Sullivan (Leopard's Spots 7) (8 page)

“That’s…” Mando pressed a hand to his throat, as if trying to keep the words in. “That’s fucked up, man. I don’t—nuh-uh.”

Sully got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as Mando’s eyes darted all around the room, on everything but him. He couldn’t tell Mando what he was, a snow leopard shifter with some rather…wild, tendencies. “Mando, it isn’t—”

“There’s no condom wrappers at all,” Mando muttered, “so don’t even try to tell me that guy brought some y’all used. I thought you meant all that shit you told me about being safe—”

Sully kept a hold of the sheet as he stood, moving slowly, his cat alerted on a higher level than a human would be to the nervousness rolling off Mando. “Look, I promise you, we didn’t put ourselves at risk—”

“Bullshit!” Mando backed up until he hit the hall wall. His dark eyes flashed as he pointed at Sully. “Stay back! You told me all that shit about being safe and waiting to have sex, and I get you wanted to lose your cherry, but you did it like a stupid asshole!
And
you let him hurt you, a lot! There’s blood all over you, and what the fuck, man, was he part vampire? Have you seen your neck there?”

Sully tried to see where Bobby had bitten him but it was just making him go cross-eyed trying. He could see the blood from the scratches on his arms, his chest, could feel the ones on his back. Yeah, they’d torn each other up, and Sully had loved it, just like Bobby had.

Maybe that was why Bobby had run, but right now that wasn’t the most pressing problem.

Mando preparing to bolt was.

Sully tugged the sheet up higher, thinking it might help calm Mando if he hid the marks. Of course there was blood on the white sheet, but all he could do was try. “Mando, look, there are things about me, and Bobby, that I can’t really tell you, but please, believe me when I say we didn’t put each other at risk—”

“Right,” Mando sneered. “You’re just another guy who lies. You tell me one thing then do another. I don’t know why I thought I could trust you. Y’all are all the same!” Mando ran, his thin legs carrying him surprisingly fast. Sully took off after him, but the sheet tangled around his ankles and he tripped. His right knee hit the floor hard, and his right shoulder slammed into the wall, buckling the thin sheetrock as it collapsed under his weight. Sully heard the front door slam.

“Fuck!” He’d screwed up everything! Somehow he’d disgusted Bobby—probably he’d been too rough and inexperienced. It was possible he’d even hurt Bobby by fucking him so hard, wasn’t it? Bobby wouldn’t have said, being all manly and shit.

Then he’d freaked Mando the hell out. Sully thought Mando had overreacted, but then again, it wasn’t like Sully had a lot of experience with any of the things that had happened the past day or so. Still, he suspected there were many things in Mando’s past that made him leery of trusting, and he might even have run because he was afraid of being let down in a bigger way if he stayed. Sully was sure there was a psychological element he was missing to Mando’s behaviour—probably a whole textbook of them.

Sully groaned and forced himself to get up off the floor. He hurt all over, and it’d been a pleasurable pain while Bobby had been tearing at him, but now he just ached and wanted it to stop.

“Oh Goddamnit,” he grumbled when he saw the size of the hole in the wall. He was going to have to buy a sheet of drywall, and replace the whole stupid hall, just about. Added to that, he would have to tape and float it, and he never was any good at that. He always left bumps and lumps because he couldn’t sand the drywall mud down enough. Granted, he’d only hung drywall a few times, but he’d screwed it up every damn time.

“Considering the shape of this place, no one will notice a few lumps. Probably not even the hole.” Sully hobbled into the living-dining-kitchen area, his knee aching. He saw the keys to the place on the floor, along with bags of groceries. Mando hadn’t taken a key, and had apparently come right in to check on him when Mando had got in. Then Sully noticed something else—Mando’s ratty duffle bag was gone.

It was only then he realised Mando had never unpacked it. Did that mean Mando had never intended to hang around?

Sully rubbed at his chest, trying to ease the pinching around his heart. He didn’t know why he was so concerned about Mando when Mando obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Regardless, Sully was going to find the boy.

And he was going to find Bobby, too, and if he had to force the man to tell him what the hell he’d done wrong, then so be it. Sully would tie him up and get some answers, then he’d see what he could do to convince Bobby to give them a chance.

