Page 35 of The Good Boys Club

Rita’s kitchen was like a sauna and a charcoal grill had had a baby. A baby that was big enough for werewolves to walk around inside. And then those people decided they would store all their food and drink and tables and chairs in there. A ceiling fan whirred overhead but made almost no dent in the oppressive heat, and in the corner of the room a table-top fan swayed pathetically from side to side. Multi-coloured ribbons fluttered in front of the blade guard, as though the fan was sayingdon’t blame me, you can see how much I’m trying.

Now I understood why nineteen-year-old Mash arrived at Remy in possession of only shorts and tanks. I wholly regretted my choice of attire—thick cords, a regular black T-shirt with a short-sleeved flannel shirt, and boots. Boots! My feet were already swimming in their own pools.

“Should I take my shoes off?” I asked Rita, praying she was one of those people who were precious about their floors and carpets.

“Nah, you’re good,” she said, waving me off and filling the kettle straight from the tap. No filter jug.

Gods, I was going to die out here.

I whipped off my shirt and folded it over the back of a dining chair. Rita’s eyes swept over the two full sleeves of tattoos on my arms, but she said nothing to me.

“You still just got the one tattoo, Mash?” she asked.

In answer to her question, Mash pulled his vest over his head. I watched as the fabric brushed along his abdominal muscles, his obliques, his pecs. I almost tore my eyes away, as I was so accustomed to doing, but I remembered we were supposed to be pre-mated, and I was allowed to look. Encouraged to. Would have been suspicious if I didn’t.

And so I did. I drank in everything about Mash’s delicious naked torso. His ultra-defined muscles—a werewolf specialty if my time at Howl had taught me anything—the soft triangles of sandy-blonde hair spreading out like an hourglass on his chest and stomach, and the tattoo nestled directly over his heart.

A black paw print, about five inches in diameter, with the letters GBC in the centre.

I had a matching one on my forearm.

Again, Rita watched me without words. I felt under scrutiny and hoped I was passing whatever tests she mentally put me through. Or perhaps she was watching me for signs I was faking the whole werewolf deal. Maybe she was waiting for my ears to twitch back into human ears, or my tail to retract.

“Is that my son I heard pulling up?!” someone yelled. A moment later, Mash’s mum, Kimmy, came jogging into the kitchen. She ran and leapt into his arms the way women did in his rom coms. He caught her easily, despite the fact she wasn’t much shorter than him, then she buried her nose in the crease of his neck and began sniffing him like a dog at the airport searching for drugs.

“Mam,” he said, squeezing her tight. “I’ve missed you.”

I’d never had a guy friend as tactile as Mash. Girls and women, yes, but not dudes. My girlfriends would hug and kiss me, hold my arm as we walked, touch me to show me something, kiss me on the cheek, pull lint off my shoulders, or apply sun lotion without batting an eyelid. But Mash was the only male friend I had who would treat me like that. Before I met his pack, I figured it was just a Mash thing. Because he was so big, and attractive, and unfazed, and so confident in himself and his sexuality he didn’t need to hide behind a front. But when I’d come to his home a decade ago, I’d realised his entire pack was the same—huggers, as Rita put it.

All cuddles and kisses and play fights and noogies and tickles, shoulder rubs, foot rubs, arms around each other. One time, Mash’s brother Zach kissed me on the mouth, and it was his mating we were attending at the time.

I’d never had that with my family. Mum had cuddled me when I was a boy, but that stopped as soon as puberty started—probably my fault as an easily mortified teenager—and Dad shook my hand the day I graduated from my master’s.

It had been the second week of uni when Mash climbed onto the couch with me, hooked his legs over the armrest, and put his head in my lap. Initially I’d frozen, my arms stiff by my sides. I was acutely aware of how close his mouth was to my junk.

“You can rub your fingers through my hair, you know?”he’d said.“I had a . . . stressful day. I’m not really sure science is my thing.”

I’d obeyed. Hesitantly at first, because I was just so damn unsure. But as my fingertips slid into his sandy-blonde locks, and Mash’s tail began tapping the sofa cushions, my own body released some kind of super-addictive happy hormones that told me never to stop. Never stop touching Mash Cassidy. If he wanted his head scratched behind his ears, or his belly rubbed, who was I to say no?

So it didn’t come as a shock that the moment Kimmy let go of her son, she wrapped her arms around me, pulling me into an embrace, squishing her enormous soft chest into me. She smelled like wood shavings and wax polish, and the metal fastenings of her dungarees bit into my abdominal muscles. Her touch was both strong and loving. A mother’s touch. I fought the sudden urge to sob.

Okay, that was weird.

She pulled away from me, but still held me by the tops of my arms. “You’re a he? Rita said Mash was bringingher. Unless—oh, heavens, did I just get your pronouns wrong?”

“No, you didn’t. I use he,” I said.

“Apparently, I was mistaken. Apparently, the phone line was bad,” Rita cut in, hands on her hips, though her tone was soft.

“May I?” Kimmy said to me.

I raised a brow. Shot Mash a silent question.

“She’s asking if she can scent you?”

“Oh. Sure,” I said, finding it odd that she would need consent to sniff me but not to squish her boobs into my face.

Then she pressed her nose into the crease of my neck and began sniffing me the same way she had with Mash. This was new. I had not been sniffed like this the last time I came here. But then, the last time I was here, I wasn’t pretending to be Mash’s lover.

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