Page 5

The only way Sayan would stop being jealous of him was if Sayan saw us together.

And, I thought with a smile, if he got to know Lars himself.

Sayan was still tense and angry. The sight of my smile didn’t help. “I am yours,” I said. “You must know that.” Holding his burning gaze, I reached up to frame his face.

He drew back before I could make contact.

Ah. It was to be like that, was it?

I lowered my hands to his chest instead, sliding my palms over his firm pectoral muscles and grazing the small, tight nipples. He was sensitive there. He was a naiad—he was sensitive all over. But, I had noticed, he particularly liked it when I paid attention to him here.

Most likely because all anyone else had ever paid attention to was first his face, and then his cock.

He fought not to react. If you didn’t know him, he would have seemed unaffected by the light touch.

I did know him.

I’d had months and months to learn his body, to learn what pleased him, and how to make him desperate for more.

I might have utterly failed at learning how to swim, but this I had mastered.

“I am yours,” I said, “and you are mine.” I gave one of his nipples a light, teasing pinch.

He gasped and crowded closer before pulling away again.

“Which means,” I continued, “that I have no interest in anyone else in the whole entire world. Only you.”

His eyes were intense on my face. His chest rose and fell quickly.

I held his hip and gave it a warning squeeze when he went to move. I backed up the unspoken command with a sternly raised brow. He stayed where he was, although he seemed conflicted about it.

I moved around to stand behind him, sliding my arms around his chest. “I have no interest in touching anyone else like this.” I stroked over the flat plane of his abdomen.

He curled his pelvis forwards, trying to get me to touch his shaft.

His breath came out in a short, frustrated pant when it didn’t work.

I stroked around to his back and glided my hands up either side of the strong channel of his spine, then pushed up to clasp his nape, pushing his head forwards. Long ropes of shining green hair slipped over his broad shoulders.

He moaned quietly.

“I have no interest in looking at anyone else like this. No interest in playing with anyone else like this.”

I took a round, firm buttock in each hand and rubbed my thumbs teasingly up and down the deep divide between.

He wasn’t used to attention here, either, having been exclusively the one who penetrated. My subtle explorations excited and unnerved him in equal measure.

He panted again, once, as he shifted away from my touch before pushing greedily back for more.

“You need never, ever, feel jealousy over me, Sayan,” I said. “I am wholly yours.” Drawing back, I gave his beautiful arse a sharp, playful slap, and moved away.

He was on me before I’d got more than two steps towards the bathroom, where I’d planned to shed my clothes, wash the lake water from my chilled skin, and warm up with a brisk towelling.

I grunted and laughed, then laughed again when his arms locked around me and he lifted me clean off my feet.

If having his beautiful behind played with was new for Sayan, then being toted around as easily as if I was the sort of slender boy I’d never been was new for me.

He rushed me over to the sofa by the hearth and pushed me down, crawling over me and covering me comprehensively.

He curled his arms around my head and shuffled his hips impatiently until I parted my legs and made room for him.

He stared at me, his lovely face stormy with emotion as he continued to fuss about.

He’d had a preference for enclosing me from the very start, but he’d grown more and more particular about it, adjusting and then adjusting again, until I was entirely contained.

It could have felt claustrophobic.

Fortunately, I revelled in his need for me.

A need that was quite visibly overflowing right now.

I stretched up and kissed him. “The only one,” I murmured against the soft, plush mouth that tensed beneath mine. “You are the only one I love like this, my Sayan. The only one I will ever love like this. You have me, completely.”

His chest expanded and contracted with a deep, shattering sigh.

I spread my fingers wide along his elegant jaw and held him for it as I kissed him again. “Do I have you?”

“Yes,” he moaned, and fell into the kiss. “Yes. Only me. Always.”

He slowly flexed, rubbing his silken skin and hard muscles against me. He made a cross sound when he registered that I was still dressed, and leaned onto an elbow, rucking up my shirt to expose my stomach and chest. He slipped a hand beneath my waistband and gently took hold of my shaft.

It was sweet, how affectionate he was to this part of me. Always tender and encouraging.

We didn’t talk about it often and I had long ago released expectation as far as maintaining an erection went, but the thought of one day regaining the ability, of showing him…

Holding my eyes, his all but black with desire, Sayan seized my wrist and clapped my hand onto his buttock hard enough that it quivered beneath my palm.

I pressed my fingertips deep into the dense, resilient muscle. He watched me anxiously.

“It’s all right,” I said.

