“In all the long years since they took my eye, you are the only person who ever touched me like this.”
I frowned up at him, and laid my hand against his face, the edge of the scar just another area under my hand. “Like what?”
He gave me a look, as if I knew exactly what.
“We are Unseelie. Things that others consider imperfections are marks of beauty among us,” I said.
“Only if you are not sidhe,” Rhys said. “To be truly scarred and sidhe is to be a living reminder that their perfect beauty could be forever marred. I am the ghost in the mirror, Merry. I remind them that we are only long-lived mortals, not truly immortal.”
“Me, too,” I said.
He smiled down at me again, pressing his face harder against my hand. “It’s one of the reasons I always thought we’d make a good couple.”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“Don’t you remember, I took you on a date when you were sixteen.” “I remember.” I let my hand fall back to the sheet. “I remember that you tried to persuade me to have sex with you, which would have gotten us both executed.”
“I didn’t actually try for intercourse. I just wanted to see which flavor of your family you took after.”
I was frowning harder. “What does that mean?”
He smiled, gently this time. “Depending on how you responded to my overtures”—he waggled his eyebrows at the last word, and made me laugh—“I would decide whether to approach your father.”
I had an inkling of where this was going. “You asked my father if you could be my fiancé?”
“I asked him to consider me.”
“You, or he, never told me that.”
“It seemed clear from the beginning of all this that I wasn’t a front-runner for your heart. You loved Galen more than me even when you were sixteen. Then your father gave you to Griffin, and if you had gotten pregnant, that would have been that.”
My face clouded over at the mention of my ex-fiancé. He’d dumped me after years. Said I was too human, not sidhe enough for him. What he hadn’t realized was that once he dumped me Andais would force him back into celibacy with the rest of the guard. He tried to join my little harem and I turned him down. The only reason he wanted to join was to have sex with someone, anyone. He didn’t love me. I knew that.
What I hadn’t expected was him selling some rather intimate photos of the two of us to the tabloids. I had loved him once. I wasn’t certain he had ever loved me. He had sold the pictures and fled faerie. To my knowledge the long arm of faerie had never caught up with him. To my knowledge. I hadn’t asked. I had loved him once. I did not want to know how he’d died, or be presented his head in a basket. Aunt Andais was capable of both, or worse.
Rhys touched my cheek, made me look up at him. “I shouldn’t have mentioned his name.”
“I’m sorry, but I hadn’t thought about him in a while.”
“Until I brought him up,” Rhys said.
Kitto moved minutely on the other side of me. Until that moment he’d been so still I had almost forgotten that he was there. He was very good at that, but naked in a bed with me and Rhys, and still able to be nearly unnoticed…I was beginning to wonder if it was a sort of magic. If it was, then it wasn’t sidhe. Snake goblins were used mostly for scouts, spying the lay of the land. Maybe they all possessed a natural talent for going unnoticed if they wished.
I looked at him, but didn’t ask out loud if it was magic. Kitto would not believe it was magic even if it was. He saw himself as powerless, and that was that.
“Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone,” he said.
“It’s your room and your bed,” Rhys said.
“Yes, but I will share it with my friend, even if I’m not included.”
Rhys reached across me and patted the other man’s shoulder. “That is a generous offer, Kitto, but I think there will be no sex this afternoon.”
“What?” I asked.
He smiled down at me. “Your mind is full of all that has happened today, as a queen’s mind should be. It makes for a good ruler, but bad sex.”
I started to protest, but he cradled my chin in his hand. “It’s okay, Merry. Maybe what we all need right now is to hold each other. Maybe it’s about closeness.”
“Rhys….”
He moved so that he covered my mouth, lightly, with his hand. “It’s all right, really.”
I kissed the palm of his hand, then moved it away from my mouth. “I understand now why not Galen. He’s a political disaster. But you, you do politics just fine.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“So why?” I asked.
“Why did your father not choose me?” he asked.
I nodded.
Kitto slipped out of the bed. “This is sidhe business.”
“Stay,” Rhys said.
Kitto hesitated.
“Prince Essus told me that there was enough death in your life. He wanted you paired with someone whose magic was about life.”
“Griffin’s magic was beauty and sex.”
“It complemented what your father hoped you would grow into magically.” Rhys played with the edge of my hair. “He was right.”
“If you were goblin,” Kitto said, “beauty and sex would be useless. It would condemn you to be a slave to someone stronger and more able to fight. Your powers, Rhys, they would be valued above such soft things.”
“Essus wanted something softer for his daughter,” Rhys said.
“He would never have chosen Doyle, would he?” I asked.
“It would never have occurred to him that the queen’s Darkness could ever be parted from her side. But no, I think if I was too harsh for his daughter to marry, then Doyle would have been out, too.”
“I hadn’t thought about who my father might have chosen for me among my guards.”
“Hadn’t you?” he asked.
“No.”
Kitto had picked his jeans up off the floor where he’d let them fall. “I will leave you two to talk.”
“Stay,” Rhys said. “Help me understand why it’s you Merry comes to when she wants to relax. I’m not her heart’s desire. I’m not even the one who makes her heart beat fast by a feather’s touch. I need to find a place in her life, too. Help teach me how to be something new.”
