Chapter Five
Suddenly, my nudity and arousal burned worse than the brooch-brand on my thigh as I blushed a bright crimson in colour.
"Decent folk wear clothes," she rasped, her voice like waves grinding pebbles to sand. Her nostrils flared as she took me in, especially my erection and the brooch branding, adjacent to my manhood. "But you’re not decent folk anymore, are you, Steven Whitemore?"
My name in her mouth sounded like a curse. Behind her, the tide pools shimmered unnaturally, reflecting not sky but starless voids. She jabbed her staff at my chest, the conch shells chiming. "That trinket’s older than your bloodline, boy. My grandson gives gifts too freely."
"Grandson?"
The word lodged in my ribs. Lachlan had mentioned a grandmother, one who’d chosen a fisherman centuries ago. Now I understood, as I gazed into her eyes, mercury-bright beneath wrinkled lids, and confirmed it. Same eyes. Same terrifying patience.
"Yes. grandson," she answered, looking at me with an intensity that could have melted me. "He's chosen well. You're certainly a good-looking man from what I can see, and... he gave you his mark, I see."
"How can he be your grandson? He's..." my fingers tightening around the spider conch necklace. "He's only mid-twenties, and you're human."
The old woman's laugh cracked like drying seaweed. "Arrh, there's a story to tell," she replied as she jabbed her driftwood staff toward a nearby boulder, its surface worn smooth by centuries of storms. "Sit, unless you'd rather stand there flaunting what the sea's already claimed?"
I blushed again, reminded of my nudity and state of arousal, choosing to sit on the boulder as she settled onto a tuft of grass, her wool skirts spreading around her like a tidepool's edge. The basalt chilled my bare thighs, the contrast oddly grounding as she studied me with those uncanny eyes. Her gaze lingered on the brooch-mark, now silver-white against my skin, before snorting. "At least he didn't brand you somewhere obscene."
“It won’t go down,” I muttered in sheer embarrassment.
“What, your cock, boy, or my grandson’s mark?” the old woman demanded with a laugh.
I actually managed a chuckle at the thought. "Both,” I responded, “and let’s be honest, he couldn't have gone higher even if he wanted. This is close enough to be obscene in my book."
"Perhaps," she replied, “And no, it won’t go down. You’re responding to his presence and your body is reacting to his proximity.”
"Really? Are you sure?" I countered her vague comment. "I’m sorry, by the way, I don’t normally meet women your age looking like this. Perhaps you can tell me when this will fade. I can't have that on my thigh forever, you know."
"Well, it's yours now and… it won't fade with time. Likewise…your desire will only become more in his presence," she replied as she lifted her wool skirt with hands that trembled, not from age, I realised, but from perhaps an old rage as she chuckled. “He has that effect on men and women, you know.”
“You seem angry with me,” I stated. “Once again, I’m sorry you see me like this. I wasn’t expecting anyone on the island and thought exploring like this was a natural response to my newfound freedom, being the sole inhabitant...I thought.”
"Good god, boy, I’m not angry with you. In fact, seeing you so aroused has made an old lady’s day. The truth is, it all started the night Lachlan was born," she said, her voice flat as a becalmed sea. "His father waited until his mother was weak from labour, then pinned her to the bed with oar handles across her wrists."
"I don't understand," I said.
Her fingers traced the kelp-patterned tattoo circling her ankle. "My daughter's skin was already drying out by then, three years ashore, bearing his children, tending his fires. He cut the webbing on her feet and hands," as she tapped the staff on the ground. "His insurance, she would never leave him. Her feet and hands would never swim again."
The wind carried the stink of low tide between us, rotting mussels and something darker.
I swallowed against the bile rising in my throat as she described the fisherman, her daughter's lover, husband, dragging her to the baptismal font, the priest blessing her mutilated hands with holy water that burned like brine in fresh wounds. "He called it love," she spat, rubbing at her wrists where invisible manacles had worn grooves in the bone of her daughter.
A tern's cry pierced the silence as I flexed my own toes unconsciously, imagining the stretch of phantom webbing between them. Her gaze followed the motion, mercury eyes narrowing.
"Lachlan was her third son, the most beautiful boy and the only one who inherited the sea's touch," as her staff scraped across the basalt as she leaned forward. "The fisherman, his father, tried to drown him at fourteen, caught Lachlan shifting form in the salmon weir."
The old woman's grin split her face like a storm-wracked hull, revealing teeth stained the colour of driftwood. "He made a big mistake that day," she hissed, fingers tightening around her staff until the knuckles whitened. "Forgot how strong we become when in the water," her laughter tasting of vengeance kept warm for centuries. "My grandson dragged him down by his boots, past the weir, past the lobster pots, straight to the bladderwrack forests where the crabs nest."
I could see it, the panicked flailing of a fisherman suddenly realising his prey had fangs, the way Lachlan's adolescent rage would have crystallised into something colder, deadlier, as saltwater filled his father's lungs.
Her staff tapped twice against volcanic rock, the sound echoing like a coffin lid closing. "They found the body wedged between basalt pillars three tides later," she said. "Face picked clean by goose barnacles."
"Where is his mother now? Where is your daughter?" I demanded.
"Our lore is intrinsically tied to themes of profound sorrow, longing, and tragedy, wrapped with impossible choices between the wild sea and domestic life on land, and her tale is no different. With his death, she never found her skin and died from loneliness and profound sorrow. A tragedy beyond forgiveness."
I was truly distressed by her story and her honesty as I asked, "And you? What is your tale?" I asked.
"Arrh, that's another tale," she said, pausing, gazing out to sea. "I chose this life. I had a good man who loved me very much. I loved him with all-consuming passion and emotion, and we were together for a long, long time. Happy for most, even after my daughter's death."
"And?" I prompted, hooked by her tale that was more than a tragedy, one even Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to tell.
"My husband always allowed me to return to the sea whenever I wanted, but when he became ill, I couldn't leave him, and so I chose to nurse him until his passing. By that time, my human body had aged so much that my return to the sea became impossible, and..."
"And?" I nudged, wanting to know more.
"I became a prisoner of age and love, visiting my husband's grave every day. Today is no exception. Lachlan visits me often, but he's free to follow his own love and..."
I sat, acutely aware that a tear was rolling down my cheek as she scooped it up with her finger. "Thank you," she said, her chuckle sounding like pebbles in a retreating wave. "Now you know about him, you should know that Lachlan has waited forty years for you, Steven Whitmore."
"I'm confused. Forty years?" I demanded.
"You don't remember meeting him when you were young, do you?" she asked, a smile painting her face as if the memory was from yesterday.
The old woman's cracked lips curved around the question like a hook in tender flesh as her staff tapped against the basalt, each strike sending tiny spirals of rust-coloured sand swirling upward. "Summer of '85. That heatwave when the harbour seals followed the mackerel run inland."
My breath caught. I was eight years old, visiting cousins in Donegal. The memory surfaced like a bubble from deep water.
