Nearly Human (Marked Book 1) Page 5

  That was the beginning of the end as far as Ethan and I went. He pried it out of me, the details about my little problem. Heightened senses, the increased prey reactions—what I referred to as my scared rabbit brain, my ability to tell when someone wasn’t ‘right.’ Ethan’s acceptance of my differences became strained, stilted. He never shamed me for them, but he started testing me, it seemed. Pushing my buttons.

  It all came to a head when he snapped at me, accused me of being afraid of my wolf side, holding myself back. We started to excel at makeup sex, tearful fights always ending in orgasms. Even then, I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I was seventeen. No one has ever accused seventeen-year-olds of making great decisions.

  Ethan was caught in the same tangle of memories as me, apparently, because he reached across the table and tapped one finger against the back of my hand where it rested next to my empty beer bottle. “You were never an experiment for me. I know what I said, and it was shitty. But you were never… It was never like that. I didn’t need to ‘find out’ if I was gay or not. I knew I was.”

  “To be honest, I thought maybe the experiment was whether or not you could be with someone who wasn’t like you.” I nodded, eyes prickling. It was something I’d figured out a long time ago about Ethan, that he’d lied to me that day about just using me for sex. He wanted to hurt me, to hurt us, but I never understood why.

  Now or never.

  “Why, then?”

  “Jesus, Landry.” He sighed, letting his head fall back against the top of the chair. “You scared the hell out of me. Out of all of us. There you were, oblivious as all get out, waltzing into the middle of a pack of weres without a care in the world. And when I figured out you weren’t one of us, even though everything in me was screaming that you were?” He shook his head, the finger on the back of my hand pressing down a bit more firmly. I was a butterfly, and he was the pin. “My family was on my ass about you soon as I told them you weren’t like us. My father—he went ‘round to every damn pack in driving distance. Wanted to talk to the heads of families in person, see their faces to make sure they weren’t lying to him when he asked about you.”

  “I remember Aunt Cleverly getting pissy about your dad,” I murmured, unable to look away from where our bodies touched, however minutely. “Said he was full of himself and needed to get his head out of his ass.” Ethan made a choked, amused noise. “I know she didn’t think y’all were anything other than plain old human. I know your father didn’t ask my God-fearing, church-going aunt if she had a werewolf in her spare bedroom.”

  There was that sound again. Definitely amused. “You know how many weres are God-fearing church goers?” he teased. “And if I recall correctly, he asked her if you had some sort of, in his words, ‘mental defect or some shit.’”

  “Seriously? Cleverly must’ve loved that. She was always worried people would think I was weird, or she’d messed me up somehow.” My aunt hadn’t exactly been overprotective, but she’d definitely been cautious, making sure I was as aggressively normal as possible in the eyes of the community. Afterschool job, check. Hobbies, check. Dinner at a decent hour, check. Homework, chores, neat appearance, check, check, check.

  Ethan grunted softly. “He was convinced by that point you were just refusing to accept your true nature and had somehow gotten stuck.”

  “Stuck?” I finally looked up at him. He looked away so quickly I knew I’d almost caught him staring. “Half were, half human? Like Eddie Munster or something?” I laughed, turning my hand palm-up without thinking. He froze for just a split second, long enough for me to realize what I’d done, but he didn’t pull back. Ethan uncurled his fingers and laid his hand against mine. It was the most awkward, heart-flutteringly wonderful hand holding I’d had in a while.

  “We do not speak of Eddie Munster,” he sniffed. “Besides, he was supposed to be fully werewolf.” Ethan made a face, and I laughed again. Our amusement petered out after a few seconds, though, and we sat in hesitant quiet for several more before Ethan spoke again. “But when I finally got back…”

  “I’d graduated.” I sighed. “I couldn’t stand it there after you’d gone.”

  His expression shuttered, but he didn’t move his hand away. “From what I was told, you drowned your sorrows with Patrick Morris pretty damned quick.”

  “Patrick Morris?” My lips curled in disgust at the very mention. The man had been mean as a rabid dog when we were in high school, and the years hadn’t improved him. “Who the hell told you… Oh, wait. Your brothers?”

