Reasons to Leave Home (v1.0)

Tags: Male Privateer Captain / Cabin Boy who is Actually a Girl, consensual sex. (There is also a failed attempted rape earlier by a different male character)


Charlotte tore down the docks with a backpack full of books and a recently cleaned saber at her hip. It was early enough in the day to still be cold and the winds were still so it was misty. The air carried salt inland and made her short blonde hair frizzy and impossible to control.

She had sold the last of her worldly possessions that she couldn’t carry with her. She had left her school, the only educational institute that mattered anywhere on the archipelago. Her parents wouldn’t even talk to her anymore, but that had been a problem for months and as much as it hurt her, Charlotte had accepted that everyone had come to hate her here. That was why she had been wearing a disguise, so she could go places without being spat at. Cutting her hair short, replacing her entire wardrobe, and using a corset on her breasts and been enough to make people not notice her.

Fuck them all, she thought. The entire island could sink, as far as Charlotte was concerned, and she would feel nothing for them. Her hatred was a flame that burned so strong these days that it had almost eclipsed her love of learning. It hurt her like a sickness or a parasite that gnawed at her inside out. Already her miserable rage had claimed one life. She didn’t feel guilty for that, but nevertheless she wanted to leave the island before anything got worse. In the end, Charlotte just wanted to leave all of the hate behind, theirs and hers.

The fishermen were gone already, out to sea, and the only boat in the bay that didn’t live there was enormous. It wasn’t a passenger ship, but it had sent a dinghy to the docks and there was a man sitting  on a chair next to it. He was a few years older than she was, with his blonde hair cut into a mohawk. For the time being he was shirtless and riddled with dark green tattoos of twisting kelp.

Charlotte asked, “I don’t suppose you’re taking passengers?”

“No,” the man said, looking at her. He picked up an orange from a basket at his side and started to peel it. “Looking for help though, if you want in so badly.”

She wasn’t certain. Her gut told her to wait for a passenger ship, but in her heart she wanted nothing more than to be gone at once and never see these shores again. “Yeah,” she said, finally.

“What’s your name?”

“Charlie,” she said, folding her arms over her bound chest and looking out at the ship.

“I’m Drew,” the man replied, putting segments of orange into his mouth two at a time. “The captain’s on shore right now. When he comes back here, you talk to him and if he likes you then you get the job.”

“What jobs are open?” she asked, finding that she dreaded the response.

“Cabin boy,” he said.

She’d take it. She was qualified, at least. But he spoke again before she could.

“You know how to use that saber?” he asked, indicating the weapon on her hip.

“I’ve been training with sabers since I was eight, I’ve won a lot of medals.” She was an athlete, not a soldier.

He saw this, and made a dismissive wave of his hand. “Then stick with cabin boy.”

“It’s a real saber, though,” she said, mildly offended at being deemed so useless. “This one is sharp, not for sport.”

“Then let’s hope that sports count for something,” came a voice farther down the dock, accompanied by the heavy fall of boots. The swarthy, short-haired man walking towards them was dressed almost casually in a shirt of thin white fabric that had been stained yellow brown from years of wearing them and patching them up with identical white fabric. He had black pants and like Charlotte he had a saber at his side. Unlike Charlotte, he also had a pistol. In his hand was a stack of papers that he was folding up and stashing in a pocket of his shirt.

“I found us a cabin boy, captain,” Drew said smugly, as if he had done work. “His name’s Charlie.”

“About time,” the captain said. Nothing about the way he looked suggested that he was in charge of an entire ship--he seemed laid back and with too few grey hairs to have such a vessel. The dark circles under his hazel eyes suggested that he spent too many nights awake, but he didn’t strike Charlotte as someone who stayed up due to stress. He sized Charlotte up. “What are you good at?”

She didn’t undersell herself. “I speak four languages fluently, I’m a medal-winning sabreur, and I have two years of advanced studies at the university where I did extremely well at everything I attempted.”

They were impressed enough that there was silence for a moment, and Drew stepped off of the dock onto the dinghy while the captain considered her credentials. “Why are you running away from that?” he asked. It was incredibly suspicious to see a young person with a promising future abandoning it.

