Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/adult-friends/shark-reef/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
Worst, the worst of all, was the frank realization that Ian had been right. By saying those words -- worse, by truly meaning them -- I had condemned myself and at least one other to the agony of love lost. I had spoken truly; I loved Ian more than I could ever recall loving anyone in my life. But did I have the callous guts, the sheer cruelty, to walk away from my wife and six daughters? The question was not, 'Am I a monster?' it was, 'Which sort of monster am I?' A word floated up, a new one. I cried even harder as I realized something I never thought because I never had the vocabulary: 'JB Cantrell, you are a ringpiece.'
Shark Reef 10: Coming to Grips
By Bear Pup
Drowning is a terrible way to regain consciousness. I went to scream and sucked in a huge lungful of water. As I was hacking and puking and gagging on that, some monstrous bastard started beating me about the head and shoulders. That went away and I heard some horrible screeching and the deluge was back, then the beating.
I finally figured out the whole voice thing and I was suddenly wrapped in a warm embrace of... a screaming madman. The voice was completely unintelligible overall but I caught words now and then. Arsehole. JB. Fool. Arsehole. Okay, yeah, got that one. Ah ha! New one that clicks. Ringpiece!
I pushed Ian away from me and put my hand over his mouth. "Ian. IAN! Shut up. What's going on?"
Ian wrenched himself away, snarling. "You, you, you fookin arse. You go all silent then start crying then you let ooot this fookin banshee howl and start writhing round like a pig in a fit! What the fooook is wrong with you!?!"
I parsed that slowly. Then a word was there, 'Abigail'. Then a statement, 'I love you, Ian'. I started to shake. "Ooo, noo yoo doon't yoo fooookin bastard!" I got a wallop upside the head. It 'fookin' hurt, too! "What the bloody hell is going on?"
I looked up at Ian and melted, letting tears stream down. "I fucked up, Ian. Sooooo bad. You're right. What do I do? I really, really love you. I really, really love my wife and my family and my," hiccough, hiccough, hiccough, "little girls!"
"Oh, Christ, JB. Pull yer head outta yer arse. I never shoulda done that to ya. I was bein a selfish kid. We get rescued and you go home to Salt Lick City to the wife and girrrrrls, mate. I go back to Kemmy in Limerick and we both think about that week or two on a beach." His voice got progressively more-wistful as he spoke.
"First, it's Salt LAKE City, not Salt LICK City. And who is Kemmy?" He let out a short squawk of laughter.
"Oh, mate. Kemmy isn't a who, it's a what. Kemmy Business School is my college at University of Limerick. The one I gradoooate frooom in a couple years, if I'm looky. Then off to someplace with an exchange, probably. London, Frankfurt... Chicago, maybe. How far is Salt whatever from Chicago? Train ride? Do you even have trains?"
"Hmm. Let's see. Salt Lake to Chicago? Probably fourteen, fifteen-hundred miles. Probably 2 days or so non-stop if they have trains that do that."
"Yer mad! Or you're yanking me. Two DAYS on a trrrain? Yer in the same countrrrrry, ain't ya? Fifteen hundred miles? I could be in bloody Ukraine by then!"
"Seriously, Ian, it's hard to really grasp how big the US and Canada are. Our main office is a two-hour flight, about 700 miles, from Salt Lake City and I commute there once a month for meetings. We're kinda used to it."
"Okay, so what's within, say, three hours of Salt Lake City?"
"Well you have three choices: Pick between deserts, mountains and mountainous deserts. So, um, how big is Ireland, anyway?"
"84 000 square kilometers of which 14 000 still under occupation by the English bastards. How big is Utah?"
"Seriously, you know how big your island is in like, real units? Wow. Um, Utah? I don't know. No idea, really. I think it's around 250 miles across and 350 miles tall, but there's big square bite out of the top corner where Wyoming is. So... fuck I hate math, um--"
"87 500 square miles less 'a bite'. That's, um, over two hundred thousand square kilometers... wowwwww. Um, and that's just one state? You've got like fifty, right?"
"Yeah, but some are really small and others are huge. But yeah, the place is really, really big. My own some-number-of-great grandfather walked thirteen-hundred miles, pulling a handcart, to get to Salt Lake City."
"Foooor God's sake, WHY?"
"Actually, for God's sake, honestly." I slipped into the easy way anyone with a Mormon background could talk about the persecution of the Latter-Day Saints. My father left The LDS when he married my mother, the daughter of an Episcopal minister. I was raised in that faith, but Mormon history seeps into you from every direction when you grow up in Utah where, 'Which Church do you go to?' is considered a perfectly normal conversation starter. The Mormon Pioneers are, perhaps, the quintessential American story.
I hit the high points, but found a willing and eager listener in Ian and found myself going deeper and deeper. The unlikely founding of the Faith through Smith and the Witnesses. The Golden Plates and Moroni. The Book or Mormon. The bloody trail of violence that seemed to plague the Latter-Day Saints anywhere they settled.