I remembered standing naked, waist-deep in a tidal creek, sunlight turning everything to molten gold. A dark shape had brushed my legs, startling me. Not a fish. Too large. Too...
The memory returned with the sudden clarity of a breaking wave, golden sunlight fracturing across tidal shallows, the briny scent of low tide clinging to my childhood skin. I'd been wading in that Donegal creek, the summer heat pressing down like a living thing, as I swam and played naked in the water while my parents enjoyed the local pub, covered in estuary mud and seaweed, without a care in the world, when dark movement flickered against my legs. Not the expected dart of minnows, but something larger, smoother, rising from the murk with impossible grace.
A seal's face had broken the surface inches from my trembling hands, whiskers glistening, mercury-bright eyes holding depths no eight-year-old should recognise. I'd reached out without fear, fingertips brushing the velvet-soft pelt between its eyes, tracing the intricate patterns of its whiskers, so delicate yet so resilient, like the sea itself given form. Its breath had smelled of fish and fathomless places, warm against my wrist as it pressed into my touch with a sound halfway between a sigh and a seal's bark.
In that suspended moment, something primal and perfect had clicked into place behind my ribs. Not just wonder, but recognition. The seal's dark eyes held an intelligence that mirrored my own startled fascination, a silent conversation flowing between us like the creek's gentle current. When it finally twisted away, vanishing into deeper waters with one last lingering glance, I'd stood frozen, salt and mud drying on my skin, knowing with childish certainty that I would spend my life seeking that connection again.
Now, four decades later, the old woman's knowing smirk confirmed what my bones had always known. That seal had been Lachlan, young and reckless, drawn to the shore by curiosity rather than the usual selkie caution.
"He'd never felt human hands without pain before yours," she murmured, her staff tracing spirals in the sand. "Your touch didn't grab or gut. It worshipped."
A gust of wind carried the scent of blooming thrift across the outcrop, the pink flowers bobbing like buoy markers. I flexed my fingers, still able to feel the ghost of that silken pelt against my fingertips, the moment that had unknowingly set my entire life's course. Marine biology degrees, conservation work, even this remote island assignment, all roads leading back to one chance encounter with a curious seal.
"Lachlan would tell me," the old woman rasped, her driftwood staff tracing idle spirals in the wet sand between us, "that he could feel your presence whenever you entered the water somewhere in the world. Always distant but yours."
Her mercury-bright eyes flicked up to mine, catching the afternoon light like polished coins. "Like a current shifting direction. Like a new star blinking awake."
I swallowed against the sudden tightness in my throat. The conch shells clicked softly against my sternum as I leaned forward.
"Two weeks ago," she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried over the crashing waves, "he came to me at low tide, shaking like a pup caught in a net. Said he'd felt you put your hand into the water at Penzance harbour," her cracked lips curving into something between a smile and a grimace. "Said your touch burned hotter than the midsummer tides. First time in forty years he'd felt you that close."
The memory surfaced unbidden, my fieldwork in Cornwall last month, crouching on the algae-slick harbour steps to test the water temperature. How the chill had prickled up my arm like static electricity, how I'd lingered longer than necessary, mesmerised by the play of sunlight through the shifting brine.
The old woman's staff jabbed abruptly toward the eastern horizon. "Then you paddled and swam in the sea at Hugh Town a week later. Left your scent like a trail of breadcrumbs across the Celtic Sea."
Her laugh was a dry rasp, like waves retreating over pebbles. "My grandson nearly beached himself swimming after that scent-line, and I had to remind him you weren't some herring to be chased down."
The conch shells pulsed warm against my chest as I remembered that afternoon swim off St. Mary's, the way the currents had coiled around my ankles like living things. How I'd laughed underwater, bubbles rising silver toward the surface, unaware a pair of mercury-bright eyes watched from the deep, making urgent passage across the Celtic Sea, only to arrive too late as I returned to dry land.
"And then," the old woman leaned closer, her breath sharp with the tang of bladderwrack tea, "you knelt in the shallows to free his female friend. Didn't even hesitate when the knife you were using cut your palm," as her gnarled fingers mimed the motion of my knife slicing through nylon. "That's when Lachlan knew. When we all knew."
The brooch-mark on my thigh throbbed in time with the crashing waves as I flexed my hands unconsciously. The cut had healed suspiciously fast, leaving only a faint silver line across my palm, another gift from the bronze serpent's magic I now suspected.
She reached out suddenly, seizing my wrist with surprising strength, her thumb pressing against my pulse. "You still don't understand, do you?" her voice dropping to a whisper that resonated in my bones. "Every seal and selkie for three hundred miles felt you claim those waters when you bled into them."
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of distant rain. Somewhere beyond the breakers, a seal barked, two sharp notes that sounded unsettlingly like my name.
The old woman's words landed like a harpoon between my ribs. "My son has been in love with you for forty years. Yes, he's had relationships with female landwalkers, but his heart has always been for you."
The wind stole my breath before I could respond; her gnarled fingers tightened around my wrist, pressing the spider conch necklace into my pulse point hard enough to leave spiral-shaped bruises. "I had to meet the man my grandson loves," she declared. "And, here we are, and now I understand... why he loves you. You have a good heart, and you care."
The spider conch shells clicked against my chest like a countdown timer as her words sank in. I stared at the old woman, Lachlan's grandmother, her gnarled fingers still gripping my wrist with selkie strength.
The revelation was harsh, demanding a moment to consider, as I sat in silence trying yet again to grasp the truth, hanging between a need to seek immediate medical assistance for mental health reasons or to embrace the fact that selkies exist, and that the old folklore tales were, in fact, true.
"I was the one who put the brooch in the welcome pack," she admitted, her mercury eyes glinting with something between pride and disbelief. "Left it wrapped in that cotton wrap. Knew if you two bonded, the serpent's magic would..." she trailed off, shaking her head slowly. "But I never thought..." her voice cracking like drying seaweed. "The brooch hasn't accepted a human mate in twenty generations."
Wind whipped between us, carrying the scent of incoming rain. The brooch-mark on my thigh pulsed in time with the distant thunder. "You're special, Steven. The serpent has accepted you, and you two will bond. You will couple. It's your destiny."
Resisting the urge to tell the old woman to fuck off with that shite, my mouth spoke a truth I shouldn’t have even been thinking. "We haven't coupled yet. I'm straight, and your grandson’s a man," I reminded her, my t-shirt hiding my renewed erection, spurred on by our talk of Lachlan.
"You will. It's just a matter of time until you realise that love between you and him is your destiny," she replied. “Only when you have shared each other's seed, will that…” looking at my cock, “will that calm down.”
I blushed, knowing she was staring at my manhood.
Feeling the need to change the subject of conversation, I asked, "Where do you live now?" my fingers tracing the spider conch necklace absently as the wind shifted, carrying the scent of peat smoke from some unseen chimney.
The old woman snorted, her driftwood staff tapping an impatient rhythm against the basalt. "Up past the black cliffs," she said, jerking her chin northwest where jagged obsidian formations bit into the skyline. "Same cottage where the fisherman, my husband and I lived. The last inhabitants of this island, and it's only fitting that his ghost watches me age freely in our precious house."
