6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Jack woke just before dark and walked down the stairs slowly while Maltin sipped a drink, still trying to figure out how to tell him. And he knew it had to come from him.

Jack walked over to the couch and fell back on it, turning his head to Maltin. “Sorry, I slept so long.”

“You must have needed it. I fully plan to fall into bed for about fifteen hours soon.”

“I should go home.”

“No,” Maltin said. “Stay here. I don’t want you to be alone.”

Jack chuckled dryly as he turned from Maltin. “I live with other people. I’m practically never alone when I’m home.”

“You have roommates, I see. Well, even in your room, you’d be alone.”

“I don’t have my own room, and before you feel sorry for me, I make enough to live on my own, but then I’d have no money left to save for a car.”

“I noticed you never drive here. Still, Jack, please stay. Maybe I don’t want to be alone.”

Jack chuckled again, but then he turned and he wasn’t smiling. “You like being alone I thought. I’m kind of trampling all over that.”

“I liked being alone because so many had…let’s just say disappointed me.”

“Oh. Heartbroken, I take it.”

“Several times over, yes. One hurt the most, and he wasn’t my lover. He was a dear friend, and, well, he stole from me.”

“I see. That’s why you’re so possessive of your cars.”

“I suppose so. They’ve never hurt me, let me down, or broke my heart.”

Jack rubbed his hands over his jeans, staring off before him. “They’re inanimate objects. Of course, they can’t hurt you. I get it, Maltin. I’m not judging. I understand a little too well.”

Maltin guessed he did understand. After hearing a small bit about his family, Maltin was surprised that Jack wanted to be around anyone at all. “It’s jading, being around people.”

“It is. My family was so ashamed of me. I was their dirty secret. It hurt a lot, and I don’t know if I can ever get over it.”

That was his in. If he were ever to tell Jack the truth, Jack had himself laid the perfect opening. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was hurt enough by the family that raised him. What if his real family was worse?

No. As much as it may cost Jack's trust, he couldn’t say a thing until they were absolutely certain.

“I think I’m…going to go home. Being close to you, I want to, you know.”

Maltin knew. Ever since they’d first touched, if not before that, he wanted inside of Jack more than he wanted air. He was electric, and the room heated when they were together. “I’ll drive you. You don’t need to take the bus.”

“No, it’s fine.”

Then Maltin thought about it and how he had to try to trust at least once more, especially if he was meant to be with Jack. “Okay, then how about this? Take the truck.”

“Not the Thunderbird?” He teased.

“I have definite feelings for you, dearest Jack, but even those aren’t strong enough to give you one of my cars. Take the fucking truck.”

“Sure,” he said, then he surprised Maltin by leaning over and giving him a peck on the lips.

Even that small kiss almost drowned him in arousal, and Jack pulled away slowly, his eyes glowing almost white; they were so gray. “Damn.”

“Get out before we both go further than we’re ready.”

He laughed as he got to his feet and winked at him. “Just wait until we do. You’ll enjoy it.”

“I know that. That’s the one thing I’m very sure of.”

Finally, he felt like he could breathe once Jack left the loft. He fell over on the couch, laughing to himself. “What the hell am I doing?”

The next day, Jack was there bright and early, but he barely told Maltin hello before he went out to work. Every noise from the roof and Maltin felt his flesh warming, sensations rushing through him until he couldn’t concentrate on the script he was writing.

His body wouldn’t allow his mind to think. He was hard and had been since Jack came to the door. Sitting in front of his computer, all he wanted was to watch porn and jerk his cock, but then it dawned on him.

Jack was in season.

How that happened without them even kissing more than a peck and never having shifted at all, he didn’t know. Plus, kids? Really? How many hellhounds were needed in the world?

He got up and went to the refrigerator to fill a glass with ice water, downing it quickly enough to get a headache. “Fuck,” he said, and even the word made him hot.

Stomping across the floor to the huge windows that lined the north side of the apartment, he heard the hammering and closed his eyes, picturing Jack on the roof, a little sweaty, muscles ripping, face intense from concentration on the task…

“Jesus, Maltin! Stop!”

It came to him that there were things to do to overcome the ferocious arousal that came with a mate being in season. He nearly flew to his computer to start looking up treatments.

