Soft blue eddies around the slow scissor motion of her thighs as she wades toward the sand. The slow rock of her stride reduces the sea to ripples of turquoise honey. Fingers trail ribbons along the surface, nails lightly scoring a lover’s skin.

She falters, as if stepping on a shell takes her by surprise. A passing flaw in her selfless poise. She pauses, closes her epicanthic eyes and fingers back wet hair like a waterfall of midnight. Strands catch. She fights the tangle to brush it off her face.

The burnt cinnamon shade of her skin has a lacquered look as the water slides off.

Her eyes open again, dark as onyx and full of bashful strength. There’s a proud impudence to the luxurious jut of her breasts. Soft elegance quivering under their own weight with every step. Glittering droplets roll over them, diamonds cascading over deadly contours of pure woman.

A column of volcanic rock stands up behind her like an ancient guardian. If it could blink, they would never have been here. Hot sand grows shy when she steps on it.

The geckoes ignore him, watching from the shade of the palms, while a sleek animal paces its cage inside him.

He knows she senses him, but she refuses to look his way. He’s an exile, and she is his native country.

How it was the day before. How it is again today. Tomorrow is always a fearful storm of hopeless questions.

She pads across the sand in a scant, blue thong that seems pasted on. She’s favoring the left foot after her misstep in the water. The curve of her wet hip teases the sun as she retrieves her sarong off a rock. She leans and reaches like a constellation shifting in its seat. The thumbnail curve of each sculpted cheek flexes in soft defiance.

The animal inside suddenly leaps at the bars of its cage.

She presses the muted turquoise fabric to her face, then wraps herself inside it. She binds herself snugly, streamlining extravagant curves, as if she could turn herself into a secret. Then she reaches for the straw, wide brimmed cowboy hat. Shaking her dark mane back, she places the hat down low, hiding under its shade, then turns to walk away.

Bright sandals dangle from her hand. It’s a simple clockwork of easy motion. His sinews tighten like harp strings, but he remains in the shadows as she saunters away. She glances briefly off to the side, but not all the way over her shoulder. Her walking away is a profusion of impossible heartbreaks.

He goes out from the shade and feels the soft weight of the noon heat. By the rock where she’d left her things, he peels away his shirt, slips from his sandals and loosens his drawstring. Naked, he places his things in the spot where hers had just been.

He looks down to see how he’s thickened more than he knew. He leans against the rock. Humid air and voracious sunshine are palpable as fingers. His cock shudders with the driving pulse of his heart.

In the distance, there’s the sputter of a motorbike coming to life. A whining rev. He imagines her astride the bike, shooting off onto the dusty road to wherever she has to go. He replays her concert of unconscious motion in his mind. His cock continues to thicken, harden, rise. Air. Sun. Desire and longing.

Back in someone else’s life he knew her name is Siren. Vague memories prickle under his skin.

Everything collides, and nothing crashes. He walks to the water. The animal curls up for a fitful sleep. He wades in, sinks yet continues to rise.

***

Today, Siren pauses at the water’s edge to slide off the neon yellow thong as she leans down in a sweeping play of flesh and sinew. The spheres of her ass part barely enough to form a thumbnail shadow.

She rises and tosses the crumple of bright string onto the sand near the faded yellow caftan. She takes a half glance over her shoulder where she knows he stands watching. There’s a shimmer of playful deadliness in her eyes. A visible streak of uncertainty, as if she isn’t quite the same inside as out.

His throat tightens. Air goes in and out of his lungs in a stream too small for his body. Blood hammers through his veins like traffic from a foreign country as he watches but never sees the constellation of imperfections that plague her.

Her hands make sweeping gestures over the front of her body he can’t see, brief caresses of her breasts and mound. His cock thickens with heat while her body stiffens slightly. He feels her twinge of self-consciousness.

A sense of irritation comes over him there in his spot under the palms. She shouldn’t have come. She doesn’t belong. Neither in that place nor in the pulsing river of waking dreams from which he was finally breaking free.

She steps in the water. Blue foam curls around her ankles. He follows the supple curve of calf and thigh to the smooth spheres of her ass. Thumb-size dimples above her cheeks.

She pauses and turns her head. As she looks at him he wonders if she can discern more than his silhouette in the shadows. She smiles, looks down at the water and goes on.

The cosmos freezes and points at where she’s standing.

His cock prickles with heat while his muscles fill with steaming blood. He steps out of the shade, aching for the lick of the sun. He moves, stumbles and strips at the same time. A cotton shirt. Dark muslin drawstrings that fall without a whisper.

He stands at the water’s edge where the shy siren wades to the middle of her strapping thighs. She suddenly turns to face him. Her breasts look improbably heavy. The blushing tips gather into knots. She looks down, looks back up and then down again.

