Isaiah (13 page)

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Isaiah muttered, then he hammered Bae’s ass, all need and no finesse, the raw passion more powerful than any skill a lover could hold.

Bae’s throat ached when he finally stopped screaming through his release, but he could hardly breathe. Isaiah had collapsed on top of him and was wheezing so hard it had to be rattling his bones. It was sure rattling Bae’s.

“Ungh,” he puffed out, freeing an arm and tapping at Isaiah’s hip. There was a dull but steady throb in his neck and shoulder, spreading into his chest. It was a bearable pain, though. And Bae was feeling pretty damn smug. He’d not let his fear hold him back, and now he was marked and claimed and all that good stuff. Isaiah had had him before that.

He’d owned Bae the second Bae had seen those beautiful eyes. It’d scared the shit out of Bae, true, and he’d run off like a wuss, but there’d been a little hidden part of him that had hoped Isaiah would come after him. Maybe he hadn’t even run as fast as he could have.

Isaiah’s softened cock slipped from Bae’s hole and Bae’s smugness withered away at the hot burning in his ass. His pucker felt like it was swollen between his cheeks, and there was spunk dripping out and running down the inside of his thigh. “Off,” Bae managed to say, needing to scratch at the gunk tickling his thigh. Probably he should wipe it off.

Except, Isaiah lifted himself up then slid down, dragging his mouth over Bae’s back, prodding his crack with a slick wet tongue. When Isaiah stopped and licked his hole, Bae www.total-e-bound.com

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whimpered and shook, undone by Isaiah’s care. The ticklish cum was lapped up, his thighs and ass massaged as Isaiah cleaned him, much like the cat he had inside of him, grooming his mate.

Isaiah must have got it all, because Bae was lifted up until he was standing instead of lying on the desk for the most part. Isaiah turned him around and held him for several minutes, rocking them gently from side to side. “Thank you,” he whispered eventually, the words soft in Bae’s ear.

Bae snuggled closer and held on, enjoying the new intimacy between them. He couldn’t explain it, except maybe to say Isaiah was more a part of him now, and Bae couldn’t imagine being apart from him.

“We should go,” Isaiah told him, rubbing at the small of his back. “Your leader saw more than enough. He looked in here twice that I know of, but I kind of lost track of worrying about him or anyone else. Just you.” Isaiah nuzzled his neck, his jaw. “Think your clothes are ruined, though.”

Bae chuckled then gasped when Isaiah nipped him right beneath his ear. “Yes, I-I think so too. Mom or Dad can find me something. I’d rather not walk out naked, although when the lepe goes on runs, everyone shifts and, well, I guess you know how that is.”

Isaiah shrugged. “I usually don’t shift often because it hurts like a bitch. Just a few times during the year, then more at the family reunion. I always run with my sibs and cousins, and we never paid attention until some of our girl cousins threw a fuss at stripping around boys. I can assure you, none of us wanted to ogle our kin, whether we were gay or not. I don’t check out the guys, either. It’s just bodies.”

“Huh.” Bae frowned and scratched his belly as he stepped back. “Wonder why shifting is so painful for you?”

“I dunno. It just is. Tim had a theory that it might be because we are so far from our natural habitat as snow leopards, but…” he looked at Bae.

Bae shook his head. “No, doesn’t really bother us, but maybe we’ve had more time to adapt or something. This stuff would be easier to figure out if we had records and tests run and studies—I can see why we don’t though. If the information got out, we’d be slaughtered.”

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“At best,” Isaiah agreed. He picked up Bae’s pants and scraps of his underwear. “Yeah, I think these are toast.”

Bae walked over to the door and opened it enough to holler out the crack and ask for someone to bring him some clothes. Minutes later, as he sat on the couch beside Isaiah, who was clothed except for his shirt, which had somehow been shredded, there was a tap at the door.

“Come in,” Bae called out, then immediately stood, unconcerned with his nudity when Chung-Hee walked in. “Grandfather,” Bae said, bowing his head as Isaiah stood beside him.

“Is that who I think it is? Chung-Hee, the crazy as a rabid squirrel leader who is also your
grandpa?”

“Yes,”
Bae thought to Isaiah.

“That’s fucked up,” Isaiah seethed, glaring at Chung-Hee.

Chung-Hee glared back. “You have no respect for your elders, snow leopard.”

