by Serena Vale
Though she was positive that he couldn’t tell she was blushing, she felt her cheeks turn red. “I… uh…”
He chuckled again. “It’s alright, don’t worry about it.” He took another forkful of his food.
“But… I…”
“Rule number three, remember?” he said between bites.
She thought back to three days ago when she had first come aboard. The memory hit her, “No jealousy?”
He nodded. “Why do you think we have that rule?”
She rolled it over in her mind. “I… I thought that that was a professional rule? No jealousy over successes and failures or something like that?”
Dane shook his head. “I fail to see how someone could be jealous of a failure, but no… that’s not it. Jealousy aboard ship here is a tad more… personal.”
Nya’s look of confusion must have shown because Dane watched her quietly for a moment before he went on.
“Did you know that Dr. Inira and Dr. Yao are married?”
She felt a sense of relief sweep into her. Somehow this tidbit of knowledge made her feel better; knowing that the people she had unwittingly stumbled into were married to each other brought with it a sense of security that she had not felt. It was only natural for people who were married to be intimate… albeit in such an unexpected place. “Oh… well… that’s good, but it doesn’t make me feel any better for knowing…”
“But not to each other,” Dane interrupted.
Nya froze. “Huh?”
Dane nodded. “It’s true. Dr. Inira’s husband is aboard ship with us even now… he’s the chief of operations below deck. Dr. Yao’s wife is back on the mainland, some kind of real estate broker I think.”
Nya suddenly saw the reason why the two lovers had chosen to have their tryst in a storage room over their bunk. Though her sense of security and relief was now gone from her, it seemed fairly obvious why the two lovers had chosen such an odd place. “They’re having an affair?”
“Hardly, each of their spouses is keenly aware of what goes on here.”
She shook her head with confusion. “Dane… Mr. Carver…” she said, trying to keep her thoughts ordered. “I don’t understand, what does that mean?”
“Well,” Dane said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, “I’m sure you’ve heard how being at sea for a long time can affect a person. It makes one… lustful.”
“You mean like in all of the old sailor’s stories?”
“Exactly,” he said, cutting into a slab of steak. “It’s a perfectly natural bodily function, Nya. We all feel it. And sometimes we need to vent… or indulge… take it as you will. And when we’re all out here, the only people that we can do so with are aboard ship. That’s why we have rule number three.”
She turned the rule over in her mind for a moment before she reached the conclusion as to why such a thing was necessary. “So, this sort of thing happens a lot?”
“All the time,” Dane confirmed. “Sometimes the people that come aboard are married to each other; they tend to each other’s needs fairly well. But sometimes they’re married to some back on dry land, or they’re not married at all. Despite that, we’re all subject to the tremendous power that biology has over us. And as scientists we’re able to separate logic from emotion. An indulgence every now and then is acceptable to people like us. Larger connections usually are unheard of for those of us who come aboard and are unmarried. And as long as such couplings don’t interfere with our work, we never see any need to put a stop to it.”
Nya was silent for a time, simply contemplating that. She lightly jabbed at her food with her fork before her mind completed its cycle and arrived at the only conclusion that it could fathom. “They do it for fun?”
Dane shrugged. “We’re only human. We have needs. And logic offers a sense of serenity that allows us to rise above emotions that might complicate things for us. It’s the same principal as needing to sneeze or scratch your nose. The reason can be enough to distract you for a short time but it can be dealt with and forgotten just as quickly.”
Dane took a drink of the cup of water he had and was quiet for a moment before he looked at her over the rim of his cup. “You should try it sometime.”
Nya was taken aback by that. “Pardon?”
“Find someone to relieve a little stress with,” he offered. “Dr. Yao told me that he felt a little bad that he didn’t invite you to join them when you walked in. He was so embarrassed. And had Dr. Inira been more attentive, she might have gone along with that request.”
Nya’s mouth was slightly agape. She had been expecting to be mocked for how she had reacted. She certainly hadn’t expected… this. Part of her wanted to believe that Dane was playing some sort of a trick upon her, but she could discern none of the usual markers for such a thing. He was being honest.
“It might have done you some good. I understand you haven’t been making too much progress on your call box.”
Nya felt stretched between two emotions: surprise and defensiveness. “But… I haven’t… it’s only been three days!”
“And that’s exactly my point, Nya. Sex has a way of unraveling the knots. It relieves the stress… helps you think. It’s done wonders for me in the past.”
Nya felt a little surprised to hear that. “You’ve done it?”
“Many times,” he admitted, but there was no hint of ego in his words. “Although to be fair my appetites are sparse, and I indulge maybe only once every voyage or so. Sometimes, not even then.”
That surprised her. She would have thought that any woman aboard this boat would have jumped at the chance for some no-strings-attached sex with the owner of the Carver group. Why didn’t they?
Dane finished his meal with a smile and rose up to deposit his plate, utensils, and cup into a washtub. “Just think about what I said,” he added as he made his way towards the door. Before reaching it, he turned and looked back at her. “You know… if you’d like, I’d be happy to help you relieve some of that stress.” He threw her a wink. “You know where my door is.”
