Fire and Sand

by Louise Collins

Tom checked the clip of the gun then breathed heavily through his nose. He reached down for the holster, clipped it over his shoulder and around his chest, then snatched up his jacket and phone.

  “Why would you take my gun? It’s to protect us. I ran down here thinking someone was taking shots at you. I would’ve took them for you. Jesus, Jake.” Tom raised his head to the sky and snorted bitterly. “This isn’t paradise with you here. I’ve drawn the short straw with this deal. I’m done.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake mumbled.

  Tom shook his head and walked back up the beach. Jake rested his head to the sand and watched him go, then he rolled onto his back and squeezed his eyes shut. They watered, but not from the fading ringing in his ears. A raw sound of despair escaped his throat, and he slapped his hands over his face to catch it.

  The sun faded behind the sea, and instead of shying from the intense colour bleeding into the sky, Jake stared at it without blinking. The sea lapped around his feet, and he had stood so long in the same place his heels were firmly imbedded in the waterlogged grains.

  Jake breathed deep through his raw throat, then turned and began the trek back to the villa. He stepped lightly up the steps, peeked inside, and sighed when he saw the living room was empty of Tom. He rushed over to the bedroom, wincing at the whine of the floorboards, then threw himself down on the bed.

  His stomach whined in protest, but Jake ignored it, balled up a pillow and pressed it against his squirming guts. At a guess, forcing sleep took hours, but Jake didn’t reach for his watch to find out. All he knew for certain was it would’ve been easier if Maddox had been wrapped around him.

  Jake woke the next morning to the sound of rumbling. A specific rumbling. A speedboat. His traitorous heart thumped with the thought of Maddox. He sunk his teeth into his bottom lip, staring at the wooden beams above. He didn’t want to run to heel like some obedient dog, but the agitated feeling started in his muscles. He flexed his toes, scrunched his fingers at his sides, but still lost out to the pull of Maddox. It felt like Maddox owned more of his body than he did, and the insistent beat in his heart overwhelmed his mind.

  Jake flung himself across the room to the chest of drawers and pulled his bin-bag of clothes free. He dove his hand inside blind, pulling out the lace knickers Tom had mocked. He went to shove them back, but paused, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. He hadn’t given in to Maddox before, but if he really was as troublesome as Tom said, he needed to do something to please Maddox, to prove he was worth keeping. He tugged them on, scrunching his face at the scratchy material, then kicked his legs into his joggers and rushed into the bathroom. Jake brushed his teeth in record time, scrubbed water on his face, dampened his hair and sprayed his cheap spray over his body.

  If Maddox was craving Jake, as much as he craved Maddox, sex on the jetty was a strong possibility. His cock responded with the tease of it and he groaned at the chafe.

  Tom hadn’t surfaced, and Jake thought better of waking him. He tiptoed across the villa, heart pounding so hard he was sure Tom would hear it, then jumped the steps to the deck below.

  He ran out into the cool morning air, feet sinking in the soft sand, and cock getting rawer with each stride. His thighs burned, and he couldn’t draw enough breath into his lungs in his excitement. Maddox, it was all he could think of. Screw what Carl and Tom said. They didn’t know anything about his and Maddox’s relationship.

  Jake panted for breath, and the drum of his heart drowned out the sound of the boat. He broke through the tree line, clasped eyes on the jetty with a smile on his lips, but then he stopped, and his joyous expression turned to a frown.

  The boat was moving away from the island, and when Jake squinted to see the figures on board, the shimmer of Tom’s sunglasses caught his eye. His heart missed a beat and his mouth popped open in shock.

  Tom had left him.

  Chapter 7

  Tom had been gone two hours, and a barrage of emotions battered Jake in his solitude. There was no TV to distract him, no job to trundle off to, or people to grift from. Maddox had stripped away everything and left him in hell. He was nothing but a junkie in a residential retreat. At first, the images his mind conjured of Maddox made him growl, and pace bitterly, then they gave way to need and he stopped. In a villa of absolute silence, his body hummed needing Maddox. His heart ached for him.

