Divine Misdemeanors_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I had a moment to brace my heels before he flung himself on me, climbing me like a monkey to wrap his legs around my waist, his arms hugging me tightly, and it just seemed natural to kiss him. I loved that I could hold him as the other men held me. I let our combined weight carry me backward to the bed, so I was sitting on the edge of it while we kissed.

  I had to be careful when I slid my tongue between his teeth, because he had a pair of retractable fangs tucked neatly against the roof of his mouth, and they weren’t just there for decoration. His tongue was thinner than human tongues, red and black-tipped, and it, like his eyes and the thin play of rainbow scales down his back, marked him as part Snake Goblin. He’d been the product of rape. His sidhe mother had never acknowledged him, but left him outside the goblin mound, even though at that time the sidhe were still food for the goblins. She hadn’t left Kitto to be saved by his father’s people. She’d left him to be killed by them.

  He was also the least dominant of my men, so I knew that I had to be the one to pull his T-shirt out of his belt and let my hands trace the smooth coolness of the scales that traced his spine. But the moment I undid some of his clothing, his small, strong hands slid down the back of my skirt so he could cup my ass and trace the edge of the dark brown lace panties that matched the bra.

  I pulled his T-shirt up and he raised his hands so I could lift the shirt off and let it fall to the floor. He was suddenly nude from the waist up, still sitting in my lap. I liked his new muscles and the fact that he was tanning, ever so slightly, like a wash of brown over all that paleness. Goblins didn’t tan, but the sidhe could sometimes, and when he’d discovered that he could tan, he’d started sunbathing by the pool.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not sitting this close to you, I’m not.” His hands started for a button of my skirt, and then he hesitated. I understood, and I undid the belt of his pants so he’d feel free to undo my buttons and zipper. He folded the top of my skirt down, and then hesitated again. I could see his eagerness to take the skirt down, but I’d have to cooperate by lying back on the bed so he could slip it over my hips. He was still in his pants, and among the goblins whoever undressed first was the submissive, and that could mean even more among the goblins than at a human BDSM event.

  I undid the button of his jeans, and started the zipper. He rose on his knees on either side of my thighs so I could work the zipper down, and now I could lie back on the bed and let him slip the skirt over my hips and down my legs, so that I lay looking up at him in only the lingerie, hose, and heels.

  He gazed down at me and his face said more than any words how beautiful he found me. “I never dreamed that I would be allowed to see a sidhe princess like this, and to know that I can do this,” he said, and he traced his fingers along the mounds of my breasts where the bra met the whiteness of my flesh. I drew a breath for him. He smiled, and put his hand down the front of my bra until he found a nipple and played it between two fingers, rolling it, pinching it, softly, until I made a small happy noise for him.

  He smiled more, and put his hands to his opened pants, then hesitated again. This time I helped by saying, “Take off your pants, Kitto. Let me see you without them.”

  I wasn’t specific enough in my wording, because he didn’t just wiggle out of his jeans; the silky blue of his underwear went with the outer pants. He crawled back to me nude, his body already growing eager. I lay on the bed, my knees still over the edge of it, my heels not touching the ground, and watched him, my eyes drawn to that part of him that was oh so male.

  He leaned over me so that just his mouth touched mine, and we kissed. It started out gentle, but grew until he had to draw back from me, saying with a hoarse whisper, “You’re going to cut yourself on my fangs.”

  “You said that the poison only works if you concentrate. Otherwise they’re just teeth.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not willing to risk you and the babies.” He laid his small hand on my still-flat stomach and said, “I won’t risk them.”

  I watched the gentleness in his face, no, the love. He wasn’t one of the fathers and he knew that, but for him more than for any of the other men it didn’t seem to matter. He was also more excited about decorating the nurseries than most of the other men, including some of the fathers.

