Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I don’t, but I do know that the Goddess is wise, and she sees further into our hearts and minds than we do. If this is what you do with only part of your power back, how arrogant would you be with all of it back?”

  Barinthus took a step toward him. “You have no right to judge me.”

  “He is father to my children as much as Doyle,” I said. “He is a king to my queen as much as Doyle.”

  “He was not crowned by faerie and the gods themselves.”

  There was a knock on the door. It made me jump. Doyle called out, “Not now.”

  But the door opened, and it was Sholto, Lord of Shadows and That Which Passes Between, King of the Sluagh. He came in with his unbound hair, in a white-blond cloak over a black-and-silver tunic and boots.

  He wasted a smile on me, and I got the full impact of his tricolored eyes: metallic gold around the pupil, then amber, then yellow like aspen leaves in the fall. His smile faded as he turned to the other men and said, “I heard you yelling, Sea Lord, and I have been crowned by faerie and the gods themselves. Does that make this fight more mine?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I DO NOT FEAR YOU, SLUAGH LORD,” BARINTHUS SAID, AND AGAIN there was that angry sound from the sea outside.

  Sholto’s smile vanished completely, leaving his handsome face arrogant, starkly beautiful, and totally unfriendly. “You will,” he said, and his voice held an edge of anger. There was a sparkle of gold as his eyes began to shine.

  The sea outside slapped against the glass again, harder, angrier. It wasn’t just that it was a bad idea for the men to duel; it was dangerous for all of us here by the sea. I couldn’t believe that Barinthus, of all people, was behaving so badly. He’d been the voice of reason for centuries at the Unseelie Court, and now … I’d missed some change in him, or maybe without Queen Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, to keep him in check, I was seeing the real him after all. That was a sad thought for me.

  “Enough of this,” Doyle said, “both of you.”

  Barinthus turned on Doyle, and said, “It is you who I’m angry at, Darkness. If you prefer to fight me yourself that will be fine.”

  “I thought you were mad at me, Barinthus,” Galen said. That caught me off guard; I’d thought he would know better than to attract the big man’s anger a second time.

  Barinthus turned and looked at Galen, who was still in the bathroom doorway. The sea slapped against the windows behind him hard enough to shake them. “You didn’t betray everything by refusing the crown, but if you want a piece of this fight, you may have it.”

  Galen gave a small smile, and moved away from the doorway. “If the Goddess had given me a choice between the throne and Frost’s life, I would have chosen his life, just as Doyle did.”

  My stomach tightened at his words. Then I realized that Galen was baiting Barinthus, and the anxiety went away. I felt suddenly calmer, almost happy. It was such an abrupt change of mood I knew it wasn’t me. I looked at Galen walking slowly toward Barinthus, his hand out almost as if he was offering to shake hands. Oh, my Goddess, he was doing magic on us all, and he was one of the few who could have because much of his magic showed no outward sign. He didn’t glow, or shimmer, or be anything but pleasant, and you just felt like being pleasant back.

  Barinthus didn’t threaten again as Galen moved slowly, carefully, smiling, hand out toward the other man.

  “Then you are a fool, too,” Barinthus said, but the rage in his voice was less, and the next slap of ocean against the windows was also less. It didn’t rattle the windows this time.

  “We all love Merry,” Galen said, still moving gently forward, “don’t we?”

  Barinthus frowned, clearly puzzled. “Of course I love Meredith.”

  “Then we’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”

  Barinthus frowned harder, but finally gave a small nod. “Yes.” That one word was low, but clear.

  Galen was almost to him, his hand almost touching his arm, and I knew that if his glamour was working this well from a distance, that one touch would calm the whole situation. There’d be no fight if that hand once touched that arm. Even knowing what was happening didn’t completely nullify the effects of Galen’s charm, and I was just getting the backwash of it. Most of it was concentrated on Barinthus. Galen was willing him to calm down. He was willing him to be friends.

