The alarm beeped annoyingly, right by my pillow. I reached out and hit snooze, praying for just five more minutes of sleep. It was not to be, however, even though it was only five in the morning. This was the life we’d signed up for.
The light in our tiny cabin came on and Suzy instantly slid down from her top bunk. I tried to turn my head in time but it was too late. Suzy insisted on sleeping naked which never bothered me, except first thing every morning when I was presented with a daily, eye-level and in-your-face view of her hairless and exposed vagina, or a pair of smooth, bare buttocks, before she would disappear into our little shower room. It was certainly not my ideal way of waking up, regardless of how firm, tanned, and sexy that ass was.
I could hear tooth-brushing and off-key humming noises coming from the small head that served our cabin, so I hauled myself out of my bunk. Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I stared at myself in the mirror on the bathroom door. Jeez, I looked awful. My shoulder-length blonde hair was all tousled and frizzy, my blue eyes bloodshot and puffy, and the close proximity of the mirror was showing me every single open pore and blemish. I let out a long sigh and groped about on the shelves for my Lycra running shorts.
I found them and pulled them on, then stood and turned away from the cabin door. This was a habit I developed after the second time Troy burst in uninvited, and we ended up nipple-to-nipple. The cabin really was that small. It always amazed me how he always seemed to know exactly when one or both of us were half-naked but, of course, he never knocked. Sure enough, as I pulled my nightshirt up over my head, I heard the door open and an excited "wow-ee" come from the doorway. I quickly wrapped my arms around my bare breasts and shot Troy an evil, yet playful, look over my shoulder. It was hard to be mad at him. He didn’t mean any harm, he was just being silly and flirty. Our boat’s third deckhand stood there, shirtless, and gorgeous, a solid slab of muscle, all tanned skin and cheeky smiles, with long, wet, brown hair framing his sharp, stubbly face.
“Get the fuck out, Troy!” I snapped at him, as he stared at my bare back, hoping for a glimpse of side-boob. He opened his mouth to reply, but the words caught in his throat as Suzy stepped serenely out of the head, still totally naked and completely unashamed. She gave me the diversion I needed to grab my sports bra and tug it over my tits.
“Morning, handsome,” sang Suzy, as she squeezed her long, lithe body around me. She smiled as she walked slowly, yet threateningly, toward the open-mouthed Troy. She reached him, placed a hand on his firm chest, and effortlessly shoved him out the door, closing it behind her. She turned to me and giggled as the outside corridor was quickly filled with loud complaints and protests.
I smiled back at her. “Will you put some damn clothes on?” I insisted.
“Only if you give me a big kiss first, beautiful!” she teased, playfully caressing her proud and prominent breasts seductively.
“Oh, you bitch,” I laughed. While it seemed to me that Suzy was a try-sexual – meaning she’d try pretty much anything – she knew I was only into guys. She’d still mess with me every chance she got, though. “Shut up and let’s go, shall we?”
“Just waiting for you!” she called behind me as I stepped into the head and locked the door. As I brushed my teeth, my mind wondered over the two months I’d spent so far crewing this yacht. Part of me wished I could be as outgoing and confident in my body as Suzy, the second steward to my third. There was, after all, not a lot of room for privacy or modesty among the crew, below-deck of Venus, the 161 foot, $20 million luxury motor yacht we all worked charters on. The cramped, claustrophobic crew quarters meant everyone was bound to see your junk or your tits at some point, so why should I worry?
Plus, every night we weren’t on charter usually involved vast amounts of drinking and dancing, as you’d expected from a crew of mostly early-twenty-something beautiful people, working hard in the Caribbean and earning a ton of money. Of course, there was more than a fair share of making out and hooking up going on too, although the latter was not quite as common as you’d think. Especially since the morning after would leave both parties trapped on a boat with no way of escape.
And last night had been one of those nights, involving far too much rum and tequila. As the last clouds of drowsiness finally disappeared from my brain, my head began to bang. I drank down a glass of water and struggled to recall the night’s shenanigans. Troy, I thought I could remember, had made out with Michelle, our normally very professional chief steward, who was still an astonishingly attractive redhead despite being over a decade older than the rest of the crew. Michelle was normally a little aloof and austere when she was sober but she could certainly party when the mood took her.
Toward the end of the night, I did recollect, a bunch of the younger guys and girls had skinny-dipped off the side of the yacht, leaping laughing and naked into the black Caribbean waters, but that was pretty par for the course on those off-nights.
As for myself, I remembered flirting a little with a guy in the bar we were at, and gradually began to recall responding when Alex, the very sexy ship’s engineer, began to compliment and flirt with me. Oh, God! That was all I needed. Alex was fit, certainly. A little shorter and not quite the Adonis that most deckhands, like Troy, turned into after a length of time at sea, but he made up for it with a really smart sense of humor and a quiet vulnerability. I just wasn’t looking for anything serious. Not right now.
Remembering his interest in me, and the enthusiastic look in his eye as we flirted, my self-confidence began to return a little. I put on some makeup, brushed my hair, and, slowly the face in the mirror returned to someone I finally recognized. A little highlighting around my eyes, a little gloss on my lips, and I started to feel attractive again. And, thanks to getting up at five every morning and running around the boat for ninety minutes with Troy and Suzy, no matter what the weather or how much we’d imbibed the night before, all the tacos, nachos, and binge drinking had only a negligible effect on my body. Thanks to the work I put in, I managed to maintain my flat stomach, firm butt, slim legs, and high bust.
Don’t get me wrong, I was no buff gym-goddess, like Suzy. But Alex still called me a knockout last night, which was always nice to hear. God, I hoped things were not going to be weird between us now, though. It’s seldom a bad thing to have a more senior colleague a little sweet on you, so long as he knows it’s never going to get serious, but I needed to keep my focus for the tasks I had ahead, and the secret plans I could never tell my crewmates about.