Tall, Dark, and . . .

She shouldn't have come out on the promenade deck alone. But the party in the cruise ship's Spotlight Lounge had become so loud and boisterous—and the swirling crowd so suffocating—that Ellen had to get away. If anyone asked why'd she'd strayed, she'd just tell them that Little Bo Peep was looking for her sheep. That was the costume Stephanie had gotten for her, whereas Stephanie was decked out as a sexy Cleopatra.

Ellen half suspected that her friend and coworker at the Atlanta ad agency that picked the costumes on purpose. Stephanie was always trying to steal a march on Ellen. Ellen had made the mistake of saying she looked forward to this Caribbean Halloween-themed cruise as an opportunity to let loose, and she knew Stephanie didn't want to be upstaged in that regard. She also had found that Stephanie had taken this as license to throw every half-way decent man she could find at Ellen—the ones that Stephanie didn't want to use up first, of course.

As soon as she'd come out on deck, though, Ellen decided this had been a mistake. It was so dark out here and she'd felt as she walked toward the bow of the ship from the stern that she was being watched.

And now she thought she heard the scrapping of shoes on the deck behind her.

She turned. Yes, there was someone there. Tall and dark. Dressed in black. In fact all black. A black man. And one of some height and build.

Ellen's throat constricted. She couldn't help it. She'd moved to Atlanta from New Mexico. There hadn't been hardly any blacks in Albuquerque. But there certainly were in Atlanta. And she didn't live in the best of neighborhoods. She knew she shouldn't be frightened in the presence of a person of color—a man, mainly; black women didn't bother her. Black men frightened her—and something else, too, though. They intrigued her, in a sensual, "what if" way. But this only frightened her more.

She thought now that she recognized him from the costume party—as much as a stranger in a mask and costume could be considered "recognized." And she had to admit that this was one reason she'd retreated from the party. He'd been tall—almost overpowering—and decked out all in black. A pirate, she thought. And it seemed like he'd been watching her and was moving ever closer to her as he moved around the party room floor in a seemingly random manner.

And there he was—out on the deck. Maybe following her. She quickened her steps and came around to plate glass doors of the casino at the stern of the boat—and ran right into a tall, masked man in a Harlequin costume.

"There you are, Ellen. I searched for you at the lounge but didn't find you."

It was Riyad—the intriguingly handsome Saudi businessmen who had been assigned to her dining table—the one that Stephanie had said, with some regret, had the hots for Ellen. The man who had kissed her hand as she sat at the table on the previous two evenings that the ship was steaming toward Puerto Rico—and then, just this afternoon, had leaned down and brushed her lips with his before he left the table—much to Stephanie's obvious chagrin, with the whisper of just one word—"Later"—which seemed to be saying so much more than the one word. And that had seemed to be taking so much for granted. Riyad had already conveyed the impression that he prized himself highly and took what he took as if by some right of being Riyad.

"Riyad. I'm so glad—" She didn't have a chance to tell him why she was glad to see him and he obviously jumped to his own conclusions on that. He took her in a strong embrace, pushed her into an alcove with a door in it that likely led to a service corridor, and mashed her lips with his, taking her breath away. She yielded to the kiss. And as she did so, his hands began to wander.

One was inside the low-necked bodice of her peasant costume, and she couldn't hold back her moan of pleasure when his hand cupped her breasts, skin on skin, one after the other, and first his thumb, and then his lips, found her nipples.

His other hand was hiking up her short, full skirt and moving under the waistband of her panties. She jerked and let out a long groan when a finger snaked into her slit and found her clit. She might have tried to stop this then, to explain that she had just been retreating in fear from an unknown stranger—a foreboding black man. But wasn't this what she'd come on this cruise for? What Stephanie had convinced her she needed to experience in her life? Riyad was tall, and dark, and handsome. A good conversationalist. Sexy as hell. And he probably owned an oil well or two or was a sheik. She'd wanted something sexy to remember this cruise by. Couldn't get much more sexy than this.

But she didn't want him to think she was easy. She laughed at that thought—almost hysterically; most probably genuinely on the edge of hysteria. The man had two fingers inside her now and she was flowing for him. They were way beyond him thinking she was easy.

