This story is based on two homosexual men. You must be above the legal age of 18 (or as stipulated for your country/state) to read this story. If this story is illegal in your area, PLEASE DO NOT READ IT. This story is a work of ficition. All other usual disclaimers apply.
This is my first story so please send your feedbacks or critisim to mikeinstudio9344(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Enoy.. The Game, Chapter 1
Renegade River, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
It was him.
Oh yeah, it had to be. No other person had ever roused that knife-edged core, gut-gnawing hunger, scraped with a burning need to hold and protect. Scraped, not mixed. It never blended, like something meek or tame. Nothing about his reaction to him was tame. One look and his veneer of social graces shed like molted skin to reveal the raw male animal beneath, hungry and hot, savage and needing.
Instant obsession.
Brendan McCall stood five feet from the round, cross-beamed window beneath an intricate and beautiful sign like something straight out of Middle Earth, proclaiming him to be : Jacob Silver, Potter of Excellence.
He watched him working at his wheel, his face - that unforgettable blend of South American exotic and haunting English-rose handsome features - filled with gentle concentration.
He'd loved his trade mark long black hair, but the new, short cut only intensified his handsome looks. The haunting star super model - everything else faded away, submerged beneath the power of the dark honey eyes in that amazing face.
Even in the quiet repose, it was definitely his face. The unique light and dark, serenity and turbulanence, so-intense-it-slamed-you-in-guts handsomeness that had launced a million magazines and spawned male and female fantasies beyond count from the time he was seventeen. The unsmiling hero.
He'd smiled for him.
They'd met while shooting promo pics for a navy recuitment drive, and he'd immediately seen the unknown, shy and loving boy inside the haughty model. And within hours, he was so deep he'd never found his way out.
He could still see him lying beneath him, drugged by his kisses, his succulent mouth smiling with innocent desire... driving him - the guy his SEAL team called 'The Untouchable' - to his knees. All he knew was, he had to have him - but he couldn't make love to him while they met in secret. He'd asked him to wait until they revealed their relationship to his wealthy parents. Touching and kissing, making promises during stolen meetings. "I can't tell my parents about us yet, Brendan...but I'll soon, I promise... I promise.
That damn word still yanked his chain. Yeah, he did gone slumming with him alright. He'd wanted an holiday from the jet set, and he'd made it clear that he was happy to be his slave for as long as he wanted him. But within six months he'd returned his uptown life and hit the class party circuit. Hanging onto the hands of rich and famous men and women of evil reputation. Yet he'd still seemed innocent, damn innocent. Until the day he'd married arms and drugs dealer Robert Falcone, he'd still been his. Though his life was the exact opposite to Jacob's, he'd been fool enough to believe he'd come back to him.
But he couldn't forget him, forget Jake. He'd staked his claim, and one day he'd mark him, brand him to the world. McCall's man. That objective hadn't changed in ten years. He wanted him even more now that the elfin child had become golden, hardcore man. The fire of desire still flicked in his soul. They were always there, burning alive all they touched in sudden conflagration.
McCall dragged in a breath that felt the centre of a firestorm - blasting hot, scorching him from the inside out. Yet it was April in New Zealand, mid autumn, and the lush, green coolness of the air couldn't be any milder. Jake sat at his potter's wheel in a quiet house amid the emarld hills, a long-lost dream of wistful handsomeness, and he felt like a caveman wanting to drag him off to his crib. My man.
Hold it in or he'll run again.
If the boss knew of their past he did take him of this assignment for sure. But Jacob de Souza was his one lapse in a perfect career, his own perfect ghost - the haunting immortal who walked with him by day, his sweet whisper in his ears by night - but when he awoke, he was never there.
He thought he knew him better than any living person, but he'd been forced to reassess that half-assed beleif when Anson, his superior in the information and rescue group known to the upper brass as the Nighthawks, had told him there was a strong probable hiding out in northen New Zealand. So he made a fool of him again. What's new about that?
