by Evelyn Drake
Michael’s eyes were half lidded, and Steve shifted the bed’s sheets so that they draped over them both. His knees were still high with his ankles hooked at the small of Michael’s back .
“I’m sorry, baby,” Michael said as his head dipped into Steve’s neck. “I’m sorry .”
“For what?” Steve asked, his hand caressing Michael’s side as concern flared within him .
“For falling asleep .”
Steve’s chuckle was low and throaty, and he enveloped Michael in his arms and tightened his legs around him. “Baby, you almost died less than two hours ago. You sleep. I’ve got you now.” He kissed Michael’s head. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for giving me back a life .”
Michael’s breathing changed as sleep took him so completely it was more like unconsciousness than sleep, and Steve was glad for it. He wasn’t ready to let him go .
“I love you,” Steve whispered, made brave with the knowledge that Michael was too far gone in sleep to hear him. But he’d needed to say it, needed to get it out. It was the only truth left to him in the world. “I love you .”
12
Michael
T he light coming in through the French doors told Michael that it was early morning. It was dim and overcast, but it still had that soft glow that only early morning had. He moved and found every inch of his body sore, his ribs most of all. Making love to Steve hadn’t helped his body’s condition, though it had helped his spirits .
Getting out of bed took more effort than he expected. He found he had to stand up slowly or else deal with shooting pain .
“I slept heavy,” he mumbled to himself, walking naked to the doors onto a tiny balcony. He swung the doors open to the morning and stepped out. The air felt good on his skin and invigorated him in a way few things could. He loved the outdoors. He loved the freedom of options it offered .
The lake that almost took his life stretched placidly to his left and right as far as he could see, and the distant shore across it was a haze of greens and browns .
He knew that standing out in the open was a risk. But so was life. So was sucking in one gulp of air after another. It was all a risk. And, he’d rather risk living than cower in a corner until death found him. “I’ll live ‘til I die,” he swore .
They were bold words, he knew, given that it was very possibly his last day on earth .
Breathing deep, Michael filled his lungs with the morning’s crisp, clean air. Finally, leaving the doors wide, he turned his back on the beauty outside and retreated into the bathroom to ready himself for the day .
Steve was nowhere to be seen, and there wasn’t the welcoming scent of bacon or coffee teasing his nostrils. He guessed that the big man wasn’t off making breakfast, which was sad because their workout from last night had his stomach growling .
He made his shower fast and hot, and borrowed some unknown host’s toothbrush, then wrapped himself in a towel that barely circled his waist .
Finding Steve was next on his agenda, and he moved silently through the house until the soft sound of distant voices halted him in the upstairs hallway .
Reaching the banister that overlooked the great room below, Michael picked out the sound of a woman’s voice interspersed with Steve’s familiar tenor .
Michael didn’t hesitate. He slid a leg over the banister, and stood on the other side with the edge of one bare foot keeping him grounded. He stretched his body out in an X, a foot and hand anchoring him against a distant pillar, and he was able to see around the wall into the kitchen area .
There, he saw a petite, pretty woman with hair like golden silk pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore the blue-black, tailored suit worn the world over by the Secret Service and their kind. Sitting next to her, Steve looked haggard but had the determined, unwavering focus of a honey badger .
“I’m telling you, she’s going nuts,” said the pretty blonde. “Monica’s out for blood, she doesn’t seem to care whose, and even the directors are afraid of her. Something’s going on. You’ve got to be careful .”
“Charlize, I’ve got this. It’s handled. He’s hidden the stone, and I’m just biding my time to romance it out of him. That’s all. They all know he’s gay. I’m just taking one for the team .”
Silence dragged between them .
“Monica thinks you’ve gone native. Have you ?”
Steve didn’t answer, and Michael could see him staring at his clasped hands .
“You have feelings for him ?”
Steve sat back in his chair, his eyes drifting away to look out the window .
