A crisp summer's day was long-awaited as Luke and Alexis had spent the last few weeks planning a sailing trip to the Philippines from Honolulu. They had dreamt of this tripfor years, and now, finally, the winds were in their favor. Since childhood, Luke has been in the company of his grandfather an WW2 Navy Veteran and sailor himself, who often regaled Luke with his adventures, sparking his imagination.
On the morning of departure, Alexis arrived at the marina dressed in a light yellow sundress with a wide-brimmed hat, her blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. She carried a woven basket filled with fresh baguettes, cheese, and a bottle of champagne—her idea of essential provisions. Luke, already aboard their refurbished 38-foot sloop, tightened the mainsail with practiced ease, his tanned arms flexing against the rope.
"You know, most people pack canned beans," he teased, watching her balance precariously on the dock's edge. She tossed him the basket without warning, making him stumble backward. "And most people don't dress like they're boarding the Titanic," Alexis shot back, grinning. The sun caught her blue eyes, turning them translucent—like shallow Caribbean waters.
Luke's grandfather had taught him to read the ocean's whispers—the way swells rolled, how clouds bunched like fists before a storm—but today, the waves lapped gently against the hull, docile as a sleeping dog. Alexis untied the last mooring line, coiled it neatly—despite his protests—then leapt aboard with the grace of someone who'd spent summers diving off piers. The sloop shuddered slightly as the current claimed it.
They turned in unison toward the shrinking dock. His grandfather stood straight-backed, hands clasped behind him—navy posture even now—while Alexis's mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Luke lifted an arm in salute; Alexis blew kisses, laughing when the wind caught one and sent it spiraling toward a seagull. "Think they'll redecorate our rooms before we're back?" she mused, leaning against the railing. "Mom's been eyeing my wallpaper since sixth grade."
Luke's fingers brushed the compass in his pocket—his grandfather's parting gift, brass worn smooth from decades of use. The needle quivered, pointing its unwavering north as if anchoring them to something solid. Behind them, Honolulu dissolved into a haze of heat and salt, the high-rises thinning into toothpicks. Alexis unwrapped the champagne, popping the cork with a practiced twist. It arced overboard, swallowed by the Pacific before it could splash. "To not getting scurvy," she said, clinking her glass against his water bottle.
The wind shifted then, warm fingers threading through their hair. Alexis seized the moment—her sundress already loosened—and shimmied out of it in one fluid motion. The yellow fabric pooled around her ankles like shed sunlight before she shook it off, revealing a purple bikini that clung to her athletic frame. Luke coughed into his elbow. "Subtle," he muttered, focusing on the horizon where the sky bruised at the edges. Alexis stretched, arching her back so the afternoon light gilded her collarbones. "You're the one who packed two pairs of socks and a rain poncho," she said. "Someone had to bring the glamour."
That night, anchored in the lee of Molokai, Luke lay awake listening to Alexis hum off-key through the cabin door. The deck swayed beneath him, alive with the ocean's pulse. He knew the exact cadence of her footsteps when she was barefoot—how she always hesitated before stepping over the companionway threshold, as if anticipating an unseen obstacle. Earlier, when she'd leaned past him to adjust the jib sheet, her shampoo had smelled like coconuts and something sharper, citrus maybe. He'd held his breath until his ribs ached.
The chart unfurled before him was crosshatched with penciled routes—his grandfather's handwriting overlaying his own like generations of birds tracing the same migratory path. He traced the course with his fingertip, lingering where the paper had absorbed decades of oil from anxious fingers. The Philippine Sea stretched vast and blank, its emptiness more daunting than any storm. Alexis slid a plate onto the chart, blotting out the equator with a mound of mango slices arranged in a sunburst pattern. "Eat," she ordered. "Before I throw it at your head."
Luke speared a slice, juice dripping onto his wrist. The sweetness exploded—overripe, verging on fermented, the way he liked it. Alexis wrinkled her nose at the sticky trails on the chart. "Barbarian," she muttered, but her toes curled against the deck, savoring the warmth bleeding through the teak.
Memories surfaced like flotsam: Alexis at twelve, knees scraped from chasing him up the mast of his grandfather's dinghy; her seventeenth birthday, when she'd commandeered a shrimp trawler's PA system to blast pop music across the harbor. The night smelled of salt and diesel, just like then, the same constellations wheeling overhead—unchanged witnesses to their shared history.
