by Melinda Minx
“And then it was shotguns and beer.”
I nod. “I’ll take you shooting next time. Don’t be so jealous.”
When we reach her house, I wake up Hank and help him up, out of the car, and inside. He excuses himself to go upstairs to his room. He’ll be sleeping really sound, at least until the hangover hits him.
“So I guess you’ll be leaving,” Sophie says.
“You’re still mad at me?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “but you can leave now.”
“Actually,” I say, “I’m still feeling the beer. I don’t think I can drive.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’m getting ready for bed. You can sit on the couch until you feel ready to drive.”
“Where did you go tonight?” I ask.
She glares at me. Now she’s mad. “You think being overprotective is the same thing as being protective?”
“Uh,” I say, “it’s got the same root word, doesn’t it? It just varies by degrees.”
“Wrong,” she snaps. “I was out with Melanie and some other girls from the Crab Shack. I don’t ask you where you go every hour of the day. I don’t ask how many fights you get into, or—”
I laugh. “I promise you, Samuel is the only guy I’ve hit since I’ve been back in America. Besides, we met each other because I like to fight, remember?”
“That first time,” she says, pointing a finger, “you were actually protecting me. This time, Mason, you weren’t. You were protecting your own ego, not me.”
I cross my arms. Maybe she’s right, but I won’t let her know I’m considering the possibility.
“I suppose it’s going to be real awkward on the boat for you now? Right? Maybe you should think things through more before you act.”
“I’ll try,” I say, springing to my feet. “After this.”
I grab hold of her and press my lips against hers. She fights me for a few brief seconds, and then her whole body seems to melt in my arms. She stops fighting as our tongues press together.
Her taste fills me, and my cock stiffens. Then I think of Hank sleeping a few rooms over from Sophie’s bed, and my dick goes limp. I just trained the guy to be a good shot, and the shotgun is still loaded on the coffee table.
I pull away.
“What?” she asks.
I point over toward the kitchen, toward a long baguette on the counter. “Can we eat that?”
“You want to eat?” she asks.
“No,” I say, walking into the kitchen and opening the fridge. I find a half-eaten wheel of Brie. I take it out.
“And that wine?” I ask, pointing to the rack.
“You want to drink? More?”
“I want to take you on a date, Sophie. We still haven’t been on a real date since I came back.”
“You don’t count what we did in the car?” she asks.
“That was an attempted date,” I say. “I like where it ended up, but it still wasn’t a date.”
She looks at the clock. “It’s 2:00 a.m., Mason.”
“I got a good place to go at 2:00 a.m., but you gotta drive.”
20
Sophie
We reach the coastline near the old light tower, and Mason tells me to stop the car.
“It’s a bit cold for the beach,” I say, zipping up my coat.
Mason leans over toward me. I wait for him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me. As nice of a gesture as a date is, I’d rather make out with him in the warm car and wait to see where that takes us, than to walk out into the cold and to wherever the hell he thinks we should go so late at night.
He leans over me, past me, and pulls the latch to pop the trunk.
“You’re not going to kill me and stuff me in the trunk, are you?” I ask.
“Don’t be nervous,” he says.
I watch him head toward the trunk. There’s the bread, the wheel of cheese, a bottle of wine, and some candles and a lighter sprawled all over the back seat. And apparently he still needs something from the trunk.
He shuts the trunk, and he’s now holding a reusable grocery bag. I sigh in relief.
He stuffs everything into the bag and takes me by the hand. “Come on.”
We walk not toward the shore, but toward the steady slope that leads up toward the lighthouse.
I stop. “We’re not going to the lighthouse, are we?”
“No,” he says. “We’re just walking toward it for no reason. Come on.”
He pulls me closer toward it, and soon it’s towering above us. The lighthouse has been closed for over ten years. Retired, they call it.
We reach the door, and there is a dingy padlock holding a bunch of chains to the handle. “I guess we can’t go in, Mason. Let’s turn back.”
He reaches into the bag and pulls out a metal tool.
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s from your trunk,” he says. “The lug nut wrench. I gotta teach you to change a tire, Sophie. You’re hopeless.”
“Why is the tire changing wrench thing here?”
To answer my question, he sticks it through one of the chain links. He starts to twist the wrench, and the chains tighten around it. He gets a firm grip on it with both hands, his biceps bulging as he twists. There’s a snapping sound, and one of the chain links snaps open.
He puts the wrench back into the bag and pulls all the chains away and off the handle. He throws it down to the ground in a heap.
“Really, Mason?” I ask.
He grabs my hand, opens the door, and pulls me inside.
It’s pitch black, and a few moments pass until I hear the sound of a lighter. The flame shatters the darkness. I see a large open space, and when I look up, there is a spiraling staircase circling all around and up toward the top of the lighthouse.
He takes my hand, still holding the candle in his other, and pulls me toward the first step. “Watch your step. Keep a hand on the rail. It’s dark.”
“No shit, it’s dark,” I hiss as I take the first few steps up. “We broke in.”
“It’s abandoned, Sophie. That means no one cares.”
