Читать книгу Wolf Tales IX - Kate Douglas - Страница 10

“There’s no doubt in my mind, if Luc had left me on the hill in question, I’d be dead.” Jake took a long swallow of his beer. Then he held the bottle in his right hand and stared at it for a few seconds as the memories washed over him. So much had happened since that chance meeting high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. His life hadn’t merely been saved.

It had been forever changed.

“Fourteen, maybe fifteen years ago, I was a paramedic, working in the North Bay, in Santa Rosa. My life sucked, to put it bluntly.”

He laughed, but he knew there was no humor in it. There hadn’t been much to laugh about in those days. “I’d reached a point where I was searching really hard for a solution to life’s many mysteries. Unfortunately, I conducted most of my search at the bottom of a bottle.”

He took a swallow of his beer. Shannon squeezed his shoulder and he glanced at her and smiled. She was the only reason he’d even consider telling his story, the only reason he’d ever choose to revisit that disturbing period of his life.

“I’d taken a few days off to go to the mountains. It seemed the only place I had a clear head anymore was deep in the forest, somewhere far away from people and accidents and crap in general. From death. The past week had been absolutely shitty. A little boy without a car seat in a bad accident. We couldn’t save him, but his drunk mother wasn’t even scratched. A toddler who wandered away from her nanny and drowned in a neighbor’s pool. Kids’ deaths were…well, my head was really fucked and I was desperate to get away.”

He raised his head and looked at Jazzy to get the nightmare images out of his mind. She was the one who’d asked, after all. “I’d planned to camp,” he said, “but I took enough whisky to open my own bar. The more I drank, the worse my future looked. I had some rope in my backpack and that stupid saying kept going through my head—give him just enough rope to hang himself. Well, I had enough rope.”

He reached up and touched Shannon’s fingers on his shoulder, desperate for a more powerful connection. She was the one who grounded him. The one who made him whole. She was also the only one who knew the whole story, even though he’d never actually told her. She’d been there, in those dark memories in his mind when they bonded. He had no secrets from Shannon, but he’d never actually told anyone. Never said the words. Not even to Luc. Especially not to Baylor. He’d kept his pathetic past hidden all this time.

As if it mattered. “It was late in the afternoon and I had one bottle of cheap whiskey left. I had it all worked out. I was going to walk as far as I could before it got dark, finish the bottle, climb a tree, and tie one end of the rope to a branch and the other around my neck. I was too big a chicken to jump, but I figured if I was drunk enough, I’d eventually fall off. Problem solved.

“I saw a big oak up ahead and it looked perfect. Branches were all arranged like a ladder. Had a great view of a pretty little valley. I figured it had Jacob Trent written all over it. I took a swallow of the whisky. I remember looking at the bottle and realizing I was running out of booze and I wasn’t drunk enough yet, and that bothered me.” He paused, remembering. “When I looked up, that’s when I saw it.”

Just thinking about that moment, that pivotal turning point in his life, caught him. He didn’t see Anton’s beautiful home or the people sitting around, watching him. He saw the wolf. The most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life, the way it stood there, staring at him.

“It was huge. A big, black wolf, but it stopped in the trail, blocking my way, not threatening me at all. I remember staring at it. I didn’t feel at all drunk, or crazy, or even depressed. And the strangest thing happened. It was like it was in my head, like I could hear the wolf’s thoughts, but they weren’t the thoughts of a wolf. They were a man’s thoughts. A kind and sympathetic man.

“I stared at it so long I lost track of time. Suddenly I realized it was dark and the wolf was gone, and I was still standing there in the trail. Still had the rope in my pack and an empty whisky bottle in my hand.

“I figured I’d had an alcoholic blackout. I tossed the bottle, sort of shook myself, and stared at the tree. I knew there was a reason I had to climb it, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why. Then I heard someone coming up the trail behind me. I turned around, and saw a man I’d never met before. For some odd reason, though, he felt familiar.”

“I asked you if you had a flashlight.”

Jake’s head snapped up. He hadn’t heard Luc and Tia come back inside. Luc stood in front of him, watching him with a sort of half smile on his face, and the memories flooded Jake with a bittersweet sense of the inevitable. His entire life had changed at that moment. “Yeah,” he nodded. “You said you’d gotten too far from your camp and the sun went down before you expected. I had a flashlight. I went with you, back to your camp.”

