I closed my eyes. Shuddering softly, I sighed. With that, the last of the crying went out of me, and I relaxed finally, completely.
“There,” whispered Marcus. I worried that he would release me, but he did not. He only relaxed his arms a little so that I could breathe fully once again. He said nothing more, and neither did I. There were no words for the depth of my gratitude.
I fell asleep with his breath warming the back of my neck.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke feeling quieted. For many moments, I remained on my side without moving, regarding the wall with a sense of peace.
Marcus still slept, his back pressed against mine. His breathing was heavy and steady. Odd, I thought. Odd that he is still asleep and it’s morning. I had always found him awake and active.
With awareness of Marcus came awareness of the night before. Matter-of-factly, I thought I should feel shame for what had transpired, as if I had somehow taken advantage of his kindness. Yet I could not. There was only a calm awareness, as if I had been purged.
I slowly sat up, careful of my inert right arm, and looked down upon Marcus. I did not care to encounter him awake just now. Quietly, I wound my arm and then picked my way over his body. He remained blessedly undisturbed.
The light of the sun, largely hidden by the trees, became brighter as I approached the open beach. Here, the light was clean and new and evenly cast. I walked to the surf and stood there with my feet meeting the waves, watching the western horizon grow slowly lighter.
My eyes unfocused so that I took in the whole of the panorama—the long line where the dusky sky met the dark ocean waves. I felt vacant inside, as if I’d been cored. It was a filled emptiness. No loose fittings rattled inside. Just a serene feeling, as if nothing but breath filled me, or cloud.
I really should not have broken down like that, I thought at length. Eventually my rational mind talked me into misgivings, regrets. No, I should not have broken down like that. I should have composed myself like a man. Instead I had acted like a child spoiled with attention. I had taken advantage of Marcus’s kindness and shamed myself. However, I could not take that back now. I had done the thing, and now I had to live with it.
The sky lightened to the familiar new blue of early morning. I am not sure how long Marcus stood there before I became aware of his presence. He seemed to be silently regarding the horizon, and was dressed in fresh clothes. For a while we simply shared the breeze, the horizon, and the waves. At length, I said, “I hope you can accept my apologies regarding last night. I lost control of myself.” I dared not look at him as I spoke, lest I lose the courage. Instead I spoke to the ocean, which wouldn’t have cared had I cried a lake.
“It’s all right,” said Marcus, stepping next to me. “These things happen. It is what makes us human. How do you feel now?”
“Purged.”
He did not reply immediately, and I interpreted his silence to be a negative response. Disdain, perhaps, or disapproval. My throat suddenly grew tight and my eyes threatened to burn. So I was not purged after all, but fragile like blown glass. I swallowed back the emotion and filled the silence with words. Perhaps, at least, I could somehow make him understand. “My life has been stressful and confusing. As you can imagine—as you possibly experienced—being shipwrecked is…disorienting. You have been very kind to me. Too kind. I am very grateful to you.” I struggled past a lump and forced life into my words, though my voice was failing me. “I’m just rather afraid I’m weak.”
“Is that…what you think?” asked Marcus.
Now, my treacherous eyes watered. I only prayed that they did not overflow. “Of course. Don’t you?”
He said, “No. No, of course not. Jon, you are a strong and courageous person. And as tough as a nut!”
I was so startled that I looked at him despite my brimming eyes. Firmly, he continued. “You survived a violent storm at sea, and not just survived. You thrive. Yes, I know what it is like to be shipwrecked. I’ve experienced madness. My own, that of others. I’ve seen men die. No, I certainly don’t think you are weak.”
I looked away again. “You say that while I have tears in my eyes,” I scoffed.
“And what is your point?” he asked. “You are a proud, brave, resourceful, beautiful, dignified man. Even with the tears. Hell, because of the tears!”
