Chapter 11
Niall
Niall stood in the shower, the warm waterfall washing away the sand from this morning’s beach yoga session. The one thing it wasn’t dissipating was his hard-on. He would have to see to that. Carli Caselli was the yoga instructor to end all yoga instructors. She was the yoga instructor to end him.
He’d been awake since four – jet lag was a killer, but Carli had kicked that to the kerb. Well and truly. Her hands on his stomach. They may as well have been inches lower, the effect she had on him. How he’d managed to keep himself down, he had no idea. He was making up for it now, hard as flint.
Niall reached for his cock and pumped gently at first.
Oh Cass.
As he worked himself into a lather, she claimed the territory of his mind.
She didn’t want him, but he was alone now so why fight it?
He’d spent a torturous hour on the beach doing that.
How had she looked so radiant after the same journey and events he had experienced over the past two days?
By rights, she should have bed head and muddled brain like him, but all he saw standing on the sand was poise, grace and effortless beauty as he floundered down the dunes, unkempt and unshaven, clasping his beach towel like a kid on the first day of a summer holiday. He had, at least, brushed his teeth.
Niall longed for Carli to be here with him in the shower.
She could stand behind him again, breathing in and out, the warm whispers of her breath hot on his neck, sending heat straight to his groin.
Did she do that for all her clients? How did they cope?
Touching his abs. The counting. One, two, three…
Niall pumped harder. Imagined turning around and crashing his mouth into hers and kissing her right there on the beach in front of Celia and her friend and that bloke from the distillery.
No, they weren’t in this fantasy. Go away.
Just him and Carli and an empty beach. Her behind him.
Hands all over him. Was she serious thinking that touching him like that would relax him?
Sure, it made parts of him looser, but other bits were at risk of moving in the opposite direction.
Thankfully he’d been wearing sweatpants.
He’d had to push the thoughts down, like his enthusiastic dick, which was so keen to show her what she’d done to it, hint at what it – he – could do to her.
There would be no flashing open of his eyes, swinging round and kissing Carli.
No ripping off that skin-skimming Lycra top with her nipples pointing through it – yes, he’d seen her rubbing them afterwards to hide their puckered points – and taking her there on the beach.
There would be none of that, or even getting aroused, in the presence of a bloke and two nice old ladies who were the living, breathing social media of the village, shooting gossip round faster than fibre optic.
Except here and now in his mind there could be, and he made sure there was, as he thrust up and down his shaft, thinking of Carli naked and gasping for him on the sand. Jesus. He was a wanton mess for this woman.
Niall leaned against the tiles and rubbed himself ragged until arousal was spurting out of him in a silent roar as he came all over the en-suite shower in his brother’s house.
‘Fuck, Cass,’ he whispered into the tiles. How is it possible to be this gone for her already?
With the blood flow problem dealt with, Niall could consider other aspects of the yoga session. Namely, the actual aim: to help him be more zen or something.
What surprised him was that, despite Carli plastering her hands all over him and making him horny as a gnarled tree trunk, once he found a stable rhythm and stuck with it, and once she stopped touching him, the breathing did help sideline those thoughts.
Maybe the best level of concentration in a yoga class came from trying your hardest not to get a hard-on.
When Carli asked him how he was feeling, Niall had to admit that he was more relaxed.
In no way had his problems disappeared, but physically he’d improved since before yoga.
Knowing that she understood some of what was on his mind helped ease the lonesome weight of his worries.
He had told no one else, not even any of his siblings, about his guilt at Rafe’s dying and thinking that Rafe was a better person than him.
He was carrying around a hundred tonnes of grief and guilt and self-recrimination.
But the fermenting in his mind would return.
You couldn’t breathe away being Archie Butler’s son, a man troubled to the core, whom Niall had been told he bore a strong physical resemblance to.
And of course who Mr McInally always said he was like in character: lazy, a low achiever, and under his breath one day but loud enough for only Niall to hear, ‘the runt of the litter’.
And why should you be able to breathe that away?
