It terrified her the first time; it was as if lightning had short-circuited her brain. She walked around in a stupor for days astonished that something so powerful lived in her.

It had been a crazy night and she was half drunk. He dared her to try it, to let him "stake her out on the beach." It wasn't until she was face-down in the sand, hands bound overhead, with her legs spread wide open that she felt the fear. She was an idiot to agree, but when you're 19 and wild, everything is an adventure, something to experience. It was only when he wound his belt around his hand and began to whip her sides that she began to panic.

The pain was terrible, but she didn't blame him. Men enjoyed playing rough with her hard body--it was erotic the way her long muscles rippled, her torso moved in serpentine distress, her ass dimpled and quivered. She had expected him to fuck her in an exciting way; she had selected him from a dozen other suitors for his dangerous looks, his arrogance, and the brazen way he undressed her with his eyes.

At 3:00 a.m., no one heard her screams above the surf. He penetrated her shaking body, delirious with pain, easily. The press of his hips on her ass, the piston-like thrusts of his cock, the scouring of the beach on her naked front excited her like nothing ever had. Months later, she could still feel the sand grinding on her nipples, on her clitoris.

The orgasm rushed over her like a runaway freight train--it stopped the screams, stopped the frantic sucking movement of her vulva, stopped her lifting of her ass. She gave one giant shudder then began to convulse, pulling wildly on the three stakes. She didn't remember what happened after that, the explosion was too violent for her mind to retain. It resided much deeper inside waiting for another opportunity.

He told her later that he thought she was having a seizure; it was only when her contractions started that he realized it was an orgasm. They seemed endless, he told her in awe, a hundred at least. When they finally subsided, he untied her, bundled her in the blanket, and carried her to the car.

He wanted to continue their relationship, but she was too scared, not of him, of herself. The fear lasted for two years, two boring and celibate years, until she decided to talk to the dance company's visiting psychiatrist.

"It was an OSO, Raven," she said immediately, "an oxytocin super-orgasm. It happens sometimes when naturally submissive women are paired with dominant men in stressful conditions."

"I'm not submissive," Raven said, more confused than offended. "If anything, people find me too aggressive. I'm not submissive, really."

The woman nodded. The work she did for the company was pro-bono. If anyone wanted more, they needed to make an appointment and pay for her expertise.

"Just be careful in choosing your sexual partners," she said. "Women subject to OSO need to be prepared, they need to work their way into relationships gradually and avoid certain kinds of behavior altogether."

The warning didn't scare her, and the diagnosis didn't make much sense, but she accepted it as the best answer so far. It was a relief to know that other women suffered from the same ... the same what, condition? At least, she had some clue now about her trauma. It even had a name--OSO.

She did her own OSO research, but it still didn't fit her very well--she was not submissive.

William Steward Forester was, by any measure, a genius. He had a photographic memory and an eerie ability to see solutions to the most confounding problem. No one was surprised when he sailed through his under- and post-graduate college years, mastering the arcane science of economics with effortless aplomb. The award of his doctorate degree seemed somehow inadequate recognition of his enormous talent.

This extraordinary performance was even more surprising given his real interest--sex. Like most American men attending college, girls were always on his mind. Instead of succumbing to the mind-numbing pleasures they offered, however, he began to study them. He wanted to understand their reactions, their motivations, and mostly, how to "maximizing sexual response in women." For his master's thesis, he wrote an academic paper on the subject asserting that sex greatly affected economic behavior. The paper was quickly designated "Restricted Distribution" by the school's economics faculty.

What he discovered in his research was that sexual response was a function of stimuli and that many contra-indicated stimuli such as pain and the transfer of power, multiplied the effect. This conclusion of course wasn't anything new; however, his rigorous quantification of the effects of various stimuli and his use of advanced econometric techniques to model them were. No one had ever studied this subject with such objective rigor.

His most infamous research experiment, which he described in detail, was to tie a nubile co-ed to a bed, gag her with duct tape, and torment her large nipples and clitoris with clothes pins for several hours. After a night of multiple super-orgasms, she was rushed to the school's infirmary and diagnosed with "psychological trauma caused by hypersexual activity"--a catchall diagnosis for the medical school. When she recovered, she refused to press charges against him or even to speak of the incident.

After college, he joined his father's company, which manufactured and distributed pesticides worldwide. His interest in the family business was non-existent. Worse, his continuing experimentation with alternative and extreme sex reflected badly on the company's public image (no mean feat for a company that made dangerous pesticides). In frustration, his father bought him a sailing yacht (sailing was his second passion) and told him, in no uncertain terms, to "get lost."

William considered it a brilliant solution. He loved the sea and sailing; he was strong and lean; and he had a pathological need for the thoughtful solitude of long voyages. His father's banishment also allowed him the opportunity to pursue his research into sexual stimuli and response--sailing attracted hordes of young women. Of course, his million-dollar yacht didn't hurt.

