Page 9

Ral straightened, shoving his wet hair out of his eyes.

“All right,” he said. “I get it. He doesn’t like me near you and he doesn’t like me looking at you.

That’s going to be a problem, Erik, because to teach you to swim, I’m going to have to do all of that, and actually touch you, too. If the naiad?—”

“Sayan,” I said.

He nodded. “If Sayan takes offence every time I do, then?—”

“I know. Don’t worry. We discussed this earlier, and Sayan has given me his word that he won’t interfere once the lessons are underway. Haven’t you?” I lifted my voice pointedly.

Sayan grunted, then looked annoyed with himself and pulled his hair over his shoulder in a long rope, stroking it while he continued to glare at Ral.

“Very well, then,” Ral said. “Let’s get on with it.”

He stripped so fast, he was naked before I even realised what was going on.

It was impressive.

I reluctantly took off my coat, then my boots and stockings. I sighed, took off my shirt and my breeches, and stopped there.

Ral glanced expectantly down at my drawers.

“I think I’ll keep these on,” I said.

“Oh. Do you want me to put mine back on?” He scooped up his drawers and hopped into them. “I didn’t think. Sorry. We always swim naked around here. Right.” He clapped his hands together and swept out an arm towards the lake. “Shall we?”

He strode confidently into the water and immediately disappeared below the surface with a startled shout.

He resurfaced a good hundred yards out.

“I’m okay,” he called. “It’s fine! I?—”

He went under again.

This time he popped up closer to the shore, and Sayan rose up behind him. He waited until Ral was steady on his feet, then gave him a petulant little push.

Sayan stared at me over Ral’s shoulder. He abruptly turned away, his body arcing gracefully and silently beneath the waves.

“Whew!” Ral scraped his wet hair back from his face as he sloshed towards me. He stopped when the water was lapping around his knees. “That was fun.”

Fun? “Was it? It looked quite horrifying from where I’m standing.”

“He’s trying to scare me, and it is not working. It was amazing. I’ve never moved that fast in my life.”

“Amazing,” I echoed.

Ral considered me. “Well, he scared one of us. Erik, are you afraid of the water?”

“No.”

“Come on in, then. It’s lovely.”

I trudged into the shallows, flinching at the cold that didn’t seem to bother Ral at all.

“If you were afraid,” Ral was saying as he moved backwards, gesturing at me to follow, “you should know there’s no need to be. I won’t let you come to any harm. Sayan certainly won’t.”

“I do know all of this, intellectually.” I stopped when the water reached my mid-chest. “It’s simply that the deepest I’d ever been in water as an adult before Sayan tried to teach me how to swim was a few inches, and that was in my bath.”

“You’ll get used to it quickly enough,” he said. “We’re not in any rush, and we’re going to start with the easiest thing in the world. I’m going to teach you how to float.”

I groaned. “We’ve tried that already. I can’t do it! I can’t float!”

“Of course you can. All you have to do is relax, and let the water take you.”

I gritted my teeth. “I can do it when Sayan supports me, but the moment he lets go, I tense up and go under.”

I truly loathed the feeling of water rushing up my nose.

Ral contemplated me quietly. He was, I decided, much more thoughtful than his cheerful demeanour suggested. “It’s not the floating you’re actually having trouble with, is it? It’s worrying about what happens when you go under.”

“I suppose it is, yes.”

“Not a problem. We’ll fix that, and then you’ll be away. Now. Put your face in the water.”

“What?”

“Like this.” He sank down until the water came up to his chin, and then he leaned forwards and put his face in it. He straightened, and laughed at my expression. “Come on, Erik. It’s easy. Give it a try.”

Grumbling, I bent my knees, hesitating when it reached my chin.

“Close your eyes if you like. Dip your face in. In and out.”

I did as he said, then wiped the water from my eyes and shot him a raised brow. “What next?”

“Hah. We’re not done here yet. Do it again,” he said. “Do it lots. Get used to it. Do it like this.” He bent his knees again, only instead of leaning forwards, he dropped straight down, disappearing under the water, and came straight back up.

He stood there and made me go under the surface over and over again. He made me blow bubbles. I felt like a fool, but after what must have been twenty minutes of it, I could safely say that I no longer panicked at the sensation of water closing over my head, and I was even eager to proceed.

And proceed we did.

Once I was used to being under the water, and to holding my breath and staying under for as long as I could, he showed me how to float.

Unlike Sayan, who had wanted me to float on my back, to admire the vast emptiness of the sky above me as I was cradled by the water around me, Ral told me to tip forwards, he supported my chest and stomach as I spread my arms and let my legs rise, and it was…it was easy.

How could I worry about my head going below the surface if I started with it there in the first place?

We were both smiling with triumph when he reluctantly said that it was time to wrap it up for the day.

“Now that you’ve got your confidence,” he said as we towelled off briskly, “you can practice floating, on your front and on your back, and next time, we can move on to doggy paddle.”

“I’d like that, Ral, thank you,” I said, buttoning up my shirt. “You’re an excellent teacher.”

Ral grinned at me, pleased.

After his initial fussing, Sayan hadn’t shown himself once for the duration of the long lesson. Ral and I returned to the cabin, shared a hearty lunch of cold pies with bread, apples, and cheese, and Ral rushed off home with a promise to return tomorrow.

Afternoon turned to evening and still there was no sign of Sayan.

In the end, I went back to the lake in search of him. I found him sitting on the shore, staring glumly out across the quiet water.

He must have been sitting for some time, as his long, thick hair was completely dry, shifting in the gentle breeze. The setting sun gilded him, lighting the magpie iridescence in his deep green hair and casting a soft rose-gold wash over his warm olive skin.

He knew I was approaching but he didn’t look at me. Not when I came to stand at his side, and not even when I sat down beside him.

