Chapter 7

7

I touched myself. My shaft was so hard it stood up and lay against my belly. I ran two fingers up and down the length of it, barely grazing it with my fingertips.

Erik’s dark eyes stayed on my face.

It puzzled me when he did that. There I was, long and lean and beautiful, laid out before him on his rug and touching myself as sensuously as I knew how, and instead of focusing on what I was doing, he was focusing on my face, my eyes. On what I was feeling.

No one had ever looked at me as Erik did.

Everyone else had looked exactly where I wanted—and expected—them to.

I moaned quietly and flexed up into my hand, knowing that my muscles would clench and relax in a beautiful, supple wave. I was damp with a light sheen of perspiration now; that wave of movement would catch the flickering light of the fire, just as the waves of my lake caught the sun, dazzling and alluring.

Erik’s nostrils flared and his breath roughened.

He still didn’t look away from my face.

I did it again and again, exaggerating the move, trying to draw his attention lower. With my other hand I touched my parted lips, my neck, my chest. The pleasure was building and I found it oddly difficult to maintain eye contact. My lids fluttered closed. “Look at me,” I whispered without thinking, even as my eyes closed fully. “Look at me, look at me.”

“I am looking at you, sweetheart.” Erik’s hand covered mine as I was stroking my chest, rested lightly on the back of it as I drifted it all the way up my neck, along my jaw, and back to my mouth. “I am looking at you.”

I slipped my hand from beneath his even as I turned my head and caught two of his fingers between my teeth.

I blinked my heavy lids open and gazed up into his beautiful brown eyes. He slid his fingers over my tongue. Closing my lips, I sucked softly and twisted a little against the floor in satisfaction.

I made a demanding noise that Erik interpreted correctly as a request to watch me. He dragged his hot eyes from my face down the length of my body and back up. My hips kicked hard into my hand.

“Yes,” he said. “Like that.”

He looked down again, as I wanted him to, and I watched the side of his face intently as I rocked up into my hand, rolling my body faster and faster until Erik leaned over me, set his mouth to the tip of my cock when it popped through the top of my fist, and licked.

I cried out and came, spilling copiously. Before I’d even finished, Erik climbed on top of me and held me. I buried my face in his neck and panted against his skin, biting and licking at him frantically.

He hushed me, running a soothing hand up and down my ribs. I bent a leg to press it into him, and then without thought, rolled us over to pin him beneath me. His arms came around me, one hand resting on the nape of my neck and the other curved over my arse.

“You,” he said, squeezing my nape and attempting to ease me away, “are perfect.”

I moaned happily and snuggled into him.

He let out a wheezing laugh, even as he tried to pull me away again. I grunted in dissent but he squeezed all the more firmly. Sighing, I lifted away and blinked the dampness from my lashes, giving him a challenging look.

He seemed surprised but only for a second; his face softened.

I was pouting, I knew it. My lips felt hot and swollen. I licked at them.

Erik didn’t say anything, though, for which I was grateful. This new part of me that I’d never even guessed at before I’d met Erik loved to expose itself for him. To roll around in his attention, like a summer bee drunk on nectar, to demand more and more and more of it.

But the part of me that was all I’d known for thousands of years still sometimes tightened up at the vulnerability, and locked my emotions like ice skimming over my lake. It usually happened after moments like this.

Erik brushed my hair away from my face and then held me steady, doing nothing but returning my gaze. I looked away first, softening over him.

He wheezed again as my weight pushed the air out of his human lungs. I eased myself off him reluctantly then shuffled backwards to straddle him.

Tucking his arms behind his head, Erik smiled up at me. “That was quite the welcome home,” he said.

“Better than Lars ’ welcome home?”

Erik cocked a brow. “Yes,” he said slowly. “But Lars doesn’t welcome me home. He can’t. My home is here. My home is with you.”

His words flooded me with warmth. “And he isn’t as beautiful,” I said.

Erik pretended to consider it. “Many people think Lars is an exceptionally handsome man. He certainly gets more than his fair share of attention.”

I scowled.

“But never from me,” Erik said. “We have never been lovers, Sayan. We’re not like that. We never have been. We’re close, yes, and he is physically affectionate, but you are my only lover.”

I knew it as surely as I knew the currents of my lake, and the turn of the seasons.

I still liked to hear it.

I needed to.

Erik pushed me back and off him, and stood. I remained on my knees, gazing up at him, as he slid his fingers beneath my chin and raised my face to his. “You know what you mean to me, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Yes.”

He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, tracing the pointed tip of it as he liked to do. I shivered. “So why are you jealous of Lars?”

I shuffled on my knees with discomfort, and lifted my chin from his hand. “How could I possibly be jealous of a human?”

“Because I love him.”

I gasped in outrage, even as Erik stepped closer, caught my face between his palms, and leaned down to say against my mouth, “But it is a different love from the love I have for you. It is the bond of family. Of truest friendship. The love I feel for you, my dearest heart…” He kissed me deeply. “It cannot be measured. It is yours, and yours alone. I cherish you above all things.”

I ran my hands up his calves to grip the backs of his thighs.

“I will tell you that as often as you need me to.” He smiled into our kiss. “One day, perhaps, you will believe me.”

“I believe you now.”

“In that case, I suppose there is no need?—”

“But you may tell me. Often. I have no objection.”

“Do you not?” he murmured.

“No.” I rose high on my knees, winding my arms around him. “You can tell me every day.”

“Then I shall.”

I stared up at him. “You may do it more than once a day. If you like.”

He smiled and kissed me, murmuring against my eager mouth, “Then I shall.”

~ END ~