by Ruby Sirois
My nightmare’s hold is unusually strong this time. They’ve been getting worse.
I reach the far shore of the neighboring island, turn around, head back. My breathing is loud in my ears, my heart a steady, calming drumbeat against the rhythm my arms make through the water. Cold water washes over my face, and it is a panacea. It calms me, centers me, and the panic feels dull, far away, unreal. This is the best weapon I have against the darkness.
One lap is not enough. I do it again, warming to my task, feeling the familiar power of my limbs sluicing through the water. It is no longer icy, but refreshing, welcome, an old friend.
When I approach my stony little beach the second time, I slow, not yet wanting to feel the cold air against wet skin. I dive under, enjoying the silence, the calm for long moments. When I pop my head up again I lay back, holding my breath to ease myself into floating on my back. One large swell washes over me, as if from the wake of a large vessel, followed by consecutively smaller ones until the water settles once more.
My arms move softly, up and down, past my ears like wings. Only my face and the tips of my breasts, puckered tight and hard with cold, touch the night. The scars there twinge, reminding me of their presence. They do not pain me still, but they’re why I prefer to swim topless.
I breathe deeply, slowly, feeling my body bob up and down on the undulations of gentle currents. The water laps over me, luxurious, like cold silk. The east is now kissed by dawn, a pale lemon glow illuminating the horizon above the pines. Stars sparkle yet in the dawn gloaming, but a trill of birdsong greets the new day.
Birdsong… I hold my breath, listening hard. My ears are still underwater. No, not birdsong, but the melody I’d heard in my dreams. The one he in my dream had sung to me.
I gasp and sit up, my toes finding the slick tide-polished stones of the archipelago’s mossy bottom. The water level is up to my shoulders, and I bounce there on my toes, hugging myself against the cold.
“I’m sorry, näckrosen.” Water lily. He has a lilting tenor voice. “Did I frighten you? I didn’t mean to.”
I can’t place the accent—it’s unfamiliar, almost atavistic. Maybe from way up north. But the way his syllables roll off his tongue is like an ancient ballad, and I find myself just wanting to listen to his voice.
“Näckrosen?”
It is too dark to see him clearly yet. He is seven or eight meters off, himself up to the chest in Coca-Cola-colored seawater.
A wry little laugh. “You are as lovely as a water lily, floating there in the dawn-lit still waters. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
“Very poetic.”
I wrap my arms around myself. Excepting my bikini bottoms, I’m bare. With a typical Swedish attitude toward nudity, I am not in the habit of hiding my body, but his presence, so sudden, and the hint of music so like my dream is an odd shock that’s taken me off-guard.
I don’t know what to do with my hands, so I tuck them into my armpits. I ball up my fingers to keep them warm.
“Have you been spying on me?”
My toes dig into the sandy bottom.
“No.”
He laughs a little, shaking drops of water from his eyes. His laughter is clear and musical as bells.
“What are you doing, then?”
“Same as you. Swimming. Enjoying the sea at daybreak.”
Normally my hackles would be up, but, just as in the dream, there is something about him, an air, a melody, that speaks of calm and peace. It surprises me, but despite myself I relax. I sense on a primal level I have nothing to fear.
Curious, yet still keeping my distance, I bob closer, my breasts bouncing lightly without breaking the water’s surface. I am overcome by a need to see his face the way I couldn’t see the one in my dream. As if I’ve been given another chance, and I can’t resist taking it.
“Are you the new neighbor?”
I’d heard through the neighborhood grapevine that someone had recently moved in to the house closest to mine—still about a kilometer off, but closer than most. I haven’t had a chance to go and introduce us yet.
“I don’t know about new, but I do live in the area.”
The sky is brighter now. His eyes catch the dawn light, reflect it in a flash of cerulean. They glow with a deep blue-green intensity like the depths of a tropical ocean. Wet with seawater, his hair looks nearly black, but there are streaks there that hint at strands of sun-bleached blond. My breath catches in my throat. His is the unearthly beauty of the melody still dancing at the edges of my memory, as if it’s been made flesh.
