Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

I undid the pants, exposing the line of his briefs. The bulge in them was straight and firm, and looked very… human. But after what I'd just seen, I had to be sure. I pulled the underwear carefully over that bulge, and saw him nude for the first time.

He was as straight and perfect as his face had promised, like a carved alabaster sculpture. I wrapped my hand around him, and he cried out.

I wasn't teasing, I was looking for something. Bhatar had had a spine inside his penis nearly as long as my hand. Something no human woman would survive. Only the royals of their kind had it, and it meant they were fertile males—without the spine the females didn't ovulate during sex.

Sholto watched me, eyes eager. "A man's control is only so good."

"That's why my pants are staying on. " He was like thick muscled velvet in my hands, but there was nothing there but flesh, no nasty surprises. "Your father wasn't royal?"

"You're looking for the spine. " His voice was low, hoarse.

"Yes."

"My father was not one of the royal drones." He whispered those reasonable words in a voice that was growing less reasonable after every touch.

"Then how did you get to be king?" My voice was calm. I hadn't stayed excited once the tentacles stopped touching me. It hadn't lasted, because I wasn't aroused by the sight of him. Lord and Lady forgive me, but I saw the extras as a deformity.

"King of the sluagh is not an inherited title. It is earned."

"Earned," I said. "How earned?"

He shook his head. "I am having trouble thinking."

"I wonder why that is." I made it teasing, but I didn't mean it. I wished I did. I could have taken him a piece at a time. Maybe if he'd had just one or two tentacles, but he had over a dozen. The thought of pressing my naked body against him, of being embraced by the nest of tentacles… The thought made me shudder.

Sholto mistook my reaction, and one of the muscular tentacles brushed my hair like another man would use his hand. I closed my eyes, raised my face to the touch, tried to enjoy the caress, but I couldn't. For a night, maybe, but not night after night. I just couldn't.

I lowered my face, and the tentacle moved away. I held him in my hand as solid and lovely as any man I'd been with, and because of what lay writhing just above, I couldn't take the pleasure in it that I should have.

Sholto was watching me expectantly, as if I'd already said yes. The logical thing would have been to stand up, kiss him, and bow out, but if I kissed him the mass of tentacles would wrap around me and Sholto would know how I truly felt. I didn't want him to see me pull away in horror. I wanted perhaps his last touch of sidhe flesh to be something pleasant, not humiliating. If I couldn't stand to go higher up his body, well, there was only one way to go: lower.

I slid off the bed, to my knees in front of him. The movement forced him to take a step back from the bed, and put my face even with that length of solid silken flesh. He drew breath to say something, but I stopped his words by taking him into my mouth. I ran my hands up the backs of his thighs to cup his buttocks, digging my fingernails into his flesh.

He cried out, his body thrusting a little to meet my mouth. Normally I liked to watch up the line of a man's body to see his reaction, but not this time. I didn't want to see. I fed at him, sucking him, using tongue, mouth, lips, and gently, teeth.

His breathing took on that quick, panting rhythm that said I would have to stop soon or break the queen's taboo. The power, too, was back, like a solid hum of energy against my body, and where I touched him, the energy thrummed; inside my mouth it was as if he vibrated, and I had a sudden vision of what it might feel like to have this warm, power-filled thing between my legs. The image was so strong, I had to pull away. I opened my eyes and found his skin white, nearly translucent with power.

I looked up slowly, and every inch of him was a shimmering, glowing thing. The ends of the smaller tentacles glowed like red embers, and the higher tentacles showed a play of marbled color like colored lightning under the skin. The play of soft red, softer violet, bands of gold like the color of his eyes pulsing against the white-white light of his skin was beautiful.

I stared up at him, and in that moment all I could see was beauty. He was as he was meant to be, a thing carved from light, filled with color and magic. That power rose off of him in a skin-caressing, body-vibrating roll, embracing me like some invisible, living silken blanket. I wanted to step into it, to feel it enfold me.

"Undo your hair." My voice sounded strange, like someone else was speaking.

Sholto undid the clasp of his hair, and shook it out around his body. The hair fell past his knees in a glittering fall like new snow. I grabbed two handfuls of it and pulled gently. It had been so long since I'd had hair that could cascade over my body like this. It was like holding heavy living satin. I pushed the cups of my bra down so that my breasts spilled out and I could brush his hair across them. That one touch made me shudder, and this time it was passion.

I looked up at him, still on my knees. "Do you think we could behave ourselves if you ran all this lovely hair over my nude body?"

Each color in his irises was glowing; the rings seemed almost to be whirling like the eye of a storm. The heat in his face changed to laughter. "Shall I lie and say yes?"

I raised a hand gone shining, nearly translucent, to stroke along his body. "Yes, lie to me, if it will keep us from stopping."

"Dangerous talk," he said, softly.

"Dangerous times," I said, and licked him, making his body react from legs to shoulders, head going back, breath coming in a shuddering sigh.

"Meredith," he said in that tone that a man saves for only the most intimate of occasions. The sound of it made my body tighten in places he hadn't seen, let alone touched.

The door burst open with a crack of tearing wood and a roil of power that slammed into us like a giant hand. Sholto staggered but stayed on his feet; I ended on my butt on the floor, peering around his legs. I had an image of a dark figure moving in a blur, then Sholto was gone, over the bed and onto the floor beyond.

Nerys the Grey stood framed in the doorway for a heartbeat, then she was moving like a blur of mist toward me. I went for the bed and the gun under the pillow, and knew I'd never make it in time.

I HAD TO TURN MY BACK ON THE HAG, TO HAVE ANY CHANCE OF REACHING the gun. I gave her my back; my hand was under the pillow, and claws slashed my bare back. I screamed, still reaching for the gun. Clawed hands wrapped around my arms and flung me to the floor. I hit the floor hard, unarmed, and Nerys was on me before I could catch my breath.

I kicked at her, and she slashed my legs through the slacks. I kept trying to kick at her and get to my feet, but she never gave me the chance. She attacked, slashing the air, my slacks, the flesh underneath, until I crawled to the wall, and there was nowhere else to run.

She was shrieking at me. "He's ours! Ours! Ours!" Each word was punctuated with a slash. I had my arms in front of my body, but she was going to strip the flesh from my arms, and it wouldn't stop her.

I'd expected the glow to be gone in a wash of terror and pain, but I was still a shining thing. Blood spilled out of my arms in a wash of glittering crimson as if my very blood glowed. I felt power like a warm fist rising up inside my body, spreading out, but not like any magic I'd ever felt before. The power flared through me, and my body shone so brightly that the hag hesitated.

Then she yelled, "I'll eat your skin off, girl, and you won't glow anymore." She slashed my arms until I cried out, and I saw that black-taloned hand coming at my face, my eyes.