“The people here are monsters,” she said. It was one reason of many.

“The people are monsters everywhere I’m afraid,” he said, following Drew out onto the little boat. “But you should come with us. I’m Adrian Naran.”

She shook his hand. “I’d love to work for you.”

“I’ll take you,” he said.

She joined them on the boat with significantly less grace and was grateful that neither of them pointed out her unsteady feet before she sat down and Drew rowed. Charlotte looked back at the island and felt only rage. The words ‘fuck you’ repeated in her mind on a vicious loop. She had everything she cared about in the entire world on her person.


The ship--named The Crusty Juggler according to words painted on the side--was bigger up close, and she saw holes for cannons lining the sides, covered with wooden hatches to make it appear less intimidating from a distance. Charlotte’s mouth opened in slight surprise to see who tossed a ladder down to them.

The thing leaning over the railing of the ship was more plant than man and dirt brown in color. He had no eyes, mouth, nose, or ears but seemed to move and flex like a person aware of his surroundings. The only hair on his body were tiny, coarse threads off of his rough skin and his back had a few fronds sprouting from it.

“You use coconut golems on your ship?” she asked.

“They’re reliable,” the captain said, helping the smirking Drew secure the small boat to the side of his ship. “They can do almost everything but fight.”

“So what am I going to be doing that they can’t?” she asked.

“Reading, organizing, and list-keeping,” he said. “Drew doesn’t read well, neither do some of my other men and those who do are busy with other tasks.”

“No need to tell him that, captain,” Drew complained in a joking tone, but Charlotte saw teeth.

The coconut golems weren’t too strange to her. She’d seen them at her school, had seen every stage of their gestation process from simple coconut to human-shaped creature. Even though they never became intelligent, they were always agreeable company. They were scattered about the deck, sunning their fronds by perching among the masts or carrying things around to do chores.

An old man stood at a table, surveying a few maps. A red coconut crab seemed just as interested as he was in the papers, and Charlotte could have sworn she saw it indicating a path with one of its claws while the man muttered to it.

The captain broke her attention and beckoned her to follow him below the decks. He gave her a small closet’s worth of space with a stunted hammock to sleep.

“Golems don’t sleep so we have plenty of space for the human crew to be private,” he said. “You struck me as the type to want space to himself rather than share a room with most of the others."

She wouldn’t complain, it was private and that was better than she had anticipated. She left her things there with only a bit of hesitation, except for her saber.

He said, “You never asked about pay.”

Charlotte reached under her cap to scratch her head. “Getting to be here instead of the island is enough for now,” she said.

“And you never asked where we were going.”

“Anywhere is better than where I was. And I speak every human language within hundreds of miles. I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier,” she forced a harsh laugh, trying to deal with how suspicious she must have seemed to him.

“And you never asked what this ship even does,” he said finally, putting a hand on his hip.

“I’m not picky,” she said.

He nodded, clearly battling himself over interrogating her. Charlotte’s heart was in her throat for that long moment and then she finally breathed when he let her off and told her about the ship. “I’m a privateer. I pretend to be a trade ship on trade routes and my crew and I kill pirates for gold. We’re leaving your archipelago entirely and heading north.”

“Okay,” she said. They'd be traveling north for months before they found a place where she wouldn't be able to talk to the majority of the population.

“How good are you actually with that saber?” he asked.

“When it comes to sport,” she said, “I didn’t exaggerate. I’m fantastic.”

“But in real life?”

The only man I ever fought, I killed, she thought. But out loud, “I haven’t had enough experience to judge, I suppose.”

“This evening I’ll have the men out and you can find out. Until then I need to show you what you’ll be doing. Do you like to read? Because it involves a lot of books.”


Sunset found Charlotte holding a wooden practice saber, surrounded by at least ten sailors whose names she hadn’t yet memorized.  Her form was practiced, she was a quick thinker. She did well, until they fought dirty, led her to an obstacle she had to step around, or ganged up on her. It was embarrassing for her to be focused, parrying and doing well, and have someone poke her in the ribs from behind.

