Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

He gave a small bow, still sitting on the edge of the bed. "So happy to have been of service to my princess."

"I forgot the extra pillows." I stood, and started to move toward the closet. He grabbed my wrist.

"You are bleeding."

I glanced down at my arm, and it was still healed.

"Your leg, Princess."

I looked down and found blood trickling down my right leg. "Damn."

"Lie down on the bed and let me look at the wound." He still held my wrist and tried to pull me down on the bed.

I resisted, and he released me. "It should not still be bleeding, Princess Meredith. Let me heal it, as I did your arm."

"It's very high upon my thigh, Doyle."

"The hag was trying to pierce your femoral artery."

"Yes "I said.

"I must insist on seeing the wound, Princess. It is too vital an area to be ignored."

"It's very high up on my thigh," I said again.

"I understand that," he said. "Now please lie down and let me look at it."

"I'm not wearing anything under this shirt," I said.

"Oh," he said. Emotions played across his face so quickly I couldn't read them, like clouds passing over a field on a windy day. Finally, he said, "Perhaps you could put something on so that I might look at the wound."

"Good idea," I said. I opened the dresser drawer that held my unmentionables. The panties, like the sleepwear, run high to satin, silk, and lace. I finally picked a pair of plain black satin, no frills, no lace, no peek-a-boo panels. It was the closest to conservative that I owned.

I glanced back at Doyle. He had turned his back on me without being asked. I slipped the underwear on, made sure the shirt was in place, and said, "You can look now."

He turned, and his face was very solemn. "Most of the court ladies would not have thought to warn me. Some to tease, and some simply because it would not occur to them to tell me. Nudity is common enough in the courts. Why did you think to tell me?"

"Some of the guards tease, play slap and tickle, and I wouldn't have warned one of them. It would be just another part of the game. But you never play the game, Doyle. You are always apart from it. To have just lain down on the bed and spread would have been… cruel."

He nodded. "Yes, it would have been. So many of the court treat those of us who remain aloof like eunuchs, as if we feel nothing. But I would rather have no touch of soft flesh than to be teased up to that point, then have no release. That is worse than nothing at all to me."

"Is the queen still refusing to even allow you to touch yourselves?"

He looked down at the ground, and I realized I had overstepped polite questioning. "My apologies, Doyle, we are not close enough for such a question."

He spoke without looking up. "You are the most polite of all the Unseelie royals. The queen saw your… niceties as a weakness." He looked up at me, eyes searching my face. "But those of us in the Guard appreciated it. It was always a relief to be given guard duty over you, because we weren't afraid of you."

"I wasn't powerful enough for you to fear me," I said.

"No, Princess, I don't mean your magic. I mean we didn't fear your cruelty. Prince Cel has inherited his mother's… sense of humor."

"He's a sadist, you mean."

He nodded. "In every way. Now lie on the bed and let me look at your wound. If I let you bleed to death for modesty's sake, the queen might make me a eunuch."

"You are her Darkness, her right hand. She would not lose you over me."

"I think you undervalue yourself, and overvalue me." He held his hand out to me. "Please, Princess, lie down."

I took the offered hand and climbed onto the bed on my knees. "Would you, please, call me Meredith. It's been years since I heard princess this and princess that. I'll get my fill of it once I'm back in Cahokia. For tonight, let's drop the titles."

He gave a small bow at the neck. "As you wish, Meredith." I let him help me climb into the middle of the bed, though I didn't need the help. Partly because the older sidhe liked helping, and partly for the feel of his hand in mine.

I ended lying with my head cradled in the wealth of small pillows on the bed. Propped up I had a perfect view down the line of my body.

Doyle knelt to one side of my leg. "If you please, Princess."

"Meredith," I said.

He nodded. "If you please, Meredith."

I raised the dark purple silk until the wound showed. The puncture was high enough that black panties showed under the raised nightshirt.

He used his hands to examine the wound, pulling the skin, pressing on it. It hurt, and not a good kind of hurt, as if there was more damage than I'd realized. Blood flowed faster, but it certainly wasn't enough for an artery. I'd have bled to death long ago if the femoral had been punctured.

He raised up, hands in his lap. "The wound is very deep, and I think there is some muscle damage."

"It didn't hurt that much until you started touching it."

"If I do not heal it tonight, you'll be lame by tomorrow, and we'll be going to that emergency room. It might require surgery, stitching on the inside of your leg. Or I can heal it now."

"I vote for now," I said.

He gave his smile. "Good. I would hate to have to explain to the queen why I brought you home limping, when I could have healed you." He started to lean over my leg, then raised up. "This would be easier if I moved."

"You're the healer—do what you need to do," I said.

He moved between my legs, and I had to open them just to give him room for his knees. It took some maneuvering, and some "Excuse me, Princess" es, but he finally ended lying flat on his stomach, his hands cupping my thighs. His gazed moved up along my body until he met my eyes. Just staring down at him in this position made my pulse jump in my throat. I tried for it not to show on my face, and think I failed.

He blew his breath like a warm wind against the skin of my thigh. He looked at my face while he did it, and I realized it had been deliberate, and I don't think it had anything to do with healing me.

He raised back from my skin. "Forgive me, but it is not merely sex one misses, but the small intimacies. The look on a woman's face when she reacts to your touch." He flicked his tongue in a quick motion over my skin. "That small intake of breath as her body begins to rise to meet your touch."

He lay between my legs, staring up at me. I looked down the line of his body. His hair lay in a thick black rope across the bare skin of his back, trailing over the tight smoothness of his jeans. When I met his eyes again, they held that look that fills a man's eyes when he is sure that you will not tell him no, no matter what he asks. Doyle hadn't earned that look, not yet.

"You aren't supposed to tease, remember."

He rubbed his chin back and forth over my thigh as he spoke. "I normally don't allow myself to be maneuvered into such a compromising position, but I find that once I am here it is very difficult not take some advantage."

He bit my thigh, gently, and when that made me gasp, he set his teeth in my skin harder. It bowed my spine, made me cry out. When I could look again, he'd left a red imprint of his teeth in my thigh. It had been so long since I'd had a lover that not only would but wanted to leave my body marked.

His voice came purringly deep: "That was wonderful."

"Tease me and I'll tease back." I tried for it to be a warning, but my voice was too breathy.

"But you are all the way up there, and I am down here." His grip tightened on my thighs; the strength in his hands was immense. I understood what he was implying. He was strong enough to hold me in place with just his hands on my thighs. I could sit up, but I couldn't really get away. A tension in my body that I hadn't even known was there eased. I relaxed under his hands, settling back against the bed. There were things that I'd been missing that had little to do with orgasm. Doyle would never look up at me with slow horror on his face at something I'd asked him to do. He would never make me feel like a monster because of the things my body craved.