Desire in the Isles

by Roland Graeme

  “You like having a Scotch dick up your Yank ass, do you?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  Angus wrapped his arms tightly around his sex partner’s chest, thrilling at the touch of his smooth skin and the pin-pricks of his hard, hot nipples. Then he began to move back slowly and when they were nearly disengaged again he plunged down into Carter’s rectum yet more deeply, with undeniable lust, but also with patience and with tenderness.

  Carter lay there fairly passive at the beginning, but after about five minutes—Angus sure wasn’t watching the clock!—he started to join in the erotic dance, squirming his hips away from his fucker’s and crushing his buttocks into the hard, flexed tops of his thighs. Angus’s head was pressed into his neck, sucking at the sweaty, salty-tasting flesh, and Carter turned his face slightly to that side.

  Angus took his lips from Carter’s neck and poised them over his lips. But before they kissed Angus opened his eyes, looked at him for a moment and then Carter’s long-lashed lids fluttered open too and the two men exchanged a triumphant, joyous gaze of total, mutual desire and satisfaction.

  Lost in the moment, Angus furiously resumed kissing the other man.

  Their mouths locked in another hot kiss and they once again joined their bodies, their anointed limbs slithering and pounding to the rhythms of their blood streams, moving together toward orgasm—which suddenly poured through both men’s straining, spasming bodies like a pure, clear, blinding light.

  By the time he reconnected with Stash, Martin, and Stewart, Carter realized that they’d spent several hours inside the bathhouse. Outside, night had fallen.

  “Amazing, how time flies when you’re being celibate,” Stash joked.

  “Are you gentlemen hungry? If you are, come back to the house with me,” Stewart urged. “I can whip up something for us. Nothing fancy, but filling. And I can offer you your choice of liquid refreshments to go along with it.”

  “We’d love to,” Stash. “Let me call Duncan and tell him not to expect us for dinner. Maybe the guys can find somewhere to eat in Castlebay, and give Niall a night off.”

  “And I have to go pay Angus before we leave,” Carter said.

  “Who’s Angus?” Stash asked. “And what do you owe him money for?”

  Carter smirked. “I thought we’d agreed that whatever goes on here in Barra, stays in Barra. Don’t worry. I’ll fill you in all the sordid details later.”

  They ate at Stewart’s kitchen table, with the meal accompanied by generous quantities of alcoholic beverages. Then they had coffee, dessert, and after-dinner drinks in the living room. Jamie the cat abandoned his truculence and bonded with Martin, enjoying the game of grasping Martin’s shoelaces in his teeth and tugging at them until they became untied. Retying the laces, Martin would begin the game all over again.

  Carter was genuinely sorry when they had to leave. Stewart was a delightful host, and Carter, like his two companions, was glad he’d met him.

  “Come back any time, and stay longer,” Stewart invited. “I have spare bedrooms here in the house. You should visit in the wintertime. We can get some rather severe snow and sleet blowing in from the sea. Then, the bathhouse becomes a real refuge from the cold. The steam rooms are packed with men, eager to stay warm. And to keep one another warm!”

  “Okay, I have to ask,” Carter said, during the walk back to where the Rock Dove was docked. “How many guys did you make it with, Martin?”

  “Eight,” the young sailor admitted. “Some in my room, some in the steam room, some in the showers. It was a busy evening. The interesting thing is, seven of the men made a point of telling me they were straight. Even though two of them reciprocated.”

  “And the eighth guy?” Stash asked.

  “Oh, he was gay, all right. No doubt about it.”

  “That much cock and come,” Carter suggested, rather crudely. “It ought to hold even you, for the time being.”

  Martin refused to take offense. “Oh, and I imagine you two were busy interviewing, the whole time we were there in the baths?”

  Stash snickered. “He’s got us there, Carter.”

  Chapter Sixteen: Camping Out Under the Stars

  “We were kind of whorish, weren’t we, back there on Barra?” Carter suggested.

  “No doubt,” Stash replied, rather coolly. “What’s the matter? Are you experiencing remorse?”

  “No.”

