Lynx Northern Shifters 3

him.
One evening Trey sat on his cot, bent over some book he’d brought with him. A mystery. He liked to read fiction Jonah had come to learn. He stared at the broad back, thought about leaning against it. Problem was that Trey would then turn around to hold and overwhelm him, and Jonah didn’t actually want that, wasn’t ready for it.
He just wanted to lean against that back.
Trey didn’t touch him when Jonah didn’t want him to, not since he’d leapt on Jonah’s lynx to force Jonah to shift to human. So why did it seem like this huge thing, to slide off his cot and sit on Trey’s?
He’d intended to return to his book but couldn’t look away from his erstwhile lover.
Well, he would rise and if Trey looked backward, he’d go get a glass of water.
But Trey didn’t glance around. He got like this sometimes when he was reading, oblivious to Jonah and the world surrounding him.
Before he could think on it further, Jonah tucked a leg under himself and plopped down directly behind Trey, so they were mere inches apart. While Trey didn’t move at all, a kind of tension suddenly held his body in position, and Jonah suspected he was no longer reading his book.
Tentatively, it had been so long, Jonah placed his forehead between Trey’s shoulder blades and breathed in Trey’s scent.
His back was warm and strong, and Jonah lifted his forearms to rest on Trey’s shoulders as he turned his face to lean a cheek against Trey’s spine.
“Trey,” Jonah murmured.
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t turn around, okay?”
“All right.”
It was intoxicating, in the oddest way. Jonah had a semi, but he wasn’t strongly aroused. He felt…relaxed, in a way he hadn’t for the longest time. A wave of relief passed through him and he remembered how it had been before when they were together, the sense of coming home that Trey had given him. Might be able to give again, even if Jonah couldn’t enter into intimacy with the same kind of naivety he’d had at twenty-four years of age.
He found he wanted to speak. “I wish I hadn’t become like this. I wish it was back to when we first met.”
“Jonah,” said Trey in a low voice, a kind of warning, a kind of plea.
“But I’m not like that now.”
“Not now. You waited too long for me. It’s my turn to wait for you.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Jonah smiled against Trey’s back, until the next thought struck him. “For how long?”
Trey’s back rippled with his shrug. “For however long it takes, since you’re my mate.” The last word was said with some intensity.
“I’m your mate?” Jonah had never heard Trey use that term before. “What does that mean?”
“It means we should be together.”
“I don’t want to have sex with you.” Not entirely true, but not entirely untrue either.
“Yet we’re still together. It’s enough.” For now was implied.
“The cities,” said Jonah, apropos of nothing, “were fascinating and repugnant. I couldn’t stay away and yet the idea of going back to them is awful to me.”
“Then we won’t go to cities.”
Leaning against Trey like this made Jonah feel strangely sleepy, strangely soothed. He didn’t feel like editing his thoughts. “By and large, the people in the city actually treated me quite well. They wanted me to be warm and fed, they wanted me to be able to support myself. They would touch me occasionally. A hug, a pat, or something else. Not too much but I disliked it.”
“How many people did you sleep with?”
“How many?” Jonah was close to snickering, which was juvenile, but he sensed jealousy here and he kind of liked it. “Let me think.”
“ Jonah . I’m worried about you.”
“Oh, you think I had a bad experience? No, I couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping with someone else. It…” It had freaked him out. And as the months passed by, he’d developed this aversion to touch. But here he was leaning against Trey’s solid back and it felt good, right.
“Some shifters get messed up when they stay too long in their human form.” Trey was speaking carefully now. “I think that’s been part of your aversion. You need the balance of human and cat, otherwise things get out of whack. You won’t feel comfortable in your skin, let alone others touching your skin.”
“But I would leave the city, go to the country and be lynx.”
“How often?”
“Every couple of months.”
“And how often do you shift now?”
“Every couple of days,” he admitted. “A week at most.”
“We won’t go