The Beast of Bodmin Moor Read online

Of course, Jake could hurt him, Phin wasn’t that daft. If he lashed out in rage, then Jake could probably finish him off with naught but a blaze of blue, but Phin wasn’t scared of Jake, who could only kill him. Phin had to live with himself.

  It had forever felt as if he saw stuff he wasn’t supposed to…staring at it inside out. Or Phin was. One or the other, maybe both. Feelings sat on the surface, rather than hidden safely away. He didn’t mind, mostly, but it was tricky to focus on stuff people wanted him to. If he couldn’t, it made them miffy—they thought he wouldn’t—and got affronted.

  Well…that was a lot of thoughts thunked…and Phin was still none the wiser. This is why he didn’t like going to bed. If his brain wasn’t busy it got bored and embarked on a bit of merry mayhem. Before Phin knew it, it had scarpered with the scraps of sensibility he could call his own; about the only thing he didn’t have too much of to start with.

  It was very hard keeping his mitts to himself too. He did have an arm wrapped around Jack, but its hand couldn’t go a-wandering as it wanted to. A temptation akin to chewing tin foil with fillings. It was getting lighter outside. Dawn was coming to steal away the darkness.

  It was with a serendipitous sigh that Phin let his eyes flutter shut.

  *

  “Mmmm…” This was The Best Dream Ever. Phin would go to bed more often if this lay in wait for him, rather than a snake-pit of too much stuff he’d rather not be ambushed by. Warm wet wondrous…a slip slide of lustrous…slurping.

  Phin’s eyelids flared wide. Jack. Was here. There. He blinked. Twice. Nope, Jack was still…down there.

  “Jaack…” He didn’t answer, which wasn’t surprising, all things considered. Phin seemed to be half-lying on his back, with one arm stretched across the bed, the other resting on the sheet, beside his bum. His torso was twisted, with the top leg flung akimbo…like a dog having his tummy tickled. Most unseemly…and more than a mite flagrant. The whereabouts of Jack being every bit as blatant. Plush lips were sending shivery quivers of bliss here, there ’n’ everywhere, a lush glide of hot, moist, heaven.

  Phin was never going to manage making-it-last, after such a rude awakening. He’d barely got his breath back, then lost it again before the ball-bubbling bliss shot sparks up his spine and blitzed his brain with a dizzying rush of rhapsody (he’d always wanted to think that word, so he did, no one was listening). Bismillah! And Good Gawd, oh blimey… Jack swallowed him down with great greedy gulps, as if feasting on breakfast fit for a king.

  “Hmmmm…” A happy hum sounded in Phin’s throat as he patted about for a silky tumble of hair.

  “Morning…” Gleaming lips twerked up in a rakish grin. The second sexiest view Phin had ever been treated to upon waking.

  “G’morning. Thank you…” That p’raps drizzled from his lips like dribble.

  “Oh, I’m not done yet…” The blue blazed topaz fire when Jake clasped Phin’s wrist and gave it a sharp tug. His breath left the building—again—when he found himself flipped onto his front, face down in the pillows, before he could blink. When Phin craned his head around, it was just in time to see Jack snap his ankles apart…and crawl into the space he’d made in the middle.

  “Wha—” That was as far as Phin got, cos the snaffler grasped the corner of his pillow and snatched it away. “Ooof.” That was a mite muffled on accounts of having a faceful of sheet.

  An arm burrowed under his belly and up it went, before landing on the purloined pillow. All o’this took less time to gasp than what the bejeezus, so it was tricky to keep his bearings. Phin hadn’t recovered from his rackety start to the day yet. That had been too boggling to do concentrating on top of. Phin may well have tried a tad harder if he’d realised that doing concentrating ever again might prove pointless.

  So there Phin was, sunny-side up, with nary a breakfast in sight. Just sheet. A thought obliterated by the very next deed of Mr. mad bad ’n’ dangerous to Phin’s last marble. Jack bent low…and swiped his tongue betwixt his butt cheeks.

  “Fuuuck!”

