Beehive (Of Shadows & Secrets #4)

26. Will

26

Will

“ W hat was that shit, lighter fluid?” Thomas asked, smacking his gums like he’d just eaten a beetle and it was still fighting back.

I grunted and dropped into the chair at the desk. “When was the last time you tried lighter fluid? How would you even know what it tastes like?”

The door clicked shut, and Thomas appeared behind me, his firm hands digging into the muscles of my neck. “It tasted like lighter fluid smells. How’s that?”

“Fuck lighter fluid,” I moaned. “You have about twelve hours to stop doing that.”

He leaned down and kissed my head as his hands retreated from their work.

“Aw, really? That was like five rubs. That doesn’t even qualify as a massage.”

Thomas shook his head and pointed around the room where someone might hide a listening device. I shrugged and turned my attention to the rabbi while he checked our room.

A half hour later, I was still staring into the old man’s eyes, feeling along the etchings, and failing to find a way to unlock the hidden chamber. Thomas’s fingers clasped my shoulders, and his thumbs dug into my back. Before I could even moan, he leaned down and kissed my neck.

“I love you, Will Shaw, more than anything in this world.”

Fear stabbed into my chest. I set the statue down, turned to face him, and mouthed, “They might be listening.”

Thomas smiled and shook his head. “I’ve searched everywhere, and I’m very good at my job. If they’re still listening, they deserve the show they’re about to hear.”

My brows shot up as he bent down and pressed his lips to mine. They were warm and wet. I melted into their touch. I wanted Thomas so badly it hurt—no, I needed him. He wasn’t some man I cared for; he was part of me, the better part, depending on who one asked.

I fell in love with him the moment we’d met back at Harvard, though it took months for my ape brain to catch up and realize it. Once it did, and my worldview adjusted, I couldn’t imagine life without him. His quirky, sideways smirk and sharp wit were maddening—and the very things that drew me to him. I wanted to swim in his smile, to lose myself in its light, to drown in its warmth.

He became everything to me.

Then we joined the OSS. That had been terrifying in a very different way.

My life plan, such that it was after my parents died, never included foreign service. It certainly hadn’t included undercover intelligence work. That was the stuff of moving pictures, not my real life. But join, we had, and in doing so, we’d been thrust into a band of brothers and sisters who dwelled in shadows and played with secrets.

Back then, I was sure we’d be sent to opposite ends of the Earth; but when Uncle Sam put us on the same team bound for Europe, I knew we would live—or die—together.

Thank God we lived.

When Thomas was captured by the Nazis on our mission in the Netherlands, and I believed him lost for good, my world—and my heart—shattered in ways I hadn’t known were possible. The sky seemed darker, more dull. Waking thought became torture. The very air I breathed turned bitter.

Life no longer seemed worth living.

On the mission to rescue him, when I saw him in that rural prison for the first time, it felt like the world flooded with color again. When I held him, I swore nothing—and no one—would ever tear us apart again.

Our lips parted, and our eyes met.

My breath caught.

The way his stare lingered, I knew I was the only man in the world who mattered to him, the only one he would ever love. Moreso, I knew I would never search his gaze without growing weak in the knees.

“I love you so much,” I said, my words almost choking off at the end.

His hand found my cheek.

His thumb stroked gently.

I leaned into his touch.

“Come here,” he said, removing his hand and holding it out like a gentleman helping his lady from a carriage. Never one to refuse a gentleman, my fingers met his, and I stood. He walked backward into the bed, then sat and pulled me before him.

He reached up and undid the top button of my shirt, then the second and third.

I placed my hand over his and asked, “Are you sure? The old man and Visla are—”

“Downstairs. We can be quiet. I need you, Will. Right now. Who knows when we’ll be alone again without minders listening?”

Without waiting for my reply, he unbuttoned the last few buttons and pulled my shirt apart.

“God, I love your body,” he said, his fingers trailing down the light dusting of hair that led into my trousers. When he reached the top of my pants, he flicked that button open, then attacked the ones below it.

My heart thrilled.

Suddenly, summer wasn’t the only thing heating up in Berlin.

“Somebody’s happy to see me,” my smart-ass lover said as he pressed a palm to my briefs.

“You’re the only man around,” I said, making a show of glancing about the room before shrugging. “Guess you’ll have to do.”

