He knew me well and that I was a good sailor, but he knew I was doing something dangerous. It wasn’t illegal, and there was nothing he could do to stop me. “You’re heading out alone?” he asked with a frown of disapproval.

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

I backed the boat out of its slip, shifted the transmission to forward, and headed out on diesel power. I turned the boat at buoy G13 and piloted into the channel with the marina, the wind, and memories at my back. When I cleared the last channel buoy I set the autopilot to keep the boat pointed into the wind, while I raised the mainsail. Then I turned the boat south, let out the jib, and shut off the engine. My world became quiet, with only sounds of waves lapping the hull as I sailed south.

I was still a young man, barely eighteen, and my girlfriend had just finished her first year of nursing school and dumped me for a guy who was going to be a doctor. She was a year older than I, and girls mature faster than boys, so I could understand it on some level. But over a year and a half we had explored most of the things a guy and girl could do together, naked, and I was devastated. Mostly I was devastated, because we never got to having intercourse and were about to, and I was burning with jealousy. I couldn’t get the picture out of my head, the picture of her fucking a med student, for her first time, instead of me.

The clouds burned off, the day became hot, and I stripped of my shirt. I drank iced coffee, pissed off the side of the boat, and remembered that’s the way most men fell overboard and disappear forever. I thought of my father asking me, after I told him about my girlfriend, if I might hurt myself. He knew I had been hit hard, and he was being a responsible dad, checking on the off chance I was thinking of suicide. I told him, “I may be depressed, but I’m not crazy.” We laughed together, and it made me feel a little better.

I didn’t know exactly where I was headed, but there were many protected waters along the South Florida coast where one could pull in for the night, and I figured I’d head for one when I got tired of sailing. Being alone I started thinking of woman and decided I’d head for Ander’s Island Cove, an isolated spot with a sandy beach that attracted girls who liked to show themselves off topless. I thought of a friend who once chided me, “How far are you going to go to see a little tit?” But he was an ass man.

I anchored in the cove, changed into a bathing suit, and dove in. The water was salty, cool, and refreshing, and I swam to the beach and began walking the length of it, getting an eyeful to use later in fantasies. I got a couple of friendly nods, but no one invited me over, and I was too shy to make advances.

At the end of the beach I turned to head back, and a flash of color caught my eye. It was a woman, pushed back into dense undergrowth, sitting on the sand in the shade. Her head was in her hands, no one else was on this lonely section of beach, and it looked as if she was crying. I tentatively took a few steps toward her. I wanted her to notice me, but I didn’t want to scare her. I wanted to help her, if I could.

She wore a bathing suit, a two piece, not overly risqué, and she had a bag of stuff with her. She saw me and looked up. Her eyes were red, and her face was wet with tears. Her body was ripe and luscious. Too good for me, I thought.

“I don’t want to intrude…” I said.

She stared and looked me up and down, perhaps measuring me for the potential to be dangerous.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked. “Are you with someone?” No one comes here alone I thought and realized I had. Also, she looked young to be on her own in a place that you had to have a boat to get to, but so did I.

“My boyfriend, ex boyfriend, kicked me off his boat,” she said tearfully and waved toward the boats in the cove. I looked out. There were dozens of boats, all expensive. I wondered what kind of boyfriend she had had, and I was jealous that he had her even if not anymore.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, thinking of one answer I wasn’t sure I wanted to get into. “I could help you find a boat with some women on it to take you to back to the mainland,” I offered gallantly.

“Would you take me back?” she asked.

“I’m not going back, at least not for a few days and maybe longer.”

“You don’t have to?”

“Go back? No. I’m taking a break… from life. I’m having a hard time too.”

The girl looked up, questioningly, but I didn’t want to explain.

Timidly, she asked, “Can I go with you?”

I couldn’t help but look down at her body—I had been trying not to stare. Reflexively she moved her arm to cover her breasts. I looked back at her eyes and paused, unsure how to respond, though I already knew my answer.

