Park gave him a look that said he knew exactly what was happening and was only tolerating it for Cooper’s sake. “I would think you’ve seen enough of my big ears for one day,” he said, and turned the faucet on, leaning forward to rinse out his hair.
Cooper frowned, watching him. It was difficult to know when to let potentially self-disparaging comments like that slide. Difficult to imagine Park ever felt poorly about himself at all, but Cooper knew better now. He waited until Park had turned the water off and was reclining with his eyes closed before he said, “I want to know what happened in the bedroom.”
Park groaned. “A terrible I Know What You Did Last Summer porn parody.”
“Oliver,” Cooper insisted. “Did I—I hurt you?”
Park’s eyes shot open. “No. Of course not.”
“But you yelped,” Cooper said, and Park winced at the animalistic term. “Or shrieked, cried out, yodeled, I don’t know, but it sounded nothing like, Jeepers, that feels grand.”
“I shift into a wolf, Cooper, not a Hardy Boy.”
“You know what I mean.”
Park bit his lip. “I was just...startled.”
“That’s not just it. I need to know what I’m doing wrong so I can fix it. Please,” he added, almost whispering.
It hurts me to see you hurt, Cooper thought. He didn’t say it. He didn’t want to guilt Park further or make it about him. He didn’t even quite understand why it had hurt so badly. The visceral...something that had torn through him when Park had cried out.
“It’s not—there’s nothing wrong.” Park sighed in frustration and maneuvered himself so he was sitting straighter in the tub, knees up, and Cooper’s hand fell away. Park reached out to take it. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Cooper nodded. “Very helpful. How on earth will an evolved couple like us convincingly pretend to need counseling?”
Park squeezed his hand and he took a deep breath. “I really was just startled. I’m not used to being touched. Like that.” He coughed. “In fur. Petted like that.”
Cooper’s throat clenched. “You mean it was...demeaning?”
“No, no.” Park looked at the ceiling, and Cooper could see his jaw muscle pulsing as he clearly struggled to say something. “You saw how Muñoz reacted to me today. Her aversion. The story she told of...the Shepherd.”
“How she jumped you, you mean.”
“I had just cut off the head of her pack,” Park said, without any inflection at all. “I was a monster of her worst nightmares there to turn her world upside down.”
“Oliver, no—”
Park held up his hand. “Her attack was justified, if unbelievably reckless. The point is that when I’m in fur, no one really...touches me. Not like you did. Nicely. Gently.”
“What are you saying here, that no one’s ever touched you in fur unless it’s to attack you?” Cooper asked. He meant it jokingly, but Park blushed and looked down, rubbing his finger along the grout at the edge of the tub.
“I mean, no, of course people have touched me. Like, in February, when you saw me in fur for the first time, you touched me then, too.” Park’s speech was quiet, stilted, embarrassed. “That was...really nice.”
“Oliver, I was tugging shards of glass out of your flesh after we’d fought for our lives,” Cooper said bleakly. “Tell me that’s not your only positive touch story. What about your family? Your exes? You cannot look me in the eye and tell me Eli isn’t touchy.”
Park smiled with wry fondness, shifted, and the water sloshed. “Of course he is. But not when I’m...like that. Not while I’m hurt, angry, dangerous. No one, ah, dominant, has ever reached out to calm me down.”
Cooper’s brain flipped over at the word dominant—him dominant over Oliver? That just didn’t sound right—but Park was still talking.
“I promise, it just startled me,” he said, and pulled Cooper’s hand to his own cheek. “Though it shouldn’t have.” He twisted to press a lingering kiss to his palm. “I know what to expect next time.”
“Next time?” Cooper’s voice sounded a little shaky.
A strange expression flashed over Park’s face, too quickly to decipher. It had almost looked like fear, but when he spoke Park sounded calm and casual. “I think after a weekend at Camp Howl you’ll have more than your fill of wolves in all our forms, myself included.”
“Impossible,” Cooper said. “I can never be too full of you.”
Park softly nipped at the flesh between Cooper’s thumb and finger, then rubbed his mouth back and forth over the spot like an apology. “But I love it when you’re full of me.”
Cooper snorted. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but whatever it is, the answer is I’m too hot for it.”
Park gently guided Cooper’s hand into the water, grasp loose enough that Cooper could easily pull away. “It’s cool in here.”
“So it is,” Cooper said, mock-surprised. He rubbed his hand lightly over Park’s chest, brushing almost imperceptibly at his nipples, letting the movement of the water do most of the work. Park’s dick twitched lazily, but Cooper didn’t reach for it. Instead, he thought about what Park had said about touch. The different ways we touch people: to arouse, appease, calm, excite, hurt, warn, beg. How impossible it was to fully understand how our touch feels to another. How it means different things to different people. Cooper may not see Park as submissive to him, but obviously after a lifetime being viewed only as a threat, a leader or both, Park felt Cooper’s touch was different. And that was fine.
Until the day Park realized he’d been wrong about Cooper all along and thrown away a ton of money and bought a whole-ass house for someone who couldn’t be the person he thought he was. Cooper wasn’t special. Just clueless.
“I’m getting all wrinkly,” Park said, startling Cooper out of his thoughts. He gently batted Cooper’s hand away. “Grab me a towel.”
“Yes, sir,” Cooper said sarcastically.
“Chop, chop, there’s a good boy.” Park winked and heaved himself to standing, water pouring off him. Cooper fetched a fresh towel, then perched on the sink counter to watch Park soap himself thoroughly in the shower and rinse off. He was tempted to jump in there with him, clothes and all, but resisted, enjoying the view too much.
When Park stepped out onto the bath mat and reached for the towel, Cooper resisted. “Should I dry you now, sir?” he asked, winking.
Park raised an eyebrow, but dropped his hand willingly and seemed bemused. “Yes, I think you’d better.”