A Caress of Twilight mg-2

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I flung him sharply into the air, where he buzzed at me like an angry bee. "Why did you do that? We were having so much fun."

  "No glamour, remember," I said, scowling up at him, clutching my sheet.

  "Without glamour the feeding will not be nearly so pleasant for you." He shrugged his thin shoulders, the movement making him dip in midair. "For me it is much the same, for Niceven's purposes it is much the same, but for you, fair princess, it is not the same. Let me save you some pain and discomfort, and let this be a friendly sharing."

  If he'd caught me on another day when Kitto's bite didn't still ache, I might have told him no, just to take his queen's blood and be done with it. Goblins could not do glamour of any kind, so Kitto had had no choice; without the natural glamour of sex to soften his feeding, there was nothing he could do magically. Sage was offering me a choice.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then nodded. "Just enough glamour to make it pleasant, but that's all, Sage. If you try for more than that, I'll call for the guards and you won't like what they'll do to you."

  He made a sound that would have been rude, except that it came out like a tiny trumpet, as if a butterfly could make an ass's bray. "Darkness has been waiting centuries for me to put a foot out of line, Princess. I know well, perhaps better than you, what he owes me."

  "I noticed it seemed personal between you, more than with the others."

  "Personal? You could say that." He smiled, and it managed to be pleasant and evil at the same time, as if he was imagining terrible things that would be a great deal of fun to do.

  I could have asked Sage what was so personal, but I didn't. Either Doyle would explain or I would never know. I didn't think Doyle would take kindly to me prying his secrets from a fey he hated. It was one thing to gain information from one friend about another friend, but you didn't talk to people's enemies about your friends, and you didn't let those enemies talk to you behind your friends' backs. It just wasn't kosher.

  "You may feed, Sage, and you may use a little glamour to keep it from being so unpleasant. But mind your manners."

  "Do you need to look so far for protection? You have your goblin there beside you. Will he not reach up and snatch me from the air and grind my bones if I play you false?"

  "Goblins have little chance against strong glamour, and well you know it."

  He put his hands on his chest, widened his eyes. "But I am but a demi-fey. I cannot have the glamour of a sidhe lord. Why should any goblin fear the likes of me?"

  "The demi-fey of every description have powerful glamour and well you know that. They have led travelers and the unwary astray for centuries."

  "A little swamp water never hurt anyone," Sage said, hovering closer toward me.

  "Unless there happens to be quicksand or sucking mud under that water. You are Unseelie fey, which means if the traveler falls through the murk to his death, so much more the fun."

  He crossed his arms, which were thinner than a pencil was round, over his chest. "And what happens when a Seelie will-o'-the-wisp guides travelers into marshy land, and they fall to quicksand? Do not tell me that they then run for help and grab a rope. They may weep pretty tears for a poor mortal, but as soon as his last breath bubbles up from the swamp, they're away, giggling to themselves, looking for another traveler to lead astray. They may avoid that particular patch of swamp, but they won't stop their game simply because it led to some unfortunate's death."

  He landed on my sheet-covered knee. "And is it so unfair to lead some net-waving butterfly collector to his death, when if he caught me, he would throw me in a killing jar and mount me with a pin through my heart?"

  "You have glamour enough to keep away from that fate," I said.

  "Yes, but my gentler brethren, the butterflies and insects that we demi-fey mimic, what of them? One fool with a net can devastate a summer meadow."

  Put that way, he had a point, or seemed to. "Are you using glamour now?"

  "A sidhe princess should know when she's being tricksied about with," he said, arms still crossed.

  I sighed. "Fine, it's not glamour, but I can't agree that you're within your rights to lead an entomologist to his death just because he's collecting butterflies."

  "Ah," Sage said, gazing up at me, "but you do agree a little at least, or you wouldn't have asked about the glamour."

