This story is based on two gay 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.
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The Game
Chapter 9 - Yearned for, but Rejected
'I would die to save you.'
Slow and unwilling, Jake's eyes lifted to McCall's face. McCall's eyes burned with all that was said, or had been left unsaid between them. After years of expecting darkness and torrential rain, he'd been led into the sunshine, and he blinked, dazzled by the power of it. Could he - 'dare' he believe McCall?
In return McCall's husky forest gaze was unerringly gentle. "I can help you. I can save you and Danny. Trust me, Jake."
Jake drew in choopy breath. Like a fool, he was praying for another miracle to show him the way, when all the magic he needed stood right in front him, looking at him, touching him.
McCall didn't move, just kept his gaze locked on his. Using his dark-eyes gypsy magic on him, willing him to believe. "Use your gut. Use your heart. You know the truth. You know me."
'Et tu, Brute. And Judas betrayed his Lord with a kiss.'
"When it comes to my son's safety, I don't trust anyone." He ran his shaking hand over his hair.
Instead of the anger he expected, McCall's face gentled with empathy. "I know, baby. How do you get your innocence back once its gone? How can you look in anyone's face - even people you've cared about - and know what they're saying is the truth?"
Speechless, Jake stared at him.
The small half smile was filled with understanding, yet hard-edged in irony. Combined with his dark fall of hair and a body made to bring a lover to unequaled satisfaction, it was a lethal combination to a starved man. "Sometimes you have to risk it on a throw. If you don't, you condemn yourself to a life alone. Danny will grow up, Jake and then what do you have?"
So many answers he could give to that. 'A grown-up son who can live, work, marry, have kids untainted by his father's filth. A son who will see his twenty-first birthday without a gun or killing anyone who annoys his papa.'
For once, the answers felt like a hollow rehearsal; he couldn't utter them. 'A life lived in fear is a life half lived.' Jake wanted far more than that for Danny... and for the first time in years, he wanted more than that for himself, too.
A finger touched his face, lifting his gaze to McCall's face. "You can't carry it alone forever. Give me the burden. Talk to me, Jake... tell me who you really are."
A king hit in the gut. Jake took the blow without movement or signal, forcing his eyes to remain calm as he physically restrained the tremors, stopped the tortured scream escaping his throat. He lost more control with every second that passed, giving his life and secrets into McCall's dark keeping.
But while Jake was unable to see the way forward, he had to cling to the dangerous illusion that he had some control over his world, by clutching at the only escape route he had. "M-my name is Jake Silver. You... you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know Danny's father. Please go." 'Even I can hear the tremors in my voice,' he thought in disgust. 'I give more away every second.'
So it appeared. McCall's gaze was too knowing as he rasped, "So you can run again?"
McCall's hooded gaze remained locked on his, keeping him pinned and still like a butterfly in a specimen case. His only movement was in his heart, beating like a wild thing, intent on escape. 'Keep your secrets. Keep control!' "Who is your group?" He demanded, still shaking. "W-what is their name? To trust you with my son's life, I have to know who they are. Who sent you here? Does the government know you're here? Will the local police back up your story?"
The heat McCall's words evoked left him nerveless, breathless and 'wanting'. "I- I don't know you." A flimsy defense even to his own ears, but like a flotsam after a shipwreck, it was all he could cling to.
"Need like this doesn't follow convention. It just happens, and when it comes, it explodes. It's happened to you and me. I could control it, if it were only me - but it's not. You want this as much as I do." McCall turned his body so he faced Jake, and tipped up his face. He trembled at the touch and it's hot, hot eyes, so much that his knees almost gave way. "You need the release from unbearable stress and fear of change - the emotional and physical freedom I can give you, even if it's only for a night. You can't be alone anymore. You're aching for me. You need me inside you as bad as I need you in me."
Helpless for the fisrt time in years, mesmerized by his eyes and his words, Jake couldn't speak, couldn't think. Jake's trembling hands reached up and brushed the fall of midnight hair from McCall dark, rebel face. Maybe he would never know this man, but he wanted him tonight. Maybe the night couldn't satisfy his want for him, but oh, he needed him tonight. "Isn't it against your spy rules?" The words came out raw, filled with craving that burst to life inside him. The greed for all he was offering.
McCall turned his face and kissed Jake's palm. Then, slowly, he ran his tongue over his heated skin, and his body's need exploded. He sawyed toward McCall, and he smiled against his palm. "I'm breaking so many rules with you, I've tossed the book." He growled seductively. "That rule book was all that kept me from crossing the line a thousand times since I became a man. But I can't remember the rules anymore. All I know is I need you now; like hell."