Luc helped Tia get as comfortable as she could in a chair next to Shannon. Then he sat down on the floor beside Jake and leaned against Tia’s legs.

Jake smiled at Tia. “Any luck?”

She shook her head. “One measly little contraction. Not dilated any more than the last time Logan checked. At this rate I’m still going to be pregnant at Christmas.”

“I highly doubt that.” Jake reached over and patted her knee.

Jazzy interrupted. “What happened when you went back to Luc’s camp?”

“Ah…the rest of the story.” Jake smiled at her. It was so much easier to talk about it than he’d ever imagined, but these were his friends. His pack. “Luc gave me this honkin’ big pill and said it would take away all my cravings for alcohol.” He laughed. “As much as I loved the booze, I had to think long and hard before I took it, but I’ve never wanted to get drunk since.”

He’d lost his cravings for alcohol, but something else took its place. Even now, so many years later, when Jake thought of those first few days after Luc started him on the nutrients, he got hard. He’d always had a healthy libido, but everything changed that night.

What had been a powerful sex drive quickly became a living, breathing entity, a constant state of arousal that the handsome young man he now shared a campsite with seemed to handle with ease.

Luc told Jake that a craving for sex was one of the side effects. That, and an increased sensitivity to light and sound, to scents on the wind. A world that had been unrelentingly gray and depressing was suddenly filled with the songs of birds in flight, of small creatures squeaking and rustling in the grass…and more.

The beat of his own heart and the rush of blood through his veins. Sounds that somehow connected him more to himself, to the man he was, the man he should be.

They sat by the fire one evening. He’d been taking the pills for a week and he hadn’t had a drink the entire time. In fact, he hadn’t even thought of drinking.

All he could think of was Luc. His name, Lucien Stone, repeated like a mantra in Jake’s mind. Luc lived in San Francisco. He worked for some kind of investigative agency. He was single…and he was, without any doubt, the most beautiful man Jake had ever seen.

He glanced up and looked through the flickering light of the campfire. Luc was watching him with what had to be the same hunger Jake felt. His stomach seemed to roll into a knot and his cock got hard. It didn’t make any sense. None at all.

Jake shook his head. “I’m not gay. I’ve never been all that particular about my sex partners, even had a couple of guys give me blow jobs before, but I’m not into guys.”

Luc smiled at him as if he understood all the crap going through Jake’s head, and he nodded. “I know. I’m not either.”

Jake rubbed at his arms. “I think I’m allergic to those pills you’re giving me. My skin’s itching like crazy.”

“Could be. Beats drinking yourself to death, don’t you think?”

Jake laughed and tossed a twig into the fire. “Yeah. It does. Luc, I…” He swallowed and stared. Luc had gotten up to grab another piece of wood. He had an absolutely perfect body and moved with the grace of a jungle cat. When he knelt down to add wood to the coals, Jake had to clasp his hands in his lap to keep from reaching out to touch him.

Luc didn’t seem to notice, but when he finished stirring the fire, he sat on the same log as Jake. Sat close enough that their shoulders touched. Sat close enough that the heat from Luc’s thigh seemed to brand Jake.

Yet, in spite of the heat, the contact made Jake shiver. He felt his balls draw up close to his body and his cock ached, trapped there between his tight denim jeans and his thigh. He bit back a groan and realized he was gnawing on his bottom lip.

“It’s okay, Jake. I’m feeling it, too.” Luc didn’t look at him, but his voice roughened with the same arousal slicing through Jake, the same unbearable need. “Whatever you want, Jake. However you want it. I’m okay with anything. What we do stays here, on the mountain. No one ever has to know.”

Jake looked up at the smoke spiraling into the star-studded sky and he thought of where his life was going, how the rope he’d planned to hang himself with was still coiled neatly in his backpack. He knew then, without any doubt, that he’d been given another chance by this quietly amazing man.

He understood he was being offered an even greater gift than his own life. Friendship. Love. A sense of connection, if only for the time they spent together on the mountain. It was still more than Jake had known his entire life.

He turned slowly and looked into Luc’s eyes. He hadn’t noticed their color before. Amber. The same unusual shade as his own, but he took it as a sign, as one more connection he could share with another human being.

Jake had never kissed another man. Never even imagined himself doing anything like it, but he leaned close to Luc and met him halfway. Their mouths touched and the sensation was unlike anything he’d experienced in his life. He didn’t remember moving, but suddenly they were standing, holding on to each other, mouths locked in a deep kiss of lips and tongue and teeth and breathing in each other’s breath.