  A scream sounded from outside the room, but it was inside the house. The scream was high pitched and terror filled. Galen’s glamour was like most; it shattered with the scream and the adrenaline rush as everyone went for weapons. I owned guns, but hadn’t packed one for the beach. It wouldn’t have mattered, because Doyle pushed me to the floor on the far side of the bed, and ordered Galen to stay with me. He, of course, would go for the scream.

  Galen knelt by me, gun out and ready, though not pointed, because there was nothing to point at yet.

  Sholto had the door opened, staying to one side of the doorjamb so he didn’t make a target of himself. He was on the queen’s guard when he wasn’t king of his own kingdom, and he knew the possibilities of modern weapons, and a well-placed arrow. Barinthus was pressed to the other side of the flattened door, the fight forgotten, as they did what they had trained to do for longer than America had been a country.

  Whatever they saw out there made Sholto move forward at a cautious crouch, gun in one hand, sword in the other. Barinthus spilled around the door with no visible weapon, but when you’re seven feet tall, more than humanly strong, nearly immortal, and a trained fighter, you don’t always need a weapon. You are the weapon.

  Rhys went next, keeping low, gun in hand. Frost and Doyle glided through the door armed and ready, and just like that it was just Galen and me in the suddenly empty room. My pulse was thudding in my ears, pushing at my throat, not at the thought of what might have caused one of my female guards to scream, but at the thought of the men I loved, the fathers of my children, maybe never coming back through that door again. Death had touched me too early for me not to understand that nearly immortal is not the same thing as truly immortal. My father’s death had taught me that.

  Maybe if I’d been queen enough to sacrifice Frost for the crown, I would have been more worried about the other women, but I was honest with myself. I’d only been trying to be friends with them for a few weeks, I loved the men, and for someone you love, you will sacrifice much. Anyone who says otherwise has either never truly loved or is lying to themselves.

  I heard voices, but they weren’t yelling, just talking. I whispered to Galen, “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

  Most of the sidhe had better-than-human hearing, I did not. He cocked his head to one side, gun now pointed at the empty doorway, ready to shoot anything that came through it.

  “Voices, women. I can’t understand what they’re saying, but I can tell that one is Hafwyn, one of them is crying, and Saraid is pissed. Now Doyle, and Ivi, he’s upset but not angry. He sounds panicked, as if whatever’s happened bothered him.”

  Galen glanced down at me, frowning a little. “Ivi sounds contrite.”

  I frowned, too. “Ivi is never contrite about anything.”

  Galen nodded, and then was suddenly all attention at the door. I watched his finger begin to pull. I couldn’t see anything around the corner of the bed. Then he raised the gun toward the ceiling and let out a breath in a low whoosh, which let me know how close he’d come to pulling that trigger.

  “Sholto,” he said, and got up, gun still in one hand, and held his other hand down for me. I took it and let him help me stand.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Did you know that Ivi and Dogmaela had sex last night?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Not exactly, but I knew that Ivi and Brii took lovers among the women who were willing.”

  Sholto smiled and shook his head, his face halfway between amused and thinking about something far too hard. “It seems that after last night Ivi assumed he could give her a little cuddle, and some
thing he did seems to have terrified her.”

  “What did he do to her?” I asked.

  “Hafwyn was witness and agrees with Ivi about what he did and did not do. Apparently, he merely came up behind Dogmaela, wrapped his arms around her waist, and picked her up off the floor, and she began to scream,” Sholto said. “Dogmaela is too hysterical to make much sense. Saraid is being physically restrained from attacking Ivi, and the man seems honestly puzzled by the turn of events.”

  “Why would just being picked up make her scream?” I asked.

  “Hafwyn says that it was something their old master, the prince, would do, but he would then fling them on the bed or hold them for someone else to do very bad things to them.”

  “Oh,” I said, “it’s a trigger event.”

  “A trigger what?” Sholto asked.

  Galen said, “It’s something usually innocuous that reminds you of abuse or violence, and suddenly it brings it all back up.”

