Wolf at the Door Read online

  Jack let himself look at Danny for a second longer and then turned his attention back to his wolves.

  “We have until the next full moon,” he said. Then he nodded to Bron. She instinctively curled her arms around her stomach and scowled at him. “And we have what the prophets want.”

  Or at least what one mad old wolf wanted. They just didn’t know why.

  Chapter Fourteen—Jack

  THE SHOCK of snow-melt water against his skin made Jack’s balls tighten between his legs and his toes curl. Wolves might not let the cold bother them, but that didn’t make it pleasant. It was still better than the stink of smoke and the hackle-prickling offense that the prophets’ monsters reeked of. Even secondhand, mixed with Jack’s own blood, it made anger scrape at the back of his throat and tighten his fists.

  He grabbed the half-melted bar of soap from the sink and scrubbed until his skin was raw and all he could smell was the sharp, antiseptic smell of tar. Blood and suds dripped down his legs and made pink puddles on the old gray slate tiles. Jack leaned over the basin and splashed a handful of water into his face. He raked his fingers through his hair and down to cup the nape of his neck.

  It was a shame he couldn’t wash the inside of his brain clean.

  “That’s a smell that takes me back,” Danny said from behind him.

  Jack snorted, unsurprised. Even at his worst, his nose stuffed with rot and the wrong smell of the monsters and the last dregs of energy carved out of his bones to keep on his feet, he would know when Danny was there. He knew how Danny walked, the sound of his breath, and the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  “Why’s that?” he asked as he straightened up. There was a mirror on the wall. It was old and specked with wear, but good enough to shave in. Jack ignored his own reflection and looked at Danny’s in the glass instead. The dark-haired man was propped against the frame of the door, and Jack felt a twinge of surprise as he took in the shaggy hair and the old sweater, ragged at the collar and cuffs, that Danny had unearthed from some cupboard. At some point Jack had forgotten that Danny could look like he belonged here. Danny didn’t meet Jack’s gaze through the glass, but his eyes had drifted lower than courtesy demanded, down the lean lines of his back to the curve of his ass. Jack couldn’t complain about that. “They’re too soft for carbolic down over the Wall?”

  He reached for the towel and scrubbed himself more or less dry on the bleach-rough cotton.

  “Not as much blood to scrub off,” Danny said.

  Jack snorted.

  “So I was right. Too soft.” He turned around the lobbed the towel at Danny. “Catch, Danny-dog.”

  It was an old trick. Danny caught the towel, looked annoyed with himself, and tossed it down on the tiles to sop up the water. It annoyed him enough that he finally looked up to meet Jack’s eyes. Jack waited for it. He knew Danny hadn’t missed what happened out on the moors, in front of the ruins of the prophets’ house. That was the disadvantage of taking someone smart to bed.

  Then Danny let his breath out on a ragged laugh, stepped over the discarded towel, and pulled Jack into a kiss. With one hand he cupped the back of Jack’s neck, fingers tangled in the damp, dirty-blond hair, and his mouth was mint-fresh and determined.

  For a moment Jack was too caught off guard to respond. He’d expected anger, even if it was Danny’s quiet, precise version of it, not a tongue in his mouth and a rough thumb grazed along his jaw. He stumbled back a step, the curved porcelain edge of the sink cold as it dug into his hips, and Danny nudged his thigh between Jack’s legs. The scrape of denim against his cock made Jack hiss against Danny’s mouth with a jolt of unexpected sensation that knotted in his gut.

  It wasn’t how it was done.

  Danny was a dog, bottom of the pack hierarchy from now until eternity. He had the right to say no to Jack, not that he ever had, but he was meant to wait to be asked. That was how it worked.

  Not like this, with Danny’s hunger chewed over Jack’s mouth and Jack left flat-footed and breathless.

  Jack’s pride spluttered up from under the crap of the last few months, the cocky young wolf who thought he could just turn up and take what he wanted. Except this was what he wanted, and the raw honesty of Danny’s want somehow made him into the supplicant even as he shoved Jack back into the wall.

  That didn’t mean Jack was going to go along with it, just that he didn’t exactly object to being wanted that much.

