Chapter Eighteen #3
The safe word she had given to Aleksi at the start.
Einar groaned as the final wave of pleasure peaked .
. . and receded, this time, leaving him limp and trembling.
It took everything in him not to collapse on top of Naia, but he managed to sprawl at her side, one heavy arm thrown across her still-trembling body.
Einar didn’t know if Aleksi had moved or if he had always been next to them, but he was there, and this time the hand stroking them was gentle and real.
He soothed them both with soft touches, and even that felt like magic as a gentle warmth spread through Einar’s body.
Something softer and deeper than pleasure—a feeling of being wrapped in a protective bubble, safe from the worries of the world. Safe from ever being alone.
Love. That was what it was. Sweet and pure and somehow stronger than steel, because it flowed from the heart of the Lover himself.
For the second time that night, Einar felt genuine awe. He could not believe he had gotten so cocky he’d thought to issue a challenge to the god of love and desire.
But what a way to lose.
They drifted there for what felt like hours before Naia opened her eyes and rolled to face Aleksi. Her hand crept back to grasp Einar’s, and she clung to it, as if for support. Then she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
The words elicited a confused chuckle from the Lover. “For what, little nymph?”
“For not seeing you,” she whispered. “Or . . . only seeing what I expected.”
“Naia—”
“I know that people don’t,” she insisted. “They’re too wrapped up in the idea of you, or too dazzled by your perfection to see anything else.” Her breathing hitched. “That must be so lonely.”
Aleksi opened his mouth, and Einar could practically hear the self-deprecating deflection taking shape on the man’s tongue.
But Naia reached up with her free hand and pressed her fingers to Aleksi’s lips. “Don’t. Don’t hide, Aleksi. You can’t anymore, don’t you understand? Because I see you now, and you’re not perfect, not at all.”
Aleksi raised both eyebrows at Einar, an expression that married amusement and disbelief.
But Naia turned the Lover’s gaze back to hers with an insistent hand on his chin. “You’re stubborn. You always jump too readily and directly to sacrificing yourself. And, frankly? You lie with the truth a bit too easily.”
“You can move on to my more positive traits whenever you like, love,” Aleksi said faintly.
“I love you,” she told him firmly. “Not in spite of those things, but because of them. Because you’re you.”
Aleksi’s discomfort melted like snow in sunlight. For once, he seemed at a loss for words, and he leaned his forehead against Naia’s in silent thanks.
She kissed him gently, then rolled to face Einar. “And I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“Don’t start listing my flaws,” he murmured, only half joking. “We need to sleep tonight.”
She grabbed his face and held him, pinned, with a solemn gaze and a soft smile. “I have loved you for thousands of years. Across lifetimes. Even when you didn’t want me to.” The smile faded. “When you begged me not to.”
His chest ached, and he didn’t know if it was guilt for some terrible wrong he could not remember, or simply guilt that he couldn’t remember.
But he lifted his hand to cover hers. “I wish I could say the same. But I think I loved you from the first time I felt your touch in the sea. Even if I can’t remember, maybe my heart knows. ”
Her smile returned in full force, as dazzling as the gentle glow that still lit the room. She wrapped a lock of his hair around her finger and tickled the curling ends over his cheek.
The room swooped around him, the feeling of familiarity so powerful he felt momentarily dizzy. He closed his eyes and tried to chase the memory, but nothing came to him. Maybe he wanted to remember so badly he was fooling himself.
But wasn’t this part of their world, too?
Wanting something badly enough could make it happen.
Naia had told him that the storm god hadn’t started off as the Kraken, and even once he had assumed the monstrous form that would become his sigil, he had never worn this form, the one that now felt so natural to Einar that it was his true self.
He was something new, something formed of what had come before and the dreams of a young boy who had grown up on legends of his own past life.
If he wanted those memories, they would come. He had to believe it.
For now he opened his eyes, and stroked back hair that looked red-gold in the firelight for one shimmering moment. In the next she was simply Naia, smiling at him with such affection that he caught her fingers and kissed them gently.
Aleksi wrapped an arm around Naia and stroked the back of his hand over Einar’s chest as he nestled closer to them. “What a gift,” he murmured. “To hold a love stronger than death in your hands.”
The warmth of the words soothed that lingering ache in his chest. Einar threw his arm across Naia and Aleksi, savoring that his larger body made it so easy to hold them both—and to protect them from anything that might come.
“Thank you, Aleksi,” he murmured, and with the Lover’s magic still wrapped around them like an embrace, he knew the other man would understand all the things he didn’t know how to say—Einar’s gratitude that Aleksi had given him the courage to open his heart, his relief that the three of them were here, together.
His love, different from the flashfire of obsession that had consumed him when he’d met Naia, but no less strong.
Naia might have snuck beneath the ice around Einar’s heart to crack open those protective walls, but knowing that Aleksi had seen his heart and all of its darkest parts and still loved him . . .
That had rendered those walls unnecessary.