Page 29 of Wolf Reborn

“And bergamot,” Miles agreed. “I don’t know much about it, but I guess it’s some kind of citrus. Nothing artificial in it, if it’s good tea. Like the stuff you have at the shop.”

Gavin frowned, but he didn’t disagree. The only flavors he’d truly changed his mind about were artificial ones, because something about his heightened taste made them taste more artificial than he’d thought before.

Miles held the tea up in front of his face, and he reflexively took a sip. It was gritty with powdered creamer that was somehow too rich and too thin at the same time. “But baby, sometimes the tea is just bad.”

Gavin, trying not to choke on the horrible attempt at tea or spit it everywhere, had to stifle his laughter. He managed to swallow the disgusting concoction, and a second later he was doubled over, laughing silently, so hard tears were streaming down his face, and he had to brace himself up on his knees. “So was that a punishment?”

Miles gave a self-satisfied grin. “Yup.”

“Is that how it’s going to be now?”

“Oh, baby,” Miles said with a bright smile, crowding into him and forcing him back against the sink, then reaching behind him to dump the tea into it. “You have no idea. Now that you’re stuck with me, you’re going to have to listen to me all the time.”

That hit him like a punch to the stomach. “Oh Em.” He reached out and took Miles’s face in both hands, cupping his cheeks softly. “I’m not stuck with you.”

Miles quirked a brow that called bullshit on him, and he didn’t know how to explain just how wrong the idea was. He’d wanted Miles, wanted to be with Miles, so badly he’d risked his pack’s safety for it. “Stuck” was never a term he would use to describe his relationship with Miles. But admitting that was admitting weakness—something Gavin had never been good at.

So he just sighed and rested his forehead against Miles’s. “Don’t look at me like that. Anyone who thinks they’re stuck with you is wrong. Or lucky.”

The impish grin made a resurgence at that. “Lucky, huh? How do you feel about getting lucky right now?”

“A little concerned,” Gavin confessed. “I mean, you almost died. And we already... once.”

Miles gave a dreamy smile at that and nodded. “We sure did. It was amazing. Ten out of ten, would go again.”

“Maybe after dinner and a nap?” Gavin asked, trying to keep his voice neutral. He didn’t want to make Miles feel guilty, but he also wanted to make sure he got plenty of food and rest.

Miles sighed and waived him off. “Oh fine, I guess, if you want to be a buzzkill.”

The microwave beeped yet again, and Gavin couldn’t have said if it was the first time or the fifteenth. Still, it got his attention, so he went over and took out the soup, handing it off to Miles with a towel to make sure he didn’t burn his fingers.

“I guess just water to drink?” Gavin asked.

Miles scowled like a five-year-old denied his artificial-cherry powdered-drink mix, but nodded. “I guess.”

They sat in front of the fire and ate their soup, and it didn’t take long for Miles to bring up yet another uncomfortable subject. “You said this is the Carpenter place. It’s been for sale for at least a year, so the owners left before you moved here.”

Gavin rubbed the back of his neck, where tension was gathering, and sighed. “My family has a vacation house in town. Had, maybe, I don’t know if they maintain it.”

Miles knew Gavin wasn’t in contact with his family, so at least he didn’t ask about that. Instead, he nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense. So the people who lived here were friends of the family?”

“Sort of neighbors. A younger couple, tech money. My father was always tutting and shaking his head about how they didn’t have the right financial advisor or whatever.”

“Sounds like a dick,” Miles said, and Gavin had to work hard to keep from laughing around his spoonful of soup.

Finally, he swallowed and nodded. “Excellent summation of my father’s character, yes.”

They finished their soup and washed the dishes, and Miles made himself a dairy-free cup of tea. He didn’t look quite satisfied with it, but he didn’t choke either, so maybe Gavin hadn’t ruined his favorite thing after all.

Gavin wasn’t entirely sure why he hunted down the spare phone charger he’d found in a drawer in the bedroom, but even if it didn’t connect, it seemed like a good idea to have it available. In fact, he used the moment to put a text to Dez in his queue, in hopes that when the thing reconnected, it would send automatically.

Safe, snowed in with Miles. Had to bite him. -G

It boiled the whole situation down too far, made it seem so much simpler than it was, but it weren’t as though he could fit the whole story, and all of his worries and fears, into a text message. Or ten text messages. Plus he’d learned very well in the army to never send a text you weren’t comfortable with everyone in the world reading.

Maybe he wouldn’t be thrilled the world thought he was a kinky guy with a biting fetish, but there was nothing damning there. Nothing that screamed, “Hi, I’m a werewolf!” For the moment, it had to be good enough.

By the time he set the phone down and turned to Miles, he was fast asleep, sprawled out on the rug in front of the crackling fire. Gavin chuckled to himself and went to get the blanket off the bed. He added a log to the fire before he laid down next to Miles, pulled the blanket over both of them, and in mere moments, was asleep himself.

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