Born to Be Wylde (2 page)

W
YLDE
stood under the moonlight outside of his cave, shoving his hair back impatiently as he gave himself a moment to think while Ken was sleeping.

Why had he reverted to his wild persona as soon as he’d spotted Ken? Although he’d come here to his sanctuary for some precious time alone to commune with nature, he’d lived among people for a few years now. He had an education. He even owned a company.

But when he’d found Ken bruised and bleeding, all he’d wanted was to take him back to his cave. He’d looked at the fine bones of Ken’s face, at the black marks marring his golden skin, and he’d needed to keep him safe.

Wylde knelt, picking up fresh kindling for his small fire from the forest floor. His first years had been ordinary, boring. He’d been Steven Butler, who lived with his grandfather high on a mountain in the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest. The old man had been something of a recluse, so he’d kept Steven isolated; but they’d had a good life, and he’d been taught how to fish, what berries in season were safe to eat, how to live off the land.

Then one terrible day the old man had grabbed his arm, falling… and Steven was too young, too alone to process his death. The only other world he knew was the woods, so he’d run there, gotten lost. Somehow he’d managed to survive those first harsh weeks, to feed himself, to build a shelter. Years passed and he became Wylde, the young man who haunted the forest.

He squeezed his eyes shut.
Or maybe he should call it the way it was—he’d become some kind of freak, someone who could never completely blend in no matter how hard he tried.
And he had tried after he’d been rescued by some of the people who lived on his mountain. Deputy Alec Danvers and Jade Hollis had given him a home, fed him, clothed him, made sure he went to school.
Of course, it didn’t help that his first crush had been on Alec, a straight man deeply in love with his fiancée.
Wylde made a disgusted sound. Maybe that explained why he’d instantly connected with Ken, wanted to protect him. He wore the same uniform as Alec, after all.

Y
ET
if he thought about it logically, the fact was that someone had hurt Ken, and Wylde didn’t know who it was. If Ken went to a hospital or clinic, couldn’t the same person find him, hurt him again?

He rubbed his eyes, the two parts of his personality clashing. The civilized part told him he should do the “right” thing, the “normal” thing, and take Ken back to his world. But the primitive man wanted Ken safe. The primitive man had already decided Ken was his mate, from his scent, from the way he seemed to accept Wylde’s touch.

It was like Ken’s body was whispering to his, telling him he belonged to Wylde.
K
EN
roused when it was still dark, the fire so low now, only the coals lit a tiny pool of lemon flickering light. Sparks rose in a sudden burst, making the light waver in patterns on the uneven walls, and again he felt as if he was lost in another world, like one of those romances his mother used to read about the woman captured by a hunky Native American guy and taken to his village. Except in Ken’s case, he’d always wanted to be the guy captured by the hunky hero.

He blinked, thinking he hadn’t had that kind of fanciful thought in years. Although he worked with clay, he didn’t consider himself an artist, but a craftsman. Throwing a Raku piece required chemistry, physics, experience… and, okay, a bit of imagination, but his hands intuitively had always seemed to know how to shape the clay. Now he sifted through his recent experiences, trying to remember where he was… and with whom.

Because he’d never slept the night with another man, but Wylde was… different. He’d just woken up with him, nude and in his care, like the captive in his mother’s romances. It was a role Ken had not remotely thought he’d ever live.

Now Wylde was lying partially on top of him, his stiff penis against Ken’s inner thigh. Ken shifted instinctively, and their cocks lined up, touching.

Ken hissed in a breath, feeling unbearably sensitive, as if he had been reborn, as if this were the first man, the only man to touch him.

And Wylde’s blue eyes snapped open.
W
YLDE
had never slept this way until Ken, pressed up against another man, but it was what he wanted. It was perfect. He woke when he felt Ken squirm and gave him a look so he’d know if he tried to get up, Wylde would shove him back on the bed.

