Chapter Seventeen
Jules
We eat pasta. Pasta. With tuna and mayonnaise, out of plastic bowls with metal cutlery.
“I love carbs,” Mathieu says. We’re sitting side by side, basking in the firelight. “I love carbs more than I love cheese.”
“Tons of carbs in cheese,” I say between bites.
“You’re very wise.”
We collapse into each other, snickering. There’s a buoyant edge to it, like mid-laugh I might plunge suddenly into tears. I can’t fathom where the instability is coming from. Exhaustion? It was a long day. The raft was done just in time for one run, and getting it across the distance was tiring.
Cillian’s on the other side of the fire. He’s been giving both me and Mathieu the cold shoulder since lecturing us at the yacht.
Mary clears her throat. “Now that we have blankets, Charles and I are going to move our sleeping spot down the beach tomorrow. It’s been a long week, and I think we’re all wishing for a private room to decompress in…”
“That’s a good idea,” Willow agrees. “Yasop and I might do the same. There’s no reason safety-wise we can’t, right?” She looks between Cillian and Seán.
Seán nods. “So long as there’s someone always here to keep the fire going, there’s no reason at all. Just let others know where you’re going to be so we can find you if we need.”
Willow has sat next to Mary for every meal since we arrived, but today she’s across from her, next to Yasop instead. I know in most cases sitting next to your boyfriend is the norm, but not for Willow and Mary.
“Anyone have any luck with their phone?” Darren asks.
He’s got his buried in a bag of rice. The cupboards, designed to stay shut, kept a good deal of food dry over the past week.
Anything that wasn’t in need of refrigeration is in decent shape.
But everyone’s phones, inside our bags, were left sitting in water.
“I had mine inside a waterproof sleeve,” I say. “But it’s dead. My power bank got wet, and it’s broken.” I set down my bowl next to the rescued cooking pot. Even that tiny movement leaves my arms trembling. It’s as if I’ve trekked up Carrauntoohil on my hands.
“You specifically put your phone into a waterproof cover but decided ‘why bother’ for the power bank?” Darren asks.
“Yes, I did. Because my phone cost four hundred euro and the power bank cost five, I didn’t care if it broke. Why don’t you have a power bank kept in a waterproof bag?”
“So if you had swum out the day I suggested it, your phone would still have been alive, and we could have called for help?” Darren challenges.
The conversations around the fire peter out.
Cillian puts his bowl aside. “Jules couldn’t even turn his head.
I am the one who said it was too dangerous.
” He fixes Darren with a hard, pointed look.
I realise that I was wrong about Cillian being angry with Mathieu and me.
At no point did he look at us like that.
“He didn’t even mention that his phone was in a waterproof bag,” Darren continues. “If he had—”
“Screw off, Darren,” Mary says. “We had two days of crazy waves after we washed ashore, his phone would have been dead by the time it was safe enough to swim out.”
“A four-hundred-euro phone would have had some charge after three days.”
That gets a couple of snorts.
“Mine cost more than my computer, and it barely lasts a day without needing to be plugged in,” Willow says.
Darren’s gaze flashes across the group. I see him realise that nobody agrees with him.
Tense, he leans back, weight resting on his palms. “Sorry. The food and supplies are great and all, but I thought the whole point of swimming out there was to radio for help. Going from thinking I’d be sleeping in an actual bed tonight to having no idea when we’ll be found is messing me up. ”
After a few beats of silence, Darren gets up. “I’m turning in.”
I watch him disappear into his lean-to before getting up myself. “Me too.” I brush my teeth and focus on the comfort of it, determined not to let Darren ruin the feeling. In the lean-to, I kick off my shorts and rest my head on the pillow. Soon, Mathieu is there.
He slips under our new blanket and wraps his arms around me, hugging me from the front. “Thank you for dinner,” Mathieu says softly. He flattens both hands on my back and rubs slowly upward. I shiver, unwinding beneath his steady touch.
