Little Wolf (5 page)

Her wink and remark about him needing protein made him blush, not that it stopped him from taking the plate. “Known a few weres in your time, huh?” Tim mumbled around a mouthful of toast dipped in egg yolk and, of course, brown gravy.

“Hunger is all over your face, sweet cheeks,” Robin’s Egg teased him, with a look in her multicolored eyes that made Tim want to hide.

“This town is obsessed with my sex life,” he moaned at her, and she touched him, a gentle pat on the back of his hand that didn’t raise his hackles.

“No such thing as privacy around here, but there’s no such thing as judgment either. You get used to it,” Carl commented without looking up from his reading. “You’d better, anyway.”

Robin’s Egg gave a delicate shrug. “Privacy is more of a human notion,” she added, then patted Tim again before pointedly withdrawing her hand. “Wouldn’t do to upset him any more.” She smiled and took Tim’s empty plate with her when she left.

He didn’t remember cleaning it, but he must have. He licked his lips, feeling full and confused and not any less tired than he’d felt before.

“Big news day.” Carl shook his paper again. “Everybody and their mama was out last night, causing all kinds of mischief. There wasn’t a were in town that didn’t have to be, except you and maybe the sheriff, from the sound of it.”

“From the—” Tim started to ask but caught himself before he could make Carl’s day by admitting yet another aspect of were life that he didn’t understand. “The sheriff was working last night?” He scowled. “He worked all day yesterday. He shouldn’t have worked last night too.” Tim was more agitated than he needed to be. A few people in the café glanced at him. Tim couldn’t see much of Carl’s face because of the hat Carl usually wore, a baseball hat with gold leaves and numbers embroidered on it, but he assumed Carl was keeping his head down because Tim was embarrassing himself. “I mean, that’s his business.”

Tim was the world’s smallest werewolf and the world’s biggest loser, fact. But Carl didn’t jump all over the chance to make fun of him. He was still pretending to read the paper.

“The man takes on too much.” Carl made an old man noise. “Between his job and the strays like you, it’s no wonder he had nothing planned. Damn shame if you ask me. If I looked like that, I wouldn’t have so much free time.”

Tim was actually hearing this. “Carl, are you trying to tell me that if you looked like the sheriff, you’d be knee-deep in pussy? And you a happily married man.” He couldn’t believe he said that out loud, but anything was better than imagining the sheriff thinking of Tim as just another stray, or the sheriff picking up the dozens of men and/or women who hit on him daily.

Carl ignored Tim’s feigned shock and looked right into Tim’s eyes. “But the sheriff isn’t like me. He isn’t like most everyone.”

“He
is
considerably hotter,” Tim agreed, too tired to argue.

Carl’s fierce eyebrows got even fiercer as he frowned. “Boy, I am starting to wonder if you’re worth it. Stop pretending to be slow.”

“Hey.” Tim huffed at him, more offended than he probably should have been for something Carl was saying to bug him. But Carl kept on frowning, as if he was waiting for Tim to get a clue or grow a pair, until Tim finally scratched his nose and tried to sniff out what it was Carl was trying to tell him.

All he got was
coffee
and
newspaper
and
irritation
, with a mix of old man smells. He finally rolled his eyes. “You’re very interested in his love life, Carl. Got a crush I should know about?” It wasn’t as much of a joke as Tim wanted it to be, not when he was fighting off a snarl, as if some part of him was pissed about the possibility of anyone else chasing after the sheriff, even an old man with a wedding ring on his finger.

Not that Tim was chasing after the sheriff; he wasn’t stupid.

Carl
harrumphed
, distinctly unamused. “That smart mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble someday.”

Tim hummed in agreement. “You are not the first one to tell me that.”

“Good for deflecting things you don’t want to talk about, I bet.” Carl went back to staring at the paper. Tim was about to call him on his whole “pretending to read the paper while harassing Tim” act when Carl took a noisy sip of his coffee and glanced at him again. “The sheriff is working today. Letting his werewolf deputies sleep in.”

