Merry Gentry 03 - Seduced by Moonlight (29 page)

So instead of death, he'd had the magic he'd given to the humans turned against him. A magic that made your skin crawl with desire and drove you nearly mad to be touched, to be fucked. I'd had it turned on me, so I could speak with some authority. He had been covered with Branwyn's Tears, one of our last great magicks, and chained in the dark with his need and no way to relieve it. It was a horrible thing to do to anyone. But he wasn't enduring anything he hadn't allowed to happen to others, except for the length of the punishment. Six months is a very long time in the dark. He'd endured three months of his punishment, and still had three to go. People were taking bets at the court that his sanity would not survive. They were also taking bets that he'd kill me before I could kill him.

"If the humans do not believe us, there is nothing we can do," Frost said.

"True, but we can give them less to talk about, not more." Doyle turned his head to look at Galen. "Touch the ring and see what happens."

Galen stepped up between the seats. There was heat in his eyes, and a look on his face that brought heat in a rush across my cheeks.

He dropped to his knees beside my chair, and cupped both his hands over mine without touching the ring. He leaned in toward me. "I want the ring to react to my touch." He spoke the last word with his breath against my mouth. "I want it to sing through me, and bring us both to our knees." His lips touched mine, and his hands closed tight over mine, in the same moment.

The ring flared between us, jerking things low in my body, tingling along my lips, as if I'd tried to kiss something that held electrical current. Galen's lips were soft and willing, but no matter how hard he pressed his hand into the ring, it did not become the near-overwhelming thing it had been with Rhys and Frost. The ring did continue to beat against us like waves of electricity. I wasn't fond of electricity on my skin, and I pulled back from the kiss, tried to draw my hand out of his. He wouldn't let me go.

"Let go, Galen, it's hurting me."

He released me slowly, reluctantly.

I sat in the seat, taking deep even breaths, trying to work past the last vestiges of the power. "That hurt. I mean that really hurt."

"You just don't like electricity," Rhys said.

"I like it just fine in lamps, or computers, but not on my skin, thank you."

"You're just no fun," he said.

I frowned at him, but looked back at Galen, still kneeling before me and looking disappointed. I knew part of his look was from the ring not working for him as it had for the others, but that might not have been all of it. "How about you?" I asked him, gently. "Do you like electricity, too?"

He looked puzzled, but said, "I've never tried it in anything but small appliances."

"Did what the ring do just now feel good to you?"

"Yes."

I made a mental note. Even if I didn't like electricity as foreplay, if some of the men did, then things could be worked out. I was willing to use it on them for their pleasure, as long as I didn't have to experience it more than to check the strength of it. You never hook anything up to anyone else that you haven't let bite your own skin. Just a rule. You don't have to enjoy it yourself, but you do have to know what it's doing to the person who does.

"It would seem," Doyle said, "that the ring has grown in strength in every way."

I nodded. "I don't remember it ever giving that strong of a power surge before."

"But it didn't do between us what it did with Rhys and Frost," Galen said, sounding as unhappy as he looked. Whatever emotion flowed through Galen, you always knew it. It filled his face, his eyes. He'd begun to have moments when he could hide his feelings. I'd both been happy to see it and mourned the necessity of it. Galen with every thought clear in his eyes for all to read was damn near a political liability in the courts. He needed to master his outward emotions, but I had not enjoyed watching the process. It felt like we were stealing some of the innocent joy that made Galen, Galen.

I touched his face with my left hand, the hand I didn't wear the ring on. The queen had always worn the ring on her left hand, and I had first put it on the same hand, out of habit, and found the ring preferred being on my right hand. So it got to be on my right hand. I did not argue with relics of power any more than I could help it.

I pressed my hand against his cheek. He raised sad green eyes to me. "Rhys and Frost have come into their godhead. I think that's all the extra sensation between us meant."

"I'd love to argue," Rhys said, "but I agree with Merry."

"You really think so?" Galen asked, the way a child would, trusting that if you said a thing, then it would be true.

I stroked my fingers down the side of his face, from the soft warmth of his temple to the curve of his chin. "I don't just think it, Galen, I believe it."

"I believe it as well," Doyle said. "So as long as Meredith touches the other guards only briefly, it should not be a problem. All of the Unseelie Court knows that the ring is alive once more on her hand. Though perhaps not how very alive it has become."

