“And if I don’t?” Sule stepped back, lifted his fists into position for a serious fight, began shifting his weight back and forth from foot to foot. It was too bad there would be no witnesses, but fighting on board would probably be enough to get the oaf expelled from the crew. It would be his word against Sule’s.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“That’s too bad,” Sule said and shot out a fist. It caught Olaf on the chin, knocking his head back but not causing nearly the impact Sule was hoping for. Before Sule could hit him again, Olaf threw the blankets aside and rushed forward, his shoulder hitting Sule in the chest, driving him backward, slamming him into the bulkhead. Sule’s head banged against the wood, and then his body was pinned there by Olaf’s. No room to kick, Olaf holding both of Sule’s wrists tight against the bulkhead as well. Sule snarled and looked up to meet Olaf’s eyes—it infuriated him that he wasn’t quite tall enough to look directly into them. What he saw there wasn’t anger or hate—he would have recognized those emotions in someone else’s eyes—but he didn’t care. He jerked his right wrist free, or tried to, but Olaf kept it pinned to the bulkhead. He pulled harder, but he could not break the grip on his wrists.
SULE knows how to fight. He likes to fight. Sometimes when he’s on land, he’ll make his way to the dirtiest, darkest tavern he can find and make bets with the white men drinking there that he’ll fight all of them, one by one, and be the last man standing. He almost always wins because he’ll do anything to win.
OLAF curled his fingers around Sule’s left wrist. Sule swore, tried again to pull free, but Olaf just tightened his grip. “We want something, we take it,” he growled, then leaned over and licked Sule’s arm, his tongue slipping under the cuff of Sule’s shirt and lapping at the skin there.
Sule went still, all anger and resistance utterly wiped away by shock. Olaf’s hand was cool against Sule’s skin, but his tongue, moving across his own fingers and up to Sule’s unresisting hand, was hot and wet. When that tongue slid across his palm, in between his fingers, Sule gasped, started to say, “What—” but Olaf’s mouth had left his hand and moved to his neck, and all he could do was drop his head back against the bulkhead and shut his eyes.
A part of him was shouting that he had to fight, to stop whatever was happening, that he had lost control of the situation and of his own body. So when Olaf slid down onto his knees in front of him, Sule felt a wave of relief and also a little stab of angry pleasure at seeing a white man kneeling in front of him for a change. Just as Sule thought It’s about time, Olaf rubbed the front of Sule’s trousers with his hand, then with his face, and when he put his mouth there, every thought went out of Sule’s head.
Somehow Olaf got Sule’s trousers unfastened, and again, his hand was cool on Sule’s skin but his mouth was hot, and when he took Sule’s prick into his mouth, Sule could not help his hips surging forward.
Olaf pulled back, pressed his hands against Sule’s hips to keep them in place, and Sule felt that loss of power again, but then Olaf’s mouth was back on him.
It should have been a triumphant moment for Sule, a chance to let his anger translate into action. He should have grabbed the Norwegian’s head and taken charge, but when he reached down and put his hands on Olaf’s head, Olaf let out a rumbling moan that Sule felt all around his prick, and it felt so good that all of Sule’s usual simmering anger was replaced by pleasure, rushing through his body.
Olaf’s hair felt cool and smooth under Sule’s rough, callused fingers. He looked down at the blond head moving back and forth, seeing his own prick sliding in and out of that pink mouth surrounded by a red beard, and when brown eyes lifted to meet his, suddenly it wasn’t some white man on his knees, it was Olaf, pulling an intense pleasure out of Sule with every swipe of his tongue. A loud moan from Olaf rumbled through Sule again, and suddenly Olaf was sucking harder, tightening his hand at the base of Sule’s prick, and then it was over, bright lights exploding behind Sule’s eyes as he shot his seed into Olaf’s mouth, pulse after pulse, wave after wave of ecstasy.
He felt Olaf’s mouth move off him, and he slid down the bulkhead, his bare arse hitting the rough wood of the deck. Olaf fell against the bulkhead next to him, gasping for breath and wiping his mouth. Sule shut his eyes. He couldn’t think, didn’t know what had just happened. A strong shoulder bumped his as Olaf shifted so that they were sitting against the bulkhead side by side.
