Sunburnt

by Joey Jameson

  “You’re so fucking tight,” Lyric breathed, grabbing Lenox’s hips for support as he pushed himself gently inside. “You feel so good…”

  With each delectable thrust of his cock, Lenox ground his teeth more tightly together, bracing himself against the feeling, as exquisite as it was. He could feel himself expand further and further, as if his body was making more space for Lyric to be inside him. His instinct was to squeeze his buttocks together, but he fought it and forced his body to relax. He could feel Lyric’s fingers digging into the skin of his hips, as he used him for leverage against the shifting sand. Lenox’s knees were screaming as the sand scraped against his bare skin. For a moment, his hands gave way beneath the weight of their bodies and he lay at a forty-five-degree angle, resting on his forearms with his right cheek pressed up against the sand. The shift allowed Lyric to go deeper and he moaned in response. From the corner of his eye, Lenox could see Lyric’s face; his eyes squeezed shut and his chin tipped towards the sky. His dreadlocks cascaded down his back and the muscles in his chest contracted with his every movement.

  Lyric’s groans got progressively more intense and his breathing quickened. Lenox could tell he was close. His hip thrusts increased in speed as he fucked Lenox harder and harder. Lenox was hard again and close to coming himself. He managed to dislodge one hand from the sand and reached around and started working away at his own cock.

  “Here, hang on a sec.” Lyric sensed his movement. “I want to see your face.”

  He withdrew his cock slowly and shifted Lenox so he was resting on his back, his black hair sprawled out around his head. He opened his legs as Lyric climbed on top of him. He took both of Lenox’s ankles in his hands and used his hips to guide his dick inside him once more. He slid in easier this time, but the feeling was just as strong. Lenox writhed beneath him as he picked up speed, sucking in air between clenched teeth. His brow furrowed as surge after surge of pleasure rocked his body.

  Lenox stroked his dick up and down, mimicking Lyric’s movements inside him. Deeper and deeper he went with each thrust, his face twisted into a mask of complete and utter lust. His dreadlocks moved wildly around his head as he fucked Lenox hard. The air was suddenly thick and cloudy around them as if full of pheromones as the two rose together. Their bodies bucked in unison, over and over as they came together. Lenox’s juices squirted all over his chest as he lost control of himself. Lyric didn’t pull out, but instead came inside Lenox, his hips thrusting again and again until he had emptied himself completely.

  When he finally opened his eyes, Lenox smiled up at Lyric as he bent over to kiss him on the lips. He withdrew and caressed Lenox’s face softly, tracing his stubbled jawline with his fingertips before cupping his head and bringing their lips together once more.

  They stayed like that, side by side, until the rising tide threatened to swallow them up. They barely spoke except for when they were collecting their clothes.

  “Oh, shit!” Lenox whispered, grabbing his shorts and hiding his modesty.

  “What is it?”

  “Up there.” He motioned towards one of the giant boulders that had been their defence against any intruders whilst they made the beach their home.

  “What?”

  “Behind that rock.”

  “What is it? I don’t see anything.”

  But Lenox paused before responding, the tension in his body receding slightly.

  “I thought I…Saw something…”

  Lyric followed his gaze and shielded his eyes from the bright sky.

  “There’s nothing there…Promise.”

  And with that, he wrapped his arm around Lenox protectively and kissed his cheek. Lenox feigned a smile as he dressed, unable to prevent his gaze from skirting the area for what he thought he’d seen.

  “You all right?” Lyric asked

  “Yeah. Fine,” Lenox lied.

  “It’s getting late. Shall we head out?”

  Lenox nodded and gathered the rest of his stuff as they began to make their way back towards Lyric’s Jeep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THEN

  Before long, it was dark and they ended back up back at Lyric’s family apartment in the D’Alt Villa, exhausted and tired from the day they had shared. Lenox found himself dozing off as they sat on the balcony staring up at the stars. The sound of Lyric’s rhythmic breathing was beginning to rock him to sleep as he lay his head on his chest and stared out at the city below.

  Lenox swam in the sense of comfort and safety that floated through his body at that moment. His thoughts strayed to the last few days and a smile crept up on his face as he realised how happy he was when he was with Lyric, and how far away his twisted past seemed to be with Lyric to distract him from his wayward thoughts.

  But then his thoughts drifted to his friends and how angry they must be with him for being so absent during their holiday.

  How excited Bambi and he had been about getting out of London for a while. They had made so many plans together for their trip and Lenox felt he had abandoned them. He texted whenever he remembered and told them he was all right, but Bambi’s one-word responses told him she was less than impressed. Guilt began to worm its way into his subconscious, but he shook it away. He knew they would be happy things were going so well with him. After all, it was the girls who’d encouraged the meet in the first instance. They could all party together anytime and anywhere. But for now, Lenox was finding himself satiated with Lyric.

  He looked up into Lyric’s aquamarine eyes and smiled the most genuine smile he had smiled in months.

  “I don’t remember the last time I was so happy,” he breathed before reaching his head up for a kiss.

