16. Swimming

16

Swimming

Safira Chastain

T he sorcerers didn't leave that day, or the next, or the next. By the fourth day, even with Celyn's company, I was getting very bored, and with the summer heat and sun beating down on me, I was starting to get a bit tacky with old sweat. I looked out across the beautiful blue waters of Tsirisma Lake with jealousy, watching Celyn as he floated in the waves.

"Sure wish I could join you out there," I said, sighing.

He tilted his head, regarding me. "You may, if you so desire."

"Wait, really? You're sure?" I asked, looking out at the blue waters of the lake before I looked back at Celyn, who lounged with most of his body underwater, fingers laced behind his head. I really wanted a swim, but I hadn't expected him to be fine with me doing so.

"The water is lovely," he said in his most beguiling voice. "And you have the invitation of the water-horse, and his promise that no harm will befall you in his waters. What, then, are you waiting for?"

"I'm just surprised!" I said, getting to my feet and stretching. "I didn't expect you to say yes."

He shifted his position in the water as I started undressing, looking almost as if he was treading water, though he barely moved his legs through the water. "Have I not always said yes to your requests?"

I thought about that for a moment, before shrugging. "I guess you have. Seems like a lot, though." I shimmied out of my pants, hesitated, then shucked my underthings. Celyn wouldn't care, and there was no one else here to see.

"You have held me in your arms each night," he said, lilting humor in each word. "I cannot imagine that holding you in my waters will be much more."

I chucked the last of my clothes onto my bed, tied my hair back, and got into the water without further ado. Tsirisma Lake was an alpine lake, but it was also the steaming lake, and though the water was cool it didn't chill my skin. I waded out until the water hit my thighs, loving the feel of the clean water, then dove down beneath the surface to swim out into the deeper parts of the lake.

When I broke into the air again, I caught sight of Celyn panting, a look on his face that seemed to be a cross between bewilderment and deep pleasure. I swam over towards him, a little concerned, pausing where the water was still shallow enough that I could rest on the tips of my toes instead of treading water. He didn't move, not looking at me, his eyes unfocused as he breathed hard. I'd thought it would be a lot to have me swimming in his lake, given how strongly he'd reacted the first times I'd touched his water and his skin, but I hadn't quite expected... this.

"Celyn?"

He shuddered and turned his face towards me. His pupils were blown wide, almost round in his pale blue eyes. I'd never seen him look like that, even when I'd touched him before. Celyn looked completely overwrought, and when he didn't move or react further, I swam out to him, hesitating for only a moment before I reached over and touched his face with the backs of my fingers. Surely touching his skin couldn't do more to him than being embraced by his waters.

"Are you alright?" I asked softly. "Do you want me to get out?"

"I..." he started, sounding overwhelmed, and shuddered. "I..."

His eyes darted down between us, and I looked down out of reflex, glancing down his body to see that—oh, wow. To see that having me in his waters like this, naked and swimming, was a very pleasurable experience for him indeed, if the evidence of his body could be trusted. The... rather spectacular evidence of his body, truth be told. I yanked my eyes up from staring at his erection to see Celyn looking at me with a stunned sort of expression.

"I don't understand what's happening to me," he said, in a faint voice.

I flushed crimson. Big damn lake in the middle of nowhere. A water-horse, an elemental, born not out of sex or any other form of reproduction, but by the existence of his lake and the impression it made on the world. Someone who had never been touched kindly before me, let alone sexually, and who apparently had no frame of reference for how such things felt. The creatures of the water didn't mate in the way of the creatures on land, I supposed.

"Um," I said, and bit my lip.

He made a low sound at that, almost a whine, and leaned his head forwards, his chin lifting.

"Your body is doing the things men's bodies do when they're experiencing sexual desire," I said, my body responding in the same way, as my nipples pebbled from more than the cool water and as my pulse started pounding between legs.

"Oh," Celyn said, still looking into my eyes, with something like desperation overtaking the confusion on his face.

"Do you... like it?" I asked, brushing my fingers back along his cheek.

Celyn whimpered, like he couldn't help it, like he had the first time I had ever touched his skin. "Yes," he said, that desperation leaking into his voice. "But if you— If you don't want me to... be like this, you should... get out of the water."

"I like having you like this, too," I said, my voice dropping lower. I didn't mean to say it, the words slipping out before I could catch my tongue—but Celyn was always so straightforward with me. I ought to give him the same honesty.

Celyn made a sound halfway between a whicker and a moan. Underwater, he touched my arms, as if stabilizing himself.

"What would you like me to do?" I asked, keeping my voice gentle despite the desire heating my skin and throbbing between my legs. All of the views of his beautiful, naked body I'd gotten in the past months flooded into me, carrying with them all the lustful feelings I'd carefully shut away. Now we were both naked, and he was surrounding me.

"I... I..." he panted, looking down between us, his eyes drawn not to his own bodily reactions, but running down my bare skin. "I want to... be touched."

"Would you like me to, um, touch you... there?" I asked, my pulse rising and my breath coming faster at the thought of putting my hands on his strong body, of wrapping my hand around that impressive length. Hung like a gods-damned horse.

