“Hello?” The guard looked straight at Matthew in his angel’s arms and then shook his head, as if he couldn’t see either of them.
As if they were invisible to his eyes.
“Huh.” The man moved so close to Matthew that he could have touched him. Heart pounding, Matthew couldn’t believe it, surrounded by more white and silver feathers than a gay Vegas showboy, but the guard only gave another cursory glance before walking out, closing and locking the door behind him.
Matthew’s head fell back in relief. “Oh shit.”
Dove smiled down at him, dark eyes serene. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, Matthew-friend. I’ll always keep you safe.”
Chapter Fourteen
Matthew
yanked Dove into an alcove under the stairs on the way out of campus. “Not much ambience.” Pain gripped his chest, making it hard to breathe, to think. “I need a moment.”
“Matthew?” Dove raised a hand and a white flame leaped from it, illuminating the space.
Matthew swallowed thickly, looking away from concern, from the clear read Dove was taking. “Wow, you can make fire and everything.”
Dove waited.
Subdued, “This is it. You’re leaving.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Matthew didn’t resist when Dove leaned his forehead against his. “Oh Matthew.”
Matthew’s eyes were moist. He backhanded them, embarrassed. “This can’t last. I know it. Someone like you with a guy like me? It’s like one of those fantasies I had as a kid, wishing I lived in another time, traveling to the stars. Stupid shit like that. Come on, we need to get you home.”
* * *
“I don’t
want to fuck you, Matthew,” Dove told him as they walked past the holiday tree on campus again, which looked a little sadder today, much like Matthew felt.
“Oh.”
“No, I mean,” Dove moved closer to the motionless Matthew, “I want to share myself with you, help your aura heal before I go away, but I’d like… to make love with you, if you will allow it. Maybe if I do, you’ll be able to trust someone, not be so alone you are bleeding inside.”
Matthew shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel this way again, angel. But I get what you’re saying. I don’t want your first time to be in my crappy apartment. I wish I could do something special.”
“I have somewhere I’d like to take you. Will you trust me?”
Matthew took the hand that Dove held out. “I used to like surprises, you know, when I was a kid? Used to want to explore new places but after what happened, I never trusted. You’re like a draft under my door, can’t seem to find a way to keep you out, right from the beginning.”
Dove glowed, clothes melting away, transformed from a mock-janitor to his silver and white-feathered self again.
“Hottest showboy in Vegas!” Matthew noted with affection. This time when Dove embraced him and the earth fell away, Matthew wasn’t as afraid; now he felt anticipation… and freedom.
But it would be their last flight together, he knew.
* * *
Dove’s
wings stretched out as they glided past the last of the city lights and out into the cold desert night. Matthew finally felt brave enough to watch the patches of trees and odd house run past his dangling feet. “Where are we going?”
“Black Mountain Conservatory.”
“Oh.”
“I saw it on a map in the professor’s office, and I memorized the location.”
“Right.” Matthew shook his head in wonder. “I guess you can do that.”
“I have a surprise for you.” Dove was smiling secretly. “Since you like surprises again.”
* * *
As they
headed into the higher elevation, snowflakes and a cold wind swirled past, buffeting them as Dove’s wings worked to bring them into the mountains. Matthew looked down and saw deep canyons and virgin snow below them. Sometimes they flew so low that he could have reached out and brushed the snow from the tops of trees with his fingers.
His throat was tight because this was the most fantastical night of his life. This kind of adventure was something from the hazy daydreams of the child he’d been until life wore away the dreams and bled into gray, smashing wonder like fragile blown glass.
Now, in his angel’s arms, he had one last chance to be a boy again. And he realized this was part of Dove’s gift, part of the healing he wanted to offer Matthew, even if it was only for one more night. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for tonight.”
“Angels aren’t supposed to fall in love with men,” Dove told him. “Because we are memory. Every age of this world that passes, I’ll remember flying with you tonight. I’ll hear your voice and feel the warmth of your body.”
“Oh, angel.” Matthew closed his eyes, not wanting that for Dove. “I’m the lucky one. I just got my crummy life to live. I wish you could forget you ever met me. If you have all these powers, wouldn’t that be possible?”
