Little Wolf (3 page)

The sheriff’s eyebrows rose, probably because people generally didn’t interrupt him.

Tim dropped his head again and remembered he was supposed to be small and helpless. “This isn’t about that, okay?”

“The moon.” The sheriff reached out as if to touch Tim, then pulled his hand back. The careful gesture reminded Tim of Ray Branigan so much that he glanced up. The sheriff was using Ray’s quiet voice too, the one that meant
What the hell kind of were are you, kid?
while trying to also sound understanding. “The moon makes things difficult. I understand.”

Tim let out a laugh. “Sure you do.” The guy who couldn’t touch people without them sporting boners understood what it was like for Tim to stand next to him and talk over the loud rush of blood in his ears? Tim was just grateful the counter was between them.

“You don’t have to stay in your room,” the sheriff remarked.

Last month Tim had stayed in his rented room, wished for porn, and regretted the fact he’d never tried to sleep with a human or practiced his pickup skills, because full moons were enough to make him extra horny even without the sheriff’s scent all over his clothes. He didn’t know how the sheriff had known where Tim had spent that night, but if Sheriff Neri considered all the weres in the town part of his pack, he probably made it his business to know things like that.

“Oh yeah?” Tim looked up at him again, his muscles locked tight to keep him from either tripping backward into a run or falling forward to crawl to the sheriff’s feet.

“Usually the kids head out together.” The sheriff didn’t gesture, but Tim looked over at the young weres at the counter pretending not to watch Tim talk with their sheriff. Nosy little things, though Tim shouldn’t say little when even the youngest, at fifteen, was already taller than him by several inches. The boys were going to be well over six feet by the time they stopped growing.

Two of the girls were putting lip gloss on each other and making kissy faces under the rapt attention of one of the boys. Except for Graham, they were all giggling. Graham, the youngest, was reading as usual. Redheaded, heavily freckled Graham was on his own stool, oblivious to the world except for how he was leaning on Albert, who blinked across the room at Tim and then quickly looked down. With barely a pause, Albert stepped away from Graham and draped himself over one of the girls. Graham raised his head with a startled, vaguely unhappy air.

“I’m not a kid.” Tim turned back to Sheriff Neri, then tilted his head up to meet the sheriff’s eye when he realized he was talking to his shoulder.

Sheriff Neri’s eyebrows went up again, way up. Tim wanted to respond to his alarm and had to remind himself that he was barely a real were and the instinct to follow and help was misplaced. As a distraction, he made himself look for flaws in the sheriff’s appearance, and sighed when all he could see were wrinkles in his shirt and how his hair was slightly out of place. Even that made him more attractive, as if he’d be okay with it if Tim pulled his hair a little.

Not that Tim knew about hair pulling outside of porn, but it seemed like something to do with someone this attractive, something to make the swirling feelings inside easier to take. The sheriff should get messed up for being so incredible. He should get marked up and jizzed on and bitten. He should get messed up by Tim, a lot.

“Honestly, even for a were you are ridiculous. How are you not a dream?” Tim complained, and could have bitten his tongue. He held out his hands. “Or, you know, don’t tear my head off. I’m awkward on a good day, and today is not a good day, so I can’t be held responsible for anything I say. Moon. Instinct. Yes. We can blame it on that. My clothes feel too small… and itchy. Maybe I used the wrong detergent.” They sold only perfume-free soaps in this town built for werewolves, but Tim hadn’t thought to check for anything else on the label, though he didn’t think anyone in this town would sell products with ingredients known to irritate weres.

“What?” The sheriff frowned at him and leaned in again, scowling even harder when Tim gasped and inched back. The sheriff couldn’t do that, lean in closer like that. Tim couldn’t react to that with any kind of sense.

“I should have never gotten off the bus,” Tim told him desperately.

“Are you all right?” the sheriff asked, though to be honest it was more of a demand.
Tell me what ails you, cub
,
that I may find it and slay it
. Tim interpreted the stern tone in his head hysterically, then sucked in another breath that only made him dizzier.

Carl snorted in amusement. “Littlewolf is never all right,” he commented, only to stop when the sheriff half turned to smile at him, baring his teeth enough to seem playful. Yet that kind of thing wasn’t playful to weres, something even the human Carl would know.