He heard the clink of their belt buckles knocking together, felt the thick length of Luc’s cock behind heavy denim and knew Luc was as trapped as he was. As desperate. Laughing, too horny to feel embarrassed, Jake broke away from Luc’s mouth, and with shaking hands reached for Luc’s belt buckle.

There was no hesitation in Luc, no awkwardness or lack of control. When he reached for Jake’s pants, he simply unhooked his belt and flipped the snap open. Jake froze as Luc’s fingers lifted the tab on his zipper and slowly, one metal tooth at a time, tugged it down.

Jake’s hands stilled and he held his breath, fingers locked tightly on the upper edge of Luc’s waistband. Jake’s zipper parted and then Luc was going to his knees, tugging Jake’s pants down low on his hips, reaching in through the open fly and cupping his balls through his cotton shorts.

Jake had never experienced anything like this in his life. Every sensation magnified. Every touch exquisite torture…the heat of Luc’s big hands holding him, the hot promise of each breath as he leaned forward and stretched his mouth over the ridge of Jake’s cock, suckling his shaft through the warm cotton knit.

Jake’s knees buckled and he grabbed Luc’s shoulders for support. Luc sat back on his heels and laughed. There was so much joy in the sound. So much freedom. Jake didn’t ever remember sex being joyful, desire anything but a basic need to deal with. His hand or a convenient lay…it had never mattered before.

Luc mattered. What he thought, how he felt, what he wanted. All of it mattered and the fear built in Jake, that he couldn’t be enough. He’d never been enough and he didn’t want to fail. Not this time. Not with this man. Not now.

“You won’t.” Luc slowly stood and rested his palms on Jake’s shoulders. “You can’t fail at anything, Jake. This is not a test.” He leaned his head close, rested his forehead against Jake’s. “And if it were, I can promise you, you’ve already passed.”

“I don’t understand.” Jake rolled his head back and forth against Luc’s and he felt his throat thicken, as if he might break down and cry. “I don’t understand any of this.”

Luc tilted his chin and kissed him again. Softly, gently. If he’d wanted to, Jake could have closed his eyes and imagined a woman’s lips on his.

But he desired Luc. Wanted it to be Luc’s mouth, Luc’s cock. His strong male body pressed close to Jake’s, showing him things he’d only imagined.

Neither of them said a word, but they pulled apart and slowly removed their clothing. When they were both naked, Jake expected to feel nervous or at the least, silly, standing here in the firelight, stark naked with the biggest boner he’d ever had in his life. Instead he felt a sense of communion, a feeling of connection, once again, to a man he’d known barely a week.

They stared, unabashedly studying one another. Luc was almost as tall, maybe six four to Jake’s six five, but broader in the chest, heavily muscled with a thick mat of dark hair that arrowed down to a flat belly.

His cock was huge—long and thick with heavy veins running the length of the shaft. Unlike Jake, he’d been cut, and the broad glans was shaped like a ripe plum and every bit as big.

Jake had never taken a man in his mouth before. At this moment, he had no other choice. He had to taste the thick bead of cream resting at the narrow slit, needed to feel the silky skin against his lips, the smooth crown filling his mouth, stretching his lips. He dropped to his knees and wrapped his hands around Luc’s buttocks, pressed his face against his groin and inhaled the rich, musky scent of another man.

He knew what he liked when he got his own cock sucked. It was a simple enough thing to turn the process around, to run his tongue the full length of that thick shaft, to dip into the damp slit in the tip of the glans and sample the salty, almost bitter taste of Luc’s seed.

Jake lifted Luc’s sac in his hand, palming the hard orbs inside and rolling each nut between his fingers. Then he wrapped his lips around the slick crown and sucked. Luc groaned, thrust his hips forward, and tangled his fingers in Jake’s long hair.

Jake sucked him deeper, ran his tongue along the full length and tasted more of Luc’s seed. He wondered if he’d be able to swallow another man’s ejaculate, wondered if he even wanted to suck him until he came, but before he could decide, Luc pulled himself free of Jake’s mouth. Blowing as if he’d run a mile, Luc leaned over and rested his hands on Jake’s shoulders. His cock bobbed in front of Jake’s mouth, shiny with saliva. Slick and wet and unbelievably tempting.

