And the heartache continues…
Let’s introduce you to the alpha.
Eamon has lost everything in
his life. It’s not until his family forces him to go and close out his
partner’s estate that he meets a group of men who change his life, and one in
particular who opens his heart to love again.
Only there’s something not
quite right here. Once Eamon realizes what it is, will he still be willing to
stay?
Taking a large drink of his beer, Eamon looked around
the pub. It was one of his favourite things to do—people watch. It wasn’t
Patrick’s pastime, though. Patrick liked to be in the crowd. He liked meeting
new people, seeing new things, whereas Eamon was content to sit by himself and
watch the world around him.
“Oi, arseholes, over here!” a voice yelled across the busy space,
grabbing everyone’s attention to three males in bright orange work shirts and
dark cargo shorts. All three were average height, within an inch of each other,
though only one of them had a solid build. The other two were thinner. “Colin!
Tim wants another beer.”
Eamon watched as the thicker of the men veered off with a mumbled word
and a nod of heads towards the bar. He leant his elbows on the bar table as he,
too, talked to the bartender, who was waiting, already pouring a beer.
Clearly these men came to this tavern a lot. It was evident in the
banter between the barkeeper and this Colin character, even more in the settled
play of mates in the corner when the other two reached the group. This was a
haven for them. You could tell, if you cared to look.
Colin, at the bar, laughed and caught Eamon’s attention again. One of
the things Eamon did was, in a way, a part of his job, of who he was, to be
able to assess a man from a moment of interaction with someone else.
Colin mumbled and noded, but the bar held that muted volume that made it
impossible to hear anything unless someone yelled or directed it to you. Colin
took the tray with four beers and walked over to the other man, all dressed in
a similar attire. Sliding the tray on the small round table, he picked up a
beer with his left hand, slapped a shorter man with his right, and then pulled
in another man—one dressed in tight purple skinny jeans and a green top—for a
kiss that made Eamon want to turn away out of respect. The intimacy between
them put an ache in his chest. It reminded him a little of himself and Patrick,
that love.
The men kissing made him look at the group in a different light, with a
keener eye. That, along with the rest of the pub. No one there seemed to think
anything of it at all. They seemed comfortable with them there. The barkeeper
even watched on with a slight softness to his eyes that made Eamon respect the
hell out of this establishment even more.
A wolf whistle came from the man who had called across the room when
they first came in and Eamon, for the first time, actually looked at him.
Sitting astride a stool with a beer in front of him, the man was short, though
Eamon couldn’t determine how short because he was sitting down, but since the
specs were around what Eamon liked, the man would be under five-foot-eight, if
even that tall. He wore dark cargo shorts with dirt matted up the outside of
his legs and sticking to his hair. Dark green sock protectors sat over the top
half of his cream boots as one tapped crazily against the metal step on his
stool.
He wore what the majority of them wore—a bright yellow work shirt that
had the same smudging of dirt across the side. One arm rested on the thigh
closest to where Eamon sat. His fingers tapped a different beat than his foot.
The other wrapped nicely, firmly around a beer.
His neck was so delicate it made Eamon swallow hard. He hadn’t felt a
reaction like this, a need to dive in and taste, simply
from a glimpse of skin.. The man’s cheeks were smooth. His chin held a slight
dimple.
The man moved, and Eamon lost his view of that face, other than a flash
of blue from his eyes and the gloss of messy blonde hair that clearly needed a
cut.
Eamon shifted in his seat, distractedly pulling at the material to give
his cock a breath of room. He’d never felt this instant need before. Never had
the mere look of a man make him want to moan. It annoyed him, especially
because he couldn’t push it away. Not when his cock was throbbing to be let out
and play.
Cursing under his breath, Eamon watched the men interact with each other
as he took slow sips of his own beer. They were obviously close. Close in a
biblical way, if Eamon was correct in his own assumption. Though he hadn’t been
wrong before, and he didn’t see that he would be now. The men, at least the
core of them—the ones in the bright shirts—wore Harper’s Landscaping & Maintenance, ironed onto their backs.
They were close. Not close in a way that they were lovers. No, Eamon
could see the distance. Maybe more brotherly. You could see the camaraderie
between them all. The shared past. The story that surrounded them that made
Eamon’s mind itch with wanting to learn, to understand, and to unravel it all.
Putting the glass up to his lips, Eamon tipped it back and got nothing. Well. He sighed. It looked like it was
time to go. With a little dejection in his step, Eamon walked out into the dry
heat that was apparently the summer season in this place. Not like what he was
used to, humidity coming from having the harbour so close to everywhere he’d
lived and worked. He found it odd, but funnily enough, enjoyable, when he had
never particularly liked that type of heat before.
He pondered that point as he tried his hardest to not think about the
man he was walking away from, and felt as if that statement held truer than he
had ever thought possible.
When got in his car, the heat
surrounding him was nearly suffocating. He hadn’t thought he’d been that long,
but obviously, his car in this sun wasn’t dealing all too well. Turning the car
on, he opened it all up, turned the air-con on full, and set off towards the
supermarket.
Lying in the
fresh bed by himself was hell. He was caught between two fantasies, both of
which he wished would go away. The agony of both was warring in his brain and
he couldn’t deal with it. Didn’t want
to deal with it. Didn’t want to deal with anything. He just wished for sleep.
He’d been wishing it for months now. He hadn’t a clue what his real
problem was, though he should. He was a damned therapist, so he should be able
to figure out what was behind his insomnia. He should be able to pull out the
thoughts, pinpoint the problems, and then work them out so that he could deal
with them and then get a good night sleep, but he couldn’t. Though, in all
honesty—which was something he hadn’t been to himself since he fell into deep
seeds of depression and shock after his partner had stopped breathing—he wasn’t
really trying.
When he’d snapped out of the shock, he had lived in a wall of nothing
that was all depression with an act of normalcy. He had not been living, though
he moved around with those who were.
Therefore, what was happening to him now? Why couldn’t he sleep? What
the hell was going on in his head that he couldn’t shut it down? All the while,
he couldn’t seem to think, to process anything that was happening to him,
around him.
Sighing, Eamon got up. A check of the clock had given him a time,
telling him the hours he thought he’d been trying to sleep were only an hour
and a half.
Pulling on a pair of sweats, Eamon walked out the room. Flicking on
light after light until he was in unnatural daylight, he opened up the bags,
pulled on a set of rubber gloves, picked up a bottle of nature-friendly cleaner
and set on working himself to exhaustion.
Taking Control of my
Werewolf by Bronwyn Heeley
Release date 15th of April
2014
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