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  In Appreciation of Their Cox

  Janine Ashbless

  “Well, what we really need are small girls who are good at shouting and like hanging out with tall, muscular blokes.”

  “Sign me up!”

  And that was how I got into coxing.

  Eight tall, muscular men, straining every sinew, and one itty-bitty young woman urging them on with all her might.

  Joanna is the coxswain for a British university rowing crew, all of them fit and muscular and hot. Although she’s fantasized about each of the men, she has always been careful to keep her relations with them strictly platonic. But now she’s leaving for a new job—and they’re going to have a farewell party they will never forget, as all Jo’s wildest dreams come true on this final night together.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  In Appreciation of Their Cox

  ISBN 9781419930836

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  In Appreciation of Their Cox Copyright © 2010 Janine Ashbless

  Edited by Raelene Gorlinsky

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication October 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  In Appreciation of Their Cox

  Janine Ashbless

  Trademarks Acknowledgment

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Lycra: Invista North America S.A.R.L.

  How to Speak Rowing

  or

  Things you don’t need to know to read this story, but I had to learn to write it

  Cox (short for Coxswain): the member of a rowing crew who doesn’t pull an oar. (S)he steers the craft, calls the beat and is generally in charge. Must be light of build but with a big personality. The Cox is the only crewmember who is facing forward in the direction of the boat’s travel and can see what the hell is going on, so the rowers are reliant on their Cox to make all judgment calls.

  Stroke: the crewmember who sits closest to the Coxswain, facing him or her, that is, at the back of the boat. Stroke responds directly to orders from the Cox. All other oarsmen take their lead from the Stroke.

  Bowman: the crewmember who sits at the front (bow) of the boat, farthest from the Cox. A Bowman has to have the wits to assess the ongoing situation and compensate for the actions of the other rowers, because he’s the only rower who can see them all. The Bowman and the Stroke are usually the most experienced and senior oarsmen.

  Cox box: an electronic device that measures the strokes-per-minute rate of the rowers and provides amplification for the Cox’s voice.

  BUCS: British Universities and Colleges Sports—the organizing body for student athletics in the UK.

  Regatta: a rowing competition, usually consisting of many side-by-side races.

  “I’ve got four seat!” = “I, the Cox, am level with our competitor’s No. 4 seat, so we are slightly ahead of them.” Seats are numbered from the bow to the stern (rear), so four seat is in the center of the craft.

  “Leg, Drive, Now, Glide.” A standard call from the Cox for the various motions of the oar stroke, setting the rhythm and pace. Coxes are usually more imaginative and make up a lot of rowing chants and calls in order to encourage and focus their rowers. An ability to improvise and innovate is an asset because bored rowers slow down.

  Fours and eights: Competitive rowing is done in various classes. It can be solo, a pair of rowers, a crew of four or a crew of eight.

  M8+ Class: “male, eight rowers, with a cox”. There are other competitive classes such as W2- (female coxless pair), Mixed4+ (mixed gender team, four rowers, with a cox) etc.

  Men’s First VIII : the university’s best eight-man crew.

  And…

  Rah (n. and adj.): Slang word employed at this particular university for that subset of students who are very, very upper class. Mildly derogatory.

  Chapter One

  Eight tall, muscular men straining every sinew, and one itty-bitty young woman urging them on with all her might.

  That’s rowing for you.

  Sunlight strikes sparks from the water droplets hurled into the air by the oar blades. There’s a brisk breeze from starboard, making the river a bit choppy and the turning at the bends that bit more hazardous. I lean forward in my seat, my stomach muscles as tense as if I’m pulling an oar too, one eye on the other team off our port side, one on the bridge ahead that marks the finish line, the fingers of my right hand firm on the tiller. Sitting right in the stern, I’m the only one facing forward, the only one who can see our goal; my crew pulls blindly, all their faith in me to guide them. “Take it up on two!” I call. “Up one, up two!”

  Nils, rowing Stroke, heroically picks up the new tempo; the others follow. We’re pulling ahead. Only by a nose, but our bow is out in front.

  “Come on!” I shout. “I’ve got four seat—we’re winning! We can do it! Row them through!” All the finesse of the sport is irrelevant now—the careful timing, the harboring of energy, the tactical lines and the struggle for the deeper, faster water. My electronic cox box with its digital readouts is ignored. Now it’s down to brute force, the last frantic pull for the finish. Eight men heave and slide as a single entity, teeth bared with effort, their shoulder muscles standing like boulders under their sleeveless singlets. I doubt they can even see me, though I’m practically face-to-face with Nils and his narrowed gray eyes are glaring into mine. Those eyes are glazed now and all eight men are insensible to everything but the rhythm of the boat beneath them, the slide of their seats, the pain of their burning muscles, the synchronized lift and sweep of the oars. And my voice dinning in their ears. “Make it hurt! Come on! Give it to me! Everything you’ve got! Empty the tanks!”

