Once Upon a Shifter (115 page)

“We’ll take her.”

That was Gavin, who had also managed to arrange his face into an expression of concern, though Thomas could see straight through it, of course.

Janelle looked from Gavin to Thomas to Monica, and for a moment, her expression changed.

“I don’t think I need to go to the emergency room,” she said, her voice suddenly far less urgent. “Just home is probably fine.”

“Are you sure?” asked the bartender. Right now, she was the most concerned person in the room, at least besides the table of fretting middle-aged librarians. After all, none of
them
knew what was really happening.

“Yeah,” said Janelle, who then winced dramatically, still holding the ice to her nose. “It might not be broken, it might just be... bruised?”

Slowly, she got to her feet, looking wobbly.

Her biggest problem is just that she’s drunk
, thought Thomas.

“Let us take you home,” he said.

Suddenly, Janelle seemed to realize what she’d done: rather than keeping Thomas at the bar with her by pretending to break a bone, now she pretty much had to go home, ending her night before 7 p.m.

Thomas could tell it made her mad, and he smiled to himself.

“Allow me,” he said, holding out his arm and grinning.

They left the bar, arm in arm, Gavin and Monica not far behind.

“Feel better!” shouted the bartender after them.

She, at least, had been genuinely nice.

Chapter Seven

Janelle lived in a small apartment on the back of a much bigger building, only a few blocks from main street. Frankly, Thomas was surprised that she didn’t still live with her parents — Monica, for instance, still did, despite being in her twenties — and a lot of shifters went that route, only moving out when they finally mated and started their own families.

Sometimes, he felt like he was living in 1915, not 2015, even though he had his own place. Modern humans mostly moved out, went to college, lived on their own — why were shifters so tied to the old ways?

‘Thanks for taking me home,” Janelle said. Her nose seemed perfectly fine by now, if a little tender, and she was hanging onto Thomas’s arm. “Want to come in for a nightcap?”

Thomas wasn’t sure where she’d learned that word. Probably from TV, but the sun had just barely set.

“No thanks,” he said.

Behind him, Monica stumbled into Gavin. It was ridiculous, really, how quickly the two girls had gotten drunk. What were they even trying to do? Were they that inexperienced in the ways of seduction, that they thought the right way to go about it was to get as drunk as possible and pour themselves over two men who couldn’t have been less interested?

“Come on,” Monica said. “There’s plenty of sugar inside.”

“I’ve got to get up in the morning for the grape harvest,” Gavin said.

Both girls just blinked at him.

“Sorry,” said Thomas, detaching Janelle’s arm from his own, having to pry her fingers up one by one. He and Gavin began walking away together, back down the quiet side street where Janelle lived.

“I know about you!” the drunk girl called after them.

Thomas and Gavin both froze where they were and looked over their shoulders.

“Everyone knows!” Monica shouted.

“You think you’re so fucking sneaky,” slurred Janelle, much too loudly. “We know. We all talk about it.”

“Go to bed,” shouted back Thomas. “You’re drunk.”

Then he turned around and walked out of the girls’ sight.

***

Both he had Gavin were dead silent for a few blocks, walking back toward the main drag.

Finally, Gavin spoke up. “You think they do?” he asked.

Thomas just shook his head. “No,” he said. “How could they?”

“It doesn’t seem impossible,” Gavin said.

They kept walking.

“My car’s just around this corner,” said Gavin. “You want a ride back to your place?”

“Sure,” said Thomas.

Something tightened in his stomach.

He knew they should be more careful. He knew that Gavin shouldn’t give him free drinks and he knew he shouldn’t flirt with the other man in public like that, but it was so hard. Along with every other way the pack was stuck in the past, they frowned heavily upon any sex act that wouldn’t produce cubs.

Hell, male members were notorious among women for not even going down on them, something that Thomas really wished he hadn’t heard his mother gossiping about with her friends when he was a teenager.

He’d had more drinks than Gavin, and he could feel the last of the whiskey pumping through his veins, making him want what he shouldn’t. Lately he’d felt like his appetite had gone into overdrive — something he strongly suspected had to do with the beautiful, luscious Sofia showing up under his nose — but he and Gavin went way, way back to the sleepovers they’d had as curious teenagers.

