Chapter 10: the Last night

 

The next day was the Sabbath. Kathyn carefully finished all the work that was needful the night before, and laid aside his sewing.

He woke before dawn on Sunday morning, and felt horrific. Willym had been going at it all night, including when Kathyn had been unconscious, if the ache in his arse as he got up was anything to go by.

He hobbled about like a crone from a fairy-story until his limbs untwisted, getting the house and himself fit for the day at increasing volume, while Willym slept on, softly snoring as he did on occasion when he'd been drinking in the evening. At last, when everything was ready but his brother, he stumped over to the bed.

Willym had somehow managed to take up the entirety of the Imperial-sized bed (one of Kathyn's few indulgences), sprawling into the shallow dint left by Kathyn's body as if to soak up his warmth.

He somehow looked even more handsome asleep, his lips pursed, curls dripping over one eye, concentrated and classic like a statue in a park. And the distinct impression of his hard cock burrowing from underpants up under his shirt, with a rose-gold band of flesh visible between.

Kathyn bit his lip. He had already eaten breakfast, but all of a sudden he was hungry again. In fact, ravenous.

He pulled out the silver-gilt watch that was pinned under his shawl. He had time. He bent over the bed and reached up his brother's shirt, curling his fingers around the hot pillar of his prick while the others slipped into his pants to massage his bollocks.

Anyway, this is how it had been when Willym was a young teen. He'd gone through a whole phase when he'd pretended to stay asleep unless and until Kathyn wanked him awake.

It wasn't, Kathyn had to admit, as he frigged his brother with long firm strokes, right from the hilt to the crown, swirling the thick foreskin over the gleaming dome, a totally unpleasant task.

Quick jerks made for a quick spending, but doing it like this, slowly and steadily, refusing to speed up, Kathyn knew was building up to a climax much more powerful.

`Wake up, darling boy', he murmured, part of him wanting it to last forever, part of him wanting it to end quickly. He felt somedeal shamed by how much he liked seeing his brother like this, unconscious and utterly in his power, his body enslaved to Kathyn's touch.

He leaned in and dropped a quiet kiss at the top of Willym's nose, between his eyes.

As if that was the trigger, Willym's hips hitched upward, breath catching, then releasing in a long, low sigh as his cock pulsed in Kathyn's hand, making a wet spot in the fabric that got bigger and bigger as Kathyn watched. By the time the pulses subsided, Willym's shirt was slimy and transparent from hem to collar. But Willym did not wake. He snorted, then relaxed, squirming against the mattress, the suggestion of a smile on his lips. His hand came up to loosely clasp Kathyn's where it lay on his wet tacket.

Kathyn straightened up, pulled his hand away and sniffed it, then shook his head and wiped his hand on the covers. He gripped Willym's shoulder and shook him briskly.

`Come on, up with yer. Nuff liggin about.'

Willym pressed an arm to his eyelids and muttered something about going over his kit.

`Nay, there'll be no sailor's pleasure this Sunday.' Kathyn tried to strip off the covers, but Willym pulled him back down to the bed, hugging him against his chest and grinding his flesh-iron into Kathyn's arse.

`Well, then a sailor must get his pleasure another way.'

`None o' that neither', snapped Kathyn, shrugging off Willym's grip, which was weakened by sleep, else he would never have got free till Willym let him. `Come. Come on.' He puffed his cheeks out in annoyance. In moments like these it was like nothing had changed from ten years ago; Willym still the stubborn sleep-addled brat, Kathyn still the brother-mother, wrangling him out of bed.

Willym groaned, but came. He stumbled over to the wardrobe and pulled on his best sailor suit. As he pulled out his jacket several coathangers clattered to the floor. He clutched his head and swore, not bothering to lower his voice, and not bothering to pick them up either.

Kathyn was scandalised at this flagrant profanation of the Lord's Day. He was also aroused, in spite of his disapproval. His years in the quiet confines of Damson Court had somehow re-sensitised him to these things. And then Willym had re-appeared, Willym who still loved him as he had when a boy, but would no longer be ruled by him. Willym who on occasion, like this one, behaved with the certain impunity that was a man's right in his own household. No longer the adoring child for whom Kathyn held all the powers of death and judgement in a single disapproving glance, for whom the mere threat of Kathyn's displeasure had been a terror worse than a hell he had only feigned to believe in, but a wild, masculine presence Kathyn could only partly control.

Aye, that's him. That's your man, and a real man he is.

The knowledge that, ultimately, Kathyn could make Willym do nothing he didn't want to do, while Willym could make Kathyn do anything he wanted—it almost threatened to undo him.

Lest he do something that would most definitely make them late for kirk, he left the room and went into the kitchen.

When he returned, Willym was sitting on the bed, trying to get into his trousers with one hand while the other clutched his skull. Kathyn thrust a pewter cup under his nose. `Here. This is for your head.'

`What's in't?' Willym asked, squinting warily into the steaming mug.

`Liquorice juice.'

`Christ!' he said, but he drank it. Afterward he looked greener; however, his nausea had gone.

For Sabbaths Kathyn dressed Island-fashion. To begin with he put on his tidiest black dress (which, fortunately, had a high collar that covered his bruised throat), then for kirk there were two aprons: one underneath of damasked black silk, and then on top another of whiteworked cambric (married women wore blue and widows wore a second black one—double-black, as it was called in Island). Then a heavy shawl of soft black wool to keep the shoulders warm, the two front corners crossed over the chest in an x-shape and tied around the waist, while the long fringed point hung down the back like a cape. Finally, instead of the bonnet which most middle-class Highmouth women wore, he draped over his head another shawl, this one of a traditional Island pattern—silver lace so fine it could cover the whole body, yet be pulled through a wedding ring. It was the only thing of their Grandam's Kathyn had been able to save from Mam, stuffed inside a straw pallet. In Island the whole would have been completed with an elaborate array of jewellery—silver brooches, buttons, chains, pendants and medallions studded with blue coral, but those were given to a bride at her wedding, and Willym had never had one. Neither had their mother. She would have sold them, anyway.

When it was all on, he stood in front of the mirror with Willym behind him.

`Do I look all right? Tell me honestly.'

To Willym it looked like he was wearing a net curtain wrapped around his waist and another over his head, but he thought it better not to mention this to Kath.

`Too many clothes', he said. Kathyn huffed. `Otherwise, gorgeous as ever.' He pulled Kathyn into a rough, wet kiss until Kathyn beat him off with his Bible.

When he looked out the window he swore again. `You can't be meaning to go out in that, Kath. We'll be drowned.'

`Come on, you'll see.'

Ordinarily Kathyn went to midday services at the Inner-kirk on Major-General-street. But for storm-seasons such as this there was a little chapel in the Court itself, and an old retired clergyman who held Morning Prayer there every day at sunrise. Kathyn didn't go often; Canon Calmady was high Pisky, and they were a Seceder family by rights, though Mother had never darkened the vestibule of any of Highmouth's houses of worship, save once to get Willym kyrsnt. But the Sabbath was the Sabbath, and any church was better than none.