Possibly he was being stupid, and developing some pathetic crush on his first lover, some puppy-dog teenage angst thing he’d missed out on up until now. Sully figured that had to be it, because he was feeling some very strong urges to run after Bobby, to find him and fuck him and keep him.

“Well, no wonder Bobby hauled ass. He knew I was a burgeoning psycho-stalker,” Sully mumbled. He should check into changing his major to psychology and see if he could figure out what the hell was wrong with him.

* * * *

“Are you practicing for the priesthood or something?” Paava asked.

Bobby waved off his best friend and head bartender’s question in favour of snapping an order at one of the repairmen who seemed intent on goofing around. “Think you can get your head out of your ass long enough to maybe finish tearing out that wall there? I’d like to open this place back up sometime this century.”

The worker, a man named Chad—of course, Bobby had never once had a good experience with a Chad—glared and muttered something Bobby shouldn’t have been able to hear. However, he was a shifter, and one angry and confused at that. Never a good combo for a wild animal like his wolf.

“You think you can kick this faggot’s ass, come on over here and try it. I’ll break you in half so fast you won’t get to experience your life passing before your eyes.” Bobby backed up the threat with a wave of power that he hoped made Chad piss himself. As it was, Chad’s eyes bugged and he scuttled off to rejoin the rest of the work crew.

“You might want to consider chilling out a little,” Paava said from behind him, “and, you know, maybe stop threatening to kill the bigots.”

“Why?” Bobby asked, turning just enough to see Paava in his peripheral vision.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Paava came forward to stand beside him. “Well, you’ve been walking around like a rabid wolf for a couple of days now, and this whole”—Paava grimaced and flapped a hand at him as he looked Bobby over—“turtleneck in August shit is just bizarre, bud. Seriously, what are you hiding?”

“I’m not—” Bobby started but Paava, who was sure to be his beta once Bobby became alpha, merely gave him a disbelieving look.

“Don’t even try lying to me, Bobby. We’ve been friends since we could shift. I know you almost better than anyone else does.” Paava leaned close and whispered, “Just like I know how smart you are under that lazy, dimwitted façade you like to pull out for people.

Now, I know you came in smelling like someone who’d been fucked hard, and I have to wonder, what marks might you be covering up?”

“Aw, fuck off,” Bobby growled, touching the spot where Sully had bitten him before he realised what a tell that was. Paava all but gloated and Bobby wanted to punch him. “How do you know what I smelled like anyway?”

Paava thumbed over his shoulder. “Because Lisa was here, and she told me. Guess you were in too big a hurry to notice my little sister cleaning the place?”

“Obviously.”
Damn it
. He’d barrelled through the club and checked the messages to make sure he hadn’t missed anything from the insurance company. He hadn’t even noticed Lisa. Truthfully, he’d not known why he came here. He’d just been in flight mode, and that irritated him.

“So what had you running like a wolf with a tin can tied to its tail?” Bobby rolled his eyes at Paava. “That works a whole lot better using a cat.” Which made him think of a certain snow leopard shifter he couldn’t get out of his head.

“You suck at evading my questions,” Paava told him.

“No, I don’t. I haven’t really answered them yet, have I?” Bobby pointed out. “I suck at acting like I’m trying not to act like I’m evading them.” Paava snorted. “I think you confused us both with that.”

“Nah, I just don’t want to talk about it.” Bobby touched that covered bite mark up again. He was still feeling the mating between him and Sully. His ass occasionally twinged with a bit of pain. He’d never, ever admit that to anyone.

“You keep touching that spot,” Paava said. Bobby was about to tell him
duh
when Paava floored him. “That’s the mating bite spot, you know that, right? And I’ve never, ever known you to let your hookups mark you, so I have to wonder…”

“No, you don’t,” Bobby sniped. “Fucking drop it. And go talk to the foreman or whoever about getting that bigoted asshole off the construction crew. I don’t want someone like that working on my club. I can’t trust him.”

“At least we agree there, but you can snarl all you want, I’m not going to stop dogging you about you being claimed—”

“I was not!” Bobby shouted. Paava just flipped him off and walked away. “The hell do I want him for a beta? He has no respect for me at all.”

