His shoulders rose in a classic Gallic shrug.
“Tell me, Eddie.”
Eddie hauled himself from his chair, yawned and stretched. “It’s been one hell of a night …” He looked at his watch. “… Actually, it’s hardly worth the effort of going to bed. I’ve got to be up in less than two hours and I’m too wired to sleep. I think I’ll get an early breakfast. Wanna join me?”
She cocked her head, considering the option. “Yeah, why not? Just so long as you don’t expect me to cook, and it’s not something greasy …” She patted her stomach and pulled a face.
Eddie grinned and held the door open for her. “Do you mind if we stop off at the locker room first? I’ve got to get out of this kit before I melt.”
“That would depend.”
“On what?
“On what you’re wearing underneath.”
“Thermals, obviously.”
“And under them?”
“Tee shirt and …” Crap. “… shorts.” She threw him a sly wink and waggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Chapter 19
They sat together in the economically lit dining room; Eddie now dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans snatched from his cabin on the way.
“Better?” he said.
Lydia sooked on her brew. “Much. Thanks.”
“How’s the coffee?”
“Cheap and nasty, but warm and wet, which is what counts? Is there any more?”
“You do know too much caffeine can be bad for you.”
“I don’t have any problem with it. Coffee, like chocolate, comes from beans; beans are a vegetable, or a fruit, not sure which, and as such can be counted as one of my five a day.”
“Excuse and denial, always the sign of a true addict.”
“Maybe, but think on this, I don’t have a problem with it, but if my blood caffeine level falls below critical mass, you very well might.”
She stirred yoghurt into her granola. “I came on to you, didn’t I?” she said. “That’s what you’re not telling me isn’t it?”
Eddie scraped a generous layer of marmalade over a thick slice of buttered toast, took a large bite and chewed methodically on it, his silence confirming her suspicion.
“Shit.” She dropped her spoon, pushed her dish away and closed her eyes. “How bad was it?”
He swallowed his mouthful. “Pretty full on, and it wasn’t bad per se, just rotten timing. Nice piercing by the way.”
“What else did I do? Did I damage anything? Hurt anyone? Please tell me.”
“No, but …” He feigned disgust. “ …your language! I’m flabbergasted you even know such words. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
She pressed a hand over her mouth, her face creased with mortification.
“Not only that, you seemed to have some weird fixation with cutting off my balls, deep frying them and serving them up with chips and gravy,” Eddie said.
Lydia covered her face with her hands and groaned. “I am so sorry.” She peeped through her fingers. “Are you going to put it all in your report?”
“That depends on what you put in yours.”
“Mine?”
“Hmmm. You said you were going to file a complaint with my soop-eer-rior for, and I quote, shouting at you, manhandling you, kidnapping and sexual harassment. I don’t think I missed anything out.”
She hid her face again and keened pathetically.
Eddie took another bite of his toast, catching a shred of sticky orange peel from the corner of his smiling mouth with his tongue.
“No, I’m not going to mention you in my report,” he said, pushing her dish back. “But I might put you in my book.”
They ate the rest of their meal in the company of convivial chit chat. When they had done and cleared away their dirty dishes and cups, Eddie escorted Lydia to her cabin.
“You want to come in,” she said, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb her neighbours.
“Best not,” he said. “We don’t want to stir up any more ill feeling than there are already.”
“Who’s going to know?”
“Walls have ears.”
“Don’t be so stuffy. It’s nobody’s business but ours where we choose to spend our time. We’re not doing anything wrong.”
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to make you a cup of proper coffee from my secret store and you are going to tell me all about your books.”
He looked up and down the corridor to see if anyone had been disturbed by their talking and felt the need to neb in.
“Okay,” he said. “Coffee and a chat. I can handle that.”
Her cabin was neat and tidy and smelled of vanilla and sandalwood. On the pillow of her bunk sat a small brown teddy bear wearing a green satin bow tie. Eddie picked it up.
“Mr Brown,” she explained, taking the treasured toy from him and placing it on her table. “He goes everywhere with me. He’s my good luck charm. Why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable?”
She filled the kettle from the bathroom sink, set it on its base and turned it on. From their hiding place under her bed she took out separate canisters of granulated coffee and creamer and prepared two mugs.
“Secret stash,” she said. “Sometimes I want quality over quantity.”
She sat beside him on the bunk to wait for the water to boil.
“How’s your head?” Eddie said.
“It’s still fine.”
“No headache?”
“No.”
“Any more bumps and bruises I should know about? For the record?”
“You said you weren’t putting me in the record.”
“Out of interest then.”
“I think I might have one on my knee.”
She rolled up the leg of her overall, exposing a fine slender calf, and a small purple stain about the size of a ten pence piece over the knobbly bone below her knee.
“Is that interesting enough?”
Tanned. Smooth. Very nice.
“Aye … ahem … they’ll do … I mean … doesn’t look too bad.”
From the corner of his eye he became aware of her watching him, appraising him as he measured up her attributes. When he looked at her directly, she held his gaze with the most beguiling eyes he had ever seen, a combination of greys and blues and greens; all the colours of the sea.