He mutters something unintelligible. She looks back up, raises her arms and falls backward.

Shimmering fingers of water scuttle across her skin and she backstrokes away. He walks in after, cock rising against his will, until the water licks his balls.

The sense of entitlement at the core of his being falters. She puts her feet down where the water trips around distended nipples that tease the sea. Her skin seems as deep as it is smooth.

There’s quiet rebellion in her eyes. Light of a quick revelation flickers through his mind. The fear behind her eyes isn’t fear.

He teeters between laughter and sobbing, but the ache seeping through the cracks in his soul takes him down to where he’s standing in the subtle lapping of a lethargic sea.

Her hands drift somewhere down beneath the surface, bringing her arms in close and bunching her breasts in between. When they make eye contact, something snaps inside him – like he could be walking through any city park on any sweet day of the year and turn to see the eyes of quietly smoldering beauty walk in and out of his life in a matter of seconds.

She holds his gaze for the first time. Weeks of dancing at a distance, and the grip of her swimming eyes is pulling him down.

She begins to wade back toward the sand. Glittering rivulets running over a pneumatic terrain of skin and contour. He watches her move and strains to ignore the strutting spine of gristle jutting up from the apex of his thighs.

As she passes she glances briefly into his eye, then a longer glance at his cock. She brushes against him lightly as she wades on toward the sand.

She sits on dry sand, while her heels dig in where it’s damp from the soft lap of quiet waves. He kneels where the water pools and ebbs around his knees. His hand rakes his sac lightly, flirting with the idea of gripping his sap-dripping shaft.

She leans back on her elbows, thighs closed while the pout of her bald mound is a bold hint of the woman broiling inside. Patient. Giving him a chance to speak. It’s as if she’s expecting to hear something. She looks away down the beach where a naked couple are walking their way.

“You not remember,” she says, calmly. Her voice has a slightly nasal twang, but a kind of smokiness that makes him feel something more than naked.

He watches her breasts rise and fall while her neck turns back and she faces him. He reaches for her straw cowboy hat on top of her caftan and leans forward to place it on her head.

“Sun was in your eyes,” he says.

Siren smiles. He hunkers back to his kneeling position, hands on knees and his swollen cock standing up between his thighs like a petulant narcissist. He tries to ignore it. She doesn’t, but she gives his face as much attention.

“You not remember,” she repeats, almost frowning, but not quite.

The brim of her hat obscures her eyes. It’s as if there’s another sky behind her skin and that’s where his breath is coming from.

“Not remember me.” Her knees drift slightly apart.

He remembers, but he’s not about to tell her how well.

Silence and heat swim between them like schools of fish. One of her thighs relaxes, cocks slightly aside and opens the curtain no wider than an anxious whisper.

“What makes you think I don’t remember?”

She almost pouts, but not quite. Fingers curl around his cockshaft, squeeze until a bubble of precum oozes. He thumbs the fluid around his dome. Slow seconds pass and her knees drift wider.

Her nipples are the darkest, most arrogant thing about her while that intoxicating slit between her thighs is demure. Her knees drift again, sumptuous curves opening like night blooming cereus.

“Not talk to me. Stay far.”

The strolling couple are close enough to skirt the edges of their privacy. He’s dark haired while his mate is petite and blonde. They sink down on wet sand. He kisses the blonde and caresses her breasts.

“I’m not so far away now.” And he takes hold of her ankle. Her other heel pushes forward, digging a groove in the sand. Her hands come to rest on her upper thighs, the spread of her fingers fanning close to the pout of her freshly waxed mound.

The dark haired man grips a handful of the blonde woman’s hair and pushes her head toward his growing cock. She yelps and giggles. Then he sighs as she fills her mouth.

Both heads turn to watch the playful couple. They’re drunk on each other and want everyone to know.

Then he realizes he’s stroking his cock and Siren is watching intently. The pulse in his shaft jars his flesh. He begins to imagine the slow but unstoppable crawl into place between her thighs and the slick, wet plunge of his cock through her yielding sheath.

“Touch,” he says. He tightens his grip on her ankle, nods at her mound.

Tentative at first, Siren’s fingers move to her slit. She takes an experimental rake along her flushing lips. Nectar oozes where she touches. A quiet rumble vibrates in his throat and his grip tightens around his cock.

The dark haired man groans aloud while his lover’s blonde head bobs and turns between his open thighs. They become and inspiring afterthought.

The beached Siren looks at up and pushes her finger inside herself. A whimper comes out of her throat and she closes her eyes, leaving only his hand on her ankle to tether them.

Her sexlips move to the pull and suck of her finger.

