After three days on the schooner Vanessa had finally managed to get her sea legs under her, and now the captain was taking her ashore into the little harbor township to take a walk. But she really didn't mind.
"You'll love it," said the captain in his Maine voice that was loud and resonant in a way that slipped into Vanessa's ears and traveled down tingling nerves to her breasts, her nipples and on. "The flowers are blooming." But the captain pronounced it: "The flowas a bloomin'."
The accent. The whole time she'd been on the boat, Vanessa had felt a mist of glossy wetness between her legs every time the captain spoke out -- especially when he was barking orders to the deck crew. But it wasn't just the accent making her feel this way. It wasn't like he was from London or France or some exotic place. He was just from the good old Northeast with its forests and fog and lobsters. Lobstas.
The captain had tattoos. The one on his upper arm tantalized Vanessa with only half a view of a fishtail curling down and around and back up under the sleeve of his t-shirt. It was a mermaid, and Vanessa had only seen the tail and the curve of the backside suggestively presenting the uppermost crack of an ass and the mermaid's bare lower-back. The first day onboard she had asked the captain to show her the rest of the tattoo, but he had just winked at her and said, "In due time. In due time."
The captain was wise. He was about forty with a thick thatch of salt and pepper hair under his hat. There were lines in his face that bore history and legend. The captain could twine a story around any subject.
The captain had strength. Long hard muscles under creamed-coffee skin drawn from a life at sea heaving ropes, hoisting anchors and paddling small boats to shore. Like he was doing with Vanessa now, stretching forward, big hands on the oars, stroking back, his hips rotating, the kiss and lap of cold seawater caressing the sides of the boat.
And he was the captain.
Vanessa tore her eyes from the captain's flat belly where her gaze had settled and looked back over her shoulder at the schooner anchored there in the bay amongst the lobster buoys. The ships two masts stretched to the clear blue sky, flags limp in the dead calm. She could see some fellow passengers on deck lying over the captain's cabin near the wheel. Vanessa was alone on the sailing cruise, between relationships, ready for adventure. Waiting for anything to happen. Vanessa was the only one who wanted to go ashore for the morning. Most all the other passengers had hangovers.
The night before had been a rum fest of near mutiny proportions. The captain had let the passengers' revelry go on in the light of the kerosene lamps and the stars. He leaned against the gunwale, lit his pipe, and joined the conversation and laughter here and there. A gentleman, he knew how to bring it to a quiet conclusion. With a mild influential word or two spoken one-by-one to the passengers he persuaded them down into their respective cabins where they could pass out in silence but for the creak of the boat and clank of the distant sounding buoy. Vanessa had been the last passenger the captain spoke to the night before.
"Lovely night," he'd said, alone then with Vanessa having steered all the others below deck, the crew all in bed.
She was near the bow above the galley ladder sipping white wine from a coffee mug. Relaxed but far from inebriated. The kerosene lamp was glowing on her face, her auburn hair shadowing her chin and neck. "Yes," she said, "it is beautiful."
"You see Polaris?" The captain pointed up into the starry sky.
"Which one is it?"
The captain took her elbow in his hand and walked her aft to the stern across amidships. "It's right up here. I'll introduce you." Even through the thick fabric of her sweatshirt she could feel his touch, felt it in her thighs, her calves and her spine. A touch of will. A master of the wind and rain and tides. And he had made her wet yet again.
They leaned against the gunwale near the captain's quarters next to a ballantine coil. The captain draped his arm over Vanessa's shoulders, leaned into her and pointed.
"You see the Big Dipper? Ursa Major?"
She could smell his skin, sea-salt perspiration and pipe smoke. "U-huh," she exhaled from the back of her throat.
He went on, "See those two bright stars on the end of the ladle there? They're the pointer stars. Follow them in an imaginary line -- yeah, that's it -- to the North Star. Polaris. You got it."
"Thanks captain," She said. "I'll never forget it."
"All the stars rotate around that one. The polestar. She keeps everyone in line."
"Kind of like you do, huh?" she said playfully looking up into his handsome face silhouetted against the stars.
"Oh no. You're in charge here," he said.
"Don't you forget it."
"Pretty night. Pretty night," the captain said and squeezed her against his ribs. She slipped her arm around his waist, cupped his hip bone along his belt line in her palm. "Look at that Milky Way," he said.
"Lovely," she managed though she felt milky herself. Milky and drunk on the captain's touch.
"We'll go ashore tomorrow morning," the captain said as he stood there with Vanessa beside him under the stars. "Might be some mist and fog come morning, but it won't keep us from going ashore if I can help it." He gave her an innocent kiss against her temple, his scruffy chin brushing the hair that fell over her eye. He walked her below deck to her cabin and said a hesitant goodnight.
