of the gun's lines.
"Sorry," he said, and moved the gun a little so it wouldn't dig into me. He laid his face against my hair. "I have weapons, but once we start having sex I won't be able to use them. I'll be too busy using my favorite weapon to worry about guns and swords."
"Weapon, is it?" I said smiling.
I felt his smile just by the flexing of his lips against my head. "Well, I don't mean to brag."
I laughed and looked up at him. He was grinning down at me. His face was half in moonlight and half in shadow. It hid his good eye and left his scars painted silver, his face looking smooth and perfect except for that glimmer of scar, so that the scar simply became another part of that perfection.
"Why so solemn?" he asked.
"Kiss me and find out."
"Wait. Before we get distracted, my point was a good one."
"Why, yes it is," I said, and I traced my fingers over the firm muscles of his stomach toward lower things.
He caught my hands in his empty hand, and used the hand full of weapons to help hold me still. "No, Merry, not until you hear me on this." He moved his face so all of him was in the bright, soft moonlight. The light grayed his eye so that it was no longer blue at all.
"Once the sex starts I will be too distracted to guard you. Everyone else is in what amounts to an enchanted sleep, so there will be no help if we need it."
I thought about what he'd said, and finally nodded. "You're right, but first we've made it clear to all of faerie that we want no throne of either kingdom, so killing me gains them nothing. Second, I don't believe the Goddess brought us out here to be attacked."
"You think she'll keep us safe?"
"Have you no faith left, Rhys?" I studied his face as I asked it.
He looked very sad and sighed. "Once I did."
"Let us go down to the sea and find it again for you."
He smiled, but it was sad around the edges. I wanted that sorrow gone.
I pulled gently on his hand and he let me pull away. I leaned up and kissed him, soft and full of lips, and let my body fall against his so he made a small surprised sound, still kissing me. Then his arms came up with gun and sword still in one, so I could feel the press of them against my back again.
I drew back from the kiss to find him a little breathless, lips parted, eye wide. I could feel his body growing hard and firm against mine.
He didn't protest again, but let me lead him toward the sighing of the sea.
Chapter Twenty
The surf beckoned like white foaming lace, the water black and silver in the moonlight. The tide had grown and deepened around the bottom steps, so that I walked into the cold foam of the sea to find it spilling around my knees, while I could still touch the railing. It was cold enough to make me shiver, but the sight of Rhys there nude, suspicious, and very Rhys helped the shiver be more. The pull of the ocean made my legs move and the sand shift, as if the very world wasn't certain it would hold still.
"I'll have to pin everything down so the tide doesn't take it, Merry. Once I do that the weapons will be slow to draw."
I should have said no, or cautioned him, or tried to wake other guards, but I didn't. I said, "It will be all right, Rhys." Somehow, I knew it would be.
He didn't say a word, just moved down into the swirling water until he could touch my outstretched hand. The moment our hands touched, there was power, magic.
"We stand in a place betwixt and between neither land nor sea," I said.
"The closest we'll get to faerie here on the Western sea," he said.
I nodded.
Rhys threaded the straps of the sword sheath around the gun, and used the naked blade to pin the sheath to the sand. He knelt in the water, so that it was above his waist, to thrust the sword almost hilt deep into the shifting sand, so that it would not be pulled away by the sea.
He grinned up at me, still kneeling in the water, and the edge of it playing with the ends of his curls. "Most of the positions I'm thinking of will