  Ethan had the good grace to look mildly ashamed. “Yeah. Tyler and Stephen both said they saw you and Patrick at the lake, down by Breyer’s Cove.”

  Slowly, I curled my fingers around his palm. His hands had always been larger than mine, rougher too, and that hadn’t changed at all over the years. He tensed in my grasp before slowly relaxing against me. Nervousness rolled off him in waves. He shifted his weight, a subtle movement but obvious to me, rocking onto the balls of his feet as if ready to flee. Or pounce. Ethan’s gaze darted from my mouth to my eyes and back again before settling at some indistinct point on my face. There was the faintest hitch to his breath. I wondered how my own uncertainty felt to him, if it fluttered like hummingbird wings or crackled like static.

  His sizzled along my awareness like water on a hot griddle, popping and rushing as he took deliberate, slow breaths. His dark green eyes were narrowed, his body tense. He was waiting, poised.

  “The night you left and every damned night after, I stayed home. Until the day I left for college, my entire life consisted of going to school, going to work, coming home, repeat.”

  “So, what you’re saying is… I’ve been an ass for going on fifteen years now.”

  “Hey. Don’t be like that.” I leaned forward, squeezing his fingers in mine. “You’ve been an ass for much longer than that.”

  Ethan’s snort of laughter broke open the dam between us. I pulled on his hand, and he rose to his feet, tugging me with him. We stepped into each other’s arms, a hard embrace that didn’t erase the awfulness of the past but dulled the sharp edges a bit. We’d been much younger than, less sure. I started to say as much to him, or something like it, tilting my head back to speak without a mouthful of cotton shirt in the way, but he was already leaning down. It was muscle memory, déjà vu, nostalgia, need, all of it bundled up into one burst of realization the moment before his lips brushed mine.

  That’s what Ethan looks like when he wants to kiss me, I remembered. Oh, and that’s what my nerves do when I see that face. Hello, tap dancing butterflies.

  I couldn’t close my eyes, even though I thought I should. His were closed, after all, lashes dark crescents against his tan skin, the faintest traces of freckles drawing my eye as I hummed a surprised sound of pleasure against his mouth. I parted my lips against his, taking his breath into me when he sighed. Ethan started to pull away but thought better of it, letting go of my hand to grasp my hips, holding me against him as we swayed gently in my kitchen, the kiss deepening.

  Part of me was desperate to wiggle free, to run and just keep going until he was so far behind me, he’d never catch up.

  When we were younger, I thought that was some sort of guilt, growing up gay in a conservative little town giving me internalized homophobia. But now… now I knew it was whatever made me almost.

  Almost were, almost not human. Almost afraid of this.

  Ethan made a guttural sound, not quite a growl but close enough that I smirked. His fingers tightened on my hips, and he rocked against me. Someone was obviously more than happy to see me, I thought, unable to stop smiling into the kiss. He nipped my lower lip and I gasped, drawing back just a little. His teeth flashed in a wild grin, hands moving up my back to tug me back into the embrace before I could go far.

  Arousal was thick in the air, not a scent but an awareness. A feeling racing in my veins and heating my blood. Ethan was feeling it too. He wanted to chase, to hunt and play and take, and good Lord I wanted to let him.

  “Landry”—he breathed against my neck when we finally came up for air— “tell me to stop if you don’t want this. I won’t be mad. I promise, I won’t. Don’t do this just for old time’s sake, or… or, I don’t know, to hurt me later. Please just tell me and—”

  I hushed him with a breath against his ear. “We’re different now, huh? We’re not going to use this to hurt one another, right?” He nodded, eyes squeezed shut. It was a visceral thrill, seeing this big, strong were damn near begging me for… Well. For whatever we’d do. I didn’t know if sex was going to happen just then, but it was definitely in the future for us, if we kept our heads out of our asses. “Do you? Want this, I mean? Or is this… I don’t know, nostalgia run rampant? A chance to have our goodbye and pretend it never happened later?”

