He liked the attention. And their affection. He was a tactile person. He loved the slip of fingers interlocking, the heat of skin, the rush of blood pumping through a warm cock. He held their life force in his hands as he coaxed them toward climax. He liked how even the most irascible man could be softened by his charms. How he could smooth away their sharp edges and encourage their true, vulnerable selves to emerge. They were naked in their wanting, and his power, in those moments, was limitless. With his young, supple body laid out on damp sheets or luxuriating in the warm sand with the shallow water tickling his feet and legs, they touched him like he was a marvel, something exotic from the sea brought to land. He was a selkie with his fur stolen, bound to the men who pleasured and excited him.
The captain looked on with apprehension, though he indulged himself plenty. Man and boy routinely visited the more populated watering holes and appointed a date and time when they would reconvene after having their lusts sated. If he’d been bedding women, would the captain have encouraged his carousing, since the sign of a man’s virility was tied to how widely he could spread his seed? How many women had the captain impregnated over the years? How many other bastards had he fathered?
The boy fantasized about his dark-skinned brothers, handsomer, more mysterious versions of himself. In his fantasies, they reunited like long-lost family, then explored each other’s bodies like lovers.
The captain told the boy to use protection, and even with his cheapskate nature, made sure there were always condoms on hand, but the boy seldom followed through. He was wild with a thirst for danger, his youth making him more reckless than even the captain. Without his mother to act as his moral compass, the boy was left to pursue his every carnal desire.
Then one day the outboard motor on the dinghy wouldn’t catch. The boy tinkered with it for hours, trying to figure out the problem with the ignition. He suspected a faulty coil but had neither the parts nor the know-how to replace it. The captain said they didn’t have the money to fix it, that they’d have to row to shore or to harbor, which was hard work and severely limited the boy’s mobility.
“I’ll take it into town and see if I can get it fixed,” the boy said. They were anchored off one of their favorite islands, just 5 km east of Paradise Island and the bustling port of Nassau. The boy didn’t care for Nassau, where the water smelled like sewage and the tourists made navigating cumbersome, but he knew a few machine shops where he could have the outboard motor looked at, and one in particular where the mechanic had shown interest in him before.
It was a long, arduous journey to row into port from where they were anchored in the harbor, even more of a feat to carry the outboard motor on foot to the machine shop. The same man as before was working and, if he was not the owner, seemed to at least have some price-setting authority.
The boy let the man look it over. And him as well. He knew, by this age, how to present. It didn’t take the mechanic long to diagnose the problem. It was the same as what the boy had suspected.
“A coil’s gone bad. The whole kit needs replacing.”
“How much is that going to cost?”
“A buck fifty with labor.”
The boy had twenty dollars in ones he’d been saving. The captain had given him thirty more.
“I only have fifty,” the boy said. He’d never been any good at haggling.
“Fifty’s not enough.” The man’s eyes slid over his body like an oil slick, making his intent known.
The boy hesitated. This man wasn’t like the others. He hadn’t been lured like a curious fish to a baited hook. This man was bigger, harder, and mean. A barracuda.
“I could work it off.” The boy glanced around the shop. “Clean up or organize your things. I’m good at alphabetizing.” Everything on the boat was alphabetized, from their spices to their medicines to his precious paperback collection.
“The only way you could work it off is by bending over,” the man said harshly and squared his shoulders. The boy broke out in a sweat or perhaps he was already damp with it, but he wasn’t all that alarmed. He’d come to this man because of an instinct, and he’d been right.
“How long will it take the part to come in?” the boy asked, stalling.
“I got it in stock already.”
“All right,” the boy said, fighting for control of his nerves. “Should I come back later when it’s ready?”
“No. Stay put. Get yourself a pop.”
The man jerked his thumb toward a small refrigerator, and the boy selected a Coca-Cola, then settled onto a raggedy, upholstered couch with stuffing and springs poking out to watch the man work. There was a baseball game playing on the radio, and the boy wondered if the man was a fan of one of the teams. He didn’t ask, didn’t make any conversation at all, because he didn’t want to know this man’s secrets, however innocuous. Despite his fear or perhaps because of it, the boy found himself dozing in the warm afternoon heat to the sounds of the radio and the man’s steady tinkering. He was tired from the trek to the shop and the long row before it.
He awoke hours later to the grind of the outboard motor, the rip of the ignition, and the roar of the engine. A powerful, ravenous sound, one of consumption and speed. His spirits lifted. The captain would be pleased.
“She’s ready to go,” the man said when he’d turned off the motor. He grabbed his erection through his pants with an eye on the boy, standing over him like a giant. The doors had been shuttered and the blinds drawn so that only a fraction of the afternoon light bled into the darkened shop.
“What do you want?” the boy asked, unsure of what he’d promised or what the man might demand. A lesson for next time: be clear about expectations.
The man wanted a lot, as it turned out, alternating between using the boy’s mouth and ass in turn. The man said filthy, ugly things and handled him crudely. Not like his previous lovers, who’d touched him with reverence, like he was precious and rare. This man handled him like a crowbar or a wrench, holding his face against the wooden worktable, shoving his grease-blackened fingers inside him, forcing him to his knees and choking him with his cock. After he’d spilled that way for the second time, the man held the boy’s mouth shut until he swallowed. It was the first time the oyster slime had ever made it down the boy’s throat, and he didn’t like it. Not the taste, nor the sensation, nor the fact that it’d been the man’s doing and not his own.
The man grabbed two beers from the fridge and told the boy to wait until he was ready to go again. The boy was bitter and resentful, but the alcohol helped, dulled the pain and soothed the sting of degradation.
“I should get back,” the boy said, glancing around for his clothes.
“Not yet.”
Realizing he’d have to tie him up or let him go, the man rolled the boy over once more and took him there on the couch, driving into him with brute force, unable to finish but trying his damnedest. He’d paid for his meal and intended to lick the plate clean. The man berated the boy the entire time, as if he’d been robbed his due. His beer breath was hot and sour on the boy’s neck, and the man used him until the boy’s legs gave out, until the pain turned into numbness, and a trickle of what the boy suspected was his own blood began seeping out of him.
