The Bura did not depart gently. It didn't fade or sigh away. It was as if a great, invisible hand simply released its grip. One moment, the world was a roaring, vibrating chaos of wind, the cottage groaning under the assault, the shutters rattling like angry teeth. The next, an eerie, profound silence descended, so abrupt it was itself a noise. The absence of the scream was deafening.
I lay in my narrow bed, listening to the new quiet. It was punctuated only by the slow, regular drip of water from the eaves and the distant, relieved chirping of a bird. A bar of pale, lemon-yellow light sliced through the shutters, illuminating the dust motes in my room. The storm was over.
A restless energy filled me. The confinement of the last day and a half had left my muscles twitchy, my skin craving fresh air and sunlight. The memory of the charged silence by the fire, of Andre's unreadable gaze, was a live wire under my skin. I needed to wash the feeling of the storm away, to feel something real and elemental.
Swimming. The thought was instant, compelling.
I pulled on a simple, practical black bikini under my clothes, a remnant of a life that involved poolside cocktails, not rocky coves. I wrapped a thin, cotton sarong around my waist and slipped my feet into my hiking boots. The cottage was still silent. Andre's door was closed. Perhaps he was still asleep, or already up at the lighthouse, assessing any damage from the gale.
The air outside was brand new, scrubbed clean and sparkling. The world looked sharp-edged, every detail hyper-real. The grey rocks were dark and wet, the pine needles a brilliant, rain-washed green. The sea was no longer a churning maelstrom but a vast, breathing entity, still heaving with the memory of the wind, great glassy swells rolling in from the open water to crash against the cliffs in explosions of pure white foam. The scent was intoxicating—damp earth, crushed pine, and the sharp, salty tang of the sea.
I followed the steep path I'd climbed on my first day, but this time my destination was the hidden cove I'd spotted from above, a tiny crescent of flat, smooth rocks tucked between two jagged headlands. It was inaccessible from the sea, a perfect, private bowl.
Reaching it required a careful scramble down a rocky incline. My boots skidded on the wet stone, and I had to use my hands for balance, the rough rock scraping my palms. Finally, I stood on the cove's threshold. It was even more beautiful up close. The water here was a calmer, crystalline turquoise, sheltered from the main force of the swell. The rocks underfoot were worn smooth by millennia of waves, warm already from the morning sun.
I was utterly alone. The only sounds were the gulls, the sigh of the sea, and my own breathing. The sense of isolation was absolute, and for the first time, it felt liberating, not frightening. This was my domain, discovered and claimed.
I dropped my backpack on a dry rock and untied my sarong. The morning air was cool on my skin. I stood there for a moment in my bikini, the thin strips of black fabric feeling absurdly constricting, a token from a world of rules and gazes. Here, there were no rules. There was only the rock, the sky, and the sea.
A reckless, thrilling impulse seized me.
My eyes scanned the cliffs above. Nothing. No movement, no dark silhouette. Just the sun-baked stone and the stoic, wind-bent pines.
My hands went to the knot behind my neck. I untied it. The bikini top fell away. I hooked my thumbs into the sides of the bottoms and pushed them down, stepping out of the small pile of fabric. The air washed over my naked body, a shocking, delicious caress. I felt a jolt of pure, unadulterated freedom. This was what it meant to be a animal, a creature of sun and salt. There was no Vesna the journalist, no heartbroken city girl, no unwanted guest. There was just this body, this moment.
I walked to the water's edge. The contrast between the warm rock under my feet and the shock of the water was breathtaking. I waded in, the cold climbing my ankles, my calves, my thighs, a thousand sharp needles. I gasped, my breath catching in my throat. It was bracing, painful, and utterly invigorating. I pushed forward, and when the water reached my waist, I plunged, diving deep into the shocking, silent embrace of the sea.
The cold was a blast of pure clarity. It scoured away every residual thought, every worry, every trace of the storm's tension. Underwater, the world was a muted, greenish-blue dream. Sunbeams cut through the water, illuminating motes of plankton like drifting gold dust. I could see the rocky bottom, a garden of dark seaweed and pale, scattered shells. I surfaced, gasping, pushing my soaking hair from my face, laughter bubbling up from my chest unbidden. It was the first real, joyful sound I'd made on this island.
I swam for what felt like an eternity, my body waking up, singing with the effort. I floated on my back, looking up at the vast, empty blue of the sky, the water cradling me, my skin tingling with life. I felt cleansed, reborn. This was the escape I had been searching for. This raw, physical connection to the elements.
Eventually, my fingers began to prune and a pleasant weariness seeped into my muscles. I swam back to the cove and waded out, the water streaming from my body in rivulets. The air, which had felt cool before, was now deliciously warm, the sun a balm on my chilled skin. I felt no urge to cover up. The feeling of the sun and the gentle breeze on every inch of my skin was too exquisite, too primal to deny.
I found a wide, flat rock that was smooth and sun-warmed, a perfect natural altar. I spread my sarong on it and lay down on my stomach, letting the heat seep into my bones. I closed my eyes, listening to the rhythmic crash of the waves, feeling the sun paint my back, my legs, the curve of my backside. The rock was firm and real beneath me. I was a lizard on a stone, a seal on a shore, completely and utterly present in my body. I drifted in a state of semi-consciousness, the boundary between myself and the natural world blurring into nothingness.
