Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 06:34:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Micheal Chukwu <mikeinstudio9344 (at) yahoo (dot) com>
Subject: The Game Chapter 9

 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.

 Please send your feedback or critisim to mikeinstudio9344(at)yahoo(dot)com
or http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/user/12573-michael9344/

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.