Erotica Harem

Title: "Prince Of The Sea" 

Chapter: "Prince Of The Sea - Ch 1 - (rev 1/2/13)" 

Author: Jon Michaelsen...

Plot: So far, not sure about the plot, right away we have conflict. Jonathan and his partner of ten years are having difficulty in their relationship and Jonathan is trying to fix it, to no avail.

Style & Voice: Great job here. I've always liked the way you write.

Referencing: Not much here since it's the first chapter.

Scene/Setting: Great job here, too. I can see the little cottage on the beach. I can just picture everything with ease. Yet, you didn't overwhelm with too much description.

Characters: I really like Jonathan. He seems to be a pretty calm, easy going guy. In this chapter, though, he's upset that Paul hasn't even called to let him know what is going on. Can't blame him. Paul is into getting his career back and not even thinking about their relationship. Is he being selfish or is there more going on?

Grammar: I noticed that when I put this into word to read it over that the inner thoughts aren't in italics, I'm thinking it was just a copy problem, so I'm only telling you about it here. I didn't correct it in the body of the chapter. Nothing much going on here. I marked what I found.

Just My Personal Opinion: As you know, Jon, I love this story and I've read the first few chapter several times. I just thought I'd start over for the forum. I won't overwhelm you with new edits to this, I'll mark anything that really sticks out to me. I can't wait to get to the newer chapters.

Jonathan Lemke sauntered to the far side of the verandah,and leaned over the edge to look down. The driveway that led out to the beach house from the main road contained a mixture of gravel, broken shells and sand. A rented Jeep parked next to an old railroad tie the lone vehicle. Peering inland, he saw no signs of a taxi drawing near, nor a trail of dust billowing up through the brush. Not a glimmer of the sun’s rays reflecting off an automobile, nothing.

Jonathan wondered if Paul, his partner, would appreciate the little cottage fronting the ocean that he’d rented months earlier as a surprise vacation. The past year had proved tough and Jonathan sensed tension in the relationship, a kind of drifting apart that often plagued gay pairings after a decade together. Paul’s struggles to get back on his feet and their petty arguments forcing each to their own corners had taken a toll. Two weeks in a cottage on the beach far from deadlines, cell phones and demanding clients seemed ideal, the perfect remedy to get them back on track. At least the escape from busy careers would provide the perfect oasis to rekindle their love for one another. Jonathan had thought as much when he forked over the non-refundable deposit a few weeks back, but Paul’s reaction to the gift proved more puzzling than his partner’s impulse.

Jonathan replayed in his thoughts the exchange they had over dinner last week when he sprung the news on his partner.

“Now?” Paul had asked with concern etched across his face, the tightness of his lips as though he chewed a lemon. “Are you serious?”

Jonathan had remained stoic, silenced and crushed beyond words. His chest had tightened as he sat in the restaurant inspecting food skewered on his fork.

“I’m just getting back on steady ground, Jonathan. You should know that I can’t get away right now, even if I wanted to.” Paul’s expression had turned acerbic. “Sometimes, you just don’t think.”

Clipped conversations shared over several cocktails and comments about lack of hunger had capped their evening before they headed home earlier than planned.

Where is he? Jonathan looked again toward the main road, his hands shielding the afternoon sun following an exhaustive day jetting across the continent to the coastal Georgia town of Tybee, an island twenty minutes east of Savannah. Paul wanted to take a later flight to finish a few things at the office, but he had promised to arrive in time for dinner. Jonathan glanced at his watch. The evening loomed forth and he an stood alone once again. Is he even coming?

Will you stop, Jonathan chided himself. Anxiety gripped the muscles in his chest and constricted his throat, which felt dry despite the drink in his hand. Jonathan fought to ignore the idea Paul might bail on him with some lame excuse about business coming first. Though it wouldn’t be the first time, now would it, he reminded himself. Paul wouldn’t do that to me now, not after all that has happened this year. Certainly not after the day of hell Jonathan had endured getting out to the east coast. He closed his eyes and gulped the warm, salty air into his lungs, forcing himself to relax.

