Chapter 10
MUIR
The cottage door closes behind me. One room, a kitchenette, a bathroom that requires strategic maneuvering. I've been renting it week to week since I arrived, and it still doesn't feel like mine.
I sit in the single chair by the window. The cushion is worn, the springs complaining under my weight. I stand. The floor creaks. I sit again.
My legs won't stop moving. My hands open and close on the armrests. There's a current running under my skin, electric and insistent, and nowhere for it to go.
The empanada Liana sent sits heavy in my stomach—the only thing I've eaten since lunch. My body is running on fumes and something sharper than hunger. There's a diner two blocks over. I could walk there. Burn off whatever this is.
I'm halfway to the door when it hits.
A pull. Low in my chest, wrapping around my heart like a fist and tugging.
My breath stops.
Cora.
I'm out the door. The night air is cool on my face, sharp in my lungs. My feet find the path through the pines without thought—the shortcut, the narrow trail that leads to the established neighborhood where her house sits overlooking the water. I'm walking fast, then faster.
Then I'm running.
The pull tightens with every step. A hook lodged behind my sternum, reeling me in. My heart pounds. My breath comes hard. The path blurs.
Her house appears through the trees—the alpine chairs on the porch, the dock stretching into dark water.
And there, in the lake, I see her.
She's singing.
Raw. Unfiltered. Her voice moves through the water and the air like a living thing, resonant and aching and impossibly beautiful. The sound of a sirena who has stopped holding anything back.
She's in full form. The indigo of her tail catches the moonlight, veins of gold running through the scales. Her black hair floats around her like ink in water. Her eyes are luminous green, fixed on nothing, lost in whatever she's singing.
My sealskin is on. I'm diving.
The water takes me cold and clean. The shift happens before I'm three feet under—my legs fusing, my body elongating, the human softening into sleek amphibious form. Seal-eyed, better-hearing, the dark no longer dark.
I find her in seconds.
She turns when I approach, her song cutting off mid-note. For a heartbeat, we just look at each other, suspended in the underwater dark, the moonlight filtering down in pale columns around us.
Then she's in my arms.
“I have to say something,” she says.
“Say it.”
“What you did—leaving the way you did, with seemingly no explanation, no—” She stops. “I built a story. About who you were and what it meant and why you could. I needed the story to be clean because the messy version was unbearable.”
Her voice is very steady. The steadiness costs her something; I can hear the cost in it.
“And the story I had was he felt nothing, and that story—I built on that story for four years.
The professional composure and the arm's-length thing and the very careful not-caring I have been doing since you walked back onto this dock.” A pause.
“And then the journal. And then the letter.” She looks at me.
“I have no words for what it is to find out the story you built was wrong.
It's not relief. It's something heavier than that.”
“Grief,” I say quietly. “For the version of the story.”
“Yes.” She exhales. “Yes. I suppose that’s the closest word to capturing this.”
“I know I can't unmake the four years,” I say.
“The leaving was real. The silence was real.
The journal and the letter don't undo that—they just change the shape of it.” I look at her.
“I took your agency. I decided what you could survive without asking you.
That's the part I can't explain away and I'm not going to try.”
She holds my gaze.
“No more deciding for me,” she says. “Whatever happens—no more of that. You don't get to choose what I can handle. I get to choose that.”
“I know,” I say. “I understand that.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise you.” No hesitation. No qualifier. “I promise.”
She wraps around me. Her tail coils around my body, her hands in my hair, her mouth finding mine in a kiss that tastes of lake water and salt and four years of absence finally breaking open.
I hold her like I'm drowning and she's air. My hands find the curve of her waist, the place where skin becomes scales, and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
The kiss deepens, her tongue sliding against mine, and I can feel the vibration of a low hum building in her chest—not quite song, but close. The sound resonates through the water, through my body, making my cock swell and throb.
We're moving through the water without intention, drifting deeper, the current carrying us toward the north cove where the lake has carved out its secret places.
Her hands slide down my chest, over the sleek fur of my shifted form, her fingers tracing the lines of muscle beneath.
