Despite the relaxation a bath provided, Thomas could tell Marcus was still dealing with a lot of emotional debris. After their bath, he wrapped a towel around his hips and went back onto the balcony, seeming to need the open air, deep breaths of the freedom he apparently found high above the world below.
There was another chair, but instead of using it Thomas slid down the side of the balcony wall, lacing his hands over his knees. He stayed in Marcus' peripheral vision, his bare sole close enough to overlap the smallest toe of Marcus' nearer foot. An expanse of leg was revealed by the split of the towel, a provocative pose that was entirely unconscious, totally Marcus.
Thomas noticed when Marcus smoked, as he was doing now, he displayed a different set of gestures and mannerisms. As Thomas studied him, he realized when Marcus smoked, he saw the street kid, the boy.
"You've got questions in your eyes, pet. What's on your mind?" That was the all-seeing, all-knowing Master he knew. But pieces of the puzzle were still missing, holes Owen wouldn't or couldn't fill in. He wouldn't push, but if Marcus was in the mood, Thomas wanted all of it.
"Tell me more, about your life before." Let me all the way in.
Marcus glanced at him. "I made it out, Thomas. I make a lot of money. I have friends, culture." An unpleasant, almost cruel smile touched his lips. "I get everything I want."
"Even me?"
"Especially you."
"Arrogant jerk." But Thomas leaned forward, brushed his knuckles over Marcus' ankle, stroked the calf. "Tell me," he repeated.
Marcus took a drag so deep on the cigarette Thomas expected to see the paper burn down to his fingers. Abruptly, he leaned down, snagged the front of Thomas' clean Tshirt. He pulled Thomas to him and kissed him with that hard, forceful and demanding Marcus taste. "That's not who I am anymore. You understand that?" Thomas nodded, but he couldn't help the desire he had to touch and heal all those scars inside that he could finally see. Why had he been fooled like all the rest, when it had been there, plain before him? "Tell me," he insisted, once again.
Marcus stared at him, straightened. Took another drag and spoke flatly. "I ran away at fourteen, turned fifteen on the streets here. Dad..." the word came out thick. "I knew what I was then, and Dad couldn't accept it. Wouldn't. Tried a lot of the usual things. Beating, tossed me in the cellar for a few days at a time, no food. Prayer... God, endless prayer. I still get nauseous if I get near a church. Whenever I have a hangover, I try to make a point of puking on the steps of one. I figure it's the tithe I owe. Sounds bitter as hell, doesn't it? My mother..."
His tone faltered, then Marcus flicked away the ashes angrily. "Wouldn't say no to him. Figured he was God in the house, so he had to be right, even if he was wrong. We were just a simple, fundamentalist family, Thomas. Not that well educated for all that.
A lot simpler than yours. Hardworking, though. Dad's idea of Friday night culture was picking up his beer and cigarettes at the local store and hanging out in the yard talking about how the fags, niggers and wetbacks had ruined America.
"We were the stereotype, what everyone thinks a dumb, white trash family is. I ran.
I doubt they even looked for me. I probably could have walked. Maybe even asked for a ride to the bus station." His lips stretched in a humorless smile.
"I eventually got back in touch with my brother. He did okay. Clawed his way into college, runs a laundry business in the area. Watches over them."
"You both do." Thomas tapped Marcus' cell phone, sitting on the ledge with the planter.
"Yeah. Don't know why the fuck I do. Maybe some of that honor thy mother and father shit got so beat into me I can't shake it. I didn't care so much about him. Least I didn't want to. Don't want to. But it happens anyway, as if there's some stupid part of you that says you have to do it, even if your old man's a piece of shit. But Mom..." Marcus drew in a breath, his nostrils flaring as his chest expanded. He shifted his gaze to stare out at the night. Thomas suspected Marcus didn't realize that the city lights reflected a great deal of the emotions passing through the eyes. "She liked bluebells," Marcus said. "There was this china doll in the gift section of our local department store. She was holding a bunch of bluebells. She'd always stop and look at it.