The entrance to Damson Court was through a gated archway in the side of the building that fronted the street. Right over the gatehouse, rising above the slate shingles on either side, was a sort of stone turret like a foreshortened Gothic steeple. It was here that the chapel was found.

Rather than go round the length of two sides of the square (for Kathyn's house was in a corner of the back row, deliberately as far from the shore as possible), or wade across the courtyard-turned-swimming-pool, they went by a covered passage that arced from a gallery in the uppermost storey of the back of the court to the front, joining directly onto the chapel-tower. There were booths along either side of this aerial arcade, but Kathyn was pleased to see none were open. Although that probably had more to do with the weather than the piety of the proprietors.

Outside the chapel was a cork noticeboard groaning under an accumulated sediment of bulletins, posters and circulars of divers content and design. One that had been pinned on top of a stack of others read

 

ALL THAT LOOK TOWARD ZION SHOULD HOLD CHRISTIAN COMMUNION — the weekly practice of the Jonson-street Silver Cornet Band has been canceled on account of Mrs Dimwich children chickens having croop

 

There was also a yellowing leaflet advertising a meeting of the Highmouth Senior Band of Hope—not a musical body. The date was several years prior. Kathyn still had the temperance pledge he'd signed at fifteen on the wall in the dining room. It hadn't been much of a sacrifice, as those things went. Somehow the docks had put him off liquor for good.

Willym lingered in the arched doorway, looking about curiously, but Kathyn tugged him inside.

They slipped into a back pew. The chapel was dim, and not very full. Most of the parishioners were clustered near the front, but Kathyn thought it was more seemly, especially for a visitor, to be at the back. Plus, there was no knowing what embarrassments Willym might produce.

For the moment, however, he seemed content to gaze around him in awe, and well he might. The chapel was a far cry from the stark white-plastered walls of a Secession kirk.

The walls of this chapel were of stone, but there was no stone to be seen, for every square inch of them was covered in shards of seashell, pebbles, and broken china, gold-threaded quartz, mother of pearl, and chips of age-purpled glass from the deck prisms of drowned ships.

It was said this unique decoration had been conceived centuries ago by sailor's wives, who added a piece of some shiny thing to the walls as thanks whenever their husbands returned home safely. Over the years, the glittering mosaic had crept higher and higher over the dull granite, until walls and columns and vaulted ceiling were all encrusted with colour like barnacles on the hull of a ship. When it was daytime, it was like being inside a rainbow.

`Kath, look. A ship, in the chapel!'

Kathyn pulled his brother's arm down. `I know, Willye.'

Seemingly floating over the nave, sailing on air, was a votive ship, a sainted cousin to the wooden model on Kathyn's mantelpiece. The chain from which it hung went up to the weathervane on the steeple, and it turned ponderously with the wind. These were common enough in the churches of the islands, but this one was a particular treasure, for it was made all of clear glass.

Unlike Secession kirks, with their triple decks of pulpits like a judge's bench taking the central place at the front of the church, the chapel's pulpit was off to one side, a small octagonal giltwood box attached to the right wall, into which the venerable chaplain now climbed to commence his sermon. He clung to the corners of his lectern as a shipwrecked seaman to a raft, and swaying over it he blinked out upon the congregation from his box at an oblique angle, so that Kathyn could not directly see his face.

Nor could he much hear his voice, for Canon Calmady spoke in soft, whispering tones that were quite drowned out by the storm outside, even without Kathyn's hardness of hearing. But it was the attendance that mattered.

Unable to catch more than every tenth word of the homily (which could not have been of much profit anyhow), he spent his time copying verses from his Bible to his notebook, embroidering the pages around them with intricate thousand-petalled flowers and twisting lines like those on the wall of his sewing room.

Willym pulled his pipe out (how had he smuggled that in—and right under Kathyn's nose!) and made as if to light it, but Kathyn snatched it away and put it under his dress. `Can't smoke in kirk', he hissed.

Willym shuffled close to him in the pew, pressing thigh to thigh, and put his arm around him. At first he pushed it around under his bottom, trying to get his pipe back, but Kathyn pulled his wrist away, and Willym settled for holding his hand. And Kathyn let him, for it was a kind of quiet pleasure all of its own to be holding hands with his husband in a Sabbath morning service.

If only he really was my husband. If only he could be here every Sunday...

After the sermon and some hymns, there was another brief address, and the scattered parishioners shuffled forth from their pews to receive Holy Communion, the first real sign of life they had displayed.

`En't you going up, Kath?'

Kathyn stared at him. Willym returned his look with one of bleary incomprehension. `What?'

`Lor save us', he whispered, though there was no need with the noise of the gale. `Were you sleepin through all the services I took ye to as a wee'un?'

Willym continued to look confused. Kathyn sighed and jerked his head toward the handful of men and women, mostly elderly, kneeling at the altar-rail for the sacramental cup. `We don't do that.'

`Oh.'

Kathyn looked at his brother with a kind of pained astonishment. He had assumed, without ever consciously thinking of it, that the mere experience of attending kirk bestowed some basic sense of solidarity, even if, in Willym's case, it had failed to produce saving faith. Kathyn had long ago resigned himself to his brother's heathen ways, but had always comforted himself with the thought that he had at least been born a Christian (which counted for something, at least with Kathyn). And, after all, he had been to enough services before they left the countryside.

But somehow he had missed the whole thing. He had been in the pew beside Kathyn, but he hadn't been there. Kathyn thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that people who shared the same blood could turn out so different.

 

When Communion was done, Willym fidgeted like he wanted to get out of there, but after some more hymns, there was the second sermon required by law.

Willym smothered a yawn in Kathyn's shoulder. Kathyn elbowed him in the stomach. Willym coughed, gritted his teeth and retaliated by driving his hand in-between Kathyn's thighs, grabbing for his pricklet, until Kathyn whacked him away, a smile forcing itself on his lips. Sometimes when it was like this, it was like they were back to how it had been in the very beginning, just boys again; just brothers, and nothing more.

Not, Kathyn thought, with a bittersweet kind of sadness, that they had ever really been just brothers—or just boys.

The thunder rose and rumbled all around them, as if the chapel were a barque tossed on a tempestuous sea, the stormwinds rattling the saints in their stained-glass cells. They minded Willym in somewise of the living-drowned mariners the Deep Witches kept in their bone-coral catacombs below the sea floor. His eye moved incuriously over their impassive faces until it returned at last to its anchoring point, his brother, more beautiful than plaster saint or painted angel, and alive and real and his.

Willym gazed at Kathyn for what felt like forever before he remembered to breathe. It was hard to believe in him, even though he was right there. Despite the dimness of the chapel, he seemed radiant as one of the figures in the church windows with the sun behind it, the autumnal glow of his hair under the white filigree of the shawl like fire caught in a net of snowflakes. With his back so straight it never touched the pew, the slight furrowing of his brow as he strained to hear what the priest was saying, the bright bloom the cold of the chapel raised in his pale cheeks, he looked so beautiful, so pure, like something Willym shouldn't even have the right to look at, let alone fuck and filthy with his spume. But from whatever wrongness was in him, it only made him want to do it more.

