InDescent

by K. Z. Snow

  “Didn’t you bring your stuff?” Jackson asked, feeling a small drizzle of anxiety when he saw that Adin wasn’t carrying anything.

  “Yeah, I brought my stuff.” He stepped over the threshold.

  Their gripping embrace came quickly, fiercely. Had their bodies been more tightly melded, they both would have lost their balance. Jackson closed his eyes as he pressed the side of his head against his lover’s, as he nuzzled his face against the man’s hair, ear, neck. Adin’s scent was transporting. It was his scent and his alone, enhanced by fresh spring air and a trace of some Crabtree and Evelyn soap. Sandalwood, with vetiver. Jackson inhaled deeply, grabbing up handfuls of him. His fingers fisted in Adin’s silky clean hair and bunched up the shirt on his back.

  “Goddamn, it’s so good to see you,” Adin murmured against his throat. His soft, humid lips flexed against it; his tongue stole out and lightly glazed the whisker stubble. “It’s always so good to see you. The best good there is.”

  Jackson couldn’t find words. His mind had hazed. At the moment, he wanted one thing more desperately than he’d ever wanted anything. Clutching the sides of Adin’s face, he turned it up and crushed his lips against that luscious, nerve-searing mouth. Nobody, male or female, could kiss like Adin Swift. He made it a sport, art and science all at once. The man was built for kissing.

  Their breath strained. Their tongues intertwined. Their moist lips repeatedly flexed and glided, relishing the rightness of the contact.

  Hot, molten steel seemed to surge into Jackson’s cock. The ridge of Adin’s erection slid against his, driving him mad. “Jesus, I want you,” he gasped, astonished by the intensity of his hunger. It made him reel. His whole body throbbed with need, and it was a need nobody else could satisfy.

  Without fully breaking their kiss, Adin pushed him toward the couch. The backs of Jackson’s knees bumped and then buckled against the armrest. He tumbled backward onto the cushions. His quaking hands instinctively went to the front of his jeans and fumbled with the button and zipper. Anticipating this moment, he hadn’t worn underwear.

  Muscles tensing, blood torrential in his veins, Jackson pulled his hard-on from the open V. Freeing it was almost painful. His cock had crowded all the extra space out of his jeans. Stiff as it could get, it immediately sprang upright. His whole groin felt packed to bursting.

  Adin had shoved his own pants down his legs. As soon as Jackson glimpsed his lover’s rigid cream-and-rose cock, his own started to leak. A crystalline pearl stood poised at its tip.

  Half kneeling on the couch and half squatting on the floor, Adin dove between Jackson’s parted, upraised thighs, his mouth sucking and plucking at the dense balls, one deft finger massaging the sensitive track that led to the opening of Jackson’s ass.

  He could've gone farther. He could've done any blessed thing he wanted to. Jackson was always helpless beneath Adin’s lips and hands, beneath Adin’s body. Always. It was a forfeit of control he’d never minded in the least.

  Jackson’s cock jumped and pulsed. He gripped it. “Hurry,” he whispered. “I’m ready to shoot.” All that free-floating horniness that kept stirring tempests in his blood—all of it had been waiting to condense around this moment.

  Adin slid his mouth over the length of Jackson’s erection. Its swollen head glided toward Adin’s open throat. Jackson hissed in a breath. It came out on a long, vocalized sigh of pleasure. Buried in the moist heat of that suctioning cavern, those plush lips tightened around it, his dick didn’t have a chance of staying hard.

  Curling forward, he grasped the back of Adin’s head as his hips jerked toward his lover’s face. Adin’s sucking was firm and urgent. Later, once they’d snuffed this initial fireball of pent-up lust, their lovemaking would be more languorous. But not now.

  The sight and feel of that expertly sensual mouth working him stripped away the last shred of Jackson’s control. He fell back again as a ferocious, marrow-deep orgasm ripped from his groin through his limbs. His cock throbbed out cum. For a few ecstatic moments, Jackson was paralyzed by a pleasure so intense he would gladly have endured an eternity of it. Muscles quivering, he exhaled in short, choppy breaths. The cum kept spurting down Adin’s throat; Adin coaxed out more and still more, swallowing it along with his own groans.

