Cry Wolf (Big Bad Wolf, #5)

by Charlie Adhara

Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental. Though if you do know of a criminal plot involving werewolves that has taken place at any of these locales, that is a coincidence I would love to know about.

Cooper groaned. “Who’s coming is the hardest part.” “Well, there’s us, of course. What about Oliver’s family? You’re going to invite them, right?” “I see you’ve been speaking with the voice I hear in my head at three a.m. while paralyzed with anxiety. Good, good.”

“If it’s so important no one knows you’re here, why did you reveal yourself to us in the first place?” “Yes, I can see now that was my mistake.” Eli sighed. “To be brutally honest with you, I thought Cooper had recognized me. But I’m beginning to understand this whole glaring, staring, nostril-flaring thing is less ‘I know that wolf’ and more of a permanent feature of his face.”

What stage of love was it when another person became a habit? How quickly had the mere background hum of another person’s life become such an essential fixture of the house that its absence felt like a robbery?

He wanted to be able to do something for Park. Something tangible. Something to make him as happy as he made Cooper. He wanted Park’s family to murmur amongst themselves, That Cooper sure does bend over backward to make you happy. Because he would for Park. He’d bend his body backward around the entire world if it made Park smile.

“I just... Do you still want to? Do something? Christ, I sound like a tenth grader.” He blew out a noisy breath and sat on the upholstered bench at the end of the bed. “Do you want to get each other off over the phone?” “Well, don’t ease me into it too subtly,” Park said wryly.

“I didn’t even take it out. I haven’t taken anything out yet,” Cooper added pointedly. “What honeyed words you whisper, Mr. Dayton.” “I can only work with what you give me here.” “And what is it exactly that you want me to give you?” Park teased. “Your...mouth?” Cooper guessed doubtfully, and wondered if the word mouth had always sounded unerotic or if that was a recent development. “And your...fingers? Am I hot or cold?” Park sighed, unfortunately not in an Oh Cooper, the skeptical tone you use when talking about my body really does it for me way. “You’ve been hotter.”

“So that’s what does it for you, huh? Honestly, right now I’m sitting on your bed bench thing, looking at myself in that big haunted mirror of yours, trying to remember if I’ve ever actually had sex before, and if so, did I like it.” “You have. You did. I did, too.” Park’s tone was very conversational, like they could be talking about anything. “In fact, you’re very good at it. So much so that sometimes it’s all I can think about. The way your scent changes when you want to fuck. The way you look at me across a room like I belong to you, like you know all you have to do is crook your finger and I’ll come running over, begging for it. The satisfied little grunts that turn to whimpers when you just start to lose control. The way you taste right before you come down my throat.”

“Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it. Like in the mornings, when I wake up, before I go on my run, and you’re still asleep next to me. And you smell like sex. And you’re making these needy little noises and rubbing against me. All I want to do is roll you over and rut into you. I think about it so much I have to get up and jerk off in the bathroom instead. I have to bite into my own hand so I don’t wake you.” “You could do that,” Cooper said. His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. “I mean, I give you my permission to fuck me awake. Sometime. Depending.”

“It would be some early morning after we already fucked the night before, so you’re still a little sweet and soft and open for me. I could put you on your side and work my fingers into you easily enough that you’d think you were still dreaming. I would let you use me how you like. Let you rock on my fingers while my other hand would stroke your body, tease you, touch you everywhere except where you need it. And when you try to reach for yourself, I’d trap your hands behind your back.” Cooper made a soft, involuntary sound. “Why?” “Because it’s my turn to do whatever I want. And what I want is for you to wake up hard and wild and desperate for it when I finally work my dick all the way into your tight little hole. So far gone already that the only thing you can do is lie there and take it as I wrap my arms around your body, trap you against my chest, and grind deep and slow. Yes?”

“I can hear you,” Park growled in his ear. “God, you sound good. I want to stay inside you all night. Let you keep my cock warm until I feel like fucking you again, and again, until you’re so full you—” Cooper’s orgasm felt ripped out of him.

