SEAL'd Legacy (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts)

by Gabi Moore

  The coarse sand sieved through my toes as I walked up and towards the land, legs in slow motion through the water. The ocean had a way of doing that: of slowing everything down, whether you liked it or not. The landscape before us was still alien to me: after all, I had only woken up on this island long after all the main drama had passed. For me, it had been the neatest scene change. I had blacked out on the ship, and come to, right on these sands.

  But not Todd.

  I scanned his face to try and read what he was feeling, to find any little sign of recognition. But he was simply engrossed in the task at hand, and held my hand firmly as we walked over to the dry sand.

  Once we set foot on land, I lowered my skirt hem and took a full breath. The wind took it up again and played with it, as it did my hair, and all the strange yet almost familiar smells of salt and fish and rock introduced themselves.

  “So this is it,” I said.

  “This is it.”

  Soon, life would whirl around on its axis again and everything would change forever. Both Todd and I were entering into a new life stage together, and so coming here to say goodbye to this place was a now-or-never deal. Hadn’t we both dreamt of this island frequently for the past five years? Hadn’t we both laughed and smiled whenever someone ask where we had met, and cast sidelong glances at the other? It was now time to move on. Time to get the ‘closure’ I had tried in vain to explain to my mother and sister.

  “Can I take that for you?” he said and gestured to my backpack.

  “It’s OK. I want to hold it,” I said.

  “Did you… did you want to do it now?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Yes. Let’s do it.”

  After we had both taken our fill of the views in all directions, we walked in silence deeper into jungly part of the island. In my memories, the trees had seemed so much denser and foreboding than they seemed now. They just looked like aging, non-threatening versions of themselves. It was cooler in the shade as we walked on.

  “What about here?” he asked.

  I looked over at the big palm tree he was standing beside.

  “Yes. That looks good,” I said.

  I told myself I wouldn’t cry. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard to gather myself for a second. I slid off my backpack, unzipped it and reached inside. I took out two things as Todd watched me solemnly.

  The first was a little wreath I had made from willow branches and flowers. A ribbon with the letter ‘A’ painted on it was tied to the top of the wreath. The second object was an envelope, and inside that envelope was a letter that I hadn’t ever read.

  Hands trembling, I opened the envelope and took it out. Todd reached out to help but I waved him off. This was something I had to do myself. I opened the folded letter, smoothed it out and set it aside. Then I put the wreath at the base of the tree, and cleared my throat. I tried my hardest to hold off on my tears. I wasn’t sad. I wanted to be here, and I wanted to do this. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  “Do you need me to go?” Todd said quietly.

  I shook my head.

  No. He was a part of this too. I had been told that when the others were recovered from the island, Anthony had been rushed onto the rescue boat and immediately asked for a pen and paper. He had begged Charlie to write down everything he said, and to swear that she would find a way to get the letter to me. By the time they had all made it to shore, though, he had already gone.

  Charlie took a few months to reach out to me after that, but I had avoided her and sent her off after she tracked me down, then stashed the letter into a bottom drawer, knowing I didn’t have the heart to read it. And there it had sat through five years, one job change, several house moves and a marriage.

  But I would read it now.

  I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand and looked down at the old, yellowing paper, creased heavily down the middle. Todd stood somberly beside the tree and waited.

  The handwriting was unfamiliar and done in a cheap black ballpoint, scratched in sloping lines. I wasn’t superstitious, like I said, but it was hard not to feel that something was happening now. I would release Anthony, and release myself. They were unspoken words about unfinished business. Whatever it was that he wanted me to know, I knew that by the time I reached the end of the letter, I’d be ready to move on and forget everything.

  I began to read.

  “Dear Ellie. Life is so much more fragile than I thought. I won’t see you again, at least not in this world. Please listen to every word that I write here and try to understand it. I’m in so much pain. I’ve never meant anything more than I mean this. Ellie, I have done everything wrong. All the things I held onto meant nothing in the end. For me, Ellie, please don’t hold onto things like I did. I cannot describe what it feels like to know that you’re dying. But I am soothing myself right now with the thought that you can do better than I did. Please be happy, Ellie. It’s all that matters. I couldn’t, but you can. Please be happy, Ellie.”

  By the time I reached the final few lines, my voice had broken into a sob and the tears dripped down onto the page. I choked them back, carefully folded the letter up again, and held it in my hands for a moment. I then went to the palm tree, dug a little hole in the soil in front of the wreath and placed the letter inside it, before covering it over again with damp soil.

  Todd stared hard at the ground with me, the twitching tendons in his neck telling me how torn up he was, too.

  On my knees now, I patted down the cool soil, then stood. Was I relieved? I don’t know. But strange, deep feelings washed over me as I realized that Anthony had moved on a long, long time ago, and it was only me who had been the ghost, clinging to the past, unable to let go.

  I had taken my lost foot as proof that life was punishing me for what I did to him. But now I could see that Anthony didn’t hate me. He hadn’t cursed my name with his last breath and he hadn’t wished me dead for what I’d done to him. In fact, the letter had contained a medicine that I hadn’t known I’d needed until I tasted it: forgiveness.