“You’re trying to kill me,” Luc said. “Right? I thought you said you’d never done this before.”

Jake laughed and wiped the back of his hand across his lips. “Never. Why’d you want me to stop?” He should have felt awkward, kneeling in front of a naked man. Instead, he felt like laughing. He wanted to lean close and lick the white bubble off Luc’s cock. Wanted to, and so he did.

“Enough. Hold on. Shit…” Luc raised his head and stared into the darkness. “I knew it. He is trying to kill me.” Muttering, laughing, Luc leaned over and grabbed his pants, reached in the pocket and found a couple of foil packets. “You want top or bottom, because it doesn’t matter to me. Man, I am so ready to fuck.”

He grabbed his cock and stroked himself a couple times, totally at ease with his body. And huge. Really huge.

Jake blinked. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hadn’t thought of this at all, but he raised his head and realized he felt uncomfortable now on his knees, eye level with another man’s package. It was too real, too graphic. He stood up. Taller than Luc. That was a good thing. “I don’t know. I’ve never…”

“I have. Either’s fine with me. Sometimes for a first time, top’s easier, but whichever you decide, you can trust me.”

Trust me.

Jake hadn’t thought about drinking for a week. Hadn’t thought about killing himself, about the job, or death, or the fact he’d been on a downward spiral, ready to hit bottom.

All he’d thought about was sex. Sex and Luc, always in the same sentence, the same breath. “Bottom,” he said. “Show me what to do. What you like.”

They spread one of the sleeping bags on the ground and left the second one rolled up. Jake lay on his back with his knees bent and Luc shoved the rolled bag under his butt so it lifted him up. He felt awkward like this, but Luc said it was better. Not as vulnerable as he might feel on his hands and knees.

As exposed as he felt, Jake found that hard to believe. He lay there with his ass in the air, his knees bent and his feet flat to the ground. His cock and balls hung in the breeze, unprotected. He felt helpless and utterly defenseless.

Luc knelt between his legs. Jake expected him just to shove his cock inside. He waited for the pain because damn, he knew it would hurt, but Luc didn’t do anything of the sort. He stroked Jake’s thighs and ran his hands over his belly. He leaned forward until their bellies touched with their hard cocks trapped between them, hot and heavy and wet with pre-cum. Their nipples touched and their balls brushed together. Luc reached between their bodies and stroked Jake’s sac, slipped his hand lower to stroke his perineum. Then he gently ran his fingertip over Jake’s pucker, pressing, releasing, pressing until Jake was lifting his hips, anxious to meet Luc’s touch.

His legs quivered. Lightning stuck wherever Luc stroked him. Every nerve ending was charged but the most sensitive place wasn’t his cock, it was that tight little puckered hole in his ass. Luc was using some kind of lube because Jake was slick and soft down there and the muscle fluttered and clenched against Luc’s fingertip. When Luc shoved a finger inside, Jake was more than ready.

There was no pain. None at all.

Luc pressed deep. In and out, in again. Jake’s perception of sensation seemed to ramp higher than anything he’d ever experienced. He could have sworn he felt the ridges of Luc’s fingerprints, a tiny snag on his fingernail, a callus. Luc added another finger and Jake planted his feet, lifted his hips and pushed back against it, forcing Luc deep inside, until both of them were panting. Their chests billowed in and out and their hearts pounded, and they weren’t even fucking yet.

Luc backed away. Jake groaned with a sense of loss, of total abandonment, but Luc was back, his cock sheathed in latex. He bent Jake’s knees and pushed his legs close against his chest. Then he pressed his cock against Jake’s ass. Jake felt the thick head bump his buttocks. The tip of the condom felt slick, as if Luc had covered it with lube. It left a damp spot against the back of his thigh.

Luc grabbed himself and found his target. He shoved hard against Jake’s anus, pushing that big, broad cock of his against that tiny little hole.

Jake froze. His muscles clamped tight. There was no way in hell Luc was going to shove that monster up his ass, no way…

But Luc was stroking Jake again with his fingertips, easing the way in and relaxing the taut muscle. The soft brush of callused fingertips against nerve endings all ready to spark sent jolts of sensation racing through Jake. Before he could react, before he had time to consider the next step, Luc had replaced his fingers with the tip of his cock and pressed forward.

