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He tossed the coat to the ground and hauled the unbuttoned shirt from my waistband.

He unfastened my breeches while I was still drawing breath to protest, and whisked my breeches and drawers down my thighs to my ankles, where the bunched fabric got stuck on my boots.

Crouching before me, he grabbed my left ankle and lifted it impatiently.

“Sayan.” I wobbled and braced a hand on his broad shoulder. “Sayan, wait.”

“I do not want to.” He tugged at my boot.

“Stop.”

At my firm command, he heaved a put-upon sigh and rocked forwards from balancing on the balls of his feet to plant his knees on the beach. He scowled up at me.

I touched his cheek. “Let’s at least make sure there is no one around to startle with my nudity.”

It was one thing for Sayan to be strutting about in all his glory. It was a treat to see him. According to the townsfolk, it was an honour.

Me, though?

I was less of a delight. Despite Sayan’s baffling admiration of my ordinary body and plain face, I was just another average middle-aged man.

And in general, one kept one’s clothes on in public.

“There is no one,” he said, wrapping long fingers around my ankle again. That was all; he held me, and he watched my face.

I hid my smile as I glanced up and down the shore.

I hoped to at least see Henrick Berglund and his dog, Lilia, but there was no one in sight.

Of course there wasn’t. When I’d moved to Laskeld, I’d chosen my cabin for its remoteness.

Very rarely did I see anyone, unless I walked in the direction of the town.

It seemed that nothing would save me from Sayan’s enthusiasm today.

“Well?” He gave my ankle a demanding squeeze.

“You’re right. There is no one about to see.” I gasped and bent over, grabbing for his shoulders as he lifted my foot clear off the ground and yanked my boot off, tossing it carelessly to the pebbles. He had the other one off equally quickly. My breeches and drawers followed.

I should have been accustomed by now to how efficiently he could strip me down to my skin, considering that he never hesitated to take matters into his own hands if I was being too slow, but I wasn’t used to it at all.

I didn’t think that I’d ever grow used to his hunger for me, or to the way he looked at me as if he’d never seen anything so wondrous in all his many thousands of years of life.

I didn’t understand it. I supposed that I didn’t have to.

All I had to do was love him back, and that was the easiest thing in the world.

Threading my fingers into his long, wild hair, I gently drew his head back as I leaned down to kiss him.

He stretched up to meet me, eagerly pressing our mouths together.

His large hands coasted up the front of my thighs and around to hold my arse.

He hummed into my mouth, then slowly stood without breaking the kiss until, instead of reaching up, he was the one leaning down.

He pulled away, his lips damp and red. Tangling our fingers together, he drew me towards the edge of the water.

My capricious cock had been showing some interest in the proceedings but as soon as we approached the waterline, it withdrew with trepidation, along with everything else south of my waist.

Sayan continued walking until our arms were at full stretch. When he noticed that I’d stopped and was no longer following him, he glanced back with a raised brow and tugged gently.

He had been so very brave for me.

He’d come into my home even though many centuries ago, he’d been betrayed and enslaved by a lover, and had good reason to fear humans—to fear lovers—and their dwellings.

He’d stayed awake through the winter rather than hibernating, and had learned to love warm fires and candlelight, plush rugs and cushions, to sleep on a soft bed beneath silk coverlets, to lounge in a warm bath.

Day after day, he left his lake and came back to me, walking into my arms as if it was the only place he wanted to be. He’d claimed me and bound himself to me.

Given up his immortality for me.

So this, I told myself grimly as I waded into the glittering, sun-struck shallows and every inch of my skin flinched away from the knifing cold, was the very least I could do.

I had to try.

If I hated it, he would accept that.

But I had to try.

I pasted on a smile and waded deeper, until the frigid water was lapping at my knees and my breaths came short and tight. Sayan turned and picked up my other hand, walking backwards as he drew me in after him, his bright eyes on my face.

He stopped, and gazed at me expectantly.

“It is very pleasant,” I said.

He bit his lip and sent me a shy look from under his lashes. “Yes?”

Oh, my heart. “Yes,” I told him firmly. “I’m l-looking f-forward to s-swimming with you of-of-often. Holy gods it’s cold, though.”

“It is?” he said, surprised.

It was to me. Then again, I was a spoiled and pampered human who was used to luxuries like dry clothes and solid land.

“It is warmer after midsummer,” he said.

