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Swiftly, I dispensed of this last layer, glancing up in time to see his head drop back against the wall and to catch his pretty mouth falling open. His hips arched up and into me, desperate for more and I gave it, swallowing down his thick cock, gagging as the tip reached the back of my tongue, loving it anyhow. He was already close, but I sucked and moaned around him for good measure, shrugging off my own jeans—there would be a sticky mess inside them otherwise, and pumped myself, quick hard strokes in time to the action of my mouth. He swore again in English and clutched my hair, tugging on it. So fucking hot.
“Can I… God, Florian… I’m going to…”
With a hissed apology and a breathy sigh of release, he stiffened, then poured down my throat.
My mouth slipped off his softening cock, and Charles slid down the wall, cursing against the roughness of the wood, to join me on the ground. Eyes closed, his features were as relaxed as I’d ever seen them and I snaked an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. With my other hand, I tidied his trousers. Neither of us spoke. My arm moved with the steady rise and fall of Charles’s chest.
After a few minutes, I gave him a nudge. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I felt him nod. “I’m… I think this feels like it’s happening to someone else.”
“Whoever he is, he’s a lucky guy.”
“Even if he is on a hair trigger. Sorry. I don’t think… I don’t remember being quite as… ah… rapid.”
He rubbed his hand across his jaw, shadowed with evening stubble. I squeezed his shoulder. I wanted to put my mouth where his hand still hovered, but sensed Charles was already withdrawing.
“Him and me both,” I said. A puddle of my own release cooled on the ground next to us. “I’ve wanted to do that to you for a while.”
“I didn’t deserve it.” He sounded bitter as he made a weary gesture, encompassing the blow job, me, my salt flat, and the marshes beyond. Maybe the whole island. “I don’t deserve it. Any of it.”
The muscles of his shoulder tensed under my hand. “Sure you do.” I smoothed my palm over bare skin. “You’ve… you’ve been through a lot. You’re entitled to a little… I don’t know what to call it… light relief?”
Sex wasn’t a cure for anything, I knew that, but if he could step outside of his grief and the mental breakdown that had followed, even for this short moment, then it had to be for the good, didn’t it?
He gave a hopeless shrug accompanied by a sigh laden with exhaustion. “I’m entitled to nothing, Florian. Listen; what if I told you my brain sees you as a silver swirl and me as a sheet of forest green? What if I admitted you are currently wrapped in a silver cloak and sometimes you wear a silver halo?”
“I’d think that was romantic,” I answered stoutly. And all kinds of fucked up merde, for sure, but romantic, in its way. The half-finished painting I’d glimpsed at his house now made complete sense.
“But would you want to suck my knob again, now that you know? And if I told you I’ve been certified insane? They sectioned me at the hospital, they locked me up and gave me electric shock treatment. Twice weekly for six weeks.”
“Mon dieu, they still do that shit to people?”
“Yes, they certainly do. And it probably saved my life because nothing else was working. I was a raving lunatic. And who’s to say it won’t happen again?”
He carried on before I had a chance to respond, his voice an embittered snarl. “My mother hung herself, by the way. She had been with her new partner—whom I was supposed to meet but couldn’t make time. Anyway, I’m kind of glad I never did, because she got sick—work was hectic, and she became obsessed with everything purple allegedly. I hate purple. Of all the fucking colours to choose. Long story short, he ditched her quicker than she could fucking spell paranoid psychosis.”
He let out a sob; I can’t lie, a hideous noise, and followed it up with an anguished moan.
“Charles, sshh. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“So yes, I’m full cuckoo, deranged, loco, and whatever other names the French have for it.”
“You were those things. Écoute— mental illness is no more a personal failing than any other illness, so don’t give yourself those horrible names. And you’re not ill now. You’re much better.”
He rubbed his face again. “Allegedly.”
Shaking off my arm, he tipped his head back; it hit the wall with a thunk. “Fuck,” he cursed, in English, and covered his eyes, hiding the tears glittering on his lashes. The scorching heat of a few seconds ago was replaced by a deafening silence. I waited until he composed himself.
“Sorry for that little outburst, Florian.” He sounded numb, his French accent rougher, his voice breaking on the words. “You can see now why they decided I’m not quite ready to return to work. It’s not what you thought you were getting yourself into, is it?”
I reached for his thigh and laid my hand on it, half expecting him to throw it off. He didn’t, he let it linger, opening his eyes to watch my thumb as I rubbed across it. All colour had left his face, he’d aged ten years in the space of ten seconds. But like the waves crashing in the distance, grey and murky at this time of evening, he was still beautiful, even though he was trying his hardest not to be.
“I’m coming home with you tonight,” I announced, as though I had a right to be anything to this man. He didn’t put up a fight. “And…” I kissed him, ever so lightly on the hinge of his jaw. “Silver is a noble colour. Like a brave chivalrous knight of old, charging to the rescue. I like that you think of me that way.”
“You do?”
I nodded and kissed him again. “Why not? I mean, gold might have been better, but silver is infinitely preferable to peach or pink or the other wishy-washy pastels. And I hate dreary purple, too.”