Her grin showed teeth stained the colour of old tea, the expression more threatening than a smile. "I see my grandson when the tides allow," she continued, the roughness in her voice softening just enough to betray her pride. "Full moons, mostly. Storm surges when he’s feeling dramatic."
I steered the conversation back to the... "So, the branding hasn't happened in a long time," I said, my fingers tracing the serpent mark that still pulsed faintly on my thigh, not a question, but a realisation. The raised flesh felt smoother than it had this morning, more integrated, as if my body had already accepted what my mind still struggled to comprehend.
"Not in twenty generations," she murmured, her cracked lips shaping the words like a prayer. The wind snatched at her salt-bleached braids as she studied me with those uncanny mercury eyes. "Did you like what you saw?"
Her laugh was salt-sting sharp. "Oh, don't blush like a virgin. My grandson's been swimming these waters for forty winters waiting to sink his teeth into you," as she leaned closer, her staff pressing uncomfortably against my ribs.
"But…, it's true. I’m a virgin when it comes to men," I said, almost defensively, as I looked at her.
The old woman's staff clattered against the basalt as she threw her head back and laughed, the sound like gulls squabbling over offal. "Virgin!" she wheezed, wiping her eyes with a sleeve that smelled of seaweed and woodsmoke. "Boy, you've been mating with the sea since you built your first sand castle and didn't know it."
I opened my mouth to protest, but she jabbed her driftwood staff at the brooch-mark on my thigh, the brand pulsing gold under her attention. "That serpent doesn't brand tourists. It only marks soulmates, and even then, it's very selective," her nostrils flaring as she leaned in. "Now answer me true, when Lachlan traced your jawline yesterday, did your cock stir or not?"
"How do you know that?" I demanded, realising she liked a bit of gossip.
The old woman's grin widened, revealing teeth like polished seashells. "Ah, so it did stir," she said, tapping my bare thigh with her staff, just above the serpent mark, where the skin still tingled. "The brooch doesn't lie, boy. Neither does your body. You found him attractive and desirable, didn’t you?"
I swallowed hard, fingers tightening around the spider conch necklace, knowing I couldn’t, wouldn’t lie.
"To be honest," I admitted, my voice rough as the basalt beneath me, "he's the most beautiful man I've ever seen," the words hanging between us, raw and unvarnished. "I've never been with a man before, and if I'm honest... he made my heart flutter, and my body react," my confession leaving me lightheaded, as if I'd surfaced too fast from a deep dive.
"So, lie with him," she said with a smile. "You won't regret it. Trust me, and when you do, touch the spot behind his jaw. The one no human knows about, but it will make him purr."
"Thanks... for the top tip," I replied more in jest than in honesty.
The old woman's laughter erupted like a wave crashing against rocks, raw and unbridled. "He's learned patience and a few tricks from watching humans on beaches all these years."
Surprisingly, I laughed at her comment, imagining voyeuristic selkies watching couples having sex on beaches, thinking they’re alone.
Chapter Six
A gust carried the scent of approaching rain between us, causing me to shiver, not from cold, necessarily, but from the weight of her words, forty years of watching, waiting as my fingers found the spider conch necklace again, its smooth curves familiar now. "How often will he come back?"
The question escaped before I could temper its desperation.
Her staff thumped against the basalt. "Tides and tempers permitting? Whenever he pleases, but if you throw the seashell he gave you into the water, he will hear you and come because you two are meant to be coupled."
She leaned in, her whisper carrying the iron tang of deep water. "But mark this, when the brooch glows gold at dusk, walk to the eastern cove if you can. That's where he'll come ashore wearing something more than seal skin…his true form.”
I stood up, feeling cold as the weather was about to change. The wind carried the scent of ozone and the metallic promise of rain, making the fine hairs on my arms rise. The old woman, Lachlan's grandmother, looked up at me with those mercury-bright eyes, her gaze unreadable as the sea itself.
"How long do selkies live?"
The question tumbled out before I could stop it, my fingers tightening around the spider conch necklace. "And how old is he really?"
"Lachlan is different. His bloodline is special, pure and ancient. He's not a selkie; he’s a shapeshifter who doesn't need to remove his skin, unlike my daughter or me. They just transform. He is…" her statement petering out before, perhaps, revealing too much information.
"Okay, I get that, but how long?" I demanded, feeling impatient to know as I started to feel the chill growing over the island.
She chuckled, the sound like waves receding over pebbles. "Shapeshifters?" her driftwood staff tracing a lazy spiral in the sand. "We don't measure time like you landwalkers. A shapeshifter like him lives as long as the sea remembers. For you, he takes the form of a young man, to others, different forms and ages, but in your timespan, he's... many millennia already."
"Not sure I can buy a cake with that many candles," I joked.
Her face darkened like storm clouds swallowing the sun. "Steven," she said, her voice rougher than the basalt beneath us, "he'll outlive you by centuries," she declared as a rogue wave of wind tangled in her salt-bleached braids as she gripped her driftwood staff until her knuckles paled. "But the time you have..." her throat working around the words, "he will continue to burn brighter than any human lifetime."
The brooch-mark on my thigh pulsed once, sharply, as if in protest. I opened my mouth... to argue, to beg for some loophole, but she silenced me with a look that had weathered a hundred gales.
"Go home," she commanded, rising with unexpected grace to stand in front of me. "Cook your food. Write your field notes. The sea keeps its own time," her smirk returning, though softer now at the edges. "And when you're ready, call him, and you will have the best sex ever," she added with a broad smile. “Once you lie with him, you won’t need to pleasure yourself. The smell of you will drive him wild with desire, especially the drying remnants of your release you enjoyed earlier this morning.
“How the hell do you know about this morning?” I demanded.
“I can smell it,” was all she said as I blushed furiously.
She turned, her wool skirts whispering against the marram grass, pausing at the outcrop's crest, silhouetted against the steel-grey horizon. Without looking back, she called, "The brooch will glow gold at dusk when he's coming. Don't wear clothes because they’re poison. Only pure natural fabrics if you must, and don't forget that spot I mentioned. You'll love the purr he makes."
"Can I come and visit you?" I asked, feeling slightly... lonely and lost all of a sudden, trying to fathom millennia as an age while feeling conflicted between my desires and my sexuality.
"Of course you can. You're family now, don't forget," she replied, and before I could respond, she was gone, her footsteps erased by the hungry wind as I turned towards my hobbit-warren I called home.
The moment I started to walk, my cock bobbed against my stomach, still hard, still insistent. "You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, staring down at myself with a mix of irritation and fascination.
Yet as I watched, another bead of precum welled at the tip, gleaming in the midday light, demanding I deal with the problem.
“Problem?” I chuckled. “How can having an erection demanding a release be a problem?” I asked myself, but my balls were aching, my cock was leaking, signifying my renewed virility after months of inactivity caused by the medication I had to take.
“Fuck it,” I decided.
