A summer afternoon, lazily fantasising halfway through "The Love Boat".
So much skin on display, so much skin. Everywhere you looked there were bodies of varying size & age & stretch & exposure & James had spent 2 days of his first ever cruise trying not to stare at examples he found particularly pleasing from beneath his sunglasses. The paperback he'd brought with him served as good cover for his voyeurism but a combination of creeping guilt & visible arousal had sent him scurrying to the countless bars & the cooling effects of air conditioning.
"Jesus I thought only old retired couples & rich widows went on cruises" he thought to himself as he sipped at a beer & mopped his brow. He'd never thought of himself as a cruise person & had lengthily resisted the insistence of Wilson in Accounts that "he'd love it, it's not like you imagine, it's exactly what you need" until an afternoon of weakness had let him email over details about one "he must go on" & then he knew he was on the hook.
Gradually his innate pessimism about the whole affair had been chipped away & he'd started to look forward to the idea of two weeks of sunlight & warm breezes & hours of nothing but reading & relaxing. The alien nature of the cruise had begun to thrill him as if it was some kind of spontaneous walk through a mysterious neighbourhood. This is not something you normally do, this is a break from your rigorously observed routine & it feels exciting.
But the bodies, the skin, the shapes & textures & curves, the hands that slowly rub lotion into soft flesh & the women who bathe in sunlight, bikini tops unclasped & draped across smooth round breasts glowing pale surrounded by suntan, how their chests stir & heave with breath & movement, the drops of water sliding down into their cleavage as they sip at sweating cocktails...he didn't anticipate this.
The quiet bar & the cold beer were bringing his old self back to him & with the lowered pulse rate & the sweat-free brow came the same reserve, the same slump, the same numbness to everything around him. A creeping retreat back to the bubble he should've left on dry land. Enough loneliness had passed for James to take comfort in the life that had formed around him & apathy had ensured he'd never tried to change it.
Watching the procession of women in bikinis he considered scandalous had caused his brain to cough up an unwanted reminder of the last time he'd been with anyone & two beers in it was all he could think about. Julie from the Admin dept at work, beautiful Julie who'd flirted with him at lunch for a month before having to outright ask him whether he'd like to go see a movie, grab something to eat etc etc.
It'd been a nice evening & they'd shared the cursory details expected of a first date but James had been overwhelmingly nervous from the outset. He'd told himself that it was ordinary first date jitters & that he was out of practise but deep down he knew that it was because he'd felt the first stirrings of a lust he'd long spent smothering. Julie was a gorgeous woman: kind, caring, funny, warm. Also, as James wouldn't admit to himself, she had a fabulous body & the outfit she wore made that abundantly clear. The skinny jeans she wore hugged her full thick ass & clung to her curvaceous hips but James couldn't help focusing on her low-cut blouse which showed a large amount of her big soft breasts.
He still hated himself for, in his eyes, spending the entire night staring at her cleavage. This was the behaviour of a Neanderthal & James had always considered himself above it but here he was stealing glimpses at the (beautiful round perfect big) breasts of his date & Julie didn't deserve this. He'd almost apologised for it but then Julie had invited him back to hers for a nightcap & before his decency had a chance to decline he'd said yes & there they were in her small & tidy apartment making out on the couch.
Now three beers in he didn't want to pore over the details of that night again but alcohol & self-loathing were controlling him now. James had known from his adolescent years that he was a "tit man", that his fantasies always revolved around busty women & this had only grown more intense & lurid over the years. This lay at the core of his self-hatred, how he wished he could quash this streak of objectification which ran through him like a stain. James was intensely aware of his flaw once Julie had unbuttoned her blouse & his hand was guided to her breasts.
Initially he froze but his caveman brain soon took over & he squeezed & stroked them, feeling her nipples harden between his fingers as he pinched & rolled them. Julie's hand went to his crotch & unzipped his jeans, his hard cock soon out & being run between Julie's fingers. He filled his palms with her tits & squeezed them together, bouncing & crushing them against each other, Julie softly moaning in his ear as he rubbed her dark nipples.