Sure enough, Gavin’s car was parked in the dark alley behind the Tipsy Miner, in the spot between the wall and the dumpster. Well hidden, almost like Gavin had had this in mind all along.

Thomas searched his companion’s face, but it was carefully blank.

They got into the car, the driver’s seat and passenger seat. Gavin put his keys into the ignition and stared straight ahead at the wall, his jaw working, as he was clearly thinking something over.

“I should just take you home,” he said. “Especially if they know.”

“They don’t know,” said Thomas, sitting in the passenger seat. “They’d say that to anyone.”

There were almost no lights in the alley, nothing lighting the two of them besides a sodium vapor light a hundred feet away and the moon reflecting off of the wall in front of them, making Gavin’s face seem more angular and sharp than it was.

“I’m not sure,” Gavin said. Thomas could see him squeezing the steering wheel of the car he still hadn’t started, his bear tattoo flexing in the dim light.

Thomas reached over and put the flat of his hand on the back of the other man’s neck, and he could feel the tension there, the muscles rock-hard against his fingers. He squeezed a couple times, trying to help work the tension out of his neck, bringing his own face closer.

“C’mere,” he said, his fingers still working.

Gavin looked toward him, and for just a moment it looked like he might refuse, but then something else overtook him, something powerful and primal, and he met Thomas in the middle of the front seat of his SUV, their lips mashing together in a hard kiss.

Thomas felt the tension in his stomach dissipate instantly, replaced by something else — a wild, uncontrollable lust that defied all reason and logic, went against everything he knew that he ought to do. He moved his mouth against Gavin’s, and he could feel the other man’s teeth on his lower lip, half biting, half crushing.

His fingers, still on Gavin’s neck, worked their way upward to Gavin’s hair, grabbing it by the handful and pushing Gavin’s head against his own. At the same time, he licked Gavin’s lip and then pushed his tongue into the other man’s mouth, demanding entrance.

In response, the teeth on his own lips bit down even harder before yielding and letting Thomas push him a little further back into his seat, his head against the headrest.

For a moment, Thomas backed off of Gavin, undoing his seatbelt — why’d he buckled it in the first place, he wondered — before turning in the passenger seat, undoing Gavin’s seatbelt, and half-crawling to the driver’s side.

Now Gavin’s hands were all over him as well, like some seal had been broken and neither of them could possibly get enough of the other. There was Gavin’s tongue in his mouth, battling his own, as they two men leaned into each other, hands grasping at necks and shoulders. For a few moments, Thomas couldn’t tell whether they were kissing or fighting, but he thrilled at every touch of Gavin’s, like the other man electrified his skin.

Before he knew it, he was unbuttoning Gavin’s shirt and pushing it over his shoulders, his breathing ragged as he revealed the other man’s hard, chiseled chest and abs. Besides bartending, Thomas knew that Gavin did a fair amount of labor on his parents’ vineyard, and his muscles were the result of hard work, not the gym.

As he shoved the shirt over Gavin’s wide, muscled shoulders, something popped and a button flew off of the other man’s shirt.

“Shit,” Gavin breathed, his mouth on Thomas’s neck, also breathing hard. “This is my favorite shirt. I should make you pay for that.”

“You should,” Thomas growled, finally getting the shirt off, Gavin’s single tattoo briefly illuminated in the moonlight.

Without speaking, Gavin tugged off Thomas’s shirt until he held it around the other man’s elbows, pinning his arms behind his back. He lurched over the center divider between the driver and passenger seats, pushing himself against the bottom of the steering wheel, and bit Thomas’s neck, hard, licking and sucking as he let himself get carried away.

“Don’t leave a mark,” gasped Thomas, feeling his eyes flutter closed as he gave himself up to pleasure.

Just for that comment, Gavin nipped a little harder, drawing a hard grown from Thomas.

Finally, Gavin released Thomas and let him take his shirt all the way off. The forest scenes in his tattoo sleeves reached all the way up to his shoulders and then had begun slowly branching down onto his torso.