"Please," he whispered. "Please. I want something, but I do not know what it is. Will you show me?"

Well, that lit a fire in me, and sent desire licking up my spine like flames up tinder. I hadn't gotten into the water with the intent to seduce a virginal Celyn, but now that I found myself here, I certainly wasn't going to leave him wanting.

"I'm going to need some shallower water so that I don't drown," I told him.

He managed a laugh, amusement crossing his face as he reached up and caressed my face with his wet fingers. "Did I not tell you that I would allow no harm to come to you in my waters?" he said. "You cannot drown in my lake any more than I can."

"Oh," I said, startled. "I thought you meant that you wouldn't hurt me."

Celyn made a low sound, like a short hmm . "I shall keep your head above water, but would you not regard me drowning you as hurting you?"

A smile tugged at my mouth. "I suppose I would," I replied, and put my arms around his neck, allowing my body to sink down against his, so that my chest pressed against his and my belly pressed against the muscle of his abdomen and, sweet Helena, against the hard line of him that lay between us, hot and thick.

He gasped, his body bowing around mine, and he drove his hips up into me, grinding his shaft up against my stomach with a sharp sound of pleasure. "Oh," he said, with the voice of one overwhelmed. "Oh."

I stroked my fingers down his back as his arms went around me, Celyn clinging to my body like a lifeline, his powerful fingers digging against the muscle of my shoulders. I kept touching his back, reveling in it, trying to rein in my own desire to give him time to adjust, and to make sure that he enjoyed everything, rather than feeling pushed or too strange and uncomfortable. For his part, Celyn held me tight, his hips moving with small, juddering motions, his face pressed against my neck as he panted.

"Still good?" I asked.

He nodded, making a soft moan as I shifted, sliding my skin against his stiff length.

"When people get sexually aroused, often they want sexual release," I said, blushing from the words, feeling so strange explaining sex to an ancient lake who I greatly desired. "For most people, that means touching our sexual organs. We can do it ourselves, too, but it feels very good to have someone else do it for us."

Celyn nodded again, and I ran my hands down his back again, then slipped them a little lower, cupping the curve of his ass before dragging my fingertips up along the soft underside of his tail. He made another sharp sound of pleasure, and I made a small one myself as he slanted his hips up against me.

"Anywhere sensitive can be sexual once we're aroused," I said. The words came out throatier than I intended, and I had to swallow. "The context matters."

He clung to me, breathing hard, strong thighs tense against mine.

I nuzzled my cheek against his head, breathing hard, my sex tingling and aching for him. But Celyn was more than virginal, totally naive, and I wanted him to be able to experience exploring sexual pleasure if he wanted to. Leaping straight into having sex with him wouldn't be fair to him, nor would it give him a chance to figure out if he even wanted that. So, despite the fact that I very much wanted to lift my hips and sink down onto his impressive endowment, what I did instead was to slide my hands around his hips, running my thumbs down the furrows of his hips until they pressed between us.

"I'm going to touch you," I said softly to him. "If you like it, I'll keep doing it, and if it's strange or uncomfortable, tell me so I can stop, okay?"

He shuddered, making a quiet sound of want. Celyn nodded a third time, his muscles taut, holding us in the water in the strange way he could, so that neither of us had any need to tread water. I slipped my hand between us, desire trembling in my chest, and moved down to wrap my fingers around his stiff length.

He gasped as I did, his hips jerking up into the contact, and as he slid up against my palm he let out a loud groan of obvious pleasure. My already warm cheeks grew hotter; I hoped that nobody was outside and close enough to hear him being wanton, not because I felt any shame in getting caught with my hand wrapped around him, but because I didn't know that he needed anyone else on the island to know about his first discovery of sex. Celyn pretty obviously enjoyed the feel of my hand around him, so I started stroking him, paying attention to how his body moved and the sounds he made as I touched him.

Celyn started breathing in great panting gasps, his chest heaving against me like a horse run almost to death, and he kept making those same overwhelmed oh, oh sounds, more as I tightened my grip around him and started moving faster, raising the pace when he seemed to get used to the sensation of having me stroke him like that.

"Safira," he moaned.

Heat shot straight to my sex, making my body clench tight. I had never expected to hear my name from him like that, and never anticipated I would want it. Now that I'd heard it once, I felt a wyrm's greed settle into my belly. I wanted to hear him say my name like that over and over again—to make him fall apart because of me.

"What—oh, what am I supposed to, ohhh, oh, Safira, what should I be doing?" he gasped out.

I swallowed, salivating from how much I wanted him. "You don't have to do anything," I said, the lust all but dripping off my tongue. "There's nothing you're supposed to do. You can just relax and let me make you feel good."

"A-as you like," he said, and groaned with pleasure as I shifted my grip.

I felt him start to relax into it, the tension in his shoulders easing as he started making small moans with every breath. His taut thighs trembled, and his chest kept tensing and releasing as his body flexed. I blessed the summer weeds for giving me the stamina to keep touching him like this, to draw my hand along the hard need of him, over and over, as Celyn started moaning almost without ceasing.