It’s not the tallest lighthouse in the world by any means, but walking up the spiraling stairs makes me start to feel dizzy, only Mason’s strong and solid hand keeps me going. After what feels like a long time, we finally stop climbing, as we reach the top. The whole center of the platform is dominated by the giant light, though there’s a huge crack down the center of the lens.
Mason puts the candle down and begins lighting another. I start to help him, and soon the lighthouse is lit once again, though only by a half dozen candles rather than a giant lamp powerful enough to signal ships from miles away.
“Do you think anyone can see these candle lights?” I ask.
“No,” Mason says. “Not without some serious equipment, at least.”
We both look outside, holding hands. One hundred and eighty degrees of the platform are encircled by a dozen or so windows. The panes are made of wood and painted white, with much of the white paint splattered onto the glass. Miraculously, none of the glass is cracked, though the chill seeping in tells me that the old glass isn’t much for insulation.
The windows form a half circle, through which we can see the shore and the black sea beyond.
Mason pulls a blanket out of the bag and throws it down onto the dusty wooden platform. He gestures for me to sit, and I obey.
“You sobered up yet?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, working the corkscrew into the wine. “Let’s fix that.”
He gets the cork open, then looks down into the empty bag. “Shit, I didn’t bring any glasses.”
I pull the bottle out of his hand and take a swig directly from the bottle. I hand it back to him. “It’s fine.”
He takes a drink, then sets the bottle down on the wood just outside the edge of the blanket.
We take the bread and cheese out next. We pull big crusty chunks of bread off with our fingers and eat it with the creamy, salty brie.
; We look through the windows and watch the waves breaking on the shore. The white from the foam looks like diamonds on the onyx sea.
“Can you imagine being the guy who had to do this job?” I ask. “Just sitting up here, night after night, alone?”
I take another sip of wine from the bottle, then lay my head against Mason’s shoulder.
“It’s a lot like standing guard,” Mason says. “It’s not fun, but it’s far from the worst thing a man can be asked to do.”
I run my hands across his chest. I can feel one of the knife wound scars even through his shirt. He must have had to do so many terrible things, and so many terrible things were done to him.
“Eric and I always said being a fisher in Tuckett Bay was the worst thing that could happen to us. Now it seems almost like a dream.”
I bite my lip. I didn’t think Mason really wanted to stay here, but now I’m not as sure. Even after applying for jobs in Boston, I still haven’t given what I want to do much more thought. Not nearly as much thought as my dad has given it, at least.
We kiss again, and the next thing I know Mason is on top of me. He peels my coat off, and I feel the cold hit me, sapping the warmth out of me. But only for a moment. Mason’s warm body soon presses against me. The cold becomes a distant memory as his hands work their way up my body beneath my shirt.
I start to fight to get my shirt off. Mason helps me, and soon I’m tearing off my bra. My breasts spill out, and Mason presses his warm lips to my skin. I watch as he licks my nipples and squeezes my thick breasts in the candlelight. A new kind of warmth surges through me, coming from right between my legs.
I tear at Mason’s shirt, pulling it up and over his head, throwing it down next to my own clothes.
I run my hands up his hard, muscular body. I run a hand from his back to his sides, then to his abs. My hand slides down and down, until it slides below his belt. I feel the impossibly warm, steel-hard rod of his cock. I grab hold of it and squeeze.
Mason tears at his belt, gets it off, and undoes his jeans. He pulls his pants and underwear down while I grip his cock. It’s free now, and I begin to stroke it.
“Fuck, Sophie,” he says.
“This counts as a date, right?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Candlelight, wine, a romantic vi—”
His body jerks and his eyes roll back into his head. When his eyes focus again, I see him staring at my breasts.
“My tits are a romantic view?” I ask.
He locks eyes with me. “Every part of you is,” he says, “but I was actually talking about the sea…”
“I know you were, idiot.”
The candlelight shows a gleaming drip of silvery precum on the head of his cock, and I run a finger across it, spreading it all over his swollen head. He shudders again, and then I surprise attack him. I dive down toward him with my lips open, and I take him as deep as I can into my mouth, all in one smooth motion.
My lips lock against his shaft and I start sucking. My cheeks pull in, hollowing against his veiny girth, and I slide down and down, many inches, until I feel myself starting to gag.
I stop taking him in, but I don’t stop sucking.
“Fuck!” he grunts. I feel his body arching up against me, and I bob my head in response. Up and down his length. I make no effort to swallow, just letting all of my saliva drip down past my lips and down his shaft. My saliva mixes with his essence as more and more precum releases, and it all drips down his beautiful rod as I blow as if it was our last blowjob on Earth.
I suck harder than I ever have, and Mason explodes into my mouth without warning. I drink up all of his seed, swallowing it down in thick gulps, even as he pumps more deep down my throat.
I finally pull away, and a wet smack of saliva sounds out. His cock is still rock hard.
He locks eyes with me. “Get your pants off.”
“But—”
“Now.”