  I ran my hands up his bare arms and across his shoulders, until he looked down at me, and the gentleness was edged with something not so gentle. That suited me and my mood just fine. I showed him with my hands, my arms, and my kisses that I appreciated his care for me, my babies, my life, all of it. But I kept the kisses more careful, because Kitto was right. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  I was down to nothing but my thigh-high hose and the high heels with him on all fours above me. I slid down the bed so that I could slide my hands around his hips and my mouth around that bit of him that dangled so temptingly over me. His entire body reacted to my mouth sliding over him, his spine bowing, and his head dropping, his hands digging into the bed like a cat kneading its claws. His breath came out in a soft explosive sound, as if he wanted to say something but I’d stolen his words away.

  I put my hand at the small of his back, my nails digging in just a little, as I held my upper body off the bed and wrapped my other hand around the base of him so I could get a better angle. It wasn’t that Kitto was small, but he wasn’t as well-endowed as some of the other men in my life. But there is a certain joy in giving oral sex to a man who doesn’t make you have to fight to deep throat all of him. I put my mouth down until I met his body and there was no more of him to go in my mouth. My hands wrapped around his hips and waist so that I could enjoy being that deep on him and not having to use my hands, but only my mouth to suck and swallow so that it was an almost continuous motion of my mouth around the long, wide, quivering, length of him.

  My nails dug into his back, and he cried out for me. He found his words, and said, “Stop or I’ll go. Please stop or I won’t last.”

  I took my mouth off him long enough to say, “Go, go in my mouth.”

  “I need to bring you pleasure first.”

  “I do enjoy this.”

  He shook his head and would have pulled away farther, but I kept him above me with a flexing of nails in his back. “Please, Merry, please let me.”

  I licked a long wet line up his stomach, and let go of him so I could move underneath his body and reach his nipple. I licked the edge of it until it hardened under my attentions. I put my teeth in a seal around his nipple, sucking on him, and then using my teeth to stretch his nipple out from his body. He made small eager noises for me.

  His voice was breathy as he said, “Please, let me go down on you.”

  I bit him hard enough to leave a red ring from my teeth in a mark around his nipple, hard enough for him to cry out above me. Kitto liked to be bitten, as much as he liked to bite.

  He shuddered above me. His whole body quaked with reaction to the bite. When he could control himself enough to speak, he asked, “Please, may I go down on you?”

  “I’ve gone down on you before,” I said.

  “But second, after I’ve pleasured you.” He stayed on all fours beside me, waiting for me to give him permission.

  “Why is it so important that I go first, other than that it’s fun for me?”

  He knelt on the bed, sitting back on his heels. “You know how goblins view oral sex?”

  “Powerful goblins don’t give oral sex, they receive it from less-powerful goblins. It’s a mark of dominance to get head, but not ever give it.”

  He smiled. “Exactly. Some powerful goblins will give oral sex to their strumpets, but only in private, only where no one else will ever find out.”

  I had two other part-goblin lovers, the very powerful twins Holly and Ash. One of the twins was a pervert among goblins because he loved going down on women, but he only did it when the three of us were alone. He knew that his brother would never tell, nor would I, but if anyone found out it would lesse
n his status among them.

  “You can pleasure me, but only after I’ve pleasured you first.”

  “I won’t tell, Kitto.”

  He shook his head. “You are sidhe and that means magic, but the goblins view all of you as softer, weaker. I would never do anything to endanger you.”

  I stayed on my back, but propped myself up on my elbows. “Are you saying that if the goblins found out that I pleasured you orally before you touched me that it would lose me status among them?”

  He nodded, and he was very serious. “There are those among the goblins who think Kurag, the Goblin King, is besotted with you and that is why the goblins are your allies. They don’t believe him when he says you are wise and powerful.”

  “And if they found out that I let you be dominant to me it would hurt my case?”

  He nodded again. “And it would lessen Kurag’s hold on them. Goblin kings never step down, or die of old age, Merry. They’re murdered by their successor.”

