I nodded, reached for my satchel of books, and pulled out the Shakespeare. There was something in his tone that told me not to ask more.
He lit the candle by my bedside, and I flipped through it until I found the speech I’d marked before. My voice rose tremulously, barely above a whisper as I read.
“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
“That’s from the play,” he said, a smile lighting his face for the first time in hours. “That was that nonsense the old fool was saying.”
I nodded. “You’ve passed my test, Bren. I wasn’t about to let you dislike Shakespeare simply because you found the play dull. But if it’s still nonsense to you, I’ll absolve you of reading further. I can’t say I agree with your taste, but—”
Normally he’d find my prank amusing. He’d laugh, his cheeks filling with cheer, and declare I should have more faith in him. But tonight he shook his head. “Go on.”
“Are you sure?” I said, startled. “If you don’t like it, Bren, it’s really all right. I have others—”
“I like it when you read it,” he said. His fingers came to rest on the back of my hand, stroking gently. Warmth pooled in my lap, and I shifted on the bunk. “That fool on the stage trumpeted out those words like he was calling an alert. But you read it as though just to me.”
I had to laugh. “That’s because I am reading it just to you.”
His fingers slid around my wrist, tightened. I could feel him exhale onto my face.
“Please,” he said.
The candle flickered. For a moment all I could see were his lips. There was no more page, no more searching eyes—just a mouth that called out to me, pulled me in like a cord of strong rope. I licked my own lips, swallowed hard, and cast my eyes upon the page once more.
“That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea...”
I stopped. Bren’s hand had curved around my jaw. His hand was a soft cup into which I could have poured like so much liquid, chin sinking into his palm.
His lips trembled, formed around words that I could not hear.
“Bren?” I was surprised I could get the words out.
“You’re dear to me,” he said. “I love you like you were my own brother. Y’know that, don’t you?”
The confession bowled me over. I sat on the bed, transfixed. The book fell from my fingertips and landed jaggedly on my lap, a corner biting into my thigh.
“’Course… ’course I know,” I whispered.
“Y’know I’d never mean to hurt you, right? Right, Thomas, you know that?”
“Bren,” I said, “you’re scaring me. Has something happened? Did something—”
He shook his head. “Nothing, no. I’m sorry. I just… I fear myself, I fear what I might do—”
He looked away. His whole body was trembling.
I grabbed his face in both hands, mirroring his own grip. I forced him to face me. “What might you do, Bren?”
And then it occurred to us both how close we were. Hands on each other’s faces, sitting a scant inch apart, lit by one dim candle. In the dark, secret hole of the bunks, where no one wished or cared to see. I knew then just what he might do. It was the same thing I’d been yearning to do without even knowing it. The desire was there, bright and keen, in his eyes.
I heard my own heart take a single skittish beat.
His lips leaped to claim mine, the salt and brine of the sea on them soaking deep into my skin, sliding into my mouth, and I drank of him deeply. He trembled, but for his fear I had double the desire; as he shook, I took control, folding him into my arms, pulling his chest up against my own, taking him in, giving him cover for the desires that were, I knew now, wracking both of us with equal passion.
It was a wondrous moment. Bren, with all his strength, all his carefree attitude and strong body, was melting in my arms, leaning on me, depending on me to steer the runaway ship of our feelings before it dashed us both on the rocks. And more wondrous, I was willing to take that on. Happy to pull him close, to run my lips against his, to taste his mouth with my tongue.
He held on tight, his fingers clutching at my collar, for a long moment after we parted, breathing heavily into my neck.
“It’s—it’s not possible,” he breathed. “It’s not natural. I’ve never seen—”
“Bren,” I whispered, possessed of some confidence I could not trace the origins of. I leaned in, kissed his cheeks, his jaw. “What if you’ve never seen it? Does that mean it could never be?”
His eyes went round and hollow. I could see the beginnings of a smile starting to break onto his face.