Riyad gave a low, throaty laugh too, probably misinterpreting hers as encouraging wantonness.

"My cabin; come to my cabin with me."

It wasn't a question.

In his cabin—which proved to be a junior suite—Riyad pushed Ellen down to a seated position on the foot of the bed, and slowly stripped off his costume and everything else he was wearing. He was doing an exhibition for her—showing off what he had. And Ellen couldn't complain about what he had. He was brown as a berry and tall and well-built. A beautiful man. And he was ready for her.

It was a little off-putting that he seemed so taken with himself, but Ellen gave the murmurs of approval that she thought was expected of her and rose to start to undress herself.

This wasn't in Riyad's plan, though, He pushed her back down on the foot of the bed and pulled down her bodice so that her breast spilled out. He cupped them in his hands and leaned down and took her lips with his again. After a lingering kiss, he moved in close to her, and she almost exclaimed in astonishment when he came in real close, still holding a breast in each hand, and then moved his erect penis to between the two breasts and started to stroke it up and down while his hands squeezed her breasts.

Ellen hadn't gotten over the shock of this before his hands had gone to cupping her head and he was pressing the head of his phallus at her lips. She had never done this for a man before. But she felt trapped—and he was so beautiful. And she had come on this cruise for an adventure. She opened her lips to him and went completely docile, letting him show her what he wanted—and doing as much of it for him as she could manage.

It was almost with gratitude that after some minutes she let him turn her bent over the bed, left long enough to retrieve condoms and a tube of lubricant from somewhere, and tossed a string of the condoms—she could see the word Maxim on them, which caused her to groan at the memory of the size of him—on the bed beside her head as he opened one of the packets and prepared himself. His hands were cold and wet, as he pushed the back of her skirt over her shoulders; ripped away her lacy panties with a low, guttural laugh; and moved his staff into her slit. The width of him was almost overpowering, as was his impatience, but now that they were here, Ellen was determined to get all of the pleasure out of it that she could. This she had done before. Not often with a man this well endowed—not often at all, actually. But this was natural, and this was what she was hoping she would find on the cruise.

She murmured for him to go slowly, but he either didn't hear her or he didn't care. He was pistoning her deep and fast and muttering to her in a guttural Arabic that she didn't really want to understand. There was no question that this was all about, all for, him. She should have guessed that this was the Arabic way.

She heard a card key scraping at the lock of the door to the corridor and she barely had time to turn her head toward the glass doors out onto the balcony. She had no idea who it might be—a room attendant or even an irate wife—but she didn't want to see them before she had to, and preferably not at all.

"Fahd," Riyad hissed in a growl. "I have mine already. You wanted the other. Don't come back."

Fahd, Ellen thought. The other young Arabic man at their dining table. Stephanie had flirted with him, although the two of them had speculated on whether Riyad and he were a pair. Stephanie had said they both were much to luscious not to be a gay pair. But she also said that she wouldn't mind having a go at Fahd. Well, they might be a pair—might even be into each other—but they quite obviously weren't limited to gay.

After the door closed, Ellen began to relax. She was taking him deep and waves of pleasure were rolling over her. Riyad obviously could feel her relax, as he raised his chest from her back, and moved out of his crouch without lessening the stroking. His hands were on her hips, but one moved around the curve of one of her buttocks and she tensed up at the feel of fingers at her bung hole.

"Oh, oh!" she gasped, her sphincter muscle closing down hard on the lubricated finger he was inserting into her.

"Relax; don't fight it," he hissed. "You'll love it. You want me."

He continued to stroke his staff deep inside her vagina as his fingers teased her other opening increasingly more slack and open to him. She moaned deeply, and he laughed.

"A little whore, aren't you? A sweet whore."

She wanted to object, but she was too taken with the mixture of pleasure and pain, of shock and fear—but also of, yes, wanting him.

She cried out as his cock came out of her cunt and moved to her other opening.

He commanded her to lay still, not to fight it—that it was what he wanted. What he knew she wanted too. She panted and groaned and writhed under him—he had leaned over her again and, now having establish purchase inside her ass channel, grasped her wrists to completely control her. Within moments, he was deep inside her. She stopped fighting him, tried to relax and will herself to open to him as much as possible, her groans turning to whimpers. She began to cry softly, her eyes focused on the berry brown of his strong hands clasping her white wrists.

