Tempest (14 page)

“A knack,” Lew scoffed. “Knacks are a man predictin' rain because of the pain in his knees, or a gambler who wins more than he loses at dice. Knacks aren't reliable day after day after bloody day, boy, not like this. This is true Weathercliff luck, for all you deny you're of that bloodline.” He leaned over and patted Colm's knee. “But don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Not like I want to share you, eh?”

Weathercliff luck? Colm had never heard of it, but he wasn't about to ask either. “It's really not magic,” he said again, more forcefully, but Lew just shrugged and returned to grumbling about the trawler.

If the mornings were more stressful than they used to be, the afternoons were less so now that Colm and Jaime had made a tacit peace over Nichol. The group of young men spent almost every day on the water thanks to Jaime's father's influence, honing their sailing skills. Colm went out with them once, sharing a cutter with Nichol as they raced Jaime's boat for the pillar. He had never sailed so fast in his life, the hull cutting through the water like it wasn't even there. The boat heeled so low that Colm had cried out, convinced they were going to go in, but Nichol had just laughed and pointed to the upslope side of the boat.

“Stand over there, counterbalance us!” he'd called, and Colm had done so. They'd won the race with almost a minute to spare, which Jaime had good-naturedly blamed on Ollie carrying too many extra pounds.

“I'd rather be a pig's belly than a bean stalk,” Ollie had retorted, and his words hadn't felt like an assault. Colm had laughed with the rest of them, and the ease that grew between him and the others was obviously a great relief for Nichol.

“It's good, isn't it?” he asked one night, his arm dangling over the edge of his cot as his fingers drew idle patterns on the floor. Colm watched Nichol's hand move, and felt shamefully jealous of the floorboards. “All of us as friends. I knew it would be.”

“I'm glad to know them,” Colm replied.

“I am too. That you know them, I mean. But what will you do when we're gone, Colm?” Nichol's bright eyes seem to flare in the candlelight as he looked down at Colm, tantalizing like a flash of scales in dark water. “Jaime should get his commission at the end of the summer, and I'll go away with him to train on the Inisfadda. Ollie and Blake are both on the list to join up as regulars with the coast guard, and when they do, they'll be sequestered for months while they learn the regulations and duties.”

“When you're gone,” Colm said, speaking carefully to avoid letting too many of his real feelings show through, “I'll still have Megg, and Idra and Vernon, and perhaps even Baylee before too long.” Her last letter had been one of woe, fighting back against Honored Gherick's contention that, at sixteen, it was time for her to marry. She had written of joining him in Caithmor, and Colm had been quick to encourage her. “I'll miss you, of course.” Colm swallowed. “Terribly, but you'll be back to visit us here.”

“Perhaps I'll go away and come back to you tied down to a wife and babe,” Nichol suggested, sounding not thrilled but rather resigned.

“I don't think you will,” Colm replied. He paused and considered for a moment before adding, “I don't think that will ever be my life, and I prefer it that way.” He looked up and found Nichol staring at him. “Does that bother you?”

Nichol's lips split in a grin. “Not at all, mate.”

Colm didn't know exactly how little that bothered Nichol until one day a few weeks later, when he'd taken the boat out several hours earlier than usual to try to catch moon discs. Moon discs weren't a fish at all, but some sort of enormous jelly that emerged from the depths for only a single week every year, coming close to the surface under the light of the full moon to breed. For moon discs, breeding meant releasing their milky seed into the shallow water, turning it completely opaque.

Despite their strange, bulky bodies, moon discs reacted with surprising agility to disruptions, and they could sink back down into the depths well before most fishermen came close to catching them. Additionally, they stung with agonizing precision if grabbed the wrong way, and so despite the fact that they were in very high demand, the actual catch was usually small.

Lew hadn't joined him on this trip. He despised the jellies, found them too dangerous and difficult, and so Colm hunted them down on his own. He rigged a net to the end of a pole and used it to scoop the jellies up from below, instead of dealing with the tentacles that projected from their tops and sides. Colm still had to leave his hand in the water to sense their locations, though, and after catching five of them, the thread-like brush of a stinging tentacle against his skin had him pulling it back fast.