"It was growing stronger even before the chalice returned," I said.

He nodded. "That is why we put it away in a drawer, so it would not discomfort our lovemaking."

Rhys did an exaggerated pout. "And I was having such fun."

My hand was still touching Galen, but I said to Rhys, "Do you want to be strapped down and have me run electricity along your skin?"

Rhys reacted as if I'd slapped him. The reaction of just thinking about it shuddering through his body. Watching him respond that strongly to the idea of it made me want to do it. Made me want to give him that much pleasure. "That was a big yes," I said.

He managed a breathy, "Oh, yes."

Galen was laughing, softly.

Rhys frowned at him. "What's so funny, green man?"

Galen was laughing so hard that it took him two tries to say, "You're a death god."

"Yeah, so what?" Rhys asked.

Galen sat flat on the floor, his knees tucked up in the smaller space, but turned so he could see Rhys. "I have this image in my head of you hooked up like Frankenstein's monster."

Rhys started to get angry, then he couldn't manage it. He smiled, a little, and the smile just got bigger until he was laughing with Galen.

"Who is Frankenstein's monster?" Frost asked.

That got them laughing even harder, and spread the laughter through the plane to those who knew the answer. Only Doyle and Frost were left out of the joke. The others had embraced television and all it could offer while in California. Even Kitto was laughing from under his blanket in the back. I don't know if the joke was that good, or you just had to be there, or if it was tension. I was betting on tension, because when the pilot told us we'd be landing in fifteen minutes, it just didn't seem that funny anymore.

It seemed even less funny half an hour later. Of course, when you're about to walk into a major press conference, and you're certain they're going to ask questions you can't answer truthfully, nothing seems very funny.

More St. Louis city policemen than I'd seen in a while met us on the tarmac and closed ranks around us. With the guards around me, and the police around them, I felt like a very short flower inside some very tall walls. Next time I'd have to wear higher heels.

We entered the lounge that is just for private planes and there met the rest of my guards. The only one I knew well was Barinthus. I saw him when the police parted like a curtain, just a glimpse between Doyle's dark back and Galen's brown leather. Frost was behind me in a silver fox coat that nearly trailed on the ground. When I'd pointed out how many animals had died for the coat, he'd informed me that he'd owned the coat for more than fifty years, long before anyone thought badly of owning fur. He'd also touched my long leather coat and said, "Please don't complain to me when you're wearing half a cow."

"But I eat cow, so wearing leather uses the entire animal; it's not wasteful. You don't eat fox."

He'd gotten a strange look on his face. "You have no idea what I've eaten."

I didn't know what to say after that, so I gave up. Besides, the January cold had hit us like a hammer when we stepped out of the plane. Coming from Los Angeles to St. Louis in the middle of winter was almost a physical wrenching. It made me stumble on the steps. Frost steadied me, toasty in his immoral fur coat. Fur was warmer than leather, even if it was lined. But I huddled in my long leather coat, hands in leather gloves, and walked down the steps with Frost's bare hand on my elbow the whole way. When I was on flat ground he let me go, and everyone fell back into a bodyguard circle. Sage and Nicca brought up the rear. If we were attacked, no one was expecting much of Nicca. One, he wasn't used to having huge wings to deal with when he moved. Two, he was huddled in a cotton blanket over a bare chest. The sidhe can't freeze to death, but some of them can still be cold. Nicca was spring energy; he could be cold. His wings were held tight together, drooping like a frostbitten flower behind him.

Rhys cursed softly. "I should have gone shopping for a heavier coat."

"Told you so," Galen said, though he wasn't much better in his leather jacket. It was too damn cold for something that left your ass and legs bare.

Kitto was probably the warmest of us non-fur-bearing sidhe in a bulky down coat that was nearly a Day-Glo blue. It wasn't attractive, but he was warm.

The private lounge was warm enough that the difference between cold and hot fogged my dark glasses. When I took them off, Barinthus's hair gleamed through the forest of bodies around me. His hair isn't as shiny as Frost's, though few sidhe could boast that, but Barinthus has some of the most unusual hair in either court.