“It’s not like that,” he finally said, his voice flat. “He’s a job, nothing more. When the order comes, I’ll pull the trigger.” His gaze shifted back to Charlize. “I always do .”
“She’ll give the kill order... on you. And she’ll torture the stone’s location out of Michael. If... if you’ve got feelings for him, tell me now. Let me intercede. I’ll take care of everything. You won’t have to do it .”
Steve sat forward, intensely staring Charlize down. “He’s my kill. No one—I mean no one —else’s. Got it ?”
Charlize lifted her hands as if in surrender, and Steve took a deep, calming breath before asking, “Is there still a detail on his family’s home ?”
“Monica pulled them off. If his family really is at risk, she’s hoping that it flushes Michael out .”
Michael heard Steve hiss at this news, and his own stomach twisted. His family—his sister—were completely unprotected from that butcher, Sigmund. He’d been sexing it up with his latest conquest and for all he knew, his sister was dying... just as he was destined to at Steve’s own hand .
The room bent and shifted as if the world wasn’t where it needed to be .
Pulling himself back over the banister, Michael sank to the floor, still listening to the conversation below. But it was more of the same. Charlize was warning Steve and Steve was placating Charlize, but nothing changed in what they were telling each other .
Monica was going to kill Steve if Steve didn’t kill him .
Why the hell do all my lovers want to kill me ? Michael mused. But the joke wasn’t funny, not even to himself .
“Enough!” Steve’s hands slammed into the kitchen table. Nothing more was said .
Getting up, Michael silently made his way back to the bedroom where he’d taken Steve’s virginity. “Oh, how they grow up fast.” His humor fell deaf on his ears yet again, and he sighed at his failure to find some shred of advantage in the moment. Only a few feet away, the huge stone he’d stolen sat on the bedside table. “That’s it then,” he said to himself, a melancholia of choice settling on him .
Dumping out drawers and searching closets in two bedrooms, Michael managed to find a pair of jeans that were only slightly too big. He cinched them around his waist with a belt before rolling up the cuffs. Two socks on each foot made a passable fit for a pair of sneakers. Finally, pulling on a too-big polo shirt, he looked in a closet door’s full length mirror .
“I look like a kid.” But it didn’t matter. He lifted each leg experimentally. The pants gave him full range of motion without any restriction. He could look like a toddler for all he cared, just as long as he could move .
His ribs throbbed and his muscles spasmed, but a trip to the master bedroom’s bathroom scored him some prescription strength pain killers. He popped one and palmed two more, tucking them away in his pocket .
After checking all of the drawers, he squatted low to look in the cabinet beneath the sink. Sprawling its contents on the floor, he found what he wanted. A minute later he had his ribs wrapped tight with an ACE bandage .
Michael moved experimentally, stretching and bending and twisting. The bandage helped, and he hoped that the pill he’d taken didn’t dull his reflex time or mess up his ability to gauge distances .
“That’ll do, pig,” he said, quoting his and his sister’s favorite movie growing up .
Squatting back down again, Michael
eyed the holster mounted under the cabinet. Protruding from it was the matte black handle of a Beretta. Michael’s hand twitched and he reached for the gun, pulling it from its holster and tucking it into the back of his pants at the small of his back .
No more than five minutes had passed from Steve’s fists slamming down on the table to the moment Michael walked back out the French doors and onto the balcony. He assessed his way down .
He’d have to rely on his climbing skills more than his leaping skills. He suspected that his body couldn’t handle the jarring impact of a long drop. Climbing over the banister, he used the old, ivy covered latticework to begin his descent. The ivy, with a stalk as thick and rough as wood, added its strength to the near-disintegrating lattice. The lattice gave way two times during his climb down, but the old vines held .