After a moment, Olaf cleared his throat. Sule tensed. This was where the Norwegian’s true motivations would be made clear. Would he try to blackmail Sule, would he threaten to tell the rest of the crew? Sule almost laughed, despite the simmer that had started up again in his head. Everyone in the crew knew that William, the captain of this ship, regularly had relations of that sort with other men, and they didn’t care. If the Norwegian thought he could get something out of Sule, just because—
“I understand why you hate me,” Olaf said, turning to look at Sule. “And I don’t blame you for it. I’ve seen what the Dutch do to sl—to Africans.” When Sule didn’t answer, Olaf turned away, then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He used the hem of his shirt to wipe the evidence of his release from his stomach and thighs, pulled up and fastened his trousers, and was about to leave the hold when Sule said, “I don’t hate you.”
Olaf smiled as Sule stood up, then caught his arm when he nearly tripped over the trousers tangled around his feet, but Sule shook him off. “I don’t like you, either.” He reached down and jerked his trousers up, fastening them quickly.
Olaf shrugged. “At least you feel something for me.” When Sule stared at him, bemused, Olaf shrugged again. “Everyone I knew in Norway, they were all cold. My parents, my friends. As if nothing mattered to them, not even me. But you….” His lips quirked up, just a bit. “You’re always hot.” He took Sule’s wrist, wrapped his fingers around it lightly. “You get angry at me, hotheaded. You feel something for me, even though you don’t want to.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Sule muttered, jerking his wrist out of Olaf’s grip. “Idiot.”
Olaf looked down at the floor and laughed softly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” Olaf gestured between the two of them. He walked over to the blankets he’d dropped and picked them up. “And for these,” he said, then smiled at Sule and climbed up out of the hold.
SULE has never found white people particularly attractive. In truth, he’s never really thought about attraction or intimacy. He spent his youth learning enough to be able to escape slavery, and the anger burning in him left no room for any other sort of heat. But now he has a better understanding of why his crewmates take themselves off to brothels as soon as they make port. His head tells him to forget about what happened, but his body keeps remembering, heating up every time he sees a flash of blond hair.
ON THE outside, nothing had changed. Or at least Sule tried to make sure that everything looked the same as usual. Olaf didn’t approach him for anything but his orders. Sule tried to put their tryst out of his mind, told himself that it could have happened with any of the men on the ship, but he couldn’t stop looking at Olaf. Couldn’t stop staring at the long hair in a plait down his back, the red beard that he trimmed when the sea was calm. Golden blond hairs on his muscular forearms, broad shoulders, stocky build, thick thighs and arse. But every time Olaf caught him looking, Sule felt as if he were losing control, and the anger started to build again.
Sule told himself that he could break free from the grip of this madness. He didn’t need Olaf to touch him, no matter how good it might have felt. So each night before going to sleep, Sule would indulge in self-pleasure in any secluded part of the ship that was not the hold. But it wasn’t working; the hand on his prick was his own, but in his mind, all he could see was Olaf. It was getting worse every day, except that the simmering in him was no longer anger but lust.
After two weeks, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He found Olaf working on barr
el staves with Tom, the cooper, and shouted at him to get below and finish the partition in the sail room.
Olaf looked up, frowning. “But I finished it two days ago.”
Sule nearly turned and walked away, but he couldn’t stop looking at Olaf’s mouth. “Don’t argue with me, Sinason, go do it!”
Tom gave Olaf a sympathetic look as he gathered his tools and headed below, Sule right on his heels.
In the sail room, Olaf knocked on the partition. “Right here, these are my repairs,” he said, looking at Sule.
Sule stood a few feet away, staring at Olaf. That first time, Olaf had begun it, had taken control, had ended it in a much better way than any of Sule’s other fights. In his memory, Sule could still feel Olaf’s hands and mouth, and as much as he wanted to repeat their encounter, he couldn’t think of how to begin or even how to tell Olaf what he wanted.