"Sometimes, when I think of her like that, I think about when she was fourteen, or Dad was fourteen. Maybe they were something different then, wanted to be something different...I should hate her." Marcus shook his head. "If you stop loving someone, it's easier to forgive them. So I guess I never stopped." He visibly pushed it away, turning the story from that path. "I worked the streets here, hooked up with Toby and Emile. And Mike. Yeah, he was a pimp when you got down to it. He'd smack me around to convince himself he was boss, but we both knew I took care of him as much as he took care of me. It isn't as dramatic as you see on television. Angst is the indulgence of the middle class." He shrugged. "When you're on the streets running, that's it. You're animals. You survive it, you move on to the next thing. If you dwell on it, you miss the next opportunity. Anyone who hurt me back then, this is my revenge. I'm here in a penthouse apartment with everything I could want. They're not." Marcus put the cigarette out.
"Is that why you didn't come after me sooner?"
"What?" Marcus turned, a startled expression on his face.
Thomas lifted a shoulder. "When I walked out. You...you were my Master. Hell, you didn't ever let me get away with anything. I've never had the upper hand with you.
But that one time, you could have come after me, tried to haul my ass back, but you didn't. Was I like them? I hurt you, so that was the end of it? What made you come so much later, when you hadn't come before?"
Marcus stared at him a long moment. "Maybe it was pride, maybe something else," he admitted at last. "The sub has the upper hand in a true Master and sub relationship, Thomas. Always. I can possess you only as long as you want to belong to me." Thomas swallowed, looked away. "I never stopped belonging to you."
"Maybe it was just hard for me to see that." Marcus cleared his throat. "What are you, some kind of romantic girl who walks out on her lover just to see if he'll give chase? Look..." He ran a hand over the back of his neck. "When you left, it was because you got a call your dad had a massive heart attack. Things spiraled from there. Then there was Rory. I wanted you back. Jesus, those first days without you in my bed, knowing you were somewhere grieving...hell yes, it hurt." He surged up from the chair, paced. "I wanted to come after you, but I didn't because I knew you were dealing with your family, and I'd be a selfish bastard, entirely."
"You thought you would be an intruder, in a place you didn't belong." Thomas corrected him, made himself say the shameful words. "Because I made you feel that way. Marcus, I'm sorry."
Marcus turned his head, looked at him. In the dim light, Thomas thought the two of them probably appeared terribly fragile, like figures from a dream where something could be lost if even a loud noise snapped them out of it.
"Okay," Marcus said. Nodded once. "Forgiven, pet." He cleared his throat again, looked back over the city. "Thank you."
"So how did you get all the way from working the streets to up here?" Thomas gestured, knowing they needed a different track, for now.
Marcus gave another one of those tight smiles. "Focus. It's working hard every day, giving up sleep, food, friends, everything else you might want for yourself, doing everything half-assed except that one goal. Those simple pleasures of relaxation we all take for granted, the half hour in front of the television, playing with the dog...hell, doing nothing. Every single moment has to be dedicated to that purpose, so everything else is scheduled around it.
"Surgeons know it, pilots, anyone who wants to be the frigging best at what they do. And then when they finally make it, knowing it was the most miraculous combination of luck, timing and working their asses off, when they have the time to take that moment of relaxation, for those nine holes of golf on a Friday afternoon, someone assumes it really wasn't that hard. The privileged wealthy, my ass."
Thomas half smiled. "I know better than to get into politics with you." Or to let Marcus get him off track with the distraction of a spirited debate. "Owen said Mike died for you."
The glint of humor in his green eyes died. Marcus went to the opposite railing, bracing his arms out to either side of him. He'd lit another cigarette and now it was trapped under his fore and middle fingers. The air filtering up between the buildings fluttered the hair across his forehead, but was unable to soften the harsh profile.
"It was that group of guys. Seven of them. Hardcore, into boys and pain. They were each willing to pay a grand, as much as you'd pay for high-priced tail in Vegas. Mike told them no. I caught up with them down the block, told them yes. Got the money, ran it back up to Mike and shoved it inside the door where he'd see it when he got out of the can. All I could think was forty percent of that was mine.
"Toby was my first discovery, I guess you could say. Graffiti artist capable of being way more. All of us were setting aside money to get him into the first year of an art school. The school said if we could get a certain percentage together, they'd take him.
That money would have cinched it, with a little left over for Emile. He'd had a rotting tooth and needed to get to the dentist...
"Wasn't Emile...a girl?"
