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I came to wakefulness slowly, aware that I was being watched.

I knew who it was before I even opened my eyes; Sayan had slept in my bed every night for almost a year now and I was familiar with the weight of his attention.

He wasn’t, however, usually quite this close.

I shifted back on the pillow a couple of inches in an attempt to bring his beautiful face into focus but he followed me, cupping the back of my head and leaning in to press his warm, full lips gently to mine.

“Mhm.” I smiled into the sweet kiss.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Mm-hmm.”

Unlike my naiad lover, I took my time to come to full wakefulness. Also unlike my naiad lover, I rarely did it this early by choice.

Sayan rolled me over onto my back and slithered on top. “Good morning,” he said again, and kissed me. As he withdrew, he nibbled on my bottom lip and whispered, “Get up.”

Enjoying the warmth and heft of his solid body pressing me into the mattress, I sank back into the pillows with a soft noise of dissent. My eyes drifted closed.

Sayan lifted his hips to sneak a hand between us and give me a frisky squeeze. “Get up.”

I dragged a pillow over my face with a groan. “No.”

The pillow was snatched away and his dark green hair spilled soft and warm around me as he leaned down. “Yes, Erik. You must come with me to my lake.”

I heaved a sigh and looked up at him.

He braced over me, his face expectant and open.

“Later,” I mumbled sleepily. “It’s early still.”

“Dawn was a whole hour ago. I have been waiting.”

I threw an arm over my eyes. “Were you watching me for the whole hour?”

He grasped my wrist and pulled my arm away, ducking down to kiss each of my stubbornly closed eyelids, and then my nose. “Of course.”

“Can you manage another hour?”

He was silent, but the restless shift of his heavy body over mine was answer enough.

I sighed.

“I will wait,” Sayan said abruptly.

“No, it’s all right. If you want to go now?—”

“I will wait. Sleep. I will lie with you. I will be patient.”

He didn’t move from his position on top of me. Gentle breaths ghosted over my face. I felt his gaze like a physical touch.

Keeping my eyes closed, I wrapped my arms around him and slid one hand down his long back to rest it on a smooth, firm buttock.

He dipped his spine, pushing his arse up into my hand, offering it should I want to do more than hold it.

When I didn’t do anything, he huffed quietly.

After another long minute of lying there, he slid off to the side. His heat pressed the length of my body and he slung a long leg over mine.

I suspected that he was up on an elbow, watching me.

I blinked my eyes open and caught him in the process of tracing the shape of my lips, his fingers a scant hairsbreadth from making contact. He froze. I leaned up and nipped a fingertip, and he collapsed onto me, kissing me fiercely.

“Are you awake now?” he demanded.

“I am.”

To my astonishment, he leapt off the bed and thrust out a hand. I’d expected him to at least insist on lovemaking first.

He really wanted me to go down to the lake.

I tossed the bedclothes back and stretched out long, the bones at the base of my spine cracking. “Is there something special about today?” I asked, shuffling over to sit on the edge of the mattress.

“Yes.” He all but vibrated with eagerness. “Today is the day that I will teach you to swim.”

I looked up at him with dismay.

His answering smile was bright.

The truth of it was, I didn’t want to learn how to swim.

I was forty-four years old, and I’d managed to go my whole life without learning.

Until last year, when I’d moved to my cabin close to Sayan’s lake, I’d lived in the great city of Hallevalt. I had been born there, in the Merchants’ Quarter.

Hallevalt was a port city and, as the son of a merchant and then a merchant myself, I’d spent countless days on the wharves and in the waterfront warehouses and offices I owned.

There, the River Valt poured out the city’s filth along with its wealth into the crowded and polluted harbour.

I could safely say that the idea of voluntarily splashing about in its waters hadn’t ever crossed my mind.

As a child, I’d often traveled with my father on business trips, and had explored country ponds and streams as any curious city child would. Once, when we were in Lindis, I’d waded waist-deep in the warm blue sea alongside white shores.

But I’d never learned how to swim.

I hadn’t needed to. Until today.

I’d known this was coming. Months ago, I’d drawn Sayan a hot bath. It was one of many human comforts that he hadn’t experienced before, wild naiad that he was, and I’d meant it as a treat for him. I’d hoped it would remind him of his southern birthplace, which he missed to this day.

