Divine Misdemeanors (31 page)

I stood and petted my dogs, letting some of the tension bleed off into the gesture. “We should get inside,” I said at last.

Sholto nodded. “Yes, we should.” He offered me his arm and I took it. He led me inside as Royal whispered in my ear, “The sluagh like the goblins still eat us like prey.”

It made me stumble up the small steps to the porch. Sholto caught me. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. I could have asked Sholto, but if the answer was yes, I didn’t want to know, and whether it was yes or no, it was still an insulting question. How do you ask a man who you are supposed to love and who is the father of your child if he commits a little cannibalism on the side?

“You’re afraid to ask,” Royal whispered like one of those cartoon devils on my shoulder.

That made me lean in against Sholto and whisper just inside the door, “Do the sluagh still hunt the demi-fey?”

He frowned and then shook his head. He looked at Royal, now hiding more seriously in my hair. “We do not hunt the small ones for food, but sometimes they are very irritating and we have to cleanse our faerie mound of them. How my people clean our house of them
is their own business. I don’t tolerate them in my kingdom, because you’re right, you forget they are there, and I don’t tolerate spies.”

Royal slid completely behind my neck so that he put his arms and legs on either side of my neck and held on as if I were the trunk of a tree.

“Hide all you want, Royal, but I won’t forget you’re there,” Sholto said.

I could feel Royal’s heart thudding against my spine. I was about to be sympathetic, but then I felt him lay a kiss against the back of my neck. It can be a very erotic spot, and as he laid soft kisses against my skin, I felt that totally involuntary reaction low in my body. I made him move.

I WAS IN THE BEDROOM CHANGING FOR DINNER WHEN THERE WAS A
knock on the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s Kitto.”

I was down to my dark brown bra with its lace trim, and still in my skirt, hose, and heels, but he was on the list of people who I didn’t have to hide from. I smiled and said, “Come in.”

He peered around the door as he opened it, as if unsure of his welcome. I’d managed a few minutes alone and he knew I valued my rare privacy, but I hadn’t seen him in two days, nearly three, and I’d missed him. But the moment I saw his black curls and his huge almond-shaped eyes with their swimming blue color, like looking into one of those perfect pools that dotted the neighborhood, I smiled more widely. The thin black of his elliptical pupils no longer detracted from the beauty of his eyes for me. It was just Kitto’s eyes, and I loved all of his face, the delicate bones in that soft triangle. He was the daintiest of all my men. He was four feet even, more than a foot shorter than I, but it was four feet of broad shoulder, narrow waist, tight ass, and everything he needed to be male, just done in a perfect miniature package. He was wearing designer jeans and a tight T-shirt that showed off the new muscles that weight-lifting had given him. Doyle made all the men work out.

My face must have shown how pleased I was to see Kitto, because he smiled in return and ran to me. He was one of the few men in my life who didn’t try to be cool, or in charge, or even worry about being manly. He simply wanted to be with me and didn’t try to hide that. There were no games with Kitto, no hidden agendas. He simply loved being with me, in the way that most people outgrow, but since he had been born before Rome became a great city, he would never outgrow the childish enthusiasm that he had for life, and I loved him for that, too.

I had a moment to brace my heels before he flung himself on me, climbing me like a monkey to wrap his legs around my waist, his arms hugging me tightly, and it just seemed natural to kiss him. I loved that I could hold him as the other men held me. I let our combined weight carry me backward to the bed, so I was sitting on the edge of it while we kissed.

I had to be careful when I slid my tongue between his teeth, because he had a pair of retractable fangs tucked neatly against the roof of his mouth, and they weren’t just there for decoration. His tongue was thinner than human tongues, red and black-tipped, and it, like his eyes and the thin play of rainbow scales down his back, marked him as part Snake Goblin. He’d been the product of rape. His sidhe mother had never acknowledged him, but left him outside the goblin mound, even though at that time the sidhe were still food for the goblins. She hadn’t left Kitto to be saved by his father’s people. She’d left him to be killed by them.

