A Shiver of Light

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

WE PASSED THE sidhe in a hurried rush. Some of them looked astonished, others … hungry was the only word I had for it. They all watched us pass, though; Unseelie culture didn’t demand that they look away. In fact, in all fey culture, if someone was trying to be attractive or sexy and you didn’t pay attention, it was an insult; no one insulted us.

Sholto and I made it to the bedroom before the clothes began to come off, but barely. In fey culture we could have been nude in front of the guards and it would have been taken in stride. Nudity taboos were more human, and both the Seelie and Unseelie courts were closer to the rest of the fey; nudity meant just without clothes on, neither good nor bad.

I did toss Cooper’s jacket off to one side so it wouldn’t be in danger of getting messy. If I’d been thinking more clearly I’d have thrown it back to him before we got to the bedroom, but I wasn’t thinking clearly about anything. It was all hands, and mouths, and the weight of Sholto above me as he pressed me to the bed. It wasn’t a time for thinking, it was a time for feeling his smooth skin under my fingertips, his muscles under my hands, him pulling my top over my head in one eager motion so he could stare down at my breasts in the lacy bra I’d chosen for him.

“Your breasts were magnificent before, but now they are beyond amazing,” he said in a voice that was low and almost hushed, the way people talk in museums around works of art.

“Hopefully they won’t stay this big,” I said, gazing down at more mounding creamy goodness than I’d ever thought possible on my own body.

He shook his head, all that pale hair sliding around the blackness of his clothes. “No, Meredith, they are beautiful, you are beautiful.”

“I’m just not used to them this big. I pass a mirror and it startles me. The belly is gone, but the breasts are still out to here.” I laughed.

He drew his gaze up to look into my eyes. The glow in his eyes was just a faint shine now, like a fire banked for the night, hot just near the center of the wood.

“Whether your breasts stay this magnificent size, or become the beautiful, pale mounds that they were, they, and you, will still be as desirable.”

I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much the body changes were still bothering me. You want to be able to breast-feed, especially when you have a baby like Bryluen who might not be able to take formula. I’d expressed milk for her before I came on this little booty call. The others could have formula in a pinch, but Bree couldn’t. It wasn’t all natural, and only that was safe for her.

“Such a serious face, Meredith; what are you thinking about that steals the light from your eyes?”

I sighed. “The babies, Bryluen in particular.” I looked up at him, touching his arms where they were tented on each side of my body, while the rest of him sat sideways on the bed, most of his long legs still off the side of it.

“I’m sorry, Sholto, you deserve better than a distracted me. Would it be odd to say, this is the longest I’ve been away from the triplets, and I’m both excited for the time away and weirdly missing them. That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?”

He smiled, and it was gentle. I wondered if I was the only one who got to see that particular smile. “It means you will be a good mother, are a good mother. You are, what’s the phrase, wired right for motherhood.” He suddenly looked very serious, almost sad.

I stroked my hands up and down his bare arms; he’d taken off his near-medieval-looking tunic but was still wearing a very modern black undershirt. It was one of those designed more for working out than just wearing, but the stretchable material fitted his muscular upper body like a glove, tucked into the top of black breeches that matched the tunic that was now on the floor.

“Now why is your face all serious?” I asked.

He looked at me, smiling, but it was tinged with something not happy. “To another female in my bed I might lie, but that is not our rule.”

“No,” I said, “honesty between us, always.”

“As my queen commands,” he said, smiling more now.

I smiled back. “As my king requests,” I said.

We smiled at each other with that special happy softness that couples have when they use one of their endearments that they use with no one else.

“Then I will speak honestly to my queen. I had feared that perhaps you would not be wired to be a mother.”

I studied his face, trying to read more of his thoughts. “Why would you think that?”

“Your own mother is not the most maternal of women. Your aunt was devoted to her son, but cruel and horrible to almost everyone else. Your uncle, the king, is little better. Your grandfather is Uar the Cruel.” He shrugged, and raised a hand so he could take my hand in his.

“You were worried that my family is mostly crazy, so would I be crazier than I seem, too?”

He began to rub his thumb over my knuckles. “Have I said too much honesty to you, my queen?”

I smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. “No, I was thinking the very same thing earlier this week, but not about me, about the babies.”

I sat up and shared my fears with him. It might have been more logical to share them with Doyle, or Frost, or one of the fathers who actually lived with me, but sometimes it’s not about logic in relationships, it’s about the people, and in that moment Sholto gave me an opening to talk that no other man in my life had managed. I’d noticed that it worked that way a lot; the man you thought would be perfect for this or that wasn’t always the one who worked best for it.

