“I hope no one was hurt.”
A woman screamed from just in back of him, “Meredith, did you ever sleep with Uther?”
I just shook my head.
A wave of policemen moved in and began pushing them back, helping us move forward. Sholto kept me pressed against him. Shielding me from as much of the cameras as he could. I was happy to be moving, and happier not to be trapped with the questions. I was used to sex questions about me and the men in my life, but Uther and the other detectives at the agency, except for Roane, whom I’d actually dated, were off that list. I liked it better that way.
Chapter Thirty-three
Uther rode in the far back of the Suv with his knees tucked to his chin and his upper body bent until his head was almost between his shins. He looked squished and totally uncomfortable. Jeremy had driven him to the scene in the van, where he fit in the back, but the boss man had to stay behind and continue to try to help the police. I sat in the middle seats with Galen on one side and Sholto on the other. Saraid rode in the small jump seat that was the last seat in the back, which was one of the reasons Uther was wedged so close. Cathbodua rode in front with Rhys. I turned as far as the seat belt would let me so I could see Uther.
He looked like what he was, someone impossibly tall shoved into a normal-size space. But the unhappiness on his face wasn’t about the fit; he was used to trying to fit into a world made for smaller folk.
“How did I miss this whole Constantine problem?” I asked.
He made an umph sound. “You and I once discussed you helping me lift my long fast. You said no, and I respect that. If I started talking to you about pornographic movies featuring another Jack-in-Irons, I feared you might misconstrue my motives.”
“You thought I’d take it as flirting?” I asked.
He nodded, settling his lips around the curve of his curling tusks the way another man might settle a toothpick. It was a thinking gesture for him.
“Bragging perhaps, or even seduction. I’ve had more human women proposition me since Constantine’s movies than ever in my life.” He crossed his big arms over his chest.
Galen turned beside me so he could see the big man, too. “And why is that a problem?” he asked.
“You watched the films. No human woman could survive.”
“Now, that’s bragging,” Saraid said, turning toward him.
“It isn’t,” he said. “It’s truth. I’ve seen what my brethren can do to a human woman. It was one of the worst things I’d ever seen done to a human by a fey, and that includes the nightflyers of the sluagh.” He remembered Sholto too late and gave a glance his way. “I mean no offense, Lord Sholto.”
“None taken,” Sholto said, managing to turn so he could both see the big man better and have an excuse to touch my thigh through my hose. Was it nerves, and if so, why? Why did the conversation make him nervous?
Sholto continued, “I, too, have seen what the royals of the nightflyers do to human women. It is …” He simply shook his head. “It is the reason I forbade them from seducing outside our kingdom.”
“Seduction, you call it,” Saraid said, and gave him a less-than-friendly look. “There are other names for it, Shadow Lord.”
His triple yellow and gold eyes gave as cold a look as her blue, which is harder with a warmer color, but Sholto managed. “I am not a product of rape, if that’s the story that the Unseelie sidhe tell.”
There was a tightening around the eyes that said he’d hit the mark, but all she said out loud was, “You were a babe. How do you know how your birth came about?”
“I know who my father was, and he was not one to take his pleasure unwilling.”
“So he says.” Saraid glared at him.
His fingers began to rub back and forth on the hose that stood between him and my skin. I knew why he needed touch now. “Said, for he died before ever we came to this country. There are pleasures among the nightflyers that do not exist elsewhere.”
She made a face, the face Sholto had been seeing on sidhe women from the moment he couldn’t hide the tentacles and extra bits. That old pain was still there etched in his handsome face. He could truly be sidhe now and have it just as a tattoo, but he didn’t forget how he’d been treated when he could do no more than hide it with glamour.
I laid my hand on the side of his neck. He actually startled at the touch, and then seemed to realize that it was me and relaxed into it.
“I do not think there are many among even the Unseelie who would take one of you, spine and all, and call it pleasure,” Saraid said.
“Sholto’s father was not one of the royals, so the spine wasn’t there to be an issue,” I said. I curved my hand around his neck so my fingers could rest at his hairline and the warmth of the back of his neck under his ponytail.
“So he says.” Saraid glared at him again.
Galen’s voice was mild as he said, “So any sidhe woman who would bed a nightflyer would be a pervert of the worst sort?”
She folded her arms across her chest and nodded. “To sleep with any of the sluagh is one of the few evils.”
“I’m a pervert then,” I said.
She looked startled, raising her eyes to me. “No, of course not. He is no longer the Queen’s Perverse Creature. He can be as sidhe as any other with his new magic.”
I laughed then, and said, “Have all of you female guards been imagining him coming to my bed only with his sidhe body and none of his nightflyer parts?”
Saraid was surprised again and didn’t try to keep it off her face. “Of course.”
I leaned into Sholto, cuddling against his body as much as my seat belt and the turning in the seat would allow. “There are things that his extra bits can do that usually takes four men to accomplish, and even then the arms and legs get in the way.”
Saraid looked ill.
Sholto wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, his head resting against my hair. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was wearing a satisfied expression.
Galen put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. I felt Sholto tense a little, and then he relaxed again, though I knew he was puzzled. Galen had never shared a bed with the two of us. In fact, none of the other men had. Sholto wasn’t close enough friends with any of the other men to be that comfortable with them.
“Sholto saved our lives by getting us to Los Angeles before Cel could come after Merry,” Galen said. “No one else among all the sidhe still have the power of transporting that many others by magic except for the King of the Sluagh. He helped Merry take vengeance for her grandmother’s murder.”
“After he killed the grandmother,” Cathbodua said, finally joining in from the front seat.
Rhys said, “You weren’t there. You didn’t see the spell turn poor Hettie into a weapon to kill her own grandchild. If Sholto hadn’t killed her, Merry might be dead now, or I’d have had to kill my old friend. He saved me from that, and he saved Merry. Don’t talk about something unless you know what you are talking about.” His voice was as grim as I had ever heard it. He had been a frequent visitor at my Gran’s bed-and-breakfast, and had helped keep her company the three years I had had to hide away from even her.
“If you say it is the truth, then I will believe you,” Cathbodua said.
“I will take oath on it,” Rhys said.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, but she glanced back at all of us, and said, “I apologize, King Sholto, but perhaps Saraid or I should tell you why we have such a hatred of the nightflyers.”
“I know that Prince Cel had made friends of a sort with one of the dispossessed royal nightflyers.” He pressed his face into my hair as he spoke, as if it were too awful to look straight at.
“You knew the prince was using him to torture us.” Saraid’s voice was outraged, and her anger translated into a flash of warmth as her magic began to rise.