This story is based on two homosexual men. You must be above the legal age of 18 (or as stipulated by 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. Any similarity of the characters to any person is clearly a coincidence. All other usual disclaimers apply.
This is my first story so please send your feedback or critisim to mikeinstudio9344(at)yahoo(dot)com.
The Game
Chapter Two - Lies
Brendan?
It took every scrap of self-control not to cry out his name, he'd done it. He'd waited in silence for Brendan to show a sign, to show him that he knew him, for him to tell him why he was here and he'd received nothing. Nothing but lies.
McCall - he couldn't think of this big, dark half stranger as his Brendan, not his Brendan - was lying through his teeth; but Jake nodded at his tourist patter. Seeming to accept him at his face value was the only way he could buy time to think - think about why he was really here, what he wanted from him. It was obivious from his non-identification, that he didn't have a positive ID on him, McCall wasn't going to recognise him.
McCall should have known better. Jake had been on the alert since the whispered phone call this morning, warning him that a man was casing all the potters' studios, buying nothing but asking lots of questions.
But he'd never expected this. Not McCall.
Even after ten years he'd known him. Leaner, tougher with deep scars hiding inside his forest green eyes, and his black hair long and grispy wild instead of military-short - but it was still him, McCall. Jake's heart hit his throat and hammered, making him quiver with one look at him. No longer in immaculate dress whites in which he'd met him, or the self-conscious suits he'd bought for their dates - no, he was dark as the storms clouds gathering outside in jeans the shade of night, boots and ankle length leather coat over a thick deep gray woolen sweater.
McCall didn't say Jake's name. He didn't show any recognition, and he didn't say a word to reassure him about why he was here. He'd treated him like a stranger, asking strange questions, watching him, handing him his damn credit card. A word kept floating around in Jake's head, keeping his cool and in control under the words straining to fly from his lips.
'Orders.'
Jake'd stake his business on the fact that McCall was under orders to keep him under survillance, to stay close and not spook him. But he wouldn't risk his life - or that of his son.
'Betrayal.'
This wasn't his Brendan McCall, the young, intense, wonderful navy poster-boy with whom he'd spent five magical months, stolen months of his life. Escaping from the bodyguards Papa set on him when he could, paying them off when they found him with McCall. Doing anything he could to be with him, McCall.
'Keep focused. One minute and Danny won't see his next birthday.' Jake told himself.
Right. Focus. Jake flicked a glance at McCall and he could see the honed insticts of a professional beneath the veneer of intense male interest. The tourist patter didn't fit the searing glance, the tense, unable-to-relax stance of McCall's tall, super musclar frame, the way he was taking everything in with mathematical precision, taking mental notes. If McCall was a tourist, he was a native resident of Antarctica.
So McCall had finally found him...but obiviously he hadn't come out of love - and whether he was on the side of the angels or the devils didn't matter. If he'd found him, Danny's father couldn't be far behind. Just by showing up here, McCall could bring the force of eternal night down on his little boy. Jake repressed a shudder. Danny's father wanted his son, and if he knew who Jake really was...
"He didn't want me, JayJay - he wants Jacob de Souza. Even after he got Danny, he kept saying that I didn't match up to his expectations of Jacob. I got so mad I told him I was Marcus - and I told him the real Jacob is hiding in England. I din't know how obsessed he was with you, or that he'd come after you. I thought he loved me, but as usual, it was you he wants..."
Jake jumped into speech. "That's what I love about New Zealand - you get every weather and place, all in two islands. I love the beaches here, and I head down to the ski fields in winter. It's always quiet here then, and I can close up shop for a week. I can't ski but jumping on a toboggan is fun." That's it, play the tour guide, the friendly businessman. Even if he knows who I am, he can't get any confirmation unless I give it.
And he wouldn't give him a thing, not even knowledge of the magnet-to-polar effect Mccall was having on him. Although he was more incredible than he was when they first met. In his dress white, he'd been sexy in an immaculate, awe inspiring, bad-boy-in-hiding style. Now he was strong and weathered, taut, hot and intensely masculine. Dark as night, rugged and turbulent, like a living storm inside a cloud - a jagged-edged force about to unleash. He was discordant poetry and unchained symphony. He didn't have a go-to-hell face - more like come-to-hell. He was already there beckoning him, irresistable, insatiable and the moth's wings were on fire. 'And I'm a fool. He's not here for himself. Someone sent him.'
Jake watched McCall smile and nod, but inside those deep forest eyes, he was adding up every word he said, and breaking it down. "You don't ski? I thought most New Zealanders would."
Jacob de Souza had been an enthusisatic skier. There were hundreds of photos of him as the unsmiling king. "No. Not after a knee surgery. I don't have the flexibility for it anymore." Jake said. 'Not bad for a spur of the moment story.'
