Chapter 6

6

T he sofa creaked as Erik shifted on it. I cut him a sideways look but didn’t meet his eyes.

“I dreamed,” he said after a moment, “that you lay before me and you brought yourself to pleasure. For me.”

I blinked at the ceiling, confused. “But why would you want that? Why wouldn’t you want to touch me?”

Doubt clawed at me, but for a few queasy moments only. Though I didn’t understand his human drives, I was as certain of Erik’s love as I was of my lake.

“It will be hard not to,” he said.

I arched a little, lifting my hips into the air in a subtle roll and loving the faint hitch of his breath.

“But,” he continued, “I am very, very greedy when it comes to you. I have never seen such a beautiful man?—”

I moaned and lifted my hips again, aching for him.

“—and I almost never get to admire you.”

That made no sense. “You see me all the time. Except when you leave me for Lars .”

He suppressed a smile. “I see you very close up, Sayan,” he said.

I pondered this.

It was true. I was always on top of him. Or holding him to me. Holding him down. Curtaining us with my hair. Enclosing him in my arms…clutching him to me…drawing him in.

I covered my eyes with an arm and stroked my chest fretfully.

Within seconds Erik was there, kneeling beside me. I felt the rise of his heat over my sensitive skin before his touch landed. He laid a hand on my sternum and left it there, a steady, grounding weight.

Lifting my arm, I peeked under it at him.

He was watching me. “It was a dream,” he said. “An idle thought. That’s all.”

“I can do it.”

“Not if you don’t want to. Although…”

“Although what?” I flung my arm away from my face. My hand landed on his thigh and I gripped it absently.

“Although—” he brushed a lock of hair from my eyes, “—I think you will enjoy it.”

I wasn’t so sure.

“I think,” he said, “that you will like to see what you do to me.”

“I know what I do to you,” I said smugly.

I’d watched his pupils expand, his cheeks flush, and his chest begin to heave. I’d seen his stomach hollow, his thighs quiver, and his hands tremble.

I often displayed myself for him. I usually did it in my lake as I approached him, to draw his attention from the water birds, or the clouds, or whatever he’d been looking at before I’d arrived. The idea of dragging the moment on and on…of doing it here, in my land-home…of having all of his attention— all of it—on me and me alone…

“I want to do it,” I said.

Erik’s smile was slow. “If you’re sure. You don’t have to. As I said, it was just a dream.”

“Did you wake hard from this dream?” My face heated as my thoughtless words hung between us. I patted his little cock apologetically. “I meant wanting. Did you wake wanting?”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

I quirked a brow at him.

He leaned over me and dropped a quick, biting kiss on my lips, then held my jaw to stop me from taking it further. “It was a daydream, Sayan.”

His meaning sank in. “It was deliberate.”

“Yes.”

A bubble of delight rose through me. “You were in your city, surrounded by your friends and your human things, and you were thinking of me. Imagining me.”

“I was. I missed you.”

I hummed and stretched my body long, flexing every muscle then releasing them languidly, watching his face.

His cheeks darkened.

I pushed at his thigh. “Go and sit down.”

Erik did, grimacing when his knees cracked.

His body did things mine did not and he liked to grumble about them, complaining that he was getting old, though he was only forty-three.

His joints cracked.

Sometimes he got a cramp in his thigh or a stitch in his side in the middle of our love play, and we had to pause.

He’d said hesitantly once that he would age in our long life together. He’d said it as if I hadn’t known . He’d said that the silver in his hair would overtake the brown; that the creases and lines in his skin would deepen. That his muscles would soften.

“I know you will age,” I’d said when he’d finished, uneasy at his apologetic tone. “I, more than anyone, know what ageing looks like. What a life coming full circle looks like. I’ve seen it often enough.”

To me, locked in my immortality, it had always looked like magic.

I’d been lying with my head on his chest, and I’d tightened the arm I had wrapped around him, rubbing my face subtly over him. Cuddling, Erik called it. “I am excited for it.”

He’d let out a puff of surprised laughter. “You’re excited to watch me wither?”

