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for the horizon, and the sky
was filled with stars so brilliant and huge that they seemed feet above her
head. There was not a hint of light pollution and the air was clearer than
she’d ever seen it, so that the distant hills looked close at hand and the
outline of the cliffs was startlingly sharp. The gulls wittered and squabbled a
little and, nearby, the chickens let out a drowsy clucking, then settled again
as she moved away.
    Tamsin didn’t know whether to head inland or towards the
shoreline, but in the end chose the latter, picking her way carefully - though,
after a few minutes, her eyes became accustomed to the dark and she could see
quite well. Daffodils brushed her legs and released their bright, fresh smell
as she passed. Ahead, the sea was a tranquil line of pewter, glimmering near
the shore but darker as it stretched away. The waves barely raised a murmur as
they met the beach. Ten minutes walking brought her to the cove, feet leaving
hard ground and beginning to sink into pale sand. The tide was in and the beach
was a narrow strip bordering the cliffs.
    Tamsin looked around her. She wondered whether to call
Jed’s name, but something - maybe the utter peace of the night - stopped her.
Instead, she kept walking. The cove wasn’t that large and it took her barely
ten minutes to explore the whole of it, her progress lit by the glow from the
water. At one point, she saw a pile of splintered planks and realised she was
looking at the remains of her boat. She shivered, hastening by, her stomach a
tight knot at the thought of how close she must have come to dying.
    She sat down on the edge of the rocks for a moment,
wondering where to look next. Then a splash drew her attention out onto the
water. A boat was coming into shore, just a dingy really: she could see the
shape of an outboard motor in the stern, behind the figure of it’s occupant,
whose smooth, rhythmical rowing had made the sound. It had to be Jed, nobody else would be here, though he hadn’t mentioned a
boat. She was about to rise to her feet and go to meet him, but, as the keel
ground on the bottom, several feet from the beach, and he rose to his feet, she
realised he was naked. He leaped out, shaking back wet hair, hauling the small
craft onto the shore. He must have rowed out into the cove and gone for a swim,
she supposed. She couldn’t let him know she’d seen him unclothed, so she shrank
down, keeping very still.
    Then she watched, mesmerised, as he left the boat, headed
up the beach and turned sideways on to the sea. She realised he was hard, his
male member thrusting high and proud almost to his navel, the head rounded and
blunt, the shaft thick. His hand reached down to encircle himself and began to move
rhythmically, slowly at first, then faster, his spine curved like a bow and
head thrown back so that his wild curls brushed his shoulder blades. He was
utterly beautiful, his jaw and throat a symphony of line, the muscles of thighs
and buttocks clenching and rippling as he approached his climax. She was
incredibly turned on, so much so that it was all she could do not to tear her
clothes off and join him. As he started to spurt, he turned away from her. Then
he was walking back into the water, wading out till the waves washed his knees,
propelling himself forward and beginning to swim in powerful strokes, foam falling
back in glittering bubbles in his wake.
    Tamsin crept away, bent double, her loins on fire with what
she’d just witnessed, then straightened into a run. She glanced over her
shoulder once and saw he was heading back towards the beach. She had never been
more excited in her life, and yet she was deeply moved. The experience of watching
him had seemed almost transcendent.
    She got back well before him, scrambling out of her
clothes, being careful to knock any grains of sand from her boots before she
entered the porch, so that he would never have the slightest suspicion she’d
seen him masturbating. Twenty minutes or so later