Page 16 of The Good Boys Club

I’d return home for those ten weeks, just like Alpha wanted, but I wasn’t mating Dee-Dee . . . or anyone else they decided would make a suitable addition to their pack. I wished I could wave a wand and magic all this shit away, or at least distract them long enough to get them off my case. Then and only then could I figure out what the fuck I was going to do for work.

After all, that was what real magicians used, wasn’t it? Distraction. Sleight of hand.

Oh . . .

A plan accidentally started to form.

I needed to see Cian. I wouldn’t tell him I’d lost my job. But I needed his help.

Me:

Can I come over?

Besides, it wouldn’t be the first thing I’d kept secret from him.

I waited a few seconds for his response, but I knew I wouldn’t get one. It was just after ten, he’d be in bed, his phone on “do not disturb,” his lavender sleep mask on and his headphones playing whichever UFO podcast he drifted off to these days.

But the answer was always “yes” regardless.

I pulled my trainers on, scribbled a note onto a scrap of paper, stuffed that in my pocket, and left my apartment.

Cian lived a seven-minute U-Rail ride away, or a twenty-minute walk. I took the underground train. His one-bed flat was situated on the fifth floor of a former warehouse. The building complex once housed machines that made cloth, but after the industry died they converted the factories to luxury apartments. Cian lived in the Calico Building.

Since his doorbell was connected to his phone and there was no way he’d hear it,andI didn’t want to bother the doorman, I climbed the fire escape and threw myself into Cian’s bedroom through his open window.

Puppy Love

Between Twenty-Four and Sixteen Years Earlier

Mash

Iwas eleven years old when Michaela Thomas told me I was cute.

All my life women and girls had called me cute. They’d pinch my cheeks or ruffle my hair, but suddenly it felt different. The word carried more weight. Meant more grownup things.

Suddenly the word “cute” made me look at myself differently.

I started growing fur where there was no fur before. I shifted into my wolf form for the first time. I got real tall, real quick. My voice went squeaky and then low. And I started noticing boobs.

I mean, I’d always noticed boobs, but overnight I was going out of my way to look at them—at school, at the shops, and at home on the pack’s desktop computer in the dining room.

Boobs were amazing. There were so many varieties. Different shapes, different sizes, different colours . . . big nipples, small nipples, brown ones, pink ones. I wanted to collect them all in my head, like trading cards. And it wasn’t only boobs. I became super interested in all aspects of girls’ bodies, and how very different they were from mine. I liked how they went in at the middle. I liked how their legs looked in skirts. I liked how soft their tummies could be.

When I discovered some girls had these dimples on their lower backs, that was game over for me.

I was twelve when I discovered masturbation. Oh my gods, the hours I’d wasted wanking. Bringing myself almost to the point of no return and then letting go . . . literally letting go of my dick until that feeling slid away, only to build myself back up again. I didn’t know it was called edging until I was much older.

Couldn’t wank in my room, though, because I shared it with my brother Zach, so I would go to the outcrop at the east end of the Howling Pines estate. The drop marked the boundary of our territory. The other side of the ravine belonged to the Rook pack, and the rocky valley in between the two perimeters was no-man’s-land.

Behind a rock, I’d hidden a magazine that Aaron Phillips had stolen from under his father’s mattress. Later, and long after themagazine had been turned to pulp by rain and other elements, I hid a bottle of lube there. Didn’t need tissues. I’d come over the edge of the outcrop into the ravine and let nature take care of the rest.

I was thirteen when Erin Anderson told me I was hot. Hot was definitely an upgrade on cute. I was already over six feet tall and towering over my classmates and most teachers. Aaron told me all the girls agreed with Erin, and I could probably fuck any of them if I wanted.

One time, Aaron’s dad was working the night shift and Aaron was home alone so I stayed over. We watched porn on the pay-per-view channels. That was the first time I ever saw anyone fuck.

“It looks fun,” he’d said. I’d agreed. My knots had popped. They were hard and heavy and uncomfortable in my boxers. That night, in Aaron’s bathroom, I learned that my knots would stay inflated for over half an hour after I’d wanked.

I was thirteen and a half when I kissed a girl for the first time. Zach threw his friend Kai a birthday party in our pack’s barn, and I snogged Erin on a dare. It was sloppy and wet, and our teeth clashed together like cymbals. I didn’t know what to do with my tongue. She had braces. Then I kissed Laura Garcia on another dare, and Jodie Holmes, and Elsie Gray, and Suzi White. I drank three beers after that and barfed in the ha-ha.

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