My hands found their way into his coal black hair, threading through the tangled, sea-starched strands. I spoke his name, again and again, obsessively, dotting kisses down his neck, pausing at the hollow of his throat to lick it. He made a small noise above me, and his fingers tightened at my collar. I lifted my lips to his ear and whispered my confession then.
“For all that you love me, Bren, I love you more—and not just as a brother.”
He took in a breath. His good arm slid from my collar to my side, then around my waist.
“I don’t fear this,” I went on. “I didn’t know it was possible, but… I don’t fear it. I want—Bren, I crave—”
My lips pressed up against his ear. I couldn’t see his smile, but I felt it. It broke across his face as suddenly as a gust of wind breaks across the calm sea, rippling the waters, changing everything from stunned silence into movement, into life.
“Tom,” he said, once, a groan, and then his mouth found mine again.
Lacking the use of one arm, Bren couldn’t move my body as he wished, but that was all right; I was more than happy to make up for that. It was a thrill, even, to summon up my own strength and push him down onto the cot where we sat, to slide one leg across both of his until I could kneel above him, look down at him, sweat-soaked shirt and breeches clinging to his skin. My fingers trembled. I’d seen him in the nude plenty of times, but this was different. This time I’d have free rein to explore his body, map it with my fingers, and the excitement very nearly did me in.
I leaned over him, kissed his mouth, and the feeling of him hard against me then ripped a groan from my lips. I couldn’t help rocking into that desperate heat, and his groan echoed mine, the most exquisite harmony. When my fingers began to undo his buttons, he struggled to help, but his injury proved restrictive. Helpless, he gasped up at me and panted, his chest rising and falling under my fingers. “You too,” he insisted, his hand fumbling at my shirt, then falling to my hip, spiraling warmth into me through my bones.
“Greedy,” I said and grinned at him, and in that moment I was so very aware that it was still us, still Tom and Bren, the two boys who rose and fell together on the waves, whose companionship had blossomed into something more but was still there, still steadfast. My heart swelled with the love I felt.
For the sake of that companionship, I stilled my curious fingers long enough to remove my own shirt before leaning down to embrace him.
And oh, how glad I was that I did. The slide of our skin together, sticky and hot as we were, was something deliriously good. His muscles burned heat into mine; our mouths caught together, lingered, and we were breathing ragged gasps into each other’s mouths. Beside us the candle flickered dimly, the sole witness to our exploration. Bren’s fingers played up my spine, nimble as a pianist’s, and I bore down on him, grinding our cocks together, an intuitive movement no one had taught me, of which I had no knowledge. It simply felt right, felt like the
extension of the frenetic embraces and pushing together of our upper bodies. I ached then for the release I’d always found so purposeless, and I grunted, hands hardening over Bren’s arms, holding him down as I reared up and shifted against him to find the best possible way to bring that rush of red hot sensation.
Yes, like this I could feel it, like this I could reach that peak; I was lost in the chafing heat, not caring if it hurt, not caring what happened tomorrow, if I never moved again, so long as I didn’t stop moving right then. I might have kept grinding there, finding my way to the end and then collapsing, had Bren not shifted his weight in the wrong direction, bringing a cry of pain from him that stilled me.
“Bren,” I whispered, scrambling up and off him. “Bren, did I hurt you? Are you—”
He looped his good hand up around the nape of my neck and pulled me in. From man I was pulled right back to boy, panting and starstruck in the light of his steady gaze. “What?”
He smiled, and his hand trailed down my neck to my chest, my stomach, then closed over the hard ridge in my breeches.
I gasped and made a noise with no dignity or sense to it. The feel of his hand, that warm, beautiful piece of him, closing over me was overwhelming in a way even our desperate grinding had not been. I swallowed hard, my eyes wide open as he sat up, guiding me to sit as well, and worked the button and rope on my breeches until they opened and billowed out like dispersing clouds.