The burn spread from his fingertips through his hand and all the way down to his elbow. Colm hissed with pain, clutched his hand to his chest and rocked back and forth for a while, trying to get a handle on the agonizing sensation. It hadn't been more than a brush, the barest whisper of contact. Surely that would make the pain diminish more quickly.

If anything, it just got worse. Colm couldn't even keep a hold on the tiller, he was so helpless to the tremors that racked him. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep breathing and ignored everything else as the boat rocked gently in the waves.

Eventually the
Serpent's Tail
drifted out of the pod of moon discs, and Colm rinsed his quivering hand in saltwater as soon as he knew it was safe. That helped enough to let him turn the boat back to Caithmor, but by the time he managed to get the thing docked again, his hand was throbbing incessantly.

Rather than load them up himself, he sent a local boy running for Carroll Lightsail. The fishmonger and two of his helpers showed up half an hour later, all of them wearing odd outfits that completely covered them with leather and tarred canvas, from the base of their neck to the tops of their feet and all the way down their arms.

“Oh lad, had to learn this one the hard way, did you?” he clucked as he looked from the enormous moon discs in the bottom of the boat to Colm, who stood close by clutching his injured hand. “Liam, give him the paste.”

“Show me your hand,” one of the men said as the other two climbed into the boat and got to work shearing the tentacles off the jellies. They dropped the writhing strands carefully over the sides of the boat, keeping them as far from themselves as possible.

Liam poured a white powder on the affected area of Colm's arm and doused it with seawater. It foamed up, and with the foam came blessed relief. Colm sighed and let his eyes fall shut as most of the pain evaporated. Liam scraped his arm clean, then repeated the cure twice more until the pain was almost completely gone. The skin was still red and swollen, though.

“Keep it cool, keep it dry,” Carroll advised Colm as he hoisted the last of the moon discs into the barrow he'd brought with him. “You should feel better by tomorrow. It happens to all of us, mate, no shame in it. The littlest of those stings can reduce a man to tears, so I'd say you did well overall. And these discs are right beauties, they are,” he added admiringly. “Not even the king himself has had this beast gracing his table yet this year, from what I've heard, and it's said to be one of his favorites. Perhaps we'll be the end of his drought, eh?” He smiled wide and looked like he wanted to clap Colm on the shoulder, but refrained since his leather-covered hands were still coated with jelly muck. “Come by tomorrow once you're well, and I'll pay you for them then. Fair price, I swear it by the Four.” He crossed the X in front of his face.

“That's fine,” Colm said. Really, he didn't care if he got cheated at this point. He just wanted to be in bed. He was tired, and still racked with occasional shivers, and his hand felt completely useless. All he wanted right now was to lie down on his blankets and sleep through the rest of his recovery.

Colm avoided the front door of the Cove, instead heading directly into the courtyard and to the back. Megg would want to mother him, and usually that was fine, but right now, Colm didn't think he could bear it. He climbed slowly up the stairs to his room, and it didn't even register that his door was closed until he heard the heavy
thud
of a body hitting it from the other side.

Colm's first instinct was to open the door. It had to be Nichol inside, and it sounded as though he'd just collapsed. Then he heard the low laugh that turned too quickly into a groan, and recognized the voice that made it, and Colm's reaching hand froze in place. Jaime was in there with Nichol, and they…

“Fuck, yes, suck me,” Jaime moaned. “Gods, your mouth…Nicky…”

There was a faint
pop
, and then Colm heard Nichol growl, in a tone he'd never heard before, “Don't call me Nicky.” His voice was low and hoarse and utterly seductive, and Colm felt the blood rush to his cock so quickly it left him dizzy. He leaned against the side of the hall, squeezed his eyes shut and wondered if he could make it back down the stairs without giving himself away. He shouldn't be hearing this. It was private, something just for Nichol and Jaime. To listen in seemed wrong, but the way it made Colm feel, the way his pulse thundered in his ears and his cock throbbed with sudden, desperate need, was too powerful to resist.

