wanted to keep Colin forever. Judd reminded himself to keep things light. Anything too deep and his mate would run scared.
Colin cupped Judd’s cheek, then slid his hand down as if he were memorizing the contours of Judd’s face with those graceful fingertips.
“I love your hands. I love them on me.” Judd admitted, keeping his eyes closed.
Those hands fluttered as if unsure of the compliment. “I don’t like… They’re very feminine.”
“They’re graceful and perfect and yours. Say thank you. Take a compliment.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Silence descended.
Colin continued to stroke Judd. He ran one fingertip over Judd’s eyebrows. He smoothed one hand around the side of Judd’s head. Judd kept his hair short. Not that it grew much, not on a werewolf. Colin seemed to like that. Those fine fingers appreciating the shape of Judd’s skull. It was very symmetrical. Judd preened and dozed.
He idly wondered if Colin was back to reading his assignment, or if he watched Judd while he petted him. Judd was afraid to open his eyes, in case that caused his mate to stop. In case Colin saw the real wanting of his heart under the desire in his body. So Judd lay still, hardly dared breathe, let himself drift on touch.
Judd had been made wolf during a time and in a place when touch was sacrosanct. It was touch that kept him trying with each new pack. That glorious feeling of fur and fur, skin and skin. Not sexual, just togetherness. He’d ended up leaving because of personality or power struggles, racism or homophobia. But he was always driven to seek another pack before too long, because of touch. How Colin had gone so long without it, flinching from contact, was a mystery to Judd.
So just this, Colin’s hands on his face, was more centering than a thousand runs, or a million deep conversations.
“I love being petted,” he said to Colin. Especially by those amazing hands, he added in his own head. Clearly his mate didn’t do well with compliments. But praise for an action he’d undertaken seemed to work okay. Judd would have to remember that when they were fucking.
“You love being doted upon, like a big ol’ cat.” Colin’s voice was pleased. He ran the backs of two fingers down the side of Judd’s neck.
Judd did wonder sometimes what it would be like to be some other shifter. Not a werewolf but a supernatural creature more connected to his heritage, like one of the big cats. What would he have smelled like? Looked like? Many of the African shifters were lions or leopards.
Judd guessed his parents had been slaves in England. Leastways, he assumed that’s how they got there. They were dead before he was old enough to know to miss them. He’d been gutter-raised and rough-hewn but free. He’d turned street smarts into spying for the werewolves when he was still a child. Some high-up political type had recruited Phineas. And Phineas knew all the ways that young and poor and Black went unnoticed in the London slums. Turned out, the things that made Judd hungry and desperate also made him useful. Judd hadn’t minded work that fed and entertained. Hadn’t minded Phineas’s mentoring, either. In fact, he’d enjoyed it. So when Phineas decided to join a pack in the north, Judd followed. There he learned about touch and safety and friendship. So when a loud brash Scottish Alpha with a propensity for small dogs and slim cigars offered him the bite, Judd took it. Turned out his werecat genetics stood him in good stead to become a werewolf. It happened like that, back before they knew anything about the triple helix and the activation chromosomes.
Judd let himself rumble in contentment under his mate’s touch. A kind of nostalgic purr for what could never be. “It’s likely I was meant for leopards, if my shifter genes came from my dad’s line. Lion if they came from my mom. Could even have been both. Better chances of bite survival if I got it both sides. And obviously, I survived.”
“You weren’t tested before you chanced metamorphosis?”
Judd chuffed in surprise. “How old do you think I am?”
Colin stopped stroking him.
Judd opened his eyes.
His Gingersnap wasn’t reading. He’d put his books off to one side. He was, in fact, staring at Judd and blushing furiously.
Judd rescued him. “No concept of genetics when I was bitten, Gingersnap. Not that I knew of, anyway. Back then they believed surviving a supernatural bite had to do with souls and creativity.”