Willym stroked a finger up his neck, drew it along his jaw, under his chin, tracing his perfect profile as if in a sketch. When it passed over Kathyn's lips he pursed them slightly in a kiss, a small smile dimpling his cheek, even though he didn't turn to look at him, still listening dutifully to the parson up front. Just through that one digit, Willym could feel his breath flowing in and out, could smell the gardeny scent of his skin, taste the sweet plushness of his mouth and the supple cuntish wetness inside.

Only one thing was wrong with him: too many damn layers.

But that could be fixed.

He slid a hand up Kathyn's skirt and that finally made him look at him.

`Willym, what—what are you doing? Stop that! Sit still, for goodness' sake.'

`Not my fault. Missed m'morning fuck.'

There, he'd got it--under all the silly layers of fabric, his own flesh and blood, warm and soft and waiting for him. He pressed in against the warm orifice, which never failed to welcome him no matter what the hole in Kath's head said. He wondered if he could make Kath come on his hand, right here in the pew.

Kath grabbed his wrist, trying to pull his hand away without creating a scene. `Willye—you stop this right now, or I swear—this isn't funny', he hissed, eyes darting anxiously about to see who might have noticed what was going on in the back pew.

To distract him, Willym plucked the fountain pen out of his other hand and drew a giant wang over the pretty flowers in his notebook. Kathyn stared at him in open-mouthed outrage and Willym had to giggle, the sound swallowed up by storm surging outside. He poked the pen into Kathyn's gaping mouth until he gagged, them pulled it out, for he'd had a better idea. He slipped it under Kathyn's thighs and steered it up under his skirts, until it found the soft cleft of his arse. He twirled it around the cloth-covered valve of his bunghole for a bit, then pushed it through his knickers, into the tight (and whatever his pretended indignation, very moist) channel of his cunt.

Kath made a noise of protest—struggled a space (Willym held him fast), then Willym felt him squeeze and the pen shot out, skipping off the pew and clattering to the floor. Kathyn turned to glare at Willym, his lips pressed so close together they'd almost disappeared, his face stark white as it only went when he was truly truly angry. `Willym--'

`I can't help it, love. It being in you so much, it's used to it now, that's all. Feels wrong not to have me cock up in thee.' Kathyn swiped at him and Willym grabbed his hand; he opened his mouth again and Willym silenced him with three thick fingers. `Shh-shh, now calm yourself, sweetling. Just sit on me dick like a good wee bitch, and carry on listening to yon parson, and you needn't take any more notice. Just let me use that wet little minnie of yours.'

Willym didn't give him more time to vent his spleen. He couldn't wait any longer. He'd been too long outside his sweet darling's warm cunt, and his balls were about to burst of he didn't get back in there right fuckin now.

Without any further foreplay, he lifted Kath into his lap and sat him down on his prick.

Whereas before the stifling gloom of the chapel and the gentle drone of the preacher had contrived to put him in a kind of comfortable half-reverie, the moment his brother's cock entered him, Kathyn became suddenly aware of everything: the other people only a few rows ahead; the way the sacral mustiness of the chapel was now tinged with the unmistakeable reek of sex; of how in the lulls of the storm the shuffling, huffing, slopping sounds of intercourse could be heard; the steady brightening of the air as dawn approached. Surely if someone looked--all it would take was for someone to look...

He smoothed his skirts over his legs, trying to school his expression to one of calm attentiveness even as Willym rammed his fuckpillar deep into his backside. But he did not react. He knew if he struggled that would only egg his brother on more, create an even greater risk of drawing attention. It was so hard, though. When Willym's thrusts glanced against his little cunt-button, he fisted his fingers in his aprons, not caring for the fine fabric, biting his lip to keep from crying out.

His brother fucked him firmly, but not fast, pushing in with long deep-driving thrusts that stroked him from his straining rim to the tiny door of his womb, not speeding up but not pausing either, not for a moment, as Kathyn's own cock inflated under the relentless waves of pleasure, the perfect fullness and heat of it.

One especially forceful thrust put stars in his eyes, and when he could see again he was staring at the woman in the window above their pew. A heathen idol she may have been, but she was beautiful: armoured and riding a dragon, or maybe killing it, bearing a lance as thin as a willow-wand, as thin as Willym's lance was fat, her face androgynous and pale as a reflection of Kathyn's own. Their eyes met in the shimmering air between them, and the restless hardness in his womb seemed to press up against his heart and his head lightened and his life seemed to enter into her and her light into him, and for a moment they switched places, and it was he who was looking down from his kaleidoscope cage onto the pair coupling in the pew below, the older boy panting and dishevelled, passion warring with prudence, reverence with lust, his silver veil slipped down to his shoulders and copper hair coming loose in little licks of fire, white face flushed so dark his freckles were invisible, swallowed up in crimson, eyes wide with alarm, excruciatingly conscious of their surroundings. While the younger one was somehow calm even in the blue-hot frenzy of his fucking, hoisting up his hips with an automatic animal ease, expression and movements both languid and intent, and absorbed wholly in his brother and the tight-wet grind of the pulsing column of his prick into his sopping cunt.

For a moment they were one, saint and sinner, guardian and defiler, watcher and condemned, and he was underneath the dragon and kissing it, swallowing its fire while it mated him, scorching his fingers on its scales while it destroyed him with the blade-sharpness of its cock. And she was with him, her arms around his shoulders and comforting him as he wept on Willym's prick, telling him that all would be well, and there was no sin in love, and other things that made no sense, and he kissed her too, for she was his sister and mother, for he knew her face, and his own in hers.

He felt the fuck-warmth spreading from the forbidden places inside him to the borders of his body, to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his hair. He felt the radiance surging within as the fire of Heaven, and his brother's staff and rod as the mount of his transfiguration, and his prayers for mercy and murmured moans of pleasure were jumbled together in one ecstatic litany of, `Oh God, oh God, oh God!'

There came a crash of thunder that made Kathyn jump on his brother's dick, that made him clench up enough to tip him over the edge. He bent low over the pew in front of them and bit into the age-streaked wood to stifle his cry as he spilled into his petticoats. Jesus, forgive me. Oh Lord, forgive me.

Willym pulled him back roughly onto his cock, mashing his huge, free-swinging balls into Kathyn's smaller ones, panting and gnawing at his back as if he meant to rip through his dress with his teeth. Kathyn tried instinctively to get away, before his dress was ruined, but Willym hauled him in close, clutching him like a drowning man as he ground his cock all the way into his arse, face buried in Kathyn's shoulder.

Then he went very still. His prick somehow, impossibly, swelled inside Kathyn's guts, preparing to unleash what Kathyn knew would be a come-flood of truly Biblical propprtions.

But Willym made no move to pull Kathyn off him. He stayed hilted to the bollocks inside his cunny, chuffing against his neck.

Get off now! He told himself, even as the stupid, irrational part of his brain that lived below the waist begged him to stay put and soak up all of his brother's hot, potent sperm; even as his womb ached for his brother's virile load and his nipples tingled for the babies his brother could give him, if Kathyn would only let him.