Luke woke to a tickling sensation on his forearm—Alexis's charcoal pencil tracing the rope burns striping his skin. She sat cross-legged beside him, sketchbook balanced on her knees, the paper already crowded with quick, fluid lines. Her tongue peeked between her teeth in concentration. "Hold still," she murmured without looking up. "Your veins keep moving." He watched her capture the way the moon painted his wrist tendons, the exact angle his thumb hooked over the tiller. She'd drawn him like this since they were kids—mid-action, half-blurred, as if he might stride off the page.
They raised anchor at dawn, the chain clattering like a drunkard's teeth until it locked into place. Alexis freed the jib while Luke coaxed life into the diesel engine—three firm slaps to the fuel gauge, his grandfather's superstition. The wind arrived fresh and insistent, filling the sails with a sound like bedsheets snapping on a clothesline. Alexis whooped as the bow lifted, spraying them both with frigid saltwater. Luke tasted iron—his split lip from yesterday's mishap with the boom—but grinned anyway. The horizon stretched unbroken, the sky pale as a rinsed mussel shell.
By noon, Alexis had returned to her sunbathing, belly down on the foredeck, her bikini top straps loosened to avoid tan lines. The purple fabric gaped slightly where it pooled between her shoulder blades, revealing a crescent of sun-pinked skin. Luke busied himself with the rigging, adjusting lines that didn't need adjusting, but the wind kept shifting her scent toward him—sunscreen and salt and that damn coconut shampoo. A drop of sweat slid down his temple; he blamed the equatorial sun.
She arched her back in a slow stretch, the movement rolling from her shoulders to her hips, and suddenly her perfectly shaped ass was right there, practically in his face as he crouched by the mast cleat. The thin fabric clung to every curve, damp from seawater and stretched taut where it disappeared between her thighs. "Do you have to do that here?" he growled, knuckles whitening around the rope.
Alexis peered over her shoulder, slow as molasses, lips quirking at his obvious discomfort. "Do what?" she asked innocently, then deliberately wiggled—just once—her hips swaying in a lazy figure-eight. The motion made the strings of her bikini bottom dig deeper into the crease of her ass, and Luke swore under his breath, jerking his gaze away. "You're a menace," he muttered, refusing to acknowledge the heat crawling up his neck.
The rigging suddenly demanded his full attention—the frayed edge of the mainsheet, the tension in the halyard. Anything but the way the sunlight glazed her skin, highlighting every dip and curve. His shorts clung tighter, fabric betraying him as blood stubbornly rerouted south. He shifted his stance, thighs pressing together, but the damage was done. When he risked a glance, Alexis had rolled onto her side, propped on one elbow, watching him with amused curiosity. "Problem?" she drawled, fingertips tracing idle circles on her own hipbone.
Luke coughed into his fist. "It's nothing." The lie rasped like sandpaper. Alexis's gaze flicked downward—just for a heartbeat, but it was enough. Her smirk deepened. She stretched again, deliberately slow, toes flexing, the arch of her foot gleaming with seawater. The bikini strings strained. Luke spun toward the mast, pretending to inspect a perfectly functional cleat. His pulse thundered in his ears, louder than the waves against the hull.
The horizon darkened first—a smudge of charcoal bleeding into the azure, like ink dropped in water. Luke squinted. "Storm's brewing," he said gruffly, grateful for the distraction. The clouds roiled, their bellies bruised purple-gray. Lightning flickered within them, silent for now. Alexis sat up, straps forgotten, her playful expression dissolving into sharp focus. She'd seen that look before—his grandfather called it "the sailor's squint," when the ocean stopped being postcard-pretty and started whispering warnings.
They moved in unison, the banter replaced by the snap of buckles and the rasp of rope through calloused palms. Alexis secured the loose deck gear while Luke reefed the mainsail, his muscles straining against the wind's sudden insistence. The air tasted metallic, charged with the storm's static. "Think grandpa's old tricks will work on this one?" Alexis shouted over the rising gale, her voice stripped of its usual teasing lilt. Luke tossed her a life jacket without answering—his jaw set in a line she knew meant danger.
The emergency pack thudded against his ribs as he cinched it tight, its weight both reassurance and omen. Inside: flares, water pouches, and the SOS target locator. Alexis secured her own pack with quick fingers, then grabbed the tiller as the first fat raindrops cratered the deck. The boat heeled violently, tossing them sideways—Luke's shoulder slammed into the mast while Alexis's knee cracked against the compass housing. She hissed through her teeth but held course, knuckles bleaching white.