Genes were genes and one yoga class wouldn’t change the fundamentals of his personality.
Okay, Niall would never be an abusive partner like Archie or sabotage his brother’s business, but if even one of those things Mr McInally said were true, then that preyed on his mind.
Carli, though. She had, gobsmackingly, offered to give him one-to-one yoga sessions to help him relax. She was an angel. Her well of kindness and understanding would run dry dating someone like him. She deserved so much better.
It didn’t stop him from wanting her, though. Of standing here in the shower ready to go for the second round in ten minutes whilst fantasising about her naked, taking him and taking him.
And taking him back.
‘One cup of cheer the fuck up.’ Sean lifted the coffee cup from the large Italian machine in his kitchen and placed it in front of Niall before busying himself with his own drink.
It was 6.00 a.m. the following day and Niall had watched his younger brother buzzing around the room for the past ten minutes getting ready for their morning surf.
Sean’s energy was infectious, but Niall had forgotten quite how much his brother had.
‘You like?’ asked Sean.
‘I’ve not even tasted it yet.’ Niall lifted the drink.
‘Mmm, delicious. I’m sure it would be even better with one of those on it.
’ He watched, bemused, as Sean sprinkled chocolate powder through a stencil over the top of his coffee to produce the shape of a surfer on a board. ‘Present from a girlfriend?’
Sean shrugged. ‘Nah, just a bit of fun. I bought it for the kids.’
‘Which kids?’
‘Dunno. If any of us have kids, it’s important there’s a surfer stencil for their hot chocolates. You’ve got to be prepared for these things.’ Sean chugged his coffee, easily swallowing back the surface artwork and possibly half the cup.
Niall took a little longer over his drink, jet lag and the cold morning making him more sluggish than usual. Eventually, though, wetsuits zipped up, they were on their way down to the beach for Niall’s first surf session in two years in the chilly Kinshore waters.
The first thing that struck Niall was how much quieter Kinshore Beach was than Manly Beach in Sydney.
There, at seven, the water was speckled with surfers, bobbing on their boards, waiting for the morning rush of the next wave.
Here, the surf was wild and intimidatingly cold and thus unbothered by human beings.
The Kintyre water could curl and crash onto the shore without anyone attempting to conquer it.
You had to really want to surf to give it a go here and most locals did not want it that much.
Niall did want it. This was what he had grown up on, from the age of six, when his dad had introduced him to this exhilarating sport that his older brothers were already obsessed with.
It was the only thing he could truly lose himself in, where he was at one with what he was doing and forgot everything else.
When he’d had a bad day at school, which was most days, after the bus dropped him off the waves were there.
If he argued with his dad, he’d go to the beach and surf away the frustration.
Sometimes Jimmy would even tell him to do that.
Did his dad understand that on the crest of a wave, Niall wasn’t a failure, a let-down or Naughty Niall?
He was a success, because surfing he could do, and he could do it bloody well.
Thank you, Dad. You gave me this lifeline that I can never be grateful enough for.
Of course, memories edged in. Of Rafe. He would have loved it here.
Why, in all the years he’d known him, had Niall never insisted Rafe come to Kinshore?
It was always a joke between them that Niall was an endurance surfer because he was Scottish.
Sometimes he’d challenged that Rafe could never hack surfing in Scotland.
Rafe had promised that one day he’d prove what he was made of, and Niall looked forward to that day, to introducing his best mate to his hometown.
Rafe had met most of Niall’s siblings, when they visited Sydney, but the trip back here would have been the frosting on the cake.
You’ve got to enjoy it because he can’t.
It was hard, though, because why should he enjoy it when Rafe couldn’t?
Because he’d want you to.
‘You alright?’ Sean’s voice filtered in and Niall noticed they were already waist deep in the water and ready to paddle out.
‘Aye. Let’s do this.’ Niall ducked under an incoming wave – the cold tightening his chest – and paddled on through until they were out the back where the waters were calmer and their first morning wave was buried somewhere in the incipient swell gently rolling towards them.