A Caress Of Twilight

Chapter 4

I ended up huddled in one of my own client chairs with a mug of hot mint tea and my boss, Jeremy Grey. I don't know what had alerted him to the trouble, but he'd come through the door like a small, neat storm. He'd ordered everyone out, and Doyle, of course, had argued that Jeremy couldn't guarantee my safety. Jeremy had countered with, "Neither can any of you." The silence in the room had been profound, and Doyle had gone without another word. Rhys had followed with a handkerchief pressed to his neck, trying to keep any more blood spots off his white coat.

Kitto had stayed because I was clinging to him, but I was calmer now. Kitto merely sat at my feet, one arm across my knees, the other running up and down the front of my leg. It was a sign of nervousness when a fey touched someone too intimately and too often, but I was stroking Kitto's hair in endless circles with my free hand, so it was all right. We were even.

Jeremy leaned against my desk watching me. He was dressed, as always, in a designer suit, perfectly tailored to his four-feet, eleven-inch frame. He was an inch shorter than me, strong and slender, with a masculine swell of shoulders. The suit was charcoal grey, about five shades darker than his own skin. His short, immaculate barbered hair was lighter grey than his skin, but not by much. Even his eyes were grey. His smile was a brilliant white, the best caps money could buy, and matched the white dress shirt he'd chosen for the day. The only thing that truly ruined his perfect modern profile was the nose. He'd spent loads on his teeth, but left the rather long and beaky nose alone. I'd never questioned it, but Teresa had. She was only human, after all, and didn't understand that among the fey a personal question is the worst insult. To imply in the same breath that something about their physique is not appealing. . well, it just wasn't done. Jeremy had explained that a large nose among the trow was like large feet among humans. Teresa had blushed and not asked any more questions. I'd gone over and rubbed his nose with my fingertips and said ooh. It had made him laugh.

He crossed his arms over his chest, flashing the gold of his Rolex, and looked at me. Among the fey it was impolite to ask why a person was having hysterics. Hell, sometimes it was considered impolite to notice they were having hysterics at all. Usually that was for ruling royalty, though. Everyone had to pretend that the king or queen wasn't bug nuts. Mustn't admit that centuries of inbreeding had done any damage.

He took a deep breath, let it out, and then sighed. "As your boss, I need to know if you're up to the rest of your appointments today." It was a nicely circular way of asking what was wrong, without actually asking.

I nodded, raising the tea up to my face, not to drink, but just to breathe in the sweet scent of peppermint and spearmint intermingled. "I'll be okay, Jeremy."

He raised eyebrows that I happened to know he had plucked and shaped. Apparently trow have that bushy-eyebrow-across-the-entire-head thing going. The beetle-browed Neanderthal look just doesn't go with Armani suits and Gucci loafers.

I could have just left it at that, and by our culture he'd have had to accept my word and let it go. But Jeremy had been my boss and friend for years, long before he knew I was Princess anything. He'd given me a job on my own merits, not because the publicity of having a real live faerie princess on staff brought in business galore. In fact, the massive media coverage had made me useless for undercover work unless I used major personal glamour to change my appearance. Most of the reporters who specialized in tracking the fey had some magical ability. If they spotted the glamour, then it dissolved. Sometimes just for that reporter, but sometimes, if they were psychically talented enough, the glamour failed for everyone in sight. That was a very, very bad thing in the middle of an undercover operation.

I'd been out among the humans long enough to think I owed Jeremy an explanation. "I don't exactly know what happened, Jeremy. Rhys started ranting about goblins, then he made a grab for Kitto, and I threw him into the wall."

Jeremy looked surprised, which wasn't very flattering, or polite.

I frowned at him. "I may not be in the same weight class as they are, Jeremy, but I can put my fist through a car door and not break a bone."

"Your guards could probably lift the car up and drop it on somebody."

I took a sip of tea. "Yeah, they're stronger than they look."

He gave a small laugh. "You, my dainty beauty, do not look anywhere near as tough as you are."

