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Chapter 5

Rhys laid his silk trench coat across my desk and caht ball inup at Rhys the way sh the cat won’t see theh

The shoulder holster was stylishly white against Rhys’s button-down shirt The butt of the gun was like a black iun to Doyle, Rhys, please"

He glanced at Doyle, who had gone back to his chair against the s "I believe you arethe little one nervous, Rhys"

"Well, isn’t that just a pity," he said, and his voice was cruel

I glared up at hiht the anger or the liht nowhere in the room but in my eyes

"Be careful, Rhys, or you can leave noithout your second chance" My voice was low and careful again I was holding on to ic the way you hold your breath, controlled or you start yelling

I must have looked like I meant it, because he turned without another word and walked to Doyle He handed the gun butt first to the dark man, then he stood there for a few seconds, shoulders squared, hands in fists at his sides It was alun If he’d been facing true er, I could have understood it, but Kitto wasn’t that kind of threat to Rhys He didn’t need the gun

He turned toward us with a shaky breath, which I heard clearly froer had been stripped away, and as left was barely disguised fear Doyle was right; Rhys feared Kitto, or rather, goblins It was like a phobia for him A phobia with a basis in reality; those are the kind that are almost impossible to cure

He stopped just in front of us again, staring down at me, face diffident, but underneath was a vulnerability that made me want to say, no, you don’t have to do this But I would have been lying He did have to do this If so wasn’t done, Rhys would lose his teet hurt, or worse We couldn’t risk the treaty And Kitto was mine to take care of I wasn’t sure where my duties would lie if Rhys killed him in a fit of panic I didn’t want to have to order an execution of someone I’d known all my life

I wanted to reassure Rhys, tell hiht, but I didn’t want to appear weak, either So I sat there with a very tense Kitto curled tight in

"I’ve always left the room when you deal withit, him," Rhys said, "What happens now?"

I’d had enough, and I suddenly didn’t feel sorry for Rhys I looked down at Kitto "I offer you s for light foreplay Weak bloodwelts There was every possibility that Kitto would choose so I wouldn’t need any distraction for I’d slowly been teaching Kitto new definitions of petting and foreplay, definitions that were a lot less stressful to all concerned

He looked down, notanyone’s eyes, and whispered, "Small flesh"

"Done," I said

Rhys frowned "What just happened?"

I looked up at hioblins before sex, Rhys If you don’t, you end up hurt"

He frowned down at otiate"

I sighed, and shook my head Most sidhe, Seelie or Unseelie, knew very little about cultures outside their own It was a type of prejudice that believed nothing but sidhe culture orth knowing "Actually, according to goblin law, you did If they’d tortured you, then, no, you’d have sih truthfully there is soh, you always have roo thele eye was so confused, so pain-filled I spilled the s Kitto almost between us For once Rhys didn’t seeoblin was to hioblins will rape, and there’s no saving yourself fros that can be done and cannot be done"

His hand rose slowly toward his scars, then stopped before he touched the in midair "You mean" And he left the rest of the sentence unfinished

"That you could have forbidden the you, yes" My voice was very, very soft, as I said it I’d been half wanting to tell Rhys, and half dreading, since I found out a few o how he’d lost his eye

He turned to me with such horror in his face I touched his cheeks, rose on tiptoe, and leaned his face doard entle kiss on his lips, a bare touch froainst his, stretching as tall as I could,hientle kiss on his scar

He jerked back,me stumble Only Kitto’s ar "No," Rhys said, "no"

I held my hands out to hi away Doyle hadRhys stopped backing ahen he smacked into his captain’s body "If you fail her here, Rhys, then you lanced at Doyle, then at me "I haven’t failed, I just I didn’t know"

"Most sidhe don’t know anything about goblin culture," I said "It’s one of the reasons that the goblins are such feared warriors, because no one understands theoblin wars centuries sooner if anyone had taken time to study them And I don’t mean torture them You don’t learn a person’s culture by torture"

Doyle put a hand on either of Rhys’s shoulders and began walking him back toward us Rhys didn’t look afraid anymore, more shell-shocked, as if a piece of his world had broken away and left hi with his feet on thin air

Doyle walked hiently Rhys blinked, startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there "You’re not ruined, Rhys You’re beautiful" I lowered his face toward me, but the six inches of difference hampered my intentions I could kiss his mouth, but not his eye I went back on tiptoe, which stretched th of Rhys’s Kitto’s arm had still been around my waist, and now his arm was pressed between our bodies, trapped with the pressure of our flesh Rhys didn’t screao I would finish what I’d started

I kissed slowly up the edge of his face, until I touched the edge of the scar He jerked, and I think only Doyle’s hands on his shoulders kept hiht like a conde I kissed h, slickened skin under entle kiss over the empty socket, where the other beautiful eye should have been

