Chapter 8: Differences in Sexual Function

Chapter 8

Differences in Sexual Function

A couple of hours of tossing, turning, punching all four of the bed’s pillows into different shapes—because screw it, if Drew was spending the night out in the woods and leaving me here to brood alone, at least I could have as many pillows as I wanted—and jumping at every rustle, creak, and shadow, I gave up and reached over to click on the bedside lamp.

I shot a hostile glare at the pillows as I rolled out of bed. Four of them, and they’d still let me down, the little assholes.

Fine, sleep wasn’t in the cards, and lying in bed obsessing over everything that had happened that evening, and everything that could still happen, obviously wouldn’t accomplish much.

I needed a plan, and for that I needed information.

The living room’s giant windows made me feel like a helpless little fish in a bowl surrounded by predators, so I grabbed the laptop I’d been using, made a cup of tea, and headed back upstairs to do my research in bed.

And then I sat there, fingers drumming on the edge of the laptop, biting my lip and staring at the blinking cursor in the search box.

How did you even begin to research something like this, at least if you weren’t a shaman or something?

Speaking of, I made a mental note to collar Drew when he got home and ask why the hell he hadn’t already called the shaman he’d consulted about me, but I had a sinking feeling I already knew the answer: he couldn’t let his family find out anything about this, and the shaman would be too much of a risk.

All right, either way, all I had tonight was the internet. And if Googling “why does my alpha werewolf roommate act like a jerk all day” hadn’t been super productive, I doubted that “how do I cure an alpha werewolf who’s gone crazy and wants to forcibly claim me in the laundry room” would be that much better as a search term.

I gulped a big swig of tea to moisten my suddenly very dry throat, and took the plunge: “alpha werewolf sexual function differences” looked really, really damning in black and white on the screen in front of me.

I hit enter.

Nothing but the same random crap that you always got no matter what you searched.

I frowned and tried again with a couple of words rearranged. Okay, no, I did not need a towel with a wolf on it from a random vintage website.

Finally, in desperation, I clicked on the settings. And…Drew, that absolute bastard. He’d had the safe search on when he gave me the fucking laptop!

But all annoyance fled, replaced by open-mouthed shock, as I reran the search without any filters.

Okay, so somehow I’d made it twenty-five years without ever knowing that alphas had…a knot.

A knot?

I read the description I’d found on one of the many websites that had popped up, my eyes widening and widening. Because, what, the evolutionary biology powers-that-be had sat down and said, “You know what? Alpha cock just isn’t big enough. Let’s make it get even bigger once it’s in there. Huge! And also, since alphas don’t already have enough advantages in size and strength and everything, the knot’ll keep their mates from getting away. In case they’re still conscious. LOL!”

Drew had one of those. Even his big hand might not be enough to wrap around that…that…oh, God.

I slammed the laptop shut, breathing hard and glancing around shiftily as if I expected someone to pop up from under the bed and start shaming me for being a pervert. For good measure, I put the laptop on the floor and snapped off the bedside light. Just in case.

Differences in sexual function.

Well, Jesus Christ on a cracker.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about what Drew’s knot would look like. If he knotted his own hand when he jerked off “more since we got out of there than most of his life.” Or if he saved that for when he was inside someone…

I let out a little whimper and covered my face with my hands.

That had almost been me, a couple of hours ago.

That might still be me if he couldn’t keep his enhanced alpha-ness under control. If he came back from his run all naked and sweaty and feral, eyes glowing and cock rock-hard…

I had to think of something.

Hiring an escort? If I could even figure out how to do that without ending up getting arrested. And anyway, it wasn’t like Drew would need to hire someone. People would throw themselves at him if he gave them the tiniest bit of encouragement. Like walking into the room.