*
The captain rowed the small boat through the mist toward the dock now. He looked at Vanessa sitting opposite him in the little boat. "Pity no one else wanted to come," he said. "Ready to test those sea legs out?"
She smiled and nodded at him, remembered how good her orgasm had been the night before after she'd slid into her bunk and dipped her fingers inside her sopping pussy and rubbed her clit with the heel of her palm. She'd thought of the captain at first and then, as they often did when she masturbated, her thoughts flew wildly around. She could see herself lying out on the wooden deck naked in the sunshine with the deck crew, all four of them, even the pretty young college-girl from Pennsylvania, each of them touching Vanessa, kissing her, sucking her nipples, so much smooth bare skin, hot wet tongues gliding over her, tattoos, ship knives and sailor fids, the boat rocking, hands rolling her over onto her belly, fingers probing, lifting her onto her hands and knees, cocks at her mouth, her ass, in her hands, the college-girl offering up her small breasts and nipples for Vanessa to nibble and roll on her tongue, the girl's fingers drenched in her own pussy juice slipped into Vanessa's mouth to taste, and then the captain again, the crew helping, placing her on her back, roping her arms and legs to cleats and chocks as she lay restrained, the crew watching and the captain lowering himself to her, biting her neck and shoulders, feeling him searching between her spread legs with his hard prick, sliding it up and down over the slippery folds, the sun over his shoulders, him a shadow rising up, knowing she is his, and falling, thrusting into her, into her, all of him at once, big and long, a rush of wind, of wave, wave, and foam...gulls calling above, going, floating over the masthead, lazy, salt-sweet and sleep.
"Glad you didn't drink too much last night," the captain was saying, rowing the oars in great wide arcs slicing into the dark water, rising up dripping in the mist. "I'd be on my own today." He winked at Vanessa.
"Yeah, so am I," she said. "And I get you all to myself." She looked at his eyes and grinned. She saw those grey-blue eyes drop and glance over her breasts. She was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting white button-down shirt with the top three buttons undone. Her breasts were pressed together in her bra, two wonderful mounds that curved flawlessly into a dark crevice of cleavage. Under the captain's gaze her nipples hardened and pressed against the silk of her bra. She rubbed her thighs together in her jeans. She was getting so wet. She thought she noticed a little tightness in the captain's pants, a rising in the sails. She wanted to jump across the boat and let loose his mast. He noticed her looking at his crotch. He smiled and looked down at hers then at her breasts again.
He sighed, "You got me, you do."
The captain tore his eyes from Vanessa's chest and looked over his shoulder toward the shore, the pier and dock, the fog beyond. There was a brick house off the pier and trees, so many trees. A dirt road led into the forest. There were old outlying buildings of weathered wood: barns, sheds, their roofs peeking out from the branches, mysterious in the foggy morning.
"Where are you taking me?" asked Vanessa with a playful turn of her head.
"Oh, I've got a place in mind."
"I bet you do." She was so horny. She wasn't holding anything back now. She was going to flirt with the captain until he told her to stop or his cock was in her hands and her tongue on his balls.
The captain tied off at the dock and helped Vanessa out of the boat. They walked along the pier with gulls overhead and the water smacking the shoreline. The tide was low and there were abalone shells and clumps of seaweed littering the exposed ground below them. Vanessa had the sensation of the earth moving under her feet. It made her feel off balance but stable all at once.
They walked past the brick house and up the dirt road into the forest. They didn't speak. The captain had reached down and taken Vanessa's hand as soon as they were around a bend and out of sight of the schooner out in the bay. Vanessa felt short of breath, her blood getting hot, her face flushed. She couldn't believe this was happening, knew that it was. Knew it was a singular gift to treasure.
The captain walked faster. He turned her onto a cobblestone path that seemed to go nowhere into the muted fogginess of the white pine forest. It was narrow and he led holding on to her hand. He was very nearly running, an urgency in his grip. Ferns brushed their legs leaving dew on their pants.
Out of the huddle of a cluster of honey locusts a tiny bungalow appeared with a wooden door and four-pane windows that were fogged over with salt. There were flowers: black-eyed Susans, and pink twinflower blooming under the windows and bordering the door, spilling out into the thick tall grass.
"Whose place is this?" asked Vanessa, she was panting now, not caring who the bungalow belonged to, just hoping there was a bed inside or a chair. The floor would do, or the wall.
The captain didn't answer. He turned the doorknob and thrust open the door. Inside the air was warm and dry, like an attic. Scent of cedar, wool and times past. He pulled her out of the way of the door as he shut it and then her back was against the door, the captain pressing her, his thighs against hers, hard chest over her soft breasts. He kissed her with his impatient lips, and she opened her mouth and gave him her tongue. She swirled it on his tongue, across his teeth, up under his lip.
