You’d swear we both hadn’t seen other human life for centuries by the way she gawped at the yacht. But it didn’t take me long to spring into action.

I stood up and started waving the oar high above my head, making the canoe tilt wildly from side to side. Ellie followed suit and upped me one by screaming out at the top of her lungs. To our utter astonishment, a series of three, echoing blasts came from the yacht’s horn.

They had seen us.

Thank god!

We turned to each other, amazed, and fell into a big hug. Then we both started sobbing. Easy, unstoppable tears streamed down my face as I kept looking at the yacht again and again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Could it really be? Were we saved?

I didn’t care if she saw me crying, dammit, this was the happiest I ever felt to see another human being. Once it was a little closer it honked its horn a second time and by now we could both make out three figures standing at the rails, waving intermittently at us. Ellie and I must have waved so hard back we nearly snapped our arms off.

It took a good ten minutes more for the yacht to get closer, and we could make out more details – it looked like a small luxury vessel, with two decks and a gleaming white finish on a nose so sharp it was like an iron gliding and slicing through the blue. When they were within fifty yards or so, I turned to Ellie again, who was pale as a ghost, and held her arm tightly.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said, and gestured towards the water. She looked down sadly at our meagre possessions in the boat. Her handmade sunshade bound together with Charlie’s strange, final apology. Our vodka bottle filled with water and a handful of the crumpled leaves that held our paltry lunch. I understood her hesitation. We had only recently clung to these flimsy belongings like they were the most important things in our small world, the tiny difference between survival and dying out here like dogs. And now we were leaving them all behind.

I helped her climb over the edge without tipping us over and I followed, the sea water swallowing me up easily and coming to my neck. She was having difficulty with her foot again, but I clasped her hand and we swam out together towards the yacht, where the three stood, lowered their aluminum ladder and watched us approach.

The engines on the yacht had gone quiet and now the whole boat bobbed gently and waited for us like an angel of mercy. I briefly turned to look back at our own ancient boat, now suspended aimless in the crystal water, freed to pursue some other adventure without us. I cannot describe the emotions I felt as I turned away from it and placed my hands on those slick ladder rails.

Though I was shaking violently, I managed to turn halfway up and help Ellie step on after me, her foot dragging behind her. I looked up to see the cautious faces of three middle aged men, all wearing golf shirts and swimming trunks, all peering down at us and wondering what the hell they were looking at.

Wet and exhausted, we stood there on the deck before them, dripping and exhausted. It was an awkward few moments. Ellie hid slightly behind me, not yet sure whether we were completely welcome here.

“My name is Todd McGregor, and this is Ellie King. We were both aboard the Odyssey Pacifica, which went down three days ago. We were stranded on an island and escaped in a small canoe. There are four other survivors we’ve left on the island, one in critical condition. Please, can you help us?”

The three men exchanged gob smacked expressions, before one jumped to attention and extended his hand for a handshake, not quite knowing what else to do. It was a surreal moment. Before he could speak, though, I felt Ellie grab at my shirt and spun around to see her collapse to the deck with a heavy thud. We all raced to her and immediately the three noticed her swollen foot.

“She needs medical attention,” I said, although it didn’t really need saying.

“Ok, I’m going to alert the coastguard. Don’t worry, you’re OK now. To be honest, we didn’t think there were any more survivors,” one of them said.

I knelt down to stroke Ellie’s brow but another one of the men was already hoisting her up and carrying her into the cabin.

“We have a first aid kit somewhere, please, come inside,” he said and whisked her off. I followed dumbly, not quite believing that any of this was really happening.

I heard the firm, insistent voice of the other guy on the radio with the coast guard. I followed into a beautifully furnished room below deck complete with tiny chandelier, gleaming wooden floors and an immense blue and white bed, which the man promptly lay Ellie down on. She was already coming to.

A glass of water was thrust into my hands before he set to work mixing up a bright pink electrolyte mixture. Without a word, he fed this to us both, although I was happy to let Ellie get the lion’s share. With glazed eyes she gulped it down, then lowered her woozy head back onto the pristine white pillows. She looked so wild and natural in this glossy room, like some ancient creature from another era.

I collapsed into a chair and watched the man fuss over Ellie, trying to update my brain to the reality in front of me. We’d need to get to shore and get Ellie to hospital as soon as possible, and then we needed to send for the others.

