by Adira August
Hunt patted his pocket. “Ring. Check.”
“You follow me. You and Cam will be escorted to the head of the aisle. Then we’ll step back and you face each other.”
The music changed to something familiar. Hunter realized he was listening to a string quartet play Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Chez moved and Hunter followed him out and along the outside of the rows of guests.
“You picked this music?”
Chez shot him a scandalized glare over his shoulder. “Cam did,” he whispered. “Hush!”
And as he followed Chez around the room and behind the guests who rose, he was in his bedroom and very small, just woken from his nap. His mother was singing to the radio in the kitchen…
I'll take your part, oh, when darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down…
Hunter fought to control the emotions that blurred his vision. He would not weep at a wedding he’d barely consented to.
He would not.
And there was Jag leading Cam toward him. Cam—also in gray, but lighter, his shirt a blue that matched his eyes, his hair freshly spiked around his multiple cowlicks. Cam, so young—he looked so very young and happy.
They met at the end of the aisle and Hunter knew he wanted nothing more than to be in this time, in this place, marrying this man. Cam’s eyes sparkled like sunlight on a sheen of ice, as he looked at Hunter. They turned up the aisle and followed their escorts to the front.
A man Hunt assumed was some sort of minister was there, but he held no book. Jag and Chez stepped back. The music faded.
“Today,” the minister began, “we gather in love and joy to witness these two men declare their lifelong commitment to one another.”
He took a half step back and Cam turned to Hunter who almost missed his cue waiting for the minister to go on. Wondering what the hell he was supposed to say, Hunt faced Cam and the look of pure devotion on his face drove away his doubts. He waited. Cam would show him the way.
In a single graceful motion, Camden Snow went to his knees for Hunter Dane. Hands behind his back and head bowed.
Hunter followed so quickly, the guests thought it was choreographed. He put his hands behind his back also, and lowered his head until they were touching.
And it was everything.
It was every vow they could need to make, every word of devotion they could have said. It was their moment, one no one else could enter, a connection no one else could understand.
It was giving and taking and being.
When he finally became aware again that a hundred people were around them, Hunter reached into his pocket and offered Cam the ring on his open palm. Cam did the same. They slid the rings onto each other’s fingers.
Cam moved his head until he could whisper into Hunter’s ear. “Is it wrong that your making me hard?”
Hunt hid his grin in Cam’s hair. “Me, too.”
They held onto each other’s hands and stood up.
The minister stepped forward. “I now pronounce Hunter Dane and Camden Caulfield Snow bound forever.”
It was, by necessity, a rather brief kiss.
“DO NOT SHOW HIM THIS,” Camden Snow whispered fiercely in full-metal Dom mode at Avia and Twee who’d eagerly shoved their cell phones at him. “What part of ‘work talk is forbidden’ do you two not understand?”
Twee actually took a step back from this version of Cam she’d never suspected existed. Avia held up a hand to stop Ben, who’d seen Cam’s face and Twee’s reaction and started toward them from across the crowd.
“Okay,” she said, keeping her voice reasonable. “First, that was incredibly hot, I don’t care how gay you are. And second, this is good news. And he’s going to see it, anyway; it’s everywhere!”
“He’s not going to see it today. Not today. No murder today. Do not fuck with our day!”
He stalked off.
“See what?” Mike Merisi asked, walking up with cake on a plate and Cal at his elbow.
Twee held up her phone. “It’s on Wikileaks. Everything Penelope Maki sent us. Including the video.”
“Oh my dear God!” Cal Derricksen dropped his fork and covered his mouth, shaking his head.
“But how did they get it?” Mike asked.
Cal stared at the three of them for a moment as if they were the monsters. “You don’t show him this! It’s his wedding day, what are you thinking?”
“The mail slot,” Merisi said to Twee. “Remember the mailbox wall in the entry? It had an outgoing mail slot.”
“Wikileaks has a mailing address?” Twee looked at Avia who was already on it.
”Here it is, right on their website.” She grinned. “Get this, it’s in Australia!”
