At Sea with Maurice

"So, you fancy him, do you?"

"No, I fancy you Maurice," I answered, trying to make a joke out of it. But I was beginning to get a little irritated with Maurice. We both knew why he'd offered me this trip home, and I was getting tired of him just not getting to it.

"But you do fancy him, don't you?" Maurice persisted. "I mean you have nothing against mixed Orientals, have you? What would you say? A fourth White Russian, half northern Chinese, a fourth Thai, I would say. And I've been around in the region taking on deck hands long enough to be a pretty good judge of that.

"Yes, I suppose that could be right. Hell, I don't anything about that. I'd only been in Singapore two weeks when you and I met."

"I was very selective, Paul. I always am," Maurice continued. If he could tell I was on the edge of irritation, he wasn't admitting it. We were in the dining room of his container ship bound from Singapore to Miami by way of India, South Africa, and up the coast of South America. "Nine days and eight nights to Mumbai, India," Maurice was saying. "Eight deckhands taken on in Singapore and exchanged in Mumbai for the run to Cape Town with a new set. In each port, a new set. Just like always. Carefully picked."

I wasn't half listening to what Maurice was saying. He owned this container ship—and apparently several others—all plying the equator route, picking up here and letting off there, enabling the exchange of goods by countries across the tropics. I guess that made him quite wealthy. He was egalitarian, though. The passenger accommodations on the ship had proven to be surprisingly comfortable and plush. He must have had at least ten well-appointed cabins for passengers beyond the ship's crew, but only he and I occupied any of these cabins on this run. And all, owner, passenger, and crew alike, took their regular meals in the common dining room.

I looked over at the sailor Maurice was prompting me to show interest in. It didn't take much effort to show interest in him. He was a well over six feet and muscle hardened, as a veteran commercial sailor had to be. Maybe thirty-five, maybe older. As Maurice noted, he seemed to have enough of the Oriental in him to be somewhat inscrutable. Certainly enough White Russian in him though to have a sturdy, if extremely well-toned, physique and a well-chiseled face. And his hearty laugh and the way the others at his table responded and accepted him—obviously a well-liked man of good humor.

David hadn't been like that. As he'd gotten older—and especially as he chose to think that I never aged along with him—and his maladies had set in, he'd gotten more ill-humored and snappish. "When will you grow into looking like a man," he'd mutter at me whenever we had a fight. But what was I supposed to do about that? There were certain attributes that made for a horse jockey type. The grand tour of Asia was supposed to make him happier. Well, that didn't happen.

"So, you fancy him, don't you? Our quarter White Russian."

"Yes, yes, I fancy him," I answered in barely controlled exasperation.

* * * *

"So, you fancy him, do you?"

"Excuse me?" I responded. Surprised to hear myself addressed. It was midday in the Raffles Hotel Long Bar, and I hadn't realized that anyone was sitting at my elbow. I was slinging gin and tonics down in some sort of wake, although I had no idea how an official wake should go. I didn't even like gin and tonics. But this is what David drank, so this is what I was drinking. It was, after all, David's wake.

"The bartender. You two have been chatting it up and you both look quite good. I thought you were working up to getting it on.

"No, no, of course not," I said. I might have been a little short with him, but the barkeep and I had been saying enough for him to know what our preferences were.

I turned and focused on the man sitting beside me at the bar who had asked me this strange question. He was maybe pushing fifty, but he didn't drive a desk, I could tell. He had that hands-on worker aspect about him. Salt and pepper hair, and a lot of it. Thick curlings at the V of his open sports shirt and matting on the backs of his thick-fingered hands where they extended from his sports coat. But he also exuded money and power. Germanic would be what I'd guess if I had to make a guess. I wasn't surprised he was chatting me up. I seem to have something that attracts these older men. David had been about his age when he had transitioned from me riding his horses to him riding me and eventually asking me to move my toothbrush into the main house.

"No," I started again. "I just needed someone to talk to, I guess—to share a last salute with. And I thought the bartender was the only one here. I didn't see you at the bar."

"I wasn't at the bar. I was over there in the corner. Waiting for you to come in."

I didn't have time to process this, because he continued.

"Someone to share a last salute with. I don't . . ."

