The Captain's Favor
I'm Astrid.
Stories in Erotic Couplings tagged funny and chatty, ranked by how many readers finish them. Reads run 15 to 21 minutes. Writers to know: Shadow Story, Narrative of Gold and Velvet Lodge. Readers usually start with “The Captain's Favor” and “The Captain's Portrait”. Some are free to read in full; the rest open with a free preview.
I'm Astrid.
Selena found him on the port side of the main deck, right after breakfast, leaning on the railing with a coffee cup going cold in one hand.
Nobody tells you the worst part of getting out is the quiet.
I'm Russ, twenty-eight, and I run the gear library in the old railway tunnel at Karioi.
I've lived in Crescent Beach for two years now, and I can tell you exactly what winter is like here.
The conference had hit the wall around hour four of day two.
I want to tell you this story right, so let me start at the beginning, which for me is standing in a hotel parking lot at eleven at night…
The ladder up the crane leg was the worst thing I had climbed in years, and I climb things for a living, sort of.
I've been planning weddings for fourteen years, and if there's one thing it's made me an expert at, it's spotting couples who are going to…
The gate agent said the word "cancelled" twice before I actually heard it.
The garage needed cleaning the way most things in my life needed cleaning, it didn't, really, but Deb had put it on the calendar and I had…
My editor called it a "career-lite assignment," which is her way of saying it won't get you a raise but it might get you out of the house.
My name is Lachlan, I'm fifty-three years old, and I live in Ringsted, Iowa, which is a town so small the gas station also sells bait.
The forecast had said light snow, flurries tapering by evening, which is the kind of thing a forecast says right up until it lies to you.
I found the lava field by accident, which sounds dramatic but is true.
Virginia Hobart had built a career on not doing impulsive things.
The dock at the Sacramento convention center is not built for a seventy-three footer, but I've backed into worse.
I came home on a Tuesday night to find my sofa had been murdered and replaced with a clone that had been left out in the sun.
I never figured I'd end up holding my ex-wife's hand again.
I turn forty-five in nine days and I was standing in a gutted kitchen in the Scottish Highlands counting salvaged tiles like they were a…