The wobble is back. The teetering instability. What is wrong?
“Your muscles feel tight. Are you sore? You did a lot of exercise today. I still can’t believe you did that… I wish I’d seen Cillian’s face when he realised you’d followed him.”
I bury my face into Mathieu’s neck. He rests his chin against the top of my hair.
“What’s wrong?” he asks in his soothing, lovely voice. “Is it Darren? He’s being unreasonable, lashing out at you like this. It’s immature.”
I greedily soak up his warmth and kindness. “I thought we’d be getting rescued today too,” I admit. “We’d call home, and this would be over.”
Mathieu’s losing weight. People are snapping at each other. I want us to be rescued before the group falls apart, before we’re ready to leave the island and never talk to each other ever again.
“I broke the satellite phone, Mathieu. I slipped, and it broke.” I hide in him, trying to merge with his very being.
Mathieu cups the back of my head. “An accident. Don’t worry.” He doesn’t hesitate before the reassurance. Like the thought of getting angry with me didn’t even cross his mind. I think this is what Darren meant when he called my optimism fake. Mathieu’s the real deal.
“Don’t you feel shaky too? Like everything is upsetting?”
“I worry for us the longer we’re here. But I don’t feel shaky,” Mathieu answers. “Getting to wash my hair with shampoo was divine…and to clean my body with soap, and brush my teeth.”
Cillian enters the lean-to, sitting at our feet. “I’m going to be another few minutes. I’m just double-checking what’s in the med kit. Before I do that, do you need painkillers, Jules?”
I peer at Cillian from where I’m tucked into Mathieu’s neck. His body blocks the rest of the group from view. With the fire behind him, it’s hard to make out his expression, but I guess he’s decided to stop being cold to us. “I’m tired, but my neck isn’t sore.”
“And your hand?”
“It’s okay.”
Cillian assesses me, and his gaze slips to Mathieu.
Mathieu hitches his hip up so that his leg rests over mine. “Are you just saying that?” he asks. “I bet you are. To be safe, I think I should hold open your mouth for Cillian to stick one in and make you swallow.”
An image of me dropping to my knees for Cillian flashes behind my eyes. Cillian’s hand fisted in my hair, controlling me.
My breath stops. I squirm, and Mathieu presses his weight down to stop me, angling so I’m slightly beneath him, not just side by side.
“Oh.” Mathieu makes a gratified, pleased sound. His hand slides from my back, across my ribs, and presses against the front of my boxers. My cock is rising against the fabric. “Do you like giving oral?”
I clutch his arm as a flutter of shivers races through me. “I mean…” My voice comes out wispy. “Yes?” Lemon from his body wash lingers on his skin, and the faint salt of the ocean.
Mathieu’s fingers curve around my erection, my boxers a flimsy barrier. I groan.
“Shh,” he whispers. “Not too loud.”
I dig my face into his neck. “Do you?” I mumble.
“Receiving. Giving. It’s all fair play.”
Mathieu slides his hand down my shaft carefully, like he’s mapping me out. Once he gets the lay of the land, he strokes with a firmer touch.
“Jules,” he says, “you are not being quiet.”
His hand goes still, fabric and cock in his grip.
“I’m being so quiet.”
That gets a strained half-chuckle.
My grip on his wrist tightens, and I try to make his hand keep moving. Mathieu doesn’t budge. He presses a kiss that feels horrifyingly like time for sleep on the top of my head.
“I am.”
“Want me to cover your mouth?”
Mathieu’s mouth is against my hair. My face is pressed into his neck, and it didn’t vibrate as the words filled the air. They came from elsewhere. I peel my face away from Mathieu’s neck.
Cillian has adjusted his position, sitting sideways with the breadth of his chest and a propped-up knee blocking the open part of the lean-to. A human privacy screen. He’s facing in. Watching Mathieu jerk me off.
I can’t break away once our eyes meet. If I’m breathing, I have no awareness of it.
