“Arghhh!” Chris howled at the sky and drubbed his heels on the deck before shuddering quite comically. “I am going to retch.”
“Salty,” I said, and watched Chris throw himself down on the deck and writhe as if in pain.
As amusing as his antics were, they were not in keeping with the proper reaction of a young gentleman to such information. I nudged him with my foot. “And how do you find your pleasure, good sir?”
He quickly sat and glared at me. “What would you have me say? I take myself in hand like any young man should?”
“Do you?” I teased.
Even in the dim moonlight I could see him flush.
“So you truly would have me pretend to find lust and seek to satisfy it?” he asked.
I sighed. “It is a thing men do.”
“It will be noted if you do not,” Gaston sighed. “Before Will… I was wounded in my heart such that I did not feel… desire. And it was ever noted by my shipmates. They accused me of being a eunuch, or being impotent, and of being womanly; and then many of them became angry because they realized I did not favor men, and then they thought I sat in judgment of them. There were voyages where I sometimes pretended to take myself in hand in order to keep them quiet.”
“Aye,” Cudro rumbled. “Many thought you were arrogant. You wouldn’t take up with a matelot, and you wouldn’t watch other men or pleasure yourself. It was noted, as you say.”
“So this is truly a thing I must learn?” Chris asked. “Damn you all,” he added with little rancor. “I do not know… What should I do: stroke this bulge we have fashioned and grunt?”
“Well, aye,” I said. “There is… well, not much more to it than that, but there is technique and nuance to… pretending correctly. Some men act as if they are performing for the stage, others are quite quick and tidy. You will need to establish your… form. As you saw tonight, though they both stroke and grunt, Cudro and Pete vary in their facial expressions, the speed of their stroking, the angle of their arms, and so on.”
My words apparently breeched Ash’s stony silence: he cursed and chuckled, adding to Pete and Cudro’s loud and unruly shows of mirth.
“I do not watch any of you do that,” Chris said with frustration.
“NextTimeIFeel TheNeed, I’llLet YaKnowAn’Ya CanWatch An’Learn,” Pete said.
“Oh thank you,” Chris said levelly. “I am sure that will be instructive.”
“Well,” I teased, “In the name of your learning the finer variations, I say we all take ourselves in hand in the morning light and give you several examples.”
Chris sighed heavily. “Wonderful, now I have something to look forward to on the morrow.” He plumped his bag and lay down with his slim shoulders forming a determined wall between himself and the rest of the boat.
We all—save Ash—laughed silently in some belated, token act of respect for Chris’ discomfiture.
I turned to Gaston and was rewarded with his hand upon my member. I laughed harder, but with even less sound, as he propelled me to the Gates and beyond.
I woke to cursing. The sun was just breaking the horizon. It took me several moments to determine the cause for the excitement; then I too was cursing with surprise and wonderment. There was a mountain in our path—or rather, a high rocky range of mountains.
Cudro was questioning everyone who had taken a turn at the tiller last night. All swore they had stayed on course.
I stared at the sun. If I faced the bow—and thus the unexpected mountain—the sun was very clearly off my left hand. “Cudro, is there any reason the sun would be rising someplace other than in the east?”
“Nay,” he snapped with frustrated gruffness. “Those mountains are to the south. Aye, very south. The land must jut out before it goes around the southeastern tip.”
He pointed to the west. There was land there, too. “The coastline must be more uneven than we thought. It’s not describing a gentle arc, but a strong curve to the southeast, and then this mountain range jutting due east. I can only hope it curves back to the south on the other side.”
“There should be waterfalls and streams coming down it,” Gaston said.
“Aye,” Cudro agreed, “water won’t be a problem going ‘round it, but food…” He sighed. “It might be best if we hunted over there where the land is still flat.”
Gaston and Pete were nodding. I sighed and shrugged.
