The Sharks Create The Ocean
Daddy doesn’t argue with deep sea fishing. So when Audie announces plans to rent a house off the Outer Banks with his good friend Calhoun Chatterton and Calhoun’s friends, Henry and Jax, his father kicks him cash for the charter boat. Audie meets them at South of the Border, the sombrero-themed park on I-95. Calhoun bolts from Henry’s Mercedes SUV and runs at Audie, who pins him against the Porsche with a long, hard kiss. Finally turning, Audie sees dark-haired, linebacker-looking Henry Culliver smirking, and a freckled blonde he’s never met leaning on an enormous plaster alligator and tapping his foot.
“You trying to set some kind of record?” he asks, light blue eyes squinted in the Southern sun.
“Not really,” Audie says. “I’m Calhoun’s boyfriend, Audie Currell.”
“Kinda obvious. Jackson Littleton. Jax. I’m Henry’s, when he’s not threatening to break up with me.”
“You’d threaten to break up with yourself too, if you had to put up with such a smart fucking mouth,” Henry notes.
“Quit talking shit, Culliver.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Henry says affectionately.
“Can I ride in the Porsche now? Please?” Calhoun begs. “They’re playing nothing but punk.”
“Whatcha got?” Jax asks. He peers over Audie’s shoulder. “A 911 Carrera? Nice. That’s what I want.”
“Let’s get going,” Henry says. “We got a long drive yet.”
Henry and Jax follow Calhoun and Audie up I-95 to state road 64. Audie drives with his palm on Calhoun’s thigh, strong and long-muscled under his hand. Calhoun looks brown from all his time on Tybee. His hair whips behind him, three months longer than before, and Calhoun’s hair grows fast. Audie’s black curls fall more messily. “Straight shot to Nag’s Head and Jennette’s Pier from here,” Audie tells Calhoun. “You really never been?”
Calhoun shakes his head. “My dad doesn’t fish like yours,” he says over the wind and Beck’s Midnight Vultures.
“It’s only three hours out to the Gulf Stream. We can catch mahi-mahi and bigeyes and tuna and swordfish. I caught a white marlin once. We had to release it but we got pictures. Daddy was so goddamn proud.” Audie snorts. “One of the only fucking times.”
“I don’t get how you’ll go out in a boat but you won’t swim,” Calhoun says.
Audie looks straight at the road. “Sharks.” He shrugs.
“Why sharks?” Calhoun asks.
“Just sharks. You know, fear of sharks is supposed to be pretty much universal. Mine’s just amplified to phobia level.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Calhoun side-eye him between bites of licorice. Audie ignores it. “Oh, dude, I love this song,” he says, as Beck saves him and “Debra” comes on. He jacks it up.
The house has four bedrooms. Necessity: they’re allegedly four guys on a fishing trip, not two couples. Audie feels mildly disappointed he can’t immediately pin Calhoun against the wall inside. “Did you bring the Bluetooth speakers?” Calhoun asks.
“Yeah,” Audie says. “Why do we need them again?”
Henry and Jax have already disappeared.
“Wills, Henry’s twin? He said we’ll have to play music at like, eleven because Henry and Jax are so loud. He and his boyfriend Crispin say Nine Inch Nails works best.”
“Christ,” Audie says. He throws Calhoun a wicked grin and grabs his hand. “We can just give it right back then.”
Audie dropped the cash on the house, so Henry and Jax have tacitly ceded the master bedroom, an enormous affair with a private bath and huge glass doors leading to an ocean balcony. Calhoun throws them open to the Carolina night. The sound of waves rushes in.
“How do you want to do it?” Audie asks. He wraps around Calhoun and smells that delicious scent of licorice. Audie wants to tell him: on your knees. Suck me. Tell me how much you want fucked. But he hasn’t seen Calhoun in a few weeks. Audie wants to give him what he needs.
Calhoun looks up at him with those big eyes black in the darkness. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Audie nibbles on his neck.
“How we always — you know.” Calhoun buries his head in Audie’s neck, which means he’s embarrassed.
“Imma make this real easy,” Audie says, his breath hot in Calhoun’s ear. “You want me to pin you against that wall and fuck your tight ass, or you want me to lay you down in that bed and cuddle you while we do it?”
