by Ella James
“Stay here.” I press a kiss against his cheek.
Then I hurry to the kitchen, fetching a large Ziploc bag of frozen applesauce, two dish towels, a thin, silk tablecloth, some Advil, and a glass of tea with a straw.
His eyes are keen on my face as I drape the dish towels over his shoulder, meld the Ziploc over them, and use the table cloth to wrap the cold compress in place. He swallows water, downs the Advil, shuts his eyes.
“You’re water first, eh?”
His lips twitch at the corners. “Yeah.” His eyes lift open to give me a small smile, and that smile gives me courage to nestle in against his left shoulder.
Truth be told, I remain humiliated by my drunken proclamation. By his silence in response. Had he not said he loved me right after, I’d be drowning in the depthless sea of my own shame. As it is, I’d simply like to move beyond it—until it’s closer to time.
“How was Mark and Maura’s house?” I whisper.
“Wet.”
“Sounds like quite a headache.”
“Yeah. It kind of was. I was glad I could help, though.”
We lie in silence for a long while, and I feel compelled to address my gaffe. It’s important to me that he knows I’d never want him to feel obligated to me. I squeeze my eyes shut, exhale slowly. “I’m sorry if I worried you with what I said…when I was out of sorts. I’ve no expectation of you. In any way. Never feel I do, please.”
I wait a breathless moment for his reply. Then I realize…he’s dropped off to sleep.
I try to sync my breaths with his long, steady ones for quite some time. No matter how I alter my breathing, it seems I always come up a bit short.
I awaken the next morning to an empty bed. I find Declan in the living room, wearing only boxer briefs as he knits on the couch. My eyes move over what he’s making: something teal and muted lime green.
“Is it a scarf?” I inquire.
He lifts his brows.
“You thumbed through my pattern book.” I smile as I take a seat beside him. “What a fast learner you are.”
I run my gaze over his face and find his eyes are sporting tired smudges below. A glance about him reveals an empty mug at his feet. That’s my recent gauge of his anxiety.
“You didn’t sleep well?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m sorry.”
I pull a blanket over myself and curl up against his side. I’m relieved when he sets the knitting aside and hooks one of his long, strong legs around me. He pulls me so I’m lying with my cheek against his chest and wraps his arms around me.
“You’re so warm,” I murmur.
“You are.” Now his legs are locked around me. I giggle. We do love a leg hug. Then he shifts a bit, and I feel his sex pressed against my thigh. It’s so long. So thick and hard. I feel a clenching sensation between my legs as I reach down and wrap my hand around him.
His hips shift. I giggle wickedly.
In times past, we would make love here on the couch. He would cup my backside, keeping me from sinking into the cushions. This time, when we’ve worked each other to a fervor, he carries me back to the bedroom, where he positions me the way he likes me.
This time, he crawls between my legs, licking me until I sag over his face. I find my release screaming his name. Then when I think my legs can hold my weight, I get on all fours and wiggle my rear for him.
It does feel good this way. I don’t mind the oddness of it. I don’t want to ask him why the change. If this is what he likes, and I enjoy it, too, what does it matter? Perhaps the bit I don’t know is this is the best position once you’re stretched and flexible enough to try it.
This time, when he grabs my hair, it’s pulled into a ponytail. When he yanks, it doesn’t hurt quite as acutely. After a moment, I find I’m not throbbing at my scalp, but in between my legs.
Afterward, as he presses a towel over me, I whisper, “That was excellent.”
He grins. “Good.”
He showers shortly after that, not telling me until he emerges with a towel tucked about his waist that there’s a men’s baseball social this morning.
“I didn’t know.”
“I should have mentioned it,” he says. “I just figured you’d heard.”
“It’s true it often works that way.” I grab a shirt and pull it over my head. “That sounds reasonably bearable.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “What an introvert.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I’ll be glad to frolic about in the field with Baby. I’ve got an old kite I’d like to try.”
He laughs at that. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
He steps closer after pulling on his boxer briefs. He runs his finger over my breast, tweaking my nipple. “You look like I want to get back in bed.”
