Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
If Icarus’s phone had been a lifeline earlier, it was as good as a grenade now.
Arm hitched back, he was ready to chuck it at the nearest wall, and with his full strength behind it, Adam had no doubt it would blow a hole clean through.
He rushed into the bunk room and grasped Icarus’s elbow. “You may still need that.”
“For what?” He wrenched his arm loose and spun, gesturing wildly. “Everyone I love is here, and the best chance I had to keep you and her safe just fucking bailed.” He resumed his pacing and continued his ranting, cursing the DA who’d refused to hear Nate’s evidence against Vincent.
Adam, however, was stuck a few words back . . . Everyone I love.
Love.
Had it been a careless slip? Did Icarus mean love generally, as in care for, like he meant about Mary?
Or did he mean something more when it came to Adam?
Something closer to what Adam was struggling with himself?
Had Icarus fallen as hard and fast too—beyond what the magic inside each of them wanted?
Did Michael want him? Because Adam—no, Gabriel—wanted Michael, Icarus, the entire package. More than he wanted his next breath right then. Maybe even more than he wanted death. That thought fucking terrified him.
But not enough to walk away. He stepped into Icarus’s path. “You need to calm down.”
Icarus cocked a brow. “Why aren’t you more upset?”
“The choice is easy now.”
“Easy? What planet are you living on?”
Adam closed the distance between them and laid his hands on Icarus’s chest. “The one with you.”
Icarus’s expression was a riot of confused emotions—soft surprise, harsh incredulity, stark worry—that eventually distilled into frustrated exhaustion.
He covered Adam’s hands with his. “The one where I might lose you and her in one fell swoop.” He leaned in, forehead resting against Adam’s, eyelids fluttering closed.
“And let’s not even talk about how I almost got Paris killed once already. ”
Adam pressed their foreheads together, then shifted. Kissed a path from Icarus’s temple to one corner of his mouth. “No one’s getting killed except Vincent.”
“You want to go in there.”
He kissed the other corner and up Icarus’s opposite cheek to his other temple. “I want him to pay for what he did to Deb and David. I want this to be over.”
Icarus sighed and leaned more of his body into Adam’s. “Fucking death wish.”
Adam snaked an arm around Icarus’s waist and lifted his other hand to cup his cheek. “Icarus, look at me.”
He shook his head and kept his eyes screwed closed. “What am I to you?” His voice was thick, a lump in his throat that he audibly swallowed around. “A last hurrah?”
“No, baby.” Adam swiped a thumb across his cheek, did it again, and Icarus opened his eyes, the blues wary and bruised. Adam wanted to see them bright again, full of fire and hope and desire. “You’re the person making me doubt how much I really want to die.”
He swallowed Icarus’s gasp, crushing their mouths together and pushing his tongue between Icarus’s lips, sweeping inside and stoking the missing fire back to life. Chasing that life himself.
Icarus groaned, a surrender and then more, arms winding around Adam, holding him tight, picking him up and moving him with preternatural speed.
Adam’s back hit the corner bed, Icarus stretched above him, the space narrow and perfect for the closeness they both craved.
Icarus’s hands were everywhere, fisting Adam’s hair, creeping under his sweater, pushing it up and off, his own shirt close behind.
He hitched Adam’s leg over his hip and held him closer, rutting their stiff cocks together.
Content to be manhandled, Adam landed his lips anywhere he could reach, brushing them against Icarus’s neck, parting them around his Adam’s apple, sealing them over a nipple and sucking hard, eliciting a breathy groan and full-body shiver that rippled through both of them.
He rucked up the back of Icarus’s skirt and found his ass deliciously cool and bare, only a thin slice of fabric parting them.
He clutched the smooth globes, and Icarus canted forward, forearms in the mattress on either side of Adam’s head, lips where Adam could reach them again.
He rolled his hips as he thrust his tongue between Icarus’s lips, and Icarus punched back with his own hips, with fangs that descended in the midst of the messy, claiming kiss.
And nicked Adam’s lip.
Icarus jerked back, nostrils flaring, eyes zeroing in on the drop of blood Adam could feel welling.
He started to blink, to lock down his senses.
He hadn’t needed to do that last night, and Adam didn’t want him to do that now.
He trusted him. But more than that, he wanted Icarus with him fully, all of his senses firing, same as Adam’s.
He grasped Icarus’s chin. “Don’t. Stay here with me. All of you.”
Icarus’s gaze remained locked with Adam’s, not once straying back to the blood. Not even when their pulses synched like they had that night a week ago in the club. “I need all of you too.”
Letting some of the heat flow from his core, trusting himself and the Devil with Icarus, Adam coasted his hands up Icarus’s flanks, warming the cool skin. Icarus groaned and sank down onto him, burying his face in the crook of his neck. “Fuck, that feels good.”
Adam wrapped his other leg around Icarus, their cocks snug, and they rocked together, Adam touching every part of Icarus he could reach, Icarus nuzzling his neck, the ridges of his forehead, his cool breath, the press of his lips and the tips of his fangs teasing.
But never a bite.
And yet not a single muscle Adam coasted his hands over was rigid. Icarus had melted under his touch, the predator’s body fully relaxed. Everything but his stiff cock rutting against Adam’s. The care—the trust—in Adam, in himself, fired all of Adam’s senses, stoking the fire and his desire higher.
