A Kiss Of Shadows

"I didn't say no, Sholto."

He turned then. His face was still closed, careful, all the emotions I'd worked so hard to find buried again. "Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, no sex tonight, but I can't say yes, I'll have sex with you, until I see everything."

"Everything?" He made it a question again.

"Now who's being coy," I said.

I watched the idea take shape on his face, in his eyes. A strange little smile played on his lips. "Are you asking to see me naked?"

"Not all of you." I had to smile at the look on his face. "But down to your thighs, yes, please. I have to see how I truly feel about your… extras."

He smiled and it was warm with an edge of uncertainty. It was his real smile, that edge of charm and fear. "That is the kindest way anyone has ever described them."

"If I can't be with you in joy and shared pleasure, then your dream of matching your glow with another falls apart. A sidhe does not glow for things that are duty and not pleasure."

He nodded. "I understand."

"I hope so, because it's more than seeing you nude. I need to touch and be touched to see if… " I spread my hands wide. "If I can do this."

"But no sex tonight?" His voice was as close to playful as I'd ever heard it.

"You dream of sidhe flesh and have never had it. I have had it, and for three, nearly four years, I've gone without. I miss home, Sholto. Strange and perverse as it is, I miss it. If I agree to this, then I get a sidhe lover and home. Not to mention I'm escaping a death sentence. You are not a fate worse than death, Sholto."

"Some have thought so over the years." He tried to make it a joke, but his eyes gave him away.

"That's why I need to see what I'm getting myself into."

"Do I raise the question of love, or is that too naive for a king and a princess?" he asked.

I smiled, but this time it was sad. "I tried love once; it betrayed me."

"Griffin is a worthless thing, Meredith, unworthy of such depth of emotion, and certainly incapable of returning it."

"I found that out, eventually," I said. "Love is grand while it lasts, Sholto, but it doesn't last."

We looked at each other. I wondered if my eyes were as tired and full of regret as his.

"Am I supposed to argue with you, and tell you some love does last?" Sholto asked.

"Are you going to?"

He smiled, and shook his head. "No."

I held my hand out to him. "No lies, Sholto, not even the pretty ones." His hand was very warm wrapped around mine. "Let me take you to bed, and see what I'm bargaining for."

He let me lead him toward the bed. "Do I get to see what I'm bargaining for?"

I pulled him backward toward the bed so I could watch his face. "If you like."

A look passed through his eyes that was neither sidhe, nor human, nor sluagh, but simply male. "I like," he said.