  “Guess again,” Jack chuckled, then swooped to swirl his tongue at the dip of Phin’s coccyx; the most ticklesome spine-tingling torture he’d ever endured.

  “Jaackk!” Phin was left grappling at fistfuls of sheet, cheeks clenched tight, as Jack set siege to his senses with an excess of excruciating. Bliss. “Stooop! Pleeaaah!”

  “Oh, okay then…” Jack raised his head, then clasped Phin’s hips and tugged them up. This, before butting the backs of his thighs to prop him onto his knees. Nothing in Phin’s whole life had ever prepared him for the next part. Not even slurpy rackets.

  Jack trailed lazy fingertips along his thighs…curving around to clasp their tops, then swooped to sluice a long, luxurious lick…in the valley of Phin’s darkest dreams. His head nearly blew off. He perhaps shrieked so loud it was a wonder the windows didn’t shatter, which might have been unseemly. Had he not already been lying face down on the bed with his butt waving in the air. Being slurped from behind. Or possibly having his behind slurped.

  Jack, had barely begun.

  The next few minutes and forever felt as if he had a firework fizzing in his head…and bum. A megalodon one—like the ones let off over the Thames—not a piddly one that fizzles a bit in your back garden. A huge fuck-off firework of brain blitzing hyper-too-muchness.

  The way it felt physically, was a surface shriek of exquisite sensation…but the tsunami tongue swirling beneath? Was the darkness itself, secret, sacred, sublime.

  *

  Phin had known what an orgasm felt like before he met Jack, so he’d sort of been prepared…but only a bit. It had felt a helluva lot different with Jake doing the deedy. Phin had tried to imagine how it might feel to have sex and…sort of fiddled about a bit. But he’d never ever dreamed this might happen, let alone wondered what it felt like. Phin didn’t live in bum bliss paradiso. He lived in a campervan in Cornwall.

  Thus, he had never envisioned waking up one morn to find himself served a tongue where the sun don’t shine. It sure left a morning cuppa in the shade. That noted… Phin had never met a robe snaffler on the moors, dead-set on stealing his sanity, either. He was starting to have a sneaky suspicion that Jake had looted a very lot more…

  26. Jake

  Jake’s eyelids flicked open. From deep sleep to awake and alert in an instant, he hadn’t luxuriated in a lie in since…the morning after the night before he found himself shackled to a jackal. The fact he’d also woken to no trace of a hangover wasn’t quite the consolation it might have been…had Jake not spent them drowning himself in whiskey, in hopes of dousing his less edifying…thirsts.

  This state of instant alertness was promptly proved a laggardly start to the day by his very own cock, which had clearly been up and bursting with impatience for some time. A boner so insistent it was impossible to ignore—even if he’d wanted to—Jake did not. He was bloody ravenous.

  After slithering from under the arm curved over his waist, Jake stilled when Phin mumbled something incomprehensible and threw his now free arm behind him. This tilted his weight rather more onto his back, which was a shift too tantalizing to resist. Slithering down the bed to slip his fingers beneath Phin’s sleepier cock elicited a soft sigh, but he didn’t stir to consciousness. Jake had no sooner angled it towards his hovering mouth than wrapped his lips around it to slide oh, so slowly down; savouring every second with a tongue on a mission to make them count. By the time he reached Phin’s hilt, he was fully erect…and wide awake.

  “Hmm…Jack…” His name was succeeded by the most superlative sigh to ever rifle Jake’s eardrums.

  Jake couldn’t exactly respond, but the jackal sure as shit could; with a goofy ‘grin’ complete with lolling tongue. Smug bastard.

  Their battle of wills had taken on a competitive edge, it seemed. Could you actually win a civil war over (sort of) yourself? Not least when to win was to lose? To lose, win?

