Page 37 of The Lighthouse Keeper and the Mermaid
“Sleep with me tonight. I want you to fall asleep in my arms.”
CHAPTER 38
Her heart hammered in response. “Will you be able to rest if you’re not moving?” she asked.
“I guess we’ll find out,” he said with a smile. “When we’re little, we don’t move when we rest. I guess it’s more like what you call sleep, and our mothers drag us along. I think I still can if I really wanted to.”
She laughed at the thought of a little Kallias dragged along by his mother. “Okay,” she said, “but only if you agree that the second you feel like you need to go back into the water, you go. You don’t even need to tell me. I understand.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he agreed easily, perhaps too easily for she still wondered if he’d actually go. But maybe that was just her heart being silly.
“It’s a shame,” she said, “because I have to stay near the lighthouse, and I have to get up every two and a half hours to rewind it. Otherwise, that sandy beach a mile or so down would be perfect. I mean up here”—she gestured to the sandy bit above the rocks—“this might work but I have no idea how you’d get up here. And I know you said you’re fine, but I’d kind of like your tail partially in the water. It’d make me feel better.”
He snickered. “I promise you I’m not that fragile. And I couldprobablymake it up there.”
“By what, using only your arms? These rocks aren’t kind. You’ll hurt your tail.”
“What about…?” he started, turning his head to the south. “Have you been down there? I think there are some perfect places not even a minute swim.”
“Your kind of swim, you mean.” For her, it’d probably be a fifteen minute swim or more.
He laughed. “Of course.”
She thought about it. It had been years, possibly even a decade, since she had bothered to explore that part of the coastline, but he was right. The rocks there went in and out of the sandy sea with little pocket caves. Some caves even had blowholes during the right tide. In fact, a lot of those ‘caves’ were really just some overhanging rock over some sand, just little pockets maybe ten feet wide and only borrowed from the ocean’s grasp. She imagined most were probably covered when the tide was in. A small few might hold their ground until a raging storm.
“Is it low tide?” she asked to his confusion. “That’s when the sea is farther from the shore.” She looked to the markers on her dock. It seemed to be. “That should probably work.”
So that was what they decided to do. She lit the lighthouse earlier that night while Kallias swam over her contraption that would wake her. She had warned him it would be very disjointed sleep, but he didn’t seem to care—maybe since as he said he usually stayed somewhat alert regardless—and while a part of her loathed the idea of having to row back and forth all night, she loved the idea of sleeping beside him enough that it didn’t really matter.
But when she was ready to climb into her boat, Kallias stopped her. “I’ll take you. I’m a lot faster.”
It was a warm enough night that she didn’t hate the idea of getting wet, and honestly, it was better to leave the rowboat in case any passing boats noticed its absence and found it suspicious. A lighthouse keeper should never leave their post after all, especially not when the light was lit.
She ignored any guilt of her ‘leaving’ her post. She’d be asleep either way, and a minute on shore versus inside the lighthouse was not much of a difference, was it?
So she readily agreed to Kallias taking her and started climbing down to the water, only to say, “Wait. How exactly are you going to hold me?” As fast as he went, she was not sure she was ready for that kind of face full of water.
She wasn’t sure what kind of expression she was making, but he laughed at it. “I’ll keep your head above water,” he promised.
“Okay,” she said slowly, hearing her wariness more than even feeling it.
She hopped into the water and he came up to her, wasting notime in kissing her. “Ready?” he said, as if a kiss was something they just did every day. Maybe at this point it was. She nodded and then so did he. “Here, just lie against my back and keep your legs to the side of my tail.”
His muscles were firmer than she might have imagined them, and she couldn’t help but drag a finger over his shoulder blade. He truly was gorgeous, like he came straight out of a Greek myth.
His body tensed at the contact. “Daria, are you trying to torture me?” he asked.
“Why? Does it feel bad?” she asked, instantly retracting her finger like she had been stung.
“It feels wonderful,” he purred, in such a way that it made her blush.
Not until marriage,she chided herself, and she scooped her arms around his chest. “Is this better?”
He laughed. “No.” It was a complete tease and she laughed as well as he said, “Hold on.”
Both their heads stayed above the water as he glided along, and she knew it wasn’t half as fast as he could go when he was fully under and her legs weren’t in the way, but it was still easily ten times faster than she had moved in anything ever.
“It’s incredible,” she called as the water rushed past them. His laugh of joy mixed with hers, and as they came to the little cave with its powdery, white, sandy beach and she got off him, she realized he had picked one with a two-foot-wide blowhole. Or it would be a blowhole when the tide hit right, but right now it was a skylight to the stars, like a painting of the universe was above them, and she started doubting he had brought her to this one by accident. No, in fact, there were the most beautiful shells she had ever seen rimming the edge of the cave in a single line too, too perfectly placed to be natural, and purple flowers that grew in the cracks of the rocky coast were dangling from the cracks in the ceiling.