Calhoun burrows into him. “Whatever you want, Audie,” he says.
Sometimes, “whatever you want, Audie” is no goddamn help.
“Calhoun,” Audie says, making his voice low and drawn-out, “you tell me if you want fucked or you want me to cuddle with you. I know you want one or the other. Because either I’m gonna lay down, curl up and kiss you, or you’re gonna turn on those lights, strip for me while I play with my cock, and your knees are going to hit the fucking ground. Pick one.”
Audie feels Calhoun shiver. “The second,” he says.
“Aren’t you good,” Audie says into his ear. His cock hardens. “Aren’t you so good. Turn those fucking lights on and take your goddamn clothes off.”
From down the hall, a monologue begins low: fuck me, I want it hard, give it to me, fuck my tight ass. Audie and Calhoun meet each other’s eyes and burst out laughing.
“Well, that’s clearly Jax,” Calhoun says. “You got the Bluetooth?”
“Oh god, I’ve never had sex to music,” Audie says. He’ll just want to sing along.
“Ooooh, I always wanted to,” Calhoun says. He puts on Nine Inch Nails. “Can I not strip for you, Audie?” he asks sweetly. “This isn’t the right music. It’s better for this.”
Sweet Jesus, his knees hit the ground. He yanks down Audie’s shorts and boxers without unbuttoning and immediately takes in his whole cock.
Audie actually throws back his head and moans as Trent Reznor begins singing “Starf*ckers, Inc.” His hands tangle in Calhoun’s hair. Calhoun’s mouth feels warm and wet and he sucks hard, his lips tight, nuzzling the base of Audie’s cock, as if he can’t get enough of its scent. Ohgod. He pulls back slowly, wetting the shaft, then suckles at Audie’s head while he unbuttons his own shorts, deftly strips them, pops off and ditches his shirt. Audie can see his cock hard in the moonlight. Calhoun holds Audie and licks precum off his slit. “Lemme fuck your mouth,” Audie begs. “Lemme fuck your mouth, I’ll go so fast, please, please, Calhoun.”
Calhoun pops off again and looks up at him. “Of course you can,” he says, and takes all of Audie in again.
Oh fuck. Audie’s always wanted this.
He grabs a fistful of that long hair and guides Calhoun’s mouth over his cock. Audie goes slowly at first and lets him get used to it. Trent Reznor blares in the background, “Closer” now, and Audie sings it in his head while he moves Calhoun over him faster and faster. Oh fuck this is good, Calhoun’s mouth hot on him. Audie’ll go fast, especially when Calhoun sucks a finger quickly, slips it into his ass and presses that perfect spot. He strokes it the way he knows Audie likes, then cups his balls. Audie thrusts once, hard and fast, then comes deep down Calhoun’s throat.
“Let me suck you,” Audie says, breathing hard.
“No,” Calhoun says. “Wait and fuck me. It won’t take you long.”
“It’ll take me at least half an hour,” Audie argues. “And then it’ll take me forever to get off.”
“You worked the savage out,” Calhoun grins. “Now you can cuddle up with me.”
“Calhoun!” Audie switches on the light. “You said you didn’t want that right now, dammit!”
Calhoun shrugs. “I knew what you wanted. Come lay down with me.”
“I asked you what you wanted.” Calhoun flat-out lied.
“I wanted what you wanted.”
“No, you had a clear preference and you didn’t tell me what it was!” Audie glares at him. “There’s a fucking difference between playing a game and not telling the tru
th, Calhoun!”
“No, I wanted to make you happy!” Calhoun has that little line between his eyebrows.
“There’s a difference between making someone happy and doing something you don’t want to!”
“But I didn’t mind!”
“Yeah, you didn’t mind. It’s not like you wanted to do it. I’m gonna unload the car.” Audie slams off the music and stalks out. He and Calhoun never fight, and it feels like an ugly, clawing thing inside him. Calhoun didn’t really want to do that, Calhoun only did it because Audie wanted to. It sickens him, like he forced Calhoun somehow, muddled up consent in a fucked up, ugly way. He clicks open the Porsche before he notices Jax leaning against one of the wooden pillars, his cigarette a glowing red cherry.