As he looked into them, the pupils dilated the merest fraction. Were they reflecting her interest in him, or were they just adjusting to the lack of light?
He settled for the latter, because even though he was interested in her, she sure as hell couldn’t be interested in him. Not in that way.
She laid her hand on his cheek and stroked it with her thumb. Face closer, lips parted, the tip of her tongue just visible. Lips touching his cheek, soft and warm and tender against the scratchiness of emerging bristles. Against the corner of his mouth. Timid pecks. Testing the water? Seeing how far she could go?
Maybe she was interested.
“Will you stay?” she said, her voice as smooth as brushed velvet as she kissed the soft spot just below his left ear. “I’d like you to stay. For the company.”
He felt himself blushing. “Aye. Sure. If you like. For the company.”
A kiss to his throat sent a tingle running through him from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes.
“I don’t really want to cut your balls off,” she said, kissing the tip of his nose.
“I’m pleased to hear it. I have become rather attached to them.” And now she had both hands under his sweatshirt, under his tee shirt, against his skin. Intimate physical contact with a colleague flouted all the rules in the book. Such fraternisation could have him before a disciplinary board …For once the rule book could go screw itself.
He took her in his arms, pressing his mouth against hers, his tongue feeling the smooth edge of her teeth, tasting the sweetness of her breath.
She broke the kiss, lay back and unzipped her overall
s down to the crotch, exposing her brassiere and a strip of pale stomach, giving him a close-up look at the jewel glinting in her pierced belly button, an eye winking at him, giving him the come on. This time, he obeyed.
He peeled the shapeless overalls from her, leaving her once again in her tiny underwear. She grabbed his sweatshirt and pulled it over his head, as he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.
Within seconds they were both naked and engrossed in exploring new territories, tasting, smelling, kissing each other all over. She was receptive, he was forceful. They both climaxed.
It had been a long time since Eddie had had any meaningful sex with anyone other than his own right hand, and this, with Lydia, out of the blue, against every regulation in the book, fulfilling and satisfying for both of them, more than made up for the shortfall.
Numb with pleasure Eddie fell back against the pillows, lathered in sweat, panting like a runner, his head spinning, his cock and balls still tingling from the orgasm.
Lydia lay down on him, her head resting on his chest. He kissed her damp forehead, tasting salt from the fine film of perspiration, enjoying the weight of her slender body against him.
He stroked the silken length of her hair, released from its regulation swinging pony tail to fall in chestnut waves over her back and shoulders, as she ran her hand over his stomach and the pairs of parallel silver scars which crossed it, a grid drawn out for some macabre game of tic tac toe.
He tried not to flinch at the tender connection. Although the scars were healed, both inside and out, reliving the memory of how he got them caused physical pain, psychosomatic probably, yet real nonetheless.
Soft fingertips traced the scars, then the pressure of warm lips against them. “Tell me about these,” she said.
“I’d rather not.”
She kissed them again. “Okay.”
Was that it? Given up? Didn’t she care? Or was she just being considerate of his feelings.
Ach, why the hell not tell her. What harm could it do? It won’t change the facts. It won’t make them go away. Might even make me feel better.
He drew in a deep breath. “I was stabbed,” he said matter-of-factly. “A really pissed off guy with a really long knife tried to fillet me like a fish.”
Lydia drew herself up on her elbows to look into his face, her expression grave. “Hell’s teeth, where was this? Some hellhole abroad?”
“Not quite. A little too close to home for comfort.” Pause. “Aberdeen dock, fifty yards from the Mermaid Bar. Saturday, 21 August, 2008, 11.45 p.m give or take a minute or two. It was a warm night with a full moon. I’ll always remember that moon, big and bright, because I got a really good view of it while I lay on my back, bleeding out into the gutter.”
“What happened?”
Eddie felt a tremor start in his leg. This was going to hurt. He cleared his throat.
“The guy was full of the swally, completely off his heid stocious,” he said. “He said he didn’t like the way I looked at him. I told him to sod off and leave me to my pint and I thought he had, but when I left he followed me outside, spoiling for a fight. There was a bit of a stooshie, some pushing and shoving, and then all of a sudden he had this great big fuck-off knife in his hand and … he … um–”
The words jammed. He cleared his throat again. “… he stuck it in me, deep. Sliced me wide open. I was lucky I didn’t lose my tripes all over the quayside.”
There he’d said it, and at the recollection a shudder ran through him. Feeling it, Lydia held him closer, and he found he wanted to continue.
“I lost a lot of blood, and, I’m told, I died on the operating table for a few minutes,” he said. “I don’t remember much about that bit, or the week I spent unconscious in intensive care afterwards. Don’t much want to remember the six months I spent in hospital recovering either.”
She continued to look him in the eyes, hers filled with care and compassion, and then she bent and kissed the scars again. “Poor baby.”
No one had ever called him that before. He found he rather liked it. He also found the fear and pain had diminished a little.
Euterich heard the pair in the corridor outside, heard them go into her room, heard them talking.