“It’s okay Charlie,” the captain said, twisting the wooden sword against her back to make his point without being too rough. “This isn’t even part of your job and you do better than most.”

One of the men, she was pretty sure his name started with an m sound, patted her shoulder. “Better than most cabin boys. Keep it up.”

It was hard to be relegated from best on the island outside of her teachers to worst on the boat but she forced smiles at the men--all of them twice her size--and worked to stay good-natured.

No one was very interested in her, and she was fine with that. It was better than being interrogated and having them put it together that something wasn’t right with her. She’d spoken most to the captain when he had toured her around the ship and shown her store rooms with careful inventory lists. It had seemed too easy, too little work, until he showed her to a room full of books stacked on the floor in messy piles.

“I need these organized,” he had said. And she’d spent hours attempting to catalog them that day before he’d come back to her, as if by afterthought, and invited her to try her hand at sparring.

Eating at the far end of one of the benches at the table in the galley in silence made her think that the sea would be a lonely place for her, but still less lonely than her home. She ate a stew cooked by the man with the beard he had seen on the deck, and wasn’t unnerved to see his crab companion perched on the table eating out of its own bowl.

Drew sat next to her after a while and patted her on the back. There was a strange sensation in her heart that came from his palm, that made her instincts flare. Too friendly, she judged, but pushed it aside because she didn’t want to be judgemental of sailors, whose customs were not her own.

He said, “How was your first day?”

“Productive,” she said. “I’ve been cataloging and sorting books.”

“The captain’s a book lover,” Drew said, shaking his head as if it was a terminal disease that the captain had contracted.

“I am too,” she told him.

“I’m sorry for you then,” he said. “Such an expensive hobby. And your eyes don’t hurt staring at the pages?”

“Only if I try to read in the dark,” she told him.


Instead of reading that night, she stood on the deck, staring out in the distance and smiling at the stars, at her freedom. Coconut golems sat quietly on masts or railings, feeling the winds to see if they would need to adjust any sails.

Drew joined Charlotte from below deck and she smiled at him in quiet but amiable greeting.

He spoke to her so softly that she had to step closer to him and stand next to him to hear properly. He said, “I started out as a cabin boy, but when I had the job it was more for doing the kind of work that the captain has the golems doing.”

“I guess I got lucky,” she said, smiling. “I had some good opportunities when I was younger. Schools and such.”

He nodded along but didn’t seem interested in listening to her words, so she let her sentences fade into nothingness.

Silence was uncomfortable, making butterflies jostle her stomach. Charlotte stole sideways glances at Drew, expecting him to say something to steer the conversation. Sure enough, he spoke after a few moments. “You like girls, Charlie?”

He clearly meant sexually. To lie or not to lie? Where was he taking things? She hesitated for a moment, then answered with the truth. “Sometimes, I guess. I don’t think about them too much though.”

“Men?” he asked.

She nodded and admitted,  “Sometimes.” She thought she might be risking disgusting him, burning bridges.

Of course Charlotte was surprised when he put his hands on his hips and turned to her. “Do me a favor, Charlie. Suck me off.”

“No!” she said, immediately revolted, nervous, embarrassed at being asked to do something sexual by a near-stranger. She stepped away from him at once but he had anticipated this and lunged for her.

One of his hands grabbed for the yellow curls that she’d cut short, the other went for her bicep.

“Don’t yell, Charlie,” Drew said. He almost sounded pleading, swinging her around to press her front against the wooden wall of the cabin.

He didn’t really need to tell her not to shout, because being grabbed seemed to have robbed her of her voice. He grabbed the front of her tunic and hauled her along with him to a place shielded from view by crates. Charlotte’s heart was in her throat and it only let her talk when he opened his mouth.

She cut him off, speaking over his first few syllables until he gave up and let her speak. She said, “What is wrong with you? Are you crazy?” There wasn’t much for her to do other than be angry and scared--with her saber now abandoned in the tiny room the captain had given her, she had no fighting strategy.

“I’m not crazy,” he said, and shoved her roughly into a crate. “I just need to blow off steam every once in a while, and you’re the one who is gonna help me do it.”