  We both looked at him, both of us surprised, and unable to hide it. Galen gave me a sour look. “What, I couldn’t know that?”

  “No, it’s just that”—I hugged him—“it was just unexpected.”

  “That I was that insightful is that big a surprise?” he asked.

  There was nothing polite I could say to that question, so I hugged him a little more tightly. He hugged me back, and kissed me on top of my head.

  Sholto was standing beside us now, and his eyes were all for me. There was that look that men get when they see a woman who is their lover and more. It was partly possessive, partly excited, and partly puzzled, as if something out in the other room was still on his mind. He held his hand out to me, and I left Galen’s hand to go to him. Galen let me do it; we shared well most of the time, and even if we didn’t, Goddess had decreed that Sholto was one of the fathers of the babies I carried. The fathers all got privileges. I just think that none of us had expected the genetic miracle of six fathers for two babies.

  Sholto drew me into his arms, and I went willingly. He was the newest to my bed of all the fathers. We’d actually only had sex once I got pregnant, but as the old saying goes, once is enough. The newness meant that I wasn’t in love with him. I didn’t actually love him at all. I was attracted to him, I cared for him, but we hadn’t had enough conversations to let me know if I loved him, or could love him. We liked each other, though; we liked each other a lot.

  “I’ve seen the traditional King of the Sluagh’s greeting to his queen,” Galen said, “so I’ll leave you to it. Maybe I can be insightful for Dogmaela.” He sounded a little disgusted, but I let him go, because he had surprised me by being smarter than I’d given him credit for and that was my lack of insight.

  Sholto didn’t wait for Galen to close the door behind him before he showed me just how much he liked me with his kiss, his hands, and his body held as tightly to me as it could be with clothes still on. I let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the satin of his tunic, and the glint of the embroidery and the small jewels sewn into it, so that I ran my hands over his clothes as much as the body underneath them. I thought about him making love to me the way Ivi had done last night with most of his clothes still on so that the satin caressed my skin as we made love. The thought made me respond even more to his kisses, and sent my hands lower to trace his ass underneath the tunic, though I couldn’t get as good a grip with one hand as the other because I had to reach around the sword at his waist.

  Sholto responded to my eagerness, sliding his hands under my ass and picking me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he walked us back the few feet to the bed. He lowered me to the bed, with my arms and legs still wrapped around him. He kept one hand on my back and the other caught our weight against the bed.

  He drew out of the kisses enough to say in a breathless voice, “If I’d known this was the greeting I’d get, I’d have come sooner.”

  I smiled up at him. “I’ve missed you.”

  He grinned. He had one of the most handsome faces in either court, and the grin ruined that beyond-model-perfect perfection, but I loved that grin, because I knew that it was for me. I knew that no one else had ever made him look at them in quite that way. No one had ever made him as happy as he was in the moments we were together. Maybe I didn’t love him yet, but I loved how he was when we were together. I loved that he let me see the great King of the Sluagh grin. I valued him letting down those years of arrogant shields so that I could see the man behind them.

  “I love that you miss me.” As if he’d read my mind, he raised up, forcing me to let him go just enough so he could reach down and begin to undo his pants. He left his sword, belt, gun, and holster in place, undoing only enough of his soft trousers to spill himself out into the light, hard and firm and as fine as any man in court.

  Normally, I wanted more foreplay, but in that moment it worked for me. It was partly what Ivi and Brii had done with me last night, but it was also that Sholto had begun to condition me to the greeting.

  He laid me back on the bed, my legs still hanging over the edge, and reached under my skirt until he found my panties. He drew them down my legs, slipping them all the way down over my high heels to drop to the floor. He raised my skirt and gazed down at me naked from the waist down except for the shoes. I didn’t ask if he wanted me to remove the shoes, because I knew he didn’t. Sholto liked me in heels.

