Perched on one of the large rocks scattered in clusters of four or five along the shore, the brunette was stoically ignoring the thick screen of rain blowing over the entire island. Piper was standing a few meters back, under the tree line, as if that could offer some protection. The needle-like raindrops fell so hard that they simply pushed away the leaves of the trees and palm trees. It wasn't long before her feet were sinking in the sand submerged within a small puddle.
She screamed Alex's name, received no answer, and proceeded to run towards the rocks - or attempt to run. The sand, which when dry was white as newly fallen snow, was now grey due to the torrential rain. The whole beach, in fact, appeared to have turned several shades darker. Additionally, the sand's texture now felt weirdly mushy, and her feet stuck to it with every step like she was trying to pass through quicksand.
Climbing the rock wasn't as easy as it looked, since it was wet and slippery, and the soles of Piper's feet were muddy, but at least now the brunette had noticed her, and hoisted her to where she was sitting, Buddha-like in posture.
"Didn't you hear me?"
Alex's hair was so wet that it didn't even move with the head shake. Parted in the middle, framing her cheeks, and falling over her shoulders uniformly, it looked like a black hood.
"Let's go back to our room." Piper started pulling at her hand.
"Are you cold?"
"No, but there's nothing to do here."
"You could always do me," the brunette said, with a casual shrug.
As quickly and easily as striking a match, Piper felt the spark of desire. It never really seemed to go away or diminish, even after so much time, even after exchanging "I love you's". The better she knew that body, the more she needed to explore it, and the more she got to hear every little inflection of that voice, the more she strove to elicit those responses. It didn't really make sense, of course, but she couldn't help but feel that, just as she had been moving around the world, she had been moving over Alex -under Alex, on top of Alex, for sure-, but primarily over that body of skin, through both freshwater and salty water, through white sand and black sand, silk sheets and impossibly green grass, sleeping bags and hammocks, high-speed trains and dingy buses, tasting everything and taking everything with her. And she felt that those things would be unwashable, no matter how many showers she took or how hard she scrubbed.
Alex kissed her and pulled her onto her lap, making Piper straddle her bent legs. She surrounded Alex's shoulders with her arms, feeling the delicious rush of being on the edge of a big, tall rock, with a flood between their mouths.
Discarding the winding road because it took longer to get to the resort buildings, they pushed through the trees and the heavy vegetation hand in hand, giggling and shrieking when the freezing trickles of water fell from the trees and shattered on their backs with malignant accuracy. The fact that the brunette was shoving her against random tree trunks to kiss her along the way made Piper's head spin so fast that she thought she wouldn't make it back to the room.
They found refuge under the wooden beams of the bucolic hotel bar, looking like they had just jumped out of the pages of 'The Lord of the Flies', muddy and soaked to the bone. Alex's loud laugh resonated through the area, causing the peaceful guests to turn around. Piper stood with her hands behind her back, innocently, her messy mane dripping on the floor like a mop. She was expecting one of the exceedingly polite hotel workers to escort them away from all those hypersensitive gazes, but Alex quickly snatched her hand and took her away.
They got to their suite through the terrace, where the rain was hammering like hail on the white umbrellas. Alex slid open the heavy glass door and they stumbled inside the small living room, tripping over the coffee table covered with brochures ("A COUPLE WHO SPAS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER" - Four Seasons Resort Seychelles). Piper yelped as she fell on the olive green sofa and sunk among the cushions, with Alex on top of her.
She was pulled to her feet again and redirected to the bathroom. Their clothes were so wet that their shirts were almost as transparent as the skin shed by a snake, and dropped on the floor with a heavy splat. Later, they would just throw them into the hallway.
Blindly stepping into the bathtub, Piper leaned against the tiled wall and soon felt the warm water showering over her head. Alex squeezed a dollop of soap onto her hands, rubbed it between them, and proceeded to massage her body. Holding onto Alex's shoulders, she let the woman work, her slippery fingers creating a layer of white foam wherever they roamed.
The sweet aroma of the almond-based soap clashed with the sharp scent of the jungle still clinging to Alex's skin and hair.
"What about you?" Piper managed to ask.
Chuckling, Alex plucked a couple of leaves from Piper's hair and let them fall. The leaves floated towards the drain and then spiraled around it like they were doing a frantic dance number. Then, as a sort of answer to Piper's question, Alex pinned her against the wall, her hands holding onto Piper's ass for support, and started rubbing against her as if the blonde had become a human-sized sponge.
Piper gasped into the brunette's ear as their soapy breasts slid in and out of contact. "I thought… I thought I was supposed to do you."
Alex's hand squeezed her ass one last time before snaking between her legs, her fingers stroking her so lightly that Piper whined piteously, her previous protest all but forgotten. There were only Alex's fingertips taking turns in torturing her, now pressing against her lips, now slipping between them for a second. It wasn't enough, not by far. She tried to hold Alex's wrist to keep her hand in place, but the brunette freed herself easily, aided by the lather of soap covering them.
Was it possible to die from unfulfilled desire? It actually felt similar to a fever, but instead of weakening her like the one she'd caught in Java, this one consumed her in a different way. She felt possessed by a fury, and Alex knew it because she could surely read it in her eyes, and the brunette had the guts to grin at her knowingly before crouching in front of her.
