A Shadow of Wings (23 page)

He was falling in love with Dylan Brody. 

No, he
was
in love with him. Head over heels, heart and black, black soul.

 Over dinner, which was excellent, Dylan watched Cam. In fact, he could barely stop staring at the guy. He drank in the beauty of Cam’s face, the grace with which he lifted his fork to his mouth, the sweet warmth in his eyes. The more he was with Cam, the less Cam’s eyes zapped him, only leaving him pleasantly fizzy. In fact, he talked more just so Cam would lift his head and look at him. Was that bad? Like another addiction? Or was this the way people felt when they…felt shit for each other.

Not wanting to think too deeply on that, he made himself look at the flame of one of the white pillars they’d lit. Seated on the air mattress once again—really romantic—they’d arranged a few in a row, and now the sun was down, they gave the room a nice glow that settled in the glossy black of Cam’s hair where it fell over his forehead. Great, there he was looking at Cam again. 

Dylan shook his head and finished the last of his garlic bread. “Everything was great, seriously. You cook like this all the time?”

Cam laughed softly. “It’s just pasta. But yes, I like to cook. Since we travel all over, I’ve picked up some international cuisine here and there. I seem to have a knack for remembering recipes, or figuring out how to make a dish I’ve eaten. I like dissecting the spices in exotic dishes and trying to replicate them. It’s a little hobby of mine.”

“That’s cool.” Dylan smiled at him, but suddenly Cam seemed shy, and the silence between them thickened a little. As dinner wound to a close, he remembered his promise to show Cam some new moves in bed. Oh yeah, he remembered. If he didn’t have halfway decent self-restraint, he would have already had Cam panting and sweating and naked. Mmm… He muffled a burp behind his fist and finished his beer. At least he’d never had a problem with alcohol. “If you want to cook something else, anytime, be my guest. God knows I don’t use the kitchen, such as it is.”

“I’d like that, but…I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in the city.”

He hid his disappointment by picking at the label on his bottle. “Oh yeah? That sucks. I was hoping we could hang out.”

“Me too.” Cam pushed his plate aside and wiped his mouth with a paper towel. He stayed silent a moment, then said, “I don’t know when I might pass this way again, but if I do… Could I see you again?”

“Yeah. Hell yeah.” And hell yeah, it sucked more than Dylan wanted to think about. He tried to act like it didn’t matter, even though the news left him a little thunderstruck. “Feels like we’re just getting started. I hate to see it end so soon. So yeah, anytime you’re around. Drop on by. Although…at the rate things are going, I’m not sure I’ll be here too much longer.”

“I’ll find you.”

He said it with such conviction that Dylan believed him. A shiver ran over his skin, reminding him he wasn’t dealing with just any other guy, but a…whatever Cam was. 

Before he dwelled on that particular dilemma, he said, “So you going off on some mystical adventure with your brother?”

Lifting his own beer, Cam pulled his legs into a cross-legged position and shrugged. “I’m not sure. We’ll be assigned to go somewhere, by the…the other brothers.”

“And these are…church brothers?”

“Something like that. Close enough. They send us around the world seeking treasure.” 

Well, he was in a rare mood to talk. Maybe the three beers were helping. “Like, sunken treasure or what?”

“Gold mostly. Gems. To fund charities for the church. Although if you ask them about us, they’ll deny we exist.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know why I’m saying so much. I keep telling myself not to, but… I’ve never had anyone to talk to before.” He looked worried, rolling his bottle between his palms. “I suppose it’s all right. Just don’t tell anyone else, or they’ll think you’re crazy.”

“Like they don’t already. But don’t sweat it. I told you before, your secret’s safe with me. So…treasure, huh? You get to keep any of it?”

He thumbed his gold chain. “Just this. I wouldn’t want it anyhow. I prefer to live simply.”

“You don’t get much more simple than this.” Dylan lifted his hand to indicate his shitty apartment. 

“I like it, though. You have no one to answer to. No great responsibilities or obligations hanging over your head. No one else’s expectations to disappoint.”

“No, I guess I got all the disappointing out of the way early.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Cam set down his beer and wiped his palms on his knees. “I envy you, that’s all. You have…all these choices ahead of you. And you’re free to make them. Where to work. Whether to go back to school. Where to live, who to live with. Who to love.”

“I guess. Never really thought about it that way. In my mind, it’s more like, ‘Where the hell am I going to live,’ and ‘Who would hire a loser like me?’ You know?”

