drown one of us."
"You can't drown, you're sidhe."
"Maybe I can't die from drowning, Merry, but trust me, it hurts like a son of a bitch to swallow that kind of water." He made a face and shivered, and I didn't think it was entirely the chill of the water.
I wondered what old memory was shaking him. I almost asked, but the scent of roses came mingled with the salt of the next wave. No bad memories tonight; we would make new and better ones.
I went to stand so that I could touch his shoulders and his face, and made him look up at me. There was a moment where the shadow of that old hurt was there in his face, and then he smiled up at me, wrapped his strong arms around my hips, and drew me in against his body. He kissed his way up my stomach, my chest, and my neck, as if the kisses themselves drew him to his feet until he could lay his lips against mine.
He kissed me. He kissed me as the water swirled and moved around us so that the pull and push of it was like more hands to caress our bodies, as our lips, hands, and arms explored the skin above the water's edge.
He leaned down, and used his hand to mound my breast up so his mouth could lick and suck, until just the pull of his mouth on my nipple made me cry out for him. He mounded the other breast with his other hand, and did the same again. He went back and forth between them as the water rose around us, until I cried out his name. Only then did he drop back to his knees, chest deep in the water, and lift me so that my knees were on his shoulders, and his face was between my legs.
I protested, "You can't hold this position long enough."
He gazed up the line of my body, his mouth close to that most intimate part, but not quite touching me yet. "Probably not," he said.
"Then why do it?"
He grinned. "Because I want to try." And that was very Rhys. It made me smile, and then his mouth found me, and it wasn't smiles he got from me.
He bowed my body backward with the strength of his hands and arms so that he could reach all of me to lick and suck. His hands were actually supporting my weight at the small of my back, my legs on his shoulders like some impossible act. I kept meaning to tell him to put me down, to be reasonable, but every time I came close to saying it, he would do something with his mouth, his tongue, and he would steal my words away with pleasure.
I felt his arms begin to tremble, ever so slightly, as that delicious pressure began to build between my legs, so that it would be a race to see if he could spill me over that edge before he had to put me down. A few sensations earlier and I would have told him to put me down when I felt his muscles begin to tremble, but the pleasure had passed to that point of selfishness so that I wanted release more than I wanted to be kind or generous. I wanted him to finish what he had begun. I wanted him to spill me over that wet, warm edge.
My skin had begun to glow as if I was some still pool that could reflect the moon's glow to herself. Rhys had called my magic to life.
In the end he moved on his knees, so that my back touched the railing. The water was high enough that the lower steps were underwater, and I leaned back against the wood, using the railing as I would have used the headboard of a bed to support my weight, to keep me at the angle he needed. He moved up the water-covered steps so that they helped him support my weight as he licked and sucked, and made love to me there with his mouth as he would make love to me later with other things.
I caught the glow of my own hair and eyes; crimson, emerald, and gold. His own skin had begun to glow white with a play of light underneath it as if clouds or something else moved inside his body, things I couldn't see or understand.
I was almost there, almost there, almost there, then between one caress