Longing for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 5) (6 page)

Calder had thought he was getting there. Well, sort of. Thinking of Sam always hurt, but he’d forced himself to think of him less and less, at least until he came back.

Until the door of Greta’s bar had opened, and there he was. Sam looked different: a little older, his face a little thinner. His hair had gotten longer and he’d been wearing a sweater. Calder had never known Sam to wear a sweater.

And then he’d just stood to the side, let Calder walk through. Like they’d never even met.

Before he’d come to Rustvale, Calder had looked up Sam’s address. He’d known that he shouldn’t, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from finding it, and then from finding it on a map.

It wasn’t far, Calder knew. Not for a wolf.

Don’t
, he thought.
You’re drunk as hell. You’re just going to get there and be an absolute wreck, and you’re going to wake up him and his mates and the kids that they probably have by now.

Or, worse, it’s going to be just him. And he’s going to invite you in for a drink, and he’s going to be polite. Cordial. He’s going to ask how your travels are going, and he’s going to talk about his job, and then halfway through you’re going to realize that it really is over for him.

Then what are you going to do, Calder? You’ll still be drunk in the middle of the woods the night before Greta gets married, and then you’re going to be wrecked even worse.

Calder’s hands started undoing his tie.

Don’t
, he thought.
Don’t. Don’t.

He tossed it to the ground, then took off his jacket, his vest. His button-down shirt. He took off his shoes and socks and put them in a pile on the grass.

Calder glanced at the restaurant, then took off his white undershirt and pants, quickly folding them into a small package. Then he shifted, the smell of the grass and the woods and the steakhouse sharpening. It was always weird to be drunk as a wolf, but not so bad.

I just want to see him
, he thought.
I don’t even care what happens. I want to see him. I want to hear him say my name, for fuck’s sake.

Calder grabbed his pants and shirt in his mouth and trotted off.

Chapter Five

Sam

Sam looked at the pasta burned to the bottom of the pot and sighed. Normally, he was a pretty good cook: nothing fancy, but he was more than able to feed himself well. Last week, he’d successfully made himself a thai curry from scratch. His macaroni and cheese had
three
kinds of cheese.

But leave the pasta on the stove for an instant too long, and this happened.

He grabbed the steel wool and went at it again, scrubbing the stainless steel surface as hard as he could. All night he’d cleaned his kitchen with a vengeance. Partly because he needed to — two nights drinking in front of the TV hadn’t done his stove any favors — and partly because he desperately needed to
do
something, or he thought he might lose his mind.

More than anything, he needed Monday to come. Calder would probably be gone again by then, and life could go back to normal. No more worrying that every time the door to his shop opened, it was going to be him.

He rinsed the burnt pot one more time, splashing water onto his already-paint-splattered t-shirt, and put it upside down on his drying rack. Then he turned the water off and listened.

Something thumped on his front porch.

Fucking raccoons
, he thought.

Another thump, another, then a long sliding sound, like the raccoon was
dragging
something.

Is it stealing my welcome mat
? Sam thought, and frowned. The noises kept up.

Annoyed, he wiped his hands off on a towel, then strode to the front door and jerked it open, ready to shout at some critters.

On the corner of his porch stood Calder, still pulling an undershirt over his head.
 

His eyes met Sam’s. Both of them stopped.
 

Sam felt like he was frozen in time for a moment, like he was staring up into the blue sky of Calder’s eyes, surrounded by the vast heavens.
 

Calder didn’t move. He looked like a deer in the headlights, as though he’d come to Sam’s front porch, and yet, seeing Sam there was a surprise.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his unsteady eyes on Sam’s face.

Calder was drunk as
hell
, too.

Sam finally moved. He leaned one forearm against the doorframe and looked over Calder, feeling for once like he had the upper hand, as surprised as he was.

I could just shut the door
, he thought.
Let him know how it feels to be left alone with no clue what happened. I could just turn and walk away. Give him a taste of his own medicine.

He didn’t. A soft breeze blew through the porch, and Sam let those thoughts blow away. Years ago he might have slammed the door, but now, petty revenge was pointless and he knew it.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t above letting Calder sweat a little, standing half-dressed on the porch.