Every touch sends heat through me despite the cold water.
“I've missed you,” she breathes against my mouth. “God, Muir, I've missed this—”
“Show me,” I say. “Show me how much.”
Her hand slides lower, finding where my cock has already emerged from its sheath, thick and hard and aching for her. I'm slick with my own arousal, the water making everything smooth and frictionless. When her fingers wrap around me, I groan into her mouth, my hips jerking forward involuntarily.
“You're so hard,” she whispers, her voice breaking into that frequency that only I can hear. “I can feel how much you want me.”
“Always,” I manage. “Every second since I left. Every second since I came back.”
She strokes me slowly, learning the shape of me again. The way my cock moves with a flexibility that human men don't have, capable of curving and flexing to find the deepest places inside her. The sensation is overwhelming.
Four years of wanting her, of dreaming about this, and now her hand is on me and I'm barely holding myself together.
I slide my hand down her torso, over her hips, finding the slit where her body opens. She's hot there—hotter than the water around us—and when I press my fingers inside, she gasps and arches against me. She's slick and swollen, her body already ready for me.
“Please,” she breathes. “Muir, please—”
I don't make her wait. I position myself at her entrance, feeling the heat of her against the head of my cock, and then I'm pushing inside in one long, slow thrust that makes us both cry out.
She's tight. So tight it borders on pain, her internal muscles clenching around me in waves that match the rhythm of her tail. I hold her hips, angling her to take me deeper, and she arches back with a gasp that echoes across the water.
“More,” she says. “I need—Muir, I need all of you—”
I give her what she needs. I thrust deeper, using the flexibility of my shifted form to curve inside her, finding the places that make her voice break into wordless song. The water moves with us, creating currents that enhance every sensation, every point of contact between our bodies.
We move together. Chest to chest, her above me, my body gliding on my back as I support her weight.
My cock thrusts inside her with its own rhythm, flexible and insistent, stroking along her inner walls in ways that make her shake.
The water amplifies everything, the heat of her around me, the pressure of her tail coiling tighter, the sound of her voice rising in pleasure.
“You feel so good,” I tell her, my voice rough. “Always so good. So perfect. You were made for me.”
“I was,” she gasps. “I was made for this—for you—”
Her voice breaks into song then, pure and resonant, and I feel it everywhere—in my bones, in my blood, in the place where we're joined. The vibration of it moves through the water and through my body, making my cock throb and swell inside her.
I reach between us, finding the sensitive place where her body opens, and stroke her there while I thrust. She cries out, her tail tightening around me convulsively, her inner muscles clenching so hard I see stars.
“Come for me,” I say against her mouth. “Let me feel it. Let me hear you.”
She comes with her head thrown back, her throat exposed, her voice rising in a pure note that resonates through the water like a bell.
I feel it in my bones, in my blood, in the place where we're joined.
Her body convulses around my cock, milking me, and I thrust harder, deeper, chasing my own release.
When I come, it's with a force that steals my breath. I fill her with everything I have. Four years of longing and absence and the careful distance I've maintained since I returned. She gasps as she feels it, her pupils dilating, her tail tightening around me.
The second orgasm follows almost immediately, her body still sensitive and trembling from the first. She convulses around my cock, milking me for more, and I give it to her. I give her everything.
“Again,” I say, still moving inside her. “I want to feel you come again.”
“Muir, I don’t know if I can—”
“You can.” I adjust the angle, finding that place deep inside her that makes her voice break. “You will.”
I thrust harder, using the water to support her weight as I drive into her. My cock curves and flexes inside her, stroking places that make her shake and gasp and sing. Her voice rises in frequencies that only I can hear. Pleasure and need and four years of absence finally breaking open.
She comes again, and again, each climax more intense than the last. By the fourth, she's sobbing with it, her body shaking so hard I have to hold her steady. Her voice has gone raw and beautiful, singing pleasure in a language older than words.
When we're finally spent—both of us shaking, breathless, barely able to hold each other—we drift.