He was almost completely absorbed in lust until one thing brought his left brain crashing through the gates of dissolution. Julie was rubbing & stroking his cock faster & faster & grinding her pussy against his leg. Another sip of beer brings more back to him. Julie moved from the couch, her beautiful boobs brushing deliberately against his face, before pushing him back. She knelt on the floor between his legs & looked at him, her gorgeous eyes locking him like pinwheels. Then those words he'll take to the grave.
"Do you want it between my tits?" It was like a pitcher of water to the face. At first he was confused at this alien inquiry but then the reserve he dragged with him like an immense boulder crushed him like a bug. His cock, before this so hard & so eager, retreated like a recalcitrant soldier & he babbled something to Julie about "not quite understanding what you mean". This wasn't how people expressed their love with each other, it was...wrong.
Needless to say he swiftly dressed & made the exit Julie suggested. His subway journey back home was a confusing one. People don't do that do they? How can people do that? Maybe in dirty movies but that's purely for perverts & Julie seems so nice... Is it me? I don't know what happens between people, do they do that? Why was I so shocked?
By the end of the fourth beer he was listing with the ship & remembering how he'd got home, lay in bed still puzzling over the events of the evening & had indulged his weekly quota of masturbation while picturing Julie's perfect breasts in his hands. That was the last time he'd been with anybody & as far as he was concerned that would never change.
***
James was so lost in drunken remorse that he didn't notice the woman enter the bar & take a seat at the table opposite him. He didn't notice her slowly sipping a cocktail, casting long glances in his direction, idly coiling her long dark hair around her fingers. He didn't notice her black dress clinging to her body, her beautiful skin pale against the midnight velvet, her legs crossing & uncrossing, her feet twirling circles in the air. Most of all he didn't notice how the cut of her dress allowed a generous proportion of her considerable chest to be very visible, he didn't notice how her large breasts heaved & shook with every one of her elegantly pronounced movements.
James had decided (he was on vacation after all & in the middle of the ocean on top of that) to get destructively drunk. It was the only thing that'd kill the memories making him squirm with a self-hatred which threatened to send him leaping over the edge & allowing the water to swallow him up. More beer, he needs more beer.
He carefully stands, gripping the table for balance & makes his way to the bar but something halts him. He can sense eyes on him before he even notices his new neighbour. They lock together & he instantly feels a desire long since dormant, a premature burial along with that night but now its claws tear through the earth & claim him once more.
Before he's aware of the caveman wrenching control again he looks at her with a want which shoots through his body like a teenage crush. Images flash across his mind as he takes in the full extent of her dreamlike beauty: his hands on her face as they kiss, her soft breaths against his ear as he presses himself against her, his hands tracing the outline of her full ass, sliding up the curves of her body before losing himself in the warm softness of her...
"B340." The voice is so soft that it seems to drift in from the distant murmur which floats in from the deck.
"B340. Come to B340."
The words seem scrambled amongst the alcohol & the shame & the lust. James is walking behind the mysterious stranger down one of the long hallways before it dawns on him that it's a cabin number.
"Wait is it your cabin? Are we going to your cabin? I don't remember..." The words trail off as James watches her drift down the endless corridor. Midnight velvet clings to her & James openly looks at her rounded ass seducing him into her cabin. A twinge of reproach pinches him but an overwhelming urge beats it down.
Time no longer seems to follow them; they could've been walking for hours or seconds. Proportion seems to flicker in & out of cohesion.
"How long is this corridor?" James asks but his words disappear into the dark wood panelling. Hundreds of identical doors pass them by. James can't make out the numbers anymore: are they runes? Symbols? What do they mean? He's constantly snapped back into focus by his voluptuous guide & the contours of her body which ground him like an invisible thread. There's a glow in the pitch-black distance, they're nearer & nearer & there it is: a thick wooden door with the number "B340".
She opens it with a touch & enters. Before James is able to take in the luxurious Art Deco trappings she takes his hand & pulls him against her. They kiss long & hard, their tongues dancing together, her hands stroking his head as he gingerly rubs her hips. The soft velvet feels like memories of childhood beaches, of hot summer holidays & the innocence of noticing girls for the first time, how desire grew in him like magic & mystery.
