Sailor's Bluff

Even though he rattled on about everything but that, I knew David's dark secret as soon as I entered the almost-deserted observation car on the Capitol Limited Amtrak train somewhere in Pennsylvania sometime before 11:00 p.m. I had suspected what his secret was earlier and hoped for it.

I knew because of the way he looked at me when I entered the car from the sleeper end and stood there, surveying what was what in the car before I sat at the other end of the carriage from David and Leila. His eyes had lit up and then slitted when he saw me, the need obvious—to me, at least. I had seen the look earlier too when we both were in the departure lounge at Washington D.C.'s Union Station, waiting to board the train. We had exchanged looks then, checking each other out.

There were so few in the car because David was well buzzed, if not quite drunk, and David had a very loud, and obscene, voice when he was buzzed. Leila, the young woman who said she was from Jordan, was working in Washington, D.C., and was traveling out to the West Coast to explore this new country of hers, only hung on for as long as she did, I think, because she was interested in sleeping with David. David was a good-looking blond—a bit on the thin side, but well-muscled through the chest and biceps and with a boyish, handsome face. He was wearing a T-shirt advertising the Hotel Coronado in San Diego and baggy, silky athletic shorts. He didn't look like the type who would be staying at that resort. He had looked good in the silky shorts, though—like a basketball player. He was a bit spacey perhaps for the Hotel Coronado, but sexy.

He was laying it on thick about the woes of his young life. He looked about twenty-four and later in his ramblings said he was twenty-six. If he hadn't gotten off on talking about his fiancée and how devoted they were to each other, I know he could have laid Leila that night—if one of them had a sleeper cubicle. They were young and flexible looking, though, so maybe they could have managed it on the coach seats as well. That would have been fun to watch. I don't think Leila understood why a fiancée was brought up, but I did.

I had a roomette compartment, which sounded luxurious, but it was pretty cramped too. But it had the maximum privacy to be had on a train and its own sink and toilet compartment—and the lower bunk folded down to a three-quarters bed. The guys at the gym were always ragging on me about needing a roomette all to myself and for taking as many cross-country Amtrak train trips as I did, but I'd just smile and hum, knowing what I did and they didn't. I never had failed to score on the train.

I don't know what either David or Leila had, coach seats or sleepers, a compartment no bigger than a fold down bed, but Leila would, I'm sure, have thought of someplace to maneuver him for a bit of privacy if his action had lived up to his bravado when he was trying to impress her in his loud voice. Maybe he was trying to impress her and to stave me off and maybe talking about having a fiancée but having been separated from her for a long time and being afraid he wasn't good enough for her had worked for him before in getting a casual female acquaintance into bed. But if it had, he was overworking it now. I could tell that Leila had decided much earlier in the conversation that she wanted him to lay her.

But I knew what it really was about, and I doubted there even was a fiancée.

Within moments of entering the car and sitting down at the other end, I knew everything there was to know about David. He kept asking Leila about her life—how she'd gotten to the States from Jordan, and why. But then he wasn't giving her time to open up before he launched into another "woe is me" story about himself.

What he was first moaning about when I came in was that the café barman in the snack bar on the lower level of the observation car had cut his drinks off and he didn't feel nearly mellow enough yet. When I asked the barman later what the limit was, he'd said that four was the limit. David moved on to having fucked up his life in high school, stolen a car, taken a joyride, and was caught trying to outrun a cop. There had been a DUI charge on top of that. It was obvious that too much liquor had continued to be a problem for David. He went on to mention other mixing of driving and drinking and getting caught. He also regretted he hadn't given enough respect to learning something about life and its opportunities before he was shipped off to the service, his parents wanting him off their hands as soon as possible. He said he came from Chicago, but he wasn't ultimately headed there. He'd be transferring trains in Chicago. Leila said she would be transferring too, but he didn't ask her if they'd be transferring to the same train.

