Seven Days Aboard

This is the longest story I've written here on Literotica. It started out with the image of a single scene on a beach in my mind, and ballooned from there into 51 thousand words of very slow burn, copious assorted naughtiness throughout, and plenty of payoff when we get to it. It's the first story I've written that I consider a romance from start to finish, so make of that what you will.

I meant it to be a Valentine's Day Contest entry, but I just felt it would be too on the nose to set these events on that week. But I am including it as my offering to the Pink Orchid 2023 for Women-Centric Erotica Challenge. This is only my third shot at a female viewpoint character, but I like Daisy, and I hope you will too.

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DAY ZERO

"Good morning, sleepy head. It's packing day!" squealed Kimmie, bouncing out of nowhere onto the foot of my bed. "Up and at 'em, girlfriend!" she went on, far too loudly. "We got to pack for our cruise tomorrow. Let's get on with it."

I blearily looked at the clock. "It is eight in the morning, you demon," I groaned. I had been kept out late the night before by Kimmie, along with Adrian and Sophia during our 'Bon Voyage Party', where we did far too many shots in order to toughen up our livers in advance of our seven day, southern Caribbean cruise.

A cruise that I had never been one-hundred percent in favor of.

"Again, why are we going on this trip?" I moaned, pulling my covers up over my head.

"Because," Kimmie replied, yanking my covers off not only my head, but virtually my entire body, "we need a vacation--you most of all!" She paused, looking at my irritably squirming form. "Ohh, that is a very nice nighty. You are bringing that on the cruise, right?"

I looked down at the sleek black teddy that I had worn to sleep the night before, precisely because I was not about to bring it on the cruise. I still didn't know why I had bought the damned thing to begin with. It had an almost thong back that completely exposed my curvy ass, and was damned near sheer everywhere else, except for the most, ah, strategic of locations on the front. My nipples might have been pretty much obscured, but given my tits, the nightie put on a helluva cleavage show, not to mention all the transparent side- and under-boob. I had bought it a while back in a moment of idiocy, while my mind was consumed with pursuing a delicious guy who totally did not work out in any way shape or from, and who most definitely had not ever been allowed to see me in it. That had been four months ago, and I had not so much as met a guy I'd have even considered wearing this thing for since.

"Why would I bring this?" I asked, sitting up in defeat.

"Night three is Pajama Night, remember?"

"You think that I'm going to wear this in public? To dinner?" I snorted, incredulous.

"Well, you can wear a robe over it to dinner," Kimmie said, as if seriously considering it. "But ditch the robe afterward for the pajama party, girl. In that thing, you'll get over your dry spell, no problem."

"I am not in a dry spell," I grumbled, fully aware that I was, in fact, in a dry spell.

"Listen, I know what a dry spell is. You are in one," Kimmie countered. Kimmie would not know what a dry spell was, as I doubted that she had ever had one. She does not have the measurements that I do, but she makes up for it with an incredibly athletic build and an astoundingly slutty behavior pattern.

Yes, I'm calling my best friend and roommate a slut. And she is, in the most adorable way. She likes sex, and likes variety in her men, that is all true. But she knows how to say no, does so often, and most importantly, no man has ever 'used' her. She also knows how to say 'yes', and when she says it, it is usually about fifty times, and at the top of her lungs.

I was lucky not to have been kept up by her affirmative behavior the night before, since my three friends had sworn off men for the evening, and had been too busy plotting our activities on the boat for any of us, even Kimmie, to break the pact.

"I don't suppose that you have made coffee yet?" I groaned.

DAY ONE

The stupidly early flight to San Juan was a nightmare. Kimmie, despite specializing in catting around all night, was one of that most odious of species--a morning person. Back when I had finally caved and agreed go on this extravagant, unnecessary, wildly-expensive trip, I had immediately volunteered to take care of the flight arrangements. I am usually the planner of our bunch, and I realized instantly that I did not want to sit with Kimmie on a six AM flight lasting six hours. I stuck Adrian with her in the row in front of me and Sophia. The two of us tried and failed to get some sleep while Adrian and Kimmie yammered away loudly in front of us.

If I had been a better planner, I'd have put those two on the other side and end of the plane from Sophia and me.

