Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

"Well, isn't that just a pity," he said, and his voice was cruel.

I glared up at him and felt the first stirrings of power. I didn't fight the anger or the magic. I let it fill my eyes, knew there was a glimmer in my eyes of colors and light nowhere in the room but in my eyes.

"Be careful, Rhys, or you can leave now, without your second chance." My voice was low and careful again. I was holding on to my magic the way you hold your breath, controlled or you start yelling.

I must have looked like I meant it, because he turned without another word and walked to Doyle. He handed the gun butt first to the dark man, then he stood there for a few seconds, shoulders squared, hands in fists at his sides. It was almost as if he felt more insecure without the gun. If he'd been facing true mortal danger, I could have understood it, but Kitto wasn't that kind of threat to Rhys. He didn't need the gun.

He turned toward us with a shaky breath, which I heard clearly from feet away. Some of the anger had been stripped away, and what was left was barely disguised fear. Doyle was right; Rhys feared Kitto, or rather, goblins. It was like a phobia for him. A phobia with a basis in reality; those are the kind that are almost impossible to cure.

He stopped just in front of us again, staring down at me, face diffident, but underneath was a vulnerability that made me want to say, no, you don't have to do this. But I would have been lying. He did have to do this. If something wasn't done, Rhys would lose his temper once too often and Kitto would get hurt, or worse. We couldn't risk the treaty. And Kitto was mine to take care of. I wasn't sure where my duties would lie if Rhys killed him in a fit of panic. I didn't want to have to order an execution of someone I'd known all my life.

I wanted to reassure Rhys, tell him it was all right, but I didn't want to appear weak, either. So I sat there with a very tense Kitto curled tight in my lap, and said nothing.

"I've always left the room when you deal with … it, him," Rhys said, "What happens now?"

I'd had enough, and I suddenly didn't feel sorry for Rhys. I looked down at Kitto. "I offer you small flesh or weak blood." Small flesh was goblin slang for light foreplay. Weak blood meant barely breaking the skin, or even just raising welts. There was every possibility that Kitto would choose something I wouldn't need any distraction for. I'd slowly been teaching Kitto new definitions of petting and foreplay, definitions that were a lot less stressful to all concerned.

He looked down, not meeting anyone's eyes, and whispered, "Small flesh."

"Done," I said.

Rhys frowned. "What just happened?"

I looked up at him. "You always negotiate with goblins before sex, Rhys. If you don't, you end up hurt."

He frowned down at me. "I was a prisoner for a night. I had no ability to negotiate."

I sighed, and shook my head. Most sidhe, Seelie or Unseelie, knew very little about cultures outside their own. It was a type of prejudice that believed nothing but sidhe culture was worth knowing. "Actually, according to goblin law, you did. If they'd tortured you, then, no, you'd have simply had to endure what they did to you, though truthfully there is some room for negotiation even in torture. For sex, though, you always have room to negotiate. It's custom among them."

The frown deepened. That single eye was so confused, so pain-filled. I spilled the small goblin to his feet and stood in front of Rhys, putting Kitto almost between us. For once Rhys didn't seem to notice how close the goblin was to him.

"The goblins will rape, and there's no saving yourself from it, but you can dictate terms, things that can be done and cannot be done."

His hand rose slowly toward his scars, then stopped before he touched them, his hand just hanging in midair. "You mean. ." And he left the rest of the sentence unfinished.

"That you could have forbidden them from permanently disfiguring you, yes." My voice was very, very soft, as I said it. I'd been half wanting to tell Rhys, and half dreading, since I found out a few months ago how he'd lost his eye.

He turned to me with such horror in his face. I touched his cheeks, rose on tiptoe, and leaned his face down toward me. I laid a gentle kiss on his lips, a bare touch from my mouth to his, then stretched until my body leaned full against his, stretching as tall as I could, my hands still on his face, bringing him closer to me. I laid the same gentle kiss on his scar.

He jerked back, making me stumble. Only Kitto's arm around my waist kept me from falling. "No," Rhys said, "no."

I held my hands out to him. "Come to me, Rhys."

He just kept backing away. Doyle had moved up behind him without either of us noticing. Rhys stopped backing away when he smacked into his captain's body. "If you fail her here, Rhys, then you must go back to faerie."

He glanced at Doyle, then at me. "I haven't failed, I just… I didn't know."

"Most sidhe don't know anything about goblin culture," I said. "It's one of the reasons that the goblins are such feared warriors, because no one understands them. We might have won the goblin wars centuries sooner if anyone had taken time to study them. And I don't mean torture them. You don't learn a person's culture by torture."

Doyle put a hand on either of Rhys's shoulders and began walking him back toward us. Rhys didn't look afraid anymore, more shell-shocked, as if a piece of his world had broken away and left him hanging with his feet on thin air.

Doyle walked him back to us, and I touched his face gently. Rhys blinked, startled, as if he'd forgotten I was there. "You're not ruined, Rhys. You're beautiful." I lowered his face toward me, but the six inches of difference hampered my intentions. I could kiss his mouth, but not his eye. I went back on tiptoe, which stretched my body along the length of Rhys's. Kitto's arm had still been around my waist, and now his arm was pressed between our bodies, trapped with the pressure of our flesh. Rhys didn't scream about it, so I let it go. I would finish what I'd started.

I kissed slowly up the edge of his face, until I touched the edge of the scar. He jerked, and I think only Doyle's hands on his shoulders kept him from running again. He closed his eye tight like a condemned man who didn't want to see the bullet coming. I kissed my way across the scars, until I felt the rough, slickened skin under my lips. I laid a gentle kiss over the empty socket, where the other beautiful eye should have been.

He was so tense under my hands, almost shaking. I kissed more firmly over the thickened skin, letting my lips open and close loosely over the spot. Rhys made a small sound. I licked, very gently, over the scar. Another small sound came from his throat, and it wasn't a pain sound.

I licked, slowly, carefully, over the slick skin. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. The fists at his side were shaking, but not with anger. I ran tongue and lips over the scar until his knees buckled, and it was Kitto who caught him around the waist. The small man held him as if he weighed nothing.

I kissed Rhys on the mouth, and he kissed me back like he was drowning and would find the breath of life in my mouth. We ended on our knees on the floor with Doyle standing above us, and Kitto still wound around Rhys's waist.

Rhys put his arms behind my back and pressed me against him, hard enough that even with Kitto's arm between us I knew Rhys was hard and firm. Some buckle or strap must have bruised into Kitto's skin, because he made a small sound.

That one tiny sound brought Rhys up for air, made him look around, and when he saw the little goblin's arms around his waist, he gave something very like a scream and scrambled away from both of us.

I was about to open my mouth and say that Rhys had done enough to satisfy me, but Kitto spoke first. "I declare myself satisfied."