“I did knock, you know. Quite loudly and for a very long time. I could clearly hear you were in here. What if you were incapacitated by some villain? Tied to a running table saw or in a glass box slowly filling with water? All while I stood outside twiddling my thumbs because of some outdated, human, capitalist construct of personal property? Think of the guilt I would have suffered. It would have killed me outright. How would you feel then?”

“Werewolf etiquette lesson number two: the naked body is not inherently sexual and should never be treated as such unless explicitly invited to do so.”

“I think it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Cooper blurted out. “Sorry. I’m just—that was incredible.” Eli eyed him beadily. “Yes, well. I don’t know what do with this earnest Cooper. Kindly return to your usual irritating self, posthaste.”

“People like to throw around words like closure and forgiveness, but I’ve long suspected that’s because they don’t want to admit how often healing is cruelly arbitrary. Some things just hurt until they don’t anymore and no one can tell you why, so they pretend you must have gotten closure.”

He’d even told him about his first partner in the FBI who was older, much older, someone intended to be a mentor, who had been a mentor as a successful queer man in undercover...he’d just also liked Cooper’s dick a lot, at the same time. Eli hadn’t quipped about that one. Maybe beneath Cooper’s light words, he could sense a glimmer of the darkness, if only just the part that reflected his own story. The joy and loyalty of recognizing someone like you, that led to letting down certain guards, twisting certain hurts even deeper.

Cooper walked right up and hugged him. Park cut off, clearly surprised. He felt wonderfully warm and wonderfully solid. Basically, just the ordinary qualities of any living person, so it was a mystery why holding him felt so goddamn extraordinary. Why Cooper, not much of a cuddler, felt compelled to hold him tighter.

“He said you promised you’d go to the zoo again today. Try to help. That was...kind of you.” Cooper shrugged, uncomfortable. “It only seemed like common decency.” “Decency is not very common,” Park said, turning back to the stove. “I’m coming, of course.”

Park chuckled and was about to say something else when Eli sauntered into the kitchen with Boogie at his ankles, eyes sweeping over them both. “I hate to interrupt this sentimental tableau, but might I remind you, someone I hold very dear is being blackmailed? And while nauseating me to death is certainly one way to put a stop to it, I was rather hoping for something a bit more impressive from the Trust’s top two private dicks.” “Is everyone you’ve ever dated an asshole?” Cooper groaned. Park just shrugged. “Maybe I have a type.”

Sophie turned to Park. “You know, it’s never too late to call off this engagement. You’re a catch, you’ll find someone.” Park sighed. “I was cursed by an old witch to find him charming.”

“Cooper is my brother-in-law,” Sophie said smoothly. “He had such an amazing time on your jungle tour yesterday, he insisted on coming back today with his fiancé, Oliver.” Cooper bit back his knee-jerk reaction of unhinged laughter any time someone called Park his fiancé.

“We’re having a bit of a missing talent problem today,” Ryan explained apologetically to the rest of them. “We’re always missing talent,” Hirano muttered. “Whether our self-proclaimed star shows up or not.”

“I just want you to get the wedding you want. Whatever that may be.” “Okay,” Cooper said. “I appreciate it. And if I ever wake as an aging silent film star obsessed with her past, I might take you up on that. But in the meantime, I’m more likely to want to get married in the sea lion pool, corpse included, than here in this building.” “It’s your lack of hyperbole that really made me fall in love with you. Wrote half my vows about it.”

“No, I want to vow,” Cooper said quickly. He took a deep breath and grabbed Park’s hand, looking him in the eye. “I really do want to. It’s just a list of things I love about you followed by some promises, right? How hard can it be?” Park studied him with a skeptical albeit fond look on his face. “For you?” Cooper scoffed. “I know what I love, Oliver. Right off the bat, you’ve got ten toes. Eight of them aren’t too weird. That’s eight lines right there. What’s next, your ankles? Those aren’t bad, either. Calves? Genuinely sexy.”