“I’d like that,” I said with a grin, and then I thought I might have answered with too much enthusiasm, so I added, “But don’t worry, you won’t owe me anything.”

“I appreciate you saying that. You seem like a nice guy.”

“I’m pretty nice—modest too.”

She smiled.

“Is anyone going to miss you, on shore?” I asked. “You can use my cell phone on the boat and call them, if you want.”

“No,” she said. “No one will miss me.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering what her story was.

I offered her a hand and helped her up. Touching her was a thrill. “Can I carry your bag?” I asked, and she handed it to me. I looked down the beach. I didn’t want to have to deal with an angry ex boyfriend, while I was helping his girlfriend, whom he might not consider to be his ex, get away. I wondered if he was still around. “Which boat did you come on?”

“I don’t know. They all look the same.”

I nodded. “We’ll have to walk the length of the beach. My sailboat is at the other end. I don’t want to get into a confrontation with anyone.”

“That could be a problem,” she said.

“Why don’t you wait here and hide in the bushes. I’ll get my boat and anchor out there,” I pointed in front of us. “I’ll swim in and get you. Can you swim out to a boat?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We came in, in a little boat.”

“I’ll bring a life vest.”

“Good idea,” she said, and then she begged, “Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” I assured her. I thought but didn’t say, “Trust me”—as useless a phrase as the paper it’s never written on.

She nodded her assent and started making her way deeper into the bushes as I jogged toward the other end of the beach.

It took me awhile, but I piloted my boat over, anchored, and swam in with a life vest and a waterproof cooler that would float and into which I could put her bag of possessions. I helped her put the vest on and buckled it around her.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. She caught my drift and looked downward. I had an erection, not a full one but definitely plump.

“From putting on a life vest?” she asked incredulously.

I shrugged, took her hand, and pulled her into the water. “I said you won’t owe me anything, and I meant it. But I do accept gifts.”

She laughed. “No promises on that. What’s your name?” she asked.

“Matt, what’s yours?”

“Chastity,” she giggled, gulped a mouth full of water, and began coughing.

“Really?” I asked, wondering if she was pulling my leg.

“Not really. It’s Eva,” she said between coughs.

“Ahhh, Eve, the temptress.”

“Eva,” she corrected me.

“Yeah, I know, but close enough.”

We stopped talking and slowly swam out to the boat.

I got on board first, carrying the cooler with Eva’s stuff in it. Then I helped Eva climb the swim ladder. I couldn’t help but look down into her top. I’m sure she noticed—women are good at detecting that—but she didn’t say anything.

“It’s cooling off,” I said. “We should get dried off and get dressed.

“Do you have a towel I can use?” she asked.

I went into the cabin, brought out a clean towel, and handed it to her. She dried her body. I longed to dry it for her.

“Do you have enough water for me to rinse the salt out of my hair?” she asked.

“I have plenty of water, hot water even. Would you like to take a shower?”

“This is a fancy boat.”

“A regular yacht,” I said. “My uncle lives up north, and I live on his boat and take care of it.”

“Lucky you. Is your uncle rich?”

“He’s pretty well off. He owns his own company. It’s some kind of software business… So, do you want to take a shower?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said looking down again.

“Especially if you invite me in with you,” I said hopefully.

“You can come in with me.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Just like that?”

“Sure, why not?” Eva said and started stripping off her bathing suit.

We went into the cabin and undressed. I guided Eva toward the shower, turned on the water, adjusted the temperature, and we both got in. It was crowded, and we wound up hugging, my penis standing between us.

Eva poured shampoo in her hand and soaped me, cradling my scrotum and testicles and paying special attention to my erection that she slid in her soapy fist. “If you think you’re going to come, tell me, and I’ll stop. I’d rather have you come inside me.”

“You’re really something,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Don’t stop—I don’t come that easily.”

“That’s a good thing in a man,” Eva replied.

I filled my hands with shampoo and started on Eva’s back. Then I washed her backside, her legs, and up between her legs. She smiled, giggling and squirming the whole time. When I washed her breasts and pulled her nipples through my soapy fingers she squealed. My penis pulsed dangerously, and I removed Eva’s hands from me.