Cudro set our course toward the flatter shore, and we sailed along it until we spotted a grove of fruit trees. We all agreed we could at least gather fruit if nothing else presented itself. We found a small cove bounded to the east by a low rocky outcropping, and beached our craft. Pete wished to hunt, and he suggested Chris accompany him. Chris agreed, and then Ash decided to join them. Gaston offered to stay with our vessel and fish. Cudro and I were left with gathering fruit.
Sometime into this endeavor, Cudro turned to me with an odd, phallic-shaped fruit. “We should have done as you suggested this morning,” he said with a grin.
“Please yourself,” I said with equal cheer.
“Non,” he grumbled. “The moment is passed. It would have put me in a better mood this morn, though.” The tight worry creased his features again.
I shrugged. “Cudro, we sail until we get there.”
He shook his blocky head. “I know damn well this island is not a great mystery, and we shall not fall off the world or any such thing. It has a certain size, and we shall sail around it. But I worry it will take so long that the fleet will have sailed by the time we reach our destination. When I told you all how long it would take, I was thinking of a larger and faster vessel.”
“If they have sailed, then we shall sail on,” I said. “Oui, it would be best if we could find a French ship, but that is not our only option.”
“I suppose I would not care how long we sailed, either, if I had a matelot,” Cudro said with a touch of venom, only to quickly shake his head and throw his hand up. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. My problem is not yours.
“Non, truly,” he added, “it was good to see someone enjoying themselves.”
I had wished to snap that I had not suggested they accompany us, or that we took this route, but I relinquished my anger in the face of his contrition.
“It is not without a care,” I said. “We are all on edge. There is little to be done for it. Perhaps we should all take ourselves in hand as often as possible.”
He sighed. “I don’t know what I would think on at the moment to spur me on. If I think of past lovers, it angers me. And I cannot even contemplate future ones.”
I chuckled. “A man is truly morose when his cock is so mired in thought it cannot rise,” I said lightly even though I well knew how true and poignant my words were, and what sorrow such shallow sentiment could mask.
“I know, I know,” he groaned. “You see my plight.”
“Well then, think of arses you might never plunder. Pete’s for example.”
“Or yours,” he said with a guilty grimace and then a smile. “That enticing arse wiggling you were doing in my direction while pleasuring your man last night was what brought me to stand.”
I nearly blanched at the thought of him eying me so, but then I laughed anew. “Then if this will aid you, my friend.” I dropped my breeches and wiggled my arse in his surprised direction before waddling off to another tree accompanied by his laughter.
He slipped away for a time. I tried not to think of him handling himself while fantasizing about my body beneath him. The image made me shudder: somewhat due to memories of Shane and Thorp, but more in that he was simply not the type of man I sought.
I distracted myself by contemplating why we were all so tense on this voyage. We had surely sailed for much longer in even tighter quarters. Yet on those journeys, there had been far more men about; and like strong spice in a stew, the rankling taste of little privacy and intimate concerns had been softened and leavened more evenly amongst many pieces of meat.
When he returne
d—gruff and sheepish—we decided we had done enough gathering and returned to the boat. I left Cudro to stow our bounty and went to join my matelot.
He was casting as I approached, and I watched him whirl the weight, hook, and bobber over his head until it whined like a bee, and then release it so that it flew in a graceful arc out above the waves to plop into the darker trough of water between two sandbars. Then he squatted next to the fish he had already caught and regarded me with welcome and curiosity as I came to stand beside him.
“Were you successful?” he asked.
“Well, as we did not have to lure and hook our quarry, oui, we proved to be quite capable at the task.”
He chuckled. “I only asked because you appear pensive.”
“Ah,” I said and regarded the annoying mountains to the east. From where I stood, blue-green waters rolled away to the north, and green, black land rolled away to the east and south, and the mountain rose like a wall in our path. “Cudro is worried.”
I told him of my conversation with the Dutchman, and even of my butt wiggling and contemplations of our being too small a stew to properly distribute the more pungent spices of life.
