Remy by the Sea

by Candice Blake

  Mateo clawed onto my back bringing me in close to him. I had him pressed up against the wall. I had to be gentle, he was almost half my size.

  He reached down and tried to unbutton my jeans. But I grabbed onto his hands to stop him. He looked up at me with his beautiful hazel eyes wondering why.

  "Listen, I'd love for this to continue. But there's a lot more I have to do tonight to get ready for tomorrow," I said.

  Mateo looked down to the ground.

  "I understand," he replied.

  I brought my fingers under his chin to pull his face back up.

  "Sleep on the boat tonight. You’ll need to be well rested by tomorrow," I said.

  I put my hands under his legs and picked him up. He wrapped his arms around my shoulder and hung on tight. I brought him to his bed and put him in.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," I whispered and kissed him on the forehead.

  I turned off the light and headed back up the helm to finish cleaning.

  When I returned, it was well past midnight. Mateo was fast asleep and I didn't want to bother him so I returned to my own room. Pablo climbed up to the foot of my bed and curled up. The wine had me feeling drowsy and before I even set an alarm I had passed out.

  I woke up to the smell of bacon and Pablo was crouching at the door with his nose at the base of it. I walked to the kitchen and Mateo was whipping up breakfast.

  "Good morning," he smiled.

  "What time is it even?" I asked.

  "Quarter to six, I was kind of hungry so I thought I would make something to eat. How do you like your eggs?"

  "Over easy, thank you."

  I sat on the stool, adjusting to the light from the kitchen. He had disheveled hair and I loved watching a man who knew his way around the kitchen and how to cook.

  There was a knock on the side of the boat, then the voice of someone I was all too familiar with.

  "Rise and shine," he said.

  I went outside to greet him.

  "Drake! Always the first one here," I said.

  "You know me," he said.

  "You ready for this season?" I asked.

  "After twenty years, I'll be as ready as I'll ever be."

  Drake was one of the biggest guys on the crew. He was in charge when I was up at the helm overlooking the whole crew. No one fucked with Drake because Drake didn't take shit from anyone.

  He climbed up on the boat to shake my hand. His grip was so firm that my hand felt numb after. We headed inside to the kitchen where Mateo was.

  "Mateo, meet Drake. He'll be sharing a room with you."

  Mateo turned around and I could sense his surprise. Not very many people looked like Drake. He had tattoos covering both his arms and scars all over his body from many years of crab fishing. I had many too. As a captain now, mine had faded from all the years that I've spent at the helm rather than on deck.

  Mateo shook Drake's hand.

  "Oh, a new crew member I see. What's your role?" Drake asked.

  "I'm not sure yet," Mateo said.

  "You're not sure?" Drake repeated, "You're going to need to have some more confidence if you want to be on this ship," Drake snarled.

  His arrogance was showing already and it hadn't even been a minute.

  "Hey, take it easy there, Draker. Mateo and I will talk about it later today. No need to jump the gun. The season hasn't even started yet," I said.

  I looked over at Mateo who had a stern expression on his face. For such a small guy, he wasn't backing down.

  I slipped myself between them to ease the tension in the air.

  "Draker, why don't you set up the crates? We'll be dropping the first set at four-o-clock today."

  Draker nodded and looked Mateo up and down before he headed out onto the deck.

  "I told you it wasn't going to be easy," I said.

  "What? You think I'm scared of him?" Mateo replied.

  "No, but the guys on board aren't easy to deal with."

  "I can handle it, don't worry about me."

  Mateo slid me the plate of eggs and bacon.

  "Well, know that I'm the captain. So I run things around here. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. But since you are on the bottom of the totem pole, if someone asks you to do something within reason, you do it. That's how things work around here. If you think something is not right, you come up to me, I will solve it. Understand?"

  Mateo nodded.

  Within the hour, the rest of the crew members arrived. Everyone was on deck organizing everything for the first catch. Mateo was out there too, helping to move crates around. Pablo and I were up at the helm.

  We were ready to set sail any moment now and as always the adrenaline started to kick in. It was like sitting at a poker table pushing all the chips in the middle and waiting for the dealer to flip the last card.

  It was always this moment that I knew I was born to do this.

  This run felt more important than the others, and I wasn't sure if it was because Mateo was on board. We haven't had a new member in years and I was curious to know how it would change the dynamics on deck.

  "All crew members on deck, we will be setting sail in five minutes. Please secure all crates and head inside," I announced on the intercom.

  Setting sail in the Atlantic was refreshing. There was a lot less competition between fishers than in the Bering Sea where I worked for most of my career. There, king crab was the prized possession.

