Striped (7 page)

“I just don’t know if I can handle it.” Sean walked away, to sit on the edge of the bed. “I like who I am. I like to be a predator. I like to get out there and get my heart pumping. I don’t want to lose that.”

“We wouldn’t want you to lose it, either.” There was only one way Jason would be able to prove it to him. “Look, let’s go outside a minute. I have something I want to show you.”

 They went out into the blinding bright Michigan morning, and Jason stripped off his shirt and unbuckled his pants.

“I’ve seen you naked,” Sean pointed out.

“Shut up.” Jason kicked off his shoes and pulled off his jeans, tossing them to the side and shifting into tiger form before they even hit the ground.

Talking wasn’t going to convince him. It would take more drastic measures. Jason growled, letting the sound rumble through his deep chest as he prowled slowly closer to Sean. He looked up with his feline vision, sharper and more detailed than when he was in human form. He saw the tension in every muscle in Sean’s body, smelled the desire for wildness in the perspiration that hadn’t yet risen to the surface of his skin.

Jason let loose with a feline scream, like audible lightning, and Sean stepped back.

“Okay, I get the point.” He held up his hands and kept retreating as Jason advanced.

Jason hadn’t planned to give a demonstration of why it was so damned scary to be stalked by a big cat. That was just a side benefit. He sank back on his hind legs, getting low to the ground to pounce. Sean recognized the behavior for what it was. Moving slowly, he unzipped his jeans and took a step back as he pushed them down his hips. By the time Jason sprang up, Sean had turned and run, shifting as he bounded over the hood of his own truck. Jason unsheathed his claws to gain purchase on the gravel, and sped after him.

Tiger bodies were designed for short bursts of speed. They would both be exhausted in a matter of seconds. They were fast, though, and made it to the tree line, Sean leading in a wide turn toward the lake. Jason caught him, jumping onto his back and rolling with him, right out of the tree line and onto the sandy shore and tangled tall grass of the lake’s edge.

Jason didn’t relent, even as they rolled into the shallows, crushing the reeds beneath them. Sean swiped at his face, claws retracted. It was a warning, that he didn’t like being pinned, didn’t like being taken down. Immediately, Jason backed down, and Sean sprang up, knocking Jason to his back. Sean was over him in an instant, jaws nipping at Jason’s throat. He backed up, front paws still braced on either side of Jason’s body, testing to see if he would rise again. The instinct was too great. Jason flipped and dove for the shore, but Sean was on him again, covering his back with his weight, their dripping fur mingling. Beneath Sean’s heaving belly, his barbed penis had emerged from its sheath, and it prodded Jason’s hip.

Without warning, Jason shifted, bracing himself on his hands and knees in the water beneath Sean’s huge body. Jason didn’t run, he didn’t move. He let Sean have the upper hand, let him be the most powerful.

Sean shifted, too, falling against Jason’s back and pushing him over, flat against the wet sand. He kissed him, grinding his hard cock against Jason’s hip.

It didn’t feel wrong to kiss him back. The thought had occurred to Jason on the ride over, that something might happen between the two of them. He’d felt a little guilty even thinking about it, like he was cheating on Mitchell just by wondering how he would react. But this was far from a sleazy sex thing. They were male tigers, all three of them, and it bound them, whether Sean recognized it yet or not.

Jason gripped Sean’s ass and pulled him tighter against him, letting the gentle waves sneak under their bodies as they lay locked together on the beach. Sean grunted and thrust against him, as if he hadn’t just spent the whole night fucking and coming, as if he’d been dead and just woken up.

When Sean broke away for air, Jason leaned up and bit him lightly on the neck, then whispered, “You don’t have to give it up.”

Sean rolled to his back on the sand, his forearm across his eyes.

Jason leaned up on an elbow. “Tigers need each other. I don’t know why, we just do. Mitchell will tell you, he was a mess before we met. I was a mess for a long time after we met. We can help keep each other in check.”

“It seems like I’m getting ripped off,” Sean said, still breathing heavy from the run. “You guys are great. Incredible. The way you are together, I would love to have something like that some day. But I want it because I want it. Not because someone says I need them, or I feel drawn to them because they’re a shifter. I want to make the choice.”

Jason rolled up and sprang to his feet. “The choice is always yours. You know where we are.”

He went back to the cabin and collected his clothes. When he got in the truck, Sean was still sitting at the water’s edge, staring out at the lake. He was glad that he’d come alone. Mitchell would have just been frustrated by the situation. He liked to solve problems and make everyone happy. Until Sean figured out that he didn’t truly want to be alone, that it wasn’t necessary to maintain his solitude and rebellion in order to remain an individual, he wouldn’t want to be with them.

But Jason knew, from experience, that all they had to do was wait.

Chapter Ten

Sean sat there for a long time after Jason left. When the water chilled his skin, he shifted. Damp fur was warmer than damp skin.

It was easier to think when he was a tiger. Though every part of his body still ached from the night before, and though he ached in a wholly different way from the incredibly arousing wrestling match Jason had engaged him in, as an animal he was able to ignore it. Maybe it felt more natural to be a tiger. He’d long wondered if he was a tiger who shifted into a human, rather than a human who changed into a big cat.

He thumped his tail lazily against the sand. Being alone had never been a problem for him. In fact, he preferred it. He thought he did. Alone, he didn’t have worry about another guy’s feelings. He didn’t have to wonder if he was missing out on something in the world, if he was being held back by his partner.

Which was why he’d never had one. He pushed up and paced the shallows, the sand cool and mucky between the pads of his massive paws. Never a long-term partner, never a boyfriend, never even a guy he fucked regularly in a casual way. One-night stands, hell, even internet porn was a reasonable substitute for being saddled with a guy.

