Page 23 of The Wolf Professor

There was a pause as Max frothed the milk (with no problem, thankfully), before Charlie said casually, “The flyers they’ve put out for the Winter Solstice Rut are really artistic, I reckon.”

Max stiffened.

“I kind of assumed it’s your pack who organize the ruts. Same surname and all.”

He couldn’t bring himself to lie. “Yep.”

“Would you have told me that they were your pack—if I hadn’t mentioned it?”

“No real reason to. You worked it out, so…” He shrugged, adding the milk to the coffee.

She cocked her head. “Are you ashamed of them?”

Gods, sometimes her directness caught him off guard. “Not ashamed, but not proud either. I don’t go broadcasting the connection. So where did you see these flyers?”

“A girl at the pub was handing them out. Taryn, I think she said her name was. She’s studying graphic design at Motham College.”

Max cast his mind back to the snippets of news he’d got over the years. That would probably be Benjy’s daughter.

“I didn’t mention you. Or say I was working for you or anything.”

“Right.” He handed her the coffee.

“Thank you, very professionally done.” She beamed up at him. “Anyway, Taryn said this was the first year they’ve advertised—like, publicly. They seem to be promoting it all over the city.”

Max grunted. “Trying to give an orgy a veneer of respectability by dressing it up as a festival.”

“Is that so wrong?”

He pulled himself up short, willing his hand not to shake as he picked up his own coffee and leaned against the bench. His prejudice toward his pack was at risk of overtaking logic. “Egh, each to their own, I guess. If the Hunts here can make coin out of such events, who am I to judge?” He gave a thin laugh.

“I guess it’s not so different from making coin out of your writing. Just, one is for educating the mind and the other… pleasuring the body,” she murmured sipping her coffee.

Suddenly he felt like a prize hypocrite. Since Charlie had arrived, he’d been plagued by fantasies of pleasuring his body, walking around with such a trigger-happy dick that even the brush of his linen pants could set off a hard-on. It occurred to him that maybe his pack were being more honest than he was. They were wolves who loved to rut, and they weren’t trying to hide it. In fact, they were reveling in it. Selling it. So maybe the joke was on him.

“These events are popular with your age group, are they?” He tried to sound consummately indifferent.

“My age group…” Her lips quirked. “Max, you’re not that old, you’re just…”

“Just…?”

“Just—oh, nothing.”

“Go on, say it.”

“Maybe… a little bit conservative.”

“Repressed, you mean.”

She shook her head, hiding a smile behind her cup.

“So you’ve all attended ruts, have you, you and your friends?” He tried to keep the irritation, the downright fucking jealousy out of his voice. What if she’d let some fucking hairy wolf rut her? He couldn’t bear the idea.

“Oh, me? No.” She gave that little hum of hers. “I never really did the wild things, as a student, you know… drugs and ruts andwhatnot. But now they’re promoting such a variety of options, my friend Gina, who’s bi, is thinking of going. Taryn told us the ruts are really gaining traction in the queer community, as well as straight, and I guess, you know, they’ve decided it’s time to take the ruts mainstream. Which I think is great.”

Max ground his molars together. “Sure.” He let out a hollow laugh. “You must excuse my… er, lack of enthusiasm. To me, sex is… Something that happens between two consenting adults in private. No doubt you young folk see that as boring andwoefully repressed, but there you are.” He slammed his cup down on the counter, a little too hard.

Charlie drained her cup and put it down more gently. “No, I think that’s a perfectly valid view,” she said, in a soft tone that made his heart stutter. “Thanks for the coffee.”

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