Yet he couldn't help but admire Jake's guts. Damn smart of him coming here, setting up a bussiness like a bona fide ordinary citizen. If he hadn't thought of it, neither would Robert Falcone - and it appeared to be so. Falcone has seemingly forgotten his lover and spent five years chasing a woman - Verity West, a fellow Nighthawk, code named Songbird. Her cover as an international singer nicked named 'Iceberg' had made her irresistible bait for a man like Falcone, who saw beautiful men and women only as trophies to show off or for breeding children for him. Songbird played her part in bringing Falcone's networks down, until he escaped from custody with the help of corrupt police on his payroll.
But a week ago the Nighthawks received positive confirmation that Falcone's hunt for his supposedly dead partner and son had intensified after five years of the back burner, and he was concetrating on the South Pacific. Anson had again gone through Jake possibles, coming up with this man, and only by sheer luck had he beaten Falcone's men here. He had about two days to get him out of here, though how the hell he could do that with the orders he'd been given was beyond him. "Keep all information pertaining to who you represent or what we want from him confidential until you get positive confirmation of his ID, and proof that he has the tape of Falcone ordering a hit on Senator Colsten. If he goes to the press, he'd prejudice the case in the court and Falcone will go free... and more innocent people will die. This man is either Jacob de Souza or his cousin Marcus. We have positive confirmation that Marcus de Souza flew in to Amalza five days before the accident that killed one of them and the other had to have taken the child, and the tapes. Getting the proof we suspect Jacob holds, and taking down the rogue Nighthawk in the league with Falcone are our number one priorties."
Damn it. He knew Anson was right but how the hell was he supposed to gain his trust without giving him the truth? But he heard his head tell him, "It's what you've done the past ten years with every mission. Just get on with it."
He pushed open the rounded door beside the round, cross-beamed window and the bell above tinkled. He stood in the doorway, framed by the glow of the morning and waited.
"I'll be with you in a moment. Please feel free to look around." Jake's voice, with a perfect New Zealand soft burr, was as cool as spring water, gentle as the pitter-pat of new rain fall and though it was miles from the husky Rio accent he remembered, it still hit him with a fission-blast of heat. He didn't move, didn't speak. Jake's handsomeness was gently mellowed down in the simple jeans and woolen sweater he wore, covered with a clay-smeared smock. His once perfect, soft, long-fingered hans were grubby from his work, chipped short nails and cracked rough skin. But it was him. He knew it. It was his Jake. "Look at me..." McCall breathed.
Finally he looked up, his dark blue eyes fixed on his face, half smiling in professional inquiry. "May I help you?" No start, no shock, not even a hint of recognition. Jake sat as serene as Raphael's Madonna. One look at him, and he'd knocked him off his feet; Jake looked at him and obiviously felt, nothing. Could he have forgotten? Was he the actor of the century or could Jacob Silver be his real name? Was this a simple case of freak coincidence of looks and age? "And in being an immigrant?" an inner voice jeered him. Jerked back to reality, he ran his gaze over Jake again watching more than his face. "Read his body language."
Hell! He knew him all right. Jake's eyes and face remained calm but his fingers were scrambling in a hasty attempt to cover the sudden hole in the wet clay he'd made with the jabbing finger.
He wanted to get Jake out of here before Falcone's hit men got here and found him. And he would, even if it killed him. Even if he wasn't commited body and soul to taking his filth of a partner down as part of Nighthawk mission, he'd do it - for Jake.
"Sir? Are you all right?"
McCall shook himself. "Yes. Sorry. I was expecting -" you to recognise me "- someone older."
"Jacob Silver doesn't sound like someone's big uncle." He remained as far off Jake had always been, until a magical summer day when a young SEAL lieutenant's outrageous comments had made him laugh, getting them both in trouble with the irate photographer... "I guess I could change it by deed poll if I wanted to." Jacob was saying.
"Not in this lifetime" McCall thought. The only man who could legally change his name from Jacob Silver in New Zealand was fifty-four years old, a father and a grandfather who lived five hundred miles away on the South Island near Christ church.
"Yeah" he agreed. "It suits you."
Jake lifted his eye brows. "But I'm nobody's uncle that I know of."
