Rief sighed. “My opinion on the debate is moot,” he said with a twinge of self-contempt. “After all, what do I know about what’s good for others when my own affairs are barely in order?”
Mathew wanted to ask what troubled him and what he was really referring to, but he knew how annoying it was when Maggie badgered him. Instead, he respected the man’s privacy and said, “Thank you for inviting me up here.”
With a shy smile, Rief nodded, then glanced away. “Thanks for coming.”
Below, a child played with a hoop and stick, his dog barking and chasing behind. A bitter lump rose in Mathew, recalling the days he felt as carefree as the frolicking pair. In Rief’s company he could almost imagine he felt that way again.
Happy. Content.
When he leaned over the edge to watch their progress, hands gripped his waist.
Mathew gasped.
“Careful now,” Rief cautioned.
At the feel of another man’s hands on his waist, the solidness of a male body close to his side, arousal rushed through Mathew. The catwalk was so tiny that when Rief led him back a step, groin brushed his hip. His heart leapt and he sucked in a breath when eyes that reflected all the colors and beauty of this tropical world locked with his own.
If anyone below looked up at that moment, they would see the two of them poised like lovers about to kiss.
Breathing heavy, Rief searched his face, eyes lingering on his mouth. When he licked his lips, a shiver danced down Mathew’s back.
Instinctively, Mathew raised his face, lips parting. All he had to do was tip his chin a bit farther....
Clearing his throat, Rief released him and stepped to the side. “Just don’t get too close to the edge, eh, Mathew?”
Nodding and throat too tight to speak, he took a much needed deep breath.
Dear God, I almost kissed him!
Though Rief had stopped it, he had not misjudged the mutual longing. Rief had wanted to kiss him too. He had never been surer of anything in all his life. His head spun from such a startling discovery.
How could Rief be like him? Was that why he had invited him here? Was he trying to get Mathew alone to kiss him? Or was he looking for more than a chat and a kiss? Was Rief actually looking for—he swallowed his panic—did he have designs to bugger Mathew?
Well, he might be smaller, less manly than Rief, but he was bloody-well never taking a prick up his ass! He wasn’t some molly or a woman!
For the millionth time, however, he imagined what two men could do together. Kiss and maybe pull on each other’s cocks? Roll around naked and rub together like in his dream? Or would they put their cocks in each other’s mouths and suck on them? A classmate bragged once that a girl had done that to him. As the storyteller’s audience had been comprised of Englishmen, they all insisted such a thing was dirty and best left for the French.
But the image of sucking a cock had taken hold of Mathew, and he often fantasized about being on the receiving end. Heat flushed in his middle now, thinking about Rief kneeling before him, opening his mouth and allowing Mathew inside him.
Surely there were signals, secretive ways men like them brought up these topics, but he had no idea what they might be. He’d been the object of unwanted advances from older men in the past, but had always removed himself from such situations posthaste, nothing and no one being worth the risk.
Instead of leaving now, Mathew was behaving like that brazen and foolish man with sour wine breath at Pansy Swanson’s summer picnic. He had repeatedly invited Mathew on a “private walk,” touching his leg and arm with little regard to subtlety or discretion.
No, Mathew was behaving worse. He’d almost kissed Rief for Christ’s sake!
While Rief had made bold comments earlier, even flirting with him, he’d stopped the kiss. Why?
Rather than speak—who knew what madness he might spout?—he returned to looking at the town, spinning his hat in his hands and all too aware that Rief kept an arm in front of him to prevent him from getting near the edge. Close but not touching. The fatherly gesture filled him with the feeling of being cared for. Accepted.
Stupid, really. Rief might have similar urges, but surely he was no different from the brazen fellow at the picnic, only after sex. Though Mathew’s body craved physical intimacy with another man more than food or even air sometimes, sex would never be enough for him. He feared if he started down this road, it would only increase the wanting for the one thing he would never get to have.
Love.