"I return the compliment," I said, toasting him with the mug.

He smiled, flashing that expensive smile. "Yes, I have surprised a few humans in my day." The smile faded around the edges. "If you had just told me to mind my own business, I'd have done it, but you volunteered information, so I'm going to ask some questions. Just tell me if you don't want to answer."

I nodded. "I started it, Jeremy. Go ahead."

"Rhys didn't get blood on his coat from you throwing him into a wall."

"That's not a question," I said.

He shrugged. "How did he get bloodied?"

"A knife."

"Doyle?"

I shook my head. "I cut Rhys."

"Because he tried to hurt Kitto?"

I nodded, but I met Jeremy's direct gaze with one of my own. "They wouldn't obey my orders last night. If I don't gain their respect, Jeremy, I may gain the throne, but I will be queen in name only. I don't want to risk my life and the lives of people I care about just to be some sort of figurehead."

"So you cut Rhys up to prove a point?"

"Partly. And partly, I just reacted, didn't think. He was trying to hurt Kitto over some stupid thing that happened centuries ago. Kitto has never given Rhys any reason to hate him like this."

"Our fair-haired guard hates goblins, Merry."

"Kitto is a goblin, Jeremy. He can't change that."

Jeremy nodded. "No, he can't."

We looked at each other. "What am I going to do?"

"You don't mean just with Rhys, do you?"

We exchanged another long look, and I had to look down, but that meant staring into Kitto's searching blue gaze. Everywhere I looked, people were expecting something of me. Kitto wanted me to take care of him. Jeremy, well, he just wanted me to be happy, I think.

"I thought I had their respect back in Illinois, but it's as if something's changed over the last three months."

"What?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know."

Kitto raised his head, which slid my hand to the warm curve of his neck. "Doyle," he said softly.

I looked down at him. "What about Doyle?"

He half lowered his eyes, as if afraid to look directly at me. He wasn't being coy; it was a habitual gesture, a subservient gesture. "Doyle says you made a good start, but you have made no use of your treaty with the goblins." He raised his eyes a little. "You have the goblins as your allies for only three more months, Merry. For three more months if the Unseelie go to battle, it is you who the Queen must come to for the goblin's aid, not our King Kurag. Doyle fears you are simply going to fuck everyone and make no move on your enemies."

"What's he want me to do, declare war on someone?"

Kitto hid his face against my knee. "I do not know, mistress, but I do know that the others follow Doyle's lead. It is he who you must win over, not the others."

Jeremy pushed away from my desk, came closer to the two of us. "I find it a little strange that sidhe warriors would speak so freely in front of you. No offense, Kitto, but you are a goblin. Why would they confide in you?"

"They did not, as you say, confide in me. But sometimes they talk over me like I am not there. Like you just did."

Jeremy frowned. "I am talking to you, not over you, Kitto."

He looked up at both of us. "But before, you were talking as if I were something that couldn't understand you, like a dog or a chair. All of you do it."

I blinked down at him, staring into that innocent face. I wanted to deny it, but I held my tongue and thought about what he'd said. Was he right? The conversation that I'd just had with Jeremy had been private, sort of. Kitto had just been there. I hadn't wanted his opinion, or his help. Truthfully, I hadn't thought he could be of any help. I saw him as someone to be taken care of, a duty, not a friend, not, truthfully, a person.

I sighed and let my hand fall away from him, so that he was touching me, but I wasn't touching him. His eyes widened frantically, and he grabbed my hand, put it back on his head. "Please, don't be angry with me. Please!"

"I'm not angry, Kitto, but I think you're right. I treat you like you're a pet, not a person. I would never just sit and pet one of the other men. I've been taking liberties. I'm sorry."

He rose to his knees. "No, no, that's not what I meant. I love that you touch me. It makes me feel safe. It's the only thing that makes me feel safe here in this. . place." The look on his face was distant, lost.