  Only when Jackson’s reservoir had been pumped dry did Adin clamber onto the couch cushions. “Shit,” he whispered, likely because he couldn’t get to Jackson’s mouth in time. Stroking hard, he jammed the sleek, plump acorn of his glans at the base of Jackson’s still-thickened cock. Cream soon coated the froth of pubic hair. Panting, Jackson curled forward and smiled. It looked like a wet duvet spread out to dry over charred shrubbery, some folds drooping between the branches.

  “You’re so goddamned selfless,” he said.

  Still catching his breath, Adin managed a weak grin. He petted Jackson’s cock then gave it a gentle squeeze. “Hardly. I wanted to feel that monster in my mouth again.”

  “And your mouth is where that monster loves to be. Besides your ass, that is. And everywhere else on you.”

  Adin stood and hiked up his jeans. Jackson kept lying on his back, drinking in the sight of him. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling. He felt like a lunatic.

  “I’ll get a towel,” Adin said.

  Jackson’s gaze followed his retreating form, its smooth flow from narrow waist to lean legs interrupted by the sweetest swell of ass Jackson had ever seen on anyone.

  He was hooked, all right. He was hooked but good. It hadn’t seemed even remotely possible until he met Adin Swift that such a thing could ever happen to him. The desire part, maybe, but not the hooked part. Even after Adin entered his life—in fact, for the next ten, repression-burdened years—Jackson tried to palm off his attraction as aesthetic appreciation combined with the cozy warmth of friendship. But then came that incident a year ago, and then a charged encounter at Adin’s birthday party…and, finally, Adin’s unannounced visit last November.

  He was the one who took the initiative. He was the one who steadfastly refused to accept Jackson’s resistance and ultimately broke it down. It was an emotionally and sexually explosive weekend, one that left Jackson both delirious and depressed, and more than a little confused.

  His “internal landscape,” as Sophie had put it, leveled out in subsequent months, but this relationship remained the most turbulent aspect of his existence. He still hadn’t fully come to terms with it.

  Adin returned carrying a damp washcloth. Angling his arms behind him, Jackson boosted himself up on his elbows. His jeans were still crumpled up below his ass. He let Adin pat off the rapidly drying semen, almost sorry to see it wiped from his body. Adin leaned over and tenderly kissed his drooping cock, then slid forward and more fervidly kissed his lips. Again, Jackson grasped the back of his head, relishing the feel of his hair, the feel of his mouth.

  Adin eased back, reluctantly, it seemed, as his fingers trailed down Jackson’s face. Jackson lifted his hips and slid his jeans back into place. Adin grabbed his hand as it reached for the zipper. “Leave it halfway down,” he said in a husky voice. “I like seeing you walk around with your pants undone.” His hands slid beneath Jackson’s t-shirt and ran over his tightened abdomen to his chest. Greedy fingers slithered over his pectoral muscles; thumbs nudged his nipples. “I wish we’d had time to break out the clamps. It drives me crazy, seeing them on you.”

  “It drives me crazy feeling them on me. When you’re around.” Jackson knew he could get hard again very soon, very easily. Adin’s and his attraction was packed with such ardor it seemed to verge on insanity.

  “We have to get more toys,” Adin said, still fondling him. “Your body just makes me want to do things to it.”

  Jackson was already starting to get itchy under the skin. Shit, the man ignited him. “Sometimes I think you’re a closet Dom, Adin.”

  “Sometimes I think so, too.” He doubled over and alternately licked and kissed Jackson’s abs. “We should research some playthings w
hile I’m here. Get online, visit some shops.”

  Jackson boosted himself to a sit. “Research. That reminds me.”

  As Adin reluctantly backed off of him, Jackson got up and went to the dining table. “If you want a drink,” he called over his shoulder, “help yourself. My days of being a formal host are over.” Picking up the brown paper with its indecipherable message, he went back to the couch.

  “I’ll get something in a bit,” Adin said. “I’m just enjoying my afterglow.” He did look relaxed.

  “Can’t be much of an afterglow considering you jerked yourself off.” Jackson sat beside him.

  “Jerking off while I’m doing you is a whole lot different from jerking off when I’m alone.”

