A Lick of Frost(61)

The adrenaline had worn off, and I was more tired than when I had started the day. I was coming down with something. Dammit.

I believed Frost would love me, but I wasn't sure how I would feel aging while they all remained young and fair. There were moments when I wasn't certain that I was a good enough person to be a good sport about that.

The room was dark. Blackout curtains had been added to the room's only window. The mirror over the dresser had been removed so that the wall was blank and peaceful. There would be no unexpected calls in here. It was one of the reasons I'd chosen the room. I needed rest, and I had had all I wanted of surprise mirror calls today.

Kitto had joined me, and he lay curled beside me under the smooth softness of clean cotton sheets. His dark curls rested on the curve of one of my shoulders, his breath warm on the mound of my breast. His arm lay over my stomach, his leg over my thigh, his other arm up where he could play idly with my hair. He was the only man in my guard shorter than I was, short enough that he could curl around me as I curled around the taller men. He was one of the first men to join me in exile. In the weeks that he'd been away from faerie, Doyle had forced him to use the gym. There was muscle under the white smoothness of his moonlight skin now. Muscle that had never been there before.

He was 4' 11" with the face of an angel that had never quite gotten through puberty. But then goblins don't have to shave, and in that, his body had taken after that half of his heritage. I played with the soft curls of his hair, which had grown to touch the tops of his broadening shoulders. The hair was as soft as Galen's, as soft as my own.

My other hand was curled around his back. My fingers traced the smooth line of scaled skin that ran down his spine. The scales looked dark in dim light, but in brighter light his skin ran with rainbows. In the kissable mouth that rested against my breast were retractable fangs, connected to poison glands. His father had been a snake goblin. The fact that his father had raped his mother instead of eating her was unusual. Apparently snake goblins were a cold lot in every way. Passion did not move them, but something about Kitto's mother had wakened heat in his father's cold heart.

She had then abandoned her baby beside a goblin mound when she realized what he was. Goblins have been known to eat their own young, and sidhe flesh is highly prized. His own mother had put him out to be killed. Instead, he'd been taken in by a goblin female who had meant to raise him to a bigger size to eat him. But something about Kitto had moved her, too, and she had not had the heart to kill him, There was something in him that did indeed bring out the desire to care, to take care of, to protect. He had offered his life to save mine more than once, yet I still could not see him as my protector.

He raised huge almond-shaped eyes to me, a swimming pure blue the way Holly and Ash's eyes were completely one color. Except Kitto's eyes were blue, a wonderful clear blue like a pale sapphire, or a morning sky.

"Who are you hiding from today, Merry?" he asked, voice gentle.

I smiled at him from my nest of pillows. "How do you know I'm hiding?"

"It's why you come here, to hide."

I traced the edge of his cheek. But for a few chance genes he would have been like Holly and Ash, tall and sidhe beautiful with the extra strength and stamia of the goblins.

"I told you, I'm not feeling well."

He smiled, and propped himself up on one elbow so that he was looking slightly down at me. "That is true, but there is a sorrow to you that I would lift if you only tell me how."

"Just don't make me talk of politics. I need to rest if I am to do my duty tonight."

He traced his finger down the side of my face from temple to chin. It was a long, slow movement that made me close my eyes and catch my breath.

"Is that how you see the goblins you will bed tonight, as a duty?"

I opened my eyes. "It is not that they are goblins that makes them a duty."

He smiled, sliding his hand into my hair. "I know that. It is who they are, what they are, and you do not feel your best."

"They frighten me, Kitto."

His face was sober. "I fear them, too."

"Did they ever use you ill?"

"They have not much liking for male flesh. I have serviced them a time or two when they came to bed my master."

Kitto had survived in a culture more violent than any in faerie by doing what some people have to do in prison to survive. They choose someone powerful, or are chosen, and become their property. It was looked down upon, but strangely was honored as a profession. On one hand, goblins like Kitto were the victims of cruel humor; on the other hand, they were highly valued by their masters. Master was not a sexist term in goblin nomenclature. It could be male or female. It was simply the term for one who owned a slave.