Icarus
Bleeds
By
Annabeth Leong
Blurb:
Icarus,
a man on the run, dreams of wings, and of taking flight like the
surgically modified rich and famous of Central City. The hacker who harbors him
will do anything to keep him, including paying for the dangerous operation in a
back alley chop shop. Neither can imagine how much the wings will truly
cost. (M/M)
Buy
Links:
Forbidden
Fiction’s Story Page (includes links to all sites where the title is
available): http://forbidden-fiction.com/library/story/AL1-1.000140
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Excerpt:
I
will call him Icarus, because he worked so hard to erase his birth name that I
will not commit the sin of returning it to him now. The things I said and did
when I knew him will only make sense if you understand how beautiful he was, so
I will try to force the words of mortals to describe a man who never seemed to
belong to earth at all.
Icarus
first came to me in the dark, in the rain, passing out of the shadows falling
over the street, slipping smoothly into the shadows I made for myself. His eyes
glowed from the corner where he took a seat, huddled under shelves loaded with
discarded computer equipment. Even then I wondered how a shadow could be so
luminous within a shadow, how black could shimmer from within black.
I
wasn’t in the habit of looking at my clients. They came because they wanted to
be forgotten, and they generally did not want to be seen either. I could not
help myself with Icarus. He reminded me of flesh I liked to pretend I didn’t
have. Eyes, lips, fingertips, inner thighs, the sides of my stomach, the soles
of my feet. And, yes. Tongue. Cock. Thoughts both crude and poetic competed to
distract me from the mechanical process of obscuring someone from all the files
and IP addresses that affirmed that person’s existence.
I
avoided looking at his skin, a lighter shade of what is called black than my
own purple-tinged pigment. Icarus’s brand of black flowed with honey, shone
with sunlight, glittered with the gold that may once have belonged to Pharaoh.
Long, thin fingers, delicate as a girl’s. Red-gold palms, and the beginnings of
a scar, a telltale revelation of a story that started in the hands and parted
the flesh of the forearm nearly to the elbow.
He
saw me looking, and pulled the sleeves of his sweater down low, clutching
bunches of the material in clenched fists. “Can you really make me disappear?”
I
snorted. “Of course not. Not these days, not with the backups they keep and the
triple cross checks they have to avoid failure conditions. Best I can do is
make them forget to look for you.”
He
nodded, the gesture emphasizing the length of his neck, the quality of his
silence. “How much?”
“How
much you got?”
He
shrank back from me, receding into the forest of parts and cords. “I’m not
looking for favors.”
“I
don’t do favors. I do a sliding scale. You pay what you can afford to pay. What
you think is fair. I trust you.”
“Why?”
I
sighed. No one ever understood this when I bothered to explain. “Because I’m not
one of them. I don’t want to act like one.”
He
swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving gracefully up and down in that impossibly
lean neck. “I was going to see what you would take.” He bit his lip and didn’t
explicate, but I got an idea of what he’d had in mind by the way his hands
crept toward his fly, the gesture so subtle that I wasn’t sure it had been a
conscious invitation.
On
any other night, with any other man, I wouldn’t have. I would have kissed that
smooth, wide forehead, done my work for free, and sent him back into the street
uttering the vague promise that someday, when he could, he would take care of
me. With Icarus, I could not resist the offer. I had to keep him a little
longer. Though I hated myself for it, the sentence passed my lips as if it made
up part of my daily stock in trade. “After I finish, you’ll come upstairs with
me.”
His
bowed head telegraphed his acquiescence well before his soft words. “Thank
you.”
When
I got him to my bed, I knew I should be the one thanking him. He stripped with
a benevolent dignity that shamed me. I felt as if I’d brought the Virgin Mary
to my room to make a whore of her. Again, I considered releasing him, leaving
my work to be my offering to his present and future beauty.
Then
his undershirt peeled away from smooth, hard abs, and his boxers fell away from
his hips and the thick, dark cock that hung soft between his legs. The shy and
lovely young man before me, with his incandescent eyes and visible ribs,
brought my own cock surging to life. I could not let him go. My desire made me
cruel.
“Get
on your knees and crawl to me,” I whispered, loosening my own clothing, casting
it aside. Hurt flashed through his eyes, and I loved it for the confirmation
that it offered. He was open to me. I could touch him. I could make him
remember me forever.
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Bio:
Annabeth
Leong has written erotica of many flavors. She loves shoes, stockings, cooking
and excellent bass lines.
Icarus Bleeds
joins many other dark erotica titles published by Forbidden Fiction, including The Snake and
the Lyre,
a story of Orpheus and the erotic underworld, and In the Death of Winter, about a dead god and
the sacrifices his followers still make. She blogs at annabethleong.blogspot.com,
and tweets @AnnabethLeong
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