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Icarus ran the tip of his tongue along Adam’s upper lip. “And?”
“Better than I imagined.” He hummed contentedly and palmed Icarus’s erection under the table. “Like I imagine this is going to be too.”
“Oh, you have no idea.” Icarus grinned. “How many more courses?”
“Just two.” Adam kissed the hinge of Icarus’s jaw while slowly stroking his length. “Should I tell you all the ways I plan to worship this tonight?”
Icarus rolled his hips with the next stroke, eager for more friction. “I think you’re enjoying this a little too much, Mr. Devlin.”
Like a flipped switch, Adam withdrew into himself and away from Icarus, taking his teasing lips, warm breath, and claiming hand with him. Humor and desire fled his gaze, sadness and longing taking their place, the rain clouds moving in, the sight eerily similar to the one he’d worn that first night back at his house.
An awkward silence filled the space between them. Icarus had tripped a memory wire. Something Deborah or David used to say or do? What kind of explosion had he unintentionally set off? The Adam-shaped hole in his chest made itself known again. “Fuck, Adam, I’m sorry.”
Adam wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, then folded it on the table. “I’m sorry I interrupted your work tonight.”
“I think I needed to be here instead.”
“Why’s that?”
Finger under his chin, Icarus refocused Adam’s gaze on him. “Back at my apartment, and at the club the other night, you said you wanted me to”—he lowered his voice—“fuck you senseless.” He shifted his hand to cup Adam’s face and tapped a finger against his temple. “What are you running from in here?” Adam tried to look away, tried to knock Icarus’s hand loose, but Icarus wasn’t letting him or this point go that easily. “You want a good, hard fuck, I got that, and I’m more than happy to oblige, but there are other moments when you want something else, something you miss. Whatever those memories are, whatever you’re missing, I don’t want to make you forget that. Lust shouldn’t blot them out.” He firmed his grip on Adam’s face, prepared for a reaction to his next words. “Neither should vengeance.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t jerk away—yet.
“I heard you,” Icarus explained, giving part of the story, hoping it would be enough. “I heard you talking to the other two in the Canyon Lands the other night once you got away from the fire.”
“Stay out of it, Icarus.”
“You caught my name, right?”
Adam’s hardened expression faltered on a chuckle. He lifted a hand, holding Icarus’s to his face. He angled his face and kissed his palm. Another of those knee-stealing intimate moments. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”
Icarus gave him more of the truth, more afraid not to, more afraid each second that Adam was headed the direction of dead instead of his bed. “Maybe I’m trying to do the same.”
The grip around his hand would have crushed a human one. “What did you say?”
Icarus didn’t flinch, didn’t shy away from the cold, hard stare assessing his own. Adam apparently didn’t like what he saw. He jerked away, yanked out his wallet, tossed a stack of bills on the table, and bolted out of the booth.
Icarus fisted his hand and thumped the seat of the leather booth. “Fuck!” He couldn’t grab for Adam, couldn’t block his path, and couldn’t flex his speed or strength without making a scene and exposing himself. He was pretty sure Adam knew already given that grip, and he hadn’t staked him for it, but Icarus couldn’t be certain no other patron in this restaurant wasn’t carrying. Namely the shifter two booths over who’d eyed him warily all through dinner. He just needed to get outside, into the dark, and follow the whiskey scent. He could catch up to Adam.
He slid out of the booth, calmly crossed the dining room, apologized to the waitstaff and host, then slipped outside. He sniffed the damp foggy air, caught Adam’s familiar scent, and followed it around the corner into the alley where Adam had parked the Camaro.
And promptly met the business end of Adam’s pistol. “What did you mean?”
Icarus held up his hands, palms out, and kept his voice as low and calm as the rising panic in his chest would allow. Not panic for his own life, but for Adam’s. He argued with the only thing he thought might convince Adam to not race off. “Would Deborah and David want this for you?”
Adam shoved the gun’s muzzle against Icarus’s chest, backing him against the alley wall. “Stop with the fucking riddles.”
“Youstop chasing your own death.” Icarus shared another truth, hoping it would convince Adam since appeals to sentiment had not. “Vincent is willing to sacrifice his own son to get to you. What do you think he’ll do if he finally catches you?”
Adam’s eyes flared, surprised perhaps that Icarus had given him the honest truth, but then they narrowed, and his mouth twisted into a sneer. “Nothing, if I catch him first. What exactly did Vincent say?”
“That they had a line on your location. That the source required a human in exchange for the information.”
“Paris?”
Icarus closed his eyes and nodded.
“Is that source you? The location here?”