If you have not gotten the gist by now, I am not temperamentally a fan of mornings. This is despite the fact that I am always the first person with my firm at work each morning. I'm only 26, which makes me the youngest and female-est of the execs at the marketing firm I have made my home. I need to work a little harder than everybody else.

"I still can't believe that I let you guys talk me into taking a whole week-long cruise," I groused yet again to Sophia.

"You are just afraid that the people at work will discover that they can survive without you," Sophia scoffed, while sucking at her third coffee like it was her mother's breast.

I decided to change the subject. "Tell me again, does the boat stop at Aruba or Antigua?" I asked.

"Antigua. And tell me again how you, the most organized planner in history, does not even know our itinerary?" Sophia asked tartly. "You have also refused to schedule one shore excursion in advance. And Kimmie said she had to remind you about things like Pajama Night."

"You should have seen what she wanted me to wear to that," I snorted. "And as for the rest... I plan every minute of every day at work. When I do go on vacation, I refuse to plan anything, or I'll turn it into work, too. I'll just hang out with you guys."

"I hope you don't think you are spending all your time with us," Sophia said happily. "I've been between men as long as you have. Kimmie is... well, Kimmie. And Adrian seems ready to move on from Todd."

"Wait. What?" I said, leaning toward Sophia and lowering my voice. This was the first juicy-sounding piece of conversation I'd heard that day, and my brain struggled to come to life. "I hadn't heard they broke up. They just went out Tuesday night, I thought."

"They did go out. Had a nice time too, supposedly," Sophia whispered back. "But Adrian was back in our apartment, alone, before 10:30!"

I considered that. "Yep. If there are any good, available guys on the boat, they better be on their toes."

Adrian, back in college, had once been the slut in our group, back when Kimmie was all shy and conservative our freshman year. But after keeping one boyfriend for more than a semester as a sophomore, Adrian had morphed from get-around-girl to serial monogamist.

I loved the girl to death, she was my oldest friend among our bunch, but she did have the rather unattractive habit of moving on to the next guy, or at least holding auditions, before telling the last guy that his services were no longer needed...

"Well, I don't know about you," I said firmly, "but I'm feeling past my expiration date on short-term flings. I'm not on this cruise for a whirlwind, slam-bang-thank-you-ma'am hookup at sea."

"Uh huh," Sophia said. "So you've given up on banging Chris Hemsworth and are want to be a one man girl now."

I giggled at that. I couldn't help it. "If any of the Chrises are on this boat, or any of the Hemsworths for that matter, y'all bitches better stand back out of my way. Some opportunities must not be missed. But other than superheroes, I'm not fishing for things I can't keep anymore."

"You'd muscle the rest of us out?" Sophia cried, holding her chest as if shot. "We are your friends! Hoes before bros, right?"

"Absolutely," I retorted. "But Hemsworths before Hoes," I added firmly.

"So selfish," Sophia teased. "But as for men who will actually be on this voyage, you can abstain all you want. I'm in the mood for some catch and release."

I shook my head. It was a good thing I had done one thing in advance, and bought the unlimited drink package. Otherwise this would have been going to be an awful week.

*

The cruise terminal in San Juan was a gigantic, concrete barn of a building, where we all ended up in long, snaking lines for check-in. It was like TSA from Hell. Sophia and Kimmie spent their time in line nattering on about Emily in Paris, a Netflix rom-com serial. I stayed out of their conversation because I famously hate rom-coms... and because I binge every season of Emily in Paris the evening it comes out. It is a show about a young, female marketing executive like me, after all. If I had let them know I knew about the show at all, I'd have probably ended up spoiling something big to them in my enthusiasm. They were not even all the way through Season One, and had no idea what was coming. I needed to keep my mouth shut and not ruin anything.

I let my eyes wander, and noticed several things. I had known this was a 21 and older cruise, but beyond the fact that there would be no kids, no other implications had really registered for me. It hadn't seemed like it would matter much. The only other cruise I had ever been on was a voyage to Alaska with my parents when I was nineteen, and that passenger list had already been practically geriatric anyway. Not only were there no kids anywhere in this gigantic crowd, but the number of old people was maybe a fifth of the number I had expected for a cruise. Most of us in line were in our twenties, thirties, and forties, with a few fifties. Geezers were few and far between. Not only that, but this crowd seemed to mostly be groups of people, rather than couples. This was going to be a party boat, I realized forlornly. Visions of quiet deck chairs and my book flickered and dimmed.

