Death on the Rhine

Folsom awoke to Ralf's sex-satiated, very satisfied snoring. They were both on their sides in one of the beds in Folsom's cabin on the MS River God, the American's well-worked butt nestled into the Australian's well-exercised groin and his strong arms encircling Folsom. The palm of one of Ralf's hands was spread on Folsom's lower belly, and the American detective had not been this content and well-fucked since he was living with Brad Roberts, his partner at the NYPD—and his lover—whose murder had propelled Folsom to Europe in search of revenge over his killer.

Folsom felt at peace this morning. Both the murderer he had pursued and the murderer he had found were dead now. And his own outlook on the relationship between death and life had changed in the brief time since Ralf had taken him to bed last night and fucked him endlessly, at first wildly on every surface in the cabin and then tenderly, but never as roughly as he had the first time he had taken Folsom. Before they slept, Ralf said he would show Folsom some rough fucking this morning, some variation of it that they hadn't done before. And now Folsom was looking forward to it—because now he didn't think of being fucked to ejaculation as a form of death; he thought of it as a form of rebirth into life. He wanted Ralf to fuck him fully back into life.

Both of the young hunks were startled very much awake by the ringing of the telephone. Folsom answered it, and as he did so, he disentangled from Ralf and sat up on the edge of the bed. Folsom opened the curtain and saw that the ship was docked in Amstersdam, very near to the main railroad station. The two lovers had missed the dawn, but not by much. It had been raining, and a sea of bicycles, workers on their way to their offices, was sweeping by gracefully on the main road and circle in front of the station.

Folsom was groggy, but the voice on the other end of the line brought him completely awake.

"Have you seen him? Has he returned?" Inspector Manfeld sounded quite concerned.

"He who?" Folsom answered dumbly.

"The ships captain. He escaped us in Cologne. We didn't put enough of a guard on him at the police station before he was booked. He just vanished. We're afraid he's headed back to where you are. To Amsterdam. To the ship."

"No," the American continued with his not-quite-awake dumb act. "I haven't left my cabin yet this morning. But I'll go see . . ."

Ralf was sitting up behind the American now, his thighs encasing Folsom's, his hands all over Folsom's body, pinching and squeezing him here and there. Folsom felt that promised rougher fuck coming. He tried to pry Ralf's hand from its squeezing hold on his nuts, but he wouldn't let go. He had his teeth in the hollow of his prey's neck.

"We'll be there as soon as we can get the helicopter up," Manfeld was saying. "Just hold on until we get there."

That was going to be hard to do, Folsom thought, as he dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle and sent his now-free hand into battle with Ralf hands. But it was a losing battle. Ralf was much stronger and more determined than his prey was.

"No, Ralf. The ship's captain has escaped in Cologne and may be on his way back here. We must . . ."

"We must finish what we were doing first," Ralf said with a throaty voice. And he wrapped an arm around his victim's midsection and raised him up and set him back down on his now-hard tool, working his way deeply into Folsom's channel, as the American thrashed about and groaned and grunted and moaned. Ralf pulled the joined couple back over onto their sides and thrust hard and rapidly in and out in Folsom's ass with his cock as he clawed the American's chest and belly with his fingernails and thrust Folsom's leg up in the air with his strong calf.

He was gnawing quite vigorously on Folsom's neck with his teeth and the American arched his back, pushing his shoulders into Ralf's bulging pecs in an attempt to writhe away from him. This was a mistake, however. One of Ralf's hands went up so that the heel of the hand was blocking Folsom's mouth and he was pinching the American's nose closed with a finger and thumb.

Folsom was thrashing about, but Ralf was just too strong. The American was gasping for air, as Ralf put his mouth very close to Folsom's ear.

"This is the special fuck I promised you last night," he whispered. Folsom could hear the lust dripping in Ralf's voice. "This is very popular here in Amsterdam. Did you know that the sweetest enjoyment of ejaculation is a sort of a death, when you are at the point of dying? Like when you can't live without the next breath but you can't breathe?"

Yes I knew that, Folsom wanted to scream. But he also wanted to yell that he was past that. He didn't want to die in ejaculation anymore; He wanted to live in ejaculation. But, of course Ralf couldn't hear his victim, because Folsom couldn't really scream anything. It was all he could do to try to search for air.