The strange, sexual window we had opened together just a few moments before had snapped completely closed and now seemed like only a passing dream. He made Ellie swallow some pills, and then felt all over her forehead before looking at her foot with a grave expression on his face.

Then he looked at me.

“You were out there for three days?” he said. I nodded. He shook his head and looked back at the wound.

“You’ll be wanting something to eat I bet,” he said, mostly to himself. “Look, why don’t you and your wife get cleaned up – the bathroom’s just through there – and I’ll fix something for you both to eat, OK? Just holler if you need more soap or anything else. We’ll take you both back to the harbor right now and we’ll get missy here to the doctors. It’ll take us a half hours, tops.”

He looked more awkward than I felt, but I was hoping my utter gratitude was a given in this situation, and that he’d spare me any further small talk.

He looked over at Ellie, nodded at us both and closed the door on us. Ellie relaxed her head over to look at me, her eyes bleary.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I keep fainting like that,” she said.

I immediately went over to her and laid at her side, stroking her arm to let her know that she didn’t need to apologize, didn’t need to say anything at all. I was still reeling from what we had just done together on the boat, and now all those new sensations were congealing and taking shape in my mind. My ‘wife’. It was a weird mistake for the guy to make, but it was only one of a million strange things that had happened today. I didn’t correct him. Maybe I liked that we looked like we belonged together.

She dozed in and out of sleep. I could smell the strawberry flavored electrolyte mix on her breath. I got up, went into the bathroom and resolved to run her a bath, even though at this point I was feeling pretty bushed myself. The tub was small but luxuriously fitted. I filled it quickly with piping hot water and stared dumbly at the rising level, wondering if I too was in shock.

On the spur of the moment, I grabbed a bottle of foam bath and squeezed some under the running water. It felt ridiculous, to have a full-on bubble bath after everything we’d been through. It wasn’t that such an extravagance was necessarily wanted. But if we were going to ease back into reality now, a bubble bath would be an innocent enough introduction.

I went back to the bed, gently lifted her up and smiled down at her weak but contented face. I carried her to the bathroom, gently peeled of her clothes – that poor party dress that had been ocean dunked so many times by now – and her underwear.

She held my neck as I lowered her down into the soapy water. It felt like heaven to touch her, after what had happened on that little wooden boat. She was certainly not a tiny woman, but her figure was mesmerizing. Her generous, soft breasts fell simply against my chest. I found it strangely touching how her porcelain skin was burnt slightly red around those places her dress hadn’t covered her. And I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that enticing little triangle nested between her legs.

She was awake, but drowsy, looking up at me with bleary eyes and something that might have been a smile on her face, might have been a grimace. I suddenly felt a wash of guilt at not having protected her more from all of this. Could I have found us more food? Would she have felt stronger now, and would her foot be healing better, if I had been smarter and found a better way to survive on that island?

I released her weight into the bathtub, then proceeded to undress myself and climb in beside her. She didn’t seem totally conscious, and her eyes were closed, but her head followed my every sound and I could tell she was trying hard to stay with me.

“Just relax, Ellie. You’re very hungry, that’s why you feel so tired. Once we clean up here, we’ll have something to eat and then we can rest until we get back to shore, OK?”

She nodded.

I climbed in and positioned myself around her, her back resting against my chest and my legs framing her body on either side. It was the same position we had taken when I helped her swim back from the mussel rock and she …touched me.

I took a loofah in my hands and began gently squeezing water all over her body. I took my time. Her eyes flickered open and she watched me with interest. I softly soaped up every inch of her beautiful, exhausted body and she yielded entirely to me. I realized after a while that I felt proud. She had been in crisis mode for the last three days, and had been bravely holding on. Now, with the end in sight, she could finally relax and let go. And she trusted me enough to do it in my arms.

I had to get out of the tub to wash her long hair. I supported the back of her head as she lay back and submerged herself till the water lapped at her temples. Her hair fanned out like a mermaid’s under the water, almost the same color as the soap bubbles. I gently ran my fingers through it, imagining that I was loosening out every last particle of sand, every last thread of stress from the ordeal we had escaped together. When I had finished with her hair, I ran some soap suds over her belly and gently slipped my hands between her thighs, soaping the soft, coiled fuzz there. My heart beat madly in my throat as I guided a tentative finger down the middle slit, opening gently to allow in the warm, soapy water. Her knees fell gently open and she let me.

