“In a few days, or weeks, we’ll know which of the babies is yours; don’t you mean that child will visit your court?”
He looked down at me, his face arrogant and almost heartrendingly handsome. It was the face he wore when he was hiding his emotions. Why did he feel that he needed to hide from me about this?
“Do you want only my genetic child to visit the sluagh?”
“No, I want them all to understand just how diverse their world is, but I hadn’t talked to you about it, and I didn’t want to assume.”
Some tension went out of his arms, his shoulders, and that release traveled through my arms, where I held him. His face went from arrogant and model perfect to smiling broadly at me. He looked so joyous that it made me smile back.
“Only one babe may be mine genetically, but they are all a part of you, Meredith, and I love you.” He touched my lips with a fingertip, as if I’d made some motion to speak. “I know you are not in love with me, nor I with you, not yet, but I do love you more than any woman before you.”
I kissed his hand and used mine to move him so I could speak. “I am honored to have such a place in your heart, Sholto.”
“This sounds like the beginning of a ‘let’s just be friends’ speech.”
I laughed then, and he looked puzzled.
“Oh, Sholto, no, I do not want to friendzone you. I love what we have together. I love that we do things in the bedroom that no one else can do with me, because no one else has the diversity of your equipment.”
He laughed then, joyous and somehow masculine, that sound. I liked the tones of men laughing when they were happy enough not to worry how it sounded, or who heard them. Good that I did, since I was likely to be surrounded by men for the rest of my days.
“That you list my extras as part of what you love about me makes me love you even more.”
“Good, because I love that you want to take all the babies to see your kingdom. I love that you spend more time in the nursery helping with them than half the other men, even though you don’t live at the house all the time. I love watching your face when we’re alone and how many different expressions I get to see that I’d never seen at court, or when other people are with us. I love the look on your face when you hold the babies. I love how your arms feel when you hold me, and the sound of your heart when I press my cheek against your chest.”
“And this would be when Rhys or Galen says, ‘But you aren’t in love with me.’”
“But you aren’t in love with me, either,” I said.
“True,” he said, and he pulled me close again. “And they are, and it is always hard to love more than you are loved.”
I snuggled up against his body and said, “That sounds like experience talking.”
“It is. I had many a serious crush on noble ladies of both courts, but I was the Queen’s Perverse Creature, as Doyle was her Darkness, and Frost her Killing Frost. I feared someday that she would say, ‘Where is my Creature, bring me my Creature,’ when she wanted to send the sluagh out to frighten or kill her enemies.” He held me tight and said, “Before you came to me, Meredith, I feared I would simply become the Queen’s Creature.”
“Doyle is the Queen’s Darkness,” I said, softly.
“Yes, but it is frightening and romantic for the Queen to say, ‘Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness,’ and someone would bleed or die at his hand.”
“You and your host have made men lose their minds at the sight of all of you in full strength, and bled many, killed many.”
“What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.”
I hugged him as tight as I could. “I love you, Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, I love all of you, and would not have you any other way than you are.”
“Oh, Meredith, Meredith, Meredith, I do love you more and more.”
“I cannot offer you to make love yet, but I want to touch and be touched by you. I want to feel all those wonderful extras do the amazing things that only you can do. I want all of you, touching as much of me as possible.”
The shine in his tri-gold eyes brightened as if someone had set a match, and the golden-yellow flame was coming alive again. “Whatever my queen desires,” he said, and took me in his arms again, but this time the skintight shirt wasn’t flat against his body. Bumps and bulges stretched the fabric and began to move, pulsing and writhing under the shirt. It was still tucked into his pants so they couldn’t escape, and then the edge of the shirt appeared from his pants, and I realized that his extras were pulling the shirt loose from the inside. The first tentacle peeked out of the cloth, wriggling free like a snake spilled out of a bag. Once analogies like snakes in a bag had frightened me, made me not want to touch Sholto. Now, just the sight of the tentacles beginning to appear at the edge of his shirt and pants tightened things low in my body, anticipating the pleasure to come.
He let the thinner, lower tentacles roll the shirt up slowly, exposing his stomach below the belly button, which was smooth and showed that he’d been working out with the rest of my warriors, but above that round indentation that I’d licked more times than I could count now was the first fringe of thin tentacles that were as pearl white as the rest of his skin, but with darker red tips. I knew that those tips had tiny, delicate suction cups on them. The thought of what Sholto could do with them made me shiver with anticipation.
The shirt rolled up a little more to reveal the first grouping of longer, thinner tentacles that grew in groupings around his ribs and upper stomach. I knew that they were a hundred times more sensitive and flexible than any fingers. They helped roll the shirt up, but it was the larger, heavier tentacles at the far edge of his chest that did most of the lifting. The medium tentacles rolled the cloth, while the thicker ones lifted that roll upward, until they themselves were revealed in all their glory, thick and white with a marbling of gold along their lengths. They sat just below his nipples, thick and heavy like leprosy-pale pythons, except they stretched and grew in size more like other body parts that were very sidhe, very human male. Once the tentacles had always been this real, and only his ability to use glamour and illusion had hidden them, but now unless he willed it they were like a very realistic tattoo. The Goddess and God, returning their grace to us, had manifested for each of us according to what we most needed, or what was most useful to them.
“The look on your face as I revealed them, Meredith, it is a look I have waited all my life to see on another sidhe’s face.”
I reached out, and one of the thickest tentacles wrapped around my hand and wrist. The image may have brought snakes to mind, but these felt almost rubbery, like petting a dolphin, except not wet. I squeezed where the tentacle wrapped around my hand, holding “hands.”
