Page 22 of Someone Else's Wolf

We should change the subject, or it would be phone sex next. We chatted about this and that for a little while, then said our goodbyes. After the phone call, I flopped down on my bed, feeling refreshed, alive, and almost disgustingly content. He really had missed me. When I got back, nothing would be different between us: lots of sex with a heaping side order of softly caring wolf and his cooking skills. Really, how lucky could a guy get?

Kirk walked into the room, his face shining with sweat. He had big, dark eyes, a sensitive and wary face that could so easily look coldly aristocratic, curly hair, and a broad-shouldered, lean build. He looked like he'd been on a run; his clothes were disheveled and sweaty. But he wasn't even breathing hard. Like Peter, he could surely outrun any non-shifter and make it look easy.

He saw me and turned to leave again.

"Don't be like that. What did I do?" I demanded.

He hesitated in the doorway, but I thought today he looked more irritated with himself than with me. His grimace was apologetic. "I shouldn't have been so rude upon our introduction. I apologize." Clearly, the words grated, but he got them out.

"Accepted." I couldn't hold a grudge when he clearly meant the apology and it cost him something to offer. I studied his face. "You really hate wolves, I guess."

He grimaced, then seemed to pick and choose his words carefully. "Some instincts are quite pronounced in me, I find. I would certainly try to be civil to any wolf I had to meet. I am not sure I would succeed."

I tried to comprehend that level of disgust for another person, but I couldn't do it. It sounded pretty damned prejudiced to me. Then again, wolves hunted deer in the wild, and if some of those instincts of fear/fight/flee came through even on the human side of things for a deer shifter, who was I to say it should be easy to turn it off and take no account of your instincts? I'd never had to deal with an instinctual feeling of "this person might kill me" upon meeting someone like Peter.

Good, soft, nerdy Peter with his awkward laugh and his long limbs and his warm eyes and his big, strong hands.

Kirk sighed and sat down gingerly on the bed nearest mine. He seemed to arrange himself carefully. He had extremely good posture — one of those tall, lordly guys who looked like he'd never slouched in his life. He looked down at his hands on his lap.

"You barely smell of him anymore. Your wolf." He spoke as though that might be of some consolation to me.

Thanks?I just watched him, not sure what to say, what he expected of me, or why he was talking to me.

He shook his head slightly. "I did not expect this to be such a sexually charged environment. Nearly everyone here seems to be, shall we say, less focused on academics than I'd have thought. I suppose it was naïve of me to think this course would be different."

I leaned forward. "Have you been to one before?" And we were all sexually charged, according to him? Wow.

He grimaced. "Yes, and it might as well have been a nightclub with half-priced drinks. Everyone seemed to be there looking for a non-work-appropriate encounter or life partner. I had hoped this would be different. As it is, I'm surprised the whole place doesn't reek of sex." He met my gaze briefly and apologetically. "I needn't have taken it out on you."

I waved away his second apology. "Perhaps you're more sensitive than some."

"Indubitably." His expression was wry. "Perhaps more than everyone else combined. My sense of smell is advanced, and so, I've been told, is my fastidiousness."

"How do you normally handle it?" If he smelled sex everywhere, and it bothered him so much, how did he function in everyday life?

"I rarely do. I live alone and do freelance work. I frequently go outdoors and walk in the forest as my true self. I am unusual in my repulsion to sex, I know, but that's just how I am. I'm beginning to think this was all a mistake and I should leave."

"What sort of work were you hoping for when you signed up for this?"

"Medical consultancy. It's a safe field with good pay, and it's very useful." He shrugged, looking downcast. "But shifters still require partners and close supervision in medicine. No one would hire me without the best certification and a certified partner to oversee me. Insurance reasons, if nothing else."

"Wait. Are you already certified, and just trying to find a partner?"

"That's correct."

I thought about that. I'd imagined everyone was here to work with the police.

He continued, "It was a special medical training course. I couldn't find a partner. It looks no more likely this time, so far. Perhaps I'm wasting everyone's time. I know I'm a bit odd."

I thought hard. If I went into medical work, it wouldn't matter what kind of sexual orientation details came out about me, which they eventually would, if I kept seeing Peter, because it was Peter. I was fairly certain he couldn't keep secrets forever, even if he tried his best.

Besides which, there was Sue. If she could find a way to out me without hurting her partner, I didn't think she'd hesitate to pull that trigger. She'd take great joy in it, if she still considered me a threat, and she seemed particularly boneheaded on that score, the jerk.

Whatever the precinct policy was on the matter, being out would make my life more difficult, whether I went back to work where I'd been, or moved to Qualestown.

Medical consultancy would solve that problem entirely.

Would I like medical work, though? Assuming I could do my part properly and could find work near enough to see Peter. Regular hours and less danger, if the pay was similar, or even less, sounded better now that I was older. Police work took a toll, whatever anyone wanted to say.