what he wants because he’s watching you.”

“He’s watching
you
, like everyone else here. You’re their fanta—” Tim started to say, but the sheriff abruptly broke eye contact, leaving Tim to flounder and deal with the feeling that he should do something to get the sheriff’s attention back.

Tim didn’t want his attention. Yet he was still talking. “Was the traffic accident bad? The one that made you late,” he explained in a rush. “Not that you have to come in here at the same time every day, or I was watching the window for a sign of you. I mean, on your days with later shifts, you eat at different times, so it isn’t a big deal. Carl said there was an accident on the highway, and I thought it must have been bad. I hope everyone was okay.”

Tim was pretty sure he sounded like an idiot. But before he could try to explain or use his big boy words, the sheriff answered.

“One person went to the hospital, but he isn’t critical. We arrested one of the drivers for suspicion of DUI. Everyone else was checked out and was fine.” The sheriff’s voice was level, but he was looking at Tim like he wanted to touch him again.

Tim ducked his head at the flare of heat he felt at that thought. “That’s good, then, no one really hurt,” he agreed, then brought his head back up. “Drunk in the middle of the day. Someone started early.” Maybe if it didn’t take so much alcohol for werewolves to get drunk, they would understand the inclination to drink like that.

The sheriff nodded. “It happened this morning, so someone started
very
early.”

“Tourists go crazy before they even get here,” Carl muttered. Tim ignored him, though he had a feeling Carl was right and Tim was going to start getting irked by out of control tourists soon too.

“Very early?” Tim pressed, not sure why. Maybe the phases of the moon were a werewolf’s alcohol. “You must be exhausted.”

“And starving.” The sheriff stretched and scratched his belly through his shirt. Tim spent a delirious moment imagining the man’s ab muscles and then another trying to guess what his claws would feel like. The sheriff didn’t seem to notice. “My lunch should be ready. Robin’s Egg should bring yours over soon.”

“I don’t need you to get me lunch.” Tim wasn’t going to forget a meal. But Sheriff Neri didn’t even acknowledge his protest, and it was no good bringing it up to Robin’s Egg. She’d call him a puppy.

“Tim.” The sheriff was staring at him with the unblinking, commanding gaze of a werewolf who had a pack the size of an entire town. Tim kind of forgot his own name for a second. “Tim.” The sheriff inhaled, then lowered his voice. “When the festival starts, it’s going to get crowded in town.”

“Yeah, yeah, people will be jumping you left and right,” Tim snarled softly and then flinched to realize, in addition to snarling, his eyes had narrowed. He hoped a bad mood and insane jealousy were indistinguishable to the sheriff’s nose. All Tim could detect in the air, aside from the brown gravy Cosmo put on almost everything, was the sheriff’s arousing scent and Tim’s own anxious sweat. “Just kidding, oh great and powerful sheriff,” Tim tried weakly. The sheriff let him panic while his gaze skipped over Tim’s face again, as if he was counting every nonintimidating freckle across Tim’s nose. Tim stared back until Carl cleared his throat.

The sheriff lifted his chin before changing the subject. “Once it’s crowded in town, I won’t be able to keep an eye on you. Not the way I’d like.”

“Oh.” Tim wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t going to ask for help, if that’s what the sheriff was after. It was amazing the man hadn’t ordered him to either get out of town or to stay under his protection, because he wasn’t going to get an invitation from Tim.

The sheriff waited, as if he expected Tim to argue or at least keep talking. When Tim didn’t say anything, the sheriff expelled a breath. “I’m letting you know that my offer stands.” He put a hand behind him, probably to preemptively shut Carl up.

“Live in your house?” Tim had to swallow to keep speaking. “Be in your house? With you?” He couldn’t help but sound horrified at the idea, of not only living with another were, but this one. “You offered that before.”

His first day here, after the sheriff sniffed and studied Tim in front of every single person in the café, he had asked about Ray Branigan and if Tim needed a place to stay. Tim had thought he’d been about to be mauled or mounted or some equally horrible fate that would have done Luca proud and had quickly shaken his head no. Then he’d gone back to gawking at the king werewolf in front of him.

It had not been Tim’s proudest moment, not that the sheriff had seemed to notice. The sheriff had let out one disturbingly quiet, almost surprised growl and then asked if Robin’s Egg knew of any rooms in town available for Tim and if she’d hired anyone to work in the gift shop for the summer. Just like that, before Tim could explain that he wasn’t going to stay long, he’d had a place to live and a job.

For a second Tim thought he heard that growl again, but the sheriff was only staring at him, the familiar frown darkening his expression.

“I can’t live with you,” Tim finally answered. “But I’m sure your house is, uh, nice.”

Sheriff Neri didn’t respond to that pathetic attempt at manners, which probably meant the invitation was something to do with the town, or, of course, some damn
instinct
. After all, the sheriff had made the offer before, and there was another were already living in the sheriff’s house in the woods with him—because the town of Wolf’s Paw wasn’t just some touristy, werewolf-centered resort, it was also some kind of sanctuary for lost weres.

“Don’t worry about it,” the sheriff said, as if Tim had said something, when Tim was reasonably sure he hadn’t, not out loud anyway. As Tim was relearning, weres didn’t always use words to speak. Tim frowned into the sheriff’s lickable face and tried to silently communicate independence and confidence. The sheriff gave him another intent stare. If Tim didn’t know it was the sheriff of a goddamn town full of werewolves in front of him, he’d have said the man was hesitant. “Just be careful.”