His hair was the color of ocean water. The heartrending turquoise of the Mediterranean; the many deeper blues of the Pacific; the bluish grey of the sea before a storm, melting into a blue that was nearly black. The color of water when it is deep and cold, and the currents run thick and heavy like movement of some great ocean beast. The colors moved, and flowed into each other, with every trick of the light, every turn of his head, so that it didn't seem like hair at all. But it was hair, hair like a cloak to the ankles of his nearly seven-foot frame. It took me a blink or two to realize that he was wearing a long leather coat dyed a deep sky blue like a robin's egg. His hair seemed to blend into the soft leather. He came toward us with his hands extended and a smile on his face.

Once he'd been a sea god, and he was still one of the most powerful of all the sidhe, for he seemed to have lost less of what he was. He'd been my father's best friend and chief adviser. He and Galen had been the most frequent visitors to my father's home after we left the court when I was six. We left because by that late age I'd shown no magical talents, unheard of in a sidhe, however mixed her genetics. My aunt, the queen, had tried to drown me like a purebred puppy that didn't meet standards. My father had packed me and his entourage and gone to live among the humans. Aunt Andais had been shocked that he'd left faerie over a small misunderstanding.
Small misunderstanding,
her exact words.

Barinthus's blue eyes with their slits of pupils were warm with true joy at seeing me. There were others who were looking forward to seeing me for political reasons, sexual reasons, so many reasons, but he was one of the few who wanted to see me just because he was my friend. He'd been my father's friend, now he was mine, and I knew that if I had children, he would be their friend, too.

"Meredith, it is good to see you once more." He reached to take my hands in his, as was his wont in public, but another guard pushed between us. He reached for me as if to steal a hug, but he never finished the movement. Barinthus pulled him back by the shoulder. Doyle moved in front of me to block him, and I stepped back so abruptly that I slammed into Frost. The fur of his coat tickled along my cheek. His hands found my shoulders as if he were ready to swing me around behind him, farther away from the upstart guard.

The guard in question was within an inch or two of Doyle's height, which made him nearly six feet tall, but not quite. The first thing I noticed about him was his coat, not usually the first thing I noticed about the guards of the sidhe. The fur coat seemed to be made of alternating broad stripes of black and white mink. Bad enough the animals had to die, but for a striped coat—that was just sad. It did match the hair tied back from his face to trail down over one shoulder to the bottom of his thighs. His hair was a series of narrow stripes—black, pale grey, dark grey, and white —all perfectly uniform so there was no mistaking his hair for someone who had gone grey. It was either an elaborate and well-done dye job, or he wasn't human. His charcoal-grey eyes were a shade darker than most, but they could have been human eyes.

"Just wanted a little squeeze," he said in a voice that sounded less than sober.

"You are drunk, Abloec," Barinthus said in a disgusted voice. His grip on the man's shoulder tightened so that his white skin seemed to be melting into the striped fur.

"Just happy, Barinthus, just happy," Abloec said, with a slightly lopsided smile.

"What is he doing here?" Doyle asked, and his normally low voice held an edge of rumbling growl to it.

"The queen wished the princess to have six guards. I was allowed to choose two, but she chose the other three."

"But why him?" Doyle said, with emphasis on the word
him.

"Is there some problem here?" one of the human police officers asked. I would have said he was tall, except I had Barinthus to compare him to, and few looked tall beside the sea god. His grey hair was cut very short, very severely, and it left his face stranded and bare looking. He would have looked better with more hair around his face to soften the features, but there was a look in his eyes, a set to his shoulders, that said he couldn't have cared less if his hairdo flattered his bone structure.

Madeline Phelps, publicist to the Unseelie Court, stepped up beside the officer. "No problem, Major, no problem at all." She smiled when she said it, showing very white, very straight teeth, framed by a deep burgundy, almost purple lipstick. The color matched her short, pleated skirt and body-fitting double-breasted suit jacket. Purple was probably the new in-color for the year. Madeline kept track of things like that. She'd cut her hair since last I saw her. It was very close to her head, but left long in thin lines around her face and down her neck, so though the hair was shorter than anyone's except the major's, it managed to touch the collar of her royal purple jacket. When she moved her head to smile up at the policeman, the light caught purple highlights in her brown hair, as if she'd given it a wash of color rather than a true dye. Her artful makeup complimented a slender face, and though she was a few inches taller than me, she was small for a full-blooded human.