  The conditions were tough, the competition battling for king crab was tougher. About five years ago, I decided to stick to my roots and head back to the Atlantic to fish for snow crab. It was a whole different kind of struggle here.

  There was a lot less competition here for many reasons. For one, luck played a larger part in the game. I could guarantee that I'd come home with a certain number of crab in the Bering Sea.

  But here, some seasons we'd catch close to nil and I would struggle with being able to pay the crew for the season. But when lady luck hits, oh boy does she ever hit hard. We could hit a hotspot where we could finish the season weeks earlier than intended.

  The second reason was because of the unpredictable weather conditions. We were in the middle of tsunami season. We could hit storms that were undetectable until we were in the eye of them.

  But everyone on board knew this. We all shared the addiction of that adrenaline rush. The rush of hitting that sweet, sweet hotspot and claiming the jackpot.

  That's why I warned Mateo before taking off that he might not be ready for this journey. Hell, some guys who have been doing this for years were still not ready for the unpredictability of it all.

  I brought us to the first location of where we were going to release the first set of pods. I calculated it based on the average of three hotspots that we hit in the last three years. I would never drop the crates in the same exact spot as I did before. Catching crab was a lot like lightning, it never struck the same place twice.

  I put down the ship's anchor and called all my men on board to release the first set of crates. From above, I could see all my men head out on deck, then I saw Mateo walk out.

  "Mateo," I announced on the intercom. "Please get off the deck and report to the helm."

  He looked at me from the deck and gave me an annoyed look before I watched him come back inside.

  He made his way up the stairs, and Pablo greeted him.

  "What?" Mateo asked.

  "I know you're eager to be working the floor. But I need you to see what goes on first before you get assigned a role. It's dangerous down there and many men have lost their lives. If you could stop acting like you know everything and take a step back, you won't be another casualty."

  "You're not my goddamn dad, why are you talking to me like you are?"

  "You're right, I'm not. But I am the fucking captain of this ship. So if you want to stay on it, you better listen to what I have to fucking say."

  Mateo sighed and he took a seat on the chair next to me.

  I took a breath and r
efocused on the task at hand. My job was to direct the crew and release the first set of the crates for the season.

  "I see this part as a choreographed dance. Every person has a role in it and it requires co-operation for everything to go as planned."

  "And if it doesn't?"

  "If it doesn't, we pick ourselves up and fix it. Or we know better for next time."

  I stared at Mateo who was now bent over the glass admiring the fluidity of the crew at work. This had been years in the making to get it to flow like this. I tried my hardest to concentrate on what was happening on deck, but my biggest fear was starting to be a reality.

  Mateo made it so hard to focus. He bent over the window to look down onto the deck and his shirt rode up his back. His jeans hugged his ass and I could see the waistband of his underwear.

  I wanted to step behind him right then and there and press myself up to his voluptuous ass. I wanted to pull his pants down and spread him open. I wanted to bury my face between his cheeks and lick him to hear his moans.

  But I had to be professional and the lives of my crew members were at stake.

  "Alright, now that you have a good feel of what happens, you can head back down. But stay clear of everyone so that you don't get in the way. There are a lot of moving parts and one bad toss of a rope can send you into the ocean. You understand me?" I warned.

  "Yeah, man. God, stop talking to me like that," Mateo said.

  He stomped down the steps of the helm.

  I ran my hands on my trousers to adjust my rock-hard cock in my briefs. The thought of him bent over like that drove me crazy. I couldn't imagine what would happen if I saw him naked again. Or if we got naked together.

  I was glad that the crew knew exactly what they were doing by now to not need any of my direction. By the time I had refocused, they had already dropped all the crates into the sea. The first drop of the day always meant a celebration.

  The crew headed inside. I left the helm to go downstairs into the living area where the guys had opened a bottle of wine. A member of the crew had prepared dinner for the night and it was time for a little break from the first day back at sea.

  "Make a toast, Remy!" Francois, a crew member, yelled handing me a glass of wine.

  With so many testosterone rampant guys, things onboard got rowdy quick. Everyone cheered for me to say something.

  "Here's to our new crew member, Mateo. Here's to the start of another season out here in the Atlantic. Here's to the best season to come."

  The boys cheered and some of them ruffled Mateo's hair giving him a warm welcome and we all clinked our glasses.

  6

  Mateo

  The snoring echoed in the narrow hallways. The waves crashing against the vessel rocked it from side-to-side. I felt like I needed to throw up.