  “I want this,” he said, voice heavy. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

  I pressed against him again, ducking my head to kiss the curve of his jaw. “That’s good. Very, very good. Yes…” He laughed shakily against me and slid his hands up my back, one hand reaching the curls at the base of my skull and tangling there. “We should at least go into the living room, though. I’m getting a crick in my neck trying to make out like this.”

  Ethan released me but stayed close as I led him through to the small living area. The sun had dropped lower, bathing the room in dark golden light with thick shadows stretching from the corners. I tossed some of the pillows off the sofa and dropped to one end of it, Ethan stretching out along the other. It was always awkward, interrupting a make out session, no matter how old you are or who you’re with.

  We sat in heavy quiet for a minute, then two. Ethan was doing his best not to look at me, cutting his eyes to the side as he kept his face turned toward the sm
all fireplace across the room, pretending he was interested in the scattering of family photos I’d set on the mantel. His long fingers drummed against his knee, the muscles in his forearm shifting, distracting me for several seconds, making it hard to remember what I was going to say. “You’ve done a good job sprucing this place up. A few years ago, whoever owned it was just letting it go to shit. Done a great job of restoring it…” He trailed off. “Very. Very midcentury modern.”

  “Um.” There we go. Years of advanced studies finally pay off in your suave conversational skills. “So, why did you come over, anyway? I mean, thank you. Really, thank you. But…”

  He finally looked at me again, cheeks pink. “Ah. Well. I don’t have your personal number. Just the ones for the office. And… I’d already missed you.” He rubbed the back of his neck, that dull flush spreading from his cheeks to his throat. “And apparently your home number is unlisted.”

  “I don’t have a landline,” I murmured. “Just my cell phone.”

  “Ah.”

  “Mmhmm.” Welp. This got awkward as balls pretty fast. “So, you wanted me?” His brows shot up, and his expression cycled quickly from surprise to embarrassed to salacious in record time. “I mean,” I said, a bit more loudly than I’d intended, “you drove all the way out here to see me, and I’m guessing it was something to do with the Raymonds if you were trying to catch me back at work…”

  I couldn’t look at him, not while he was giving me that look. It made me want to giggle like a teenager and hide my face.

  Ethan cleared his throat, twisting onto one hip and facing me. He was trying, bless his heart, to look serious and all business, but his lips were still swollen, and judging by the way he was awkwardly positioned, he was trying his damnedest to keep me from noticing his erection. “Um, right. The Raymonds are insisting on an autopsy for both of the kids before they go through with the cremation.”

  I sat up straight, all hints of arousal fading fast. “What? They should contact the coroner’s office, not you. Or at least through the funeral home. They shouldn’t have taken them home.”

  Ethan couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he’d tried. “They, uh… they’re requesting a private autopsy. They want the remains sent to this private hospital north of here. Garrow Clinic?” I shook my head—the name didn’t ring a bell. “The clinic sent word ‘round to my office this evening, just at the end of my shift. You’d already left work, when I called.” He slid me a sideways glance that reminded me of a puppy waiting to be chastised. “Sorry?”

  “I’m not mad about it. Confused but not mad.” I wished I’d brought my beer bottle with me because I desperately needed to fidget. “It’s been days since they died. Any tox screens will be piss poor. Their organs have already started to deteriorate!” Ethan’s face crinkled in disgust. “Sorry, I forget not everyone can talk about this sort of thing without being grossed out.”

  “It’s just… I kind of knew them. Thinking of them deteriorating is just…” He blew out a breath. “Sorry.”

  “And it’s expensive,” I added. “The Raymonds weren’t a very wealthy family last I checked. A private autopsy can cost over five grand conservatively. Especially going through a private clinic. And it’d have to be done by a pathologist, not just the family doctor.”

  “There’s no way the Raymonds can come up with ten grand,” Ethan murmured. “They didn’t seem to think it was anything other than feral dogs when I spoke to them the other day, but this morning, there was a message waiting from Mrs. Raymond, demanding I call her immediately. She told me she thinks you were wrong on the cause of death and wants a second opinion. I guess she didn’t like my reply, that she needed to talk to your office herself, because the people at Garrow called this evening.”

