Kitto curled around my waist, sliding his leg along mine. My hand fell away from the sheet and stroked his curls. His hair was unbelievably soft. He snuggled his face in against my waist, and the brush of his face against my skin made me shiver. I think anyone could have touched me then and I would have reacted to them.
I looked at Sage. "You're very good." My voice was husky.
"We have to be," he said, as he ran his hands up and down my finger. It was no longer nice; it was erotic, as if there were nerves in that one finger that had never been there before. I knew it was glamour, the natural magic of faerie, but it still felt so good, so very good.
Surrendering to someone's glamour, if his glamour ran to the sensual, could be a wondrous experience. Sidhe did not do it with each other, because to practice glamour on another sidhe in an intimate situation was considered a grave insult. But the lesser fey practiced it often among themselves, and almost always when lying with a sidhe. Perhaps it was insecurity. Perhaps it was just a way of saying, look what we have to offer.
Sage had much to offer.
He wrapped his arms around my finger, and it was as if he touched larger things, so much more intimate things. He laid a kiss against my fingertip that was like the brush of finest silk. I felt his lips part, and they felt larger than they were. I had to open my eye and look at him to make sure that he was still small, kneeling in my hand. I had sunk back upon the pillows, my arm resting in my lap, but Sage was still kneeling in my cupped palm.
Kitto entwined his leg over mine, and I felt him growing firm against my leg. For a moment I wondered what the glamour was doing to and for the goblin, when suddenly Sage bit into my flesh. He bit me like he was biting into an apple, sharp, but the pain floated away, and when he began to suck at the wound, it was like he had a thin, red thread from my fingertip to my groin. Every movement of his mouth pulled on things low in my body.
He fed, drawing faster, harder, and it was as if he stroked lower things, faster, harder. I felt that growing warm weight in my body that said I was on the edge, the edge of pleasure. It was as if Sage had coaxed me to the edge of a cliff I hadn't seen, and I had to choose whether to fall over it into the embrace beyond.
I couldn't think. I couldn't decide anything. I had become only sensation, the growing tug of pleasure, the weight of warmth building, building in my body. Then that warmth flooded out of me, over me, through me. I called out, but it wasn't pain that burst from my lips. I cried out in pleasure and writhed on the sheets, caught between Sage's mouth still locked on my body, and the firmness of Kitto's body pressed against my leg. Kitto's body rode mine as I writhed on the bed, his hands sliding over my waist, upward to brush the tip of one breast. It was a tentative touch, but in my heightened state, it felt like so much more.
I cried out again, and when Kitto slid his body over the edge of my thigh, pressed himself against me, not entering but lying across me, both of us nude, both of us eager, I didn't protest.
Kurag had said that I had to give Kitto true sex, and for a goblin that meant only one thing: intercourse. But I also knew that goblins didn't have sex without drawing blood. Now, nothing hurt, nothing would hurt.
I looked up to find Sage hovering over us. He was glowing, a soft honeyed light as if a candle had lit within him. His eyes burned like black jewels and the veins of his wings gleamed with black fire; the yellow, blue, and orangey-red glowed like stained glass in a fall of brightest sunlight.
I had enough sense left to ball up a handful of Kitto's hair and jerk his face up to mine. "Blood only, Kitto. No flesh missing when we're done."
He whispered, "Yes, mistress."
I released his hair abruptly, and he looked up at me, his eyes a solid drowning blue with his pupils like a thin black line within them. It was as if I could have fallen into the blue of his eyes, and I knew it was Sage's glamour still at work, and I didn't care. I gave myself over to it, let the illusion ride me.
Kitto slid inside me, and I was more than wet, more than ready. He seemed larger than I knew he was, filling me up, swelling inside me. He raised himself up on his arms, pressing our lower bodies together, frozen for a moment with his body sunk inside mine, with us joined. He gazed down at me spread underneath him, and a single tear welled up from one blue eye.
I knew what the goblins considered sex, and they didn't cry at the first joining. Through the glamour I saw Kitto -- through all the magic, I truly saw him -- and I raised a hand up, a hand that had already gone white and shining. I touched that one crystal tear and did what goblins do with precious body fluids; I touched it to my lips. I drank the salt of his tears, and he made a sound low in his throat and began to thrust himself inside me.
With every thrust he seemed to grow bigger, swelling wider, touching parts of me that had never been touched, that were not supposed to be touched. I watched him entering my body, and his skin had begun to glow, white and pearlescent. He thrust himself inside me, a glowing shaft as if he were made of light, and that was not glamour. I lay under him, my skin glowing like moonlight. Only for another sidhe would my body shine like this. Colors began to dance under his skin as if rainbows danced inside his body, coming to the surface of his skin like fireworks glimpsed through crystal water.
His eyes held nothing but blue flame behind glass. His short curls moved around his head as if an unseen wind played with them, and the wind was Kitto. He was sidhe. Goddess help us, he was sidhe.
He brought me in a wash of light and magic that blinded me for a moment. All I could see was white light and rainbow flashes across my vision. All I could feel was my body locked around his, as if the place of our joining was the only part of our bodies that was still solid. As if we had become light and air and magic and only the anchor point of our joined bodies held us, tied us, bound us. Then even that fell away as he came inside me, and we became nothing but light and magic and color and wave upon wave of pleasure. It was as if you could become laughter, become joy, become whatever most pleasured you.
I came to myself slowly. Kitto had collapsed on top of me. We were still joined, our bodies still glowing softly like two fires banked down for a long winter's night. A warmth that would keep the house, the family, everything safe through the long cold nights to come.
Flashes of color were still flitting through the room like stray rainbows from some crystal sun catcher. But there was no sun, no crystal, only us.
Well, not only us. The guards stood around the bed, hands held up, palms toward us. I concentrated and saw the nearly invisible barrier that they had thrown up around us. They had put up a sacred circle, a circle of power.
Doyle's deep voice came. "The next time you decide to invoke enough energy to raise an island from the sea, Meredith, a little warning would be good."
I blinked up at him, for he stood closest to me. "Did we hurt anything?"
"We caught it in time, I think, but the news will probably be full of unusual tides. We will have to see if the ground itself holds still for such a release."
Kitto hid his face between my breasts, and whispered, "I'm sorry."
"Do not be sorry, Kitto. It is we who owe you an apology. We thought of you as goblin because you are half theirs. We never thought what it might mean for you to be half ours."
Kitto moved his head enough to look up at Doyle, then he hid his face again. "I don't understand." He spoke with his mouth against my skin, and even after all we'd done, the feel of him whispering against my chest made me shiver.
My voice was a little breathy, but I answered, "You are sidhe, Kitto, truly sidhe. You have come into your power."
He shook his head, his face still buried against my breasts. "I have no powers."