I wave my hand. “Go pursue your sport.” I scoff teasingly at the last word, prompting his dimpled smile. “And don’t speak of me. Remember we’re the Catholic sort, despite some of the men’s foul mouths. And although you’re a gorgeous, charming sports star, you’re an outsider. What we’re doing would be beyond frowned upon. I could suffer for it.”
His face tenses, and he runs a hand back through his hair.
“It’s not hand-worthy.”
“What?” He smiles a little, bringing out a dimple again.
“Don’t go grabbing at your hair, Carnegie. Just don’t speak of me. And hurry back.”
As it happens, he’s gone until near four o’clock. He returns with a nice, sloppy grin and heavy eyelids, reeking of liquor and cigarettes, craving my body. He throws two blankets on the living room floor and urges me onto my hands and knees. Then he lies on his back below me, suckling my breasts until I’m so wet between my legs, I’ve started trembling with the need for release.
“I can’t take it…” I laugh, a soft quaver.
Declan shifts his lower body so he’s lying directly beneath me. Then he unfastens his pants and lowers me atop him, rubbing his sex against mine through my panties till he’s groaning and I’m clawing at him.
I feel him palm his sex. “Ah, hell. I need a condom.”
I reach down and smile to find his steel-hard sex is weeping. “I adore this.” I paint the illicit slickness down his vein-striped shaft, making him rumble low in his throat. Then I drag a fingertip over his taut balls.
“Ohh, fuck…”
I smirk as I reach atop the coffee table, where I stashed a condom in a bowl. Declan’s jaw is taut, his eyes aglow with desire as I roll it over him.
“Someone’s randy when he drinks.”
I squeeze his thick tip, and he groans as if my touch is torture. I do it again. This time, he whimpers.
“Sit on my dick.” His eyelids slit open as I cup his balls. “Please…ride me.”
He’s so stiff, his condom-covered sex is lying near-flat on his chiseled belly. I pull it away, wrapping a hand partway around the base, and he groans loudly.
“Oh fuck. Finley, please. I wanna be inside you.”
I climb over him, my own sex piqued and dripping. I take just his tip inside. My legs tremble with need to stuff myself until I’m stretching.
“Oh God. Fucking hell, Finny.”
I sink slowly down atop him till I’m so full, for a moment I can’t get my legs to hold me.
He thrusts. “Oh fuck. I love you.”
Then he flips me over, thrusting with such force, he has to hold onto my arms to keep me locked in place beneath him.
Ten
Finley
For the first time in a week or two, we climb into the tub together after. I rub his feet, marveling at his flawless arches as he reclines with bubbles kissing his pecs and his head against the tub’s rim.
“This is how I found you—loafing, you’ll recall.”
I see a flash of dimples before he’s panting as I tour the pressure points on his foot.
Afterward, he gives me back as good as he got, rubbing my feet as I perch on the bed
’s edge, wrapped in a towel and a blanket. He’s kneeling on the rug, and Baby’s looking at us both. I can’t help laughing.
“Do you want to throw something? Er, pottery…” I laugh.
He stands, looking tired. “How about I watch you?”
“Of course. If you’d like to.”
A while later, I cast a glance from my hands to his face and find he’s nodded off, standing with his broad back against the home’s external wall. His cheek is on his shoulder.
“Declan,” I whisper. His eyes peel open.
“Dearest. Go inside and rest.”
When I finish, though, I find him knitting on the couch.
“Who is it for?” I inquire coyly.
“Who do you think?” I can’t see his eyes. They’re focused on his hands and my bamboo needles.
“For Baby?”
He snorts. “She’s got a built-in wool scarf.”
“Could it be…me?”
He glances up for a moment, his lovely lips pursed in mock mysteriousness. I kiss his forehead and go wash my hands.
He’s quiet for the next few hours. Markedly so. I read a bit as he knits. The scarf is completed as I dress for Saturday sewing. He puts it on with gentle hands, running his fingers through my hair as he looks down at me.
