Death on the Rhine

The shadow by the stairway to the Helios deck of the MS River God drew back and sheathed the blade that had been held at the ready lest a moonbeam cast its damning light on dark intent.

Just moments to a death now.

The increased intensity of the groaning and moaning from the only occupied lounger on the rooftop deck of Rhine River luxury cruiser told of the impending death. The small figure was splayed on its back on the lounger, trembling legs spread wide, arms flailing, torso writhing, as the larger figure hunched over it, stabbing, stabbing, cutting deeper with each thrust, each thrust met with a tortured yelp and a moan.

A final cry in duet, the thrust of death, and the small figure collapsed in upon itself with the hiss of a long, spent sigh. The hunching figure rose up on its feet, looming over its prey, gave a satisfied and wicked laugh, and wiped its dripping blade clean before sheathing it.

The epitome of one man dominating another man. Fucking. The act and second of ejaculation. That had been what Michel Foucault's The Use of Pleasure, the book NYPD detective Clint Folsom had been reading while his partner—and lover—was dying equated to a type of death—orgasm as a point-of-death experience. And Folsom had become possessed with this concept and its association with Foucault's theory. He couldn't get the image out of his mind. The thought of that which followed the point of death possibly being one long, rolling orgasm initiated by a last-gasp ejaculation. Just as he couldn't get the vision of the hunched figure standing over his prey now in the moonlight on the top deck the River God as it sliced the waters between Mainz and the vineyard village of Rudesheim out of his mind. Bruno Meister. The man who had sado-fucked Folsom's partner and then killed him. And Folsom had traced the killer down on this Rhine River cruise and had followed him out on the open deck in the dark of night to take his revenge. But this obviously wasn't the opportunity he thought it would be.

Oh well, it was a six-day cruise to Amsterdam. There would be other opportunities.

* * *

It was just the first day of the cruise, which had begun in Mainz. Folsom had run Meister to ground for the first since the master criminal had fled his crime in New York just an hour earlier at dinner in the Ambrosia Restaurant on the Apollo deck. The MS River God was a special ship, and this river cruise was even more special. It was a no-holds-barred gay-oriented cruise that would unleash ninety well-heeled and very horny men into the welcoming arms of the forgiving city of Amsterdam in just less than a week. This, of course, would be no big deal for Amsterdam. It was a sexual paradise and supermarket.

When the NYPD traced Meister down to this cruise, they developed plans to meet the ship in Amsterdam. But Folsom thought his partner and lover, Brad Roberts, deserved better than a chancy attempt at extradition from the very-forgiving Netherlands. And Folsom was one of the few detectives in the department who would fit in unobtrusively on such a cruise. The NYPD had given him a leave of absence to fish in Montana. But Folsom preferred to do his fishing here on the Rhine and to take care of business before the ship docked in Amsterdam.

Meister, a big bruiser of a German gangster who was on the far end of his fifties but who still held onto his commanding muscle and brooding good looks, was planted at the captain's table in the curve of the window at the bow of the boat. Folsom had found a seat for this first meal of the cruise on a nearby banquette, next to an Italian count who used his hands in conversation just as all Italians did and who wanted to have a conversation with Folsom's thighs and basket under the table. Wanting to fit in, Folsom was playing to the count's interest while he locked his attention on Meister, waiting for a chance to be alone with the monster he was pursuing.

Meister had many nefarious interests in New York, and Folsom and his partner, Roberts, had been zeroing in on an arrest, with Roberts serving as the inside man in Meister's operations. As far as Folsom knew, Meister had never laid eyes on he himself—which made this close pursuit possible. And serving as the inside man had meant that Roberts had negotiated his way into Meister's bed, which had been a stretch even for the inventive Roberts in view of Meister's nasty sexual preferences.

Roberts obviously had gotten just too close to Meister, if that was possible. When they found his body, he was naked and spread-eagled on his back on a luxury hotel room bed, his hands tied over his head to the headboard, his feet to the footboard, and a deep knife wound under his rib cage and traveling up into his heart. He'd been fucked, including with a monster-sized object that had torn him up pretty badly, and a thick sounding tube was still buried deep inside his cock. The autopsy determined the presence of the latex of a condom in his ass canal. The case had been broken open primarily because the condom had also broken open. The DNA led to Meister.

