Island of Icarus (6 page)

Our lips met and we kissed again, this time slower and deeper. Marcus threaded his fingers into my hair and massaged my scalp, pressing my face gently against his as his tongue explored my mouth. Again, everything—our lips, our tongues, our skin touching, and his fingers working against the tension in my muscles—combined into one sensory experience that threatened to drown me. My knees could melt out from under me, and I would not care. I would simply dissolve into Marcus, a merged thing, a single flesh.

When we parted mouths, he played his fingers lightly over my chest. They came to rest at the hem of my shirt. Softly, seriously, he said, “When I ask you to take your shirt off this time, it is not as your doctor.”

I nodded in response, and my belly clenched. Suddenly I feared I might be ill.

Perhaps he recognized some change in my body language, for he hesitated. But my need for him far exceeded my fear of succumbing to stress response. “
Please
,” I begged.

He swept the shirt off of me, and I whimpered at a stab of pain from my rib. “Oh!” he exclaimed, but I shook my head emphatically and said, “I’m well.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, smoothing his hands over my shoulders. My chest, my flanks, my lower back. His hands were strong and sure, as I remembered them, but charged this time with heat and hunger.

“You are a doctor, aren’t you?” I posed, slyly.

“Yes, but not right now.” His voice trailed into a throaty whisper.

He had me. He knew it, too, because he chuckled wickedly and caressed my arse. His touch swept up to my lower abdomen, only several shivering inches from my cock, which ached from need. “May I?” he asked, barely a whisper this time.

My mouth had gone dry. I did not trust myself to form words, so I placed my hands over his and hooked his thumbs into the waist band of my pants. His body tensed against mine, and then he caught my mouth in a kiss as he slid the pants over my hips. My cock sprang free. His hands deposited the pants at my knees, and then traveled back up the fronts of my thighs and along the fold of my groin, teasingly close to my member. The sea breeze whispered across my skin, and though it wasn’t cold, I shivered. A hundred worries flashed through my mind. What if I was not the right length, or thickness, or color? What would he think of my being so hard for him? What if I went soft? What if I disappointed him? Oh, but his fingers were so close. I nearly groaned as I shivered again, this time from pleasure. “Oh, yes,” he murmured, staring at my erection with admiration plain on his face. “You’ve a beautiful cock.”

I swallowed through my tight throat and said, “Thank you,” not sure what the proper response to this was. It seemed to suffice, because Marcus smiled at me before running his hands down my flanks and thighs. As his hands drew back up, they slid inward along my inner thighs, fingertips brushing against my scrotum. I sucked in a quick breath and trembled where I stood.

“You may want to lie down,” he suggested, with an amused tip of one eyebrow. He guided me onto the sand, and then lowered himself beside me, still clothed.

“Will you, ah…” And I could not think of how to ask the question. “Your clothes.”

He laughed. The shirt came off first, revealing that toned abdomen and the lean curve of his shoulders and back. I found myself beginning to look away, then recalled that this time, it was all right to admire. By the time his hands reached his pants, my stomach had twisted into a knot. Yes, there was his cock—reddened, long, slender, and stiff. For me.

He was so close that his scent entered my nostrils—fleshy, musky, tantalizing. I wetted my lips. My hand itched to hold him, but I hesitated, afraid to disturb the perfect sight of his cock and unsure of how to touch him. I knew the best ways to pleasure myself—all the correct positions, the pressure, the cadence. But Marcus’s cock was so beautiful, and I worried that my scant knowledge would not be sufficient. Then, too, touching him would make this all so very real.

I drew in a deep breath and swallowed my trepidation. “May I?” I asked. He smiled and kneeled close to me on the sand. I ran my good hand over his chest and stomach, both lean and hard from island life. I traced his thin hips, the dip of his pelvis, the shock of dark curly hair. He trembled as my fingers brushed toward his member. I paused with fingers slightly curled, close enough that I could feel his heat. With a low chuckle, he twitched his member into my hand. As his flesh hit my palm, my own cock throbbed. His shaft was hot and solid, and he hummed as I stroked its exquisite, velvet length.

A heavy pressure lifted from my heart as I gripped him. I had not realized that it had been there until it was gone—years of fear that I could not love another, that I was incapable of that emotion. I was so very sorry about Cara, but then, I had not known. Now, Marcus felt divinely right in my hands, wondrously so.