Vanessa's fingers dug into the captain's hard muscled ass. She was gasping and her body was tingling on the verge of going numb. His hands explored her body, hunting for the places that would react to his touch with tightened flesh, quivering nerves and hot wetness. She could feel his stiff cock pressing into her belly through his pants, through her shirt. She wanted nothing between her flesh and his.
He broke away from her. He bent and his shoulders dropped and rippled under his shirt. He lifted her and turned and walked to a brown leather couch under a hazy window. He set her down. She saw a dark flash through the window, a bird flying over the house, and then the captain was pulling his t-shirt off in front of her.
She saw the mermaid in her full glory, breasts jutting out and a flow of long hair, an angelic face. Above the mermaid on the captain's shoulder was a sperm whale, its mighty jaws open over the mermaid, its tail draping down over and onto the captain's chest. The leviathan poised and hungry, drawn eternally frozen above the beauty. And then the captain was kicking his shoes off and unbuckling his belt; he slid his pants over his narrow hips and he was free.
She sat there taking in his bare flesh and the captain stepped toward her, stepped up on the couch, one forceful leg on either side of her shoulders. And she opened her mouth for him, and her hair brushed his skin as he gently slid the engorged head of his cock over her lips and teeth and onto the soft blanket of her tongue. She closed her lips around him and tasted him and licked him. He started rocking his hips ever so slightly, just far enough back and forth to distend and strum her upper lip over the glands as he patiently slid back and forth in her mouth. She looked up and he was watching her face with a look of gratefulness, of wonder, of ache.
And then the captain was climbing down, gracefully sliding like a sail dropping from the mast, and he was undoing her buttons, his fingertips lithe and efficient, having undone countless knots at sea. He spread her shirt open and was on his knees. He bowed down to her and kissed the flesh of her ribs under her bra. Her body jumped and shuddered. She moaned. The captain kissed down her belly, lingered at her navel where he circled it with his tongue. Then he was at her belt line. Kissing lightly. She was straining her hips upward trying to get some -- any -- pressure against her pussy. She slid her hands under her bra and squeezed her nipples. She was desperate for his touch to go lower.
The captain popped the top button of her jeans and kissed her there. He slowly pulled the zipper down sliding his tongue along the newly-exposed flesh. He could feel the heat and wetness of her excitement rising from below on his chin. He came to the waistband of the tiny pair of thong panties she wore. He took hold of the silky material in his teeth and raised his head slowly, and Vanessa moaned as her panties pressed and slid against her aching clit.
And then the captain was pushing her jeans down and her underwear, over her sharp hip bones and thighs, her knees and calves to her ankles and off, on the floor, her skin tingling in the air, bare. His tongue was there, buried inside her. For all his patience before, once he could see the soft padded flesh and glistening slit between her generous pussy lips, he could not hold back. He licked her, sucked and nibbled on her, plunged his tongue as far as he could into her slippery hot gap.
Vanessa was writhing in pleasure. The captain's tongue was buried inside of her, his rough chin pressed against the taut flesh between her pussy and anus. The pressure there was about to make her cum, and then his mouth moved up and over her clit and he twirled his tongue around the tiny bb that was hard and pulsing. Vanessa looked up at the ceiling and then the world around her turned lavender as her body caved in on itself; all feeling, awareness and life was drawn in under the captain's tongue throbbing like a heart beat slow and steady: One...two...three...four. Her own moans and squeals brought her up from under the purple curtain into the daylight coming through the window over her shoulder. Her gasps slowed and she saw that she had pulled her breasts completely from her bra, her nipples pinched between thumb and finger.
Without a word she beckoned the captain kneeling between her legs to rise up, to sit beside her. Then she pivoted and was on top of him in an instant on her knees, poised to slide his cock inside her. Her hands were on his shoulders, her hair falling down over her face, her breasts jutting over the top of her bra, open in her billowing shirt. And he was there, hard against her, and she slid easily and little by little down the length of him until every inch of him was inside of her. And then she rose up starting a slow rhythm that echoed inside of her, up and down. She bent to him and kissed his chin, tasted her juice, keeping her rhythm. She kissed his neck, his shoulder, and the whale. She ran her tongue along the fluke, the hump, its eye and the sharp teeth. And then she licked the mermaid on the captain's arm, over her hair and face, down to her breasts and back, her ass that became fish and onto her tail. The captain's hands were on her waist. She felt him tense, and then he groaned and thrust up into her over and over and over again until he held her tight in his grip, his cock reaching for the deepest part of her, touching her there, touching her center where, right then, the stars, the earth and the waves, all things radiated from and spun loosely around her in a great pulsing tide of purifying pleasure that rose up and overflowed in a roar of hot breath and moans.
And outside the wind was near, blowing the mist and fog back into the trees, blowing over the sea, searching for boats with willing sails to lift and fill.
Originally published June 2007 - "Body Art"