He overruled that primal voice with difficulty, and clambered off Willym, his cunt already mourning the loss as his brother's cock flicked out with a schlup and a spray of fluids. He plumped himself down on the pew in a sweaty huff, feeling utterly disarrayed and almost deranged.

He stared at Willym's slick, twitching cock in stupefaction, struggling to process what had just happened. Then he saw the veins on the shaft bulge and the hole at the end open so wide you could almost have fit the pen down it. Kathyn's eyes widened as well. Oh Lord!

Just in time he dove down to cover the tip with his mouth, catching the hot volleys and saving the chapel from an even worse desecration. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked ferociously on the head, at the same time pumping Willym's tool with his hand, trying to get it all out of his balls and into his mouth as quickly as possible lest someone—lest the preacher! —notice anything. But it was only Willym's second come-off of the day (save those he had undoubtedly pumped all over Kathyn in the night) and with Willym it was never over in just a few spurts. He came and came and blimmin came, so Kathyn had to swallow repeatedly just to stop it spilling out of his mouth. He was sure the brat was somehow coming more just to—just to be a brat.

When the endless fountain started to dry up, Willym put his hand on his head and fucked his mouth with a few quick jabs, just to get out the last drops of his seed, before finally releasing him.

Kathyn sat up, wiping at his mouth with a shaky hand, feeling like his insides had been turned to soup.

At the front of the chapel the Canon was still proceeding in his sermon, placid and unperturbed, and the heads of the congregants nodding slightly as they listened, or pretended to, unaware of the enormity that had been committed behind their backs.

He looked behind the preacher at the altar and the simple driftwood cross that hung above it, austerely plain amidst the gaudy colour, and his heart almost broke. The afterglow of his own pleasure was like a lead weight in his stomach, like an acidic canker dissolving his breast from within. He wanted to weep but he was too ashamed. This was the one line he had never allowed Willym to push him across, and now...

Oh Lord, what have I done?

Willym stooped down and picked the pen up off the floor—the one that had been in his quim--and proffered it to Kathyn.

When Kathyn only glared, he smirked, licked it and put it in his own pocket.

He made no move to put his prick away, so Kathyn reached over with a tut and did it himself. Willym deliberately made the hot-blooded serpent twitch in his hand a few times, but allowed him to tuck it back inside his trousers, where it still made an unmistakeable outline in the worn black cloth.

As the service dragged on, Kathyn's emotions settled. He'd come to understand it wasn't a deliberate thing on his brother's part. Willym didn't do it out of malice. In a way that was the worst of it. It was like he didn't even care, like he was operating on a level of such immediate animal appetites that he'd fuck Kathyn anywhere, whenever the whim arose, regardless of what he was doing or who else was around. That he was so used to having Kathyn at the drop of a belt at home, it didn't even occur to him that that didn't hold true when they were in public.

In the beginning, Willym had come to him shyly, bashfully, literally trembling at the chance to touch his beloved brother, and received each kiss like manna from heaven—a one-time wonder: cherished, but never to be expected again. But somewhere down the track he had got greedy with getting, and Kathyn with giving. Now he claimed Kathyn's body as a matter of right—the idea that he did not have unrestricted access to it, did not own Kathyn absolutely, would not have been outrageous to him; it would simply have been incomprehensible. If in future Kathyn did try to re-establish some constraints--to tell Willym that it was he who'd decide when and where and how often, and that if for whatever reason he didn't want to, that was it, his refusal was final--he could just see what would happen. Willym wouldn't be angry, or shout at him, or beat him, as other husbands would. He'd do something far worse. He'd simply laugh, and maybe ruffle Kathyn's hair or pinch his cheek, then pick him up or push him down and take him anyway -- not meanly, not to hurt him, or even to punish him, but just because he could. To prove that he could. And as long as he could, he would.

And the worst thing about it was that it was Kathyn's own fault. One by one, he'd allowed all the barriers between them to be broken down—emotionally, mentally, physically. And for some reason in his folly he'd imagined Willym would still retain some inhibitions when they were outside the home. He was now being very forcefully proved wrong.

When they were alone, it was like they inhabited a self-contained, sealed world of each other, in which nothing they wanted was wrong and there was no law but love. For Kathyn that bubble burst when they stepped out the door. But for Willym it seemed to still be there, like he was so wrapped up in Kathyn he didn't even register the presence of other people. Or maybe he just didn't care.

Or maybe he doesn't have a bubble, and never did. Maybe the whole world is his bubble, and so he doesn't have to choose. Maybe that's what it means to not know the meaning of fear.

Now it was his turn to watch Willye, who was leaning forward with his chin resting on his arms, which were in turn crossed over the back of the pew in front of them, looking ahead to the front of the chapel. Looking ahead with his eyes azure-bright and cloudless, calm, keen and steady, showing no sign of the struggle that buffeted the walls of Kathyn's breast. His hair, still untidy from slumber, frothing like bloody surf over that magnificent, unfurrowed brow, behind which lay that immaculate brain, calm and clear as a windless ocean, untroubled by waves of reflection or remorse; free of guilt, free of thought.

He doesn't think; he lives. And he loves me.

Dawn crept in, a sullen, shabby dawn, glittering wanly over the chapel's million broken mirrors. It advanced reluctantly along the floor like a tardy tide of light, washed up the walls, skipped across the vaults of the ceiling, and the glass ship caught fire.

 

At home Kathyn served luncheon, to which Willym sat down with an ill grace.

He surveyed the cold meats, cold jellies, cold puddings, cold pies, cold custards and said, voice low, eyes not leaving the table, `Must be the only house in Highmouth where a man canna get a hot dinner on a Sunday.'

After his outburst of innocent ardour in the kirk he had compressed into a flat mood that lay like a congealed skin over a reservoir of slow-simmering resentment, produced by the misery of his hangover and his sleeplessness and the misery of knowing, knowing in his bones as a sailor can, that the weather was changing and he must shortly be called back to the ship and the capricious green-haired lady who was his ultimate mistress. If it seems perverse that the pain of being parted from his only love manifested itself in bitterness toward that loved one, that is too often the way of things. Though it may have been only that Willym had for a much longer time than a morning, or a week, been coming to the end of his tether, and whoever happened to be nearby was going to catch the recoil when it finally snapped.

Kathyn stood up from the table with a clatter. He stared for a trembling moment at Willym, who obstinately refused to meet his eyes. Then he took his plate and threw it into the sink. Somehow he didn't feel hungry anymore.

`Aye, you do that, my love', said Willym, still low. Low like a gutter-crab crouched at the foot of a stair. `You just carry on like that, and see what comes.'

Kathyn's face, as it quivered back at him from the kitchen window, underwent a change that would have been a revelation to Willym. It was a revelation to himself. He turned around holding a piece of the plate from the sink and hurled it at Willym's head. Willym dodged it almost lazily, one arm swinging round to hang over the back of the chair, and looked at Kathyn with a contemptuous expression that for a moment filled him with an unbelievable fury. Then almost at once it dissolved into bottomless remorse.