We rinsed off, got out, and dried each other. Then we went into the V-birth and curled up in each other’s arms. I figured it was time for a confession. “I had a girlfriend, for about a year, but she dumped me.”

“I’m sorry,” Eva said.

“Really?” I asked as my penis rubbed against her.

“Not really,” Eva said, and we laughed.

“We did lots of stuff together, but I’m still a virgin,” I admitted shyly.

“I don’t mind—I was a virgin once too,” Eva said, and we laughed again.

I put my hand between Eva’s legs, held her, and squeezed gently and repeatedly as a caress. She made the loveliest girl sound high in her throat, and then she sighed. I could feel her wetness leaking out, and I put my finger in and explored her, while she held my penis. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, and her fingers stopped moving over me.

We kissed and touched each other, and after an interlude it seemed the most natural thing in the word for me to come on top of her and guide my penis into her slippery wetness. I moved it in and out, experimentally—it was my first vagina—it held me tightly.

We enjoyed making love for a long time, sharing Eva’s orgasms, spaced by intermissions, until it was my turn to come. And I did come, with ferocious energy, and my young man’s lifetime of practice masturbating culminated in the most gratifying release of childhood and attainment of manliness.

I lay on Eva, exhausted and exultant. “Am I hurting you?” I whispered.

“No, you feel good,” she said and hugged me. “Stay as long as you like.”

***

I fell asleep on Eva, and when I woke I was next to her, touching side-to-side, her arm over my back. I turned and kissed her, and she woke and smiled. We dressed and cooked the fresh shrimp I had in the fridge, and we prepared slices of French bread and butter, and strawberries.

We took the food outside and ate in the cockpit. “I haven’t eaten this well in ages,” Eva said.

“The first night out the food’s always the best.”

“Mm hmmm,” she replied, her mouth full of strawberry.

After dinner we lay together on deck, wrapped ourselves in a blanket, snuggled, and stared at the stars.

“I ran away from home when I was sixteen,” Eva said quietly.

I turned toward her, put my arm over Eva, and put my lips next to her cheek as I listened.

“I left with a small backpack full of stuff, mostly clothes. I was terrified—afraid during the day and afraid to go to sleep at night.”

“For five or six months I didn’t stay with anyone. I slept in old cars, under bushes, wherever I could find someplace that seemed safe.

“The first night I was picked up by a trucker. I lied and said I had an aunt in the direction he was heading, and he let me off when we got where I said I was going. He was understanding and nice and didn’t hit me up for sex. And I didn’t have experience with sex, just kissy-feely stuff with a couple of boys and a girlfriend.

“When he left me off the only things on my mind were staying away from home and what happened that made me leave. I didn't know where I was going to go or how I was going to get there. I thought about a couple of friends, but it I knew their parents would just being me back to my mother. Whatever I saw was scary and bleak.

“I was hungry as hell, and the truck stop where I was let off had an all night diner. I went through their garbage and found something to eat and slept on the ground next to the building.

“The next morning was like a lot of mornings—I needed food. One of the gals that worked in the kitchen found me going through the garbage and brought me some cereal and toast. She didn’t offer anything else, but that was wonderful. I got to thinking about where I was going to stay, but I didn’t know where to turn. I didn’t want to go to the police, because they’d just send me home, so I wandered around, looking, for what I didn’t know, just looking.

“I spent a week like that, maybe longer, always going back to the truck stop. Every morning the gal would bring me breakfast. One morning it was a different person, an older guy the woman had called. He was a counselor from Children’s Services. He was nice, and he told me he would help me, but he said I would have to go to the facility.

“I was afraid, and I told him No.”

“He said I could leave anytime I wanted. Then the gal came out and chatted with him, and she told me he was okay and helped a bunch of kids get things straight, so I went.

“I had my first shower in I don’t know how long, a real meal, and I sleep in a real bed. There were two other girls there, and we sort of bonded. I still see one of them, once in awhile. The other one died of an OD after she went back home.