A playful gleam entered his widening eyes. The next thing I knew, his hands were on my sides flipping me around and tossing me onto the bed with a thud.

I was sure someone must have heard.

Neither of us cared.

Thomas roamed freely, kneading and stroking my chest and abs as his lips and tongue wrestled with my own. I surrendered to the moment—to him.

Gripping the back of his head like a drowning man seizing a raft, our kisses grew even more passionate, urgent.

He grabbed my arms and sat me upright, then yanked my shirt over my shoulders and threw it across the room. I reached for his, but he was too quick. His bare chest greeted my fingers as his shirt flew in the opposite direction.

“Jesus, you’re—”

He wasn’t up for conversation.

His body smothered mine, pressing me back onto the bed. His kisses devoured the last of my resistance, as if I ever had any against him. Somewhere in the frenzy, his erection had hardened and was throbbing beneath his trousers. I felt him pulsing against me, pressing into me, begging to be released to take whatever he wanted.

His mouth left mine as his head lowered. His tongue circled a nipple.

A shiver streaked across my skin. I was always so sensitive, and he knew it.

I could feel his grin against my chest.

Teeth clamped.

My body seized.

My back arched.

His hand slid beneath the rubbery band of my briefs and gripped.

“Fuck, your hands are like fucking ice!”

His chuckle reverberated in my chest, as his hand, not caring what I thought of its temperature, squeezed, then stroked.

“Fuck, Thomas . . .”

“Oh, that’s the plan,” he looked up and whispered, the sinister glint in his eye making my heart skip a few beats. “Someone’s leaking.”

He held up a finger, then shoved it into his mouth, groaning like he’d just taken his first bite of a perfectly cooked meal.

“Would you stop playing with your food and get naked already?”

His smile was the heat of a thousand suns.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. Scooting down, he gripped my briefs and tugged them free. Then he pushed off the end of the bed and slipped out of his own, taking his boxers with them.

His cock flicked into his stomach as he freed it from his underwear.

Slickness glistened in the lamplight.

“I’m not the only one leaking.” I grinned.

Fully disrobed, Thomas lowered himself atop me again, spreading my legs, then resting them on his shoulders. His cock brushed against my cheeks, teasing me in the most evil, seductive way.

“We have to be quiet. Think you can manage that?”

I nodded, but my breath caught as his head teased my hole.

He hefted himself up on his knees just enough to rut back and forth, our cocks slipping and sliding, the friction increasing with every motion. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hard—or felt my cock pulse so much. Every touch sent another wave through me, another hint of the pleasure to come.

“Skip the pleasantries,” I urged. “I need you inside me.”

His grin turned feral as he held my gaze and ground against me a few more times.

I’d been so focused on the statue that I hadn’t seen him position a small jar on the nightstand. With his lips firmly locked onto mine, he stretched a hand out and scooped a healthy handful of jelly and slathered it across my hole.

“Shit, that’s cold, too.”

Ignoring me, a finger slipped inside.

I squirmed. “Oh, shit.”

He wiggled his finger, opening me up, then added a second.

“Oh, holy fucking shit, Thomas.” Words became a challenge as stars filled my eyes.

Once I relaxed, his fingers withdrew, and he stretched for the jelly again.

I practically vibrated with anticipation. I wanted him so badly, to be one with him, for him to live inside me.

He pressed his head against me, testing, teasing.

He felt so big.

For a moment, I wondered—

He slipped inside.

All the air wooshed out of my lungs.

God, he felt good.

And damn, he hurt.

“Slow,” I begged. “Easy.”

He held there, unmoving, his body hovering over mine, his cock a third of the way inside me. I opened my eyes, not realizing they’d been squeezed shut. He was staring. His gaze held every ounce of love and compassion the world possessed. In his eyes, I saw our future, our past, our every waking moment. I saw our hopes and dreams, our long lives filled with joy and laughter.

In that brilliant, frozen moment, everything was as it should be.

“Ready?” he whispered, his voice a husky shell of itself. That made me shiver again.

I nodded, a frantic gesture, unable to speak.

He pressed deeper, slowly, one centimeter at a time, his eyes never leaving mine.

Hunger consumed me when he hit halfway, and I reached up, gripped his ass, and shoved him all the way in.

