He laughed, head back, mouth wide, a sound so joyous it seemed to make the day brighter. “I’ll be hiding myself against your gorgeous body.”
“No,” Doyle said.
“And are you going to do anything picture-worthy?” Rhys asked, hands on his hips. He was totally comfortable nude. His body language never changed no matter what he was, or wasn’t, wearing. It had taken two days worth of arguing to get Doyle into the thong bikini bottom he had on. He’d never participated in the court’s casual nudity.
Doyle stood, and the front of the suit was tiny enough, and close enough in color, that I could see Rhys’s point. If you didn’t know how magnificent Doyle looked nude, you might think this was it, at a glance. From the back he looked almost as nude as Rhys.
“I am wearing this, and I am in public view.”
“You’re cute,” Rhys said, “but if we want the tabloids to stop trying to snap pictures through the bedroom windows, we need to play fair with them. We need to give them a show.” He spread his arms wide when he said the last, turning his back to me so I got the full view of the back of his body. The view was better without the bathing suit to break up the clean, muscled lines of him. He still had a wonderful ass, unlike some bodybuilders, who’ve taken the lack of body fat to a point where there is nothing soft on their bodies. You need a little softness to hide the lines of muscles, or it just looks wrong.
I could hear the helicopter now. “We’re running out of time, gentlemen. I do not want to go back to having the photographers camped out in the trees outside the wall.”
Rhys glanced back at me. “If we don’t give the first tabloid a good show, they’ll tell the rest that we lied, and we’ll have them climbing all over us again.” He sighed, and not as if he was happy. “I’d rather flash my ass to the entire country than have another photographer break his arm falling off the roof.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Doyle took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth. “Agreed.” How little he liked it showed in the lines of his body, the way he stood. If he couldn’t act better than this, Doyle would have to be excused from future photo opportunities.
Rhys came to the foot of my lounge chair and knelt on all fours, with his hands on the chair arms. He was grinning at me, and I knew he’d find a way of enjoying this. It might be duty, and he might prefer to just shoot the helicopter out of the sky, but he’d play fair, and he’d find a way to make it fun, if he could.
I gazed down his body, because I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t not look at him dangling there, close enough to fondle, close enough for so much. My voice was a little less than steady when I asked, “Do you have a plan?”
“I thought we’d make out.”
“And what am I supposed to be doing?” Doyle asked. He sounded disgusted with the entire situation. He loved being my lover, loved the possibility of being king; he hated the publicity and everything that went with it.
“You can take one end, I’ll take the other.”
The helicopter was close now, perhaps hidden only by the line of tall eucalyptus trees that bordered the estate. Doyle flashed a smile, white and sudden as lightning in the darkness of his face. He moved with that liquid grace and speed that I could never match, and was suddenly kneeling beside my shoulder. “If I must, then I would have the sweet taste of your mouth.”
Rhys darted a quick lick across my bare stomach that made me writhe and giggle. He raised his face enough to say, “There are other tastes just as sweet.” The look in his eye, his face, held a heat and knowledge that stole the laughter from my throat and sent my pulse racing.Doyle brushed his lips across my shoulder. The movement brought my gaze to his, and there was that same dark knowledge. A knowledge born of nights and days of skin and sweat and bodies, of tangled sheets and pleasure.
My voice came a little shaky. “You’ve decided to play. What made you change your mind?”
He whispered against my cheek, and just his breath hot against my skin made me shudder. “This is a necessary evil, and if you must parade yourself for the media, then I will not abandon you.” That flash of a smile came again, like a surprise across his face. It made him look younger, almost like someone else entirely. It had only been in the last month or so that I’d known Doyle had a smile like that inside him. “Besides, I cannot leave you to Rhys. Goddess knows what he would do out here on his own.”
Rhys ran a finger along the edge of my bikini bottom. “Such a tiny piece of cloth. They’ll never see it if we’re careful.”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
He dropped lower on the lounge chair so that his face was above that tiny piece of cloth, his hands sliding under my slightly raised thighs until those hands came up over my hips and hid the bright red cloth of the bikini bottom. He lowered his face just over my groin, and his hair spread across my thighs like a curtain.