“I have no respect for manipulators who force sexual abuse on their followers,” Isaiah retorted. “There’s no respecting crazy, or sick, or—”

“Isaiah, stop.” Bae squeezed his arm and looked at Chung-Hee. “This is my mate, Isaiah Trujillo. He’s a man, a shifter. He is not a snow leopard, not just. And as his mate, I agree with him. There is no respecting someone who does what you do to your lepe.”

Chung-Hee’s nostrils flared and he set down the clothes he’d carried in. “I do not expect you to understand. You want me to be a monster, but I am not. I am what my father was, and his father before him, and so on. We have all been shepherds of the Amur.”

“And look how well that’s turned out,” Isaiah spat out. “It’s wrong, what you do, not that I think you will ever understand why that’s so.” He lifted up a shirt, a blue button up that Bae thought might have belonged to him ages ago before he left, or maybe he’d forgotten it on one of his rare visits here. Isaiah held the shirt and Bae slid his arms into the sleeves.

“Bae Allen Warren, you are no longer part of this lepe,” Chung-Hee said from out of nowhere. It shook Bae, as there’d been no discussion leading up to him being booted out, or at least no discussion about him being booted out. “You are no longer welcome here.”

Isaiah stopped in the middle of buttoning Bae’s shirt and turned a nasty look on Chung-Hee. “What are you saying? That he can’t see his family? You’re a fucking bastard if that’s what you mean.”

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Chung-Hee flapped a hand at Isaiah, as if shooing off a buzzing fly. “You want to unsettle our ways, and I cannot allow you to do so. Our ways have worked—”

Bae had had enough. He stepped around Isaiah and shoved down years of kowtowing to his elder, the man who’d kept the lepe under his control for decades. “They have not. All you have to do is a headcount, right?”

Chung-Hee’s anger was apparent in the way he compressed his lips to thin lines and the tension in is thin body. “I would not expect someone as ignorant as you to understand.

Do not return here or you will be seen as a threat to our survival.”

Isaiah’s low growl carried an ominous threat, one that Chung-Hee bared his teeth in the face of, but he turned and scuttled out of the room quickly.

“I’m so sorry, honey.” Isaiah smoothed a hand down Bae’s back, petting him lovingly.

“I don’t know how close you are to your family, but I do know this is hurting you.”

Bae didn’t bother to deny it. Isaiah could feel his pain anyway. But his throat, already sore from all the screaming he’d done when he was getting fucked, was tight as he tried not to give in to the urge to cry. He wouldn’t show any weakness here.

Isaiah, no doubt aware Bae would bawl at the first sign of sympathy, helped Bae get dressed without speaking. A sound outside the room caused them to pause looking for Bae’s other shoe. Bae glanced and saw his father standing there. “Come to make sure I have no contact with anyone else? You wouldn’t want me to influence anyone, right?”

Chul cleared his throat and averted his eyes, staring at some point beyond Bae. “No, actually, I came to tell you…” Chul coughed and patted his chest. His eyes were watery, and Bae wasn’t sure if it was from the coughing or if that had been a ruse to hide the build-up of tears. “I wanted to tell you, I will think about everything you said. And what Isaiah said as well. If…if we leave here—”

“Anything,” Bae offered, hope burning away some of the sorrow he’d been trying to ignore. “I’ll do anything to help my family, Dad. Just, please, think about your other children, what’s being done to them.”

Chul gave a sharp nod then turned and left, muttering a thank you as he cleared the door. It wasn’t much, but the ember of hope had been lit, and Bae was going to cling to it until he couldn’t cling to it any more.

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Some days just seemed to be made to try your patience, at least that’s what Isaiah thought as he struggled to get the wrench on the worn hex head bolt. Just when he thought he had it good and tight, he tugged. “Goddamn it!” Isaiah yelped as the wrench slid off the bolt. His knuckles thwacked the fan blade and Isaiah jerked, his head then hitting the underside of the hood.

“Calm down, boss,” Dorso said from behind him. “Man, you ain’t been yourself the past couple days. Everything all right with your boyfriend?”

Isaiah managed to get out from under the hood without damaging himself any worse.

“We’re great. I’m just tired.” Isaiah checked his hand. He’d caught it good on the damn fan blade and while he hadn’t lopped off any fingers, he’d scraped the crap out of his knuckles.

“Damn it, today just sucks.”