  “Nor am I. We had a good time. Maybe it was something we had to get out of our systems.”

  “Get it out of our systems, so we could—?”

  “Appreciate each other a little more, maybe?” Stash asked.

  “Yeah. That’s kind of the way I was thinking,” Carter admitted.

  “God, I like you when you’re like this.”

  “When I’m like how?” Carter asked.

  “Shy, and repentant, and feeling guilty about having been exposed as a total gay slut,” Stash informed the other man.

  “I don’t—!” Carter began to object.

  “Oh, save it. I was joking. Trying to get a rise out of you—which I see I’ve succeeded in doing. Seriously, Carter, by now I know you too well. And I like you too much. Don’t waste your time trying to bullshit me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Carter mumbled.

  “I do love you, shortcomings and all,” Stash insisted.

  “Same here.”

  “I love you so much, Carter, in fact, that I’m willing to let you be with Liam again,” Stash vowed. “I can accept that.”

  “Damn it, Stash—!”

  “Oh, don’t argue with me. There’s no need. Enjoy yourself. Truly, I want you to.”

  “You say that, but do you mean it?”

  “I mean it,” Stash vowed.

  But Carter was still skeptical. “We’ll see,” he muttered.

  The Rock Dove prepared to drop anchor in the harbor of the town of Kinloch, located on the eastern side of the island of Rum.

  Rum, according to Stash, was a magnificently wild place with dramatic scenery, including broad expanses of mountainous terrain. Many of the mountains retained their exotic-sounding Norse names, such as Askival, Hallival, Trallval, and Ainshval. Tucked in between these mountains were deep glens, abrupt escarpments, and boggy heaths.

  Stash was looking forward to touring Kinloch Castle, a lavish estate built by a millionaire in the early 1900s. The island, he told his traveling companions, was also famous for its wildlife—red deer, a distinct species of Rum ponies, Highland cattle, and white-tailed sea eagles. The latter had been reintroduced to Rum. Since 1957 the island had been a National Nature Reserve, and it had benefited from an extensive, ongoing reforestation project.

  “There’s going to be plenty for you to film,” Stash promised his cameraman.

  “Sounds great,” Carter said.

  But Carter was far more excited by the prospect of seeing Liam again.

  As the Rock Dove got ready to dock, Duncan made an announcement. He looked a bit sheepish as he did so, which was uncharacteristic of him.

  “Ah, there’s a sort of tradition here,” he said. “When you step ashore, if you’re wearing a hat or a cap, you doff it.”

  “Oh? Why?” Stash asked.

  “As a sign of respect for one of the island’s residents.”

  “For whom, exactly?” Carter inquired. “Some local laird?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a Brownie.” Duncan went to explain that the Brownie was a supernatural being who appeared to mortals, when he chose to, as a small man dressed entirely in brown, with bright eyes and a pointed beard. Offend him, and he was likely to play a prank on you. Stay on his good side, though, and he might help you with the household chores. For example, the Brownie might do the butter churning, or the washing up of the dishes, while the householders slept.

  Once, Duncan said, two sailors were having trouble loading a large, heavy barrel of whiskey on board their boat. Frustrated, one of them remarked that the Brownie could accomplish this task easily enough,
if he so chose. Instantly, the barrel escaped from their grip, rolled down to the shore, became airborne as lightly as a small stone flung into the air, and it landed, intact, on the deck of the men’s boat.

  Hearing all this, Niall promptly set the example by taking off his baseball cap. “I’ve got a bunch of potatoes that need to be peeled,” he announced. “Maybe the Brownie would like to take a whack at that, if he’s got nothing better to do. I’d be willing to take him on as my sous chef.”

  The others also made sure they were bareheaded as they disembarked.

  Looking forward to his reunion with Liam, Carter managed to reach him by phone.

  “It’s so good to hear your voice,” Liam said.

  “Same here. Hey, we’re renting a car,” Carter told him. “Are you guys up for visitors?”

  “Absolutely! But you’d better write down the directions. Finding our place out here in the wild can be a bit tricky.”