He gaped right as my eyes clamped shut again, pain and pleasure, a blinding cocktail of perfection, filling every corner of my being.

“Are you okay?”

“Stay right there,” I said, wishing the moment could last a lifetime. “Don’t move.”

“Tell me that, and I’ll never move.”

I almost melted.

Then he slid back, almost pulling himself out. The air in my lungs went with him.

And back in again, this time one smooth motion ending when he hit a kidney or lung, I wasn’t sure.

My whole body arched.

He gripped my legs.

Gentle tenderness fell away as unbridled passion took hold.

Thomas thrust himself into me with all the force and strength he could muster. His hunger filled me with desire and need and every other emotion we’d kept pent up.

My fingers dug into his flesh, willing him deeper, wishing he could slam into me so hard I felt him for days.

And so, he did.

Again and again and again.

Until the headboard smacked the wall.

Thomas froze.

“Shit!” I hissed.

“Fuck it,” he said, shoving a pillow between the headboard and the wall.

Once the pillow and headboard were secure, he drove me all the way home.

“Do you think we’ll ever get to live a normal life?”

My head rested in the crook between Thomas’s chin and his chest, the safest, most peaceful place in my world. His arms were draped around me, squeezing occasionally. The fingers of one hand caressed my skin.

We were still sweaty, sticky, and probably smelled worse than Berlin after a good rain, but neither of us cared.

He seemed content, his breathing slow. I simply couldn’t move.

“Normal isn’t really what we signed up for,” he said, his hand rising from my back to stroke my hair.

“Still, I can’t help but wish we could . . .”

He waited as I struggled to figure out what I wished we could do. Finally, he asked, “What would you want to do if we weren’t married to the OSS?”

“I’d rather be married to you.”

My head bobbed as he chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be something? I’m not sure my family’s strong enough. We’d be the cause of at least a few heart failures.”

“The US government might have a fainting spell, too.”

“And everyone who lives in the States.”

I grinned and nuzzled deeper into the muscle of his chest.

“It’s still a pleasant dream,” he said, his voice suddenly far away.

A quiet moment passed.

His fingers massaged my scalp.

I breathed in his scent, wishing I could inhale his very essence, hold it like a breath, and never exhale. “I think I’d want to live somewhere far from cities, as far from people as we could. Maybe we could live on a farm with horses and pigs and cows . . . and a whole pack of dogs. I always wanted an Australian shepherd. We could have a whole litter.”

“You never had a dog growing up?”

I sighed. “No. We lived in urban Chicago. The only dogs my parents would let me have were little fluffy things that would’ve gotten me beat up in school.”

Thomas’s hand squeezed the back of my head. “I can just see you walking some fluffy ball of fur as it yipped its way down the street. My big, strong man and his homosexual beacon.”

“As a great philosopher once said, if it’s smaller than a football, it’s not a dog.”

“Right you are,” he agreed. After another moment, he asked, “What else is in your dream for us?”

“If the world ever stopped burning, I’d want to travel. At the very least, I want to see every state. Other than traveling back and forth to Harvard, I never really got to see much of the country, much less the world.”

“We’ve seen a good amount of Europe.”

Now it was my turn to chuckle. “I prefer my travel with a little less war and intrigue and a lot more wine and pastries.”

Thomas grunted. “Getting kind of specific, aren’t we?”

“Back to the farm.” I squeezed him tighter. “I want a lake, a big one, with lots of fish . . . oh, and a dock with a boat. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just a rowboat so we can paddle out to the middle and fall asleep under the stars.”

“What if the boat tipped over?”

“We’re spies trying to save the world. I’m pretty sure we can manage staying afloat in our own boat.”

“Let me get this straight, you want to fall asleep on a boat in the middle of a pond?”

“A lake,” I corrected. “It needs to be huge, remember.”

“Size queen.”

I squeezed him again.

“I’ll be your floatie if we tip over.”

As silly as that sounded, my heart swelled, and my cheeks ached from grinning.

“My floatie for life,” I whispered. “I love you, Thomas Arthur Jacobs du Pont.”

At the invocation of his full name, something I rarely did—and never while on a mission—he reached down and lifted my chin so our gazes met.

“Not as much as I love you, William John Shaw.”