I only let his hand go when we arrived at them.

Quickly, juggling the sheet I had around me, I pulled on my nightgown then my panties.

I wound the toweling around my arm, took my husband’s hand again and led him farther down the beach.

As the distance from camp grew greater, Aramus’s fingers tightened around mine and he growled a warning, “Ha-Lah.”

I stopped, looked back at camp, which was not close, but it wasn’t far enough away.

But my king was not comfortable with the distance.

So it would have to do.

Still holding my husband’s hand, I dropped the toweling to the sand, moved so close to his front, our bodies were nearly brushing, and I tipped my head back.

“You once accused me of making you earn everything you received from me,” I reminded him.

In the moonlight, I saw his expression flicker from anger, to regret, back to anger.

He opened his mouth.

But it was me who said, “This, my husband, my king, I give you for free.”

And then I turned, still holding his hand, but lifting my free arm up in a wide arc.

The tingle surged from my womb to my heart to my fingertips, and a great break of water some fifty meters out and some twenty meters across rose toward the heavens on the trail of my arm, then dropped to the sea.

My arm now lowered, I lifted it up, and a gust of surf blew straight up into the air only to shower down as I again lowered my arm.

“By Triton,” Aramus whispered, his gaze locked to the water.

On a tug of his hand, I moved us to the edge of the surf.

And when the waves lapped my bare toes and the leather of his boots, I tugged his hand again and made him crouch beside me.

I closed my eyes, felt the warmth overtake my insides, opened my eyes, submerged my free hand in the water and sent my request.

It did not take long for me to receive a reply.

I turned my head to my husband.

“Watch the sea, my king,” I urged.

His eyes, no longer filled with fury, now filled with wonder, something that warmed me far more greatly than what I was getting from the sea, went from me to the horizon.

I turned that way too.

I heard his sharp intake of breath when four dolphins, two on each side, leapt from the waves toward each other.

“And now for a show,” I said.

And they were back. This time flipping nose over fin in the air or riding above the surf on the ends of their flippers or leaping all together in formation.

They ended with just their heads above water, whistling and trilling our way.

As they sunk beneath the sea, I waved my hand still in the water, and said, “And the finale.”