McCall forced words from his half-frozen mouth, "I beg your pardon. I don't know you, do I? Your face reminds of someone I used to know..."
Not a twitch or start, no telltale flush or paling of his golden cheek. But his fingers ... were they shaking? "I seem to remind a lot of people of someone. People always ask me that." He lifted clay-smeared hands in inquiry. "May I help you, or are you just browsing? You're welcome to look around all you like."
"Just looking. I saw your house and sign and I just couldn't resist having a look in here."
"That was it's design." Jake smiled. This time with some genuine feeling. "Please, feel free."
Slammed in the solar plexus. Just one smile and he was winded, scrambled, foolish and fooled. Part of him wanting like hell to believe he was Jake, the other half so bloody naive it was laughable, all wishing and wistful. A dumb-ass jerk wanting him to be geniue - just Jacob Silver, Potter of Excellence. A legal identity to smile at, think about, take to dinner and make love with, like any other man... as if he weren't the runaway partner of a billionaire black-market arms and drugs dealer whose men were reported to be hot on the his tail right this minute, bent on kidnap and revenge of said runaway partner. Both halves of him so fierce in their driving male need, so finely balanced on a hot knifepoint he felt as if he walked an eletric tightrope and he was nobody's gymnast. This mission could fall apart because he couldn't change the way he felt anymore than he could stop the sun from rising tomorrow.
Tomorrow. One day closer to Falcone getting Jake. Yet he stood here like a teenager in his first burst of lust. Lost in the same old need, it's ache never dialuted. He had two days max to gain Jake's trust, while from half a world away Falcone sat smack between them, pulling his strings and smiling like an obscene demigod, holding a high caliber automatic to Jake's head. "He's in danger. Just do your job." that inner voice said again.
Jake was watching him. Checking him out...and not in a sexual manner. Beneath his semi-feminine, gentle exterior, Jake acted like a computer seeking out his secrets. Finding what he wanted to hide, working out his agenda.
McCall made himself nod, still watching Jake. "Thanks. I'll look around. Did you paint that sign yourself?"
"Yes." Jake's words were cool and distant, a step back, a mile above. The star-being, the haunty Brazilian prince. He'd retreated behind barriers he couldn't nagivate, jamming his prelim-data radar like an EA 6B Prowler at night. He couldn't blame Jake. The intensity of his briefest gaze on him almost blistered his own skin. "Get a grip on yourself!" the voice yelled.
He wandered around the studio. The bell above the door was connected by a wire to an intercom system too high-tech for a business this small. Window onto the main road looks double-glazed - bulletproof. Both the doors to the outside, and the door leading into the private house look at least two inches thick with one-sided quadruple locking system protecting the house.
Jake was watching his every move. His eyes are calm but he just dented the pot on the wheel again, his fingers are gripping it's base too hard. It's already twisted out of shape with his foot jerking the wheel pedal. Yeah. Way too tense for a man with nothing to hide.
At random, McCall picked up a vase. It was flute-shaped, thin as the most delicate glass, of blue so clear he could almost see through it, like a wash of oceanic beauty. A man's face , superimposed like a hologram for it's fineness, it's sweet lost-soul effect. "This is amazing."
Jake nodded with regal carelessness. "Thank you."
"How much?" Nothing in the whole studio had a price tag on it that he could see.
He told him, his cool clear voice almost a shrug. As if he'd picked a price from the top of his head.
McCall's mental alarm started sherking. Everything Jake said and did was way too casual for the levels of tension he felt radaiting from Jake. Jake whatever knew him, remembered him. Was he fighting the same grinning demons he was? Wanting, aching for a touch, playing the fiddle of imperative danger while they burned with need.
Jake apparantly misinterpreted his silence. "That's in New Zealand dollars, not American." He guessed he was speaking in referance to his Californian accent, still strong after living for a decade in Canberra, Australia's capital.
"Very reasonable." With almost two NZ dollars equivalent to one American dollar, the vase was almost indecently cheap. "I'll take it." And he wanted it. Even if it hadn't been a piece of such clear water beauty he'd still want it. He wanted a permanent part of Jake to stay with him even after he was gone. Gut, heart, body and soul all screaming. "I've found him!"
