Wrecked

by Deanna Wadsworth

  Rief threw back the fiery liquid, eager for anything to calm him.

  Drinking his with the same ease, Mathew observed, “You have the best rum in this part of the world.”

  He nodded and watched Mathew swirl the liquid, examining his hands, imagining how they would feel against his naked balls, intertwining in the hair. Stroking him fast until he released his seed—all of it for Mathew. His cock inched down his leg, liking the idea very much.

  Shit, he needed to get a hold of himself! But it was near impossible when all he wanted was for Mathew to grab him and kiss him once more. Bend him over the table and ram his cock in his ass, or his mouth. Hell, so starved for touch, Rief would settle for a simple caress!

  Before he became hard enough to notice, Rief held up the bottle in question. When his guest consented, he sloshed a healthy amount into each glass, figuring they could both use it. They sat in a silence neither seemed ready to fill. The rain came down heavier now, periodic gusts causing the sound to shift as irregular waves pelted the building. Occasional bursts of lightening reflected the charged energy in the room. The real tempest brewed inside, swirling around them in a gale of risk and reward, danger and desire.

  Glass in hand, Mathew stood abruptly. Taut with nerves, he took a few steps through the kitchen, then back again, pacing. Rief couldn’t help admire the shapeliness of his legs, the narrow taper of his waist. It seemed the pattern of his trousers only enhanced his round ass, his vest stopping at his waist and showcasing the shape to perfection. Rief’s mouth watered, and he longed to see if Mathew was as beautiful naked as he was in his fine clothing.

  Rief never thought the man he’d been drawing all these years would be such a dandy, wearing some of the most fashionable clothing he’d ever laid eyes on. If he recalled, six of the large clothing trunks they had salvaged from the wreck had been marked with the initials MHW. Removing all those layers would be better than unwrapping an elaborate present.

  Mathew flinched and looked at the floor. “Oh, hello.”

  Rief let out the breath he’d been holding, but Mathew was too intent on the black cat purring and rubbing against his ankle to notice.

  “Is he yours?” he asked, scooping up the feline and caressing him.

  Damn, he would kill for a chance to have Mathew nuzzle his neck like that!

  “Well, he lives here, if that’s what you mean,” Rief answered. “His name’s Sully.”

  Mathew gave the usually taciturn animal a soft caress, then placed him back on the ground. Sully threw a self-satisfied glance at Rief before leaping on the counter and curling up to nap again. With a wry smile, he knew the cat was deliberately being a nuisance.

  “I think he likes you, Mr. Weston.”

  With a groan, Mathew threw back the rest of his rum, then placed the empty glass on the counter beside the cat. “Please, don’t call me that. It sounds terrible when you say it. Especially after....” His face reddened. “Um, especially after we... well....”

  Rief remained quiet, giving the man time to find his words.

  Apparently Mathew was not ready to begin that conversation. He glanced around the room. “So you live here?”

  Though he heard no judgment in his tone, Rief couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. One makeshift wall of old sail cloth he’d smeared paint on separated his bed from the main living area and studio, though the art had spread farther. Piles of canvases and heaps of discarded paper lay everywhere.

  My God, what must Mathew think of him?

  The son of an English lord, fastidious in his toilette, and not just well-dressed, but rich. Rief didn’t live in squalor, but to Mathew, he must look like the pauper’s son.

  Smoothing his shirt front, Rief said, “For now. I have the money to buy a house, but it’s easier to live here since I work downstairs anyways.” He left out the detail Uncle Richard had allowed him to take one of the upper storage rooms in the warehouse after Dad died and it became painfully obvious Cole no longer wanted him in their childhood home.

  “You work at the auction house? I thought you were a part of the Mirabella crew.”

  “I haven’t been since my dad died. Being onboard when I saved you was a bit of a fluke.”

  “A lucky fluke for me,” he said with a faint smile. “And my ship, she arrived yesterday. It seems that she will sail again.”

  “Cole’s crew is the best,” Rief agreed.