Needy, so damned aroused he couldn’t have stopped his body from reacting if he’d tried, Jake met him. He lifted his hips to Luc’s invasion, felt the tight muscle guarding his anus relax. He groaned with the long, dark slide of Luc’s cock deep inside his body, the sharp burn that was equal parts pain and pleasure when his sphincter stretched to accommodate Luc’s girth.

Luc slowly pressed forward. When the soft curl of his pubic hair tickled Jake’s butt, Luc held perfectly still. Slowly, Jake felt his muscles begin to relax, felt the burn subside and a new warmth take hold. Both of them panted. Jake thought they sounded like a couple of big dogs after a long run.

Stuffed full, his body slowly adjusted to what was an entirely unparalleled invasion. The lingering pain of entry slowly, subtly, gave way to pleasure. Jake opened his eyes, unaware he’d closed them when Luc first entered his body. Once again he found himself staring into eyes the image of his own. There was something important about that, something he should understand, but now all he wanted was for Luc to move, to make the pleasure grow, to take him even higher.

He’d never been penetrated—not with fingers or sex toys, and most definitely not with a man’s cock. He’d never experienced a connection with another man that was even remotely similar, but for some unfathomable reason, as Luc slowly withdrew and then pressed forward once again, Jake thought of the women he’d fucked. So many women…the countless, nameless, faceless women who, over the years, had been receptacles for his hard cock, and if not for the condoms he always used, for his seed.

Jake realized he felt more for the man fucking him now than he ever had for any of those women. Felt a greater connection, a stronger emotional link with Lucien Stone than he’d experienced with anyone before now.

Had the women felt this with him? Had he ever given any of them the same feelings Luc now shared with him, the sense he was a vessel, a treasured receptacle for the man’s cock? He couldn’t imagine any woman feeling this complete during sex with him.

Not as complete as Jake felt with Luc.

Impossible. Jake knew he was an adequate lover, but he’d never shared his soul. Never given anything of himself. Luc gave everything. Jake’s mind and body soared, caught in the gentle rhythm of Luc’s slow and deliberate penetration, in the sense of the man who made love to him as if he truly cared.

Jake wrapped his hands around his shins and held his legs bent tightly against his chest. His cock bobbed against his belly, hard and dripping, the little eye pointing directly at his chin. He almost laughed. Was he going to shoot all over his face when he came…?

Shit. When he climaxed while another guy fucked his ass.

Luc seemed to read his mind. Their connection grew more powerful as Jake’s arousal, tempered by confusion, grew. When Jake wondered about his cock shooting jizz all over his face, Luc wrapped a hand over the thick shaft and slowly, almost reverently, stroked him.

As if he understood Jake’s fears.

Almost as if he offered answers to his questions.

Jake watched those long fingers sliding up and down his cock, watched the cowl of foreskin as it partially covered the glans and then retreated once more, mesmerized by the vision of another man beating him off, another man’s hand lovingly stroking his dick.

The sensation was so intense, so entirely visceral, he jerked his gaze away from the sight and looked up, directly into those clear amber eyes, sparkling now in the dying light of the campfire.

And it happened. Something so unreal, so intense that Jake forgot to breathe. A link, unlike anything he’d ever imagined. A clear telepathic link with another person. Without any warning he was there, inside Luc’s head, his cock trapped in the damp warmth of Jake’s rectum, sliding in and out against the hot clench of strong muscles and wet heat.

He felt the sleek stretch of soft skin over an erection as hard as steel, the wet flow of pre-cum as his hand rolled over the broad glans on each upward stroke, and the fascinating slip and slide of a foreskin, a small structure alien to Luc.

Jake heard the silent litany, repeated over and over in Luc’s head, the words don’t come, hold on, don’t come, hold on…, so clear they became Jake’s words, his own mantra until the two of them seemed caught in sexual stasis, balanced precariously between need and desire, caught on the precipice between unbearable lust and ultimate perfection.

Luc smiled and Jake knew he’d been caught, knew that Luc realized his thoughts had been stolen. In that one instant, the act that had been a sharing, a joining of two souls, exploded into something more—a challenge. A battle of wills, of two strong men, each trying to outlast the other.

Now when Luc grinned at Jake, Jake winked. What had been deadly serious took on another sense altogether—of challenge, but of play, too. Exhilarating, thrilling beyond the extreme, yet it was something totally unexpected, and for Jake, an entirely new level of arousal.