For the next eight years, he circled the globe twice and logged more than 200,000 miles in his sailing log. Unfortunately, his reputation as a weirdo and a hard-ass, no-nonsense captain eventually caught up to him in Darwin Australia when he couldn't find a crew. He could sail his ship alone, but the danger of sailing a racer solo was too high. He was effectively stranded.

Chapter One

It was a shipboard pool party, but no one was using the pool. People understood that the word "pool" in the invitation was code for "come smartly and scantily dressed." Scores of women, mostly from the local ballet company, lounged on deck or meandered from place to place, showing off their hard bodies. Getting their haute couture pool-wear or their carefully coiffed hair wet was unthinkable.

The yacht owner's wife, a former ballerina herself, was a diamond-level sponsor of the company, which meant that attendance was mandatory for dancers. The word was that she prowled these events periodically looking for a new bed partner, a woman with similar sexual preferences ... or the ambition to ignore hers.

She wasn't the only one. Many of Darwin's richest and most powerful men attended the party (without their wives) to inspect the dancers. Like meat in a butcher's shop, long chiseled legs, hard asses, and washboard abs were on display everywhere. When a patron spotted someone who turned them on, man or woman, the approved approach was to offer a private sponsorship "to develop the dancer's unique and special talent."

Translation: hot sex in return for a luxury apartment and plenty of spending cash.

Raven made her way to the yacht's bow to avoid more inane conversations and barely-veiled proposals. Not that she was against conversation or the exchange of favors for sex, she just found it all too ordinary. She had worn a tiny bikini with a shear and wispy shawl to fit in, but it was a mistake. She didn't have the skinny--no butt, no tits--body that the other girls displayed so proudly. Her body was more like the one trucker's display on their mud-flaps and mechanics hang pictures of in their garage.

She attracted a lot of unwanted male attention because of it. Each time, she could feel the jealous eyes of the other dancers drilling into her, dissecting her. Dance and ballet were hotbeds of non-dance competition and political intrigue. She had worked at two other companies, but this was the worst. ABC, the Australian Ballet Company of Darwin, seemed to exist primarily to supply hard bodies to its rich sponsors. Dance was an afterthought, perhaps even a front. It was the source of bitter arguments between her and the dancers and management over the last few weeks.

"Do you admire this ship?"

She jerked back, surprised. The man had approached silently. He was leaning on the rail looking out at the darkness beyond the party lights. The question caught her by surprise; people had been asking her about the ship all night, but usually with a statement--amazing ship, right? She couldn't remember how many times she had nodded and smiled. But a real question ... it caught her off-guard and she said what she had been thinking.

"It, ah, seems wrong somehow for the sea," she had said, "more suited to dock parties and showing off expensive swimwear."

He glanced at her Nikki Fontaine bikini and her Jimmy Choo lifts, both on loan from the company's supply, and smiled.

"Why...?" he asked with almost rude insistence.

She stared at his face then heard herself speaking.

"All this glass and below-deck space ... it's almost as if they want to be out of the elements. I can't imagine how something this big and tall rides easily on rolling waves. It feels like an enormous RV, more at home in a trailer part than on the road."

He tried to smile, but it was as if his facial muscles were not used to that expression. He handed her his card.

"I agree with you," he said evenly. "This yacht is all wrong for the sea. It's much better suited to dock parties and for hosting incredibly beautiful dancers like you. We call this kind of ship a 'floating microwave. As for their seaworthiness, I wouldn't ride this one beyond the harbor entrance. It's a deathtrap in a heavy sea."

He stared at her for another moment as if confirming a decision. She waited for his pitch. His opening gambit had been interesting and different; and his eyes were ... predatory, just the way she liked them, but she was sure his next words were going to be ... ordinary, again.

"My name is William Steward Forester. If you want to see a boat that makes love to the sea rather than try to bludgeon it to death, give me a call."

He handed her a card and walked away.

She had to admit, it was an unusual technique. He didn't spend any time bragging about himself nor did he hang on her like most of the others. In truth, she had no idea if he was rich or not; he hadn't dropped any of the "subtle" clues rich men use to let you know they have money. He might have been one of the stewards. She just assumed he was rich because he was in their company.

She left the party shortly after turning down several gangplank invitations from other men. She kept feeling his card folded and tucked between her labia. Where else could she tuck a card wearing a micro-bikini? She tried to get his commanding eyes out of her mind, but they haunted her all night.

The next day in the studio was a nightmare. She had, apparently, caused a ruckus in the sponsor ranks by showing up with too revealing a bikini for her "over ripe" body. She pushed back when one of the girl's accidentally / on-purpose held out her leg and tripped her. She would still have written it off if one of the dancing masters had not then criticized her for being "top heavy and clumsy."

She walked out on the session. That afternoon she called him.