The appearances of the passengers, and their voices, also revealed that we were going to be on a voyage with a lot of, maybe mostly, foreigners. I had been dimly aware that this was an Italian cruise line, but it had not registered on me that it was a line that marketed primarily to Europeans. My professional mind tried to spool up with ideas and speculation on how marketing such a product would be different, but I banished the work thoughts and kept my mind blank.

And then there was one guy who caught my eye. He was standing clearly by himself in the line, which was fairly unique, and he was more than a little hot, which was wonderful but also surprisingly not unique. There were more good-looking people in this line than I had almost ever seen in a single place before. But this one guy was special, at least to my eye. He had gloriously wavy brown hair with blonde natural highlights and striking eyes that looked blue from this distance.

As the line snaked on, he would drop out of sight, then come back into view, and I found myself marking our progress by my sightings of him. He had to be close to my age, in his twenties certainly. He was taller than almost everyone around him, and while he wore a loose-fitting Hollister teeshirt, he clearly was fit and nicely muscular. I don't go for guys who are jacked or ripped, but I do like to have the idea that a man can pick me up and carry me safely out of any kind of...

Listen to me, fantasizing about some rando in a line from Hell.

And shit, he nearly caught me looking at him. I used my trick of not looking away, but focusing instead on something way beyond him. After I finished 'scanning the back of the line', I looked away. When the line should have brought him into sight again, I couldn't help but look his way.

And he was definitely staring right at me. I was caught dead to rights this time. He actually flushed and looked away. So did I, blushing furiously.

Great. The first really good-looking guy I see on this trip, and I creep him out, acting like a stalker.

"What is your malfunction, Daisy?" Kimmie asked me, noticing my flustered nature.

"Nothing," I muttered. Then I admitted, "A guy just caught me looking at him."

"A guy? Where? Which one?" Kimmie asked excitedly. The nimrod went full prairie dog, sticking her head up high and staring around in what I viewed as the most embarrassing possible direction.

Never go full prairie dog, you horrible friend. I elbowed her in the ribs, and she hunched down with an, "Oof."

The only good thing about the whole episode was that it forced me to pull my head out of the dude-filled clouds and actually engage with my friends. I needed to keep Kimmie from embarrassing me any further.

And I found that I kind of wanted her to be thinking about things other than that particular guy. He was my find--mine to mack on from afar, and I didn't want to share.

Wow. I really needed to put in a bit more work on my social calendar when I got home to Dallas...

We got to the front of the line, checked in, and walked out toward the boat. It felt like a weight lifted from me as we approached the gangplank. I could shut off my planning brain for seven days, lie in the sun, drink, and go with the flow. Maybe I wouldn't resent my friends the whole time after all...

I got my first real look at our boat as we left the check-in building and headed up the long, dusty ramp to the embarkation level. Our ride was smaller than most of the other boats in the cruise harbor, but I realized I really liked its look. It was white with long, bright, red lines painted on it that almost felt like racing stripes, especially with the more rakishly sleek lines it had, as opposed to the big, fat, mega-liners that surrounded it in port.

"It looks a lot smaller than the others," I observed, as we walked across the tarmac.

"It is, dummy," Sophia said merrily. "There are only, like, 2,000 passengers. What does the company call The Wanderer, Adrian, a 'Luxury Mega-Yacht'?"

"You know it! 2,150 adult passengers, out to have fun, and a thousand crew to make it happen."

And this was a 'small' boat. I shook my head, then looked back at our ride with a smile.

I was more than happy to go all girly-girl for the mandatory embarkation photo with my friends, and after the giggling process, I actually found myself actually looking forward to being on this trip, possibly for the first time.

By the time we got on board, our cabins were ready, but our luggage was still likely hours away from being delivered. We split up to check out our rooms, drop off our carry-ons, and touch up our makeup. Kimmie's and my cabin was on the uppermost of the non-suite decks, and toward the stern. Sophia and Adrian had chosen an interior cabin a few decks down, with a wide window that looked down over the big, interior shopping and restaurant plaza inside the ship. They wanted the view of all the parties.