“No,” she said, almost laughing--but it was with nervousness rather than confidence.

He shoved her again, angrily. Was this all he had? Trying to bully her into going along with what he wanted? She was confident she could have cut him to ribbons if she hadn't been a fool.

Charlotte preferred exposure to willingly putting her mouth on a stranger. “I’m not gonna do it,” she said, and started trying to walk away. Most bullies in her life--and she had known many--usually didn’t know what to do about her walking away.

Drew was different, and wasn’t afraid to grab her again and pull her back. He lifted one leg and pulled a jagged knife that looked poorly maintained from his boot. It looked like it would do a poor job cutting her but that if he tried he’d give her a case of lockjaw. Charlotte tried to steel herself.

“C’mon, Charlie,” he said, and pushed her, face-first, against the crates. “Do me a favor here. Help me out.”

He tugged her pants down to her thighs. Her skin crawled, fearing the kind of diseases this man might carry more than she feared what he’d actually do to her.

“What the Hell?” he sounded dumbfounded by her lack of cock, and Charlotte groaned in disgust when she felt his confused hand reach forward between her legs and press against her vulva as if to confirm what he had found. “Why do you have a cunt?”

Footsteps saved her, and Drew leaped away from her like she was a stinging jellyfish at the sound. Charlotte was fast to pull up her pants and slide away, but she wasn’t fast enough, and by the time she turned to look at the source of the footsteps, the captain had seen enough.

He was the portrait of fury with his flintlock leveled at Drew’s crotch. “I’ve wondered why we’ve gone through so many cabin boys.” Adrian’s teeth were bared like a shark's, a vein pulsed at his temple.

Drew was slow to respond.

The captain gestured with his free hand to Charlotte, first pointing at her and then pointing to his right side. Universal body language for ‘come here.’ She obeyed immediately. It was a poor time to make enemies. Already she feared she would be on his bad side.

The sailor had finally made an excuse. “She asked me for it,” he tried.

“Bullshit,” Charlotte spat.

“Three choices,” Adrian said. “I can shoot you and you won’t be a man anymore. Or you can jump off the side of the ship and let yourself drown with your cock intact. Or I take you below deck and put you in a cell and the next time we reach port I give you to the local authorities.”

Drew was a slow man, but he didn’t take very long to make this decision. “The brig,” he said.

“Right,” said the captain. “Charlie, go wait outside my quarters. Drew, keep your lips sealed unless you want a bullet and walk down to the cells. I’ll be following.”


Charlotte leaned against the captain’s cabin door. Only now did she feel her body start to tremble, panicked by what he might have to say to her. At least, she thought, she probably wouldn’t be tossed into the brig with Drew.

When Adrian returned, it was with an exhausted look to his face but perfect posture. He motioned Charlotte out of the way of the door and unlocked it, then swept his hand to direct her inside. She was unquestioning.

His cabin was very much a repeat of the room he wanted her to organize. It was a maze of piles of books with a desk on one side of the room and a bed on the other side. There was very little empty floor space, but all of it made up a number of safe walkways between the book towers. She took light steps in and he shut the door behind them both.

“I don’t appreciate that you didn’t let me know earlier that you are a woman,” he said when the door was closed again.

“I didn’t want to risk being left behind,” she said. She wouldn’t argue with him, but it wouldn’t hurt to be honest. “And for what it’s worth, I was pretending to be a man before you got here just so people wouldn’t recognize me. I didn’t do it solely to fool you.”

His expression was unchanged, but he gestured to the edge of the bed to offer her a place to sit, and she accepted the offer of hospitality. Adrian asked, “Why were you hiding from them? What were you running from? I didn’t push it earlier but I’m pushing it now.”

She said, “There was a professor at my university. I killed him.”

“Why?” asked the captain. Not an unreasonable question, but one that she wasn’t sure how to answer immediately.