He’d thought he didn’t want it. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Gwinn Close was more of a home than he’d ever known. He’d definitely stayed there longer than he’d ever stayed in one place. Maybe that was the root of his need to break the rules. If he sabotaged this place, he wouldn’t get comfortable. He’d have to pack up and move on, and be truly alone again.

A blue gill darted past him in the shallow water, and he lunged at it, snapping it up easily. Fishing, like thinking, like so many things, was so much easier as a tiger.

The world he wanted to occupy would only have him as a man. Tigers were rarely welcome in bars, no matter how much of a dive they were, and it wasn’t like he was going to be able to keep up on how the Yankees were playing if he was off in a jungle. Hell, two hours without internet and he got itchy. Moving the UP had been bad enough.

If it weren’t bad enough to be torn between those two worlds, he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Gwinn Close, but the idea of staying, getting into a stable, regular
something
and settling down made his throat want to swell up.

But god, the sex. The sex had been…

Phenomenal
. That was the only way to describe what had happened between them. He’d felt like he would die from the pleasure, it had been so intense. He’d felt reckless and wild. And he’d felt safe.

It was that feeling of safety that scared him most of all. It was the kind of feeling he could get used to, and the kind that would crush him if taken away.

Whether in human or tiger form, that was one thing his two natures had in common. His crippling fear that one day, something would be important to him, and he wouldn’t be able to hold onto it. He’d already started over so many times, it just seemed easier to keep doing it, and far more natural than hope.

He shifted and washed the mucky sand from between his fingers, splashed himself with water to rid himself of the sand elsewhere, then walked along the beach until he reached his lawn. Though shifters were usually casual about nudity, he didn’t like the idea of shocking some poor old guy or gal looking out their kitchen windows first thing after an afternoon nap. They’d probably blame him for the heart attack.

He collected his clothes and went inside. He looked from the bare counters and the equally empty pantries above them, to the furniture that had been there when he’d moved in. He’d brought only his clothes and his bedding. He’d gotten moving down to a science, what he could carry in the big toolbox in the back of his truck.

The starkness of his life hit him all at once. He didn’t even own the dishes in the cupboards, or the cleaning supplies beneath the sink. He’d simplified himself right into what was pretty much homelessness, aside from the fact that he had shelter. He didn’t have a home. He didn’t have a career. He travelled around and did odd jobs. That was no kind of life. It was an existence.

Maybe one day, you’ll figure out that it’s better to survive than try to live.
He’d seen where that would get him. He’d seen his brother get married to a beautiful wife who fucked around on him and left him for his best friend. He’d seen his mom marry guy after guy, until the last one in the line put her in a nursing home the second it became clear that her cancer wasn’t going to take care of itself.

There was no reason at all to lock himself down in Gwinn Close. At this point, everyone would just know him as the weird tiger guy who chases people, and he’d be ostracized. Better to move on before anyone found out they didn’t like you, and let you know about it.

When he’d moved in, he’d signed a lease. Mitchell was one of those do-the-right-thing, stand-up kind of guys. He would probably take him to small claims or something for breaking it.

It was probably kind of sick that thinking of that got him hot for Mitchell all over again.

There was some horrible, sensible, normal person thing inside of him that suggested caution. To wait until his lease was up, and see how he felt then. There was another part of him that wondered if he could justify just packing up in the night and running. He’d done it before, he could do it again. But even he thought it was a shitty thing to do to two guys who’d been nothing but nice.

It would take less than a half hour to pack up his stuff, shut off the utilities and leave. If he stayed, if he put down roots, it would be a lot harder to transplant himself somewhere else.

With a frustrated exhale, he pulled on his jeans and grabbed his cigarettes. He didn’t need to decide right now. But he did need to decide.

Chapter Eleven

A week went by, and the phone never rang once. Mitchell saw this as both positive and negative. No one was calling to complain about Sean chasing anyone down, and that was great. But it also meant he wasn’t calling.

“Staring at it won’t make it ring,” Jason advised one morning as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

Mitchell turned away from the phone with an exasperated exhale. “You’re not concerned at all? You don’t even want to call and check to make sure he hasn’t packed up and moved out?”

“You know he didn’t. If he had, he would have dropped off the keys.”

Damn him. He was right. Mitchell went to the refrigerator and scowled into it. He straightened, closed the door, and shuffled to the island, where he sat down with a heavy sigh.

“Not cute,” Jason warned as he stirred sugar into his coffee. “You can’t call him.”

“I called you,” Mitchell reminded him. He’d called him, dropped by his work, generally made a nuisance of himself. But Jason was right. Sean wouldn’t find Mitchell’s persistence amusing, he’d find it threatening. Before Jason could argue, he held up his hands. “I know, I know.”

“He’ll come around. Or he won’t. But as long as he’s behaving himself, does it matter?”

Did it matter?
Mitchell didn’t want it to. He wanted to go back to being perfectly happy with their life. “It shouldn’t.”

“But it does.” Jason leaned on the counter, sliding a mug of black coffee to Mitchell. “You like him.”

Mitchell put his hand out to take Jason’s. “I like him. But I love you.”

Jason shrugged. “I don’t know how well it would work, to be honest. But I’m not averse to trying. It seems that Sean isn’t interested, so…maybe channel your unrequited like into something constructive. Like cleaning out the gutters.”

If there was one thing Jason was good at, it was perspective. Mitchell sipped his coffee, trying to wiggle out of that perspective with some very careful justification. “Fine. You want to come with?”

“To the roof?” Jason raised his glass in a mock toast. “It’s all yours.”