He wrapped his arms around me, pressed me to the slickness of the modern undershirt, my hands trailing a little lower as I hugged him back, so I felt the nearly velvet texture of his leather trousers, still tucked into the knee-high boots. I pressed the side of my face against the firm strength of his chest. I could hear his heartbeat against my cheek. It was a good, steady sound, the kind of sound you could plan your life around if you were looking for a center to your world. Sometimes I felt I had too many centers to my world, and the triplets had just amplified the sense of too many people pulling me in too many directions.

His voice vibrated up through his chest against my face as we held each other. “Your idea of raising them with more non-sidhe and humans is sound, and they will already be visiting my court. That will certainly expose them to a wider world of faerie than the high courts can offer.”

I leaned back enough to see his face, sorry that I couldn’t keep the beat of his heart in my ear, but my desire to see his face was greater.

“In a few days, or weeks, we’ll know which of the babies is yours; don’t you mean that child will visit your court?”

He looked down at me, his face arrogant and almost heartrendingly handsome. It was the face he wore when he was hiding his emotions. Why did he feel that he needed to hide from me about this?

“Do you want only my genetic child to visit the sluagh?”

“No, I want them all to understand just how diverse their world is, but I hadn’t talked to you about it, and I didn’t want to assume.”

Some tension went out of his arms, his shoulders, and that release traveled through my arms, where I held him. His face went from arrogant and model perfect to smiling broadly at me. He looked so joyous that it made me smile back.

“Only one babe may be mine genetically, but they are all a part of you, Meredith, and I love you.” He touched my lips with a fingertip, as if I’d made some motion to speak. “I know you are not in love with me, nor I with you, not yet, but I do love you more than any woman before you.”

I kissed his hand and used mine to move him so I could speak. “I am honored to have such a place in your heart, Sholto.”

“This sounds like the beginning of a ‘let’s just be friends’ speech.”

I laughed then, and he looked puzzled.

“Oh, Sholto, no, I do not want to friendzone you. I love what we have together. I love that we do things in the bedroom that no one else can do with me, because no one else has the diversity of your equipment.”

He laughed then, joyous and somehow masculine, that sound. I liked the tones of men laughing when they were happy enough not to worry how it sounded, or who heard them. Good that I did, since I was likely to be surrounded by men for the rest of my days.

“That you list my extras as part of what you love about me makes me love you even more.”

“Good, because I love that you want to take all the babies to see your kingdom. I love that you spend more time in the nursery helping with them than half the other men, even though you don’t live at the house all the time. I love watching your face when we’re alone and how many different expressions I get to see that I’d never seen at court, or when other people are with us. I love the look on your face when you hold the babies. I love how your arms feel when you hold me, and the sound of your heart when I press my cheek against your chest.”

“And this would be when Rhys or Galen says, ‘But you aren’t in love with me.’”

“But you aren’t in love with me, either,” I said.

“True,” he said, and he pulled me close again. “And they are, and it is always hard to love more than you are loved.”

I snuggled up against his body and said, “That sounds like experience talking.”

“It is. I had many a serious crush on noble ladies of both courts, but I was the Queen’s Perverse Creature, as Doyle was her Darkness, and Frost her Killing Frost. I feared someday that she would say, ‘Where is my Creature, bring me my Creature,’ when she wanted to send the sluagh out to frighten or kill her enemies.” He held me tight and said, “Before you came to me, Meredith, I feared I would simply become the Queen’s Creature.”

“Doyle is the Queen’s Darkness,” I said, softly.

“Yes, but it is frightening and romantic for the Queen to say, ‘Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness,’ and someone would bleed or die at his hand.”

“You and your host have made men lose their minds at the sight of all of you in full strength, and bled many, killed many.”

“What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.”

I hugged him as tight as I could. “I love you, Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, I love all of you, and would not have you any other way than you are.”

“Oh, Meredith, Meredith, Meredith, I do love you more and more.”

“I cannot offer you to make love yet, but I want to touch and be touched by you. I want to feel all those wonderful extras do the amazing things that only you can do. I want all of you, touching as much of me as possible.”

The shine in his tri-gold eyes brightened as if someone had set a match, and the golden-yellow flame was coming alive again. “Whatever my queen desires,” he said, and took me in his arms again, but this time the skintight shirt wasn’t flat against his body. Bumps and bulges stretched the fabric and began to move, pulsing and writhing under the shirt. It was still tucked into his pants so they couldn’t escape, and then the edge of the shirt appeared from his pants, and I realized that his extras were pulling the shirt loose from the inside. The first tentacle peeked out of the cloth, wriggling free like a snake spilled out of a bag. Once analogies like snakes in a bag had frightened me, made me not want to touch Sholto. Now, just the sight of the tentacles beginning to appear at the edge of his shirt and pants tightened things low in my body, anticipating the pleasure to come.