As he looked it up, he realized he never learned a thing about being a shifter. Why? He’d never had any indication of being one. Most shifted early in their lives. He thought that gene was recessive, and he only had the powers of his witch half.

The more he read, the more his head hurt. There were so many rules, but then again, none for hellhounds. He searched and searched the web but there was not a thing about his specific shifter identity.

The longer he sat, however, and heard the tapping of the hammer, making him realize his mate was so close, the more his head hurt, and his dick matched that pain, throbbing in tune with the hammering.

“Will the suppressants even work on us? Am I the alpha, is he? Why doesn’t anyone know?”

The frustration was too much. He was ready to lose his mind. Wondering if Jack was feeling the same, he left the loft and walked through his rows of cars, trying to take his mind from his dick to polish the tiny bit of dust that was landing on them while Jack stirred it.

Jack stirred the dust; he stirred Maltin’s pheromones if that was what hellhounds had. Unable to write or think, he rubbed the soft cotton towel over the yellow hood of the ’71 Mustang and then the black hood of the ’45 Chevy Coupe. All while most of his thoughts were centered completely on the man sitting on his roof.

“I can’t do this,” he growled, then his head moved until he looked at the underside of the roof, the little sliver of sky he could see disappearing because Jack was looking through it.

“Come down here! I…I need to speak with you.”

He didn’t say a word, but Maltin listened to the steps on the roof, then the clanking of the ladder as Jack descended. When he walked in the door, Maltin wanted to fly to him, grab him and fuck him against each and every car, but he restrained.

His jaw felt like it could barely move as he ground his teeth together, but watching Jack walking toward him, seeing him moving, seeing the bulge in his pants…

Maltin turned around to face away from him, unable to look at him for another second.

“Jack, something needs to be done.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m ready to back up to doorknobs.”

Maltin heard that, and he pictured it in his head, and besides arousing him more, he started to laugh. “Jesus.”

“Don’t even say that. I’ll picture him naked, and I’ll go to hell. Wait, are we going to hell anyway?”

Maltin laughed more than he was aroused, and he could finally face Jack. As he did, he saw Jack smiling, and he was so much more beautiful smiling. “Can we, I don’t know, see someone?”

“I’ve thought about it. I spoke to Garvey, and he told me they have pills and shots and stuff for this. I just don’t know if I want them.”

Maltin felt the same. “Plus, we’d have to admit what we are.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another step closer. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Me either.”

Maltin took a step, and Jack did, and they continued until the heat from Jack was pulsing off him and making Maltin sweat. “Maltin…I want you. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in my life. I don’t think I can stand it.”

Nodding slowly, Maltin grunted, “No. I can’t. I need you.”

“Do you just need me because of…what we are?”

Maltin laughed low and wickedly. “No. I wanted you before that.”

They were close, their body heat combining to make it nearly unbearable. Jack’s lips parted as his eyes dilated, panting loudly, and it consumed Maltin in a haze of the most extreme arousal.

Maltin grabbed his head and pulled him closer, not that he needed to pull much. He set his lips on Jack’s but didn’t kiss him. Instead, he let their rushed breaths combine as he stared into Jack’s suddenly darkened eyes.

Jack’s entire body vibrated, his head dipping to the side, giving over his will to Maltin. Maltin felt his alpha senses coming through the haze, and he felt as if he had grown ten inches in height in those few seconds. His fierce need calming as he knew he was about to take his mate.

The calm only lasted while they experienced their first real kiss.

Jack, more subdued than Maltin imagined he could be, tentatively let his lips part as they touched Maltin’s, allowing, silently, Matlin to take over the kiss. Maltin’s hands held Jack’s face, moving it as he needed so he could deepen that chaste start, pushing his tongue between Jack’s cherub lips, brushing his tongue, sucking on it once before he backed off and kissed both of his lips before pulling back and watching his eyes flutter open.

“Maltin,” he sighed, the sound of tears in that breathy word.

Maltin Graves knew right that second he’d never like the sound of his name more than when it was spoken from that luscious mouth.

Then came the surge of adrenaline, his heat consuming him once again, and he moved Jack backward until he fell back on the hood of his ’69 Corvette Stingray.

