They glanced at each other as Galen closed the door behind them. “We were,” Rhys said, “but we spent months sharing your bed, so we … tied.”
“Tied?” I asked.
“Rhys tried to pull rank, and I wouldn’t let him without a fight.”
I looked at Galen and didn’t try to keep the surprise off my face. “Really?”
“Really,” he said, and his usually good-natured face was set in serious lines.
“Really,” Rhys said.
I looked from one to the other of them. “How serious a fight were you willing to have?”
“I wasn’t backing down,” Galen said, and he said it as if it were simple fact and not a total shock.
“I think he might have requested a duel,” Rhys said.
Galen looked uncomfortable then, and more his normal self. “I don’t know if I would have taken it that far.”
“Now you tell me,” Rhys said, smiling.
Galen rolled his eyes, and then the kidding faded, and he turned that serious, handsome face to me. “But short of a duel, I wasn’t giving up the first chance to touch you in months.”
Rhys turned so that only I could see his face. He raised eyebrows at me, but there was something new in his face as he said, “It was the most angry I’ve ever seen him, outside of a fight to save your life, or ours.”
I looked up at him, and suddenly his face was uncertain. “The only one who could tell me no today is you, Merry. Do you want just Rhys? If you do, then I’ll leave.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s all right, I mean … stay, both of you stay, though with no intercourse allowed and not even being able to do oral sex on me, I’m not sure what both of you will be doing.” I laughed and held my hands out to them both. “It’s an embarrassment of riches to have you both.”
Galen grinned, and the two men exchanged a look. They’d had months of literally sharing my bed and my body. They worked almost as well together as Frost and Doyle, though since they didn’t love each other, the energy wasn’t the same. It was good, but not as good, but then more love makes everything better.
THE CLOTHES CAME
off in an eager rush of hands and kisses, and left them nude and me wearing only the forest-green panties that matched the robe. I wanted to be as naked as they were, wanted to rub as much of my skin on theirs as possible, but my body wasn’t healed enough from giving birth, not yet.
They laid me down between them and covered my body with kisses and caresses. Just that brought small eager sounds from me, making me writhe, body arching up against their hands like a cat, except I was lying on my back and arching things up toward them that cats didn’t offer their owners. Rhys’s hand slid down the front of my panties at last. I cried out just from that, arching my pelvis upward toward his hand.
Rhys put his other hand on my hip. “Easy, we need to be gentle, remember.”
I blinked up at him and had a moment of wanting to argue, but my body was already letting me know that I might have been a little overeager, writhing around. It didn’t hurt, but I ached.
“I’m sorry, I do remember, it’s just been so long.”
“It’s been a long time for us, too, Merry,” Rhys said, leaning in to kiss me. His hand wasn’t down my pants anymore; he’d moved to keep from hurting me while I moved too much.
“We need to be slow, not fast,” Galen said with a grin.
“Goddess help me, but I don’t feel slow, or gentle; I feel crazed with the need to have you touch me everywhere.”
“And we would like nothing better, but if we hurt you we’ll never forgive ourselves,” Rhys said.
“Not to mention that Doyle, Frost, and the rest will kick our asses,” Galen said, smiling.
“They’d try,” Rhys said.
“I’d put up a good fight,” Galen said, “but eventually they’d win.”
Rhys’s face closed down; it was beyond serious.
“What?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Liar,” I said.
He grinned. “Now we’re not allowed to actually lie.”
“But we’re allowed to exaggerate until you’d believe the moon was made out of green cheese,” I said.
“But we’re allowed to lie by omission,” Galen said.
Rhys frowned at him. “Don’t help me.”
I studied his face. “You think you could win against Doyle and Frost.”
“I know I could.”
I gave him a look.
He smiled, but it left that one tri-blue eye unhappy. “I could bring death with my touch to non-fey when I was just Rhys. You’ve seen me do it.”
“But you killed the goblin that tormented you and Kitto; that’s fey.”
“I couldn’t have done that before you and the Goddess brought me back into my power,” he said.