“Even a little wolf has teeth.” The sheriff spoke calmly despite his visible canines and then turned back to Tim before dropping the smile.

Tim stared at him. “Did you just defend me?” he blurted, then widened his eyes to distance himself from that extremely dumb idea.

“Little Wolf?” The sheriff used the name Carl had used, the false last name Tim had given his first day in town. Everyone had to know it was a lie, although no one had questioned Tim about it. The sheriff might have asked Ray Branigan about it, since apparently he and Ray were friends, but he hadn’t said anything to Tim. What he did was almost worse; he put a pause between “little” and “wolf” as if it were a nickname.

It could have been Sheriff Neri’s way of letting Tim know he knew the name was fake, but he never said it accusingly. If anything, his tone was gentle. Maybe Ray had called him after sending Tim here, and being cops, they had both investigated Tim, and they already knew everything. In which case it was really strange that they hadn’t turned Tim over to his uncle. There would be money in it for them, if they didn’t want to do it just to appease a Dirus, or out of alpha werewolf pride or whatever.

Or maybe Tim was being overly paranoid. Of course, overly paranoid wasn’t a bad way to be when living on the run with the Dirus family, one of the oldest and most well-known werewolf families, after you. He already knew how tenacious a were could be in tracking down its prey.

Sheriff Neri was watching him. Tim tried to seem as if he wasn’t strung tight with tension and sporting half a hard-on from imagining scenarios in which the sheriff might call him “Little Wolf” up close and personal. His heart was as loud as a freight train to wolf ears. Tim hated this town and every were in it so much.

The sheriff inhaled again. Whatever he smelled made his eyes go dark. “You’re sure everything’s okay?”

“Since you asked me a minute ago, or since you asked me yesterday?” Tim responded without thinking, rolling his eyes for good measure, because he’d been on his own for five years now and could manage without the sheriff.

The sheriff’s head went back so far that Tim watched his throat move as he swallowed. The scents around him were confusing—still warm and wild but also saltier, rawer, similar to blood. It reminded Tim of bruises and made him stumble into the counter as though he was trying to give himself some.

Luca had enjoyed it when Tim had mouthed off at him, because he had seen it as a chance to intimidate Tim into shutting up, not that Tim ever really had. Tim had ended up hurt the majority of the time. Bruises healed, and weres healed faster than anyone but fairies, but Tim still couldn’t think of Luca without a shudder and a cold knot in his stomach.

Tim thought
hurt
as he inhaled the sheriff’s scent again and held very, very still. Maybe it meant Tim would never lead his family the way his uncle had wanted him to, but he didn’t see the point of needless cruelty, even toward Sheriff Neri, who made him antsy without trying. After almost two months in town, two months of this strange concern for him from the sheriff, Tim didn’t think the sheriff was going to hurt him like Luca had done.

“I’m just bored,” Tim announced, as if he hadn’t been a sarcastic dick.

The sheriff’s shoulders eased down a bit at Tim’s nonapology, though his voice was strained. “You’ll be busy enough once the tourists get here.”

“So will you, I hear,” Tim answered, then shut his eyes at his snippy tone. “Oh my God, seriously, can we blame that on the moon?” He knew his big mouth was a problem, and he didn’t really expect any positive attention from the sheriff, but it would be nice not to endanger his already crappy life by saying something stupid. He nearly asked the sheriff not to kill him, but he’d stopped doing that when it had become clear the sheriff seemed to think it was, well,
rude
that Tim would suggest such a thing, as if that wasn’t what weres sometimes did, when of course it was.

Although, Sheriff Neri hadn’t harmed the tour guide, who had actually deserved an ass-kicking or two. Tim was still mentally drooling at the memory of that display of power. He couldn’t be alone in that. As everyone kept telling him—despite how Tim hadn’t asked, really—the sheriff could take his pick of lovers during the tourist season. Tim debated covering up his jealousy with his envy at the sheriff’s ability to get laid, then decided to act like he’d never said anything.