“For me?” he asked, amused, as he regarded the tip of my penis. There was a drop of fluid there, proof of my excitation.

“Yes,” I admitted, laying back onto my elbows.

“I see,” he said, lips curling up in a sly smile. And then he lowered his face and before I realized his intent, before I could possibly object, he had closed his mouth around the head of my cock and sucked the drop from it. I hissed with surprise, and hardly cared about the slice of pain it elicited from my rib. He chuckled, and then he swallowed the length of me. I dropped back onto the sand with a shudder.

He went slowly at first, and I struggled to hold back tortured, guttural noises of pleasure. He pulled at me with a gentle suction, teeth grazing ever so lightly as his tongue made lazy circles along the underside of my cock. The grip of his mouth was as skilled as that of his hands, and even more capable of eliciting pleasure.

One of his hands found the base of my shaft and began to squeeze and twist. His rhythm quickened and my throat abandoned making noises in favor of drawing in deep, fast breaths. I sensed another rhythm at work. I stole a look down the length of my body to see his head working up and down, the length of my cock appearing and disappearing with every movement. Beyond, his body was folded in the sand, torso twisted to the side. His folded legs framed his magnificent cock and his other hand, which worked it with strong strokes. The whole scene sent a delicious thrill through me.

“Mmm,” I hummed, and he made an answering noise that vibrated against my cock. He drew his mouth all the way up, momentarily disengaging from me, and then plunged back down. My hum turned into an animal grunt, and I began to pant as his rhythm changed now—slow, fast, slow—in a way that made me wild. A fire grew in my loins. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to contain myself.

“Marcus,” I gasped. “I don’t think—I can’t—” Words failed me. Fire spread through me. I was going to spend, right then, into his mouth.

His only response was a rapturous moan. He dipped his head severely at a jackhammer pace, and my cock bumped against the back of his throat.

It was too much. I convulsed and cried out, splayed on the sand in helpless ecstasy. My come filled his mouth and he allowed it. He sucked it down greedily, then released me.

At my waist, Marcus grunted and hissed, back arching now as his hand pumped his cock. I watched with fascination as he doubled over and a spray of his seed shot across the sand. He collapsed against my legs, lungs heaving, and laughed.

I had no words, so I lay on the sand like a beached fish with my mouth hanging open—limp, beaded with sweat, and utterly exultant. Marcus was a warm weight on my legs, his head pillowed on my pelvis. I would have thought him unconscious or dead, but then he spread his hand on the ground and sighed. He looked up at me and with sudden shyness asked, “Did you…like that?”

I laughed. “Yes, very much. Thank you.” I held my arm up in the gesture of invitation and demand that he had used last night when I’d cried. He crawled up beside me and lay on his side in my arms, skin-to-skin.

That night, I lay next to Marcus, tracing the firm curve of his bicep. I said, “You seem to have experience with men.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve had my share. Women, too, mind you, although I never found their company satisfying… I had a rather extended relationship with a gentleman chemist. You remind me of him. Thoughtful, intelligent… And then he got married properly to a lady, and that was the end of that. That’s when I decided to travel. I hadn’t a stomach for society. I can’t pretend to be something I’m not, and eventually, people ask questions, as they are wont to do. Then, of course, I became shipwrecked, which worked out well enough for me. Especially considering the quality of the salvage that drifts onto the shore.” He twisted to smile at me, face inches from mine. The smile turned into a kiss, which led to his hand against my chest and mine on his thigh, and soon I had taken his cock into my grip and we were entangled on the bed in throes of pleasure.

The next two weeks passed blissfully and lazily, while my body mended and my spirit began to heal. I could have sketched Marcus’s body from memory by the end of that first week, so closely did I study his lean form. We bathed in the lake together, and we explored the forest and the winding beach. I taught him how to identify plants, and he introduced me to the mechanics of bird flight—wing shape, feather patterns, the anatomy of the flight bones, the physics of wind flowing around the pinions and causing lift. I began to appreciate the complexity of his project and the difficulty of granting man flight.

I set to exploring the island with renewed vigor. On afternoons as Marcus toiled over his wings, I hiked deep into the forest, taking clippings and jotting notes. Days passed, and in the second week, it began to rain as Marcus said it would. That brought an end to my long days adventuring. Around the same time, Marcus came to an impasse with his project.