I stumbled on a rock with the unsteady grace of a drunk man, my legs still stiff from sitting for so long with the old woman. The warm sea air blew around me, raising goosebumps across my damp skin, doing nothing to quell the persistent ache between my thighs.
The sunlight revealed what my hands already knew: my body wasn't finished as the brand pulsed in time with my heartbeat, the spiral design seeming to shift subtly when I wasn't looking directly at it.
At that precise moment, my desire for release lassoed me as I slipped my t-shirt off, dropping it onto the ground while my hand moved almost involuntarily to my aching erection. The touch alone made me hiss, oversensitive yet still desperately needy, like my nerve endings had been rewired overnight. My balls ached with unspent pressure, drawn up tight against my body as precum dribbled steadily down my shaft.
"Christ alive," I muttered, gazing into the distance as my hand began moving again. The rhythm came easier this time, my body remembering what it wanted even as my mind rebelled at the sheer impossibility of needing more so soon.
The angle was perfect, standing there, giving deep strokes that made my knees threaten to buckle whenever my thumb brushed the weeping slit. A gull cried, the sound startlingly human as it echoed across the cliffs. The thought that someone, that Lachlan, might see me like this, completely naked, standing in the open, visible and vulnerable to the whole world, sent a jolt through me that had nothing to do with shame.
My pace stuttered as imagination supplied phantom hands replacing mine, cooler than human skin, smelling of salt and storms. The brand flared in response to the fantasy, the pain-pleasure of it wringing a broken noise from my throat as my hips jerked forward.
My release built faster this time, a tsunami cresting behind my navel with terrifying inevitability as my fingers tightened almost painfully around my shaft as the first hot spurt painted the ground, flying through the air at least two feet in front of me. The second stripe hit the grass with a splatter, followed by another, and another, each pulse wrenched from me with almost violent intensity until my legs gave out entirely.
I barely caught myself as I slumped onto a boulder, forearms trembling as aftershocks racked my body, watching with detached fascination as the remaining thick ropes of cum dribbled down my shaft, melting into my pubic hair.
After recovering, I felt better. My cock had lost its hardness but not its length as it now swung like a pendulum when I resumed my journey towards the hobbit-warren. Even in the shower, it hung between my thighs, rejuvenated without a doubt, looking good as a circumcised penis should. The branding next to my manhood suggested they were linked, but I dismissed the thought, returning to mull over my… growing desires. “Christ, was I turning gay?” I wondered, as I thought more and more about the naked young man sitting on the beach and then his magnificent nudity in my bedroom after I experienced the swoon, as he called it.
Chapter Seven
The laptop cursor blinked accusingly as I typed the final sentence, three drafts, two whiskey glasses, and one inexplicable selkie-brand throbbing beneath my cotton shorts. Attaching the photos felt surreal; the wirebirds looked staged next to their folklore-inspired captions, like evidence from some parallel universe where Celtic myths bled into marine biology.
My finger hovered over 'send'. "What the hell," I muttered, clicking it. The manuscript vanished into cyberspace with a cheerful whoosh, carrying six generations of selkie secrets to an unsuspecting academic press. Let them rationalise that with peer review.
The spider conch necklace clicked against my sternum. I moved the mouse to the WhatsApp desktop icon to start a video call, as I looked at my sister's contact photo, grinning up at me, Saoirse mid-laugh at last year's beach barbecue, her wild auburn curls haloed by sunset. What would those corkscrew curls say about her little brother getting branded by seal magic?
Three rings. A click. "Christ, Steven, I was about to send search parties..." her voice cutting through cyberspace, amplifying the noise of her nostrils flaring. "Why do you look and sound like you've just seen the Virgin Mary in your toast?"
I laughed, a ragged, unhinged sound. "Close, but more like the selkie equivalent."
The whiskey burned less than the truth lodged between my ribs. Saoirse's silence stretched taut as a fishing line, then snapped. "Bullshit. You're sitting there with your 'marine biologist voice' on, but your breathing's all wrong. What happened?"
I told her everything. Literally, everything, and she listened patiently without interrupting until she demanded. "I want to see it."
The one thing about my big sister is not to ignore her when she demands evidence. She's a Professor of Celtic Folklore and History at Trinity College, and so, I did as ordered, holding the brooch in front of the laptop camera.
"Fucking hell. Can't be... that looks like a Claddagh variant. From here, it looks Bronze Age. Where's the branding?" her voice developing a manic edge when academia collided with the inexplicable.
"Right here on my thigh... still. It won't fade," I muttered, pointing to my upper thigh hidden behind my shorts and briefs.
"Show me. Put the artefact next to the mark. Now," she ordered, her command leaving no room for argument.
"Sis, I'll have to drop my...."
"Fuck off, Steven, seen it before, now do it," she ordered again.
I obeyed, standing up in front of the laptop, pulling my shorts and Y-Fronts down, pressing the cold bronze to my warm flesh next to the mark, providing a full view of my body and the artefact.
A harmonic resonance vibrated through her bones as Saoirse swore in three languages in response, "Okay, you can pull your pants up now," she said, her breathing heavy and urgent.
Normally, she would have said, ‘Nice dick’ or something witty, but she started speaking with the cadence of someone reciting scripture, her voice weaving through the air like kelp in a slow current. "Legend has it that... there are selkies, and then there are shapeshifters," her face one of shock as she paused.
"And legend has...," she started, "Legend has it that this brooch belonged to Manannán mac Lir himself, the sea god who could walk between worlds without shedding his skin. I've only seen drawings in ancient manuscripts like the Book of Kells, but you're holding...either a very good replica or... Steven, it's the runes.... that worry me."
The brooch pulsed against my flesh, warm as a living thing. Saoirse's sharp breath crackled through the laptop speakers. "That explains why some of the markings match Bronze Age votive offerings," she whispered. "But it's the other runes... I can't read them."
"Do you believe me now?" I demanded.
"I believe you found something very important and... you probably slept on it during the night. Give me an hour or so... I have to check something and will call you back."
My sister had hung up, her timing impeccable as from the west, dark clouds swallowed the horizon whole, their underbellies lit intermittently by lightning too distant to hear. As I stood staring at the storm, I played with the seashell he’d given me that nestled in my pocket, the one which Lachlan had given me if I wanted to call him, my mind playing games with me, demanding, 'Throw me.'
I pulled it out of my pocket, looked closely at it for a sign of… something and then, saying Lachlan’s name in my mind, I threw it on the desk.
Gazing at the storm approaching, I was pulled from my thoughts when my WhatsApp app came to life with a sudden urgency, two rapid-fire video call requests from Saoirse back-to-back before I could even click 'accept'.
Her face filled the screen, haloed by the chaotic backdrop of her university office, ancient manuscripts splayed across her desk like beached jellyfish.
"Listen carefully," she hissed, her finger jabbing at something off-camera. "That brooch isn't just Bronze Age, it's pre-Celtic. Older than Tara. Older than fucking Newgrange. The Cathach refers to it in an ornate design starting one of the 58 folios by St. Columba."
