Chapter Eight #4
ashes of the driftwood fire, where spectral blue-green lights were
shimmering against the morning sun. “Yes. Yes, go away
now.”
Fen
leaned over the hull of an upturned boat. He braced, muscles
cording up and down his bare arm, and tore a length of planking
away. He examined it critically. “Rotten at both ends, but sound
enough in the middle.”
Cai put
out a hand. Fen tossed it to him, and he fitted it into a gap in
the ancient fishing boat they were repairing. He hammered it into
place with a rock, crushing the rotten ends tight into the good
wood. That would form a kind of seal, and the clay pit a little way
up the shore would provide caulking for the rest. He sat up.
“That’s the last of the holes. The big ones, anyway—for the rest we
can just bail. It’s not a long trip, if we catch an incoming
tide.”
“All right. Let’s haul her out and have a look.”
Cai got
out of the hull where he’d been working. He picked up the prow, and
Fen went to grab the battered stern. They dragged her out of the
crude drystone boathouse that had stopped her from eroding to
splinters and dust over the years. She was heavy, but Fen didn’t
flinch, and he set her down on the runway outside with a dazzling
grin. “She looks good.”
“Better than she has any right to.” Cai eased down his end,
grateful that none of his repairs had snapped out of place.
“Speaking of which…”
“Yes. I am better too. Your stitches came out somewhere last
night, and beneath them I am healed. Maybe you were right,
physician, about the benefits of salt water, or…of
something.”
Cai had begun to wonder if something had been consigned to the
seabed along with their boat. They had come down here in silence
and worked quietly, only exchanging the words they needed for their
task. Maybe a vikingr pirate could grasp at a brother-in-arms in a moment of danger,
rekindle the fires of life with him, but afterwards… “I should come
and have a look. May I?”
“You never asked my leave before.”
“My patients have to do as I say. If you’re well again, I don’t
wield the same authority.”
Fen
examined him from the far side of the boat. The morning was
brilliant now, a brisk wind dancing in the light. There wasn’t much
chance of concealment, for damaged vessels or for men. It didn’t
seem likely to Cai that Fen had shared his doubts, but there was a
trace of uncertainty on his brow, in the corners of his mouth. He
took a couple of steps back and sat on the remains of the hut’s
seaward wall. “Yes, then. You may look.”
Cai
knelt in front of him. It felt natural, and it was the best place
from which to undo his leather jerkin and the top strand of his
leggings. Lifting both garments far enough aside, he saw that the
wound had closed, its edges ragged but clean. New flesh, pink and
healthy, had formed inside. “It’ll scar,” he said roughly. “I’m
sorry.”
“For what? Thor counts our scars in our favour when we
die.”
“No. That I did it to you.”
“We were in battle. And we were nothing to one another
then.”
Cai looked up. It had been on his lips—what are we to one another now? But
he didn’t need to ask. Answers to questions he hadn’t even known
were forming inside him were there in Fen’s eyes. Fen put a hand on
top of his, pressing it to the warm skin inside his jerkin, laying
it over the wound. He leaned down, and Cai stretched yearningly up.
They kissed with brief ferocity, then Cai sat back on his heels. He
tugged the front of the leggings open with his free hand. He’d
noticed in some lightning-flash instant the night before that Fen
had dispensed with the subligaculum cloth, just
as he’d left his own behind him with his cassock on the storeroom
floor. Easier to get to… He gasped and swallowed hard as Fen’s
shaft rose, then without hesitation—the moment before memories of
Leof, of doing this for him, could rush in—he dived
down.
Fen
grabbed the hair at his nape. Pulling away, not claiming him. Cai
sat up. “What’s the matter?”
“This…”
“What about it?”
“Among the Torleik, it’s…something a lesser man does for a
greater.”
Cai
stared at him. In Leof’s case, that had probably been true. No,
certainly true—as time went on, Cai understood more and more what
strength had lain in that gentleness. What strength such gentleness
took, to survive unsoured in a rough world. “Do you think,” he
growled, “a lesser man is about to do it to you now?”
Again,
that silent answer. Cai would never have believed that face could
soften in surrender. The clasp at his nape became a caress. “No.
Please.”
He was
big, and Cai took him carefully. The small noises he made sent red
pulses of arousal into Cai’s groin, but he kept his hands off
himself, stroking and grasping Fen’s thighs until he’d accommodated
what he could of the long shaft. Fen kept very still, electrical as
pent-up lightning under Cai’s touch. What was it costing him not to
grab, paralyse, thrust? The great hands released him and fastened
convulsively on the stonework, a clutch that would have cracked
Cai’s skull. And now he did move—small shifts of his hips, the
movements of Cai’s peaceful ocean yesterday before the storm,
infinite power stored up and waiting. He braced his feet on the
sandy floor and let go one desperate moan.