"No." Marcus said it emphatically. "What he was born didn't matter. In Emile's mind, in everything he was, he was male. I respected him that way." Thomas was watching his face closely. "You were lovers."
"As much as two street kids at that age can be." The cigarette was burning down, the ashes untapped. Thomas rose and moved to his side. Sliding his fingers over Marcus', he removed the butt and stubbed it out. He wanted to grip the tense hand on the rail, but he didn't. He stayed close, though.
"It was a tough night," Marcus said briefly, another humorless smile crossing his mouth. "But they got what they paid for."
"Jesus," Thomas murmured. Marcus slanted a glance at him, and his green eyes were hard, brittle.
"Don't think about it, pet. I don't. No one who lives it dwells on this fucking stuff.
You just thank God or your own balls for getting yourself through it, pulling yourself up into something better. The day I see pity in your face, I want your fucking ass out of my life."
"That's not what I'm thinking. And that's bullshit, by the way." Thomas kept his voice mild as he leaned over the rail and laced his fingers, bracing his forearms. It brushed his side against Marcus', clad only in the terry cloth. Marcus flinched, but he didn't move away. "You know, the very first time I looked at you, I thought, what the hell could he possibly want from me except maybe the thrill of a one night fuck with some halfway decent-looking piece of ass from down south?" Marcus' eyes narrowed. "What kind of horseshit - "
"It's actually not easy to love you," Thomas interrupted. "You're arrogant as hell, moody, and a lot of times just a mean son of a bitch. Even when I didn't know about your past, I knew you had some pretty dark places. It is killing me, thinking about what you went through, how I couldn't be there to help or protect you. But when you've reached for me in the night, demanded I submit, I was helping heal those wounds, wasn't I?"
He met Marcus' gaze. "I understood it somewhere deep down. You don't feel lonely when you're with me. All those things about me you make fun of, just like me with your cologne and fancy ways - that's everything and way more of what we need from each other, isn't it? Everything down to the soul of what we are. That's why we fit."
When Marcus didn't immediately respond, Thomas shifted his gaze down to the street, to where a doorman was walking an elegant Great Dane. "You're what my art's all about, Marcus. We see something and think we know it, understand it, but really we're lucky if we ever understand any more than a small piece about anything. The infinite of the universe is in each one of us. You're grace, faith. Hopelessness, despair.
Violence and anger. Beauty."
His attention flicked briefly up, lingered on Marcus' mouth, the column of throat, sweep of shoulders, expanse of chest, down to the snug hold of the towel. "Pain. You overwhelm me," he said quietly. "And every time I see you or think of you, I can't grab a brush fast enough. I thought I couldn't paint you, but it turns out I've been painting you all along, from the beginning, before I even knew you." Thomas reached out then, no longer worried about the reaction. From the stillness between them, like the stillness he felt when immersed in his work, he knew he stood inside Marcus and Marcus stood inside him in this moment. Laying his hand on Marcus' face, Thomas cupped the jaw, fingers over the ear, touching the still damp strands of his hair. He increased the pressure on the side of Marcus' neck, moving forward himself until their mouths met, tasted. Savored.
Marcus' lips parted and their tongues caressed, wet, straining heat. It was easy then to bring him closer, take his hand to his waist, the small of Marcus' back. Thomas' thumb caressed just inside the hold of the towel, his other fingers resting on the fine curve of his buttock. Marcus remained nearly motionless. Not resisting, not passive, but like he held an explosive energy too compressed to dare movement.
It was as if he knew Thomas was experiencing this so deeply that reaction wasn't needed. This utter stillness was the reaction.
Thomas drew back, studied his face. "All that time on the street. There's not a scar on you, Marcus."
Marcus lifted a shoulder. "I don't scar. I never have. Mike..." He gave a half-derisive chuckle that was too full of pain for Thomas to summon a smile. "Mike used to say I must be an angel, though he didn't know if I was from Heaven or Hell. I can get sick, my bones can break, but my skin always heals. Never shows anything."
"No. That's your eyes. They show everything. It's all there." The scars, the wounds that didn't heal, the story of who he was. It was all there. And even more. Something bigger than the experiences. Something more than mortal. It made Thomas wonder if Mike had been right.
