Page 13 of The Naiad's Lover

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 youwantme 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 Iwasn’tdoing 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.

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