He kissed the skin of my temple, lightly, but there was an intimacy to it, a reality to it that he’d never used when undercover on my arm. There had always been an edge of teasing with it. It let you know he didn’t mean it, so you wouldn’t hold it against him later.
Julian was always touching people, and that gave me a thought. I leaned into him even more tightly and spoke quietly for his ears only. “Are you not getting much touch lately?”
It startled him enough that he stumbled and caused our easy rhythm to falter. He caught himself and me, and we continued our almost lazy stroll up the sidewalk toward all the blinking lights.
“Isn’t that awfully direct for fey culture?” He whispered it against my hair.
“Yes,” I whispered back, “but we’ll be at the crime scene in minutes, and I want to know how my friend is doing.”
He smiled, though I was close enough to know that it left his eyes empty. “No, I’m not getting much touch at home. Adam seems to have buried his heart with his brother. I’m starting to look around, Merry. I’m starting to shop seriously, and I realized it’s not just sex, it’s the touch I miss. I think if I could get more touch I would be able to wait out his grief better.”
I stroked my hand across the flat planes of his stomach, and he gave me a speculative look. I smiled up at him and said, “You can have touch, Julian. Our culture doesn’t see touch as necessarily sexual.”
He laughed then, an abrupt and happy sound of surprise. “I thought you saw every touch as sexual.”
“No, sensual, but not sexual.”
“And there’s a difference?” he asked.
I traced my hand across his stomach again, while my other hand clung to his waist. “Yes.”
“Which is this?” he asked.
That made me frown. “You don’t like women, remember?”
He laughed again, and put his hand over mine where it rested on his stomach. “Yes, but you won’t share your men.”
“That would be a question for the individual men,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Really?”
His expression made me laugh. “See, you’d rather sleep with them than with me.”
He rolled his eyes a little and made a waffling gesture with his hands, then grinned at me. “True.” He leaned down, still smiling, but his next words didn’t match. “But if I cuddle you Adam will forgive me, while he might not forgive me a man.”
I studied his face from inches away. “It’s that bad?”
He nodded, and lifted my hand off his stomach so he could lay little kisses on my fingers as he spoke. “I love Adam more than I ever thought I’d love anyone, but I’m not good without attention.” He let my hand fall and leaned our faces as close together as the height difference and my heels would allow. “It’s a weakness of mine, but I need touch, and flirting, something.”
“Come to the house for dinner tonight and we’ll do a big cuddly pile while we watch something on the movie-size TV.”
His steps hesitated, and he almost broke rhythm but caught himself, so neither of us lost a step. “Are you sure?”
“Trust me, as long as it’s not sexual you can get touch.”
“And if I wanted it to be sexual?” he asked.
That made me frown at him, and he looked away, not meeting my gaze. He pretended he was looking at the police and all the emergency vehicles, but I knew he was hiding his face from me, because whatever was in his eyes in that moment he didn’t want to share.
I stopped him, by stopping my own walk. I turned him to face me. “You told me once that your commitment to Adam was your first happiness, that you’d fucked and worked, but never been happy, not really.”
He gave a small nod.
“If you tell me your priority is to keep your commitment to him, then I’ll help you keep it, but if you’re telling me that it’s over and you want sex, that’s a different conversation.”
I watched the pain in his eyes. He drew me into a hug that left no daylight between our bodies. He’d never hugged me like that, and seldom other men unless he was teasing and trying to see if he could make them uncomfortable. But it wasn’t a hug about sex, or teasing. He held me too tightly and too desperately. I held him back and spoke with my face pressed to his chest. “Julian, what’s wrong?”“I’m going to cheat on him, Merry. If he leaves me this alone for much longer, I’m going to cheat. I think that’s what he’s waiting for, so he can use it as an excuse to break up.”
“Why would he want to do that?” I asked.
“I don’t know, maybe because Ethan always hated the fact that his only brother was gay. He always hated me and blamed me for turning his brother into a fag.”
I drew back enough to try to see his face, but he curled around me so I couldn’t. “Ethan didn’t believe that. Adam’s always liked men.”
“He had a few girlfriends here and there. He was engaged once before me.”
I touched his face and turned him to look at me. “Is he making noises about being into women again?”
He shook his head, and I realized there were tears glittering behind those tinted glasses. He wasn’t crying yet, but he was a blink away from it. “I don’t know. He doesn’t want me to touch him. He doesn’t want anyone to touch him. I don’t know what’s in his head anymore.”
The tears trembled on the thickness of his eyelashes. He kept his eyes wide so the tears wouldn’t fall.
“Come over for dinner. You can at least have some touch.”
“We’re supposed to have dinner together tonight; if it works out I might not need the touching from anyone else.”
I smiled up at him. “If you don’t show up, then we know you and your main squeeze are having fun, and that will be great.”
He smiled at me, and wiped hastily at the unshed tears. He was gay but he was still a man, and most of them hated to cry, especially in public. “Thank you, Merry. I’m sorry to bring this to you, but my other friends, they’re mostly gay men and …”
“They see it as a chance to poach you,” I said.
He made that waffling motion again. “Not poach, but I am learning how many of my friends would be happy to be in my bed again.”
“That’s the problem with staying friends with most of your ex-lovers,” I said.
He laughed and this time it sounded happy. “What can I say? I’m just a friendly guy.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. I hugged him, and he hugged me back, more a friend hug this time. “Have you talked to Adam about couple’s therapy?” I asked.
“He says he doesn’t need therapy. He knows what’s wrong with him. He lost his damn brother and he’s allowed to mourn.”
Rhys made a throat-clearing sound and we turned to him. “We have to show ID and get through the line.” He was utterly neutral as he said it, but I knew that he’d caught some of what we’d been doing. One, all fey have better-than-human hearing, and two, after a thousand years you get to read people.
“I’m sorry,” Julian said. “I am being unprofessional and that’s not acceptable.” He stepped away from me, straightening his jacket, smoothing his lapels, and gathering himself at the same time.
Galen leaned in and said, “We’ll cuddle you without wrecking your marriage.”
“Oh, that is a blow to the ego,” Julian said with a smile. “That you’re not even tempted to seduce me.”
Galen grinned. “I don’t think I’d be the one doing the seducing.”
Julian grinned back at him. Cathbodua frowned and said, “I will not be cuddling anyone but Usna tonight.”
“How sad for you,” I said.
Cathbodua frowned harder. I shook my head, but said, “No one has to cuddle anyone they don’t want to cuddle. It’s all about touching because you want to, not because you’re forced to.”
She exchanged a look with Saraid. “That is very different from the prince.”
Saraid said, “Happily so.”
Julian glanced from one to the other of the women, and then said, “Were you honestly thinking that Merry would force you to touch me when you didn’t want to?”
The women just looked at him. Julian shivered. “I don’t know what your life was like before this, but I’m not into force. If my charming personality doesn’t make you want my company, then so be it.”
The women exchanged another look. Cathbodua said, “Give us a few more months of this new world and we may even believe that of both you and the princess.”
“Tell Jeremy to keep all the female guards off undercover duty for a while,” Julian said.
I thought about how either of the women might have taken the little walk with Julian. Would it have seemed like force, a kind of sexual abuse? So many walking wounded to take care of, and I’d just offered to help take care of Julian. But I didn’t mind that last, because I knew how weak you could grow from lack of attention, until you began to look at strangers while the person who was supposed to love you neglected you. Humans saw it as a weakness on the part of the cheater, but I knew through my first fiancé that a person can leave a relationship in more ways than just walking away. You can leave your partner so bereft of attention that it’s like not being in love at all.