"Did you have an accident?" McCall asked.
McCall was on a hunt, and if he were in Falcone's pay he was up that wild Renegade River outside, without a paddle.
'Don't think of him as Brendan... don't...' So he lied. "I was a mad netballer as a kid. Dad and Mum -" Jake forced the New Zealand pronunciation through an aching throat "- took me all over the country. When I was fifteen I lost my cruciate ligament twisting to throw the ball. I took up pottery while recuperated, and was hooked. I need my leg in good working order for the pedal wheel. I won't risk another operation just for the sake of skiing. Toboggans are great fun."
Doubts. Shadows. A web of confusion spun at a moments notice, born of fear and the scent of danger surrounding him. McCall made him hot and cold at once, filling him with memories of tender starlit magic.
As if he was remembering too, his eyes grew lush and hot. "Have dinner with me tonight, Jacob Silver. A date."
Well, that was a curve ball out of left field he should have expected, yet Jake felt his cheeks heating and his breath freeze in his lungs. Just as well, since he'd almost blurted, 'Your employer wouldn't appreciate that, would he?' And damn it, McCall was already tempting him too much. Oh, to to be a normal human again, free to be with this forbidden fruit of a man...
'The man who sold his country's secrets to the highest bidder, and only got of treason charges because he dissappeared from America and never went back.' He reined in his thoughts.'
'Control, control!' The mantra had been his best friend over the past six years, and he grabbed it with all the fevered intensity of a man hit by terror - and unwanted desire.
"I prefer Jake." Jake said. 'Why did I say that? I'm talking too much. "Sorry, but I'm busy." 'Much better.'
McCall took a step closer. Jake could feel the heat inside him, the wildness he kept under tight leash. The hidden lightning in his soul called to his long-forgotten heart and spirit - the promise of a breaking storm on a deep summer's night. And oh, the man in him screamed to run into the uncontrolled tempest inside McCall, and get absolutely soaking wet...
"Tomorrow night...Jake." McCall said.
Jake managed to hold in the strange delicious quiver of carnal need and met McCall's eyes, willing a veneer of calm to cover the tangled emotions within. "You're not my type." Jake stated.
McCall didn't even flinch, didn't even move. The only indication of his feelings at his lie registered in the slight hardening of his fine-chiseled mouth, the deep grooves of his dimples slashing downward.
"Do you have a type, Jacob Silver?" McCall asked in his deep rough voice - a creature of the night, a gypsy spirit hiding beneath the tourist's mask.
"Teddy bears." Jake said blandly. "I like the boy next door. A guy who takes his partner and kids to the movies and the games."
McCall took a step closer. "I think you're lying." His voice, dark and wild as the night, vibrated into Jake's soul, stripping it's layer of defence. "I think you've got a weakness for bad boys."
'Marcus. Not me! Marcus!' Marcus had been the one who liked bad boys, and he had made it known internationally.
Jake closed his eyes and dragged in a harsh breath, sucking air in till his lungs felt ready to explode. The gentle jasmine scent in the burner, meant to uplift his customers, felt obscene in his nostrils as he waited for the words to come. So it had come back again, the reap-what-he'd-sown consequence of one stupid desicion - the reason he'd left his life behind. The foolish mistake he'd made when he was ninteen, yet it still dragged behind him like a chain gang's weight. In tearing grief for his parents' death, he'd allowed the cousin who'd been like a brother to him in his shoes for a month. Poor little Marcus, with the near-identical face to his, brought up by Jake's parents afte his died - but with such a different life . So sheltered and cosseted and lonley, spending most of his childhood and teen years in hospitals or in grueling physical therapy for a bent back from severe scolisois. Finally, healed, he'd wanted to know how it felt to be Jacob de Souza, supermodel, handsome and admired and wordly - just for a little while, JayJay... a few weeks? It would be fun for me... and you'll get to rest for once...
He'd been paying the price for allowing the charade ever since. Years and years of running, paying for Marcus' innocent, foolish mistakes - and his penchant for dangerous men.
What was he saying? Marcus was the one who'd paid. He (Jake) lived with his mistakes - Marcus had died with his.
"You're wrong," he said now, with the conviction of utter truth. "Bad boys have bad hearts. I want a nice guy, the nice house, picket fence and all that."
"And based on ten minutes' acquaintance you know I don't fit the mold?" Brendan lifted an eyebrow and a slow, knowing smile that emanated an aura, a feeling of current too deep and strong, and he was flailing in waters too uncharted for his swin in safety.
Breathe, his mind whispered.
