Shawn's Law (20 page)

“Conjugating verbs?” I suggested as I kissed my way down his throat to his chest.

He arched his back and allowed me further access to his neck. “It doesn’t feel like a conjugation. It actually feels like a jerk session.”

“I kiss. You kiss. He kisses. We kiss. Conjugation,” I declared. He was half leaning on me as I lay flat in the sand. I squirmed until I could get my other hand out from under our bodies and used it to slide down the back of his pants. I allowed one of my fingers to enter his crack.

“Harley? This is definitely not conjugation.” His hands were on my stomach, fingering the small smattering of hair I had there. I mentally urged him on, begging him in my mind to go further south.

I kissed him again before replying, “I jerk. You jerk. He jerks me. We jerk together.”

His cock was hard in my hand and I circled the head, smearing the liquid that I found there. It took Shawn a couple of heartbeats for his brain to catch up with what I said.

“I jerk you?” he asked me in astonishment. “You were the one who pulled me into the bushes. Shouldn’t you be jerking me?”

I shoved his shorts down over his buttocks so I could pull his cock out. It gave me more room to work with, plus I could feast visually on him. “You owe me,” I reminded him. “I’ve already given you a blow job this morning.”

His hands finally made it inside my swimming shorts. I was a bit put out that he’d taken so long, but I guessed when it was Shawn, the waiting was worthwhile. My dick joined the party, rubbing up alongside my hand where I was tugging on Shawn’s dick. Shawn took mercy on me and pushed my hand away so he could grasp both of us in his palm. It was a bit dry, especially with the salt and sand we were both coated in, so I spat on Shawn’s hand to help with the lubrication. I groaned as the sensation was suddenly twenty times better.

“Yes, Shawn. Oh, God. That feels good.” I grabbed his arse with both of my hands and we furiously kissed while Shawn jerked us. I could feel my climax building and pulled Shawn to me, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and cupping his adorable face with my left hand. I thrust up into his embrace.

“Argh.”

I loved that sound he made. I wanted to record it and play it back when I was alone and in bed.

“Yes!”

“Argh.”

“Go for it, Shawn.”

Suddenly he stopped, completely freezing in my arms and giving me a frightened look.

“What is it?” I questioned urgently. Had he heard something? Was someone coming?

“Harley? Where are your hands?”

I frowned. My hands? I was more worried about his hand around our dicks to think about my own hands. I flexed my fingers on each hand and found one on his shoulder and one threaded through his black hair. “Here and here. Why?”

“If your hands are there, then what’s touching me on my bum?”

We stared at each other for endless seconds before I raised my head and stretched my neck to peer over his body. Two black eyes stared back, unblinking. The creature wiggled its nose at me, then took a funny little hop forward, touching his whiskers to Shawn’s naked flesh.

“Harley? Please tell me that it’s not a snake?”

I bit back my smile. Shawn got all embarrassed when I laughed at his calamities. “No. Not a snake. Just a quokka,” I informed him.

He jumped a mile, scrambling over my body so that he was scrunched in the bushes on the opposite side from the little marsupial.

“Argh!”

I laughed. “Hey, buddy,” I crooned to the animal. “What are you doing here?”

“Touching my bum,” Shawn shrieked. “How dare he?”

I laughed harder. “He was just wondering what we were doing,” I soothed Shawn. “He wasn’t going to nibble your nuts or anything.”

“That’s what you think,” Shawn cried. “How do you know it’s a boy? Maybe he’s a queer quokka. Maybe he was coming over to join in?”

I tried to stifle my chuckles and gently pushed the animal away. “Go on, buddy. Move along. Nothing to see here apart from two horny blokes.” Obviously deciding we didn’t have food, the quokka moved away, bunny hopping in its quokka-like manner and slipping between the bushes. I turned back to Shawn. “He’s gone now. Do you think you can finish us off now?”

