Hidden Passions (9 page)

The cautious cat had remembered to pull it closed.

"Go on," Tony said when he hesitated. "We can't return to the party together."

His tone was sarcastic, but Chris didn't take offense. "You're a good man," he said before slipping outside like a shadow.

A good man
. Too bad there was no reward for that.

CHRIS'S mood hadn't been sunny since walking out on Tony two nights ago. His catnaps were history. They'd been chancy enough before, but now that he'd been with Tony a second time, he dreamed of the hot young cop each time he closed his eyes.

His subconscious mind seemed determined to torture him with details. At random moments, Tony's scent teased his nose. His ears rang with Tony's gasps, the pleasure the wolf had experienced clearly new to him. Chris had loved being the first man to give him head. The prick of Tony's claws on his scalp was a sensation he wouldn't soon forget. More times in the last few days than he cared to count, he woke with pounding erections he was too annoyed to deal with. Jacking off would only summon more images. Remembering Tony in that shed--the way they'd come, the way they'd said goodbye--tempted Chris to put a fist through something. Tony wasn't kidding about them being a good fit. Chris didn't think he'd ever felt that
himself
with someone.

All of which proved he'd been right to walk away. If any man could inspire him to out himself, Tony "Hotstuff" Lupone was that person.

Given that this was so, the sight that came toward him now didn't make him happy.

Their homophobic omega Liam was straggling across the concrete apron outside the station like he had all the time in the world. The big tiger was relaxed, yawning behind his fist as he paused to check the street in both directions. The autumn blue sky above him drew his attention next.

The forecast for Liam was cloudy--as he'd have known if he'd had the self-preservation the Tiger Queen gave a gnat.

"You're late," Chris said loudly enough for his voice to carry.

He sat inside Company 5 with the rest of the men. The lounge's secondhand chairs and sofas offered a view through the truck bay into their egress street. Chris had been halfheartedly paging through
The Pocket Observer
, looking for articles to occupy his thoughts. He'd finished all his administrative chores, sure sign of his desperation for distraction.

Having time to kill was nothing new. Resurrection wasn't a nonstop fire city. Firemen here waited around a lot, though portions of their shift were taken up with training and equipment maintenance. Aside from that, they ate, they napped, and they studied--if they were so inclined. Sometimes they raced out on calls that turned out to be someone's cat spelled into a tree by an ornery neighbor. Maybe twice a week they answered an alarm for a fire that required more than a ten-second burst from an extinguisher.

Despite facing only occasional life and death circumstances, one rule of their profession wasn't open for debate.

Firemen showed up where they were supposed to when they were expected.

Liam seemed to have forgotten this. He added a full-body stretch to his yawn, cracking the joints in his muscled back with a tiger-grunt of pleasure. When he finished, he grinned boyishly. "Sorry, boss. I do have a good excuse. Ever since the wedding, Freda and I have been knocking boots. That tigress knows how to wear out a man."

Chris's insides went very still. Their best cook Syd had been frying eggs and sausage in the open kitchen behind the lounge. Naturally, Liam's ill-chosen words reached him. The sizzle dissipated as the cat clicked off the stove's burners. Along with everyone else, he'd stopped what he was doing to see how Chris responded. Syd was laidback by nature, his family having originated in Jamaica. His reaction reminded Chris
laidback
wasn't the same as
indifferent
. Every member of the clan cared how it functioned.

Jonah was probably their hardest man to read. He lost his cat-cool enough to lean forward in his easy chair.

"What's the deal?" Liam asked, noting all eyes on him. Slowly though his long legs were moving, they'd brought him into the truck bay. "I'm only ten minutes late. The big boss isn't even here."

Evina and her new husband were on a whopping two-day, two-night honeymoon. Liam shouldn't have assumed their alpha's absence meant he could slack. No one else at the station was. Vasur, their shortest man at a mere six three in his turnout boots, had been working out when Liam made his gaffe. Vasur outranked Liam, a fact he didn't let the junior cat forget. He felt obliged to point out the error of his co-worker's ways.

"You really should not have said that," he murmured from the weight bench.

