We stared at each other, and I knew without asking that Cel had made promises and broken them. That alone should have made him outcast and certainly denied him the right to any throne. Andais had always spoiled Cel, but I never realized just how much.
"When can we expect your surrogate?" I asked.
She seemed to consider this, reaching an idle hand out toward where the mouse was crouched. It crept close to her, its long whiskers twitching, ears alert, as if it still wasn't sure of its welcome. She stroked it gently. "A few days," she said.
"We are not always at home to welcome visitors. I would be loath to have your envoy receive less than our best hospitality."
"Leave a pot of flowers by your door and that will sustain him."
"Him?"
"I believe a him would please you more, would it not?"
I gave a small nod, because I wasn't sure I cared. I was sharing blood, not sex, so I didn't have a preference; or at least I didn't think I did. "I am sure the Queen is wise in her choosing."
"Pretty words, Princess. It remains to be seen whether you have pretty actions to back up all those words." Her eyes flicked back to the men and settled on Doyle and Rhys. "Pleasant dreams, Princess."
"And to you, Queen Niceven."
Something harsh crossed her face, made it look even thinner and sharper, as if her face were a mask. If she reached up and ripped her face off, I was not going to be able to hold my business face in place. But she didn't. She merely spoke in a voice that was like the whisper of scales on stone. "My dreams are my own business, Princess, and I will keep them as I like them."
I gave her another half bow. "I meant no insult."
"None taken, Princess, merely envy rearing its ugly head." With those words, the mirror went blank and smooth.
I sat gazing into my own reflection. Movement caught my gaze, and I watched Rhys and Doyle still on their knees. Muscles worked in Rhys's arms as he brushed Doyle's hair. Frost didn't so much move as just look at me in the mirror so hard that it turned me to look at him.
Frost glared back. The other two seemed unaware of my attention. "Niceven is gone. You can stop pretending," I said.
"I haven't finished brushing out all of this hair," Rhys said. "This is why I stopped growing mine down to my ankles. It's almost impossible to take care of it by yourself." He separated out another section of hair, hefted it in one hand, and began to brush with the other.
Doyle was silent as Rhys worked on his hair with the serious-faced concentration of a child. There was absolutely nothing else childish about him as he knelt nude, surrounded by a sea of black hair and multicolored pillows. His body was, as always, tightly muscled, pale, gleaming. He was lovely to look at, but he wasn't excited. Nude didn't mean sex to the sidhe, not always.
Frost made a small movement that turned me to him. His eyes were the dark grey of the sky just before a storm. He was angry; it showed in every line of his face, the tension of his shoulders, the way he sat, so careful, immobile, and shimmering with energy at the same time.
"I'm sorry if it upset you, but I knew what I was doing with Niceven."
"You have made it abundantly clear that you rule here and I merely obey." His voice was harsh with anger.
I sighed. It was early, but it had been a long day. I was too tired for Frost's hurt feelings. Especially since he was in the wrong.
"Frost, I cannot afford to appear weak to anyone right now. Even Doyle holds his opinion in public, no matter how unfavorable it is in private."
"I have approved of everything you've done today," Doyle said.
"I am so happy to hear that," I said.
He gave me a very level gaze, ruined only a little by the tugging of his hair from the brush. It's hard to look menacing when you're being fussed with. He stared at me, until most people would have looked away or flinched. I met his gaze with my own empty one. I was tired of games. Just because I could play them, and play them fairly well, didn't mean I enjoyed them.
"I've had enough power plays for one day, Doyle. I don't need any more, especially not from my own guards."
He blinked those dark, dark eyes at me. "Hold off, Rhys. Meredith and I need to talk."
Rhys stopped obediently, sitting back among the pillows, the brush still in his hand.
"In private," Doyle said.
Frost jumped as if he'd been struck. It was his reaction more than Doyle's words that made me suspect we were talking about more than just a few secrets.
"It is my night with Meredith," Frost said. His anger seemed to have vanished on the wings of possibilities he hadn't foreseen.
