Page 32 of True North
Misha had lost control of himself. He should make some kind of excuse and go back inside. If he said dinner had disagreed with him, JT probably wouldn’t question it.
“Yeah, nice,” Misha said.
JT let out a long, contented sigh and sank deeper into the tub. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, which had the unfortunate side effect of giving Misha free rein to ogle him. Which he did, at great length, ashamed of himself but also unable to resist.
What would happen if he slid over to JT’s side of the hot tub? Would JT recoil from him in disgust? Or would he pull Misha into his lap and run his hands down Misha’s hips? Maybe he would let Misha kiss him and touch his shoulders. Maybe he would lead Misha indoors by the hand and take him upstairs to bed.
JT didn’t like men. He had given absolutely no indication that he liked men. Misha was dreaming.
JT groaned, eyes still closed. “This feels great. My back’s killing me. I mean, my back hurts.”
“Yeah,” Misha said, for lack of anything else to say.
“I know you like this hot tub.” JT raised his head and made eye contact with Misha, who tried to look as though he hadn’t been staring. “Since I caught you in it. When you were a bear.”
Misha hoped the heat of the water would serve as a plausible explanation for his blush. “I thought it’s—warm, nice. Good. I don’t, uh…” He trailed off. Explaining that he’d been too deep in his bear-mind to fully grasp or care that the hot tub was private property was beyond the limits of his English. He could tell JT someday. In another week or two, if things kept coming back to them at the rate they had been. He remembered more words every morning, as if they had been deposited into him in the middle of the night.
A tentative peek revealed that JT’s eyes were creased with a smile. “You looked happy in here.”
Misha had been, he remembered. The water had felt nice, even without the jets turned on. Living fully in the moment, as he sometimes could as a bear, he’d had nothing on his mind but the warmth of the water and the summer smells wafting on the breeze. He hadn’t even known who JT was at that point. JT’s house was alluring mostly because of its readily accessible garbage.
So much had changed since then.
“Yeah, happy,” Misha said. His face was so hot. He resisted the impulse to press his hands to his cheeks.
JT was watching him. He shifted closer to Misha, then seemed to reconsider and settled back. “Misha, um.” His gaze dropped from Misha’s face to his shoulders or chest or—maybe somewhere else, although Misha shouldn’t hope for that or even consider it. The air between them seemed warm and very still. Time slowed to a crawl. Misha didn’t know what was happening, but his heart was racing nonetheless.
JT looked away and rubbed a wet hand over his face. The moment broke.
“What?” Misha asked, knowing it was fruitless to ask.
“Nothing,” JT said. “Never mind.” He sat up straight. “Forgot the beer. Want one?”
“Okay,” Misha said.
* * *
Misha was ready for bed that night at the usual time of somewhere between eleven and midnight. He and JT habitually went to bed together, and if one of them wasn’t quite ready to sleep yet, they would read in bed for a while.
It was not, Misha had to admit, normal behavior.
But, whatever: he liked sleeping with JT, and to stop now would only draw attention to how weird they were being about each other. As long as they didn’t discuss what they were doing, they could pretend there was nothing strange about it.
He set his book down on the coffee table and sat up to stretch his arms above his head and rub his eyes. “It’s bed.”
JT glanced over from the other couch, where he was reading his own book, some action novel with a silhouette of a man holding a gun on the cover. The lamp on the end table beside him cast a warm pool of yellow light around him. “I’m not sleepy yet. You go on up.”
Misha eyed him. “You don’t come?”
“Nah.” JT returned his gaze to his book. “I’ll stay up for a while.”
Misha sat there for another moment, wrong-footed and confused. He wondered if he had done something wrong. But JT didn’t look at him again, only calmly turned another page, and Misha rose to his feet and went upstairs alone.
He brushed his teeth, undressed, and climbed into bed. The moon was only a bare sliver outside, and after Misha turned out the lights, the darkness in the bedroom was almost absolute. He lay there in the silent black and tried to think about nothing and fall immediately asleep, but his thoughts spun around and around, and he couldn’t seem to settle.
What had JT stopped himself from saying earlier? Misha could imagine any variety of things, some completely benign, others straight out of his wildest fantasies. On the other hand, maybe JT was tired of having a houseguest and had decided to deliver the news in the hot tub to soften the blow.
That made a lot of sense. Now that Misha had been introduced to the local community, JT would expect him to start relying on his fellow shifters for support. JT wasn’t going to be willing to keep feeding and housing Misha indefinitely. At some point, Misha would need to move on.