I washed over her raw, angry looking wound and spent my time cleaning the sand off her other foot, too. Once I had cleaned every part of her, her eyes looked brighter and she even refused my hand as I offered to lift her out of the tub. Slowly she stood and climbed out, the water streaming off the many peaks and valleys of her full, womanly figure. I quickly hopped in after her to wash up myself and let the water out. She stood and watched me attentively as she toweled herself off.

A tiny island of sand gathered at the plug as the water drained away. We toweled one another off together, in silence, the simple tasks of bathing as welcome and monumental as any solemn ritual ever was. I was feeling more and more refreshed by the minute, and if the mottled pink color growing on her cheeks was anything to go by, she was feeling the same.

When we made our way back into the bedroom, we instantly discovered a little tray on the bedside table, and it was laid out with a few sandwiches, some fruit and what looked like glasses of lemonade. Without skipping a beat, she rushed over to it, flung herself down on the bed and in a second she had already gobbled down half a sandwich.

“Oh my god, Todd, this is the best thing I’ve eaten in my entire life,” she said with a full mouth, and I could do nothing but laugh. It was a joke. But in a way, it was painfully true. Still chewing, she got to work on the second half of her sandwich, and held up the tray to offer me the other sandwich.

I shook my head.

“Why don’t you eat both? We’ll be back on shore soon,” I said.

It was food enough for me just to watch her guzzling away, not even a half second of thought given to manners. I loved it. I had seen her sad and angry and horny and now, I had seen her ravenous, as well. I liked all her variations. And I liked just how much she and I had shared together these last three days – like we were both on a weird intimacy crash course.

I swallowed back the glass of lemonade and paused for a moment to feel the sugary ice cold reaching all the way down into my chest. While she got to work on the other sandwich, I sat beside her on the bed and ate an apple, then moved the tray to the door, checking to see that it was locked. It was. We found some simple clothing in the cupboard and dressed, her in a too-big sundress and me in a pair of old-man shorts and a t-shirt that had a picture of a cartoon manatee on it and ‘FLORIDA’ printed above it in a watery font. We took a moment to laugh at one another.

Then we both lay back on the bed, staring up at the molded ceiling, remembering how good it felt to eat and drink again. Our eyes were adjusting to the modern human landscape again: it was all plastic, metal, and fiberglass and no longer sand, water and tree.

“You know, when I bought tickets for the cruise, I told myself that it was a test. That depending on what happened during those two weeks, I would make my next important life decisions, you know?” she said thoughtfully.

I thought about reaching out to grab her hand, but held back.

“Looks like I got more than I bargained for, didn’t I?” she said and laughed quietly.

I didn’t want to think too much of what would happen next, back at shore. Whether she’d disappear from my life forever. I knew that the second we hit the harbor, there’d be a flurry of activity – there would be authorities, doctors, lots of talking, explaining, stress. For now, she was all mine, though.

I reached my hand over and took hers. We held one another there like that. I could still feel the sea waves underneath us. The same ocean that had wrecked everything was now pacified and carrying us safely to where we belonged.

She turned around and pressed her back to me. She was still warm and smelt like soap. I turned to curl my body around hers, and as I did so, I realized just how tired I also was. Without thinking, my hands started to tenderly, gently trace her curves, down and then slowly up her hips, her waist, her arms and at that faint swell where her breasts began. She pressed back into me.

I was hard again.

Wordlessly, her own hands glided over her body and soon she had shimmied up the end of her dress and pulled it high to her waist, exposing her bare, warm ass to me. I pulled my own shorts off again and pressed my naked, excited body against hers. We moved quietly, like ghosts, like two survivors who are dazed to find that they still have life in them, still have appetites.

It was easy to find that delicious sensation again, the one we had stirred up together on the canoe just a while ago. This time, though, I was as close to her as I could get, my face buried in her sweet, damp hair and the full length of my body pressing firm up against the full length of hers. Together, we found a slow, gentle rhythm grinding against one another, me rubbing into the silky skin of her amazing ass, and she writhing carefully back against me.

I don’t know how it happened. It was certainly not something I planned. I had spent all my life stressing about sex, stressing about expectations and obligations and crumpled under the weight of my own stupid neuroses – but all at once it felt like the most natural thing in the world to slip my cock between her full thighs and leave it there. She closed around over me, stroking me till I grew even more stiff. I nearly lost my mind when I realized that her beautiful, sweet pussy was the source of that warm wetness I now felt slick over the length of me. The head of my cock twitched, almost painfully. I just had to be inside her.