He let the thinner, lower tentacles roll the shirt up slowly, exposing his stomach below the belly button, which was smooth and showed that he’d been working out with the rest of my warriors, but above that round indentation that I’d licked more times than I could count now was the first fringe of thin tentacles that were as pearl white as the rest of his skin, but with darker red tips. I knew that those tips had tiny, delicate suction cups on them. The thought of what Sholto could do with them made me shiver with anticipation.

The shirt rolled up a little more to reveal the first grouping of longer, thinner tentacles that grew in groupings around his ribs and upper stomach. I knew that they were a hundred times more sensitive and flexible than any fingers. They helped roll the shirt up, but it was the larger, heavier tentacles at the far edge of his chest that did most of the lifting. The medium tentacles rolled the cloth, while the thicker ones lifted that roll upward, until they themselves were revealed in all their glory, thick and white with a marbling of gold along their lengths. They sat just below his nipples, thick and heavy like leprosy-pale pythons, except they stretched and grew in size more like other body parts that were very sidhe, very human male. Once the tentacles had always been this real, and only his ability to use glamour and illusion had hidden them, but now unless he willed it they were like a very realistic tattoo. The Goddess and God, returning their grace to us, had manifested for each of us according to what we most needed, or what was most useful to them.

“The look on your face as I revealed them, Meredith, it is a look I have waited all my life to see on another sidhe’s face.”

I reached out, and one of the thickest tentacles wrapped around my hand and wrist. The image may have brought snakes to mind, but these felt almost rubbery, like petting a dolphin, except not wet. I squeezed where the tentacle wrapped around my hand, holding “hands.”

“Now that you have the tattoo you might be able to find another sidhe lover,” I said, gazing down the length of the undulating tentacles, like a bed of exotic sea creatures waving in the current, except this current was his body, his muscles, his thoughts.

“But they would only love me with the tattoo in place hiding my extras.” He ran his hands through both sides of the graceful movements of those other body parts.

My gaze followed his hands down through all that potential until he came to the band of his pants, where he caressed his hands over the only bulge that was still hidden behind cloth. I let out a shuddering sigh, because I knew that the promise of that bulge was everything a woman could want.

“The heat in your eyes never flinches, just sharpens as you see things you like more, but there is nothing on me that you do not enjoy in some way.” He started drawing me closer with the tentacle I was holding “hands” with.

I half crawled and half let him pull me across the bed toward him where he stood beside it. My heart was racing, my body already wet, though right now that was a mixed blessing, a messy mixed blessing.

“I am so sorry that I had any issues at first,” I said.

He smiled and wrapped another tentacle around my other wrist. He wasn’t holding hands this time; he wrapped around my wrist like a rope, or a chain made of muscle and skin. The one I’d been holding twisted in my grip and he suddenly had both my wrists bound. It caught my breath in my throat, sped my pulse even more.

“Just as I need someone who sees all of me as desirable, you need bondage.”

“We can’t be rough yet,” I said, but my voice was already lower, almost choked, just from him holding my arms out to my sides, and feeling the unbelievable strength as he held me. I knew I couldn’t get away if he didn’t want me to, and that was part of the thrill, but I also knew that if I asked he would let me go instantly, and that was one of the reasons I trusted him to do bondage with me. It was all about trust and desire, and understanding yourself and your lover.

“I’ll never be rough compared to Mistral, but you wouldn’t want that rough every night.” He pulled me over the bed, my body sliding helplessly toward him. There was nothing I could do to stop that muscled strength. Luckily I didn’t want to escape; I so wanted to be caught.

He smiled, and it filled his eyes with that darkness that wasn’t fey, or human, but just male. It made me shiver, but not with fear.

“No,” I whispered.

“How long has it been since you had any bondage?” he asked, pulling me close enough that some of the smaller tentacles could trace across my skin in teasing lines.

“You know how long,” I said, my voice a little hoarse.

“Do I? As you said, I don’t live with the rest of you; how do I know what you are doing?” He made it light, teasing, but sometimes when we tease there is a truth to it.

“Do you want to live with us?”

“It is not want, Meredith. I cannot leave my kingdom and move to yours.” He forced my hands straight out to my sides, until it was almost uncomfortable. His tentacles stretched effortlessly outward to hold me, while the smaller ones traced teasing lines, careful not to go inside my bra or panties.

I found my voice and said, “I have no kingdom of my own.”