“Does it suit me?” I murmur.
“I think it does.”
We share a simple kiss, and he helps me into my coat. I toss a spare pair of needles into my yarn-stuffed shoulder bag, and then I’m off, walking quickly to outpace the melancholy that’s begun to bear down on me at odd moments.
His ship departs in near two weeks…
I remember, as I take an odd, out-of-the-way trail into the village, that Saturday night means I can’t return to him. My chest aches at the prospect, but there’s nothing I can do. On Sunday mornings, everyone is going to and from church. Were I to walk down from Gammy’s, I’d be noticed in an instant.
My heart is heavy as I enter the post office through the unlocked front door. On Saturday evenings, the packaging room doubles as our sewing spot. I find Holly, Anna, Dot, Rachel, and Blair sitting in a row of rocking chairs that make us all feel geriatric.
“Fancy you should join us.” Holly looks up from her cross-stitch.
I glance at them, each one looking down at their hands. “Meaning?”
Dot sighs. “We all knocked all afternoon, trying to tell you we’d be starting early.”
My gut clenches.
“It’s Aunt Bea’s birthday,” Anna offers.
“So it is.” My words are soft and slow. My heart is pounding.
“Where were you?” Holly’s voice is snippy.
I take my seat in the smallest, creakiest rocker. I can scarcely breathe as I say, “On the slopes.”
“Did you have business with the sheep?” Blair asks as I bring my yarn out.
“Rain may be coming. Someone had to redirect a problematic gulch. Who better than me?” I roll my eyes as if it’s quite the headache.
“I hadn’t heard that,” Dot says.
“Checked the forecast.” I say a silent—automatic—prayer of thanksgiving when no one contradicts me.
Soon we’re comfortably lost in our gossip. Blair’s much younger brother, Randy, bit her calf when she stepped on his favorite Hotwheels car. She shows the bruise, and I fuss over it. Anna confides that Freddy’s mother Sheila encouraged her to poke a hole in Freddy’s condoms.
“It’s Lord God’s way,” Anna quotes. “Can you imagine? The Lord favors lying?”
We all shake our heads. Those liars, headed right to hell.
“Wee Kayti’s still so young, and…it’s a risk each time,” Blair says quietly.
Here on Tristan, pregnancy is never underrated for its risk.
Before too long, Holly starts fishing for Declan information. When no one offers any, she bemoans his disappearance from the bar. It’s a bit of work for me to keep from smirking like a twit.
Then Dot reveals she got a kiss from Rob Glass, and there’s the evening. Rob is nearly old enough to be her father.
“Thirty-eight,” she whispers, her high cheekbones staining red, and Anna nearly falls from her chair. Holly shrieks, which startles Blair, who drops her penguin cross-stitch. Rachel slaps a palm over her mouth.
“He is perhaps a bit handsome,” Blair whispers. But her eyes are bulging; I can see she thinks it’s mad.
Dot is quite demure at first, but then she brings us up to speed. They’ve been spending time together for three weeks. By evening’s end, Holly’s naming Dot’s unborns, and Anna’s doling out cupid advice. (“If he kisses your lips and slips his tongue in, don’t attempt to duel him. You’ll both choke!”)
As we slip out into the foggy night, I see Dot hug Holly. They walk off that way—and I suspect I know why. Holly’s feeling left out…as she does.
Anna walks me partway to the clinic residence, our breath staining the night in puffs of white. Before she turns toward her house, she stops mid-step.
“Wait—I had an odd thought. Where is Baby?” She tilts her head, as if perhaps Baby will materialize. “Did you put her back out with the others?”
“No.” I give what I instantly realize sounds like an uneasy laugh.
“Well where’s she gone to?” Anna laughs, too.
“Funny story, actually. The Carnegie has her.”
“Does he then?”
I nod. “Quite the fluffin lover. Perhaps a bit lonely as well.”
Anna gives an odd laugh as she turns to go. “Fancy that.”
