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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?”

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“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.”

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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—”

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“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.”

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“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

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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.