“Can I bum one of those?” Audie asks. Audie almost never smokes: maybe sometimes when he goes out to bars with his best friend Justin, or once in a while on his dorm’s back porch when he gets really drunk.
Jax wordlessly tips the pack at him. Audie taps one out — a Parliament Light — clicks the lighter and sucks. It tastes bad; the smoke burns but good going down. He exhales through his nostrils, like a dragon. He always liked doing that.
“Nine Inch Nails, huh? You talking to Wills?”
Audie sort of grins. “You mean Henry’s brother? He told Calhoun y’all fucked loud. He was right.” He leans against another pillar.
“Wills always plays Nine Inch Nails. I think it’s sort of a fuck you because his boyfriend’s back in Savannah most of the time.”
“Sucks for him.”
“Yeah, hear it sucks for you too, Calhoun in Charleston and you in what, Columbia?”
“Yeah,” Audie says stiffly, and turns partly away from Jax. He doesn’t want to talk about Calhoun right now.
Jax sort of looks at him over the orange cigarette glow. “What happened with you?”
“You’ve got no fucking idea,” Audie snorts. He’s not unloading that fight on anyone, let alone a stranger, so the overstatement will take attention off it.
“Son, I think I know a little something about fucked up,” Jax says.
“Uh-huh. You’re fucking the captain of the goddamn football team,” he snarks, because he’s in the mood to fight. “You gonna tell me you got a damn thing wrong with you?”
“And you’re fucking the head cheerleader, with your floppy curls and your Low Country accent. You gonna act like you’re damaged goods? Hear you got the biggest house on South Battery.” He pauses. “And Wills was captain of the football team, not Henry.”
This is starting to get too nasty and hit too close. “This is a little maudlin for a post-sex smoke,” Audie comments, trying desperately to detour.
“What is it with you then?” Jax presses. “If you fucking insist it’s something.”
“There is always something,” Audie says, half to himself.
“Robert Penn Warren, All The King’s Men.”
Audie takes a long look at the freckled blond smoking in the dark.
“What, you thought because I’m a smart-ass I can’t read a fucking book?” Jax asks.
“You know Southern lit?”
“I’m a English major with a specialty in Southern poetry.” Jax drags on his cigarette.
“I got James Dickey tattooed on my chest,” Audie says.
“Which one?”
“‘There is still time to live on a breath made of nothing but the whole night.’”
“‘Falling.’ Nice. So what fucked you up, Dickey fan?”
“‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad,’” Audie says.
“Phillip Larkin, ‘This Be The Verse,’” Jax says, naming the poet Audie’s quoting.
“What about you?” Audie asks. “If you’re so fucked up yourself.”
“‘These are the true religious/ the purists, the pros, the ones who will not/ accept a false Messiah/ love the priest instead of the God,’” Jax says.
“Sharon Oulds, ‘Sex Without Love,’” Audie replies. Jax means he fucked a lot of people. A lot. He pauses, then asks, “Does Henry know?”
“Some of it. Does Calhoun?”
“Some of it.”
They stand quietly and smoke in the dark. Jax must be hurt by the way he talks around it. They can both say everything without saying anything at all: someone else’s words can speak their piece instead. It’s easier that way. Audie knows it, and Jax must know it, and that knowing carries them further into friendship than they probably would have ventured.
“Well,” Audie says finally, “You know what they say about ‘darkness on my back’ and all that.”
Jax is quiet for a while.
“All right, goddammit,” he says. “You got me. Who is it?”
“That’s Johnny fucking Cash, son,” Audie drawls. He stubs out his cigarette. “Help me carry this shit inside.”
Jax shakes his head. “You bastard, I was racking my fucking brain.”
Audie laughs.
Jax comes into the master bedroom with him. Calhoun, thank God, is wearing clothes. Audie hadn’t thought of that until he opened the door. “Oh, hey Audie, hey Jax,” he says, like nothing’s wrong. “Thanks for helping Audie carry his stuff in.”
“Had to help him out of ‘love’s sweet charity,’” Jax replies.
“Whitesnake,” Audie says. “‘Here I Go Again.’ One up on you, bitch.”
“Goddammit,” Jax curses and disappears.
“What was that about?” Calhoun asks.
“Nothing,” Audie says stiffly. “Just a thing.”