"And?" I asked.
"Shut up and listen," she demanded. "It's terribly important. I'm bringing into this call, Dr Fitzgerald Michaels from the British Museum and Dr Kelly Fitzgerald, Head of the School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore, as well as the Head of Irish Folklore & Ethnology in the School and my boss."
“Your boss? I thought you were the boss.” I retorted.
“She’s the Vice Dean of the university. Be nice. She’s my big boss. Okay?” my sister asked, declaring this wasn’t for debate.
Getting the magnitude of her rant, I had no choice but to surrender. “I guess that makes her important, then,” I suggested with a chuckle.
Suddenly, two faces joined my sister and mine, both looking terribly shocked as they listened to my sister.
"Steven, that bronze artefact you have, no one has ever seen those runes before today, but we've managed to translate some of them. They say, Aenbharr, Sguaba Tuinne, Fragrach, Cairbre Crom-chenn. The other runes indicate a crane bag, the scabbard of Manannán and the cloak of invisibility."
Everyone was silent for a moment, taking in the magnitude of what had been said, until Dr Fitzgerald spoke. “These runes have never been seen before on a brooch. Any brooch. Only in drawings.”
"Steven,” my sister continued, “Manannán mac Lir is an Irish mythological sea deity, guardian of the Otherworld, and master of magic and illusion, often considered the 'son of the sea’ associated with the Tuatha Dé Danann, who ruled the maritime realm and the blissful afterlife island of Mag Mell. In your language, the Isle of Man and Ireland."
Dr Fitzgerald urgently asked, “Have you seen the second brooch. I am almost certain you have one of the two from legend. Manannán mac Lir has one, and he gave the second to his love as a coupling or bonding so they would become one. Legend has it that the recipient of the gift would inherit shared powers, becoming an instrument between gods and mortal men.”
“I’ve only got this one,” I confirmed, holding it up to show them.
Chapter Eight
The laptop screen flickered as Dr Fitzgerald's voice cut through the academic haze like a harpoon through mist. "Steven, who's that behind you?" her words carrying the sharp urgency of a lighthouse keeper spotting rocks in dense fog.
Before I could turn, warm breath ghosted across my neck, salt and storm wind and something indefinably wild. Lachlan's voice, rich as polished mahogany, curled around me in fluid Gaelic: "Tá grá agam dó."
I saw him through the camera's fish-eye lens, Lachlan's naked form haloed in the laptop's blue light, his cloak the only clothing he was wearing with the second bronze brooch dangling from his neck like a pendant of power, its serpentine coils pulsing with an otherworldly gold-green luminescence. The glow intensified as he repeated those Gaelic words with the cadence of breaking waves, "Tá grá agam dó."
I looked down, feeling the branding pulse and vibrate on my thigh as the video call erupted into chaos. Dr Michaels dropped his teacup with a porcelain shatter; Dr Fitzgerald's pen snapped in her grip. Only Saoirse remained eerily still, her freckles standing out like star chart markers against suddenly bloodless skin.
"Now do you believe me?" I asked, my voice cracking like thin ice over dark water. The laptop screen froze momentarily, Saoirse's mouth half-open in shock, Dr Michaels' fingers suspended mid-air where his teacup had shattered, before erupting into overlapping exclamations in three different academic dialects.
Lachlan's laughter vibrated against my spine, warm as tide pools in summer sunlight. His fingers traced the fresh runes now spiralling up my body from where the brooch-mark lay on my thigh, as he lifted my t-shirt over my head. "They'll need more than....," he murmured in that voice like submerged oak, his breath stirring the fine hairs at my nape.
Onscreen, Saoirse had begun rapidly stacking reference books like storm wall fortifications. "Steven," she said with terrifying calm, "turn the camera. Slowly."
Lachlan's hand slid from my arm to the laptop's edge, tilting the screen with ancient strength until his face filled the frame, mercury-bright eyes catching the brooch's glow, seawater still beading along his collarbones. The academics recoiled as one. Dr Fitzgerald's whispered "Sweet Brigid" was barely audible over Dr Michaels' hyperventilation.
"Manannán's lineage doesn't usually photograph well," Lachlan observed, thumb brushing the bronze serpent now fused to his sternum, very much alive. The motion triggered a harmonic vibration through my bones, a phantom sensation of whiskers brushing my childhood fingertips in that Donegal creek as he kissed me.
The laptop captured the moment as Lachlan's mouth crashed against mine, tasting of salt and storms and something deeper, the iron tang of ancient tides. His fingers tangled in my hair with shapeshifter-strength, pulling me into him as the WhatsApp call continued unheard, my sister's tinny shouts drowned beneath the sudden roar of blood in my ears as Lachlan pushed my shorts and Y-Fronts down my legs, picking me up naked in front of the audience, his erection in full view of the academics attending the call.
Somewhere beyond the haze of sensation, academic voices still squawked from the laptop like disoriented gulls. Lachlan chuckled against my throat, his teeth grazing the fresh markings spiralling up my neck. "Let them listen," he murmured in that voice like polished driftwood, as one hand slid down to palm the aching hardness of my cock. "Let the whole world hear what happens when a shapeshifter claims his mate."
The brooch between us burned brighter as his hips pressed mine, the intricate bronze serpent writhing with its own molten energy where our hearts met. I arched against him with a gasp, the brand on my thigh flaring gold in response, forty years of longing crashing over us both like the spring tide.
Saoirse's voice cut through the static of desire, sharp as a harpoon. "Steven Patrick Whitmore, if you're about to defile marine archaeology with your..."
Lachlan reached past my shoulder, his webbed fingers glinting in the light as he slammed his fist down with ceremonial finality. The sudden silence throbbed between us, broken only by the crackle of wood and peat in the hearth that had spontaneously come to life, mixed with the slick sound of his tongue tracing the shell of my ear.
"I didn't call you," I said.
"But you did, Steven, when you held the seashell in your pocket earlier. You thought of me and called my name when you discarded it on the desk, and I heard you."
The world tilted as Lachlan lifted me effortlessly, my body arching instinctively into his strength, not like a man carrying his lover, but like the sea claiming driftwood it had polished for decades. My thighs bracketed his hips as he carried me toward the bed, the spider conch necklace swinging wildly between us with each step, its clicking rhythm matching the frantic pulse at my throat. His teeth found my collarbone, sharp enough to brand but gentle enough to worship, and in that suspended moment, I understood kisses were the exact midpoint between drowning and devotion as I surrendered myself to him.
The mattress sighed beneath us as Lachlan lowered me with ceremonial care, his palms mapping my ribs like tidal charts. "You're trembling," he murmured against my sternum, his voice thick with forty years of restraint finally snapping. I could only nod, fingers tangled in his rain-damp curls as his tongue traced the fresh runes spiralling up my torso, each touch pulling another fractured memory from that childhood creek, another ghostly sensation of whiskers against eight-year-old skin.