I had focused every ounce of my concentration on keeping my face turned from him. So much so that I did not sense him moving closer until his hand was under my face. He took my chin gently and tipped my face toward his. “Don’t you see?” he asked, while I searched his eyes with confusion and surprise. Tears began to roll down my face. The edges of his mouth tipped up in a rueful, tender way. “You are an amazing person.” Then, he leaned in and placed his lips against mine in a short, sweet kiss.
His hand fell away as he pulled back, gaze locked with mine. I stared, speechless, the fresh tears still wet on my cheeks and the memory of his lips still imprinted on mine. Surprisingly soft, and as considerate and sure as his hands had been.
Marcus took a step backward. I caught his wrist before he could take another, and pulled him back toward me. What I would do once he was close again, I was not sure—not until his face was inches from mine. My hands rose to his face, and I winced slightly as my cold metal fingers touched his skin—not because I could feel them, but because I knew that he could. But then, I was guiding his mouth toward mine. He curled his hands around my neck with a sharp intake of breath that I felt as much as heard. Our lips touched, and this time they were exploring, kneading, needing.
A wave of energy and want flowed into me from that kiss—out from him and up from my gut. Our fingers tightened and we pressed closer until our bodies were molded against each other and I could feel his cock, hard against my thigh. I groaned reflexively against his mouth—surprised, alarmed, joyful. He groaned back and I was aware of my own member pressed stiff against him. His hips dipped down to grind wantingly against it. His tongue flicked against the crease of my mouth, invitingly. I parted my lips for him. I could taste him now, yes, and somehow I felt his caressing tongue and the heat of his loins as one sensation.
I broke away from him, panting heavily for breath. Sweet fresh salt air rushed in around our faces. “How? Why?” I gasped.
Marcus rested his forehead against mine and his arms traveled down to encircle my shoulders. “Thank you,” he said, breathlessly. “Oh my God, thank you.” He laughed and squeezed me and said, “You have awoken a passion in me I have not felt for years. I had begun to forget what it was like to be with a person, to be with a man. And here you came, so perfect, so desirable. If we’d have met on the mainland, I would have considered myself just as lucky.” He smiled at me. “Do you see now?”
“You desire men?” Puzzled, I pulled back.
“I’m afraid so,” he said, wry and sheepish.
“I never thought—” What? Never thought it was possible for an educated professional man to exhibit such unnatural, wanton cravings—or that those cravings may not be unnatural or wanton at all? Never thought that my nervous regard for beautiful, intelligent men may have been more than just admiration?
“You didn’t know,” he said, an explosion of mirth lighting his eyes. It was neither a statement nor a question, but a realization.
I shook my head. There was a great deal I didn’t know.
He drew his eyebrows together and pursed the lips I had just kissed. He hesitated, then said, “I…would like to show you, if you would let me.”
My gut clenched. “I…” I could not find the words. I could only stare at him standing before me in the clean morning light, a shadow cast across his eyes. God, I could still feel him against me—his skin, his lips, his cock—and I wanted him. I wanted to touch his face, to run my hands over his chest and through his sun-bleached hair. Wanted to feel his breath against my mouth. I wanted— Oh, God, I wanted to hold his stiff cock.
A twist of horror shot through the desire. What was I thinking? Here was
the man who cared for me and showed me tenderness—beautiful, intelligent, and gracious. And I—I was exiled, stranded. Fractured.
“I can’t—” I choked, but did not know the rest of the words. Oh, but it suddenly made sense, didn’t it? The realization turned my blood to ice. This was the thing that had been wrong with me, the secret so shameful that I had kept it even from myself. I desired men.
I desired men, and I desired Marcus.
When I did not answer straight away, Marcus turned his face away. “Forgive me,” he muttered. “I have acted out of line. It’s just… When I found you on the beach, you were so perfect, even broken. And then you opened to me last night, and I thought perhaps… Well, it’s been so long, and I hoped so hard that you would want me as I want you.”
My breath hitched. He stood there, a picture so tragically beautiful it made my throat close. I wanted to touch my fingers to his cheek, to comfort him. “Marcus.” My mouth had gone dry, my voice hoarse.