Let him think I might close the door
, Sam thought. He waited long moments before he spoke.

“Okay,” Sam said at last. “You coming in?”

He stepped back and opened the door. As Calder walked past him he closed his eyes. Just the way his former mate
moved
was so familiar that it hurt to watch, and he closed the door. A stray moth circled a floor lamp.

They looked at each other again, and Sam knew that Calder hadn’t planned past the front porch. The smell of whiskey was practically coming out of his pores and he jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Nice place,” Calder said at last, looking around.

“Thanks,” Sam said. “I like it.”

Silence.

“Can I get you a drink or something?” Sam asked. It seemed like something a person would say at this point.

“Water?” Calder asked.

Sam nodded once. He went to the kitchen and filled two glasses, then brought them back into the living room where Calder stood, staring around.

He was wearing a white undershirt and gray pants that looked like they were from a suit. No shoes, no other shirt. Both the pants and the shirt had unmistakable teeth marks torn into them, the obvious shape of a wolf mouth.

“You coming from somewhere?” Sam asked.

He tried not to look at Calder too much. Somehow, Calder looked exactly the same, like he could have left yesterday.
 

Sam could feel the old, familiar ache resurfacing, just looking at the other man. That rush of pure
desire
. He forced it down as far as it would go, trying to bury it somewhere deep inside himself.

“Greta’s rehearsal dinner,” Calder said, swallowing water.

“You forgot most of your suit,” Sam said.

Calder looked down.

“Yeah,” he said. “This was kind of an impulse thing. Most of it’s still in the parking lot, I think.”

He looked around again, still standing in the middle of the room.

“You live here alone?” he asked.

Sam nodded, then swallowed.

“Yeah, it’s just me,” he said. “You still traveling?” he asked, his heart thundering.

Is this where we talk about our lives?
he wondered.
Where I say I’m still single and he whips out his wallet with pictures of his mates and his kids?

“Still traveling,” said Calder, and he looked down into his water glass. “I did twenty thousand miles last year. I went to Alaska for a month.”

“You see the northern lights?” Sam asked, the first thing that popped into his head.

“Nah, I was there during the summer,” Calder said. “It’s light for so long that you can’t really see them then.”

“I’ve heard they’re incredible,” Sam said.

He looked down into his glass, a knot in his stomach.

Just ask what you really want to know,
he thought.

“You traveling alone?” he asked.

Calder looked at him again, and Sam’s breath caught in his throat.

Worse, he’s mated and unhappy and now he’s drunk in my living room
, he thought.
I’m some sort of backup plan for him
.

“Yeah, just me,” Calder said, then laughed. “Me and the open road.”

Sam took one more sip of his water, then put his glass on an end table. He took a step forward and looked Calder dead in the eye. His entire being
screamed
, every emotion rushing through him at once, but he forced himself to stand still, look into Calder’s eyes.

“You look different,” Calder said. He put his glass down, too, and just stood there, a strand of unruly hair draping across his forehead. “Your hair’s longer.”

He scanned Sam’s body for a moment.

“You got more tattoos,” he went on, his voice changing somehow.

Sam looked down at his arms. He’d gotten a
lot
more tattoos, and most of them weren’t even visible when he had a shirt on.

“I own a tattoo parlor,” Sam said.

“You used to have the ones on your forearms,” Calder said. “You were going to get the forest scene on one sleeve.”

“I did,” said Sam, pulling up the sleeve of his t-shirt, showing it off. “I got a river down the other arm.”

Calder ran a hand through his hair and swallowed.

“Why a river?” he finally asked.

“Face your demons and all that,” Sam said. “I wanted to remember on my own terms, and that’s how I did it.”

A pause.

“I’ve got a couple of gray hairs, too,” Sam said. “Sometimes my back hurts if I sit in a car for too long. It’s been a while. I got older, Calder.”

“I did too,” said Calder.

“You look the same,” said Sam. “I feel like I could have seen you yesterday, and here I am, unrecognizable.”

