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“Are you uncomfortable back in your human form?” Luke asked, finally having lost his battle at pretending Syrus wasn’t in the room.

Syrus considered. The change of form generally didn’t bother him until enough days had passed for the ache in his bones to begin—it wouldn’t do for him to be completely landlocked, for example—but there was indeed an increased awareness of the pain like this. Syrus was unaccustomed to feet to begin with, and thus they demanded his attention. Perhaps less so when he was up and moving, but his dear, sweet Luke wouldn’t allow for such things at the moment.

Luke had stopped sanding, waiting patiently for Syrus’s answer. Syrus allowed himself a pitiful grimace. “Perhaps my fins would be preferable.”

Luke straightened on his stool. “Oh. So you need… Back to the ocean? Or…” He gazed off in the direction of the house. “The bathtub, maybe?”

Syrus shook his head slowly, biting back a smile. “Here is fine.”

“Here?” Luke asked with obvious surprise. “But won’t you…dry out?”

Syrus didn’t have to feign his grimace this time. Dry out? Like he was some terribly unattractive flapping fish left out in the sun?

“I will grow weak without water given long enough,” Syrus said with all the dignity of his species. “But that will take some time.” He arched a brow. “Didn’t you know my kind like to bask on the rocks? How better to lure fishermen to their doom than to be on full display?”

It helped to have ocean air on his skin, of course. Transforming in the desert wouldn’t be at all the same, from the tales he’d heard, but Syrus was too piqued at the phrase dry out to share that knowledge at the moment.

Luke cocked his head. “I thought you were too young to know anything about that.”

Syrus coughed delicately, then gave Luke his best coy look. “Will it be terribly distracting for you if I return to my true form while you work?”

Syrus already knew the answer—of course it would be, as beautiful and glorious as he was—but he was too greedy for Luke’s continued attention to feel overly guilty about it. Luke had told him already that his work was mainly for pleasure, that an inheritance kept him afloat despite his reducing commissions to tend to Colby’s care.

And if Luke could pause his work to tend to Colby… Why not Syrus as well?

Luke huffed and returned to his sanding, a light flush high on his cheeks. “I’ll manage.”

Syrus grinned and let himself transform.

In the end, Luke held off longer than Syrus had bargained for.

True, he’d initially turned his stool so his back was to Syrus—presumably to get a better angle for sanding, but who was that really fooling—which must have aided his efforts toward indifference quite a bit. But when Luke had finished his task, he’d had no choice but to shift into another position, no longer facing away from Syrus. From then on it had only been a matter of minutes.

Now Luke couldn’t keep his eyes off him.

Syrus probably wasn’t helping the matter. For one, he’d placed himself in what he knew was a beguiling pose: on his side, with his head propped on his hand, his beautiful tail stretched out along the quilt-covered futon. And for two, Syrus kept asking Luke questions, keeping Luke’s attention directed exactly where he wanted.

Syrus couldn’t feel too bad about it either. It was so clear that Luke wanted desperately to catch his little glimpses. Syrus was simply helping him get his heart’s desire.

Case in point: Syrus cleared his throat, and Luke’s focus immediately shifted his way.

“Would you say this table is your usual style?”

Syrus thought he knew the answer already, but he wanted to hear it from Luke’s own lips. He wanted to hear everything from Luke’s lips.

Luke tore his gaze from Syrus’s bare chest and frowned thoughtfully at the table. “The wood itself is,” he said slowly. “I prefer warmer colors to work with. Cherry. Teak. I think there’s a tendency now to equate a certain coastal style with ashy tones, and I think that’s…closed-minded.”

“And the form?”

Had that sounded suggestive? Syrus hadn’t meant it to, but he liked the little pop of color the question had added to Luke’s cheeks.

“Um, no. I prefer clean lines and a certain…solidity. But this is for a longtime client. He wanted something for his daughter, and her tastes are a little more whimsical.” Luke cocked his head, studying his piece and not seeming to find it lacking, judging from the small quirk of his lips. “I guess I don’t mind the challenge.”

He loved his work, Syrus’s human. It was there in his voice when he spoke of it, in his careful hands when he approached it. He might not spend the hours dedicated to his craft that someone unencumbered by other responsibilities could manage, but it was clearly a vocation born of passion. A calm, quiet passion, perhaps, suited to Luke’s grounded nature.

Syrus’s own lips curled as he remembered the noises he’d wrung from Luke the night before, not to mention just this morning. Perhaps not always calm and quiet, Luke’s passion. There were turbulent waters hiding under his amiable exterior. They just needed the occasional…stirring.

Syrus let the fins at the end of his tail twist and fan, the pain muted for the moment by the delicious tension building in the air.