She shook her head. “Clever, Darkness, but not clever enough. If you bring a hint of life back to the gardens, then I will allow Meredith to punish Nerys’s people.”
It was his turn to shake his head. “If the Princess Meredith and some of her men bring even a hint of life back to these gardens, then Meredith alone decides what punishment shall be meted out to Nerys’s people.”
She seemed to think about that for a moment or two, then nodded. “Agreed.”
“You give your word, the word of the queen of the Unseelie Court?” he asked.
She nodded. “I do.”
“Witnessed,” Rhys said.
She waved her hand dismissively. “Fine, fine, you have your promise. But remember, I have to agree that there is at least a hint of life. It better be some evidence impressive enough that I can’t pixie out of it, Darkness, because you know I will, if I can.”
“I know,” he said.
She looked at me, then. It was not a friendly look. “Enjoy Mistral, Meredith. Enjoy him and know that he comes back to me when this is done.”
“Thank you for loaning him to me,” I said, and kept my voice absolutely empty.
She made a face at me. “Don’t thank me, Meredith—not yet. You’ve only bedded him once.” She motioned at me with the sword. “Though I see that you have found what he considers pleasure: He likes to cause pain.”
“I would have thought that he would be your ideal lover then, Aunt Andais.”
“I like to cause pain, niece Meredith, not be on the receiving end.”
I swallowed hard, so I wouldn’t say what I was thinking. I finally managed, “I did not know that you were a pure sadist, Aunt Andais.”
She frowned at me. “Pure sadist—that’s an odd phrase.”
“I meant only that I didn’t know you didn’t like pain on your own body at all.”
“Oh, I like a little teeth, a little nails, but not like that.” Again she motioned at my breast. It ached where he’d bitten me, and I had a near-perfect imprint of his teeth, though he hadn’t broken the skin. I would be bruised, but nothing more.
She shook her head, as if to chase away a thought, then turned, and the motion caused her black robe to swirl wide. She grabbed the edge of it, to pull it around herself. She looked back over her shoulder one last time before she stepped into the darkness and traveled back the way she’d come. Her last words were not a comfort. “After Mistral’s had his way with her, do not come crying to me that he’s broken your little princess.” And the piece of darkness where she had been was empty.
So many of us let out a sigh of relief at the same time that it was like the sound of wind in the trees. Someone gave a nervous laugh.
“She is right about one thing,” Mistral said, and his eyes held regret. “I like causing a little pain. I am sorry if I hurt you, but it has been so long since…” He spread his hands wide. “I forgot myself. I am sorry for that.”
Rhys laughed, and Doyle joined him, and finally even Galen and Frost joined in that soft masculine sound.
“Why do you laugh?” Mistral asked.
Rhys turned to me, his face still shining with laughter. “Do you want to tell him, or do we?”
I actually blushed, which I almost never do. I kept Abe’s hand in mine and drew us both across the dry, brittle grass until I stood in front of Mistral. I looked at the blood that trickled dark across his pale neck and gazed up into his eyes, so anxious. I had to smile. “I like what you did to my breast. That’s just about as hard as I like it, just this side of drawing blood with teeth.”
He frowned at me.
“You like the nail work to be harder than the teeth,” Rhys said. “You don’t mind bleeding a little from nails.”
“But only if you’ve done the preliminaries,” I said.
“Preliminaries?” Mistral said, and sounded puzzled.
“Foreplay,” Abeloec said.
The puzzled look faded, and something else entirely filled his eyes. Something warm and sure of itself, something that made me shiver just from him looking at me. “I can do that,” he said.
“Then take off the armor,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Get naked,” Rhys called.
“I can speak for myself, thank you,” I said, glancing back at him.
He made a little motion as if to say, Be my guest. I turned back to Mistral. I gazed up into his face, and found that his eyes were already beginning to fade to a soft grey, like rain clouds. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, a little uncertainly, as if he wasn’t used to smiling much.
“Get naked,” I said.
He grinned, a brief flash of it. “Then what?”
“We have sex.”
“I’m first,” Abeloec said, hugging me from behind.
I nodded. “Agreed.”