  “Bastard,” he shouted, moving into the kitchen.

  Jake sunk his teeth aggressively into an apple. It was warm, and too soft, no crunch, more a slurp. He huffed then twirled the fruit in his hand and stared at the unbitten side. The shine reflected his face, contorted with dissatisfaction. He moved along, ready to throw it away, but paused with the apple dangling over the bin.

  He side-stepped the bin and yanked open the drawer to the cutlery. The knife he selected was sharp, easily able to carve the skin from the apple, but instead Jake cut wedges from the unmarred side. He left the knife and the browning remains on the side and moved into the bedroom.

  There was one way left to rid himself of frustration, and that was beating it out of himself. He lay on the bed, tugged his joggers down to his knees, and shimmied the lace knickers halfway down his thighs. Jake slid his eyes closed, reached down and tightened his hand around his needy cock. He stroked, and as he stroked, he fed himself the segments of apple. They still didn’t crunch the way he liked, and it didn’t lessen the humidity of his mouth, but the memory of Maddox surfaced fast. The erotic way he'd fed Jake apple piece by piece. Jake groaned with the memory.

  As if put under some spell, the arm he used to feed himself numbed, until he felt disassociated from its movements, and his mind grew fuzzy, whether from the heat or his desperate desire, he didn’t know.

  With his eyes shut, it felt like Maddox really was feeding him, teasing him by running the apple against his lip, then pushing inside for his teeth to graze the pulp. He imagined classical music complimenting the powerful pumps of his heart, building to the conclusion. He panted against the apple, couldn’t bite, couldn’t move his lips against it, too swept up in the moment. Maddox, he imagined his dark eyes watching, snapping between Jake’s face, and his fisting hand. Maddox and the intimidating quality he possessed, the maddening dominance. Jake imagined that control breaking, and him swooping down, replacing the piece of apple with his tongue, batting Jake’s hand out the way to finish the stroking himself.

  Jake moaned out Maddox’s name, long and suffering, then the orgasm hit. He emptied his frustration with three stomach clenching pulses of his cock.

  He cracked an eye open, stared at the few pieces of apple still waiting on his chest, dirty by his own doing. He had cried for Maddox, not from his eyes, but his cock. Jake slowed his breathing, and his heart calmed, but the phantom feeling of Maddox didn’t leave.

  He craved the post orgasm touches, the strokes of Maddox's warm fingers against his neck. The soft kisses to his temple, and the feel of Maddox’s skin so close to his it felt like his own. Those were the touches that convinced Jake it was more than sex between them.

  Jake blinked at the sting in his eyes, and when it became clear that wasn’t going to dry them, he squeezed them shut, balled his hands into fists, and didn’t move until he finally succumbed to sleep.

  When he woke, he blinked down at himself then flung his head back hard into the pillow with a growl. Scrubbing his face with his hands didn’t lessen the embarrassed heat seeping from his cheeks. He had got himself off to the memory of Maddox, and the evidence prickled his skin. He shuffled, then tugged the sheet from underneath him and wiped his chest. It had long dried, even the apple had parched in the few hours he slept.

  Jake wiggled the lace knickers back up, before yanking the joggers high to cover them. He forced himself out of bed, washed his chest with a cloth, then rubbed at his grumbling stomach. He scanned the remaining fruits in the kitchen, and blushed scarlet at the bananas.

  “Get a grip,” he growled.

  Unlike all the other days, t
he sky wasn’t clear. A thick wall of cloud moved through the blue, forcing the ocean into shadow. Jake watched the invasion of darkness from the beach. It reminded him of a mushroom cloud, sweeping in after some explosion at sea. If a colour could be angry, then the fast greying sky was furious, unsettling the crystal water, and consuming the remaining blue above.

  The wind rushed through Jake’s hair, cooler than before, and when he turned to look back at the beach, the palm trees were flapping their leaves at the swift airflow. Their vibrant green dulled, and so did the sand Jake lounged on. No longer a beach of flawless white, but surrounded by pewter ash, warm beneath his body.