'A strong man doesn't need to blame people for his needs and his weakness, encantador.' Papa's voice came to him, a shadow of the past, from one of his heart-to-heart talks with him. Jake almost smiled, remembering how he'd calll him encantador; a litle fairy who enchanted him. 'A brave man does not speak when he's angered or hide behind his beloved when things go wrong. Trust a man who shoulders his own faults. lean on him when you need strength, for he'll need you too.'
Until now he had never met a man who fulfilled Papa's standards. Until McCall, who didn't blame him for his need for him or even for breaking the rules, which could land him out of his spy group on his bad-boy ass. He took it on hinself. McCall had lost control over him, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it.
McCall's arms held him up when he fell into him. Jake leaned in to McCall's chest, his head on McCall's shoulder. He breathed in McCall's skin, his need, his heat, his fire and innate strength, knowing McCall wouldn't let him fall tonight.
"Say it, Jake." Jagged and hot with hunger, his voice rasped into the sensitive skin behind his ear. "If you say nothing else, tell me you need me like hell, too - at least tonight."
But Jake couldn't make the words come, and he was too far gone to care why. Jake's hands tangled in McCall's hair and pulled his mouth down to meet his.
Was there a word to decribe what McCall made him feel? God help him, McCall's touch made him drown in need until he had to taste him, inhale him, shed their clothes, and be with him, skin to skin. Whatever this was, he felt dreaming and awake at once, in despair and in bliss, wanting to die and more alive than he had ever been. And craving, craving...
'You need me inside you as bad as I do.'
"Yes, yes." Jake whispered as McCall grabbed him by the waist and hoisted him onto the kitched bench. McCall nipped at his throat with his teeth; McCall's hands found his aching nipples, and rubbed them with exquisite tenderness. And oh, the weakness of anguished desire filled him, body and soul, aching, pounding for release...
"Wrap your legs around me." McCall uttered hoarsely. "Do it, Jake. Show me you're as hot for me as I am for you."
Jake gasped at his blunt words - nothing pretty or tender or sophisticated for McCall - but they flicked a switch in his core he'd never known existed. More aroused than he'd ever been before, Jake hooked his feet over McCall's butt, his thighs around McCall's hips, dragging McCall to him... skin to skin, hardness to hardness, if only there clothes weren't on...
He moved against McCall, moaning. Filling fingers and palms with that dark, muscled skin. Impatient, he tore at McCall's shirt, pulling it away until he could see McCall, feel him. Gorgeous, so unutterably male, burning-hot and dangerous, so brilliantly alive and blatantly masculine, he terrified him, drew him irresistably.
'Come to hell, baby...'
McCall ground against him, making a low animal sound of satisifaction when his body replied in kind. McCall flipped his T-shirt to the floor. "Beautiful." he mumbled between scorching kisses and a touch burning him alive and making his throat ache with the need to drag McCall to bed, take his body, right here and now. "Let go, Jake... yes, baby, that's it, let go..."
Jake couldn't outrun this desire, so he threw it on the fire McCall had made between them, shuddering in the dark power of his words and touch, his mind and body screaming out a primitive chant, more, more, more. He barely knew what he dad as he ripped, tore, dragged and drank him in.
McCall was no polite lover - he was a barbarian who would take him and give it all back again with that savage want. feeling raw and untamed, burning alive and aching, Jake wanted to let go - to be a bad boy for once. He wanted to be wild , to be the one to take McCall, to throw him on the floor, straddle him and ride him. To stake his claim on him, and oh, McCall would let him own him, chain him body and soul tonight...
'What am I doing? Danny's father is coming closer by the hour...'
"No!" He jerked back, shocked by his own wanton desire, by what McCall made him feel - by what McCall could mahe him forget. "I don't - I can't do this. Please go now!"
Expecting an argument, McCall stunned him again by moving away, but he didn't go far. McCall stood one pace back, folding his arms over his tight-muscled chest, still panting and flushed and hard. Half-naked, with his jeans unzipped - had 'he' done that? - he watched him through that wild fall of dark, mussed hair, making no effort to hide his aroused state.
'But why should he? He knows it's no different for me.'
But McCall didn't look down at his half-undressed body, and he felt illogically threatened by his control, even be the respect for him he sensed in his self-command. McCall knew he didn't have to say a word. He could make him want to get it on with him, have wild, untamed sex right here on the bench, because the scratching of this heated itch they had for each other couldn't be called making love - with a single touch. But McCall gave him the choice. This man, who could have it all from him without a word, was waiting, giving him the diginty to choose his way and time. If he wanted him, he'd have to come to him, walk straight into his dark, scorching-hot fire...
