18. As Bright as Sunlight

18

As Bright as Sunlight

Celyn

I had never imagined experiencing orgasm, and so I hadn't learned to anticipate it, or how to recognize the desire for such a thing. But with Safira in my waters, the raw longing that filled me every time she touched me crystallized into something new. Heat flushed my entire body, my pulse throbbing between my legs as the soft shaft within my sheath grew thick and hard, sliding out of me. I might have fled, dissolving into water so that I no longer had to endure, except that it felt incredible, my whole mind fixated on the feel of embracing Safira while I ached with a need I had no name for.

Her body against mine. Her strong fingers wrapped around my aching length. The gleaming sensation that soared into me with every stroke of her hand, as bright as the lances of sun off my waves ever were.

It consumed me, leaving me panting for something just out of reach, and Safira gave it to me like a gift. All-encompassing pleasure shot through me, scorching through my veins like lightning and leaving bliss the likes of which I'd never experienced in its wake. That pleasure tore away the need, leaving me satiated, and as the tension washed away in the face of relaxation, I realized that my world had grown suddenly very different indeed.

Like a landslide that changes the course of a river, or a volcano that collapses to make a home for a lake, the touch of Safira's hand created a new landscape for me. That bright pleasure beckoned, asking me to chase it—but though she said that I might give it to myself, what I truly wanted was for her to give it to me, again and again and again. It startled me to discover that yearning, unsure of when the attachment had grown. Yet, I couldn't deny it, nor could I deny the desire to do the same to her.

Perhaps if I could give her the same glories, she wouldn't ever want to leave. Perhaps I would never have to give up the touch of her hand or the brightness of her laughter.

I chose not to think about the eons I would see when her years passed. If I could be so lucky as to have the full measure of her days, I would count myself blessed beyond any expectation.

There were, as it turned out, a great many ways to pleasure a woman, and I determined to master all of them. It satisfied me in the depths of my soul to be able to command her body in such a way. Her surrender to my tongue and touch woke an ageless hunger for her pleasure, and though I could have simply thrown her into orgasm with my power and will, the reward of luring her into it with my physical body was far greater. I could have touched her like that forever, and still not been satisfied.

The pleasure she felt when I touched her radiated out into my water, not only in the salt-taste of her desire, but from the delicate trace of empathy any water-horse has with the creatures that touch his waters. I'd been able to feel the fear of the boy who'd fallen into my waters long ago, and the terror of each slaver I'd drowned. I could speak to them, too, if I chose, sliding my thoughts into their mind while they were submerged within me.

I wondered if Safira would be able to speak to me in such a way. Her voice was such a joy to hear. Every morning when she woke on my shore left me with ebullience radiating through my chest, an eagerness to hear the sleep-roughened voice that lit my memories and days.

Much to my distress, all of the ley powers save for one left not even a full day after Safira first swam in my lake. Greedily, I claimed that full day with her, touching and being touched, but when the sun began to set I decided to tell her. Safira's trust was a precious thing, and as she was open with me, I would be open with her. And, too, the sorcerer who had remained was a great power, one who could end me if she so chose; I had no desire to see my millennia cut short for such a mild sin as pleasuring the gardener.

Safira sprawled naked in the shallow waters with me, allowing me to untangle her curling hair with my fingers. I lifted one lock to my face, inhaling as if I might forget the way her scent mingled with mine, then trailed my fingers down her spine.

"They are gone, Safira," I told her, making myself smile when she looked over at me with surprise on her face.

"They are?" she asked, relief in her voice.

It stung that she would be relieved to leave me, and I dropped my hand, turning my face away. "You need not be so eager for it," I said, a tightness in my chest that I didn't like. What is a woman, to command such desire from a water-horse? "Have I been such a terrible host?"

"Celyn," Safira said. She sounded injured, as if I could do her harm with words.

The sound made me look back in concern. She didn't appear injured, giving me a chiding look. Safira turned, coming nearer, then took my face in both her hands and pressed her warm mouth against mine.

A kiss, I thought, the concept sliding into my mind as she did it, my body melting towards hers.

Her mouth broke from mine, and I followed like a lost duckling, my hand tangling in her hair as I pressed my mouth against her again, soaring desire driving me to it. Safira made a sound of surprise, one that sent a jolt through me, but a moment later she answered with the same heat that roared through me, her lips moving against mine. A moment later she had me straddled, her strong thighs around my hips and her cleft pressed against my shaft as it grew hard.

I threw my head back, a tight sound in my throat, and her warm mouth found the pulse of my neck.

"Celyn," she said, the sound of the name I'd chosen for myself in her throaty voice sending a flash of pleasure through me. "I'm relieved because the sorcerers scared me. If you think any part of this week has been unpleasant, that's just self-consciousness speaking."

I wrapped my arm around her, the heat of her body soaking into me, my fingers counting her ribs. My hips bucked of their own accord, sliding up against the salt of her. I voiced another sharp sound of pleasure as I did, driven into it by the perfection of even touch, my shaft heavy and aching. "Will you be the doe to my stag?" I asked, panting desperation marking the words. "I want to know."

She rocked her hips along my stiff length. I clung to her, waves shivering across my surface, ripples lapping at the shore.

"The mare to your stallion?" she asked, the words new to me.

They fell into my heart with a dangerous possessiveness, the image of her on all fours for me while I took her like the beasts on my shores searing itself into my imagination. She named herself not as a thing we were both like, but as akin to me , painting herself in my image. It didn't matter if a water-horse was a solitary creature. A blooded horse was not , and the stallion laid claim to his mare.