Ralf's pounding cock was hitting Folsom's prostate hard, and just as the Australian stud flooded the American hunk's insides with his cum, he squeezed Folsom's balls hard and the American shot off as well. This also was the moment Folsom blacked out from the lack of oxygen.

When Folsom awoke, he was alone. The droning of the police sirens no doubt were what had brought him around. He painfully sat up in the bed and pushed the curtains back. There were several police cars parked at the ramp up to the ship's entrance. He had no idea whether Manfeld and his people had arrived or whether he had called in an advance contingent from the Amsterdam police. The cars were empty, but their sirens were still blaring.

Folsom heard pandemonium in the corridor outside, and, as soon as he could get his shit together and throw on a pair of trousers and a T-shirt, he joined the chaos.

All of the attention was on the lower level, with all feet headed for the captain's cabin.

He was already dead when Folsom got there, lying in front of an open wall safe, a knife dug in up to its hilt in his back.

The policemen now on the scene were Dutch. Manfeld and his crew were nowhere in sight. He must have prepared the Dutch police though, because they quickly accepted who Folsom was and that he was to be privy to the investigation.

Seeing the captain lying there in his own blood, not just stabbed, but his body sliced here and there with the knife blade, brought the scene of Brad Roberts's murder back to Folsom full blown. It surfaced details of that scene he had pushed back into the interior of his mind, that he hadn't allowed myself to think about. Brad's body had been sliced as well. Not deeply, just shallow cuts. Almost ritualistically, primitively. And what was that Brad had told his partner about the case the night before he had died? What had Brad told Folsom that the two of them should do?

On impulse, Folsom bent down to the body. Something was clutched in the captain's dead fist. With the permission of the Dutch detective, the American pried the fist open. Just a scrap a paper, a torn edge of a document of some kind, something to do with the ship.

Not much to go on, but the captain had returned for whatever this scrap was attached to, and he had died because he had returned for it.

Folsom stood up and told the detective he had to go see about something immediately, that he had to call his researcher at the NYPD, Trudi, and pursue the question that Brad Roberts had wanted him and to check out. Suddenly the answer to that question was very important. And Folsom told the Dutch detective what he needed to check out.

Folsom was heading down the corridor toward the reception desk and the only computer on the ship linked to the Internet, when he was accosted in the corridor by a hulking figure.

"I would very much like to resume that fucking we were so nicely doing yesterday afternoon," the African potentate was saying in a clipped, very British voice.

"I just have to check on something first," Folsom said, a little irritated that the African stud was after him before Folsom was ready for him. But he just stood there, filling the corridor between Folsom and the reception room with his black beefcake figure.

"I think now is fine," he said with a big grin. And he had his arms around Folsom and he was squeezing him, and, in particular his fat fingers were squeezing vital arteries in Folsom's neck, and the American blacked out for the second time that morning.

Folsom found himself on a bed covered with the hides of exotic creatures. And his arms and legs were spread-eagled and tied to the corners of the bed. And the naked African king, his body glistening with sweat and radiating power and force, was dancing around below him, a large dildo in one hand and a pearl-handled hunting knife in the other, both of which were covered in blood. Young men, a couple of the waiters from the boat, Folsom realized, were standing beside the bed and moving the air with large palm fronds. And the ebony giant was chanting and laughing. Folsom's ass was being massively entered, and a thick tube, whether the dildo or the African's cock, Folsom knew not, was invading him ever deeper. And he was screaming and gasping and bucking against and with the invader. The African was huddled over him, leering down at him, the knife was poised over Folsom's breast.

Folsom realized, with horror that he had been here before, in a dream. But this was no dream. He also thought, rather idiotically, that he should be paying more attention to his dreams.

But then Folsom realized it wasn't large palm fronds the two members of the ship's crew were holding onto; it was two ends of ropes in some sort of pulley system. And Folsom's wrists were somehow attached to this system, and the two young crew members pulled on the ropes at the mad African's gesture, and Folsom's torso was being raised, his arms being raised up in a wide stance. He was hanging from a bar overhead.