It was no momentous occasion. No great barrier was crossed, no new realm penetrated or vast new world unlocked. In fact, slipping inside her felt like the exact opposite: like coming home. Like being separate from her was the mistake, and coming together again was the relief. It was the perfect, satisfying sigh of one puzzle piece folding frictionless into another. My fears and anxieties disappeared instantly. I knew why I had never done this with anyone before. I had been waiting for her. Waiting for this feeling.

Even our breath went silent as I tilted my hips and brought the entire heft of my cock into her, pressing up and in till I could go no further, and the edge of my body met the edge of hers. I was struck how fucking hot she was inside. She was like a magic castle, with secret rooms that unlocked and opened to me the deeper in I pressed. I wanted to reach all the way inside her, to love her with every inch I had, to leave nothing of her unopened. We lay together, my balls pressing faintly against her now sopping clit, and breathed.

My arms easily found a place for themselves around her body. She folded effortlessly into my grasp, and every other part of us found its twin on the other: my chin nested in the crook of her neck, my knees tucked into the back of hers, my arm discovered a home tucked under the smooth cleft where her large breasts met her waist.

I closed my eyes and relaxed into her, feeling myself almost swell to fill her gorgeous cunt. When I pulled out slightly it was only to press back into her again, and repeat that sweet, sweet gliding feeling of finding my way back inside her each time. She was wet and impossibly silky, her hips tilting back to accept me in again.

And again. And again.

I placed my hands on her hips, not to guide the rhythm there – she was already fucking me well all on her own – but to all the more appreciate how beautiful it felt to have her moving against me like that, wanting me, taking me all the way in and then out again.

I pulled back and peered down a little, a dirty thrill shooting through me to see the wide bulk of my cock cramming into her little hole. I marveled at how her body accepted it all, how that split peach of her pussy clung to me and stretched around every thrust I gave her. Other than her slow, secret hips moving against my crotch, she was still and silent, and I had to rely on the signals of her body to know that she was enjoying it. Enjoying me.

This was it. It was happening, and it was nothing at all like what I had imagined. Every night on the island I had furiously jerked off with the most outrageous of fantasies in mind, Ellie always center stage. But now it was actually happening, and it was so, so much hotter than even my horny, desperate self had imagined.

Having already come so recently, it was only a few minutes before I felt ready again, as though being rescued and dragged out of the Atlantic Ocean was a mere interlude in our fucking and the previous three days had just been an extra long foreplay session. When I felt the peak of my orgasm cresting over me, I didn’t resist it, and it washed over me easily and fully. I pressed up into her as hard as I could, softly growling despite my best efforts to remain quiet, and squeezed her ass cheeks hard, trying to get give her every drop of cum right into the deep, delicious core of her body.

She came soon after, too, slow and syrup-like, and her exhale had the faintest sound of a whimper along its edges as she twitched hard and shuddered all through her hips.

It was dream sex. Floaty, soft sex. The kind of sex you can only have when you’re teetering on the edge of death and life, caught between two places, between stranger and lover, between hopeless and hopeful, between land and sea. Coming inside her felt like a giant wave crashing onto the shore and melting into millions of fluffy, foamy bubbles that stroked over the sand on their way back out again.

I softened inside her and nuzzled deeper into her neck. I held her. In a moment, she wriggled off me, pulled down the hem of her dress and rearranged my arms around her again. I was happy to be her blanket. We dozed for only a few minutes or so before we heard a polite knock on the cabin door and the voice of one of the men.

“How are you two doing?” he cried. “We’re just about getting ready to pull into harbor. You all set?”

He knew we had been fucking. I knew he knew. But I didn’t care. We had been starved out there, and we were going to greedily sate all our separate hungers now: for food, water, fucking.

We would need our strength for whatever was waiting for us back on shore. I had seen Ellie at her most frightened, he most desperate. I had seen her more naked than I thought it possible to see another human being. I had seen her dirty, in torn clothes and desperately gnawing at half empty mussel shells for nourishment. I had seen her limp and cry and swim and even fight.

But the prospect of what we would do now, in the real world again, was more than a little daunting.