“Very nice, sailor.” –Renee McDaniel
“Hermoso… (beautiful)… I just love it.” –Merchi Sananes
“Love it! A beautiful story.” –Leonora Lonesto
The moon sailed above low clouds over the ocean’s cobalt gleam. The light just enough to see as we worked our way down the path among the rocks. Through a scalloped opening, we entered a clearing of unspoiled sand embraced on both sides by the stone that grew from the sea to become the crags surrounding us. I held the bottle of Tierra Secreta, the Argentinean wine Anna had carried as she undressed and stirred at the contrast of sun-kissed flesh and the creamy cloth-sheltered paler reveal of her oh so enticing skin.
She pirouetted, a ballerina dressed in moonbeams. The susurration of surf and waves her accompaniment as she danced. Slowing her turn to a stop, with a glance back… feet leaving trails… she moved toward the water. I followed to join her out of the reach of the lapping waves.
The wind kicked up and carried the tang of salt; that hard to describe scent a sailor knows so well of where land meets the sea. Inbound, it heralded a homecoming; outbound, it meant their longing began. I tasted it on her lips and, brushing hair aside, the nape.
Anna’s hands, fingertips tracing—brushing my Navy dog tags—down my chest to the flat of my stomach, were gentle as the breeze as she kneeled. Then lingered. My toes curled to grip the sand, a stiffening and loosening that eclipsed the world and its worries. I tilted my face toward that silent celestial observer of countless moments of love, lust, and loss near and on the sea. Anna rose long enough to help me spread the blanket we’d brought. Soon the moan of the wind joined ours and mingled with the surge-sound of breakers that swirled and eddied among the rocks. Serenaded. Two people in a place of wind and water and a moment when body and soul become one.