  I sighed again. I had made the terrible mistake of taking entomology in college. I hadn't understood that you had to kill insects to pass the course. I remembered a carousel of butterflies trapped in a killing jar. It was one of the most lovely things I'd ever seen. Alive they were magical; dead they were like tissue paper and sticks. I'd finally asked how many insects I had to collect for a D, and I'd collected that many and no more. There had been no point to collecting the insects when the college had a complete collection of almost everything the class was killing. It was the last biology class I took where you had to collect anything.

  I stared at the little butterfly-winged man on my knee and couldn't find an argument that didn't make me feel like a hypocrite. I wouldn't kill someone for collecting butterflies, but if I had butterfly wings on my back and spent most of my life out among them fluttering from flower to flower, maybe I'd see the death of one butterfly on a different scale. Maybe, if you were the size of a Barbie doll, killing the small creatures was every bit as horrible as killing people. Maybe. Maybe not. But I didn't feel sure enough of my ground to argue.

  Chapter 29

  I mounded the pillows behind me, so that I was propped to half-sitting. I'd had to make Kitto move before I could move the pillows. He clung to me with hands and arms, but his eyes were all for Sage. He watched the demi-fey as if he didn't trust him, or expected him to do something dangerous, or maybe he was just wondering what Sage would taste like. Whatever Kitto was thinking, it was not friendly.

  Sage didn't seem to notice the goblin's less-than-friendly stare. He simply hovered, fluttering as I made myself comfortable.

  I secured the sheet across my chest and held my hand out to him. I cupped my hand upward so Sage could reach my fingers, because that was where he would take the blood from. Niceven had taken blood from me there once, and if it was good enough for his queen, it was good enough for Sage. Besides, something about him unnerved me. It was ridiculous to be nervous of someone I could smash against the wall with one hand, but silly or not, I couldn't deny how I felt. I didn't question it, just covered most of my more vulnerable bits and gave him my hand.

  Sage landed on my wrist. He knelt in my upturned palm and wrapped tiny hands around my middle finger. He stroked my finger, and the movement was both nice and disturbing.

  I must have tensed up, because he said, "You have given me permission to use glamour, have you not?"

  I nodded, not quite trusting my voice.

  He smiled, and his mouth was like a tiny red petal, his eyes warm, sincere. I felt myself relax as if a hand had simply stroked all my nervousness away. I didn't fight it, because I had agreed and the pain in my shoulder was gone. Nothing hurt.

  Kitto curled around my waist, sliding his leg along mine. My hand fell away from the sheet and stroked his curls. His hair was unbelievably soft. He snuggled his face in against my waist, and the brush of his face against my skin made me shiver. I think anyone could have touched me then and I would have reacted to them.

  I looked at Sage. "You're very good." My voice was husky.

  "We have to be," he said, as he ran his hands up and down my finger. It was no longer nice; it was erotic, as if there were nerves in that one finger that had never been there before. I knew it was glamour, the natural magic of faerie, but it still felt so good, so very good.

  Surrendering to someone's glamour, if his glamour ran to the sensual, could be a wondrous experience. Sidhe did not do it with each other, because to practice glamour on another sidhe in an intimate situation was considered a grave insult. But the lesser fey practiced it often among themselves, and almost always when lying with a sidhe. Perh
aps it was insecurity. Perhaps it was just a way of saying, look what we have to offer.

  Sage had much to offer.

  He wrapped his arms around my finger, and it was as if he touched larger things, so much more intimate things. He laid a kiss against my fingertip that was like the brush of finest silk. I felt his lips part, and they felt larger than they were. I had to open my eye and look at him to make sure that he was still small, kneeling in my hand. I had sunk back upon the pillows, my arm resting in my lap, but Sage was still kneeling in my cupped palm.

  Kitto entwined his leg over mine, and I felt him growing firm against my leg. For a moment I wondered what the glamour was doing to and for the goblin, when suddenly Sage bit into my flesh. He bit me like he was biting into an apple, sharp, but the pain floated away, and when he began to suck at the wound, it was like he had a thin, red thread from my fingertip to my groin. Every movement of his mouth pulled on things low in my body.

