A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I love that you touch me. It makes me feel safe. It's the only thing that makes me feel safe here in this. . place." The look on his face was distant, lost.

I offered the tea mug to Jeremy, who took it and put it on the edge of my desk. I cupped Kitto's face in my hands, moved his gaze back to mine. "You tell me I treat you like a dog, a chair, and I try to treat you like a person, and you don't want that either. I don't understand what you want of me, Kitto."

He put his warm hands against mine, pressed my flesh firm against his face. His hands were so small; he was the only man I'd ever met with hands smaller than mine. "I always want you to touch me, Merry. Don't stop. I don't mind that people talk over me. It lets me hear things, know things."

"Kitto," I said softly.

He clambered into my lap like a child, forcing my hands to encircle him to keep him from falling. My right hand slid over the slickness of the scales on his back; my left cupped the smooth, hairless curve of his thigh. The sidhe didn't have much body hair, and snake goblins had none. The mixed heritage had left Kitto smooth and perfect like he'd been waxed from neck to toe. It added to the doll-like image and made him seem perpetually childlike. He'd been a product of the last sidhe-goblin war, which meant Kitto was a little over two thousand years old. I knew my history, I knew the date, but holding him in my arms like an oversize doll, it was hard to really believe it. Almost impossible to grasp that the man curled in my lap had been born not long before the death of Christ.

Doyle was even older, and Frost, too. Rhys, under a different name, which he would never tell me, had been worshipped as a death deity. Nicca was only a few hundred years old, young by comparison. Galen was only seventy years older than me; in the courts it was almost the same thing as being raised together.

I'd grown up seeing them all remain the same. They were immortal; I wasn't. I was aging a little slower than a pure human, but not by much. I was about a decade or two behind where I should have been. Twenty extra years was great, but it wasn't forever.

I looked up at Jeremy for a hint of what to do with the goblin. He spread his hands wide. "Don't look at me. I've never had an employee crawl into my lap and want to be petted."

"He doesn't exactly want to be petted," I said. "He wants to be reassured."

"If you have all the answers, Merry, then why don't you reassure him?" Jeremy said.

"A little privacy, maybe," I said. The moment I asked for privacy I felt Kitto's body begin to relax against me. He slid his arm underneath my suit jacket, to curve at the small of my back. His knees unclenched enough so that he tucked them underneath my arm, sending my hand on his thigh sliding downward to the very edge of his shorts. Since Kitto never saw clients, he got to dress like it was casual day every day.

Jeremy straightened his tie, smoothed the edges of his jacket. Nervous gestures, all. "I'll leave you two alone, though I think that once Doyle finds out you're alone except for Kitto, he'll be in here."

"We don't need much time," I said.

"My condolences," Jeremy said. He opened his mouth like he was going to add to that, then shook his head, tugged on the sleeves of his suit jacket, and went, very firmly, for the door.

The door shut behind him, and I looked down at the goblin. We weren't going to do what Jeremy obviously thought we were going to do. I'd never had intercourse with Kitto, and didn't plan to start now. I'd had to share flesh with one of the goblins to cement the treaty between them and me, but sharing flesh can mean a lot of things to a goblin. Technically, once I'd let Kitto leave a perfect imprint of his teeth in my shoulder, we'd shared flesh, and it was done. But what should have been a scar had faded, then vanished from my skin. I'd shown King Kurag the bite mark when it was fresh, and neither Kitto nor I had mentioned that it had faded. Without the scar there was no proof that I belonged to Kitto.

The pain of Kitto's bite had been lost somewhere in the middle of sex with someone else, lost when my body had gone forward into that place where pleasure and pain are blurred. From a dead start, with no foreplay, getting a piece bitten out of you just hurts.

Kitto was within his rights, by goblin culture, to expect reassurance in the form of sharing flesh, whatever that meant for us. I was very lucky with my little goblin; he was subservient to me and liked it that way. My father had made sure I understood all the cultures of the Unseelie Court, and I knew what was true reassurance and what wasn't for Kitto's world. I had to play him fair, not cheat. I suspected, strongly, that Kurag would be upset that I had no visible mark of goblin on my body; and insult to injury, Kitto wasn't getting intercourse either. So I was trying to be very careful about all the other cultural rules and taboos.

I needed to reassure Kitto and continue the day's business. There were two other clients to see before we could go off to visit Maeve Reed. Ms. Reed, through Jeffery Maison, had been most insistent that we see her this afternoon, not this evening. If we couldn't make it this afternoon, then tomorrow morning would be next best.

Kitto cuddled against me, his small hands kneading along my back and waist. It was a gentle reminder that he was still there, waiting.

The door opened. Rhys hesitated just inside the door, staying at us. A spurt of anger flashed through me. "Come in, Rhys, join us." My voice was cold, distant, angry.

He shook his head. "I'll get Doyle for you."

"No," I said.

He stopped in the doorway, and finally looked at me, met my eyes. "You know I don't share you with the — " He caught himself, before he could say goblin, and finished awkwardly, " — him."

"And what if I say you will share me with him?"

"I came in here to apologize, Merry. If I had injured Kitto, it could have jeopardized your treaty with the goblins. I'm sorry I lost my temper."

"If this had been the first incident, I'd accept the apology. But it's not the first. It's not even the fifteenth. Words aren't enough anymore."

"What do you want from me, Merry?" He was looking angry and sullen again.

"Distract me while I reassure Kitto."

He shook his head hard enough to" send his white curls flying. He winced, and put a hand up to his neck. There was a bandage on it, but apparently it still hurt. The wound wouldn't last long; a couple of hours and he'd be healed.

"I vowed never again to let goblin flesh touch mine, Merry. You know that."

"He's going to be touching me, Rhys, not you.