“Loser? Hardly.” His tone sharpened with sincerity. “In all my travels, I’ve never met a man so open-minded, so kind and brave. When I saw you with Gertie in the alley, I was… Well, more than intrigued. I knew you were different.”

He nodded. “Like you. You’re different too.”

He hesitated, then said, “Did you know? Right from the start?”

His innocent curiosity was sweet. “Sort of. You were so shy.” He reached out and put his hand over Cam’s on his knee. “And nervous. And horny.”

Cam blushed and snatched his hand back. “How could you tell?”

Dylan picked up his beer again and pointed the neck toward Cam’s crotch. “Wasn’t hard to figure out.
Other
things were hard.” He snorted a laugh, and Cam shook his head.

“I’m terrible at this. Dealing with people.”

“Give it time, baby. People ain’t all bad, especially when you realize they’re all carrying their own load of crap inside. They all look nice enough on the outside, but most people are pretty messed up, trust me.”

He looked doubtful. “You’re the only one I feel comfortable around. Everyone else seems cold or suspicious. Or I trust them too easily and then get in trouble.”

Dylan scootched closer and ran his hand over Cam’s thigh. “Well, you led a sheltered life, seems to me. It’s tough when you’re never in one place for a long time. I had a friend who was an army brat, kept having to pick up and move to wherever his dad was stationed. He learned not to get too close to people because he knew he’d just have to say good-bye again real soon. It was kind of sad.”

“Yes, that’s exactly how I feel.” 

“Maybe it won’t always be that way. Someday, your brothers will let you go, and you’ll track me down with that”—he flipped his hand toward Cam’s collar—“Spidey sense of yours, and we’ll get together again.” He wrapped an arm around Cam’s back and pulled him closer, feeling warm muscle beneath the soft cotton of Cam’s shirt. “I’ll wait for you.” 

He meant it. Goddamn if he didn’t. 

“And I’ll have no one else but you.” Cam turned serious eyes to Dylan, and Dylan fell into them as always, though something felt different this time. Deeper, darker…like, right-down-to his-soul serious. Like…
love
serious. 

His heart started to kick up in his chest, and he leaned in to kiss Cam’s lips. Not a sex kiss, not wet and teasing, but one charged with whatever he was feeling. Love, lust, fear, need like a fiery spice on his tongue that needed to be shared. Cam opened up to him, breathing Dylan’s breath and curling his fingers tight around whatever body part he could reach—Dylan’s biceps, the small of his back, the hair at his nape. Wherever he touched, it felt urgent, like neither of them could wait a second longer. 

Dylan drew back, almost surprised just a minute had passed. “I want you. Want you now.”

“Please,” was all Cam said before he unfolded his legs and lay down, drawing Dylan down with into another kiss. 

He’d never needed anybody like this, Dylan realized. Needed not just another body for sex, but craved just this one man. Wanted to fuck a guy not to piss off his parents or to earn a hot meal or to score a place to sleep or drugs to numb his broken heart. Just to be with Cam. Only Cam.

Dylan evicted their plates from the air mattress with a sweep of his hand, not caring at all that they spilled onto the hard wood or that Cam’s beer dribbled a fizzy trail across the floor. He maneuvered them both so they lay fully on the awful, wheezing mattress—tried not to think about the embarrassment of not having a real bed—and then fit himself between Cam’s knees. He held up his weight on one elbow and pushed his fingers through Cam’s hair. He pressed his lips to the silky black eyebrows, one then the other. The gently closed eyelids. The tip of Cam’s nose. His parted lips. His chin. 

All the while, Dylan moved his hips in a small, slow circle, enticing Cam’s cock to hardness, letting him feel his own stiff dick through their jeans. Yeah, he’d take this one slow. Make this one matter. He didn’t want to think they might not have much time left. 

“I know just what I want to do to you tonight.” He stared into Cam’s half-opened, dazed eyes. “You up for it?”

“I’m all yours,” Cam whispered.

He watched as Dylan sat up on his knees and pulled his T-shirt over his head, leaving his hair standing in waves, as if Cam had plowed his fingers through it—which he yearned to do. But he made himself lie still on the mattress while his lover undressed, pushing down his worn jeans, his thick rod already full and hard. Cam licked his lips. He wanted to taste that again. Nearly whimpered with the need to please his lover. 