Yet if he was Jake de Souza, he belonged to another man, even if that man was a slime-bucket criminal who got rid of his enemies with armies of contact killers. And still McCall wanted him, his desire raging and unstoppable.
Jake had been an eighteen year old boy when they'd met in secret for five beautiful months, then Jake was gone. Within a year he'd married Robert Falcone, a smiling demon who left the hearts of brave men slamming against their ribs and their guts knotted. What had life with Falcone done to the man-child who'd been so pure, so protected and innocent to McCall's world-weary eyes.
Seeming oblivious to his turmoil, Jacob Silver, Potter of Excellence wrapped the vase in tissue paper and placed it in a bag with his amazing design on it's silvery folds. "Here you are, sir" His hands trembled slightly as he handed the package to him. On instinct, he zeroed in on Jake's eyes and saw unmasked terror... and haunting recognition. Then it was gone, so swift it felt like the passing of an F/A-18. He had to force himself not to blink. Was this an Oscar winning performance, or was he wishing, hoping so damn hard for him to be his Jake that he'd gone catatonic?
McCall handed him a credit card with his real name, watching him as he took it. Would he react? Not likely, if he didn't react to my face or voice. But it was a risk he had to take, with only two days to gain his trust. Jake's eyes flicked over his name with detached professionalism as he made the bill, then he handed him the slip to sign. "Thank you, Mr. McCall. Please come back." Not a single sign of recognition, just a courteous dismissal.
He didn't believe it - didn't believe him. He'd had a decade to perfect his act. He wasn't going anywhere. Not when every screaming instinct told him he'd found him at last. "My mom has a set of pottery at home in a similar blue to this vase, but she broke her teapot. A tall one, in a classic design. Do you think you could make a replacement? I'd love to surprise her with a new one." Since his mom had run off when he was eight, taking his sister, Meg and leaving him alone with his druken dad, she sure as hell would be surprised - surprised he'd bothered to find her. But it made him sound like an all round nice guy, and some people liked that kind of man. He had to gain his trust fast - Jake's life depends on it - and his long absent mom may as well be useful to him once.
It worked. He got another smile, a fluttering of his fingers. "Of course I can. Does the piece have have any paricular design on it?"
"Daisies." A spur of the moment decision. "You know, like that old china pattern? Flannel daisy, wasn't it?"
Jake's cheeks flushed, his eyes glowed from within like far off stars warmed by sunlight. He didn't know what, but he'd said something to bring Jake to life, one or another. "I can make something similar, but please bear in mind that the design and china are classic. I can never hope to create anything that perfect." He went on, neither needing nor wanting McCall's reassurance on his talent. "I could have it finished in tweleve days. Perhaps I can send it over to wherever you're going?"
"I've got two more weeks here." He watched Jake in what he hoped was a strong-male-interest-without-interrogation manner. Hell, the best he could hope right now was that he didn't look like a phycotic stalker. When it came to Jake, his feelings were so screwed he didn't know what he looked or felt. One of Jake's eyebrows lifted. "Two weeks in the Bay, in autumn? You're not touring the whole North Island?" Jake asked.
"I'm on long service leave. I've been here for months with Auckland as my base, doing beaches and wilderness. I've seen from the Harbors to the volcanoes around Rotorua and the ski fields, not that there's snow yet. I checked out the South Islands too. It's a gorgeous place, isn't it? Just like it looks in Lords of the Rings."
Innocous babble of an American tourist, lifted straight from a tour guide. He'd flown straight into the Bay last night, his security clearance absolute and unquestioned.
"This wasn't working" the voice said. His hatred of the lies he told wouldn't show, he was too good to let it slip - but the people he lied to were the pond scum of the earth, and lying to this pristine prince made him feel as if he'd joined their ranks.
If he kept up the act, Jake'd bolt. He had to tell him the truth or the mission would blow up in his face. The consquesnces to him were immaterial compared to those before the whole Nighthawk team, and especially to this man and his child.
Because if he didn't get him out of here fast, no matter how real his name was, Jacob Silver would be a dead man within days.