The next time you get on your knees and open your mouth, I’m sticking my cock in it.
“Cover it in what?” I ask.
Cillian’s eyes flare, but I realise what he was offering. I touch my mouth. “Okay.”
Cillian glances behind him, and I watch, enthralled, as he moves position.
He sits pressed against my knee, and leans over both me and Mathieu, a hand planted on the bedding on the other side of Mathieu.
He pushes us both over so that he’s blocking the view of us bar our legs from the outside.
He takes his other hand and places it over my mouth.
His fingers are long. My entire jaw is in his grip.
I go still, staring up at him.
Mathieu props himself up on an elbow. He studies the way Cillian’s holding me, then my eyes. I only see that out of the corner of my eye. The entirety of my focus is on Cillian. My body starts singing, Use me use me use me. I’m here for the ride, you steer.
“Since your mouth is going to be covered, this is your code word.” Mathieu guides my hand to Cillian’s wrist and taps twice.
“If you can’t catch your breath, or it feels uncomfortable or scary, you do that, and we’ll stop.
Even if you just get bored with being touched and want to stop, you tap. Okay?”
I nod.
“Practice it for us,” Mathieu says.
I tap Cillian’s wrist, and he releases my mouth.
“Good.” Mathieu makes a happy sound.
Cillian’s hand slides back into place.
“Bon appétit.” Mathieu says something else in French that I don’t understand. His hand is back on me. A touch through underwear shouldn’t be so electric, but after a mere few strokes I’m scrabbling at Mathieu’s forearm, trying to beg through Cillian’s hand.
“We’ll prioritise the rest of the food and drinks tomorrow,” Cillian says. “And any other tools that we can salvage. Then we’ll move on to the rest of what’s in there.”
Mathieu replies with something about timing and schedules. Other stuff I can’t coherently follow.
I vaguely understand they’re talking to cover up any other sounds. If Mathieu didn’t have my lower body pinned, I’d be arching off the ground, humping his hand. My lashes flutter shut. Cillian’s grip tightens. “Eyes on me,” he corrects.
My eyes flash open and jump to his face. His grip softens.
Mathieu’s hand is doing maddening work. All on top of my clothes.
I don’t get the chance to complain about the distance; Mathieu kisses my shoulder, and the flutter of sensitive nerves sends me over the edge.
Mathieu pumps me through my orgasm. Cillian smothers the moans.
I tremble, pinned by the two of them, my body convulsing with shocking force.
In the lingering aftershocks, I breathe heavily, a layer of sweat clinging to me. I’m still keeping my eyes open. On Cillian.
He breaks eye contact, looking at the mess in my underwear. Mathieu brushes Cillian’s hand with his fingertips. Cillian releases me, slowly. Mathieu hooks a finger beneath my chin and turns my face towards him. “Good?” Mathieu checks.
I’m bottomed out. “Good,” I pant. “Thank you.”
Mathieu looks amused. “Thank-yous are given as returned favours.”
I reach for him. Cillian catches my wrist before I can get a hand into Mathieu’s shorts.
“He’s tired,” Cillian says.
“I’m not.”
“A sleepy hand job sounds just as appealing as an energetic one,” Mathieu says. But he scans my face, studying me. “Hm.” An awful premonition rises at the sound of that hm. It’s the same cadence he used when he decided I was too drunk to hook up with at the club.
“I’m not tired,” I object. “Let me. Let me.”
“Hmmm.” Mathieu cups my face. “You do look very tired. And you’re trembling.”
“This is ridiculous. Why didn’t you object five minutes ago then? If I’m so tired.” I pin an accusing look on Cillian, who still has my wrist captured.
Cillian doesn’t look sorry or fazed.
“Because Mathieu was doing the work, and you’ll sleep better now,” Cillian says.
“And,” Mathieu adds, with a cheeky sideways glance at Cillian, “he got super turned-on watching.”