Their interior cabin was also nearly a thousand bucks less for each of them. Kimmie had wanted the two of us to book a suite. I had told her, repeatedly, that I did not want to show up our friends with how we could afford it (a junior one at least), when they sure as hell could not. Both Sophia and Adrian had nice jobs in the petroleum industry, with excellent benefits and good advancement prospects, but meager current pay. Personally, I was doing very well, with a recent year-end bonus in my bank account that had merely been dented by this trip.

Kimmie was the top earner among us, I was sure.

She sold Porsches. And she was a 26 year-old hardbody, with fabulously blended Asian and Norwegian features, and a flirty attitude. Thus, she sold a shitload of Porsches... all without actually sleeping with any customers. (Except for that one. No one blamed her for that one.) I loved Kimmie to death, but I swear, if she took a fall into an open septic tank, she'd pop to the surface clutching a lost heirloom diamond ring.

Some bar, we had not decided which one yet, was calling, so the two of us set about freshening up quickly.

I tossed off my travel blouse, which was wrinkled and probably smelly from the flight, swabbed my pits, put on some fresh scent and shrugged into the clean, sleeveless top I had packed for the first afternoon in my backpack. Sixty seconds in the mirror, and I was ready to go. Then I went out onto the balcony and looked out over San Juan harbor while I waited for Kimmie to get her tight, little, slow-poke ass in gear.

I smiled ruefully as I remembered that my friend in turn had her grumps about me. One of the chief ones is that I need very little work to get my face in shape to go to work, or even to go out. I have led, even in high school, a largely zit-free life, and I tan easily, quickly, and evenly, even through sunscreen. My eyebrows are dark (they do need to be trimmed... a lot), and my lashes full. It is a rare event, when I want to really doll up, that I actually use base, or even mascara. I usually just go with an eyeliner pencil and a touch of lipgloss unless I really want to be extravagant.

I wasn't feeling extravagant that afternoon. I was on this vacation to depressurize, read, drink, and have fun with my friends... while watching them make fools of themselves with the male passengers. They could waste their own time on perfecting their looks.

Kimmie, as I said, is a knockout. But while she never comes close to laying it on with a trowel, she does spend ages doing her face.

"Come on, girl!" I called from the balcony back into the room. I had exhausted the charms of the other cruise ships and the industrial port that made up our current, pre-departure view. "There is a Bloody Mary with my name on it somewhere on this ship, and I want to find it."

My phone buzzed. We could still text easily in port. "Come on, Kimmie," I pestered her for the third time, seeing a hand extend itself from the cramped bathroom's door and flip me the bird in reply. "Even Adrian is done up before you," I added. "They already have a table up in some place called the Eagle's Nest on deck twelve, so we can watch the boat cast off."

"Cool your jets, girl," Kimmie called. "I'm ready."

I got up and returned to the cabin, eyes adjusting to the relative darkness of the interior. Kimmie had, of course, changed every stitch of clothing from the flight. She had on a low-waisted pair of jeans shorts, raggedly cut off extremely high to show off acres of lightly dusky, toned legs. Up top, she had on a very tight, white, cotton tank top that exposed a few inches of toned, nearly washboard stomach, along with a large amount of the bright green bra she sported beneath. There was plenty of cleavage too.

"On the prowl already?" I asked, as we climbed the aft stairs to deck twelve. No elevators had been one of our pre-cruise resolutions, to combat all the food and drink we planned to slam. Also, even modest little old me likes the way I look on stairs, whether from behind me, looking up, or above me, looking down... "I thought we are going to be a foursome for the first night."

"No guys tonight," Kimmie agreed firmly. "And this little outfit? It's just something I threw on."

I snorted.

"And maybe it will lay some marketing groundwork for the rest of the cruise," she giggled. I giggled with her. She was incorrigible.

The Eagle's Nest was a huge bar with a panoramic view aft of the boat. Deck twelve was a small level that stood atop the aft structure of the ship. There only other thing up there on that deck was an escape room, just forward of the bar.