"If it was Rhys, then he would have to wait his turn again, but I have not had a turn, so I am within my rights to ask for this evening."
Frost stood, almost stumbling in his haste and the lack of space at the foot of the bed. "First you hold me back from helping her today, now you take my night in her bed. I would accuse you of jealousy, if I did not know you better."
"You can accuse me of anything you wish, Frost, but you know I am not jealous."
"Perhaps, perhaps not, but you are something, and that something has to do with our Merry."
Doyle sighed, a deep, almost wounded sound. "Perhaps I thought that by making the princess wait for my attentions I would intrigue her. Today I saw that there is more than one way to lose a woman's favor."
"Speak plainly, Darkness."
Doyle stayed kneeling, half-naked, his hands limp and empty resting against his thighs, surrounded by a sea of his own hair. He should have looked helpless, or feminine, or something, but he didn't. He looked like something carved out of the elemental darkness, as if he'd risen as one of the first things to ever draw breath, before the light came. The silver ring in his nipple caught the light as he breathed. His hair had covered all the earrings, so that this one silver spark was the only color on him. It was hard to look away from that shining silver light.
"I am not blind, Frost," Doyle said. "I saw the way she looked at you in the van, and you saw it, too."
"You are jealous."
He shook his head. "No, but you have had three months and there is no child. She is a princess and will be a queen. She cannot afford to give her heart away where there is no marriage."
"So you'll step in and win her heart instead?" Frost's voice held more heat than I'd ever heard in it, outside of the bed.
"No, but I will see that she has choices. If I had paid closer attention, I would have stepped in sooner."
"Oh, you in her arms will make her forget all about me, is that it?"
"I am not so arrogant as that, Frost. I told you, today I realized there was more than one way to lose a woman's heart, and waiting too long is one of them. If there is to be any chance that Meredith will not turn to you, or Galen, then something must change now. Not later, but now."
"What does Galen have to do with any of this?" Frost asked.
"If you have to ask that, then it is not I who am blind," Doyle said.
Confusion chased over Frost's face. Finally he frowned and shook his head. "I don't like this."
"You don't have to like it," Doyle said.
As interesting as the conversation was, I'd had enough of it. "You are all talking as if I'm not here, or as if I have no choice in the matter."
Doyle turned his so serious face to me. "Do you object to me sharing your bed tonight?" He asked it in the same neutral voice that he would have used to order at a restaurant or talk to a client, as if my answer meant nothing to him.
But I knew he sometimes used that neutral voice when he felt anything but neutral. It was a way of shielding himself from the emotion; act as if it doesn't matter, and maybe it won't.
I looked at him, the sweep of shoulders, the swell of his chest and that sparkling glint of silver, the flat plains of his stomach, the line where his jeans cut across his body. I had never seen Doyle nude, ever. He did not participate in the casual nudity of the court; neither had Frost.
I looked at Frost. His silver
hair was still back in the loose ponytail, so his face was clean and unadorned, if anything that beautiful could ever be called unadorned. He had his jacket and shoulder holster, complete with gun, hung over one arm. He was wearing his arrogant mask again, the one he hid behind so often at court. That he felt he had to wear his mask here and now in front of me hurt my heart.
I wanted to go to him, wrap my arms around him, lay my cheek against his chest, and tell him don't leave. I wanted to feel his body against mine. I wanted to wake in a cloud of his silver hair.
I did go to him then, but not the way I wanted to go. I got close, but didn't trust myself to touch him. I was afraid if I did, I wouldn't let him go, "I have the chance to satisfy mine and many a court ladies' curiosity tonight, Frost."
He turned away so he couldn't see my face. "I wish you joy in it," but he didn't sound like he meant it.
"I want you tonight, Frost."
That turned him to me, with a startled look.
"With Doyle in my bed looking like that, and all the waiting, I still want you. My body begins to ache when you're not with me. I hadn't realized until today what that meant." I couldn't keep the pain out of my eyes, and finally stopped trying.
