Chapter 21
21
Marcelis
Toorin stood and helped me to my feet. I didn’t know about the rest of the crew, but as Metta’s boat chugged toward the horizon, looking for other prey, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Though with the mainsail torn, no telling how long it would take us to get to a port.
Juniper returned with the harpoon that had lodged in the galley’s bulkhead and tossed it overboard.
“Everyone okay?” Toorin asked as we regrouped.
“Never better, Captain,” Darwin said.
Lyric rolled his eyes, and the rest of us pretended Darwin’s swollen, blood-red hands weren’t more painful than he let on.
One by one, Toorin met everyone’s gaze. “We can go back to Toonu or drop any one of you at the nearest port if—”
“Did he get a knock on his head?” Lyric asked Darwin.
“Aye.” Darwin rubbed at the bloody abrasions on his wrists. “Me thinks his brain stopped working, not his heart.”
Toorin let the comment go and checked in with Juniper.
“Don’t look at me,” Juniper said. “Being boarded by pirates is better than any day on the fringe.”
“I’m in,” I said as if I’d ever say anything different.
It nearly killed me each time Toorin’s heart stopped, knowing that at any time, it might not restart. I would skip the nearest port and head straight toward the one closest to Mercy if I thought we could survive that long on the scant rations they’d left us.
Bodie clamped a hand down on Toorin’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “No one’s leaving. Stop wasting your breath with that bloody nonsense. Aye?”
Toorin’s gaze slid away, and then he looked up, more determination in his pale face than I’d ever seen before. “Aye.” His voice came out hoarse. The voice of a man not expecting all of us to care so much.
Toorin cleared his throat and waved a hand at Darwin and Lyric. “You two, take down the mainsail. Bodie—”
“Marc and I will raise the jib,” Bodie said, an unexpected thrill going through my chest when Bodie included me without Toorin having to threaten him. It felt like the winds had turned on his mistrust of me. A little, at least.
“I’ll set a course.” Toorin stepped toward his cabin and the charts he stored there. “As soon as the sail is up and the deck is cleared, we’ll get underway.”
Juniper started picking up the bare-bones belongings Metta had left for us. With the six of us, the rations wouldn’t last long.
Bodie and I waited for Darwin and Lyric to stow the mainsail before we hoisted the jib. The wind filled the sail, and Toorin brought the Lark’s bow about, putting the wind into our sail.
With all the immediate chores completed, Lyric headed to the galley to work magic on what remained of our rations. Something to fill our bellies, if not tease our taste buds. Toorin sent Bodie and Juniper to their bunks with the long night ahead, leaving Darwin and me to manage the sail if need be.
I didn’t pretend to think I knew much about sailing yet, but I was picking it up fast, determined to pull my weight. I stood near Toorin, stealing a second to take in the beauty of the sun as it waned in the sky, scattering shards of sharp light across the rippled water. The breeze raised gooseflesh on my skin as the late afternoon air turned mild.
Lyric came on deck long enough to bring us both mugs of boiled water he’d pulled from the IP since Metta hadn’t left us with any casks of mead or rations of coffee beans. It tempered our thirst but left us wanting.
I drank the last of my water, enjoying the view of Toorin at the helm, his stance wide, his strong hands gripping the wheel. I could look at him all day and never tire of the sight.
How quickly my life had changed since I’d escaped my sire and Toonu. To be fair, it wasn’t anything like I’d envisioned. Then again, nothing could have prepared me for Toorin.
Toorin glanced at me over his shoulder. “Come here.”
Stepping over, Toorin let loose of the wheel with one hand, making room for me to step in front of him.
He caged me in with his arms, my back to his front, his chin resting on my shoulder. I closed my eyes, absorbing his tenderness and this slice of time we shared. In this world, not every day came with a guarantee. Today drove that reality home.
We didn’t have time to waste out here. Or play silly games.
Not Toorin.
Not me.
Not anybody.
Which is why I let what I held in my heart spill out through my mouth. “You scared me.”
Toorin pressed a lingering kiss to my neck. It wasn’t meant to arouse but to convey all that he felt. He must have come to the same conclusion I had. “You scared me, too. When Metta’s man thought he’d recognized you, I…”
Toorin’s words failed him. He took one strong hand off the wheel, wrapped it around my waist, and buried his face in the crook of my neck. His warm breath heated my wind-cooled skin, and the way he pulled me close made me feel the words he’d proclaimed to Metta deep in my marrow. He’s Mine.
“Did you mean what you said before?” I asked, my bravery in asking the question fleeting.
Toorin chuckled. “I’ve said many things before. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Covering his hand with mine, I swallowed past the stricture in my throat. “The he’s mine .”