When he reached my groin, his hesitation lasted exactly one crashing wave against the cliffs outside. The brooch between us pulsed gold as he stared at my naked body, his breath warming the head of my cock in a way that made my hips jerk involuntarily. "You're beautiful," he breathed, the words roughened by centuries of sea salt, and I believed him utterly because shapeshifters like selkies couldn't lie about things that mattered.
I reached for him then, clumsy with human impatience, but Lachlan caught my wrists and pinned them above my head with one hand. His grin flashed as dangerous as storm-lit waves. "Easy, mo ghrá," he chided, his free hand skating down my quivering abdomen. "The sea doesn't rush its treasures to shore," as his thumb brushed the weeping slit of my cock, smearing precum in intricate spirals that mirrored my markings, and I arched off the bed with a shattered moan.
The first breach of his fingers stole my breath more thoroughly than any dive. He worked me open with the same relentless patience as waves smoothing glass, twisting, retreating, returning deeper each time until my thighs shook with the effort of staying still. When he finally curled those clever fingers just so, my vision whited out like sunlight through foam, my shout echoing off the cottage beams as I came across my stomach in ragged stripes.
The third time that day, my body had erupted, offloading my seed freely and renewed.
The aftershocks left me limp, sprawled across the sheets like driftwood. Lachlan's chuckle vibrated against my hipbone as he licked a stripe through the mess on my abdomen, slow, savouring, the way seals groomed each other after storms. His tongue left trails of fire in its wake, my oversensitive flesh twitching beneath each stroke.
"You taste like home," he murmured, the words curling warm against my skin. His fingers never stilled, working me through the haze until I was hard again, impossibly fast, the brooch between us pulsing gold-green with each shared breath.
When he finally sheathed himself inside me, it felt less like penetration and more like coming ashore, that first gasp of air after diving too deep, the relief of finding solid ground beneath your feet when you'd forgotten it existed. His forehead pressed against mine as he stilled, our shared breaths fogging the air between us.
"The spot," I remembered suddenly, my voice rough as tide-worn rock. My fingers found that secret place behind his jaw, just where his grandmother had said, and Lachlan's entire body shuddered. A sound escaped him, unlike anything human, deep and resonant as a harbour buoy in swell, vibrating through my chest where we were pressed together.
"Dia dár réiteach," he gasped, his hips stuttering forward involuntarily. The motion dragged another purr from him, this one lower, hungrier, as his fingers dug into my hips hard enough to leave bruises shaped like his fingerprints. "Should've... warned you..." he managed between panting breaths, "how sensitive..."
The spider conch necklace lay forgotten between us, its clicking rhythm drowned beneath Lachlan’s purrs as I stroked that spot behind his jaw, the one no human was supposed to know. His hips jerked forward with each touch, his cock sheathing deeper inside me in ragged increments that left us both gasping. When his teeth grazed my collarbone, sharp enough to brand but gentle enough to worship, I understood why shapeshifters and selkies drowned sailors, not from malice, but from the sheer impossibility of resisting this pull.
"Look at me," he demanded, his voice rough as barnacled rope. His mercury-bright eyes held mine as he began to move in earnest, each thrust timed to the brooch’s pulsing glow between us. The rhythm was unmistakably tidal, advance, retreat, return, as if our bodies had memorised this dance long before we’d met. I arched into him, my cock trapped between our sweat-slicked stomachs, and Lachlan’s purr deepened into something predatory when I came undone a second time, my release smearing across his abdomen in silvered streaks.
His grandmother’s words echoed between my ribs: “He’ll outlive you by centuries.”
The thought should have chilled me, but Lachlan’s fingers tracing the fresh runes on my throat felt like a vow written in some older language. When his rhythm fractured, he buried his face against my pulse point and groaned, a sound like waves breaking against cliffs, his release flooding me with warmth that had nothing to do with biology. So much cum entered my body with each thrust, his flow flooding me so entirely, it started to leak out, as his brooch flared gold-green between us, its serpentine coils twisting as if alive, before settling into a steady hum against our chests.
We lay tangled in the aftermath, the peat fire sputtering as rain lashed the windows. Lachlan’s fingers absently combed through the cum drying on my stomach, his touch proprietary and tender in equal measure. "You’re mine now," he murmured, not smugly, but with the quiet certainty of the tide claiming shore. Outside, a seal barked twice, that same unsettling echo of my name and Lachlan’s head snapped up, nostrils flaring.
Chapter Nine
"Storm’s worsening," he said abruptly, rolling off me with divine grace. He padded naked to the window, his silhouette limned in lightning flashes, the brooch’s glow casting eerie shadows along the fresh bite marks on his shoulders, my marks, the realisation sending a possessive thrill through me.
"Lachlan, please make love to me for the whole storm. Keep me safe and secure," I begged.
The storm howled against the windowpanes as Lachlan turned from the glass, his silhouette flickering like candlelight in the erratic flashes. His eyes caught mine, liquid mercury in the gloom and the hunger in them made my breath hitch. Without a word, he crossed the room in three strides, his palms cradling my face with unexpected gentleness before claiming my mouth in a kiss that tasted of salt, desire and desperation.
The spider conch necklace lay abandoned on the floor where it had fallen, its delicate clicks drowned by the thunder as Lachlan pushed me back onto the mattress. His hands mapped my body with precision, the dip of my collarbone, the jut of my ribs, the fresh runes spiralling down my thighs as if committing every inch to memory. When his teeth scraped the sensitive skin behind my ear, I shuddered, arching into him with a moan that vanished into the storm’s roar.
“Say it,” he demanded against my throat, his voice roughened by centuries of sea winds. His fingers tightened on my hips, blunt nails leaving half-moon indents in my flesh. “Say you’re mine.”
The brooch between us pulsed gold-green, its heat searing where our chests pressed together. I gasped his name instead, and Lachlan growled, a sound deeper than thunder, before flipping me onto my stomach with effortless strength. His knee nudged my thighs apart as he leaned down, his breath hot against the base of my spine. “Say it, Steven,” he repeated, lips brushing the twin spiral marks branding my lower back, his claim, his sigil.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the room in stark monochrome. In that frozen moment, I saw our reflection in the rain-streaked window, his powerful frame curved over mine as he pulled my hip up, forcing me to kneel in front of him as my fingers twisted in the sheets. My vision shattered as Lachlan’s teeth sank into my shoulder, blunt and claiming, as he sheathed himself inside me in one relentless but tender thrust.
The storm outside reached a crescendo as Lachlan's hips snapped forward, driving me deeper into the mattress with each thrust. His hands gripped my waist tight as the rain lashed the windows in horizontal sheets, the wind howling like the selkie chorus that had followed us from shore.
"You feel that?" he whispered against my spine, his teeth grazing the fresh runes there. The brooch between us burned hotter with each movement, its molten energy searing into my skin. "The sea knows her own."
I couldn't answer. I could only gasp as he hit that spot inside me again, my vision whiting out like sunlight through storm surge. Lachlan's purr vibrated through my ribs as he felt me clench around him, his fingers tracing my hips in crescent moons on my flesh.
