Chapter 2: Whispers on the Path

The night air was cool as we stepped out of the door, carrying the saltier smell of the beach below. Elena’s blue sundress was clinging to her thighs while fluttering against her windswept skin, the thin fabric whispering excitement as it lingered in the heat of the mirror moment. My hand found hers, fingers entwining in a squeeze that crackled up my arm. We had been forbidden and asexual before, but this moment turned it all on. After seeing her body exposed in the reflection, every touch felt electric and anticipatory.

We walked down the sandy path. The sand gave way under our feet, like me slipping into the void. Waves crashed in the distance, their rhythm a metronome with my heart. It was steady. Then surging. Elena’s hip swayed against mine with each step, a contact so deliberate the universe couldn’t be playing with us. Her hips were wide, rolling like the sea, and the sundress rode up, revealing precious glimpses of those yoga-toned thighs with their soft pink stretch marks, stories in their skin. I smelled her. Lavender soap with a spicy undertone, warmer, her woman’s musk. Hot and intoxicating with the salt in the air. My cock was twitching in my jeans. Thick, grinding against the zipper. I couldn’t deny it. I needed some patience. Breathe down. Down. Down.

“You’re pretty quiet, my love,” she said, her voice a velvet drag on gravel.

She again pressed her hand to mine, pulling me in until she and I were a unit.

“You still thinking of Mia? That little bitch, she dumped the best thing she had.”

My stomach knotted in my throat, the word stabbed at me like a knife, but she wrapped it around me like a scarf of salt and flame. My ex stabbed at my heart, and the betrayal was sharp in my mind, the cold text about finding some other “exciting” one, the cheating in the other hotel room that left me on a dorm floor. But here, with her, the fire was different. Her love stirred a fiercely protective lust in me, the loyalty she had found through deserts, through divorce.