Ken didn’t seem to understand that he belonged to Wylde now. Wylde had found him, brought him here to his cave, cared for him.

Wylde frowned, struggling with the two warring parts of his soul. No…. No, that wasn’t right. He couldn’t just claim Ken. He had to…. They had to talk first. Ken would want to learn more about him. There were things they had to do before Wylde could simply mount the other man.

His best friend, Josh Atherton, had a girlfriend. Wylde had observed them covertly sometimes, trying to figure out how to behave with a mate, because he ached for one. He just had to remember some of the stuff Josh did. The talking was good…. If only he knew what to say.

But conversation flew from his head as he lifted himself up on his palms over Ken’s narrow, golden-skinned body, revealing to his gaze the thin line of hair leading down from Ken’s flat belly to his stiffening penis. Wylde was excited by the feel, scent, and touch of his mate.

He thrust against Ken, seeing the brown almond-shaped eyes widen, the pink lips part. Ken had a ghost of a beard shadow outlining his lips and dusting over his chin. Wylde liked it and his silken black hair, cut short. He was smaller than Wylde, and more subtly muscular. Wylde wanted to purr whenever he rubbed himself against the other man’s smooth, firm chest. And his skin… his golden skin had a faint cinnamon scent, as if Ken used that variety of soap.

Wylde wanted to scratch his mark into Ken’s skin. At last. Someone for him.
Ken gave a long groan, but it didn’t sound like the pain noises he sometimes made as his bruised body healed. His neck fell back, and he lifted his hips so their cocks brushed again.
Wylde shuddered, and then his hands captured Ken’s hips. Panting, he stared into his wide dark eyes. “Stay still,” he warned. “I have to think… of stuff to talk about with you.”
“Talk?” Ken looked confused, but then he gasped when Wylde rubbed against him again. “We… we shouldn’t. We barely know each other. This place—it’s a dream!”
Wylde licked Ken’s shoulder, wanting to bite it but also wanting to be gentle. Confused by his mixed impulses, he thrust against the other man again.
Ken made a husky sound, and then Wylde was rutting against him, holding him fast and feeling Ken’s crisp pubic hair against his prick.
Good, so good, the pounding in his ears of his blood. He needed this, needed it. So long. So long he’d watched and yearned from the shadows, but there had been no one to touch, no one for him.

W
YLDE
pressed his lips against the skin next to Ken’s mouth, a kind of pecking, as if he’d observed kissing but never participated himself.

Ken knew he shouldn’t do this; it was insane to be carrying on with a stranger like a piece of driftwood carried away by an early tide. Wylde was still an enigma. Why did he live like this? How had he found Ken?

Ken knew he was almost prim in the management of his sexual entanglements. He was never impulsive. He never let anyone get too close, preferring his solitary life.

But heat sparked between them like a trail of dry pine needles, suddenly incandescent, and he needed this, needed to feel alive and crushed under Wylde.

Unbearably aroused, Ken dug his hands into Wylde’s hard round shoulders, feeling warm, healthy skin, not the cold stone of death that had brushed his life. When Wylde nuzzled him, Ken licked Wylde’s bottom lip, wanting to instruct him. Apparently he didn’t know how to kiss.

Wylde made a rough sound and ground his mouth against Ken’s as he was doing his hips where heat radiated out, where they barely moved apart now, a lumpy, awkward organism needing to come, only to come….

“
K
ISS
,” Ken whispered. “Kiss me, Wylde.”
Wylde blinked heavy-lidded blue eyes. “Don’t know….” “You don’t know how?” Ken brushed Wylde’s mouth