He looked at me with an expression of raw hope and need. Tears swelled in my eyes, and I looked away. “I…do. I want you.” My lips twisted into a tortured smile, and I laughed, a harsh sound. “I feel passion for you that I have never felt for a woman.”
The warm press of his fingers on my cheek made my heart lurch. I looked at him and for a long moment, he searched my gaze. “It’s not easy being this way,” he murmured. “I couldn’t live the lie anymore. It’s why I left. I don’t want you to…regret anything.”
I pressed my good hand to the one he held against my face. “The lie is what destroyed me.” I had never loved Cara, nor any woman. Denying my attraction to the same sex had only led to my ruin. I gripped his fingers and steeled myself against the fear I felt. “Please, show me.”
“Are you sure?” he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine.
I nearly moaned. I sought his mouth with mine. “Yes,” I said against it.
Chapter Twelve
Our lips met and we kissed again, this time slower and deeper. Marcus threaded his fingers into my hair and massaged my scalp, pressing my face gently against his as his tongue explored my mouth. Again, everything—our lips, our tongues, our skin touching, and his fingers working against the tension in my muscles—combined into one sensory experience that threatened to drown me. My knees could melt out from under me, and I would not care. I would simply dissolve into Marcus, a merged thing, a single flesh.
When we parted mouths, he played his fingers lightly over my chest. They came to rest at the hem of my shirt. Softly, seriously, he said, “When I ask you to take your shirt off this time, it is not as your doctor.”
I nodded in response, and my belly clenched. Suddenly I feared I might be ill.
Perhaps he recognized some change in my body language, for he hesitated. But my need for him far exceeded my fear of succumbing to stress response. “Please,” I begged.
He swept the shirt off of me, and I whimpered at a stab of pain from my rib. “Oh!” he exclaimed, but I shook my head emphatically and said, “I’m well.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, smoothing his hands over my shoulders. My chest, my flanks, my lower back. His hands were strong and sure, as I remembered them, but charged this time with heat and hunger.
“You are a doctor, aren’t you?” I posed, slyly.
“Yes, but not right now.” His voice trailed into a throaty whisper.
He had me. He knew it, too, because he chuckled wickedly and caressed my arse. His touch swept up to my lower abdomen, only several shivering inches from my cock, which ached from need. “May I?” he asked, barely a whisper this time.
My mouth had gone dry. I did not trust myself to form words, so I placed my hands over his and hooked his thumbs into the waist band of my pants. His body tensed against mine, and then he caught my mouth in a kiss as he slid the pants over my hips. My cock sprang free. His hands deposited the pants at my knees, and then traveled back up the fronts of my thighs and along the fold of my groin, teasingly close to my member. The sea breeze whispered across my skin, and though it wasn’t cold, I shivered. A hundred worries flashed through my mind. What if I was not the right length, or thickness, or color? What would he think of my being so hard for him? What if I went soft? What if I disappointed him? Oh, but his fingers were so close. I nearly groaned as I shivered again, this time from pleasure. “Oh, yes,” he murmured, staring at my erection with admiration plain on his face. “You’ve a beautiful cock.”
I swallowed through my tight throat and said, “Thank you,” not sure what the proper response to this was. It seemed to suffice, because Marcus smiled at me before running his hands down my flanks and thighs. As his hands drew back up, they slid inward along my inner thighs, fingertips brushing against my scrotum. I sucked in a quick breath and trembled where I stood.
“You may want to lie down,” he suggested, with an amused tip of one eyebrow. He guided me onto the sand, and then lowered himself beside me, still clothed.
“Will you, ah…” And I could not think of how to ask the question. “Your clothes.”
He laughed. The shirt came off first, revealing that toned abdomen and the lean curve of his shoulders and back. I found myself beginning to look away, then recalled that this time, it was all right to admire. By the time his hands reached his pants, my stomach had twisted into a knot. Yes, there was his cock—reddened, long, slender, and stiff. For me.