Folsom was numb from the death of his partner and lover, but he was seething with rage. The image of the connection of ejaculation and death had possessed his mind. He sought one sort of revenge death for Meister, but ever since that night Brad had died, Folsom had also gone on a frenzied search for the ejaculation form of death for himself. It had only been as he neared the point of orgasm that he'd been able to forget what he had lost and what had happened to his lover. And it was the image of the possibility of the sensation of perpetual orgasm in the embrace of his beyond-the-pale lover, Brad Roberts, rolling down through eternity that propelled him to discount the cost of killing Meister himself.

He was hoping, as he eyed Meister exchanging jovial, expressive conversation with the captain and the other honored guests at the captain's table and flirting with the small, but solid Croatian waiter, Tiho, that the Italian count had a cock as sensuous and searching as his hands. Because after he had dispatched Meister, Folsom very much wanted to be dispatched himself—to spend whatever time it took to uncover his crime of vengeance in the arms and sheathing the possessing phallus of a vigorous lover. The Italian count seemed more than interested in helping him with that problem.

Tiho was playing Meister for all he was worth, prancing around the table as he served it, playing the coquet. And Meister was buying what Tiho had to sell. As the dessert course was served, Meister reached out while Tiho was placing a plate before him, wrapped a beefy hand around the young man's neck, and brought Tiho's ear down to his mouth. Tiho smiled at what was being whispered to him. Later, after coffee had made the rounds and been consumed and when the captain had stood, shook hands all around with his guests, and left, Meister headed for the ship's foyer. Tiho was nowhere to be seen.

In the interim, the Italian count's hands had been having a conversation with Folsom's cock, which he had fished out of the detective's pants under the low-dipping cloth on the table, and Folsom was having a little trouble focusing on Meister's movement. This was his chance at getting Meister alone, however. The count would have to wait his turn at dispensing death.

Whispering a "Don't go away, I have to go to the WC," in the Italian's ear, Folsom disengaged the count's fingers, reholstered his piece, zipped up, and then rose and followed Meister down the corridor running between the suites from the dining room to the ship's foyer. He reached the top of the staircase leading half a deck down to foyer just in time to see Meister go off to the left and through the sliding glass doors onto the open porch beyond where the gangway would start when the boat was docked and from whence the stairs led up to the open Helios deck.

Not wanting the desk manager to see that he was following Meister, Folsom walked on past the reception desk and into the Alexander Lounge. Passengers, having finished their dinner, were already gathering in there. The room had a Mediterranean motif, and three beef-cake, heavily muscled, blond-haired men were taking orders and tending bar. They wore only short, Roman soldier-type skirts, laced sandals, and gold arm rings. Gold-colored sequined masks hid the upper part of their faces and made one indistinguishable to another. Muscle perfected in triplicate.

Folsom just stood at the entryway, though, watching the reception desk with his peripheral vision. And when the desk manager turned away, he turned and slipped out the sliding glass doors.

He immediately, though, had to sink into the shadows of the porch, out of sight of both the foyer and of the upper part of the stairs leading to the Helios deck, because he wasn't alone. A now-naked Tiho, except for his rhinestone-encrusted short waiter's vest, was sitting on a step near the top of the stairs, and Meister was standing on a stair below him, with his back to Folsom. They both had their hands on the side rails, and Tiho was mouthing Meister's cock, as the German gangster slowly stroked his buttocks back and forth, clearly enjoying the sucking he was receiving.

One of Meister's hands came off the rail and disappeared in front of him, and from the groaning and grunting that Tiho had started to do and the fidgeting of his torso in the moonlight, it was evident that the German was opening the young Croatian's hole up with his fingers in preparation for a plowing. At length Meister gave a command, and they both disengaged and moved up the stairs and onto the lounger on the Helios deck.

Folsom followed them on up to the top, silently sticking to the shadows. He drew out his knife, anxious for Meister to finish with Tiho and for Tiho to leave. But Tiho didn't leave. After that first plowing, Meister gripped Tiho by the sides of his head and guided the young man's mouth to his cock again. Meister obviously wanted a second helping, and who knew how long it would take for him to reload and then finish with Tiho a second time—and perhaps a third—time?

With a sigh of resignation, Folsom turned and silently worked his way down the stairs again. It was a six-day cruise. There would be other opportunities. But soon, Folsom told himself. Very soon.