Mistral’s face darkened; I could almost see clouds in his eyes. Not just the color of the irises, but the actual image of clouds floating in the pupils. “Why is he first?” he asked.
“Because he can be part of the foreplay,” I said.
“She means, once I’ve fucked her, then you can do it rougher,” said Abeloec.Mistral smiled again, but this smile was different. This was a smile that made me breathe harder. “You really liked what I did to your breast?” he asked.
I swallowed hard, pressing myself against Abeloec’s body, almost as if I were afraid of the taller man in front of me. I nodded and whispered, “Yes.”
“Good,” he said, and he reached for the leather fastenings that held his armor in place. “Very good,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 4
THE MOMENT ABELOEC LAID ME DOWN ON A BED OF CASTOFF clothes, our skin began to glow. It was a thin layer of my guards’ shirts and tunics, just enough so that I wouldn’t pierce my body on the dead vegetation. It amounted to all the clothing the men were wearing, which hadn’t been much—and it left them all nude. I could still feel the dry sticks, crumbling leaves, dry and withered, crushed underneath me.
It wasn’t the feel of the ground in winter. No matter how cold the winter, how deep the snow, there is a feeling of waiting in the ground then—a sense that the land is merely asleep, and the sun will wake it, and spring will come. Not here. It was like the difference between a body that is deeply asleep and one that is dead. At a glance, your eyes may see no difference, but if you touch it, you know. The ground that Abeloec’s body pressed me into held nothing—no warmth, breath, life. Empty, like the eyes of the dead that but a moment ago held personality, and now are like dark mirrors. The gardens weren’t waiting for reawakening; they were just dead.
But we weren’t dead.
Abeloec laid his naked body against mine and kissed me. The height difference meant that all he could do was kiss me, but it was enough. Enough to conjure that moonglow inside our bodies.
He raised up on his arms to stare down at my face. His skin glowed so bright that again his eyes became like dark grey caves in his face. I’d never met any sidhe whose eyes did not glow when their power came upon them. His long hair spilled out around us, and the white lines in his hair began to glow softly blue, like before. He raised higher on his arms, almost in a push-up, so that his body was suspended above mine on hands and toes.
Pale blue lines glowed through the white of his skin. Flowing images of vines and flowers, and trees, and animals. Nothing stayed, nothing lasted. There weren’t that many lines, and they didn’t move that fast. I should have been able to tell what kind of vine, what fruit, what animal, but beyond small, or large, it was as if my mind couldn’t hold the images.
I traced the blue with my fingers, and it trailed over my hand, tickled and teased across the white glow of my own skin. And even staring at my own hand, I couldn’t tell you what plant it was that grew and flowered there. It was as if I weren’t meant to see it, or at least not to understand it. Not yet, maybe not ever.
I stopped trying to make sense of the flowing lines, and gazed down the length of Abeloec’s body where it stretched above mine. He held himself above me like a shelter, as if he could have stayed there forever and never tired. I reached down his body, worming underneath his steady strength, until I could wrap my hand around the hard length of him.
He shuddered above me. “I should be touching you.” His voice was strained, thick with effort, but effort for what? His arms and shoulders, and legs, were utterly still above me as if he were stone instead of flesh. It wasn’t his strength that gave his voice that thick sound. At least not strength of body. Maybe strength of will.
I squeezed gently around his shaft, and he was hard, so terribly hard. His breathing changed, and I could see his stomach fluttering with the effort to stay steady above me. “How long has it been?” I asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said.
I stroked my hand up and over the head of him. His spine bowed downward, and he almost fell on top of me, but then his arms and legs went back to their firm stance. “I thought the sidhe did not lie.”
“I do not remember exactly,” he said. His voice was breathy now.
I slid my other hand down to cup his balls and gently play with them.
He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it, and said, “If you keep doing that, I’ll go, and that’s not how I want to go the first time.”
I continued to play with him, gently. He was so hard, quiveringly hard. Just holding him in my hands, I knew that the phrase aching with need wasn’t merely words. He glowed and I could feel the power in him, but he did not throb with it the way the others did. It was a quieter power, this.