“The moon?” The sheriff repeated, his tone blank, as though he had no idea what Tim was talking about, or maybe as though he’d asked it before while Tim had been lost in thoughts of his sexiness. Tim blinked at how close the sheriff was all of a sudden, how hot everything was, how the layered scent of
Nathaniel
filled his mouth. He realized his head had fallen back to expose his throat and he was staring into the sheriff’s eyes. Distantly, he thought that he might not mind getting eaten if he got to feel Nathaniel’s teeth in his skin. Then he thought if Nathaniel tried, Tim would show him his teeth in return. He’d bite until Nathaniel carried his mark.

He twitched and fell backward, knocked into the stool and then reached out to catch it.

“Shit! I was challenging you again, wasn’t I?” Tim couldn’t look over at the sheriff, not with his cheeks stinging. His heart was beating so fast it must have alarmed the sheriff, because his pulse was just as fast, distracting and intense at the edge of Tim’s awareness. Tim glanced at the smooth brown column of the sheriff’s throat and then away again when he realized he was staring at the man’s pulse point. “I don’t mean to keep doing that. I’m not a ‘challenge an alpha wolf’ kind of guy. I’m a ‘run and hide’ kind of guy, trust me. I mean….” Running was why Tim was in Wolf’s Paw. “Yeah,” he finished quietly and tried to catch his breath.

“Tim.” Sheriff Neri took a deep breath too, and Tim looked up. “I meant what I said.” The sheriff curled his hands into fists at his side. “You don’t have to spend the full moon alone. There are people who would be happy to invite you out with them.” The sheriff stopped there, then cleared his throat before going on in the slowest, most reluctant tone Tim had ever heard from a grown man. “The kids over there, for example.”

Tim waved that off. “I know. They won’t shut up about it.” The kids kept inviting him to some place called the Meadows. But Tim had no idea what werewolves did together for fun and no intention of making a fool of himself in front of teenagers while finding out.

Sheriff Neri curled his hands tighter. “Weres are stronger when they have friends.” He was probably annoyed at having to give Tim a lesson they taught weres in kindergarten. His voice was like a growl suppressed. “The urge to bond is natural.”

Tim shivered. It was harder to keep his gaze up now with the sheriff’s eyes seeming to turn that wolfish gold. He knew what the sheriff was doing by talking this way, but Tim wasn’t a part of this town, not really, and definitely not in the sheriff’s extended pack. Tim didn’t have to listen, no matter how much the sheriff’s low tone and general aura of intimidating hotness made him stand up straighter. The butterflies in his stomach were just hunger. “I am not a kid.” Tim was small, but he wasn’t a child. “I’m older than them,” he added stubbornly, because the sheriff’s impassive expression wasn’t all that scary, not to someone who was actually related to a big, bad wolf.

The sheriff remained unimpressed with this argument. “They know more about weres than you do.”

Tim flinched and glared. He didn’t care about Carl being there; this wasn’t okay. Tim stayed in this town like Ray and the sheriff obviously wanted him to, he kept out of trouble, and in return the sheriff didn’t press him for information about what Tim was running from or why Tim didn’t know anything about other weres. It was practically a contract, and the sheriff was breaking it.

Glaring was another thing to put on Tim’s list of stupid things done in the presence of Sheriff Neri. But there was no narrowing of eyes or showing of fangs. The sheriff let out a long, slow breath and then nodded. Tim had to blink a few times while he processed that.

“It might be good for you to learn a few things.” The sheriff was oddly cautious for someone who looked frustrated enough to tear the glass case to pieces with his bare hands. “For your own protection since you won’t—” He cut himself off. Tim wondered again exactly what Ray had told him. “You can trust them,” the sheriff added. “They like you.” He uncurled one hand to rub at his nose, then turned toward the café for a moment without indicating a particular were. His voice carried the weight of another unexpressed growl. “That one especially.”

Tim looked around him to the counter, to Albert at the end. He didn’t inhale, but he wrinkled his nose and looked back at the sheriff. Tim wasn’t going to talk about Albert. Albert was nice enough, already tall and strong at eighteen, with nut brown skin, long, straight black hair, and a wide smile, but the sheriff was frowning down at Tim and talking about Tim’s sex life. At least, Tim was pretty sure that was what they were talking about.

Albert smelled okay. If Tim had to label it, he would have said
impatience
or maybe
eager confusion
, and yet he wouldn’t have been able to say why. Apparently the sheriff could.

“You label scents, don’t you?”