“Oh, God, what if he’s already seen it?” Cal moaned. He craned his neck, lifting up on his toes and located Hunter at the end of the room by the wedding cake table. “He looks okay. He’s talking to Cam’s mother.”
“Is he?” Avia sighed. “I guess we really don’t want to interrupt that.”
THE “ICE QUEEN OF ASGAARD,” as Hunter had once thought of her, was impossible to miss as she moved through the crowd. In her spiked silvery heels, she was slightly taller than Cam. But except for standing in the receiving line, Hunter hadn’t seen Elizabeth Snow up close since the ceremony.
He’d finally broken away from the poker crowd from the club and wandered over to the most impressive thing in the room: the wedding cake. The enormous white mountain of swirling frosting had two figures at the top. The Cam figure had spiky yellow hair and blue dots for eyes. The Hunter one had a shock of hair falling over an eyebrow and—he grinned—a five-o’clock shadow.
“You like them? I made them from fondant. Cam told me what color your suits were.” Dee Snow was at his elbow.
Hunt peered more closely. The figures were wearing suits, dark and light gray. “They’re fantastic! You’re a true artist.”
“Where do you think Cam got it?”
He laughed and took her hand. “Listen, the cake is perfect. I don’t know how you managed to make it just like … I mean—” He stopped, feeling a bit of a fool being moved by cake.
She patted his hand. “I’m glad you like it, but I didn’t make them. Liz insisted.”
Liz? He’d never imagined the powerful attorney and self-made millionaire would be called “Liz” by anyone.
“And, those are twenty-three separate cakes,” she went on. “She’s not really a baker, you see. But she can manage to follow a recipe and make layers.”
“I can also manage to design a stand, make boiled frosting and turn many molehills into a mountain,” Elizabeth Snow said behind Hunter. “Sorry,” she told him, as he turned. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“That’s fine.” He looked at the cake again. “This is amazing and it was, I mean, it is exactly what … well, your mother asked me—” He looked back to Dee but she’d wandered off into the crowd.
“Take a walk with me, please, Hunter.”
The ‘please’ surprised him and he escorted Elizabeth Snow away from the others. She halted behind a pillar near the exit and crossed her arms over her body, clutching her elbows.
Hunter knew the body language of stress and vulnerability. But he didn’t need anything but the haunted look on her face to know she was in pain.
“Cam came to see me last week. Did he tell you?”
He shook his head.
“Did you know that he’d never told me, or anyone in the family, about his Huntington’s Disease?”
He fought the urge to touch her arm. “No, I had no idea.”
“I didn’t think so.” She looked away for a moment. “Recipes are like dog breeds and hairstyles. They come in and go out of fashion. That cake was quite popular once. My mother made it, too. She still had the recipe, naturally. She has every cookbook she ever bought.”
Hunter thought he’d never seen anyone so
frightened who controlled it so well. Something else Cam inherited.
She lifted her head and cleared her throat. “I wanted to tell you, Hunter, that I now believe if I’d scoured the Earth I couldn’t have found any man better suited to be Camden’s husband and become part of our family.”
Hunter felt his mouth literally drop open and quickly shut it. He reached a hand out and she took it.
“That’s me speaking as Cam’s mother. … I’d like to bring you more than your mother’s cake. That is, if you’d allow me the temerity to say what I think she’d say if she could be here, herself.”
His throat too tight to speak, Hunter waited.
She put her hands on his shoulders. “She’d say she was incredibly proud of you. That you’ve grown into a very fine man.”
And then his head was on her shoulder and their arms were around each other and all the tears he didn’t allow to fall stained the shoulder of her silver-gray power suit.
He fought to recover himself, knowing her need was the greater in that moment. He lifted his head and took her hands. “The clinical trial results are very encouraging. We’ll take care of him.”
She jerked a quick nod and stepped back, brushing at mascara-stained eyes. “We will. You may call me Liz. Excuse me, I have to repair my make-up.”
She walked away, tall and proud and indestructible. Hunter wished he had make-up to repair or just someplace to go to get himself together and feel all the things he needed to feel.