“Audie,” Calhoun starts.
“You lied,” Audie hisses. He doesn’t want Henry or Jax to hear. “You lied. How do you think I feel? I fucked your mouth.”
“Audie, c’mere,” Calhoun says. “Let’s start over.”
“No,” Audie says.
“What do you mean, no?” Audie hears the carefulness in Calhoun’s voice. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t trust you to tell me the truth,” Audie says. “I can’t do things like that unless I can trust you to tell me the truth about it. I’ll always be worried and always be wondering and I just can’t do it.”
“Audie.” Calhoun sounds tired. “It’s not like I was faking it.”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t, honey. I wanted to do something for you.”
“That you didn’t want to do.” Audie feels dirty. He wants to shower. He will never again do what they did or think about it. Calhoun just ruined it for him. His mind shies away from even naming it. “I’m going to go sleep in one of the other bedrooms. I just had Jax carry my stuff in here so it didn’t look weird.” Audie digs around for his dopp kit and some pajama pants, then heads into the bathroom. He shuts the door and intentionally doesn’t look Calhoun in the face.
“Goodnight,” he says when he comes out.
“Night,” Calhoun says sadly. “Audie, I didn’t mean to do anything you didn’t —” He sits up in bed. Audie can read his tattoo: No story is a straight line. He ignores it.
“Except you did it, and now I want to shower for about three weeks. I don’t want to talk about it. G’night. I love you.” The last comes out with clenched teeth.
He runs into Jax coming out of the bathroom. Jax looks at him, doesn’t comment, thank god, and walks back to his bedroom.
Audie hates sleeping alone knowing that Calhoun’s across the hall. He has to arrange the pillows into a nest, back-front-top, and hold one of them, blankets piled on him. The pressure helps, even if he sweats, and he wakes early. Fuck it, might as well fish. He rises quietly, brews coffee, pours it in a thermos, and retrieves some clothes silently. Calhoun looks like a curled ball in the middle of the bed, brow furrowed. Audie takes his gear down to the beach and is casting for blues by sunrise when Jax stumbles out, rod in hand. He nods at Audie.
“Catch anything?” he asks after about twenty minutes.
“A few spot for cut bait,” Audie says. “Nothing worth eating. No Spanish mackerel or sea trout. Hooked
a poor tiny little ray. What’re you gonna use?”
“Bucktail.”
“Watch my rod a minute and I’ll bring us sand spikes, chairs, and beers.”
“Oh fuck yes.”
They both cast out, sit in beach chairs with their feet in the surf, and drink Modelo.
“Do I get to ask about last night?” Jax asks finally.
“No,” Audie says.
Jax nods.
“Fuck,” Audie says eventually. “Might as well. You’re a goddamn bottom, don’t pretend you’re not. I heard that fucking monologue.”
“I theoretically switch, but only when Henry makes me.” Jax kills his beer, ditches the empty in the cooler above the high-tide line, and cracks another. “This is a serious conversation for just after sunrise,” he says after he sits and casts again.
Audie watches his rod, stands and casts. “You fucking asked.”
“Fair.”
“I asked him what he wanted. He did that ‘whatever you want’ bullshit and finally settled on the ‘fuck me hard’ option. Then dropped to his knees and —” Audie winces. “It wasn’t exactly gentle.”
“You fucked his mouth.”
“Father fuck me,” Audie says. “Fine. Yes. Then he wants to fucking cuddle. Which is all he wanted in the goddamn first place. And I asked. I offered. I said, do you want it like this or like that. He picked. And he lied.”
Jax shrugs. “Maybe he was just doing what he thought you wanted.”
“Yeah, isn’t that a goddamn problem? Not quite consensual, is it?”
Jax doesn’t reply. When Audie cuts his eyes sideways, Jax isn’t looking at him either, but focused on some far point on the horizon. “I’m not the person to ask,” he says finally.
So not only did Jax get fucked a lot, Jax got used for fucking a lot. Calhoun bitched about his smart mouth through half the drive; somehow Audie’s managed to bypass it into something else entirely. He wonders why, and how.
“Sorry I asked,” Audie says. He means it.
Neon Saturday Night (Low Country Lovers Book 2) Page 5