The flight from LAX proved a nightmare as hordes of mid-summer vacationers had pushed their way on board the plane tugging more luggage and parcels than space in the overhead bins provided. Jonathan had watched as one after another filed through the first-class cabin and stowed their wares above his head before shoving their way to the back of the plane. Making matters worse, an hour into the flight the captain’s voice had filled the cabin through tiny speakers that sounded like the crackling and popping of a transistor radio to alert the passengers of a problem.

“Ah...folks, this is Captain Harbin from the flight deck. No reason for concern but ah, as a precaution, we’ll be diverting to Dallas-Fort Worth for a brief check of the instrument panel.”

Jonathan recalled turning from starting out across the blue horizon through the cabin window as the woman across the aisle shot her eyes toward the flight attendant preoccupied with her fingernails as though the cotton-candy sheen beheld some secret message. Others in the first-class cabin occupied themselves with their laptops or PDA’s and paid little attention to the squawking of the intercom.

“Again, just as a precaution. Likely a faulty fuse with a panel light, nothing more,” the voice reassured. “Best not to take any chances folks, so we’re going to head right on over to DFW and check things out before continuing on to our final destination.”

What a crock! Jonathan recalled how angry he got after learning the captain chose not to advise passengers that indeed, the sensors in the cockpit had alerted the crew to a problem with the landing gear, a fact he and everyone else along for the ride learned firsthand following a landing straight out of a disaster flick. It took more than a few cocktails in the airline’s clubroom to calm Jonathan’s nerves enough for him to board the continuing flight east.

Still, no call from Paul. Not even after he’d left several messages at both his partner’s office and on the cell. With everything going on and all they had been through this past year, Paul at least owed him a phone call of explanation. Goddamn him!

Shoulders slumped, head bowed, Jonathan raised his tumbler in a toast to an ocean bathed in brilliant turquoise and downed the last of the twelve-year-old scotch. He stared out across the water, despondent and aloof, like a seafaring mariner searching for land known to lie beyond the horizon. The breeze skimming the ocean’s surface cooled his cheeks and brushed the dark hairs on his chest exposed from an opened shirt. The sun conjoined with the western shore, its phosphorescent embers reaching out like long fingers to touch the sugar-white sand. The moss-draped oaks and spiny palms fronting the beach bathed in a sheath of glittery gold. Nearby tree frogs thrummed and crickets chirped as the afternoon began to yield to dusk.

A seagull floated by on the warmth of the current as insects indigenous to the area traveled in droves atop the sea of waving cordgrass. Rolling whitecaps of the ocean’s lips choreographed a symphony that crashed headlong ashore. Jonathan stared out across the water and wished on some level he could be one with the ocean to escape the realities of life threatening to suffocate him. The air smelled of salt and fish and drying seaweed as the breeze coated everything in gritty residue. He drank in the air hitting his face with eyes closed, as though the waft brushing his skin cleansed years of L.A. smog from his pores.

Hums of a tiny world abuzz lulled him and warmed his heart with thoughts of the past, long summer days enjoyed playing on the beach with pail and shovel in hand forever scooping up sand to fortify a sandcastle or surrounding moat. The memories of strolls along the beach with his family on never-ending searches for that one of a kind shell or sand dollar surged forth. He had spent his early years not far from where he stood now. The smell of salt-air and seaweed all he had known before leaving the coast to attend college at University Of Georgia. A promising career writing screenplays sent him racing to the west coast and to a life of twelve-hour days and all-night parties.

Amazing, he thought. So many years had passed with little memory of his childhood before returning to the small island after more than a decade of abandon. Being here now, the breeze jostling the fabric of his shirt and brushing past the cotton of his chinos, the sun varnishing his skin in iridescent bronze, his heart swelled in delight, like passing through doors of time into a nostalgic journey of his boyhood. Jonathan closed his eyes and drank in familiar aroma of his youth.

Why hasn’t he called?

The past year had tested the men’s relationship more than any year of their decade together. They needed this vacation, time alone outside the pressures of deadlines, e-mails, texts and cell phones, a break from the constant demands nibbling away their time without regard to their needs, aside the occasional unexpected turn of events now and again.