Feelings of regret, guilt, and doubt greeted Michael as soon as his feet touched down on solid earth. Closing his eyes, he remembered Steve’s taste and the sounds of his breath as he slept. He thought of the way Steve had pulled him close during a dream. It had been a moment when Michael had wondered if the monster would come out. He’d wondered if Steve would try to strangle him, too. But that monster hadn’t come, not last night. In fact, he hadn’t seen a monster at all, not since the moment he opened his eyes in bed to look upon Steve’s face after the car crash .
He crashed the car, a voice within him reminded. To kill you. Steve hadn’t told him, hadn’t spelled it out. But Michael had figured it out .
Putting one foot in front of the other as he moved into the surrounding forest, keeping his right shoulder parallel with the lake’s shore line, Michael walked and then ran, allowing his momentum to build up as his pull to the man he was leaving behind weakened the more distance he put between them .
Lightning rumbled in the distance, and a wind that spoke of rain to come began to blow. And, with it all, Michael’s heart ached .
You don’t even know him, the voice within chided as Michael ducked a low branch of one of the forest’s skyscraper pine trees. But it didn’t matter. It was the way that Steve looked at him that moved him and made his heart long to trust. Steve’s eyes had the naked want of an neglected child, and everything in Michael wanted to pull him into his arms and hold him .
Hold a killer .
I’m a fucking idiot .
Steve was sworn to kill him or be killed .
I’m as good as dead .
As he topped a hill, lightning crashed in the distance, no longer a distant rumble. Michael stopped as he took in a modern style home several hundred feet below. It looked like a series of plaster, steel and glass boxes fitted together to suit some anal obsessive’s need for order and control. Attached was a garage with bay doors for four cars .
“That’ll do, pig. That’ll do .”
13
Steve
E vergreen needles whipped at Steve as he ran full speed through a forest of trees that had never seen a logger. A loaner gun from Charlize pressed itself into his hip .
“That fucking idiot!” Steve raged, but it was rage fueled by fear. For the first time in years, he liked something about himself and that something was Michael. He was desperate to hold on to that. He didn’t want to go back to the life he’d had before .
He didn’t know how much of a head start Michael had on him, and he hoped that the other man’s injuries were slowing him down. As soon as he got Charlize out of the house, he’d looked for Michael. The last time he’d seen Michael, the man was asleep, too exhausted to even wake from a kiss .
In contrast, Steve had been awake for hours. Fear that he would hurt Michael in his sleep had eventually dragged him awake. And it was a change Steve had welcomed. He loved the man too much to be willing to risk hurting him. He hadn’t even meant to fall asleep holding him. He’d meant to leave the bedroom, to put distance between them. But Michael’s warmth and the steady rhythm of his breath had invaded all his senses and had overcome all his will to leave .
“Damn you!” he swore again as fear surged his adrenaline, causing his heart to pound at heart attack speeds .
The echo of a gun shot rang in the distance a half-second before the crashing rumble of thunder, and Steve’s hurried run stopped cold. He put one hand over an ear and then the other, trying to re-hear from memory where the sound had come from .
Desperation welled in him, and he fought his need to scream his rage. He couldn’t risk allowing his torrent of emotion to be the thing that lost Michael to him forever. But the only thing he could hear was the breaking of twigs underneath his feet .
Closing his eyes, Steve concentrated again. He thought it through, he tried to remember, and then he opened his eyes and guessed .
He picked a direction, and he ran .
Covering ground as if the hounds of hell were at his heels, Steve ran the length of two football fields. Then, turning in the direction where he’d been when he’d heard the gun shot, he ran some more, curving his path in an enormous circle. He stilled the rage in his head, quieting the roaring blood to give himself a better chance to hear the next sound—the next sign—that Michael was alive and needed him .
Steve knew he was done for if he lost Michael. There was no going back for him, despite what he’d told Charlize. The life he’d known before held nothing for him now, except an emptiness that was too draining to survive any longer. Michael’s touch and the way he looked at him was the first true sustenance Steve had known in years. He couldn’t lose it. Not now, not ever .
