Chapter 5

Beth and I were treading water a few feet from the boat when Anna slipped into the water. The half-moon was high and bright enough I could see Anna was naked, but not bright enough I could make out details.

“I thought it would be cold,” Anna said.

“It’s pretty shallow here, so the sun heats it all the way down - if it were deeper, it would be,” I said.

Beth peeled off of me and drifted to her sister. They were really close but not quite touching.

“You ok?” Beth asked.

“Me!? Are you ok?” Anna chuckled. “You were the one getting smashed.”

I grinned and slowly swam to circle the boat and give them a minute. The water here is clear, but not like in the Bahamas - in the Bahamas you can see the bottom even at night. It was always a bit unnerving to swim at night, no matter what I’d told Anna earlier. I did it a lot, but there was that little corner of my lizard brain warning me about sea monsters. As I looped back around, the girls were still huddled in conversation so I reversed course. When I got to the bow I hung on the anchor chain and did some pullups just to kill time and move around a bit.

When I got back to the stern, the girls were sitting on the swimstep dingling their feet and I could make out Beth smiling at me.

“OK, you’re allowed back on your boat,” she said.

“Thank god. It’s scary out here in the dark,” I said.

“Well, yeah,” said Anna. “It kinda is. But it feels exhilarating too.”

“Cuz that’s what the right kind of scary does,” said Beth and Anna shoulder bumped her.

“It’s really scary in the open ocean, even in the day,” I said. “I make myself do it sometimes, but I can’t be cool about it. I feel helpless and insignificant. I don’t like that, but I like to imagine that it builds character.”

We were silent a bit as we collectively pondered our relative insignificance. Then Beth stood up and grabbed the showerhead and started rinsing off. She blasted Anna too, who squealed.

“OK, now that’s cold as shit!” yelped Anna, trying to dodge the water and not flash her bits right in my face.

“Suck it up, you big baby,” laughed Beth as she hosed her sister down. “No salt in the boat!”

I gently grabbed one of Anna’s feet. “Look at me,” I said quietly. “Breathe. With me. Breathe.” Anna froze at my touch but after the initial twitch she squared her shoulders and inhaled and after she stopped squirming, Beth relented and finished rinsing herself off.

I was now holding both of Anna’s feet, looking up at her as she took deep, even breaths.

“Good work,” I smiled. She shivered and said ‘thanks’ with a tiny voice.

Beth climbed the rest of the way into the cockpit, leaving Anna room to get up. She stood, towering over me as I floated below her, giving me a moment to look up the length of her slim, nude body before she clambered into the boat.

When I climbed aboard and rinsed off, they both sat in the cockpit and watched me. I’m no exhibitionist, but neither am I shy, especially around someone I’m fucking (and might soon, fingers crossed). I stepped into the cockpit and Beth handed me a towel.

“Do you like it when he ties you up?” Anna asked her sister.

“Oh fuck yes!” Beth wiggled in her seat. “Like, even without sex, it’s really great.”

“Without sex?” Anna asked. “Like he just ties you up and what? Watches TV?”

I laughed as I dried off my junk.

“No, you dork! It’s like a whole intimate kinda thing. I mean, he’s all over me, moving me and kissing me and turning me here and there. It’s just ... really, like I dunno ... close. It’s hard to describe, you have to experience it.” Beth shrugged.

“Okay,” said Anna. My cock twitched under the towel.

“Okay?” said Beth. “Oh! Like, okay?”

Anna gave a small nod. “I think I wanna try it.” She pointed her head at me. “Just the tying thing, not the sex!”

“Okay. We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s get back to bed.”

I checked the weather as soon as I got up, a necessary habit on a boat, and there was no wind or swell predicted until tomorrow afternoon. That could, and probably would, change - meteorologists were the only profession wrong more often than politicians - but for now I’d take advantage of the calm.

I quietly started a pot of coffee and put together some fruit and bagels. I knocked on Anna’s door and then went to nuzzle Beth awake.

“Muh time izzit?” she mumbled, face buried in the pillow.

“7:30ish,” I answered.

“Fuck off. M’on ‘aycation!”

I nibbled her earlobe and neck and rubbed her ass.

“There’s no wind, the water’s calm. We’re goin out to the reef while conditions are good.” I progressively nibbled harder as I whispered.

She thrashed side to side, tangled in the sheet. “Ok, okaaaay! I’m up. I’ll get up. Gimme a minute.”

I popped her a good one on her ass and stepped into the main room where a bleary eyed Anna was stirring something into her coffee and nibbling an apple slice. She wore a long Iron Maiden T shirt and her hair was unkempt.

“Why so early, dude?”