Ken touched his lips, parting them and then licking him again.
“Teach me,” Wylde muttered.
Wylde crushed him into the sheepskin, and his tongue penetrated Ken’s mouth, claiming him. He tasted of honey and tea. His body covering Ken was perfect. Ken wanted him inside him, pounding into him. He clung to Wylde, his cock aching for release, his heart thudding like a wild stallion broken free…. Wylde’s blue eyes mesmerized him, the pupils enlarged and hungry, as if he were half man, half beast.
He reached down and squeezed Ken’s prick gently, exploring him, but it was too much…. After coming so close to death, Ken needed….
“Uhhhhh!” The cave ceiling revolved in slow spirals as if Ken had had too much to drink. His heart was pounding; his head was pounding. He came back to himself, sticky with Wylde’s come, with his own relief, warm and liquid between their bodies.
His throat tightened. Oddly, he felt as if the simple act of spilling together was something more significant. It was crazy, of course.
“How did that happen?” Ken asked, deeply sated. A better question to ask himself might be why he ached to lie under Wylde again, passive, and let him have his way with him.
Wylde licked his neck like an animal pleased with its mate. Ken shivered at the aftershock of pleasure, grappling again with the fateful sense that this was as new and powerful for him as it seemed to be to Wylde.
Feeling oddly protective in light of Wylde’s innocence, the way he didn’t try to cover up how he’d been moved by their encounter, so his eyes were soft and dazed like wet blue velvet as he looked at Ken, Ken stroked Wylde’s back gently until his hand grew sleepy like his body.
He was badly bruised, he’d nearly died, and he’d woken up in a cave, cared for by this strange young man. Being with Wylde seemed like a fairy tale, nothing like the calm shelves of Ken’s ordered life. But when Wylde whispered, “I want you,” Ken found himself smiling faintly. No one had ever needed him in this way, as if his body were food and water.
“Tired,” he said. He’d think about this in the morning, how he had to get out of here, get back to his life, how he shouldn’t like the way Wylde possessed him, taking him, pleasuring him.
Wylde was already snoring softly, oblivious to Ken’s worries, spooning his body, one thigh tangled with Ken’s, as if they were wool knitting into something new.

K
EN
grimaced. “Sticky,” he said in disgust, summing up the morning and the state of his body. Man, he needed to get clean. Living in a cave might be romantic in the middle of the night when his captor brought him to climax, but the morning after….

Wylde had finished pulling on his leggings while sitting on the sandy floor across from their shared bed. He bent over Ken a moment later.