In a blink he was on his knees beside Willym's chair, sobbing into his brother's pant-leg, hand trembling, without thinking, into his lap, seeking there the only welcome it was sure of. When Willym pushed it off, he put the rest of himself in its place.

Willym looked stern, but covered his mouth with several warm kisses, as if he couldn't help himself. Kathyn clung to his neck, sobbing still harder.

`I'm sorry--I didn't mean to—I love you so much—Willye, please, don't be—I'm so sorry...' He felt worse than he ever had. He couldn't believe he'd done that, he who'd never raised a hand to anyone in anger, and to his own dearest, darlingest Willye! What was happening to him?

`Hush, hush, sweetling.'

Kathyn drew in a shaky breath, and Willym's voice was by no means entirely steady as he soothed him. `There now. There now, love. You just wait, I'll have these tears out of thee.'

Kathyn looked up and saw his distorted reflection in the dining room window, craggy and red-faced from crying. He buried his face in Willym's neck again and Willym kissed at his ear and temples. At the same time his hands kneaded Kathyn's buttocks, and the firm shaft of his cock was a springing weight against Kathyn's crotch. He bore down it, is if he could grind it into him through his clothes, needing it inside him, needing to be sure.

And Willym knew without telling what he wanted, and was as ready to give it to him, for he knew better than most that a good stiff tupping was the quickest and the sweetest way to make up a quarrel.

His hands didn't want to leave his brother's plump, squeezable cheeks, and Kathyn's didn't want to leave his shoulders, so Willym flexed his todger with all the muscles of his groin, popping it through his half-open broadfall by sheer force of randiness. Kathyn's knickers he made quicker work of, reaching up under Kathyn's skirts and tearing the damp material away from his slick-soaked arse like a bit of scrap linen, tossing them onto the table where they landed with a wet plap. There, let that teach him for hiding his cunny away from him. He ought not to have been so lenient as to let him wear them in the place, but that'll change, he thought, starting from right this fucking minute.

That done, there was nothing left between his cock and Kathyn's cunt, its eternal home, but a few inches of air that vanished in an instant. Kathyn's cries choked off and his eyes strained open as so many inches of his brother's arm-girth prong were pushed up into his torso.

`There you go, get my cock in thee. Come on, there she goes, bitch. Ah now, no need for tears.' He continued to fuck Kathyn as he sobbed, the cutlery and crockery rattling each time his knees hit the table on an upward thrust. Let all his china and silverware shake themselves to pieces—he wasn't stopping till he'd fucked the sadness out of his brother, till he'd raped him happy again.

`Shh, shhh, calm down, love. Dinna think about nothing, just my cock in thee. Feel how big it is, love? Feel how it's stretching and hurting thee? Thou hast been a naughty little cunt, but my prick'll punish thee right.'

`Mmm-mm-mm', grizzled Kathyn as Willym's big balls went plap-plap-plap against his backside, and his huge randy man-rod did its best to turn his arse inside out, feeling like it flipped his stomach over with each stab.

And, by some old, deep magic of the flesh, it did work. It did calm him.

Willym's arms were sturdy as anchor-chains about him, and his cock was a pressure everywhere inside that distracted him from the storm in his head, and warm like a cinder-stake, heating him from the core, unfailingly hard and infinitely comforting. Slowly the sobs turned into moans, and by the time he came his eyes were dry.

 

Kathyn stood over the sink, holding the shards of the plate. It had been one of Grandam's. He called it his Sabbath plate, since that was the only day he used it. The delicate rose porcelain was set with pieces of glass like little multicoloured windows, edged and threaded with gold. It was their great-great-Grandad who had brought it back, he remembered, from some long-ago whose name had been forgotten.

As a child, loving pretty things, and hating to see them sit unused and gathering dust, he had never understood why Grandam never let them be brought out of the china cabinet, no matter how often he begged. But she always said, smiling, that she was saving them for when the Empress came to tea. Which event Kathyn, who had been very young, had thereafter steadfastly looked forward to, and almost entirely for the chance of seeing the tea-set in use. The Emperor and Empress had been but names to him then; the grandest person he'd seen in the flesh was the brother-in-law of the Master Attendant of the Port of Highmouth, who had a house in the mountains near the village. The brother-in-law of the Master Attendant was still the grandest person he'd seen. And that plate had been the only piece of Grandam's set that survived.

He didn't cry again. He picked up the pieces, wrapped them in newspaper and put them in the dust-chute.

They didn't see each other for the rest of the day, until in the evening Kathyn came into the parlour. As soon as he opened the door he started coughing from the pungent odour that filled the room.

The room was full of smoke. His first thought was that there had been a fire, and his eyes went round the room in methodical panic, searching for Willym. When he found him, however, sitting on the settee, he saw that the smoke was coming from his pipe.

It was a far stronger smell than he was used to, acrid and earthy, yet carrying a whiff of the ocean, and something deeper, and darker, something that seethed and boiled in the cauldron of his belly and made—he grabbed between his thighs, forcing his tacket down again.

Good grief, what was that smell?

Willym was in the dressing gown Kathyn kept for him, which Kathyn liked because it had no tie and so hung open at the front. His prick was stiff against his flat belly, the bell-end tapping the mermaid tattow on the left side of his abdomen. He gently dragged on it in a corkscrew motion as Kathyn watched.

When Willym saw Kathyn marching toward him his eyes lit up—though they were somehow clouded, as if the smoke had got into them. When he came near he left off wanking, stuck his pipe between his teeth and tried to pull him into his lap, down to his rigid, leaking tadger.

But Kathyn was having none of it. All afternoon he'd been praying and studying the Scriptures and the Catechisms and Confessions, and repenting thoroughly for the wickedness they had committed earlier in the church, and he was determined the rest of the Sabbath Day, at least, would be kept holy. Even if one of them had to sleep on the chaise. `Oh, nay. Nay, there'll be no more lakin on the Lord's Day. And no drinkin, smokin or swearin, neither.'

`I'm not smoking', Willym said, falling back onto the settee with a pout.

`Oh, you are not? And I suppose that'—he tried not to cough and failed—'is not tobacco.'

`Nay. Tis a new thing. They call it—' Willym paused, blushed, and said, `They call it mermaid's moss. And they dinna mean what grows in her garden.'

Now Kathyn was close enough to see a paper packet containing some kind of dried plant-matter on the seat beside Willym. In colour it was not unlike the seaweed flakes Willym had given him for the merdle. Kathyn shook his head. Where had he been hiding this?

Then he remembered the false-bottom box and the overpowering stench of glue. Something like dread stole over him, though he could not yet say why.

`And what's this `moss' do, eh?' he asked, inching forward, looking for an opening to grab the stuff. Straight down the dust-chute it was going and then, as for Willye--he may be nineteen, but his ears were looking very boxable.

`Does all sorts, what I hear.' While he talked Willym had a hand back on his prick, pulling on it, as if to make it longer, Heaven forbid. The other was cradled under his testicles, and as Kathyn watched he gave them a little jiggle. Kathyn had seen Willym bring himself to ejaculation just by doing that. His voice was scratchy and deeper than Kathyn had ever heard it. 'Makes ye horny.'