  Lyric only smiled back and returned his kiss before returning his gaze to the sky above. Lenox felt momentarily dismissed and wished he hadn’t exposed his vulnerability like he did.

  A moment later, Lyric excused himself and went to the toilet. Lenox lay back feeling deflated and annoyed at himself.

  His mind drifted to the day they had just spent together and the feeling he got when they were together; how warm it made him feel. Safe. Secure. So different from his relationships of the past.

  His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of Lyric’s phone going off on the bedside table. Curiosity getting the better of him, he reached to check the screen. With a quick swipe, the phone unlocked itself and the miniature icons came into view…

  Part Two

  Lyric

  Chapter Seventeen

  THEN

  It was the pounding in his head that woke him up. As if an entire marching band was drumming along between his ears and using his brain as a punching bag. Even the thought of opening his eyes seemed like a chore. They fluttered a couple of times before stretching open into little slits, but the light that filtered through the openings was like a slice to his retinas and he recoiled his head under the duvet in self-defence.

  After a couple of deep breaths Lyric tried again, slower and one eye at a time so as not to assault his senses with too much stimulation too soon.

  As his vision focused and fuzzy images slowly took shape, he was struck with the panicking thought that he didn’t know where he was. Furrowing his brow, he blinked again in an attempt to force his eyes into submission. After a third attempt, the panic subsided as his parents’ apartment came into sight. The light that assaulted his bleary eyes was coming from the balcony doors which were wide open, a light breeze billowing in and ruffling the curtains.

  He stared at the open Mediterranean-style balcony doors and felt puzzled that they had been left open after he had gone to bed. Lyric never left the doors open at night as it would be too easy for someone to climb up the fire escape and break into the apartment.

  He tried brushing his concerns off and lifted himself to a sitting position, but the pain in his head only intensified when he shifted, and he almost cried out as he collapsed back down on the bed. How did he have such a searing headache? He didn’t remember drinking nearly enough
alcohol to warrant the pounding in his head.

  When he raised his hand to rub at his temples, he noticed it.

  At first, he wasn’t sure what it was that coated his palms and fingers, and froze for a moment until his brain caught up with what his eyes registered. His heart followed suit, thumping away erratically inside his chest. His eyes blurred over with tears, but he was too afraid to use his hands to rub them away.

  He lifted his other hand for inspection and saw that both were saturated with what appeared to be thick, red stains. The texture and coppery scent was unmistakable.

  Blood.

  He tore back the bed sheets in a panic. His gaze darted frantically around where he lay, worried that it was him who was bleeding, but although there were some random smudges on his bare chest, he didn’t seem to be cut.

  Lenox.

  He swung his legs around and over the edge of the bed and stood up before ripping himself around to stare at the other side of the bed, petrified at what sight might be waiting to greet his wide eyes.

  But the bed was empty.

  Except for the blood.

  Lyric yanked the sheets right off the bed to see the deep red stains beneath. There was an abnormally large pool of blood smeared next to where he had been lying. It petered out into smaller wisps and splodges, almost as if someone had dumped a bucket of something from high up above the bed and let it splatter around, drenching the sheets and spattering an obscenely large space around it.

  “Jesus!” he cried out, recoiling from the bed until his back hit the wall behind him.

  His breath hitched in his throat and his skin tingled from head to toe as he squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to wake himself from this apparent nightmare.

  But he wasn’t dreaming. It was the sound of his own shallow and erratic breathing that forced him back into his body as he let go of the vain hope that he was still asleep and in the middle of some terrible dream.

  He forced his eyes open to stare at the mess at his feet and counted slowly back from ten, forcing the panic back down inside him and trying to stop himself from shaking.

  “No…” he murmured to the empty house around him, praying that it was some sort of sick joke. Perhaps Lenox was only hiding and waiting for the right moment to reveal himself and his practical joke and bathe in the hideous hilarity of the situation he had created.

  But Lyric knew that was not the case. His gaze darted around the bedroom as he waited for the punch line that he knew would never come. The longer he stared at the blood on the bed and the splatters on the floor, the more a sort of twisted familiarity sank in.

  He remained rooted to the spot until his breathing had returned to normal and the clouds in his mind had begun to clear. He steadied himself against the wall, the wheels in his head turning as a plan was formulated.

  “No…” he repeated to himself. “Not again…”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THEN

  Lyric stared out at the rising sun over the water.

  He was on the beach. Some beach. Wearing only board shorts.

  He looked around at his surroundings, craning his neck to see behind him, then stopped short as the muscles in his back and shoulders cried out. He rubbed the back of his neck in an attempt to soothe the shooting pains then noticed a watch on his wrist that he hadn’t seen before.

  It looked expensive and foreign, as if it had been imported from a posh boutique in London, not something you’d find at one of the bohemian style shops on the island. Upon closer inspection, the face read Rolex. He quickly unclasped it from his wrist and turned it over in his hands.

  The back of the watch was inscribed and he squinted his newly awoken eyes to make it out.

  To my darling Ryan,

  love always,

  D x

  He shivered as he read the unfamiliar words then tried to remember if he knew a Ryan. Or a “D.”

