Rhys opened the door, and I offered my hand automatically. He took it and raised it to his lips to put a kiss on my fingers that made my skin tingle. Anxiety for me then, not the case, was making his magic swirl closer to the surface. I wondered how much worse the pictures on TV had looked from the outside looking in; it hadn't seemed that bad at the time, had it?
He wrapped his arms around me and drew me in against his body. He squeezed and I had a moment of feeling just how very strong he was, and that there was a slight tremor to his body. I tried to push back enough to see his face, and for a moment he held me more tightly so that I had no choice but to stay against him. I let myself feel his body underneath his clothes. Bare skin would have been like his kiss; it would have tingled against my skin, but even through his clothes I could feel the pulse and beat of his power like some finely tuned engine purring against my body from cheek to thigh. I let myself sink into that sensation. Let myself sink into the strength of his arms, the muscled firmness of his body, and for just a moment I allowed myself to let go of all that had happened and all that I had seen today. I let it be chased away by the strength of the man holding me.
I thought of him nude and holding me, and letting the promise of that deep vibrating power sink into my body. The thought made me press my groin more tightly against him, and I felt his body begin to respond.
He was the one who raised his head enough to allow me to gaze up into his face. He was smiling, and he kept his arms tight across my back. "If you're thinking about sex, then you can't be that traumatized." He grinned.
I smiled back. "I'm better now."
Hafwyn's voice turned us toward the door. She came out of the house with her long yellow hair in a thick, single braid to one side of her slender form. She was everything a Seelie sidhe woman should have been. She was an inch under six feet, slender but feminine, with eyes like spring skies. When I had been a little girl this was what I had wanted to look like instead of my all-too-human height and curves. My hair, eyes, and skin were sidhe, but the rest of me had never measured up. Many of the sidhe of both courts had made certain that I knew I was too human looking, not sidhe enough. Hafwyn had not been one of those. She had never been cruel to me when I was just Meredith, Daughter of Essus, and not likely to sit any throne. In fact, she had been nearly invisible to me in the courts, just one of my cousin Cel's guards.
Standing there in Rhys's arms with Doyle and Frost moving up behind us, I did not envy anyone. How could I want to change anything about myself when I had so many people who loved me?
Hafwyn wore a white sundress, simpler than mine, almost a shift like something they once wore under dresses, but the simplicity of the cloth could not hide her beauty. The beauty of all the sidhe reminded me often why we'd once been worshipped as gods. It was only partly the magic. Humans have a tendency to either worship or revile beauty.
She dropped a curtsy as she came to me. I'd almost broken the new guards from such public displays but a century's worth of habits are hard to break.
"Do you need healing, my lady?"
"I am unharmed," I said.
She was one of the few true healers that faerie had left. She could lay hands on a wound or illness and simply magick it away. Outside of faerie her powers were lessened, but then many of our powers were less in the human world.
"Goddess be praised," she said, and touched my arm where it lay against Rhys's body. I'd noticed that the longer we were outside of the high courts of faerie the more touchy-feely the guards became. Touching someone when anxious was considered something that lesser fey did. We sidhe were supposed to be above such petty comforts, but I had never found the touch of a friend a petty comfort. I valued the people who drew strength from touching me, or gave me peace with their own touch.
Her touch was brief, because the Queen of Air and Darkness, my aunt, would have either laughed at her for the need, or turned that kind gesture into something sexual and/or threatening. All weaknesses were to be exploited; all kindness was to be stamped out.
Galen came out of the house still wearing an apron that was all white and very TV chef, unlike the sheer white one we had in the house. He wore that one without a shirt, because he knew I enjoyed watching him. But he'd fallen in love with the food channel and had some more useful aprons now. He was wearing a dark green tank top and cargo shorts under the apron. The shirt brought out the slight green tinge in his skin and short curly hair. His only sop to the long hair that the other sidhe men kept at the Unseelie Court was a long, thin braid of hair that fell to his knees. He was the only sidhe I'd ever known to voluntarily cut his hair so short.
Rhys let me go so I could be wrapped up in Galen's six feet worth of lean body. I was suddenly airborne as he picked me up. His green eyes were so worried. "We turned the TV on just a little bit ago. All that glass; you could have been hurt."
I touched his face, trying to smooth out the worry lines that would never leave a trace on his perfect skin. The sidhe did age in a way, but they didn't really grow old. But then immortal things don't, do they?
I leaned up for a kiss, and he leaned down to help me reach him. We kissed and there was magic to Galen's kiss as there had been to Rhys's touch, but where the other man's touch had been deep and almost electric, like some kind of distant motor humming, Galen's energy was like having my skin caressed by a soft spring wind. His kiss filled my mind with the perfume of flowers, and that first warmth that comes when the snow has finally left and the earth wakes once more. All that poured over my skin from one kiss. It drew me back from him with wide, startled eyes, and I had to fight to catch my breath.