Page 29 of Stranded With the Grumpy Mermaid

"Don't stop."

I don't.

Her body starts tightening around me again. I feel each little contraction before she does, the way she pulls at me from the inside.

"I'm close."

Her voice fractures on the words.

I kiss her.

"Come for me."

And she does. Her entire body locks around mine, and the blue-white light erupts across her skin.

She cries out into my mouth. Her walls clench around me in hard, rhythmic pulses, gripping me so tightly I lose the last of my control.

I thrust through the first few contractions.

One. Two. Three.

Then I bury myself as deep as I can and come. Pleasure rips through me hard enough to blank everything else out. My hips jerk against hers. My arms shake. Her name leaves my mouth against the side of her throat, rough and helpless.

For several seconds there is only heat, pleasure and Neri. The entire universe and its wonders become utterly and completely irrelevant.

I stay there until I can trust my own brain to recognize reality again.

For a while neither of us speaks. The silence doesn't feel empty, it feels full.

"So." Her voice is muffled against me. "The muffins. The wilderness survival. And that. What else are you hiding? Can you weld?"

I smile into her hair. She really is amazing.

"I can paint a house. I can make empanadas for forty. And I know where every navigable star in the northern sky is right now."

"Show-off."

I kiss the top of her head. She burrows closer.

Then the night catches up with her. She goes heavy all at once, every muscle finally giving up the fight, and her voice slurs into my chest.

"I'm not sleepy."

"No. Obviously not."

"Mm."

She’s almost gone now. Then, from the bottom of somewhere, small and true:

"Don't let go yet."

My arm tightens around her.

"Wasn't planning to."

I hold her until the fire is down to muttering coals and the sun is up over the water and our shadow lies long across the sand. I get one arm under her knees and one under her shoulders, and I stand.

She blinks at me.