Page 8 of The Naiad's Wish

I squeezed him closer, making him groan. “It was a long journey to get here,” he said, “and I haven’t had the chance to freshen up yet. I came straight down to your lake to find you.”

A flash of pride rippled through me. “You did?”

“Of course I did.” He cupped my cheek, looking almost sad. “You must know that you are precious to me.”

“Most precious?” I asked quickly.

“Themost precious. Of all things and all people.”

“IncludingLars?”

“Including Lars,” he said solemnly, though his lovely dark eyes gleamed with amusement.

I unbuttoned his coat, pushing his hands away when he went to do it himself. It was my delight to unwrap him.

I’d be even more delighted if he agreed to be naked for me at all times, but Erik was, after all, a human. He had strange human ideas about such things.

Usually, I liked to take my time. Not today.

Today, I found myself gasping and pulling at his clothes. Fabric ripped beneath my fingers, and Erik huffed out a sharp laugh when I yanked at his breeches, bouncing his hips off mine as I wrestled with the fastenings before whipping his breeches down his thighs.

I moaned, my hands going straight to his buttocks. I gave the heavy globes a firm squeeze, reminding myself to be gentle,gentle, but as soon as I felt the bare skin of his torso against mine, and that glorious rasp of hair that led down to his cock abrading my smooth navel, I pushed my fingers between his buttocks without ceremony.

Erik yelped, his entrance tight and unyielding.

I rubbed apologetically over his hole, petting it and murmuring nonsense against his mouth, still hauling him into me, into me,into me.

“Oh,” I said, and spilled without warning over his stomach, my heart thundering, my legs trembling.

Erik held me through it and pressed a kiss to the side of my head when I curled over him and hunched down to tuck my face into the crook of his warm neck. I opened my mouth over his skin, taking in the taste of him. Salt, heat, male.

Mine.

I shuddered and spilled one last time.

Once, this would have mortified me.

Shocked, appalled, and mortified me. It wasn’t a naiad’s place to take his pleasure first—he must give and give and give, and only when he had earned it was he supposed to take his own.

So my mother had taught me, back on her island when I was young.

Erik taught me differently.

Pleasure between lovers, he said, was a thing to be shared, not apportioned and doled out. I was allowed to feel. I was allowed to seek and take joy in his body. He offered it to me freely. Hewantedme to take joy in it.

He wanted me to be happy.

My mother had also wanted me to be happy—Erik had had a strange expression on his face when I’d told him that—but more than my happiness, she was concerned with my dominion over humans. With my survival.

If there was one thing I knew, it was how to survive. As for being happy?

I was learning.

Erik ran a firm hand over my long hair, all the way down my back to grip my buttock. He jiggled it playfully in his hand and I moaned into his neck, bumping my hips into his.

“Lay the fire for me,” he said, releasing me with a brisk pat, “and let me go and freshen up.”

I made a complaining noise and pressed closer, picking up his arms and wrapping them around me. While I was drawn to the fire and would doze in front of it for hours and hours, sprawled out on the rich autumn-coloured rug, I didn’t care for laying it. It was a messy business.

---