She was ready for him, slick and hungry, and he fed her, inch by agonising inch, until he was buried to the hilt and could go no further. He held her there, locked in his embrace, locked as one, his feet planted wide as the waves tried to claim them. A moment to be savoured, a moment like no other. Then, with a rush like the outgoing sea, he pulled out of her. Her gasp of loss turned to one of delight as he lunged into her again.
She was liquid in his arms, salt and surf and part of the sea, but part of him now too. And the waves crashed around them as he crashed into her, deeper and harder, searching for a sweetness that defied the salt.
And the waves built inside him, and all around, and where she held him, in her tight embrace. And he knew the exact moment she left him, knew the instant she’d come apart, knew it and couldn’t help but follow her into the crashing foam.
They tumbled and rolled, spluttering and laughing and still locked together, finally coming to rest breathless on the sand, the receding waves leaving them in the shallows.
The salt was sticky on his skin, the sand felt gritty in his hair, and his skin stung where they’d grazed the sandy bottom. And yet he’d never felt better in his life.
He wiped a tendril of hair from her face, stroking her forehead with his thumb. Her blue eyes looked up at him, her plump lips parted as her breathing calmed.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he told her. ‘Crazy and beautiful.’
She looked up at him and made to say something, but then her lips stalled and turned into a smile. He wondered what it was she’d been going to say. Wondered what she’d thought better of.
And he wondered how long he had before he had to tell her he was leaving without her.
A few hours at most.
And suddenly he didn’t feel good any more. The sand and grit and salt and the knowledge he’d risked everything by not using protection all combining into one irritating package. If she were pregnant with his child…
‘Do you still have your IUD?’
She blinked and frowned.
‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘It seems you caught me, as you like to say here, with my pants down.’
Her eyes widened as the truth dawned. ‘Oh, of course.’ She shook her head, and for just a moment he thought she was going to say she was unprotected. ‘No. It’s okay. There’s no chance.’
And yet instead of the relief he was expecting his mood got inexplicably darker. He swiped at his sand-coated skin. ‘I have sand everywhere.’
But she just laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him down for a kiss. After a moment he let her. If they only had a few hours, he wasn’t going to waste them feeling bad.
They washed in the ocean, letting the wave action work its magic in tearing the sand away, then dried off under the shade of their tree, picnicking on cold chicken and fresh tropical fruit and chilled white wine. And afterwards they lay down on the rug and watched a lone falcon perform lazy loops over the water’s edge, ever watchful for its next meal.
The sun tracked lower, their shade moved, and she took the tube of sunscreen and squirted some into her hands, getting Alejandro to roll over. She rubbed it into his shoulders and back, her fingers trailing down his arms.
He turned suddenly and captured both hands in his own. ‘Do you remember how we met?’ he asked.
She looked at her hands in his and remembered the chance meeting in a café on the Costa del Sol that had exploded into an affair that very night.
‘It was your hands,’ he said. ‘You were beautiful enough, but you were sewing something and it was your hands that drew me to you—the way they worked, the way they moved. I knew I had to have you from that very moment.’
He was so intense, so sincere, that it was impossible not to feel the impact of his words in the answering beat of her heart. He held out her hands, holding them palm up in his own, examining them as if searching for their secret.
‘They are just hands, and yet your fingers bewitched me in that very first moment. How is that possible?’
His accent was stronger, as if he was struggling with what he had to say, struggling to express himself. His words washed over her, drenching her in a new hope. Was he bewitched? Was that the reason he’d come back for her? Was this faint hope unfurling in her heart founded in something other than just wishful thinking?
‘Why did you leave me?’
The question came so softly, so unexpectedly, that she didn’t think she’d heard it right. But then she lifted her eyes to his and read the question there too.
‘Leah?’ he prompted. ‘Why?’
Her heart was thumping so loudly it drowned out the sound of the seabirds and the crashing surf. As it drowned out the tiny voice in her head that told her not to be foolish enough to admit the truth. Besides, she told herself, if she couldn’t tell him on this special day, after all they’d done and all they’d shared, she could never tell him.
‘Because I fell in love with you.’