Divine Misdemeanors

“No,” I said, “we don’t clean it off like this.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I just knew the answer. “The ocean, Rhys, we clean it off in the ocean at the place where the water meets the shore.”

“That’s an in-between place,” he said. “A place where faerie and a lot of other places meet the mundane world.”

“It can be,” I said.

“What do you have in mind?”

I took a deep breath and could smell jasmine again more than roses. “I’m not sure it’s what I have in mind.”

“All right, then what does the Goddess have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We’re saying that a lot tonight. I don’t like it.”

“Me, either, but she’s the Goddess. A real one like your nameless death deity.”

“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“No, because when I asked if he was harming people here, you wouldn’t answer me.”

“Fine, let’s go down to the sea.” He put his coffee down and held a hand out to me.

“Just like that, you’ll go with me without knowing why.”

“Yes.”

“Because you don’t want to talk about the death deity anymore,” I said.

He smiled and made a wobbling motion with his head. “Partly, but the Goddess helped you save Bre

I slid off the stool and put a hand in his. He grabbed his weapons as he moved past, and we went for the sliding-glass doors. He did add just before he let go of my hand to open the door, “If you get salt water on that silk robe it’s ruined.”

“You’re right,” I said, and undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor.

He gave me the look that he’d been giving me since I was about sixteen, but now the look held knowledge and not just lust, but love. It was a good look.

“I don’t think I’ll need the robe,” I said.

“The water’s cold,” he said.

I laughed. “Then I’m on top.”

“There may be other problems with the cold.”

“Ah, the guy problem with cold water,” I said.

He nodded.

“Fertility deity, sort of. I think I can help you work around it,” I said.

“Why does the Goddess want death and fertility at the water’s edge?”

“She hasn’t told me that part.”

“Will she?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

That made him shake his head, but he took my hand in his and we went out into the cool night air and the smell of the sea. We went out to do as the Goddess bid without knowing why, because sometimes faith is about that blind trust even if you were once worshipped as a god yourself.

Chapter Nineteen

The sand was cool under our bare feet, which didn’t promise well for the water. I shivered, and Rhys put an arm across my shoulders, drawing me in against his muscled firmness. More than any of the other guards he was honed down to his essence, all muscle. He didn’t have a six-pack, he had an eight-pack, which I hadn’t known was possible.

He wrapped me in his arms and held me in the warmth of his embrace, though the metal of his gun was not warm against my bare back. He had the leather sheath of the short sword in the same hand, so it swung gently against my body. I clung to his warmth, wiggling a little closer and away from the hard press of the gun’s lines.

“Sorry,” he said, and moved the gun a little so it wouldn’t dig into me. He laid his face against my hair. “I have weapons, but once we start having sex I won’t be able to use them. I’ll be too busy using my favorite weapon to worry about guns and swords.”

“Weapon, is it?” I said smiling.

I felt his smile just by the flexing of his lips against my head. “Well, I don’t mean to brag.”

I laughed and looked up at him. He was gri

“Why so solemn?” he asked.

“Kiss me and find out.”

“Wait. Before we get distracted, my point was a good one.”

“Why, yes it is,” I said, and I traced my fingers over the firm muscles of his stomach toward lower things.

He caught my hands in his empty hand, and used the hand full of weapons to help hold me still. “No, Merry, not until you hear me on this.” He moved his face so all of him was in the bright, soft moonlight. The light grayed his eye so that it was no longer blue at all.

“Once the sex starts I will be too distracted to guard you. Everyone else is in what amounts to an enchanted sleep, so there will be no help if we need it.”

I thought about what he’d said, and finally nodded. “You’re right, but first we’ve made it clear to all of faerie that we want no throne of either kingdom, so killing me gains them nothing. Second, I don’t believe the Goddess brought us out here to be attacked.”

“You think she’ll keep us safe?”

“Have you no faith left, Rhys?” I studied his face as I asked it.

He looked very sad and sighed. “Once I did.”

“Let us go down to the sea and find it again for you.”

He smiled, but it was sad around the edges. I wanted that sorrow gone.

I pulled gently on his hand and he let me pull away. I leaned up and kissed him, soft and full of lips, and let my body fall against his so he made a small surprised sound, still kissing me. Then his arms came up with gun and sword still in one, so I could feel the press of them against my back again.

I drew back from the kiss to find him a little breathless, lips parted, eye wide. I could feel his body growing hard and firm against mine.

He didn’t protest again, but let me lead him toward the sighing of the sea.

Chapter Twenty

The surf beckoned like white foaming lace, the water black and silver in the moonlight. The tide had grown and deepened around the bottom steps, so that I walked into the cold foam of the sea to find it spilling around my knees, while I could still touch the railing. It was cold enough to make me shiver, but the sight of Rhys there nude, suspicious, and very Rhys helped the shiver be more. The pull of the ocean made my legs move and the sand shift, as if the very world wasn’t certain it would hold still.

“I’ll have to pin everything down so the tide doesn’t take it, Merry. Once I do that the weapons will be slow to draw.”

I should have said no, or cautioned him, or tried to wake other guards, but I didn’t. I said, “It will be all right, Rhys.” Somehow, I knew it would be.

He didn’t say a word, just moved down into the swirling water until he could touch my outstretched hand. The moment our hands touched, there was power, magic.

“We stand in a place betwixt and between neither land nor sea,” I said.

“The closest we’ll get to faerie here on the Western sea,” he said.

I nodded.

Rhys threaded the straps of the sword sheath around the gun, and used the naked blade to pin the sheath to the sand. He knelt in the water, so that it was above his waist, to thrust the sword almost hilt deep into the shifting sand, so that it would not be pulled away by the sea.

He gri

“You can’t drown, you’re sidhe.”

“Maybe I can’t die from drowning, Merry, but trust me, it hurts like a son of a bitch to swallow that kind of water.” He made a face and shivered, and I didn’t think it was entirely the chill of the water.