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After hopping over the rocks as Jarin had done, she wriggled out of her lacy underwear and her filthy dress, casting them near his trousers. While Jarin’s back was turned, she lowered herself into the pool, the waterline coming to her waist. The skin that’d been covered by the dress was pale and clean compared to her sandy, dirty limbs.
Jarin seemed unfazed by her, holding his head under the waterfall and scrubbing at his hair and neck, his eyes squeezed closed against the torrent.
Keeping a deliberate distance, she walked under the waterfall too, laughing in delight as the cool, fresh water soaked her hair and body. The sand on her arms and legs was washed away, soothing her sunburn.
“Good, right?” came Jarin’s voice from behind her.
She turned around to face him. How long had he been standing there?
Droplets clung to his eyelashes and his hair was slicked back, rivulets of water traveling the planes of his muscular body. The hair in the middle of his tattooed chest was onyx-black with wetness, trailing down to a dark mound in his groin. His cock swayed before her, impossibly massive and veined, like his wrists and hands.
“I’ll go away if you’d rather be alone,” he said over the thundering water.
“No, I don’t want you to go away.”
He nodded. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“I suppose.”
“What’s it like to have a tail?”
She giggled. “It’s wonderful.” Riella swished her hands through the cool water. “Far simpler. Freeing.”
“That makes sense. And what’s it like having legs?”
She shrugged, glancing down at him. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”
“I think it’s different for men.”
Her face grew warm. “Honestly? It’s distracting at times.”
“Oh, yeah?” A smile danced at the corner of his mouth. “What times?”
She splashed water at him. “Nothing to do with you.”
To hide the blatant lie she’d just told, she dove under the waterfall, surfacing in the pool on the other side. Jarin followed her. They swam to the center, where the water was calm, and floated on their backs. Patterns of light shifted on the rock walls, like shadow puppets.
With her ears submerged, Riella couldn’t converse with Jarin. But she stayed close to him. Now and then, almost as if by accident, their fingers grazed.
After this happened a few times, Jarin took her hand, threading his fingers through hers and holding it tight.
Riella smiled to the dark cavern, the feeling in her chest expanding and flowing through her like warm honey.
CHAPTER 16
The waterfall made rainbows in the sunny mist. Riella awoke on a rock while Jarin still slumbered, his arm under her neck like a pillow. After bathing and dressing last night, they’d talked until falling asleep in the early hours.
He awoke when she tapped her talons on his shoulder, sitting up and squinting against the brightness of the day.
“Good morning,” he grumbled, scratching his stubbled cheek. “We fell asleep.”
Riella felt strangely shy, even though nothing happened between them. Nothing except holding hands and sleeping side by side and talking, at least. But those things weren’t as monumental as sex, were they?
She stood. “We should return to camp and work on the ship. They’ve probably started without us already.”
After gazing up at her for several moments, he hauled his long body from the rock. “You’re right. We should go back.”
Once they left the cavern and filed through the vibrant green path back to camp, the night they spent in the rock pools seemed almost like a dream. Jarin walked in silence, and Riella did not speak either, unsure what to say. What did last night mean, if anything?