  “The ones most likely to succeed him are Holly and Ash, and they are my allies, too.”

  “There are some among the goblins who think you are only sleeping with the twins to keep them from killing Kurag.”

  “Why would I care enough about Kurag to do that?” I asked.

  “There are those at our court who think the twins would not honor the treaty Kurag made with you, and then the goblins would be free to ally themselves with whomever they wished when the Unseelie has a new ruler.”

  “Andais isn’t going to step down,” I said.

  “Not for anyone but you,” he said.

  “I don’t want the throne,” I said.

  “Then she will be queen until someone assassinates her. I fear that whomever takes the throne may always see you as a threat to their holding the crown.”

  “Because faerie and Goddess crowned me and Doyle.”

  “Yes, and you are the queen’s bloodline.”

  “Maybe faerie will pick a new ruler for them.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he sounded doubtful.

  “But what does all the politics have to do with the oral sex in the privacy of our own bedchamber?”

  “Until things are settled at both the Unseelie and the goblin courts I don’t want to do anything that might cause a problem for you.”

  I studied his solemn face. “You mean that. That until both courts are sure of their rulers, you pleasure me first.”

  He nodded.

  I sighed, and then smiled. “It’s not a hardship; you are very orally talented.”

  He smiled, and there was nothing humble about the expression on his face. “I was a strumpet passed from one powerful keeper to another for sex. I had to be good at my only job so they valued and protected me.”

  “I’ve never asked before. How did you happen to have no master or mistress when Kurag offered you to me?”

  “The husband of my last mistress had grown jealous of me, and since that was a sign of weakness, my mistress had to either get rid of me, or challenge her husband to a duel.”

  I looked at him. “That is a bit of goblin culture that I didn’t know.”

  “Weakness is not tolerated among us.”

  “You’re as sidhe as you are goblin, maybe more,” I said.

  He gave a little smile that I couldn’t decipher. “Maybe, but for now, please let me go down on you?”

  “And when you’ve made me scream your name, what then?”

  “Then I would very much like to fuck you.” He said it all formally, but the wording was goblin. Goblins didn’t make love, they fucked. In truth, they made love, some of them, but when asking in public, they fucked.

  “No one can hear us, Kitto.”

  “I want to go down on you, and then I want to fuck.”

  I sighed again, and nodded. “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I smiled at the slow spread of happiness on his face. “Yes.”

  “Do we want to make them wait dinner on you?”

  “Why do you ask?” Because I knew he’d have a reason.

  “Because if I bring you more than twice by mouth, and then fuck you as long as I want to, they’ll have to wait dinner.”

  I knew it was not an idle boast. “I guess it will have to be a quickie,” I said.

  He glanced at the bedside clock. “An hour, that will be a quickie.”

  There was more than one reason that I loved having Kitto in my life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  KITTO REMINDED ME THAT HIS TONGUE WAS NOT ATTACHED TO THE same muscles that the rest of my lovers had in their mouth and throat. He reminded me that his tongue was longer and thinner, had a partially prehensile tip, and was forked. It meant that he could do things with his tongue that just weren’t possible with someone who was more humanly equipped.

  He licked, and touched, and sucked until I screamed his name to the ceiling, and then he pressed his mouth to me again and used his tongue in a series of fast flicking movements that only seemed to work after I’d been brought at least once before, but boy did it work that second time. I drove fingernails into his hair, feeling the silky curls under my fingers, and driving my nails just a little into his scalp. The small pain of it seemed to urge him on to new heights, and encouraging him earned me a third orgasm.

  My eyes fluttered back into my head so that I was blind, my hands fallen away from him limp at my side as my body rode the aftershocks of his talented mouth. I felt the bed move, felt his body spreading my thighs wider. I tried to open my eyes to watch him enter me, but I still couldn’t make my body work enough to do it. He’d outdone himself tonight.

