Page 50 of Shipwrecked

I tense. “You can’t be rough with someone without checking first that it’s okay.”

“We weren’t rough, and we did talk about it,” Mathieu replies. “He liked it. You liked it. I liked it.” A soft, irritated groan falls from Mathieu’s lips. “And you have cock-blocked me again, which I will forgive because you’re right, he’s exhausted.”

Mathieu rolls over, hitching his leg over Jules and me. It lines his cock up against Jules’s ass, and I know from the way he’s been squirming and breathing that he’s hard.

“If you even try to hump him while he’s asleep—”

Mathieu swats my arm hard enough to sting. “Bug,” he says, a warning in his voice. “Insult me like that again, and one will land somewhere far more precious.”

“As if a shorty like you could hurt—ow.”

He interrupts me with another, harder arm smack. I hadn’t thought Mathieu capable of violence. Of everyone on the island, he’s the steadiest. He’s continued to charm and flirt every day, as if we’re just on holiday somewhere. He’s resilient.

“I get it,” I say.

“Good. Now, any chance you can lend me that hand?”

It takes a second for the words to register. “Excuse me?”

Mathieu taps lower down on the arm he just smacked. The tip of his finger brushes the space between two knuckles. He draws a question mark.

“What’s wrong with your own hand?”

“Boring,” Mathieu replies. I feel him shift. The light of the fire catches on the side of his face as he studies me. “Not your thing?” he asks.

Two weeks ago, my answer would have been on the tip of my tongue, out before I even had to think. No, I’m into women. Although, is that really it? I’ve always dated women. Men have never been part of the equation. “I can give it a go.”

“Give it a go. Hm.” Mathieu sits up. “Hmmm. You haven’t given a man a hand job before?”

“No.”

“Irish boys are very frustrating sometimes,” Mathieu says. He dips his head, pecks Jules’s cheek, then rolls away from both of us.

“Mathieu, come back. I’ll do it.”

“First times must always be ‘I want this’, not ‘I suppose I can’.” Mathieu winks, taking any sting out of his refusal. “Back in five minutes.”

Did my first times involve “want”? I wanted not to have to go home. I wanted my money not to be stolen for drink. I wanted not to be in that house, trapped in the mess, breathing in the stench of beer, listening to the roar of the telly and violent cursing.

I doubt that’s the kind of “want” Mathieu means.

Mathieu comes back and promptly folds himself around Jules. His fingers brush soothingly against the stretch of skin he swatted earlier. “I’m not short,” he says. “You’re just tall.”

◆◆◆

Jules shifts restlessly between Mathieu and me during the night. Eventually he tucks himself tight into Mathieu, pushing until Mathieu wraps his arm around Jules and rubs his back. That settles him.

He’s in that exact position when the sun rises, and still in it when Seán boils water for tea in our salvaged metal teapot. People are up, have eaten and moved on, when Jules stirs. I tense. I should have started my day when Seán got up. There are a dozen jobs I want to do with the tools now at our disposal, but I need to talk to Jules first. Or present myself to be yelled at.

Jules groans and nuzzles Mathieu’s neck. Mathieu smiles to himself and nuzzles Jules back.

“My shoulders are killing me,” Jules complains.

I sit up. “You’re hurt?”

I bruised him. I pushed him against the cabin wall and bruised him.

“I need a deep-tissue massage,” Jules continues. “Ugh.”