Sensing her complete surrender, Riyad started moving his hips again—in, farther in, partial withdraw, in again. Ellen groaned at each invasion.

"There, I knew you wanted it, that you would love it. Tomorrow we move your things to this cabin."

She should have fought this. But she didn't. This was what she'd taken the cruise for. Yes, even for the exotic lovemaking—if it could be called any form of love.

He was withdrawing from the one channel and moving back to the other. She moaned deeply in welcome—loving it even more now that it had been lost to her for several minutes. God, the man had remarkable staying power. She had managed it. But who knew what she'd do when she returned to her own cabin.

In the morning, when Ellen returned to her cabin, there no longer was much of a question what she would do. A naked Fahd was on his back on one of the twin beds, smoking a cigarette and leering at Ellen while she moved around the cabin gathering her things. Stephanie, also naked, was straddling the Saudi's hips and riding him in long, languid motions. Ellen had no idea if Stephanie looked at her while she was in the room; Ellen was too embarrassed to make eye contact.

Riyad was waiting just outside the door to the cabin to take her back to his stateroom—and to roughly fuck her again.

* * * *

"You will meet a tall, dark, stranger."

"Naturally," Ellen muttered under her breath.

"Already have, actually," Stephanie, murmured.

"AND," a thickly accented voice, showing edges of pique, overrode the murmurings, "and you will find he has been close to you already, in an earlier life, and will be closer yet in the next . . ."

"See, I told you. Riyad said he lived in Atlanta, same as us. Oil company work, of course."

"Shush," Ellen hissed. "Don't feed her ideas."

"And," the accented voice continued, "he will dealing with a precious commodity that all want."

"Oil, of course. I knew it. Riyad is your man." Stephanie tried to keep the whisper so that only Ellen heard her distinctly.

They were in the back room of a cinderblock hovel in a back alley of Samana, Dominican Republic, where the Enchantment of the Sea was making a stop on their nine-day cruise of the Eastern Caribbean. Oddly enough, Riyad, who had been so possessively attentive to Ellen the last two days, hadn't objected to Ellen taking an off-ship exploration of the small port of Samana while they were docked—and had said he had no interest in going with her. With Fahd, it had been more Stephanie keeping him in sexual bondage in what had been Ellen's shared cabin. And Stephanie hadn't even bothered to ask him what he felt about her leaving him for a bit.

It had also been Stephanie's idea to visit the gnarled old fortune teller who someone who had taken this cruise before had recommended to her.

"So, you're going to the Caribbean on a Halloween cruise," the woman had said. "Would you like to meet a genuine witch? Someone who can not only foretell the future, but can create it as she wishes?"

Stephanie hadn't been able to resist that opportunity.

"Precious commodity? Gold? He'll have gold teeth?" Ellen said in a somewhat louder voice. Although she'd agreed to come here with Stephanie, she had been making fun of the venture since the moment they left the ship.

"Black, I see black . . . and murky," the fortuneteller said in a strong voice that was laced with irritation.

"See, I told you. Oil," Stephanie spoke up. "It's Riyad. You can't escape it."

That was something that was nagging at Ellen's mind, and it didn't help a bit for Stephanie to mention it. Riyad was certainly taking care of her needs—but he was almost exhausting. And so possessive and bossy . . . and narcissistic. The feeling had never been lifted from Ellen that she was only there to serve him. She wasn't all that comfortable with the thought of being with him in Atlanta when they returned—even though he was a hunk and probably wealthy beyond her wildest imagination.

"I sense skepticism, a narrow mind, doubt," the fortuneteller was saying in a throaty voice. Her eyes were closed and she began to rock. The grip of her hands on Ellen's from across a small, round table became a death grip. "There is disbelief afloat. You must be warned that your fate is out of your hands—that you may struggle against it, but if you try to avoid or reject it, it will haunt you until accept your fate."

Ellen had had enough. The fortuneteller came out of her trance-like state, and Ellen withdrew her hands from the old woman's clutches as quickly as she could and beat a hasty retreat.

The outing had been more disturbing than the needed change of pace that Stephanie had promised her.