“The weather is perfect to hit the reefs. Almost all the good snorkeling in the keys is actually out in the ocean. If the wind is up, it’s pretty crap. It was calm all night and is supposed to be most of the day, too,” I said. “So, should be an easy trip and good visibility.”

“OK,” she said. “I forgive you.”

I know she really wanted to go snorkeling on this trip - she’d only ever piddled around at boring little scraps near shore, which Florida doesn’t have a lot of. The reefs it did have weren’t amazing but they were nice if the conditions were good.

I slathered cream cheese on a bagel and swigged some coffee, burning my tongue a bit. After a couple of bites, I heard Beth’s feet hit the floor and she shuffled past and into the head without looking at us. A small boat meant limited privacy and we heard her pee splashing loudly as we ate. I smiled at Anna and she looked away, perhaps reminded of last night’s lack of privacy.

Beth came out and poured herself some coffee and grabbed some grapes and sat down on the couch. She was also in just a T shirt, hers plain black. She propped her feet up and it was clear it was only a shirt.

“We leave in 45 minutes,” I said. Beth held up a singular finger in my direction. Anna turned her head away to hide her amusement.

I don’t like to be late, even when there’s no deadline and we were in the dink in just under 45 minutes. Beth grumbled but she knew better than to fuck around if I gave her a timeline. She actually liked it when I made the decisions - another reason we got along - it was only ever an issue if it was early. Anna seemed to not be as troubled by moving in the morning and it was actually more than enough time since there was no make up to put on or outfit to pick out.

I packed us a cooler with water and sandwiches, bagged up all our gear, and made sure there was plenty of sunscreen and big floppy hats to go around. We were wearing light wetsuits - the sun would be strong but the water would be chilly. I checked the oil and the fuel in the outboard and tossed my handheld VHF in my bag, just in case.

It’d take about a half hour to get out to the first reef I planned on visiting. We blazed through the same creek we used last night to get to dinner, but didn’t turn south, instead heading straight out into the ocean. The water was pretty calm, but in the ocean that still meant some swell and the dink bounced along making it work to hang on. Arriving without incident, we were the first boat to grab a buoy - the park service maintained a few moorings to tie to along this string of reefs. It was handy and it protected the reef from careless anchoring.

I spent a couple minutes on the trip out giving Anna a brief safety rundown since she’d never really done this out in the big water. Beth said she was a strong swimmer and I knew she wasn’t an idiot, so there wasn’t a lot to talk about. It didn’t take long for us to kit up once there, but by the time we were ready to hop in, there was already another boat approaching.

I held us up until they’d tied up just to make sure nothing crazy happened - the actual dangerous part was traveling from the mooring field to the reef itself. It’s not inconceivable that one could get run over by some moron in a boat. There was no shortage of those.

The diving was good; this area was what was known as bommies - a collection of big coral heads scattered along the ocean floor. Some were isolated and some were clustered together. It was about ten to fifteen feet deep and had plenty of life. We saw lots of colorful reef fish - angelfish, clowns, parrot fish - a couple of barracuda and a couple of stingrays. Anna was audibly squealing with excitement all morning. We spent a couple of hours at this spot but it eventually got pretty crowded so I dragged the reluctant ladies back to the boat.

We unhooked from the mooring and scooted a few hundred meters away from the area to crack open the cooler before moving to the next spot.

“It’s so much better than I expected,” Anna said. “Like, I’ve seen sooo many nature documentaries and youtube videos and they’re great and all, but, WOW! Being here ... so awesome! I could do this all day, everyday! I totally wanna boat now! You can’t scare me off, Jack!”

Beth concurred. Hell, I concurred - it was a big part of why I lived on a boat.

We munched our sandwiches - sliced turkey and cheese on some fancy herbed bread and spicy mustard - and sipped water. I don’t know why, but being under water made me ravenous and it seemed that sentiment was shared as the girls inhaled their lunch.

“I’m hoping this next spot won’t be as crowded. It’s smaller, but I think it’s got better coral, at least some of it,” I said.

“Sign me up,” said Beth, killing a bottle of water.

I pulled up the GPS on my phone and pointed us in the right direction. It was a pretty quick trip and when we arrived the mooring field was about half full. Not too bad.

Beth found a moray eel in a hole on one of the coral heads and we spent a long time trying to entice it out. It would poke its head out a bit and tease us and then slip back inside where we could barely see it. Eventually we gave up and thoroughly explored the rest of the bommies. The coral was more vibrant in this spot and there were a couple of huge schools of tiny fish, but overall I think the fish were better at the last spot. That said, the girls were ecstatic, constantly flagging each other down and pointing at the next new thing. It was a good day.