Page 22 of The Naiad's Lover

“Besides,” he said, “I’m sure that you’ll pick it up quick as anything.”

“I suppose we’ll have a fairer idea after today.”

He nodded and drained his tea, setting the mug back on the table with a gentle click. “Who knows? You could be a natural.”

I was not a natural.

Ral, fortunately, turned out to be a natural teacher, as patient as he was cheerful.

Sayan walked with us down to the lake, circling us relentlessly and alternately bumping into Ral then resting a hand at the back of my neck before breaking away for more circling and a repeat of the whole performance, until we came out of the trees and the lake was in sight. As soon as it was, he broke into a run and flung himself into the water without leaving even a ripple. The sight was athletic and erotic in equal measure.

“How do you manage it?” Ral asked, adjusting himself discreetly. “Gods, how do you not get completely overwhelmed by him, all the time?”

“Well, as you said, Ral, I’m old?—”

He gave me a friendly nudge. “Mature.”

“—and with age comes experience.”

“You mean experience with naiads and the like? Have you seen any dryads?” He turned to walk backwards, fascinated gaze going from my face to the tangled forest behind me. “No one around here has seen a dryad for at least two hundred years, the way I hear it. Before you, the last person to see even the naiad was Gil Olsson, and he’s ninety-five. Nowthat’sold.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I haven’t seen any dryads. Though Sayan tells me that they are here.”

Or they had been. When I first arrived, a few of them regularly roamed through the forest near my cabin. Once Sayan had claimed me and the area around me as his territory, however, he’d scared them all off. Again, so Sayan told me.

All apart from one curious little one, who lingered despite Sayan’s warnings.

He was an endless source of irritation to my beloved.

“In any case,” I said, “it was experience with relationships and attraction I was talking about, not experience with immortals.”

“Ah.” Ral stopped walking backwards and faced front again. “Can’t say I’ve had much of that first-hand, either.”

“No one you have your eye on?” I asked thoughtlessly as we reached the waterline.

He stopped and gave me a level look. “No one available.”

We stared at each other for a charged moment. I was oddly wrong-footed, and the first to look away.

Then Ral gasped, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders as a great splash of water slapped him in the side of the face.

Sayan stood in the shallows, glaring.

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.

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