  Did it matter a toss when victory and loss amounted to much the sa
me sublime outcome? Fruits of his labours that didn’t seem too far in the future when Phin flexed upwards, straining off the bed with white-knuckled fistfuls of sheet clutched tight. Rolling purrs and writhing hips accompanied the trawling of Jake’s flattened tongue as he dragged his head back. An abandonment to pleasure every inch as lavish as everlasting legs…

  Jake picked up the pace, craving the moment that would soon be his to savour. Very soon, but it had been an unprecedented start to Phin’s day. When lean hips spasmed, the shudders that rippled along Phin’s spine vibrated Jake’s very bones…the shriek of his name almost as sweet as the cinnamon salt that spilled into his mouth. Jake drank him down with a thirst he’d started to suspect was insatiable.

  “Hmm…” A smudgy smile smeared itself across Phin’s face when questing fingers sought, found, Jake’s hair.

  “Morning…” His voice sounded as if he’d gargled with gravel.

  “G’morning…thank you…”

  Phin patently thought it was po-lite to add the latter to his own greeting…but the jackal was far from finished with him. He wanted more.

  Be fucking reasonable.

  When the jackal huffed with disgruntlement, Jake steeled himself against the scything agony of claws. It did not come, instead? Jack’s eyes just gleamed greed.

  That’s a compromise!? On which planet…Phin’s? Okay… I’ll take your compromise and raise you an ultimatum: if you so much as sniff a sheep’s arse after this, we’re going skydiving. Off a cliff.

  *

  “Oh, I’m not done yet…” Apparently.

  Jake clasped Phin’s wrist and gave it a swift tug that flipped him onto his front. Jake had settled himself between excessive legs and whipped away Phin’s pillow before he so much as got his bearings, let alone wondered what the fuck? Aloud, at least. The pillow would raise him a little, but not enough to grant them an access he as sure as (wot no) fuck wasn’t about to let go horribly awry. And dry.

  The promise of paradise—lost—was too alluring to risk…when this would suffice—for now—it seemed. According to compromise and promise alike. With perhaps a threat…thrown in as caveat.

  Phin possibly wasn’t expecting the consequences of said accord.

  “Fuuuck!”

  “Guess again…”

  Thus, it was that, under the terms of their settlement and nary a sniff of sheep’s arse; Jake’s tongue embarked on its maiden voyage into uncharted territory. Even on his extensive map of misadventures. But so was Phin. Jake had never felt this way before. Was that all down to Jack? Could this all-consuming craving be attributed solely to him? It was incomprehensible, incalculable. Jake knew, beyond all shadow of doubt, that he’d want Phin with, or without, the jackal’s influence…but it was impossible to fathom how deep that desire would’ve dredged. A subterranean, bone-deep hankering to make Phin his own…or a quick shag after a pint or three down the pub?

  The jackal whimpered. Want. Jake bent trickle his tongue along the tender seam of skin behind Phin’s balls before sweeping a luxurious sluice to the centre of their darkest designs. The shriek that ensued damn near shattered their ear drums. How they yearned to earn themselves many, many more. Too much more.

  Phin gasped, gulping at air as Jake continued his mesmerizing ministrations. Nothing he had ever experienced—even in the last two years—had prepared Jake for the profound intensity of his own emotions. Or the ineffable intimacy of the moment.

  On what plane of consciousness might Jake ever have pondered such a likelihood? He’d sure as hell never sat on his sofa musing the metaphysical consequences of shoving his tongue where the sun don’t shine. Not even while blind drunk; a claim established as fact after exhaustive research.

  A diligence Jake now applied to the matter at…tongue. An organ he now found himself—inconceivably—wishing he could trade with the jackal. Jack was…to the astonishment of no one ever? In complete agreement on this. Again.

  No shit, Sherlock. You have an uncanny knack for stating the bloody obvious, y’know. An unassailable fact proved by the current location of your tongue.

  With the most fuck awful of all puns…just sayin’.

  This newfound simpatico was well on the way to disturbing…

  27. Phin

  Phin’s knees gave way, or maybe his arms. He wasn’t sure which went first, he’d only been able to do concentrating on one part of himself for a wee while…oddly enough. Was that even legal? Phin couldn’t care a toot either way…but surely something that sumptuous must’ve been outlawed? Or—at very least—coshed by a Tongue Tax.