The ocean vanished beneath them as the sloop crested a swell, suspended momentarily in a chaos of wind-whipped spume. For one weightless second, Luke saw the storm's true face—an endless gray maw, waves churned into jagged peaks. Then they plummeted, the bow spearing into the trough with a concussion that rattled his molars. Seawater geysered over the rails, knocking Alexis off balance. Luke lunged, catching her wrist just as her feet skidded on the slick decking. His grip slipped against her wet skin, fingertips carving desperate trails before clamping tight enough to bruise.
A second wave hit broadside—not a crest but a sheer wall of black water, its impact punching through the hull like cannon fire. The deck buckled beneath them, timber screaming. Alexis's mouth formed a silent "oh" before the force wrenched her from Luke's grasp. He saw the exact moment her body left the boat, suspended midair with arms outstretched—not reaching for him but spread wide as if embracing the storm itself. Then she was gone, swallowed by the boiling sea in the space between heartbeats.
"Alexis!" Luke's voice tore from his throat raw as stripped copper, lost instantly in the wind's howl. He scanned the churning water, vision blurring with salt spray, searching for any flash of purple fabric or pale limbs. The ocean gave nothing back—only slate-gray waves that rose like crumbling cliffs before crashing down with the force of tectonic plates shifting. His fingers clawed at the rail, nails splintering against the teak as if he could dig through the storm itself to reach her.
He never saw the boom coming.
One second Luke was leaning over the rail, straining against the storm’s fury—his entire being focused on the water where Alexis had disappeared—and the next, a crushing weight slammed into his ribs like a freight train. The mast’s swing caught him square in the chest, the impact punching the air from his lungs in a wet gasp. His vision whited out, pain radiating in jagged shards up his sternum. Then darkness swallowed him whole.
Consciousness returned in fragments: the rasp of sand under his cheek, the salt-crust of dried seawater splitting his lips when he groaned. Rain still pelted him, but the wind had lost its jagged edge—no longer screaming, just murmuring now against the curve of an unfamiliar shoreline. Luke rolled onto his back, spitting out a mouthful of grit. His ribs throbbed with each shallow breath. Overhead, palm fronds thrashed like the limbs of drowning men, their shadows spiderwebbing across his face.
The beach was a narrow slash of volcanic black, studded with driftwood bones and the occasional glint of something man-made—a shard of green glass, a rusted bolt. Luke staggered upright, swaying as if still aboard the pitching deck. The horizon wavered, empty of ships. Empty of Alexis. His stomach clenched tighter than his fists.
Then, through the rain-streaked haze, he saw it—a speck of purple caught between two gnarled roots where the beach met the jungle. The color was wrong for this place, too vivid against the muted greens and grays. Luke lurched forward, ribs screaming, sand sucking at his ankles. The wind snatched his breath away, but he kept moving, eyes locked on the colour.
Alexis lay half-buried in the tide line, her bikini top torn where the waves had dragged her across coral. One arm was flung over her face as if shielding from the sun, though the storm still wept overhead. Luke dropped to his knees beside her, fingers pressing into the hollow of her throat. The pulse fluttered—weak but insistent, like a moth trapped against glass. He exhaled shakily, forehead nearly touching hers. "You don't get to drown," he muttered, peeling a strand of seaweed from her collarbone. "Not before returning my fucking compass."
The drag marks behind her showed how far he'd hauled her unconscious body—fifteen feet of churned sand where his knees had plowed trenches. His ribs protested as he hooked his hands under her armpits, tendons standing stark against his forearms. Alexis was dead weight, seawater sloshing in her lungs with each pull. Her toenails scraped twin furrows in the wet sand, filling instantly with brine. The storm had stolen one of her flip-flops; the other dangled from her big toe like some absurd flag of survival.
Luke's vision tunneled. Each breath sawed through his punctured side where a coral shard had buried itself during the swim—he only noticed now, with adrenaline leaching away. Blood seeped between his fingers, warm as the tropical rain still sheeting down. The metallic tang mixed with the stench of rotting kelp washed ashore. He blinked salt from his lashes. The jungle loomed ahead, its foliage thrashing. Somewhere beyond that ridge, fresh water.
He eventually passed out beside Alexis, unable to continue on.
Luke awoke to the dull throb of his side—not the white-hot agony from before, but a muted ache wrapped in something coarse. Fingers brushed the makeshift bandage: strips of his own t-shirt, stiff with dried salt and what smelled like crushed leaves. The sun angled through the palm fronds overhead, dappling his chest with golden coins of light. A breeze carried the scent of wet earth and something floral—hibiscus, maybe—cutting through the brine still crusted in his nostrils.