He cursed his oversensitive hearing for picking up every grunt, groan and sigh of their lovemaking, and be damned his highly developed sense of smell as it tormented him with the sweet and sour scents of sweat and semen.
The pictures in his head tortured him - the pair laying their hands on each other, feeling, tasting, images of Capstan with his tongue in her pussy, her with Capstan’s dick in her mouth, both experiencing the pulsating undulation of pure pleasure, the explosion of mutual orgasm and the spine tingling delight of post coitus.
He screwed up his face in a dark scowl and pressed his eyes closed, squeezing out hot tears of yearning, craving her with physical pain.
Fucking Capstan, taking what was his!
He felt the fire of hate surge through him, coursing through his veins, scorching his brain, enhancing and corrupting his already burning jealousy to a state almost incandescent in its intensity.
He rammed his knuckles into his mouth, biting down on them to stifle a cry of anguish.
Without release the storm turned in on itself, and without mercy snapped what little rationality he still possessed.
Chapter 20
The weather forecast said to expect two relatively fine days in a row, days to take advantage of and get some outside work done. Jock McAllister and his helper of the day, Lawrence Brewer, were already busy.
McAllister’s voice came through Brewer’s headset. “Steady!”
McAllister had charge of this operation and right now his word was law, and not even God himself could override his authority.
Brewer’s thumb hovered over the red ‘stop’ button on the handheld control, ready to bring the operation to a halt at a split second’s notice if the voice instructed. The reason for his diligence - nestled in its personal tubular cradle, itself held by a sturdy gantry swung out at a right angle from the lower deck, a bright blue and yellow remotely operated vehicle (ROV) about to be deployed to survey the platform’s four supporting legs and the seabed on which they stood for degradation or damage, and to take samples of the surrounding water and sand to check for contamination by leakage or degeneration.
The ROV and its cradle began to sway slightly on its support cable as a rogue gust of wind caught it and turned it around.
“Wait…” The air fell still again. “Okay, bring her down. Easy with it.”
Brewer’s thumb rested against the ‘down’ button, lowering the equipment at a limpet’s pace ever downward, until it broke the water’s surface and sank beneath it.
“Touchdown! That’s great, Prof. Hold it there. I’m coming up.”
Brewer’s thumb switched from the green ‘down’ button to the red ‘stop’, and the winding machinery clunked to a halt. Now he would wait for McAllister to climb up from his lower level observation post to join him.
Standing at the safety rail, looking down the hundred plus feet into the swelling waves of the North Sea, Brewer had time to remember back to the last time he felt this keyed up, when he had last worn the all enveloping coveralls, a hard hat with his name painted on and a pair of steel toed boots so heavy they made him walk like Frankenstein’s monster.
Had it really been eight years? So long since he last felt any real sense of anticipation of the work to come, of accomplishment at its completion, of the sheer bone numbing exhaustion that came at the end of a hard day’s graft?
He turned his face to the breeze and wiped a hand over his brow to smear away a sheen of perspiration; a nervous, excited, well earned sweat pushed out by a pounding heart and a rush of adrenaline.
“And Longdrift thought it might be a hardship for me to be out here,” he said. “How wrong they were. Look at what I’ve been missing. I’ve been too long behind a desk and now, for a few short months, I’m free of the office politics,
get to hang out with the guys, play about with some pretty nifty technology, as well as snap the odd photo and get in a spot of fishing, and in return all I have to do is keep my head down and do the jobs I’m assigned, make a few observational notes of the crew’s psychological state along the way, and then collect a big fat pay packet and a spot of leave for my trouble. In reality, Longdrift old fruit, the joke’s on you because I am laughing up my sleeve.”
A herring gull perched on the rail a few feet away took no notice of Brewer talking to himself, and continued its preening.
With the ROV out of sight below the waterline, McAllister returned, scaring off the gull now lined up in the viewer of Brewer’s camera.
“Good job Prof, I’ll take her now.”
“Be my guest,” said Brewer, and stood back to allow McAllister access to the controls.
Under McAllister’s careful control the cable continued to play out, taking with it the dual control cables. Power went down one, fibre optic pictures came back up the other.
With the device safely submerged, the holding clamps securing it to its cradle were remotely disengaged.
Further manoeuvring via its four separate directional thrusters would require a skilled hand to manipulate a different set of controls, and they were housed in the shelter of a nearby red Portakabin.
Inside, surrounded by empty packing crates, McAllister took his seat at the workstation, manipulated a few switches, and three television screens flickered into life.
“Mind if I watch?” said Brewer, hovering close and peering over McAllister’s shoulder.
“You not got anything else to do?”
“Not until we bring it back up.”
McAllister said, “Okay then, pull up a pew. So long as you don’t want to chatter and don’t expect a running commentary. I have to concentrate.”
“Understood.” Brewer chose one of the sturdy plastic boxes to use as a rudimentary seat and made himself comfortable.
“Would you mind if I take a picture or two?” he said, removing the lens cap from his camera.
McAllister gave him a sideways look. “What for?”
“They’ve given me this nice smart piece of kit to document our adventure. Be a shame not to use it.”
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