Something changed in the rhythm then. Not the tide-like cadence from before, but something wilder, the riptide pull of a storm current. Lachlan's breath came ragged against my shoulder blades as his thrusts turned uneven, his control fraying at the edges. When his hand slid up my spine to fist in my hair, pulling my head back, I understood with dizzying clarity that he was close.
The brooch flared white-hot between us as Lachlan's teeth found my throat, not the playful nips from earlier, but a proper claiming bite. Pain and pleasure blurred into a single bright line as his hips stuttered, his release flooding me with impossible heat and the sheer volume of his seed. The scent of salt and storm filled the air as he collapsed atop me, his weight pressing me into the mattress like a wave pinning driftwood to shore as he remained inside.
The storm stilled before dawn, not gradually, but all at once, like a held breath finally released. Lachlan's weight lifted from my back, his withdrawal leaving me suddenly hollow. I rolled onto my side to find him perched on the edge of the bed, looking at me as my fingers reached out to play with his cock.
Chapter Ten
"Tell me," he asked, "For a man who's never been with a man before, where did you find your energy and desire?"
"Come back to bed for a cuddle, and I'll tell you," I answered.
At that, he climbed back into bed, pulling me close against him as the duvet covered us in more warmth than I'd expected. His skin still carried the scent of brine and something deeper, like the inside of an ancient conch shell when held to your ear.
"Because you tapped into something I never knew I had," I said, tracing the fresh runes spiralling across his collarbone with my fingertip. The markings shimmered faintly, reacting to my touch like bioluminescent plankton disturbed by a passing fin.
"It's like... my body welcomes yours before my mind catches up. Because you give me so much satisfaction. I've never felt this way before. So satisfied. So...Christ, Lachlan, you have given me multiple orgasms from hitting a spot I never knew could feel like... ecstasy."
He kissed my forehead gently before I continued.
"When you're inside me, I feel a state of overwhelming, rapturous emotion, bliss, joy, comfort, whatever you want to call it, where I feel detached from reality or self-control and I let myself go. I feel intense spiritual, aesthetic, and emotional euphoria with each stroke and thrust of you inside me. Of being wanted, owned and desired."
Lachlan's chuckle vibrated through my ribs, rich and dark as molasses. "Forty years of tides waiting for you," he murmured, nuzzling into the hollow of my throat. "Did you think the sea would let you go unchanged?" as his hand slid possessively down my flank, pausing where the serpent mark pulsed gold against my thigh.
Outside, the first gulls of dawn squabbled over scraps left by the retreating storm. I watched their shadows flicker across the ceiling, their cries mingling with the rhythmic sigh of waves against the cliffs below. Lachlan's breathing had slowed to match the tide's cadence, his breath warm against my sternum as his fingers traced patterns over my bottom.
"Tell me something real," I whispered, suddenly desperate to anchor this madness in something tangible. "Not magic or destiny. Something ordinary about you."
Lachlan's fingers stilled on my hip. For a moment, I thought he hadn't heard me over the gulls' cries. Then he exhaled sharply through his nose, that half-laugh he did when I surprised him.
"I hate whiskey," he admitted, the confession absurdly mundane after everything. "Tastes like medicine gone bad. But I'll drink it if you're sharing," as his thumb brushed the dip of my waist. "And I sneeze in sunlight. Full seal or half-human, doesn't matter, bloody inconvenient when trying to look majestic on rocks."
I burst out laughing, the sound startlingly loud in the quiet cottage. Lachlan grinned, pleased with himself, but his expression softened as he studied my face. "Your turn. Something ordinary. Not the professor or the selkie-whisperer. Just Steven."
The question caught me off guard. I stared at the water stains on the ceiling, the familiar shapes I'd named as a child, a dragon, a schooner, my father's profile. "I... collect sea glass," I said finally. "Not the pretty blues and greens everyone wants. The ugly frosted whites, the broken bottleneck edges. They remind me of..."
"... how even shattered things get polished into something new," Lachlan finished quietly as his fingers resumed their tracing of my body, following the path of a particular scar on my shoulder. "Knew that already. Try again."
Raindrops pattered against the windowpane as I hesitated. "I'm terrified of jellyfish," I blurted. "Not just the stingers, the harmless moon jellies too. Their... bone lessness. The way they move without moving. Your turn?"
Lachlan answered. “I thought you were beautiful when I saw you the first time. Stand waist-deep, naked, in the water. So pure and unblemished, your infant manhood without its skin, as I wondered what it would look like when you got older.”
“That was unexpected,” I responded, chuckling. “What do you think now?”
He thought about it while his fingers tickled me a little bit and then asked. "Even more beautiful than when you were younger,” he replied. “Many times, I've seen landwalkers on beaches, men or women, naked, their heads between the legs of their partners. It looks so weird, as if they're bowing to their partners, paying homage to... each other."
I choked a cough and a laugh at the same time, realising he didn't actually know what they were doing. "You mean... oral sex?" the words escaping before I could stop. My face was blushing despite the intimacy we'd just shared as I asked, "You've never been sucked off by a man or woman?"
Lachlan’s fingers stilled against my ribs. His brow furrowed, not in confusion, but something closer to offence. "What’s the point?" he repeated, his voice rough as wind-worn cliffs. "My seed should be used, not wasted," as his palm pressed possessively against my lower abdomen, where his release still warmed me from within. "Every drop brands you deeper. Marks you as mine in ways your human biology can't comprehend."
I opened my mouth to argue as his hand slid lower, his fingers probing where I remained stretched and slick from his earlier claiming. When they came away glistening, he brought them to my lips with a predator’s patience. "Taste," he commanded.
His finger tasted of brine and copper and something deeper. “That’s the point,” I murmured against his skin, the words vibrating through the contact. “Sometimes a partner, a lover, just wants to taste their lover. It’s intimate. It's personal.”
"Have you tasted a lover before?" he asked gently.
"Only a woman years ago. Never a man. As I said, I've never been with a man before you."
“Would you like to taste me, Steven?" he asked.
The question hung between us like the spider conch necklace abandoned on the floor, delicate, precarious, its implications clicking softly in the silence. Lachlan's thumb traced my lower lip, his mercury-bright eyes tracking the minute twitch of my facial muscles.
"I..." my voice cracking; the honesty surprised me more than the desire. "Yes."
Chapter Eleven
The sheets whispered against my thighs as I slid down Lachlan’s body, my pulse hammering loud enough to drown out the distant tide. His skin smelled of salt and sweat and something muskier now, the scent deepening as I neared his groin. I hesitated where the blanket of dark curls began, my breath hitching; this was new territory for me.
"Easy," Lachlan murmured, his fingers carding through my hair with patience. "The sea doesn't rush..."
"I know," I interrupted, pressing a kiss to his inner thigh just to shut him up. The taste of him bloomed across my tongue, brine and iron and something wilder, like storm-lashed rocks at midnight. His hips jerked when my teeth grazed the sensitive skin there, a choked sound escaping him that made me chuckle.
