Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
It took Adam thirty minutes and several laps around the reflecting pool to rein himself in.
It took another ninety with Cormac, Robin, and the rest of his team on the main level to sort logistics and evaluate potential meet locations.
By the time he returned to the cellar, Adam found the bunk room completely transformed.
With most of the winery’s business in the main facility down the mountain, the villa’s cellar was minimally used as storage for extra equipment and living and sleeping quarters for seasonal workers during harvest, which had ended a month ago this year.
But you wouldn’t know it for the lived-in coziness Icarus had created in two short hours.
The line of single beds had been pushed together in the center of the room, Cormac’s mother’s hand-knitted quilts thrown across them in a splash of color.
More soft shades painted the walls, cast by the silk and sheer tops Icarus had draped over the room’s lamps.
Across from the beds, the storage trunks that normally sat at the end of each bed had been stacked and arranged so that Icarus’s laptop and webcam on top were aimed directly at the now oversized bed.
Everything was perfectly arranged, except for the single bed shoved in the corner nearest the door, Icarus’s go bag open and spilling what was left of its contents the length of it.
Adam leaned a shoulder against the door. “Do you have everything you need?”
“Not everything,” a silk-robed Icarus said.
He dug through the bag once more and produced a bottle of lube.
“But enough.” His voice was a shade brighter than earlier but still careful, and as Icarus placed the tube of lube on the bedside table and surveyed the room’s final setup, he likewise carefully avoided Adam’s gaze.
Mentally replaying his earlier outburst, Adam could see how his harsh words might have bruised Icarus.
They’d revealed a darkness, an inevitability, that Icarus maybe hadn’t fully appreciated—or accepted.
He stepped into the room, and as Icarus passed by on his way back to the spare bed, Adam lightly clasped his elbow. “Icarus, please.”
He wrenched his elbow free and flicked a dismissive hand in the air. “I can’t be in this headspace with you when I need to be Icarus for someone else.”
The computer pinged, a guest waiting.
“I want to stay while you do this.” It was a wildly inappropriate suggestion that got Adam the reaction he craved.
Stormy blues clashed with his, and Icarus gave a sharp shake of his head. “No way.”
“He might say something I need to hear.” A plausible enough excuse.
Icarus didn’t buy it, his gaze shrewd, but he didn’t outright reject it either. “Not without his consent.”
“Has he been on a multifeed before?”
“Yes.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Icarus pressed his lips together, and Adam bit his tongue to keep from saying more, to stifle the plea that wanted to escape. He’d become invested in the idea, tangentially for the mission, primarily for the chance to watch Icarus work.
To escape and wind down after hours of planning and debate.
Icarus heaved a sigh. “Fine. You’re going to blackmail him with this in the end, anyway. But only if he consents.”
Adam nodded. “Fair.”
“Where’s the meet?”
Adam gave him the address, and when the computer pinged again, he followed Icarus’s order to take up residence on the spare bed. He shoved himself into the corner, upright, out of view of the laptop screen and camera but with an unobstructed view.
Icarus clicked the mouse, then sat on the edge of the bed, his legs crossed. “Nate, it’s good to see you.”
“I’m glad you pinged.” There was a slight wobble in his voice, barely contained excitement tangled with I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this nerves. “I hadn’t heard back from you this week, so I didn’t know . . .”
“I’ve had company in town.” His gaze flicked Adam’s direction, then back to the screen. “Been more exciting than I anticipated.”
Adam stifled a laugh. Exciting was one way to put it.
Icarus smirked.
“Company?” Nate said. “Are they still there?” The cop wasn’t a fool. He’d picked up on the off-camera byplay.
Icarus must have picked up on something he saw onscreen. “You dirty minx! Do you want an audience? Because yes, he’s still here.”
“I like knowing you have one.” Nate cleared his throat, tempering the excitement he’d let slip vocally too. “But I don’t want to see or hear anyone but you.”
“Don’t you worry. My friend’s going to sit in the corner and be a good boy and just watch.” Icarus’s eyes pinned him to the spot. “No words and no touching. And he won’t come. That’s just for you and me, Nate.”
Nate half hummed, half gasped his approval, the idea alone clearly turning him on.
For his part, Adam nodded. He toed off his shoes and propped his feet on the bed, knees bent and legs spread.
He snagged Icarus’s crochet hooks, threaded them through his fingers as an extra measure of restraint, then rested his wrists on his bent knees, hands dangling where Icarus could see them and his cock already stiffening behind his zipper.
Icarus smirked and shifted his attention back to the screen. “Are you going to be a good boy too?” He crawled to the center of the bed and untied his robe.
Adam nearly swallowed his tongue.
Turquoise lace hugged Icarus’s torso, a form-fitting camisole that dripped from thin silk straps, dipped low in front, and ended at the tops of his thighs.
It was an inch or two shorter in the middle, balls peeking out below, owing to the stretch caused by the bulge of his erect cock that was tucked up against his pelvis.
Nate wasn’t nearly so quiet, cursing and groaning.
He only got louder as Icarus ditched the robe completely.