I don't know how long I lay there. Time had lost its meaning. It could have been five minutes or an hour. But a subtle shift in the atmosphere, a prickling on the back of my neck, pulled me from my sun-drenched stupor. It was the unmistakable, visceral sensation of being watched.
My eyes snapped open.
My gaze, unfocused and bleary with sun, travelled across the cove, up the rocky incline I had scrambled down.
And there he was.
Andre.
He stood at the top of the path, silhouetted against the bright sky. He wasn't moving. He was just… watching. The distance was too great to see the expression on his face, but his posture was utterly still, his attention absolute. He was holding a coil of rope over one shoulder, as if he'd been on his way to mend something, and had simply… stopped.
A hot flush of embarrassment and something sharper, more volatile, shot through me. My first instinct was to jerk, to cover myself, to scramble for my bikini. It was a deeply ingrained, social reflex. You are exposed. You are vulnerable.
But I didn't move.
I held my position, my heart hammering against the warm rock. The shock of being seen began to morph into something else. A challenge. He wasn't turning away. He wasn't pretending he hadn't seen. He was looking, with a direct, unflinching intensity that was both an invasion and an acknowledgment.
So, you see me, I thought, a defiant anger mixing with the strange thrill coursing through my veins. This is me. Not the journalist. Not the intruder. This.
Slowly, deliberately, I pushed myself up onto my elbows. The movement was languid, unhurried. I made no attempt to shield my body from his gaze. I turned my head fully towards him, meeting the shadowed focus of his eyes across the distance.
The air crackled. The sounds of the sea, the gulls, seemed to recede, muffled by the intensity of the silent communication passing between us. It was a standoff. A test of wills.
His stillness was unnerving. He didn't shift his weight, didn't look away in polite embarrassment. He absorbed my nakedness, my defiant posture, with the same focused intensity he gave the lighthouse mechanism. He was cataloging me, learning the lines and curves of me, and in doing so, he was stripping away every last pretense.
My breath came faster. My skin, moments ago cooled by the sea and warmed by the sun, was now flushed with a different kind of heat. This was more exposing than the nakedness itself—this unblinking, mutual stare. I was daring him to look, and he was accepting the dare without a hint of shame.
I saw him take a slow, deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling. It was the only movement he made. Then, very slowly, he adjusted the coil of rope on his shoulder. It wasn't a retreat. It was a recalibration.
Still holding my gaze, he took one step backward, up the path. Then another. He didn't turn his back on me. He simply withdrew, his eyes locked on mine until the angle of the path and the rocks obscured him from view.
He was gone.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding, a long, shuddering exhale. My body was trembling, alive with a thousand conflicting signals. Shame. Anger. Triumph. A raw, aching vulnerability. And beneath it all, a deep, throbbing current of pure, undiluted arousal.
I looked down at my own body, seeing it through his eyes. The water droplets had dried, leaving a faint dusting of salt on my skin. My nipples were hard peaks, not from the cold, but from the adrenaline, the intensity of that shared look. I felt utterly seen, in a way I never had before. Not even with Luka, in our most intimate moments, had I felt so… laid bare. This was beyond physical. It was a confrontation of selves.
I didn't dress immediately. The spell, though broken, had left its mark. The sun felt different on my skin now, his gaze a lingering brand. I sat there for a long time, staring at the spot where he had stood, replaying every second of that silent exchange.
He hadn't smiled. He hadn't leered. He had looked with a hunter's focus, a keeper's assessment. And in doing so, he had acknowledged a power in me I hadn't known I possessed. I had confronted him not with words or arguments, but with the simple, unadorned truth of my body, and he had not looked away.
Finally, the chill of the returning breeze prompted me to move. I pulled on my bikini, the fabric feeling alien and restrictive against my sensitized skin. I tied the sarong around my waist and gathered my things.
The walk back to the cottage was charged with a new and terrifying anticipation. What would he say? What would I? Would he pretend it never happened? Would he be angry?
I found him in the shed, as I had to pass it on the way to the cottage. He was coiling the same rope with meticulous care, his back to me. He didn't turn as I approached, but I saw the muscles in his shoulders tighten. He knew I was there.
I stopped at the entrance, the bright sunlight outside throwing my shadow into the dark, oil-scented space.
"The water was incredible," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "After the storm."
He finished his coiling, placing the perfect loop on a hook on the wall. He turned around slowly. His stormy eyes met mine, and they were different. The flat hostility was gone. In its place was a dark, smoldering intensity that made my knees feel weak. He looked at me now not as an intruder, but as a puzzle he had just begun to solve. A territory he had just begun to map.
"The Bura stirs up the deep water," he said, his voice low and rough. "It makes it cold."
He held my gaze for a moment longer, a world of unspoken meaning in that look. I saw you. You saw me seeing you.
Then he gave a curt nod, as if our entire encounter had been summarized in that single, charged statement, and turned back to his workbench.
I walked to the cottage, my body humming. The air was no longer thick with unspoken words of animosity. It was now thick with the unspoken words of a challenge that had been issued, and accepted. The game had changed. The rules were gone. We were two solitary creatures on a rock, and the first, true line between us had been crossed, not with a touch, but with a look.
And I knew, with a certainty that thrilled and terrified me, that nothing would ever be the same again.