“Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone,” he said.
“It’s your room and your bed,” Rhys said.
“Yes, but I will share it with my friend, even if I’m not included.”
Rhys reached across me and patted the other man’s shoulder. “That is a generous offer, Kitto, but I think there will be no sex this afternoon.”“What?” I asked.
He smiled down at me. “Your mind is full of all that has happened today, as a queen’s mind should be. It makes for a good ruler, but bad sex.”
I started to protest, but he cradled my chin in his hand. “It’s okay, Merry. Maybe what we all need right now is to hold each other. Maybe it’s about closeness.”
“Rhys….”
He moved so that he covered my mouth, lightly, with his hand. “It’s all right, really.”
I kissed the palm of his hand, then moved it away from my mouth. “I understand now why not Galen. He’s a political disaster. But you, you do politics just fine.”
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“So why?” I asked.
“Why did your father not choose me?” he asked.
I nodded.
Kitto slipped out of the bed. “This is sidhe business.”
“Stay,” Rhys said.
Kitto hesitated.
“Prince Essus told me that there was enough death in your life. He wanted you paired with someone whose magic was about life.”
“Griffin’s magic was beauty and sex.”
“It complemented what your father hoped you would grow into magically.” Rhys played with the edge of my hair. “He was right.”
“If you were goblin,” Kitto said, “beauty and sex would be useless. It would condemn you to be a slave to someone stronger and more able to fight. Your powers, Rhys, they would be valued above such soft things.”
“Essus wanted something softer for his daughter,” Rhys said.
“He would never have chosen Doyle, would he?” I asked.
“It would never have occurred to him that the queen’s Darkness could ever be parted from her side. But no, I think if I was too harsh for his daughter to marry, then Doyle would have been out, too.”
“I hadn’t thought about who my father might have chosen for me among my guards.”
“Hadn’t you?” he asked.
“No.”
Kitto had picked his jeans up off the floor where he’d let them fall. “I will leave you two to talk.”
“Stay,” Rhys said. “Help me understand why it’s you Merry comes to when she wants to relax. I’m not her heart’s desire. I’m not even the one who makes her heart beat fast by a feather’s touch. I need to find a place in her life, too. Help teach me how to be something new.”
“I will not teach you my place, for you will replace me.”
“I will never be as undemanding of Merry as you are. I have neither the personality nor the patience. But teach me to be a little less pressure so that she might turn to me for something.”
“Oh, Rhys,” I said.
He shook his head, sending all that curly white hair sliding around his shoulders. “You like me. You’ve always liked me. You enjoy sex with me, but you do not burn for me. Strangely, you burn for colder things even than my powers.”
“I am Unseelie sidhe.”
“You are also Seelie sidhe.”
“I am part that, yes, but I am also part human, and part brownie. But if you pushed me to name myself, what I am, I am Unseelie.”
He smiled, a sad sort of smile. “I know that.”
“Andais accused me of remaking the Unseelie court into a mirror of the Seelie. I am not doing it on purpose.”
“Remember what I said about you when you were sixteen? That I wanted to see which side of your family you took after?” Rhys asked.
“Yes.”
“I wanted you to take after the Seelie side of your family.”
“My grandfather is an abusive bastard. My uncle is mad. My mother is a cold, envious social climber. Why would you want that in your life?”
“I don’t mean their personalities, and I don’t even mean the ones you referred to. Remember, I knew your ancestors before they were lost in the great wars in Europe. I knew some of the women of your mother’s line. They were goddesses of fertility, love, lust. They were a warm lot, Merry, in that good earthy way.”
“So, what, you wondered if I had taken after my great-great aunt?”
“Aunts,” Rhys said, “and a great-grandmother or two. You reminded me of them. The hair, the eyes. I saw them in you.”
“No one else did,” I said.
“No one else was looking.”
I rose and gave him a kiss. The kiss grew until I felt his body grow hard again, where all the talk had made it soft. He broke from my lips with a sound that was almost pain. “I can’t keep being the gentleman if you keep kissing me like that.”
“Then don’t be the gentleman, be my lover.”