A strong arm circled his waist. Of course.
Cam led Hunter through the exit door to the elevator.
It took a while for anyone to notice that the happy couple had slipped away.
CAMDEN SNOW WAS LAUGHING too hard to protest when Hunt surprised him outside the door to the townhouse by throwing Cam over his shoulder and carrying him across the threshold.
“I was gonna do that!” Cam gasped when Hunt dropped him on his feet.
“You’re the bride, remember?” Hunter paused and pressed himself into his husband and kissed him long and well.
“C’mon,” Cam said and led Hunter, not into the bedroom, but through their new place. It was masculine without being dark, with lots of good, deep red, accented with warm beiges and midnight blues. He’d gotten rid of all curtains at Hunter’s suggestion and replaced them with vertical blinds.
The kitchen counter, now accompanied by three beige leather counter chairs, was set for breakfast already.
“The dishes are red!” Hunter exclaimed with a kind of childish glee, lifting one of the heavy Italian-made stoneware plates.
“We aim to please,” Cam told him.
Hunt touched the plate and saw his finger reflected in the glass-smooth virgin surface. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“You bought the rings,” Cam said.
“That was for us. You bought a townhouse and filled it with things I like. Because I like them.”
“The townhouse is for us.” Cam’s brows pulled together. “I don’t understand.”
Hunt pulled his hand away from the plate. “You did everything. Planned everything. Made all the decisions.”
“And you let me. Which is what you gave me.” Cam saw it was Hunter who didn’t understand. “C’mon.”
Cam led him through a door at the end of the dining room that opened onto a short hallway with several ceiling-high closets. Beyond, they entered a dark room.
Hunter could only see vague shapes and realized the blinds were drawn all along one wall. Cam had him by the hand, and Hunt felt him feel for the wall. But he didn’t turn on the lights.
“It’s my studio. Or it will be when I get this moved out that I wasn’t going to show you until the show. But… Okay, try to not freak out.” He flipped the switch.
It was him.
Everywhere.
Shocked, Hunter wandered forward.
Bronzes on stone plinths. Huge canvases in muted colors with deep contrasting shadows. Charcoals. A pen and ink series of eight-by-eight panels—bits of him. Three-quarter profile of part of his eyebrow and cheekbone, looking away, eyelashes and the curved partial horizon of his eye—somehow translucent in ink, a coruscation of light off the iris.
On an unfinished wood pillar, the last piece he’d posed for with the ropes. Head back, eyes open, tears running, body straining. The figure seemed to be gasping for air and he felt if he touched it, it would be warm and alive. His eyes moved down along the body and legs to the title carved into the plinth: Courage.
“You gave me everything,” Cam said quietly. “On this day, a year ago.”
Cam touched his lips to Hunter's ear, again. He spoke without force. "There are no limits. You have no safeword. You do nothing I do not order. I don't stop until I'm done."
He waited, but Hunter made no movement or protest. Cam pressed the dark head into the hollow of his shoulder.
"You have one chance to walk away. Once I restrain you, nothing and no one can or will rescue you. I am all there is." Cam released him. "Straighten up."
Hunter obeyed, and Cam pulled an adjustable yoke from his bag. He put it together in front of Hunter, wanting him to see, to anticipate his helplessness.
"Lower your head." Cam lifted the yoke and passed it over Hunter's bowed head, laying it across his shoulders. He kept his hands on it. "Look at me."
Hunter Dane obeyed.
"You can duck down and out from under the yoke and it's over. Or, raise your hands and grab the bar at the wrist restraints. Once I attach them, we're through the gate. Do you understand?"
Hunter's arms were moving before Cam finished speaking. He grabbed the bar, moved his hands apart until he felt the restraints. And stilled.
Cam controlled his breathing, walked around his willing captive, carefully not limping. He wondered if his cock would literally split the denim wide open. The longer he’d spoken words meant to warn and heighten anxiety, the calmer Hunter had become. The man was intoxicating. This man.