Shawn looked uncertain. My erection had softened slightly, but I was still determined to get my jerk off. My lover, on the other hand, had gone completely soft. I sighed and admitted that perhaps, since the quokka had been smelling
his
butt, he had a reason to shrivel. I palmed his shaft and tried to coax him back to arousal.

“Shawn? Baby?”

He looked at me like I had escaped from the loony bin. “You want to jerk off with a quokka watching?”

I swallowed my mirth. “He’s not watching now. C’mon. I’m dying for you over here.”

“But what if he comes back?” Shawn asked.

“As long as he doesn’t bring a camera, what does it matter?”

“But he’s watching!” Shawn cried.

“He’s an animal,” I reminded him. “They watch it all the time.”

“They don’t watch me.”

I sighed, this time in exasperation. “Shawn? We have about two minutes until your sister comes looking for us. Do you think you could forget about the quokka and give me an orgasm?”

It turned out he could.

It turned out he could also break my heart.

Shawn

Blue-ringed octopuses and trying to break up with Harley. Again. Again.

I
DIDN
’
T
mean to. Really.

Harley had the balls to ask me if I did things on purpose to get attention. I didn’t. I don’t.

Rottnest Island was beautiful, and I had been thoroughly enjoying the day when Harley ruined it for me. I was still recovering from ejaculating so hard that I nearly managed to hit a quokka with my jizz when Harley asked me to go snorkeling with him again. The underwater life at Rottnest is beautiful. Stunning. Breathtaking.

Deadly.

There had been a flippant remark asking if I could please make sure I did not get bitten by a shark again, but for the most of the day, Shawn’s Law stayed away. So Harley and I snorkeled around the rocks, searching for interesting shells to take back for the twins. Harley had a little net thing and was collecting brightly colored bits—and some rubbish he found that he wanted to dispose of properly—when I was distracted by something that was almost glowing in a little crevice. I was wading through knee-deep water and had a small yellow bucket for my collection, but the only remotely interesting thing I had found was a rock that looked like a whale. Harley declared it looked more like a penis and that I should dump it. So when I saw the glowing object, I took a closer look.

There was a tiny octopus resting in the shallow rock hollow, gently waving his legs as the waves sloshed him about. I was super excited—an octopus was ten times better than Harley’s starfish and blue rocks. The octopus was small. His head was only about two inches across, his legs about the same. He was a beautiful pale yellow color with bright iridescent spots. I carefully waded over to him, determined to take him back to show my nephews.

“Come here, little man,” I whispered, not wanting to alert Harley to my find. He would surely be impressed with me when I had this fellow in the bucket.

The little octopus didn’t agree with me, and flitted away, brushing against my ankle as he made his escape over my foot. I followed him around the rock, then managed to persuade him into my bucket with my penis/whale rock.

“Gotcha,” I exclaimed happily. Now that he was in the bucket, his blue spots seemed to glow even brighter. Zek would love him.

“What did you find?” Harley asked as he came up behind me. I turned happily and showed him my catch. He didn’t react exactly as I hoped. He jumped a mile when he saw what I had.

“Oh, fucking Jesus Christ! You’re fucking shitting me! Are you doing this on purpose, Shawn?”

“Huh?”

Harley dropped his net and very carefully took the bucket off me, holding it out from his body like it was gelignite. He took several steps away from me, then turned with a furious expression and exploded. “Shawn Ignatius O’Hara! You are going to be the death of me. I’m sure you must do it deliberately.”

The “Ignatius” part was stinging a bit, and I was making a mental note to torture my sister later for dropping that piece of information, when the second part of Harley’s rant occurred to me. “Do what?”

“This,” he shouted, nodding to the bucket.

“What?”

“This!”

“An octopus?”

“An octopus?” he asked in disbelief. “Fucking hell. It’s not
just
an octopus. You bloody well picked up a blue-ringed octopus in a kid’s sand bucket. One of the world’s most deadly creatures. It can kill you in under ten minutes. And you just scooped it up.”