He stared down at me, raised a hand to touch my face, but stopped himself just short of my skin. "If that is true, then Doyle is right. You will be queen. And some things... you cannot be as others. You must be queen before all else."
I laid my face against his open hand, and even that small touch made me shiver.
He drew his hand away, rubbing it against his pants as if something clung to his skin. "Tomorrow night, Princess."
I nodded. "Tomorrow night, my -- " and I stopped there for fear of what word I might use to finish.
He turned without another word and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Some small noise turned me back to the room. Rhys slid to the other side of the bed near the window and picked up his clothes that were lying in a hasty heap on the floor. "The first night shouldn't be a group effort."
"Making this a threesome had not occurred to me," Doyle said.
Rhys laughed. "I didn't think it had." He worked his way round the bed, holding the clothes with the brush balanced on top, all held above waist level so my view was uninterrupted. It was a nice view.
"A little help with the door, please." The moment he asked, I knew that he was feeling left out. He was flaunting his charms and I was ignoring him. A deadly insult among the fey.
I got up to open the door for him, as if he couldn't have shifted his clothes around to do it himself. But I stopped before opening the door and raised up on tiptoe to kiss him. I balanced with one hand behind his head, lost in the curls at his neck, and the other hand trailing down the side of his body, caressing over his ribs, the sweep of his hip. I let him see in my eyes how beautiful he was to me.
It made him smile, and he gave me a shy glance out of his one perfect eye. The shy was pretend, but the pleasure wasn't.
I stayed on tiptoe long enough to put my forehead against his. My hands played in the curls at the back of his neck, and he shivered under my touch. I stood back on the ground flat-footed and moved out of the door so he could pass.
Rhys shook his head. "That was her idea of a good-bye kiss, Doyle." He glanced back at the other man, still kneeling in the bed. "Have fun, kiddies." But his serious face didn't match the flippant words.
Rhys offered me the hairbrush from the pile of clothing, then I let him out. I shut the door behind him, and was suddenly very aware that I was alone with Doyle. Doyle, whom I'd never seen nude. Doyle, who had frightened me when I was a child. Doyle, who had been the Queen's right hand for a thousand years. He'd kept me safe, guarded my body and my life, but somehow he hadn't really been mine. Somehow he wouldn't really be mine until I'd touched that dark body, seen all of him bare before me. I wasn't sure why that was so important to me, but it was. By withholding himself from me, it was almost as if he was holding his options open. As if he believed that once he was with me, he'd have no more options. Which wasn't true. I'd been with my one-time fiance, Griffin, for seven years, and in the end he'd found plenty of options, none of them me. Having sex with me hadn't been a life-altering experience for him. Why should it be different for Doyle?
"Meredith." He said my name once, but for once his voice wasn't neutral. That one word held uncertainty, a question, and a hope. He spoke my name once more, and it turned me around to face the bed and what lay waiting for me among the burgundy sheets.
Chapter 18
He sat on the edge of the bed closest to the mirror, closest to me. He was almost lost among the black dream of his hair. Almost all the other sidhe I knew had some contrast from hair to skin to eyes, but Doyle was all of one piece. His unbound hair cascaded around him like a black cloud, so that his ebony skin was almost lost in the folds of it. A long, long lock of hair had fallen over his face, and his black-on-black eyes were lost in that darkness. He looked like a piece of night itself come to life. He swept a hand up to draw back the hair and try to tuck it behind one pointed ear. The earrings glittered like stars against his darkness.
I walked forward until the bed bumped against my thighs. My legs pressed into the bed, but all I could feel was the thickness of his hair, trapped between my body and the firmness of the bed. He turned his head, and I felt the hair tug underneath me. I pressed in harder, trapping his hair.
He turned those dark eyes up to me, and there were colors in his eyes that shone nowhere in the room, like a swarm of brilliant fireflies -- blue, white, yellow, green, red, purple, and colors I had no name for. The pinpoints danced and swirled, and for a second I could almost feel them flying around me, the tiny wind of their passing like being caught in a cloud of butterflies; then I was falling and Doyle caught me.
