“I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my neck. “I’ve got you, love. Let go.”
I do. The orgasm that crashes through me is different from all the others, deeper, more complete, like something fundamental shifting into place. I scream his name, the sound echoing across the water, and he follows me over the edge one more time.
We stay locked together as the pleasure slowly recedes. The sky is lightening now, pink and gold touching the clouds. Birds are starting to sing in the trees along the shore.
He’s still inside me. Still hard. Still moving in small, gentle thrusts that keep the pleasure simmering, his cock flexing and stroking in ways that make me whimper.
“Addictive,” I whisper. “You’re addictive.”
“So are you,” he says. “I could stay inside you forever.”
“Then stay.”
So he does. As the sun rises over Harmony Glen lake, we remain joined in the shallows, his body covering mine, his weight pressing me into the soft sand, his cock still buried deep inside me where it belongs, still seeking, still finding, still filling me in ways only he can.
The water laps gently around us. The morning light turns everything gold.
And we are finally, completely, home.
CHAPTER 12
MUIR
The New York StateDepartment of Environmental Conservation has specific requirements for commercial dive operations in protected freshwater systems. San Pedro Eco-Tours has been operating on the correct initial certification and the optimistic assumption that the night-swim and specialty package documentation would sort itself out eventually. Cora's relationship with paperwork: genuine good intentions, indefinite timeline.
I've been working through the backlog for two weeks.
It's some of the most satisfying work I've done all summer.
Cora finds this bewildering. She stands in the cabin doorway Wednesday morning with her coffee and loose hair, watching me with equal parts gratitude and mild suspicion, like she's waiting for the permits to turn out secretly terrible.
"You actually enjoy that."
"I'm going to thank you right now." She comes in, sets her coffee down, and kisses me on the side of the head with the easyunselfconsciousness of someone who's decided they're allowed to do this.
She goes back to the Snack Hut. I go back to the permits.
The expansion happens in increments.
The first new offering is the mer-magic package—a guided underwater photography session for small groups, certified divers, led by Cora in her sirena form with me running safety and the camera rig.
I spend a week in early August configuring the underwater housing and testing the lighting with a local artist named Sera who does nature photography for the Harmony Glen tourism board. After her first test dive, she surfaces and says, "I need you to set aside every Saturday for the rest of the summer."
Cora negotiates the contract from the Snack Hut counter with a lumpia in one hand and the booking spreadsheet open on her laptop. Sera agrees to everything. The lumpia makes Cora look relaxed and in control, which she is.
The first Saturday package sells out in eleven minutes.
The second new offering is the night swim—a late-evening guided experience for non-divers, paddleboard and kayak, under the stars. I write the safety protocol. Cora writes the story script: lake lore, local supernatural history, the particular quality of Harmony Glen's water after dark when the sprites are most active.
We run the first session on a warm Thursday evening in early August with a group of eight. I watch from the kayak guide position as Cora's voice carries across the dark water and thetourists in their life vests go from politely interested to genuinely enchanted.
The night swim sells out. The second session has a waitlist.
Finnbar provides three additional boat rentals per week for the expanded operation with zero ceremony but noticeable pleasure. He has strong feelings about the lake being properly used—respectfully, by people who know what they're doing, with appropriate equipment.
He informs me of this when I come to arrange the rental terms, standing behind his Monster Catch counter in his Monster Catch polo, his paint-coloured horse head carrying the expression of a glashtyn satisfied with a business arrangement.
"Good operation," he says. From Finnbar, that's a standing ovation.