Her body’s perfume begins to singe the edges of the air. He spirals into himself and then back out again.

“Dammit, you know I remember everything,” he hisses. He grips her ankle harder, vice like.

“Stay too far away…” Her hips arch. She slips another finger beside the first and grinds them back inside.

She won’t look at him, but the other hand slips in near the first and her fingers fan across her distended clit.

He watches her become something he’s never seen before. Somehow, this arcane, erotic side of her being makes everything more sensible. The woman he knew back in the world was suddenly more real, more familiar. A lifetime of courage and fear pulses through the length of his aching cock.

Time stretches and bends back on itself. The dark haired man cries out in weakness as the blonde ravens his gushing cum.

Siren’s hips buck and twist while her hands move in a single-minded blur. He snarls and rises off his haunches, fucking his own pummeling hand as her body floats above the sand. He realizes it had always been her heart pumping his blood.

All her muscles tense in relief as she cries and kicks against his grip on her ankle. But he holds her. He holds her like the only thing keeping him bound on this earth while the force of a glittering darkness gathers up inside him and erupts in a shower of sparks.

His cock leaps and sprays across the sand, leaving a dollop of cum on her ankle just above where his hand grips. He finally thinks to let go.

The couple down the sand are looking at them, grinning, imagining their game had been joined.

He looks back at Siren and catches his breath. She huffs, her breasts heaving with the effort, and she still won’t open her eyes.

He moves in to lie across her body. His slowly relaxing cock presses her mound while his chest settles onto her breasts. Her breath touches his face in synch with the rise and fall of her body beneath him. Her skin feels made of the air, heat and water surrounding them.

His lips touch hers lightly. The ends of their tongues come forward to meet.

“I’ll be coming for you,” he says. “And soon.”

Her eyes remain closed but he knows she’s listening. He stands to gather his clothes, dresses slowly as he watches her roll to her side.

“I remember everything,” he says, looking down where his shadow crosses her body.

****

The night has that kind of sultry tackiness to the air that makes you feel far away from everyone wherever you go. The flow of people is light but steady. He weaves among them like an echo falling on deaf ears.

He comes to the doorway he’s been seeking. Four women he doesn’t know stand around the entrance. They all seem younger than Siren. They greet him as if they’ve been expecting him. Their laughter makes him think of jewels raining on glass.

“Siren,” he tells them, and the laughter stops.

One of them turns inside. Siren comes out a few seconds later. Something in her face falls a little when she sees him, but she nods as expected and leads him inside.

He pays without bargaining. There’s a dim corridor lined with curtained stalls along one side. Siren leads him to the middle and holds the fabric aside as he bows his way in. He turns around, expecting to see her, but finds himself alone.

Moments later, she comes back dressed in loose cotton gym shorts and tank top. She carries a towel and oil. Sets them on the floor beside the mat without facing him.

“Why didn’t you come today?” he asks.

She looks up from her kneeling position and puts her finger to her lips, warning him to shush. She rises and whispers.

“You say you coming. For me. I wait for you.” She tugs at his shirt. “Take off.”

He unbuttons the shirt. Sandals, pants, all but his scant briefs. She waits. Patiently.

He sits on the mat and she floats onto her knees beside him. She touches his chest to urge him to lie down for his massage, but he catches her wrist in his hand. He tugs at her top with the other.

“Take off,” he barely whispers.

She almost smiles, but not quite. Peels the top over her head without a sound, leaving her breasts to quiver with motion. He touches her collar bone and studies her face in the dim, sweet smelling hovel.

“You understand what this is?”

“You here for me.” She touches his bare chest and smiles. Her face breaks open like the beginning of a fresh season.

He nods and pushes her to the mat. “Take off,” he whispers as he hooks his fingers in the waist of her shorts to pull them off. She raises her legs and allows it.

She indulges an audible snicker as he rolls her to her stomach. He kneels at her feet and oils his hands. His thumbs press hard in the calloused soles of her feet, grinding against the nerves and sinew, stopping the blood and letting it flow again in tiny bursts.

He leans his weight onto oiled palms and presses them up the length of her calves, passing back and forth, up and down, until the tension surrenders.

He spends forever on her thighs, pushing hard and deep into pliant flesh, pushing his palms up over her cheeks and spreading them as he kneads.

The way her body opens under his hands feels like a hopeful sadness with only one cure. Her skin is living silk. It makes his hands feel borrowed from some Olympian myth. His cock simmers and uncoils, pushing against the snugness of his briefs.

He oils his palms again and leans his weight into the heels of his hands as he presses them into the dimples above her ass. He leans, pushes down against her, waits – waits a little longer – then lets his hands plow upward along her back, over her shoulders.

