Vision Quest (3 page)

"Told you. Here for you."

The words played through Arik's mind like a song being whispered by unseen, unknown spirits through treetops. And he answered them, albeit it in silence:
well, now, that's probably a whole lot of foolish.

A prick of sweat lifted the hairs on the back of Arik's neck. One ... he told himself. Two. Three. But before he was granted the liberty to continue the journey of his mind's eye, Blaze countered with speech.

"You do far too much communicating with yourself than you do out loud. That seems ..." Blaze paused, considered, "pointless."

Arik lifted the coffee to his lips in an effort to hide a grin. He tried to tell himself that the brew needed a touch more sugar, and knew it was a lie. It was perfect. As though Blaze had counted the granules, and weighed them with scientific accuracy against the preferences of Arik's tongue.

Fascinating.

"Did you sleep well?" Arik asked, his eyes drifting to the clock that hung on the wall behind the counter.

Senses sharpened to the movement of the arms of the piece, the incessant click, click, click that monitored the passing seconds and turned them into moments. And his head took him to places long gone and instances passed, while his father drew on his cigarette and forced Arik's chin to wherever it needed to be in order to make Arik's eyes follow,
"Are you watching? Arik? Are you really, really watching?"

"Segue?" Blaze's voice forced Arik's attention back. "Or attempt at distraction?"

He felt a frown crease his forehead and caught Blaze's gaze. "Casual conversation."

"For what purpose?"

Arik's expression softened with a smile, and he caught all other thoughts together, drawing them by the ends of their reins into his fist and tying them to the side. Out of the way. Kept, for future reference and consideration, but contained for the time being. He had a beautiful man in front of him. A man who, apparently, had a skill for tweaking caffeine into the perfect elixir, and an obvious interest in Arik's ... something. That's where his focus needed to be. That was, at least, where he was damn well going to put it. Regardless of advancing clocks or possible theories on time and place.

"Let's just say that I want to get to know you." Arik lowered his eyes to the bag on the floor of the coffee shop. "Is that your luggage?"

He registered Blaze's nod, considered the brevity of the gesture, and felt his attention get drawn back to it. "So are you local then?"

As Arik had packed, his expectations had been for three days. One to arrive, one to scope, and one to make good on whatever the hell he'd been led there for. Even with that limited duration, his suitcase was twice the size of Blaze's bag, and had been shoved so full that Arik had to force the clasp.

"No," Blaze shook his head to match movement to word. "I travel light."

While his lips twitched into a grin, Arik reacquired Blaze's eyes with his own. "Damn. Here I thought maybe that bag of yours would be full of the kinds of things a person just felt too self-conscious to leave in his room. Guess it's probably just clothing, then?"

"Would you like it to be?" Blaze asked, the quip of his tone lightening the cryptic nature of his reply.

"Full of clothing?" Arik asked innocently, drawing out the game.

He felt the connection of Blaze's eyes with his skin. Once again long, slim fingers lifted, tripped up the length of Arik's forearm, and God-be-damned and Christ-almighty, but Arik would have sworn he felt a charge leap from digit to limb. Clarity sharpened, like something was tuning the focus in Arik's brain. "What are you doing here, Blaze?"

Blaze paused. Pressure suggested the contemplation of disconnection, but something must have made Blaze reconsider because, instead, Blaze laid his palm flat on Arik's arm and wrapped his fingers around the muscle. His voice was slow and careful when he spoke. "Should I know that answer any more than you do?"

Something creepy and unwelcome slithered down Arik's spine. "I know why I'm here, Blaze. I'm here to soothe a petulant customer and convince him that it's way too late in life to start thinking about modifying his retirement visions."

Blaze tilted his head. "Are you now?" He didn't give Arik a chance to reiterate. "That sounds like something that could be easily done by telephone or web conference."

Arik shook his head. "No. Not this time. This was—"

"Different," Blaze finished for him.

Tension shouldn't have been tightening the otherwise broad expanse between Arik's shoulders. There was no reason whatsoever that his stomach should twist. More than anything, however, there was no justification for the warning that hinted Arik should be very, very careful. Of course, that particular nuance could have had more to do with history than any instinct serving self-preservation.

