Page 3

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Float how?”

“Lie on your back.”

He lifted the water level, watching my face carefully and reaching out to hold my hips when I gasped and clutched at him.

The water continued to lift, and we lifted with it. My feet left the bottom.

“All right,” I said, heart pounding. “How do I go from here to floating on my back?”

“You relax, and your legs will simply rise.”

I didn’t think I could relax if my life depended on it.

He squeezed my hips. “Relax.”

I gritted my teeth. “I am trying.”

My clenched fingers were white on his shoulders. My back was strung with tension. My legs began to jerk in spasmodic little kicks.

He cocked his head. “Try harder.”

I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. My core muscles were locked as tight as if I was wearing a corset. I kept trying, but despite telling myself that I was safe in Sayan’s arms, my body continued to disagree, insisting that I was in danger, that I was in deadly peril, that I was?—

Warm, soft lips touched mine. My eyes fluttered open.

Sayan’s were closed, his saturated lashes spiky and dark against his skin.

One arm was curled around my tense back.

A gentle hand held the side of my face. He kissed me again, encouraging my lips to part, and pushed his tongue sweetly inside.

He dipped it in and out, stroking lazily.

My eyes fell shut as I fell into the kiss.

Now this , I could do.

I could kiss him all day long.

I softened into it, sighing when he changed the angle and licked deeper, even more demanding than usual. Perhaps because here he was in his element.

Here, he was king.

He moaned into my mouth and kissed me deeper still, overwhelming my senses until all I knew was his heat, the wet flicker of his tongue as it glided over mine, and the strength of him surrounding me. The chill of the water faded away. My limbs grew soft and heavy with lassitude.

He drew back in gentle increments, from the intense claiming to light brushes that had me chasing for more. I tangled my fingers in his long hair to hold him to me.

“Erik,” he whispered. “Open your eyes.”

I did.

Sayan was bending over me, his gaze dark and hot. All I could see was him. He blocked out the sun, the sky, and I felt weightless as I…

As I floated on my back.

My body jackknifed with panic and I plunged below the surface.

I thrashed and flailed under the water, kicking madly until my foot struck pebbles. Powering up to the surface, I crashed back into blessed air and discovered that I was standing in water that only reached my mid-chest.

Sayan was laughing.

I lunged at him and pushed, regretting my shove instantly when he gave way and sank below the gentle swell, taking me with him.

Before I could panic again, we broke through the surface and he beamed down at me.

When I’d first encountered Sayan, he had been remote, focused only on seduction and frustrated by my resistance to him. As we grew closer, I’d started to see flashes of his playfulness every now and then.

As a sultry naiad bent on sophisticated seduction, he was magnificent.

As a mischievous boy, he was irresistible.

Gods, how I loved him.

I hauled him down to kiss him, holding him in place with a hard fist wrapped in his hair as he made happy sounds against my mouth.

Releasing him, I blew out a breath. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

He nodded at once, his pale green eyes bright.

I would do this. I would learn.

I would do anything to keep that happiness inside him alight, until it had burned his past isolation to ash and had driven his loneliness beyond the point of memory.

“Will you trust me?” he asked.

“Always.”

“Let me take you out deeper again, to where your feet cannot touch the bottom. You will not reach for it, then. I think it will be easier.”

“Very well.”

He gathered me close and I lost myself in the slide of our naked flesh in the water.

My legs tangled easily with his, sliding between his thighs now and then, his sliding between mine.

His arm was firm around my waist and he drew me after him as he moved us out into the lake, further from the shore.

I was safe here in his arms, I told myself, fighting the urge to tense up. He was a naiad. As he’d said, when I was with him in the water where he ruled, I was safer than I could be anywhere else.

I almost believed it.

He stopped about a hundred yards out and we hung in the water, staring into each other’s eyes.

His cheeks were flushed, his expression pleased and proud.

Of me or the lake, I didn’t know. I suspected both.

I rested my forearms on his broad shoulders, let him keep us above the swell, and tried to enjoy the sensation of weightlessness.

Sayan pushed my wet hair back off my face, then did the same to himself. I admired the bunch of his gleaming biceps and he gave me a smouldering look but didn’t follow it up with his usual kisses or fondling.

Instead, he set about teaching me as earnestly as any of my schoolmasters had a lifetime ago.