Bitterness soured his mood, and he squinted against the glaring sunlight. He could almost feel the weather mocking him, smirking with its warmth despite the icy turmoil of his reality.
“How can you stand all this sunshine?” Mathew asked with sudden contempt.
Rief laughed. “Do you have something against nice weather?”
“Of course I don’t, not really.” He took a moment to collect his thoughts. Rief didn’t seem inclined to interrupt, and it relaxed him. “Life is full of hardship and denial. That is the real world. My world,” he added without thinking. “Yet here, it’s eternal summer. Like the very weather is laughing in my face, telling me that I will never get what I want out of my life.”
Rief was quiet for a moment. “Not everything has to be a struggle.”
“Doesn’t it?” he countered. “A man can’t always get what he wants, Rief. Life isn’t like it is here, all sunshine and idyllic perfection. Real life is like winter. A storm. Bitter and full of hardships. A place where a man must work hard and do what is expected. He cannot live in sunshine forever, holding on to the trappings of youth and innocence. Eventually, he has to face what comes his way.”
Rief studied him with a quizzical smile. “Are you always so philosophical, Mathew?”
“It’s rare I find someone that I am comfortable talking to,” he confessed, cheeks warming, but not from embarrassment. He never would’ve imagined his given name on the lips of another man would sound so unbelievably seductive. So arousing....
A pelican flew through their line of sight, its great brown wingspan casting a shadow on the ground below. They watched its progress for a moment, then Mathew said, “You spoke of the debates and if your country should trade one freedom for another. Well, sometimes a man must give up what they want for the greater good.” He couldn’t help the desperation in his voice for how badly he wanted to believe those words. But if he was doing the right thing by ignoring his desires and marrying Maggie, why did it feel like a betrayal of his very soul?
Was wanting to be loved really such a sin?
“You have to do it for the greater good,” he repeated, impassioned.
Rief studied him intently. “But sometimes the ‘greater good’ is just what a bunch of assholes says it is,” he countered, as if truly following the revolving debate in Mathew’s head. “That’s why a man has to go with his gut, follow his heart, no matter what the outcome. To hell with the rest.”
Mathew gave a self-deprecating sniff. “Spoken like someone who fights for what he believes in. I have never been able to be that sort of man. Don’t you think I would love to have the respect of my father? We both know it will never happen, so I have given up caring.”
Rief arched unconvinced brows.
Smiling, Mathew blushed and admitted, “Well, I am attempting to do so. At the very least, I have come to accept I will never have the things I want most.”
“Men like us rarely do, Matt,” he whispered.
Mathew shot him a look, stunned yet again by another almost confession. And did he just shorten my name?
“I may fight but only because I have to,” Rief went on casually, as if he hadn’t just admitted a secret men could be killed for. “I haven’t gotten what I wanted either. But some things are worth fighting for, even if you lose them in the end.”
“I wish I could do that, but I am a slave to convention. I have duties, responsibilities. People expect things from me. And I must believe that in the end, all the struggling
and the sacrificing will be worth it.” He pounded his fist on the railing, as if willing those words to bear the truth.
“Tell me, Mathew. What conflict are you struggling with?”
The conversation had become way too personal, far too easily. Hadn’t they just been discussing politics and the weather? Though Rief had laid down the gauntlet, all but saying the words aloud, fear prevented Mathew from picking it up.
A lump formed in his throat, and he managed to chuckle. “I have no reason to struggle with this conflict over slavery and state rights. Remember, I’m an Englishman?”
Rief sniffed a laugh. “All right, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want. But we both know we stopped talking about politics a long time ago.”
“I know, it’s just....” His face heated, and he confessed, “I’m still trying to find an understanding of a world where I don’t fit in.”
Rief nudged him in the arm. “When you find out, let me in on the secret, eh?”
Cracking a smile, he tried to ignore the way his stomach ached with a longing to touch Rief, hold him and be held in return.
