«About as distracting as this.» I ran my hands over the mounds of my breasts where they lay barely contained in the red bathing suit. My hands slid lower, down my ribs, my waist, to frame my hips. Rhys's gaze followed my hands like a starving man. Nude as he was, he couldn't hide how watching me touch my body affected him.
He was one of those men who looked small until he grew, and then you knew he wasn't small in anything but stature. It was Rhys's laugh that brought my gaze back to his face. «Consort thank you, I love seeing that look on a woman's face.»
A human would have blushed to be caught staring, but my cheeks held no heat as I raised my eyes to meet his laughter. If I had not stared at Rhys's lovely body, it would have implied that he wasn't worth noticing. My eyes held all the heat that would have blushed across my face if I'd been just a little more human, a little less fey. The heat in my eyes sobered his face, drenched his tricolored eye in heat of its own.
He had to clear his throat to say, «As distracting as all that, my, my.» A smile flashed across his face. «So you're the tits and I'm the ass?»
That made me laugh. «That's one way to put it.»
He stepped closer to me, letting his eye linger in one of those looks that is almost more intimate than a touch. A look that made my skin begin to glow, softly, as if I'd swallowed the moon and it was shining underneath my skin. It raised the hair along my body, caught my breath in my throat. All this from a look.
I had trouble focusing on him as he smiled down at me. «To see your body react to my gaze like that» — he let out a shaking breath—"I'd face a thousand ogling goblins to watch the play of light under your skin.»
My voice came out breathy, very early Marilyn Monroe, but I couldn't seem to help it. «Why is it that you're the only one who can do that with just a look?»
His smile quirked into a grin, and his gaze slid briefly toward Frost, who was scowling at us both. «I could say it was because I'm the best lover you have.» He held up a hand, as Frost took a step forward. «But I'd rather not have to fight a duel later.»
«Then why?» I breathed.
The humor faded, replaced by a depth of emotion, intelligence, everything, that Rhys had managed to hide for centuries. A month ago, more by accident than design, Rhys had recovered powers that had been stripped from him centuries ago. All of the guards had recovered lost magic, but it was Rhys who had recovered the most because it was Rhys who had been stripped of most of his power. The price for the fey coming to the United States after they'd been kicked out of Europe was that there were to be no more large-scale fights among us. If we went to war against one another on American soil, they'd exile us, and we were out of countries that would take us. The answer to keep that from happening had been the Nameless: a creature made up of the wildest magic the sidhe of both courts had left. But as with all spells dealing with wild magic, it was unpredictable. Some sidhe had barely lost any powers; others had been nearly stripped dry. The Nameless wasn't the first time the sidhe had done this. The first time was trying to stay in Europe after the great human-fey war. That one didn't take, but Rhys had lost a lot in the first great spell. The Nameless had taken most of the rest. Rhys had been transformed from a major deity to one of the less powerful of the sidhe. He'd lost so much, he would no longer allow anyone to mention his old name. Out of respect, and horror that it might have been one of them, all the sidhe honored his wish. He was simply Rhys now, and what he had been was lost.
A month ago he'd recovered himself. He was simply more. He could call light into my skin by looking at me. I wasn't sure if he was truly more powerful magically, or if it was the nature of his magic. I thought the former, rather than the latter, because he was a death deity and not a fertility god. Surely my body should have reacted more to life than death.
His voice came soft and low. «What do you want me to do?»
For a moment I couldn't think what he meant. It took all my concentration not to buckle at the knees. «What?» I asked.
Frost made a disgusted noise. «She's power-drunk. Rhys, you really must be more careful.»
«It's been almost seven hundred years since I had this much power. I'm a little rusty.»
«You enjoy how you affect the princess,» Frost said. He was closer now, but it would have been too much effort to turn my head to look at him.
«Wouldn't you?» Rhys said.
Frost hesitated, then said, «Perhaps, but we have no time for it, Rhys.»
I felt Frost's strong hands on my arms as he turned me slowly to face him. «Find robes for both of you while I fix this.»
I thought I heard Rhys move away into the room, but I wasn't sure. I was too busy staring at Frost's chest. His white shirt was buttoned all the way up to the rounded collar. I knew what lay under that tightly buttoned cloth. I knew the swell of his chest as I knew my own hand. I felt heavy and thick—not just thickheaded, but as if the hand I raised toward him was heavier than it should have been.
He caught my hand before it touched his chest. My red fingernail polish seemed brighter against his white skin, like startled drops of blood. «If there were more time» — he spoke low, just above a whisper —"I would wake you from this befuddlement with a kiss, but I would not trade one bemusement for another.» He bent close, whispering against my face, «And if my kiss has not the power to befuddle you, I do not wish to know it.»
I started to say something romantic and silly, like his kiss was always magical, but his hand where it touched mine had gone cold. Ice, his hand was like ice. If I'd been thinking more clearly, I'd have jerked back before he finished, but of course if I'd been thinking clearly Frost wouldn't have done what he did. Cold shot through my body, a cold to freeze the skin and ice the blood. A cold so intense that it stole my breath, and when I could breathe again, it came from my lips in a white fog. I jerked free of him, and he let me go. I was no longer befuddled. No, I was clearheaded, and shivering with cold.
I fought chattering teeth to get out, «Damn it, Frost, you didn't have to freeze me.»
«My apologies, Princess, but like Rhys, I have not had my full power in centuries. I am still relearning the niceties of it.» His grey eyes were full of snow, as if the iris of each eye were one of those snow globes that you shake up to see the snow fly. Almost every other sidhe I'd known glowed with power, and Frost could glow with the best of them, but when he called cold, his eyes filled with snow. Sometimes I thought that if I gazed into those grey, snow-flecked eyes long enough I'd see a landscape done small, see the place where he'd begun, see a time before I was born.
I looked away. My nerve broke every time, because I wasn't entirely sure where those winter eyes would lead me, or what secrets they might reveal. There was something in the snow that frightened me. There was no reason for it. No logic to it, but I did not like the snow.
If I'd been human I'd have accused myself of being unnerved by the strangeness of it, but I wasn't human enough for that, and Goddess knows I'd seen stranger things than snow fall in someone's eyes.
I was already warmer. The cold never lasted long, but I didn't like it. He had used it as foreplay once in our lovemaking, and though interesting, I didn't want to repeat it. To hide the fact that I was unnerved by his magic in a most un-sidhe-like way, I said, «Why is it that only Rhys's magic bemuses me like that?» I didn't meet his eyes as I asked. Eventually, his eyes would return to their normal grey.
«None of us had lost as much as Rhys, and he was once a deity to rival any.»
That made me look up. His eyes held a sense of movement, but were grey again. «None of you talks about what it was like before.»
«It is hard to speak of that which is lost, and can never be regained.»
«Are you saying that Rhys was more powerful than any of the rest of you?»
«He was the Lord of Death himself. Death followed at his step, if he willed it. When he was great among us, Meredith, none could withstand us.»
«Then why didn't the Unseelie destroy the Seelie?»
«Rhys was not always Unseelie.»
That surprised me. «He was Seelie Court?»
Frost nodded, then frowned. He frowned so much that if he'd been able to wrinkle, he would have had grooves in his forehead and around his mouth by now, but his face was smooth and flawless, and always would be. «Rhys was a power apart. He was the ruler of the land of the dead, and that is not truly Unseelie or Seelie. He was welcome at the shining court, but he was truly a thing apart, as were some of the rest of us. The system of two courts of the sidhe is relatively recent. Once there were many courts. The humans chose to call those of the fey who were beautiful and did them no harm Seelie. Those they found ugly, or harmed them, they named Unseelie. But it was not so clean a line.»