Page 6 of The Naiad's Lover

“I’ll try.” I took his face between my hands. “Iwilltry, but this is not my element. It will take time for me to get used to it. Perhaps a lot of time.”

His face lit up. “A lot of time with you in my lake sounds perfect,” he said.

That…hadn’t been what I meant. There was no getting out of it, though. “Then let us begin. Teach me how to swim.”

“It is very easy,” he said with confidence. “You are a human. Your kind has plenty of body fat, like the little seals who live in the north of my lake by the glacier.” He pinched the skin above my hipbone. I slapped his hand away crossly. “You will float if you just surrender to the water.”

Surrendering to anything was not my strong point.

I wasn’t particularly enamoured with being likened to a seal, either.

“Once you are floating,” he continued, “you tense and release your muscles, and that propels you in the direction you want to go. You see? It is easy.”

As I stared at him, it slowly dawned on me that Sayan was quite possibly the worst person in the world to teach me how to swim.

He was a naiad. Swimming was his nature. He’d been born with the knowledge.

Like a seal.

Or maybe I was imagining a difficulty where there wasn’t one, and it was truly that simple. Float, and move my muscles.

It didn’t sound hard, after all.

“Float,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Float how?”

“Lie on your back.”

He lifted the water level, watching my face carefully and reaching out to hold my hips when I gasped and clutched at him.

The water continued to lift, and we lifted with it. My feet left the bottom.

“All right,” I said, heart pounding. “How do I go from here to floating on my back?”

“You relax, and your legs will simply rise.”

I didn’t think I could relax if my life depended on it.

He squeezed my hips. “Relax.”

I gritted my teeth. “I am trying.”

My clenched fingers were white on his shoulders. My back was strung with tension. My legs began to jerk in spasmodic little kicks.

He cocked his head. “Try harder.”

I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. My core muscles were locked as tight as if I was wearing a corset. I kept trying, but despite telling myself that I was safe in Sayan’s arms, my body continued to disagree, insisting that I was in danger, that I was in deadly peril, that I was?—

Warm, soft lips touched mine. My eyes fluttered open. Sayan’s were closed, his saturated lashes spiky and dark against his skin. One arm was curled around my tense back. A gentle hand held the side of my face. He kissed me again, encouraging my lips to part, and pushed his tongue sweetly inside. He dipped it in and out, stroking lazily.

My eyes fell shut as I fell into the kiss.

Nowthis, I could do.

I could kiss him all day long.

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