He watched as Laddin jumped up from the floor, brushing off his pants with quick swipes of his hand. Bruce took his time pulling on the sweatpants, doing his best not to gasp when the fabric skimmed over his dick. It made no sense. He was hard and horny, and he was watching Laddin as if the guy were the newest Playboy centerfold. Bruce had always noticed cute guys before, but he’d never had such an overwhelming reaction to one.
“You said my brother was like… that he needed….”
Laddin dug into the trunk again and pulled out a T-shirt with a wolf emblem on the front. The thing was all wavy hair as the creature howled to the moon, and beneath it were the words Wulf, Inc. “A blow job after every shift?”
Bruce’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
Laddin laughed as he threw the T-shirt at Bruce. “Not after the first few times. That didn’t stop him from wanting one, though.”
Bruce couldn’t imagine his brother as one of the crass crew—the guys who talked nonstop about sex with bad jokes, crude references, and stupid double entendres. His brother had never been that lame, and the idea that Josh had turned into some beast that needed to rut all the time just reinforced his need to get his brother out of here.
“It’s the Nero guy, isn’t it?”
Laddin smiled, his expression growing wistful. “They’re cute together, aren’t they?”
Cute wasn’t the word he’d use. What he’d seen was a lot bigger and much more dangerous. They were consumed by each other, trapped in each other’s spheres and unable to break free. He had no doubt that Josh thought he loved Nero. His brother was naïve that way. When he fell, he fell hard and gave his all. As a kid, Josh had always obsessed over things, while Bruce had scrambled to keep their father completely unaware of the fallout. Josh’s first dive into chemistry had been when he tried to recreate the experiment that created the Flash. That had cost Josh all his hair and all Bruce’s allowance as he tried to hide the damage to the basement. As time wore on, Josh’s experiments had gotten more sophisticated, but his habit of completely immersing into whatever—or whomever—was still there.
Bruce, on the other hand, knew better than to trust the first kindhearted guy who showed up. Sure, Nero pretended to cherish and protect his brother, and the sex was probably off the charts. But he’d also turned Josh into a werewolf, talked him into risking his life, doing God only knew what, and most telling, he’d destroyed Josh’s relationship with his family.
Or he’d tried to. Bruce was still here for Josh, and he was going to do what he should have done from the very beginning: protect his little brother. And if that meant diving into Josh’s nightmare world of werewolves and other monsters, then that was what he was going to do.
But first he needed to learn the lay of the land. He leaned back against the straw bale, consciously relaxing his pose, as if all he needed was a beer and a plate of nachos. “Give it to me straight. What exactly does it mean to be a werewolf?”
Laddin echoed his pose, only he settled onto the fender of the car as he stretched out his legs. “It means you can turn into a wolf.”
Yeah, that part he’d already figured out. “But how?” He leaned forward. “I need details.”
“I could give you a ton of them, but it won’t matter. You are a fairy-fruit werewolf. None of the rules apply to you.”
“And those rules are….”
“Individual.”
Sounded like a recipe for disaster. Or the standard bullshit con artists used to cover their dirty deeds. He just couldn’t figure out if Laddin was one of the brainwashing cult leaders or another guy caught in someone else’s charismatic orbit. He certainly seemed nice enough, but Bruce would need a lot more to go on before he could trust Laddin.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s start with Josh, then. How did he join your ranks—?”
They both looked up as the barn doors started rolling open. Someone was coming, and Bruce didn’t want to be sitting here half-naked when he met whatever foe decided to stroll in. Plus, it was cold outside, so he pulled on the wolf T-shirt and jumped to his feet.
Laddin was much more casual. He tilted his head to look through the growing crack in the door; then he smiled at Bruce. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? That’s the team coming back. We’ll get your assignment from them.”
Bruce frowned. “My assignment? I didn’t join your team.” It was a knee-jerk response. He never joined anything without triple-checking the small print and doing an exhaustive internet search for scams. His father had drilled distrust into him from the day he was born. Unfortunately, Laddin was smart enough to point out the flaw in his statement.
“You ate the fruit, you joined the team. Wulf, Inc. is responsible for all the lupine shifters in the world, and the bite marks on my jeans prove you qualify. Ergo, you get assignments from us.”
“Is that so?” he challenged. “I have to obey you. No loophole, no way around it, no—”
Laddin cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Of course there are workarounds. We’re magical creatures. The only rule about us is that there are no rules unless we make them.” Then he leaned forward. “Which we do, because it makes everyone safe, including you.”
That was bullshit of the first order. Only abusive people spouted, We make the rules, and you have to obey for your own good. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he turned toward the car just now heading inside, and blew out a relieved breath. Josh sat in the front passenger seat, alive and apparently whole.
Good. His brother was alive.
Now