Long, elegant fingers swipe at the droplets of water gathered on wet eyelashes, brushing high cheekbones clean and combing shoulder-length hair from a high, clear brow. A musician’s fingers—strong, yet agile. His broad shoulders, strong arms, and wide chest bulge with swimmers’ muscle. There is a tattoo of a snake, or maybe a sea serpent, on his shoulder and upper chest, but I can’t make out the finer details.
I curse the opaque water for hiding the rest of him.
He hums a snatch of something, and my head whips up from my contemplation of the finer points of his perfect body.
“What is that?” I demand, my voice more harsh than I intend.
The music has taken me aback, and the scraps of dream begin to coalesce, threatening to close back in around the edges of my awareness as if I’d never left my bed. My pulse picks up. I wriggle my toes in the sand and mud, against tiny pebbles and round stones.
He raises an eyebrow at me. He is not offended. In fact, he seems pleased over my interest.
“Just something I wrote. Do you like it?”
“So you are a musician.”
“Very astute, näckrosen,” he says. “What gave it away?”
Just the barest hint of friendly irony. He’s teasing me.
I open my mouth to speak, to compliment the melody of his voice, the grace of his hands—but it seems too forward. I remember my nakedness.
“What you were singing… it’s beautiful.”
Like the rest of you, I want to add, but don’t. There’s no need to make a total fool of myself. I bounce a bit closer, enjoying the weightlessness the water lends me. I see a faint splash of freckles on his cheeks and shoulders, a negative of the stars above fading in the rising light of dawn.
A faint breeze brings fresh, green notes of lemon and lavender, bergamot and salt and amber. His scent. My nipples tingle, and not from the cold. My pussy suddenly feels hot, swollen with desire—I haven’t felt this in ages.
“I’m a songwriter, a lyricist, and a multi-instrumentalist,” he says.
I’m not surprised. No wonder half of what he says is like poetry.
“I work from my recording studios at my home and on my yacht. I have many online collaborations and commissions keeping me busy.”
“Your yacht?”
Now that I think of it, I have seen a yacht around lately, but it’s not an unusual sight. The waters in this area are deep and the cost of living is high.
“I didn’t know you could even have a recording studio on a yacht. Isn’t it too damp? Or too loud?”
I feel like I’m babbling, but the brighter it gets out, the more stunning he is. As if even the sun itself worships him. He smiles, and his teeth are white and even. The lines of his tattoo writhe with the play of the muscles underneath, almost as if it’s alive.
My heart does a little flip-flop in my chest. I tuck the ends of my hair behind my ears, hoping I can play it cool, that I don’t seem as stunned as I feel. I’m like a teenager with her first crush, tongue-tied.
“I don’t like being far from the water, näckrosen. So I make it work.”
I should protest the unbidden nickname, but oddly, a larger part of me likes it. I’ve never had a nickname I liked, but from him it sounds pure and lovely—just like a water lily in the dawn, as he said.
“I’m Linnea,” I say, although I don’t want him to stop calling me by the new name. I also don’t want to tell him that.
It seems like giving too much away.
I hug myself a little tighter. Bounce closer.
I can see the individual spikes of his lashes, the exact oceanic shade of his eyes. I catch myself staring. Wanting to drown in them.
“Aegir.”
He inclines his head politely, but a little smile playing on his soft lips gives away the game. His eyes slide over me in appreciation, as if he senses my body’s response to his.
I realize with a thrill of pleasure that he’s flirting with me.
Aegir
The dawn light kisses the freckles on her nose, lighting the pale gray of her eyes to a clear blue like the sea after a storm. Her gaze on me is avid, interested, and I haven’t missed how she’s traced the lines of my arms and chest with her eyes. Hidden by the dark water, my cock grows hot and hard.
My siren song bubbles up in me, adding a few notes in major tone to what has always been a minor melody since the very first, a thousand years gone. I cock my head to listen. It’s difficult not to sing along.
“This is your beach?”
