Chapter 12 #3
An arm came round his waist, clutched him close. Held him there, strong as an iron band. Everard froze.
“Vitya?”
“Mmm.” Vitaliy shifted restlessly, still holding Everard close.
His other arm wrapped around, almost in a hug—and all at once he used the sway-roll momentum of the ship heeling back to larboard to shimmy his body further beneath Everard’s.
He fit Everard’s hips neatly over his own, and made a deeply pleased noise, low in his throat.
Everard had already been in a bit of a precarious situation, prick-wise; the pleased noise certainly didn’t help. Then gravity resembled its normal self, and brought Everard’s weight down. Vitaliy was as hard and hot beneath his drawers as Everard; he couldn’t help but gasp.
Vitaliy splayed his legs accommodatingly, slotting Everard between broad firm thighs; he rutted up, a roll of hips. He mumbled, “Mmm?”
Holy Good God, Everard thought. Vitaliy wanted him after all.
He really hadn’t had expectations, but…
“Wait,” he groaned, “wait, Vitya. We can’t—that is, we shouldn’t, not now.”
Vitaliy’s arm held fast around his waist; his other hand gripped onto Everard’s arse and clutched him insistently closer.
Everard resisted, held his hips as still as he could bear—they seemed to want to press and grind of their own accord—and tried to prop up more of his weight on his knees.
What he wanted was to do precisely the opposite, to put hands to either side of Vitaliy’s waist, let his weight fully down, kiss him, everywhere.
But Vitaliy’s strangeness held him back.
He remembered a lazy, sleepy midnight conjugation, once upon a time; Vitya had been quiet, but intensely responsive all the same.
A man can’t change so much in three years.
“Vee?” Everard rested his forehead on the other man’s. “Are you awake?” he whispered. “You don’t seem quite yourself.”
Vitaliy grunted, “Mhm.”
It sounded affirmative enough. And the rutting continued against him, slow and molten.
Everard kissed the soft mouth carefully with closed lips—as perhaps he could coax the man to his normal responsiveness that way—and received a dark, needy whimper that sank straight into his gut.
Hadn’t he heard that sound in his dreams ever since?
Still he held back.
“Vitya,” he said regretfully; every bit of him trembled with restraint. “It’s still raining—there’s a storm.”
“Evra’d,” Vitaliy mumbled, and then was silent. Everard, really alarmed now, raised higher to look at him properly.
What seaman didn’t react to the word storm?
Vitaliy’s eyes were closed, and a tiny furrow creased between his eyebrows; his lips were red and parted, unsmiling, his breath increasing. His hips moved up, up, up, and his hands roamed, all over, up Everard’s back and down again, clutching.
Everard bit his lower lip, hard. The exquisite drag of linen between their pricks seemed suddenly very, very wrong.
For Vitaliy wasn’t awake. Not at all.
“Vitaliy,” he said urgently now, one hand pushing down on the man’s warm hip to put more space between them, the other pushing himself up, not wanting to break his grip too harshly. “Wake up. Vitya.”
Nothing, except increasingly aggressive rutting, murmurs of what sounded like encouragement in slippery, lilting Russian. Vitaliy’s legs wrapped round Everard’s own, pulling them closer, closer.
Everard said, “Vee,” loudly. “Vitya,” he said, directly into an ear.
Sant Jesús, the man was completely insensible.
“For God’s sake,” he said, even louder. “Vee, wake up!”
Vitaliy inhaled like someone surfacing. The rutting stopped abruptly, and Everard felt the man’s awakening jar into his bones. Muscle and limbs stiffened, and hands jerked away from Everard’s arse. Blue eyes opened in bleary horror.
Thus freed, Everard quickly pushed himself up, backing onto his knees.
Vitaliy sat up, too, shoving back into the corner of the cot, breathing hard.
Prick still hard, too, Everard noted dimly, though he knew that meant nothing at all.
Not compared to the thin-lipped look of disgust on Vitaliy’s face.
Everard’s stomach dropped. Dear God, he’d assaulted an unconscious man. One who, in the daylight, hadn’t encouraged him at all.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” He scrambled out of the cot so fast, he sent it swinging anew and almost fell. He caught himself luckily with his left hand against the rug, and picked himself up, so ashamed he felt his skin would dry to a crisp around his bones. “I’m so—”
“Don’t,” Vitaliy said thickly, harshly. A wakening voice, truly this time. His fist gripped the cot’s corner rope tight, his arm wrapped round, like an unsure child did on a swing. “Wait. Please.”
Everard waited, not that he knew what for, or where he would go in drawers and nothing else.
Above their heads, the rain came again, a sheet of it falling down, and then another, in unmistakable rhythm. Vitaliy looked up, eyes wide. “A storm?” His expression twisted, and fell into flat, bitter understanding. “Tell me. What have I done?”