I pressed a kiss to his warm skin. “To be there with you. To always be with you. To experience it with you.”

Erik had lifted my face and looked down at me. “Will you age?”

I blinked. “Oh. No. I will of course remain young and beautiful until the day we die.”

“Of course,” he’d said dryly.

“As you will remain beautiful until the day we die.”

His face had taken on that rueful look he sometimes got when I told him how much I loved his body. “The way you see me,” he’d said with a small shake of his head, and kissed me.

I saw him truly. I didn’t think he understood that. Maybe one day he would. I didn’t have the words to explain it, in the same way I couldn’t explain the bond to my lake. Instead of using words, I’d shown him.

I watched as Erik returned to his seat on the sofa and reclined against the cushions. He raised a brow at me.

Fixing my gaze on his, I turned onto my stomach and then lifted up onto my knees. I gathered my hair into a long rope and drew it over one shoulder, shivering when the weight of it whispered over my skin, which was already sensitised and thrumming with energy.

Every part of my being craved sensation. I yearned for the hard push of dense muscle and the rasp of his hair- roughened skin over mine. For Erik, though, I could stave off the desperation—just a little longer.

“What did I do, in your daydream?” I asked him.

“Many things.” Erik’s voice was deep and soft. “Things that made you feel good. That made me feel good, watching you.”

I flattened a hand at the base of my collarbone and held it there for a moment, spreading my fingers wide. I tilted my chin to arch my throat a little, looking at Erik under my lashes, and dragged my hand down my chest. I brought my other hand up to join it and briefly stroked my pectoral muscles, digging my fingers in hard enough that he’d see the skin turn white around my fingertips. I hissed out a sharp breath between my teeth at the pressure.

I coasted my hands down my torso, lingering over every ridge and line of muscle until I held my shaft in one and cupped my balls in the other. Slowly, slowly, not looking away from him for a moment, I sank down from the high kneeling position to sit on my calves, all the while working myself gently. I was trying to hide it, but the muscles deep at my core were trembling, sending out little shocks and pulses of arousal.

I could do this, I affirmed to myself, and stiffened when Erik said in a husky voice, “Turn around.”

I hesitated before I complied, turning on my knees until my back was to him.

“Kneel up again,” he said.

I did, and shook out my hair so it cascaded down my back.

“No,” Erik said. “Move it away. I want to see.”

Oh. I pulled my hair over my shoulder, exposing the length of my back, my arse and my thighs to him. I slid my hands down my sides and around to hold my buttocks, lifting them gently.

Erik let out a shattered breath. “Yes,” he said. “Like that.”

I hummed and massaged my buttocks slowly, wishing Erik’s were the hands lifting and separating my cheeks, sliding a teasing finger in between, drifting down to grip my thighs.

I peeked over my shoulder. Erik’s eyes were fixed on my arse. I released it to take hold of my shaft, and pushed my hips into my fist and back, in and back, moving as fluidly as if I was in the water.

With Erik’s attention on me, the familiar sensation was tripled in intensity.

I fell forwards and caught myself on a hand. I didn’t stop moving into my fist, and then, suddenly, Erik was there, kneeling behind me.

I shuffled my knees apart to make room for him. I was shocked at how vulnerable it made me feel to have him there.

Excited by it.

His warmth soaked into me and the skin on my buttocks and thighs brushed his as I rocked and rocked. He laid a hand at the very base of my spine, pressing lightly and encouraging me to deepen the arch. Fingers tangled with mine as I stroked myself, increasing the pressure and slowing the speed.

I softened and dropped to an elbow as he took control.

Erik leaned over me, giving me his weight. I shivered at the feel of his shaft slotting between my cheeks.

I had done this thousands of times. I had positioned many lovers on hands and knees, or if they preferred it, with their face in the grass and arse to the sky. I had never, not once, been in this position myself.

I’d always been the one behind.

My mind was confused but my body wasn’t—I continued to do as he guided me, rolling languidly into our joined hands, rubbing back against him, my breathing turning slow and deep.