"My companion . . . Oh, hell, my lover, the man who fed and clothed me . . . died the other day here in the Raffles Hotel. In bed . . . with me. I've just now gotten the paperwork finished and seen his body off for the States. But there wasn't room for me in the box to Boston. So, I'm here, high and dry. I don't know if I'm here to mourn him or to feel sorry for myself."

What was I saying? I blushed in embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all of that. I guess I'm still in shock. I hope I didn't say that to the bartender. I just don't remember. Too many gin and tonics, I guess. I'm such a bore."

"No, no, you aren't a bore at all. You're endearing. And, yes, you did mention to the bartender that you had been a racing jockey some years past. That caught me by surprise. You don't look hardly old enough to have had a past. And you've said enough to the bartender that I thought you might fancy each other."

I could tell a pass when I heard one. I started wondering whether I might string my Singapore stay out for another meal and a night. That was pretty hard as nails of me, I knew. But after tonight my suitcase would be in the hall and Singapore's welcome mat would be jerked out from underneath me, and I had no more prospect of leaving Singapore than I had of staying here. It was unfair, really, I thought. I'd given up a promising Jockeying career to go with David; you didn't just dip in and out of that, you had to have a progression of recent successful rides to get anywhere. And I'd been nursemaid and lover to him for nearly ten years—all to the horror of his family. There would be no succor in that direction. I'd not get a dime from any of them to get home on, even though I'd been more family to him for nearly a decade than any of them had been.

The man beside me backed right off of what he was getting into saying, though. His whole expression changed. He became jocular, as if he was afraid he'd been too forward. But in my straits, I'm not sure what too forward would look like. I'd given out for my keep for some time now; I hadn't honed any other skills.

"Say, I'm starving," he said—as if he'd been thinking for some time how to move this proposition along and this was the best he could come up with. "You wouldn't like joining me for a bit to eat in the Palm Court, would you. I hate to eat alone."

"Umm, the Palm Court isn't exactly in my budge at . . ." I mumbled.

"Oh bother that," he said. "My treat, of course. My name's Maurice, by the way. And yours is . . ."

"Paul . . . just Paul."

"Well, Just Paul, tell me, do you fancy the bartender?"

I must have given him a very peculiar look, because he immediately steamed back into the conversation.

"Ummm, well. Pity that. But come, the Palm Court awaits us."

Over dinner Maurice established that he owned container ships plying around the world in the tropic zones and that he had one he was taking to Miami via the India, Africa, and South America route that was about to set sail.

"I get the impression your David's sudden death has left you here high and dry," he said over coffee. "Would it help to get you to Miami?"

Would it ever. I'd do just about anything for him to get passage to Miami.

"It wouldn't be the fastest route, of course. It would take more than a month actually . . . but if you're interested, I could take you on board tomorrow. No, no problem, no cost to you. It would just be good to have someone to talk with during the journey. I'm not taking on any other passengers this time; you'd be no added cost to me; more than enough provisions are already on board, and what's not consumed will just have to be thrown out."

Manna dropped from heaven. I didn't even try to pretend that I wouldn't jump at the offer.

"Would you like me to come up to your room with you tonight?" I asked as we were rising from the dinner table. I didn't want there to be any misunderstanding how grateful I was and what he had a right to ask of me in return.

"No, no. Not tonight. That's not necessary. Have your bags down by 9:30 tomorrow and we'll leave straight for the docks.

* * * *

We hadn't set down to our evening meal in the container ship's dining room until we had cleared the Singapore Straits and were steaming into the Indian sea. All alone now on the sea; no land and no other ships in sight in any direction. The sun was still bright outside; it wouldn't set for another couple of hours. The ship's mate came into the dining room as deserts were being handed out to report that we also seemed to be steaming into a squall. All hands were called on deck to methodically walk through the stacks of metal containers as big as box cars and ensure that all of the cabling holding them in place was as tight as could be. One container dislodged could roll the whole ship over in a high sea. It was going to be hard work and the sun was still hot, so all of the hands pushed their desert plates aside, stripped down to their waists, and headed for the hatchway.