The
sound of it washed all of Cai’s caution away. He closed his mouth
hard around Fen’s straining cock and let him slide deep into his
throat. He couldn’t breathe, but that mattered less than getting
him inside, sucking him, making those half-anguished cries rip from
him. Tears burned him blind. He hung on, twisting his fists into
the deerskin, the swollen shaft-head ramming further and further
into him—unbearable, perfect.
Fen went
rigid, muscles of his thighs locking tight. The pressure in Cai’s
throat became a rush, a melting heat, and he swallowed and
swallowed to keep from drowning. Red haze threatened him, but he
hung on still, pushing through it, wanting every wild pulse of
Fen’s coming, meeting every one of them halfway.
Fen
caught him. He dropped to his knees with him onto the sand. Cai
leaned against him, brow pressed to his shoulder, coughing and
snatching great lungfuls of the sun-bright air. Fen was shuddering,
his own breath ragged. He felt at Cai’s groin. “You’re still
hard.”
“Yes. I was…” Cai waited till the words would come out whole.
“I was…occupied.”
“Aye, almost suffocating yourself on me. Gods! I thought you
would eat me alive.”
“Maybe next time.”
“Or I will eat you.”
Cai
raised his head and looked into the eyes of the wolf. A deep,
delicious fear unfolded itself, stretching his erection harder.
“Will you?”
“Maybe I will start right now. You smell good enough. Lie
down.”
“Here? It’s damp.”
“You did it in the sea last night.”
Cai
grinned and subsided onto the stones. The moment’s resistance had
been feigned—he’d have lain down in fire if Fen had asked. He
spread his thighs, moaning, while Fen unfastened him and leaned in
close.
The hot
mouth engulfed him—paradise, with a sharp scrape of teeth. He
grabbed Fen’s shoulders. “Careful, you savage.”
Fen sat
up briefly, his face avid, a wicked smile curling one corner of
that handsome, dangerous mouth. “Forgive me. I’ve
never…”
“Never been the lesser man
before?”
“If you must put it so, yes.”
“Well, take some instruction. Run your tongue up me first. Open
a bit wider and… Oh, God,” Cai breathed. Fen had obeyed him on the
instant, putting the lesson into practice. “Let your lips cover
your teeth. Yes.”
Yes. Cai fell back, raising his arms
over his head in surrender, hiding his face in the crook of one
elbow. He forgot Leof and Ben, and Theo, and the secrets and
treasures of Fara. He forgot about death, in the rising flood of
red-hot life Fen was calling up from his bones. He angled his hips,
and Fen seized his backside, lifting him to be devoured. His vision
blurred, and the flood rose high, and just for a while he
forgot.
It took
all afternoon to caulk the boat. The walk to the clay pit was a
rough one, and the business of scraping damp clay into a makeshift
pail arduous, straining backs and shoulders. Cai and Fen spoke very
little, and looked at one another less. The work needed doing. Back
at the boathouse, they took up position on either side of the
repaired vessel’s hull and began the laborious task of spreading
the clay. Cai’s hand brushed Fen’s, and the spark leapt, the flash
of a flint striking stone above dry kindling. Their hands clasped
tight.
“No,” Cai whispered, still not daring to look. “Not unless you
want to spend the rest of your life on this island.”
“You’re right. The clay will take some time to dry.”
“The rest of the day at least. So…”
“So?”
“So you have to let me go.”
They went back to work, and this time didn’t pause until every
crack and hole in the woodwork was packed tight. Then Cai
straightened up, rubbing a handful of dry sand between his palms to
clean them. The sun had passed zenith and was blazing over the
monastery to the southwest. Only a narrow stretch of sea divided
Addy’s retreat from the mainland, but in this light the Fara
buildings, all the pain and joy that had reverberated within their
walls, were nothing but a handful of glitter. Even the great rock
on which they stood could have been cut from papyrus in this
light. If you want to spend the rest of
your life on this island… That was old
Addy’s desire. Cai too could see the charm.
Fen came
to stand beside him, and the charm became clearer still. “We have
hours of daylight yet.”
“Yes. The boat should dry.”
“Our work is done, then. I don’t imagine your crazed hermit
will want to be disturbed in his prayers, so…”
“I’m not sure he’s all that crazed. So?”
“So…we have time. Sunlight. Sand dunes and soft beds of thyme.
I would do with you…” He faded out, voice roughening, a little rasp
that raised the hairs all up and down Cai’s spine. “What you could
not do with Leof.”
He’d used the word fuck