She lets a sigh escape. He knows she didn’t mean to, afraid the others might hear. His ripening cock nudges her ass as he works her shoulders, fingers digging and searching through her flesh.

He can’t help stopping to indulge the warm, intoxicating rub of his cotton sheathed cock against the globes of her ass. She mewls and presses back, egging him on.

He rears back and tugs on her hip, urging her to roll over. She watches him push off his briefs. His cock snaps free.

For a while, she watches him. His face remains intent, focused as he presses his palms deeply into her thighs. Her eyes finally close as his sliding hands rub and smear the flesh beside her swollen mound. Her pussy seems such a tiny, simple thing, and yet he would trade away years of his life without remorse just to be near it.

Her thighs push wider every time he works his palms against the muscle. He chuckles softly, thinking her pussy doesn’t open like a flower, but that it’s the other way around. Nature keeps making flowers, never stopping – forever trying to get it right.

He suddenly grips her thighs and pushes them up and apart. He opens her pussy by pushing apart the meat of her thighs. Her lips and flushed with nectar. The bud of her rim peers up from underneath.

She’s made of everything either of them is ever going to need to survive. It’s a good thing, because he has nothing to give back. His cock ripples with ravenous greed as he grows nearly ashamed. It’s as if an entire lifetime of taking suddenly comes down to these moments together in the near dark of this arcane way station.

Around them come the disembodied sighs of pleasure and weakness from other stalls.

He presses his oiled thumb over her rim and leans close to her open pussy. Thumb pressing harder, he exhales across her dripping slit. She sighs and he inhales. The redolence of her arousal fills his skull.

He presses his mouth to her pussy and grinds his thumb against her bud. Kissing her, letting his tongue stroke once inside before he rears back upright.

“Not pretty,” she frowns, her whisper nearly silent.

“More perfect than you’ll ever imagine,” he tells her.

He lets her thighs go to the sides and knees under them, bringing his pulsing cock to rest against her heat engorged mound. He takes a moment to oil his palms again and begins kneading the pliant globes of her heavy breasts. Her nipples are thick, hard yet pliant under the twisting grip of his slippery fingers.

The belly of his stalk runs over the wet furrow of her slit as his hands clamp and knead her breasts. He pushes, pulls, grips and releases. He fans his fingers over the gathered tips until her spine arches slightly and her mouth opens on a swallowed gasp.

The skin of his cock is wet with her honey as he moves away from her, scuttling to the side where he leans over to capture a nipple with his teeth. He presses the heel of his hand against her splayed open pussy, gnashing onto her clit as he sucks the russet nub into his mouth.

Her hips begin rolling against the grind of his palm as he flickers his tongue over her nipple. One, then the other, then the first one again. She bangs a loose fist against his arm and fucks at his palm.

He leans down and holds her face in his hands. When her eyes open so close to his, it feels like a spectacular escape from death, and he kisses her with all the joy and relief of waking up alive one more day. Her head arches and she kisses back like drinking something cool.

He guides her to her side and straddles her bottom thigh. As he fingers open her pussy, his ballsac drags along her flesh, his shaft nudging and grinding its way past her slick, yielding lips.

Inside, he’s falling off the precipice of his own dreams. Her body swallows his cock with a hunger that leaves him raw. He rears back and thrusts again deeply, gripping hard on her breast. He rolls her nipples roughly as he rocks back and forth on his haunches, stroking his ripe shaft into her honey soaked core.

His thumb is rolling over her clit while his cock drives hot and steady. By the time their breathing begins to grow audible, he slows his pace, finally drawing his wet cock out into the air. He touches her shoulder and guides her onto her back. He pushes her legs up and apart. When he pushes his burning cock back inside, he leans over to be close to her face.

He holds his cock inside. Still. Nothing moving but their spasming hearts and heaving chests. He nips at her bottom lip. Then he presses his own to her ear.

“Can you feel that?” he whispers.

“You cock?” she whispers back.

“No.”

“You crazy. Just fuck.”

He snickers softly.

“Like everything just makes sense now,” he tells her. “You. Me. Everything. Like suddenly knowing there’s never going to be anyone else. Like suddenly knowing you just came home.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know,” she almost giggles. “Talk later. Fuck now.”

He starts to laugh, but somehow it ends up as kissing her. His tongue sweeps through her mouth while his cock begins rocking into her again. Rocking. Harder.

Sliding. Wet slap of bodies in concert.

Gasp and kiss. Their faces twist and cry out in the brittle silence.

Pump and fuck and live and die. Their bodies reform around each other. Making new places to fit together.

Fuck, pound, grind, bite and suck. They begin growing old together…

…and suddenly erupt, evaporating in a voracious blast of steam.