Adrift-mxm

Chapter 4

"You refuse to fight me and you refuse to shift?" Inkani repeated with a twitch in his left eye. 

A thin smile spread across his lips as he knelt down in front of Ilio. Instead of meeting his gaze, however, he looked over his shoulder and upward. 

"Bin, he's not going to fight me, or shift. Isn't that just grand?" he said, mocking, once again, in his tone. 

The man standing behind him let out a deep chuckle. 

"I've never seen a werewolf so easy to catch before."

Ilio tilted his head slightly as he heard the man approach him from behind. His inner wolf's hackles rose with each step closer and once he was within a foot, his upper lip lifted to reveal partial canine teeth and a warning growl slipped from between his lips. 

Except, they retracted immediately and his body relaxed when Inkani settled a hand against the side of his face. 

"Just a little pat to the cheek and my ferocious pup is soothed into complacency, hmm?" Inkani said as he reached up to pat Ilio's hair with his other hand. 

He liked the attention, a lot, but was forced to lift his own hands and brush the man's away in order to keep his mind from being swayed again. 

Inkani seemed to find his reaction entertaining, because he was soon poking at him here and there, then tapping his head and removing his hand before Ilio could swat it away, only to poke at his belly, knee, and even nose!

It got to the point where he had no other choice but to simply try and shield his head with his arms and hunch into as small a ball so he could to try and avoid the man's frustrating attention!

"Sir, it is already past two in the morning, perhaps we should begin heading back to the ship?" the other pirate, Bin, said. 

Thankfully, his words finally had Inkani's hands withdrawing from a frazzled, stressed Ilio, whom refused to remove his arms from his head or straighten back up into his sitting position. He just wanted to crawl into a quiet, peaceful den and hide for the next week or five.

This man is too much. 

He heard the two converse as Inkani stood up and moved about the room a bit, but he still refused to raise his head. Instead, he focused on calming his overwhelmed heartbeat and clearing his, once again, fuzzy mind. 

Things quieted after about five minutes, and when he didn't hear anything else for another minute after that, Ilio slowly lifted his head and lowered his arms. 

Oh? 

Inkani was just finishing up chewing something with his eyes on a small map he held before himself as he sat on the edge of a mussed bed. 

He was dressed now, in a pair of black pants, the high-boots Ilio had brought him, and a partially open, weather-worn faded white shirt. Add the single stud earring in his right ear and the look of concentration on his face and Ilio was, once again, completely distracted. 

He wasn't able to even think straight until his nose picked up the scent of something that smelled absolutely delicious and had evidently been brought over to him. 

Without even thinking he reached up and grasped the item that was being offered to him, then immediately slid it between his lips. 

"And here I thought you were looking at me all this time. You just wanted the venison jerky I had in my coat pocket," Inkani said as Ilio hungrily tore into the thick slice of dried meat. 

It tasted so good. Better than good!   

"You... wasted our best jerky on a wolf?" 

The man sounded like he was in complete disbelief, but Inkani didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, he appeared quite pleased with himself as he grinned playfully at Ilio.