“He lied about me. I caught him cheating on his wife with another university student in his office and I told his wife that he was being unfaithful. He ruined my reputation and got me kicked out of the school by telling people I’d… that I was selling myself to the male students. He got a bunch of them to lie too. They all lied, they all wanted me gone,” she had done enough crying about this on her own island, but the tears returned now and made her feel like an idiot. “Even my parents believed it, that was the worst part. They stopped talking to me.

“I didn’t kill him in the moment. I lured him out to the beach and I stabbed him. I thought about it and planned it.” It was the confession she had never uttered to any authority, but admitting that she had killed someone that she detested so much gave her a cold thrill in her stomach that she didn’t like one bit.

“And were they on to you, that you killed him?” asked the captain.

“I think they thought it was me,” she said. “That’s why I left as fast as I could.”

While she talked he walked around to her from behind a stack of volumes and stood in front of her. She expected some harsh judgement.

“You can stay,” he said. “But keep your secrets.”

“Why?” she said nervously. “Do you think any of the other men would…?”

“No. But if they knew you were a girl they’d be tripping over each other to woo you and I don’t want them getting distracted.”

“I’m not a distraction,” she sputtered, frustrated to be relegated to such a role.

He looked at her harshly and turned away from her slightly to face the window. “You are a distraction to me already.”

Charlotte shut her eyes. It hurt to hear that she was a detriment to the workforce on the ship if she didn’t disguise herself. And now that she was emotional about it, she felt sure that she would be judged harshly for that as well, and tried to wipe her eyes dry before they got too wet.

“That came off as less kind than it was intended,” Adrian said after a short time. “It’s not my intention to treat you poorly. And I believe your story.”

She laughed in exasperation. “An island of people I had known all my life didn’t believe me, but the captain I just met trusts me immediately. I… I am very lucky that yours is the ship I picked.”

“I believe you because if you were the whore that man alleged you were, you would already have been sucking Drew’s cock when I found you,” he said. Charlotte nodded. “So tell me your real name.”

“It’s still Charlie. Charlotte’s the long version,” she said. “And other than being male I didn’t lie about anything. Really.”

“I believe you,” he held out a hand horizontally and lowered it, telling her to calm herself. “You can stay. But as I said you will keep your secret from my men, and I will be keeping a closer eye on you.”

“A… closer eye?’

“Clearly I need to be more protective of my cabin boys,” he said. “And that aside, I’ll admit that I’m naturally protective of women on my ship.”

She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted, endeared, or confused.

“You can sort the books in here for the next… however long it take you to sort them or we reach land,” he said, then pointed to piles. “I’d rather not leave you in the library room.”

She considered talking back, telling him that she could take care of herself, but clearly she couldn’t take care of herself, so Charlotte kept her mouth shut.

He looked at the door. “We should move your hammock here as well.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

He held a finger to his lips. Shh. Charlotte listened, and heard the talking from underneath them. It was muffled and distant, but she recognized Drew’s slow, deep voice and then someone else’s. “Because he talked. I’ll be back.”

Charlotte paled. The captain left the room again, and she heard his heavy steps going further down into the ship. He barked something at whoever was talking to Drew, and then she heard a gunshot and a scream.

She kept her mouth covered, but couldn’t have said that she felt a shred of sympathy for the man who had just been shot. It just wasn’t in her to feel anything for him but contempt.

Adrian took his time returning to his room. When he was finally back, he had the hammock from Charlotte’s tiny room folded in half to create a sack that was carrying all of her possessions. “You will have to sleep in here now, I’m afraid.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because the only way some of those men are going to be able to focus on anything around you is if they think you are absolutely and completely off-limits,” he said. The solution he had come up with didn’t feel honorable at all and he felt a touch of guilt having to resort to it. “I told them you are dating me.”

She bristled. “I don’t like being lied about.”

“You were quick to lie about yourself,” he snapped, dropping the hammock and possessions at her feet. She had no retort for that, and he knew it. “But, if it makes you feel better, sea people aren’t anti-sex like island people. It happens out here between unmarried people and we don’t see it as the unforgivable kind of sin you lot make it out to be.”

It was strange to think that she wouldn’t immediately be judged as a piece of shit here just because she was sleeping with someone. “Oh,” she said.

