"You mean you'll take the abuse so she doesn't have to," Rhys said.
Kitto nodded.
I sat up and hugged him. "I don't want you to be hurt either."
He leaned into the hug. "And that is why I would take the hurt willingly. Besides, I am harder to hurt than you are."
"If you will allow me, I will join you and Merry this afternoon," Rhys said.
"Tonight, you mean," I said.
"No, I don't know if I'm that strong yet." He looked down, then up, but it was not me he looked at. "I don't know if I am as strong as my friend."
"Friend?" Kitto made it a question.
Rhys nodded.
"How can you say you are not as strong as me?" Kitto asked.
"I was the victim of the goblins who hurt me for a single night. Yet I have feared and hated all goblins for years. You have taught me that it was wrong. But I still don't know if I am strong enough to be in the room when Merry goes to the goblins tonight. I don't know if I can stand to be in the room and watch and guard her. You had years of… hurt, by the very goblins who will be here tonight. Yet you will give yourself to them to protect Merry. I say to you, Kitto, that is a kind of bravery that I do not have." His single beautiful eye shimmered in the dimness.
Kitto reached out and touched his arm. "You are brave. I have seen it."
Rhys shook his head and closed his eye. One lone tear trailed down his face, shining more than any human tear would have in the twilight of the room.
Kitto touched that single tear with one fingertip. He offered the trembling drop to me, but I shook my head. He raised it to his lips, and Rhys watched him lick his tear off of his finger. Tears were not as precious as blood and other fluids, but they were still gifts. I knew that sometimes the goblins tortured simply to gather tears.
The sidhe would make you cry, but they didn't value the tears.
"Can I join you?" Rhys asked, and I knew it wasn't me he was asking.
Kitto gazed into his face and finally nodded yes.
CHAPTER 18
RHYS'S CLOTHES AND WEAPONS ENDED IN A HEAP BY THE BED. Stripped, he was as amazing as ever. There were guards who had longer waists, or broader shoulders, but no one had the sculpted muscles in stomach, chest, arms, and legs that Rhys did. All of him was smooth and hard and strong.
The bed wouldn't have been big enough for me and two of most of the other men, but Kitto and Rhys both took up less room than most. There was room for the three of us.
I lay between the smooth, muscled weight of the two of them, and it felt so good. The sensation of it made me close my eyes and simply concentrate on the feel of their bodies against mine. I had needed this, to be comforted by people who cared for me, to be held, and not to have to worry. Had Doyle understood that I would have lain there tense, listening for his pain sounds, and not truly rested? Perhaps he had.
Only now, as Rhys and Kitto ran their hands over me, laid a kiss on first one shoulder, then the other, did I realize that it wasn't about sex today. It was about needing to be held, needing to be cared for. Was I so weak that I needed this, even when the man I said I loved was injured? Would I ever be truly content with the touch of just one man, no matter who it was?
I didn't love Doyle any less as I lay between the two men, but they gave me something he could not. They gave me uncomplicated touch. I did not love either of them in that way. I loved them, but… but their tears did not cut my heart. Their sorrows made me sorrow but I did not bleed as they bled. Love makes you weak and strong. There had been that moment earlier today when I'd thought my Darkness was no more. It had been like losing a piece of myself. It had frozen me, made me lose focus. Dangerous, it was. But hadn't I done the same thing when Galen had nearly died by assassination in faerie? Yes, I had. I'd loved Galen since I was a child. A part of me would always love him. But it was the love of a child, and I was no longer a child.
"You're not paying attention," Rhys said.
I blinked up at him where he lay beside me. I must have looked surprised, because he laughed. "Your body was enjoying being touched, but your mind was a thousand miles from this bed." The humor died, leaving his face a little sad. "Has it happened already? Do Doyle and Frost get all of you now?"
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. "No, it's not that."
"She's thinking of politics and power," Kitto said from where his head lay on my hip and thigh.
Rhys looked at the other man. "In the middle of foreplay she's thinking about politics? Oh, that's even worse."
"She often touches me and thinks at the same time. It seems to clear her mind."
Rhys looked down at me from where he was propped up on his elbow. "Did all that touching simply clear your head?"
It was an insult to have not been paying attention. "I was enjoying it, Rhys, honestly. But my mind is racing a thousand miles an hour. I can't seem to make it still." I looked down my body to Kitto. "Do I truly use you simply to clear my mind?"
"I cannot be king for you, we all know that. I am content to have a place in your life, Merry. I wait upon you, and do tasks that most of your noble-born lords deem beneath them. I can be your lady-in-waiting, and no one else could do that for you."
"We have several sidhe women now," Rhys said. "If Merry wanted more ladies-in-waiting she could have them."
"We do not trust them alone with our princess after only a few weeks out of Cel's service," Kitto said.
Rhys's face darkened. "No, we don't. Not yet."
"I love that no one can do these things for Merry but me," Kitto said.
I stroked his curls. "Really?" I asked.
He smiled at me and it filled his eyes with something more than just happiness. He had a place in my life. He belonged. It is not merely happiness we all seek. We seek some place where we belong. For the lucky few, we find it in childhood with our own families. But for most of us we spend our adult lives seeking that place or person or organization that makes us feel that we are important, that we matter, and that without us something would go undone and undoable. We all need to feel that we are irreplaceable.
"You do not touch anyone else but me to simply clear your head. You come to my room when you need to hide from the demands that the others put upon you. You come to me when you want to think. You touch me, I touch you. Sometimes there is sex, but often there is just the holding." He snuggled his cheek against my thigh. "No one has ever held me for comfort before. I find that I like it, very much."
I thought about everything he'd just said and couldn't argue with it.
"I thought you hid in Kitto's room because it was the only one without a mirror," Rhys said.
"That, too," I said.
"She does not just come to me in my room. She pets me when I am sitting under her desk. She has gone from seeing me always at her feet as a burden to counting on me being there to touch and be touched."
"Do the dogs ever crowd you under the desk?" Rhys asked.
"The dogs don't seem to stay under the desk when Kitto is there." I looked at him, my fingers playing in his hair. "Did you do something to the dogs?"
"My place is at your feet, Merry. They cannot have my place."
"They are dogs, Kitto, no matter how special and magical they may be. They are dogs. You are not."
He smiled, and it was a little sad around the edges. "But dogs fill many of the needs I fill for you. I have seen you stroking them, watched it calm you."
"Are you more jealous of the dogs than of the rest of us?" Rhys asked.
"Yes," Kitto said.
That made me sad, that he would see himself as so unimportant to me. "Kitto, you are important to me. Touching you is not like petting the dogs."