He turned and walked silently out.
Nya only sat, stunned.
Chapter 6
By the end of her first week onboard, Nya found she was unable to focus on anything that was important to her. She had always thought the stories of how sailors at sea could be ravenous when they came into port were preposterous. But now, with the possibility of sex firmly on her mind, she had begun to realize that there was more truth to such things than she had thought possible. And with plenty of time to herself she felt as if she were slowly being consumed by her biology.
Sex had not always been easily within her reach and she had leapt at willing partners when the opportunities had come. But no one had simply offered her sex as casually as if they were offering her tea before. It was an experience that she had not been entirely prepared for.
And it had kept her up nights, like tonight.
She sat upright in her bunk just like she had for the whole night, trying to focus on how best to fix her current array of problems with the call box. But her mind had kept drifting to what Dane had said to her in the dining area three nights prior. Her thoughts were locked on it the same way iron particles clung to a magnet dragged through sand.
Had he been serious about his offer?
Though Nya wasn’t given over to religion, she prayed to God that he was serious about sharing himself with her. Liberal as the attitude towards sex tended to be on this boat, she found it hard to believe that the owner of the Carver Group would be willing to couple with her at all. Not when there were more sophisticated women aboard. Even if she slept with him only once or even at all, she found herself tempted by it.
Nya had given in to the desires of the flesh plenty of times before in her past. But the differences then compared to now were drastically different. She had cared for the people she had bedded in the past. There had been an emotional connection. That had always seemed important.
But, she reflected, if
it had been such a crucial thing why hadn’t any of those relationships lasted?
It was a good question and it was one that she couldn’t answer.
Maybe there was something to the whole idea that she hadn’t really noticed? In the days after her initial embarrassment she had seen doctors Inira and Yao going on about their work. They had carried on as if they had exchanged nothing more than a passing ‘hello.’ If there was any tension between them, she hadn’t seen it. And she had been quick to notice that the work in their labs, while she didn’t fully understand it, had taken some considerable leaps and bounds. She’d seen the pace at which they had been working. And after their coupling, their work seemed to have progressed via a quantum leap.
It was that kind of success that she needed just now.
When she’d returned to her cabin, the work that she had done seemed menial by comparison. And it was not something that she felt at all proud of. She had two weeks still to complete her work, but she hadn’t even gotten so far as to get her call box wet outside of a testing tank yet. Part of her current string of problems was that she couldn’t perfect the damn water-tight seals.
She looked across her cabin at her desk where her current prototype sat. The boxes were only about a third completed. It had a skeleton, but its guts and brains were missing. The dimensions were much as she had intended them to be. On the whole, the device was the side of a bread box. Its four walls were of industrial plastic, capable of withstanding certain amounts of pressure at various depths of the water… if she could just figure out how to protect the electronics within.
Its innards were, at a glance, a jumble of electronics that – obviously – if exposed to water would short out and render the entire device useless. And it was those damn water seals that she couldn’t figure out and more, she needed a redundancy system in case the system was breached in the real thing and water got inside.
The Carver Group wouldn’t accept her work if she couldn’t find a means to back it up somehow. One line of defense; the overall case for a system like this, wasn’t enough. That there would be some water seepage seemed inevitable. What she needed was a means to waterproof the electronics inside the box as well when that happened. Like finding a way to waterproof a message in a bottle after the bottle had been thrown out to sea. But the only means she had devised to that end made the entire thing too heavy, too bulky. And enough so that the device might decouple from the hull it was attached to and sink, making it into litter at the bottom of the ocean.
Shit.
She sighed and leaned her head against the bulkhead of her cabin. She stared blankly at the ceiling, watching the way the overhead light there flickered. No solutions were coming to her and she had to get her apparatus ready for its first dip in the real sea within the next two days if she wanted to stay on schedule.
She thought of Dane and what he had said. Not about his offer of sex, but how sex could clear her mind and give her focus.
The idea of unabashed sex seemed strange. But the fear of failure and professional ridicule and shame were downright terrifying. Sex could be kept a secret and easily dismissed here; she’d seen proof enough of that for herself. But scientific failure was something that would follow her all the way back to shore.
She knew which she preferred.
“When all else fails, fresh tactics,” she said to herself.
Resigned, she got up and left her cabin.
When she arrived, she saw light from under his door, the telltale sign that he was there and just as she usually did, he was burning the midnight oil. She was pleased that he was at least awake, given that it was close to 1 AM. She knocked on his door and waited patiently there, hoping that her sudden appearance there wouldn’t be an inconvenience if he were too deeply in the throes of his work.
When the door opened, she saw him. He was dressed in nothing, but a pair of raggedy old jeans and she saw that he had more tattoos on his chest and belly. Once again, he reminded her more of some kind of a punk rocker than a scientist and billionaire.
“Nya,” he said with a pleasant tone, “good evening.”
“Hi,” she said, suddenly feeling a pang of nervousness that hadn’t been there before. Her mind and mouth both searched for something to say. “I was wondering…”
She didn’t need to finish. All Dane did was smile and he stepped aside, allowing her room to enter. He knew why she was here.