Luc’s thrusts sped up and he slammed into Jake faster, harder. His hand slipped up and down Jake’s cock at the same speed, sliding in the thick streams of pre-cum now pouring from the tip.

Sensation poured over Jake—the penetration that seemed to fill his entire body, the exquisite pleasure and perfect pressure of another man’s hand wrapped around his cock. He felt himself sliding over that edge, slipping precariously toward climax, taking the ride alone while Luc plundered his body with perfect control.

Desperate, unwilling to give in to an orgasm fighting for release, Jake slipped his hands between his legs, brushed the thick root of Luc’s cock and cupped his balls in both hands.

Jake almost laughed at Luc’s sharp look of surprise when he squeezed lightly and pressed a fingertip against Luc’s ass. Luc’s hips jerked—in and out a half dozen times in rapid succession, and Jake knew he’d won, knew he’d held on, knew…

His victory was short-lived. Bombarded with shared sensations and visuals—from Jake’s point of view, from Luc’s, so many, so intensely visceral, it was all Jake needed, more than he could take without shooting like a burning star off that precipice and tumbling into orgasm, shouting loudly with Luc’s cry echoing in his ears.

But it wasn’t a cry. Not at all.

It was a howl. The victorious call of a wolf, claiming the night.

They lay together for what seemed like hours. Jake’s hips were still raised on the sleeping bag, though it had flattened out under the combined weight of two men. Luc sprawled across his chest, but his cock was still inside Jake and his fingers still wrapped around Jake’s cock.

The oddest thing, though, happened in his head. Luc was still there, his thoughts an open book to Jake, just as Jake knew his thoughts were to Luc.

I don’t understand, he said. It doesn’t make any sense.

It does, Luc answered. You will.

Jake felt Luc’s chest bouncing against his, and recognized his silent laughter for what it was…an excuse for words, because there were no words.

Jake had no desire to move. None. He’d never felt this complete, this connected, to anyone in his life. Nor this confused. So many images, so many more questions, but they were questions that made him revisit a past he’d tried to forget.

He’d grown up with a succession of relatives raising him until the time came when no one knew how to handle the kid who couldn’t or wouldn’t follow the rules.

He’d lived on the streets, tried some drugs, drifted in and out of empty relationships and dead-end jobs, but without a high school diploma he’d been headed nowhere fast. At least he’d recognized a need for more education, and finally, with a small scholarship, he’d gotten his diploma, gone on to junior college, and then completed paramedic training.

Somehow, he’d thought that helping people in trouble would give him the connection he’d always needed, but it hadn’t helped. Nothing helped. He’d floundered, lost and frustrated.

Until now. Luc had known. Somehow he’d tapped into that part of Jacob Trent that had been searching in vain all his life…only it was hard to find something when you didn’t know what you were looking for.

Luc had shown him exactly what that was. During the height of climax, as orgasm had swept over both of them, Jake had seen his own holy grail, and he’d grabbed hold of it with both hands.

Chanku.

He had no idea what it was, what it meant, but he knew one important fact. Somehow, Luc and the black wolf were connected. And so was Jake. Their paths were meant to cross.

This night was meant to happen.

They made love again, and then again. Jake took the top, then Luc again. Each time more intense. Each time giving Jake a greater sense of who and what Lucien Stone really was.

What he, Jacob Trent, was. And in the morning, after he and Luc had bathed together in an icy stream, washing bodies sticky with semen and sweat and saliva, Luc had finally demonstrated everything Jake had tried to understand throughout the most important night of his life.

Luc shifted. There, in the morning glow of a rising sun, with the towering Sierra Nevada as their backdrop, Luc Stone turned into the same black wolf that had saved Jake’s life just one week ago. Then he’d shifted again, and he was once more just Luc…and Jake broke down and cried.

He sat there by the cold embers of the night’s fire, beside the sleeping bags that were twisted in knots and covered in dirt and pine needles and wept like a baby. All those years, those lost and wasted years of searching and wanting, of strange dreams and even stranger desires, finally made sense.

One week later, after more sex, more love, a greater connection with any other man or woman than he’d ever known in his life, Jake made his first shift.

Before the week was out, he quit his job and joined Ulrich Mason’s special investigative company, Pack Dynamics. He became a part of the team that already included Lucien Stone, Miguel Fuentes, and Andrew Jackson Temple. Since that day, he’d never looked back, and he’d never once regretted meeting Lucien Stone, the man who not only saved his soul, but forever changed his life.