Arik tried again. "Not so much different. More like, well ... I needed—"

"To be here." Blaze nodded, blue eyes trained on Arik's. His expression was intense, direct, and though it spoke of decades, centuries—millennia even—of hard-learned secrets, it was honest. "You needed to be here."

There wasn't anything Arik could think of to say. Instead, he parroted it back. "Yes. I needed to be here."

"Do you know why?"

Arik shook his head. He answered with what he thought was the obvious expectation. "To meet you?"

Blaze leaned back, took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. "Do you think so?"

"If I could answer that, I wouldn't have phrased my reply in the form of a question." Arik's smile took the edge off his comment. At least, he hoped it did. Because 'fascinating' was quickly turning into 'frustrating.'

"To be honest, I think you might know more than you're saying, Blaze. You caught my eye in the lobby. You spoke to me in the elevator. And you had to have been watching for me in the hallway. Unless you have some kind of mystical way of just knowing ..." Arik let his words drift when the corner of Blaze's lips twitched into amused. "Actually, do me a favour and don't answer that."

"I won't," Blaze grinned. "Besides, I have this overwhelming urge to start quoting sayings about kettles and pots and the spoken blackness thereof."

Arik lifted an eyebrow and pursed his lips. "So tell me something, Blaze." He paused until Blaze was driven to raise one hand, palm up, fingers wide and ask him to continue with sight alone. "Would you care to go for a drive?"

"Sure," Blaze said, finishing the last dregs of his coffee. Arik seemed to be making up his mind whether or not he was happy about Blaze's easy acceptance. Blaze tossed his empty cup into the trash. "Taxi?"

 "Rental," Arik said, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a key ring with a plastic tag.

 "Cool." Blaze scooped up his bag and slung the strap across his chest. "You drive."

 "I was planning on it," Arik mumbled, mostly to himself, Blaze thought, and Blaze followed Arik out of the shop and into the hotel proper. Guests and staff milled about, their strides and stances screaming of self-importance. Arik held the door for Blaze, who smiled his thanks, and Arik pointed to the parking garage next to the hotel.

 "Lead on," Blaze said over the sound of horns honking and traffic steadily rolling past the hotel on the busy downtown street. The row of buildings narrowed the sky above to a slim strip of blue. Cloudless, haze-less, a gorgeous day in the making, not too hot and not too cold; perfect early autumn weather.

 A group of businessmen split and streamed around Arik and Blaze like a school of fish around a rock, and Blaze instinctively grabbed his long t-shirt sleeves, tucked his hands into them, and put his hands into his pockets. Arik glanced over his shoulder to check that Blaze was there, and then hurried across the street while the light was still flashing. Blaze jogged along, watching the movement of Arik's slacks across Arik's ass, and the way Arik's upper body worked with the swing of Arik's muscular arms, and Blaze cobbled together what he knew.

 The first dream had been the city's skyline, moon above and lights below ...

The sign read Davenport Conference Center, and it was next to a fountain set in a downtown street sidewalk. A man wearing comfortable clothes walked out of a shadowy parking structure and disappeared into the grand front entrance of the hotel, rolling a carry-on bag behind him.

... the second dream was all Arik ...

Hands opened a suitcase, hung a suit in the hotel closet. A razor sliced in careful rows across stubble on cheeks. A fork lifted a bite of food to a well-shaped mouth. A pair of eyes crinkled with laugh lines at the corners. Comb in dark hair, socks on feet, and a full image of irritated exhaustion, a credit card sliding across a counter.

... the third dream left Blaze breathless ...

Flush on cheeks, parting lips, gritting teeth, sweat rolling down the center of a wide back ... A low moan, a whisper of a name ... A turn of a head, out of rhythm and out of time, seeking out Blaze who watched ... a whisper ... again ... Blaze's name ... beckoning ... inviting. And skin rolled over the top of a hard cock, a flat stomach heaving as release sprinkled a kempt patch of pubic hair and the jut of a hipbone.

... the fourth dream had been on the train coming into the city ...

Room numbers 1107 and 1143.

The blond man, the sad eyes, the cigarette, Blaze in bed ... A phrase, SINS OF THE FATHER, and the top of a flyer jutting out from a book. The flyer had been from a church, perhaps, the scrawling single word the only color in the black and white dream:

BELIEVE.