“Perhaps not, but you have a court of faerie, and more magic gathers to you every day.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing and just gave myself over to the sensation of him touching me, and being held so terribly, wonderfully tight. I began to pull. I knew I couldn’t break his grip by just struggling, but sometimes struggling is the best part, or the best part until the man pins you and makes the struggling impossible.

I closed my eyes and pulled harder.

“You can’t get away,” he said, voice full of that arrogance that big, athletic men can have.

“I know,” I said.

“Then why try?”

I opened my eyes and let him see that my eyes had started to shine, just from this. “Because I like to struggle, and you like to feel me struggle.”

“True,” he said, and it was almost a whisper. One of the thinner tentacles trailed the edge of my bra, and another the band of my panties.

“Please,” I whispered.

“Please what?” he asked, but the look on his face said he knew exactly what I wanted.

But I played the game and said, “Slide inside my bra and panties, touch me, suck me, make me come.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“I’ll return the favor,” I said.

He grinned, and then it turned into a smile that was full of as much lust and eagerness as anyone could have wished for, and I did wish for it.

“Ladies first,” he said.

It took me a second to realize what he meant, and then he slipped those long, thin pieces of himself inside my clothing and began to caress and tease along my breasts, and at the top edge of my panties, not really sliding inside them, but only playing just inside the band, when I knew he could go so much farther down.

He began to suck on my breasts, a small suction “mouth” wrapping around my nipples. Other parts of him slid a little farther inside my panties, tickling and caressing and finally sliding lower to tease, caress, and begin to bring that near-magical pleasure that usually takes someone’s mouth, but Goddess had shaped Sholto so that his mouth could be kissing mine, while other parts of him kissed me, so much lower down.

He drew back from my lips, his eyes glowing brighter, the circle of yellow around his pupil beginning to glitter like molten gold, the amber circle gleaming, and that last circle of pale yellow like elm leaves in autumn shimmering in rich, golden sunlight. His hair spread out around him like a cloak of new snow with just a hint of yellow, like snow reflecting the light of the rising sun. His skin began to blaze as if the moon were rising inside him to shine a cold, cool light that played out the tips of the smallest tentacles like shining rubies, and the largest ones that held me so tight were marbled with colored lightning, soft red, softer violet, bands of gold like the colors of his eyes. He was a thing carved of light, and color, and magic. It vibrated down his body, so that his skin hummed against mine, and the weight of pleasure began to build between my legs, and my breasts. It quickened my breath, and those shining ruby tips sucked harder, deeper, and that heaviness between my legs burst into pleasure and power, spilling through my body in a wash of light that decorated the room in the twin shines of our moon-bright skin, and when I threw my head back to scream my orgasm, my hair shone like spun rubies and garnets woven in cool fire across my face.

He didn’t stop with my screams of pleasure, but kept sucking, stroking, until one orgasm followed another, and I could see the spark of power from my own eyes like emerald and melting gold, until I was blinded by the colored fire of my own magic.

Sholto brought me until I was a quivering, shaking thing, and only the pull of his body held me upright. He laid me down on my side, on the bed. I lay there shivering with happy aftershocks, my eyelids quivering so hard that I couldn’t open my eyes and was literally blind with pleasure.

I sensed the bed moving like a distant thought, but I couldn’t think what it might mean. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and let the aftershocks of pleasure have their way with me. The light in my eyes and hair had faded enough that I could see the colors of the actual room in bits and pieces, when a hand smoothed my hair back from my face. I blinked and tried to focus, to see; I knew it was Sholto, but in that instant he was a pale blur of movement and colors seen through the fluttering of my eyelids.

He leaned in and kissed me, soft, but there was still magic in him, so that the kiss vibrated and tickled across my lips. It brought a soft moan from me, and then he lifted my head and put a pillow ever so gently underneath. He stroked fingers down my cheek, and I was able to turn toward his touch. Parts of me were beginning to work again, but the languorous edge of orgasm still held most of me delightfully immobile. He ran a fingertip across my lower lip, and I opened my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I meant to kiss him or just to touch more of him, but he took it as invitation, finger sliding between my lips. I closed my mouth around him, and the movement was so much like sucking on other things that it was almost a shock to feel the bone and hardness of finger, when part of me had already started to think about other, bigger things that had no bones, but only round, solid, flesh.

He pulled his finger almost out of my mouth and then slid it back in until his knuckle met my mouth, and then he pulled out again, and began to slide in and out, and then two fingers for me to suck and lick, and then three. He had to be careful with his fingernails not to cut me as he began to plunge his fingers in faster, and then four and he couldn’t go in deep now, because he was too wide and the fingernails were harder to be careful with. I rolled my eyes up to him, and found him nude and eager. The tentacles were like a dream painted across his skin, a tattoo of exquisite detail, but his body was lean and solid, and human looking. I’d asked before, so I knew that the tentacles got in the way of his view when I was in certain positions, and he liked to watch me while we made love.