  His head hurt. Like he had been drinking, and the moaning coming from his stomach served to tell him it had been a while since he had eaten. He looked himself over, standing up gingerly. He didn’t appear physically hurt in any way and nothing seemed overtly out of the ordinary, save for his hands. He brought them up to his eyes to inspect under his nails. His hands were filthy. Dirty, as if he had been digging around in a rubbish bin, and the skin around his fingertips was cut and streaked with blood, presumably his own. But it was the deep red stains that caked the underside of his nails that worried him.

  His hands trembled as he held them out in front of him and his skin prickled all over. He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him, but the beach was particularly desolate at this time of the morning. Lyric walked towards the shoreline, unsteady on his feet, and winced as the cool water washed over his bare toes. He bent down to wash his hands, rubbing them together in the salty water before splashing some over his chest, then his face. Brushing himself down, he tried to rid his skin of any signs or traces of the night before.

  Or from whenever they came.

  His thoughts wandered, as they habitually did whenever this happened, and he felt nauseated as he scrubbed himself over. His dreadlocks swung in front of his eyes, dipping into the water and blurring his vision further as his eyes filled with tears.

  He knew he had to move quickly. He worked his way through his mental list as he had so many times before; finish wiping himself down and figure out where he was, then get home and take his meds. He tried to remember to breathe deeply to calm his nerves, for if he let himself get carried away by his thoughts he knew this wouldn’t end well.

  Lyric stood up and almost jogged away from the water and towards the road, keeping an eye out for any onlookers who might view his behaviour as suspicious.

  Did I take my meds yesterday? Everything seemed so blurry that he couldn’t be sure about anything.

  He squinted his eyes to read any road signs, but it was the monolithic silhouette of Es Vedra in the distance that told him where he’d ended up. Quickly gaining his bearings, he knew he was on Cala D’Hort in the south west of the island. He forced himself to slow his speed as he found the walk that skirted the ocean and flicked his dreads away from his face in an attempt to look casual, just another local out for an early morning stroll along the beach.

  The occasional passerby appeared as the sun cast its glow onto the whitewashed buildings, waking people up and announcing another new day on the island.

  Lyric swallowed his fears and worries as he repeated to himself over and over that it would all be all right. If he said it enough times, he might convince himself.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THEN

  When he found his way home, Lyric sat on his bed for almost an hour, stiff as a board and practically unmoving. Too afraid that if he stirred it might either jar memories of what had happened or alert someone to his whereabouts.

  He quickly popped two tablets of his chlorpromazine, chasing it with a swig of vodka, straight out of the bottle. Not exactly the ideal way to eat his tablets, but he was desperate for something to calm his nerves.

  The blinds were pulled and all his lights were off and he stared intently at his phone as if afraid it was about to spring to life and attack. But instead it stayed motionless and quiet, as though the world had forgotten about him. He willed it to remain that way. The same went for his front door; he regarded it with fear, as if someone might come looking for him and bang it down. His ears remained intensely receptive to all the sounds around him, but were greeted with nothing but quiet.

  Nevertheless, his ears rung and his skin vibrated as he attempted to filter out the panic that was threatening to take hold. He tried to remember back to his counselling. Think soothing thoughts, count down from one hundred, fill your head with white noise and try to remain calm.

  And wait for the meds to kick in.

  This wasn’t the first time he had woken up in a strange place, unsure of how he had gotten there or what he had done. These types of awakenings were becoming all too familiar to
him.

  Ever since the accident.

  His parents used to think he was sleepwalking; at nighttime when he was younger he’d wander into odd places in the house—under the stairs, in the attic—and they would find him mumbling softly to himself as if in some sort of dream-state. This continued for years, until suddenly, these events seemed to stop of their own accord. Nothing more had come of them, at least nothing worthy of seeking help or a cure for them. His family simply thought he had grown out of these sleepwalking states. When he was twelve, he seemed to fall into the wrong crowd and the episodes started up again. Only this time, they were a bit more severe. He would find himself in situations that he couldn’t explain and had no memory of how or what had happened.

  Then his whole world collapsed.

  After his parents and Cedar died when he was eighteen, something shifted inside him. He began to feel less and less like himself; irritable and angry and full of disdain. It was more than just grief. It was as if he had darkened somehow. It wasn’t long after their funeral that the episodes swung into high gear. He would lash out at everyone and everything; the stealing and the violence and the blackout episodes grew worse. It all seemed like it was happening to someone else, and he was just the spectator.

  Then came the time spent in the institute. It was such a confusing period of his life. He couldn’t make heads or tails of what was happening to him and why they thought he did all those horrible things he was getting into trouble for.

  But it wasn’t up to him to try to understand why, as they said at the hospital, it was only important that it all stopped.

  Two years of intensive therapy, confinement, group talks and exercises. When he was released he got better.

  At least he thought he had.

  He would take his pills at the prescribed time, check in at the prescribed time, and show up for his check-ups as they called them. For years, he felt like he was on the right track to being normal again.