And oh, he felt so cold without his touch.
McCall turned to the bench, took the half-drunk mugs of now-cold chocolate and empited them down the sink. He bent to the floor, tossed over his T-shirt and pulled on the tattered remains of his shirt, pulled his sweater on, zipped up his jeans.
Jake only just held in the cry of protest.
Only when they were both dressed did McCall turn to him, his eyes intense in raw thruth. "I won't be far. I'll be watching."
Unable to control it, he shuddered.
"I loved your long hair. I loved running my hands into it." Slowly McCall reached out and touched his hair. A possessive gesture by a man who thought he was in control.
'Control.'
The illusive vision of budding trust vanished like a mist over the Bay below. Jake dropped from the bench - even just sitting on it seemed shockingly intimate to him now. He tried to make his face and eyes flat, though his lips and body still throbbed molten-hot from McCall's touch. "This is my typical hair stlye. You have the wrong man."
"Tell me the truth, Jake." McCall whispered, and it sounded to Jake like a bomb ticking - and the explotion was the truth. And though McCall might get a promotion or commendation from it, the real consequences would only come to him and Danny.
Yes, the term collateral damage seemed all too real now. And he might have to face the words in Danny's dying eyes...
"You seem to be fixated on me being another person. But he's dead. You say you want the truth, then look at it yourself. Jacob de Souza died in a car crash years agio. You're chasing a ghost." Hating himself for the shadowy world of half-lies he had to tell to survive, he told McCall as much truth as he could. "I've had to deal with too much obsession in my life because I look like him. I'm already trying to save my son from a man who's violent and unbalanced when it comes to us - do I derserve another one?" He sighed and shrugged, palms up, telling McCall the truth. "I've never met this Falcone person in my life. Accept it - I am not the supermodel who married that man and had a baby with him." Tired of the intircate, stiletto-sharp dance over a ravine as dangerous as the one that had caused Marcus death, he said wearily, "And if that was all you ever wanted from me, don't bother coming back. I'm tired of being Jacob de Souza's substitute."
The heat and need McCall had felt moments before snapped off like a broken light switch. McCall was all business now, cold and ruthless and dark as sin. "We got the original birth records for your year. The only Jacob Andrew Silver in New Zealand is fifty-four. He lives five hundred miles away in Christ-chruch. And no Daniel Silver was born in New Zealand seven years ago, or either year around it." McCall threw the words in his face like a curveball.
Jake gave a qiuck, bland smile. "I guess my mum and dad forgot to register my birth, and I'm sure as hell wasn't going to register Danny legally, with his father after us. The facts you have don't make me your boyfriend."
"Maybe not, but it makes you and Danny both illegal immigrants." McCall folded his arms across his chest. "You aren't on the naturalized list either."
Jake shrugged. "So arrest me, and take me to your leader. I feel it's only fair to warn you, you won't find a thing to pove your theories as to my identity, and you won't see any of this so called evidence I'm supposed to have, no matter how long or hard you serach for it."
McCall sighed as if he had the weight of the world already on his shoulders, and he had just added to it. "You know I've given you enough classified information to destroy me tonight, and we both know that you know where to use it." McCall's voice was quiet and yet terribly harsh, as if Jake had been the one to betray him.
Jake shrugged. "Our defintions of destruction are a little different. Your destruction is your career. Mine is the life of an innocent child, and sacrificing my life or freedom to a violent and obsessed man...whether the man is Danny's father or this Falcone person seems immaterial to me right now."
"You are right." McCall withdrew inside himself; the blazing heat inside him vanished, and he shivered with the sudden cold, and a tired kind of loneliness. "But I'll be damned if I'll lie down for you to walk on me. You either trust me by now or you don't."
'Trust?' With his son's life and freedom on the lone? With the possiblity of his ending up dead? Trust?
The fury filling Jake must have shown on his face. McCall nodded. "I guess that's it then. That's how the cookie crumbles today." His deep-forest gaze roamed his face and body, and he shivered again, hot and needy. God forgive him for giving him the right to look at him with such intimacy - and God help for the purely carnal reaction to everything about McCall, for wanting to drown in his dark, hot temptation.
Drawn to a man who would only betray him.
Judas with his silver. It seemed appropriate, since he'd been standing in a field of blood the past five years.
"I'll be watching." Was all McCall said. Then he left.