Recognizing he needed to make a few things clear, Chris set down his paper and got up from the couch. "You think you have no one to answer to when 'the big boss' is gone?"

He didn't put a growl in it, but Liam was just smart enough to perceive one.

"Um," he said, rubbing one flushing Irish cheek. "No?"

In his unsureness, he'd paused beside their lime green and black tiger-striped pumper. Chris prowled out, giving the other man a taste of his heightening beta energy. He stopped an arm's length away.

"Freda is your alpha's friend. You think it's appropriate to be bragging to your buddies about what she did with you in private?"

"Freda doesn't care," Liam said stupidly. "She sleeps with everyone."

Chris wasn't an ordinary person, and sometimes he couldn't afford to act like one. He didn't fight his tiger's instincts on how he should respond, though his beast was probably more ticked by Liam questioning its authority than by the slur to a member of tigress-kind.

Powered by sureness and dominance, his arm lashed out in a split second, moving too quickly for even Liam's shifter perceptions to see it coming. He cuffed the omega across the face the way a grown tiger would a cub, knocking Liam off one foot and causing his body to swing around. He didn't break Liam's cheekbone, but it was close.

"Shit," Liam gasped, hand to the place his superior had walloped.

"Freda is a tigress," Chris bit out. "Not some prostitute you met on a corner. She risks her life every day the same as you. You will not speak of her with disrespect."

Liam was the bottom man, but he wasn't short on pride. If Chris had punched him, it would have been man to man. To swat at him like he had was an insult. Embarrassment and anger fought for control of his expression. In the end, foolishly, he tried humorous wheedling. "Come on, boss. Just because you couldn't hold Freda's attention--"

He didn't finish. He lost his nerve when the men behind Chris sucked in matching breaths of shock. Chris's gift for astral projection expressed itself in different ways. Now his energy swelled with anger, expanding to such a height that for a second he could have been looking down at an ant. His eyes flared bright in the monstrous feline form, claws jutting from the spirit shape like talons. Liam quailed and fell to his knees, finally doing what Chris's tiger believed he ought.

When Liam covered his head to shield against a strike, all Chris felt was satisfied.

He pushed down the emotion, settling for long warning growl. Understanding it, Liam cowered lower.

"Boss," Jonah said. He had a hard time seeing his buddy scared, however much Liam deserved it.

Without moving his gaze from Liam, Chris pulled his energy almost completely in.

"Check the hoses," he ordered the cowering cat, his vocal chords still projecting an animal threat. "Every inch of every length." Liam drew breath, but whatever he meant to say Chris cut off. "Not another word. When you finish, scrub the bathroom. While you're at it, consider how lightly you're getting off. You were late
and
insubordinate. Tigers have been fired from this crew for less."

He turned away before he saw Liam's inevitable resentment. Chris didn't need more triggers to force the man to submit. He'd already come too close to seriously hurting him. Within tiger clans, betas were enforcers. Sometimes they had to use physical force. For better or worse, that was the language their beast halves understood. If, however, a beta used force to settle every damn argument, he'd lose a bigger battle than the one for obedience.

Maintaining his men's respect meant his human side had to rule his animal.

He strode from the truck bay into the kitchen. His hands tried to shake, but he controlled them. He wasn't like the man who'd killed his brothers. He understood Liam was just a temporarily stupid kid and not a threat to him. Both sides of Chris's nature wanted to keep the omega safe more than they wanted to put him in his place. Liam was shaping up to be a good fireman. Making sure he became one was Chris's priority.

He'd calmed a bit by the time Syd slid him a plate of food. The caramel-skinned, dreadlocked tiger was mellow to the
nth
degree. In addition to this, he was mid-rank on the power scale and not short on confidence. All the same, he offered Chris the steaming meat and eggs as if needing to placate him.

"I'm all right," Chris said. "Storm over."

Syd nodded soberly. The kitchen's concrete prep table was between them. Syd made no move to change that. He visibly squared his shoulders before he spoke. "You sure you don't need a day off? You came straight back to work after your accident."

He meant after Chris was burned so badly he'd been in too much pain to change and heal. This was the official explanation anyway. Chris knew his issues were more complex.

"I wanted to come back to work. I'd have been bored to death at home."