But he couldn’t go pick someone up, could he? His family thought he had a mate. If he got caught with someone else, there went—well, me. He seemed to honestly think they’d kill me if we weren’t mated. At best, I’d be out on my ass with nowhere to go but the nearest police station, followed by a one-way trip to prison. And as much as I’d tried to look on the bright side of normal human jails earlier, I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I’d survive. I doubted I’d even want to. The thought of concrete walls around me, closing in, trapping me again…I’d started to hyperventilate, and I curled up in a ball, hugging one of the pillows and squeezing my eyes shut.

No, I couldn’t go there, literally or figuratively.

Think about something else. Anything else.

Of course, the looming specter of Drew’s knot was the first thing to pop into my head.

That image provoked a hot, tense sensation in my belly. Arousal? I couldn’t remember what arousal felt like. I couldn’t get hard. And it could just as easily be embarrassment.

I wished more than ever that I could remember my sexual history. Sexual orientation ought to be innate, I thought, at least most of the time…although of course there were exceptions to everything. So shouldn’t I simply know what turned me on? Without having to think about it?

All right. I could mentally experiment. I could also turn the laptop back on and look at some porn, but that might give me another panic attack.

Start simple. Naked women. Breasts. Hmm. Yeah, those sounded nice. Legs. Okay. Curves in general…no erection popping up at the thought, obviously, but I could see the aesthetic appeal. Men: broad shoulders, muscular arms, long strong legs, and a dick.

Maybe with a knot.

My belly clenched again.

Drew’s knot, with Drew’s strong hand wrapped around it, stroking it…

I flipped onto my back, hyperventilating and wide-eyed again, only this time not from panic but from something more akin to delirium.

I forced myself to stare up at the ceiling, watching the faint shadows of the branches outside cast up onto it by the bright light Drew had over the back porch waver and flicker as the wind swept by.

It calmed me down enough for my brain to start functioning at a higher level than “Oh fuck, his dick gets even bigger!”

We had three options.

One: Go on as we had been, with Drew constantly fighting his own instincts and his own magic, tense and wound-up and ready to explode at any moment. He’d keep running for hours, trying to burn off some of his excess energy, and then getting himself off whenever that didn’t work. Was it weirder that he’d been doing that and I hadn’t known about it, or would it be even weirder now that I did know and I’d be awkwardly listening even though I was trying not to, involuntarily alert for a gasp or a groan or the sound of a hand sliding over a hard cock?

Weird or not, it wouldn’t be tenable. I had to focus on the practicality of it rather than getting…sidetracked.

Eventually he’d snap. And yeah, after contemplating it for a while, I knew I could and would forgive him when he did. He’d saved my life. I couldn’t be hurt, literally, and that conversation about the gun had really clarified how not-very-far I’d be willing to go to defend myself against him.

But Drew would never forgive himself, even if he hadn’t done anything to deserve what those fucked-up warlocks had done to him.

Option two: Find another shaman, one with no connection to his family. But for that we’d need to leave Idaho, probably, and would his family freak out if we tried to go somewhere? Would it be safe for us to go somewhere else?

Which left me with option three: Try to treat his symptoms and see if maybe he’d get better on his own.

And since I’d already decided that him picking up or hiring a sexual partner were both out, that left—me.

That didn’t disturb and upset me as much as I might have thought it would. The idea of Drew forcing me violently disturbed and upset me a whole hell of a lot—but not because he’d be touching me, or even having sex with me. Being near him didn’t bother me. The opposite, even. It felt so natural to sleep next to him, for example, curling up in the less-than-half of the bed that he left for me with his big, muscular sprawl, basking in his supernatural warmth.

And looking at the possibility of having sex with him from another angle—and oh, God, I was really considering this—it didn’t matter that I had no idea if I was gay or straight or somewhere in between, because I wouldn’t enjoy any physical touch, no matter who I got in bed with.

Bottom line…I wanted Drew to feel better. I wanted him to be happy and relaxed. And thinking that way felt pathetic as hell, because I ought to be more concerned about myself, shouldn’t I? But I kept coming back to it.