“I’ll be perfect for it and you know it, because I won’t let you get away with shit,” Paava called back to him. “And you’ll always be able to trust me to tell you the truth when you need to hear it.”

Paava was right, but Bobby wasn’t going to admit it. He went back to his office and walked over to the dingy mirror hanging on the wall. He tugged down the turtleneck until he could see the bruised spot on his join of neck and shoulder. There were scabs over the places where Sully’s teeth had penetrated him, and they itched, but if he scratched them he’d probably bleed and even a black turtleneck wouldn’t hide that from the shifters around him.

They would smell his blood. That would lead to more questions, most likely from Paava.

Nosy bastard.

Bobby moved over to his desk and eased down into the chair. His wolf was making him grumpy. No, that was an understatement. The wolf and the man were at odds, and it was driving Bobby to the brink of a drop he didn’t want to look down. He was sure that Sully was his mate, but Bobby was just a mess. He didn’t particularly want to be alpha, but couldn’t very well tell his father that. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the responsibility, but more that he never had a choice in the matter.

Which was the same reason he was mate-resistant, as he was coming to think of it.

Bobby didn’t think he was ready to settle down. Of course, the problem there was, now that he’d met his mate, no one else was going to do it for him. He knew that. He
knew
it and he was
still
fighting it.

Bobby had always been difficult, yes, mostly just for the sake of it. He didn’t like things that came easy if they came with strings. Him being the alpha of the San Antonio pack had always been a given. Unlike some of the packs he’d heard of, theirs had always been led in a patrilineal manner, and Bobby’s great-great-great and so on had established the pack ages ago. Josiah and him were the only sons, and Josiah was the younger son at that, as well as mated to a snow leopard shifter and living happily with said shifter’s family. No one even protested that since the weight of the leadership had always been on Bobby’s shoulders.

He’d bear that weight, too, but he didn’t have to like it. He was just a contrary fucker and he knew it. Got his kicks out of poking at people, and digging in his heels even if it hurt him.

He wondered how Sully was doing. Bobby couldn’t help but to do so. It was taking everything he had to hang back. He knew he’d break, the mating instincts could be too strong to resist much longer. Sully would probably be mad as hell, might even punch him—

and how fucked up was he that the idea of that turned him on? Bobby’s dick was uncomfortably hard, and his asshole burned like he’d just been ploughed all over again.

He had some serious issues, but self-esteem wasn’t one of them. He didn’t mind that he was messed up. In Bobby’s opinion, everyone was, one way or another. Perfect people didn’t exist—shouldn’t exist. If he ever met one, he might just have to tear them apart, or at least scratch them enough to mar their perfection.

That was just Bobby’s way. He kicked and bit and scratched, he teased and joked and lazed, sometimes on the inside as well as the outside, and he kept people at a distance so he wasn’t burdened by their expectations. There were plenty of people already depending on him. If he kept most of them out of his head, they’d never know how he lived in fear of truly letting them down.

Kind of like he had his mate. “Aw, shit.” Bobby thunked his head against the desk hard enough that he thought his brain bounced in his skull. “Ow.” He did it again. How had he not thought of it like that until just then? He knew Sully was confused, and maybe a little hurt over Bobby leaving like he’d done, but—

But what? Like Sully would just magically not feel the effects of the mate-bond? Like he
wouldn’t feel the need for me, the desire, the anger too—can’t forget that one. Does Sully even know
what we are to each other? Or is he miserable and hurting because I’m a selfish jackass who’s afraid to
grow up already? Jesus, thirty-three and I’m cowering from responsibility.

That wasn’t entirely true. He took his responsibility as owner of his nightclub very seriously. There were people who depended on him, whose jobs depended on him being intelligent and mature. Bobby would rather poke out an eye than let them down. So why was he so obstinate when it came to other expectations? The only answer he could come up with was, he had control issues. He had opened the club, made it a success, with the help of others, of course, but it was his baby.

Becoming the alpha and having a mate, those weren’t things he’d chosen. Did he want them, though? Was he being a stubborn ass just out of habit, or did he truly not want what he was being given?

Bobby was going to have to think about that for a while. He was afraid he wouldn’t like the answers.