Running with Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 1) (3 page)

Elliott chuckled and fastened the bandage, then leaned over Shane’s shoulder, his face an inch from the other man’s.

“Cute?” he asked, a smile lighting his eyes. “That’s the word?”

“We’re not all over-educated,” Shane said.

He laughed and kissed Elliott on the mouth, playfully at first, but then the kiss deepened. He could feel the hunger inside Elliott and pushed against his mate.

“Ow,” Elliott said, breaking the kiss. He touched his nose gently.

Shane felt awful right away.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’ll live,” Elliott said, tentatively scrunching his nose.

“Go put some ice on that,” Shane said. He reached out and very, very tenderly touched Elliott’s nose. “It’ll help. Trust me. I’ll clean up in here and then come join you.”

“Thanks,” Elliott said. He took an ice pack from the freezer, then walked out of the kitchen and sat on their couch, his head tilted back, feet up on a box labeled
Elliott’s Books.

Most of the living room was piled high with boxes that said
Elliott’s Books.
 

Shane hoped again that moving to Cascadia hadn’t been a bad idea.

Sure, Oregon hadn’t been great. Once the people there found out they were wolf shifters, everything got harder: finding work, finding a place to live, even finding a pizza place that would deliver. While bear shifters had mostly integrated into modern society, and the lion shifters had managed to win a sort of grudging respect from humans, nobody seemed to like wolf shifters.

They had a reputation for being short-tempered and prone to violence, and they ran in packs. He’d thought that living in Cascadia, one of the states formed explicitly
for
shifters, might be better, but he was starting to worry.

Well, if this doesn’t work out, there’s two other shifter states
, he thought, half-jokingly.
If Elliott found a tenure-track job once, it should be easy to do again, right?

Shane found a trash bag, then tossed some bloody paper towels into it.

They’d been trying to move to Cascadia for almost two years, and even then, they almost hadn’t come. Elliott had serious reservations about moving back to the town where he’d grown up. For starters, he swore he’d been a serious nerd in high school, the kind that got beaten up and stuffed into lockers. Shane had a hard time believing that, especially since the first time they’d met, Elliott had been heaving hay bales onto a tractor all by himself, making it look effortless.

But Elliott swore that all that had happened in college, when he’d joined the rugby team and suddenly filled out, packing muscle onto his once-skinny frame. He wouldn’t even show Shane pictures of himself as a teenager, no matter how his mate goaded him.

He was still a total nerd, though. A hot nerd for sure, but after getting a college degree in Classics, he’d gone on to get a Ph.D., and now he was an associate professor with a fancy title at Cascadia State. Half his books were in Latin, and the other half were in Greek.

Even though getting a tenure-track job was pretty much like finding a unicorn in a sewer, Elliott had almost turned it down. His parents still lived in Rustvale. Both of his fathers were officers of the Rustvale wolf pack, and though Shane had only met them once or twice, they were both hardworking, salt-of-the-earth types who believed that a stiff drink and a good day’s work could solve just about anything.

They didn’t know Elliott had a Ph.D., or that he was a professor. They still thought he had a BA in Agricultural Management and had taken a job at a horse breeding farm in the county to the north. According to Elliott, for his whole life, they’d made it abundantly clear that intellectual pursuits weren’t for wolves, and they’d outwardly scorned him when he got good grades and read books.

Shane couldn’t blame Elliott for not seeing his parents very often, or for not telling them what he really did for a living. Besides, he hadn’t talked to his own parents in nearly five years, so it wasn’t like he had room to criticize.

As he washed out the bottle that Elliott had been using, Shane felt his thoughts slide to Greta again. He hadn’t talked to her for more than a few moments, but those moments were crystal-clear in his memory, like all the background noise was cut out.
 

He liked her curly, wild hair, the no-nonsense way she ran things. He
really
liked the shape of her body underneath her clothes, those curves perfect for grabbing onto and burying himself in...

Shane tossed his hand towel onto the counter and went to sit on the couch, next to his mate.

Chapter Three

Elliott

Elliott leaned back on the couch, the ice pack carefully balanced. His nose still throbbed, but he was starting to feel better.