Erik was rolling too, his hips moving, pushing into the resilient bounce of my buttocks. His hand abruptly left my shaft and his heat abruptly left my back as he straightened his upper body to grip my hips—another position I was intimately familiar with from the other side.

I moaned quietly and sank down to both elbows. At Erik’s urging, I eased all the way down until I was lying on my front. I smiled giddily as he settled on top and continued to thrust against me.

He wasn’t hard, wasn’t soft. He dragged over my arse as he opened his mouth over the nape of my neck, grazing his teeth lightly back and forth before kissing me there.

Braced with my arms either side of my face, I worked my hips, dragging the front of my body over the rug. I was going to make a mess of it and the coarse fibres would soon begin to abrade the skin of my groin, but I couldn’t stop.

This would, I thought, be better on the bed.

I blinked, realising that it was the first time I’d given any thought to how and where our lovemaking happened.

This must be why Erik fussed about not wanting to do it on the ground outside, on the fallen tree, in the water, on the lakeshore.

It was about comfort, yes, but more than that, it was about spinning out the moment between us.

Erik moved over me in slow, deep pulses, his breathing loud in my ear.

I licked my lips. “How is the view from there?” I asked teasingly. “Not too close?”

He stopped moving.

I made a noise of complaint. I was teasing , I didn’t want him to stop!

“You make a very good point,” he said, and slid off me. “I was supposed to be watching, wasn’t I?”

I threw a hand back to grab him, but too late.

The sofa creaked again as he sat. I groaned and dropped my head, panting into the carpet. Spreading my legs wider, tipping my arse up, I shoved a hand beneath me and gripped myself. The position was not something I’d normally choose, but I liked the way it felt at the base of my spine. I liked the heat of Erik’s attention on me.

Oh, how I liked it.

I sighed and flexed my hips, pushing into my fist, letting my arse rise and fall just a fraction slower than I normally would, because I knew that was what Erik wanted.

“Sayan,” Erik said roughly.

“Mmm.” The noise that came out of me in response was involuntary, but once I made it I couldn’t seem to stop.

I spread my legs wider, thinking that he must be able to see everything now, and continued to pump into my hand.

I continued to do it slowly, steadily, adding an extra twist at the top of every push.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“I could do this for hours,” I warned him. “I could get lost in it.”

“Do you touch yourself often?”

“No. I don’t know. Perhaps. What is often? I used to do it when I was lonely. Oh. Ohhh.”

As soon as I’d said the word lonely , Erik was with me again. “You are not alone,” he told me, closing a firm hand over the back of my neck. “You will never be alone again, not as long as I live.”

“Or after you die,” I reminded him.

Sometimes the things Erik said made me think he didn’t know what was waiting for us on the other side. Humans had the most peculiar ideas about death.

“Never, if it is in my power,” he said, lifting my chin and turning my face to his. He leaned down and kissed me. It strained my neck and pushed me off balance. I went with it, rolling slowly to my back.

“I’m sorry,” Erik said. “This wasn’t a good idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You wanted to admire me,” I reminded him, sliding my hands down my sides then laying one on his thigh where he knelt, rubbing it up to his stomach and back down.

“I can admire you perfectly well from here.”

“I do not mind it.”

“That,” he said with a smile, “is not good enough.”

The breath froze in my lungs and I felt my eyes widen with dismay.

“For me,” he added quickly. “That is not good enough for me . I want you to love it.”

“Oh.” I lowered my lashes. “I…I like it. A bit. I like your eyes on me. I like the attention.”

“A bit?” He was stroking up and down my ribs, pausing at the hard ridge of muscle above my hips and gripping it every now and then as my hips continued to fidget.

“A lot,” I confessed. “I like you looking at me. Wanting me. Knowing that you can have me, whenever.”

Erik smiled but it wasn’t his usual smile of fondness or humour. It was a slow, dark thing as his eyes locked with mine.

“Well, then,” he said. “Perhaps you should continue.” He stretched an arm over my lower body and braced on the other side, containing me.