  I looked out the small porthole window next to my bed. I could see the moonlit water that diminished to blackness in the horizon. My heart pounded from the fear of not being in control of where we were going. The thought popped up that this trip may be harder than what I could handle.

  I thought of the end goal which was to go back to Venezuela. Back to the sandy beaches, hot sun, and coconut water. I noticed that Pablo was not in Remy's room that night and instead he was sleeping on the floor next to my bed.

  I wondered where Remy was. I got up out of bed and headed up the stairs towards the helm. There was dim lighting and light jazz music playing.

  Remy was sitting in the captain's chair looking out into the horizon. I could see the focus on his face in the reflection of the mirror before he noticed that I had snuck into the helm.

  "Look who's up at this hour," Remy greeted.

  He was shirtless and in his sweatpants. It reminded me of the night we were naked on the beach together.

  "It's hard to sleep with so much rocking on the boat," I said.

  "Are you saying I'm a bad captain?"

  "Well, can you try to avoid the waves or something?"

  "I'll press a few buttons to enter anti-motion-sickness-mode. How does that sound? Or better yet, why don't you steer this thing, Mr. Know-it-all."

  "Don't mind if I do. Don't you need a break anyway?"

  "There are no breaks for me around here. I work around the clock. I'll take brief naps once in a while when the conditions are good and when we're heading down a straight path. But besides that, it's me, myself, and I."

  "Who do you usually ask to man the ship when you take naps?"

  "Usually, Drake. Because I've known him the longest and he's the one I can trust the most."

  "Who taught you to sail a ship anyways?"

  "My dad of course. He taught me everything about running a vessel like this. Here, I can give you a demo and show you some of the controls since you're up anyway."

  Remy motioned his hand to gesture me to walk towards him. When I was about to sit down in the co-pilot's chair, he grabbed my arms and looked at me then drew me to sit on his lap.

  The warmth of his fuzzy bare chest radiated against my skin. I felt the steadiness of his deep breaths on my back. Soon after, the hardness of his cock against his sweatpants pressed up against me.

  "You comfy?" He asked.

  I nodded with a sly smile.

  "Good. Alright, we'll start off with starting the ship. You put the key in and flick this button on. Easy enough, right?"

  "Sounds pretty easy."

  "Alright, next is acceleration. You hold onto this button, then you push the lever forward. Why don't you give it a try?"

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course, I'm sure."

  I rested my hand on the lever and hesitated. I felt his large hands on top of mine. He guided me to push the lever forward and I watched the boat speed up cutting through the waters.

  We were going fast and before I knew it we were going full speed.

  The adrenaline rush kicked in from the speed at which we were going. Remy grabbed onto my chest bringing me closer towards him as we sped through the ocean.

  "Holy shit," I screamed.

  "Alright, that's enough for now," Remy said.

  He pulled the lever back and we returned to the normal speed.

  "I didn't think we could go that fast," I said.

  "Oh trust me, it can go even faster if we wanted. But it's not safe this late at night."

  I turned around and our eyes locked onto each other. I studied his handsomeness, his confidence as a captain of this ship. My heart was still racing from how fast the ship was going and then Remy kissed me.

  He squeezed me tight with his hand on my inner thigh while his lips were locked onto mine. His beard grazed my cheeks and I could taste a hint of coffee on his lips. His hand moved from my thigh up my shirt.

  He touched my sensitive nipples that hardened up. Remy's low moans echoed in the helm as his tongue explored my mouth.

  I turned around on his lap and latched my hands onto his thick shoulders. His cock was bulging and visible from his sweatpants and I could feel it pulsing under me. Remy lifted my shirt up and sucked on my nipple, biting it.

  I whimpered in pain and pleasure and he sucked on them harder. My nipples were the most sensitive part of my body.

  "Take your shirt off," Remy demanded.

  I listened and took off my white t-shirt and he took it from my hands and tossed it behind him. He then reached behind me onto the control board and pressed a button. A green light illuminated the autopilot signal.

  Then, Remy focused his attention back on me.

  "God, you're so fucking sexy," he groaned biting his lips.

  He reached his hands down my shorts and latched onto my ass and squeezed it tight.

  "Your skin is so smooth. I fucking love it," he said.

  Remy lifted me up from the chair and carried me to the table at the back of the helm. He then slid my shorts off exposing me completely naked and vulnerable to whatever he wanted to do.

  Remy's lips pursed open admiring my naked body. He caressed my thighs, feeling my smooth s
kin on his calloused fingers. My cock was rock hard from his touch, I could see the outline of his hard-on too.