As soon as I get into the residence, I call Declan and stand by the counter for an hour with the phone’s cord twirled about my finger. He doesn’t say much but that he’s feeling a bit poorly. I regale him with tales of my night, and then I offer to come to him. I could sneak back to the village for tomorrow morning’s mass if I departed quite a lot before sunup.
“Nah. It’s okay.” But he’s quiet, and my heart tugs a bit when we hang up the phone.
I call back after a hot shower. His voice is gruff when he answers.
“Were you sleeping?”
He snorts, and I shake my head. “Take your tincture and drink your tea, Carnegie.”
He chuckles—and I note he doesn’t promise he will. Silence spins across the line.
“You okay?” he asks.
I give a small sigh. “I miss you.” It’s the fourth Saturday since I realized I need to stay away if I want to attend mass on Sunday morning. It’s important that I engineer perception, but it feels so horrid—being separated. It makes me think of July. When I do, I feel near frantic with fear and confusion.
He interrupts my musings with a husky whisper: “What part of you misses me?”
I close my eyes and lean against the counter and confess my craving. He whispers a wicked incantation. Till I’m on the floor. Till I’m shameless, with my hand between my legs. He says he’s touching his sex as well. My flesh throbs with envy.
Declan
I lie in bed until I can’t keep lying there. Then I put on boots and a jacket, fill a thermos with some of that tea. As I’m going out the front door, Baby darts up out of nowhere.
I crouch down to rub her head. “You wanna go?”
She presses her warm, fuzzy self against my legs. I swallow hard. “Okay.”
I know she’s an ewe, and sheep are great on rocks, but I feel weird about taking her up somewhere with such an epic drop-off. I tie a rope around the collar Finley made her and use that as a leash. I’m pretty sure Baby thinks I’m nuts, because as we follow the trail up to the plateau, she keeps looking back at me.
“I’m sorry.” My throat’s so tight, it sounds raspy.
I’m glad Finley isn’t here tonight. I’m grateful for church, just this once. I’m fucked up today. Just woke up feeling…dark. Then at baseball, some guy slapped me on the back, right near my neck. I spun on him. Went to grab his collar, but I stopped myself in time. I think the mayor saw it go down, though.
; Afterward, Freddy invited me to get some beers down at the bar. People kept buying me bottles to say thanks for coaching them, and I kept putting them away.
I said sorry to back-slap guy as I took off, and we shook hands, so I think it’s all good now.
I can feel how drinking the beer wasn’t good, though. Since I’ve sobered up, I feel like I’ve sunk a little lower than before the bar. It’s that real bad, heavy, anxious, apathetic feeling. Fucking mess.
I stop at the back edge of the plateau. Hold my breath and then release it. It’s darker tonight. Darker than the last time I was up here. I sit down beside some bushes, draw my legs up to my chest. Baby—fuck, she’s such a good girl. She sits right beside me…like she knows. I want to hug her, but I’m sort of scared I’ll hurt her. I wrap an arm around my knees and try to smooth my breathing out.
“I’m the princess, you’re the prince.”
I’m not. I’m not the prince. That’s why I called my agent earlier…before I got in bed. Told him what happened with the taper meds and asked if he could get me out of here early.
There’s a ship coming—right now. The Celia. Left from Cape Town yesterday, will be here the night of the twentieth. She’s a research vessel. Not too many people on board. I’ve got a ride back on her, departing the twenty-first.
“It’s too much for someone like me. Because you’re leaving, see? And I’ll be here without you. And I know how that works out, you see. It doesn’t work out pretty.”
With steady hands, I untie Baby’s leash and stand up. Walk slowly across the plateau. I hear myself swallow, louder than the tide. It’s pretty calm tonight, and quiet. No sunlight to turn the squiggle of the waves above me golden. But it’s nice and dark. And peaceful.
She would never get over it.
You’d drown, like her parents.
Those thoughts make me feel like I should really do it.
Take yourself out. Piece of shit. If you can’t do this right, you can’t do anything. You already failed at living real life every time you tried.
