Page 12 of The Naiad's Wish

“It was just a dream, Sayan.”

Did he meannightmare? Because it sounded like one.

I glared up at the ceiling. “Tell me more,” I said bravely.

6

The sofa creaked as Erik shifted on it. I cut him a sideways look but didn’t meet his eyes.

“I dreamed,” he said after a moment, “that you lay before me and you brought yourself to pleasure. For me.”

I blinked at the ceiling, confused. “But why would you want that? Why wouldn’t you want to touch me?”

Doubt clawed at me, but for a few queasy moments only. Though I didn’t understand his human drives, I was as certain of Erik’s love as I was of my lake.

“It will be hard not to,” he said.

I arched a little, lifting my hips into the air in a subtle roll and loving the faint hitch of his breath.

“But,” he continued, “I am very, very greedy when it comes to you. I have never seen such a beautiful man?—”

I moaned and lifted my hips again, aching for him.

“—and I almost never get to admire you.”

That made no sense. “You see me all the time. Except when you leave me forLars.”

He suppressed a smile. “I see you very close up, Sayan,” he said.

I pondered this.

It was true. I was always on top of him. Or holding him to me. Holding him down. Curtaining us with my hair. Enclosing him in my arms…clutching him to me…drawing him in.

I covered my eyes with an arm and stroked my chest fretfully.

Within seconds Erik was there, kneeling beside me. I felt the rise of his heat over my sensitive skin before his touch landed. He laid a hand on my sternum and left it there, a steady, grounding weight.

Lifting my arm, I peeked under it at him.

He was watching me. “It was a dream,” he said. “An idle thought. That’s all.”

“I can do it.”

“Not if you don’t want to. Although…”

“Although what?” I flung my arm away from my face. My hand landed on his thigh and I gripped it absently.

“Although—” he brushed a lock of hair from my eyes, “—I think you will enjoy it.”

I wasn’t so sure.

“I think,” he said, “that you will like to see what you do to me.”

“I know what I do to you,” I said smugly.

I’d watched his pupils expand, his cheeks flush, and his chest begin to heave. I’d seen his stomach hollow, his thighs quiver, and his hands tremble.

I often displayed myself for him. I usually did it in my lake as I approached him, to draw his attention from the water birds, or the clouds, or whatever he’d been looking at before I’d arrived. The idea of dragging the moment on and on…of doing it here, in my land-home…of having all of his attention—allof it—on me and me alone…

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