  “Y’okay?” Jack asked, sounding a smidge worried. He was most odd at times. What the bejeezus could be wrong with Phin? Unless he’d dropped dead of delight.

  “I am…too bamboozled to do talking?”

  Jack was still chuckling when he catapulted off the bed, landing with light-footed aplomb a world away from Phin’s galumphing thud to the floor. After wrangling himself around to flop onto his back, Phin lay staring at the roof, blinking a bit. Stone the bloomin crows…and some ravens too. And jackdaws.

  He was too dizzy ’n’ dazed to see straight. Even the images scrolling through his mind’s eye looked like one of those old crickle-crackle cine-film reels. Starring an excessively foxy friend and his very own bum. Foxy might only be a turn of phrase, but it was still very fitting for a certain sultry scoundrel with a Canidae slink to his lithe grace.

  Lines from one of Phin’s favourite poems— ‘Thought Fox’—kept wafting through his head, so well-suited did they seem. He must have a mooch for The Hawk in the Rain later, when Jake left. Phin preferred reading the words even though he knew them by heart; it felt more intimate, immersing himself in a book. He revelled in the rustle of pages, their satin smoothness, the very smell of much-loved hardbacks. In truth, many poems penned by Ted Hughes seemed to encapsulate Jake’s essence; both steeped in raw, brutal beauty. Perhaps the hypersenses had recognized this all along…even though Phin had only got around to thinking it now. He had never felt as comfy with someone as a beloved book before. Jake was the living embodiment of their inherent conflict, oozing tender violence.

  Even the tale that gave life to ‘Thought Fox’ was fabulous: Ted had been trying to write for hours, staring at a blank page until two a.m. before giving up and going to bed. He’d dreamed of a fox—a big one, as large as a wolf—who walked into the room on its hind legs. Charred; as if he’d stepped straight from a fire, with agonized eyes. The fox approached Ted’s desk, placed his bleeding hand (not paw) on the empty page and said: ‘Stop this, you are destroying us…’

  In the background of these musings came the clink of cups and merry bubble of the kettle. Hmm…tea for two. It was perhaps daft, but the thought of Jack pottering about in Phin’s ‘kitchen’ was luscious. The scoundrel was so sexy, he made tea bags seem erotic.

  “Teas up…” Jake announced, lifting the tray aloft. Balanced on bridged fingers too, like a fancy waiter in a swanky restaurant. Perhaps a French or Italian one, he didn’t look English.

  “Jack? What is your surname?”

  “McCain…” He answered while hefting himself into the nook, much as a gymnast mounted a high horse. Phin would never have managed it, but Jack hoisted himself up without any huffing and puffing. Watching the taut ripple of sinewy muscle was worth tossing the tray overboard for, in hopes of a replay. Chances were, Phin would have to fetch it himself, though. His own cock-a-leg-up and grasp-the-mattress-scramble couldn’t be considered the least bit saucy.

  “That’s a Gaelic name isn’t it—Irish—not Scottish?”

  “You…are astounding. How on Earth did you know that?”

  “Easy peasy. Celtic mythology is my favourite…I learned some Gaelic along the way. That’s one of the reasons I came to Cornwall, it being a Celtic land. I knew my mum would have a heart attack if I got on a boat, which ruled out Brittany, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. That left Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales…I liked Dorset and I love Arthurian legend, so…Kern
ow it was. I drove to Tintagel first, it was even more magical than I’d hoped.”

  “It is fantastical…” Jake agreed. “Was it the distance…or the boat itself that worried her?” His smirk suggested that he might be in cahoots with certain mum’s who found the thought of Phin aboard a boat cause for coronary.

  “She didn’t do choosing between them…and still had plenty of space left for bicycle clips, clean hankies and losing my phone. And my van.”

  “Have you…?” The scoundrel asked, with a glint that implied the answer was a bit of a no brainer. How rude…

  “You are, I believe, sitting in my van…” Phin sniffed, “…and the phone is…” Bummer. He paused to ponder the whereabouts of the pesky article, having put it “…in a safe place.”

  “Would I be correct in assuming you’ve since found the van and the phone is…as good as lost?”