And then, just before they left, a cell phone, a steering wheel, and carnival music. Rarely did Blaze have so damned little to work with, but he'd done more with less and managed to pay his dues on time.

 Arik lead Blaze to a Chrysler 300 in an icy blue color. "Upgrade," Arik said, almost apologetically. The car chirped at them as though it was agreeing.

 "Nice," Blaze said, opening the back door, tossing in his bag, and climbing in to settle in the front seat. "So where we headed?" Blaze fastened his belt.

 "I've got a client meeting at half past ten," Arik replied, hooking a hand onto Blaze's seat and reversing out of the space.

 "You need backup?" Blaze teased.

Arik snorted. "Maybe. But you'd probably be more comfortable in the lobby of the building. It shouldn't take long."

 "And I'm to be your, what, assistant?"

 "God, no. I have one of those, and she doesn't travel with me, thank goodness." Arik weaved through the garage toward the ground floor exit.

 "Oh, then maybe the call boy who won't leave until you actually pay him?"

 "Oh, the people I'm meeting know I'd pay and pay well." Arik grinned slyly. "More like the call boy who won't leave because he can't get enough."

 "So I'm Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
? If I had a damned dime ..."

 Arik's laugh was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing though the car speakers. The dash lit up with INCOMING CALL and the number, and Arik hit a button on the steering wheel.

 "Good morning, Maria," Arik said.

 "He's rescheduling," said a weary female voice, presumably Maria's.

 "He's what?"

 "There's a good reason."

 "There had damned well better be."

 "Faulty gallbladder. He's in the hospital having it removed as we speak."

 Arik sighed, swung into an open handicapped space, and thumped his head against the seat. "Where does this put us?"

 "Well, Mr. Boss, and if you don't mind me saying so, Mr. Boss, as I know you won't, Mr. Boss—"

 "Maria."

 "—but there's really nothing on your plate that can't be pushed, and the man does need time to knit flesh, and he wants to reschedule for end of next week, which could allow you fly home, be a work-a-holic, and return, but I was thinking, Mr. Boss, that just maybe, if you wanted, of course, you might use this time to ..." Maria paused, and when she spoke again, her stage whisper was deafening, "... take a bloody vacation for once in your sad life."

 Arik glanced at Blaze. "Sure," Arik said.

 "... What?"

 "I said, 'sure.' Clear my calendar. I'll stay until he's out of the hospital and we can—"

 
"WHAT?"

 "—set up the appointment, again. I'll stay where I am for at least a couple more nights. Will phone if I want something more quaint—"

 "Who are you and what have you done with—"

 "—or anything else, for that matter. Lovely to chat, Maria, good-bye."

 "—sick? Near death experience? What the hell is—"

 Arik hit the button and burst into laughter. "Oh God, I've wanted to do that for years, but never thought I'd actually get the chance."

 Blaze waited until Arik quit giggling, unable to help himself from smiling at seeing Arik so momentarily amused. "So, you know what this means?"

 "Other than Maria is going to put salt in my coffee for a month after I get back, no, not really."

 "You've got the day free."

 Arik sobered and blinked adorably at Blaze. "I do, don't I?"

 "Don't worry, I have something we can do."

 "Mmm." Arik leaned across the seat and slipped a palm onto the back of Blaze's neck. Sparks flew, and Blaze heard the carnival music, again, but this time he saw ...

 Blaze was glad Arik kissed with his eyes closed, because Blaze's were open in shocked delight. He got lost in lips and tongue and taste for a few blissful moments, and nosed Arik's cheek when Arik broke the contact. Arik brought a hand up to his mouth, as though it tingled. Blaze wondered if Arik could feel the connection, too, and how interesting would that be, if Arik wasn't immune to the force that had brought them together.

"More of that, definitely," Blaze said. "But if you're still set on the idea of a drive, I think I have someplace we can go."

"We've already got a hotel," Arik pointed out, helpfully.

"What, you only fuck in beds?"

"I ..." Arik blinked. "What did you have in mind?"

Blaze sat back in his seat. "Head north on the Interstate, past the exit for the Parkway, and take the one for Manhurst."