"Oh, Safira," he said through a moan, sounding like a lover, his voice soaked with sexual pleasure. "Oh, you are— You are killing me with pleasure."

My breath hitched at that, a sound of desire catching in my throat, and a moment later, Celyn shook and arched around me, coming with a loud, shattered cry, pulsing against my hand in waves as he did. I kept touching him, drawing him through it, until he melted against me, making a quiet whimper. Heat flooded me, the deep pleasure of taking someone through ecstasy and into bliss. Celyn came for me , and because of me. He wanted this from me, and had never so much as thought of it before.

I felt like a goddess, as if I was Helena touching her consort Metien for the first time, changing their relationship from one of friendship and companionship to one of sexual pleasure. Giving him the gift of the knowledge of that kind of physical pleasure, and waking in him the desire for more.

I released Celyn, putting my arms back around him, and gently touched his back and sides. He held me for a while, as his breathing eased, simply pressing against me as we bobbed low in the water. I let my own arousal fall away, enjoying the intimacy of being wrapped around him like this.

Wrapped around a multi-thousand-year-old lake elemental, floating in his waters, held in his strong arms. A lake to whom I had just given his first orgasm. The world was sometimes a very strange place.

"Was that the something you wanted?" I asked in a murmur.

Celyn made a low sound, shivering. "Yes," he said in a rough voice. "What is it?"

I blushed again. Deflowering a water-horse. What had my life turned into? And yet I couldn't bring myself to regret one moment of my time with him, nor any part of this.

"There's lots of names," I said. "Orgasm, climax, release, and coming are the common ones." I rubbed the back of his neck with my fingers. "You can do it for yourself, the same way I did it for you, if you want to feel like that again. Probably other ways, too, if you want to experiment. People can get pretty inventive about it," I added with a smile.

He pulled back from me a little ways, lifting his head off of my shoulder so he could look into my eyes, his expression relaxed and... happy. Celyn looked happy, at ease in a way I usually only saw in flashes, as if floating here with me in the early summer sunlight after having me touch him like that had given him everything he could want in life.

"What about you?" he asked, some of that roughness still in his voice. "I know these bodies are built to be complementary, in the way of all animals, but I have never before had the chance to discover in which ways we might correspond." A smile slanted up one corner of his mouth. "Nor have I previously possessed the desire to do so," Celyn added. "I fear you may have turned me into a young stag in his first rut, for I suspect that, now that I know what bright ecstasy this body holds, I will be helpless but to seek it out. I understand now why the stags chase the does."

I smirked at that, and he made an amused sound in response, tilting his head.

"You are not surprised."

"I am not," I said, trying not to laugh. "That is pretty much the experience of everyone with any interest in sex, when we discover what our bodies can do."

"You as well, hmm?" he asked, rolling one shoulder, with a smile that bordered on smugness. "Perhaps you will be inclined to show mercy to me, then, now that I understand these things I have been desiring."

"Have been?" I asked, raising a brow as I switched my arms to rest on his shoulders, held still in his waters. I'd imagined the deeper water of the lake would be colder than the surface, but though the water felt cool against my skin, the temperature was comfortable enough that I thought I could spend hours in it without getting a chill. I supposed he was Tsirisma Lake, the steaming lake, fed by hot springs and held by a volcano, and I shouldn't be surprised that his waters felt warmer than the typical alpine lake.

Celyn smiled at me, and ran his hands up my sides, which did very interesting things to my body.

"I crave the touch of your hand far beyond the comfort of social creatures, Safira," he said in a gentle voice, as if he took care not to frighten me. "I only desired a solitary existence before I met you, but it seems you were correct about me all along."

I made a sound of curiosity at that, not sure what he was referring to.

He leaned in towards me, sliding his hands back down to grip my hips. "I broke your pump so I could use it as an excuse to pester you, because I have an attraction to you."

It was so unlike how he usually phrased things, a delightful callback to our first meeting, that I burst into laughter. Celyn smirked at me, looking very satisfied with himself.

I shook my head and smiled at him, and stroked his hair. "You're attractive to me, too," I told him.

His smirk softened into a smile. "Am I?"

I laughed, unable to help myself, while he kept looking at me with those soft, happy eyes. "Yes, very," I said. "Unlike you, I'm practiced at identifying sexual desire, and I've been attracted to you since I first saw you."

Celyn snorted and wrapped one arm around my waist, tugging my hips flush against his body again. "You might have told me such," he said. "I spent many long hours these past months troubled by my yearning for your presence, carrying in my soul the desperate hope that you would not come to fear or despise me. The comfort of knowing that you also desired to look upon me would have saved me much concern."

I rubbed my fingers along his neck. "That's not sex, Celyn," I said. "That's affection."

"Hmm," Celyn said. "Perhaps it is both."

"Perhaps," I answered with a smile. "And I do like both."

"Then it is well," he said, resting his forehead against mine as we floated in his waters.