His face burning, Sule stepped forward, took Olaf’s hand, and put it around his own wrist. He saw the comprehension cross Olaf’s face, and then the two of them were tumbling down onto a pile of canvas. Olaf’s mouth moved across Sule’s face and down to lick and suck on his neck. As before, Sule let his head drop back, letting the sensation wipe all thoughts from his head.
Olaf shifted so he was nearly lying on top of Sule, who could barely breathe under his weight, but it felt good, too. Strong. Solid. He put a hand on Olaf’s back, bit the nape of his neck. Olaf bit him back, pinned Sule’s wrist to the canvas next to his head, and lifted his hips to rub his prick against Sule’s through their thin trousers.
Like the previous time, a flash of thought went through Sule’s mind that he should stop Olaf, that he should be the one in control, but when Olaf moved off him and stood up, he felt the loss of weight and teeth almost like a punch to his gut. Before he could say anything, though, he saw that Olaf was only unfastening his trousers. Sule hurried to take off his own, and then Olaf fell beside him, one large hand on Sule’s arse, pulling his hips forward so that they were skin-on-skin.
And then Olaf pulled back again, and Sule nearly cried out from disappointment, ready to let himself boil over in frustrated rage, until he saw the simmer in Olaf’s eyes. He knew that Olaf wasn’t playing with him and that they weren’t done yet.
Olaf ran a hand up Sule’s side underneath his shirt from his hip to his armpit, causing Sule to shiver, then pulled his hand out and stroked down Sule’s arm. Catching Sule’s hand, he brought it to his mouth and licked the palm. Sule shivered again and let his hand be pulled down to Olaf’s prick. He gave it a squeeze, watching as Olaf licked his own palm, then his eyes shut as he felt that big hand wrap around his prick. As Olaf began to move his hand, Sule caught on and began to match his movements, stroke for stroke. So much better than his own hand, alone in a dark corner of the ship, no beard rubbing against his cheek or hot breath on his face.
So much better that Sule’s climax rushed over him with no warning, and suddenly he was crying out, jerking, bucking, pushing into Olaf’s fist, his seed coating their hands and stomachs. He was still breathing hard when Olaf took Sule’s hand off his prick, guiding it around his thick waist and back between his buttocks.
Sule felt so good, he was willing to go along with anything Olaf wanted at that point, even if he didn’t understand it. He let Olaf move his hand back and forth, rubbing his slippery fingers across Olaf’s opening, and he kept moving them even after Olaf let go and began stroking his own prick, his hips pushing back and forth between Sule’s fingers and his own hand. A few seconds were all it took for Olaf to go over the edge, his buttocks clenching around Sule’s hand and a new warm wetness springing up between them as he jerked, growling into Sule’s neck.
Olaf rolled onto his back, breathing heavily, and Sule’s hand slid from Olaf’s buttocks to his hip. He let it rest there a moment, feeling muscles shift under cool skin, then sat up and found the damp rag he had stowed behind the pile of canvas earlier that day. He wiped his hands and prick and handed the rag to Olaf, who took it with a look of surprise on his face but did the same.
“Next time, maybe you can fuck me,” Olaf told him, sitting up and reaching for his trousers.
Sule had heard that word thrown about by the Dutch overseers and plantation owners when talking about slave women and town whores they’d been with, but he wasn’t entirely sure how it applied to men. But then Olaf smiled at him, and he felt himself getting hard again just wondering about it.
AFTER the sail room, there is no more pretense; Sule and Olaf slip away whenever they can. They’re nearly caught once, but Olaf just bites gently at the hand that Sule puts over his mouth to keep him quiet, which in turn inspires Sule to sink his teeth into Olaf’s right buttock the next time they’re both naked.
SULE waited until Olaf looked over at him after supper, and then he flicked his eyes at the door. Olaf gave a tiny nod and drained the last of his drink.
“If you’re done, you need to finish fixing that floorboard in the hold,” Sule snapped. Olaf opened his mouth as if to argue but then shut it again. He stood up, shoulders slumped, and left the galley. Sule stood up to follow him, but William caught his arm.
“You need to stop this.”
Sule’s heart thumped, and he looked into William’s eyes. “Stop what?” he asked, trying to buy time, not wanting to think about what he’d do if William put an end to their games.