I went cold all over as I noticed how close the man I loved was to this animal. “Oh. Well, give it back to me, then. I’ll let it go.”

To my horror, Harley took two more steps back. “No way. Knowing you, you’ll trip and fall face-first into the bucket. I’m not letting you anywhere near this thing.”

I was stung to think the man I wanted to impress had such a high opinion of me. Harley turned and made for the beach, taking away my deadly catch.

My heart sank. What a dunce I was that I didn’t recognize a blue-ringed octopus? What did I think an octopus covered in blue spots was called? I should call Harley back and shove my hand in that bucket. I would be doing the world a favor. I was such an idiot. The wildlife of Australia recognized that I needed to be exterminated and were out to get me. It was only because of Harley’s intervention that they were not succeeding.

I trudged after Harley, knowing he would soon realize what a mistake he’d made by dating me. I was stupid and reckless, and he’d mentioned several times that I wasn’t good for his heart. He was meaning I gave him frights, but I knew I wasn’t good for his heart in other ways too. I was a bad boyfriend and needed to work out a way to politely dump him to save him from stressing over breaking up with me. If I dumped him first, he would be sad for a while, but ultimately it would be over quicker for him.

I walked around a young boy with a boogie board playing in the shallows. “Hey, mister,” he called. “What didja find? I saw you got something. Was it good?”

I shrugged morosely. “A blue-ringed octopus. Deadly.”

His eyes opened wide in wonder before an admiring grin came over his face. “Cool!” He was racing up the beach before I could tell him it wasn’t cool at all, so I continued to follow Harley. Next thing I knew, there was a man dressed in a brown uniform in front of me.

“What’s this about a blue-ringed?” he asked.

It was the uniform that made me answer. “I caught it. It’s in the bucket.”

Suddenly there were twenty people surrounding me. There were questions being asked, and I was suddenly the center of attention. But my concentration was caught by a single thing—Harley’s stern and furious face.

I answered inquiries, smiled for photos, and recounted how I came to capture the animal, all while seeing that terrible face in my mind. Harley was angry with me.

It turned out that Shawn’s Law had placed two Rottnest Island rangers on the beach, along with two local newspaper reporters doing an article about them. Before I knew it, I was page-three news. I was photographed, my deadly catch was photographed, and then the rangers took the creature, promising to release it away from tourist areas.

I didn’t want a scene with Harley in front of the kids, so I grabbed the twins and dragged them to a clean patch of sand, and together we made sandcastles. Each time Harley tried to speak to me, I smiled and told him I was having so much fun that I would have to talk to him later. I used the kids’ presence as a barrier for the rest of the day. Even on the ferry home I managed to avoid conversation by nursing Vinnie, who promptly fell asleep in my arms.

Once Brendan and Lisa drove away, I had to concentrate on Mum. Harley had no chance to get me alone, until I finally closed my mother’s bedroom door and set the sensor alarm so I would know if she woke up.

“Shawn?”

Harley was lingering in the hallway, giving me confused looks. I
was tired and emotional, and in no mood to have a deep-and-
meaningful. “What?”

“What’s wrong? Did I do something? You’ve been ignoring me.”

I sighed and lied. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just exhausted. Go home, Harley. I’ll see you later.”

Maybe by then I would’ve worked out how to break up with him. Again.

He frowned and didn’t move. “Something’s wrong. Is it this Subiaco thing? Because I’m trying to find a solution. I promise you, I am. I’m trying to find my dad a better place.”

“I know you are. But perhaps you’re looking at the wrong path?” I meant that perhaps, instead of trying to fix the problem from his dad’s end, he should simply sever the link between his dad and me. If I were no longer a part of Harley’s life, then there would be no need for his dad to move. But I couldn’t mention that yet. I had to find a way to make Harley dislike me enough that he wouldn’t try to argue his way back into my life like last time. And I needed time to work out what that would be.