He was also the least dominant of my men, so I knew that I had to be the one to pull his T-shirt out of his belt and let my hands trace the smooth coolness of the scales that traced his spine. But the moment I undid some of his clothing, his small, strong hands slid down the back of my skirt so he could cup my ass and trace the edge of the dark brown lace panties that matched the bra.

I pulled his T-shirt up and he raised his hands so I could lift the shirt off and let it fall to the floor. He was suddenly nude from the waist up, still sitting in my lap. I liked his new muscles and the fact
that he was tanning, ever so slightly, like a wash of brown over all that paleness. Goblins didn’t tan, but the sidhe could sometimes, and when he’d discovered that he could tan, he’d started sunbathing by the pool.

“You’re beautiful,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not sitting this close to you, I’m not.” His hands started for a button of my skirt, and then he hesitated. I understood, and I undid the belt of his pants so he’d feel free to undo my buttons and zipper. He folded the top of my skirt down, and then hesitated again. I could see his eagerness to take the skirt down, but I’d have to cooperate by lying back on the bed so he could slip it over my hips. He was still in his pants, and among the goblins whoever undressed first was the submissive, and that could mean even more among the goblins than at a human BDSM event.

I undid the button of his jeans, and started the zipper. He rose on his knees on either side of my thighs so I could work the zipper down, and now I could lie back on the bed and let him slip the skirt over my hips and down my legs, so that I lay looking up at him in only the lingerie, hose, and heels.

He gazed down at me and his face said more than any words how beautiful he found me. “I never dreamed that I would be allowed to see a sidhe princess like this, and to know that I can do this,” he said, and he traced his fingers along the mounds of my breasts where the bra met the whiteness of my flesh. I drew a breath for him. He smiled, and put his hand down the front of my bra until he found a nipple and played it between two fingers, rolling it, pinching it, softly, until I made a small happy noise for him.

He smiled more, and put his hands to his opened pants, then hesitated again. This time I helped by saying, “Take off your pants, Kitto. Let me see you without them.”

I wasn’t specific enough in my wording, because he didn’t just wiggle out of his jeans; the silky blue of his underwear went with the outer pants. He crawled back to me nude, his body already growing eager. I lay on the bed, my knees still over the edge of it, my heels not
touching the ground, and watched him, my eyes drawn to that part of him that was oh so male.

He leaned over me so that just his mouth touched mine, and we kissed. It started out gentle, but grew until he had to draw back from me, saying with a hoarse whisper, “You’re going to cut yourself on my fangs.”

“You said that the poison only works if you concentrate. Otherwise they’re just teeth.”

He shook his head. “I’m not willing to risk you and the babies.” He laid his small hand on my still-flat stomach and said, “I won’t risk them.”

I watched the gentleness in his face, no, the love. He wasn’t one of the fathers and he knew that, but for him more than for any of the other men it didn’t seem to matter. He was also more excited about decorating the nurseries than most of the other men, including some of the fathers.

I ran my hands up his bare arms and across his shoulders, until he looked down at me, and the gentleness was edged with something not so gentle. That suited me and my mood just fine. I showed him with my hands, my arms, and my kisses that I appreciated his care for me, my babies, my life, all of it. But I kept the kisses more careful, because Kitto was right. It wasn’t worth the risk.

I was down to nothing but my thigh-high hose and the high heels with him on all fours above me. I slid down the bed so that I could slide my hands around his hips and my mouth around that bit of him that dangled so temptingly over me. His entire body reacted to my mouth sliding over him, his spine bowing, and his head dropping, his hands digging into the bed like a cat kneading its claws. His breath came out in a soft explosive sound, as if he wanted to say something but I’d stolen his words away.

I put my hand at the small of his back, my nails digging in just a little, as I held my upper body off the bed and wrapped my other hand around the base of him so I could get a better angle. It wasn’t that Kitto was small, but he wasn’t as well-endowed as some of the other
men in my life. But there is a certain joy in giving oral sex to a man who doesn’t make you have to fight to deep throat all of him. I put my mouth down until I met his body and there was no more of him to go in my mouth. My hands wrapped around his hips and waist so that I could enjoy being that deep on him and not having to use my hands, but only my mouth to suck and swallow so that it was an almost continuous motion of my mouth around the long, wide, quivering, length of him.