  He put his hands on either side of my hips and pulled me roughly to the firm length of his body. He angled in against me, raising my hips rather than touching himself to change the angle. He pushed himself inside me and I was too tight for him to do it all in one thrust. He had to work his way in, but I was already wet, just tight. I squeezed around him, tighter still, making his head fall a little forward so that his hair swept across my face. He hesitated above me, then he pushed harder, and I made him work for every inch until I orgasmed simply from the sensation of him being so big, so wide, filling me up so completely.

  I screamed my pleasure, my head thrown back, my fingers clawing at his satin-covered arms, unable to find something to mark.

  He picked me up off the bed with most of him still inside me. He held me in his arms while my body spasmed around him, and I clung to him. He shoved the rest of himself inside me in one long, hard thrust while he held me, and I screamed for him again.

  He half collapsed on the bed, half crawled us into the middle of it. He let go of me with his arms, and only his lower body pinned me to the bed. He’d stopped moving once he was as deep as his body could go. He said, “You are my queen, and I am king. This is proof of that.”

  It was a very old saying among the nightflyers, of which his father had been one. They looked like huge dark manta rays with tentacles, and faces far from human. Among them, only the royals were able to breed, and able to bring the females to orgasm so easily. The female nightflyers reacted to a spine inside the penis that would have killed me, but luckily for both of us, Sholto didn’t take after his father that much.

  I spoke the next part of the ritual, because Sholto had taught it to me. “You inside me proves that you are royal and I am with child.” If I hadn’t been pregnant the reply would have been, “You inside me proves that you are royal and I will be with child.”

  He raised up enough to undo the belt around his tunic waist. He tossed the belt with its sword and gun to one side of us, not off the bed; within reach, but out of the way. He spoke as he began to wiggle out of his tunic with his body still pinning mine to the bed. “I don’t remember you being that easy to pleasure, Meredith.”

  We shared well, all of us, but not so well that I could tell him that it had been partly Ivi and Brii last night that had helped make his entrance so amazing.

  “I told you, I missed you.”

  He grinned again, then was hidden behind the rise of his tunic. He stripped off the undertunic of white linen next, and I could finally see his upper body. He was as muscled as any of the men except Rhys. He was broad of shoulder, simply beautiful, but there was a
tattoo on his stomach, tracing up to his rib cage. The tattoo was of the tentacles that he would have had had he taken more after his father. Once they hadn’t been a tattoo, but the real thing. Now he could be with me as smooth and human as any sidhe, or he could choose to be everything he could be.

  Usually he asked me which I preferred, but one moment he rose above me with that flat and lovely stomach, the next tentacles writhed above me like some fantastic sea creature formed of ivory and crystal with lines of gold and silver running through all that pale beauty. He leaned over me, still hard and fast between my legs, but he leaned over for a kiss, pressing all that muscle and caressing against my body so that when we kissed he held me with more “arms” than any lover I’d ever had. The bigger tentacles were for heavy lifting, and wrapped around me like muscled rope but a thousand times softer, like velvet and satin and more. His more human arms were in the kiss, too, but it was all a part of him, all him hugging me, holding me, kissing me. Sholto loved that I didn’t recoil at his extra bits. Once the sight of his uniqueness had disturbed me, no, honestly, it had frightened me, but somewhere in the magic that had joined us as a couple I had come to appreciate that different wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, he could certainly brag that he could do things with me that none of the others could do without another man to help them.

  The smaller tentacles, very thin and stretchy, had small reddish suction cups near the tips. They tickled between us, and I writhed toward their touch, eager for them to find their purpose. The small ends traced over my breasts until they came to my nipples, and then sucked on them hard and fast so that I made eager noises into his mouth as he kissed me. My hands traced along the muscled length of his back, and spilled over the hard velvet of the tentacles, caressing their undersides, where I knew they were sensitive. It made him begin to pull himself out from inside me, giving himself enough room so that one of the small tentacles could slide between my legs and find that small, sweet spot just under my hood, so that while he began to push his body in and out between my legs, working at the wetness and tightness, another of those small eager mouths sucked me.