The song thrills in me, wanting me to listen, trying to tell me something important. I swallow it, so that it won’t escape my lips.
She nods. “We’ve lived here since my divorce, my two daughters and I—which was about seven years ago. By the way, I was wondering—did you swim all the way here?” she asks, glancing around. “It’s cold, and I don’t see a boat.”
“I swim a lot—I don’t mind if it’s cold.”
I hold still as she bobs closer. I could almost touch her if I reached out my hand for hers. Her wet hair is tucked behind her ears, framing her face and bringing out the delicate lines of her cheekbones, the tilt of her eyes, the graceful lines of her neck. The water is shallower here, and the other arm is still wrapped around her body, but the pale globes of her breasts are glowing through the umber waters. Her nipples are stiff just underneath. Deeper down, the water is too dark. It hides her curves with the grace of a queen’s gown.
She smiles. “Me too. I used to be a competitive diver when I was younger. I won a few medals—two silver, one gold—in the Swedish Nationals in that life.” She splashes the surface idly with one hand. “Now I just swim to keep myself sane.” A couple of breaths. “And even though it’s inconvenient, working in the city and having to commute all that way, I can’t bear to be away from the water.”
“I know the feeling.”
No need to go into details. Something in my siren song urges me to be careful, to swim lightly around her, to not offer too much. She is the bright flash of a rare fish, and I fear scaring her away. My fingers move of their own accord, riffs flowing through them, playing the melody of my siren song. Her eyes drop to them and she smiles.
“You’re the type who can’t stop playing music no matter what, huh.” A little laugh at my quizzical look. “I knew some guys in a metal band, one of them was like that.”
She reaches for my hand under the water, takes it. Her eyes widen, and her fingers tighten around mine before she drops it again.
Now I’m sure. She felt it too—the shock of recognition. The one my dragon’s melody felt when I took her hand in Dreamscape.
“Do I know you?” she says.
“Only from my dreams.” I say it lightly, flirtatiously—but her lips part in surprise. Did I say too much?
“I’m sorry,” she says after an awkward pause. “It’s just that I’ve been having these recurring nightmares lately. About my coven, and that fucking dragon, setting everything on fire, and he almost killed us, and then—“ her voice trembles, breaks, and she shakes herself. Tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands. A deep breath. “Well, you don’t want to hear about that.”
But the tone of her voice is clear: it is colored with disgust, fear, remembered dread. Her eyes sparkle with tears. Now I know what my dragon’s melody wanted me to be careful of. With a sinking feeling, I realize she hates dragons. It was another type that terrified her, not a water dragon like me—but I don’t think those finer points will be appreciated. It’s clear she is traumatized by the experience, and I will not frighten her further. Yet despite my reservations, I am convinced she is meant for me—my siren song’s wild, celebratory melody, one which is new to me, sings it in unmistakeable harmonies.
I can’t resist. I take her hand, raise it to my lips. Sweet, powdery hints of peach blossoms and honeysuckle, underlaid by earthy vetiver and a touch of salt-encrusted sea grass. A wild, fresh scent, that of a woman who spends time outdoors. It is intoxicating, alluring. I hum a bit of my siren song, letting it dance from me into the dawn-kissed air, enjoying how it echoes from the calm umber water.
“Näckrosen,” I say, my siren song weaving through the syllables, music expressing what words yet cannot.
She makes a little noise. My eyes fly to hers. She stares as if I am something she’s desperately wanted her whole life, yet never knew existed until this moment.
I can’t help myself.
I reach out, trace her full bottom lip with my thumb. Water splashes my chest as I comb wet hair back from her temple, pull her face gently toward me. She comes willingly, eagerly, her arms finding their way around my neck, her lips meeting mine.