His red face nearly perfectly matched the cherry red of the car, and all that crimson was perfect for the fire he felt in his veins. Pushing Jack down fully, he started to rip at Jack’s jeans. He never knew his strength, but he could have lifted any car in the warehouse at that moment.

The button flew off, and he heard the ting of it as it hit another one of the cars. Any other day that would have enraged him, but he didn’t care a bit. Yanking Jack’s pants from him, Jack was moving like he was on fire, trying to kick off his sneakers.

Maltin helped, throwing them behind him after snatching them from his feet, and then the pants were off, and he moved over him, kissing him so roughly, he was biting at his lips, Jack’s hair in his fists, Jack’s hips moving to grind against Maltin.

It was harried, frenzied, and Maltin had never wanted anyone more, not in all his long years on the earth. He’d never guessed he had a mate and never thought how hot it would be to be with him, their bodies writhing against one another, lips and teeth clashing.

Jack’s legs wrapped around him as he tried to free his cock, but he couldn’t manage to keep his hand there as Jack lifted his hips, his growls desperate and animal.

Maltin moved, breaking the hold Jack had on him, and like a flash, he spun Jack around on his stomach, freeing his cock and spitting on his hand, rubbing it over his cock before he moved to Jack’s hole, pushing in like he was trying to hammer into Jack like Jack had hammered into the roof.

Yes, that sound, that pounding, was echoing in his head, and he knew that was a motion he wanted to replicate. Grabbing both of Jack’s luscious, globed ass cheeks, he squeezed and was surprised to see his nails digging into his flesh. His nails were usually short and manicured, but he noticed the harder he grabbed Jack’s ass, the longer and thicker they got…like claws…

Jack’s screams were vibrating the metal of the car hood, high-pitched and pained, and instead of making him want to stop, he pushed those claws deeper. His cock pierced his mate, and that set Jack to scream more, his own claws raking down the red paint, bringing up curling ribbons of it along with the metal underneath.

He smiled, seeing it, seeing his mate’s blood pooling around his fingers and the blood-red paint under Jack’s blood. His eyes moved slowly over the rest of Jack, angry once they settled on Jack’s T-shirt even as he pounded inside his ass, deep, roughly, no mercy in his thrusts.

Reaching for it, Maltin grabbed the shirt and started to tear it, ripping through it in long streaks with his claws.

Once it was in ribbons, Maltin’s eyes kept moving up, expecting to stop on the beautiful face of his mate after Jack had turned his head to lay his cheek on the cold metal of the car. Instead, however, he moved over Jack’s face quickly and then set on the back of his neck.

Suddenly, Maltin’s mouth filled with saliva as he stared at Jack’s neck, and suddenly, he wanted to bite. It was a need in him that was stronger than even the need to fuck was, and he bent over his mate, grabbing a fistful of hair to keep him still while his mouth opened, and his teeth settled over his flesh. As he bit into Jack, his eyes rolled back, and he felt his body purring like some lion, and his hips began to move once again, gaining speed the deeper his fangs (fangs?) went into Jack’s neck.

Jack’s fists began to pound so hard on the hood that he dented the thing, and he shouted out while his body stiffened under Maltin.

The entire warehouse was filled with the incredible scent of Jack’s cum. Maltin sniffed hard, sucking it into his lungs, feeling more wicked by the second. “You came?” he growled, sounding completely different than he’d ever heard himself.

Jack was slack, his body boneless as Maltin started in on him again, banging him into the car, watching the Corvette move half an inch, then another half, then a full inch. The closer it got to the ’70 powder blue Mini Cooper, the more his blood boiled in lust.

The power he felt in those moments made up for how powerless he’d felt all his life. He bit into Jack’s neck again, tasting blood, the scent of the man’s pheromones surrounding him, mingling with the scent of sex.

Mating. Taking his mate, fucking him, it was right, it was good, and Maltin surged with the energy he had. As the Corvette’s bumper slammed into the Mini Cooper, Maltin came, and he felt the electricity that had shot Jack out from the ladder was nothing compared to the crackling, exciting feeling of that moment.

The warehouse lit with it, and he screamed out, letting the echo of that scream sound in the warehouse, booming, ear-splitting…

And he knew he was just getting started.