  But the sensation of him entering me while I was that wet, that eager, that swollen with pleasure made me writhe underneath him. I couldn’t help but move as he pushed himself inside me. He knew he wasn’t as big as some of the men in my bed, but his prep work made up for it, and he wasn’t small by any means. He pushed all that thick, aching hardness into me one slow inch at a time, until I was making small eager noises before he buried himself inside me as far as his body and mine would allow. Then he began to pull himself out of me, just as slowly, just as controlled.

  My body didn’t want controlled, or slow. I began to dance my hips underneath him so that I was taking in his length and pulling away from him, so that all his carefulness was undone by my eagerness.

  He made a sound low in his throat, almost a cry, and then he gave up on slow and careful. He started moving to the rhythm I had set, and we began to dance together, his body into mine, my body over and around his, until we did dance on the bed in that most intimate of dances.

  He was short enough that he could lie down on me and we could still look into each other’s eyes. I wasn’t trapped under him; we could both still move, and writhe for each other. I felt that sweet heavy pleasure begin to build between my legs, and my fingers found his back. My breathing sped and I had to fight to keep the dancing rhythm of my hips meeting his body. Between one stroke, one rise and another, the sweet heaviness spilled up and over, and I shrieked my pleasure, my neck bowed, my nails set into his back as I painted my orgasm on his skin, and my hips bucked underneath him, and I felt somewhere in all that pleasure his body lose its own rhythm. He fought to keep it, trying for another orgasm, but I squeezed him tightly inside me, and that was his undoing. His body shoved into mine in one last deep thrust that brought me screaming, nails digging into his body as if he were the last solid thing in the world, and everything else had washed away on the pulsing of our bodies, the ecstasy of him inside me, and me wrapped around him.

  He collapsed on top of me, his head cradled in the bend of my shoulder. I lay on my back, his heartbeat pounding against my chest as he fought to catch his breath. I had to swallow twice past my own pulse before I could whisper, “They’ll have to wait dinner a little while.”

  He nodded, wordlessly, and then took a deep, shuddering breath and said, “Totally worth it.”

  I could only nod wordlessly as I stopped fighti
ng for enough air to talk and relearn how to breathe all at the same time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I WAS DRESSED FOR DINNER, WHICH HAD BECOME A SEMI-FORMAL occasion, which meant I was a little overdressed for the police forensics lab, magical division. Jeremy had phoned before we could actually eat because he’d been called by one of the police wizards to come and give an opinion on Gilda’s confiscated wand. The one that had made a policeman fall down and not wake up for hours.

  Jeremy wanted some of us to look at it, because he thought it was sidhe workmanship. He’d offered for me to stay home and eat because he really needed some of the older sidhe guards, Rhys had gone early to commune with his new sithen, and Galen was, like me, too young to know much about our older enchanted sidhe items. But the three of us were the only ones with private-detective licenses. The others could only come as bodyguards. The reporters going through the window had been on all the news and YouTube, so the police believed that I wouldn’t go out without a shitload of guards. So I was “protected” and Jeremy got the sidhe he wanted to look at the wand. The only downside was I had to eat something quickly in the car, and the yellow high heels dyed to match the yellow, belted dress, complete with crinoline to make the skirt sit right, were the wrong shoes for standing on the concrete floors.

  The wand was in a Plexiglas rectangle. There were symbols literally pressed into the case. It was a portable anti-magic field so that if something was found the police could put it inside the case and negate it until forensics could figure out a more permanent solution.

  We all stood around staring down at the wand, and by all I meant the two police wizards, Wilson and Carmichael, plus Jeremy, Frost, Doyle, Barinthus (who had shown up just as we were leaving), Sholto, Rhys, and me. Rhys had cut his sithen exploration short to solve crime.

  The wand was still two feet long but now it was only two feet of pale white and honey-colored wood, clean and free of all the sparkle that Gilda was so fond of, and that I remembered clearly. “It doesn’t look like the same wand,” I said.