The captain found old eyelets screwed into the wall for hammocks and started to attach hers, shoving a pile of books out of the way so that it fell over and made a colossal mess. “Unless you decide that you would in fact like to have sex with someone on this ship, this lie will be beneficial to you,” he said.

Charlotte watched him attach the hammock. “Thanks.”

“You are welcome, young lady,” he said.


Charlotte cataloged books as efficiently as was humanly possible, but with so many of them around it was simply too difficult to keep track of individual books once she had moved from one pile to another, and that was what slowed her most in filling the shelves in his cabin.

It was lonely work most times because the captain was everywhere else on the ship working. They passed a single trade ship--which was a tense moment because there was brief uncertainty for a time because they didn’t know for sure if it was a legitimate trade vessel or pirates in disguise--but otherwise nothing interesting happened.

She dwelled on her own bitterness towards her island and towards the people who had wronged her. Her professor, So many men in her university and now Drew. And two of them were dead, which gave her young heart a certain satisfaction even though she was smart enough to realize that deriving pleasure in their demises could lead her to emotional ruin.

A week in, on a clear night with no wind that had them almost still in the water, many of the men drank. Charlotte stayed in the cabin in her hammock, thinking that tomorrow she would go down to the store room and make careful notes about the consumption, maybe add it to the list of supplies to buy when they next reached land in another few weeks.

Adrian returned to sleep in the early hours of the morning. He didn’t seem drunk at all, though he had an enormous, half-empty bottle of wine in his hand. His words didn’t slur when he greeted her and his feet were sure when he slipped among the remaining books on the floor.

“You didn’t miss out on much in the galley unless you’re exceptionally fond of drink,” he told her when he sat down and began to untie his boots.

“No,” she said. “Alcohol was illegal on my island.”

He laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

“No, really,” Charlotte said, sitting up in her hammock. “I never saw the point of it myself but the religious people said that it would lead to sinning.”

Adrian shook his head. “No, only in excess is it ever dangerous. I’m guessing you haven’t had any before?”

She shook her head, and he immediately offered her the bottle. She smelled it curiously. “What type is it?”

“Just red wine,” he said. “Not even a fancy kind.”

Charlotte took a hesitant sip, decided she liked it, and tipped the bottle up to drink more. Even though it wasn’t cold it was delicious, and before she knew it the captain was laughing and taking his bottle back.

“Easy, Charlie,” he said. “Take it slow. You’re new to it and you weigh nothing, it’ll hit you harder.”

He tried to hand it back to her but she waved him off, not feeling any different but not wanting to push her luck. Adrien sat down on his bed and kicked off his boots. Like Charlotte, he slept in his clothes and like most people on the ship he only changed them every few days or so. He was happy as long as he could be barefoot in bed with no belt on.

It made their cohabitation miles more comfortable than if he had insisted on being naked every night, and she relaxed back into her hammock while he flopped into his bed.

She asked, “Do the uh… do the other crew ask questions about me?”

Adrien shook his head. “Only about sex. They just want something new and interesting to imagine for themselves.”

Charlotte couldn’t help but make a disgruntled sound, something like a whine or a grunt. Everyone on her island had hated her for being a slut and her gut instinct made her fear that here too. “It’s frustrating that I keep ending up in situations where I’ve done nothing wrong and everyone thinks I’m having lots of sex anyway.”

“First of all,” he started, “There’s nothing wrong or sinful about sex. That’s some wild sharkshit that your island believed and I am genuinely sorry that you had to live with that, and I’m amazed that anyone was actually able to build a university there.”

“It was only built because it’s a big island,” she told him, but he had moved on with the conversation.

“Anyone that wants you to think there’s anything wrong with sex is a prudish madman,” the captain said. “Unless you’re spoken for and sleeping with someone else, that’s not alright in my book. But the act itself? No. Nothing wrong with it.”

Charlotte’s eyebrows were raised, but only the ceiling knew that. She would rather have spoken to a woman about this, but she was still curious. “What about… babies and stuff?”

“They make potions for that,” he said. “None of those on the island? Everywhere else, they’re dirt cheap.”