  Jack grabbed a handful of Danny’s hair, grown out curly and shaggy enough to tangle around Jack’s fingers, and pulled his head back. He admired the taut line of Danny’s throat and the hunting-fit sharpness of his jaw. Danny had always been lean, as lanky in human form as he was in his dog skin, but he’d gotten soft down in Durham. A layer of good living had softened his jaw and sheathed his muscles. It was gone now. He was no wolf, but he didn’t have to be dangerous.

  The pulse point in Danny’s throat fluttered erratically under the skin, uncertain and aroused. Jack scraped his teeth over it, bit down on the bubble of it hard enough to make Danny squirm at the warning.

  “I just need some time,” he said. It was a lie—they could both smell that on him—but maybe if he wanted it enough, it could become true. “Da would have listened, but the wolves need to be led. And after what happened with Lach, with the prophets, I need to be what they expect for them to follow.”

  “I get it,” Danny said. “A Numitor wouldn’t be mated to a dog, especially one with a dick.”

  That made the pulse between Jack’s teeth flutter in nervous anticipation before Jack had the chance to growl. Danny wasn’t wrong, but the truth wasn’t what Jack wanted right then.

  “Danny—”

  “I get it,” Danny insisted. He stroked his hand over Jack’s shoulder and down his side, over the taut slats of rib bone and muscle. “It’s all about the next generation. How could they trust a wolf to lead them that doesn’t have an investment in that future? Without your own pups, why would you care about theirs? You think nobody ever explained to me why I couldn’t have you?”

  Jack chewed a short-lived bruise into Danny’s throat, a livid splash of red and blue that would fade soon enough. He leaned back and narrowed his eyes in a glare.

  “Who?”

  Danny looked amused. “Who didn’t?” he asked, his fingers curved around Jack’s hip. “Maybe some of them didn’t put it in so many words, but they made sure I got it. You were the prince of the Pack, the Numitor-in-Waiting. And I was a dog who nobody thought you needed.”

  Nobody had tried to tell Jack that. Neither of the Numitor’s sons had ever taken kindly to being told what to do. It hadn’t stopped his own version of the lesson from sinking in, though. No one had a problem with Jack’s dalliance with a dog—he could do as he liked—but they’d all thought it was just a fling. Even Jack had stalled at imagining a future further away than the idea he wanted Danny around past “tomorrow.”

  Jack tightened his fingers on the nape of Danny’s neck, enough to make Danny hiss through his teeth. “They were wrong.”

  A shadow of regret passed over Danny’s face for what he was about to say. He tilted the corner of his mouth wryly, and Jack could think of better things to do with that mouth than argue. He shoved Danny down onto his knees in front of him and pulled his head back to exaggerate the submissive stretch of his throat. Tendons pulled tight for a second as Danny resisted on instinct, but then he relaxed back into it. Brown eyes watched Jack curiously through his glasses, at least until Jack reached down and plucked them off his face.

  “Don’t—” Danny protested as he reached up to take the glasses back.

  “Show me what your humans taught you,” Jack said as he put the glasses behind him on the sink. He remembered the heat of Danny’s mouth on him in Durham, his knee-jerk scrape of arousal and irritation at the reminder that Danny liked playing human, that he might be Jack’s, but he hadn’t wanted Jack to come and get him. That still chewed between Jack’s ribs sometimes, like a squirrel at the root of th
e world, but he wanted all of Danny, even the bits Danny had never meant for him. “Make me want you.”

  Danny glanced at Jack’s cock, already flush and half-hard between his thighs at the thought and swiped his tongue over his lower lip. The gesture made Jack’s cock twitch in interested response. It might be a human thing, but Jack liked being in Danny, so why not in his mouth too?

  “I need to try now?” he asked.

  There was a crack of something other than Danny’s clever mouth in the question, a hint of uncertainty, as though he thought it wasn’t just a fact, like the fucked moon getting fat. Jack supposed it hadn’t been—since he’d let the old bitch in his head—but that was something in him. Nothing to do with Danny.

  “I meant use your mouth on my cock,” Jack said. He leaned back against the sink and spread his legs slightly, his cock thick and obviously not in need of anything more than Danny there to get its interest. “Not talk until I give up and fuck you to shut you up.”