`As if you need it', Kathyn scoffed, but his insides were on fire and his hole was quivering.

`It makes me see things. Oh, all sorts of wonderful things, darling-dove. Did you know, across the sea there's places where it is summer all year, and rains warm, like bathwater? Just think, beaches of warm fine sand like feather-down, all colours of the rainbow. And folk there wear no clothes, and have no husbands or wives, but all lie down together...'

A long pull, and when he exhaled nothing came out again. Then he looked straight at Kathyn, his smoke-grey eyes both seeming to see him and not see him at the same time. Or to see him as something else entirely...

`What you thinking, Willye?' Kathyn said in a warning voice. That look on his brother's face had never boded aught but mischief.

`I'm thinking o' thee in a grass skirt. Dancing for me like one o' them brown girls. Dancing on me lap, on me prick, and all the brown boys watching, but they cannot have thee. They may look, but only I can touch.'

`What a foul fancy', Kathyn said, though it created a twinge in his nethers also.

`It's a devil's weed right enow.' Willym said it in a tone of such sententious warning, as from an old reformed roué, that it made Kathyn smile.

He stood up and his prick stood straight out in front of him, more rigid than Kathyn had ever seen it. It was a raging red all over, right down to the balls, and as he strode toward Kathyn it didn't sway or bounce at all, despite its ridiculous length, only twitching ever so slightly, as if about to fire off then and there. It could have been carved from red marble, if it weren't for the steady throbbing of the thick veins and the gooey translucent stuff that was audibly splattering onto the floor. All in all, Willym was so violently worked up that for once it scared Kathyn rather than enticing him.

`Makes me think devilish things, aye, and do em.'

All at once he made a grab for Kathyn, and Kathyn, shocked by the suddenness of the action, ducked aside without thinking. Willym fell over in front of the fire, very nearly landing in it.

He clumsily pushed himself onto his hands, blinked, and then instead of cursing, laughed, merry as a babe. He stared straight ahead, and his eyes were now blank and blue as if he were one. `What pretty colours the fire makes. Come and see, Kathy!'

Kathy. He hadn't called Kathyn that since he'd been old enough to understand why his brother didn't want their mother's name.

Willym watched the flames with the cunning of a patient hunter. `Just hold on, Kathy, I'll catch you a nice green one—it'll be lovely in your hair. There!'

He darted his hand out. Kathyn caught it just in time. `Don't put yer hand in the fire, you idjit!' And he was so exasperated he gave Willym a clip over the ear, just as if he really had been a child again.

Willym slowly touched his ear. Tears gathered in the points of his eyes.

`You hate me', he whispered. `Kathy hates me. Oh. Oh no.' He put his head in his hands and moaned.

Kathyn moaned as well, fond, frustrated, frightened. `No, I don't hate you, Willye. I love you, all right? Now just calm down. For goodness' sake, I love you, now be quiet and go to bed.'

But instead of pulling Willym up, Kathyn found himself pulled down. He landed on his backside with an Ooof! and Willym immediately twined his arms around him, burying his face in his stomach.

`I had a dream about you', he mumbled.

`That's nice, Willye, now let--'

`Oh, Kath, I dreamt thy belly was as big as a buoy. And it was a boy. Yours and mine.'

He continued to lean his weight into Kathyn, until he was tipped awkwardly on his back and Willym was looming over him. His pupils were huge, the irises so dark they no longer looked blue. They were like sinkholes beneath the surface of the ocean.

He stroked Kathyn's belly, and then down between his legs. `And as soon as the baby was born, I was set on having me another one, right then. And thou did not want it, but I did it anyway. And I will too.' His hand clenched over Kathyn's groin.

As much on instinct as from conscious anger, Kathyn lashed out, smacking him in the face.

Willym reared back, the expression passing over his face more one of disbelief than hurt. But it allowed Kathyn to get up and get away.

He stood facing his brother, breathing heavily, head swimming from the smoke and the emotions roiling through him. He wanted—to turn back time, to hit Willye again, to get on his knees and beg forgiveness, to go to bed and wake up to find it had all a dream. Most of all, he wanted to be sick.

Willym got to his feet more slowly. He spoke slowly, and low, as if to himself. His erection—and somehow this was the strangest and most terrifying thing of all—had not flagged. `What sort of man am I if I cannot rule me own household? If I cannot have me own way wi me own flesh and blood?'

Kathyn stumbled backwards--he hoped towards the door; he dared not look to see, for Willym was advancing on him with every step.

Willym picked up the pipe from where it had fallen on the floor and sucked on the mouthpiece. When he inhaled, his whole face glowed, but an unhealthy glow, as of a man with a fever. His cock spasmed with it, seeming—oh, that awful smoke must have been doing his head in, for it seemed to grow with each inhalation, and the pre-fuck came in little fountaining spurts that Kathyn would have taken for piss were it not for its thickness and silver colour.

As for Kathyn, his head and heart both ached and his pricklet—when he looked down it was making a clearly-visible tent in his skirt. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to grow very tall, and the ceiling, the door, the floor—all at once all of them were very far away.

`Throw that reeking thing away, Willym', he panted. `Oh, I wish you'd never come home.'

He'd meant to say, I wish you'd never come home at all if it's in such a state, but for some reason his mouth stopped there.

The words stopped Willym in his tracks. For a moment his face was an open wound, gaping with a hurt deeper than any Kathyn had ever seen in it. Then it twisted into rage. `Do ye? Do ye? Is that what ye wish, is it?

`Oh, no, Willye, that's not what I meant, you--'

`Oh belt up', Willym said in a voice of ugly rage. `Or I'll belt you.'

Kathyn's eyes were inundated with tears. How had it come to this? Three years longing for each other and now they were fighting?

`Oh, go on with thee then—have a good bawl. That's all yer good for, tisn't it—cryin and cantin and cooking cold suppers. And tuppin—aye, yer good for that an all. About all you'll be good for when I'm done wi thee, bitch!'

Despite the cruelty of Willym's words there was a desperation behind them that softened some of their sting. He sounded on the verge of tears himself, but his face was wild.

Kathyn made to reach out to him, but Willym grabbed his wrist and bent it back as if he meant to snap it.

It was no good. Their calm seas had run to ground, and now they were wind-over-tide, anchorless and rudderless, and no turning about.

Now it was Willym's turn to lean in, stooping over his face, as if he would kiss him, but there was that ghastly pipe in the way, billowing that vile, maddening smoke. If only he could get Willym away from it...

He seized the pipe, ripped it from Willym's mouth and tossed it behind him. There was a thrill of triumph...

And the next instant the world whipped to one side. When it swung back on centre Willym was holding a clenched fist: he had caught him with a closed-handed blow to the face.

He lifted a hand to his cheek. He couldn't feel anything, not even pain—it was like touching someone else. But when he brought it away there was blood on his fingertips.

He looked up at Willym's face and saw...not surprise, not regret--nothing but a wilderness of untamed emotion. What had happened on his birthday had been play, even if of a rough sort. But now, for the first time Kathyn thought that he did not know his brother. If the creature before him was his brother at all, and not some demon that had stolen his skin.

