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)
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Fiction’s Story Page (includes links to all sites where the title is
available): http://forbidden-fiction.com/library/story/AL1-1.000140
Excerpt - Icarus Bleeds
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.
About the Author
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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