“What the fuck?” Tim glared out the window in outrage, startling someone who happened to be passing by and had looked in. Tim transferred his glare to Carl. “What is Zoe thinking? I knew I didn’t like that girl.” To be honest, Tim wasn’t sure exactly what Zoe was to the sheriff, since, according to rumor that Tim had no reason to doubt, the sheriff took a lover or two every summer. Zoe might be the sheriff’s pet, living in his house and working as one of his deputies, but she either didn’t know how to look out for the sheriff or she was a total self-absorbed douche, because the sheriff shouldn’t work this many shifts in a row.

Maybe they weren’t a couple. Tim had gotten the impression that werewolves were more possessive—well, until he’d overheard those two moms talking about their teenage children’s sex lives last night when he’d gone to the store to buy himself dinner. Now he didn’t know what to think, except that Zoe didn’t appreciate what she had—if she had the sheriff. He let out a
harrumph
of his own and felt about five years old when Carl shot him a knowing look. Tim’s uncle had been a master of that look, though he’d usually followed it with a disappointed sigh before dismissing Tim from the room.

“You are a bad human.” Tim straightened. “Do you torture me because you’re bored, or do you have some objective in mind?” His uncle believed in always having an objective; Tim just wanted to be left alone. He flung a hand up when Carl opened his mouth to answer, and turned away before sitting on the stool to wait out his shift. He let Carl call him a drama queen without comment.

After an hour of watching weres, and a few humans, stumble into the café with dazed, sated expressions on their faces, Tim gave up and went back to dusting. Then he started making notes on which lube needed restocking. He found more condoms too, all expired, and made a note to order some.

Then when that left him with nothing to do, aside from going through the cabinets and
not
glancing toward the window as it got closer to lunchtime, he paced in front of the bookshelves and pulled out a book at random. The small volume was about the history of the town, printed by a local publisher and written by the current mayor, a human who was also a frequent customer of the café. Most everyone in town stopped by Robin’s Egg’s café. It was more of a hub than town hall.

Tim flipped the book open and walked to the counter. If anyone asked, he was prepared to say he had to know what the book was about to recommend it to customers, if he ever got any. At least it answered some of his questions about the town. In the old days when weres and other beings had still been hidden and hunted, there had been communities where they could hide and keep one another safe and form new families if their own had been destroyed, and the tradition had continued in some places even though beings no longer lived in the shadows.

Ray had known that, and he must have thought Tim had known it too when he’d bought Tim the ticket for this place, but Tim didn’t need a giant werewolf foster home, or refuge, or whatever. There was no such thing as sanctuary when a wolf was hunting you. He doubted other weres would leap to his defense against another were, even if Ray had.

Ray was unusual. He had worn a suit like Luca and Uncle Silas, but Ray’s had been wrinkled, as if Ray sometimes let someone rumple him up. Ray had smelled like
predator
but also playful somehow, like caramel popcorn, and he’d always looked right into Tim’s eyes and waited for Tim to speak. Somehow that had translated to Tim staying in Los Cerros, though he wouldn’t have said he and Ray were friends until Ray had bought him the ticket to Wolf’s Paw.

The act had been meant to protect Tim. Ray couldn’t have known it would confuse Tim so much he’d have to resort to a guidebook to figure things out.

Tim was deep in the history of Wolf’s Paw during the Gold Rush when he realized he was being watched and lifted his head. He straightened at the broad chest in front of him and gasped at the discomfort of twisting bones and emerging claws. He immediately put his hands—paws—behind his back and tried to recover from his surprise.

He blamed it on adrenaline as he looked up into the sheriff’s face, because his heart was rabbiting, and the hair on the back of his neck was raised. Tim was supposed to be able to hear leaves falling to the ground. He was not supposed to be snuck up on, ever, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to lose control and partly shift. He wasn’t a teenager anymore.

His face was flushed, and he was pretty sure he’d yelped. “I am so smooth.” He closed his eyes and immediately reopened them at the warm exhale from the sheriff that might have been a laugh. An actual laugh. From the sheriff. Mortified or not, Tim had to see that.

Nathaniel’s expression was pleased as he stared at Tim. He had crinkles at the corner of his eyes, and his lips were parted. He was so pretty Tim almost missed it when he spoke. “You’re reading about the town.”