He didn’t respond, other than to shift over me again.

I wondered whether I should coax him into asking for what he wanted. I wondered if he even knew.

“Can I touch you here?” I asked. Better than saying, Do you want me to touch you here?

He dipped his head in a short, quick nod. “You can…you can touch me anywhere.”

“Oh?” I eased my other arm free and wound it around him. He pressed closer, dipping his back and lifting his arse into my hands. Gods. I held him there, letting my want and my own possessiveness show clearly on my face. “Kiss me.”

He pressed his lips to mine and brushed them back and forth but didn’t push for more. He nibbled gently, kissed softly…

…and it was completely by rote. All of his focus was centred on his arse and what I was doing to it.

Or what I wasn’t doing to it.

I held it, nothing more. My touch was as reverent and chaste as if I was holding his face.

He hitched his hips into mine with a petulant little demand and nipped my bottom lip.

I pushed him back to look at him.

He glared at me, but his gaze quickly fell away.

I tutted, drawing his eyes back to me.

He huffed and raised a brow.

Very deliberately, I stroked the outside of his thigh, his hip, and up to the delicious, deep dimples at the small of his back. I refused to let him look away as I pushed my hand down and let two fingers glide between his buttocks.

His breath caught as he squirmed uneasily.

I moved back up to those dimples then pushed down again in a long, languorous stroke.

“Just this,” I told him.

“If you…” His breath stuttered and his eyes unfocused as I did it once more, this time brushing the tips of my fingers over his hole. He cleared his throat. “If you want.”

“Mhm.”

I decided to do it a little longer and then, if he was still uneasy, I’d back off and ask him to fuck me instead.

Watching him learn a new type of pleasure was arousing, but it also broke my heart. He was a skilled and passionate lover, yet at times there was a peculiar shyness in the way he responded to me taking control.

Sayan loved me and he loved being with me. He loved indulging in his physicality and using his body and his knowledge to bring us both pleasure.

I didn’t think that he loved the act itself, for itself.

For thousands of years he’d been driven to seek out meaningless encounters with strangers. Always a stranger, never the same person twice. A stranger who never considered him and his pleasure, who took and took and took and, once sated, walked away.

I’d bet my life that he’d never even asked for a kind touch in return.

That he’d kept his need buried deep inside, tucked away in the same place where his loneliness lived, along with his helpless yearning for his childhood, his lost siblings, and the cold mother whose cruelty he didn’t even understand.

I couldn’t think about it for long without growing angry.

He hummed quietly against my neck. Every now and then he opened his mouth and licked at my skin.

“You taste perfect,” he said, and humped against my stomach in a slow, thorough drag. “Like you and my lake.”

I wasn’t all that thrilled to have the lake water dry on me, but Sayan had expressed his enjoyment of it on more than one occasion.

I was stroking him firmly now, up and down, up and down. I let my fingertips tickle the skin behind his bollocks, and when I dragged them back up, I stopped over his hole and held there.

He parted his lips and set his teeth to the long tendon at the side of my neck.

I began a gentle, circling massage.

Sayan moaned and went limp, his heavy body pressing suddenly down onto me and pushing the air from my lungs in a short wheeze.

He arched up into my hand demandingly.

“Yes?” I said, surprised at how gravelly and low my voice was. My heart pounded and my face stung with aroused heat.

He hummed again.

It wasn’t quite enough. I stilled.

“Yes, yes.” He sucked hard at my neck, and pinched the skin between his teeth. “Yes.”

I wouldn’t go much farther today. He was about to come—I knew it by the frantic little pulses of his hips, by the way his voice shook.

I returned to the gentle, slow circling of my fingertips, regular and relentless. He fell into the rhythm, flexing his hips at the same speed, chasing my touch.

“Look at me, Sayan,” I said.

He tried. He raised his head and attempted to focus on me. His cheeks were flushed a deep rose, his lips were bitten red and damp, and his eyes were dazed.

None of this was a mystery to him. None of it was a surprise. Sayan had prepared many, many partners for his possession in exactly the way I was now preparing him.

And yet, from the way he was responding, from the look on his face, you’d think he’d never even imagined such a thing.

It reminded me of the first time I’d taken him into my mouth. Astonishingly, I’d been the first ever to do that, too.

I loved him so, so very much.

Digging my free hand into the solid lower curve of his buttock, I reached for his mouth and said against his parted, puffy lips, “Come for me,” as I breached him slowly.

He did.