I offered the tea mug to Jeremy, who took it and put it on the edge of my desk. I cupped Kitto's face in my hands, moved his gaze back to mine. "You tell me I treat you like a dog, a chair, and I try to treat you like a person, and you don't want that either. I don't understand what you want of me, Kitto."

He put his warm hands against mine, pressed my flesh firm against his face. His hands were so small; he was the only man I'd ever met with hands smaller than mine. "I always want you to touch me, Merry. Don't stop. I don't mind that people talk over me. It lets me hear things, know things."

"Kitto," I said softly.

He clambered into my lap like a child, forcing my hands to encircle him to keep him from falling. My right hand slid over the slickness of the scales on his back; my left cupped the smooth, hairless curve of his thigh. The sidhe didn't have much body hair, and snake goblins had none. The mixed heritage had left Kitto smooth and perfect like he'd been waxed from neck to toe. It added to the doll-like image and made him seem perpetually childlike. He'd been a product of the last sidhe-goblin war, which meant Kitto was a little over two thousand years old. I knew my history, I knew the date, but holding him in my arms like an oversize doll, it was hard to really believe it. Almost impossible to grasp that the man curled in my lap had been born not long before the death of Christ.

Doyle was even older, and Frost, too. Rhys, under a different name, which he would never tell me, had been worshipped as a death deity. Nicca was only a few hundred years old, young by comparison. Galen was only seventy years older than me; in the courts it was almost the same thing as being raised together.

I'd grown up seeing them all remain the same. They were immortal; I wasn't. I was aging a little slower than a pure human, but not by much. I was about a decade or two behind where I should have been. Twenty extra years was great, but it wasn't forever.

I looked up at Jeremy for a hint of what to do with the goblin. He spread his hands wide. "Don't look at me. I've never had an employee crawl into my lap and want to be petted."

"He doesn't exactly want to be petted," I said. "He wants to be reassured."

"If you have all the answers, Merry, then why don't you reassure him?" Jeremy said.

"A little privacy, maybe," I said. The moment I asked for privacy I felt Kitto's body begin to relax against me. He slid his arm underneath my suit jacket, to curve at the small of my back. His knees unclenched enough so that he tucked them underneath my arm, sending my hand on his thigh sliding downward to the very edge of his shorts. Since Kitto never saw clients, he got to dress like it was casual day every day.

Jeremy straightened his tie, smoothed the edges of his jacket. Nervous gestures, all. "I'll leave you two alone, though I think that once Doyle finds out you're alone except for Kitto, he'll be in here."

"We don't need much time," I said.

"My condolences," Jeremy said. He opened his mouth like he was going to add to that, then shook his head, tugged on the sleeves of his suit jacket, and went, very firmly, for the door.

The door shut behind him, and I looked down at the goblin. We weren't going to do what Jeremy obviously thought we were going to do. I'd never had intercourse with Kitto, and didn't plan to start now. I'd had to share flesh with one of the goblins to cement the treaty between them and me, but sharing flesh can mean a lot of things to a goblin. Technically, once I'd let Kitto leave a perfect imprint of his teeth in my shoulder, we'd shared flesh, and it was done. But what should have been a scar had faded, then vanished from my skin. I'd shown King Kurag the bite mark when it was fresh, and neither Kitto nor I had mentioned that it had faded. Without the scar there was no proof that I belonged to Kitto.

The pain of Kitto's bite had been lost somewhere in the middle of sex with someone else, lost when my body had gone forward into that place where pleasure and pain are blurred. From a dead start, with no foreplay, getting a piece bitten out of you just hurts.

Kitto was within his rights, by goblin culture, to expect reassurance in the form of sharing flesh, whatever that meant for us. I was very lucky with my little goblin; he was subservient to me and liked it that way. My father had made sure I understood all the cultures of the Unseelie Court, and I knew what was true reassurance and what wasn't for Kitto's world. I had to play him fair, not cheat. I suspected, strongly, that Kurag would be upset that I had no visible mark of goblin on my body; and insult to injury, Kitto wasn't getting intercourse either. So I was trying to be very careful about all the other cultural rules and taboos.