He was so tense underI kissedmy lips open and close loosely over the spot Rhys ently, over the scar Another small sound came from his throat, and it wasn’t a pain sound

I licked, slowly, carefully, over the slick skin His breath ca, but not with anger I ran tongue and lips over the scar until his knees buckled, and it was Kitto who caught hihed nothing

I kissed Rhys on theand would find the breath of life in myabove us, and Kitto still wound around Rhys’s waist

Rhys put his arh that even with Kitto’s arm between us I knew Rhys was hard and firm Some buckle or strap must have bruised into Kitto’s skin, because he ht Rhys up for air, oblin’s ar very like a scream and scrambled away from both of us

I was about to open h to satisfy me, but Kitto spoke first "I declare myself satisfied"

I stared at hi for yourself yet"

He shook his head, blinking those drowning blue eyes "I am satisfied" He seemed about to add more, appeared to think better of it, and just shook his head again

It was Rhys who said, "You haven’t had your bit of flesh, yet"

"No," the goblin said, "but I ao it"

"Why would you do that?" Rhys asked He was still crouched on the floor, face wild, panicked

"Merry needs all her guards to be safe I would not have her lose one of theive up your bit of flesh and blood so that I can stay?"

Kitto blinked, then looked at the floor "Yes"

Rhys frowned "Are you feeling sorry for er crept into his voice

Kitto looked up, clearly surprised "Sorry for you, why? You are beautiful and share Merry’s body as well as her bed You have a chance to be king The scars that you think ruin you are a reat valor, showing you have survived great pain" He shook his head "You are a sidhe warrior No one bullies you but the queen herself Look at me, warrior, look at me" He held out his s I aoblins" For the first time there was a bitterness in Kitto’s voice A bitterness of years of abuse, of being in a culture where violence and physical prowess is prized, of being trapped in a body that was soft by their standards He’d been born a victioblins He held those tiny hands out to Rhys, and there was anger in that ser, and a helplessness born of truth Kitto knew very hat he was, and what he wasn’t Aoblins he was anyone’sbad city

Chapter 6

Ask most people, especially tourists, where the rich and famous live in Southern California and they’ll say Beverly Hills But Holh fences that block the view of the peons driving by, straining for a look at the rich and famous Holmby Hills is not the fashionable address it once was, not the place for the young rising stars to ed: you need ates, lots of money Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the newly famous don’t move to Holmby Hills much; they can’t afford it

Maeve Reed could afford it She was a major star, but lucky for us, not in the top 2 percent If she’d been, say, Julia Roberts, we’d have had to evade her media hounds as well as h for one day

There ays around the ic -- for instance, a white van with rust spots that sat unused in the parking garage ency used it for surveillance when the usual van would stand out too hborhood, we used the nice van If it was a bad neighborhood, we used this van Thethe nice van every ti the princess and her entourage That left us with the old van, even though it stood out like a sore thumb in Holmby Hills

One of the back as covered with cardboard and tape Rust decorated the white paint like wounds Both the cardboard and the rust held places to hide cameras and other equiphts in an eency

Rhys drove The rest of us hid in the back He’d piled all that white hair under a billed cap A high-quality fake beard and ood looks The cap and the facial hair even covered uards had becoood disguise And Rhys loved playing detective He’d dressed up as if the day was any day and all the emotional tur under s in the floorboard Doyle sat on the far side of the seats away fro beside each other, the two , Frost was the taller by a couple of inches His shoulders were a little wider and his body slightly bulkier It wasn’t a large difference, and not one you usually noticed when they had clothes on, but it was a difference all the same Queen Andais treated them almost as if they were just two sides of the sa Frost Doyle had a name aside from the Queen’s nickna Frost, and that was all

Frost was dressed in charcoal grey dress slacks cut long enough that they covered the tops of his charcoal gray loafers The shoes were polished to a mirror sheen His shirt hite with a ribbed front and a banded collar that encircled the srey jacket hid his shoulder holster and shiny nickel-plated 44 The gun was so big that I could barely hold it one-handed, let alone shoot it

His silver, Christmas-tinsel hair was pulled back in a fir, clean, and almost too handsome to look at The tail of silver hair had spilled mostly over the backseat and half across his shoulder A few strands trailed over ave his report to Doyle I touched those shining strands, feeling the spiderweb softness of them The hair looked metallic, like it should feel harsh, but it onderfully soft I’d had all this silken grace spill over ht that a h-court sidhe took great pride in their hair, aainst mine, hard to avoid in the close confines of the seat But his thigh pressed the length of mine, and that he could have avoided

I had raised a lock of his hair in front ofthe strands fall dohile I watched the world through a lace of his hair, when Doyle said, "Are you listening to us, Princess Meredith?"

I startled and let Frost’s hair fall away "Yes, I was listening"