My nails dug into his back, and he cried out for me. He found his words, and said, “Stop or I’ll go. Please stop or I won’t last.”

I took my mouth off him long enough to say, “Go, go in my mouth.”

“I need to bring you pleasure first.”

“I do enjoy this.”

He shook his head and would have pulled away farther, but I kept him above me with a flexing of nails in his back. “Please, Merry, please let me.”

I licked a long wet line up his stomach, and let go of him so I could move underneath his body and reach his nipple. I licked the edge of it until it hardened under my attentions. I put my teeth in a seal around his nipple, sucking on him, and then using my teeth to stretch his nipple out from his body. He made small eager noises for me.

His voice was breathy as he said, “Please, let me go down on you.”

I bit him hard enough to leave a red ring from my teeth in a mark around his nipple, hard enough for him to cry out above me. Kitto liked to be bitten, as much as he liked to bite.

He shuddered above me. His whole body quaked with reaction to the bite. When he could control himself enough to speak, he asked, “Please, may I go down on you?”

“I’ve gone down on you before,” I said.

“But second, after I’ve pleasured you.” He stayed on all fours beside me, waiting for me to give him permission.

“Why is it so important that I go first, other than that it’s fun for me?”

He knelt on the bed, sitting back on his heels. “You know how goblins view oral sex?”

“Powerful goblins don’t give oral sex, they receive it from less-powerful goblins. It’s a mark of dominance to get head, but not ever give it.”

He smiled. “Exactly. Some powerful goblins will give oral sex to their strumpets, but only in private, only where no one else will ever find out.”

I had two other part-goblin lovers, the very powerful twins Holly and Ash. One of the twins was a pervert among goblins because he loved going down on women, but he only did it when the three of us were alone. He knew that his brother would never tell, nor would I, but if anyone found out it would lessen his status among them.

“You can pleasure me, but only after I’ve pleasured you first.”

“I won’t tell, Kitto.”

He shook his head. “You are sidhe and that means magic, but the goblins view all of you as softer, weaker. I would never do anything to endanger you.”

I stayed on my back, but propped myself up on my elbows. “Are you saying that if the goblins found out that I pleasured you orally before you touched me that it would lose me status among them?”

He nodded, and he was very serious. “There are those among the goblins who think Kurag, the Goblin King, is besotted with you and that is why the goblins are your allies. They don’t believe him when he says you are wise and powerful.”

“And if they found out that I let you be dominant to me it would hurt my case?”

He nodded again. “And it would lessen Kurag’s hold on them. Goblin kings never step down, or die of old age, Merry. They’re murdered by their successor.”

“The ones most likely to succeed him are Holly and Ash, and they are my allies, too.”

“There are some among the goblins who think you are only sleeping with the twins to keep them from killing Kurag.”

“Why would I care enough about Kurag to do that?” I asked.

“There are those at our court who think the twins would not honor the treaty Kurag made with you, and then the goblins would be free to ally themselves with whomever they wished when the Unseelie has a new ruler.”

“Andais isn’t going to step down,” I said.

“Not for anyone but you,” he said.

“I don’t want the throne,” I said.

“Then she will be queen until someone assassinates her. I fear that whomever takes the throne may always see you as a threat to their holding the crown.”

“Because faerie and Goddess crowned me and Doyle.”

“Yes, and you are the queen’s bloodline.”

“Maybe faerie will pick a new ruler for them.”

“Maybe,” he said, but he sounded doubtful.

“But what does all the politics have to do with the oral sex in the privacy of our own bedchamber?”

“Until things are settled at both the Unseelie and the goblin courts I don’t want to do anything that might cause a problem for you.”

I studied his solemn face. “You mean that. That until both courts are sure of their rulers, you pleasure me first.”

He nodded.

I sighed, and then smiled. “It’s not a hardship; you are very orally talented.”

He smiled, and there was nothing humble about the expression on his face. “I was a strumpet passed from one powerful keeper to another for sex. I had to be good at my only job so they valued and protected me.”