A Stroke of Midnight (Merry Gentry #4)(61)

Galen decided for me. “They didn’t know, Kitto, they just guessed. They were being mean. That’s all. They didn’t know that what they said would hit so close to the truth.”
“Guess?” Kitto said, looking at him. “Guess? They guessed? How? How could they know? How?” He gripped Galen’s hand with his smaller ones. “Is my shame written across my body? Is it that easy to see that I am weak? That I am a burden to those around me? I am a danger to you even.” He reached out to me then, gripping my hand so tight it almost hurt. “If I got you with child, they would never accept me as king, or you as queen. The two sidhe lords said they’d see you dead before they’d let a goblin-sided sidhe sit on the Unseelie throne.”
I wanted to ask who “they” were, but he might not know their names, and to ask it now seemed cruel. The two lords hadn’t been talking of conspiracies. They had simply been giving voice to their prejudices. They had said the cruelest truths they could find. But if they had truly planned on killing him, and me, then they wouldn’t have told him. They wouldn’t have taunted him with it. Or they wouldn’t have let him go unscathed after overhearing them. His clean, unbloodied flesh meant they didn’t really mean it. They were bullies, nothing more. I could get him to describe them for me later. Tonight, I didn’t want to make him dwell upon it. I wanted him to forget about it, at least for a little while.
I wanted to caress him, to hold him until that look left his eyes. But there was no room tonight on my dance card, not unless I could figure out a way to combine people again. Galen would sleep in big puppy piles, but he didn’t like sharing sex. Nicca shared just fine, and I think he would have agreed to almost anything just so he could get to Biddy in the next room. I didn’t mind being the one he rushed through. I enjoyed Nicca, but he did not speak to my heart and body the way Galen did, or Doyle, or Frost.
It was Galen who reached for Kitto. Galen who pulled him closer to the tub. “I’m sorry, Kitto, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say . . .” He didn’t finish it, but he’d said enough to let me know that he knew he’d said too much. That he’d said aloud what I’d been thinking, and he understood that his comments had hurt Kitto. He understood it, and was willing to try to undo the hurt he’d inadvertently done. 
Many humans watched the casual touching among us and mistook it for sex, but it isn’t always. Sometimes you just need to be touched. Sometimes you see such hurt, such loneliness in another fey’s eyes that you must do something, anything, to chase that look away. Sometimes sex isn’t even about sex among us. Sometimes it’s just the last resort for making someone smile.
CHAPTER 29

KITTO LAY BACK IN THE WATER, CRADLED AGAINST GALEN’S BODY. Galen trailed his hands over the smaller man’s arms and shoulders, stroking strong hands through the now damp curls around his face. Kitto half floated, his eyes closed as he snuggled his shoulders and head against the curve of Galen’s upper body.
I trailed my fingertips down the front of Kitto’s leg, until I traced along the top of his foot. I knew he was ticklish there, and it earned me a smile, but his eyes stayed closed. I held his foot in my hands, and licked along the top of his foot where I had touched. It made him squirm and laugh. He opened his eyes, sinking his legs below the water and sitting up. Galen’s arms spilled around his shoulders, holding him more securely against his own body.
I moved in against the front of Kitto’s body, straddling his legs. I brushed myself over the loose thickness of his groin. It drew a sound of pleasure from him. But when he put his hands at my waist, it was to stop the movement of my hips.
Kitto’s voice was a little strained, but his small hands were very firm at my waist, stopping me from pushing harder against his body. “It is Nicca who is meant to be with Galen and you this night.”
“I am content to wait my turn,” Nicca said from where he knelt beside the tub. His wings fanned gently at his back as he reached to trail his fingers in the water.
Kitto shook his head, water trickling down his face from his sodden hair, his black curls flattened against the white of his skin.
I moved my groin against his, and his hands on my waist could not stop it. His fingers tightened, and again he said, “No.” But other parts of his body were already responding to even the light touch he was allowing me.
“Your body says otherwise,” I said.