The artist in him could imagine a woman with Marcus' jaw and fair forehead being lovers with an angel who had those amazing green eyes and to-die-for body. A one night fantasy the woman would think was a dream, as if visited by a succubus.
Nephilim. Child of an angel. That's what he'd call the painting.
Marcus was looking at him, a half smile on his lips, an unexpected expression after the dark memories he'd been visiting. But Thomas understood it now. When immersed in his feeling for Thomas, none of the past existed for Marcus. It was all just swept away.
"You're painting, aren't you? I can tell. You have that dazed look. Go." Marcus gave his shoulder a light shove. "Go up to the roof and do your thing."
"You're just trying to stop talking about this."
"Yeah. It's enough for one night." Marcus brushed his shoulder more casually with his knuckles. "I promise to tell you more. But not tonight, okay?" Thomas captured the long fingers, took a step forward. Then another, moving Marcus back in counterpoint into the shadowed dark corner of the balcony.
"What are you up to, pet?" But Marcus' voice had gotten throaty. That look was still in his eyes, heat and vulnerability, a raw, primal openness that Thomas wanted to guard jealously forever, the gift he now believed only he'd been given.
When he got Marcus to the corner, he put his hand down, took the edge of the towel and tugged it free, leaving his Master standing full and strong, naked and pale, touched by the gold and red lights of the city, limning the hair resting on his shoulders and the light thatch across his chest.
Kneeling slowly, Thomas slid his hand down Marcus' taut abs, the slope of his thighs, nuzzled his Master's cock with his lips, teasing as his breath drew in harshly.
"Jesus..."
Thomas opened and took him in deep, feeling with fierce joy as he grew harder, thicker. Marcus' testicles shifted convulsively under the caress of Thomas' thumb, the taste of his come already leaking from him. Putting his hands on his thighs, Thomas dug in, holding onto Marcus to take him deeper, sliding down every marvelous inch.
Marcus put one hand high on the stucco wall, the other going to Thomas' shoulder, gripping hard in the collar of his shirt, hard enough to tear except Thomas was moving with the rhythm of the flexing hand, anticipating Marcus' rock forward on the balls of his feet, the press of his ass back against the wall and forward again.
When Thomas glanced up, the look in Marcus' eyes almost overwhelmed him. A desire so strong it was indescribable, as if something had been unleashed in him that was unquenchable. His expression said he could fuck Thomas to death and still need more, because what he wanted was so much more than his ass.
Thomas had never seen this naked expression that revealed the unshielded heat of Marcus' need to control, his need for Thomas' utter surrender to give himself some type of peace. A level soft meadow in which Marcus' soul could fully rest and know what he most wanted belonged to him in every way.
"Thomas..." A breath, a guttural groan and Thomas sucked hard, hollowing his cheeks, flicking the sensitive underside with his tongue, finding the perineum with his finger and pressing just enough, teasing.
"Jesus, fuck..." Music to his ears. Thomas held the vision in his mind. Marcus as a fallen angel, head dropped back against the wall, six feet of wings stretched out on either side of him, feathers glimmering in the sparkle of a city that moved on, the mundane world and magic intertwined together, one so unaware of the other. When Marcus' thighs flexed under his grip, convulsing, he braced himself, prepared as Marcus came with sudden violence, clutching Thomas' shoulder with bruising fingers, thrusting against his face.
"Love your fucking mouth..."
Poetry, the rough male response to fucking, being fucked. Invaded, penetrated, filled, taken beyond satiation to exhaustion, all the answers there in post climactic aftermath, at least for that powerful, still moment of repleteness.
When it was over, Marcus was leaning fully against the wall, chest expanding and contracting like a bellows. His knees were...quivering. Filled with satisfaction and emotions too strong to form words, Thomas stayed on his knees and put his cheek on Marcus' thigh, lips nuzzling the now drained cock, rubbing his knuckles slowly up and down the opposite column of thigh, brushing Marcus' testicles with the movement, teasing his hip bone.
As Marcus' touch moved from Thomas' shoulder to cup his head, a deep breath left Thomas. He was aroused, of course, but he wanted to stay this way awhile. Just be this.
"When do you go back?" Marcus' voice. Hard to read if Thomas didn't know him, heart, blood and bone.