“I will not teach you my place, for you will replace me.”
“I will never be as undemanding of Merry as you are. I have neither the personality nor the patience. But teach me to be a little less pressure so that she might turn to me for something.”
“Oh, Rhys,” I said.
He shook his head, sending all that curly white hair sliding around his shoulders. “You like me. You’ve always liked me. You enjoy sex with me, but you do not burn for me. Strangely, you burn for colder things even than my powers.”
“I am Unseelie sidhe.”
“You are also Seelie sidhe.”
“I am part that, yes, but I am also part human, and part brownie. But if you pushed me to name myself, what I am, I am Unseelie.”
He smiled, a sad sort of smile. “I know that.”
“Andais accused me of remaking the Unseelie court into a mirror of the Seelie. I am not doing it on purpose.”
“Remember what I said about you when you were sixteen? That I wanted to see which side of your family you took after?” Rhys asked.
“Yes.”
“I wanted you to take after the Seelie side of your family.”
“My grandfather is an abusive bastard. My uncle is mad. My mother is a cold, envious social climber. Why would you want that in your life?”
“I don’t mean their personalities, and I don’t even mean the ones you referred to. Remember, I knew your ancestors before they were lost in the great wars in Europe. I knew some of the women of your mother’s line. They were goddesses of fertility, love, lust. They were a warm lot, Merry, in that good earthy way.”
“So, what, you wondered if I had taken after my
great-great aunt?”
“Aunts,” Rhys said, “and a great-grandmother or two. You reminded me of them. The hair, the eyes. I saw them in you.”
“No one else did,” I said.
“No one else was looking.”
I rose and gave him a kiss. The kiss grew until I felt his body grow hard again, where all the talk had made it soft. He broke from my lips with a sound that was almost pain. “I can’t keep being the gentleman if you keep kissing me like that.”
“Then don’t be the gentleman, be my lover.”
Kitto finished fastening his jeans. “I will leave you to what the sidhe do best, other than magic. You are my friend, Rhys, I believe that, but you are not comfortable with me in the bed with you and the princess.”
Rhys started to protest. It was my turn to put my fingers on his lips. “He’s right.”
He moved my hand. “I know. Damnit, I know. I thought if I could have sex with Kitto and you, I could guard you tonight with the goblins, but I can’t.”
“You have come a long way on the subject of goblins, Rhys. It’s all right.”
“Who will guard you tonight if Doyle is injured and my sensibilities are too delicate?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “and right this second I don’t care. Make love to me, Rhys, now, just you. Be with me, help chase my thoughts to stillness.” I rose and kissed him again and drew him down to me with arms and hands and eagerness.
I did not hear the door close quietly behind Kitto, but when next I opened my eyes, we were alone.
CHAPTER 19
RHYS MADE ME LIE ON MY STOMACH AND BEGAN TO BREATHE HIS way down my back. I would have said kiss, but it was too gentle for that. He caressed the skin with the barest touch of lips and breath. When he got low enough, he began to breathe and work those tiny, near-invisible hairs on the lower back, so that my body ran with goose bumps and involuntary shivers.
I raised my hips minutely from the bed in a silent invitation for him to do more.
He laughed that laugh of his that was masculine pleasure and his own amusement. But for once there was nothing of self-mockery in it. He laid a more solid kiss against the small of my back. I writhed for him, letting him know without words how wonderful it was.
He laid his weight on top of me, resting the hard, long length of himself between the cheeks of my ass. The feel of it made me cry out.
He wrapped his arms around me, forced me enough off the bed so he could cup my breasts in his hands. He held me tightly and firmly in the strength of his body.
“If I truly loved you,” he whispered, “I would do what Kitto has done. I would refuse to have intercourse with you. I would take myself out of the race for king. Kitto did it because he knows that neither court would ever let a half goblin sit as your king. They’d kill you both first.”
He settled himself more firmly against me, pushing his hips just a little. It made me writhe as much as the weight of him would allow, but the seriousness in his voice didn’t match what his body was doing.
Rhys continued to whisper against my hair. “I know you love Doyle and Frost. Hell, you even love Galen more than you love me, even now when you’ve both realized what a political liability he would be as king.”
“Sometimes we have just oral sex now when we are together.”
Rhys tensed above me, and not in a sexual way, but as if he was thinking. “Has he taken himself out of the race for king?”
“Not completely, but sometimes we don’t do anything to make babies. We just pleasure each other.”
“Interesting,” he said, and it wasn’t a seductive whisper this time.
I tried to rise, but he kept me pressed to the bed with a squeeze of his arms, a flex of his hips. I spoke, trapped underneath him. “Why is it interesting?”
“Galen has taken himself out of the running for king because he knows he isn’t strong enough to help keep you alive. But he loves you, utterly loves you. He loves you enough to give you up if that’s what’s best for you. Gallant Galen.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but Rhys was right. It was gallant and horribly brave. Galen still had a chance to be the father of my child, but the last few times we’d made love he had only used his chance for intercourse once. The rest had been amazingly fun, but nothing that would have made a baby.
