“I knew it.”With a grunt, Joey backed up against him, snuggling in, accepting Gideon as the big spoon.Gideon reached below him, grabbed the throw from the foot of his bed, and pulled it up to keep them warm for a few more moments while they were still joined.
“Knew what?”Gideon asked, running his lips over Joey’s shoulder because he couldn’t help himself.
“Knew you were the wolf,” Joey said dreamily.“Knew you were the wolf.I’ve never been the prey before.But I knew you were the wolf.”
And there they were.In the strange language of hunter and hunted, one that Gideon understood.
He licked the sweat from the back of Joey’s neck and then bit him softly, enjoying Joey’s faint, “Ah!”of pain and pleasure.
“I don’t know who you’re kidding,” Gideon whispered in his ear.“But we’re both the wolf.”
In his arms, Joey Carlyle shook hard.Orgasmic aftermath—or anticipation.As Gideon hardened inside him, he realized it could be both.
Joey grunted and bore down, squeezing him harder.“Fuck me, wolf,” he dared.
Gideon closed his eyes for an instant, now seeing how trapped he was—how trapped they both were.
And his hips started moving, and he started mating once more.
FINALLY,FINALLY,their passion eased.They may have slept, but Gideon, true to those years in the military, was immediately awake and in the present when he felt Carlyle try to slip out of bed.
His arm tightened around Joey’s stomach, and Joey grunted.
“I swear to Christ, Gid, I just have to pee.”
Gideon sighed away some of his panic.“Okay,” he conceded.“I’ll go when you’re done.”
When he got back, Joey had a bag of pita chips and some hummus on a towel on the bed.Gideon raised an eyebrow, and Joey glared at him.
“Yes, I’m a barbarian.No, I don’t always eat in bed, but….”He glanced away.“I wasn’t sure if you’d let us eat on the couch.”
Gideon shivered.“Grab some sweats,” he murmured.“We haven’t eaten all day.”
A short time later, they were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, the coffee table laden with snacks, including a bowl of microwaved popcorn, something Gideon had only begun keeping when Joey had started coming over to his place and asking for it.
After eating in silence for a few, Joey started talking as though they’d never stopped.
“I… the one time I had a girlfriend,” he said, his voice low, “my father paid one of his men to seduce her—or assault her, I never knew which—and get her pregnant.Her parents were too scared to press charges.But you… you learn really quick not to get attached.Every encounter—you stalk, you fall, you eat, you walk away.”He shrugged.“My grandfather taught me how to hunt.He made it… honorable, I guess.I tried to be honorable.”His voice had a note of pleading in it, and Gideon got it.
“No strings, no promises, everybody knows what they’re getting,” he said, and Joey nodded, relieved.“That’s a hard way to live.”
He’d meant it to comfort, but the expression on Joey’s face was suddenly stripped bare.
“I didn’t mean to taunt you, Gid,” he said, staring at Gideon’s face with naked begging now.Please understand me.Please.“I just didn’t know how to ask for more than that.”
Gideon nodded and leaned into Joey’s space, relieved when Joey leaned back.
“We can’t do this if we don’t trust each other in the bedroom the same way we trust each other in the car,” he said gently.Joey shifted a little, but that was only to lean closer.“Do you trust me?”
“In the car, yeah,” Joey said, and Gideon nodded, thinking he’d take it.It was a place to start.
“What are you afraid I’ll do here, flesh to flesh?”
Joey made a sound then, a grunt of terrible fear.“You don’t know what he could do,” he whispered.
Gideon nodded.“I’ve been studying up, Joseph Carlyle.Believe me, I know exactly what I’m getting into.”
Joey pulled back and stared at him skeptically.“You’ve said that,” he said.“I don’t think you can get what you need from—”