The African was chanting something almost ritualistic as he danced around the bed on which the animal pelts were spread. With two swishes of the nasty-looking knife he had in his hand, he cut the bounds that had Folsom's ankles attached to the corner posts, and Folsom's leg's were free.

But only for a moment. The African potentate bounded up on the bed, danced around Folsom momentarily, and then was behind him, thrusting his huge cock inside Folsom's ass. The two crew members came in close beside the bed on each side and each grabbed one of Folsom's ankles and wishboned them to the side.

The African was crouched between Folsom's raised legs and was fucking strongly up into his ass. His was swishing the knife around in front of Folsom, and Folsom gave a surprised scream and then a gasp as, in two swishing strokes, the knife had sliced very shallow cuts across his chest and on one of his thighs.

The African savagely pulled Folsom's head back with his free fist in the American's hair and whispered in his ear, "Not quite the way I did your lover, Brad Roberts, but maybe I'll finish you the way I intended to finish him—and the way I would have if he hadn't lurched unfortunately and run into the knife."

Folsom was terrified, but he didn't respond to the African hulk's admission. However, Folsom now knew who had murdered Brad.

The blade of the knife gleamed in front of Folsom's eyes, catching the light of the overhead fixture.

"Ever fantasized about being fucked to death with the blade of a sharp hunting knife?" The African hissed into Folsom's ear. "We do that back in Tuliewanna. That's a very special execution we have for worthy opponents. Are you feeling worthy, Mr. Folsom?"

A swish across a bicep, and Folsom cried out in pain.

"The captain? Why the captain?" Folsom managed, trying to get the African concentrating on something else other than carving him up.

"You needn't ask that," The African whispered menacingly in his ear. "You figured that out. I heard what you said to the Dutch policeman in the captain's cabin. You asked him to check out what country this ship was registered in. Tuliewanna, of course. Landlocked Tuliewanna. Flag of convenience and all that."

Swish across a buttock and Folsom stifled another scream. The African pulled his cock completely out and then slammed it home again, and for that Folsom did groan loudly.

"Just one step from there and you'd have figured out that I own this operation, that all of the rest front for me, Frist, Meister, the captain, the whole lot of them. The captain came back for insurance, for the ship's registration papers, so he could hold that over my head. He had covered for me in his testimony that Frist killed your Brad Roberts. But he thought he could have something to hold over my head so that I didn't just kill him then. He was wrong, naturally."

The African had the blade under Folsom's chin now, and Folsom could feel the dribbling of blood more than any pain from the slight cut there.

And then he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Some movement over by the cabin's door. And then Ralf was bounding in the room and moving quickly toward the bed.

Folsom's immediate thought was that he was afraid that if Ralf attacked the African directly, the blade of the knife might slip—with very unfortunate consequences for Folsom. But his next thoughts were very confused. Ralf bounded onto the bed, but he wasn't attacking the African, he was grinning from ear to ear. And he and the African were kissing deeply over Folsom's shoulder. And then Ralf was holding Folsom's thighs in his strong hands and he was crouching in front of and below Folsom, sandwiching the American between him and the African.

And Folsom felt a second cock at his asshole. Pushing in beside that of the African. An impossible feat, but one that he somehow was accomplishing. Folsom was howling in pain and surprise, but he was being deeply skewered by two fat cocks despite his objections. And they started fucking him vigorously in unison, as he arched his back and turned his head to the ceiling, looking for relief from any quarter that would offer it. And he was moaning and groaning. And panting and pleading. But he was taking it, and it was sending him to the moon. Right up until he blacked out for the third time that day.

This time Folsom awoke in the arms of Fritz the bruiser, his favorite fuck friend from Cologne, well after the good guys had arrived and broken up the fun of the African and Ralf. Fritz had helicoptered in with Manfeld. Fritz had saved Folsom at the last minute so many times now that Folsom decided to go back to Cologne under his protection and in his embrace until the German and Dutch police could sort out just how many layers of control and intrigue were involved in this MS River God operation.

As far as Folsom cared, with a thought to how well the bruiser had topped him, they could take their jolly sweet time in sorting it out.