  We stood for a moment more looking at our modest memorial, before Todd took my hand and guided me away. Walking out into the bright sunshine of the beach again felt like a cleansing. Tears still on my face, I somehow found a way to smile.

  “I feel better now,” I said, and it was an understatement.

  Todd’s hand went gently to touch my lower belly. It was sweet, protective little gesture that he had started doing ever since I had found out I was pregnant. It was only a small curve, but I knew full well that it’s often the smallest things that take up the most space in your life.

  Todd kissed my neck and then wandered off, sensing that I’d need to be alone for a while.

  I had forgotten one massive detail about this place: how quiet it was during the day. When the wind stopped streaming through the trees for a moment, the island was washed over in a kind of loud silence that felt impossible to ignore.

  I sighed and took a walk along the beach, examining here and there for signs of …anything, really. Was I looking for evidence that we had changed this place as much as it had changed us? Did I want some proof that we had been here at all, and all those memories were not just images that came to me late at night to torment me and keep me from sleeping?

  The truth was there was nothing.

  And I felt nothing.

  Nothing remained of the days we had spent here – how could it? – and the island was just as bare and cruelly indifferent as it was the first time we laid eyes on it.

  I wandered over to the gradual slope where the water’s edge stroked the shore. Endless, rhythmic waves came again, left again, came again. Hypnotic, and a little senseless. Time just marched on here, to its own slow, elemental rhythm. For this island, five years was nothing. I bent down to look at the sand granules and wondered which of them had even been here five years ago. Wasn’t an island just a naked part of the ocean floor, a high piece that peeked up over the water level? In time,
I guess even this island would be ground away and float off.

  I had had enough. I stood, dusted the sand from my knees and scanned around for Todd. He was far out over to the other end of the beach, wading in some rock pools. I walked off towards him.

  “Feel like some mussels?” he laughed when I reached him, then waved a glinting blue shell in my direction.

  “Oh my god, don’t even joke,” I yelled back.

  He was like a little kid, bent over and investigating the sea creatures that lived in the pockets of water between the rocks. I hopped onto them as best as I could, being unused to walking without my prosthetic, and went over to sit with him on the rock’s edge. He was more robust than I was, that much was true.

  “Weird, isn’t it? Being back here?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Are you sure this is even the right place? It feels so much …smaller,” I said.

  “I know what you mean. But this is it. Santa Majella.”

  “Not much going on here, huh?”

  “No, not really.”

  We both laughed.

  It had been so important to me, coming back here. It had felt like the closure I needed. Now that I was here, I had mixed feelings. There was nothing special about the place, only about all the things that had happened here.

  Todd was important.

  The baby was important.

  But this island?

  I hadn’t expected to, but I started to feel like I was ready to leave, even though we’d only been here a short time. There was nothing left to do. Well, maybe there was one thing…

  I reached out and placed my hand on his knee. He put his hand on top of mine and continued staring out at the horizon.

  “Todd, let’s head over to those trees under there… I want to lie down for a moment before we head out again.”

  He instantly got to his feet, helped me up and we went over in silence to the shady grove of palm trees behind us. The sand here was powder soft and gave way like a cushion as we sat on it. Todd settled his weight down and invited me to sit between his legs and lean back against his chest. It was the wide blue sea in front and Todd’s warm, supportive body behind.

  We sat in silence, his fingers playing in my hair and then finding their way to my neck, along with his lips which gave sweet, light kisses on my shoulders. His other hand was softly around my waist.

  “Todd, do you think I’m getting fat?”

  His kisses turned into playful nips.

  “Don’t ask me that again or I’ll go for your jugular next time,” he breathed and I laughed, trying to squirm away.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Your body is perfect to me.”

  I smiled, grabbed his arm and guided it further up, so it cupped my breast. He seemed reluctant at first, but then teased lazy circles around my hardening nipples. I took hold of his other wrist and guided it down, so that the tips of his fingers just grazed the valley between my legs. I wanted him. Here, and now. And there. I twisted back and offered him my lips, which he dutifully kissed. I never got tired of how good it felt to taste him like this, to feel his tongue caressing mine.

  He stopped me though, and pulled back to look at me with concern.

  “Ellie, are you sure you want to…?”

  I kissed him again, hard, to stop him from talking. I could feel the smile on his lips.

  “Well, you’re the one parading around all day without your shirt on, it gives a girl ideas you know,” I said and playfully bit his lower lip. He took my head in his hands and searched my face.

  “Just be serious with me for a second, will you Ellie? We came here for a reason. Is this what you really want? We’re not coming back here ever again…”

  I sighed.

  We had talked about this every evening for the last two weeks straight. I knew what he was asking. He had been patient. But he had also hinted strongly that he was ready to move on, ready to forget about this whole place and everything it came with. And he deserved a real clean start. We deserved a relationship that wasn’t a sequel, wasn’t a closing scene, wasn’t a conclusion to some other tragic story but the beginning to a much better one. A relationship that stood in its own right.

  “I want it.”

  It was all I needed to say. His body closed around over mine again and his lips once more found my collarbones, my neck, my shoulders. I moaned and tilted my head to the side, enjoying the goosebumps, and that amazing way he knew just how to tease my nipples so they tightened and sent hot little sparks all through the rest of my body.