On his left chest, just above his nipple, was the outline of the bear from the California flag, following the star. Gavin spent a moment tracing his finger around it before leaning back into the driver’s seat.

“Get in the back,” he said to Thomas, his voice low and dusky with lust. He elevated his hips in the driver’s seat, undoing his belt buckle and unzipping his jeans.

Thomas didn’t argue, maneuvering himself into the space between the two seats, into the considerably bigger back seat of Gavin’s SUV. The windows back there were tinted, which made for just a bit more privacy.

Gavin kicked at his pants, banging both his knees on the bottom of the steering wheel, and then Thomas’s hand was on his arm, pulling him into the back seat, naked as the day he was born, all six-feet-plus of him hard and muscle-bound.

“Take off your pants,” he growled. As he came through the canyon of the two seats, he looked almost like a feral animal, ready to pounce.

Thomas was already rock-hard, lifting his hips off the back seat of the SUV as he undid his belt and slid his pants and boxers down, all in one motion.

Not even waiting to get fully into the back, Gavin grabbed Thomas’s cock as he crawled, his own thick, erect member waving and bouncing as he landed hard, making the entire car bounce.

Right away, Thomas went for him, taking his hard length in one hand and crushing his lips to his own, biting Gavin’s bottom lip and drawing it away, getting a small whimper out of him.

“Careful,” Thomas whispered. “Wouldn’t want to get caught.”

He squeezed Gavin’s cock extra hard, and the other man made a half-whimper, half-moan noise, grabbing Thomas by the hips and pulling him hard toward him.

Now the entire length of their bodies was touching, head to toe, as Gavin pushed his tongue into Thomas’s mouth and Thomas let himself be plundered, sinking into the pleasure of the full-body, skin-to-skin contact before pumping his hand slowly up and down Gavin’s erect cock a few times, watching the other man bite his lip as he tried not to make a sound.

“How long has it been?” he murmured.

“Weeks,” said Gavin. “Maybe a month.”

“Too long,” said Thomas.

Gavin didn’t respond, just made another strangled moan, his own hand pumping up and down on Thomas’s cock.

Thomas could tell that neither of them were going to last much longer — that was what happened when the only time you got to fuck was in the back of a car when you were absolutely desperate for it, he figured.

“Where is it?” he asked from between gritted teeth.

“Center console,” said Gavin. “Grab the tissues, too.”

Thomas’s hand left Gavin only to grab a small tub of vaseline and package of tissues and then returned to the back seat. Gavin grabbed the vaseline out of his hand and had the tub open before Thomas could even sit back on the seat, scooping it out and applying it to Thomas’s cock and then leaning into the other man, rubbing their shafts together, pinning Thomas to the backseat of the SUV.

Thomas reached down and put his own hand around Gavin’s, also holding their cocks together, feeling the full force of the pure pleasure that came from touching like this, his full length sliding up and down Gavin, a moan escaping his lips.

“God, you feel good,” Thomas gasped, the words coming out more loudly than he meant them to.

When they were just making out in the front seat, it was easy enough to separate, but they were naked and lubed up in the back of the car, and he knew they’d have a hard time explaining this away if they got caught.

“Just cum,” whispered Gavin.

“No,” said Thomas. “I need you.”

He saw the smile flicker across Gavin’s face, and then he reached around to the other man’s back, finding his tight, round ass and giving it a squeeze.

“I can’t last long,” said Gavin, still smiling, giving their cocks one last, long squeeze together.

Then he got off of Thomas and turned toward the window, facing away from the other man, bracing himself against the window.

Thomas took another handful of vaseline from the jar, briefly hoping very, very hard that Gavin’s mom never used it as chapstick, but before he could spread it over his cock Gavin’s hand was on him again and then Gavin was leaning back against Thomas, rubbing his cock between his firm, muscled buttocks, guiding the slippery length toward his tight hole.

Just like they’d done a hundred times before, Thomas slowly guided the head of his cock to Gavin’s hole and then gritted his teeth. He could feel himself pulsate, just in anticipation.

Then he pushed in, very gently, and felt Gavin’s muscles resisting him.

“Harder,” said the other man, his voice bouncing off the window in front of him.