“I don’t think Doyle and Frost would let you get close enough to touch them,” Galen said.
“I wouldn’t have to touch them now.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I was Cromm Cruach; I lived for blood and slaughter, and I was good at it. I have a sithen of my own again, Merry. It’s disguised as an abandoned Los Angeles apartment building, but it’s a piece of faerie that came into being, because you brought me back to what I was; I don’t have to get close enough to touch someone to cause their death.”
“How do you know that, for certain, I mean?”
He looked away then, and I had to reach up, touch his face, and turn him back to me. “Rhys?”
“Let’s just say that my sithen is in a bad section of L. A. and I’m blond and blue-eyed and don’t exactly look like I belong.”
“Someone attacked you,” I said.
“Someones,” he said.
“Who?”
“Let’s just say that the gang problem in that section of downtown isn’t an issue anymore.”
“You didn’t do it to defend yourself,” Galen said.
I looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”
“They hurt one of the people living near your sithen, didn’t they?” Galen asked.
Rhys shrugged. “Don’t make it sound all noble.”
“I wasn’t.”
Rhys looked at him. “Don’t disapprove either.”
“I wasn’t.”
“If you have a point to make, make it soon,” Rhys said, and he didn’t sound altogether happy.
“I saw the flowers and gifts they leave by your building,” Galen said.
“I would have known if any of you were close to my sithen.”
“Apparently not,” Galen said.
“You scouted me,” Rhys said, and again he wasn’t happy.
It was Galen’s turn to shrug and give a little smile. He was pleased with himself.
“I’d believe that Darkness visited me, but not you.”
“The only one of us better at personal glamour than me is Merry.”
“True, you never need a disguise to do undercover work back when we are all working at the Grey Detective Agency. Sholto’s pretty good at it, too.”
“Good enough that both of you, and Sholto, went inside the Seelie sithen to rescue me with only your glamour to hide you from the king and his nobles.” I grabbed Galen’s hand and then took Rhys’s. “And you in your fake beard and hat. You could have gotten all of you killed.”
“But we didn’t,” Rhys said.
“But now you’re telling me that you killed an entire gang. You risked yourself to do it, Rhys; don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“I wasn’t in much danger; that whole immortal thing, remember.”
“Bullets can hurt you, Rhys, all of you, it’s lead; cold iron can kill us, and steel hurts—no, don’t give me that immortal crap. You could have died.” I sat up. “Did you at least take some of the other guards with you as backup?”
The moment he looked away I knew he hadn’t. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t ever risk yourself like that again, not alone. We’re a court, a court of faerie, Rhys; that means we fight our battles together.”
“I was willing to risk my own life, Merry, but no one else’s. Let’s be honest: If you lost me you’d survive, but if I got Doyle or Frost killed, you’d never forgive me.”
“Yes, I love Frost and Doyle the most, I’m more in love with them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Don’t you ever think that I could lose you and it wouldn’t hurt. How dare you think so little of me, Rhys. How dare you believe that my heart isn’t big enough to love more than just two men.” I was yelling at him.
He held his hands up in front of him. “I’m sorry, truly, but I did what I thought was best.”
“If I’m the royal here, the would-be queen, then you don’t get to make decisions like that without consulting me, is that clear?” I was yelling again.
“It’s clear, I’m clear, checking with the queen before I clean up any more neighborhoods.”
“You could have died!” And I burst into tears like some hysterical pregnant woman. Stupid hormones.
I FORGAVE HIM
when he made me yell for a much more fun reason, and the first orgasm in months filled my body, flowed over my skin, and brought me screaming. I screamed his name while his fingers brought me, and my nails carved my pleasure in red scratches down his arm, and across Galen’s back, because that was what was under my fingers when Rhys’s hand pushed me over that delicious edge.
My skin had not glowed until that last push of pleasure; only then had my pale skin filled with moonlight glow like the clouds had finally been blown away and the light of a full moon could bathe the world in its luminescence. My skin ran with power and I could see swirls of greens and golds from the corners of my vision and knew it was the colors of my own eyes alight with magic.