Tim couldn’t decide what to call the flavor of the sheriff’s scent. He was debating between wood-burning pizza oven and the skin on the inside of his wrist after he jacked off, which was the closest thing to what sex tasted like that Tim knew, except for the taste of his own come, and that he knew because he was werewolf and the urge to lick wasn’t something he denied when he was alone. Things rarely tasted gross to a were’s tongue, but even so Tim had a feeling the taste of sex and come on Nathaniel’s skin would be divine.

He tried to stay focused on the conversation, but all he could seem to notice was how the sheriff’s chest moved as he breathed heavily in and out. “Me?” Tim remembered to speak again. “I have no need to be careful. First sign of anything and I’m out of this weird, flea-bitten, sex-obsessed town.”

“So you’ve said,” the sheriff remarked and stepped abruptly away, taking his face and his eyes and his mouth with him. Tim stopped imagining his tongue and his fingers and his dick in that mouth and tried to calm down by thinking of the things the sheriff would likely do to him if he tried anything, if the man didn’t die laughing first. He waited until the sheriff was across the café at the counter and then took the longest, steadiest breath of his life.

His life that he hated. Like this town. Like the moon. Like alpha weres who
had
to know what they did to Tim and came around anyway out of some misguided pack mentality.

Tim was small, but he wasn’t a follower. He was a lone wolf by inclination. He clutched at the charms he always wore around his neck, the ones designed to help keep him hidden from any forms of Seeking magic, and reached out for the cleaning rag without taking his eyes off the sheriff’s back. His heartbeat was so out of control it almost felt like he was hearing two hearts, both of them wild and scared.

Carl coughed significantly.

“Shut up,” Tim told him in a firm voice. He ignored Carl’s offended harrumph and went over to dust the bookshelves, a job that, coincidentally, took the sheriff out of Tim’s line of vision and gave Tim time to calm down.

A few moments later, Robin’s Egg brought an absolutely massive plate with an open-face roast beef sandwich on it, fries on the side, all of it smothered in brown gravy. It was a freaking
platter
of food. Robin’s Egg winked and called it “The Full Moon Special.”

She didn’t need to say anything for Tim to understand that the sheriff had ordered more food than usual for Tim’s lunch, but Tim didn’t look up, because he didn’t want Carl to see his red face.

“It’s perfect,” he whined. The food would definitely satisfy at least one of his immediate needs, as the sheriff had known. Tim turned to find the sheriff and blinked to see him gone. The TV was still on near where the sheriff had been standing, the scrolling
Diedre’s Secret
credits informing Tim he’d probably missed an important plot point. Again.

“Fucking
instinct
,” Tim complained to the universe and put his hands to his face when the sheriff turned around in the street and stared at Tim through the window, as if he’d heard that.

Tim ducked and ate his lunch.

T
IM
RAN
to work late the next morning with his jeans open and his hair a mess, only to find the café busy with the breakfast crowd and the gift shop empty as usual. He flopped onto the stool behind the counter, anticipating another eight hours of boredom. Staying up until dawn to stare at the moon and jack off had been a mistake, because Tim felt
really
tired now, more tired than he’d felt in his life, enough to be worried that something might be wrong with him. Weres healed so quickly when they did get hurt that illness was a foreign concept. Human sickness never touched them.

Maybe he needed to eat. It would probably help him feel better faster. At least he was slightly more relaxed now that the moon was waning and he’d come his brains out a few times. The only way to be more relaxed would have been if he’d come that much with someone else in the room. He looked up at the thought, but it was early, and Sheriff Neri never came into the café in the morning. He must get breakfast at home. With
Zoe
.

Tim sighed. His jealousy wasn’t entirely to blame on the full moon. Like his crush, it seemed to be here to stay, like Tim.

That settled it. No more feeling so edgy and desperate that he fixated on the alpha werewolves around him, and no more nights jerking off and going without sleep so he could listen for the sound of a far-off howl. He needed to leave this town. As soon as he had money and an idea of where to go next, he was out, and maybe in the next town, he might have a chance to settle in and get laid. He’d have to pick up a human, but if he watched enough people this summer during the sex festivals, or whatever they called them, he might figure out how to be with a human without hurting them. There was no way he could try with another were. The minute another werewolf saw Tim’s scrawny ass naked, they’d laugh.

He sucked in a breath when Robin’s Egg swept by, her beehive hairdo making her barely taller than Tim. It was only among their own kinds that she would seem small and Tim would seem freakishly small. Tim was the only were male under six feet he’d ever seen. At about five foot nine, he wasn’t even close.

Robin’s Egg brought him a coffee and a muffin and swept out again. Tim stared after her with the muffin already in his mouth and then called out, “Marry me!” as Carl took his usual spot. Carl chuckled and then straightened out his newspaper. Robin’s Egg hadn’t brought Carl his coffee, Tim noticed. Instead she’d sent a waitress over. Tim smirked about it in Carl’s direction and buttoned up his pants while devouring the rest of his muffin. He didn’t bother with his hair, though the way it stuck up now made him look like an eager pup.

It wasn’t a comforting thought after a night that had almost made him feel thirteen again. He scrubbed at his cheeks and started to head through the café to get another muffin, but Robin’s Egg appeared again with a plate of fried eggs for him.