  Maybe it wasn’t what Danny needed. Another dog—a human—might have been kinder, gentler about it. Vulnerable. That wasn’t in Jack. It wasn’t something he could stomach. The blunt honesty of his lust seemed like it was enough for Danny. The hint of uncertainty, the hesitancy, bled away.

  “When did that ever work?” Danny asked.

  Jack snorted. He didn’t mind when Danny ran his mouth, to be honest, but that was a challenge, and he had definitely reduced Danny to nothing but ragged breathing and whimpers before.

  “Remind me to show you later,” he said.

  Danny gave him a quick kiss and ran his hands up Jack’s braced legs. With his thumbs he traced the tight run of muscle through the pale, sensitive skin of the inner thigh. He hesitated at the spot where the black lines of ink tore away and left his skin new and naked. Something in Jack tightened, a knot of tension behind his breastbone, but it felt… the same. He didn’t know what he thought it would feel like—tainted somehow by Rose and her sharp little knife—but all it felt was good.

  Danny lifted his cock and leaned in to press a wet, tongued kiss to the base of it. He worked his way up the length of it, hard, flushed flesh slick and wet under the attention of lips and tongue, to the come-slick head already only barely covered by Jack’s foreskin. The tip of Danny’s tongue swiped around it and then flicked across the eye to taste the bead of come.

  “Shit,” Jack groaned as Danny took him in his mouth. Pleasure jolted down his cock and clenched in the back of his thighs and his gut.

  The wet warmth of Danny’s mouth was more tease than the instant satisfaction of Jack’s cock in Danny’s ass. It made his nerve ends fire off slivers of electric sensation that twitched under his skin and pulled anticipation tight as a wire through his stomach.

  Like a lot of human things, it was unnecessary. Jack could have bent Danny over the bath and fucked him. That wasn’t a thing that needed improvement or adornment. The only reason he didn’t was the sticky, undemanding intimacy of it.

  Danny was on his knees, mouth wrapped around Jack’s cock, and Jack got to watch. He raked his fingers through Danny’s curls to pull them back from his face and watched the way Danny’s mouth stretched around the width of his cock, his lips already flushed from kissing and now slick with spit and come. It was the vulnerability of it that dragged on the hot thread of pleasure that ran into Jack’s stomach.

  Danny took nearly all of Jack into his mouth, the back of his throat tight and wet as he swallowed him. He pushed his tongue up against the underside of Jack’s slick, hard cock, and Jack braced his arms against the sink as he came. His hand tightened around the back of Danny’s head, fingers tangled in his air, as he jerked his hips roughly forward. Then he spilled his come over Danny’s tongue and watched Danny’s throat work as he swallowed it.

  Heat flushed up Jack’s spine to the base of his skull. Maybe, he thought hazily as Danny leaned back and let Jack’s cock slide out of his mouth, the humans had a few good ideas in them. Beyond Celtic football club.

  “So, I’m done,” Jack said, his voice thick with satisfaction, as Danny sat back on his heels. He cupped Danny’s chin between his fingers and tilted his head back. “Who’s going to take care of you?”

  It was just a tease. He wasn’t about to suck Danny’s cock—his pride bristled at the idea even as his tender balls tightened with interest—but he could still get him off… or get it up again. His cock was spent and wet against his thigh, but he could feel a twinge of interest.

  “I can always take care of myself,” Danny said as he scrambled to his feet. His jeans were wet over the knees and the faded denim pulled tight over the hard rise of his erection. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  It didn’t take years spent in dusty rooms reading dusty books to pick up that Danny didn’t mean he could just use his own hand. Jack snorted as he grabbed a handful of Danny’s sweater, laced his fingers through the rough knit, and shoved Danny back against the door frame. He leaned in and breathed in Danny and sex, the musky smell of it a shot of hunger that flowed straight down to his cock.

  “I guess I’m going to have to fuck you after all,” Jack rasped into Danny’s ear. “Otherwise you just keep talking, huh?”