He lunges for me, and pulls my belt off as I laugh wildly. He undoes the buttons on my jeans and pulls. My jeans are tight enough that it just pulls my body along with me. I grab hold of one of the support struts for the light, and he pulls harder, peeling my pants away. I start to pull my panties down, but he grabs and rips them off.
“Jesus, Mason, you—”
He shoves me down onto the blanket so that I’m flat on my stomach, and the next thing I know, I feel his thick cock pressing between my legs.
His dick slides in between my soaking wet lips, and I spread my legs wide for him. I’m still completely flat on the ground, with Mason completely dominating me.
He’s still hard after cumming so hard in my mouth?
He slides a few inches into me, and I shudder in ecstasy. His hard abs slide against my back as his cock presses into me. My inner walls squeeze him tight, welcoming him in with warm wetness.
He thrusts hard and fast into me, and I pull my knees up under me. Mason grabs my hips and helps me up, until my ass is up in the air. My face is still pressed on the floor, but now he can fuck me even faster. Rougher.
I hear his body slapping hard against me as he drills deep into me. His cock stretches and fills me. My breasts sway back and forth beneath me, and I moan so loud and with such abandon that drool drips from the corner of my mouth.
When I come, I worry that my screams will shatter the old glass and let all the cold seep in—not that I’d feel it with all the warmth wrapping around me.
We collapse together onto the blanket, the candle lights casting pale orange flickering shadows across our bodies. My body looks smooth, and Mason’s looks like all angular planes, cut with dark shadows.
“John was right,” Mason says, grinning.
21
Mason
Sophie said things would be awkward on the boat. Fuck that. I’ve forgiven a guy from accidentally shooting me, and then had him save my life later. Punching out Samuel is nothing.
When Samuel gets to work, his usual scraggly stubble is absent.
“Clean shave,” I say.
He shrugs.
It must have hurt to shave over all that black and blue.
“No hard feelings, man,” I say, reaching out a hand.
He tilts his head at me.
“You said some dumb shit,” I say. “You were out of line. And so was I.”
He reaches his hand out and shakes. He’s got a good grip.
“Yeah,” Samuel says. “We’re cool, I guess.”
“Good,” I say. “It’s too easy to let someone die on a boat like this. We’d better be cool.”
The day goes on like normal. Not quite like normal, exactly, as Samuel is definitely stone-cold sober. Ever since I’d started, he’d drank some on the job and at lunch, but not enough to be a huge problem. It’d gotten worse and worse lately, and seeing him totally sober—which makes him seem almost like a new man I’ve never met before—shows me just how bad it had really gotten. It all snuck up on me.
After lunch, some of the nets start getting stuck, and Marv is already occupied at the helm.
I step up. I order everyone around as if I was the fucking captain. It’s not that I want to be, it’s just that someone needed to be. The guys all take my orders, and working together, we save the nets from getting torn apart or tangled so bad we have to cut them off.
When we’re finally out of the shit, I look up and see Marv watching me. He looks like he’s just seen something for the first time.
Then I look over and see Samuel glaring at me, his jaw tight.
I guess we’re not cool after all.
As I head to my car, Marv stops me.
“Mason.”
“Yeah?”
“You really stepped up back there.”
I shrug.
“Remember when I first hired you?” he asks. “How I said I could cut you in? How these other guys are fuckups? You wanna be my first mate?”
“First mate? On a crew this small?”
“Whatever you want to call it,” Marv says. “Instea
d of just paying you per hour, you get part of the cut.”
I start to do the math. It’s a lot more money, even if the cut is small.
“Of course,” Marv says, “if profits are down, you’ll make less. It’s incentive, that’s what it is. If you make sure we do well, then you do well yourself. Better than being some chump who gets paid the same crap salary even if we’re raking in the dough, yeah?”
“So what do I gotta do?” I ask.
“The same thing you did today, that’s all. Just step up. My crew is good at fishing despite being fuck-ups, but they need oversight to shine. I can’t be everywhere at once, and I realized today that I trust you.”
“I’ll think it over,” I say.
“What’s there to think about? It’s a raise.”
“I always have got a lot to think about, Marv. Nothing’s ever simple.”
“Alright,” he says, furrowing his eyebrows. “This isn’t an open offer. You tell me yes or no tomorrow, all right?”
“All right.”
22
Mason
When I reach the dock the next morning, Hank is there. The snow from a few nights ago is long gone, and he’s standing like a shadow in the fog.
“Hank?” I say. “Everything okay?”
“You tell me,” he says.
Is he suddenly going to get protective of me sleeping with his daughter? Is that what this is about?
“Everything’s good,” I say.
I stand across from him, waiting for him to get to whatever it is he is here for.
“You know she wants this job in Boston,” Hank says, as if accusing me.
“I know,” I say.
“And what about you? You want to keep fishing on Marv’s boat? You think being co-captain or whatever the hell this is will give Sophie a good life? It will trap her here. Is that what you want? You want a piece of that rusty boat?” He tilts his head toward Marv’s boat, barely visible in the fog.
I shrug. “Not particularly, no.”
I guess word travels fast when a man in Tuckett Bay is promoted on a rusted-ass boat.