“What? Oh I uh….” Tim looked down and was startled to see the book there, but his gaze went right back to the sheriff. The sheriff was about as exhausted as a werewolf could be, and yet the soft circle of his mouth wasn’t something Tim could ignore. He smiled back, because in some way Tim couldn’t explain, the sheriff was smiling at him without actually smiling. He forgot whatever he had been going to say. “Town, right.” They were talking about the town, not what Tim had done to make the sheriff so happy. “It’s nice here… if I ignore everyone’s intense interest in my life.”

The sheriff agreed, at least with the first part of Tim’s statement, with a humming sound that made Tim shift in place.

“But you didn’t go out last night,” the sheriff went on.

If Tim had been flushed before, he was flaming red and radiating as much heat as the sheriff now. He looked at the sheriff’s mouth and then into those beautiful eyes, and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He managed a nod. It was better than,
I stayed home and thought about you while rubbing a few out
. Which, if Carl and Robin’s Egg knew, Nathaniel was going to know with one sniff. “The kids invited me. But… it wasn’t what I wanted,” Tim mumbled. At least Tim’s embarrassingly puny and half-formed paws were finally shifting back into hands. He brought them out from behind his back, then smoothed his palms down his sides. He bit his lip.

“I understand.” The sheriff murmured out the words in a rougher voice than Tim was expecting and then shook his head. “Good morning, Little Wolf,” he said formally and then took a deep breath and held it. Tim was fascinated, okay,
obsessed
with the rise of his chest and the fall when he finally exhaled. His eyes were heavy-lidded.

“You look tired,” Tim told him, then realized how rude it was. “And gorgeous, but yeah. That’s you all over. The tired is not. Uh, good morning, I mean. I’m a little tired too. It’s weird actually.”

He should ask if it was normal. Now would be a good time, but the sheriff took that deep breath again and leaned in to look down at Tim’s hand. He made a small growly noise and then glanced across the café at Robin’s Egg.

“Fairies,” the sheriff murmured, then released a puff of air. “I thought you seemed quiet.”

Tim gave him the same glare he’d given Carl. “Sorry. Is there some post-moon sexy thoughts etiquette or—” Tim bit his tongue on purpose, hard enough to make him wince and draw a little blood. It put a whole new tang in the air, like adding a dash of pepper to a dish that was already delicious. Tim shut his mouth, but he had to breathe; there was no avoiding it.

Nathaniel’s breathing was becoming more noticeable. Tim kind of hated him for his ability to take in air when it was so thick with all of Tim’s stupid feelings.

“Are you and Carl ganging up on me?” Tim wondered out loud, trying to figure out why he always meant to think of the sheriff as
the sheriff
and yet sometimes he was
Nathaniel
.

The sheriff stared at Tim for a second, clearly lost, then blinked. “You’re pissy too,” he mused. “Did you not eat?”

“It’s not even lunch yet!” Tim protested in disbelief, only to look around at the growing crowd in the café and realize it was well after noon. He’d missed his show and hadn’t noticed either, dammit.

“I’ll be right back with something for you,” the sheriff told him and then headed into the café, where, naturally, the sea of people parted for him. Tim stared after him, without ogling his ass, much.

“I know I’m tiny, but really, I can look after myself,” Tim informed the sheriff when he returned with what was probably someone’s phone order BLT. The sheriff drew himself up and gave Tim an odd look, which made Tim remember that he was dealing with an alpha wolf who didn’t have to fetch anybody lunch if he didn’t want to.

Tim fell onto the stool and took the sandwich with the meekest “Thank you” he could manage. Anyway it smelled good. Bacon was the best smell in the world, next to Nathaniel’s natural scent.

“Just eat,” Nathaniel grunted at him. Tim figured that was his cue to eat in order to make the alpha were go away. He ate, glancing up once or twice with an increasingly pissed-off glare when the sheriff seemed sort of zoned out, like he might fall asleep on his feet.

Tim finished eating with a burp that brought the sheriff out of his daze. He looked down at Tim and smiled, really smiled, not just hinting at one. It did slow, low, shaking things to Tim, as if his body took it as his reward for doing as he was told. Tim beamed at the sheriff before he could stop himself.

He quickly turned it into a stern frown, because if he was tired and acting dopey, the sheriff was being so much worse. He had fetched Tim a sandwich. There were humans out there who would have made dog jokes. Nathaniel had his reputation to consider.