Shane’s getting better
, he told himself.

It was true. God knew it had been a long, slow process, and there had been hiccups, but Shane’s temper
was
slowly improving. Yes, he’d gotten into a bar fight — one he’d
shifted
during, no less — literally his first night in a new town, but he hadn’t
started
the bar fight.

And, if Elliott was being honest, if Shane hadn’t punched that guy, he probably would have, for talking about Greta like she was just a thing, something that he owned.

Something that he thought he had a
right
to.

Just remembering it, Elliott felt his wolf rising, scratching at his skin to get out.

He shook his head, then rearranged his feet on the box in front of him. This one was labeled
Elliott’s Books: Roman History
, and inside was the complete Livy, several volumes of Tacitus, and a dollop of Suetonius for good measure.

It wasn’t the only box labeled that.

He felt like Greta could have knocked him over with a feather. He remembered her from high school, of course, but he hadn’t really
noticed
her before. When they were teenagers, she’d always been nice to him, probably because the same jocks who beat Elliott up for being a dork made fun of Greta for having an ugly name, though she didn’t get it nearly as bad as he did.

Besides, he’d always liked the name Greta. It wasn’t one you heard every day.

Plus, she’d grown up into a
seriously
hot woman, with those eyes so dark blue they looked purple, curly near-black hair that bounced past her shoulders, and those
curves
. When she’d turned around to pour a beer, Elliott had nearly drooled at the way her ample butt looked in her jeans, not to mention the way that her generous bust was offset by a narrow waist.

Shane walked in and sat on the couch next to Elliott.

“Ice working?” he asked.

Elliott shrugged. “I can never tell,” he said, taking the ice pack off his face. “Does it look better?”

“A little,” said Shane.

“I can tell you’re just saying that,” Elliott said.

Shane kissed him on the temple as a response.

“I hope I’m better by the time my classes start next week,” Elliott said. “Otherwise I’ll be the bar brawl professor forever.”

“It’ll make them respect you,” Shane said. “I’d have done way better in school if I thought my teachers could kick my ass.”

Elliott snorted.

“Just tell them they should see the other guy,” Shane said.

“It isn’t the students I’m worried about,” Elliott said. “It’s the faculty and the administration.”

“Just tell them,” Shane said. “They know your whole life story. I’d bet you fifty bucks that they’re already pretty sure you’re a wolf.”

Elliott made a face.

“We should go see my parents while we’re both beat up,” Elliott said, sounding a little annoyed. “They’d be pleased as punch to find out that we’re already drinking and getting into bar fights.
That’s how wolves act
,” he said, his voice taking on a mocking tone.

Shane slumped on the couch and put his feet up next to Elliott’s, denting in the top of the box. He leaned his head against his mate’s shoulder.

“It’s not actually a bad idea,” he said. “We do owe them a visit, now that we’ve moved back. And it’s not like we can ask them over to dinner.”

Elliott turned his head and looked at his mate, frowning.

“Why?”

Shane chuckled. “Because you’ve got a room full of books in dead languages? Because there’s a picture of you in your doctoral hood leaning against the mantle downstairs?”

He paused for a moment.

“What would happen if you told them?” he asked. “Seriously?”

“I don’t know,” Elliott said. “They basically told me it was my fault that I got beat up for eighteen years,” Elliott said. “I used to come home bruised and bloody, and they’d tell me that I should man up, stop whining, quit reading so many books, and fight back. Guess how well that worked out for me.”

He went silent for a moment.

“I know it’s stupid, but I still want their approval,” Elliott said. “I can’t help it. When I was a kid, before everything went south, my Papa was my
hero
. He could rope cattle and ride a horse
so
fast, and once I watched him pick up my mom with just one arm. When I was four, one of the ranch hands decided it was a good idea to let me ride a horse all on my own,” Elliott went on.

Shane grimaced.

“The horse started trotting and I fell off,” Elliott said. “I broke my collarbone, and even though I was lying on the ground, screaming in pain, the thing I really remember is Papa hauling off and just
slugging
the guy who put me on that horse, and that second, I was
so
proud to be his kid. But that’s kind of fucked up, right?”