Kitto finished fastening his jeans. “I will leave you to what the sidhe do best, other than magic. You are my friend, Rhys, I believe that, but you are not comfortable with me in the bed with you and the princess.”
Rhys started to protest. It was my turn to put my fingers on his lips. “He’s right.”
He moved my hand. “I know. Damnit, I know. I thought if I could have sex with Kitto and you, I could guard you tonight with the goblins, but I can’t.”
“You have come a long way on the subject of goblins, Rhys. It’s all right.”
“Who will guard you tonight if Doyle is injured and my sensibilities are too delicate?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “and right this second I don’t care. Make love to me, Rhys, now, just you. Be with me, help chase my thoughts to stillness.” I rose and kissed him again and drew him down to me with arms and hands and eagerness.
I did not hear the door close quietly behind Kitto, but when next I opened my eyes, we were alone.
CHAPTER 19
RHYS MADE ME LIE ON MY STOMACH AND BEGAN TO BREATHE HIS way down my back. I would have said kiss, but it was too gentle for that. He caressed the skin with the barest touch of lips and breath. When he got low enough, he began to breathe and work those tiny, near-invisible hairs on the lower back, so that my body ran with goose bumps and involuntary shivers.
I raised my hips minutely from the bed in a silent invitation for him to do more.
He laughed that laugh of his that was masculine pleasure and his own amusement. But for once there was nothing of self-mockery in it. He laid a more solid kiss against the small of my back. I writhed for him, letting him know without words how wonderful it was.He laid his weight on top of me, resting the hard, long length of himself between the cheeks of my ass. The feel of it made me cry out.
He wrapped his arms around me, forced me enough off the bed so he could cup my breasts in his hands. He held me tightly and firmly in the strength of his body.
“If I truly loved you,” he whispered, “I would do what Kitto has done. I would refuse to have intercourse with you. I would take myself out of the race for king. Kitto did it because he knows that neither court would ever let a half goblin sit as your king. They’d kill you both first.”
He settled himself more firmly against me, pushing his hips just a little. It made me writhe as much as the weight of him would allow, but the seriousness in his voice didn’t match what his body was doing.
Rhys continued to whisper against my hair. “I know you love Doyle and Frost. Hell, you even love Galen more than you love me, even now when you’ve both realized what a political liability he would be as king.”
“Sometimes we have just oral sex now when we are together.”
Rhys tensed above me, and not in a sexual way, but as if he was thinking. “Has he taken himself out of the race for king?”
“Not completely, but sometimes we don’t do anything to make babies. We just pleasure each other.”
“Interesting,” he said, and it wasn’t a seductive whisper this time.
I tried to rise, but he kept me pressed to the bed with a squeeze of his arms, a flex of his hips. I spoke, trapped underneath him. “Why is it interesting?”
“Galen has taken himself out of the running for king because he knows he isn’t strong enough to help keep you alive. But he loves you, utterly loves you. He loves you enough to give you up if that’s what’s best for you. Gallant Galen.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but Rhys was right. It was gallant and horribly brave. Galen still had a chance to be the father of my child, but the last few times we’d made love he had only used his chance for intercourse once. The rest had been amazingly fun, but nothing that would have made a baby.
Rhys wrapped those strong arms tight, so tight it was almost hard to breathe. He whispered against my ear, his breath hot. “If I truly loved you, I would take myself out of the running for king. I would help you get your heart’s desire, which is Doyle and Frost. But I am too selfish, Merry. I cannot give you up without a fight.”
I spoke in the voice that his grip allowed me, breathy. “It isn’t a fight.”
“Yes,” he whispered fiercely. “Yes, it is. Not of strength of arms, maybe, but it is a battle. For some of us, the prize is to be king. But for most of us, Merry, we would want you as our prize even if there was no throne.”
He shoved his body against mine hard and fierce until I cried out for him. Then he squeezed me even tighter until I thought I would have to ask him to stop so I could breathe. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss against my ear, so fierce, so full of emotion. “I want to win, Merry. I want you even if it breaks your heart. I am a selfish bastard, Merry. I won’t give you up, not even to see you happy.”