“They probably would have called that a sin too,” she said. Her voice was quiet because she felt years of inhibitions flutter away. “Do you have any on the boat?”

“Any sins?” he asked with a chuckle. “Plenty.”

“No,” she said. “Of those potions.”

“A few,” he said slyly. In his bedside table somewhere.

“People gave me so much trouble for something I never did,” she said. She rolled out of the hammock and took a few barefoot steps to his bed and climbed into it next to him. She felt remarkably calm instead of aroused, and found that curiosity was her driving force. “I might as well… actually do it.”

Adrian rolled onto his side to face her. He smirked. “Would you like to sin with me, cabin boy?”

She reached for his body and put a hand on his chest. “Yeah.” She could feel his heartbeat.

“I like it,” he said, and started to undress, pulling his clothes off without bothering to sit up. Charlotte gawked at him. The captain didn’t appear to mind, tossing his tunic over the side of the bed to the floor where it covered a stack of books.

“They teach you about bodies in your university or are you going to be surprised?” he teased her while he unbuttoned his pants.

She smiled but still chuckled. “I think I know how it works.”

“Well that’s good,” he said, and pulled down his pants.

The room was dark, but there was enough light for Charlotte to see his half-erect penis. She felt little tremors in her body--up her sides and in the pit of her stomach. It made her tongue tied, but she gathered up the courage to pull her shirt up, but she made a noise when Adrian reached out to her body and helped her along.

“What is this on your chest?” he asked curiously, running his hands over the garment she used to disguise herself. “Some kind of corset?”

“For my breasts,” she said shyly. She already felt his hands untying the strings.

“I see,” he said, and then smiled when it was sufficiently loosened and he heard Charlotte breathe deeply for the first time. He pulled it off and ran a thumb over one of her nipples and interrupted her deep breath by making her gasp softly and smile. He asked, “Any odd contraptions I should expect when we pull down these pants?”

“No,” she said, and pulled her pants down, kicking them off of the bed. “You’re not going to be surprised like Drew was.”

“I’m surprised that’s not a touchier subject for you,” Adrian said carefully, reaching for her hip and stroking her pale thigh. He gave her hip a gentle squeeze and then trailed his hand over her abdomen and down over her mons pubis.

“It would be but… he got what was coming to him,” she said, looking down at his hand on her body and felt pleasant tingles. “I don’t feel bad. If anything, it makes me a bit relieved to think that he’s dead.”

“Fair enough,” said the captain. He didn’t wait for a convenient segue to ask,  “How would you like to have sex, Charlie?”

This was a question she hadn’t anticipated being on the test. “The… normal way?” she said, chuckling at her own ignorance.

He laughed, but not in a way to be mean. Charlotte still found herself blushing with embarrassment. Maybe she wasn’t as clear on how it went as he was. He pulled her in against his body and she tossed an arm over his shoulder to hold him.

“I know what you mean,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead gently. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what you like and what you don’t like as we go and we’ll get you caught up on everything you’ve been missing in no time.”

“Have I really been missing that much?” she asked.

“That depends on your perspective,” he said. Grabbing her hips and grinding against her gently. She felt him growing and stiffening between them and liked it. It made her feel prideful that her body could make him feel good, could make anyone feel good. It gave her power to be proud of. “You’re missing less if you’ve at least been having fun on your own.”

“You mean…?”

He reached between her legs and she spread her thighs just enough for him to gently brush against her clitoris and press a few fingers inside of he. She inhaled suddenly and grabbed at him. He said, “I mean masturbating, or whatever the cute euphemism is where you lived.”

“That was also a sin,” she struggled to force the words out, too distracted feeling his rough fingers playing inside of her and making her wet. Charlotte felt surges of delight spitting up through her body like electricity, making her ache with desire.

He chuckled, pressing his forehead against hers and holding her body to him with the hand that wasn’t inside of her. “Then you missed out on a lot and I have so much to teach you.”

“You don’t mind?” she panted. “Oh, gods, why didn’t I do this sooner?”