David's girlfriend, turned fiancée, had remained in Chicago, he revealed. He said she'd gone to community college, made something of herself, and hadn't given up on him. In fact, she wanted to move to where he was stationed with the Navy—in San Diego—and wanted them to marry. She could find a job there. David thought he was talking about that in terms of life looking up and settling down, but I don't think Leila was convinced. I certainly wasn't. This train was going to Chicago. He didn't once mention that he was going there to see her. He repeatedly said he was transferring there onto another train, the Texas Eagle, headed southwest, back to the naval base at San Diego.

He kept coming back to having fucked up his life and being twenty-six now. He wanted a redo, he said. He wasn't making the prospect of marrying his high school sweetheart, who had a good education and was willing to relocate to San Diego and get a job, sound like the do over I'm sure Leila and I saw it to be. So, neither one of us, I'm sure, was convinced by that. What I had figured out, though—and Leila apparently hadn't—was that he was putting what probably was a nonexistent fiancée up as a barrier to doing what Leila so obviously wanted him to do with her. That spoke volumes to me in and of itself.

He kept looking over at me, even though I was sitting in the shadows—pretty much invisible as a black man to any white boy who wanted me to be invisible. I didn't get the impression that David wanted me to be invisible. He seemed almost intent on me coming over and saving him from being alone with Leila.

I felt bad for Leila. She had a good body, but she was no beauty and likely thought it would be a plus for her to get David to fuck her—he was a lot better looking than she was, in my humble opinion. But I had decided she didn't have a chance with David and that as much as David was running at the mouth about his fucked-up life and problems, he wasn't talking about what was really bothering him.

To check that out—I was curious and he really was a good-looking guy—I stood up and stretched, showing him that, even at thirty-five, I was a muscular black stud. He took notice and seemed disappointed that I sat down again rather than coming into their conversation. We were the only three people in the club car. After that, he stole glances at me even more often, and I knew for sure.

He said he needed another drink, forgetting that he'd been cut off, and went down the stairs to have another go at the keeper of the booze at the snack bar—or maybe hoping there had been a change in bartenders. Leila drifted off into the coach end of the train, and I was blissfully alone for a few minutes—but not for long. David cursed all the way up the stairs and Leila, obviously hearing him from coach, came back in as well. Hopeful to the last.

They went through another round of David moaning his wasted life and Leila clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth and sympathizing with him. When he ran out of steam, she rose and said, "It's late. I guess I'll go back to coach. They've turned off the lights. I'm in the second coach. Almost no one else is there. I have a row of seats all to myself. It's sort of nice that the train isn't crowded."

Can't get any plainer than that.

But David didn't bite. He did tell her, "It was nice talking to you. I wished you'd told me more about yourself and what brought you here from Jordan. There's no mystery about my fiancée. We grew up together. Always knew we'd be together some day. No mystery there."

There was a bit of mystery, though. David had never said what his fiancée's name was. And he had exclusively talked about her in the past tense. He had buddies in the Navy he talked about in the present tense. I don't know if Leila caught onto that, but I sure did. He'd talked up how close knit he and his Navy buddies were. Leila didn't catch the inference of that either.

After repeating that she was in the dark and nearly deserted coach section two carriages back, she left.

A couple of minutes after she'd gone, I got up and walked up the car and sat in a seat facing the view of blackness outside the speeding train two seats down from him. Not too close. I didn't want to spook him. I'd done this before. Often. I enjoyed doing this. David watched me approach and sit, but sideways, like maybe he wasn't watching me but, rather, was mesmerized by the view of a dark countryside through a window that reflected more of his and my faces and bodies than what was outside the train. We searched each other's faces in the reflection of the glass.

"Navy, eh?" I asked. I doubted he would have the courage to start this dance. "I overheard you." Who could have avoided overhearing him? "My name's Frank."

"Yeah, I caught that."

"I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying." And what you were avoiding saying, I continued in my thoughts.

"Yeah. San Diego. I'm attached to the Merlins of the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron there. Great bunch of guys. We're really tight with each other."

"Yeah, guys in the service can really bond," I responded. "The Navy can bring guys really close—isolated at sea and at other duty stations like that. They can get really, really close. I know how that is. Been there, done that."

He didn't bite on that out loud, but I could tell he knew what I was inferring and condoning—and maybe even proposing. It hinted that I might not only have some special insight into some of the shit that came down in the Navy but that I also had been part of that. That's pretty much what I wanted him to infer.