Toorin stiffened behind me, and I opened my mouth to take the words back, or to laugh them off and tell him I was joking, that I knew he didn’t mean—
Toorin spun me around, pushing me against the wheel, both arms bracketing me, but I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Look at me,” he said. I hesitated, but he refused to let me be. “ Marcelis .”
I’d never heard my name spoken like that. Like… like… he’d sail straight into a lifetime of gales for me. I glanced up, and his gaze held mine, a connection as enduring as the strongest length of virgin steel.
Unbendable.
However, the question ran through my mind… How? How could he?
“I meant them.”
How was I supposed to reply to that? My entire life, I’d never felt worthy. Or felt like I belonged to someone—not as a possession to fulfill someone else’s agenda—but as someone who had value for exactly who he was.
As if Toorin wanted to be clear, as if he’d read the doubts floating in my head, he added, “And it has nothing to do with what’s beating in your chest and everything to do with what’s in your heart.”
“But—”
“No buts. You didn’t want this any more than I did. You’re not at fault here. You’re not responsible. Understand?”
That last word held an authority that I couldn’t ignore and a certainty, a solemnity that in the deepest depths of him, he believed every word that he spoke.
I guess it was time for me to take him at his word. “Understood.”
If you threw the smile he graced me with up into an inky sky, Bodie could have navigated to the Earth’s end on the darkest of nights.
Then his smile faltered. “Unless you don’t want—”
I shut him up with a kiss so tender my eyes stung. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead and turned me toward the wheel. “Put your hands next to mine.”
I took hold of the wheel, feeling the pull of the rudder as the Lark cut across the choppy waters of the IP. The wind had picked up, but with only the jib to propel us, we couldn’t generate the speed we could before.
“How does it feel?” Toorin asked.
“Powerful.”
It was the only word that came to mind. Everything the Lark was, had ever been, and would ever be was tied to that wheel. I felt Toorin’s sire at the helm gazing across the deck as the boy versions of Bodie and Toorin scaled the masts or hoisted the sails.
My feet stood where Toorin’s had, day in and day out. I felt closer to Toorin then than I ever had.
Letting loose of the wheel, Toorin relinquished full control to me, his hands going around my waist, holding me to him. “It’s addictive,” he said. “The swell of the water under the hull, the wind at your back, the flap of the sail, the screech of the gulls.”
Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that if we were to have a future together, whatever that might be, we’d have to spend it on the IP. Toorin loved it too much, and I couldn’t live with myself if I stole another piece of him that made him him .
I glanced at the compass. “Why are we heading north?”
I’d seen the charts. We’d already cleared the narrows near a town that the old maps called Mackinaw, where we’d head south toward a couple of rivers that eventually would lead us to a busy port near what used to be Cleveland.
All I knew was that the Mercy Province lay deep inland from there, and a trek through the badlands seemed too daunting to dwell on.
Toorin reached around me and hit the compass with the meat of his closed fist. The needle jumped, then settled in a new direction. South-south east.
“Always good to give this compass a good knock. When my sire first let me at the helm, I sailed in the wrong direction for two days. Learned my lesson.”
“And your sire let you?”
“It was my lesson to learn. He figured I’d remember it if the crew wouldn’t let me live it down every time I took the helm for the next year.”
“I guess that would stick with you.”
We sailed as night fell and the stars blossomed. Darwin and I managed the sail a few times, but I always returned to the helm, to Toorin standing behind me. Telling tales about his life on the IP. A hard life, no doubt, but not any harder than clawing and scrapping an existence on the fringe.
In Toonu, you were guaranteed a roof over your head and a meal in your belly, as inadequate as those could sometimes be. But then you existed at the whim of the Uppers and, of course, my sire. I couldn’t blame people for shunning the settlement and taking their chances outside the perceived safety of the walls.
In the distance, the shoreline ran along our starboard side, mostly dark, with a smattering of firelight from small settlements along the banks. Settlements as large and prosperous as Toonu were few. These were areas where people banded together for safety. For trade. I’d heard about them. Lawless places, but from the deck of the Lark, they looked peaceful.
“Help Darwin with the sail,” Toorin said as he adjusted the heading toward land. “We’re going to moor here for the night.”
“I thought we were sailing through until morning.”
Toorin yawned. A jaw-cracking, open-mouthed yawn. “We made better time than I thought.”
We weren’t in the protection of a harbor, but the water remained relatively calm. He pointed at the smattering of firelight along the shoreline. “I know that settlement. No wharf, but we can beach the dinghy in the morning and resupply.”
“Do you think they’ll have coffee?”
He chuckled, then kissed me. “We can only hope.”