“No, I like the teaching role,” he purred, starting to breathe harder himself. “Part of being a captain, I suppose. Always teaching and always protecting.”

“I noticed your protective streak,” she commented, and let out a short, involuntary groan when he started the thrust his fingers into her wet hole, doing his best to start simulating the motions he intended to put her through in a few minutes.

“I’d be shocked if you hadn’t,” he said, and pulled his hand from within her with a wet sound. “Gods know I get enough shit for it from my men for keeping you in here.”

“I don’t really mind,” Charlotte told him.

“Sweet of you,” he said, rolling her over onto her back and positioning himself between her legs, pulling them up so she would squeeze at his midsection with her thighs. “Not everyone tolerates it.”

Charlotte’s eyes fluttered shut to have him there, amazed by how appealing the heat of his erection was when it rubbed against her wet labia. She lifted her head to kiss him on the lips and run a hand through his short, dark hair. Kissing was mysterious and she just wanted to experiment, using her soft lips to sense out the textures of his short facial hair and his own soft lips, the taste of salt on his skin. He smiled when she nipped at him curiously--Charlotte supposed he was used to things that were so much more rough.

“Are you ready?” he breathed in her ear when she let go of his lips, and kissed her on the cheek in front of her ear, one of his hands gently running up and down her side, stroking her breast.

“Yes,” she said uncertainly. She looked down between them and waited for a moment as Adrian aligned himself with her vagina before he pushed inside of her.

She grabbed him tightly. “Oh!” she yipped. He was splitting her open! Forcing her apart! She had to shift her hips, move her legs to help him fit inside of her comfortably while her heart raced and she breathed at a hundred miles an hour. Inside of her, Adrian felt enormous, but before she could say anything about it, he withdrew and she breathed a sigh of slight relief.

“Not too much?” he asked.

Charlotte didn’t think about it. “No, do it again.”

“Mhm,” he said, and kissed her cheek. He thrust back in, harder, faster, and she crooned. He set the pace--that was a captain’s job--and moved steadily while watching the look on the girl’s face as she adjusted.

“Oh, yeah,” she sighed, hugging him close to her body. “I’ve missed out.”

She arched her back, moved in time with his gentle thrusts. He seemed used to having his back clawed at and didn’t even flinch when she held him tightly.

“Are you thinking about staying on board after we stop next?” he asked her.

She had been considering it, but she had her answer now. “Definitely.” It was all she knew to stay with the man who'd taken her virginity and who had shown the first shred of protectiveness for her that she had seen in months and months.

“Oh, I like the sound of that,” he said, and throbbed again inside of her, running his finger along her jaw. “All other merits aside, You’re a fine cabin boy, Charlie. I would love to keep you here so long as you’ll stay.”

She bucked up to him and groaned in pleasure, her eyes shutting.

“How close are you?” he asked her, trying to gauge.

“I have no idea,” she said with a little laugh. He quieted her with a kiss.

“Then I’ll keep speeding up,” he said.

“Oh gods, do,” she begged, “Do that, please.”

Again, he kissed her on the lips but pulled back before he slipped his tongue in. Then he took a few breaths to gather himself and started to pound into her without holding himself back, pouring all of his energy into it.

Charlotte yowled in pleasure, surprise, amazement. If their cheeks hadn’t already been red from exertion they would have been now knowing that everyone on the entire ship had no doubt heard the girl’s mid-sex sounds. He hadn’t expected the volume from her but it seemed to make him smug.

The hammering of his thick cock inside of Charlotte at that speed was easily the most stimulating thing she had ever felt or even imagined. Her body gushed  fluids every time he thrust into her, and she thought she had reached an orgasm until she actually came and was rendered breathless and weak, shuddering as her body lost control.

“That’s the stuff,” the captain said between grunts, his expression tightening as she clenched around his cock until he ejaculated into her. He seemed to growl while he came, then let himself flop down on top of her.

They were quiet, and he stayed inside of her. A few times, Charlotte almost said something but didn’t, and felt a profound relaxation coming over her.

Adrian pulled a thin linen sheet over them.

She said, “I’m glad I left that island.”

“Me too,” he said.