Chapter 17
The dream was even more potent the second night Kate shared a bed with Nathaniel.
The events of the previous two days had somehow swirled together in her nocturnal imaginings, rendering Nathaniel shirtless, as he had been at the washbasin.
But this time, he was shirtless on the beach, his arms rippling with muscles as he pulled at the oars.
Then, he was grinning at her over his shoulder as he jogged down the beach, his warm brown skin glistening in the sunshine.
And then, alarmingly, they were lying together on the sand, his limbs tangled with hers.
She ran her fingertips over every inch of his sun-warmed skin, which formed a tantalizing contrast with the cool waves lapping at her toes.
They were bare, because in this dream, Kate wore nothing but a shift.
Which would presumably indicate that dream-Nathaniel knew that dream-Kate was, in fact, a woman.
But dream-Nathaniel didn’t seem to mind.
He was holding her close, his big, warm hands encircling her waist. She threw a leg over his hip, and he groaned, low and aching, into her hair.
Suddenly, he started pumping his hips against her, fast and urgent.
Which felt… strange. But it was the best sort of strange.
Kate’s breath was coming in gasps. Her pulse was flying.
She was afraid she might come apart, might shatter into a thousand shards.
But, as much as she feared… whatever this was, this thing that was thundering toward her like wild horses…
she longed for it in equal measure. “Nathaniel!” she gasped.
His body, which had been warm and pliant, turned to stone beneath her hands. “Kit?” he asked, his voice laced with panic.
Kit? Should it not have been Kate? After all, this was naught but a dream, and—
She sat bolt upright in bed. Or at least, she attempted to. She didn’t make much progress on account of Nathaniel’s arms, which were wrapped tightly around her waist.
Suddenly, they weren’t. Wrapped around her waist, that was. Nathaniel sat up abruptly, eyes wide, and scooted back all the way against the wall, taking the blankets with him.
Disoriented by both the sudden turn of events and the sudden shift of the mattress, Kate swayed and went tumbling off the edge of the bed.
She managed to grab onto the bedpost, saving herself from any real harm. But her hips made an impressive thump against the wooden floor.
“Kit!” Nathaniel cried, heedless of their sleeping neighbors.
“I’m all right!” she squeaked from her undignified position on the floor.
She was too embarrassed to look at him, but his voice was thick with frustration. “God, I’m so sorry. I… ugh. What is wrong with me? I didn’t mean to… I’ve never… I…” He trailed off. For the first time Kate had witnessed, the eloquent academic was at a loss for words.
“It’s quite all right! I know you didn’t intend to, er…” She trailed off, clearing her throat. She was not entirely certain what it was that they had not intended to do. “I didn’t, either.”
“To be sure!” Nathaniel exclaimed.
Kate rose, grateful to find him facing the wall.
She made a clumsy grab for her coat and yanked it around her shoulders.
“We’ll just forget it ever happened.” Which was a bald-faced lie.
Kate realized how ridiculous the words were as soon as they left her mouth because she was never going to forget the way Nathaniel Sterling had just made her feel, not even if she lived to be two hundred.
But, judging by the tremulous quality of his voice, her words meant something to Nathaniel. “That’s very good of you, Kit. You’re too kind.”
Kate cleared her throat. “Think nothing of it!” She grabbed her boots, which were positioned by the door. “I’ll see you at breakfast!”
She had closed the door behind her before he had a chance to answer.
The next day, Nathaniel was feeling confused.
The good news was that it appeared he was going to have a good long while to contemplate the strange state of affairs that had arisen between him and Kit.
This was on account of it being Sunday. When Mr. MacRitchie had suggested that he and Kit might like to join his family for Sunday services, Nat had readily agreed.
He was given to understand that religious services were strictly observed in the Outer Hebrides, and he wanted to put his best foot forward.
Besides, he attended church regularly. It wasn’t as if it were any hardship.
That was before he realized that the service would be in Gaelic. Really, he should have anticipated that one. Well, no matter. That wasn’t the real problem.
The real problem was that he’d been sitting beside Kit on the pew for five hours. And, as best he could tell, the service was nowhere close to ending.
This left him with nothing better to do than quietly contemplate the baffling situation that had arisen between him and his illustrator.
