Luna carefully wrapped the paper around the end of the chocolate bar and put it to the side. Then she rose up on her knees and leaned forward to Beckett’s face. She kissed him, deep, her tongue flitting and playing in his lips. She stopped kissing him and groped for the bottom of his t-shirt, pulling it up, passing it over his arms and head, and tossing it away.

It landed in a bucket of water with a splash. “Oh! I’m sorry.” Luna giggled as she climbed his body until she was straddling his lap.

He said, “No worries, needed washing anyway.”

She kissed his neck and up to his ear. “But it’s in the dirty sink water.”

He rubbed his hands down her back. “Sink water? What are we even talking about, sink water? Shirt? I’m having trouble concentrating.” They chuckled with their lips pressed together.

She wrapped her arms around the back of his head. “Are you now? Because I feel like you’re intensely focused.” She wiggled on his lap. He groaned and tugged fruitlessly at the bottom of her tank top. He pulled at it but it was tight and wouldn’t budge. “I can’t…”

She grinned, leaned away, and pulled her shirt up and over on her own, flinging it across the rooftop toward the garden.

“Now your shirt is off I definitely can’t think. Where are we even?” Beckett curled around her chest, holding her tight, nestled in her breasts, suckling and kissing. Her breath quickened. He pulled her down, heavier on his lap. Urgently.

“We’re in the middle of the ocean, just me and you, and you want me desperately.” Her voice was a whisper in his ear, then she kissed down the side of his cheek to his lips.

“I do, Anna, I really do.”

She clamped her eyes shut and took a deep breath. “Beckett, I …”

“Yeah?” His hands caressed down her back, pulling her closer.

She closed her eyes tight, gulped a deep breath, “Never-mind,” and pressed her lips to his mouth until she forgot what she wanted to say. She pushed him back to the pillows and bedding, shimmied down to his pants, unbuttoned them, and pulled them to his knees. He rose up on his elbows and kicked them off.

She peeled her yoga pants down, kicked them away, and sat down, a knee on both sides at his waist, hovering over him, rocked forward on her arms, head bowed. She kissed the corner of his lips, and then deeply with her tongue in his mouth. His hands gripped through the back of her hair, rubbing down her back, rocking closer and closer, until it wasn’t close enough. He firmly pulled her hips down and on and himself inside.

A moan escaped him. Her breath caught in her throat. She pressed the side of her forehead into his cheek and found a rhythm as she moved her body up and down on his—his breath close to her ear as she rocked. His hands moving—rubbing along her back and her hips and her thighs. Her small moans coming faster and deeper.

She took his hands in hers, pushed them over his head, and held them there, panting into his ear, pressed long on his body — stopped, deep, stilled, stretched, the pause long, her panting in his ear, his heartbeat pounding in his chest, then a gasp as waves rolled through her body. He pulled his hands from hers, held her hips and thrust again and again, until he climaxed, with her moans hot in his ear.

He slowly released his hands down her thighs and collapsed away.

Her head down beside his, he said up to the universe, “I’m sorry. I should have asked first, about protection. Was that okay?”

In answer, she whispered a non-answering, “Yes,” into the side of his neck, near the place where his heart beat loudest. His arms went around her back, hugging her tight.

Soon she pulled up and off him and slid to his side, head on his bicep. Beckett smiled. A full dimple-cheeked smile. He stroked the side of her face and kissed her on the tip of her nose.

“That was awesome.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Beckett sighed and after a minute staring at the night sky, gestured with his free hand, “Do you know anything about these stars?”

“I do, I’m a navigator.”

“Really? Cool. Can you teach me something?”

“Never. Great-great-great-grandmother Jane would never forgive me if I did. No, my friend, these water stars are not for you. At your mountain house you can look up and learn the land stars. Then my conscience will remain clear.”

“Great-great-great-grandmother Jane is a formidable presence in my life.” Beckett grabbed an edge of the quilt and pulled it to their waists.

Luna said, “I wonder if she would like me?” Then she giggled so much she hid her face in Beckett’s side.