  Then the shadow of the bridge falls over the bow and we’re under, we’re through and it’s all over. I lift my arms in the air and shriek with triumph as a clatter of applause echoes from either bank.

  We’ve done it. We’ve just won the BUCS national regatta, M8+ class.

  The aftermath is painful at first for the guys, as all the agony trapped in their muscles hits them like a wave. They flop over their oars, grinning and slapping at each other, their chests heaving, sweat suddenly streaming down their flushed faces. I high-five Nils, nearly breaking my fingers but not caring; he’s the only one I can reach. I have to wait until we’ve pulled in to the pontoon jetty before I can grab each of the guys in turn as they disembark from the boat, giving them the hardest hugs I can manage. They grin and stagger like buff
oons, slapping backs and shaking hands. Race officials come down to greet us, relatives are pressing in to congratulate us and supporters wave university scarves. As the organized chaos progresses, Bradley and Fergus pick me up between them and prop me on their shoulders, to acclamation. My crew are all at least six foot two tall but I’m five foot nothing and I’m invisible until they hoist me like a banner. When they let me down again I disappear among a sea of bodies.

  They’ve forgotten, I think, as we start to make our way up the steps. They’ve forgotten the traditional baptism of the winning cox—and I’m sort of glad because although I’m wearing a life jacket and it’s not dangerous, the river looks pretty gray and cold today. Then without any warning Murray whirls round and, stooping, grabs me around the waist and heaves me up over his shoulder. I shriek, but it’s no use. I try to break from his grip but the others grab my arms and suddenly I’m stretched out between four of them and they’re thudding back down the steps onto the jetty and I can’t even thrash in protest as I’m stretched taut between them, I can only scream. They swing and for a split second I’m flying, lofted over the river in an undignified sprawl, and before I hit the water I have time to think how completely happy I am.

  * * * * *

  This is a love story about eight men.

  We’re treated to a big dinner that night, family and friends and everyone involved in the competition, and we all get pretty drunk. Then it’s back to our home territory because it’s still term-time, and we get to present the cup to the Principal and the Chancellor and there’s more brouhaha and lots of congratulations because we’ve done our university proud. People see the Oxford-Cambridge boat race on TV every year and you’d be forgiven for thinking that makes those two the best rowing crews in the country, but the fact is we’ve kicked both their butts regularly over the years—we’re just not famous for it. Intervarsity sports matches aren’t exactly important in the outside world, but it means a lot to us in the winning team.

  Then we have another dinner, just the nine of us and Davey, our coach, in the Royal County Hotel, and it’s a sadder affair. Because I’m leaving. I’ve put it off for as long as possible, I tell them, having done two post-grad stints and taken an extra year to complete my PhD, but I’ve finally got a job and I’m leaving the university I love, the rowing team I’m devoted to, to work down south. I’m going to be on a research team designing a new generation of artificial joints and limbs. I’m not the only one leaving, either. Nils will be heading back to Oslo in a month or so, Fergus and Murray are going to graduate this summer and Jon is jumping ship to Oxford for his post-doc. Most of them will carry on rowing in some capacity or another and I confidently expect Darren to show up in the national Olympic squad eventually. But our days as a team are over. We drink champagne and talk over our memories, as if trying to preserve them in alcohol.

  * * * * *

  I started as a cox in my first term, when I was still a fresher. Every college in our university has its own boathouse and multiple teams, and they all work hard to get the new crop of students interested. I went down to watch a demonstration race, and while I was hanging over the bridge shouting at my college women’s four, a tall girl poked my arm with a clipboard.

  “You’ve got a big mouth,” she said with a cheery grin. “You thought of being a cox?”

  “A what?” I said, not sure if I’d been insulted. She was a bit of a Rah—the pearls and the cashmere and the horsey accent gave that away.

  “The fours and eights are always looking for coxes. You got a sense of rhythm? Can you clap a beat?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” I blinked, still bemused.

  “Well, what we really need are small girls who are good at shouting and like hanging out with tall, muscular blokes.”

  I laughed then. “Sign me up!”

  And that was how I got into coxing. I worked my way up to the official college crews and then I ended up with the University Team, coxing for the Men’s First VIII. There was a bit more to it than shouting, of course. There was the willingness it demanded to be down at the boathouse by 6 a.m. at least three days a week—and more often, as I got more serious—come rain or shine, frost or exams. There were the holiday breaks where I stayed at college just so we could go on practicing. There was the need to remain positive even while giving my crew hell, even in the midst of personality clashes and self-doubt and failure. A cox is a cheerleader and a drill sergeant in one, you see. My job is to get the best out them, while steering an inherently unstable boat and calculating tactics and times. When I’m with my crew I’m in charge, even though I’m half the size of any one of them. I put them through warm-up exercises and training, I order them step by step as we maneuver the long fragile shells from their racks in the boathouse and down into the river. I call the shots and they have to work to my commands with seamless synchrony, because a rowing team that has no discipline is no team at all.