Toorin
I crawled into my bunk, groaning. My legs and feet ached from standing so long at the helm. My shoulders complained from the strain Metta’s bindings had put them in, and a deep purple bruise had blossomed over my chest from where Juniper had jumped up and down on it. The way my sternum felt, I was lucky it hadn’t cracked open.
All that discomfort and exhaustion disappeared when Marc followed me into the cabin a few minutes later with two hardtack biscuits and two strips of fried fish, now limp from sitting so long in the galley.
Marc handed me one of each. He swallowed the last of his fish, held his biscuit in his teeth, and ripped the shirt off over his head. With the way lantern light hit the contours of his torso, I found I wasn’t hungry. At least not for hardtack.
“Come here.” My voice rolled out thicker than expected.
Marc stilled, a coy smile appearing behind the biscuit. He tossed it on the counter next to my charts. “You need to sleep. It’s late, and your day has been less than ideal.”
That would have been the smart thing to do. Marc could be practical, if nothing else, but we both knew he also had a naughty side. “Take your trousers off and get over here.”
“Then you’ll never get any sleep. I’m going to sit in the corner like a good spawn and watch you—”
“ Marcelis .” I injected as much authority as I could into my words, knowing full well I couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to. I didn’t need a nursemaid. I needed him . “Come. To. Bed.”
He tugged at the trouser ties at his waist, and the coarse material dropped to his ankles, revealing his amazing cock already half-hard.
“You’re bloody beautiful.” I held out my hand, and he came without hesitation. “Douse the lantern.”
He shook his head. “I want to see you. Every stubborn, glorious inch.”
I didn’t argue. As long as Marc slipped under the covers that had been too tattered for Metta to take, I wouldn’t complain. Besides, watching the emotions play across his face as he climaxed had become one of my favorite pastimes.
The air had developed a chill as the night wore on. I could have used an extra layer of bedding—which, thanks to Metta and her men, we didn’t have—however, I wouldn’t be cold for long. What I had planned for Marc would heat us and the cabin well into the night. I briefly considered opening the portholes for a breeze I knew we’d need, but I couldn’t be arsed to do it.
Not with Marc looking at me the way a starving man looks at a fire pit stacked with camel tongue steaks.
I held up the thin cover and slid over, making room. Marc scooted in beside me, his head falling to the mattress where our pillows should have been. He turned on his side and tucked an arm under his head. Our day could have ended so much worse. Being down to a thin blanket and no pillows barely registered.
I circled an arm around his waist and pulled him tighter against me, our legs tangling, our cocks aligning. “I’m very glad Metta didn’t find out who you are.”
“I’m very glad Juniper got your heart started again.”
I kissed him. I could have kissed him through the night and into the next morning and into the one after that. Even in this forsaken world, we had much to be grateful for.
Most people counted their wealth by the number of chips in their pockets or credits on their accounts. I used to be one of those people.
Before.
I knew better now. Wealth wasn’t measured by your possessions. It was measured by the people in your life that you were willing to let into your heart.
Like this man.
I’d never set out to find my person. It wasn’t a thing out here on the fringe. We didn’t have that kind of luxury. But it felt like I’d found him. And I’d do nearly anything to keep him.
Like, let him keep your heart?
Marc laid a hand on my face, his fingertips scrubbing through the scruff on my jaw. “Where did you go?”
“I’m here,” I said, returning to myself and him.
“You’re thinking too much.” He said it like he could hear every cog turning and grinding in my head. Before I could reply, his hand dropped from my face, and he palmed my cock. Whatever remnants of thoughts I had vanished like he knew they would.
“Fuck.” It was the only word that fit how it felt to have his warm hand slide over me, his thumb brushing across the slick tip he’d exposed.
He pushed me back, my leg falling open, granting him more access. Marc climbed on top of me, his knees landing on either side of my hips as his hand worked my engorged shaft from tip to root.
I pulled him down for a kiss, trapping his hand between our bodies, but I needed to taste him, to breathe him in. Living the life of a scrapper was always about the next haul of scrap, the next sale, the next threat.
The next, the next, the next…
There was no living in the present. There was no appreciation for what you have because what you have was rarely enough.
Except for Marc.
He was enough.
More than enough.
He made me slow down. He made me appreciate the here the now. He made me see the beauty in the little things like pleasure shared, whispers in the dark, shared dreams, and a future that didn’t look so bleak with him in it.
He tasted of herring and hardtack and hope.
Breathless, he broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. “When you kiss me like that, everything is possible. That we’ll figure this out. That there’s a way we can come out the other side and thrive.”
I almost laughed at the thought of thriving . The lucky people settled on surviving . How bold and daring we were to want more. But I understood because I felt it, too. With him, the impossible wasn’t so impossible anymore.
“I want that. I want you .”
He ground his hips into mine. “You have me.”