  A sonorous thunderclap echoed in the evening air. They both looked toward the window as lightning streaked through the sky, its reflection on the storm-darkened waters silver and white. The rain picked up, beating the building in another erratic tempo. Their eyes met for a brief second, then Mathew turned away, a blush spreading tantalizingly over his cheeks.

  Mathew indicated the stack of canvases stretched over frames leaning on the wall beside various rolled up ones in the studio. “May I?”

  Though he never shared his art, Rief gave him a reluctant nod. Would Mathew be able to see the pain in every stroke of color and every brush of oil? Could he possibly be the one to understand?

  Was that why Rief had been drawing him all these years?

  Mathew looked through the pile of rolled-up canvases and paused to examine a series of paintings, the colors and swirls making lurid and distorted visions of the sea, the marina. A bloated dead body washed up on the beach. Animals, some alive and some horribly maimed. Wrecked ships. Storms. Ravaged buildings.

  “Is this the hurricane you spoke of?”

  “Yes. Those are based on the drawings I made a few weeks before—” Rief stopped himself short, before he said too much and scared Mathew away. “They’re based on some drawings I made a long time ago.”

  He couldn’t believe what he’d almost let slip. Something about Mathew made him forget to keep his tongue in check, and he’d almost confessed that he’d painted those images as a punishment, a way to remind himself of what he was really capable of. It had been a futile task, because rarely did a week pass without memories of the ’46 hurricane haunting him. That year held the darkest days of his life.

  He’d been seeing Key West underwater for weeks, waking up to the imagined howl of a storm, drawing images that seemed to have no end. Dead bodies, wrecked ships, and trees bent by powerful winds. When Dad saw the drawings, he took away Rief’s pencils. As if somehow that would stop what was coming. Mother begged Dad to listen to the warnings, but he dismissed her, calling the doctor when she became “hysterical.” Once she’d been calmed with medicine, Dad ordered Rief not to discuss it and not to draw anything else. A wrecker, loyal to his calling, he took Cole and the crew on patrol despite the impending disaster.

  The storm that hit was like nothing anyone could remember. If Dad hadn’t been on patrol in the upper Keys, and crowded on sail to Cape Florida, they would’ve been lost too. Most of the wrecking vessels were destroyed, the town was completely submerged, and the lighthouses in Key West and Sand Key washed out. Uncle Richard had managed to get Rief and Mother to safety—he alone had believed his sister’s frantic pleading and the warnings Rief had drawn.

  Everything Rief had seen came true.

  He had imagined Dad would be grateful for the foreknowledge upon his return, but he wasn’t. Mother’s violent fits and vivid dreams Dad could not ignore, but he chose to believe the doctors who said she suffered from hysteria, a common feminine ailment. He might have loved her, but he never accepted the truth of what was happening within his small family. Rief still remembered the day Dad had issued his final ruling on the subject: “We will never speak about this again, Mira. My sons are wreckers, not insane gypsy fortunetellers!”

  Cowering in the back of the kitchen while they argued, Rief had sought Cole’s attention, desperate for the brother he’d always admired to offer him the reassuring smile he needed. But contempt had colored his once-loving brother’s expression. Cole had turned away from Rief, unable to look upon him.

  From that moment on, Cole had treated him like a stranger.

  An abomin
ation.

  While Dad acted like nothing had changed, refusing to acknowledge the things he did not want to believe, Uncle Richard’s eyes were full of pity, almost worse than the fear and indifference. Though he’d believed Rief about the hurricane, he never mentioned it either. Then Mother had grown more distant, nightmares consuming her to the point she was no longer the same woman. Even the medicine couldn’t stop her fits.

  As hard as Rief trained his heart to block out the grief of that time in his life, if it snuck up on him, he would be plunged into darkness for days, if not weeks. He found his way out of that emotional pit through his art, the very thing that had gotten him into this mess. Stuck in a hopeless circle of hurting others with the only way he knew how to cope, the one thing that made any of it bearable was painting the very man standing in his studio, totally unaware of his own unfathomable existence.