She tastes of Baltic seawater and dreams, of longing and of home. Her bare breasts, soft and round, press against my chest, and my hands skim the dip of her little waist and generous hips, the sweet fullness of her ass covered only by a triangle of fabric. She weighs next to nothing in the water, and my arms hold her close, sharing the heat of my body with her in the cold water. Her skin is slick against mine, the hard pink pearls of her nipples pressed against me. My cock, trapped between our bodies, pulses with my heartbeat, with the insistence of my melody. The barrier between us is whisper-thin. Thighs wrapped around my waist, she rocks her hips against me in time to it. It’s all I can do to hold myself back.
Her tongue duels with mine, as eager and full of need as mine. Holding myself back with an effort, against my draconic instincts, I instead let her take the lead. I want to lose myself in her, to take her and make her mine, but my siren song trills warnings whenever the temptation becomes too great.
Let her come to you, it sings. Let her invite you in—don’t press her.
Her fingers rake through my hair, and she kisses me eagerly, greedily, as if she’s been starving. She explores my body, the dip and bulge of every hard muscle. I offer myself to her, happy to let her indulge herself. I want to her learn my body, learn the feel of me, to know in her soul what I already do: that she is meant for me. That she is my mate.
“You make me hear music,” she says, kissing the stubbled line of my jaw, the cords of my neck. “It feels like I’m dreaming. Like I’m swimming in dreams.”
I hum to her, wordlessly, cupping the delicious roundness of her full ass in my hands, as she tastes me—the dip of my collarbone, the lobe of my ear. I ache for her, to taste her curves, and my siren song reflects my need—but I will not make her afraid. I would die first.
My cock throbs, and her hips respond. She knows what she’s doing to me, and she’s reveling in it, the little minx. I groan into her. She already has me under her spell.
My fingers dip into the back of her bikini bottom, tracing the line of her crack. Not too low—just enough to tease her. To tease myself. Her breath picks up, and she makes a little noise deep in her throat before bringing her mouth back to mine. I take it in a passionate kiss, my tongue the only place where I dare take the lead, where I dare assert my desire the way I want to.
Her body responds to mine, relaxing into mine. The scent of honeysuckle and peach blossoms mixing with feminine musk surrounds her like mist. Her skin is so soft, the water turning it to the slipperiness of satin, and my hands glide along her curves with no resistance at all. She is hot where the water is cold, soft where I am hard, demanding where I am yielding.
My hand snakes up to cup the curve of her breast, thumb flicking against the hard point. Her hand comes up to cover mine.
“Put off?”
I am confused—she is everything I’ve ever dreamt of.
“I have scars. It was elective, I had a lift, but some people—I mean, guys—they haven’t liked them. Now I’m a little paranoid about it because of what some people said.”
Now I see them, the same on both breasts—faint white lines, a circle around the nipple, a vertical line reaching down underneath, and a horizontal one along the bottom curve. Each set makes the shape of an anchor. But they are faint, and if she hadn’t mentioned them, I would never have noticed.
“I couldn’t care less about scars,” I say, and I mean it. “Your breasts are perfect. Beautiful. All of you is beautiful.” The shape is stunning—high and round, as if she’s turned back time. “I’d worship them, I’d worship all of you if you’d let me.”
She melts into me. I take one point between my lips, flicking with the tip of my tongue, and she gasps. Cupping the back of my head, she urges me on.
“Oh, I’d let you,” she says, her voice husky and low. “I might just beg you, if this is the preview.”
I switch to the other nipple, relishing the feel of the tightly puckered areola against my tongue. I trace the circle of it, lapping water droplets from the warm satin of her breast, trace the horizontal line underneath before taking the point back in my mouth. She gasps, cries out, arching her back to give me a better angle. She tastes clean and sweet, and I can’t help but imagine how she tastes lower down. The salt and musk of her, how hot and wet she’ll be for me, how hard she’ll come for me. My mouth waters, and I work her more insistently. She responds by purring her approval, digs her fingernails into my shoulders.
My cock throbs, hard and needy against my abdomen. I have her firmly around the waist with one arm, tracing the lines of the other breast with my free hand. She writhes against me, her breath coming in little moans and gasps. I paint my need for her onto her skin, the melody of my siren song snaking around us like the eddies of summer breezes.