My magic brought theirs, and Rhys’s skin was an answering shine to mine, so that it was two moons entwined, filling the world with a light so bright it would make mortals shield their eyes for fear of losing sight, or mind, from the beauty of it. His one eye glittered like three jewels, carved sapphires in a range of blues from palest blue, as if the sky could burn with its own color, a blue so rich, as if cornflowers could explode with their own beauty, and then the color of the ocean where it runs shallow and warm, as if the sun truly did rise from the water in a burst of glory.
He leaned over and kissed me with lips that were the soft pink of sunrise to the ruby glow of my own. I saw his hand held above us; there was red shining on his fingers as if the color of my lips had been spread like slick fire across his hand. It was my blood from bringing life into the world, and it glowed like every other part of us, thick with magic and the grace of Goddess.
He lifted away from the kiss and there were afterimages of the colors of our lips like a Doppler effect that you could see with your naked eyes. My hands fell back to the bed, all of me limp; my eyes fluttered back into my head with the pleasure of it, and I could see the light of my own irises inside my nearly closed eyes, so that when I tried to open them the world was edged with emerald and molten gold fire. The term
afterglow
had a whole new meaning for the sidhe.
The bed moved, but I couldn’t see past my fluttering eyelids and the radiance of my own eyes and skin, as if my own magic blinded me.
Someone kissed me, and I knew from that first touch that it was Galen, because the sky didn’t glow the pale green of spring leaves, but that was the color that joined mine, so that the greens of my eyes and the green of his seemed to blend and flow together as we kissed. Where his hands touched me the light flared. I couldn’t see it, I could feel it, so that a thrumming warmth followed at his touch, and when he slid his body cuddling close to mine, that warmth pulsed between us, until I couldn’t breathe for a minute, and when I did it was a gasp, as if I were already putting my mouth around things much deeper than his kiss could ever be.
He whispered against my lips, “I want to feel your mouth around me.”
I breathed out, “Yes … please.”
He got up on his knees beside me. The fire was beginning to fade so that he looked less magical and more just Galen, but that had been magical enough to me since I was fourteen. My own glow was fading so that I could see him without the shine of my own eyes clouding my vision. He smiled down at me, and I gazed up the long length of him. The one thin braid spilled down the side of his body, the tip of it curling around his groin, so that I reached for the braid first.
“I miss when all your hair was this long,” I said.
“I’d grow it long again for you.”
I smiled up at him. “I would like to make love to you just once with all that wavy green hair surrounding us.”
He grinned. “Did you have a crush on me, or my hair, when you were young?”
“You, but the hair was beautiful. Why did you keep just the one tiny braid?”
“Because the queen’s commandment was worded in such a way that I could cut all the rest, so long as I kept some of it this long.”
“It was still a horrible risk, Galen. She could have found a reason to punish you for cutting that long hair that she’s so fond of.”
“And that proves we are high court sidhe; that’s really why we grow our hair out, Merry, and why anyone not of the court is forbidden long hair. It’s just another way to say we’re better than everyone else.”
“The custom didn’t even start until after the Unseelie began to lose their powers,” Rhys said, as he walked toward the bed, a towel folded in his hand.
“I thought it was older than that,” I said, still running Galen’s braid through my fingers.
“No, the queen decreed it to make sure that at least visually we would be different from the rest of the Unseelie Court.”
“You’re all sidhe, tall, elegant, gorgeous, and that’s true no matter what hair you have,” I said.
“True, but the nobles were afraid, Merry. Our power, our magic was what made the rest of the fey, the ones who called themselves Unseelie, let us rule them. Without that our rule was in jeopardy.”
“Forbidding the non-sidhe from growing their hair past their shoulders didn’t change that,” I said.
“People, even the fey, are very concerned with appearance, Merry. We looked different. We were allowed a privilege that the common folk were not. I believe it did help set us apart.”
“Just having long hair doesn’t make us sidhe,” Galen said.
“No, but it was a visual reminder of power. People are more likely to follow you if you look impressive.”
“True leaders can rule if they are in rags, my father always said.”