“But I don’t choose to forget you, Matthew.” A perfect crystal tear, glittering like a diamond, rolled down the angel’s cheek and struck Matthew’s face. Matthew cried out, his skin burning. “What
was
that?”
“The tear of an angel; my gift to you.”
Matthew shuddered, feeling white heat run through his body. When it reached his chest, it
hurt
.
“Your heart is bleeding, and I can’t bear it anymore. I can’t leave you like this, Matthew. I touched you where you hold your pain.”
“My aura again?” Matthew felt faint amusement. He still didn’t really believe he had one of the damned things, but Dove seemed to, and where the angel touched him, cherished him, he didn’t feel so alone.
“I hope it will heal you. In our long lifetimes, an angel only has a few tears to shed. I gave you mine.”
Matthew frowned, concerned by how his crappy life had touched an angel’s. “Shit! I don’t want to make you less because you care about me.”
Now Dove’s face was as softly illuminated as the snow. “How could loving you make me less?”
* * *
Dove
set them down gently at the top of Black Mountain, just above the gray curves of conservatory. Matthew was relaxed in the angel’s arms; even the cold didn’t seem to be affecting him. He felt like he was sitting by a warm fire. Dove’s powers mysteriously kept him warm and safe.
“This is where I want to make love with you, Matthew.”
Matthew looked up at the sky, feeling familiar wonder and the longing that had never been answered when he’d looked up, studied the constellations. “I’ll think of you every time I look at them.”
Dove pulled him closer, consoling with touch. Matthew meshed his fingers with the angel’s. Each moment they shared now was like that single crystal tear, once in a lifetime
.
Chapter Fifteen
It was
innocent Dove who seduced experienced Matthew.
He started with a single, coaxing kiss, soft as a feather on Matthew’s lips, groping as if his only senses were his lips and he wanted to learn Matthew by their touch alone.
Matthew gasped as Dove licked his neck. “Outside like this? I thought we’d go indoors.”
“I want you in moonlight,” Dove said simply. “You aren’t cold?”
“No, though I should be. Should be afraid of getting snow up my ass.” But Matthew laughed and cupped Dove’s cheek. “I don’t care.”
They stripped Matthew slowly together and stretched his clothing out, creating a makeshift bed under a tree. As the green limbs moved with the night breeze, Matthew saw misty threads of clouds and the bright cool nimbus around starlight above them.
He put his arm around Dove, feeling warmth and anticipation as they leaned against each other.
“Was no one ever gentle before, Matthew?”
Matthew looked away. Trust Dove to pick up on how he tensed. He relaxed, slowly giving himself. “Brief encounters to let out steam.”
“But this is different, because you are my Matthew-friend.”
“Yes,” Matthew whispered. “With you it’s different.”
“Can we have sex now?” He looked wistful and Matthew laughed.
“Oh yeah!”
* * *
Matthew
had some lubricant he’d shoved in his coat when they’d left his apartment. He shook it out and looked at his angel. Dove’s wings had morphed back into his skin, so he looked like a beautiful man and not the angel he really was. “On your hands and knees, pet.” He guided Dove gently into position, kissing him behind his ear and making him laugh again as his own bare skin slid against Dove’s. Fuck, it felt good!
He kissed Dove’s neck, licking and biting him gently into submission as the larger man shivered, arching his neck, his legs widening, receptive as Matthew moved between them.
He reached and found Dove’s long, thick penis, stroking him, feeling his body push into Matthew’s hand. “I’m going to finger fuck you first, angel.”
“What?” Dove sounded caught between laughter and apprehension.
“I don’t want you feeling any discomfort your first time.”
“I am stronger than a human would be, Matthew.”
Matthew kissed Dove as he looked back over his shoulder at him. “I need you to want me. The only men I’ve ever taken are whores.”
“But you were nice to them, weren’t you?”
“Nice? I guess. But they weren’t you. Only let me have them ’cause I paid for it. Nothing like someone… wanting you to be their first. Understand?”
“Yes, Matthew.” Dove’s midnight eyes touched him, saw into him.