He swallowed hard and blinked those blue on blue eyes up at me. “I cannot be your king, Merry. Word has come from Kurag, Goblin King, that Holly and Ash have laid challenge on any goblin that takes their prize before they can.”
I frowned at him. “And that means what?”
“Any goblin that does anything to become your king before Holly and Ash have had their chance will be challenged and killed by them.”
“They have no right to dictate to you, Kitto,” I said. “You are sidhe now. You have a hand of power. That is sidhe magic, not goblin.”
He gave me a sad little smile. “You do not know them as I do. I would not anger them, not for anything in faerie.” He touched the side of my face where the blood still clung. “Let me help you and Galen clean yourselves.” He smiled, and it was a real smile, not so sad. “I am honored that Galen reached for me first. I know that that is not his way.” He leaned in against the taller man’s body and smiled up at him.
Galen smiled down at him and ran his hands down the other man’s arm. “I wanted to see you smile.”
Kitto smiled wider, amost a grin. “It means much to me that you care if I am happy or sad.” He looked at me, and his face sobered. “But heed me on this, Merry, sidhe or no, princess or no, you should fear Holly and Ash.”
“They will come to my body as the rest of you have. They will have their chance for kingmaking. I know to negotiate exactly what kind of sex they can have from me. Beyond that why should I fear them?”“We will be with Merry in the goblin court,” Galen said. “We won’t let anything bad happen to her.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Kitto said, gazing up at the other man.
“How dangerous are the twins?” Nicca asked.
“They are some of the most feared warriors of our court,” Kitto said.
“They looked sort of puny standing next to the Red Caps,” Galen said.
“I do not know what this ‘puny’ means,” Kitto said.
“Small, weak,” I said.
Kitto acknowledged it with a nod. “But size is not everything in combat. Holly and Ash have a reputation for viciousness among the goblins.”
I stopped petting Kitto and went very still, because what he’d just said put things in perspective for me. For Holly and Ash to have earned such a fearsome reputation among the goblins spoke of terrible violence against a people who thrived on it.
“Goblins are stronger than we are,” Galen said. “To be half-sidhe in their court must make life hard.”
Kitto shivered, and he relaxed his hands on my waist enough for me to press the front of my body against the front of his. Galen and I held him between our bodies; he wrapped his arms around me, and clung to the feel of our bodies. “You have no idea, Galen, no idea how it marks you as victim. I was unlucky enough to be as weak as I look. Holly and Ash were beautiful children, blond and pale, and except for the eyes would have passed at either sidhe court. Even with the eyes they would have been accepted.”
“Why didn’t they petition to join our court?” I asked, my face resting on the top of Kitto’s wet hair, and the warmth of Galen’s shoulder.
“I do not know,” Kitto said, “for they suffered when they were young males. Our females liked to make them perform, until they grew strong enough to fight them off.”
Galen and I were frowning at him, but Nicca seemed to understand. “You mean the she-goblins raped them?”
Kitto nodded.
“It’s not easy for a woman to rape a man,” I said.
“It is possible,” Nicca said, and he leaned his face against the one folded arm that graced the edge of the tub. His other arm was deeper in the water, as if he sought something below its surface. “The queen is fond of force.”
I moved through the water to touch his shoulder. He started when I touched him, as if he had expected a far less pleasant touch. Nicca’s brown eyes were a little too wide. Whatever memory he was thinking upon, it was a bad one. So many bad memories among the guard, thanks to Andais.
I laid a gentle kiss on his mouth, and drew back to stare into his face. “Let me clean up, and we will make love. Gentle love, and then you will have Biddy and that will be gentle, too.” 
He nodded, but it was a little too rapid, and his eyes still held that shadow of fear. I felt the water move before Kitto came beside me to add his hands to mine on Nicca’s body. “Until I became a part of the princess’s household, I did not understand that any sidhe could be forced to such horrors, not unless they had earned punishment.” He touched Nicca’s face. “I know now that there is pain in every court, and no one is truly safe.” He kissed Nicca’s cheek. “Let me help them rid themselves of the blood, and then the princess will take that sadness from your eyes.”