I was fully naked for him then, breeches and stockings and shirt gone, and as he pressed ardent kisses across my shoulders and chest, I could scarce breathe for the wild whips of lightning scorching me. When I did breathe, I expelled it in a moan. Gently his hand stroked me, wrapping a tight ring of fingers around me and sliding up and down, twisting, expert, practiced, artless. It should not have been a surprise to me that he knew how to draw out pleasure—like me, he’d lain in his bunk and breathed fast and sharp to get the pangs of longing out—but now the idea was no longer benign. I pictured Bren alone, overheated, sighing as good feelings wracked his body, and it sent me even further into mindlessness.
I reached out, eager to reciprocate, and his lips met mine in a busy tangle-clash of a kiss. We were likely making sounds now that the others could hear, were they awake. It no longer mattered. It was all we could do not to shout aloud. He gasped, and his fingers slid to a halt as I inched his breeches down, exposed him. The fine red crest of his cock was messy, damp, and when my fingers slid over the wet stuff, he moaned loudly through gritted teeth.
“Bren,” I whispered, mouth puffing soft breath into his. “Bren, oh God.”
“Love you, Tom,” he was whispering back. “So, so much.”
A thousand short kisses, lips puckering and smacking and parting. tongues licking over each other’s mouths. His fingers nimble and now sticky on my cockhead too. The divine, soft sound of his breaths, the rise and fall of his chest next to mine. Our nakedness, mirroring each other, together, closer and closer together.
At last, when I could stand it no more, I pulled hard on his shoulder, flattening him below me. We were still tumbling together to the cot when my release hit me, and I shouted, spurting hot white over the tanned stretch of his stomach, feeling as though stars were blazing before my eyes. A moment later I felt him pulse in my hand, and then we were both crying out, both breaking into a thousand pieces, clinging together, falling through the darkness.
I felt weightless and weighted, heavy and airy at once. My limbs seemed to float, skin against Bren’s skin in the barest of a feathery touch. Yet the bulk of me sank down into the tiny cot with lazy insistence. The groan I gave was contented.
After a moment, Bren cleared his throat to speak. “I feel,” he said, “as though I’ve been moved. I’m here, and it’s you, but everything’s gone different somehow.”
I laughed and pressed a kiss to his chest. “Perhaps we’ve gone into that other world,” I said. “Perhaps when we go above deck, there’ll be dragons.”
“If there are dragons, we should stay below deck,” he quipped, and I laughed again. But Bren had gone still, and his fingers touched my lips, his body alive, arched like a cat’s. “Listen.”
I quieted. A creak from above, the sound of the masts moving. And our cot, still as our lazy bodies a moment ago, was starting to shift beneath us.
“The wind,” he said, and the dying candle painted the dimples that sank into his cheeks as he smiled.
“Aye,” I said, and then, because I could, “or dragons.”
“Tom!” He very nearly rolled me off my own cot. I fought back against the shove, barreling my body into his, and as we laughed, alight with a newborn love as fresh and heady as sea air, the boat began to pitch further, until the regular roll of the waves had returned. Somewhere above, a shout of joy came up from the gang on deck. We were in motion once again.
I thought then not of dragons but of the power of the old gods. I had seen them, and Bren was right, they existed after all—within him. His zephyr’s magic had stirred us back to life. And that I will believe to my dying day.
And so, if you ask me one more time why I love the sea, I may tell you this: Once, in still waters, I was touched by the West Wind. And ever since, he has been at my back.
ELLEN HOLIDAY started writing at the age of five and never stopped. Her passion has always been for romance, for the magic moment when words are no longer needed, breath stops, and the whole world consists of two souls connecting. Writing that moment, and all the madness surrounding it in every situation, remains her passion every day of her life.
She works in Washington, D.C., where the mix of history, beauty, and politics keeps her constantly intrigued, and lives just west of the city with her husband, with whom she shares a love of science fiction, gaming, and all things geeky. They also share plenty of romantic moments of their own.