  He fed, drawing faster, harder, and it was as if he stroked lower things, faster, harder. I felt that growing warm weight in my body that said I was on the edge, the edge of pleasure. It was as if Sage had coaxed me to the edge of a cliff I hadn't seen, and I had to choose whether to fall over it into the embrace beyond.

  I couldn't think. I couldn't decide anything. I had become only sensation, the growing tug of pleasure, the weight of warmth building, building in my body. Then that warmth flooded out of me, over me, through me. I called out, but it wasn't pain that burst from my lips. I cried out in pleasure and writhed on the sheets, caught between Sage's mouth still locked on my body, and the firmness of Kitto's body pressed against my leg. Kitto's body rode mine as I writhed on the bed, his hands sliding over my waist, upward to brush the tip of one breast. It was a tentative touch, but in my heightened state, it felt like so much more.

  I cried out again, and when Kitto slid his body over the edge of my thigh, pressed himself against me, not entering but lying across me, both of us nude, both of us eager, I didn't protest.

  Kurag had said that I had to give Kitto true sex, and for a goblin that meant only one thing: intercourse. But I also knew that goblins didn't have sex without drawing blood. Now, nothing hurt, nothing would hurt.

  I looked up to find Sage hovering over us. He was glowing, a soft honeyed light as if a candle had lit within him. His eyes burned like black jewels and the veins of his wings gleamed with black fire; the yellow, blue, and orangey-red glowed like stained glass in a fall of brightest sunlight.

  I had enough sense left to ball up a handful of Kitto's hair and jerk his face up to mine. "Blood only, Kitto. No flesh missing when we're done."

  He whispered, "Yes, mistress."

  I released his hair abruptly, and he looked up at me, his eyes a solid drowning blue with his pupils like a thin black line within them. It was as if I could have fallen into the blue of his eyes, and I knew it was Sage's glamour still at work, and I didn't care. I gave myself over to it, let the illusion ride me.

  Kitto slid inside me, and I was more than wet, more than ready. He seemed larger than I knew he was, filling me up, swelling inside me. He raised himself up on his arms, pressing our lower bodies together, frozen for a moment with his body sunk inside mine, with us joined. He gazed down at me spread underneath him, and a single tear welled up from one blue eye.

  I knew what the goblins considered sex, and they didn't cry at the first joining. Through the glamour I saw Kitto -- through all the magic, I truly saw him -- and I raised a hand up, a hand that had already gone white and shining. I touched that one crystal tear and did what goblins do with precious body fluids; I touched it to my lips. I drank the salt of his tears, and he made a sound low in his throat and began to thrust himself inside me.

  With every thrust he seemed to grow bigger, swelling wider, touching parts of me that had never been touched, that were not supposed to be touched. I watched him entering my body, and his skin had begun to glow, white and pearlescent. He thrust himself inside me, a glowing shaft as if he were made of light, and that was not glamour. I lay under him, my skin glowing like moonlight. Only for another sidhe would my body shine like this. Colors began to dance under his skin as if rainbows danced inside his body, coming to the surface of his skin like fireworks glimpsed through crystal water.

  His eyes held nothing but blue flame behind glass. His short curls moved around his head as if an unseen wind played with them, and the wind was Kitto. He was sidhe. Goddess help us, he was sidhe.

  He brought me in a wash of light and magic that blinded me for a moment. All I could see was white light and rainbow flashes across my vision. All I could feel was my body locked around his, as if the place of our joining was the only part of our bodies that was still solid. As if we had become light and air and magic and only the anchor point of our joined bodies held us, tied us, bound us. Then even that fell away as he came inside me, and we became nothing but light and magic and color and wave upon wave of pleasure. It was as if you could become laughter, become joy, become whatever most pleasured you.

  I came to myself slowly. Kitto had collapsed on top of me. We were still joined, our bodies still glowing softly like two fires banked down for a long winter's night. A warmth that would keep the house, the family, everything safe through the long cold nights to come.