I had to do something to help him, since he’d done so much to help me. Wanting him not to flip out and maul me played a role, but…honestly, truly, I ached to give him some of the comfort and care he’d lavished on me so generously. He’d saved my life and taken me out of that place, protected me from his family, cared for all my bodily needs for weeks while he nursed me back to health, fed and clothed and housed me, and loyally given not one single fuck about my possible violent criminal past.

I could, like…jerk him off, couldn’t I? I mean, that wasn’t so much to ask. Especially since he wasn’t asking. I’d be offering. Aside from when he couldn’t control his instincts, he’d been a perfect gentleman.

Of course, that might also suggest he didn’t find me attractive when he was in his right mind.

Okay, that made me feel like shit just a little bit.

But on the other hand…any port in a storm, right? I didn’t need to be his ideal to get him off. It’d be a purely physical release. Between friends. Us against the world. Doing whatever we needed to do to take care of each other.

Despite everything, my eyelids drooped, the shadowy ceiling fading in and out. Adrenaline crash was a bitch, and my still-healing body felt like it had lead weights attached everywhere.

We’d take care of each other.

It’d be okay.

And we’d figure it out tomorrow.

***

I woke up to Drew slumped in the chair by the side of the bed, gazing at me out of half-lidded, faintly glowing eyes.

With a yelp, I flailed, slid off the side of the bed, knocked one of the pillows flying, and landed—on his lap, because he lunged forward and caught me before I hit the floor, pulling me across his knees.

“Oh, shit,” I panted, blinking to clear my vision. I had a great view of the floor. Twisting my neck around bought me half the chair and a glimpse of Drew’s face.

With no apparent effort, he maneuvered me out of my sprawl across his legs and up to sitting on them instead. My hands came up to steady me, landing on his shoulders. His hands tightened on my waist, and the glow in his eyes brightened.

At least he had clothes on: the gym shorts and T-shirt combo that he usually wore around the house.

I shifted my weight. He shifted a little under me. I couldn’t look away from his face, only a few inches from mine. I could feel his breath on my skin, the heat of his body, and…under me. Yeah, that wasn’t a third leg, although it was almost big enough.

“I think I should get up,” I whispered. Maybe I’d been planning to offer to get him off today, but I’d also been planning to have a real conversation about it beforehand.

His hands tightened a little more.

“Yeah, you probably should,” he said hoarsely.

He didn’t let go, and the air around us thickened with tension. I knew that if I tried to move without his by-your-leave, bad things would happen. Bad, as in me getting fucked and knotted right there on the floor without any kind of conversation, real or otherwise. Drew’s chest rose and fell too quickly. His whole body had gone completely rigid, and not just the part starting to press insistently against my hip.

Screw it. We were out of time for talking.

Slowly, I slid one hand down from his shoulder, over his chest, tracing the muscles as I went. Drew’s heart hammered beneath my palm, and I lingered there for a moment.

“Ash,” he said, his voice barely more than a growl. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.” How the hell did I sound that confident? My own heart beat so fast my lips were vibrating. But I knew, I knew I was doing the right thing. He’d taken such good care of me.

My turn.

I let my hand drift lower, stroking his abs, and then I took hold of the string of his shorts.

Drew jerked one hand off my waist and caught my wrist, hard. It probably would’ve hurt.

But luckily, I didn’t have to worry about that.

“Don’t,” he ground out. “Don’t!” He sounded halfway to unhinged, and his eyes had gone so wild they hardly needed to be glowing. He felt like a live wire under me, crackling with suppressed energy. “I won’t be able to—I’ll hurt you—why would you even—”

“You need this, and I want to,” I said, a lot less confidently and a lot breathier, like someone auditioning for a really bad porno. But I had to get through to him. If I couldn’t reach the real Drew, I could at least talk to the part of him in control right now. And that feral side of him would want me to submit, wouldn’t it? I could do that, be that for him, if it helped him. “Let go of my arm, Drew. Don’t do anything. Let me. You’re not going to hurt me. Because I’m giving you what you need. Right? You don’t need to take anything. I want to do this.”

