A short story for your entertainment. Enjoy. Comment.

Wine Dark Sea

Eventually, the older couple, introduced only hours before, took the hint. The pair were last to leave the impromptu beach party. Silent but relieved of boredom, Danni silently urged them along the wooden jetty, the dying fire of sunset haloing the older woman’s silver curls into gold. Quinn, so close beside her his skin was warm on hers, waved as the older pair turned to acknowledge them before clambering aboard their motor launch. They took eternity to start the engine, slip the mooring ropes, but finally, they chugged into the night, bound for the stone harbour three miles up the island coast.

Danni was first on her feet. She glanced at Quinn, a prelude to mischief in her eyes. Her celebratory stretch emphasised slender curves and, dropping her arms, she slipped talented fingers under the bikini band, eased it past her knees and let it drop. Quinn relished the display, admiring her as the top half followed.

‘Come on, lazybones. I want to swim.’

Not what most occupied his mind. But he rose at leisure, kicked sand over the remains of their driftwood fire and the discarded fish bones, and only then removed his swimming shorts.

Danni felt tempted. But had decided to swim first. Rocks and tide-washed seaweed made the initial twenty yards too hazardous to dare in the dim evening light, so she took him by the hand along the narrow jetty. At the end, close to where their yacht rocked gently with the swell, she sat and dabbled feet in warm Mediterranean waves.

During the day, they’d marvelled through transparent turquoise to sand and rocks below. Fish, tiny silver darts, rounded fleshy ovals, dark flat rays, had played games of life and death beneath the surface. Now, the night mantled sky with mystery, rendering the sea unfathomable, veiled.

‘You can see why Homer called it “wine dark” when it’s like this.’

‘I hooked me a scholar.’ Quinn hunkered down beside her, ran a tender palm from her nape down her spine to cup a warm round curve of cheek.

Signs of surrender and complicity seeped through her, but she wanted, needed, to wash off smoke from the barbecue, sand that gritted soft skin. ‘Once around the boat, then we’ll collect our things, get aboard, and you can show me once again why I chose a hunk instead of someone with a brain.’

He pushed her into the water for her cheek, dropped in beside her. She came up gasping for air but laughing and shaking her hair to free her gaze. The night now so profound she found it hard to separate sky and sea. Only stars perforating looming black infinity marked that horizon. She turned to find Quinn and discovered in that direction the fine fresh crescent lancing the quiet surface with a band of light silhouetting each feature it encountered.

But no sign of her man.

‘Quinn?’

No answer. She knew he’d followed her into the water. He’d had no time to swim away from her.

‘Quinn!’

Nothing. No reply. No movement. No response.

‘Quinn, where are you?’

Only soft surf answered her, and her query dissolved into silence. Panic threatened. Where was he? What had happened to him? Dread surfaced.

Then, bubbles burst the surface near the end of the jetty. She struck out, relief energising and directing her. ‘Oh, Quinn, I thought I’d lost…’

But he wasn’t there.

Bubbles.

Was he underneath the waves?

One last try. ‘Quinn! If you don’t show right now, I’m going aboard and you’ll get none tonight.’

Nothing.

She accepted, then, what must be truth. Her first dive gave her nothing. Total darkness requiring her to explore with fingertips and toes.

She submerged a second time, lungs as full as she could make them. Nothing.

The third attempt, after she’d exhaled to make herself less buoyant, she came on flesh.

Unmistakable.

Quinn.

Unmoving.

She tried to raise him, but he wouldn’t move. Tried again, chest burning with the need for air. But he was trapped.

The surface gave her what she needed and she took it all, filling her lungs, exhaling, filling them again, blowing it out. Replenished, she dived again. Worked her hands along the body that had given such delight. At his knee she found it. Stiff, hard, ungiving. A hawser twisted round his lower leg. But why couldn’t he free himself?

She worked further down. In his struggle to escape, he’d turned and the metal rope had kinked into his flesh, trapping him. She concentrated hard, her need for air commanding her to surface. But he’d already been here far too long. It was now or not at all.

She twisted him away from her and felt the force of his captivity release as the cable reformed into its original loop. He was free. She pulled. Found the surface, Quinn still in her arms.

Only for as long as it took to regain air and feed her lungs and body, she held his head free of the water.

Quickly, she worked her way onto the wooden jetty, never letting go of him. The water lapped just inches below the wooden surface. It took effort to extract him, pull him flat and start the drill she’d learned in med school.

Sure she was too late, she nevertheless pumped and thumped, the rhythm beating with the song advised. He was gone. Must be. Wasted effort. But still she worked. He couldn’t leave her now.

He coughed.

Spewed water.

Coughed again. Mumbled something incoherent. Moved.

Their abandoned clothes lay on the beach. Unimportant. In the soft bed on the yacht, they eventually slept, wrapped only in their sudden, precious love.

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