Ellen Holiday can be contacted at [email protected].
THE GOLDEN GALLEON
K.R. FOSTER
FLYNN Olsen glared at his cell phone, but it didn’t stop ringing. The blasted contraption hadn’t been quiet for almost ten minutes now, even though he ignored each incoming call. It fell silent for a moment, then buzzed and skittered across the coffee table his feet were propped on. That would make the thirteenth voicemail, assuming he hadn’t lost track, of course.
A blessed lack of noise. Finally!
Leaning back against the comfortable couch, Flynn turned the page of his book. He had waited months for the newest Jonathan Froste novel, and nothing was going to—Ring! Ring!
“All right, damn it!”
Slamming the book shut, the thump sounding louder than the phone, Flynn set it down on the coffee table as he swung his bare feet to the carpet. If he hadn’t promised his partner to always leave the thing on, he would’ve turned it off or thrown it at the wall already.
Flynn pressed the talk button and snarled, “It’s Sunday!” Sunday was his only official day off; he hated interruptions on Sunday.
“I know, but we’re packed.”
“It’s Sunday,” he repeated, as if that would cause the restaurant he was assistant manager of to miraculously empty and leave him to his book.
“I know, Flynn!”
The bustle and yelling voices of the kitchen staff could be heard over the phone line, even though the kitchen was on the other side of the office he and Jason used to make their calls.
“I need two shipwrecks and a jolly roger!”
Flynn gritted his teeth. Days like this didn’t happen often, despite how popular their restaurant was. The Golden Galleon had been his and Jason’s dream ever since college; it was doing well. However, as expected, it took a great deal of time to run a successful restaurant. Especially one in a big city that was popular with rich clientele.
He stared longingly at the black and white photo of the woman crying blood on the book jacket, and then resigned himself to forfeiting what little remained of his free time. “Yeah, all right.” He scrubbed a hand through his short hair, fingernai
ls scratching at his scalp. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Jason sighed. “Thanks, Flynn.”
“You owe me big time for this,” he muttered before cutting off the call.
Flynn stood and stalked down the hall to his and Jason’s bedroom. As first mate of The Golden Galleon, his uniform wasn’t as elaborate as Jason’s, but it was more detailed than those the waiters, waitresses, and hostesses wore.
The butter-soft black breeches slid up his legs with the ease of long practice. A toothy smile consumed his face when he remembered how difficult it had first been to don them; they were skintight and stuck to his skin like leather pants. The knee-high black boots came next—solid and worn from years of use. His shirt was white with flowing, puffy sleeves and cut low in the front.
After fastening the wide belt with its massive brass buckle, Flynn grabbed a black and silver bandana and stalked into the bathroom. He smoothed his auburn hair away from his face and tied it beneath the swath of fabric.
“Oh, I hate this part.”
He made mocking faces at himself in the mirror above the sink as he expertly drew eyeliner around his startling blue eyes. Makeup was for girls. It was a truly stupid decision on his and Jason’s part to include it in the dress code.
As he stomped down the hallway to the front door, his phone began ringing again. Flynn rolled his eyes and snatched it off the coffee table. He flipped it open, said, “I’m really coming,” and then snapped it shut. His exasperation and annoyance shifted to slight amusement. Jason hated when he did that. Then again, he didn’t like when Jason called back to check on his progress; he had only forgotten and become absorbed in a book one time.
Too bad Jason wasn’t the type of man who would let a person forget such instances. Teasing was one of his less attractive qualities, of which there were many. If Flynn didn’t love Jason, he would’ve punched him years ago.
After scooping his keys off the table beside the front door, he left the apartment and locked it behind him. Whistling jauntily, he strolled over and poked the elevator button; the doors dinged open immediately. The ride down to the garage of their apartment complex took a little over a minute, but it felt like ages.
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