“Now that you have the tattoo you might be able to find another sidhe lover,” I said, gazing down the length of the undulating tentacles, like a bed of exotic sea creatures waving in the current, except this current was his body, his muscles, his thoughts.
“But they would only love me with the tattoo in place hiding my extras.” He ran his hands through both sides of the graceful movements of those other body parts.
My gaze followed his hands down through all that potential until he came to the band of his pants, where he caressed his hands over the only bulge that was still hidden behind cloth. I let out a shuddering sigh, because I knew that the promise of that bulge was everything a woman could want.
“The heat in your eyes never flinches, just sharpens as you see things you like more, but there is nothing on me that you do not enjoy in some way.” He started drawing me closer with the tentacle I was holding “hands” with.
I half crawled and half let him pull me across the bed toward him where he stood beside it. My heart was racing, my body already wet, though right now that was a mixed blessing, a messy mixed blessing.
“I am so sorry that I had any issues at first,” I said.
He smiled and wrapped another tentacle around my other wrist. He wasn’t holding hands this time; he wrapped around my wrist like a rope, or a chain made of muscle and skin. The one I’d been holding twisted in my grip and he suddenly had both my wrists bound. It caught my breath in my throat, sped my pulse even more.
“Just as I need someone who sees all of me as desirable, you need bondage.”
“We can’t be rough yet,” I said, but my voice was already lower, almost choked, just from him holding my arms out to my sides, and feeling the unbelievable strength as he held me. I knew I couldn’t get away if he didn’t want me to, and that was part of the thrill, but I also knew that if I asked he would let me go instantly, and that was one of the reasons I trusted him to do bondage with me. It was all about trust and desire, and understanding yourself and your lover.
“I’ll never be rough compared to Mistral, but you wouldn’t want that rough every night.” He pulled me over the bed, my body sliding helplessly toward him. There was nothing I could do to stop that muscled strength. Luckily I didn’t want to escape; I so wanted to be caught.
He smiled, and it filled his eyes with that darkness that wasn’t fey, or human, but just male. It made me shiver, but not with fear.
“No,” I whispered.
“How long has it been since you had any bondage?” he asked, pulling me close enough that some of the smaller tentacles could trace across my skin in teasing lines.
“You know how long,” I said, my voice a little hoarse.
“Do I? As you said, I don’t live with the rest of you; how do I know what you are doing?” He made it light, teasing, but sometimes when we tease there is a truth to it.
“Do you want to live with us?”
“It is not want, Meredith. I cannot leave my kingdom and move to yours.” He forced my hands straight out to my sides, until it was almost uncomfortable. His tentacles stretched effortlessly outward to hold me, while the smaller ones traced teasing lines, careful not to go inside my bra or panties.
I found my voice and said, “I have no kingdom of my own.”
“Perhaps not, but you have a court of faerie, and more magic gathers to you every day.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing and just gave myself over to the sensation of him touching me, and being held so terribly, wonderfully tight. I began to pull. I knew I couldn’t break his grip by just struggling, but sometimes struggling is the best part, or the best part until the man pins you and makes the struggling impossible.
I closed my eyes and pulled harder.
“You can’t get away,” he said, voice full of that arrogance that big, athletic men can have.
“I know,” I said.
“Then why try?”
I opened my eyes and let him see that my eyes had started to shine, just from this. “Because I like to struggle, and you like to feel me struggle.”
“True,” he said, and it was almost a whisper. One of the thinner tentacles trailed the edge of my bra, and another the band of my panties.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Please what?” he asked, but the look on his face said he knew exactly what I wanted.
But I played the game and said, “Slide inside my bra and panties, touch me, suck me, make me come.”
“And what do I get out of it?”
“I’ll return the favor,” I said.
He grinned, and then it turned into a smile that was full of as much lust and eagerness as anyone could have wished for, and I did wish for it.
“Ladies first,” he said.
It took me a second to realize what he meant, and then he slipped those long, thin pieces of himself inside my clothing and began to caress and tease along my breasts, and at the top edge of my panties, not really sliding inside them, but only playing just inside the band, when I knew he could go so much farther down.
He began to suck on my breasts, a small suction “mouth” wrapping around my nipples. Other parts of him slid a little farther inside my panties, tickling and caressing and finally sliding lower to tease, caress, and begin to bring that near-magical pleasure that usually takes someone’s mouth, but Goddess had shaped Sholto so that his mouth could be kissing mine, while other parts of him kissed me, so much lower down.
He drew back from my lips, his eyes glowing brighter, the circle of yellow around his pupil beginning to glitter like molten gold, the amber circle gleaming, and that last circle of pale yellow like elm leaves in autumn shimmering in rich, golden sunlight. His hair spread out around him like a cloak of new snow with just a hint of yellow, like snow reflecting the light of the rising sun. His skin began to blaze as if the moon were rising inside him to shine a cold, cool light that played out the tips of the smallest tentacles like shining rubies, and the largest ones that held me so tight were marbled with colored lightning, soft red, softer violet, bands of gold like the colors of his eyes. He was a thing carved of light, and color, and magic. It vibrated down his body, so that his skin hummed against mine, and the weight of pleasure began to build between my legs, and my breasts. It quickened my breath, and those shining ruby tips sucked harder, deeper, and that heaviness between my legs burst into pleasure and power, spilling through my body in a wash of light that decorated the room in the twin shines of our moon-bright skin, and when I threw my head back to scream my orgasm, my hair shone like spun rubies and garnets woven in cool fire across my face.
He didn’t stop with my screams of pleasure, but kept sucking, stroking, until one orgasm followed another, and I could see the spark of power from my own eyes like emerald and melting gold, until I was blinded by the colored fire of my own magic.