Rhys wrapped those strong arms tight, so tight it was almost hard to breathe. He whispered against my ear, his breath hot. “If I truly loved you, I would take myself out of the running for king. I would help you get your heart’s desire, which is Doyle and Frost. But I am too selfish, Merry. I cannot give you up without a fight.”
I spoke in the voice that his grip allowed me, breathy. “It isn’t a fight.”
“Yes,” he whispered fiercely. “Yes, it is. Not of strength of arms, maybe, but it is a battle. For some of us, the prize is to be king. But for most of us, Merry, we would want you as our prize even if there was no throne.”
He shoved his body against mine hard and fierce until I cried out for him. Then he squeezed me even tighter until I thought I would have to ask him to stop so I could breathe. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss against my ear, so fierce, so full of emotion. “I want to win, Merry. I want you even if it breaks your heart. I am a selfish bastard, Merry. I won’t give you up, not even to see you happy.”
I lay underneath him and didn’t know what to say.
He squeezed harder, and I finally had to protest, “Rhys, please….”
He eased the grip of his arms just enough so that I could draw a good breath, but his fingers squeezed my breasts hard and firm. The harshness of it drew small noises from me.
“You like sex rougher than I do. Things that are simply pain to me make you shiver with pleasure.” His grip on my breasts eased. “The goblins will do worse than that tonight to you, and you will enjoy it, won’t you?”
“I’ve negotiated for pleasure tonight, Rhys.”
He rubbed his face against my hair. “I could give you up to Doyle, or Frost, or Galen, if I had to. It would kill something in me, but I could do it. But I could not bare to lose you to Ash and Holly. I could not bear to have my Merry married to goblins, fucking goblins every night.”
A sound escaped him that was almost a sob.
“Rhys,” I said, “I….”
“No, don’t say it, whatever it is. Let me finish. I may never have the courage to say it all again.”
I went still under him. I lay there with his body wrapped around me, and let him talk, if that was what he needed.
“I hate the thought of them with you tonight, Merry. I hate more that you are excited by the thought of them tying you up and fucking you. God, I hate that maybe most of all.” His arms tightened around me once more. “See, I don’t love you, not really. If I loved you, truly loved you, I’d want you to be happy. I’d want you to have the sex you enjoy, not just the sex I think you should have. But that’s not what I want for you. I want you to be gentler than you are. I want you to want sex the way I make it. The way I like it. I hate that you want things that I think are pain and not pleasure. I hate knowing that though you enjoy sex with me, it’s not everything you need, or want.” He dug his fingers into my breasts again until I cried out again, and my body bucked under his.
He let go of me abruptly, pushing himself above my body so that his arms framed me on either side, but his hips were tighter against me.
“Because I hate the thought of the goblins with you tonight, because I want you with me more than I want you happy, because I am a selfish bastard, I’m going to fill your body with my seed, and I’m going to pray while I do it. I’m going to call power while I do it. I want you pregnant with my child, consort help me, but I do. Goddess help me, but I do. Not so we will all live. Not so Cel won’t sit the throne, and divide us in civil war. No, nothing so noble, Merry. I want it, because I want you, even knowing you don’t want me.”
“I do want you,” I said, and turned so I could look at him over my shoulder
.
The look on his face was one that I would never forget. So fierce, so desperate, so wild, but not with sex or even lust or love. The look on his face was full of an awful loss. If I’d been sending him out to do battle with sword and shield, I wouldn’t have let him go, because the look on his face was the look of a man who knew he wouldn’t be coming back. The face of a man who knew he would lose this day, die this day. I would have held him back from the battle. I would have made him stay by my side, and kept him alive another day. But this was not a battlefield I could protect him from. It was my body and heart, and they had already chosen.
He shook his head. “No pity, Merry, at least save me that.”
I turned away then, turned so he could not see the tears that shimmered in my eyes. It was the only way I could save him from my pity. I did love him, but not the way he needed me to love him. He was right, even our sexual appetites did not match.
He jerked my hips up off the bed. I tried to get up on all fours for him, but he forced my head down, so that my lower body was raised like an offering to him.
I felt the head of him pushing against me, but I was still too tight for the angle.
I said, “You’ll need to use a finger to start. I’m too tight with no foreplay for this position.”
He kept pushing at my body, harder, fiercer.
“You’ll hurt yourself, Rhys,” I said from where my face was almost buried against the pillows.
“I want it to hurt,” he said. Then I felt him break the surface of me, find the barest part of himself inside me, and I stopped protesting. He forced himself inside me, fighting the tightness and the lack of wetness of my body. If I had been wired differently, it would have hurt. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be hurt, I could. Even intercourse for me could be done so it was only pain, but you had to work at it, you had to be bad at it. Bad in a way that Rhys was not.
I started screaming for him. My body orgasming simply from the feel of him forcing his way inside me. Not just one orgasm, but waves of them rolling over and over my body, making me writhe and push myself against the force and strength of him. The pleasure of it spilled out of my mouth in one ragged scream after another. I screamed, “Yes” and “God” and “Goddess” and finally at the end I screamed his name, over and over and over.
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