Piper's eyes opened wide as she nodded, and grabbed the metal bar which thankfully was nailed to the tiled wall. Alex lifted one of Piper's legs and gently placed it over her shoulder before embarking on a topsy-turvy path of kisses which started in Piper's belly button. Her mouth closed around Piper's outer lips, slowly, like a first kiss, but then the devil inside Alex sent her tongue as a mischievous emissary. There was no innocence in the way the tip of that tongue ran up and down Piper's lips and dipped between them. The blonde risked her safety by allowing one of her hands let go of the metal bar and close around Alex's wet hair, because trying to push that head into her was far more important.
Somehow, miraculously, extraordinarily, it worked. Alex complied, and Piper was good and ready to believe in whichever god wanted to claim responsibility, as the flat of Alex's tongue started drawing the most perfect shapes ever conceived. Wet as they were, Alex appeared to have no doubts as to which wetness was inherently Piper's, and collected it with her tongue before running it over her very desperate clit. For an eternal moment, she became warmer than the curtain of water surrounding her, and was almost ready to come, but then felt Alex's fingers inside her, working her at a constant rhythm, and felt her impending orgasm back down, morph into more pleasure.
Her hand let go of the woman's head and moved back to the metal bar, for fear of crashing down. Looking down at Alex, her lips around her clit, her blue eyes shining with a malice that seemed to say "I'm not done with you yet", Piper surrendered to the "come hither" movement of Alex's index and middle finger, the delicious pressure on her walls, the apparently unending cycle of pleasure.
Then, suddenly, as her screams echoed against the tiled walls, she felt lighter than air, and exploded like an overflowing water balloon under a fountain.
"Oh my God!" Alex cried, her fingers pressing onto Piper's trembling thighs.
"What the fuck…?" she gasped, still out of breath. "What the actual fuck… was that?"
With her surprised eyebrows almost touching her hairline and a growing smile, the brunette rose to her feet. "Fuck me! I didn't know you could do that."
"Do what? Was that…?"
Alex laughed. "Looks like you just squirted, Pipes."
"I… Really?"
"Yeah! I must've done something very, very well."
The brunette kissed her, then helped her out of the bathtub and covered her with a white bathrobe. Piper had to admit that, whatever she had done to her, it had been more than amazing. In fact, she still felt very light, as if her molecules hadn't yet regrouped completely and were still a bit spread out, with spaces of air between them.
"I want to hear how great I am," Alex said, as they curled on top of the canopy bed, both wearing bathrobes. Hugging her from behind, she kissed Piper's cheek several times.
"Well, of course you do," Piper said, clutching one of Alex's hands. The truth was that she still felt her center throbbing like a second heart.
On a related note, she could also feel Alex's heart beating fast against her back. Turning to face the brunette, Piper raised her eyebrows, asked what was wrong.
"Tomorrow," Alex said, simply.
"Tomorrow what?"
"Tomorrow's back to the States."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. For a while."
Piper didn't know how to digest that piece of news. It didn't have to change anything, although it was really the other way around, more like stepping on the brakes: no more changes for some time. Yes, they had already been living together in Alex's house, but that had been before frolicking through half the world. What if…? What if it didn't feel the same? What if part of the spell was in the constant travelling?
"Are you worried?" Alex asked, furrowing her brow.
"Aren't you?"
"'Course not! Pipes! Besides, what do you suggest? Do you want us to stay here, become pirates?"
"Pirates."
"Yeah."
The blonde eyed the other woman suspiciously. "I just… God, the way your brain works! Are you very high right now?"
Alex laughed hoarsely. "I think I could rock an eye patch… I'd have to wear a monocle, though. But I've got the rum thing covered. Come on, I could be a pirate."
"Yes, because being a drug dealer obviously isn't enough for you."
Alex made a grimace, looked away for a moment, but then a cheeky smile crept over her lips. "Then let's just get ourselves stranded in some desert island."
Piper laughed. "Look at us, do you think we would last a week?"
"Pfft! Speak for yourself! I'll totally survive. It's gonna be awesome, babe, think of all the stories we'll have."
That was something the brunette said whenever things took an unexpected turn, supposedly for the worse. Change was always good in Alex's eyes, it seemed, and uniformity appeared to make her feel caged and smothered. Piper had to wonder if even being a pirate would be exciting enough for her.
And now they had to go back, and she had to return to her supposed home, where everybody's lives had probably evolved, moved forwards, while her life had been put on hold. She had been moving around, of course, but in circles, or spirals, not lines, and it hadn't mattered, just as long as she never had to stop.
"You're so full of yourself. And I think you've watched 'The Blue Lagoon' too many times."
"Wait, is that the one with Brooke Shields? In that case… yeah, probably." Alex giggled and attempted an innocent expression. "So, if milady isn't pleased with my excellent suggestions… We'll just have to go back."
"Okay." Piper sighed, accepted Alex's wet, tender kiss.
"We fucking love each other. The rest doesn't matter."
For whatever reason, she recalled the story Alex had humorously told her about the Coco de Mer palm trees, that nobody really knew how those towering trees pollinated, but legend had it that, whenever a storm passed through the islands, the male palms uprooted themselves and had their way with the smaller, female palms in an orgy of rain and flaying leaves. Perhaps she was remembering it because she felt that they were so far removed from their old world that it wouldn't even shock her to look out the window and spot a running palm tree.