Down the shore, Alexis knelt in the shallows, her silhouette backlit by the morning glare. She hauled something from the water with both hands, muscles straining in her shoulders. The torn purple bikini had been replaced by...Luke squinted. His own button-down shirt, sleeves rolled past her elbows, the tails knotted at her waist. It gaped at her collarbone with each yank, revealing the edge of a fading bruise where the waves had thrown her against the wreckage.
"You're alive," he croaked—half statement, half question. His throat felt scraped raw with salt and exhaustion. Alexis didn't turn immediately, just kept dragging the sodden mass onto higher ground. When she finally straightened, Luke saw it was the ship's cooler, its waterproof lining bloated like a dead fish. "We both are," she said, voice hoarse but steady. "Mostly."
She knelt beside him, fingers probing his side with clinical detachment—a practiced motion Luke recognized from summers spent patching each other's skateboard wounds. Her touch lingered just shy of tenderness. "The shard went deep," she muttered, tying fresh kelp strips over the wound. The algae stung, but the pain cleared his head. "Could've nicked your spleen," she added casually, as if discussing a torn sail.
Their faces were inches apart—close enough he could count the freckles resurrected by the sun across her nose, see the pale lashes clumped together from seawater. Something unspoken thickened the air between them, heavier than the tropical humidity. Alexis paused mid-sentence when she noticed his gaze tracing her lips.
A shred of kelp clung to her collarbone. Luke reached for it instinctively, fingers brushing her skin—and froze when she inhaled sharply. Neither pulled away. The jungle's cacophony dimmed, replaced by the hammer of his pulse in his ears. Alexis's throat moved as she swallowed. She instinctively leaned toward him as their lips connected.
Luke barely registered the sting in his side as he surged forward, crushing his mouth against hers. She tasted like salt and copper from her split lip, her breath hitching as his fingers tangled in her damp hair. The cooler tipped over with a hollow thud when Alexis shoved it aside to straddle him, her thighs bracketing his hips. The borrowed shirt gaped open, revealing the swell of her breasts still marked with fading bruises from the storm.
She broke the kiss first, panting, and shrugged the shirt off one shoulder—slow this time, deliberate—letting it catch on the curve of her elbow before shaking it free entirely. Sunlight poured over her bare skin, highlighting the water droplets clinging to her collarbones. Luke's throat went dry. She reached for what remained of his tattered shirt—just scraps clinging to his shoulders—and peeled it away like shedding a second skin. Her fingertips traced the fresh scratches coral had carved down his ribs.
Her hands drifted lower, pausing at the knot of her bikini bottoms. Luke watched, pulse wild, as she tugged the string loose—one slow pull—letting the fabric slacken against her hips. The purple material slithered down her thighs, catching momentarily on the jut of her knee before pooling in the sand beside them. The wind whispered over newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps in its wake. Alexis arched slightly, unconsciously, as if presenting herself to the sunlight—and to him.
Luke slid his shorts down, letting his already hardening erection free. The air was warm against his skin, but nothing compared to the heat of her gaze dropping to take him in. Her lips parted, a silent exhale escaping as she rocked forward on her knees, her inner thighs brushing against his hips. The contact was electric—just that faint friction of skin against skin—and Luke hissed through his teeth, hands flying to grip her waist.
She reached down, fingers wrapping around his now steel-like member, guiding him to her entrance. Their eyes locked—hers dark with need, his blown wide—as she held him there, teasing, letting him feel the slick heat of her without granting him relief. A bead of sweat slid down Alexis’s temple, catching the sunlight before disappearing into the curve of her jaw. She leaned forward, breath ghosting over his lips.
Then, slowly, she pressed down.
Luke saw stars before his eyelids even fluttered shut, the sensation of her taking him in almost overwhelming. Inch by inch, she enveloped him, her body yielding yet resisting just enough to make his knuckles whiten against her hips. The stretch made Alexis bite her lower lip, her breath hitching sharply as she paused halfway, adjusting to the unfamiliar fullness. Beneath them, wet sand shifted with their movements, grains sticking to sweat-slicked skin.
The feeling was exquisite—almost painful in its intensity. Every nerve ending in his body seemed to have rerouted to where they were joined, hyper-aware of each clench of her muscles, every unsteady roll of her hips. Heat radiated from her core, searing where they touched; he could feel her pulse in the tight, velvet grip of her. Alexis rocked forward experimentally, letting out a shuddering exhale as she sank deeper, her fingers digging into his shoulders for balance. Her nails left crescent indents in his skin, a fleeting sting swallowed by the liquid pleasure coursing through him.