Instead, he leaned his upper body towards me until our shoulders were touching, and tried to drop his head on my shoulder. He tutted. He was, of course, too tall to do it.

I wrapped an arm around his narrow waist and smoothed my hand over his midriff, stroking gently before letting it rest there.

“I am jealous,” he said after a while. “I think.”

“Are you?”

He nodded, and moved with that sudden and beautiful grace to kneel before me. His eyes were dark on mine.

“Oh, Sayan,” I said softly, and cupped his cheek.

He swallowed visibly. “I do not like it.”

“That’s all right.”

“It is?”

“Of course it is. You can’t help how you feel. You’re allowed to not like something.”

“You are not angry at me for it?”

I pulled him in and kissed his uncertain pout. “No.”

“Even though I wanted to take the boy out to the middle of my lake and leave him there?”

“You wanted to but you didn’t.” Thank the gods.

He snorted. “I wanted to very much, Erik.”

“Why? Because he touched me? That doesn’t mean anything to me. No one’s touch means anything to me. No one’s but yours.”

He’d been sitting back on his heels, but at this he lifted up onto his knees, stretching tall and shuffling closer.

I caught his hips in my hands.

Dusk was falling softly around us. It was a mild, late spring night. His lovely face was still shadowed with unhappiness.

I slipped a hand around to rest on his buttock and encouraged him closer still, even as I sank down to an elbow.

He made an inquiring sound at the back of his throat and followed, knee-walking up until he was straddling my chest. I took hold of his shaft and eased it away from his stomach, angling it towards my mouth.

His eyes were fixed on mine, bright with anticipation.

I licked the tip and his breath stuttered as his hips flexed forwards.

No one had ever put their mouth on Sayan before me.

It still made me angry to think of it. Angry and sad.

In his thousands of years of existence, he had brought pleasure to many.

He’d received little for himself in return.

Pleasure for him had been transactional, a matter of survival.

His lovers had found ecstasy in his arms, and he’d taken nothing but basic sustenance from it.

No one, in all that time, had thought to spoil him, only to be spoiled. They hadn’t sought to arouse and seduce him, only to be aroused and seduced.

It had turned him into a strange mix of utter seductive knowledge and strange, bittersweet innocence.

He could take me apart in minutes. He could bring me to the height of pleasure with a few practiced touches, some filthy whispers, the light brush of lips, and hands.

But whenever I played with his cock or his arse, he gasped and squirmed and panted, behaving as if he’d never dreamed of such a thing—even though he’d done it himself to others.

Now, when I pressed my mouth to his inner thigh, when I licked up the length of his shaft to capture the head and suck it hard, his eyes were round and wondering.

I released his buttock and fell to both elbows. He followed me down, one large hand cupping the back of my head protectively, the other holding his erection at the base as he guided it between my lips in a smooth, unbroken move

His hair fell forwards as he settled me on the ground and he kept his hand behind my head, cushioning me from the hard pebbles that dug uncomfortably into my back.

He was a beautiful sight.

He towered over me, his long torso tight with muscle and flexing with each of his shallow thrusts as he dragged slowly in and out of my mouth.

In general, he preferred it if I pinned his hips and made him take it at my pace, but as I’d suspected, right now he wanted to reassure himself that he owned my affections.

That he owned me, as I did him.

He didn’t thrust deep. For all that he was an overwhelming, vigorous lover who had on many occasions given me a stitch in my side and left me heaving for breath as if I’d been running for my life, he was ridiculously tentative when it came to this.

Even though I’d have taken him all the way in, as deep as I could, he seemed to prefer playing quietly just inside my mouth. It was the act of entering me that he liked the most. He liked to watch my mouth yield to his cock, see my tongue slip over the head.

The sound of the birds in the trees behind us settling in for the night and of the lake before us lapping gently on the shore all faded as my world narrowed to Sayan and nothing more.

He gleamed even in the rising dark, moving over me slowly and relentlessly, gasping with every thrust until his body was all I could see, his breath was all I could hear.

“Erik,” he said, his voice little more than a low vibration. His hips bucked but then, instead of finishing in my mouth as I’d expected, he pulled out, tore open my coat and shirt, and spent on me instead—my neck, my chest, and a little on my face.

I laughed as he did it.

His muscles were cast in sharp relief, clenching in a delicious play of darkness and light as he climaxed with a guttural moan and marked me more thoroughly than he ever had.

His moan tailed off into a deep, satisfied sigh and he eased down to lie on top of me.

“Sayan,” I said with a hint of complaint, catching his sides and attempting to brace him off me.

He grumbled and lay himself fully over me, driving his weight down and rubbing our bodies unsubtly together.

I let him do it, pushing his hair back off his hot face and holding the spill of it at the nape of his neck. He gazed down at me.

“Do you feel better?” I asked him wryly. Now that he’d covered me in as much of his spend as possible.

He considered it, then ducked down and kissed me. It was an incongruously chaste peck. “Yes.”

“Good.”

“Although I think I should do it again, and then I’d feel even better.”

“You do?”

“Mhm.” He kissed me again, licking delicately at my lips. They were swollen and hot after my exertions. It always fascinated him when they were that way. He nibbled gently. “And then I will do it to you, and feel better yet.”

I squeezed his solid ribs and gave him a brisk push. “Let’s go home first,” I said. “These pebbles are beginning to grow—oh.”

He rolled off me and had me up before I’d even finished talking. He gave me a hot look, his eyes raking the length of my body and back up before grabbing my hand and dragging me after him all the way back to the cabin.

If I’d thought he’d made a mess of me on the shore, it was nothing compared to the state of me by the time he was fully reassured hours later, sprawled happily in our bed with a heaving chest and damp skin while I was facedown and gasping beside him.