When they returned to the ship, which was to depart port again while they were eating their dinner, Ellen acquired a strong suspicion on why Riyad had been so willing for her to go on an off-board excursion without him. There was a hint of perfume in the air in his suite that wasn't any scent she would have worn.

She couldn't pinpoint anything beyond a suspicion, however, as Riyad seemed quite pleased at her return and showed her just how happy he was to see her long and vigorously enough that they almost didn't make their seating for dinner.

* * * *

Ellen couldn't believe it—but then of course she could. They were reclining on the beach at Royal Caribbean's own little Disneyesque adult playground enclave in Labadee, Haiti, where the Enchantment of the Sea had docked for a day of cruise passenger frolic so that they could say they'd been to Haiti—and hadn't suffered for it.

The Saudi men hadn't come off the ship again. Ellen wondered a bit whether the two were hiding from something, but she thought it was more likely that they were shopping for something. She didn't mind, though; she'd begun to feel like a sex slave and completely devoid of privacy and breathing room.

If she was honest, she couldn't say, however, that she had tired of what she got from Riyad—she couldn't quite call it attention, because increasingly, if that was possible, Riyad's attention was focused on Riyad. She either was becoming accustomed to or steeled against the rougher aspects of the pleasures he took. And he was giving her more than satisfaction in her sexual needs. It was the "more" that had her a little concerned.

Stephanie had not complained, either, about what she'd been getting from Fahd, although from what Ellen had observed, Stephanie was doing most of the driving there. Whatever Stephanie was getting couldn't have exhausted her juices, though as she couldn't talk about anything but men and their body parts and what they did with them since they'd left the ship.

When they'd laid out on the beach, the two of them had gone to man watching and comparing the various hunks out on the beach. There seemed to be far more Haitian men out on the beach looking after the passengers from the ship than there needed to be—and they all seemed to be real hunks. Some were wearing skimpy Speedos, but more were wearing the kind of silky baggy flowered jobs reaching their knees, the kind that were body clinging when wet and that drooped down at the waistline, showing the curve of the men's belly muscles down into their crotches with a hint of pubic hair in an alluring way. Ellen had suggested that there were so many being employed because Royal Caribbean was boosting Haiti's depressed economy. To this suggestion, however, Stephanie just snorted and said she thought it was because lonely single women always predominated on these cruises and Royal Caribbean was providing them candy at this stop so they'd book on future cruises.

And then she proceeded to prove her point.

"Let's each pick out one, Ellen, and we'll give them the eye and the cleavage. I'll bet we'll each have a nice, plump black cock inside us before sunset."

"Stephanie!" Ellen exclaimed in shock and embarrassment. She glanced around quickly to see if anyone was close enough to them to have heard.

"Prove me wrong then. There, I'll take that slim, smaller guy in the read hibiscus trunks that his slim hips can hardly keep up. He's walking around strutting so arrogantly that I'm betting he has something special between his legs to compensate for his size."

"Stephanie!" Ellen exclaimed again.

"Again, prove me wrong. You pick one out now. How about that big bruiser with the bodybuilder's pecs over there. Jet black—both sensual and foreboding. The one who just came in on the surfboard and whose trunks are so plastered to his body that you can see every curve of him."

Ellen almost involuntarily looked down to the line of the surf. She shuddered in immediate fear—but, as Stephanie said, there was something sensual behind the fear. He must have been well over six foot and he arguably had the best musculature of the men on the beach. He was a dark chocolate brown, nearly true black, and he had dreadlocks that came down to his shoulders. Stephanie was right. Ellen could clearly see the curve of what he had on under the silky yellow trunks he was wearing, and what she could discern made her draw her breath in. But at the same time, a chill of fear went up her spine. He was beautiful, yes, in a massive sort of way. But he was black—and not just dark-toned black; almost ebony black. Ellen couldn't help it; his blackness alone brought back her fears of moving in her neighborhood back in Atlanta and pulled up in her memory her more recent experience of seemingly being pursued by the black pirate at the ship's Halloween costume party. This one had the same build as the man she had retreated from on the ship.

"OK, you look hooked," Stephanie said, as she rose off her towel and picked it and the loaded beach bag she'd brought up. "We'll split up. That'll make it easier. Bet I get fucked before you do."