  Golden lamplight filled the loft, the man who had given Mathew his first real kiss sitting just on the edge of it. Paint stained Rief’s fingers, and Mathew wondered if he’d interrupted him in the middle of creating another macabre masterpiece.

  Canvases had been stacked, leaning against every clear surface. Tucked in the back corner of the main work area, an easel faced large windows. Mathew imagined the northern light would be perfect for painting, but right now the sky was dark, wind howling through the panes and rising with intensity like the tension in the room.

  Feeling strangely at home in the clustered place, he looked at the paintings of the hurricane wreckage. The smell of turpentine and pigments was heavy on the air and, mixed with the rum, had a strange intoxicating effect on him, making the images seem alive, moving. They were rendered distorted, exaggerated. More fascinating. More terrifying.

  He looked up at the artist. Rief had draped his leg over a knee, the mug hanging from his fingertips. Despite the casual repose, he leaned forward, as if waiting for a judgment. Gone was the courageous man who had saved Mathew’s life, and in his place sat a child seeking approval, misunderstood and gossiped about by superstitious fools and storytellers like Mr. Fairfield.

  Seeing the fear in those eyes made Mathew long to touch him, but he didn’t dare.

  “They’re all so very dark,” he whispered, hoping his observation wouldn’t offend Rief.

  Rief fidgeted in his seat, looking away. “Weren’t you the one discussing the darkness in life? The struggles a man must endure?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And it seems that you have painted it.”

  Mathew pointed to a water scene with a gold-haired mermaid with her back to the artist—no, good Lord that was a merman sunbathing on the shore! The way Rief had mixed the colors, the sunlight seemed to glisten right off his naked back. So sensuous and alive. Almost as if another artist entirely had painted it. “But not everything you’ve done is dark. This one looks as if the sun is shining on him. How did you get the paint to do that?”

  “Do you like it?”

  The innocence to his question made Mathew smile. “It’s wonderful.”

  A ghost of pride played about his face. “Thank you.”

  “Moonlight is sculpture, painting is sunshine,” he said. “So you have proved it to be a truth.”

  Rief’s brows rose. “That’s beautiful. You’re a poet.”

  His cheeks warmed at the compliment. “Well, I overheard Nathaniel Hawthorne saying it once.”

  “You know Hawthorne?”

  “Uh, no,” he admitted, feeling foolish for trying to sound clever. “He was in attendance at a party and we overheard him saying that about a piece in the host’s collection.” His face burned and his throat tightened with embarrassment as he hastily confessed, “Maggie is such huge fan of his, and we basically spent the entire evening hovering nearby. When I saw your art, the words came back to me. I did not mean to claim them as my own.”

  Eyes wide, Rief nodded and said nothing as he absorbed the convoluted explanation.

  Mathew cleared his throat, wanting to shift the conversation away from his own childish desire to impress. “Do you sell your work?”

  “Never,” he said quickly. “I would sooner sell my soul.”

  Having no idea how to respond, Mathew looked through a different pile of rolled canvases. There was a scene of men working on a dock, the sun beating down on broken backs. Another of a ship, wrecked at sea, with the salvage operation underway and every bit as magnificent a feat as Mathew recalled.

  When he pulled out another canvas, Rief sucked in an audible breath. Mathew hesitated, but when Rief did not stop him, he unrolled it.

  It was of a broken woman done in a monochrome of deep browns, gray, and sallow peaches. The misshapen, distorted body made her appear weak, hopeless as she entered a turbulent sea. Most disturbing, she wore manacles on her wrists, and evil hands lurking in the water held the chains. With a longing in her eyes, she smiled at the creatures of death.

  A chill moved over Mathew and the air in the room thickened, making it hard to catch his breath. Tears burned his eyes, and he wanted to turn his back on the woman, but he didn’t want her to be alone. Would he ever become so lost he would welcome death as an escape from a life of living in secret?