  The rental car was a rusty antique, which made some alarming noises when its engine was started. Somewhat to Carter’s surprise, though, it did make the drive in one piece.

  At one point during the drive, they saw a herd of the island’s red deer, grazing, and Carter captured the animals on film.

  Upon their arrival at their destination, Carter embraced and kissed Liam.

  “Carter’s got a boyfriend,” Alonzo mocked him.

  “Oh, more than one?” Bill asked, slyly, giving Stash a sidelong glance. “Spreading the wealth around, has he?”

  “Go fuck yourselves,” Carter retorted, happily.

  “Looks like, unlike some, I may have to settle for that. Damn it, you gay guys are getting all the action on this trip!” Alonzo complained.

  “It’s not too late for you to change your luck,” Carter told the straight guy. “And find ut what you’ve been missing.”

  Alonzo made a great show of declining this generous offer.

  Carter asked Liam if he’d heard about the local legend of the Brownie.

  “Hell, yes,” Liam assured him. “Every time a piece of our equipment goes missing, we blame him. We were in the pub in town one night, drinking. All of a sudden, there was a big crash back in the kitchen. A shelf suddenly detached itself from the wall and fell down. The proprietor said, ah, that’s the Brownie, for sure, up to his usual tricks. He poured out shots of whiskey for everybody, and he proposed a toast to the Brownie, to placate him. The people here take it dead seriously. But now, let me show you around.”

  The archaeologists, Carter saw, had set up quite an impressive camp. It was a tent city of sorts, made up of many small tents, clustered close together. One tent was reserved for cooking. Another, larger one, was where the professors and the students cleaned, catalogued, and studied the artifacts they’d recovered.

  At a discreet distance from the tents, they’d dug latrines. “Unisex,” Liam pointed out, with a grin.

  Bathing, Liam told Carter with a wry smile, was accomplished by carrying a bucket, a washcloth and a towel, and soap to the nearby shore. There, you stripped down and scrubbed yourself in the cold, invigorating seawater.

  “Or you can just say fuck it, and go for a swim. Either way, you end up shivering, and the salt water can leave these little white streaks on your skin,” Liam said, with a laugh. “But at least you’re clean. Now, let me show you guys what we’ve excavated so far,” Liam added.

  To Carter’s uneducated eye, the site wasn’t particularly impressive, but he tried his best to imitate Liam’s enthusiasm. There were two rectangular walled enclosures, one larger than the other, with a short distance separating them. Roofless, the stone walls had lost many of their upper rows of masonry, and as a result they were irregular in height, coming up to no more than chest-high at their tallest. Carter saw narrow doorways and what looked like roughly delineated, asymmetrical window openings. Inside each rectangle, the floor consisted of unpaved dirt.

  Liam pointed out a feature which the two interior spaces had in common. Each had a round flat stone set in the center of the floor. Each of these stones had two holes meticulously chiseled in it, so that the stones resembled oversized, heavy shirt buttons. Their function baffled Carter, until Liam provided the explanation.

  “These holes supported the wooden posts which held up the roof beams, which would’ve also been wood. The roof itself was probably thatch. All that rotted away long ago, of course.” Liam led Carter to an area near the smaller rectangle. Here, a deep pit was covered with boards and a tarp, and marked off with stakes driven into the ground. “We think this was a farmhouse—and this was their garbage pit,” Liam said, excitedly. “It’s a real treasure trove. We know what they ate, because of all the bones discarded here. Quite a variety of animals, birds, and fish. We also know what they threw away. We’ve found lots of pottery shards and broken tools. I know that sifting through people’s trash doesn’t sound all that interesting, but you have to remember, this is medieval trash. It’s a time capsule of sorts. It tells us a lot about these people lived.”

  Stash interviewed the professors, and some of the students.

  “I think we’ve got everything we need,” Stash said. “I guess we should head back to town. You’re staying the night, I assume?” he asked Carter.

  “Yeah. We’ve all been invited to,” Carter told him. “It’ll mean squeezing the extra bodies into those small tents, but that could get interesting.”

  Stash laughed. He consulted Bill and Alonzo, who preferred to return to town.

