There was something in that passage about correlative spells that could be useful … but I felt myself drifting, my body weightless in the warm water, a warmth that surrounded me like liquid sunshine … or like the fluid Aelvesgold that had wrapped around me when Liam and I had made love in Faerie. Behind my closed eyelids I summoned the image of Liam as he’d appeared to me there, his skin golden and glowing. I pictured him moving above me, the gold light limning his body, but leaving his face in shadow. I couldn’t quite bring his face into focus, but I felt his body stirring the liquid Aelvesgold between us and I remembered how the golden light had entered me before he had. Just as the warm water seemed to be moving over me now, caressing my breasts, stirring between my legs … I spread my legs to let the water inside me. I arched my hips and felt it move against me in a wave. A wave that had fingers and a mouth. I gasped as the water caressed me and the image of Liam, his face still in shadow, pressed his mouth against mine. My mouth was flooded with the hot, syrupy sweetness of his tongue. I drew it into me just as I drew in the wave of warmth between my legs. He rocked into me so hard, filling me so completely, that I sank beneath him. I would have gasped but his mouth was locked on mine, sucking my tongue, my lips, the very breath out of my lungs.

We were both sinking, our legs wrapped around each other, our mouths locked, our bodies rocking to the rhythm of the ocean’s tide. I opened my eyes and saw his hair spread out in a dark corona around his head, his aquamarine eyes staring wide into mine …

Liam didn’t have blue eyes. Who was this man? A fantasy? Or some creature made out of water and Aelvesgold fucking me into a watery grave? I bit down on his lip and, startled, his head snapped back. Not Liam, but someone else I recognized. Duncan Laird. He smiled at me and opened his mouth … and a small crayfish crawled out.