I didn't know what to say, but I tried. "It's not that, Uther. I'm about to get on a plane and go Goddess knows where. We may never see each other again." Which was partially true. I mean, I was leaving town. I couldn't think of any way to finish this in this short drive without hurting his feelings or lying to him. I wanted to avoid both.
He spoke without looking at me. "I thought you were human with some fey blood in you. I would never have suggested this to someone who was raised human. But your reaction to Roane's desertion is proof that you don't think like a human." He turned almost shyly back to me. The look in his eyes was so open, so trusting. It wasn't that he thought I'd say yes. He didn't know, but he was trusting me not to react badly.
It had just been yesterday that I'd first thought of how very alone Uther must be out here on the coast. How many times had I cuddled against him like this, thinking of him as some kind of big brother, a father substitute? Too many. It had been unfair, and he'd always been the perfect gentleman because he thought I was human. Now he knew the truth, and it had changed things. Even if I said no, and he took it well, I'd never be able to treat him this casually again. I'd never be able to cuddle in his big arms in innocence. That was gone. I mourned that, but there was no recovering it. All I could do now was try and keep Uther from getting hurt. The trouble was I didn't know how to do that because I didn't have a clue what to say.
My thinking had taken too long. He closed his eyes and moved his hand off my thigh. "I'm sorry, Merry."
I reached up and touched his chin. "No, Uther, I'm flattered."
He opened his eyes, looked at me, but the hurt was there, plain to see. He'd put his heart on his sleeve, and I'd put a knife through it. Dammit, I was about to get on a plane and never see these people again. I didn't want to leave him like this. He was too good a friend for that.
"I am part human, Uther. I can't..." There was no delicate way to put it. "I can't take the damage that a full-blooded fey could take."
"Damage?"
So much for being coy. "You're too large for my body, Uther. If you were... smaller, I could have sex with you for an afternoon, but I don't see us dating. You're my friend."
He looked at me, gaze searching my face. "You could truly sleep with me and not be repulsed?"
"Repulsed? Uther, you have been too long among the humans. You are a jack-in-irons and you look exactly as you are supposed to look. There are others of your kind. You are not a freak."
He shook his head. "I am exiled, Merry. I can never go back to faerie, and here among the humans I am a freak."
It made my chest tight to hear him say that. "Uther, don't let other people's eyes make you hate yourself."
"How can it not?" he asked.
I laid a hand over his chest, feeling the sure thick beat of his heart. "Inside is Uther, my friend, and I love you as a friend."
"I've been among humans long enough to know what the friend speech means," he said. Again he turned away from me, his body growing stiff and uncomfortable, as if he couldn't bear for me to touch him.
I got to my knees. I would have said I straddled his legs, but the best I could do was to put a knee on each thigh. I touched his face with my hands, exploring the slope of his forehead, the thick eyebrows. I had to lower my arms and come from underneath to trace his cheeks. I ran my thumb along his mouth, rubbing my hands along the smooth bone of the tusks. "You are a handsome jack-in-irons. The double tusk is highly prized. And that curve in the end-the jacks consider it a sign of virility."
"How do you know that?" His voice was soft, a whisper.
"When I was a teenager, the queen took a jack named Yannick as her lover. She said, after she'd been with him, that no sidhe could fill her as her jack of Hearts could." In the end she'd called him her Jack of Fools, and he'd fallen out of favor. He'd gotten away with his life, which was more than most of the queen's non-sidhe lovers managed. The humans usually ended up committing suicide.
Uther stared at me. With me kneeling on his legs we were almost eye to eye. "What did you think of Yannick?" he asked, voice low and lower, so that I had to lean in to hear him.
"I thought he was a fool." I leaned in to kiss him and he turned away. I put a hand on either side of his face and brought him back to face me. "But I thought that all the queen's lovers were fools." I had to sit on Uther's lap, a leg to either side of his waist to get an angle to kiss him. The tusks got in the way for kissing. But if it would take that hurt from his eyes, it would be worth the effort.
I kissed him as my friend. I kissed him because I didn't find him ugly. I'd grown up around fey that made Uther look like a GQ cover boy by human standards. One thing the Unseelie teaches is the love of every form of fey. There is beauty in all of us. Ugly is simply not a word you use at the Unseelie Court. At the Seelie court I was considered ugly, not tall enough, not slender enough, and my hair was the blood auburn of the Unseelie Court, not the more human red of the Seelie Court. Among the Unseelie I hadn't had many "boyfriends" either. Not because they didn't find me attractive, but because I was mortal. A sidhe that was mortal frightened them, I think. They treated it like a contagious disease. Only Griffin had been willing to try, and in the end I hadn't been sidhe enough for him either.
I knew what it was to be forever the outsider, the freak. I put all that into the kiss, closing my eyes, cupping his chin in my hands. I kissed him hard enough to feel how the bones of his upper jaw widened before they curled upward.
Uther kissed like he spoke, carefully, each movement, like each syllable, well thought out. His hands kneaded my lower back, and I could feel the amazing strength in them, the potential in his body to break me like some fragile doll. Only trust would take you to his bed and let you expect to come out the other side unharmed. But I did trust Uther, and I wanted him to believe in himself again.