  Jackson handed him the paper. “What do you make of this?”

  Adin took it and studied the message. He was a translator, proficient to one degree or another in something like twenty modern languages. He’d even studied ancient ones. After a couple of minutes he turned the paper over, turned it back again, and looked up. “Fascinating. Where did you get this?”

  “I found it on the floor when I got home today. I’ll get to the story behind that a little later. So?”

  “It’s Polish,” Adin declared. “From a kind of fairy tale, as I recall.”

  “Well, what does it say?”

  “’Ko?ciej covets life. Thus, hides his soul in a needle, the needle in an egg, the egg in a duck, the duck in a hare, the hare in a chest of iron, which he has buried under a green oak tree on Buyan Island, afloat in the sea. Hold the egg to bind the magic of Ko?ciej.’” Adin looked up. “I’m pretty sure there’s more to the legend, but it’s not written here.”

  Jackson didn’t know whether or not it was important for him to know the rest. At the moment, it was imperative he fill Adin in.

  “If you’d like some refreshment,” he said, “now’s the time to get it. ‘Cause I’m about to give you an earful of some mighty weird shit.”

  Three hours, six drinks, and countless questions, answers, and speculations later, they’d covered everything Jackson had experienced and learned since Christy’s appearance at his door. Adin got a little hung up on the Passion Celebration and Mikaela; Jackson again had to remind him that he was the one with the fulltime girlfriend. Jealousy wasn’t a big issue between them, but a breath of it did blow by now and then.

  Inevitable, Jackson supposed. They were male. And they were pretty tight. Some territorial instinct usually sprang from the flow of testosterone. So they had an unspoken agreement that neither of them would ever get intimate with other men. The homoerotic part of their sexuality was reserved for each other. At least so far. As much as he hated to admit it, Jackson hoped that would never change.

  Adin Swift loved him. Truly, madly, deeply. This friend-turned-lover who was nine-some years his junior genuinely fucking loved him. And genuinely loved fucking him. Every time Jackson was reminded of those facts, he felt at once warm and chilled, secure and threatened. The whole situation just plain messed with him. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes not.

  Adin seemed carefully to ponder everything Jackson told him. “What’s hanging me up is this Mikaela person’s involvement,” he finally said. “She appears, you fuck her senseless,”—at this point, Adin shot Jackson a look that matched his peppery tone—“she reappears to rat out Ivan and maybe get more dick, she disappears, then somebody who resembles me shows up at your door and kisses you. And now you can’t find a trace of her.”

  Still on the couch, which is where they’d had their talk, Jackson clasped his hands behind his head, straightened his legs, and indulged in a full-body stretch. “That’s it in a nutshell. And I have no idea who or what assumed your form or for what reason.”

  “How did you know it really wasn’t me?”

  Jackson lazily dropped a hand to Adin’s shoulder and fondled his hair. “Don’t you think I know by now exactly how you feel and smell and taste, how you kiss?” His cock perked up at the reminder.

  Adin smiled. “I’m glad you weren’t duped.”

  Jackson gave the tendons of Adin’s neck a brief, affectionate squeeze. “Impossible.” Sighing, he sat forward. “And now all these goblins and furries are popping up around the city, and I’m the goddamned trainer who’s supposed to herd them back into their cage and fix the broken latch. Or something.” Esme’s personal-quest statement flashed through his mind and immediately sent a quiver through his diaphragm. Reaching for the tumbler on the coffee table, he downed the last of his watery whiskey. “Fuck, I don’t know.”

  “So you have no idea when or how this is going to come down?”

  “Not yet.” An inner conflict again began to harass Jackson, the same one he’d experienced while talking to Adin on the phone. He had to put selfishness aside and address the issue. He sure as hell didn’t want to, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to remain silent. “You know,” he said somberly, turning on the couch to face his guest, “I don’t want you getting caught up in this. You need to leave as soon as—”

  “Stop right there,” Adin said. He, too, swiveled on the cushion. “I’m sticking around. And don’t try to talk me out of it. Hell, I’ll go into the damned Prism with you.”

