Chapter 6: The Pool

The water was colder than I had ever let myself imagine, and I went in anyway.

It closed over my knees, then my hips, soaking my flannel and my leggings, and I waded to the center of the pool.

Velun was waiting on the stone ledge in the shallow end, up to his ribs in black water.

The crack across his shoulder had healed to a thin silver seam.

"It stopped hurting by noon," he said. "I have been listening for your boots on the path since sunset."

"Good."

"You're wet."

"I noticed."

"You'll be cold."

"I don't care."

I walked up to him through the dark water, and the glow of his eyes ran over my face and my plastered shirt.

I had thought about this moment for two years, in the middle of the night.

I had done it with my hand between my legs and my face in a pillow.

I had never once thought it would be real.

I stopped an inch from him, and I said it before I lost my nerve.

"I want you."

His breath caught.

"I want you to put your hands on me and your mouth on me," I said.

"I want you inside me. I want it right now."

"I've wanted it since I was twenty-five."

His amber eyes burned.

"I'm twenty-seven," I said. "I know exactly what I'm asking for."

"I am thirty-one," he said. "I know exactly what I am asking too."

"Your legs will hold?" I asked. "In the water?"

"As long as I am wet, they hold."

"Then stay wet."

He made a sound I felt in my teeth, and he took the front of my flannel in both hands.

The buttons went.

He didn't rip them, he just opened them one by one, and each one he opened he pressed a cold kiss to the skin underneath.

I stood there with my head back, shaking, as the shirt slid off my shoulders and floated away.

He slid his arm around my waist and pulled me against him, my bare chest against his slick cool one.

"Warm," he whispered into my collarbone. "All of you."

"You said that."

"I'll say it again."

His mouth found my breast and I forgot every word I knew.

He was careless with it, hungry and curious, his tongue circling my nipple until it drew tight and aching.

I tangled my fingers in his wet hair and held him there, gasping.

"Yes," I said. "Like that. God, like that."

He moved to the other one, and his webbed hand slid down my stomach, into the waistband of my leggings.

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