I needed to reassure Kitto and continue the day's business. There were two other clients to see before we could go off to visit Maeve Reed. Ms. Reed, through Jeffery Maison, had been most insistent that we see her this afternoon, not this evening. If we couldn't make it this afternoon, then tomorrow morning would be next best.

Kitto cuddled against me, his small hands kneading along my back and waist. It was a gentle reminder that he was still there, waiting.

The door opened. Rhys hesitated just inside the door, staying at us. A spurt of anger flashed through me. "Come in, Rhys, join us." My voice was cold, distant, angry.

He shook his head. "I'll get Doyle for you."

"No," I said.

He stopped in the doorway, and finally looked at me, met my eyes. "You know I don't share you with the — " He caught himself, before he could saygoblin, and finished awkwardly, " — him."

"And what if I say you will share me with him?"

"I came in here to apologize, Merry. If I had injured Kitto, it could have jeopardized your treaty with the goblins. I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"If this had been the first incident, I'd accept the apology. But it's not the first. It's not even the fifteenth. Words aren't enough anymore."

"What do you want from me, Merry?" He was looking angry and sullen again.

"Distract me while I reassure Kitto."

He shook his head hard enough to" send his white curls flying. He winced, and put a hand up to his neck. There was a bandage on it, but apparently it still hurt. The wound wouldn't last long; a couple of hours and he'd be healed.

"I vowed never again to let goblin flesh touch mine, Merry. You know that."

"He's going to be touching me, Rhys, not you."

"No, Merry, no."

"Then pack your bags and go."

His eye widened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I can't risk you hurting Kitto and screwing up the treaty with the goblins."

"I said I was sorry about that."

"But not sorry enough to make friends with Kitto. Not sorry enough to behave like a bodyguard instead of a spoiled, bigoted child."

He stood in the half-open doorway, staring at me. "You can't mean that you'd kick me out in preference to this. . goblin."

I shook my head. "My enemies are the goblin's enemies for three more months. That has kept me safer than any of you have managed to do. No one wants to risk facing the entire goblin army. The fact that you can't see past your own prejudices to how important this is means you're too flawed to be my guard." I ran my hand down Kitto's arm, pressed his head more firmly into my shoulder, forced Rhys to look at him.

The rage in his face was raw. "They" — he pointed at Kitto — "made me flawed." He tore his eye patch off and stalked into the room. "They did this to me." He kept his finger pointed at Kitto as he advanced toward us. "He did this!"

Kitto raised his face enough to say, "I have never harmed you."

Rhys's hands trembled as he balled them into fists. He stood above us, looming, trembling with rage, with the need to strike out at something, at someone.

"Don't, Rhys," I said, my voice low, calm. I was afraid if I raised my voice, it would set him off. I really didn't want to lose him, but I didn't want Kitto hurt either.

I heard a sound behind us, though I couldn't see the doorway through Rhys. Doyle's voice came clear and deep. "Is there a problem?"

"Thanks to Rhys, I need to renew my vows with Kitto, so I told him he needed to distract me while we did it."

"I would be happy to distract you, Princess," Doyle said.

"Oh, yeah, you're great at foreplay as long as there's no follow-through, and let me just say that that's really beginning to get on my nerves, too," I said.

"Frost should be back from his assignment very soon. He's told the starlet that she'll have to find someone else to guard her from her would-be fans."

We were still speaking around Rhys's body. "I thought Frost's body-guarding gig lasted until the end of the week, at least."

"I thought it prudent after last night's attempt that we have him with us. I've sent him on ahead to scout Ms. Reed's home."

"Scout?" I made it a question.

"She is, after all, full Seelie Court sidhe, once a goddess, but yet no longer of either court. She might feel she is beyond the limits of our laws. I would be a poor guard indeed to simply allow you to walk into her home without some preparation."

"So you just pulled Frost off a job for our agency and reassigned him, without asking Jeremy, or me."

