Chapter Twenty
There was, as expected, very little swimming at first.
They came into the room pretending practical intentions, but practicality had already had a long day and was quickly set aside. Somewhere between seeing each other bare and stepping into the warm pool, pretense became purpose.
Derran reached for her as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and she went to him without hesitation.
The need between them was the sort that comes after danger, when being alive must be proved to the body before the mind will believe it.
When rest comes not from sleep, but from closeness.
From warmth. From the plain, steady reassurance of another person’s hands.
He drew her against him until there was hardly room for water between them.
For a little while they only stood there, arms around each other, letting the pool hold some of their weight.
Ina felt his breath against her cheek and the strong beat of his heart where her body rested against his.
He kissed her forehead first, then her brow, then the corner of her mouth.
She smiled against him, lifting one hand to the back of his neck and combing her fingers through the damp hair there, lingering where it curled at the nape. Derran closed his eyes at the touch.
Then he lifted her, weightless in the deep water of the bath’s third ledge.
Her legs wrapped around his waist with easy trust, her arms around his neck, her hands tensing in his hair at the first opening nudge.
His lips met hers fully, swallowing the eager moan leaving her depths as he slipped steadily into them.
Their bodies joined seamlessly, hard muscle against soft skin, from chest down to hip.
“You seem to be well-rested already,” Ina managed to gasp.
“Who, me?” Derran’s voice was low and breathy at her teasing. “Hardly. I’m exhausted.”
“Oh?” she replied, thoughts pulling together more slowly than usual. “Should we… should we stop?”
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered against her lips.
They forgot then that they’d given themselves only an hour.
The water buoyed them both, softening every shift and turn until even movement seemed quieter in the bath than it would have been anywhere else.
They rocked together in small motions at first, guided more by instinct than intent, each one indulging the other.
Long breaths flowed in and out of them with the same relaxed pace, connecting them again and again, as though they had all the time in the world.
Their mouths kept finding each other and parting again.
Sometimes the kisses were deep and searching.
Sometimes no more than brief touches, mouths brushing, breath mingling.
Ina leaned her head against his shoulder for a few moments and pressed a kiss there, just above the line where neck became collarbone.
Derran turned his face into her hair and kissed the crown of her head in turn.
Still they continued their small movements.
An inch in.
An inch out.
He shifted his grip once, carefully, one hand broad at the middle of her back and the other under her thigh, settling her more securely against him.
She answered by drawing him closer with a small tightening of her arms, her fingers spreading over the damp skin between his shoulders.
They might have stayed like that for the rest of time, not striving toward any end, only enjoying the feel of one another in the warm water.
A little drift, a little turn, a slow return.
The bath itself seemed to shape the rhythm, rocking them into something deeply soothing. Something restful.
Eventually though, Derran, being Derran, couldn’t help wanting just a little more sound from her.
His mouth curved against her skin in a grin she felt before she saw. He drew back enough to look at her once, openly pleased with some private intention, and let his wings vibrate.
The ripples ran through every fiber of her being. Pressed so close to him, she felt the flutters surge from chest to chest, belly to belly, hips to hips, settling in her inner depths.
Ina obliged his craving and gave a low helpless moan, her body answering before thought could catch it.
Derran looked wildly satisfied by this result, which only made her want to punish and reward him in equal measure.
She leaned into him again with more force than before, luring his mouth to hers and trapping it there in a deep kiss.
He chuckled against it at the vigor of her answer.
She answered in kind then, fluttering her wings as he had his, bouncing the pleasure back from her into him.
That stole his breath more effectively than any teasing could have done.
His whole body reacted to it, and he moaned too, eyes unfocused as icy electricity ran through him, cold and hot and spiraling upward all at once.
“Don’t stop,” one of them said. Or perhaps both did.
Every movement seemed to gather more feeling into it than the last. Derran held her more closely. Ina pressed herself more into his keeping. The water lapped and swirled around them in widening rings that broke against the stone and came back again.
His wings vibrated once more. Electric current surged into her, starting deep inside her and flowing out, crashing like a waterfall.
She teetered on the edge for a moment, gasping for breath, and then toppled over with a sweet cry that sounded like pure happiness.
Derran’s own steadiness gave way with that cry.
The sheath of her contracted and loosened tightly around him, and he lost control of his legs then, buckling under his own spasms.
For one ridiculous, ungraceful moment they both lost their balance and sank underwater, the rush in their bodies pulling them down.
Then Derran found himself again, and pulled her back up with him, both of them breathless from more than just the water.
He pushed wet hair back from his face and looked at her in a dazed, delighted sort of way.
Ina laughed quietly because he looked so pleased and so stunned together.
He carried her then, more carefully now, back to the first step of the bath where the water lay at their waists and the stone gave them an easier place to rest.
They settled in the warmth there together, his arm around her, her hand spread over his chest.
The steam had thinned a little. The air above the pool felt cooler against flushed skin.
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
The silence was not empty. It was full of the kind of peace that comes only after fear has spent itself and left tenderness behind.
