Wolf Tales IX. Kate Douglas
at it. I didn’t feel at all drunk, or crazy, or even depressed. And the strangest thing happened. It was like it was in my head, like I could hear the wolf’s thoughts, but they weren’t the thoughts of a wolf. They were a man’s thoughts. A kind and sympathetic man.
“I stared at it so long I lost track of time. Suddenly I realized it was dark and the wolf was gone, and I was still standing there in the trail. Still had the rope in my pack and an empty whisky bottle in my hand.
“I figured I’d had an alcoholic blackout. I tossed the bottle, sort of shook myself, and stared at the tree. I knew there was a reason I had to climb it, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why. Then I heard someone coming up the trail behind me. I turned around, and saw a man I’d never met before. For some odd reason, though, he felt familiar.”
“I asked you if you had a flashlight.”
Jake’s head snapped up. He hadn’t heard Luc and Tia come back inside. Luc stood in front of him, watching him with a sort of half smile on his face, and the memories flooded Jake with a bittersweet sense of the inevitable. His entire life had changed at that moment. “Yeah,” he nodded. “You said you’d gotten too far from your camp and the sun went down before you expected. I had a flashlight. I went with you, back to your camp.”
Luc helped Tia get as comfortable as she could in a chair next to Shannon. Then he sat down on the floor beside Jake and leaned against Tia’s legs.
Jake smiled at Tia. “Any luck?”
She shook her head. “One measly little contraction. Not dilated any more than the last time Logan checked. At this rate I’m still going to be pregnant at Christmas.”
“I highly doubt that.” Jake reached over and patted her knee.
Jazzy interrupted. “What happened when you went back to Luc’s camp?”
“Ah…the rest of the story.” Jake smiled at her. It was so much easier to talk about it than he’d ever imagined, but these were his friends. His pack. “Luc gave me this honkin’ big pill and said it would take away all my cravings for alcohol.” He laughed. “As much as I loved the booze, I had to think long and hard before I took it, but I’ve never wanted to get drunk since.”
He’d lost his cravings for alcohol, but something else took its place. Even now, so many years later, when Jake thought of those first few days after Luc started him on the nutrients, he got hard. He’d always had a healthy libido, but everything changed that night.
What had been a powerful sex drive quickly became a living, breathing entity, a constant state of arousal that the handsome young man he now shared a campsite with seemed to handle with ease.
Luc told Jake that a craving for sex was one of the side effects. That, and an increased sensitivity to light and sound, to scents on the wind. A world that had been unrelentingly gray and depressing was suddenly filled with the songs of birds in flight, of small creatures squeaking and rustling in the grass…and more.
The beat of his own heart and the rush of blood through his veins. Sounds that somehow connected him more to himself, to the man he was, the man he should be.
They sat by the fire one evening. He’d been taking the pills for a week and he hadn’t had a drink the entire time. In fact, he hadn’t even thought of drinking.
All he could think of was Luc. His name, Lucien Stone, repeated like a mantra in Jake’s mind. Luc lived in San Francisco. He worked for some kind of investigative agency. He was single…and he was, without any doubt, the most beautiful man Jake had ever seen.
He glanced up and looked through the flickering light of the campfire. Luc was watching him with what had to be the same hunger Jake felt. His stomach seemed to roll into a knot and his cock got hard. It didn’t make any sense. None at all.
Jake shook his head. “I’m not gay. I’ve never been all that particular about my sex partners, even had a couple of guys give me blow jobs before, but I’m not into guys.”
Luc smiled at him as if he understood all the crap going through Jake’s head, and he nodded. “I know. I’m not either.”
Jake rubbed at his arms. “I think I’m allergic to those pills you’re giving me. My skin’s itching like crazy.”
“Could be. Beats drinking yourself to death, don’t you think?”
Jake laughed and tossed a twig into the fire. “Yeah. It does. Luc, I…” He swallowed and stared. Luc had gotten up to grab another piece of wood. He had an absolutely perfect body and moved with the grace of a jungle cat. When he knelt down to add wood to the coals, Jake had to clasp his hands in his lap to keep from reaching out to touch him.
Luc didn’t seem to notice, but when he finished stirring the fire, he sat on the same log as Jake. Sat close enough that their shoulders touched. Sat close enough that the heat from Luc’s thigh seemed to brand Jake.
Yet, in spite of the heat, the contact made Jake shiver. He felt his balls draw up close to his body and his cock ached, trapped there between his tight denim jeans and his thigh. He bit back a groan and realized he was gnawing on his bottom lip.
“It’s okay, Jake. I’m feeling it, too.” Luc didn’t look at him, but his voice roughened with the same arousal slicing through Jake, the same unbearable need. “Whatever you want, Jake. However you want it. I’m okay with anything. What we do stays here, on the mountain. No one ever has to know.”
Jake looked up at the smoke spiraling into the star-studded sky and he thought of where his life was going, how the rope he’d planned to hang himself with was still coiled neatly in his backpack. He knew then, without any doubt, that he’d been given another chance by this quietly amazing man.
He understood he was being offered an even greater gift than his own life. Friendship. Love. A sense of connection, if only for the time they spent together on the mountain. It was still more than Jake had known his entire life.
He turned slowly and looked into Luc’s eyes. He hadn’t noticed their color before. Amber. The same unusual shade as his own, but he took it as a sign, as one more connection he could share with another human being.
Jake had never kissed another man. Never even imagined himself doing anything like it, but he leaned close to Luc and met him halfway. Their mouths touched and the sensation was unlike anything he’d experienced in his life. He didn’t remember moving, but suddenly they were standing, holding on to each other, mouths locked in a deep kiss of lips and tongue and teeth and breathing in each other’s breath.
He heard the clink of their belt buckles knocking together, felt the thick length of Luc’s cock behind heavy denim and knew Luc was as trapped as he was. As desperate. Laughing, too horny to feel embarrassed, Jake broke away from Luc’s mouth, and with shaking hands reached for Luc’s belt buckle.
There was no hesitation in Luc, no awkwardness or lack of control. When he reached for Jake’s pants, he simply unhooked his belt and flipped the snap open. Jake froze as Luc’s fingers lifted the tab on his zipper and slowly, one metal tooth at a time, tugged it down.
Jake’s hands stilled and he held his breath, fingers locked tightly on the upper edge of Luc’s waistband. Jake’s zipper parted and then Luc was going to his knees, tugging Jake’s pants down low on his hips, reaching in through the open fly and cupping his balls through his cotton shorts.
Jake had never experienced anything like this in his life. Every sensation magnified. Every touch exquisite torture…the heat of Luc’s big hands holding him, the hot promise of each breath as he leaned forward and stretched his mouth over the ridge of Jake’s cock, suckling his shaft through the warm cotton knit.
Jake’s knees buckled and he grabbed Luc’s shoulders for support. Luc sat back on his heels and laughed. There was so much joy in the sound. So much freedom. Jake didn’t ever remember sex being joyful, desire anything but a basic need to deal with. His hand or a convenient lay…it had never mattered before.
Luc