He was so close that his scent entered my nostrils—fleshy, musky, tantalizing. I wetted my lips. My hand itched to hold him, but I hesitated, afraid to disturb the perfect sight of his cock and unsure of how to touch him. I knew the best ways to pleasure myself—all the correct positions, the pressure, the cadence. But Marcus’s cock was so beautiful, and I worried that my scant knowledge would not be sufficient. Then, too, touching him would make this all so very real.
I drew in a deep breath and swallowed my trepidation. “May I?” I asked. He smiled and kneeled close to me on the sand. I ran my good hand over his chest and stomach, both lean and hard from island life. I traced his thin hips, the dip of his pelvis, the shock of dark curly hair. He trembled as my fingers brushed toward his member. I paused with fingers slightly curled, close enough that I could feel his heat. With a low chuckle, he twitched his member into my hand. As his flesh hit my palm, my own cock throbbed. His shaft was hot and solid, and he hummed as I stroked its exquisite, velvet length.
A heavy pressure lifted from my heart as I gripped him. I had not realized that it had been there until it was gone—years of fear that I could not love another, that I was incapable of that emotion. I was so very sorry about Cara, but then, I had not known. Now, Marcus felt divinely right in my hands, wondrously so.
“For me?” he asked, amused, as he regarded the tip of my penis. There was a drop of fluid there, proof of my excitation.
“Yes,” I admitted, laying back onto my elbows.
“I see,” he said, lips curling up in a sly smile. And then he lowered his face and before I realized his intent, before I could possibly object, he had closed his mouth around the head of my cock and sucked the drop from it. I hissed with surprise, and hardly cared about the slice of pain it elicited from my rib. He chuckled, and then he swallowed the length of me. I dropped back onto the sand with a shudder.
He went slowly at first, and I struggled to hold back tortured, guttural noises of pleasure. He pulled at me with a gentle suction, teeth grazing ever so lightly as his tongue made lazy circles along the underside of my cock. The grip of his mouth was as skilled as that of his hands, and even more capable of eliciting pleasure.
One of his hands found the base of my shaft and began to squeeze and twist. His rhythm quickened and my throat abandoned making noises in favor of drawing in deep, fast breaths. I sensed another rhythm at work. I stole a look down the length of my body to see his head working up and down, the length of my cock appearing and disappearing with every movement. Beyond, his body was folded in the sand, torso twisted to the side. His folded legs fr
amed his magnificent cock and his other hand, which worked it with strong strokes. The whole scene sent a delicious thrill through me.
“Mmm,” I hummed, and he made an answering noise that vibrated against my cock. He drew his mouth all the way up, momentarily disengaging from me, and then plunged back down. My hum turned into an animal grunt, and I began to pant as his rhythm changed now—slow, fast, slow—in a way that made me wild. A fire grew in my loins. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to contain myself.
“Marcus,” I gasped. “I don’t think—I can’t—” Words failed me. Fire spread through me. I was going to spend, right then, into his mouth.
His only response was a rapturous moan. He dipped his head severely at a jackhammer pace, and my cock bumped against the back of his throat.
It was too much. I convulsed and cried out, splayed on the sand in helpless ecstasy. My come filled his mouth and he allowed it. He sucked it down greedily, then released me.
At my waist, Marcus grunted and hissed, back arching now as his hand pumped his cock. I watched with fascination as he doubled over and a spray of his seed shot across the sand. He collapsed against my legs, lungs heaving, and laughed.
I had no words, so I lay on the sand like a beached fish with my mouth hanging open—limp, beaded with sweat, and utterly exultant. Marcus was a warm weight on my legs, his head pillowed on my pelvis. I would have thought him unconscious or dead, but then he spread his hand on the ground and sighed. He looked up at me and with sudden shyness asked, “Did you…like that?”
I laughed. “Yes, very much. Thank you.” I held my arm up in the gesture of invitation and demand that he had used last night when I’d cried. He crawled up beside me and lay on his side in my arms, skin-to-skin.
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