I saw the coward’s way out and was about to run for it by suggesting that we try again in another month or two, but the sweet expectation on his face…

I couldn’t.

Bracing myself, I said, “I’m sure it will feel less cold once I am submerged.”

“Of course,” he said with a mischievous smile.

Well. I’d as good as asked for it, hadn’t I?

I caught my breath as the water level rushed from my knees up to my chest and over my shoulders, stopping short of my chin. I yelped with surprise and flailed backwards, going under with a splash.

I broke the surface, gasping, and Sayan’s happy laugh rang out. He scooped me up against his hot body and grinned as I clutched him. “Less cold?”

Narrowing my eyes, I drove a hand between us and grasped his hard shaft. Mine was trying to follow my balls as they did their best to crawl into my body for the warmth. His, as always, stood proud.

His eyelids fell and he grunted, flexing his hips up into my grip.

I opened my fingers and let go before he could thrust more than once.

The water level sank, and returned to lapping around my knees.

Keeping an arm looped around my waist and his eyes on my face, Sayan drew me deeper into the lake.

Pebbles shifted beneath my bare, stumbling feet.

It actually was less cold now. In fact, the parts of me submerged were the warmest; the light breeze that blew strands of Sayan’s hair around his lovely face sliced over my damp skin.

I hurried him backwards, eager to get the water up over my shoulders again for what protection it offered.

He was more than happy to oblige.

Only he kept going until my feet lost contact with the lakebed and I grabbed at him desperately.

He halted, attention going from my face to my neck, where my pulse beat frantically.

He’d probably sensed the vibration of it in the water.

“You are afraid?” he said, his voice lifting.

“Yes!” I clutched his shoulders.

“You have no need to be. My lake will not hurt you. It would not dare, even if it wanted to. Which it does not. You are safer here with me than you ever have or ever will be on land.” His big hands drifted down to settle on my arse.

He lifted me and held me tighter against him. “Do you not trust me?”

“Of course I trust you,” I snapped. Water lapped at the nape of my neck and I fought the urge to wrap my thighs around his hips and cling on like a child.

“I just don’t know how to swim, I do know that men drown easily, and it is hard to believe you when you say the lake won’t hurt me, because I have no idea what that actually means if I were to drop below—aaaah! ”

He’d released his grip on me in preparation, I can only imagine, to let me beneath the surface, but at my appalled shout, he snatched me close again, his eyes wide.

I locked an arm around his neck, hooked a leg around his hip, and clung on. He shook against me with laughter. I bit him on the shoulder. Hard.

Sayan groaned, and then nudged me back towards the shore. He was not, I was disappointed to realise, taking us back onto dry land. He stopped in shallower water and held me close until I had tentatively touched down and regained a sense of balance.

Then I shoved him.

His upper body swayed as gracefully as a young silver birch in the wind. He pursed his lips in an effort not to smile, but the sparkle in his eyes gave him away.

I wanted to turn my back on him, march up onto the shore, and keep going until I reached the cabin.

Unfortunately, more than I wanted that, I wanted Sayan to be happy.

I stood my ground and glared at him instead.

He held the back of my head and ducked down to give me a warm kiss, keeping our lips pressed together as he murmured, “Do not be afraid, my Erik.”

“I’ll try.” I took his face between my hands. “I will try, but this is not my element. It will take time for me to get used to it. Perhaps a lot of time.”

His face lit up. “A lot of time with you in my lake sounds perfect,” he said.

That…hadn’t been what I meant. There was no getting out of it, though. “Then let us begin. Teach me how to swim.”

“It is very easy,” he said with confidence. “You are a human. Your kind has plenty of body fat, like the little seals who live in the north of my lake by the glacier.” He pinched the skin above my hipbone. I slapped his hand away crossly. “You will float if you just surrender to the water.”

Surrendering to anything was not my strong point.

I wasn’t particularly enamoured with being likened to a seal, either.

“Once you are floating,” he continued, “you tense and release your muscles, and that propels you in the direction you want to go. You see? It is easy.”

As I stared at him, it slowly dawned on me that Sayan was quite possibly the worst person in the world to teach me how to swim.

He was a naiad. Swimming was his nature. He’d been born with the knowledge.

Like a seal.

Or maybe I was imagining a difficulty where there wasn’t one, and it was truly that simple. Float, and move my muscles.

It didn’t sound hard, after all.

“Float,” I said.