“Stop breathing down the man’s neck. He’s good at his job, and he can do it without you hovering over him like a hawk, waiting for him to make a mistake. And you need to stop shouting at him. We’re damned lucky to have him, and I don’t want to lose him to another crew because of your constant sniping.” William blew out a breath. “I know you can’t stand to have him around, but try to keep in mind the good he’s doing for the ship, all right?”
His head spinning with relief, Sule nodded. “All right. I’m sorry, Bill, I’ll try to do better.”
William clapped him on the shoulder, smiling. “I know you will. Thank you.”
Sule left the galley, strolled around the deck for a few minutes, then snuck below to the hold, where Olaf was sitting on the trunk of blankets behind the bulkhead.
“What took you so long?” Olaf asked, standing up and peering behind Sule.
“The captain said I needed to stop bothering you while you’re working.” Sule pushed Olaf back down onto the trunk and stood in front of him, legs spread, as Olaf kneaded his buttocks. “He told me that you can do your job without me standing over you. I was afraid he’d stop me if he caught me going down here, so I had to take the long way.”
“Next time, tell him that I’m being insubordinate,” Olaf murmured into Sule’s stomach, and Sule laughed.
The laugh caught in his throat, and the smile fell off his face. He never smiled unless some white man took his bet to fight him. And he never laughed unless he had blood in his mouth and was standing over an opponent who lay face down on the ground.
But when he looked down into Olaf’s face, he felt the smile returning. Olaf pulled him down so that Sule was kneeling on the trunk and straddling his lap. As he felt the familiar heat build between them, Sule thought that the captain was right, as usual. Olaf was very good at his job.
THEY dropped anchor in a cove near Beaufort so that they could restock and get paid out of the money that William would get from selling the spoils of their raids. As with most landfalls, he let them go into town two or three men at a time so as not to raise too many suspicions among the citizens. He almost balked at Sule’s request to go ashore with Olaf—“Can’t you give the man an inch of breathing space?”—but agreed when Sule explained that Olaf wanted to purchase some better tools and would need Sule to translate.
With their earnings tucked safely inside their shirts, Sule and Olaf headed first to a blacksmith’s for the tools, then to a shop that sold cotton cloth—Olaf had been alternating between the clothes he’d had on when he’d run from his old crew and some castoffs from Mwata, the only man on the ship whose clothes would f
it him. After making the purchases, they found a tavern nearby but walked out after the owner refused to serve Sule. “You can stay,” the man told Olaf, “but your boy has to go up the street to Pedra’s.”
Pedra’s turned out to be a tavern run by a mulatto couple named Pedreira, who were happy to fulfill Olaf’s request for a meal and a bath. Olaf and Sule sat downstairs while the water was heated, drinking ale, dipping still-warm bread into olive oil, and nearly inhaling bowls of the first fresh meat and vegetables they’d had in weeks.
When the bath was ready, Olaf clasped Sule’s hand on the table. “Come upstairs with me. You can have the bath first.”
Sule pulled his hand away, looking around the tavern, but it was early afternoon and the place was almost empty. Mrs. Pedreira was smiling at them, gesturing toward the stairs, not seeming to notice their hands at all. Sule let out a breath and nodded, pushing away from the table and standing up. Olaf stood up as well, picking up the basket of bread and a carafe of oil and taking them upstairs with him.
SULE lay back in the tub and closed his eyes. Hot baths with fresh water that actually allowed soap to foam up were a luxury that a sailor could indulge in only a few times a year. After a moment, he opened his eyes to see Olaf watching him, nibbling on a piece of bread. “You’re still hungry after that?”
“Not really. Just that the bread is very good.”
Sule sat up in the tub. “Do you get enough to eat on the ship? You’re as big as Mwata, and he needs two plates at every meal—”
“Bosco gives me two plates as well, you don’t have to worry. He looked me over my first day on board and didn’t even ask, just stood over me until I’d finished everything.”
“Good.” Sule closed his eyes and lay back in the tub once more. “If you get ill from not eating enough, it’s the ship that will suffer.”
“I’m glad you’re thinking about the welfare of the ship.”
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