Page 26 of The Naiad's Lover

“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.

5

“You’re going to what?” I said to Ral a few weeks later, my voice ringing loud with indignation.

He’d managed to coax me into swimming out further than I’d gone before and I was concentrating on treading water, keeping my head above the surface with some ungainly kicks and flails.

“Push you under,” Ral said.

I stared at him, then turned and aimed my ungainly kicking and flailing in a shoreward direction. “No.”

Laughing, Ral darted around to block my escape.

He wasn’t as graceful as Sayan—he couldn’t possibly be—but he was a strong, athletic young man and he made swimming look easy. Natural. He didn’t even have to think about it.

It seemed impossible that I would one day be as confident as he was, but he’d assured me that if I continued to put the time in, then I would be.

I attempted to push him out of my way, and was instead swiftly propelled a few feet in the opposite direction. He enjoyed dominating me in the water a little too much. “Why would you even want to do that?” I demanded.

“Well, Erik, I’m not really here to teach you how to swim, am I? I’m here to teach you how to spend time in the water with Sayan without being convinced that you’re about to die at any moment. You don’t need to know how to do all the different strokes. Now that you’ve mastered floating and paddling, you need to get comfortable not panicking when things get rough and you’re getting splashed and tossed about.”

I frowned at him. “Sayan can control the water. If it was choppy enough that I’d be at risk of being tossed about, he’d simply calm it.”

Ral smiled, dimple popping, and lifted his brows.

“Oh,” I said.

Sayan would be the one tossing me about, not the lake.

“All right.” I stopped treading water and let myself rise to a floating position on my back for a rest. Now that I could do it, I was baffled that I had found it remotely challenging in the first place. “But why do you want to push me under? I don’t think Sayan would do that.”

“Maybe not on purpose, and certainly not if you ask him not to. It’s about getting you used to the shock of going under when you don’t expect it. We already know you’re fine when you do it deliberately. Having it suddenly happen rather than first preparing for it and then doing it yourself is different. Can I give it a go?”

“I suppose it makes sense,” I said, staring at the sky above me. “But—” I cut off with a yelp when he darted forwards, threw himself on top of me, and shoved me below the surface.

Instead of being overcome with panic, I simply thrashed back to the surface with a splutter and glared at him. “That was?—”

He did it again. He leapt at me, put his hands on my shoulders, and drove me down.

I bobbed back up like a cork to see him grinning. “Excellent!” he said, reaching out to shove me again.

I was ready for him, but before he made contact, his eyes flew wide and he shrieked as Sayan exploded from the water behind him, snagged him around the chest, and crashed back below the surface.

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