I came to myself in his arms, in his lap, where he'd sat me. When I could speak, I said, "Why?"
"I am a power to be reckoned with, Meredith, and I want you to never forget that. A king should have more to offer than seed."
I slid my hands across his skin, wrapping my arms around his neck. "Are you auditioning?"
He smiled. "We all are, Meredith. Some of the others may forget that in the rush of hot skin and sex, but you must never forget. You are choosing a father for your children, a king for the court, and someone you will be tied to forever."
I hid my face in the curve of his neck. His skin was warm to the touch. His pulse beat against my face. His smell was so warm, so very warm. "I've been thinking about that." I spoke the words against his skin.
He rubbed his neck against my face. "And what conclusions have you come to?"
I drew back enough to see his face. "That Nicca would be a victim and a disaster on the throne. That Rhys is lovely in bed, but I can't see him as a king. That my father was right and Galen would be utterly disastrous. That there are more knights at court that I would rather kill than be tied to for the rest of my life."
He laid his lips against the side of my neck, not quite kissing me. He spoke with his own mouth against my skin, so that his words made small kissing movements against me. "There is Frost and... me."
The feel of his lips made me shiver, writhing in his lap. Doyle drew a sharp breath, his hands wrapping around my waist, across my thighs. He whispered, "Merry," against my skin, his breath warm and fierce, his fingers digging into my thigh, my waist. There was such strength in his hands, such pressure, as if with little effort he could plunge his fingers into my body and bring my blood and flesh to the surface, peel me apart like something ripe and sweet. Something that had been waiting for his hand to open me, to bring me, to spill me in a rush of pleasure over his hands, across his body.
He half lifted me, half threw me onto the bed. I waited for him to press his body against mine, but he didn't. He got up on all fours, straddling above me like a mare with a colt, but there was nothing motherly about the way he stared down at me. He'd thrown all that hair over one shoulder so that his naked upper
body was exposed to the light. His skin gleamed like polished ebony. His breathing was deep and rapid, making the nipple ring wink and shimmer above me.
I raised my hand to touch it, brushed my fingers over that bit of silver, and a sound came out of Doyle, low in his body and growing, a growl like some great beast, echoing through that slender, muscled body. He straddled my body, lips curving back to flash white teeth, while that growl trickled out of his lips, past his teeth like a warning.
It made my pulse race, but I wasn't afraid yet. Not yet. He leaned down into my face and snarled, "Run!"
I just blinked at him, my pulse in my throat.
He threw back his head and howled, a sound that echoed and echoed in the small room. The hair on my body stood, and I stopped breathing for a second, because I knew that sound.
That lone, clear evil belling of the Gabriel Ratchets, the dark hounds of the wild hunt. He put his face inches from mine and growled, "Run!"
I scrambled out from underneath him, and he watched me with those dark eyes, his body immobile but so tense it seemed to shimmer with the promise of some violent action, violence contained, constrained, restricted, but there all the same.
I had crawled off on the wrong side of the bed. I was trapped between the window and the bed. The outer door lay across the bed, past Doyle. I'd played games of hunt and catch before. A lot of things in the Unseelie Court liked to catch you first, but that was pretend, play, foreplay. The look in Doyle's eyes was hungry, but one hunger looks much like another until it's too late.
His voice fought out from his clenched teeth. "You ... are ... not... running!" With that last, he made a rush at me on all fours, a black blur. I threw myself over the edge of the bed, rolled, and fell to the floor in front of the outer door. I was on my feet, hand on the doorknob when his body crashed into mine. The door shook and my body bruised with the violence of it. He jerked my hand off the doorknob, and I could not withstand his strength.
I screamed.
He tore me away from the door, threw me on the bed. I tried to slide off to one side, but he was there, his lower body pressing against mine, keeping me pinned to the side of the bed. I could feel the firmness of him through his jeans, through my panties.
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