  It’s a kick, of course. Slight little me, and all those big beefy blokes doing just what I tell them. Rowers have to be tall for the leverage and broad across the shoulders, and they carry no spare flab. I love working with them. I love being the only girl with all those fit guys.

  But I’ve never slept with any of my crewmen. Well, once, right at the beginning, and I learned from that mistake. If you’re going out with a bloke, he won’t tolerate you telling him off in front of his mates, but if you go easy on him all the others know you’re showing favoritism. The team doesn’t work if you get too intimate; you have to be aloof to keep their respect. For nearly a decade I’d watched those ripped men in their clinging, sweaty shirts and never touched a one. There were plenty of days I came in from rowing practice with my panties nearly melted between my shaking legs and jumped straight into the shower so I could finger myself, eyes closed, dreaming of one of those big fit men grunting and heaving on me just as he grunted and heaved at the oars. One or more. The thing about not being in the market for a particular bloke is that you can fantasize about all of them.

  I know their bodies, from crown to waist and thigh to toe, intimately. I recognize the individual scents of their fresh sweat and their underarm deodorants. I can rank them from heaviest to lightest, tallest to shortest, oldest to youngest. Fergus has the darkest stripes of hair on his legs but it’s Jon whose chest is really furred, despite him being prematurely bald on top, his scalp cropped to a horseshoe of stubble. Nils’ body hair is so fine and blond that his forearms and legs look as if he waxes them. Zeke—who’s American and here on an exchange program—is wildly ginger, his hair an almost metallic orange, his face usually painted in stripes of opaque sunblock and his shoulders in summer a hailstorm of freckles.

  I’m uncomfortably familiar with their shorts. Lycra sports shorts usually, but Murray has a horrible penchant for training in bright beach pants. My surreptitious observations tell me that Bradley has the most impressive cock, at least when at rest, but that Jon’s balls are, beneath the elastisized fabric, as big as my clenched fist. The hairless small of Ed’s back just above the tight swell of his ass, its skin golden in summer, drives me nearly mad with wanting to lick it. I’ve seen Darren drop his pants a few times to moon people; his butt is brown and muscular, nearly square when clenched.

  They’re all muscle. Their legs, their arms, their backs and stomachs are ripped and taut. Flab makes for smooth cylindrical bodies, but these guys are lumpy with muscle, all dips and hollows and angles like sand dunes sculpted by the wind. Those angles drive me crazy—the bifurcation at the back of the calf, the groove down the thigh. I want to stick my fingers in and test the contours. I want to feel the muscles working beneath my hand.

  But I can’t touch and sometimes that frustration tips over from arousing to agony. It’s like being the chef at a banquet I can’t eat, and hunger gnaws in my belly. I ache with appetite.

  Most of the time though, I enjoy it. Lucky me.

  Chapter Two

  My memories. Walking down the river path, the ripe seed cases of Himalayan
balsam writhing between my fingers as I grasp them. The cool breath of the river on my face under the steep, wooded banks. The creak of the rowlocks sounding like the melancholy call of migrating geese. Weeds on the bank furred extravagantly with frost while the river lies dark and smooth as an oil slick beneath our hull. The hiss of summer rain. That distinctive smell of the boathouse interior—concrete and wet trainers. That moment when, as my crew stood with the boat at their shoulders on the lowest step at the water’s edge, I first fantasized about my power as a cox. They took every step at my mark, they awaited my order to swing the shell smoothly over and lay it in the river, and if I didn’t give that instruction they would just have to stand there, arms aloft while I walked down the row and groped each one of their hard arses and their tightly packaged cocks. For a split second I was breathless with temptation, and then I called it and everything went on as it ought, the bright window closing.

  Another memory. Bradley stripping off his shirt in front of me and mopping down his chest, completely unaware of my reaction as he stood clad only in Lycra shorts, and the white stripe up the blue on the inside of his thigh outlined a hoselike ridge. I wanted to jump into the river to douse the flames that erupted under my skin.

  Another. I was walking past my college bar when through the open door I glimpsed Darren and turned in. He was with a bunch of blokes I didn’t recognize—fellow first-years probably—and they were roaring with laughter over some joke.

  “Hey,” I said, arms folded, as the noise ebbed. “What’s going on, Darren?”

  “Joanna.” He grinned at me, his cheeks burning, his eyes unfocused. “Hi!”