“It’s understandable, though,” said Shane.

“Yeah,” admitted Elliott. “But still, I just don’t want to let them down.”

Shane just nodded.

“I get it,” he said.

Chapter Four

Greta

Elliott and Shane didn’t show up again for four days after the fight. Even though Greta knew better than to hold out hope that a hot, new-to-town bachelor pair might be interested in her, she still got a little more bummed every day that they didn’t show up.

Still, every time the door to the Tooth & Claw opened, she felt her heart skip a beat.

On the other hand, Zeke didn’t show up either. Greta hadn’t seen him since the fight and didn’t care to. She also didn’t know what had
started
the fight, but she didn’t have a good feeling about it. Zeke wasn’t exactly welcoming to other shifters in what he considered his territory — and lately, he seemed to be considering Greta his territory.

Just the thought sent a wave of disgust through her, and she could almost feel her fur stand on end. Zeke was a prime example of why she was single, since he had the sort of swaggering, utterly unearned machismo that crumbled at the first sign of someone standing up to him.

Like Shane had.

Greta frowned and scolded herself, stacking pint glasses on the drying board behind the bar. For most of her adult life, she’d avoided that kind of guy like the plague. Anyone who got into a bar fight his first night in town was bad news, and she
knew
it.

So why did she keep thinking about Shane naked? Or worse, thinking about him and Elliott, the former nerd, shirtless and making out, maybe leaning her over the bar right here and then...

The door swung open again. Greta finished her stack of glasses, and looked up.

It was them. Her mouth went dry, as Elliott looked her straight in the eyes, and smiled. Shane turned his head and said something to Elliott, and they both laughed.

Greta felt heat rush to her face, but just tossed a bar towel over her shoulder and nodded at them, trying to look casual.

“Look what the wolf dragged in,” she said.

They didn’t look great, but they didn’t look terrible. Elliott was wearing a black t-shirt and still had a cut across his nose and the remnants of two black eyes, but he smiled at her dumb joke. A bandage stuck out from under Shane’s shirt, but his face was fine.

“He get you?” she asked, nodding at the bandage.

Shane nodded and made a face. “Yeah,” he said. “I deserved it, though.”

He paused for half a second.

“Sorry for fighting in your bar,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken the bait like that. Did we fuck anything up?”

His light blue eyes searched hers, and Greta couldn’t find words. She
wanted
to be pissed that he’d seen fit to get into a brawl in her bar, but now that he was here,
apologizing
, she just couldn’t find it in herself.

“Just yourselves,” she said, glancing from him to Elliott, and then nodding at him. “Honestly, you got it the worst.”

“I know it,” he said, and pretended to glare at Shane.

“You two want to know a secret?” she asked, leaning forward.

They leaned forward, too, and she could practically feel the heat coming off of them and toward her.

“Yes,” said Elliott, a smile playing around his eyes.

“It’s not bad for business to get a good fight once in a while,” she whispered. “Not every night or anything, but after a good fight like that one, everybody sticks around to have another drink and discuss who won.”

“Who
did
win?” asked Shane.

“I’m pretty sure I did,” said Greta, teasing. “I think I remember two wolves slinking out the door of my bar when it was over.”

Elliott looked at his mate, a devilish smile on his face.

“She’s right, you know,” he said.

Shane looked slightly pissed. Greta stood up straight, cocking one hip against the bar. Then she straightened.

Come on
, she thought.
You’re at work. Try not to pose like a burlesque dancer.

“What can I get you?” she asked.

“Jack Daniels, rocks,” said Shane.

“What whiskey do you have?” Elliott asked.

“He thinks he’s a connoisseur,” grumbled Shane.

“Just the basics,” said Greta. “Jack, Jim, Maker’s, and Knob Creek. We’re not fancy,” she said.

Then she winked at them.

What’s gotten into me?
She wondered.

I know what I’d like to get into me.

STOP.

Greta blushed, and turned toward the liquor, grabbing the bottle of Jack Daniels from the shelf, scooping ice into a glass and pouring the whiskey over it, a little more generously than she usually did.