  After all this time together, we had our own carnal shorthand, and he knew exactly which buttons to press to have me squirming in no time. My body knew him, knew his touch, and wasted no time playing its part.

  I loved the way I could feel his chest rise and fall underneath me as his breath deepened. I loved feeling that familiar hardness in his pants, and knowing what it meant. It felt naughty, being out here like this. The chances of another living soul seeing us were beyond remote, but then again, it was hard not to feel like we were breaking a taboo by being so flagrantly outdoors like this. His hands were moving more urgently over my stomach now, and when he slipped his flat palm over that soft swell, my hips instinctively rose to meet him.

  Tired of kissing him over my shoulder, I swiveled round and faced him, on my hands and knees, and kissed him so deeply it sent him backwards a little, throwing his hands back out behind him to support himself. I couldn’t stop my hands as they hungrily took in every knot and bulge of his well-developed torso. He smiled and let me have him, looking down at me with amusement plastered on his face. Me being so desperately horny during early pregnancy had been a pleasant surprise for both of us.

  I had soon shimmied up the hem of my dress to allow me to straddle him and then I set to work trying to greet every inch of his belly with a kiss.

  “Hm, you really do want it,” he purred, and leant back even further.

  I did. I couldn’t explain it, but somehow this was the missing piece, this was what I had come here to do. It was a big middle finger to this hellish island. It was the last word in the whole story, and I was going to have it, right here and now.

  I pushed him back so he fell flat onto the sand and reached down to lift my dress high overhead. I tossed this aside and with as much abandon as I could muster, and then did the same to my bra. I couldn’t be bothered to take my panties off – I didn’t want to miss one second straddling him. Instead, I fell forward for another deep, juicy kiss and let my hips wander over that thick bulge I could now feel at his crotch. Lips still locked into his, my hands went to work unzipping him and releasing that meaty monster of his. I had fucked Todd in every position, in every room in our house. I had fucked him fast and I had fucked him slow. We had had angry sex, and playful sex and cute, sweet sex and serious sex and rushed sex. But no matter how well-worn that path, no matter how many times our bodies had come together like this before …I always wanted to do it again.

  His cock bounced swollen and purple from the slit in his trousers and I left it just like that. It looked hot, seeing just that most delicious part of him poking out through his sensible, practical clothing. I slowly stroked the damp spot on my g-string against the veiny length of him, relishing the thrill of nothing but that flimsy strip of fabric between us. I played here with the friction for a moment but eventually the craving to have my bare skin against his bare skin was too much and I reached down, slipped the lacy material to the side and pressed against him again, kissing him now in two places.

  There’s something truly extravagant about pregnant sex. It has its own kind of gluttony, filling up a cup that’s already full, drinking when you’re already intoxicated… It felt like a joyful excess, to keep begging to be filled with his cum when it had already proved so potent.

  His hands reached up to pull me down for more kissing, but I was getting impatient. His other hand grabbed a firm handful of my ass and pinned me down, rocking and grinding my hips against that stif
f rod. I usually loved letting go and giving Todd reign over me.

  I loved trusting that he’d know exactly where to lead my body and how, and I could simply melt into it all. But today, I felt differently. I squeezed my knees tight against his trunk and held my hands at his biceps, playfully holding him down and letting my long hair graze his chest. He seemed sweetly taken aback, but only smiled softly, and he held my gaze and didn’t do a thing to protest.

  “I feel like we’re the only two people left alive here,” I whispered as my hips kept up their teasing rhythm over his shaft. His smile was dreamy and distant.

  “Like we’re just two wild animals, lost, forgotten, and we only have one another to rely on… for everything,” I moaned.

  He raised an eyebrow at me. I usually wasn’t very chatty during sex either.

  “And like animals, like savages we need to fuck to keep our species going, to keep one step ahead of danger at all times, to survive…”

  He propped his hands behind his head and cocked his head at me.

  “Are we ever going to get to all this savagery or are you going to keep telling me stories?” he asked, then yelped when I lurched forward to nip his shoulder with my teeth.

  “You’d better watch out, mister, I’m the alpha female here, and you’re my chosen mate.”

  I felt his cock bounce against me.

  Still holding one another’s gaze, I shifted my weight onto my knees and knelt back, arching my ribcage to display my chest to him fully. I grabbed each breast and squeezed, rolling and teasing the nipples to points, still grinding wet in his lap. I tossed my hair so it fell over my shoulders and down my spine, then let my head fall and imagined that it was all true – that for this moment, we lived in a simple world. A world made only of sand and sea and wind and flesh, a world so close to death it was thrilling, so near to primal, unspeakable longings that there was nothing left to talk about, nothing to think about.

  There was only doing.

  Only fucking.

  When I squeezed his engorged head into my pussy, it took my breath away for a moment. I tried to register how intensely thick and solid he was, how the sensation of being firmly opened by him sent little waves all through my hips. I was only three months pregnant but already I felt myself changing internally, shifting to become deeper and juicier. He groaned and arched his back to bring his hips up and deliver another slow inch into me, and then another.