After three consecutive nights of erotic dreams, followed by three consecutive mornings of awakening to find that he had seized Kit in his sleep and was engaged in some combination of caressing, groaning, and humping, he could not plausibly deny his attraction toward Kit.
It was surprising because Nathaniel had never had this sort of reaction to another man before. Not that he found such a response troubling, in spite of the prevailing opinion that sexual attraction between two males was immoral.
One of the primary supporting arguments for this stance had been posed by a series of clerics dating back to Thomas Aquinas. Sexual acts between men were unnatural, Aquinas had argued, because they did not occur in the natural world.
But Aquinas had been wrong about that. Nathaniel would know.
He was a naturalist, after all, and had therefore had occasion to observe males mating with other males in a range of animal species.
Anyone who had spent time around sheep could tell you that rams mounted other rams all the time.
Additionally, there had been a recent uproar in the German publication Entomologische Zeitung after zoologist August Kelch described male doodlebugs having sexual relations with other male doodlebugs.
He had promptly been denounced by his fellow entomologists, only for his detractors to conduct their own observations and discover that he had been right.
Whether it was ducks or dolphins, goats or geese, mating occurred between members of the same species, regardless of what Thomas Aquinas said. These animals were God’s creations. As they exhibited this behavior, there was nothing “unnatural” about it. Any other conclusion was blatantly illogical.
Nathaniel was therefore not alarmed to discover his undeniable attraction to Kit.
But was at a loss as to explain why Kit inspired such a reaction.
He could not help but observe that Kit smelled unusually good.
Which, he had to admit, was a piss poor excuse for humping him in his sleep!
But it was almost as if the young artist emitted some sort of natural musk that Nathaniel found nigh irresistible.
What made Nathaniel feel even more uneasy was the fact that his unintentional advances were apparently not reciprocated.
Although… it was difficult to be sure. There were times when Nat felt certain that Kit was experiencing a similar state of arousal.
He had awoken yesterday to find that Kit was the one humping him.
The young man’s cheeks were always flushed in the morning, and his voice breathy.
Why, just this morning, Kit had been clinging to him so tightly, he had scratch marks on his shoulder!
But there was one thing Nathaniel could not help but notice, and that was that while Nat woke with a raging erection, Kit was never in a similar state.
And wasn’t that the most conclusive piece of evidence?
Perhaps he had misinterpreted the signs that Kit reciprocated his feelings.
Maybe his red cheeks were a sign not of lust, but embarrassment.
Perhaps he had dug his nails into Nat’s shoulder not to draw him close but as an act of self-defense.
Perhaps it was all a figment of his imagination…
The congregation stood as a hymn began. The church did not have an organ to accompany the singing.
Nor was there a bell in the steeple, or any stained glass in the windows.
When Nathaniel had asked about it, Mr. MacRitchie had solemnly explained that such ostentations were frowned upon on the islands.
Nathaniel was surprised by this definition of “ostentations,” but he certainly preferred the islander’s simple sincerity to the alternative—extravagant spending on decoration without any discernable piety.
He caught Kit’s eye, and the young man gave him a commiserating smile.
The one bright spot was that Kit seemed as determined as Nathaniel was to close the door on whatever madness was flaring between them within the confines of their room.
There was no awkwardness between them as they worked together.
In fact, there was an ease to spending his days with Kit that Nat had never experienced before.
Usually, the things he wanted to do—spend all day sitting in a field, staring at an animal or bird—his friends and family could tolerate for no more than five minutes.
Likewise, the topics that were of interest to him were deemed dull by most everyone he knew.
With Kit, it was the opposite. There was nothing the young man would rather do than spend all day watching puffins, and nothing he would rather discuss over dinner that night than what they had observed.
Every detail was of interest, no matter how minute.
It was nice to find someone who truly enjoyed his conversation and wasn’t just humoring him.
It felt rare. Special. Precious, even. And it moved him in a way he had not anticipated. His feelings for Kit were growing deeper with each passing day. What he felt for the young man was so much more than the incendiary physical reaction he experienced when they shared the same bed.
Kit was his partner. His soul mate. Nat was growing more certain of that fact with every day he spent in his company.
How that would translate in a world in which it was a capital crime for two men to express such feelings physically, he did not know.
But they could be close friends. Confidants. Research partners.
Perhaps that would be enough.