"Yes," I groaned, my voice guttural. I thrust up against her, the sweetness of the friction between us singing into me. "Please. I want it."

"You're sure?" she persisted. When I didn't answer, she stopped moving against me, taking my face in her hands. "Celyn," my Safira said, her voice soft. "You're sure?"

I opened my eyes again, looking into her face with worry and finding only care. "Yes," I said. "I am as certain as the stone in this. I am even asking." I smiled for her, trying to hold my reckless hips still against her. "Allow me to discover how our bodies correspond."

Her cheeks darkened and her eyes went soft, dropping from mine to my parted mouth. Safira shifted, getting onto her knees above me, and reached between us. Her warm fingers closed around my shaft, stroking along me with strength as my head fell back. I held myself still, trembling from the effort. She set the blunt tip of my shaft against the entrance to her body, then smiled at me, her eyes dark.

"This is how we correspond," she said, and sank down onto me.

Blinding satisfaction raced through me as her heat wrapped around me in a velvet embrace. Safira lowered herself down towards my hips, sliding my throbbing body into hers inch by inch, and I clung to her, helpless in the face of it. My hips bucked up against my will. That thrust tore my control from me with sunlit pleasure, the stroke of my shaft into her slick body better than anything I'd ever experienced.

She moved with me, moaning as I kept doing it. Her fingers went to her sensitive nerves, chasing her own pleasure as she gave me mine. My own fingers dug hard against Safira's skin as I braced myself against her body, driving myself into her over and over again, sinking deeper into her with each stroke. The movement sent tension coiling at the base of my groin, everything drawing closer and tighter, with a swollen need.

My pulse throbbed, overtaking my hearing and focus. All I had left to me was the feel of Safira in my arms, the taste of her salt-sheened skin against my tongue, and the overwhelming press of her body around mine. I could have faded into oblivion in that moment, ended my time in the world and thought myself lucky for it. Nothing mattered but her and the feel of me inside of her— nothing. If the price of bliss had been death or a bridle, I would have accepted it without hesitation. She was perfection itself, something impossible, the heat in my veins and the pounding of my heart and the deepening, aching, needy pressure of my groin. She was my everything. I would do anything to have her here with me.

Safira cried out, her body gripping down on mine in rhythmic waves, and it threw me into cataclysmic ecstasy, as devastating as the eruption of the volcano that had been the prelude to my waking. I screamed out the pleasure, my voice soaring to the skies, and slammed myself to the hilt in her. My whole body throbbed with the searing bliss of release, pressure erupting through my shaft as everything within me flared. I forgot about the world and I forgot to lie quietly, waves white-capping and tearing at the shore.

Safira. Safira. Safira.

She crooned to me, kissing me on the neck, petting my hair. I gasped for air, sparks dancing in my sight. Her mouth found mine, and my heart found another focus. I kissed her with everything I was, my body within hers and her body within my waters, and wanted nothing else. If this could have been my life – this one moment, drawn out into eternity – I would never have tired of it.

But the bliss of orgasm faded, as it does, and I came down from those spectacular heights wrung out and dazed. I looked into Safira's beautiful face like a man struck dumb, unable even to remember the words of the things I wanted to say. When she smiled at me, I felt it like the sunlight on my lakebed, piercing through my clarity to warm my very bones.

"That sounded good," she said, grinning down at me with exuberance, her eyes sparkling.

Good? It had been everything to me.

"Yes," I said, unsure of what else to say.

She leaned forward, dropping a light kiss on my nose. "I should go say hi to Marin and Bash," she said, her words easy, all unknowing of the stirrings within me.

I didn't want her to leave. I wanted her to stay here with me, surrender her breath to my waters and make her home beneath my waves. I could have done it, pulled her down with me, showed her the depths of my waters, and for a moment my power coiled through her, locking her legs around my hips where they still rested.

But I had only ever stolen the breath from those who tried to steal me. I couldn't bear to see on Safira's face the same expression those long-ago thieves had worn. She had trusted me. She had an attraction to me. She'd given me the embrace of her body and the taste of her kiss. I would need to trust that she would come back to me, as she always had before.

I released her, as I always did, loss and trembling tension shivering through me.

"Will you come back?" I asked, voicing the worries that twined through my heart.

"Probably not tonight," she said, softening the words with a gentle brush of her fingers on my neck. "As lovely as sleeping next to you is, my back will thank me for sleeping on a real bed. Unless you... want to come inside?"

A shudder ran down my spine at the thought of being locked away from the sky and rain, with stone between my lake and my physical form. "Not even for you will I do such a thing," I said, my loathing coming out in my voice. "I will not consent to be separated from my waters."

She flinched backwards, the automatic reaction digging sharp claws into my chest and throat.

I softened my voice, trying to smile. "I am glad you asked," I said, trying to be encouraging—trying to keep her from fleeing me. From seeing first my danger, and then only belatedly seeing my heart. "It always pleases me for you to ask."

A smile flickered onto Safira's face, the corners of her mouth trembling. "Anger's hard for me to hear, but I'll try to remember that," she said quietly. She got up off of me, my water running down the smooth brown of her legs.

I looked up at her, my eyes tracing the soft shape of her body. Already I longed for her to return, the sensation of something unfinished twisting within me. But to bridle her would be as much a cruelty as being bridled, turning me into her monster, and I wouldn't brook such longings within me. I would need to wait, and to remember that she also liked to look upon me, and to hear my words. Surely I could do such a thing for her. "Is there aught you desire from me?"

Another smile, truer than the one before. "Can you carry me back? In a boat, please," she said, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "I have a lot of things to bring with me."

"Then I shall carry you in a boat," I said, and slipped below my waves once more.