“You said everything is perfect here, but that isn’t so, Matt,” he finally said. “Florida has thunderclaps that seem to last hours as they echo off the sea. We have days so hot you can see it rising from the ground. Bugs that burrow into your skin. Reptiles that can kill faster than you can blink. Shouldn’t we get our fair share of perfect days when our bad days are so much worse? Don’t you and I deserve that too?”
“I suppose.”
How did Rief keep stirring these things within him, getting inside his head and decimating all the walls he had painstakingly placed around his heart? Making him believe there might be a chance to enjoy a few moments in the sun?
“Storms here are violent beyond measure,” Rief continued. “But when it’s over, the sun shines, almost in apology for what was done. Or maybe laughing at your pain and mocking the harshness of reality, like you said. Just take a look at those trees lying on their side.” He pointed to a rolling line of pines bent at an unnatural angle. “Winds did that. I was just a boy when the big hurricane came in ’46. The biggest anybody’s ever seen. Only eight houses survived and the water was so high on the lower streets it was over a tall man’s head. Lots of people died too. A lot of people I grew up with.”
Without thinking, Mathew placed a comforting arm over Rief’s shoulders. He rubbed his warm back, wanting to soothe the pain in those eyes. “I’m very sorry, Rief.”
The body beneath his hand tensed.
When he realized what he was doing, he dropped his arm quickly and clutched at his hat, barely catching himself before bending the brim. “That’s a very sad story,” he said a bit too loudly.
“Yes, it is,” Rief agreed, his voice neutral, studied.
Mathew had known the danger of befriending this man. He kept cautioning himself to back off, but then Rief would lure him closer to a place of risk. It would only be a matter of time, lost in this dance, before he said or did something he couldn’t take back.
Attempting to behave casually, he looked down at the town again, fighting the conflicting urges to flee or yank Rief’s into his arms. The streets made an ordered grid, each one littered with tidy houses, some of brick and others wood-sided with big windows to welcome the ocean breeze.
Searching for a neutral topic with which to calm the charged air, he pointed at the fancy brick house directly below them. “Who lives there?”
“Asa Tift,” Rief said. “He’s got the biggest wrecking outfit in town. Six wreckers.” He chuckled to himself. “And let me tell you, he is not pleased my brother is wreck master of your Lucky Clipper job.”
Mathew felt like he swallowed broken glass, jabbing his insides and making that pain in his guts return. The casual mention of his ruined business venture marked the return of his wits and a measure of his hormones.
Why had he been such a careless fool? Addressing each other with the casualness of intimate friendship? Going for a walk, chatting philosophy and personal matters, touching this man? Rief might be like him in some ways, but had Mathew become so blinded by loneliness that he forgot who Rief really was? What sides of a conflict they both stood upon?
No matter how devastatingly attractive or charming he was, or how much he understood the struggles Mathew faced, Rief Lawson was one of the men cheating them in an intricate pattern of lies and deceit.
How could he have ignored that?
And to think he had almost kissed him!
Thank God he had not risked everything on a man who spoke words that tickled his ears even as he dug a knife into his pocket.
Sensing the change in the air, Rief went on in a rush. “Wrecking is honest work, Matt. We patrol the reef and help those who run into trouble. We save lives first, then cargo. And nobody gets paid for saving somebody’s life. We do it because we’re honest men.”
The weight of accusation was not lost, nor was the far-too-familiar shortening of his name. He had the decency to blush. But embarrassed anger, coupled with the injustice inflicted upon his business, the pain of Father’s cruel accusations, and finally Maggie breaking their engagement and leaving him vulnerable to exposure—all of it lay just below the surface, working its way to the top.
“If it weren’t for us, lots of people would die,” Rief said. “We’re doing an important job. Wrecking drives the economy of Key West. It keeps our families fed.”
“At what price?”
“What do you mean by that?” There was a warning in Rief’s tone that told Mathew if he were smart, he would be quiet.
But he refused to back down.
So little Mathew finally decides to be a fighter. Father would be so proud....