His voice was friendly and sounded genuine if you didn’t know him well enough to hear him testing Park’s pride, or to catch the flex in his arm as he squeezed his hand. “But you don’t strike me as the skittish type.” Park merely looked as amused as he always did when someone was attempting to establish a hierarchy with him. “On the contrary, I’m as timid as a mouse,” he murmured.

Cooper bristled, feeling a surge of defensive anger for Park at Neil’s dismissive tone, but tamped it down quickly, reflexively. It would be seen for what it was—a weak spot—and Cooper remembered not to reveal his weak spots to Neil at the same deep, instinctual level a solider remembered to duck when a door slammed.

“Don’t talk to me like that.” Neil matched his pose, bringing their faces closer together. “What’s the matter? Don’t like it when I stroke your ego anymore?” “Nah. You never could quite get the rhythm right.”

He started to sit back now, and Neil reached out and snagged one of his hands, tangling their fingers together loosely. There was nothing threatening about it—to anyone watching, it meant nothing more than a simple wait, one more thing—but Cooper still felt a pulse of anxiety tinged with the usual disproportionate rage Dr. Ripodi had explained was his body releasing floodgates of adrenaline, gearing up to fight for its life. But there was nothing to fight. The only danger between them, the memories triggered by a touch too familiar, too intimate for who they were now. It should have been too intimate for who they were then, as well, but that hadn’t stopped Neil, and maybe a tiny little sliver of Cooper’s rage was because of that, too.

He recognized so much of Neil that he had adopted into his own personality. He hated so much of Neil, too. And weren’t circles the worst Venn diagram of them all?

In turn, Cooper was trying too. God, was he trying. With the therapy and the communicating and the thinking before he spoke and the apologizing after he did... But that didn’t change the fact that one of them was shedding walls to reveal literal fluffy goodness and the other was shedding walls to reveal...well. The person Cooper had always been, he supposed. Three percent less of a dick? Five on a good day? And not one single degree warmer, even at his best.

Cooper didn’t just want to make it. He wanted them to thrive. He wanted Park to feel the sort of nurtured, safe, joyful, happy that he’d given up on as an abandoned child. Cooper would get it back for him if it was the last thing he did. That was his own personal vow that had nothing to do with human matrimony rituals and everything to do with the man Cooper wanted to be for himself, for Park, for their lives together.

Eventually Cooper let go, and Park looked over his shoulder. “That’s the third hug of the day, you know,” he said, curiosity burning in his expression. “My diary entry tonight is going to be rife with exclamation marks and hearts.”

“Thinking about what?” “Oh, nothing new. Just how I’m going to love the ever-living fuck out of you for as long as you let me,” Cooper said.

Park could have decided to be jealous. Or that he wanted to keep talking about Cooper’s relationship with Neil. He could have requested details. Could have felt angry for him. Sorry for him. He could have wanted to be tender and soft and gentle with Cooper, which would have only made him feel more fragile, fractured, hurt. Instead Park was offering controlled, consensual roughness, and Cooper was grateful more than he knew how to put into words.

They’d bought a blindfold from a sex shop a few months ago, but after a couple unsuccessful attempts, Cooper had decided it wasn’t his thing. It wasn’t that he was upset or turned off by it, per se, just that he kept compulsively pulling it down to see what was going on. “I’m sorry! I can’t help it,” Cooper had said when Park got exasperated with him just wearing it over his eyebrows like a bandanna and said he drew the line at Rambo role-play. “I like looking at you.”

“I got what I came for.” He snorted with his eyes closed. “Came for, heh.” His face landed heavily back on Park’s chest. “Your surrender is all the reward I need.” “It’s true. I did surrender,” Park murmured, sounding soft and even a little surprised. “I surrender everything to you, heart and soul.” Cooper hoped he said something nice back before he drifted off completely, but couldn’t be sure. With Park, sometimes it was hard to tell what was real life and what was just a really lovely dream.

“I will. I just missed you this week. I want to spend time with you.” Cooper raised an eyebrow. “I want to spend some non-naked, non-working time with you as well.” “All right, lunch out it is. But straight back to naked work after.”