"You?" he asked. "You in the service too?" He was looking at me in the reflection in the glass with needy eyes.

"Not now. I own a gym now."

"Yeah you look it," he couldn't help but say.

"But I was in the service," I added. "The Marines. And I know how it can be in the service. Guys sticking together. Depending on each other. Helping each other. Being close knit. Giving each other support . . . and relief."

"Yeah, that figures," he said. "You being in the Marines. Really squared away."

"I helped guys a lot in the Marines. Guys with special needs," I said. "I sort of specialized in taking care of guys." Time to take command. I moved over to the seat beside him and put a hand on his knee. He looked down at the hand but did nothing to move away from it or me.

"I was just going down to get a drink. Would you like me to get you one too?" I kept my voice low, hoarse like. It was a voice of pursuit known among guys with special interests. I was declaring myself as a seeking top. "Maybe another drink before we . . . well, you know."

"They've cut me off," he said, a slight edge of belligerence in his voice. I moved my hand farther up on his thigh and slightly to the inside. He spread his thighs for me and looked down at the hand.

This was going to be easy.

"I can get the drinks. They're about to close the bar and I can ask for two. I don't have to tell them one of them is for you."

"That would be great," he said, his eyes focused on my hand that had moved up his inner thigh, a finger extended up, touching what I knew would be something hardening up inside the material of his crotch. "Then afterward . . ."

"Yeah, afterward," he said, "I'd like that." His voice came out in a croak. Just like that, his flag of surrender had flipped up. But then I knew that's what he'd wanted all along.

When I came back, he was sitting there, staring at his reflection in the glass. He looked keyed up. He gave me a weak smile as I handed him his drink. I sat in the seat beside him and put my hand back on the inside of his thigh. He spread his legs again and nearly gulped his drink—his fifth one. He obviously was a serious drinker, as he was managing to stay just in the buzz zone. There was no problem with the hand, though. He was more than ready to take up from where I'd left off.

We both knew I was going to fuck him.

I drank my drink more slowly, showing him who was in control. We continued eyeing each other in the reflection of the glass, not saying anything until, in that low, hoarse voice again, I said, "Just lay back in the seat and enjoy the view—as long as there's no one but us in the observation car."

He docilely did just that, spreading his legs. While still sipping my drink, I moved my hand down to the hem of his baggy, silky shorts and then inside them and up his inner thigh. My eyes took possession of his and didn't waver. His look of need was latched onto my eyes as well.

I finished my drink and set it down on a side table. His eyes went big as I worked my other hand up his thigh inside his shorts. I encased his cock with both of my hands inside his shorts and briefs, and, with a sigh, he collapsed back into the lounge chair. He moved the nearest thigh to mine over my legs and spread and raised the other leg, the pad of his foot going to the metal frame of the wall of windows. He was completely open to me, surrendered and vulnerable. I rolled his cock between my hands. He was hard, as I knew he would be, and going harder, which I knew he would. He had a nice cock too.

He was putty in my hands. I could do anything I wanted with him.

I went down on my knees on the carpet between his spread thighs, both of us concentrating on me working his cock inside his shorts with both hands. We simultaneously leaned our heads together momentarily, with our foreheads touching and our eyes locked together.

"You're going to lay down for me, aren't you?" I whispered.

"Yes. Whatever you want," he answered.

When I moved to possess his lips, he opened his mouth fully and let me stick my tongue down his throat and grab and suck on his tongue. I slowly jacked him off, and he lay there, quiet, moaning softly, in complete surrender.

I released him from my control after he'd ejaculated to me working his cock with both hands and turned and sat back on my chair. He closed his legs up and looked at me like he was my puppy dog.

"Go ahead and finish your drink," I said. "Then come to my compartment with me and I'll fuck you."

"Yes," he said meekly. He didn't make a move, though, so I picked his drink up and handed it to him. He gulped it down, not moving his gaze from my eyes.

"I'll fuck you hard. I'm built big," I said.

"Yes," he murmured.