Thomas raised his head, looked up that incredible terrain of curved muscle. As he rose, he stayed close, his body pressed against his lover's. Marcus shifted, his thigh pressing knowingly against Thomas' hard cock. His hand slid to Thomas' nape, that possessive kneading touch. But his mouth was taut.
Thomas' lips curved. "Don't worry about that right now," he murmured.
Marcus nodded. Looked out into the night and worried.
Marcus found a pair of loose cotton lounging pants and they went to his roof garden. While Thomas sketched, Marcus fell asleep on the grass, too exhausted by drink, sex and emotion to do anything different.
When he was snoring in an amusingly offensive way, Thomas squatted at his side, removed Marcus' cell phone from beside his elbow and moved to the far end of the roof. He found the number he was looking for, took a deep breath, and hit the preprogrammed button to dial it.
"Hello?"
A man. Shit. Thomas had hoped to talk to the woman first, not the man that Thomas knew Marcus had once fucked. He forced himself to rally. Marcus was his now, and this man was married. "Josh?"
He didn't know his last name, knew nothing except they were the closest friends Marcus had, if Julie and Marcus' own references to them were true.
"This is Thomas. Marcus' Thomas." He didn't know how else to go about saying it.
A pause, then a surge of alarm that came through clearly, even over a cell phone connection. "Is he okay?"
"Yeah...yeah. Well, no. Actually, not really. His dad just died, and I was thinking he could use some friends right about now. Do you...do you live nearby?"
"Jesus, he hasn't told you anything about us, has he?" Thomas hesitated, not sure what to say to that. Apparently the significance of that pause came through clearly as well.
"Oh." A self-conscious chuckle. "Figures that's the only thing the asshole would tell you. He hasn't told us much about you either. It's from what he doesn't say that we figured out who you were to him. No wonder his stomach's been bothering him, if his dad was sick. I knew that son of a bitch was lying about it not being him. Here, I'm putting Lauren on. Tell her what's happening with him. She's a doctor."
"No, it's not - " Thomas heard an exchange of words and then he was relieved, despite the misunderstanding, to find himself talking to the woman.
"What are his symptoms? Are you at a hospital?"
"No, and in about five hours, his symptoms are going to be a massive hangover." Thomas chuckled wearily despite himself, ran a hand over the back of his neck. "Look, I probably shouldn't be calling you, but I think you two are his closest friends, and he got some bad news today. I'm thinking if you're nearby or planning to come this way soon, you could - "
"You're not bugging out on him."
"No," Thomas said automatically, in response to the sharp tone of her voice. "That's the thing. I'm going to have to go home in three or four days, and I'm hoping - "
"Thomas, you do realize you're the love of his life, don't you? So are you sticking this time or not?"
"I'm sticking," he said, the simplest answer.
A pause. "Oh. Well, good then. We'll be up tomorrow night. Josh will cook. We'll have a quiet night in. I'm going to let you talk to Josh some more."
"No, I - " But she was gone. Thomas shook his head.
"Sorry, didn't realize she was going to go after you like that. Women, Jesus. So tell me how he's doing? And tell me when the hell did he get a dad? First we've heard of it."
"I only heard about it a couple days ago..."
A few minutes later, when Thomas finished, Josh stayed silent for a long pause.
"Christ. Marcus and I have been friends a while, and I didn't know anything about his family."
Thomas felt a tightening in his gut. "I know. Me either, until this week." Another pause, as if Josh was having some trouble getting out the words. "Listen, Thomas, Lauren is my Mistress. She and Marcus shared me one night. Long story short.
One time, special circumstances. She's everything to me. Marcus and I were never lovers. Got it?"
"Okay." Thomas got his mind around it, took a more secure grip on the phone.
"Okay."
"She's a girl, so she's going to say it the girly way - ow. But..." Josh's voice got serious again. "She's right. You're everything to him. Don't fuck him up. Okay?"
"I..." Thomas looked over at the sleeping man, his arm thrown over his eyes. "He's everything to me too. I've got it straight now. He won't shake me. But there's one more thing I've got to do. That's why I need you here. After I take care of it, he's never getting rid of me."