The first sign of things coming their way began this past February when their beloved housekeeper of many years confessed to selling secrets about their private lives to a trashy supermarket rag one day before the headlines hit the stands. The lies sold thousands of copies across country and caused a flurry of activity around the Lemke-Morley household, even threatened to derail their careers in a town that fed on lunchtime gossip. Jonathan managed to escape the scandal, but Paul had to leave his job as a publicist with a major public relations firm under mounting pressure and had to strike out on his own.

Jonathan checked his cell inspace case he’d missed a call from Paul. Nothing.

Not six months into the year, Jonathan lost his beloved grandmother to the ravages of pulmonary artery disease, the heart attack that took the woman’s life a mockery of one so selfless. Jonathan had spent months traveling back and forth to the Florida Panhandle where Mama Effie had retired to spend time with her. Her husband, Jonathan’s grandfather, had died two decades earlier, collapsing on the job after forty years sucking in carbon emissions at a heavy equipment assembly plant in Brunswick. Cleansing herself of many material items Mama Effie no longer cared for or needed, she headed to the gulf to live with her sister. Jonathan snickered as he recalled the faces of shocked family members as his grandmother had passed out heirlooms like plastic trinkets at some birthday party.

Jonathan had understood his grandmother unlike anyone in the family, supported her wishes and vehemently protected her from familial expectations. Like him, Mama Effie preferred to morn in silencecomma and if ridding herself of everything that reminded her of the only man she ever loved meant facing each day anew, then he pledged his support, regardless of the wishes of the rest of the family. Jonathan knew his grandmother like no other, like the unwritten words shared between two lovers, the unspoken truth. Mama Effie accepted him for the boy he was, and the man he was to become, unlike others in the family, including his parents.

Jonathan’s cell buzzed. Snapping out of reverie, he touched the green icon on the screen and turned inland. “Where are you?” He demanded.

A pause filled the air before familiar noises drifted through the line. A feeling of dread overcame Jonathan before Paul even spoke. “I’m in Chicago. Look, babe, I got a call from Gyllenhaal’s people, and I just—“

“Paul, you promised!” Jonathan clenched his free hand.

“I know, hon and I’m real sorry, but signing up such a client means everything to me. You know how bad things have been for me, right? I’ve mentioned many times that I need to attract bigger names in order to get my business off the ground. This could be the break I need to take off, Jonathan.”

“We discussed this, Paul. What about what we need? Our relationship?” Jonathan struggled to suppress his anger. “I booked this cottage over six months ago so that we could get away from the rat-race, you know? Spend some quality time together. Sit back and relax, take a real vacation for once, just you and me.” Jonathan wanted to unload on his partner, confess how that for months, he’d sacrificed at every turn, given in to every whim his partner had tossed his way. Sure, Jonathan knew his demands bordered selfishness, but damn it, he didn’t care anymore. Their relationship was in trouble. They needed time alone to rekindle a romance dormant for far too long. Frankly, Jonathan tired of all the bullshit.

“Paul,” Jonathan said, steadying his voice, “You don’t have to work so hard. We have plenty of funds coming in from royalties, scripts I wrote years ago, with more on the way. Last year’s writers strike guarantees us at least nine months to a year of cushion. A year off and we’d never feel the pinch. Do you hear what I am saying? Why do you have to rush off, now?”
“Jonathan, as usual you’re not listening to me. What about what I want, what I need? It’s not always all about you, you know.”

Jonathan clamped down on his lip and listened.separate these, otherwise we expect Jonathan to be speaking when it's not. “Signing Gyllenhaal is the first big chance I’ve had at being a real publicist again. No one has been willing to take me seriously on my own in this business without the bigger names, greater celebrity influence.”

Jonathan bowed his head, pinched his fingers on the bridge of his nose. “You promised,” he repeated, with a clinched fist. Paul spent more and more time away from home and now this!

“I need to go, hon. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The lined disconnected. Jonathan stood, stunned, his jaw slack. What just happened?