  “I’ll go with them,” Stash said. “I hate the thought of a perfectly good hotel room, with a bed and a functioning bathroom, going to waste. I’ll think of you, Carter, roughing it out here, when I’m lying warm and comfortable in my bed tonight. We’ll come pick you up in the morning. Meanwhile, are you planning on doing any digging and sifting yourself?”

  “That’s not such a bad idea,” Carter replied. “I can earn my keep. What I’m really looking forward to is taking one of those cold water bucket baths.”

  Stash gave him a dubious look. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s exactly what you’re looking forward to!”

  Was Carter imagining things, or was Stash once again behaving as though he was just the tiniest bit jealous?

  “Well,” Carter said, a bit awkwardly, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “For sure.”

  Stash, Bill, and Alonzo drove off, in their rickety vehicle.

  The archaeologists, Liam warned Carter, went to bed shortly after sunset, so they could get up and go back to work at the first light of dawn.

  “We’re all set,” Liam told Carter. “My roommate’s agreed to bunk in another tent tonight.”

  “Nice of him. So,” Carter said, a little uneasily. “Everybody here knows you and I are going to be fooling around tonight?”

  “Yeah, but so what? I didn’t think you were so protective of your reputation. I know I’m not. Anyway, the other guys aren’t judgmental. If anything, they’re envious. The girls have refused to put out so far, from what I’ve been told. So there’s been a lot of wanking going on in these tents at night. I have a suspicion some of these straight studs are going to cross the line, before this summer’s over. And of course I’m prepared to facilitate that process, should the need arise.”

  Carter had to laugh. “You’re willing to become the camp’s resident gay whore?”

  “Absolutely. As the saying goes—a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. I’m ready to take one—well, more than one, actually!—for the team.”

  “Shame on you. But then, I suppose I’m no better than you are. We’re two of a kind.”

  Carter did spent a few hours assisting with the dirt hauling and sifting. It was surprisingly hard work. He sweated profusely, and he could feel his muscles knotting up.

  Liam was sympathetic. “My muscles ached, too, the first few days. When we knock off for the day—do you want to go for a swim?”

  “Yeah,” Carter agreed. “Please!”

  He and Liam, and several of
the other guys, went skinny dipping in the sea.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Carter blasphemed. “I can’t believe how cold this water is, even in summertime!”

  “Invigorating, isn’t it?” Liam teased him.

  “That’s one word for it. Cock and ball shriveling—that’d be another way to put it,” Carter complained, as he tried not to be too obvious about checking out the other young men’s wet naked bodies.

  Carter soon decided, though, that Alonzo, Stash, and Bill had missed out on a pleasant evening. Dinner, cooked partly over a propane-fueled stove and partly over an open fire, was good, and the meal was accompanied by lively conversation. The students wanted to hear about life in the United States, and about Carter’s adventures in Scotland to date.

  When dusk fell, the night sky was studded with brilliant stars—a display made much brighter than usual, in the absence of street lamps and lighted houses.

  After dinner, Carter and Liam retreated into one of the tents. Liam’s roommate had taken his sleeping bag with him to the other tent. Carter and Liam would share Liam’s sleeping bag. Illumination inside the tent was provided by a small battery-powered camping lantern.

  “It’s primitive, as you see, but it’s comfy,” Liam said.

  “Yeah. It’s fine. Quite intimate, as a matter of fact,” Carter agreed.

  “I always sleep naked, even here—and with my straight tent mate.”

  “So do I. Interesting—the sleeping naked part of it, I mean. Have you made any progress in recruiting him?”

  “None whatsoever,” Liam admitted, with a rueful laugh. “The son of a bitch is incorrigible. A real breeder, cunt crazy. I’m afraid my charms and my wiles are utterly wasted on him. It was starting to look like a long, horny, frustrating summer, until you turned up.”

  “Trust me, Liam, your charms and your wiles, which are considerable, aren’t wasted on me.”

  “Thank God,” Liam said, fervently. “But tell me about Stanislaus Pulaski. Have you found out whether he’s gay or not?”