Now he knelt above me, his body as muscled and sculpted as any sidhe in my bed. He folded his thumb in with his fingers and shoved all of it into my mouth. I opened as wide as I could, and still he could only push in to the second knuckle of his hand; there was just no way to go deeper when he was that wide. He started to back out, but I grabbed his wrist and urged him to push in farther. His eyes widened, but he didn’t argue, just kept pushing his hand into my mouth, pushed, pushed, until my mouth was impossibly wide and it was uncomfortable, but there was something about that discomfort that I enjoyed. He finally shoved his hand as hard and far into my mouth as he’d ever gotten it, and I finally had to tap his arm and let him know that I was done, I could take no more.

He drew his hand carefully out of my mouth, and before I could completely catch my breath, the hand that had been so deep in my mouth was wrapped around that long, solid, quiveringly eager part of him, and the rounded head was against my lips like an invitation.

I opened my mouth for him, because after that much of his fist inside me, I wanted as much of the rest of him inside me as possible. I mounded the pillow up so that my mouth was like an offering to that long, hard piece of him. It felt so much better than just fingers; it seemed to complete something in me to feel him slide between my lips, across my tongue, and then not too deep, before he pulled out, but I grabbed his ass and started pushing him in and out faster and harder than he and I usually preferred, but Sholto had said it earlier—it had been a long time for me. Months of not daring to risk an orgasm throwing me into labor, months of having to be so careful, so safe. I didn’t want to be either today.

He followed my urgings and begin to slide himself deep into my throat, pushing until he buried himself as deep against my mouth as he could, and I had to fight my body, force my throat to relax around all that hard flesh. I urged him on with my hands on his body, with the shining that began in my skin and eyes, that set my hair blazing like spun rubies around the edges of my vision. The tattoo across the moonlit white of his skin glowed with the colors I’d seen on them so that his human shape ran with colors in a pale rainbow play of red, violet, shades of gold that mirrored his eyes that stared down at me as he plunged himself fast and faster into my mouth and down my throat.

I began to have to time my breathing for the top of his stroke, grab a quick breath and then he was down, plunging inside me, gagging me almost, and then pushing past even that, cutting off my air. He found a rhythm that was deep and slow, which gave me more time to breathe at the top of his stroke, but also meant he was deeper, longer down my throat, so that I began to have to fight my body not to panic at the lack of air, and even that filled a need, so that I wrapped my hands around the tightness of his ass and held him tight with him plunged so deep inside me that my mouth was sealed against the front of his body and I fought my body not to gag, not to panic, as it asked to breathe, and all the time our bodies shone bright and brighter, painting the room in shadows and light.

He vibrated across my tongue, down my throat so that the deep, plunging thrum of him seemed to calm the panic and just make me want to hold him inside me as long as I could. Then between one downstroke and the next, the orgasm hit me, one made up of the feel of him inside my mouth; all that thick, vibrating flesh brought me almost as if he had been shoved between my legs. It made me set my nails into his body as my body writhed around him; when he drew out enough for me to breathe, I screamed my orgasm around him.

He cried out above me, and then he shoved himself down my throat one last time. I felt the involuntary movement as his body pulsed and he spilled himself down my throat so far back I couldn’t taste him but only felt the sensation of warmth. So far down that I didn’t so much swallow as he poured himself down my throat, while I rode my own orgasm, nails digging into his ass, the rest of my body almost convulsing around him, helpless and eager for him.

When he was done, he drew himself out enough for me to breathe in a gasping rush of air. He collapsed over me on all fours, arms on the other side of my head and the pillow I rested on. His head hung down, his hair spilled around us both like a shining, silken tent. He pulled himself out of my mouth as I let my head roll farther down the pillow.

He found his words first and said in a voice that was still breathless with effort, “Oh, my God and Goddess, that was amazing.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, it was.”

He moved his head enough so we could look at each other, so he was looking at me almost upside down as he said, “I love you, Meredith.”

I smiled up at him and said the only answer there ever was for such a moment: “I love you, too, Sholto.” Rhys and Galen would argue that I didn’t love them as much as I loved Doyle and Frost, and that was true, but in moments like this I did love the man I was with, maybe not always in the way he would wish, or want, but it was true: still real, still love.

Sholto moved so that he could lie beside me. I curled into the mound of his chest, the curve of his arm, the hollow of his shoulder, and was content.