“Do not wiggle your arse in front of Pete,” my matelot said quite seriously when I finished.
I chuckled, only to sober as I recalled Pete’s hunger from the other night and quickly perceived how that scenario could go from comical to tragic.
“Is that what men getting on well together requires: a steady diet of fornication?” I asked.
“Or them being resigned to none at all,” he said and shrugged. “But buccaneers are not monks.”
“Were the monks so truly happy?” I asked. “I have ever seen priests squabbling amongst one another.”
Gaston grimaced. “Well, there was the problem of the sheep… and the donkey.”
I grimaced and laughed. “Oui, oui, it is unnatural for men to go without.”
“Well, it becomes unnatural if they do,” he said.
“Like here, where men who do not favor men cleave to one another from necessity,” I sighed. “But the more of that, the fewer troubled farm animals.”
He turned to frown at me. “So you perceive it as natural if men favor one another, but unnatural if they do not?” There was teasing in his tone, but it was well embedded in sincere curiosity.
I grinned. “Oui. It is not unnatural for a man to love another; but even I feel it can be unnatural for a man who does not love men to love one merely from necessity.”
“So you are saying I have long viewed you as a donkey?” Now he was truly teasing.
I sighed, wondering at my thoughts. His words were scratching at old wounds, but they had long since scarred over and I felt no pain or blood. “I suppose that follows. I once felt that, did I not? And that any who loved me when it was not natural for them, loved me all the more because they were doing an unnatural thing for my benefit.”
“You are not a donkey, my love,” he said with a smile. “You are the natural recipient of my natural needs and affections.”
I laughed and embraced him. He kissed me until he abruptly stopped to manage the fishing line that was jerking in his hand. He hauled the catch in and I waded into the surf to grab a sleek silver fish as long as my forearm. I clubbed it soundly and tossed it atop the other three he had caught.
“We should pair Ash with Chris if they will agree to it,” Gaston said thoughtfully when I sat beside him once again.
I sighed. “Oui, that would be the natural pairing, but it still angers me.”
He smiled. “We are unnatural creatures, Will. Natural creatures do not think so very much, and hold grudges and opinions and do all manner of unnatural things. They are as they are: as the Gods intended.”
“Are we not as the Gods intended?” I asked with a mix of amusement and curiosity at the turns of my thoughts. Was that not the question of humanity: the question of Christianity even? Were we as God or the Gods intended, or was the whole battle for goodness not waged for or against us behaving in the manner God intended? “I suppose that has ever been my disagreement with Christianity: the whole business of why did God make us as we are if He does not wish us to behave as we are so prone by our natures to do—specifically with the matter of sexual congress.”
Gaston chuckled. “I was pondering that very thing. Finding pleasure in coupling is natural: why do men seem determined to think that God views it as evil?”
“It is the hubris of man,” I said. “Their God, our Gods, nothing divine has anything to do with it at all.”
“Oui,” he said. “So praying will not make our voyage any smoother.”
I laughed. “Non, non, we can pray we are soon graced with a larger stew pot and many more pieces of meat so that those of us with unmet needs can do what comes naturally.”
He sighed. “It will still not solve Ash’s problem. And, truly, Chris is not faced with unnaturalness—he favors men.”
I chuckled as he baited his line with a fat beetle and cast it into the surf again. Then my humor ebbed away as I watched him stand above me with the annoying mountains behind him. My man was beautiful as always, but he was thinner—truly noticeably thinner. Months of living a leisurely life in Cayonne, and then weeks of illness and cramped quarters had robbed him of the dense rippling muscles that had graced his bones since I first knew him. He was still strong and handsome, with nary a pocket or bulge of fat beneath his scarred skin, but he lacked the physique he had once shown.
As I reflected on it, I realized Pete was much the same. He had not begun to grow a paunch such as Striker had been tending toward, but he was not as he had appeared when first I met him.