Unrestrained, Icarus ran his hands through his hair, down his long neck, over the gap in the lace, then under its edges, playing with his nipples, dipping into every ridge of his abs, tracing his V-cut to his groin, spreading his legs wider and subtly thrusting forward.
Touching everywhere but his dick that swelled.
All while directing Nate—how to tease himself, when to take out his cock, how to lather it up, how to stroke it.
It drove Adam crazy. His dick ached as he imagined his lips tracing a path down Icarus’s neck, his hands tangled in lace, his fingers slipping inside to feel the cool heat of Icarus’s skin, slipping behind to palm the ass the cami didn’t cover all of.
Intentionally.
As Icarus pulled a dildo from under a pillow, his earlier words came back to Adam.
An overworked cop . . .who jerks off to me fucking myself on a dildo.
He suctioned the base of the dildo to one of the wooden headboards, grabbed the bottle of lube, and coated it.
Then he hiked the cami up, exposing a plug in matching turquoise.
He’d prepared himself. He eased it out with a mewl that nearly undid Adam.
But then he went down on all fours, rammed back on the dildo, and let out a relieved, shuddery sigh, and Adam was fucking gone.
He closed his eyes and tilted back his head, white-knuckling the crochet hooks as his hips rocked up, aching for friction, hungry for the man he couldn’t touch less than ten feet away.
“Look at me.”
He wasn’t sure if Icarus’s sharp command was for him or Nate, but regardless, Adam whipped up his head, righting his gaze just in time to see Icarus reach down and free his cock from the lace.
Stroked once, twice, then bowed like a cat, the hand in the bed fisting the sheets, Icarus coming with a deep groan that was echoed onscreen.
Adam wanted to groan too, wanted his dick in Icarus’s ass instead of that dildo, wanted to be under him with his mouth around Icarus’s cock, drinking up every drop of his come, wanted Icarus to flip him over and come inside him again.
Adam bit his cheek so hard he tasted blood.
Icarus’s head jerked up, nostrils flared and eyes wide, his body practically vibrating. He was every inch the predator.
Adam’s heart raced, but he wasn’t afraid. He wanted . . . The thing inside him wanted . . . more.
Icarus blinked, and the predator was gone.
Adam closed his eyes, mind swirling, body revolting, heart on a roller coaster he didn’t want to get off of.
“Wasn’t that good, Nate?” Icarus said, focused again on his client. “Maybe you’d like to do this in person?”
Nate’s “I can’t” was wholly unconvincing, even to Adam’s half-lucid brain.
“You don’t have to touch,” Icarus cajoled. “You can be like my friend over there watching me fuck myself, smelling the come as it drips from my dick for you, hearing every slide of the dildo into my hole.”
“We’ve never . . .” Nate groaned, and if Adam had to bet, Nate was getting hard again just thinking about it.
“I might not be in town much longer, Nate. Last chance.”
“When?” Nate panted. “Where?”
“Tomorrow night.” He rattled off the address, confirmed once more, exchanged payment details, and then Icarus signed off.
The bed springs squeaked, and Adam righted his head.
Icarus climbed off the show bed, left the camisole in its hiked-up state, his dripping cock and ass bare, and stalked in his direction.
The blank face was gone, but the predator remained tucked away too.
Adam didn’t taste blood any longer, and Icarus apparently didn’t smell any either.
“That turned you on,” Icarus said once he reached the side of the single bed.
Adam flicked his gaze down to where his cock was at war with his fly. “Obviously.”
“You weren’t jealous.”
“Watching you do what you do best?” He shook his head. “Not at all. Wanted to be that dildo, or between your legs sucking your cock, or getting plowed by you. But jealous? No, baby. That’s your job, and you are fucking magnificent at it.”
Icarus smirked, gaze drifting to Adam’s erection. “Do you need me to do something about that?”
“If you want to,” Adam replied, and Icarus’s gaze shot back up.
“I’m not your job. Only if you want to,” he repeated.
He didn’t want an act. If he was going to be real in these moments when he put Adam and the Devil aside, when Icarus tempted him into hitting pause on the future he usually raced toward, he needed to know Icarus was being real in these moments too.
“I want to,” Icarus said as he gently removed the hooks from Adam’s grip.
He tossed them aside, then gracefully lowered to his knees, spreading them to make the cami ride even higher.
“Put your hands in my hair and come when I do.” He didn’t wait for a reply, Adam’s “Again?” dying on the tip of his tongue.
In a single blink, Adam was yanked to the end of the bed, his jeans and boxers torn down, and his legs thrown over Icarus’s shoulders, his dick inside Icarus’s hot mouth.
His hands shot to Icarus’s head, tangling in the magenta strands, holding on for dear life as Icarus took him apart.
Long licks, teasing flicks, suction that had him idly wondering if what was left of his soul was being sucked right out of him.
Stolen by the predator giving him the only moments of intimacy he’d had in a decade.
As his world splintered, his orgasm rushing up to meet the one Icarus groaned out around his cock, he thought it a fair deal—peace in exchange for the soul he’d already lost, claimed by the fiery beast inside him that spread its wings and flew.