  “Who is she?” he managed, embarrassed when Rief saw him brush a few treacherous tears away. He had intended to come here and be bold, wanting Rief to see him as strong and confident. Masculine. Not weepy and feminine. However, this painting touched him on a very primitive level, and the emotions were too raw to deny.

  “My mother,” he whispered.

  Mr. Fairfield had called Rief’s mother mad, but Mathew did not see that in the painting. “Was she really this sad?”

  “Yes. My dad would’ve disagreed.” Rief wiped roughly at his face with the back of his hand. “And my brother would say that painting killed Dad, not the rum. I painted it a week before she died.”

  Mathew’s blood ran cold, and his hand slipped, the bottom half of the painting rolling back up. Breathing became laborious, and he fidgeted with his cravat until it loosened. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  He didn’t know if he should be shocked or intimidated.

  “After the big hurricane, we lived aboard our ship while Dad and his crew rebuilt our house. Once it was done, I thought she would be happy again. She even bought me new paints for my birthday. My uncle resumed traveling. Dad and Cole went out on patrol again. We’d lost so much, but life was getting back to normal. Then one day, she went out for a walk and didn’t come back. A few days later, her body washed ashore. No one knew how she got there. See, she hated the water. Terrified of it. Always said it would be the death of her, and in the end it was. But it wasn’t an accident,” Rief said in a haunting whisper. “She killed herself.”

  “Oh, Rief... why?”

  “She just couldn’t take it anymore, I guess. She’d been depressed for a long time. I wish I’d known what she was going to do when I saw that painting in my head, but—” Rief’s voice cracked and then he shrugged, doing a poor job of feigning nonchalance. “My brother said I painted it to be nasty. Dad just got drunk. Afterward, they all looked at me like it was my fault.”

  “They blamed you? How absurd. Just because you symbolized her loneliness didn’t mean you knew the future. It’s not like you can paint how someone dies, no matter what people say.”

  Rief’s jaw clenched and his shoulders straightened. “So you’ve heard the talk?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “It was a rather curious tale.”

  A bitter smile scarred his face. “Yeah, that’s what I am to most people. A curiosity.”

  “That’s unfair to say to me, especially when you know—” He couldn’t bring himself to voice the words.

  Outside, the storm picked up, and an unnaturally long clap of thunder filled the awkward silence. Rief turned his face away from him, or the sad image of his mother, Mathew couldn’t be sure which. Everything fit into place now, painting a picture of loneliness and grief, not one of black magic or curses like t
he fools of this town believed. The depth of his guilt over his mother’s suicide permeated the room, screamed out from every canvas.

  Mathew wished he could say or do something to convince him it was not his fault, but how?

  His heart broke when he saw the glistening in Rief’s eyes. He longed to embrace him, comfort him. But men didn’t do that sort of thing. Or did men like them do?

  Replacing the painting with care, restless anticipation itched at Mathew’s fingertips. He did another circle of the room, feeling Rief’s gaze follow him. He trailed his fingertips along the canvas sail, making his way to the window to watch the storm.

  He should say something to change the direction of the conversation to a less intrusive, more polite topic. But what? Should he be trite and make a comment about the weather? He didn’t want to be an insensitive lout, but he had no idea how to console Rief with words when all he wanted to do was kiss and hug him tight, offering him the succor he’d been denied far too long. But anything physical might be premature, igniting the passion of their last encounter—a prospect that still terrified Mathew.

  Searching for something to say, he turned toward the easel in the center of the studio, curious about what Rief had been working on before he arrived.

  Suddenly Rief cried out, “No don’t!”

  Mathew jumped at the outburst, but it was too late.

  He’d already seen it.

  Chapter Eight

  “It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.”

  —Jean Jacques Rousseau; Swiss Political Philosopher, 1712-1778

  “Bloody hell!”

  “Don’t look at that!” Rief rushed forward. “I can explain!”

  Mathew turned a stunned expression on him. “Can you?”

  “It’s not finished,” he babbled, bodily trying to block Mathew. “Don’t, no... I’m begging you.”

  “Rief,” he spoke clearly, firmly.

  “No, I can’t. Please....”