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 saygoblin, 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."
"No, Merry, no."
"Then pack your bags and go."
His eye widened. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I can't risk you hurting Kitto and screwing up the treaty with the goblins."
"I said I was sorry about that."
"But not sorry enough to make friends with Kitto. Not sorry enough to behave like a bodyguard instead of a spoiled, bigoted child."
He stood in the half-open doorway, staring at me. "You can't mean that you'd kick me out in preference to this. . goblin."
I shook my head. "My enemies are the goblin's enemies for three more months. That has kept me safer than any of you have managed to do. No one wants to risk facing the entire goblin army. The fact that you can't see past your own prejudices to how important this is means you're too flawed to be my guard." I ran my hand down Kitto's arm, pressed his head more firmly into my shoulder, forced Rhys to look at him.
The rage in his face was raw. "They" — he pointed at Kitto — "made me flawed." He tore his eye patch off and stalked into the room. "They did this to me." He kept his finger pointed at Kitto as he advanced toward us. "He did this!"
Kitto raised his face enough to say, "I have never harmed you."
Rhys's hands trembled as he balled them into fists. He stood above us, looming, trembling with rage, with the need to strike out at something, at someone.
"Don't, Rhys," I said, my voice low, calm. I was afraid if I raised my voice, it would set him off. I really didn't want to lose him, but I didn't want Kitto hurt either.
I heard a sound behind us, though I couldn't see the doorway through Rhys. Doyle's voice came clear and deep. "Is there a problem?"
"Thanks to Rhys, I need to renew my vows with Kitto, so I told him he needed to distract me while we did it."
"I would be happy to distract you, Princess," Doyle said.
"Oh, yeah, you're great at foreplay as long as there's no follow-through, and let me just say that that's really beginning to get on my nerves, too," I said.
"Frost should be back from his assignment very soon. He's told the starlet that she'll have to find someone else to guard her from her would-be fans."
We were still speaking around Rhys's body. "I thought Frost's body-guarding gig lasted until the end of the week, at least."