Chapter 5

5

I pushed him back and crawled over him, lowering my body to his until he was pinned beneath my dense weight. Humming with soul-deep satisfaction at the feel of him under me, I lowered my head to take his mouth in a long, soft kiss.

The earlier urgency to take him and re-stake my claim still beat through my blood but it had eased to a deep, steady throb rather than the jagged and desperate scatter of beats it had been before.

I held the side of Erik’s neck and stroked a thumb along his jaw as I parted his lips with mine. He opened for me. Our tongues slid together tenderly and I purred with happiness.

Erik’s amusement was evident in the short puff of air through his nose that struck my cheek. I soon put paid to that, curling my tongue over and around his in a way that drew a moan out of him. I flexed over him, settling my body heavily onto his, as if I was trying to fuse us together.

Erik’s hands drifted into my hair. He held me to him as he pushed up and up into the kiss, and up some more until I gave way and he had enough room to turn us.

No matter how I tried to keep him beneath me, where I could keep him safe while I worked for our pleasure, eventually, Erik always turned us to put me on the bottom.

Sometimes we wrestled for it. Sometimes we ended up rolling slowly over and over the bed—or the floor—switching places until we were shaking and laughing.

But I liked to be beneath him.

I liked it so much.

Until Erik, I ‘d had to keep a part of myself awake and aware while coupling. Someone had to look out for danger, after all.

When the world was younger, that meant watching for wild creatures. In the last thousand years, the danger had shifted from the wild to other humans. And yet when Erik was on top of me, against all sense, I didn’t feel the need to be on guard. With Erik, I felt safe.

I trembled beneath him, my gaze fixed on his face.

He straddled my thighs, his shaft more than half hard. I ran a curled knuckled the length of it and he flashed me a smile. I enclosed him in my fist, feeling the weight and lovely heat of him, fascinated by the way he looked hard but his shaft had a gentle give to it.

I loved the way it lay in my palm.

I was built on the scale of the gods. My hand was larger than a human’s, and I loved the way I could hide his little cock away there.

Erik had been less than pleased when I’d shared this with him. His human pride had entertained me greatly.

Now, he rocked his hips into my hand once or twice, but no more. I released his shaft and turned my attention to his balls. He liked me to touch him here. He liked me to suck him here. I licked my lips and gripped his waist, dragging him forwards and up.

Since I had previously always been on top this, too, was new for me. I wanted it all the time.

He wobbled and fell forwards, trying to catch his balance as I quickly scooted him up my body. I arranged him with his knees either side of my chest, his legs spread as wide as they could go, and leaned up to get my mouth on him.

“Oh gods,” he said when I took one heavy ball into my mouth and tongued it. His hips jerked, the muscles pulsing beneath my firm grip. “Ohhhh.”

I growled against him, pulling him closer, pulling him further onto me, and dug my fingers into his thighs when he said, “Wait, wait.”

I pulled off and craftily tilted him, scooting him closer so I could get my tongue?—

“Sayan,” Erik barked, folding at the waist and catching himself with a hand against the floorboards.

I tipped my head back and scowled up at him.

“I don’t want that today,” he said.

My scowl deepened, but I released him at once, dramatically letting my arms drop by my head, my fingers curled loosely.

He touched my cheek and pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. “I want you to do something else for me,” he said, his voice low.

Anything.

Anything, anything.

“I want you to take your own pleasure.” He moved backwards and then off me completely. I reached after him without meaning to. He caught my hand, kissing it as firmly and quickly as he’d kissed my forehead. “Do you know what I was thinking of the whole time I was in Hallevalt?”

“ Lars ?” I said. I heard my moody tone. I didn’t care.

“I was thinking of you.” He grazed a hand down my side, from my collarbone to my hip. He flattened it over my stomach below my navel and pressed down. I shivered under the touch. His eyes heated. “I dreamed of you.”

I blinked at him then had to look away, oddly embarrassed at the thought. I didn’t look away for long. I couldn’t. “You dreamed of…me?”

I dreamed of Erik all the time, but I hadn’t thought…I hadn’t expected…I smiled up at him, a bright burst of emotion warming my chest.

“Oh, Sayan,” he murmured. “Of course I did. I love you.”

“I love you.” Instead of grabbing for him, I relaxed further onto the hard wooden floor. I surrendered all the tension in my muscles and stretched out before him.

His eyes flared with that look I adored—possessiveness and pride. And who would have thought that possessiveness, the one thing above all that naiads were supposed to flee from, would be one of my very favourite emotions? One I had begun to crave?

“What did you dream?” I asked him, my voice breathy and ridiculous and I didn’t care. I didn’t care .

“Well,” Erik said. “I had more than one dream.” He shifted to sit on the sofa, shivering in the cooler air away from the fire. I rolled onto my side and rested my head in my hand, watching him go. “There was definitely a theme, though.”

I traced a slow hand down my chest to grasp my cock, circling it and displaying it for him. “This.”

“That was certainly involved,” he said, his voice rough. “But it wasn’t the theme.”

It wasn’t?

My confident smile faltered and I pushed up to kneeling.

“The theme,” Erik said, “was you being good for me.”

Oh. My confidence rushed back. “I am always good for you,” I said.

I was.

“You are,” he said at once. “But this will be quite difficult.”

I rolled my eyes even as I walked over on my knees to push my way between his legs. It was my favourite place to be. “I am sure that I can fulfil anything you can possibly want from me.” It was my naiad nature to do so. And, because this was Erik, it was my dearest, fiercest wish.

He laughed into my mouth—I couldn’t help but kiss him when he was this close, and I didn’t even wait until I’d finished speaking to do it—before threading his fingers through my hair and using it to pull my head back.

I gasped at the delicious sting and arched my throat.

He did not kiss it, even though it was perfectly presented for him.

“I dreamed of you lying there—” he laughed again as I immediately collapsed to the floor and sprawled out for him on his lovely rug, “—yes, like that. Just like that. You are so very beautiful, my love.”

“I know.” I made sure to angle myself so that the shadows cast by the dancing flames would accentuate my sculpted torso, delineating the muscles that Erik had spent hours exploring with his fingers, his tongue, his lips.

“And then what?” I prompted him as his gaze dragged hotly over me. “Did you want me to hold still while you ride me?”

I hadn’t yet managed it. I ended up flipping him and driving him beneath me as I neared climax, but I was confident that with another decade or two of practice, I would learn the patience to?—

“I am not going to touch you at all.”

I stared at him.

A log popped on the the fire.

I stared at him some more.

“What?” I said, my voice pitched quaveringly high.

“I told you it would be difficult.”

“Difficult. Not impossible .”

“It was just a dream, Sayan.”

Did he mean nightmare ? Because it sounded like one.

I glared up at the ceiling. “Tell me more,” I said bravely.