He hugged me back. “I have a family like I read about in books.”
“The goblins aren’t much for reading,” I said.
“Most are not, but my first mistress taught me how to read, and after that being able to read was an asset to my other masters and mistresses—as much as the sex sometimes.”
“So you read them to sleep?” I asked.
“Or read contracts to them, or modern newspapers.”
“I didn’t know the goblins cared about what was happening in the outside world.”
“Some do.”
I held him close, rubbing my cheek in the softness of his hair. I thought about all the long centuries that he had managed to survive in a culture that valued brute strength and power on the battlefield, and sex. It sounded like a desperate and lonely existence.
I tried to lighten the mood, because I needed it, too. “Good that you are learned, and fabulous at sex.”
“Sometimes I was too good at the sex,” he said.
I moved back enough to look into his face. “What do you mean? It’s not possible to be too good at sex.” I smiled when I said it, but he didn’t smile back.
“Several masters and mistresses became jealous that their lovers preferred me to them, and cast me out because of it.”
I gave him wide eyes and tried to think my way through that. I finally said the truth. “I’m amazed the jealous lovers didn’t just kill you for it.”
“Some tried, but the lovers that valued me stopped them, or even fought them in my defense.”
“You are very good in bed,” I said.
He smiled up at me. “But not that good, you’re thinking, not by goblin standards.”
“They like it very rough,” I said.
“In public, but in private many of them prefer gentler sex.”
I’d experienced that difference myself with Holly and Ash, the other goblins in our lives. If anyone knew they enjoyed gentle sex, their reputation would be damaged, so I said nothing, not even to Kitto.
“And if their secret got out that they’d enjoyed that with you, they would be ruined.”
“It would be seen as weakness, and that is always challenged among my people.”
“Your mother was sidhe, Kitto; we are your people as much as the goblins.”
He smiled, and it was a happier one this time. “I was not raised sidhe, Merry, so I will always think of myself as goblin. The sidhe were these impossibly beautiful, magical beings, and the fact that I carried their skin and hair appealed to the goblins that had a fetish for the touch of sidhe flesh.”
“It is a serious fetish among the goblins,” I said.
“It’s what led to so many rapes in the wars between the two races. The sidhe will not voluntarily share themselves with a goblin.”
I leaned over and kissed him softly, gently, but thoroughly. “This is one part-sidhe princess who volunteers eagerly.”
His face lit up, filled with happiness. “And I will serve you in any way I can for as long as you will have me.”
“Kitto, I’m not planning on casting you out, you know that, don’t you?”
His happy looks slipped a little around the edges. “If my goblin king calls me home, Merry, there is nothing you can do but let me go.”
“You are sidhe now; I have brought you into your power, which means the goblins can’t call you from my side, Kitto.”
He cuddled tighter against me, rubbing his cheek against the crook of my neck like a cat cuddling closer. He shivered, and not in a happy way.
I hugged him tight. “What’s wrong, Kitto? What are you afraid of?”
“I am a goblin with a sidhe hand of power, but Holly and Ash have hands of power, too, and they have stayed in the goblin kingdom.”
“They would be insane to try to join the Unseelie kingdom with the queen so unstable,” I said.
“True, but the fact that they didn’t try to join the sidhe after coming into their magic means that magic alone may not be enough to keep me at your side.”
I buried my face in the softness of his curls. I breathed in the scent of him, felt the gentle strength of him, and thought about him not being here by my side. It was a painful thought.
“Has someone said something to you?”
“Have you asked what Holly and Ash are doing with the new hands of power that you helped give them?”
“No, should I?”
“Yes,” he said, with his lips soft against my neck.
“Tell me,” I said.
“If they find out that I told on them, they will not like it, and their hands of power are much stronger for combat than mine.”
He turned in my arms, so he could cuddle even closer to me. He shivered, and it wasn’t from happiness at being held. He was afraid of the twin warriors, and he should have been. It suddenly felt like Kitto wasn’t close enough to me; sometimes even a robe and pajamas kept the skin hunger and comfort from being fed.
I let go of him enough to open my robe and reach for his shirt. He helped me take it over his head with a smile I could see from the pale glow of the night light. We wrapped our na**d upper bodies around each other, his arms wrapping around my waist inside the thin shelter of my robe. The front of him, still in shorts, pressed against my thigh. I could feel that just that much undressing had made his body start to react, but I knew I didn’t have to tell Kitto that there would be no sex tonight; he wouldn’t push, but be content that I wanted to touch him so closely.