Sharing a Bed with Her Black Surf Coach

I still can’t quite believe I let it happen, but looking back on that week in Hawaii I know exactly how the whole thing started. I’m Emily, twenty-two, white as they come, a college junior who signed up for a week-long surf camp thinking I’d get my own little beach bungalow and some sun. Instead the booking system double-booked me with my instructor. Marcus. Twenty-eight, local, tall and built like he spent every free hour in the water or the gym. Dark skin stretched tight over thick shoulders and a chest that made my mouth dry the first time he demonstrated a pop-up on the sand. We’d been flirting since lesson one—his easy grin, the way his eyes lingered on my legs when I peeled off my wetsuit, the casual touches that lasted half a second too long. When the camp manager apologized and said there was only the one tiny bungalow left with a single queen bed, Marcus just shrugged those massive shoulders and said, “We’re both adults. We’ll figure it out.” The electric jolt that shot through me told me we already had.

The bungalow sat right on the edge of the sand, salt air blowing through the open windows, one bed shoved against the wall and barely enough floor space to turn around. That first night we kept it polite—me in the bathroom changing into shorts and a tank, him stripping down to board shorts and sprawling on his side of the mattress like he owned it. But the tension was ridiculous. Every time he shifted, the mattress dipped and my hip brushed his. He smelled like coconut sunscreen and ocean. I lay there staring at the ceiling, hyper-aware of the heat rolling off his dark body, replaying the way he’d stood behind me in the water that afternoon, big hands on my waist correcting my stance, voice low against my ear. “You feel that, Emily? That’s how you catch the power.” I’d felt it all right.

By the third night neither of us was pretending anymore. We’d just finished a late private session under the moon, both of us soaked and laughing as we stumbled back up the path. My bikini was plastered to me, hair dripping. Marcus kicked the door shut and peeled his rash guard straight over his head. Water beaded on the hard planes of his chest, ran down the ridges of his abs, disappeared into the waistband of his trunks. I couldn’t look away. He caught me staring and smirked, slow and knowing.

“Your turn,” he said.