Smiling with would-be blandness, he lifted a tourist guide from the counter. "You quoted the guide verbatim. You 've really never been south of this part of New Zealand, have you?"
"No." His mouth twitched into a full-bodied grin. With the rumbling chuckle, a lock of hair flopped over his forehead, as if to hide his eyes. "So one lie - a white one at that meant to impress you with my wealth and ability to stay idle for a long periods of time, excludes me from the teddy bears' picnic?"
It was so hard to keep a straight face with him moving closer, wearing that lazy grin. He'd almost forgotten how his rumbling, self-mocking humor always made him laugh. McCall had a bad boy written over him, yet he was good - too good. A man who made him want to smile, tease and flirt just as his life had exploded in his face was way too dangerous to play with. He had niether the experience nor the ammunition for it.
He moved back to gain perspective, which he couldn't do with Brendan's taut, jaguarlike body leaning close to him, just close enough to be screaming male interest. "Afraid so."
McCall's eyebrows lifted. "You can tell I'm not a boy next door?"
"I'm sure the mamas next door were warning their daughters to bolt rather than trusting them to your care" Jake retorted.
McCall burst out laughing, warm and musical and facinating as the sea on a deep summer's night. "I'm sure you're right... as sure as I am about the fact that teddy bears aren't really your thing. Some instincts tell me you're a 'bad boy' kind of guy."
No. Not anymore. He'd been cured of that boyish fantasy forever, thanks to Marcus. "My instincts says that your instincts don't always work to your good." He held out the bag containing his vase. "Have a nice stay in the Bay, Mr. McCall."
"What if I don't give up?" McCall muttered, low and urgent, moving closer as he backed off, McCall's eyes shifting from calm forest to stormy crystalline. "What if I come back here everyday until you change your mind?"
He'll keep coming anyway, if Danny's father sent him here. And that was the only real option - it wasn't as if Interpol would send a man who'd already betrayed his country for cash.
The truth of it tore his wistful wish that McCall could have come here for him, and ripped it in to shreds. "I'd say, don't annoy my customers."
McCall rocked back on his feet, the deep intensity lightening as he chuckled again. His smile lit his whole face, including the fascinating cleft chin and left dimple, with male strength and beauty. "Man, you don't give much away, do you?"
Not when my son's life depends on it. He smiled, hoping to look bland, uninterested, but his needs and fears were already submerged beneath the long-dormant man, leaving him in hopeless, needing confusion. Within ten minutes of meeting McCall again, his emotions were so skewed he barely knew what he said or did. His heart had been iced over so long he'd thought it in permafrost to anyone but Danny; now it melting so fast he felt as if McCall had jet-streamed it to equator by one of the Hornet planes he'd once loved so much. "What did you expect on ten minutes' acquaintance?" His voice sounded husky, deeper and huskier than his practised gentle New Zealand accent.
He watched those amazing rain-forest eyes of McCall's register the sound of his voice, and take the information in. Click. Lock. Another piece in place. Another bullet in the barrel of the gun of exposure - and he was facing it down in hopeless defiance.
"Well, a guy can always hope." McCall shrugged and picked up his bag. "I'll be back."
He meant it. He'd be back. Jake closed his eyes for a moment; then he fixed his gaze on him. "Why" Why me?"
McCall's deep compelling eyes on his, McCall closed the gap between them. With infinte gentleness, he tipped up his chin with a finger. "Why do you think?" It was a whisper of heated sound, coffee-warm breath tiptoeing over his face, his touch tender. His masterful strength leased...for now, at least. McCall would never hand control to anyone else for long.
Yet, no matter how he fought it, the slow blush filled his cheeks at his touch - a wave of half-shy sensuality, a man-to-man acknowledgment of his effect on him.
No! no. Any act he put on now would be useless. He'd given it all away with a moment of invoulntary need. His lashes fluttered down; he looked at his trembling fingers in disgust. Yet, how many long, cold years had it been since he'd known the sweet drowning, the yearning for a man's touch?
Not since Brendan.
"If I knew, I would need to ask," he whispered back.
"Does there have to be a why?" McCall's fingers moved over his skin in a slow, subtle caress. he felt the quiver touch his soul, the heat streak straight from his heart to his most masculine core.
Without knowing it, he nodded.
Still holding his chin with a finger, McCall flicked his other hand toward the large pewter mirror hanging over the counter, designed as much for warning against strangers as it was for beauty and security. "Look in that." He walked to the door, opened it. Then he turned to look in his eyes - a moment's truth flickered in their hidden depths, lush and hot with untold secrets. "Watch out for strangers, Jacob Silver."
As the door swung back to close after McCall'd gone, Jake felt McCall veiled warning touch his heart with icy, chilled fingers.