Chapter 7 #4
“It means we aren’t tied to each other sexually,” I explained, my breathing shallow, my focus wavering. “If either of us wants to have sex with someone else on occasion, we can.”
“Really?” He raised both eyebrows. “How convenient for me. But why enter into a commitment at all then? Whose idea was it?”
Liam suggested it years ago, shortly after we’d started dating. He said, “I don’t even dream of tying down a woman like you. I know you, Maren, I can only keep you in my life if I give you the complete freedom to do as you please.”
I appreciated his words back then. He made me feel independent, strong, and free, which was everything I always aspired to.
“Why does it matter whose idea it was?” I asked, stepping into the waves. “The important thing is that we both agreed on this arrangement and it works for us.”
“Does it? Does your betrothed have sex with whomever he pleases?”
“Yes, he does. As is his right. We both agreed to it, remember?” I retorted, maybe a little snappier than was necessary.
Liam and I didn’t talk about his encounters, but he didn’t make them a secret either. We weren’t living together. We both traveled often, sometimes together, other times apart, and I knew he wouldn’t turn down an attractive woman’s advances if he met her when I wasn’t with him.
The agreement between us was that he wouldn’t sleep with someone else if we were in the same city and that he wouldn’t fall in love with anyone else of course.
He also decided that he’d rather stay away from friends or colleagues, and of course, clients were off-limits, but other than that we were both free to have sex outside of our relationship.
Monogamy wasn’t for everyone. Arrangements like ours weren’t unique to us.
Open relationships worked for other couples too.
“How about you?” Kye asked.
“Me?”
“Do you have sex with other people?”
I could if I wanted to, but I just hadn’t felt any particular desire toward any other man. Liam was enough for me. And when he was away, I had a few very capable toys on hand.
“No,” I said. “To be honest, I prefer my own hand or a toy to some random guy.”
I wasn’t sure why I admitted that to Kye or why I even had to say anything at all. But that was the truth, and now he knew it.
“That’s a shame.” He sighed. “I would’ve loved a chance to prove to you how a man could be so much better than a toy.”
“I doubt it,” I quipped, fondly remembering my vibrator.
“Sadly, I can’t touch you, ” he said. “But can I fantasize about you freely now, since I know you’re not committed to monogamy?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Would you stop fantasizing if I said no?”
He seemed to think about it for a moment, then admitted, “That’s highly unlikely.
Frankly, darling, I would very much like to keep my fantasies of you.
Most of them are too beautiful to give up.
Like the one where you’re riding me with your breasts in my hands and your pussy clenching around my cock so hard, I can see stars even in daylight. ”
“Oh... Um, that’s pretty graphic, isn't it?” I ducked my head in hopes that he didn’t notice the blush heating my face.
Water splashed between my legs as I stepped deeper into the waves, and I nearly gasped at the tingling sensation spiraling up my skin.
When did my body get so tender and hypersensitive? How? No one even touched me. Was it just from his words and his heated stares? Or was there some kind of magic involved in this too?
“You have no idea how vivid my fantasies can get, sweetheart,” he crooned in an exceptionally velvet-soft voice. “Especially when given some food to the imagination. And my imagination is truly feasting today.”
From the corner of my eyes, I caught his gaze traveling to my chest that remained exposed with the waves reaching only up to my waist for now. The worst part in all of this was that I genuinely enjoyed his attention. More than that, I soaked up every drop of it.
He stared at me as if I was the only woman in the universe. I’d never seen such a fervent desire in a man’s eyes before. My body responded to it eagerly. But even my mind reeled from his attention, and my heart basked in his admiration like in sunlight.
None of it could lead to anything of course. The sobering thought irritated me. I pushed away from the bottom and swam into the ocean.
The water felt pleasantly cool against my flushed skin. I dove under the upcoming swell, then swam away from the shore in wide, relentless strokes. I pushed myself to the limit, swimming as fast as I could to punish my body for its reaction to those iridescent eyes and the velvet-smooth voice.
When I finally stopped to catch my breath, there was nothing but the open ocean in front of me.
The wide horizon brought the illusion of freedom, momentarily washing me with elation.
I didn’t want to go back to the glass palace that made me feel like a moth trapped in a jar.
I wished I could just keep swimming until I came back home or drowned while trying.
“Maren!” Kye’s strong voice reached me from across the waves. “Come back. That’s too far!”
I tried to ignore him, savoring the brief moments of being free.
Then I remembered the tentacles that had tried to drag me under last night.
Kye said the monsters wouldn’t come up in daylight.
But dread already trickled through my limbs with freezing cold, pounding inside my head with rising panic.
Pivoting in the water, I swam back without a delay.
Kye stood on his coral, peering into the ocean with his hair shimmering in the breeze like a dragonfly’s wing. As I swam closer, I could see the tense expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, treading the water.
The reef dropped steeply into the ocean to the left of Kye’s coral branch, allowing me to swim up close without having to get out of the water.
“Why did you call? Is something in the water?” I asked nervously.
He rubbed the back of his neck, crouching on the coral to get closer to me.
“You’re in the water,” he said.
“Yes. So?”
“And you swam too far,” he added, with a rather sheepish look on his face, as if he had just realized how ridiculous it was for him to shepherd me like that.
I kicked my feet, turning onto my back and spreading my arms out. “I see no problem with that, unless there are sharks nearby? Are there sharks?”
“There could be. Sharks swim here, occasionally. Though they would probably mistake you for a siren, and they know not to start fights with sirens... But anyway. Stay close. Just in case. Humans can drown.”
“Kye.” I smiled. “I’m a very good swimmer. I promise.”
He watched me float in the swells for a few moments, then sat down onto the coral, gingerly dipping a foot into the waves.
“How do you float like that?” he asked. “Humans have no magic and therefore no water power.”
That made me pause.
“Do you honestly believe that swimming is only possible through magic?” I laughed. “How about the fish then? Or are even the fish magical in Olathana?”
He didn’t laugh with me. His throat bobbed with a swallow. The pointer finger on his left hand tapped against the glass coral in...irritation? Or was it something else? He looked rather awkward, refusing to meet my eyes.
Then I remembered that he’d called me to him when I’d swum too far for his liking instead of coming after me himself. And it dawned on me.
“Kye. You can’t swim, can you?”