  Glaring at Adin, Jackson pitched forward and grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t you even think about doing that.” His fingers speared his own chest. “This is my task. I’m the Adept.” He raised a quaking forefinger to Adin’s face. “You put yourself in danger, Swift, I swear…”

  Adin calmly raised his own hand and lowered Jackson’s. “Inside or out, I’m not going to run away. That’s all there is to it. If I can’t get into the Prism with you, then I’ll sleep with the damned thing, carry it around with me, send positive vibes into it, whatever. But I intend to see this through with you.”

  Growling in frustration, Jackson rolled his head back. “Why? Your involvement would be pointless. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know if it qualifies as something ‘wrong’, but I love you. And when you love someone, you weather his storms. That’s just what you do.”

  A tight knot formed in Jackson’s throat. Adin’s fingers were still curled over his hand. That choked-up feeling further infuriated him.

  Jackson pulled his hand away—hard, so he got the message across. “Then don’t love me,” he whispered hoarsely, and got up from the couch.

  Walking aimlessly around the living area, he didn’t know where to direct his anger. There was only one person responsible for this mess, and that was the asshole who’d created the Prism’s big bad breach. Only he didn’t know who that person was. And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter.

  Standing at the dining table, Jackson spun like a magnet to face Adin. He couldn’t help it. When that man was around, Jackson couldn’t not look at him. He seemed to fear that if he turned his back for too long, Adin would vanish from his life.

  But his lover was still there, calmly watching him.

  “You know,” Adin said, “for such a smart man, you can be awfully damned ignorant.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Love can’t be willed away.”

  “How do you know until you’ve tried?”

  “I just know. Love has to be eroded.”

  “You mean, like a rock?”

  Adin looked irritated. “Don’t minimize the issue by quoting lyrics.”

  Flustered, Jackson threw up his hand, dropped it to his hip. “It’s a fucking simile, Adin. It’s not my fault Bob Seger turned it into a song title!”

  Adin’s jaw shifted forward. It was an unconscious movement, one that often happened when he was about to concede a point, grudgingly. “Okay then. Yeah, it’s like a rock. A big, hard one.”

  Spontaneously, Jackson grinned.

  “As in Gibraltar.” Despite his raised voice, Adin was clearly trying to hold in a smile. He finally exhaled a laugh and shook his head. “How did we get back to that?”

  “We’re men. We’re pigs.” Jackso
n crossed his arms over his chest. “Everything in life comes back to the big, hard one. Even sentiment.” And I’m proving it right now, he thought, watching Adin’s gaze fall below his waist.

  “I don’t know why, but I suddenly want to grab your dick.”

  The grin expanded. “See what I mean?”

  But Jackson could tell that his levity would only go so far. Adin’s smile had already begun to shrink. He got up and walked toward the dining area. Jackson half expected his lover’s hand to slide over his crotch, but it didn’t happen. He merely took a seat.

  “That’s not all we’re about, though.” Adin crossed his arms on the cluttered table. When he turned up those lustrous eyes, Jackson wanted to drop to his knees at Adin’s feet. But those lustrous eyes soon turned down to the tabletop. He spoke again.

  “You know, I lived a certain way for a long time. It was a superficial existence. So many people moved in and out of my life, they became like molecules of air. I took them all for granted. Even my occasional companions were more like conveniences than true friends or lovers.”

  Very quietly, Jackson pulled out a chair. Adin had been murmuring his words, reflectively, as if he were in a Confessional.

  “Then you came along,” he continued, still without lifting his gaze. “Then Celia. And suddenly, I started having feelings I hadn’t had since I was married to Margery…all those cold, cold years ago.” Finally, without a hint of shame, he looked straight into Jackson’s face. “So am I rejoicing in what I feel for you? The physical desire? The love? Yes, I am. It’s like taking a hot bath after being stranded in some Arctic wilderness. So just accept it and leave me be.”

  Jackson swallowed, hard. It was fully a minute before he could speak, and even then his voice was none too steady. “You can’t imagine how much I hate this situation.” He realized he’d never before wished he weren’t an Adept.

  “And you can’t imagine how much I hate it that you don’t have more faith in me.”

  The comment stung. Jackson wasn’t sure how to counter it. “This isn’t a matter of having faith in you.”