The bath had been a great success. Too great a success. He’d been entranced by it, and had insisted that he would ‘return the favour’ by teaching me to swim so I could join him in his lake.

I’d tried to put it off. I’d tried my very best. It had been easy enough to do when autumn cooled into winter and the land was buried beneath great drifts of snow.

I’d coaxed him into more hot baths. I’d even allowed him to coax me in with him.

It was a ridiculously tight fit with the pair of us in there; Sayan had been born in a time when men were closer to gods in stature than to the greatly weakened and diminished form—as he’d earnestly explained—that we now took.

Diminished I may be in comparison to my godlike naiad, but I was still taller than the average man, and squeezing into the tub once he’d crammed himself in there was no easy task.

I’d already ordered us a new, much larger, one.

I’d been fooling myself, though. A bath, no matter how large, would never satisfy him. Today, I had to accept it.

My luck had run out.

Sayan chivvied me through my morning ablutions and hovered close by as I dressed, telling me that neither a wash nor my clothes were necessary, as if I would just hurry , then I would be naked and fully submerged before I knew it.

He lost patience when I attempted to brew a third cup of coffee and, despite my laughing protests, he whisked me out of the house, into the forest, and off to his lake.

We walked hand in hand along the grassy track that wound through the trees. The morning breeze was crisp enough to raise goosebumps over my exposed skin, but it was significantly milder than it had been for some time.

Snowdrops had come and gone months ago, followed by dainty blue squill and thick banks of yellow daffodils.

Blackthorn blossom had turned the bare brown hedgerows into delightful billows of creamy white before fading to make way for fresh new leaves.

The hawthorn had taken up its mantle and now glowed under the lemony, late spring sun, even as the bluebells that had turned the ground beneath the ash and oak trees to a hazy purple carpet were turning, their seed pods swelling.

Summer was almost here.

I’d expected Sayan to all but run us to the lake, but as soon as we’d left the cabin behind us, his urgency eased. He still set a fast pace. Every few steps, I had to swallow my pride and jog a little to keep up.

He squeezed my hand and looked down at me, excitement lighting his green eyes.

I smiled and shook my head. “You really want to teach me to swim,” I said ruefully.

“Of course I do! You will love it!”

I swung our hands between us. “I will certainly try. But Sayan, I won’t feel about it quite the way you do.” I didn’t want him to be disappointed with my reaction, and I wasn’t about to insult either of us by faking an enthusiasm I didn’t feel.

He scoffed. “Of course you will not. You cannot. You’re just a human.”

I raised a brow.

Flashing me a smile, he lifted my hand to his lips and turned it to press a quick kiss to my palm.

“You cannot understand the world as I do,” he said.

“I do not expect it. What I want is to take you to my little island, and to my favourite bays and beaches, and to the fjords far from here. I want to show you all of my favourite places.” His gaze heated and his deep voice roughened.

“I want to make love to you in the water.”

“If that’s what you’re after, we managed to make love perfectly well in the bath. We can do that again, whenever you like.”

“We will,” he said confidently. “Many, many times. But I want to take you in my lake. I need it to know you, as it knows me. You’ve barely even dipped a toe in it.”

Because it was freezing .

It wouldn’t be freezing today, I comforted myself. Winter was far behind us and summer was a couple of short weeks away. Perhaps out in the deeper water it would still be icy, but that didn’t concern me, as I had no intention of going out into deeper water.

I had no intention of going any deeper than my chest.

My chin, at most.

Sayan’s lake was as big as a sea. It stretched hundreds of miles in length, crossed the borders of seven kingdoms, and only Sayan knew how deep it went.

Settlements large and small clustered around its southern edges, while the farthest northern reaches of it were so inhospitable, they were as yet uncharted.

It had many different names, in many different languages.

Here, the townsfolk of Laskeld and the surrounding villages called it simply Greenlake.

I’d asked Sayan once what he called it.

He’d given me a perplexed look and said, “Mine.”

As soon as we reached the sliding pebbles of the gently sloping shore, Sayan tugged on my hand—he’d clasped it tightly in his the whole way there—and turned me to face him.

His quick fingers unbuttoned first my coat and then my shirt in short order.

He made a deep, satisfied sound when my chest was exposed.

I caught his wrists, laughing, as he almost yanked me off my feet with his enthusiasm.