“Probably not, but come to find out, I share a lot of similarities with her lost-at-sea husband, George, so I doubt she would have liked me much either.”

They lay like this for a while staring up at the sky, a soft ocean breeze blowing across the rooftop. Luna rolled her fingers around the soft hairs on Beckett’s stomach. Occasionally kissing his chest nearest her lips.

Finally Beckett said, “You know I was thinking, I know I just met you, but I —”

Luna adjusted to look up at the side of his face as he spoke.

He said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but many prestigious scientists predict that this is the last big emergency. One more swell of water, a rising and then a leveling. If we can just adapt, stay safe, we can get through it. I’m so sick of change, but I don’t know, I have hope.”

Luna kissed his chest.

Beckett reached for her hand and entwined her fingers just over his heart. “I have the mountain house, and it will be above the predicted water level, everyone agrees.

“So what I was thinking, was that I hope—I want to come and get you. You and your family. I have time left, of duty, but I get to pick now, since I volunteered, and I was thinking that I would ask to be transferred to the settlements. Maybe I could even be there by the time you get there. Then we can—”

“Me and my family?” The words caught in Luna’s throat.

Beckett pulled his head up and looked down at her, “What Anna?”

“It’s nothing, It’s just so—I wasn’t expecting.”

“But that would be okay? If I came to the settlement to find you?”

Luna nodded her head, tightening her hug on his body.

“Good, I’ll put in my request tomorrow. I’ll be there when you get there.”

Luna nodded again.

Beckett kissed the top of her head, then held tight.

Finally, she quietly asked, “My whole family?”

“Of course. Or wait, how many of you are there?”

“Either seven or twenty-one depending on the day.”

“Hoowee, twenty-one? Well, I’ll figure that part out.”

Luna flipped over onto her stomach looked down at him and kissed him on the lips. A tear rolled down the side of her nose, dropping to his cheek.

“Are you crying?”

She nodded and buried her face in his chest.

His hands stroked the back of her hair and he tried to pull his head up and see her expression, but she was hiding her face, her tears.

“What’s happening, what’s going on?”

“You just surprised me, and I don’t know—I feel so safe and—”

“You are safe. We’ve got this.”

Luna’s head shot up. Her eyes were red-rimmed, scared. “Beckett, you have to be careful. You can’t just say that—we. The word we, it means a lot to a Nomadic person. It’s a big word. It’s the kind of word that means you’re becoming a part of someone’s family. You can’t just use that word with me and not mean it, it’s too big.”

“I mean it, Anna. I mean it exactly like that.”

“Me too.” She dropped her head to his shoulder so that her forehead rested at the steady thrum of his neck. “Tell me about your mountain house.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s been in my family for a really long time. It has three bedrooms and two baths, which is big these days, and—”

“What direction does it face?”

“Southeast.”

“Sunrise.”

“And there’s a trail, about a half mile, that ends in a place that faces west.”

“Sunset.”

“See, sunrise and sunset.”

“When we get there, can we buy chocolate?”

“Enough for twenty-two people. And thank you for your ‘we,’ Anna.”

“You’re welcome,” said Luna.

Luna slithered over Beckett’s body and rolled onto his other side. “Are you sleepy?”

He said, “I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open, actually.”

She sat up. “How about I do the lashing together tonight.” She pantomimed uncoiling a rope, wrapping it around them both, and tying a big, firm, pretend, yet perfect, holding-while-you-sleep-out-on-the-ocean knot. The kind of knot her family would have approved of if they had seen it. The kind of knot that, if real, would have meant no one would ever drift away in the night. “And I’ll take the first watch.”

Luna curled beside Beckett, hugged into his side, holding on and watching as he fell asleep. She tried to sleep on her back and then her other side. She tried covers and uncovered. Then she really did keep watch, standing and, like a sentry, walking the perimeter of the roof top, looking in all directions. Her gaze watchful, searching, the breeze ruffling her hair. Until finally she was tired enough to sleep.

She lay down beside Beckett and drifted away.