The SY (Sailing Yacht) Albatross was moored in the far corner of the Darwin Yacht Club. It was a 52-foot Hinckley sailing sloop [racer], with black sides, and polished teak decks, rails, and trim. Her tall wooden mast was as phallic a symbol as she had ever seen. Everywhere on the boat metal was needed, the builders had used polished brass.

Raven's first impression was that the ship's anchor chain was holding her in bondage, keeping her from her natural home--the sea. She blushed unseen in the water taxi; penises and bondage had been on her mind a lot lately. She was very picky, but she liked her sex rough and as "different" as her partner was comfortable with. William's hard eyes held the promise that he might be very different indeed.

"Welcome aboard," he said, reaching out to help her into the boat.

"This is magnificent," she said honestly. "I thought you might be fooling me last night, but this ship is, well, sexy. Can you show me around?"

"Boat...," he said, "This is a boat. The monstrosity we were on last night is a ship."

"A boat...," she repeated obediently.

"I would be honored to show you the Albatross..."

They finished off two bottles of red wine before the afternoon was over. Lounging under the canopy with a cool breeze blowing off the ocean and harbor waves lapping at the sides, she forgot the day's unpleasantness.

She had done some asking around about him in the yacht club before hiring the water taxi. Contrary to what she heard, he was charming and easy-going, a perfect gentleman. When the sun reached the horizon, he prepared them a simple onboard dinner of King George whiting, scalloped potatoes, and spinach. She continued drinking his wine through dinner feeling the day's tension drain as she talked. He was a great listener. She just assumed that at some point he would invite her below and they would fuck. Men, especially men who owned beautiful half-million-dollar yachts, didn't hang out with her for the titillating conversation.

But she was wrong--instead of fucking, he began to talk about himself. For him, she suspected that this was even more intimate.

"I'm, ah, having trouble finding a crew here in Darwin," he said quietly at one point. "The word has gotten out that the Albatross is not an easy ship, that her captain is too demanding and, well, an asshole. He smiled his half-smile then poured her more wine.

"Maybe they're right. I find it hard to make compromises at sea. Laziness and incompetence will get you killed on the ocean. I don't allow it ... the Albatross is my home, the only thing that stands between me and drowning or starving. I insist the crew treat her with respect."

His diatribe reminded her of her own issues with the lax discipline at ABC.

"I feel the same," she said, slurring her words slightly. "The management at the company let the dancers get away with murder. It makes our dancing sloppy. I can't stand being part of something so, so undisciplined. I dance because I love it. The others do it because it opens doors."

He had stared at her for a long time.

"You appreciate discipline...?" he asked quietly.

"When it's administered for a good reason," she answered.

He stared at her again. She didn't look away.

"Would you be interested in a berth, Raven, aboard the Albatross...?"

She had expected an invitation to fuck not a job offer. Flummoxed, she didn't know how to answer. In her mind, they were already shedding their clothes, fondling each other, which she hoped might lead to a spanking perhaps some tied-to-the-bed action. There were ropes everywhere.

"I have a job, Captain, and a career. Anyway, I don't know the first thing about sailing. I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help to you. A ship this big and fast needs a real crew ... professionals."

She kept talking, wondering why she didn't just say no.

"I would teach you. If you agreed to follow the ship's rules, I would teach you everything you need to know. People say I'm an excellent teacher--strict but fair. I wish you would consider the offer; I expect to reach the U.S. in about six months."

She laughed thinking he was joking about the "ship's rules."

"What kind of rules, Captain...? And what happens to crewmen who don't follow the rules?"

She was a joking, but he treated it as a real question.

"They get whipped," he said. "It is the traditional way discipline is enforced aboard a sailing ship. Sailors get lazy, they become complacent about the ship and the sea. The pain and the treat of pain keep them on their toes."

He paused for a moment then talked about some of the work aboard the Albatross, ending with, "This is a sailing ship. She demands a lot from those she carries."

Raven listened as closely as the wine allowed, her face burning with his talk of corporal punishment. His eyes, the idea of being whipped, and the matter-of-fact way he described it had a strange effect on her. She remembered the first time she had been whipped ... on the beach.

"I'm still not sure if you're joking or serious, Captain, but I'll think about it," she answered.

"I'm not joking," he replied, "and the offer stands. I need a crew; I'm willing to train one on the job if they are serious about learning."

The next day, she resigned the company and appeared at the side of the boat toting an overstuffed backpack.

"I need a job. I hope you were not joking last night," she said as she took his hand.

"No, I wasn't."

She stood for a moment holding his hand.

"I can dance anywhere at any time," she whispered. "How often do I get to sail the high seas with a handsome captain who believes in corporal punishment?"

He smiled his half smile and helped her with her pack.

"Not very often I would guess. Come, I'll show you your cabin where you can stow your gear."

Raven smiled. She had hoped they would share a cabin ... perhaps once they were at sea.