I sucked in my breath at the look of the White Russian's physique when he was stripped down. Heavily muscled, bulking, a regular Zeus. In fact, all of the deckhands were large-boned, particularly well muscled; and strong looking; it obviously was a career necessity.

Maurice left with them, but he returned in a few minutes, and we finished our deserts and coffee in an otherwise deserted dining room. He was being extremely polite and solicitous—almost fatherly—toward me. Not for the first time did I feel embarrassment at my slight size and young looks. I wondered how I was going to get past him treating me like I might break in two if he touched me. David had never shown me this regard.

Over the day on board, Maurice had grown on me. I was used to going with older men, and, although "of an age," he seemed in better shape than most. And his curly salt and pepper hair intrigued me. I wondered if he was as hairy under that shirt as the back of his hands and the V at his neck implied. And whether he had such a luxuriant bush at his pubes—and how low he was hung. The hair leading me down that path. I was resisting the urge to run my hands under the hem of his shirt and up to his nipples and trying to start the inevitable process of the taking—right here on the dining table. I leaned in a bit toward him and moved my hand to the edge of the table near him.

But then Maurice abruptly rose again from the table and took a step back. "We should turn in early," he said. "If we run into the squall, it will be a rough sailing night."

"Shall I come to your room tonight?" I asked. Maurice had still not openly expressed the price of my passage, and I wanted to make clear that I knew what I owed. I also knew from how he looked at me that he wanted me, even though he was withdrawing from every signal I was sending him.

"No, no. It's not necessary," he answered.

I found this very frustrating. David—at least after my jockey career was shot when I stopped competing and putting horses through their paces so that I could respond to his every whim—had never let me forget that sex was my price for any favor or spending money. I hadn't needed to beg for the responsibility or right to pay my own way with the only coin available to me with David. I couldn't figure Maurice out.

My confusion and funk continued after I had gone back to my cabin, stripped down to my sleeping shorts, and tried, unsuccessfully, to read from one of the paperbacks I'd brought. The ship wasn't churning in the disquieted seas too violently yet, but it was pitching and yawing enough so that my eyes couldn't remain focused on the small print of the paperback. I had left the night lights on as Maurice had cautioned me to do with the comment that you never could tell where the furniture would wind up at night at sea and it would be best to be able to get your bearings if you had to get up in the night. But the lights cast an eerie red glow around the cabin that fought hard with every attempt I made to sleep.

I rose and padded barefooted out to the covered deck at the back of the passenger cabins, overlooking the wide span of the open hold in which the containers were stacked. Those of the deck crew who so recently had been heartily eating and laughing in the communal dining room were still hard at work, checking cables and tightening up anything loose on deck. It had grown dark now, as much from the black clouds scudding in from overhead as from the end of day. The White Russian, still naked to the waist, torso gleaming from sweat and salt water spray in the lights beaming down from the bridge, was there, not more than ten yards from where I was standing at the railing of the covered passenger deck. What came next came to as if in a dream.

* * * *

He has come to me in the darkness of night in a stormy sea, riding me on the crest of the waves. I have had to raise the side the rails to stay in the berth as the ship struggles through the squall, rolling and churning through the stormy sea. He comes down heavily on my back as I'm stretched out in the berth on my belly. He is heavy with undulating, insistent muscle, invading, consuming.

Unable to sleep in the tossing sea, I had come to the rail and watched the deckhands moving like dancers, tightening the ropes, securing the cargo. I watched him, the burly White Russian, for hours as the ship raced toward the twilight horizon, just ahead of the storm, losing the race by the minute, inevitably being enfolded from behind in consuming embrace.

Stripped to the waist, he worked hard with ropes at the bow of the ship, letting his muscles and hands work as they knew so masterfully to do. Beauty in motion. Sensual. Arousing. No longer watching what he was doing, because he was watching me.

"What was that you said?" I called out over tumult.

"Your cabin number?" he called back. "I can come soon. I want to fuck you."

"Fuck me?" I cried out in shock. Maurice had told him, had told the White Russian I fancied him.

"Your cabin number," He called back. No longer a question.

I wonder if he would have come anyway, even if I had not told him the number.