“The system was fucked up—I was put in a foster home that was abusive. How those people got to be a foster family is beyond me. Mom, dad, daughter, and son treated me like shit, like I was there to be their slave.The daughter was my age but was a pig. The son was a little older. I'm glad he didn't like me, or who knows what might have happened. I’ve thought about going back and seeing if they are still with the program. I sure hope not.

“I couldn’t register for school without a transcript, and I didn’t want my old school to know where I was, because I was afraid they would tell my mom. I probably would have needed her signature, too, but Children’s Services helped me with all that. I don’t know if my mom ever found out where I was, but if she did she didn’t give a damn. I never heard from her again.”

I lifted my head and tried to look into Eva’s eyes, but she wouldn’t look at me. She just looked at the star filled sky.

“I got friendly with a girl in school, and for awhile I moved in with her and her mom,” Eva continued. “They were great, but the girl and I were very different. We lived in the same room, and she was a slob. Not that I’m perfect, but when she took off her clothes she couldn’t be bothered putting them in the hamper and stuff like that. But the bigger problem was me. I was used to being by myself. Eventually I moved on.

“I lived wherever I could. I begged for money and slept on the ground in parks, in an abandoned car for a month, places like that. One day, while I was begging, I met a woman who took an interest in me. She took me home, fed me, cleaned me up, and had sex with me. I was totally willing—I enjoyed it. We had a great afternoon, and then her husband came home, and we had a threesome. I enjoyed that too. I might have stayed with them, but they weren’t interested in having that much of a daughter, so I left.”

“Can you tell me what made you run away from your mother?” I asked.

“My mother was an addict. If she was at breakfast at all, she had a beer in her hand. She supported us by getting welfare and working a little. She mopped floors in a school, stocked shelves in a grocery, and was a maid in a motel until they found out she was fucking guests.

“Mom loved to fuck. I inherited that from her. She quit the little work she got, because it interfered with her night life. I don’t think she was a prostitute—she’d fuck anyone for free—but I didn't know about any of that or about the motel when I was a kid. I only found out about it after I ran away, when I went looking for my father and my mom's old friends told me what she was like.

“First it was beer, but later it turned into hard liquor and drugs. I saw what my mother’s addiction did to her. I remember it so well that there is no way I will ever be an addict to anything, with one exception. I’m an addict to sex, just like her. I was never a prostitute—I never explicitly offered sex for money—but like my mother I survived by trading what I had for what I needed.”

“Were you living with the guy who brought you on the boat?” I asked.

“Yeah, for a month, but he got tired of me. He wanted to trade me to his friend, for his friend’s girlfriend, but I wouldn’t do that, so he kicked me off his boat with all my stuff.”

“All your stuff is in one bag?”

“Yeah, and I always keep it with me in case I have to leave someplace fast.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a mother and father and aunts and uncles and grandparents, and a brother and sister, and they all love me.”

“You’re lucky,” Eva said.

“What about your father?” I asked.

“My birth certificate says Father Unknown. He could have been anyone.”

“That’s so sad.”

Eva shrugged. “I’m used being by myself.”

“I have plenty of love. I’d like to share it with you,” I said.

Eva smiled, turned, and hugged me. Under the blanket she slipped off her shorts and panties, and I got hard, anticipating making love again. She helped me undress, lay on her back, and moved me between her spread legs. She took my penis and guided it into her, and she sucked in her breath as I sank in deep.

Before we headed toward climax we lay in each other’s arms, not rushing, enjoying each other’s presence and listening to the sounds of the water lapping the sides of the boat and to night sounds from shore.

“The last night with my mom she was drunk on her ass, begging her drug dealer for drugs, but she had no money. So she offered me in payment, thinking so little of her daughter… I became just a token. He was too drunk or stoned to want to do anything, and I ran away before he could have me.”

I pulled my penis out and then came back into Eva, trying to express—with kisses on her lips, her face, in her ears, and up and down her neck; my hands caressing and cupping her breasts, my fingers gently holding her nipples; and my penis that had only just learned the exquisite feeling of being inside a woman—how much I cared for and wanted to give Eva love and perhaps be the first person she ever trusted enough to risk loving in return.