“Is it better if I tell you how pretty you are on your knees,
Nichol
?” Jaime teased him, his words broken here and there with gasps. “Your mouth,
ah
, gods, your mouth looks so perfect around my dick…fuck, you always take me so deep, like that, yes, like that, don't…don't stop, Nichol, don't stop…ahh, fuck, fuck…” Jaime's words dissolved into frantic whimpers, and Colm envisioned the scene in the room, picturing long fingers wrapped up in Nichol's dark curls, working his head back and forth as that beautiful mouth took the length of that long, leaking cock. Colm pictured Nichol's eyes opening and staring upward, capturing his gaze, dark and smoldering and
wanting
, oh gods, the idea that Nichol wanted
him
…

Jaime came faster than Colm did, but that was hardly surprising. He had the allure of the man himself at his feet, and not just the illusion. Jaime came with a long moan, and Colm twitched helplessly in the hallway, not wanting to open his eyes and break the vision with reality but not quite there yet, not quite.

“Now me,” Nichol said a moment later. Jaime just laughed, and then there was a flurry of activity that seemed to end with Jaime falling onto the cot, and Nichol climbing on after him.

“You're at my mercy now,” Nichol murmured, almost too faint to be heard through the door. “I could have you any way I pleased, and you would have to simply accept me.”

“What of me do you want, then?” Jaime asked breathlessly, and Nichol laughed.

“To stop up that unstoppable mouth of yours, I think,” he announced, and then the cot creaked again. Colm pictured Nichol getting to his knees and straddling Jaime's chest, bracing himself with one hand while the other cupped his lover's jaw as he thrust his cock into the other man's mouth, as he rocked over him and used him for his pleasure, and the image was so compelling that Colm suddenly came, completely untouched. He bit back the urge to groan and had to lean into the wall to keep himself from doubling over completely as the vision of Nichol, locking gazes with him as he filled Colm's mouth with his length, sent pulses of ecstasy through his groin.

By the time he shakily came back to his senses Colm worried that they might be done, but the rhythmic squeaks of the cot reassured him. Wonderful, now he could make his escape and wash away his shame in peace. He turned and made his way down the stairs with as much discretion as he could manage.

Pulling water was a challenge with only one un-stung hand, but Colm managed, and hustled behind the inn to clean off before he could be seen. He stripped down to his drawers, then peeled them off carefully, trying not to spread the mess of his release. His cock was still half-erect, and so sensitive when he touched it that Colm gasped. The normally pale skin was almost blood red, and the white smears of come looked like pearls against the heated flesh. He stroked the head, carefully, and shuddered at the sensation. It made him want more. He hadn't had enough yet, wasn't anywhere close to satisfied. Colm mentally weighed his options for a moment, glanced down at the cold bucket of well water at his feet, and made up his mind.

Gods, it
hurt
to grab himself the way he did now, not gently or tenderly but vicious and tight, as though Colm were punishing himself for his earlier pleasure. In reality, it just hardened him faster, forcing tired tissues to swell again, and the ache in his balls as he handled himself roughly just drove Colm to increase the pace of his hand on his cock, stroking the length of it over and over as he leaned against the cool stone wall and fucked his fist. It was awkward and painful and raw, and no better than he deserved after eavesdropping on Nichol and Jaime.
Fuck,
that had been the best thing he'd ever heard in his life and the only thing that could have made it better was him with Nichol, him feeling the press of Nichol's knees against his shoulders and the head of his cock against the back of his throat and even, even, oh, him rolling over and baring himself, offering his hole up like a whore and Nichol taking him there too, driving inside just as hot and desperate as he felt right now—

The volume was less this time, and the pleasure of Colm's release was almost overshadowed by the tingling ache that accompanied it, but today was a day that was made for pain. Colm locked his knees out to keep himself upright and gingerly let go of his cock, which felt chafed and sore and looked in about the same shape.

Colm rinsed off, letting the water cool him down and trying to avoid getting his injured hand wet. He cleaned the drawers, then redressed in his clothes, wincing a little at the way the wool rubbed against his groin. Gods, he needed to lie down.