  Danny tilted his head to the side until their mouths almost touched. For a moment, as brown eyes met his, Jack thought Danny was actually going to force the conversation. Instead, the corner of Danny’s mouth tilted in a half smile and he drawled, “Well, we’ve got time to kill, and that didn’t take that long, so—”

  Jack kissed him hard enough to press Danny’s head back against the wood and mash his teeth against Danny’s lips. He chewed whatever smart-arse comment had been on the seam of Danny’s lips and swallowed it.

  Maybe, one day, the memory of that smart mouth would be all Jack had. But for now he had Danny. Or he’d have him in a minute.

  “Next time,” he said as he broke the kiss, “maybe I’ll suck your cock.”

  He didn’t particularly mean it… maybe, not until the suggestion made Danny flush a bright, flustered pink from his collar to his temples. That clever tongue was left to splutter, something about “he could” and “didn’t have to.”

  Clever as Danny was—and Da had always described Danny as “sharp-witted enough to cut himself”—all it had ever taken was a look or a well-placed hand from Jack to leave him blush-red and bumbling.

  It would be a lie if Jack pretended he didn’t appreciate that. Enough to play human games in bed.

  He pressed a dry, closed-mouth kiss to Danny’s cheek. It would have been almost chaste, but Danny had Jack’s cock on his breath and they both knew Jack was going to fuck him next.

  “When was the last time I fucked you in my da’s house?” he asked.

  He knew Danny well enough to know that would throw him off for a second as he tried to remember. While he counted back, Jack scruffed him and dragged him out of the bathroom and down the hall to his bedroom. Danny tripped over his own feet and growled in protest for the sake of it but went along anyhow.

  Given time, his da would have cleared it out. Or Gregor would have marked all the corners to make a point. The end of the world hadn’t given either of them a chance to get around to that. Instead his bedroom was much as he’d left it, sheets tangled on the bed and clothes hung limply over the open drawers on the scarred old chest in the corner. Clean—Da had chucked their clothes out the windows and hosed the rooms down a couple of times when they were pubescent—but with the distinct, comforting scent of mine worked into the fabrics and walls.

  “Asshole,” Danny accused with a snort as Jack shoved him toward the bed. “I wasn’t going to argue.”

  He unbuttoned his jeans, and they slid down over lean hips to flash a slice of pale skin across his stomach. The jeans caught there, held up by the jut of Danny’s hard cock as Danny grabbed the bottom of his sweater. He dragged it half up, tangled around his arms, and Jack smirked as he shoved him back onto the bed.

  Danny sprawled back over the mattress, elbows
braced behind him. Half dressed, his cock trapped under his jeans and stomach taut as he squirmed out of his sweater, he looked ridiculous and fuckable at the same time. Jack eyed the thick bulge of Danny’s cock and considered his offer to suck it. The images that flickered through his head—the noises that Danny would make, his hands on Danny to pin him down as he squirmed—appealed enough to get him hard again.

  The ache of his cock—and the pressure of the full moon deadline neither of them wanted to acknowledge—dissuaded him. If he only had time for one thing, he wanted to be buried in Danny.

  Jack flipped Danny over on the bed, grabbed the waistband of his jeans, and yanked them down enough to expose the pale, firm curve of Danny’s ass. Sprawled out on the bed, Danny swore indignantly as he tried to get out of his sweater. Muscles tightened in long strips along his back and made his asscheeks clench.

  “Tell me what you want me to do to you,” Jack said. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around his cock. It was already hard, still sticky from his spilled come, and the rough jerk he gave it made him clench from his balls to his ass. He rubbed his thumb over the wet head and then worked his hand down to roughly squeeze the base. The pressure built in his balls. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.”

  First time he wanted to be sure. It was easy with wolves, but humans did things differently. Just because they smelled or moved like they wanted to fuck didn’t mean they did. After Danny had spent so many years away, Jack didn’t want to misread anything.

  Now he just liked to hear Danny say it, his voice raw with hunger and impatience as he begged for Jack’s cock.

  “You know I do,” Danny rasped out as he finally pulled his top over his head and tossed it off the bed. He pushed his shaggy curls back from his face and looked over his shoulder with irritation as he propped himself up on his hands. Something he saw—and Jack didn’t want to know what it was—made his face soften. “I want you to fuck me, Jack. Please?”