That Eva had trusted me enough to reveal her past, her secrets, her pain, transported each of us and us as one into worlds of feeling where thoughts slipped away, and we made love with moans and tears and flows of woman’s slipperiness that coated me and Eva’s thighs and dripped between her buttocks… And then we came as one with anguish on our faces and gasps for breath and life, to produce life, at least symbolically, and our cries in the night were heard by roosting birds and bats and other creatures on their own quests for food, mating, and the perpetuation of their species. We made love as neither of us had ever done, and after we climaxed and rested we went into the cabin and slept in each other’s arms. Nothing between us was ever the same again.

***

We travelled from Miami down to the Florida Keys, anchoring and making love whenever one of us felt the desire, which was often. Sometimes we headed out into the ocean where we could be away from other boats, and we would take off our clothes and cavort naked, touching and making love at will. Sometimes we didn’t make love; we just fucked in the cockpit with the boat was underway. At times we pulled into marinas to load up on water and supplies, but we never stayed overnight, for our need to make love was compelling, and we didn’t want to be inhibited by people being around us.

I taught Eva to sail, and she could spell me at the wheel as I napped, and in midsummer we crossed the rough waters of the Gulf Stream and went to Bimini and back.

It was getting toward the end of summer, and I was running out of the money I had saved working at the marina where my uncle kept his boat. “I’m going to have to go to work again,” I told Eva.

“Am I’m going to have to leave?” she asked.

“No, No, Not at all. I don’t want you to.”

“Really?”

“Really. Would you stay on the boat and live with me?”

“We do have a lot of fun together.”

“We do,” I said, putting my hand on her thigh between her legs.

Eva closed her legs on my hand. “I don’t know why you like me, except for sex,” she said. “I’m a bad girl—a slut, and a cum bucket, and a whore.”

“No you’re not. You just had a tough life.”

“One time I met this girl, and we got friendly, and she invited me to a party. There were three other girls at the party, but they all had boyfriends. The girl who invited me was in one of the couples, and I didn’t know anyone else. Before we went, she told me that it might turn into a sex party, and she asked if I was willing. ‘Sure,’ I said, thinking I would be with one guy or girl. I didn't realize I would be the only unattached female with eight unattached guys.

“I realized I was going to be a gang-bangee, and I was reluctant, at first, to have to give attention to all the unattached guys. But I was only reluctant for about thirty seconds. Then I sucked every cock and was fucked by most of them. The guys liked that I wanted their cum in my mouth, not all over me. So you see what I’m like?”

“Do you have to be bad like that?” I asked.

“Yes, but not if you loved me. If you really loved me I would never be bad. I’d be only for you.”

“I do love you,” I said.

Eva stared at me, and then she started to cry. She whimpered, “I love you too,” and she hugged me and started crying harder. “I never said that to anyone before,” Eva said. “If you hurt me now I’ll die.”

“I won’t hurt you, Trust me.”

Eva nodded—she believed me, and with tears streaming down her face she said, “I do.”

***

I began working full time in the marina, and Eva enrolled in nursing school. She worked so hard that the hospital offered to pay her tuition if she agreed to work for the hospital for two years after she graduated. She accepted, and we lived together on the boat.

Eva spent a lot of time in the hospital, volunteering in the emergency room, and she was a fierce protector of every young woman who came in with a story of abuse. She fought Children’s Services, the hospital administration, and even the police. Once she almost got arrested for taking a young woman and hiding her so Children’s Services couldn’t take her back to the foster home from which she ran away. Eva fought so well, always on the side of righteousness, that instead of firing and arresting Eva the hospital, Children’s services, and a representative from the police force formed a group to develop new guidelines to protect young women. Eva, as young as she was, was a key member.

Now, every night Eva comes home exhausted, and I have dinner waiting for her. I give her a dose of love, we share sex, and we sleep touching.