Park laughed. “Cooper, there isn’t a room in the world I would be embarrassed to walk into with you by my side. Not even if you were wearing a sunflower on your head.”

Cooper was already starting to sweat. Plus, now that he was in a safer position, the throbbing of his injuries was returning with a vengeance. Pulsing out a furious message. We. Said. Some. Thing’s. Wrong. You. Stu. Pid. Fuck.

“But in addition to being my partner, my...whatever the opposite of alpha is, the horizon that my first and last thought touches every day, and my hands-down favorite lay, you’re also my best friend, Oliver. And maybe that doesn’t sound as big of a deal because, you know, not a lot of competition. But it’s true. You’re my best friend and you make me feel like I can do anything. I just... I want you to feel that too.”

“Whenever you’re ready. As often as you like,” Cooper vowed. “You can always tell me what you want out of life and I’ll always be first pick on your heist team ready to help you get it.” “As often as I like?” “Dreams change. People change. Please just don’t stop giving me the chance to change with you.”

“Happy chance,” Park sighed into Cooper’s hair. “What?” “Nothing,” Park said. “An old line I’ve developed new appreciation for. Perhaps I’ll pull it up and read it to you sometime during one of our daily power couple check-ins on hopes, dreams and aspirations.” “Daily?” Cooper muttered. “I said best friend, not your fucking fairy godmother. Weekly, maybe.” He rested his head on Park’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, and sighed. “Every other day, at most.”

The vicious thought caught Cooper off guard, even in his rage, the way only the most simple and obvious realizations can. Of course he hadn’t turned Neil bitter and cruel with his icy untouchability. Neil had never wanted him warm in the first place. He’d wanted him obedient. And in lieu of obedience, he’d take impotence. Defeat.

“Wait. Just...tell me this isn’t about Neil,” he said, meeting Park’s eyes. Park hesitated, cocking his head, giving the question genuine thought. “I don’t want you out of some jealous need to assert a claim on you,” he said slowly. “But I’d be lying if I said seeing you like this—put together and unfazed while he walks away frustrated and stinking of lust—doesn’t make me want to take you apart piece by piece right here and now.” Cooper raised an eyebrow, feeling the starting prickles of arousal in his balls tighten and solidify into a pulsing want as Park continued. “I’d also be lying if I said it doesn’t make me hard as stone knowing to everyone else you’re untouchable and in control while I can turn you into a shaking, dripping, begging mess.”

“You are my favorite part of living,” Cooper whispered. “I’d do anything for you.” It was a confession more than anything else. Not necessarily something he thought was right or took pride in, but dug from the deepest and most private part of his mind, unsightly and true. “I’m yours,” Park murmured simply. And for the first time, Cooper didn’t see it as having a power and dominance over him that he’d never wanted, but as a rare and fragile responsibility that Park had gifted Cooper in love.

He remembered thinking, he would never move from that spot. No one would ever find him, talk to him, or look at him again. He could just stand there under the sheet and disappear forever. The idea had thrilled and terrified him equally. How...disconnected he’d felt to the world. How he’d always felt slightly out of step with others.

“But all those things happened because Cooper’s good at his job.” “Ah yes, the perfectly reasonable explanation that someone else is simply better than you are. That always stops people from talking,” Cola said, rolling her eyes.

“I, um...” Park sounded uncharacteristically flustered. “I definitely wasn’t going to try to do this today with everything that happened. The blogs said the car is a great hiding place,” he muttered. “I should have known that was a mistake. They also said a good place to give it to you was a nice restaurant, but every time I’ve tried to get you in one it’s led to physical violence, so really I don’t know why I’m even surprised.”

Cooper realized he was just sitting there and staring. He nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed, and slowly put his own ring on. A tremor ran subtly through his body. Like the whole earth had just heaved a sigh of satisfaction and he was the only one who could feel it.

“When we get home,” Cooper murmured, speeding up his strokes, “I want you to fuck me. I want to feel that ring pressed against my back while you bend me over and make me take you.” Park’s hand tightened in Cooper’s hair. “I want you to make me wait on my knees on the floor by your feet until you’re ready to have me again.”