"Good. Because he's a royal pain in the ass and you have our sympathy." Thomas grinned. After a few more moments of confirming plans, a guilty shock as he realized the two of them were at the tip end of Florida and would have to arrange a flight in, he hung up. Only to find Marcus awake and watching him.
"Josh and Lauren will be here for dinner tomorrow night," Thomas informed him.
"Meddlesome prick. You think you have the right to handle me?"
"When you need handling. Why don't we invite Julie over tomorrow morning if she's back from Massachusetts? We'll fix her breakfast." Marcus considered him. "Okay," he said at last. A sudden exhaustion crossed his face, the simmering belligerence just evaporating, making Thomas' heart hurt for his lover. "I don't have much in the kitchen. And the place is a fucking mess."
"I'll take care of it. Why don't you just keep on napping? I'm going to finish this idea up, then I'll wake you and we can head to bed." Marcus lay back on the grass. "Fine. But be sure you wake me. You're feeling so nurturing right now, I don't want you scooping me up in your manly arms and carrying me back downstairs."
Thomas sent him an arch look. "Will you beat on my broad chest with your feeble fists if I do?"
"And ruin my manicure? Not likely. I would have Julie sock you in the eye though.
In the morning."
"Then shut up and go to sleep. I'm working. Trying to make you money to keep you in the manner to which Donald Trump wishes he could become accustomed."
"Music to my ears. Tomorrow night I'll have my biggest commission source and the one artist I know who can give him a run for his money in my house." Marcus raised a brow. "Come to think of it, maybe I should keep you two separated, like the President and the Vice President, never in the same building." Thomas snorted. "J. Martin is your biggest commission check, another guy you've never let me meet."
"You and the rest of the world. He's very private. Likes living on some ass-end remote island off the coast of Florida."
Thomas stopped dead. His charcoal made an uncontrolled smudge as he forgot to remove it from the paper during his swift turn.
"J can actually stand for a name beginning with J," Marcus pointed out. "Like Joshua. Josh."
"I was talking to J. Martin? That's Josh? Holy - why didn't you tell me? Holy Christ.
I... You fucked J. Martin. Holy Christ."
Thomas broke off, scowled when he saw Marcus with his hands laced behind his head, eyes dancing with laughter at his reaction.
"So now it's okay that I fucked him?"
"You dick. I'm going to throw you off this roof."
"Security will not let you stay for dinner tomorrow night if you kill me," Marcus said, rolling to his feet more quickly than expected as Thomas came after him. He dodged around a tree anchored in a massive clay planter.
"I'll make it look like a suicide," Thomas promised.
Marcus feinted left, but he was too tired and still too full of alcohol. Thomas tackled him and they rolled over the grass, throwing elbows. Somewhere along the way, Marcus was laughing and Thomas forgot to be annoyed, suddenly just pleased to see his Master laughing, roughhousing as if they were teenagers. Thomas rocked back on his heels, shoving him away. Marcus sat up on his elbows, giving him an indulgent expression. "You're pretty good to have around, pet. I could get used to it."
"Don't expect me to clean up your apartment ever again. This is a one-shot deal."
"That's why I have a maid service. Call them on my Rolodex. They'll put it all back together and we'll stay in bed, until dinner. They're used to working around me." Thomas shook his head. "J. Martin. Marcus, he's like - "
"You'll be as good as him. You're on your way now." Marcus said it bluntly, watched the deep flush of pleasure rise in Thomas' cheeks. "And he is a complete slob, a bohemian of the worst sort. Lauren has to make him wear shoes most days. You two will get along just fine."
"And he's...like me."
Marcus easily picked up the direction of his thoughts. "Josh is a sexual submissive, like you, only he prefers women. One woman. Lauren. She's extraordinary, and if I ever tried to lay a finger on him without permission, she'd break all ten of them." Reaching out abruptly, he caught Thomas' arm and pulled him to him, tumbling them over in the grass and suddenly having enough strength to pin Thomas under him. "The same thing I'd do to anyone who touches you."
He traced Thomas' bottom lip with his thumb, his eyes getting smoky and intent.
"We're going to let the maid service do the apartment. I've got better things for you to do with your energy."
"Insatiable monster."
"You bet your fine ass."
"Your fine ass," Thomas corrected, a moment before his mouth was seized, his breath taken so he couldn't tease his Master further.