more options. Which wasn't true. I'd been with my one-time fiance, Griffin, for seven years, and in the end he'd found plenty of options, none of them me. Having sex with me hadn't been a life-altering experience for him. Why should it be different for Doyle?
"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