Calder looked at Sam with a look so raw that Sam didn’t know what to do. He felt like he didn’t have a script for this.

“I’d recognize you anywhere,” Calder said, his voice so sincere it made Sam’s breath catch in his throat.

“Why are you here, Calder?” Sam asked.

“Because I wanted to see you and I’m too drunk to make good decisions,” he said. “Because when I saw you two days ago you looked at me like I was a stranger, and I almost got back on my bike right then.”

“You ruined my date,” Sam said.

Calder paled.

“You had a date?” he said.

“A bad one,” Sam said. “We shook hands, for fuck’s sake.”

Calder’s jaw flexed, just a little.

He’s jealous
, Sam realized.

“Like this?” Calder asked. “Like acquaintances?”

He held out one hand, like he was offering Sam a handshake.

Sam shook his head, wondering what the hell Calder was trying to repair.

“No,” he said.

Calder put his hands back in his pockets, and Sam caught an odd glint in his eye, a rakish gleam that made something inside him
growl
.

“No handshake?” Calder asked.

“We’re not acquaintances,” said Sam.

Calder took a step forward. Their faces were six inches apart, and Sam knew exactly what was going to happen, like he was reading it from a book.

He is going to break your heart again,
Sam told himself.
He’s here because he’s drunk, and he’s going to leave, and you’ll still be here, pining away like an idiot.

“You didn’t come here late at night, drunk, to shake my hand,” Sam said.

“You didn’t let me in so we could have a polite chat,” Calder said, the gleam still in his eye.

“No,” said Sam.

Then he grabbed Calder by the back of the head and brought their lips together, hard enough that he tasted blood, but he didn’t care. He opened his mouth against Calder’s, the other man drunk and moving just a little slow, and pushed his tongue in.

He wrapped their tongues together, one hand in Calder’s hair, as Calder grabbed Sam’s hips and pushed them against his own. Calder was already hard, and Sam could feel the iron of his erection against him as they rubbed together through two layers of fabric, the friction hard and electric.

There was nothing else in the world. The house could have caught on fire, and Sam wouldn’t have cared.

Calder pulled back, biting Sam’s lip, and Sam growled at him. He closed his fist around Calder’s hair, pulling just hard enough, and Calder let go, his eyes flashing, and then he shoved Sam up against the wall, pinning the other man’s hips with his own, cock against cock, and kissed Sam again. He was sloppy and he tasted like whiskey but Sam didn’t care. He wanted everything, every
inch
of Calder, and he wanted it
now
.

When Calder broke the kiss again Sam tore Calder’s shirt off then shoved the other man, pushing him through the door to the bedroom. Calder backed up and got Sam’s shirt off, then stumbled over the low bed, falling onto it backwards.

For a moment, he looked up at Sam in wonder.

“You have a
lot
more tattoos,” he said. There was an odd note in his voice, something Sam didn’t quite understand.

“You were gone a long time,” Sam said. Then he reached down and undid Calder’s pants, yanking them off. He got on his hands and knees, Calder beneath him, and in seconds, he had Calder’s thick cock in his fist. He stroked it hard and slow and Calder gasped.

“Sam,” he whispered.

“Don’t talk,” Sam said, squeezing a little harder. He bent his head to Calder’s neck and sucked the skin there until he heard Calder moan, his hips rising off the bed.

Then Calder reached up and grabbed Sam’s erection through his thin pajama pants, and Sam bit Calder’s neck. A groan tore itself from Sam’s throat, and all he could think was
I want this
.

“Come on,” Calder said, and he grabbed Sam’s pajama pants and yanked them off, pushing Sam to the side and then they were face-to-face and Calder had both of their cocks in one hand, pressed together hard.

Sam groaned, his hand on the small of Calder’s back, pressing the other man into him. Everything was pure, white-hot pleasure, their bodies pressed together, his shaft rubbing against Calder’s in his dark bedroom.

“This feels the same,” Calder said, his voice low and rough.

“I
said
don’t talk,” growled Sam.

“It feels fucking
good
,” Calder said, his eyes drifting closed.