Their breathing slowed together. Now and then Derran pressed a kiss to her hair or temple.
Once Ina lifted his hand and kissed the center of his palm for no reason except that it was there and it pleased her to do it.
He looked at her for that with such softness that she had to turn her face away for a moment, lest the whole evening become too much to bear.
Then she said, softly, “You don’t need to be jealous of him, you know.”
Derran stiffened just a little. Ina felt it.
He was not ready to go back to that conversation. She could feel that much in the line of his muscles beneath her hand. But she had brought it there, and now she would have to be fair about it.
“My love with him is different from my love with you,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “And the same too. You have all of me, just as he does.”
Derran gave a short laugh. It had bitterness in it, though not cruelty.
“I want all of you all the time, though, Ina.”
He did not look at her as he said it. He looked out across the water instead.
“Not only a day or two when you come to the sky court, only to go back to the burrow, which is clearly more your home now. Not only a quick tumble in my bed or in this bath. Not only a kiss of your hand when I can sneak one. I want to have you, every moment of every day, at my side. My queen. My...”
He looked down then, leaving the word unfinished.
She knew it anyway.
Wife.
Ina was quiet for a few breaths.
Then she said, just as quietly, “But I don’t want that.”
He turned his head toward her now.
“Not with you,” she said, “nor with Karai. I love you both with an intensity that might destroy all three of us. But…” She searched for the right words and did not quite find any that felt right enough. “I think it would be too much to be around either one of you all the time.”
She meant it half-lightly, with the edge of a joke to soften the confession, but the truth was real beneath it. She loved them. She did not want to be swallowed by either love whole.
Derran understood that much. She saw it settle into him.
“You feel that way about Karai too?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to marry him? Not even now?”
That made her laugh a little. The sound slipped out before she could stop it, carrying with it the memory of Emmie’s many fierce opinions on the subject.
“I don’t,” she said firmly.
He studied her face. “What do you want, then?”
Ina thought on it for a moment. The confusion of the prior lonely weeks had not been brought to any more clarity in the last few days. The only thing she knew for certain was that she did not want to have to choose between them.
“All I want is for the three of us to be together sometimes,” she finally said. “And to be with just you sometimes. And to be with just him sometimes.”
Derran took his turn being quiet, deciding what he thought about that. Then he nodded slowly. “I can’t pretend I’ll always be fine with that,” he started slowly.
“I know.”
“Though I said what I said in the burrow, after...”
He stopped and began again from a different place, which was very like him when he cared too much to speak badly.
“I don’t want to lose you. With you, I’m always lighter than air. I could stop breathing and still stay alive as long as you smile at me. Without you...” He shrugged one shoulder. “Less that.”
Ina smiled despite herself.
“I can’t promise I won’t feel jealousy,” he said. It wasn’t so much a confession as a simple fact. “But for now, I think…” He sighed, resigning himself. “I think I can live with it. I can live with your choice.” Then, with the smallest smirk returning to his mouth, he teased, “Or lack of one.”
She laughed. That was the most Derran way possible of surrendering with dignity.
He drew her closer then, and they kissed again, still slowly. When they parted, he brushed a thumb over her cheek and said, “Now.”
“Now what?”
“We did actually come in here to swim.”
Ina groaned and leaned her forehead briefly against his shoulder. “Must we?”
“Yes,” he said. “You made a solemn demand. I accepted. The sky court takes such things very seriously.”
“You don’t take anything seriously.”
He gave her a look. “I take you seriously.”
That comment was almost unfair in its effectiveness. She let him pull her up from the step and guide her farther into the pool.
He began simply, which she appreciated. How to trust the water enough not to fight it. How to breathe. How to float without going rigid as a board and sinking with indignation. He stood close while she learned, one hand at her back, the other under her arm when needed.
“Let the water hold you,” he said.
“It hasn’t earned that trust.”
“Ina.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re arguing.”
“I can do both.”
He laughed and adjusted her again, gentler this time. “Head back. No, farther. Glaring at the water will only leave it unimpressed and you underneath it.”
She did better when she stopped trying to dominate the lesson and started listening to it.
Or to him, rather. He made swimming sound less like surrender and more like conversation.
A balance of body and element. Too much force and the water fought back.
Too little intention and it swallowed you out of laziness.
Soon she managed a proper float for several breaths without flinging herself upright in offense. Then a few uncertain strokes from one side of the pool to the other while Derran moved beside her, correcting the angle of her hand or the line of her kick.
When at last she reached the far edge without swallowing half the bath, she turned and looked at him with something very like triumph.
“There,” she announced proudly. “I swim.”
He folded his arms and leaned against the step. “You survive in water. It’s an excellent beginning.”
“That was swimming.”
“It was… determined splashing.”
She splashed him for that on purpose.
He splashed her back.
And for a little while, in the warm light and the drifting steam, with danger still waiting outside and the kingdom no less troubled than before, they had the strange good luck to laugh.