“ What…?” Ken exclaimed in shock when Wylde hefted him in his arms. “Wait!”
Wylde paused, blue eyes drilling into Ken’s. He lifted a brow.
“I’m… I can’t go out there naked!” Ken said primly.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” He felt hot color rise in his cheeks as Wylde’s gaze swept over him. He was hard. He tried to tell himself it was just natural morning wood, not Wylde’s proximity.
His body wasn’t buying it.
Wylde’s long hair was loose, tangled over his shoulders like a cape of wet seaweed. His blue eyes were large and expressive, and his lean tanned face reminded Ken again faintly of that of a Native American.
Still staring at his wild man, Ken almost didn’t catch his nod as he lowered Ken closer to their bedding. When he did, Ken got the silent message and wasted no time in snagging a sheepskin to cover the essentials.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
For a reply, Wylde nuzzled his neck as he carried him from the cave.
Ken shivered in reaction.
“I can walk,” he felt obliged to point out, hands clenching in Wylde’s broad shoulders as his legs dangled almost to the embankment.
Wylde ignored him, picking his way down a gravel slope toward a meadow. The May sunshine was out, bright and warm, like a gift on his body. Ken sighed, seeing wildflowers dotting the landscape. Stands of purple foxglove and daisies.
His wild man lived in a paradise.
Wylde carried him as if Ken belonged in his arms. It made Ken’s stomach tighten. He felt again like he was lost in a captive-captor romance novel, in one of the books he’d taken in secret from his mother and read for the hero, not that he’d wanted her or anyone to know.
It was his shameful fantasy.
A
ND
like something out of his reading, Wylde took him to a waterfall. He put Ken down on his feet, and Ken’s legs trembled like a birch tree in a harsh wind; he was still embarrassingly weak.
“Sit here,” Wylde directed, maneuvering him carefully so he was seated on a sun-warmed boulder, smooth and a little chalky against his bare ass. Wylde retrieved the sheepskin, blue eyes glinting when Ken’s erection was exposed again. Kneeling at Ken’s feet, he reached up and cupped his cheek. “Shy….”
“I’m not…!” Ken huffed, annoyed. He’d been with a few guys. But he found himself not wanting to mention it aloud to Wylde, as if he’d be going back to that other life, the one he’d lived before he’d woken in a cave.
Wylde’s lips quirked.
“So you can smile,” Ken said, watching as Wylde picked up some accessories waiting on a mossy patch of ground. It reminded Ken of that old Herbal Essences advertisement. A rough gray linen towel—hinting that Wylde had to visit civilization sometimes—and… soap?
“Oh,” Ken murmured. He wanted to kiss Wylde for producing what he’d most longed for. Maybe after another orgasm, not that he would be admitting that.
He primmed his mouth, determined to wean himself of Wylde’s allure. Soon he’d be back in his ordered existence. There would be no fanciful encounters, no being claimed in the middle of the night.
Wylde wet the soap in the stream and then sat behind Ken, patiently using it in his hair, taking clumps and massaging so Ken wanted to close his eyes and purr. Wow, Wylde was really good at this.
But again he was moved to prick the balloon of this fantasy. “I can wash myself.”
“I want to touch,” Wylde said, as if that was all that mattered.
Ken’s eyelashes fell, concealing his eyes. He knew he was blushing again, but Wylde’s hands felt wonderful, scrubbing gently, working up lather after he dipped the soap.
“Sandalwood!” Ken exclaimed, catching the scent. It was a favorite of his.
Wylde nodded. It was only a thin sliver, maybe not enough left for both of them to use, but Wylde had chosen to gift it to his guest.
“I don’t like being dirty.” Ken found himself admitting in light of Wylde’s sacrifice.
“Fastidious.”
Ken blinked. Wylde knew that word? He’d seemed some kind of strange mountain man, living apart from civilization in his cave.
“Do you know where my uniform is? My radio and gun?” Ken prodded. He was still healing, but he needed to get back to his life, needed to find the person who had beaten him, left him for dead.
Sometimes Ken could almost see his face, like shards trying to become a whole picture again. His gut twisted. What if it had been someone he knew? The odds said it was likely, given he patrolled two small towns.
Wylde shook his head. “You were… this way,” he gestured at Ken’s nudity, “When I found you. Someone had dug a pit for your body.”
Ken’s eyes widened. “Shit! The killer was going to finish me off, bury me. But you found me?”
Wylde nodded. “I took you, hid you with me.”
Water dripped from Wylde’s fingertips in a sound like wind chimes as he lifted them to massage Ken’s shoulders. It felt like visiting the special seaside onsen, the Japanese spa Ken had treated himself to on his last trip there. Their natural surroundings had the same soothing effect, taking Ken away from his more rigid existence.
“You’re safe now,” Wylde assured him. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Him. Wylde, you saw him?” Ken swung around to regard his caregiver.
“Not… not too close,” Wylde said. “He had a baseball cap on, a lumberjack coat.”
“I have to stop him,” Ken whispered. “He has been responsible for hurting others.”
Wylde avoided his gaze, focused on scrubbing Ken’s back. It felt…. Ken’s penis stiffened, and he imagined what it would be like if Wylde touched him again, made him come…. He swallowed. No. He had to get his life back. This wasn’t real.
“Will you take me back to the place you found me?”
Wylde’s lips tightened. He was smoothing a hand over Ken’s collarbone, a sweep of sensation that made Ken’s skin sing. The water was cool, the soap slick, Wylde’s callused fingers running over him, brushing his nipples, making his head fall back so he rested it against Wylde’s chest, surrounded by the other man.
“Yes,” Wylde agreed, his tone grudging. “I will.”