Page 47 of Riding A Cock-Horse
“No, we leave the Secondary here with older Nessie, and we all gotogether. There's safety in numbers.”
I know she's right, but I hate the thought of her potentially being caught by the dean or the doctor who injected her with whatever the fuck he concocted. We have no idea what's waiting on that island for us.
If we're not careful, it could spell our doom.
“Just get on my back and hold on tightly—I'm slippery when wet.”
“That's what she said,” I mutter sourly as Nestor jumps into the waters of the North Channel and shifts into his massive Tertiary form.
Alastair drove us to the shore, which was only fifty minutes away from his house. Once we got there, Nestor immediately jumped out to get in the water, along with Theo. Elise, Sian, and Jude shifted and started flying south toward the Isle of Man seconds later. Harry and Jack are waiting in their ass forms for Phineas, Dageus, Arthur, and Alastair.
“You know… I might just ride Jack again,” I say, hitching a thumb back at the land-roving group.
Nestor opens his big mouth and bellows at me, making me screech in fright.
“Ok, ok! I’m getting in!” I slowly ease into the water, terrified. “You know, you're not supposed to go to the ocean at night—there are sharks.”
Nestor gives me a look to say,‘Do you think any sharks are around me?’. To be fair, heisthe baddest predator around. Theo looks even more hesitant than me, and I can't blame the guy. He doesn't even go intolakes,and now, he's just jumping right into the ocean. I smile encouragingly at him.
“Don't worry, we've got this,” I lie, taking his hand and squeezing it.
He gives me a wan smile in return. My sweet slippery dick looks even paler in the moonlight with his blond hair nearly leached white and his big green eyes full of trepidation.
“Nestor won't let anything happen to you. Just remember what he said—stay by his flipper. You can ride it along with me. This way, we'll all stay together.”
“I'm not a suckerfish,” Theo murmurs. “It's going to be hard to keep up with your mate.”
“You’remy mate,” I counter, “and you’ve got this. You can stay in the crook of my arm. Hopefully, I don't get hypothermia!”
“You'll be fine this time of the year,” Theo reassures, and I pray to the shifter gods that he’s right.
Nestor lets out another bellow, and I know it's time to shit or git. I wade into the water and swim the rest of the way. Climbing up onto Nestor's back, I decide to pretend he's just a dolphin—people pay hundreds of dollars to ride those things, and here I'm getting a free adventure on the back of the Loch Ness Monster.
Theo shifts and flips into the water. He comes back up and snuggles up close to Nestor's side. I scoop him up towards me, making sure he's still covered in water.
“Ok!” I holler back toward the shore at the others. “We'll see you there!”
At this, Nestor takes off. It's a good thing it’s night because it would be pretty damn easy to spot a giraffe-sized neck coming out of the water with a woman clinging to it. Then again, at the speed that Nestor is going, maybe not. The man wasn't kidding—he can book it in water!
When I was a kid, my parents and I took a vacation to the Bahamas. I convinced my mom to go jet skiing with me. The foolish woman agreed—moreover, she let me drive. I'll never forget her screams of panic as I took us further and further away from the shore.
Riding Nestor is like riding a jet ski. A spray of ocean water slaps me in the face, cold, astringent, and pungent. It stings my eyes, but makes me feel alive. When I went jet skiing with my mom, we saw dark formations—shadows under the water—that I teased were for sure sharks. Smart woman that she is, my mom never let me jet ski again the rest of that vacation, but the experience always left me with a craving for exhilaration.
It's probably why I like to screw strangers so much—it gives me the same rush.
Riding Nestor’s Loch Ness Monster is similar to banging a bunch of people you don’t know at once. I wonder what kind of dark shadows lurk beneath the water, but they’re nothing compared to the monster that’s ferrying me across the Irish Sea. I check down at my arm every so often to make sure that Theo's still tucked in there. I can just barely see his scales glinting in the moonlight, but I know he's still there, safe and sound.
Nestor says we should arrive in approximately a few hours—I have no idea how far the Isle of Man is away from Scotland, but the shifter is like an aquatic mach jet! He keeps us close enough to the shore so that I can see it off to my left, but far enough away so that no one can spot us. At one point, Nestor takes us to the shore for a quick break. He shifts into his human form, as does Theo.
“What's up?” I wonder.
“Waterguard’s coming by,” Nestor answers. “We’ll just lurk here for a moment.”
I never see anything, but with my heightened senses, I can hear a boat off in the distance. It eventually passes, and we set off again. The Waterguard Incident makes me wonder how we're going to get close to the Isle of Man without any of the Tershes hearing us…
Maybe they’ll be too inland?
Of course, that would have been too easy, right? When Nestor swims up to the island’s shore, there is a pack of the most hideous looking animals I've ever seen waiting. Nestor shifts as he wades to land, cradling me—and fish Theo—in his arms. I feel so safe and protected.