I stroked his shoulder with my other hand, gently, soothing and coaxing him. Showing him that I wasn’t fighting this, wasn’t fighting him.

And Drew relaxed under me. Not a lot, not completely. But enough that his fingers weren’t digging into my wrist anymore.

He kept hold of me but didn’t try to stop me as I tugged the string on his shorts, undoing the knot, and then carefully pulled the waistband down.

I didn’t need to pull it down much. His straining cock popped out the top, the head flushed red and shining.

I swallowed hard.

God, it really did grow.

I gave the waistband another pull, baring a couple more inches. Drew lifted his hips, letting out a harsh little growl that sounded more like frustration than a threat. I took the hint and tugged his shorts down as much as I could.

Now I knew that Drew went commando under those gym shorts.

And that he had more than enough for two of my hands to…handle.

My grip on his shoulder turned punishing as my nerves ratcheted up. Drew didn’t flinch, and when I tore my eyes away from his thick cock, I found his fixed on my face. Our eyes met for a long moment, and I had the urge to duck my head—but I couldn’t, like he’d caught me.

Weren’t you not supposed to make eye contact with predators? Did it make a difference when you were already planning to jerk off the predator and let him come all over you?

“Ash,” he growled, and tightened his grip on my wrist again, moving my hand over and putting it exactly where he wanted it.

Well, I could take a hint.

I wrapped my hand around his shaft, hot silky flesh against my palm and throbbing in my fingers.

Drew’s head fell back and he groaned, low and helpless, his hips stuttering up to press his cock against my hand. Once he looked away, I could too, the spell broken.

The sight of my hand on his cock sent something like a thrill through me. Yeah, maybe I was any port in a storm, but right now…right now he wanted me more than anything. He was desperate. And he might be a predator who could tear me apart in seconds—but he’d put himself at my mercy. Sort of. As long as I did what he wanted.

It felt like a dance, maybe a tango, all dangerous undercurrents and careful steps. If I stumbled, I might lose control completely.

That made the thrill even better, somehow.

And for once, amnesiac and lost as I’d been, I knew what the next step should be.

I tightened my grip, stroking up, running my thumb over his swollen cockhead. And then down, squeezing and sliding, my fingers not even wrapping all the way around as I reached the base of his cock. It felt completely new. I couldn’t remember ever doing this to myself, let alone someone else—and for all I knew, I’d never touched another man’s dick before today. I couldn’t remember what felt good, what would bring him to orgasm.

It didn’t seem to matter, because Drew’s cock stiffened further in my hand, and he started to fuck up into my fist, his arm sliding all the way around my waist and crushing me against his chest. God, he smelled good, all warm and spicy with a hint of the wild forest he’d been running in, and I buried my face in his shoulder and stroked him off as fast and hard as I could. His gasps and groans transmitted to me through his chest as much as to my ears. Maybe I couldn’t experience pleasure myself, but I could feel his: tension and heat and the mounting anticipation. My own breath started to come faster, hitching on every upstroke.

Drew didn’t guide my hand with his on my wrist, but he never let go of me, and it made me feel like I couldn’t possibly do it wrong, like he had me as much as I had him.

And a little bit like a sex toy, something he was using to get himself off.

Drew’s sex toy. His.

The muscles in my abdomen clenched, hard, and I knew it should’ve felt good but it didn’t, and the combination of Drew’s thick cock in my hand and his body surrounding mine and the frustration—the need for something I couldn’t have—had me moaning helplessly into his shoulder.

Drew’s fingers spasmed on my waist and around my wrist, and then he was coming, wet heat dripping over my hand and his cock twitching in my grip.

He didn’t let go of me, holding me close as he came down from it, his harsh, uneven breaths panting in my ear. I kept my eyes closed and my face pressed into him.

When I looked, this might be over.

And I wanted this moment of repletion and heat and closeness to last, since I couldn’t have anything else.