She stepped inside.
Chapter 7
The door had barely closed when she turned around and found him upon her as if he were some wild beast that had been starved before its next meal. His mouth met hers as if they had been connected by invisible strings suddenly pulled taught and drawn together. His beard from several days of not shaving tickled her, but she relished it. And pleasant as that sensation was, it didn’t compare to his tongue as it slipped over his lips and into her mouth.
Her arms wrapped around his neck and she held him close, excitement rising up inside of her. There was something to be said for this kind of encounter. There was no need for the getting-to-know-you stage of a relationship. The end goal was firmly on her mind as it must have been his. And each, she felt, was eager to get at it.
Her arms tightened and he responded by encircling his arms around her larger waist. It was only a moment before he slipped his hands flatly inside the waistband of her jeans. His fingers snaked their way down, grabbing her ass cheeks and squeezing them tightly.
She moaned under his touch as he used the new leverage to grind his pelvis against hers. The sensation made her damp in her panties and she felt herself yearning for more. She wanted the old sensations of sex… warm flesh pressed against warm flesh… the sweat… the taste… the smell…
Dane seemed attuned to her desires and removed his hands from inside of her jeans and brought them to the hem of her shirt. In a single fluid movement, he removed the garment. The ease with which he did so impressed her.
But he took hold of the bridge of her bra between her massive breasts and yanked so hard that the fabric tore with an audible snap. Her bra ruined, he yanked it free from her torso and fell to his knees like a priest at prayer before the idol of a goddess. He buried his face in the valley between her breasts, cupping them both with his hands. His tongue inscribed a primal language upon her skin in invisible ink as his hands massaged her bosom. The combination of his touch and tongue sent earthquakes down her spine, threatening to topple her where she stood.
Dane, however, offered her support that she was lacking. The firmness of his hands upon her breasts spoke a silent message: stay standing. Though she trembled in doing so, she stayed upright. The aftershocks of his mouth as it worked on her threatened to collapse her, like a house of cards suddenly troubled by a slight gust of wind.
His hands abandoned her breasts and his mouth took over their duties. He took one of her large dark nipples into his mouth and the sensation of his teeth as they gentle nibbled on her set fire to her skin.
His fingers traveled down and unfastened her jeans. With speed that spoke of pent up lust he pulled her jeans and panties down in the same motion. His left hand found her free breast, his fingers tracing her areolas and pinching her nipple, making it hard. His right hand shot between her legs and two of his fingers slipped inside of her.
This time there was no denying the quaking of her legs. As if she was held up by nothing but toothpicks, she felt herself give way under her own weight as she fell to her knees. Dane’s mouth reclaimed hers, but his hands stayed where they were, pleasing her both inside and out.
His tongue went wild inside her mouth, probing every corner. Her tongue played lightly at his, she tried to pry her way into his mouth but like a stubborn sentinel he refused to give her that much leeway. His tongue barred, tackled, fended off, and held her tongue in place as if he were trying to keep her from learning some deep and private secret.
His fingers thrust in and out of her like mad. She had owned a vibrator once that hadn’t felt half this good. H
is technique was practiced, but somehow it felt savage… primal… like he was indeed venting his scientific frustrations sexually. She found the experience more than a little agreeable.
“God!” she moaned between kisses. She managed another quick breath before uttering, “Take your pants off.”
“You do it,” he whispered back, “my hands are busy.”
She obeyed, her fingers fondling the zipper and clasp of his ragged shorts. She pulled them down and found that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. Somehow, she found this as amusing as she did arousing. Thinking that this was perfectly in sync with the kind of character she had imagined him to be. His cock was already hard and ready for her.
She gently began to stroke it, her fingers moved slowly as if mapping him via touch alone. She felt the veins of his dick becoming harder, throbbing with anticipation. The crown of his cock was perfectly shaped, the tension he was already feeling called to her.
“Harder,” he murmured. “Harder.”
She complied, wrapping both hands around his shaft and pumping him. It was like no other sensation that she had felt before. Her past lovers had all had techniques that she had found interesting, but the simultaneous stimulation of her mouth, breasts, hands, and vagina… she’d never experienced its’ like before.
He seemed to relish this control over her, she noticed. And though it felt like hours later – though perhaps it was only several minutes – he freed his mouth from hers and withdrew his hands from her body. Her senses cried out from the loss, noticing the lack of energy that he’d generated from her at once and silently she demanded that they return.
Dane laid on the floor before her, his cock upright and ready. “Get on.” She began to mount him but before she could complete the movement, he stopped her. “No, no… turn around.”
She felt a second rush of excitement and flashed him a toothy grin. She turned her back on him and slowly mounted him. She remained upright on her feet and inch by inch she claimed him. He slid inside of her as if their mutual organs had been custom made to fit together. His hands reached out and took hers, giving her some support though she still felt as if she were half suspended in mid-air. The weakness she’d felt in her legs from before was nothing compared to now. But the feeling of pleasure drove her to remain on her feet. With her legs like springs she began to lightly bob on him.