Luke groaned, hands sliding up her sides—calloused palms rasping over damp skin—before cupping her breasts. The weight of them filled his hands perfectly, the nipples pebbled and taut against his fingers. Alexis arched into his touch with a gasp, her movements stuttering as sensation rippled through her. She squeezed his wrists, pressing his hands harder against her flesh, silently demanding more. The scent of salt and sun-warmed skin enveloped them, mingling with the musk of their arousal.
She rocked forward again—just once—and the shift sent a jolt through her, sharp and sudden. The fullness of him inside her hit like a spark igniting gunpowder, her body tightening reflexively, already teetering on the edge. Her breath hitched audibly; Luke recognized the sound—that fractured inhale she'd always made right before losing control—whether jumping off cliffs or stealing kisses in the dark. Her hips jerked shallowly, chasing friction where she needed it most, but she refused to surrender yet, teeth sinking into her lower lip hard enough to whiten the flesh.
Luke groaned as her thighs trembled around him, her inner muscles fluttering like a trapped bird. She tugged his wrist lower—down her belly—until his thumb brushed the slick heat between them. Alexis exhaled sharply through her nose, her pupils blown so wide her irises were swallowed by black. The moment his fingers found her clit, she bucked violently, her nails scoring crescents into his chest. A strangled cry escaped her—half sob, half gasp—as her body locked tight around his, her inner walls clamping down in rhythmic pulses.
Luke barely had time to register the exquisite pressure before she collapsed forward, her forehead pressing into his shoulder, her breath hot and ragged against his neck. He felt it—the moment her orgasm crested—in the way her thighs spasmed against his hips, in the wetness that spilled over where they were still joined. Her fingernails dug deeper, anchoring herself as wave after wave of pleasure wracked her, her hips stuttering in uneven circles against him. The scent of sex and saltwater clung to her skin, mingling with the sun-warmed linen of his borrowed shirt still tangled around her elbows.
Her body clenched around him like a fist—tight, pulsing, relentless—and suddenly Luke couldn't breathe. The sensation tore a ragged groan from his throat, his hips jerking upward instinctively, seeking deeper friction. Every muscle in his abdomen locked, his orgasm hitting with the force of a rogue wave—sudden, brutal, drowning. His vision whited out at the edges as he spilled into her, his release shuddering through him in hot, unrelenting pulses. Alexis gasped, her body still trembling from her own climax, her inner walls milking him greedily as if determined to wring every last drop from him.
He felt the warmth radiating through her—the heat of his own release deep inside her body—and Alexis whimpered against his collarbone, her hips rocking in tiny, involuntary circles. The movement sent fresh sparks of sensation crackling along his oversensitive nerves, making him grit his teeth as another aftershock rippled through him. Her breath hitched, her fingers tightening in his hair as she whispered, "Fuck, Luke—" before cutting off with a shuddering moan.
She slid off him with a slick sound, collapsing beside him in the sand, her arm draping heavily across his heaving chest. Sunlight spilled over her sweat-slicked skin, highlighting the tremor in her fingertips as they traced idle patterns through the coarse hair dusting his sternum. Neither spoke—just the ragged symphony of their breathing, the distant crash of waves, the rustle of palm fronds overhead. Luke turned his head to watch her, the lazy sweep of her lashes as she blinked up at the sky, the way her parted lips still trembled slightly.
His fingers found her chin—calloused and insistent—tilting her face toward his. Alexis resisted at first, her gaze skittering away, suddenly shy despite their intimacy. He tightened his grip just enough to make her look at him, his thumb brushing the corner of her swollen mouth. Her pupils dilated, swallowing the blue of her irises, and in that raw, unguarded moment, Luke saw everything—the years of suppressed longing, the storm-surge of fear when the waves tore them apart, the dizzying relief of finding each other again. Sand clung to her cheekbone where it had pressed against his shoulder; he brushed it away with his knuckle, his touch lingering.
The second kiss tasted different—slower, deeper. No desperation this time, no frenzied claiming. Just the warm press of lips moving with deliberate slowness, rediscovering the shape of her. Alexis sighed into his mouth, her fingers curling into the hair at his nape. Their breaths mingled, uneven but synchronized now, like their childhood habit of matching strides without thinking. When he finally pulled back, her lips remained slightly parted, her tongue darting out to catch the ghost of his taste.
They lay there together, both determined to survive.