His heart tumbled head over heels.
Icarus kissed a trail along his jaw. “I can’t hurt you.”
With his fangs, no, Adam believed it, but this had gone past physical, past instincts, since that first night in his Terrace bathroom, when Icarus had run his fingers through his hair and wrapped safety and intimacy around him for the first time in a decade.
Had re-awoken Gabriel from where Adam had buried him deep inside.
He didn’t think he could go without it again.
He drew back enough to meet Icarus’s gaze, not hiding anything from him, putting it all out there like he used to.
“I think maybe you can hurt me more than anyone.”
Icarus wiped away a tear Adam hadn’t realized he’d shed. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Especially me.”
Adam smiled, a forgotten reflex a week ago, same as joking, which he felt compelled to do then to lighten the suddenly heavy mood. “Unless I ask you to,” he said with a slow roll of his hips.
Icarus smirked. “Not right now.” He canted sidewise, reached into the bag beside the bed, and retrieved a bottle of lube.
Righting himself, he tossed it on the bed, then clasped each of Adam’s wrists and spread his arms, pinning him to the bed.
“Just let me worship you.” He coasted his own hands down Adam’s torso and rose on his knees.
“Let me drown in this heat, in everything I feel for you, before you run off and do something foolish and heroic.”
Adam chuckled. “How about you be heroic and give me your dick?”
Icarus was in his face faster than Adam could inhale.
“I’ll give you my dick when I’m good and ready.
” He drew back enough to splay his palms on Adam’s chest, nails lightly scratching.
“And if all this heat is any indication, I’m not gonna last that long once I’m inside you, so I’m going to make sure you’re good and ready first.”
Adam keened, tried to bow, then shuddered with need as Icarus used his strength to keep his back flat to the bed.
Keeping one palm at the center of his chest, Icarus retracted the claws on the other and deftly flipped open Adam’s fly.
He shifted enough to shove Adam’s jeans and boxers down, and Adam kicked them the rest of the way off.
Then, in a sight Adam would never forget for the rest of his life, Icarus hitched up his skirt and shoved aside the strappy front of his black thong to free his erection.
He clasped it in his hand with Adam’s, stroked them together, and that was all Adam saw, his eyes rolling back in his head from sensation overload.
He wanted to writhe, but Icarus wouldn’t let him, holding him firmly to the bed with his hand, forcing all of Adam’s pleasure, all of his heat into one point. He slapped the bed with his outstretched hand. “Fucking hell, Icarus.” He fisted the sheets. “I’m ready, I’m fucking ready.”
“I don’t know.” He rolled his hips, slowed his strokes, and circled a thumb over their heads, smearing precome.
“I could edge you like this for hours.” Icarus’s shadow darkened the light filtering through his lids, his breath floated over Adam’s lips, and the palm on his chest trailed out the length of his arm, clawed fingers weaving over Adam’s clenched fist. He continued to stroke with the other.
“You would lie here for me like this, all day and night, wouldn’t you? Let me take you apart piece by piece?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“I’ll give that to you, I promise,” Icarus murmured against his lips. “But I want you too bad for that tonight. But I promise, Adam.”
He forced his eyes open, gaze snaring the blue one less than an inch away.
“Gabriel. My name is Gabriel.” If he wasn’t already in love with the vampire stretched above him, Icarus’s smile, bright and fiery and full of desire, would have pushed Gabriel the rest of the way over.
He let more of the leash go. And love tasted fucking divine.
Icarus brought their lips together in a plundering kiss, and Gabriel lost himself in the heat that freely flowed, everything he felt for this man rushing to the surface, folded together in fire’s wings, in life.
Icarus shuddered, losing his rhythm, face buried in the crook of Gabriel’s neck again, and Gabriel held him close until Icarus regained his composure and lifted onto his forearms. He stroked Gabriel’s temples in time with their heartbeats, and Gabriel laid himself bare, hiding nothing, same as Icarus who looked every bit the predator except for the love swirling in his eyes.
He lightly brushed their lips together once more. “I promise, Gabriel.”
And fuck if Gabriel didn’t want to live long enough for Icarus to fulfill that promise. He smiled again. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Another big smile from Icarus, free and uninhibited, then fast on joy’s heels, a tsunami of desire.
And in a flash, Gabriel was on his stomach, his hips hitched, ass in the air, lube trickling down his crack and into his hole.
Icarus pushed in a slick finger and worked him open.
Fabric ripped behind him, and then all of Icarus’s bare flesh covered his backside, dick making a sticky mess of his ass cheek, fingers making a slippery mess of his hole, lips down his spine making a gooey mess of his insides.
Gabriel hung his head, panting, so tempted to reach down and clasp his own dick, but not until Icarus was inside him. “Now, baby, please.”
He whimpered as Icarus withdrew his fingers, but the emptiness only lasted a second before Icarus slid in, whimpering himself.
“Fuck, Gabriel, you feel so good.” He slid them both down onto their sides, joined, a knee under Gabriel’s to keep it lifted, to keep him open for the slow, long thrusts, while every other part of Icarus wrapped around him.
Gabriel returned the hug, letting the leash go completely, letting the fire wrap them up and carry them into oblivion together.