"You want it from a black man, don't you?"

"Yes."

He had been ready to go before he'd finished that drink I'd gotten him, but I wouldn't let him go until he'd downed it. He wasn't blotto drunk, but he was buzzed enough to be doing what he really wanted to be doing—what he'd learned to do in the Navy—what he was talking to Leila about back in the observation car.

I fucked him on the three-quarters lower bed in my bedroom compartment, in the dark, with the occasional light from a building or lamppost screeching by in the Western Pennsylvania night outside the window wall of my compartment.

"Fuck, you are big," he murmured, talking in whispers now, as he knelt beside me at the bed, getting the measure of my cock with his hands and then his mouth, as I ran my fingers through his blond curls and, eventually, controlled the bobbing of his head.

"Too big for you to take?" I asked, knowing I wasn't really going to give him an opportunity to decide that.

"No, never. Don't make me wait," he nearly hissed through his teeth.

"Bigger than you've taken before?"

"Almost."

"From a black man? Big black cock?"

"Yes."

"You like it that way?"

"Yes, oh yes. Black bulls. Love 'em. Fuck me. Do me. Don't make me wait. Black stud, spike me."

There was no bravado now, no talking around his problems. He knew what he wanted. He knew I was going to give it to him—and that I was going to give it to him hard, fast, and deep. He was Navy; he knew I'd been a Marine. He'd been fucked by black bulls before. He knew that once we started, we gave no quarter. He knew we'd both leave satisfied.

I put him on his back on the lower bunk, with pillows under the small of his back. I slapped his thighs apart, as he moaned for it, and I lifted and bent his legs, pressing his feet flat against the bottom of the overhead bunk. He was docile and malleable, moving as I posed him and staying there, groaning softly and muttering, "Hurry. Hurry, Now, now," under his breath. His hands went down and encased my erection as I hovered over him.

It was he who drew me inside him, his channel spreading and opening expertly to me as we hooked up, became one. "Oh god, oh shit, I can't take it. It' too big," he complained with muffled voice as I held a hand over his mouth to keep our fucking as private as possible. But it was just his way of heightening his arousal. He did take it, and when I would have drawn out, giving him more time to adjust to me, he grabbed my buttocks in both hands and held me to him as he opened more to me, murmuring, "God it's big. Shit I love it," over and over again. "Fuck me. Fuck me hard," he hissed insistently.

I fucked him. I fucked him hard.

As soon as I was thrusting he was counterthrusting, moving his pelvis with mine and moaning quietly but deeply. I fucked him hard and fast and deep, setting a rhythm that was in harmony with the sound and the feel of the train wheels over the tracks under us, racing through the night. He went with me all the way—and then all the way again. He was experienced. I needed to do no more than nudge him and he went into the position I wanted and ensured that I remained saddled, and all along he was murmuring, "Yes, yes. So big. Fuck me. Yes, there, like that. Big, black stud. Marines do it best. Black Marines do it best."

"And you've had black Marines before?" I growled as I pumped him.

"Shit, yes. But you're the best," he answered.

I fucked him through the night, turning him onto his stomach when I was finished with the missionary. And then I took him from the side after we'd dozed off for a while. Then I put him on top of me and made him ride me. He worked my cock with his passage hungrily, without hesitation or holding anything back. He kept murmuring that I was the best and I gave him no reason to think otherwise.

There was no pretense here. There was no pretending as with Leila that there was a fiancée with a hold on him out there anywhere. He wanted cock. He wanted cock inside him, the bigger the better, and, as he admitted to me, the blacker the better. He called me a big black bull, and I just laughed in recognition that I was and that I was what he needed tonight.

I had to push him off me and practically dress him myself and send him on his way back to coach as it was getting light enough outside the train to discern the identity of the blobs we were passing. All night long, we were just inches away from the corridor outside and people were passing by. We heard them. I did what I could to keep David from revealing to anyone passing what we were doing, but, in the end, I didn't care all that much. What I cared was that I was getting my cock dipped in a sweet stranger on the train. Male or female, I'd do either. I preferred male, though. I liked them needy and malleable like David. David was ideal for my purposes.