I studied my arms. I was much as I had ever been as a man, but I was also not at the peak of form I had attained a few years ago when I had routinely joined Gaston in his exercise—or engaged in other labor, or even—dare I say—practice with a blade.
“We should engage in calisthenics,” I said, and immediately winced as I recalled how weak he was. “Not you…”
Gaston nodded thoughtfully. “Oui, everyone else should, rigorous exercise dulls anger and other natural urges.” Then a guilty frown tightened his face. “I think I will merely fuck you.” This brought a weak smile as he turned to me. “As in doing that, I have no need for a substitute of the other.”
“My love, I am content—non, I am elated with that amount of exertion on your part—until you heal. Then we will work hard to keep you from becoming soft and thick as Striker is doing,” I teased. “Being a physician is not laborious.”
He chuckled. “Non, we will have to work hard to keep from becoming fat once we return to a simple life.” He regarded me seriously with the guilty mien once again. “You should spar with Pete: you are correct, you both need it.”
I nodded and sidled closer to him to kiss his cheek. “I will quit lazing about and…” I sighed, now unsure of my initial choice of words. I changed my tack. “I will take care of you as you have always done for me whilst I healed from my misadventures.”
He sighed and kissed me. “I am sorry.”
“For what: getting shot: breathing water while almost drowning? I should smack you for your impudence in the face of fate.”
He snorted. “Smack away, I cannot put up much of a fight.”
Then I could see the fear in his eyes in the harsh afternoon light.
“We are one,” I whispered. “I will pull for now.”
“Will, you may need to pull for a very long time,” he said with fear and shame.
“Gaston,” I chided. “I would rather carry you as an invalid for the rest of my days than lose you. Damn it, we have always spoken of carrying one another in our madness, but the same is true of our bodies. I do not care if you can no longer run five leagues and fight armies: you will always be ten times any other man in my gaze—non, a hundred times. And you do not need to be Achilles to do what you do best: loving me and healing others.”
He sighed and smiled and met my gaze. “I truly
have no doubt you will always be here for me; it is just that I have always had to fight—always… And this weakness scares me, Will.”
I thought of all the times I had been wounded and weak; until Gaston, they had always been periods of fear: primarily because I could not always trust those around me and the worst things in my life had come from those I sought to trust. I had been forced to learn to trust my well-being and safety to my man very early in our life together. He had not yet had to learn the same of me.
I kissed him and stood. “Trust me.” I shed my tunic and placed my weapons beside him save a pair of knives.
“You do not appear weak,” he said with a smile.
“Thank you, but I am not at my best, either.”
I pointed to another clump of rocks projecting onto the beach a good league away. He nodded. I kissed him atop his head and dropped down to the sand.
Running was awkward at first as my stiff muscles became accustomed to the process, and then it felt good to run for the pleasure of it. I missed Gaston being at my side, but knowing he was keeping an eye on me made my heart glad as I breezed alongside the dark and tangled forest. I purposely ignored the knowledge that there would be little he could do if a Spaniard stepped from the trees.
Sadly, I discovered how very soft I had become before I reached my destination. I pressed on anyway, determined to at least achieve the rocks before walking for a time. I did it, and panted in the surf before turning and walking back for a good half mile. Then I had my breath again and I was able to run the rest of the distance back.
Gaston was laughing with me when I returned, panting, to his side. “Perhaps we should go ashore every day.”
“Apparently,” I gasped.
Once I had my breath again I embarked on a series of calisthenics, with him chiding me for my poor form when I became lax.
Cudro came to join us as Gaston was holding my feet and counting out sit-ups.
“Are you two at that again?” he asked.
“You should join me,” I gasped.
He patted his belly and grimaced. “I should, but…” he sighed. “I should. But not today.” He pointed at the lowering sun. “They’ve been gone most of the day. There’s daylight left, but…”
Wolves Page 52