I didn’t have time to protest, or even decide if I was going to. The helicopter cleared the trees, and that was how they found us. Rhys with his face buried in my groin, his legs bent at the knees, feet kicking slightly over his bare ass, like a child with a piece of good candy.
I thought Doyle would protest, until he pressed his face into my neck and I realized he was laughing. Silently, shoulders shaking. He eased me back onto the lounge chair so that I was lying down again, still laughing, but hiding it from the cameras.
I started to smile and was glad my sunglasses were back in place. The smile started to turn into a laugh as the helicopter circled overhead, close enough to chop the water of the pool and send Rhys’s hair tickling along my skin. My hair flared in the artificial wind like bloody flames.
I was laughing full out now, which made things besides my shoulders shake.
Rhys licked across the front of my groin, and even through the cloth it slowed the laughter, brought a catch to my breath. He rolled his eye up the line of my body, and the look was enough; he didn’t want me laughing. He set his teeth into the cloth and grazed me delicately with his teeth. The sensation made me shudder, spine bowing enough to spill my head backward and open my mouth in a throaty gasp.
Doyle squeezed my shoulder, brought me back into my head a little. I was still shaky and had trouble focusing on his face. “I think we have had enough of a show for one day.” He laid one of the towels across my stomach. He handed the other one to Rhys.
Rhys looked up at him, and I saw the thought to argue cross his face, but in the end he simply began to get up, spreading the towel as he moved so that the cameras didn’t get a glimpse of the bikini bottoms. I’d half expected him to flash the camera, show the joke, but he didn’t. He very carefully covered me with the towel, while the helicopter swirled overhead and the wind beat our hair around us. On his knees, he was fully exposed, and I wondered if there’d be photos with him politely fuzzed out, or whether they’d sell them to the European papers and not worry about it.
When I was covered completely, from thighs to just under the red bikini top, he scooped me up in his arms.
I had to shout to be heard above the sound of wind and machinery. “I can walk.”
“I want to carry you.” He seemed so serious when he said it, and it cost me nothing to let him do it.
I nodded.
Rhys carried me toward the house with Doyle walking a little behind and to one side of us. Doyle was being a good bodyguard, bringing up the rear, but he was also walking to one side, instead of directly behind us, so that he didn’t ruin the photo opportunity.
He stopped at his chair and scooped up a third towel, then moved smoothly toward the house. I caught a glimpse of the gun wrapped in that towel. The helicopter circling overhead never knew that any of us was armed. They also couldn’t see Frost standing just inside the sliding glass doors, hidden by a spill of drapes. He was fully dressed, and very fully armed. I think the reason I didn’t mind the media games so much was that if no one tried to kill me, it was a good day. When that’s your criterion for a good day, what’s a few helicopters and some racy photos? Not much.
Chapter 2
Frost watched Rhys carry me inside with angry grey eyes. Frost had been the one guard who voted against our treaty with the press. He would guard us while we did such foolish things, but he would not participate. His dignity would never have stooped so low.
He was handsome in his anger, but he was always handsome. Goddess had made it so that he couldn’t be anything else. He was all cheekbones and flawless lines that would make a plastic surgeon cry with envy. Skin like snow, hair like silver frost glittering in moonlight, broad of shoulders, slim of waist, narrow-hipped, long of leg and arm. Clothed he was handsome; nude he was breathtaking.
He watched us walk across the cool tile floor with a look like a petulant child. He was the moodiest of the guards. The first to anger, the last to forgive, and he pouted. It seemed the wrong word for a warrior who had defended his queen for more than a thousand years, but it was the right word. Frost pouted, and it made me tired to see it. He was amazing in bed, a wondrous warrior, but shoveling his emotional shit was nearly a full-time job. There were days when I wasn’t sure I wanted the job.
“The Goblin King has called on the mirror,” he said in a voice as sullen as his eyes.