Silence.

"I'll take that as a yes." I frowned up at Rhys. "Move to one side, Rhys. The threat display is getting a little old."

Rhys looked a little surprised, as if I was supposed to be quaking in my boots. Of course, maybe the show wasn't for me. Kitto looked pale and very frightened.

"Move!" I said.

"Do as the princess bids," Doyle said.

Only then did Rhys move, reluctantly, to one side. I stared past him at Doyle, who was just inside the door. "Either Rhys helps distract me while Kitto gets reassured, or he packs his bags and goes back to Illinois."

Doyle looked completely surprised. You didn't see that response too often in the Queen's Darkness. It made me just a little happy. "I thought you enjoyed Rhys's attentions."

"I love having Rhys in my bed, but that doesn't matter. If he can't control himself around Kitto, then eventually he's going to blow up and hurt him. You know Kurag didn't want to join a treaty with me, Doyle. He tried to weasel out of it from the beginning. I forced an alliance on him, but if Kitto is injured, or worse, killed, then Kurag could use it as an excuse to break the alliance." I stroked the side of Kitto's face, turning him from staring at Rhys. "And do you really think that if Kurag has to send us a second goblin, it will be anyone as pleasant as Kitto? It's my flesh and blood being offered up, not Rhys's, not yours."

"That is true enough, Princess," Doyle said. "But if you send Rhys home, our Queen will also send a new guard to replace him, and there are many less pleasant guards she could send than Rhys."

"It doesn't matter. Either Rhys does this, or he's out. I'm tired of the histrionics."

Doyle took a deep enough breath that I could see the rise and fall of his chest from across the room. "Then I will stay and guard everyone's safety."

Rhys turned toward him. "You don't mean that I have to do this."

"Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hand of flesh, has given you a direct order. If you do not obey it, then the princess has already told you the penalty."

Rhys walked toward Doyle, the anger fading. "You would cast me aside for this? I am one of your best guards."

"I would hate to lose you in this fight," Doyle said, "but I cannot go against the princess's wishes."

"That's not what you said last night," Rhys said.

"She is right, Rhys, you have endangered our alliance with the goblins. If you cannot control your rage at Kitto, then you are a hazard to us all. She is right to make you face this fear."

"I am not afraid of him," Rhys said, pointing again.

Kitto cowered back against me at Rhys's anger.

"All mindless hatred comes from a root of fear," Doyle said. "The goblins hurt you long ago, and you fear ending up in their hands again. You can hate them if you like, and you can fear them, if you must, but they are our allies, and you must treat them as such."

"I will not help that. . thing sink its fangs into an Unseelie princess."

"If you had behaved yourself," I said, "I wouldn't be forced to do this again so soon. You're about to cause me pain, Rhys, and if I'm willing to endure it, then the least you can do is make it not completely unpleasant."

Rhys went to the window, gazing out. He spoke without turning around. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Just try," I said, "but really try. You can't just put a toe in, declare the water cold, and run home. You have to stay with it. If you truly can't bear it, we'll talk, but first you have to try."

He leaned his head against the window glass. He finally raised his head, squared his shoulders, and turned to face the room. "I'll do my best. Just make sure he doesn't touch me."

I looked down at the little goblin's pale face and frightened eyes. "Rhys, I hate to break it to you, but I don't think Kitto wants to touch you any more than you want to touch him."

Rhys gave a small nod. "All right then, let's do this. We've got clients waiting." He managed a faint smile. "Mysteries to solve, bad guys to catch."

I smiled at him. "That's the spirit."

Doyle closed the door behind him and leaned against it. "I will not interfere unless there is danger."

For the first time Doyle was protecting me not from any outside force, but from one of my own guards. I watched Rhys as he walked toward Kitto and me. The bandage on his neck was almost as big as my palm. Maybe Doyle wasn't around just to keep Kitto and me safe from Rhys; maybe, just maybe, he was also here to keep Rhys safe from me.