“Missing something,” he muttered. “Missing something, but what?”

We sat together in the little cabin, riffling through books and reviewing Marcus’s notebooks on flight, waiting for the rain to stop so that I could go out or for inspiration to strike Marcus. Day after day, neither happened. On many evenings, he paced the living area of the cabin like a caged lion.

The rain put me in mind of London. I found myself longing for my raincoat. The memory of its oiled smell made me recall the rainy mornings I wore it to the street corner to hail a hansom. Until then it had been possible to keep the homesickness at bay. Between discovering the island and discovering Marcus, there had been enough on my mind that there was no room for thoughts of London. Now, trapped in the cabin with a distracted Marcus, I found myself with little to think about save the university green, the weight of Ferrous against my shoulder, pub food—all of the familiar things of home that I had taken for granted. I missed my housekeeper, too, and the horrible floral wallpaper that had come with the house.

With thoughts of London came a tightening in my gut, a sense of dread as I wondered how I would ever be able to resume my life there. There was no question in my mind that I would eventually need to return. One simply did not spend one’s entire life on a deserted island. I imagined trying to face my male colleagues and students without blushing, or how I would act toward women. Polite, but reserved. I feared my more perceptive acquaintances would begin to speculate about me, as Marcus said they eventually do. Perhaps I would have to take on a wife to keep up appearances, a girl like Cara who deserved more than a lie. Perhaps I might find happiness in raising a family. The sense of dread in my stomach told me otherwise.

It was these fears that made me feel more distant from London than the ocean between us.

One night, a little more than two weeks after I had arrived on the island, it stormed violently. It was a proper storm with thunder and sheets of rain, and I worried that the cabin might blow over in a strong gust. “It’s weathered worse,” Marcus assured me over dinner. Later, I found him sitting at the little table in the bedroom, staring at his electric finches with a distant expression on his face, perhaps listening to the thunder. More likely, he was mulling over his wings, which had now lain untouched on his workshop table for four days.

I did not disturb him, but instead went to the bed and lay down. With my eyes closed, I listened to the rain and the thunder. I was feeling particularly cramped, trapped, and lost that night. Lying there, I could almost imagine lying on my own bed at home. In my mind’s eye, old Ferrous was curled nearby, ears flicking at the louder peals of thunder. I would be teaching a class in the morning and hoped that the rain would die down by then, because I did not fancy arriving to class with wet trouser cuffs.

I was shaken from my reverie by Marcus sliding onto the bed next to me. When I turned over to make room for him, he said, “You’re still awake.”

“I hadn’t been attempting to sleep,” I said, looking at the wall. The image of London disappeared like fog in a wind, ethereal and then gone.

He pressed his body against mine and draped an arm over me. His touch instantly relaxed me, and with it, my longing for England twisted into a feeling of guilt and confusion.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Home,” I said. “London.”

“Ah,” he said, softly. “I imagine you must miss it.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I shouldn’t.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

I thought about it for several long moments. I said, “I have no one there to miss.”

“Well, that is sweet of you,” he said, and kissed the edge of my ear.

I closed my eyes at the sensation and sighed in his arms. I turned my head and found his lips with mine for a soft kiss. Marcus made me feel wanted and accepted. Why did I wish to leave?

We lay together for a while, and Marcus massaged his fingers through my hair. He said, “I do apologize if I’ve been preoccupied.” He sighed, and I could feel the warmth of his breath. “There isn’t much to do in the rain, and I’ve been so very absorbed. I do appreciate that you’re here, for as long as you’re here. I want you to know that.”

Quizzically, I looked at him. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said, though I could feel the dark shadow of doubt roll over me.

“Not now,” he agreed. “But when a ship comes, I will understand if you do.”

Our gazes were searching. At his words, it felt as if a hand clenched about my heart. I shifted uncomfortably in his arms and looked away, relaxing my head back onto the pillow. I squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” was all I could think of to say, although I thought they were poor words. The thought of losing him unsettled me, yet I could not promise him that I would not go.

“I care about you,” he murmured, and something had gone out of his voice, some vital energy.

I kissed him again. “And I care about you,” I said, hesitating only out of shyness. Those words, at least, I knew were true.