Willym had stopped shouting, but his silence had a harshness of its own. He was breathing hard, like an ox vexed to the point of goring its driver.

He folded Kathyn over the back of a chair, the leafy scrollwork at the top digging painfully into his gut. He tore at Kathyn's dress, using his fingers like claws; he wasn't just trying to get Kathyn naked, but deliberately trying to ruin it, to cause as much damage as he could.

For once Kathyn wasn't wet at all, but Willym had never been harder; he blunted his way in by brute force, shearing apart Kathyn's reluctant flesh with the red-hot knife of his prick.

When a sailor used to bending his body to the mastery of hundreds of tons of wood and sail turned it instead on another man, much smaller and weaker than himself, it was like an ape wrestling a hamster. Only he wasn't using his fists but his prick, using it as a weapon, a hammer, a bludgeon, raining merciless blows into the tenderest parts of his body, bruising his stomach and kidneys and liver as if he meant to smash them to a pulp, goring him on his harpoon, coring him like an apple.

At the end of one thrust that felt like it would puncture right through his stomach and out the other side, he pulled out too far and Kathyn slipped off his cock (the slick bell-end stinging as it whipped up out of the smashed-up ring of his arse), down to the floor.

Willym knelt down behind him, grunting like a troll and put his prickhead up at Kathyn's pucker.

Kathyn kicked him in the face.

Willym rolled off him with a shout, clutching the side of his head. In a trice Kathyn was on his feet, dashing across the room, making for the door and the stairs beyond.

It brought a profound feeling of dislocation, to be running for his life from his own brother in his own home, like some horrible dream.

But this was no dream, and the heavy footsteps and harsh pants behind him were not from his imagination.

He knew he was only making it worse for himself if (when) Willym caught him, but he couldn't let him do it, couldn't let him ruin everything they had built between them in one mad moment of lust, not after being careful so many years.

If he could get into the bedroom closet, he could lock himself in that and stay there, all night if he had too, till Willym calmed down and came to his senses.

He had just made it into the room, slamming the door behind him, and was scrambling over the bed to the wardrobe, when the door burst open again. It smashed against the wall with a tremendous crack, then dangled awkwardly from one hinge like a broken arm, a huge splintering dent in the middle of the teak panelling.

He collapsed where he was on the bed, sobbing and gasping, seeing there was no sense in hiding. If Willy had done that to the bedroom door, the closet could offer no refuge.

He was terrified, yes, but also bewildered, angry and grieved beyond measure that he should be terrified of his own brother, his own dear Willye, his nearest blood and truest love, whom he adored more than anyone in the world, and who adored him right back. It couldn't be true. How could everything in the world have gone wrong in one night?

Willym stalked toward the bed, kicking over chairs as he came, pulling things down off shelves, out of drawers, making as much mayhem as he could.

The edge of a rug skidded up under his foot and he tripped, cracking his forehead on the leg of an end-table he had knocked over.

He got up quickly, angrier, and hornier than ever. Oh, the little brach was going to get it.

She had hurt him, wounded him right to the core—when he looked down he could see the gaping hole over his heart, spilling blood over his chest. She had hurt him and he was going to hurt her back. Hurt her so deep with his cock she'd never fight or speak again.

He stumbled forward, forcing his way through the billowing storm of colour that flooded the room, and surfed around him. At first there had been many colours, golds and greens and pinks and blues, but now it was all in shades of bright, eviscerating red.

He had careened through a house on fire in search of the one source of water. And now he'd found it.

It was like an actual burning flame, consuming him invisibly from the inside. His whole body was bursting with a boiling brew of spunk and he had to let it out before he was scalded to death. He could feel it surging up the shiny bronze spigot between his legs, pressing burningly against the hole at the end, but he gripped it sternly. It mustn't come out till it was inside the sow's womb, till the sperm-seeds could spark and bloom and bud in her inner forest.

In the whole red room there was but one relief, one spot of blue—on the bed. A trembling silvery form like an angel of the depths and God but he was going to fuck it so hard, just fuck it right to death and back to life again, fuck it till it burst from all the babies he crammed into it.

The fire swelled within him every step he took; he was so ragingly turned-on he had to grip himself again to keep from spending as he walked. The mere motion of his body, the brush of the air over the crown of his prick and down to the hot-lead lumps of his balls, was almost enough to set him off.

He launched himself at the bed and fell on her and crushed her mouth against his and it was too late he was fucking coming, fucking squeezing his bollocks out through his cock, coming so fucking hard it hurt like hell itself. He felt the scorching seed spray out of him, surging up his length and falling over the quivering blue bed-nymph in little orange drops, like magma from a volcanic explosion.

He'd hardly waited till the last salvos jerked out before he shimmied down and plunged his length into the hole in the blue, quenching its infesting fire in the cool clenching tightness of the boy, moaning aloud at the glorious relief. He could hear the steam whistling out of his ears, see it smoking up around his prick as it seared the slick purple hole like a branding iron.

The slickness of it was like balm for Willym's burning dick and he rubbed it all over, shuffling it back and forth so it got thoroughly coated and cooled. The bitchcunt reeled and writhed back and Willym enjoyed the sensation of movement on his prick, the way the muscles shifted and tightened around him, threatening to milk out another climax not even a minute after the last one, which had barely taken the edge off.

He jammed her shimmering coral legs up behind her ears and gave it to her proper—so hard it actually hurt his stones when they were smashed between their two bodies. With each stab of his prick the fuckthing changed forms: nymph, merdle, seal, fish; lover, brother, mother, betrayer—he fucked it through them all and fucked on, punishing, pounding and soon, soon, breeding. Willym was all prick, now; just a cock and a hole in his heart.

But on one more spirited lunge the quimfish almost slithered away, and he wasn't having none of that, not fucking again, the faithless, feckless whore, so he landed her two meaty whacks on her head and she stopped.

Now she lay still beneath him, only faintly sobbing, and boy fuck did that feel dandy. The sobs made cool blue ripples that caressed his prick like a thousand moist, dewy tongues, flicking teasingly over his bollocks and thighs, giggling as they popped and vanished into the air, which had by now subsided to a pale maroon. Josyphe fucker of Mary he was about to pop. He settled in deeper, letting all his weight fall on the smooth girlyboydoll writhing erotically on his cock, grinding his whole body against hers, feeling the bone china of her flesh crunch and splinter under the granite-steel of his bulk.

 

Kathyn could hardly credit what was happening. He could feel it, all too well, but he still couldn't believe it. He knew his brother had the stamina of a goat; had known it for a long time. He knew it was a rare swiving when he shot only once, and he'd relished having such a vigorous mate. But usually there was some respite. Not even Willym could go forever.

Yet now, it seemed, he could. It was that accursed stuff he was smoking.

Kathyn was numb, now, at least: numb from the waist down and all through the middle parts of his frame. He felt nothing, said nothing, did nothing but lie on his belly and take the worst pounding any wife had from a husband, in bed or out of it, from hand or prick; lay there and wept as his brother used him like a heap of warm fuckable flesh whose name he didn't even know.