Heavy, stretched out, covering me. Wet and salty, just come from the sea. Too strong for me, even if I had wanted to struggle. He gives me no choice, however. His strong arms lace under my armpits and back over my shoulders and make a fist with his hands at the nape of my neck.

His knees are forcing my thighs apart. His club of a dick is at my channel, pushing, pushing, pushing. Entering and rising up inside me. And he just holds me there, letting the rolling and lurching of the tossing, storm-cast sea move him deeper, deeper inside me, Rolling this way and that, the hot bulb of his cock kissing and assaulting my sensitive inner walls at all angles in the rhythm of the tossing sea. Ahhhhhhh.

* * * *

He was grunting hard and I was groaning even harder. I felt the bulk of him slip away from me and both heard and felt the slurping of his impaled dick pull out of me, and I thought he'd finished with me, short of my release. Short, I was sure, of his own. I had not invited him in, but I felt a sudden loss of him.

But he wasn't leaving me; his weight momentarily removed, he turned me over on my back, and in one swift movement pushed his knees between my thighs and grabbed me above the hips, his hands so big and my waist so thin that his fingers almost met, and pulled my torso down hard into him as he thrust his dick strongly up in me once again. I cried out and arched my back, writhing and trembling under his new, stronger assault. I reached over my head and grabbed the rungs of the headboard to hold myself in place against the tossing ship and the White Russian's digging cock.

My head lolled to one side, and that's when I saw him. Maurice, sitting in a chair across the cabin. Naked under a robe, hanging open at his sides. Sitting there, one leg hooked over the arm of the chair to give him a wide stance, intensely watching the White Russian fuck me, a little smile on his face, his hand pulling slowly, rhythmically on his meat. The reddish glow of the night lights made the curled wisps of his heavily matted silver-colored chest hair stand out prominently. He was breathing heavily, his barrel chest expanding and contracting, bringing movement to the thatch of chest hair that reminded me of a breeze passing over a field of wheat. His engorged cock was big and thick, extending from a luxurious bush, its bulbous head angry red in the glow of the night lights—and glistening with precum. His eyes glued to the spectacle of the slight me being manhandled and fucked by the burly White Russian deckhand.

The rolling of the ship and the thrusting of the White Russian's cock was too much for me. I gave a gasp and my muscles tightened, and then I gave a little scream, collapsed under the relentless pounding, and released my seed up into the muscular, flat belly muscle of the thrusting deckhand. He, in turn, roared in triumph and jerked and ejaculated deep inside me.

Then he was gone but was almost immediately replaced with Maurice, who took up the just-vacated position, his knees pushing under my ass cheeks and thighs, his strong hands digging into my hips, a thicker cock than the deckhand's thrusting inside me. And thrusting and thrusting. Fucking me hard, the rolling of the disquieted sea tossing and turning and churning me on his relentless cock. I ran my hands up through the enticing thick hair on his chest and took his nipples between my fingers and gently squeezed. I smiled into his face, a smile of welcome, of gratitude for the free passage. Wanting him to enjoy the fuck. Enjoying the fuck myself.

But Maurice had worked himself up into a frenzy in his voyeuristic foreplay. My welcoming him wasn't really the image and the fulfilled fantasy he was seeking.

"Fight me," he demanded. "Struggle for your freedom or I'll fuck you unconscious." Then he backhanded me across the face, and I began to writhe under him, trying to escape. But this was probably why he had selected me. I was small and light, and although I was strong, I wasn't strong enough for the White Russian or for Maurice.

I did manage to dislodge his cock and scramble over to the side, but the safety slats on the side of the bed were insurmountable, especially as the ship had taken that moment to lurch to port and roll me back into Maurice.

He laughed and grabbed me around the waist with one hand and scooped up two pillows with the other. He turned me on my face and forced the pillows under my belly, raising my hips to him. The lurching of the ship was tossing us about, but Maurice was used to this. He crouched up over my hips, his thighs encasing mine. I felt his hand positioning his angry red knob at my hole, and then he reared his pelvis back and brutally thrust inside me and started pumping me hard. Going with the lurching of the ship, using the ship's motion to delve deeper into my channel and assault and caress every inch of my channel walls as he drove up inside me. Driving me to distraction. Sensations I'd never felt before. Completely taken, wholly controlled and invaded.