  It’s in bad taste to laugh about the dead, but it’s perfectly fine to cackle about the dead’s family. “What the hell? First of all, the cause of death wasn’t dog attack. It was blood loss due to massive abdominal and thoracic trauma. Secondly, what the hell?” I shoved myself to my feet, heading toward the kitchen to grab another beer. Make out time was long gone, apparently, because there was no way to get myself back in the mood after that news. Ethan grabbed my arm as I passed, though, and tugged me down across his legs. “Hey!”

  “Hey,” he repeated without any mocking to his tone. “I thought you weren’t mad about this. It’s not like, I don’t know, cheating on your hairdresser with another one, right? Them getting another opinion on the cause of death?”

  “It’s not a good look for me, professionally, if the private autopsy turns up a different cause of death, but even a first-year medical student could tell you it’s going to be damn near impossible to determine the cause was anything other than the blood loss due to trauma. And frankly it’s unusual that someone would insist upon a private autopsy like this. You usually see it in cases where cause of death is less obvious, like a young person just dying in their sleep with no known pre-existing conditions. Not someone dead from an apparent animal attack.” I held back my other thought: I needed to look up this Garrow Clinic. I’d never heard of it, and if they were doing private autopsies, I needed to know. The forensic pathology world wasn’t so big as we couldn’t find one another easily, and when you narrowed it down on a regional level, it got even cozier. I knew the pathologists in our area by name, many also by face, and not a single one of them worked at a place called Garrow.

  Ethan shifted his legs, so I sat on his thighs rather than his knees, tilting them up so I tipped to one side. Leaning against his chest, my legs hooked over his, I smiled. “So that’s what you’d come over to tell me?” It seemed like a pretty thin excuse, especially since I’d have found out myself on Monday when I had to sign off on my copies of the exam notes being sent to whomever they had performing the autopsies. But he was here, in my house, and maybe a little stalkery, but honestly, I was okay with that for the time being. Kind of. Mostly.

  “I just want to be sure that you’re not going to… I don’t know, get fired or something.”

  Aw, damn it. He was being sweet. And I wasn’t ready for that.

  I wiggled a bit, turning on his lap until I could look him in the face. “I’m an appointed official. It’d take more than someone wanting a private autopsy to get me removed from the position. I may get some shit from the county about it since this is the first time it’s happened under my watch, but unless they find something grievously wrong with my report, I’m fine.”

  Ethan studied me with an unfamiliar expression on his face before wilting back against the sofa a little, pulling me with him. “We should talk more about… Well. Everything. Before.”

  “Everything before or everything before we do anything?”

  “Both,” he chuckled. “Fucking hell, I missed you, Landry,” he breathed, pulling me down so my head was under his chin and his arms were around me.

  “There’ve been others,” I murmured. Both a question and a fact.

  “Mmm. I’d have been shocked if there hadn’t been.”

  I had to ask. “Is there anyone now?”

  “Ah, no. The job doesn’t really allow a lot of time for dating.”

  “Ah.” Reluctantly, I slid to my feet, offering him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry, but if we’re going to have this conversation, I need to be somewhere that’s not your lap.”

  Ethan nodded. “I’d say it’s an old habit but…” He shrugged, looking sheepish, and got to his feet.

  We headed back into the kitchen, Ethan taking up his seat at the table and me heading for the coffee maker. I felt unexpectedly shy under the glare of the kitchen light, and the domesticity of the moment was weird for us. I fussed with the coffee maker, painstakingly measuring grounds, then spent an inordinately long time choosing mugs, arranging creamer and sugar on the table, and generally trying to avoid the moment.

  “I guess I’ll go first,” he said when it had been quiet for too long. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not still attracted to you, but I know we’re not going to just jump back in the way things were.”

  “We were teenagers,” I reminded him. “And hormonal.”

  “You know there was more to it.” The soft burr of his voice sent a wave of want through me, and I knew it was obvious. He straightened in his chair, his gaze hooded as he regarded me across the table, coffee finally poured but ignored. “But we’re grown men now. We can’t… we can’t just listen to the wolf in us like that now.”