The first tentative lick along his length drew a groan from us both. Lachlan's cock twitched against my lips, hotter than I'd expected, the skin silken and salt-bitter as I mapped him with my tongue, tracing the prominent vein underneath like a coastline, until his fingers tightened in my hair. "Steven," he gasped, his Gaelic accent thickening. "If you're going to..."
I swallowed him down on a surge of reckless courage, my nose brushing coarse curls as he arched off the bed with a curse. The stretch of my jaw burned, the weight on my tongue foreign and exhilarating. Lachlan's thighs trembled beneath my palms as I pulled back, savouring the slick drag against my lips before taking him deeper.
The rhythm came easier than I expected, inhaling through my nose, hollowing my cheeks, dragging my lips up slowly until just the head remained between them. Each descent brought new sounds from Lachlan, rough Gaelic endearments that dissolved into groans when I swallowed around him as his fingers flexed in my hair, not guiding, just feeling, as if he needed proof of this happening.
I glanced up through my eyelashes and saw his head thrown back, tendons standing stark against his throat, the brooch at his sternum pulsing gold-green with each ragged breath. The sight sent a thrill through me, this ancient being unravelling under my mouth.
My jaw ached wonderfully, saliva slicking where my lips stretched around his girth, and suddenly I needed him deeper, needed to feel him hit the back of my throat.
On the next downward stroke, I relaxed my throat deliberately, letting him press inward until my nose buried in his curls. Lachlan shouted something that might've been a prayer or a curse, his hips jerking instinctively before he caught himself. "Oh..the gods...sorry..." he gasped, but I gripped his thighs and swallowed again, silently begging for more.
The taste of him flooded my senses, salt and musk and something indefinably oceanic, like biting into a fresh oyster at low tide. My own neglected cock twitched against the sheets, dripping onto the mattress as I worked him with single-minded focus. Lachlan's purr vibrated through my skull when I found a particular spot beneath his crown, his thighs trembling as I lavished attention there with my tongue.
"Steven," he warned, his voice frayed, but I doubled down, taking him deeper with each bob of my head until tears pricked my eyes. The brooch's glow intensified, casting our shadows across the ceiling in molten gold as he arched off the bed, with a human bent devoutly between his legs, paying homage to his manhood.
The warning tremor in Lachlan’s thighs told me he was close, but I didn’t slow; instead, I hollowed my cheeks tighter, dragging my tongue along that throbbing vein as his fingers twisted in my hair. His gasp fractured into Gaelic when I swallowed around him, the vibration drawing another broken sound from his chest. Salt-bitter precum slicked my tongue as he arched off the mattress, his hips stuttering in shallow thrusts I could feel in my molars.
“Steee...Steven...” his voice sounding wrecked, the brooch between us pulsing gold-green like storm-lit waves as I took him deeper, until his curls brushed my nose again. His climax hit suddenly, a hot flood against my tongue that tasted of kelp and salt, elemental and strange. I drank him down greedily, savouring each twitch and gasp as his fingers tightened convulsively in my hair, his thighs shaking against my shoulders as he kept pumping his seed into my mouth.
When I finally pulled off with a wet pop, Lachlan looked totally wrecked, his hair mussed from clutching the sheets, lips parted around panting breaths, his pupils wide with residual pleasure.
He reached for me blindly, pulling me up his body with undeniable strength until our mouths crashed together. I could taste myself on his tongue, salt and musk and something deeper, the iron-tang of ancient tides as his hands mapped my ribs like tidal charts.
“You’re magnificent,” he murmured against my lips, rolling us until I straddled his hips. The brooch pulsed warmly between us as his thumbs brushed my nipples, coaxing them to aching peaks. “Look at you, still hard for me,” as his palm skimmed down my abdomen, leaving fire in its wake, before wrapping around my neglected cock with a possessive squeeze. “Let me...”
“No,” as I caught his wrist, surprising us both. “I want to come just like this,” as my hips rolled instinctively, dragging my leaking cock against the thatch of dark curls at his groin, smearing precum across his skin. “Watching you watch me.”
Lachlan's mercury-bright eyes tracked my fingers as they curled around my cock, not tentative now, not uncertain, but with the same slow, deliberate rhythm as waves polishing stones. The brooch pulsed between us, casting our shadows in molten gold across the cottage walls as I stroked myself, my gaze locked with his.
His lips parted slightly, sea-damp curls sticking to his forehead as he watched me work my hand over the flushed length of me, my thumb catching the bead of precum at the tip and smearing it down the shaft.
"Steeeven..." Lachlan breathed, his pupils swallowing the silver of his irises. His fingers flexed against my thighs where they bracketed his hips, blunt nails leaving crescent indents in my skin. "You're gorgeous like this."
I arched into my own touch, the ache of neglect making each stroke sharper, sweeter. The scent of us hung thick in the air as I twisted my wrist on the upstroke, the way I'd done alone a thousand times before, but now with an audience of one who mattered. Lachlan watched closely as I sped up, his gaze dropping to where my cock glistened in my hand, the head dark and leaking against my stomach with each pass.
"Let me," he rasped, reaching for me, but I caught his wrist again, holding it against the mattress beside his head. His pulse jumped under my fingers, rapid as shorebirds fleeing the tide.
"Watch," I ordered, and something primal flashed in his expression, a shapeshifter challenged in his own territory. But he stilled, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths as I stroked myself faster, the slide of my palm slick with my own arousal. The brooch's glow intensified, its heat searing where our skin touched, the serpentine coils writhing against my sternum as if alive.
My climax hit me like a rogue wave, overwhelming, stealing all thought as my back arched as I lifted slightly off his hips. My release striped Lachlan's chest and face in ragged spurts, each pulse wrenched from me with a choked cry that sounded foreign in my own ears. The brooch between us burned white-hot, its serpentine coils twisting against our sweat-slicked skin as if trying to fuse us as I pumped more cum than I expected, each drop a testament to the sexual freedom and desire I had discovered.
Lachlan's purr vibrated through my sternum as he watched me come apart above him, his fingers tracing the paths of my seed with something like reverence. "Look at you," he murmured, swiping a thumb through the mess on his stomach and bringing it to his lips. His tongue darted out, tasting me with a predator's focus. "Even your salt is sweet."
I collapsed against him, exhausted and spent, my forehead pressed to his as our shared breaths fogged the air between us. The brooch's glow dimmed to a steady pulse, its heat now comforting rather than searing, like embers after a blaze. Lachlan's fingers carded through my hair with unexpected tenderness, his other hand splayed possessively across the small of my back.
"You're shaking," he observed, his voice rough as barnacled rope. When I didn't respond, his grip tightened fractionally. "Steven?"
"Just..." I swallowed hard, my throat raw. "I didn't know it could feel like that with someone watching."
The admission hung between us, vulnerable as a beached jellyfish. Lachlan's expression softened in the firelight, his thumb brushing the damp hollow beneath my eye where saltwater clung, whether from exertion or emotion, I couldn't say, but as I lay wrapped in his arms, I drifted off to sleep.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