Matthew slid down and spread Dove’s muscled ass cheeks apart so his pale opening was revealed. It looked vulnerable and untouched, everything Matthew associated with his new lover. He swallowed at the sudden sense of responsibility. How did he make it wonderful for an angel?
Taking a deep breath and deciding to give into his instincts, he put his lips to Dove and suckled, before slowly penetrating him for the first time with a shy and tender tongue.
“
Matthew-friend!
” Dove cried out, his body humming beneath Matthew’s touch like electrified wire.
“Going to get you all ready—”
Matthew gave Dove a lavish tongue fuck before pushing a probing finger in slowly. He paused and then pulled back to lube more of his fingers before he began to open Dove up, working him as if there were no rush. His lazy gentleness seemed to arouse the angel, who shifted his legs, arching his back wantonly. His wings had reappeared, so Matthew smiled at this sign of a young angel’s arousal. “Yeah, almost ready for me, aren’t you, sweetheart? Ready for your fucking?”
“Matthew, my penis is beginning to hurt again, so hard!” Dove sounded grumpy.
Matthew reached down and touched Dove’s heavy sac, snug against the angel’s body. “You just need a bit of cock, darling, hitting the sweet spot—” he rasped, on fire himself, trembling now.
He kneeled between Dove’s legs and put his cock to him. He felt oddly timid, part of him still wondering if he would be welcomed or turned away.
“Come inside me, Matthew,” Dove encouraged, as if sensing the reason behind Matthew’s hesitation.
Matthew smacked Dove’s ass. “Bossy angel.” But he nuzzled his bent head against the angel’s back.
He was wanted.
Matthew pressed inside, deeper, both of them holding still. Sweat dripped from his forehead as he undulated carefully.
“What…?”
“There’s something inside you that likes to be touched.”
“It
really
likes to be touched!”
“Shhhh, gorgeous. It will be better if you hold off a little, trust me.” Matthew didn’t increase his pace and kept up his gentle tapping, light as summer rain against a rooftop so that soon the body under his was all loose and slick. The wings extended, feathers shivering with Matthew’s thrusts.
“Harder now, pet.” Matthew slid in and out faster, the big warm body surrounding his cock, taking him, taking all of him. It was gut-wrenching, watching his own thick cock going inside Dove, fucking him.
“Matthew!” Matthew caressed his lover’s balls gently, riding him as Dove arched, as he shot, losing himself in the wonderful body of his angel.
* * *
After
, tangled together under stars on Matthew’s crushed clothing, Dove gathered him in his arms.
“I am memory and I won’t forget,” Dove promised him.
Chapter Sixteen
The
first thing Dove did when Matthew used the key they’d nicked to get inside the observatory was go hunting for a kitchen. Matthew followed him, bemused, watching him pull out left over lunches from a small ’50s era fridge. The angel stuffed his mouth full of someone’s leftover orange, blinking at Matthew innocently despite his hair sticking out at weird angles and the still-drying sweat on his naked body. “What we did made me very hungry, Matthew-friend.”
Matthew wasn’t very put together either, wondering how the hell he’d recover from the earthquake that had gone off inside him, shaking, destroying,
remaking
. Now he tugged his T-shirt back on with shaky fingers, adding it to his jeans, smiling indulgently at Dove’s quirks, while at the same time that sliver of pain cut into his chest. Soon his angel would be gone.
“What?” Dove laughed as he bit into an apple, obviously relishing it. His eyes got heavy in a way that heated Matthew.
“You liked it. I mean, you liked
me
.”
“Yes, I liked you.” Dove held out the apple, his dark eyes coy. “I don’t have to leave right now, do I?”
“Slutty angel!” Matthew took a bite out of Dove’s apple and then a bite of his neck, making him gasp. Dove fell back on the kitchen table, spreading his legs so that Matthew could unzip and snug his sex against Dove’s. The angel knitted his ankles around Matthew’s hips, lying back with his palms up, surrendering.
His trust made Matthew burn to possess again. He fished out the lube and tested Dove, finding him still warm and loose and welcoming. He fitted himself to his angel and shoved inside, hard this time. They both groaned, and Dove’s hands slid down Matthew’s loosened jeans to cup his working ass. “Yours, Matthew-friend.”