Perhaps he did make a small sound, for Dylan reached down and ran his hand over Cam’s dick under his fly. “No worries, sweetheart. Just a couple more minutes.” Then he got up and walked away. He was a beautiful man, Cam thought breathlessly. Whatever he’d been through in the past, now Dylan’s body was lean and hard, ropy with muscle. The tail of the phoenix trailed over his left shoulder, ending in a loop, scaled so much like the tail of a cockatrice it sent a jolt through Cam. Maybe…Dylan wouldn’t mind. If he liked phoenixes… He trailed his hand down his own chest and pushed it under his shirt to lay his palm against his hot skin and beating heart. 

No. This was what Dylan thought he was, what Dylan wanted. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn he felt his heart stop for a moment as if breaking. And that strange cramp twisted in his gut again, causing him to draw up one leg.

“You okay?”

Of course Dylan would have to see that. “Yes, fine.” He forcefully relaxed his squint of discomfort. “I just can’t wait. That’s all.”

“Good.” Dylan held up the lube. He also had a couple of condoms in his other palm. “Do we need these?” 

Cam shook his head. “I trust you.”

Dylan pointed a finger at him. “That’s okay that you trust me, but don’t ever trust nobody else, okay? Promise me.”

“There won’t be anyone else.”

“You don’t know that,” he muttered, frowning, then threw the condoms aside. He went to his knees on the mattress beside Cam. “Even though I think about you with someone else and I feel like killing something.”

Cam felt his wings expand on a surge of delight, a brief tingling beneath the skin of his shoulder blades. Dylan’s eyes brightened, and his gaze moved across Cam’s chest. “You like that, huh? I can tell.”

“I like that I don’t have to hide from you.” He stretched his arms out to the sides, then above his head, his skin so sensitive from being horny, he felt like he could burst. “What do they look like?”

“Just shadows. Wing-shaped shadows. But like gauze, like if I put my hand out, they’d tear.” Dylan stroked Cam’s thigh while he gazed thoughtfully down at him. His eyebrows drew together. “Sometimes I see kind of a glow over your head too. Tell me that’s not a halo.”

“Hardly. No, it’s…they say it’s our soul. Only…normal people shouldn’t be able to see it.”

One lowered eyebrow arched wryly. “Nobody’s ever accused me of being normal.” 

Cam swallowed, then said, “Do you believe in souls?” 

“Sure. I guess.” Dylan’s eyes followed the lazy path of his hand down Cam’s leg. “I think we all got something we can lose, if we’re not careful. Something worth hanging on to. Soul’s as good as word for it as anything.”

Digesting that, Cam nodded once. Then squirmed beneath the pressure of Dylan’s palm. If only he’d stroke a little lower. God, that hand over his thigh, even through his jeans, felt so hot and strong. He licked his lips. “Please, Dylan…” Maybe letting his thighs fall open would give him the hint? “We could talk philosophy later.”

He huffed a laugh. “I guess we could. Got something else in mind you wanna do?”

Scootching down enough to loosely grasp Dylan’s erection, he murmured, “I had a few thoughts.”

“Mmm, baby.” Closing his fingers over Cam’s, Dylan squeezed his cock with both their hands. “Aw, shit, that’s good. I’m so fucking hard just looking at you, you don’t even got to touch me.”

When Dylan let him go, Cam rubbed his palm over the smear of precum leaking from Dylan’s cock. His mouth watered. “Can I suck you?” he asked, his voice a rough plea.

“Maybe in a bit.” He nudged Cam’s hand away. “Enough of that for now. Let’s get you unveiled, beautiful.” Setting the lube aside, he worked on the button of Cam’s jeans, then pushed up Cam’s T-shirt and pressed kisses all over Cam’s chest. The sensation of warm, wet lips on his skin made Cam writhe, and when Dylan’s tongue dragged a circle around his nipple, he couldn’t help a moan.

“You’re a sensitive thing, aren’t you?” Dylan said in a husky whisper. 

God, how he loved that rasp in Dylan’s voice. It was the sound of sex, fierce and urgent. Digging the fingers of one hand into Dylan’s hair and sucking a drop of cum off the thumb of the other hand, Cam moaned again, shamelessly this time. Releasing Dylan’s hair, he bunched the cloth of his T-shirt, pulling it up so Dylan could have full access to his chest, to his nipples, to whatever he wanted. His skin burned. Dylan’s tongue cooled it, then inflamed it all over again. 

His tee seemed to float off him, and his jeans whisked off his legs with some coaxing from Dylan’s hands, and then he was naked except for his chain. Knowing his wings spread in hazy pools around him, knowing Dylan saw the dim glow of his soul, Cam lay utterly bare before his lover, in a way no ’trice had been since he who was both first and last of his kind lay in submission before his conquering knight.