He closed his eyes and let his mind drift. Time passed and Willym kept fucking. After a while it hurt less, even became boring, almost.

Then Willym's lunges became more erratic, his panting more desperate and Kathyn's eyes snapped open, meeting Willym's, which were clear now, and blazing with triumph.

He remembered. How could he have forgotten?

`Pull out! For sweet Jesus' sake, Willye, I beg you, pull out.'

Willym did not pull out. If anything, he pushed in, so deep his firm bollocks actually sunk in partway to Kathyn's thoroughly fucked-out arse. He was moving too fast for Kathyn to feel anything in detail, but there was a spreading warmth inside him, and definitely an increase in wetness.

Then there was a loud bang, and Kathyn would have jumped if he'd been able to move. Willym had punched the wall. That was all the confirmation Kathyn needed. He'd done it, then. He'd—oh Lord.

Willym panted and slowed, but still kept thrusting, dragging his prick almost all the way out before bashing it in again with vicious jerks of his pelvis, hips smacking Kathyn's cheeks like a blow from his open hand. Warm, sticky fluid slopped out around his prick and oozed down Kathyn's thighs, as if he'd needed more confirmation. So much of it, and yet more was within him. He couldn't even think about what it meant. He was too exhausted to think of anything.

`No y'don't, you whore', Willym growled. `You're goin t'take my seed and have my fuckin bairns, if I have to lay it in ye wi a boathook.'

Willym stopped thrusting altogether, but spend continued to dribble out of Kathyn's arse, and he swore in frustration. He tried at first to pinch Kathyn's pucker closed around his dick, but this only made Kathyn squeal. Then he pulled out entirely with a disgusted noise and put his fist up against Kathyn's hole to stop his come seeping out, knuckles kneading over the inflamed muscle. But there was so much it still leaked out around his fist.

He slapped Kathyn's cunt contemptuously. `What the fuck is the good of this? Eh? Like a gutted fish. Can't even hold a man's cream. Just shitting it out all over the fuckin bed. Do I have to stitch ye up just so you'll keep it in?' Another cruel slap, this time swiping over Kathyn's head. Kathyn sobbed harder and tried to flatten himself to the bed to escape Willym's blows, but that just made him pummel him several times in the back and shoulders.

Kathyn didn't care; let him do what he wanted. He'd already done his worst, the one thing he swore not to. Nothing else mattered now.

Willym looked more clear-headed, but no less furious. And no less randy.

He picked a belt up off the floor where it had fallen from a drawer, and Kathyn skittered back, almost falling off the bed, shielding his face with an arm.

But Willym didn't send the leather strap with the steel buckle at the end hurtling toward him. Instead, staring down in careful concentration, paying no need to Kathyn for the moment (having accomplished his task and knowing he wouldn't dare to run away), he wrapped the belt around his cock in a kind of spiral, somehow contriving to cinch it. There were silver studs all down the leather. It no longer resembled an organ of generation, but an implement of torture.

Willym looked up at Kathyn and grinned.

And Kathyn found he did care, in fact. He cared a lot.

`Willye...Willye, no, don't even think of it. Are you mad? If you put that inside me you'll—you'll get no babies at all. You'll ruin me.'

Willym flexed his prick and raised his fist and Kathyn shut his mouth. He held himself as still as he could while trembling, braced for the blow to fall.

It fell, but not on his head. With an infuriated growl, Willym punched Kathyn in the hole. The dull bloom of agony suddenly unfurled into an incandescent brightness that ate up what little reserve of strength or sanity remained to him. He felt the world sort of slipping sideways, and knew he was about to faint.

He flung a hand out behind him to steady himself, but it settled on air. Then he was toppling backward over the side of the bed, landing on his head with his neck curled at an awkward angle, arse in the air. He was about to roll himself over and away when a meaty hand slapped down on his calf.

Surprisingly, it did not drag him back onto the bed but simply held him in place while Willym skidded up and loomed over him, preparing to sink his newly embellished prick into his hole, which was already twinging in anticipation

`Willye, please, no. Not that, I beg you—ah—ahh!'

He'd begged Willym not to tup him before, but always in play, never in earnest; he, fool that he was, had thought that made a difference. But Willym hadn't listened then, and he didn't listen now.

He hurled himself over the side of the bed, as if he meant to fall down with Kathyn, but caught himself on his hands, bracing himself with his arms on either side of his head, letting gravity as much as anything drive his cock straight down, deep into Kathyn's aching womb.

The only mercy Kathyn had then was numbness—the numbness and the spots of blackness that swallowed and released him every few seconds when Willym stabbed in.

In-between, in the unbearable interludes of lucidity, he could not escape it: the awful, unnatural tightness and fullness, the leather scraping and sandpapering, the little studs stabbing and slicing; the knowledge that he was being maimed in some unseen but sadistic and permanent way. He was conscious it was happening, but it was as if it were happening to someone else. The connection between his body and brain had been broken, maybe when Willym hit him once too hard.

Staring helplessly upward as he was, spine almost snapping from the strain, he could not escape Willym's eyes.

They weren't human eyes. They weren't animal eyes either, though they would have felt safer, even the pitchy eyes of a shark or the frameling eyes of a tiger. They were—and Kathyn realised he had known this all along, but only knew he knew it now—the eyes of the sea itself. And never was it told that she took pity on any man...

Willym moved energetically, as if it were a demented game, bouncing himself with his feet on the mattress, lifting up and dropping down again, dropping that tool of pain right into Kathyn's core. The bulge in his guts now came out so far that when Willym jabbed in it intruded blurrily into his vision, like one's nose when one looked down at it cross-eyed.

Was this making love? Was it even fucking anymore? It all felt so wrong.

Willym did not seem satisfied either, irritation distorting his features even as he came. `Ach, no fuckin good. Too loose, yer slut.'

He did not so much pull out as peel Kathyn's chafed, bleeding cunt off his prick, the rough edges of the leather rasping against Kathyn's rim, several careless streams of come splashing over Kathyn's face, one hitting his eye and making it smart.

Willym hauled Kathyn back onto the bed like a slaughtered whale being hoisted into the deck of a ship. He unwound the belt and Kathyn really expected this time he would start thrashing him with it. Instead, he roughly turned him over on his face, settling his targe deep into his bowels as he looped the belt around Kathyn's neck. He gave it a brief yank, testing it, then hauled on it so he was yanked violently upward. his back bending into an almost perfect C.

He felt all Willym's weight on him, jostling into his arse, rubbing him raw as he leveraged Kathyn's own body against him, using the belt to drag him back by the neck even as his hips and the huge gut-rending cock between them shoved him forward with each violent thrust.

Willym was going to break him. There was no doubt in his mind. He would wake with Kathyn's cold, bloody corpse. Kathyn wept now not for the pain, which had gone past being pain and was now simply the state of matter his body inhabited, as a fish breathed water, but for his brother, and the guilt and grief he would endure for the remainder of his life. He did not weep for himself; now that he knew his brother hated him, there was nothing left to weep for.

There was a creak of leather and the belt pulled tight, sawing into his skin. Kathyn's eyes closed and did not open again.