A feeling welled in my chest, constricting my lungs, clogging my throat, and filling my eyes with moisture. It wasn’t something I’d felt before, but if this was love…
If this was love, I understood how people could move mountains because of it. My strength felt unending, my purpose never clearer.
“Thank the fucking stars.” I pulled him in for another kiss before releasing him to sit back on his haunches.
He picked up where he left off. Working my cock with his hand, the fingers of his other hand gently fondling my heavy balls. He swiped a bead of precum at my tip with his tongue, and my hips thrust forward. As much as I loved how he made my nerves knot and my balls tight, I needed more.
“Come up here.” I guided him with the firm grip I had on his hips.
He rose on his knees and braced himself on the bulkhead at the head of the bed, his leaking cock inches from my hungry mouth. I licked the wetness there, and the groan that rumbled up from deep within sent a zinger straight to my balls.
I pulled off his cock long enough to wet a couple of my fingers with my mouth and used them to tease a trail to his hole.
“Moon and mars.” He thumped his forehead against the bulkhead. “Toorin, I—” I circled his rim with my finger and chuckled when he lost his train of thought. I loved that I could scramble his brains with my mouth and my touch.
I didn’t want him to think. I only wanted him to feel.
Second by second, I worked him closer to the brink with my mouth on his cock and my fingers in his ass. His breathing grew labored, and sweat slicked his skin as he thrust into my mouth and ground down onto my fingers. I knew he was close from the copious amounts of precum coating my tongue and the sweet, innocent, debaucherous sounds emanating from somewhere deep down.
As much as I wanted his cum down the back of my throat, I needed to be inside him more. I pulled off of him and took hold of his hips.
“Fuck,” he grumbled, though his face softened when he saw the need on mine. He settled back on his heels, but not before grabbing the container of lube. He held the jar while I uncorked the top, slapping my hand away so that he could pour it into his palm.
My dick sat at full attention as he shifted his weight onto my thighs, waiting for him to slather on the lube. He didn’t make me wait.
He wiped his hands on a clean rag, then hovered above me. Slowly, gently, painstakingly, slowly—I know I mentioned that last one already, but fuuuck— he lowered himself down on me.
His eyes fluttered closed, and his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He blew out a breath as he braced his hands on either side of my head. He didn’t move. Not the way I’d expected him to.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
After opening his eyes, they drifted closed again as if gathering the words for what he wanted to say. “Why does this feel like so much more than sex?”
He felt it, too? He must. “Sex has never felt like this before. This connection… it’s…” Now, I was the one floundering for words.
“It’s unexpected but feels immeasurably strong.”
“Like there isn’t a force of nature strong enough to break it.”
“Exactly.”
My heart whirred in my chest, and I hoped to the stars that it didn’t pick this moment to crap out on me. I would never forgive it if it did. I had an important question to ask. “Do you think…”
Why was this so hard to ask? The whirring in my chest grew louder. The loudest yet.
He leaned down and kissed me. Somehow, that simple press of his lips to mine gave me the courage and confidence to ask what I needed to. “Do you think that that’s what love feels like?”
His grin grew and grew until it nearly eclipsed his face. “Maybe you’re right.”
He kissed me again, then started to move, and I lost the words and fell into a world that shrank to my cabin and the here and now. To him and I moving together. A place where only his and my pleasure mattered. Where our bodies said what our mouths couldn’t—that we were safe together, that we mattered together, that we would brave the world… together.
My fingers and thumbs pressed into his flesh as he rocked back and forth. The sweet grip he had on my cock nearly blinded me. I fought the urge to close my eyes. I wanted to see the emotions dance across his face, the pleasure, the desire, and the... love?
“That’s it,” I said as he shifted and started using my cock, my body, to pleasure his. I braced my heels on the bed, letting him set the increasingly brutal pace. I loved it when he took control. That in taking, he was giving himself over to me, letting me into his body and his world.
There was nothing sexier than that.
The sound of flesh slapping flesh filled the cabin, and I didn’t care if anyone else on the Lark heard. Marc wasn’t someone that I wanted as a secret. I wanted the world to know that he was mine and I was his.
The base of my spine tingled, and my balls drew up tight. I hauled Marc against me, our skin slick, his hot, harsh breath in my ear. Reaching between us, I took him in my hand, my thumb brushing through the moisture at the tip.
Marc moaned, his teeth sinking into the tender flesh where my shoulder met my neck, his body stiffening above me. He contracted around me, all that warm, tight heat launching me over the edge with him.
I emptied myself inside him. I’d never tire of knowing he carried a part of me with him. He collapsed onto my chest, the rapid staccato of his heart slammed into my sternum.
His heart.
Somehow, it didn’t feel like mine anymore.