Everard stared. “What you’ve done?” he said, incredulous. “Nothing. It was me, my fault. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realise at first that you weren’t aw—”
“Nothing?” Vitaliy said. He looked down to his still hard, linen-concealed stand, as if he didn’t recognise it, his expression strange. “I did nothing?”
“Well, there was…” Everard was torn between the truth and reassurance. Because it was definitely not nothing, what had happened, but, in Everard’s eyes, it was also nothing serious, what Vitaliy had done. What he had, though…
“You were… er… I was… I believe you wanted me to…”
“Oh,” Vitaliy said, relaxing slightly, “like that?” His shoulder dropped as his hand groped low, beneath him, exploring.
“No!” Everard’s face burned. “Jesús,” he cursed. “I wouldn’t have— I didn’t— Nothing happened.”
Vitaliy exhaled. “Nothing.” His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
“Er.” Everard blinked. “Because you were…” Too insistent? Not insistent enough—in the proper way? “… asleep?”
Vitaliy’s knuckles on the rope were white knots of tension as he pulled himself out of the cot and swung gracefully down. Half-naked, still hard and unconcerned for it, he walked to the night-black windows. The rain whipped the six-panes with pitter-patter drops and shining rivulets.
“I should apologise,” Vitaliy said slowly.
“Not you. I should’ve… warned you. It doesn’t happen often, only when storms are imminent, or I am extremely tired.
” He grimaced. “When I have not been with someone for a long time, too. I don’t ever remember the act, so it is easy to forget it happens at all.
” He crossed his arms around himself, big shoulders slumping.
“I did not think it through. I’m sorry.”
Everard didn’t know what to say. He was—and this was putting it mildly—horrified. And not on his own behalf.
Vitaliy looked over his shoulder from within a curtain of hair. He pushed it behind one ear and peered at him anxiously. “I did not do anything you did not like? Or…” He swallowed, “… Did not want?”
“No!” Everard said hastily. “I liked all of it, up to the point I realised you were completamen—completely—insensate. That was the only part that was… objectionable.”
Vitaliy nodded again. He seemed relieved. “In past episodes, I have usually been the receptive party.”
Episodes. Everard felt sick. It had happened before, and Vitaliy didn’t remember it? Remember men taking advantage of him? Rolling him over, pushing up his legs, making him whimper and accommodate them?
“No one’s ever woken you? Never?”
Vitaliy turned halfway. “One other, once. No one else much minded I was asleep, no. Not enough to tell me they did. I do eventually wake,” he added, with an uneasy smile. “And it hasn’t happened in… years. A decade. Longer.”
Everard did a quick calculation. A decade, more: from what he’d said three years past, ten years before had been Vitaliy in the Marines, Vitaliy pressed into the Navy.
“God. I’d like to give them all what-for—”
There was a hasty knock, and the greatcabin door swung open. Thom stuck his head in.
“Storm, sirs” was all he said before popping back out.
“Shite,” Everard cursed.
The rain was in fact hitting the deck harder, and voices and footsteps of the hands abovedeck had grown tenser, louder with alarm. A hard gale, at the least.
Everard went to his trunk and pulled out knee breeches and a waistcoat. One leg in, he was obliged to crouch and clutch at the trunk, as another sharp heel of the ship to starboard almost sent him sprawling.
“Gah. It’s a storm, all right.”
Against the roll, Vitaliy had only leaned, thighs tensed, arms raised to take hold of the rafters above. He, better than Everard, knew the heel and heave of his ship, felt every push of water and wind in his centre. He offered his hand as the ship righted; Everard took it.
“I’d run her, won’t you?” Everard asked, pulling his waistcoat shut. “We’re out far enough.”
Not that any sailor with half a brain would dare put a Santa Ana–class between a lee shore and the northeasterly trades, and have her at risk of running aground. They had more than plenty of room to open the sails and flee the storm, using its own gale.
“Yes,” Vitaliy said softly. “Put her out before the wind. She can take it.”
At 2,100 tons and a draught height of almost seven-and-a-half meters, stuffed to ribs with cargo and enough rations to last two hundred men the winter, Everard damned well hoped the meregildo could take it.
Unless the storm was a hurricane—then they were probably fucked, no matter what size ship they tied themselves to.
“All right.” He eyed Vitaliy’s still-bare chest. “Are you not coming above?”
“Go tell León to fly her, as far as she’ll go,” Vitaliy said. “It’s time for the Sévère to come out of hiding.” He about-faced and stepped close. “Thank you for waking me,” he said. Carefully, slowly, smoothly, he leaned in, and, seeing no resistance, kissed a stunned Everard on the mouth.