No one had ever done what Hunter Dane had just done. Everyone hesitated. Every. One. Cam realized the surrender, as he thought of it, was something Hunter Dane had hungered for. As much as I’ve hungered for him.
For the first time, Cam felt he wasn't alone, doing to. Instead, a kind of equality had been established. Not a sub topping from the bottom, but a supplicant as powerful in his choice to yield as Cam was in his duty to decide and execute.
“You let me. You gave me everything. So I can be myself. All of myself.”
Neither could have said who moved first. They were in each other’s arms, hands on each other’s faces and in each other’s hair, greedily devouring each other with their eyes.
Cam grabbed Hunter’s hand and dragged him out of the room. “I think the honeymoon portion of the program is about to begin.”
INSIDE THE BEDROOM, Cam walked into his closet and Hunter tried to follow. Cam pushed him back and pointed. “Yours is over there.”
“I have my own walk-in closet?” He went past the bathroom door to another door he hadn’t noticed the first time he’d been there. There’d probably been boxes piled in front of it.
“You do. The bathroom’s a lot smaller here, but I have a guy who says he can expand the shower,” Cam called from his own closet. He stuck his head out long enough to say, “I want you naked.”
“We aim to please,” came the semi-muffled reply.
Hunt met Cam in the bathroom where he was brushing his teeth at one of the twin sinks. Hunter opened a drawer, expecting to find the four ounce bulb syringes Cam always kept stocked.
Cam put a hand over his. “Bottom drawer. And you don’t need that tonight.” He wiped his mouth and rinsed his brush. “Meet me in bed.”
A DRAFT OF COLD air across his nude body told Hunter Cam had cracked a window. He did love to sleep in a cold room in a cozy bed next to Hunt. Hunter had learned to love it, too. Cam’s body radiated heat like a Franklin stove.
Right now, most of that body was hidden under the comforter of the big bed,
much like the one in the A-frame. It was king-sized, soft on top and firm underneath.
There were still two night tables and two small lamps. Cam lay in a warm pool of light, propped on pillows, arms crossed behind his head, enjoying the sight of his new husband moving toward him.
Cam threw back the duvet and the sheet, inviting Hunter in and immediately wrapped him in his arms and snuggled them together face-to-face on their sides.
“How’d the test go?”
Hunt cocked an eyebrow at him. “The test?”
“The test.”
“Fine. I passed. There were maybe twenty or so. I’ll be in the top three.”
“Confidence is very hot.” Cam pressed his hips forward until his cock found Hunt’s. He grinned at how short that distance was, as they were both already erect. He pulled Hunt hard against himself, their legs tangled. Hunt shifted, dragging his sac back, settling down against Cam’s thigh.
Taking a fistful of hair to anchor Hunter, Cam used his lips and tongue and teeth over Hunt’s mouth and jaw and neck. “I wanted to jump you all damn day,” he growled. “I almost dragged you under the buffet table. We need to go more places where you get dressed up.”
Hunter took Cam’s lower lip between his teeth and sucked gently. “Most of those places don’t have buffet tables.”
Cam rolled Hunt onto his back, grinding heat against heat. Both hands in Hunter’s hair, Cam opened Hunt’s mouth with his own, sucking his tongue, swallowing his moans, relishing every flex of hip and clutch at his hips. Breaking away, Cam reached into the night table drawer for a lube packet. He rolled them back onto their sides.
Hunter eyed the single lube packet. There were no toys or restraints in evidence, either.
“I have a plan,” Cam told him, reading his look.
“I’m sure you do.”
“Hand.”
Hunter held out a hand palm up and Cam divided the lube between them. He wrapped Hunt’s hardness in his strong fingers, and Hunter followed, holding Cam tightly. Cam did love to be held so very tightly.
“Look at me, Hunter Dane.”
“Yes, Cam.”
And so they lay, gazes locked, relishing the feel of themselves and each other sliding through one another’s hands—touching, knowing, needing and giving, deepening and intensifying—until Hunter felt the flood of Cam’s heat over the inside of his wrist that released him, also. And their mouths found each other again.