“At what price?” he repeated. “At what price do you keep your families fed? Deceit and conspiracy? Piracy?”
“You don’t wanna have this conversation with me.”
“Quite right, I do not,” he announced in a superior tone, donning his hat with a curt bow. “Thank you for showing me the lighthouse. Good day, Mr. Lawson.”
Hoping that would end it, Mathew rushed back inside. He could not be near Rief a second longer. If he stayed, he would either blame Rief for everything falling apart in his life—which wasn’t exactly fair—or risk his entire future on a kiss!
Heart pounding and sweat slicking his brow, he raced down the stairs, needing to put as much space between himself and Rief as humanly possible.
He’d been a fool to come here!
“We’re wreckers, not pirates,” Rief declared from above, anger in a voice that had been so pleasant a moment ago.
Mathew descended the spiral stairs faster, head spinning. It seemed so much farther climbing down now that he was impatient to escape the things Rief’s presence—no! Mr. Lawson’s presence did to him. He could not relegate this man to such a friendly place, even in his mind. Though growing dizzy, Mathew didn’t slow his pace. He was halfway to the bottom. Just a little farther....
Out of nowhere, a large hand grabbed his arm.
“Unhand me!” Mathew growled, trying to break free.
Rief towered over him, oppressing him with a sudden fury. He had seen Rief’s playful side, but much like the Florida weather, there was a potential for darkness too. A potential to lash out like an injured, cornered animal. Mathew had sensed it. Seen it in those hazel eyes.
And now here it was, at the fore.
“Wreckers sometimes go months between finding a salvage job, and they don’t get paid for that. And when they do work, it’s perilous and backbreaking. Lots of good men die,” Rief said. “Is it wrong to get paid for doing a dangerous job?”
Mathew tried to shake his arm loose, but Rief’s hand circled his bicep in an iron grip, rendering him powerless, trapped between the brick wall and a solid pillar of hard muscle. Rief could break his arm effortlessly if he wanted. He could do whatever he wanted to Mathew, and there was no way to stop him.
“Let go of me,” he warned, ple
ased his voice didn’t tremble like his insides.
Smirking until that single dimple appeared, Rief cocked his head to the side. “Or what? Are you gonna scream like a little girl?”
Those words struck harder than the blow of a fist.
After everything they’d discussed, he never expected Rief to speak to him with the same mocking tone Father used. To know Rief did not think of Mathew as an equal, as a man... destroyed something inside him.
Because, was he a real man? How could he be when he couldn’t even act like he should? Associating with women, lusting after men? Falling overboard like a clumsy fool? He’d failed to handle the auction preparations, and then cowered under Father’s reproof. Even Maggie dismissed his opinions as if he were a child. He should tell her to order a dress for him out of that damn lavender silk, because he really was a molly, a dandy, and a fribble, just like everyone said.
And having Rief throw it in his face crushed Mathew to his very soul.
“You wreckers disgust me!” Fighting tears of shame, he allowed anger to take hold of him. “You’re all in some sort of grand conspiracy to extort as much as you can out of people’s misfortune. Your own uncle has deceived me. You claim to be altruistic, helping those in need, but you prey on the injured like vultures, twisting the laws until you leave us with nothing!”
“You got your life,” Rief reminded him, his grip tightening, his body moving closer. Mathew could smell the sweet saltiness of his breath. The sun-soaked musk of his skin.
Suddenly a hot flush worked across his body. The fear twisted, making his heart race at the raw intensity of the man holding him captive. The scent of Rief’s sweat, the heat of his body, made Mathew’s groin stir. He hated himself for it, but he could not stop it any more than he could stop a storm at sea.
He sputtered for a reply. “W-which I am grateful for.”
Laughter echoed in the lighthouse. “Doesn’t sound like it.” Rief’s entire body grew with indignation. “I risked my life to save you. Then I risked it again retrieving your cargo and a ‘thank-you’ is all I deserve? How dare you name an honest sailor a pirate?”
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