  Flashes of color were still flitting through the room like stray rainbows from some crystal sun catcher. But there was no sun, no crystal, only us.

  Well, not only us. The guards stood around the bed, hands held up, palms toward us. I concentrated and saw the nearly invisible barrier that they had thrown up around us. They had put up a sacred circle, a circle of power.

  Doyle's deep voice came. "The next time you decide to invoke enough energy to raise an island from the sea, Meredith, a little warning would be good."

  I blinked up at him, for he stood closest to me. "Did we hurt anything?"

  "We caught it in time, I think, but the news will probably be full of unusual tides. We will have to see if the ground itself holds still for such a release."

  Kitto hid his face between my breasts, and whispered, "I'm sorry."

  "Do not be sorry, Kitto. It is we who owe you an apology. We thought of you as goblin because you are half theirs. We never thought what it might mean for you to be half ours."

  Kitto moved his head enough to look up at Doyle, then he hid his face again. "I don't understand." He spoke with his mouth against my skin, and even after all we'd done, the feel of him whispering against my chest made me shiver.

  My voice was a little breathy, but I answered, "You are sidhe, Kitto, truly sidhe. You have come into your power."

  He shook his head, his face still buried against my breasts. "I have no powers."

  I put a hand on either side of his face and raised him gently to look upon me. "You are sidhe, one of the shining ones. There will be power now."

  His eyes widened, and he looked frightened.

  "We'll help you," Galen said from the far side of the bed. "We'll help you learn how to control your magic. It's not that hard; if I can do it, anyone can." He smiled, made it a joke.

  Kitto didn't look convinced.

  Some small movement made me turn my head farther, and I saw Sage perched upon a stray mound of pillows. He was still glowing softly like a golden, bejeweled doll. His face was tear-streaked, the line of tears like silver glitter upon his tiny face. His face was enraptured.

  "Damn you, Princess, and damn this newest prince. I have glimpsed heaven and found it fair, and now I stand on the shores of earth, abandoned. I did not understand until this moment what it meant that you were sidhe and I was not." He laid his face in his hands and wept, curling on his side on a satin pillow, his wings held out behind him, stiff, almost forgotten.

  Kitto touched my chest, and it hurt, a little. I realized that he'd bitten me between my breasts, a little to one side, so that some of the mark was in the mound of my left breast. It hadn't hurt until he touched it. It wasn't as deep as the mark on my s
houlder, because it hadn't needed to be. The sex had made up for the lack of violence. It should have healed cleanly and quickly, but somehow I knew it would not. Somehow I knew I would bear his mark over my heart forever.

  "I am sorry," he whispered, as if he'd read my mind.

  I shook my head, touching the silken skin of his cheek. "I wear your mark with honor, Kitto. Never doubt that."

  He gave a shy smile, then raised up on his arms much as he had through the beginning of the lovemaking. I noticed first the spots of blood on my own white skin. He had hurt me more than I'd thought; then I looked up at Kitto and saw that from collarbone to waist my nails had marked him. Bloody furrows across the perfection of his skin, across the small mounds of his nipples. I'd sliced into the meat of one of his nipples and it bled there more than the rest.

  It was my turn to say, "I'm sorry."

  He shook his head, and the smile wasn't shy now. "You have marked me, and there is no higher compliment among my kind. May the marks never fade."

  I traced the edge of one of the nail marks, and he shivered above me. "You are among your kind now, Kitto. Right now."

  Doyle seemed to know what I wanted, because he pulled his black T-shirt up enough to show Kitto the nail marks on his black skin.

  "You are Unseelie sidhe," I said.

  He moved off of me, his body grown softer with all the talking. He lay beside me, one arm over my waist. He gazed at the men around the bed. "My mother's people were Seelie. They left me for dead outside the goblin mound." His voice was matter-of-fact, as if it was just truth, something he'd always known.