  Jake turned his attention back to the cloud. It covered the orange sun, and when it managed to force itself through, it looked like fire, fire drowned by its own smoke. A furious fire ready to suffocate the life on the island.

  He knew he should run back to the villa, keep away from the storm, but he couldn’t.

  Jake stood and walked back to the shallows. No longer calm and clear but spitting with small wave breaks. They slapped his calves hard, and goosebumps spread up to his thighs. His heart skipped into his throat, and he breathed faster.

  Jake moved further into the water until it broke around his knees, soaking the bottoms of his rolled up joggers. They blotched, and darkened, and he kept walking until the water knocked his hip, and the breaking waves sprayed his face.

  The sky rumbled, and Jake felt the vibrations deep in his chest. The growl didn’t scare him, he wanted more. It didn’t just travel through the air, but tremored up from the sand, through the water, into his chest. The grumbles of the sky interrupted the beat of his heart, paralysed his lungs and he could only breathe once the vibrations had softened to nothing.

  Jake played chicken with the sea, not how children did in the surf with their parents watching, but a game of risk with no one to rescue him, and the current getting strong around him. Danger, he loved it, and there he was finally finding it to get his heart pumping and his body buzzing without Maddox.

  He turned back to the beach, and the trees bowed to the force of the wind, the sand whipped into the air in blasts, and the peace surrendered to the untrainable force. The clouds roared again. Jake startled, pressing his hand to his frantic heart, then laughed. A manic crazy laugh that didn’t sound like his own. He spread his arms wide and welcomed the downpour of rain. It hit the ocean, and splashed up, rain drops struck him from all angles and the sloshing waves slapped into his flesh.

  A wave hit him in the chest with enough force for him to lose his suction footing in the sand. His head went under the water, and his scalp tingled at the sensation. He managed to regain his footing, and prepared himself for the next wave, bracing his chest forward for the angry slap trying to knock him down.

  It pushed against him. He gritted his teeth and growled back, but it still had the power to tip his heels back and dunk him back into the ocean. Jake surfaced with his throat burning, and spluttered at the sloshing waves. He yelled in elation, punching the water with his fists, pounding it like it was a beast.

  He turned back to see how the trees were fairing against the storm, and a blur on the beach caught his eye, a figure hidden by a veil of swirling sand. His phantom sensation of Maddox had upgraded to one he could see. A ghost that wanted to bring him back from the water, but its presence had nothing on the pull of the ocean. The addicting danger he needed for adrenaline. He turned his back on the mirage of Maddox; it didn’t deserve his attention, but the rushing ocean and the darkened clouds did.

  Jake could still reach the shore, but he wanted to tease the storm, challenge it to knock him down and keep him there.

  Each time he went under he surfaced with a laugh, throat sore and eyes stinging but not beaten. The rain washed the saltiness from his face, only for the ocean to reclaim him, and infuse him with the permanent scent.

  Something coiled around his arm and yanked him forcefully. Jake struggled when he surfaced, tugging his arm back from the seaweed or octopus that was gripping him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Jake froze at the furious voice behind him. Not a hallucination on the beach, but the real man he hated and needed in equal measures. Jake allowed himself to be dragged, skin tingling where Maddox touched, then grimaced and dug his heels into the sand. Not this time. He wasn’t some pup gripped by the scruff of its neck. He struggled free of the hands and turned to face Maddox with a growl.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Maddox’s green eyes were manic, and his brow scrunched with feral lines. Jake imagined that was his expression before he killed, the last face terrified people saw while they pleaded for their lives. Jake wasn’t going to plead for his. The game with the storm had nothing to do with Maddox.

  He pointed towards the beach. “Go back to where you came from.”

  Maddox’s eyes blazed with fury, and he lunged forward, but Jake slipped free of the clutch and backed away, towards the storm. It rumbled at his back, feeding him confidence. He lifted his chin and didn’t bow to the anger Maddox emitted. He challenged it.

  Maddox’s eyes roamed to the clouds, and his lips popped open. Jake didn’t see the forks of lightning, but the beach lit up like its picture had been taken. Maddox did see, and he moved to grab Jake again.

  “Let’s talk about this back at the villa.”