The founding of the City of Zion in Jackson County, Missouri. The specific spot where Christ would return one day. Being driven from there and founding Far West instead. The Extermination Order when the governor of Missouri declared that the 'Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state.' The creation of Nauvoo. The arrest of the founder of the Faith for treason against Illinois. His assassination by an angry mob in nearby Carthage.
The vision of Brigham Young and Isaiah 51: "For the Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." The fallow potential of the Great Basin. The great migration of the faithful. The death and misery of many who walked that path. The Faith that held them together. The power of what they founded.
Sometime early during that story, I calmed and felt Ian curl into my side as he listened. We built our fire and watched it burn down in the deepening night, then built it up again. I found a place to cast my fishing line and caught some utterly-unrecognizable silvery fish that, once cooked, tasted vaguely of diesel fumes and old seaweed, but was filling nonetheless. We cuddled into the Lunk-Lunk bed and Ian whispered, "It's good to have you back, JB," as we drifted to sleep.
My dreams were, shall we say, less than restful. Going to board the plane for home and being told by a stewardess with creepy, sparkly-flashy eyes, 'I'm sorry sir, but you're dead. You have to have a casket to fly.' Abigail laughing at my flaccid cock when I tried to make love to her. Ian being hauled away, screaming and crying, by faceless, uniformed goons in a generic airport hallway for God only knows what reason. Standing (naked and covered in sand, complete with iridescent crabs) in front of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles while they just frowned at me, silent and scary, before throwing moray eels at me that they'd hidden under their jackets. Of little Rebecca looking up, smiling but puzzled, saying, 'But we already got a new Daddy. Why would we want two?'
It was long before dawn when I woke and decided to give up the whole 'sleep' thing as a bad job all round. For some inexplicable reasons, the emotionally-charged dreams didn't leave me upset as much as burning with anger. I loved my wife, and was utterly devoted to and besotted by my kids. But I refused to be condemned by my dream-self for also loving Ian.
I stomped and muttered my way along the shoreline and ended up on the southern boob of Bra Island. I recalled the two things we'd dragged to dry sand the day before. One was a woman's suitcase, much the worse for wear, that had cracked on impact and ruined the clothes inside. The other was... intriguing. It was a traditional briefcase, the handle of which had been ripped off violently.
What made me frown, though, was the starlight glinting off a lot of metal under the veneer of blackish leather. And it weighted a fucking ton! I left Old Soggy where it lay and headed back to The Nest carrying the case, pondering what it might contain. The sun started to rise and Ian woke. He moved off to take care of morning business and rejoined me, bleary-eyed. "I'm guessing you couldn't sleep?"
"Bad dreams," I muttered distractedly. "Ian, what do you make of this?"
"Briefcase, mate. Why?"
"No, look closer."
He picked it up, or tried to, and let out a loud, "Oof!" Just then the sun came up enough to glance off the leather and I felt a thrill run through me. Embossed on the leather in the corner of the case that would be upper-right if held by the now-vanished handle was an emblem, complex with letters and shapes. In the glint of the sun three things stood out. A lion to the left, a horse... no a unicorn to the right and crown between. Underneath the emblem were three bold letters: FCO.
"Um, Ian. I, uh, think this is important. Get, uh, get the multitool and every Ninja Knitting Needle we've got."
The only thing that made it remotely possible to get into the thing was the violent loss of the original handle which had acted as the critical part of the locking mechanism on that edge of the case. Apparently, it had acted like a clamp to hold everything shut, and ripping it away left only two small latches to hold the thing closed. If it had been in place, nothing would have opened it.
Did I say, 'only two small latches'? Fuck. It took most of the day, including a nap required out of sheer, screaming frustration that Ian relieved in a most-satisfactory way, nuzzling an orgasm from me to calm us both down.
When it finally broke open, Ian and I looked in awe at the contents. On top was a maroon passport that read, 'Queen's Messenger, Courrier Dioplomatique' beneath a most-illegible and complex tracery-emblem in gold. A variety of normal travel-related goodies were in there. Gum, breath mints, a tiny bottle of DEET bug spray [YAY!], electric razor, folding umbrella (duh, he was a Brit), etc. But below all that was our one-way ticket off this island.
Just small enough to fit in the case and only an inch thick, the red-leather-bound, gold-embossed case had a crown dead center overtopping an E and R -- Elizabeth Regina. Running along all four edges on both front and back read, 'Diplomatic Pouch - Valise Diplomatique...' and the same in perhaps a dozen other languages and scripts. On the edge itself, in a continuous band, was a strip that covered the seam between front and back. There appeared to be a zipper of some sort under the tape. 'Diplomatic Pouch. Property of Her Majesty. To be opened only by an officer of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom.' The letters ran in an uninterrupted stream around the entire circumference.
I held my breath as I committed treason... or something. I mean, there had to be some sort of Geneva Convention thing saying that I'd be, I dunno, drawn and quartered for violating a diplomatic pouch. That made me pause to think of the gravity of the situation for at least four nanoseconds before I was cutting through the seal. The 'zipper' was some strange plastic ziplocky-thing with a tiny, pro forma, plastic lock that I snipped with the multitool. I handed Ian half the stack of papers and took the rest, frantically reading through them.