Stopping at the base of a hill with a steep slope, Steve put his hands on his knees to catch his breath as he eyeballed it. His lungs burned and his legs felt like jello .
Putting one foot in front of another, he began the climb, soon opting for an all-fours approach. He slipped twice on a blanket of dried pine needles and was saved a third time by a sapling that he grabbed as he pulled himself up the slope .
Cresting the hill and still on all fours, Steve looked down on a mansion made of steel and glass, a study in right angles .
“Be in that fucking house,” he whispered, closing his eyes in his own personal way of prayer .
He let gravity do most of the work to get him down the hill. It was at times a controlled, falling slide, but when he reached the bottom, he was running again, moving as if he had never stopped .
Steve circled one side of the house, looking for the best entrance that would allow him to enter with the least notice. He opted for what looked like a utility door, and saw through a small side window that the room beyond appeared to be a mud room for changing clothes and washing off shoes .
The handle didn’t turn .
With both hands grabbing the lever shaped door handle, he tried to force the lock, but it didn’t budge. Finally, removing his t-shirt, he wrapped it around a heavy rock and used it to hit the window pane. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from the point of impact .
He did it again, giving the glass a hard, sharp tap with the covered rock. This time it punched a hole the size of a quarter .
Steve dropped the rock and wrapped the shirt around his hand and forearm. He pushed at the edges of the hole, trying to make an opening without making too much noise. He scraped away enough shards of glass that he was able to reach the lock and turn it .
’He was inside the house a moment later .
He moved quietly with carefully placed footfalls, but a garbled scream from deeper within the house sent Steve crashing forward like a stampeding bull. He tore his way into a lavish yet sterile living room, and what he saw made his surging blood turn to ice. Michael was on his back, a gun held in both hands and pointed at the chest of a jowlish man. The heavy homeowner’s face was twisted in rage, and spittle sat unnoticed at the corner of his mouth as he brought a heavy, wrought-iron fire poker arching with full force at Michael .
Michael was not pulling the trigger. He was not taking the shot that would save his life .
Steve didn’t remember pulling his gun from his jeans, wasn’t aware of w
hat he was doing until he’d fired two shots. The first bullet entered the homeowner’s chest from the side, and Steve estimated that it exploded the big man’s heart. The second bullet entered the man’s head as it bounced off of the ceramic tile floor .
By the time Steve put his gun away, Michael’s face was a mask of sheer terror. He scrambled, crab walking backward to put distance between himself and the cold-blooded killer before him .
It was true. Steve felt nothing for the dead man on the floor. He’d felt nothing as he’d pulled the trigger. There was no remorse, no guilt. There was an absence of emotion. The homeowner didn’t exist to him when alive, and he didn’t exist now that he was dead. He was an abstract concept—like whether the color of yellow smelled like sunshine. The man didn’t matter, never had and never would, and Steve felt nothing about or for him .
Steve opened his mouth to speak, and Michael was up and running .
He practically levitated off the floor, and one foot bounded across a glass topped coffee table that shattered as he left it. His next step landed on the top of the couch, and he was over it and close to the lakeside door before Steve could move .
“Michael!” Steve broke into a run. Holy fuck, the man’s fast! He was amazed that Michael could move so well with his injured ribs .
Running out onto the home’s house-long patio, Steve’s jaw dropped to see Michael already halfway down the path to the lake. “How the fuck ?”
All around them, the skies had grown dark and even though it was still early morning, the day seemed to have turned to night. A gust of wind pushed Michael’s running body a foot sideways when he broke the tree line at the lake’s shore .
Thunder rumbled and occasional flashes of light ripped the heavens, accompanied by crashing booms that made Steve flinch despite years around man-made destruction of equal or greater strength. “Michael...” he whispered as he watched him run without slacking down the short pier that dead-ended in the lake. He was still ten feet from the pier when Michael made a cannonball leap from its end and disappeared beneath the wind-chopped water .