“Sorry, boss.” Dorso poked around the car’s guts. “Is the tensioner pulley frozen up?”

“Apparently.” Isaiah barely resisted the temptation to kick the car. Normally he wasn’t anywhere near so childish, but his nerves were worn thin with trying to find out who was stalking Bae. And someone was, because they’d caught that awful scent more than once since returning from Bae’s parent’s place, and Isaiah had seen the black Expedition drive by his shop. Bae had seen it on the highway, but whoever was driving wasn’t likely to take on a big van, and the vet-mobile was definitely a good-size. Isaiah wished it was bus-sized. And armored, and filled with guards.

“I can handle this for you if you wanna go wash up,” Dorso offered, already loosening the damn nut that Isaiah couldn’t get a grip on. “Oh, and you got a call, line one.”

It wasn’t Bae, because he’d have called Isaiah’s cell phone, so it was more than likely one of his family members. He’d missed his weekly check-in call with his folks and he would bet his momma was just waiting to tear a strip off his hide for it.

Isaiah hissed and whined—since no one was near to hear him—his way through washing his hand and cleaning his wound. It wasn’t that bad, but he knew a guy who’d lost www.total-e-bound.com

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his hand from a tiny little scratch he’d got working on an engine. Joey was his name, and he’d barely even felt the scrape, but a couple of days later, his fever was dangerously high and his hand swollen more than twice its normal size. Some creepy bacteria had got in the scratch that hadn’t even bled, and since there wasn’t any fatty tissue between his knuckle and his skin, the infection had got into tendons and—yeah, he needed to quit thinking about that whole nightmare.

Once he was assured as much as he could be that no psycho bacteria had been left on his hands, Isaiah headed to his office. Small and cluttered and desperately in need of some TLC, his office was still a refuge for him.

A familiar scent teased his nose and Isaiah pulled up short just outside his office. Then he grinned and let out a whoop as he rushed in there and hefted his brother Tim off his feet with a mighty, swingy hug. Of course Otto was there, too, but Isaiah couldn’t imagine anyone ever lifting Otto up for a swinging hug—which was kind of sad, actually.

“When did you get in?” Isaiah asked as soon as he set Tim down. He and Tim were almost exactly the same height, with Isaiah having his older brother only by a half inch.

“Hey, Otto,” Isaiah said. He held his hand out to his brother-in-law. “You’re looking good.

You too,” he told Tim.

“Thanks.” Tim thumped him on the back affectionately. “You didn’t call Mom Sunday, so she asked us to stop by and check on you on our way to Holton.”

“She could have called my cell number,” Isaiah pointed out, but he knew better. His mom hated cell phones, saying they were incredibly intrusive. Kind of like sending in people to check on him. Isaiah grinned. “Yeah, never mind that. So when did your plane get in?”

“Just about an hour ago. Well, that’s when we got the hell out of the airport,” Tim grumbled. “I hate flying, and airports are not all that, either. Ugh.”

Otto patted Tim’s butt. “It’s all right though, isn’t it? We did manage a bit of privacy in the men’s room.”

“Seriously?” Isaiah asked, eyeing Tim. He’d never have thought his brother had it in him… Although, he sure looked smug, like he’d had something in him. “Jerk.” Isaiah laughed, ruining his attempt to be snarky. “If you tell me you two joined the mile high club, too, I’m going to think pod people have taken over my older brother’s body.”

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“Not likely.” Tim winked at him. “They’d take Otto first. I mean,” he turned and gave Otto a lascivious look. “Wouldn’t you?”

Isaiah hitched up a shoulder. “Nothing personal, but probably not.” The next part was going to be fun, even though he was going to get his ass chewed for it. “I like my men a bit less tall, and better looking, like my mate.”

For one heartbeat the silence in the room was complete and profound. Then Tim yelled and punched Isaiah rather hard in the chest. “You dick! You didn’t tell anyone!” He smacked Isaiah again. “You just wait until Momma gets a hold of you, your ass is grass and she’s the weed whacker.”

Otto sputtered and gaped at Tim. “That’s the least impressive threat I think I’ve ever heard.”

Tim whacked Otto on the chest, hard enough that Otto took a half step back to keep his balance. “You and Isaiah are both going to be in trouble. Him with Momma, and Dad, and the sibs. You”—Timothy tapped Otto’s nose—“you’ll be in trouble with me, just because it’s fun to tie you up and—”