📍 38°41'21"N, 1°23'18"E — Cala Saona, Formentera

The Caseta

📍 38°41'21"N, 1°23'18"E — Cala Saona, Formentera

She had been waiting twenty minutes when he arrived, and those twenty minutes had done their work.

Marina was sitting on the old mattress, back against the cold stone of the caseta, knees pulled up to her chest. Through the narrow opening in front of her, the sea. Nothing else. The kind of view that empties the mind and lets the body think instead.

She was thinking about his hands.

Tomàs came in without a sound, lifted the linen curtain, and found her exactly as he had imagined — eyes already dark, dress already half surrendered to the heat of the stone. He said nothing. He crouched in front of her, took her face between his palms and kissed her slowly, with a precision that cut her breath short.

She grabbed his shirt.

— Easy, he said against her lips.

— No, she said.

He smiled. She felt that smile more than she saw it. He slid his hands along her arms, her shoulders, down her back — not to undress, just to learn, to memorize things he didn't yet have the right to know. She arched slightly, involuntarily, and he took note.

The dress fell.

He looked at her — really looked, without glancing away — and she resisted the urge to cross her arms. He pressed his lips to her collarbone and moved down slowly, with a patience that bordered on cruelty. She buried her hands in his hair.

— Tomàs.

— Mmh.

— This isn't what I had in mind.

— I know, he said. It's better.

She wanted to answer but his mouth had just found something that made words unnecessary. She let her head fall back against the stone, eyes on the low ceiling of the caseta, nails in his shoulders. Outside, the waves. Inside, her breath breaking in shorter and shorter gasps.

He came back up slowly along her stomach, her throat, and when he was finally face to face with her, she pushed him over.

— My turn, she said.

What followed had no proper name — just skin against skin, warm stone, crumpled linen, and the sea continuing outside as though nothing were happening. She took what she wanted. He let her, hands on her back, face in her neck, murmuring in Catalan things that sounded like prayers or blasphemies — she wouldn't have known the difference.

Afterward, there wasn't much to say.

She lay on top of him, listening to his heart slow down. Through the opening of the caseta, stars were beginning to appear one by one above the black water.

— When do you leave? she asked.

— Day after tomorrow.

She didn't answer. She laid her hand flat on his chest, felt his warmth, and decided that was enough for tonight.

📍 38.6892° N, 1.3883° E — Cala Saona, Formentera, Spain