"Saints alive, what a scandal!" Ian muttered. "Pay vouchers? Expense reports? They fly boring shite like this around the planet chained the wrist of some bloke?" He choked for a second as the import of what he just said sunk it and stared at the shredded metal where the handle had been on the case, a handle probably still attached to a dead man's wrist.
"Ummmmm, yeah. Those, um, pay vouchers? Do they have, uh, names next to them?"
"Oh, sure. Lots of nnnnnn... Oh."
"And the expense reports? Large sum by any chance?"
"Ohhhhhhh."
"Ian, we make quite a team. You found the water that will keep us alive and I found the thing that guarantees we'll be off this island before long. Wikileaks would kill for this shit, and I'd bet a number of governments would literally kill for it. Her Majesty's whatever service is going to be out and looking." We stopped reading and just stared at each other. I took the pages from Ian's unresisting hands and shuffled through everything, looking for any trace of metal. There was none. I zipped it up and stripped away all trace of the tape that had sealed it and the lock-thing that held the zipper in place.
Ian followed me as I wandered to a minute. I looked up and smiled. Grabbing the little plastic shovel, I found the big triangle logo of Hyundai Merchant Marine on the side of the container-shelter. I stepped off seven paces aligned with the triangle's point and found that, luckily, there weren't any trees as we were right at the edge of the beach proper. I dug a slit in the sand as deep as I could go until I hit water, slid the diplomatic pouch in and refilled the little trench, kicking sand around until it was well-hidden.
"Okay, I give up. What the fook are you doing? Have you gone all Pirate of the Caribbean, mate?"
I smiled. "No. It won't be there long. But I guess I'm paranoid. I don't like governments and I think it would be best if this weren't easy to find until we're someplace that I think of as safe." I went to the Beach Bimbo bag and rummaged until I found something I'd seen but really didn't think of a use for. It's what some folks called a beach wallet. A long lanyard for wearing around the neck and a small, waterproof pouch for essentials, usually a phone and ID. Exactly the right size for a passport that read, 'Queen's Messenger'.
I took a quick look inside the passport then zipped it in and put the lanyard around Ian's neck. "Keep this with you. With luck, the soul of Mr Noah Pearce will get us both out of here."
I pulled Ian to me and kissed him slowly. We kissed for a long time, not the steamy, desperate kisses of before but with hunger and sadness and joy mixed together. The sun was well up and I broke our kiss and doused us both with a few precious pumps of the DEET spray before pulling him into the nest. I wondered briefly is DEET worked on spiders before sighing into a new kiss with Ian.
I'd made love, in a way, to Ian the previous time, but I'd built him to a sexual frenzy by then. For the first time, we made love to each other, slowly and methodically. I also did several firsts. I sucked a man's cock, licked his balls and even, briefly, considered licking his ass but chickened out. I did see his 'nether' lips were still red and swollen; there would be no 'consummation' tonight, even though Ian did end up begging for it.
I spent plenty of time, though, at his taint and balls, and his moaning made me quiver. The idea that I was giving my lover -- HA! I thought it! Without a squeam or qualm! -- so much pleasure was nearly enough to bring me to the edge. His balls were nowhere near as sensitive as mine, but when I got back to his prick he was on fire. I smiled as he tried to grab hair I didn't have to drag me off his dick as he shouted that he was going to cum and I had to stop. Stop? Not 'fookin' likely 'mate'!
The taste of semen was... unexpected. I really anticipated it would be seriously disgusting, but... not so much. Would I suggest it as next year's Doritos Super Bowl Flavor of the Year? No. It was slimy, a bit salty, a bit like bleach, and a lot like the beautiful, hunky boy I was sucking at the time. That last part overrode all the others when it came to pleasure, but it had nothing to do with the flavor itself.
One of the things that really shocked me was the volume. When Ian had sucked me dry, I was worried that I would literally drown him. Porn is all about that, girl (and I guess guys) choking half to death on the complosion. Ian's eruption was thick and there was plenty, enough that I was forced to swallow quickly and repeatedly, but I'd taken does of cough medicine that had more actual liquid. Some tiny, entrepreneurial (aka Mormon) part of my brain thought, 'I wonder if I could make a business by fact-checking porn?'
The second round was more mutual. We ended up humping each other face to face, each trying to outdo the other with pinches and caresses without breaking our intense and wonderful kiss. I took completely unfair advantage of his exquisitely-sensitive ass-lips and he play my nipples like a violin. I came first but only by a 'head' and he followed immediately as my slime created a foamy slickness for his dick to plough through. As he spasmed, I muttered to myself as much as anything, "I can't let you go Ian. I can't. I can't and if that damns me, I'm damned." We fell asleep still kissing.
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Canvas Hell: 31 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 23 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 24 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Lake Desolation: 16 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/ Shark Reef: 10 chapters .../adult-youth/shark-reef/ Culberhouse Rules: 6 chapters .../incest/culberhouse-rules/ Raven's Claw: 6 chapters .../authoritarian/ravens-claw/