Chris had never met a fireman who didn't feel that way. Seeming to accept his claim, Syd leaned more sociably on the countertop. "
Are
you interested in Freda?" he inquired cautiously.

Chris rolled his eyes. "I'm not jealous of her and Liam."

"But if you were," Syd said, "I or one of the other tigers could warn him off."

Chris rubbed his forehead, unable to explain how many different ways this was wrong. "No," he said. "Freda is a free agent."

"Getting shagged is a good tension reliever."

"I am aware of that," Chris said.

The desert dryness of his response wasn't lost on Syd. "Okay," he surrendered with a small grin. "You can arrange your own love life."

Chris grimaced and said nothing. He wished he could arrange it. He dug into the food, aware he'd dodged more than one bullet in the last few minutes. It occurred to him he hadn't worried about dominance issues during his two encounters with Tony. He'd pushed the wolf to be
less
submissive . . . though he couldn't deny enjoying that side of him. Frankly, everything Tony did was enjoyable.

Thinking about the wolf wasn't a good idea. Chris's blood was up from facing off with Liam. One salacious mental image would dump him in libidinal hot water. The klaxon going off for a new alarm was undeniably good timing.

Because Liam probably needed bucking up, Chris squeezed his shoulders before they rolled out. He wished he could swear Tony hadn't been in some corner of his mind when he struck the gay-phobic cat.

What the otherwise likeable tiger might do to a wolf like Tony didn't bear thinking on.

~

Tony's disreputable running shoes felt like they were cemented to the unnaturally clean sidewalk. P.J. Brit's wasn't the sort of bar he was accustomed to. For one thing, it was uptown, with shiny plate glass windows and perfectly groomed green ferns hanging from a stamped tin ceiling. The predominantly male clientele looked just as snipped and trim. Most sat in laughing groups at too-small tables, wearing
GQ
-ish suits Tony wouldn't have dreamed of wasting his paycheck on. For variety, a smattering were tricked out in motorcycle leathers, reminding him of greaser movies from the Fifties.

Fetishwear, he guessed it was.

Tony doubted the men who wore it actually rode Harleys.

Fuck
, he thought, cursing his unpreparedness for this.

Their precinct dispatcher Dana had recently come out as a lesbian. Because everything Tony had found on Elfnet seemed skeevy, he'd asked her if she knew where gay men hung out.

P.J. Brit's and the Central Park public johns were what she'd come up with.

Tony probably should have consulted Nate instead.

Stop dithering
, he scolded his reluctant feet. His tiger fireman was a write off. He needed to get his gay self into circulation some other way.

A group of laughing pointy-eared yuppie elves bumped him on their way in. They didn't glance at him as they passed. They were oblivious to everything but their own circle.

God, Tony hated going out alone.

Too bad
, he told himself, ordering his legs forward. If he wanted to be who he really was, he'd have to function without wingmen.

His sweaty palm gripped the door handle. Nervous strength caused him to nearly bash himself in the face. That embarrassment narrowly avoided, he stepped inside with his heart pounding. Going to hookup bars was so much easier when you didn't care about the outcome.

"Meeting someone?" inquired a sharp-nosed effeminate shifter behind a podium.

Okay, what the fuck sort of watering hole had a maitre d'?

"No," Tony said. "Is it cool to hang at the bar?"

"You can't order food there, just snacks."

"That's okay," Tony said. "I doubt my stomach can handle food anyway."

The host looked to where Tony had pressed his hand over his belly. His lips slanted to one side, making him abruptly seem friendlier. "First time?"

"I guess that's obvious." Tony tried to breathe out his nervousness. "I'm dressed all wrong, aren't I?"

He'd pulled on a clean yellow polo shirt and new jeans, nicer than what he'd have worn to a cop bar. He'd also showered and shaved but--given that he was a dark-haired wolf with a persistent beard shadow--he wasn't ever going to look as polished as most of the men here. Given that he wasn't a wannabe anything, he wasn't going to carry off fetishy either.

The maitre d' laid one finger beside his mouth to consider him. When he finished the slow once-over, he was grinning. "I expect you'll do. Variety is the spice of life."