"Meredith." He said my name once, but for once his voice wasn't neutral. That one word held uncertainty, a question, and a hope. He spoke my name once more, and it turned me around to face the bed and what lay waiting for me among the burgundy sheets.
Chapter 18
He sat on the edge of the bed closest to the mirror, closest to me. He was almost lost among the black dream of his hair. Almost all the other sidhe I knew had some contrast from hair to skin to eyes, but Doyle was all of one piece. His unbound hair cascaded around him like a black cloud, so that his ebony skin was almost lost in the folds of it. A long, long lock of hair had fallen over his face, and his black-on-black eyes were lost in that darkness. He looked like a piece of night itself come to life. He swept a hand up to draw back the hair and try to tuck it behind one pointed ear. The earrings glittered like stars against his darkness.
I walked forward until the bed bumped against my thighs. My legs pressed into the bed, but all I could feel was the thickness of his hair, trapped between my body and the firmness of the bed. He turned his head, and I felt the hair tug underneath me. I pressed in harder, trapping his hair.
He turned those dark eyes up to me, and there were colors in his eyes that shone nowhere in the room, like a swarm of brilliant fireflies — blue, white, yellow, green, red, purple, and colors I had no name for. The pinpoints danced and swirled, and for a second I could almost feel them flying around me, the tiny wind of their passing like being caught in a cloud of butterflies; then I was falling and Doyle caught me.
I came to myself in his arms, in his lap, where he'd sat me. When I could speak, I said, "Why?"
"I am a power to be reckoned with, Meredith, and I want you to never forget that. A king should have more to offer than seed."
I slid my hands across his skin, wrapping my arms around his neck. "Are you auditioning?"
He smiled. "We all are, Meredith. Some of the others may forget that in the rush of hot skin and sex, but you must never forget. You are choosing a father for your children, a king for the court, and someone you will be tied to forever."
I hid my face in the curve of his neck. His skin was warm to the touch. His pulse beat against my face. His smell was so warm, so very warm. "I've been thinking about that." I spoke the words against his skin.
He rubbed his neck against my face. "And what conclusions have you come to?"
I drew back enough to see his face. "That Nicca would be a victim and a disaster on the throne. That Rhys is lovely in bed, but I can't see him as a king. That my father was right and Galen would be utterly disastrous. That there are more knights at court that I would rather kill than be tied to for the rest of my life."
He laid his lips against the side of my neck, not quite kissing me. He spoke with his own mouth against my skin, so that his words made small kissing movements against me. "There is Frost and. . me."
The feel of his lips made me shiver, writhing in his lap. Doyle drew a sharp breath, his hands wrapping around my waist, across my thighs. He whispered, "Merry," against my skin, his breath warm and fierce, his fingers digging into my thigh, my waist. There was such strength in his hands, such pressure, as if with little effort he could plunge his fingers into my body and bring my blood and flesh to the surface, peel me apart like something ripe and sweet. Something that had been waiting for his hand to open me, to bring me, to spill me in a rush of pleasure over his hands, across his body.
He half lifted me, half threw me onto the bed. I waited for him to press his body against mine, but he didn't. He got up on all fours, straddling above me like a mare with a colt, but there was nothing motherly about the way he stared down at me. He'd thrown all that hair over one shoulder so that his naked upper body was exposed to the light. His skin gleamed like polished ebony. His breathing was deep and rapid, making the nipple ring wink and shimmer above me.
I raised my hand to touch it, brushed my fingers over that bit of silver, and a sound came out of Doyle, low in his body and growing, a growl like some great beast, echoing through that slender, muscled body. He straddled my body, lips curving back to flash white teeth, while that growl trickled out of his lips, past his teeth like a warning.
It made my pulse race, but I wasn't afraid yet. Not yet. He leaned down into my face and snarled, "Run!"
I just blinked at him, my pulse in my throat.
He threw back his head and howled, a sound that echoed and echoed in the small room. The hair on my body stood, and I stopped breathing for a second, because I knew that sound.
That lone, clear evil belling of the Gabriel Ratchets, the dark hounds of the wild hunt. He put his face inches from mine and growled, "Run!"
I scrambled out from underneath him, and he watched me with those dark eyes, his body immobile but so tense it seemed to shimmer with the promise of some violent action, violence contained, constrained, restricted, but there all the same.
I had crawled off on the wrong side of the bed. I was trapped between the window and the bed. The outer door lay across the bed, past Doyle. I'd played games of hunt and catch before. A lot of things in the Unseelie Court liked to catch you first, but that was pretend, play, foreplay. The look in Doyle's eyes was hungry, but one hunger looks much like another until it's too late.
His voice fought out from his clenched teeth. "You … are … not. . running!" With that last, he made a rush at me on all fours, a black blur. I threw myself over the edge of the bed, rolled, and fell to the floor in front of the outer door. I was on my feet, hand on the doorknob when his body crashed into mine. The door shook and my body bruised with the violence of it. He jerked my hand off the doorknob, and I could not withstand his strength.
I screamed.
He tore me away from the door, threw me on the bed. I tried to slide off to one side, but he was there, his lower body pressing against mine, keeping me pinned to the side of the bed. I could feel the firmness of him through his jeans, through my panties.
The door opened behind us, and Rhys looked in. Doyle growled at him. Rhys said, "You screamed?" His face was serious. There was a gun in his hand, held next to his leg, not pointed but there.
Doyle growled, "Get out!"
"I leave at the princess's order, not yours, sire." He shrugged. "Sorry. You having a good time, Merry, or. ." He made a vague motion with the gun.
"I'm. . I'm not sure." My voice came out breathy. The feel of Doyle pressed tight and firm against me was exciting, even the promise of violence was exciting, but only if it was the promise of it, a game.
His hands on my thighs were shaking, his entire body quivering with the effort not to finish what he'd started. I touched his face gently. He startled as if I'd hurt him, then turned, looked at me. The look in his eyes was barely human. It was like looking into the eyes of a tiger, beautiful, neutral, hungry.
"Are we having fun here, Doyle, or are you going to eat me?" My voice was a little steadier, firmer.
"This first time I would not trust myself to put my mouth to such tender places."
It took me a second to realize that he had misunderstood me. "I don't mean eat me in the euphemistic sense, Doyle. I mean, am I food?" My voice sounded utterly calm now, ordinary. Pinned to the bed by his body, his eyes still animalistic and wild, and I sounded like I was in the office, talking business.