  “No,” Jake yelled, stepping away.

  Maddox scrunched his fists at his sides. The usually controlled man was a mess, hair stuck to his forehead, shirt creased by waves, and face displaying an array of emotions rather than his default bored expression. Jake was glad he had unsettled him. It made him feel good.

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  Jake shook his head. “Kill myself? I feel alive right now. I’m in control.”

  Maddox shook his head, and Jake watched as he braced himself for another wave to strike him. Maddox kept his footing better than Jake who floundered and sunk before surfacing with a gasp.

  “You are not in control.” Maddox said, walking forward only for Jake to back away. “This is dangerous, crazy.”

  Jake tilted his head back and barked with laughter. “You don’t know the craziest part.”

  Maddox narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “I can’t swim. You think anyone would’ve bothered to teach me? Each time it knocks me down, I might not get back up.”

  Maddox launched at him, wrapping his arms tight around Jake to prevent his escape.

  “Get offa me!”

  The ocean aided Jake, knocking them down, and untangling Maddox’s crushing grip.

  Jake spluttered, swayed, then bent his legs to cope with another smaller wave hitting him. He stared in Maddox’s eyes, and didn’t cower at the fury he faced.

  “You can’t save me from the storm, just as you couldn’t have saved me from the fire.”

  Maddox's aggressive stance softened, and his face relaxed. His green eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak but Jake got there first.

  “Why would it even matter?” Jake shouted. “I’m disposable, you’ve had others before me, and you’ll have others after.”

  Maddox shook his head, and his damp hair whipped left to right. He moved close but didn’t lift his arms to grab Jake. They hung at his sides, and his hands were no longer tightened into fists. The slosh of the ocean, the rumble in the sky, and the wind whipping Jake’s ears fell silent. Jake focused on Maddox’s mouth.

  “If I couldn’t save you from the smoke, or the fire, then I’d burn with you.”

  Jake shook his head and curled back his lip. Maddox took another step forward and Jake didn’t retreat.

  “If the ocean filled your lungs, and I couldn’t empty them, I’d swim until the waves claimed me.”

  Maddox lifted his hand to run his forefinger up Jake's cheekbone. Jake allowed the touch, and his eyelids fluttered.

  “If a gun is pressed to your temple, and I’m not quick enough drawing mine, I’ll turn it on myself.
”

  Jake bowed forward, wanting to resist Maddox’s caress but unable to do so. He leaned into the hand cupping his face, and Maddox brought his other up to hold Jake’s cheek.

  “You are not disposable.” Maddox said, lifting Jake’s head to connect their gazes.

  “You said you wanted to keep me,” Jake said.

  Maddox nodded. “Yes, I do—”

  “But you never said at arm’s length. Never said I would only get a piece of you when you get all of me. I’m no use to you,” Jake spat, pulling away.

  Maddox tightened his hands, then flared his nostrils and released Jake. “What?”

  “A complication. Your words, right?”

  “Yes, they’re my words.”

  Jake sagged with diminished hope. He had wanted Maddox to deny it, would have basked in the lie.

  “They’re my words, but not said to you—”

  “Carl and Tom—”

  “Yes,” Maddox growled. “it’s what I said to them, so they can paint their own image of us. Their deluded idea of how things are. You think I’d lay my heart bare for everyone to see, for anyone to stake. Even Tom and Carl need to be kept in the dark, for their own sakes and yours.”

  Jake continued to retreat, and Maddox followed, ushering him towards the shore.

  “Why do you think I sent you here?”

  Jake scrunched his face and turned away. “To get rid of me, make sure I didn’t interfere.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  Jake shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Why would I get Carl to work at the stationary shop? Why would I send you away from possible harm? And get Tom to guard you? It’s because I care. I made a mistake with Richie. I didn’t see that you were being followed, blinded by my own desire, by the game we played, and I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  Maddox flashed a look to the roaring ocean. “But I can’t keep you safe from yourself. Even bringing you to the most peaceful non-dangerous place you still managed to find some.”

  “I told you I loved danger,” Jake muttered.