A Stroke Of Midnight - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,143

you understand that?"

He looked down, and he was small again, his foreskin covering him. "If what you did with Mistral is what you want, then why do you want me?"

"I don't want rough every night, Galen. Some nights I like gentle. Some nights I like to make love, not fuck."

"But some nights you like to fuck," he said. "I pretty much always want to make love."

I smiled at him. "I could argue that."

He tried not to smile, but failed. "Not if what you did in the hallway was fucking."

"That was fucking with Mistral. Sex depends on the person you're with, Galen. Lovemaking rises and falls on the rhythms of the people involved." I held my hand out to him. "Come to me."

He shook his head. "If I come to you now, I won't be able to come to you when Nicca finally enters you."

"I can bring you back with a little bit of magic."

"Yeah, but if you do it immediately, it hurts a little."

"You never told me."

I looked down my body at Nicca, who had gone very quiet, his head resting on my thigh more for a pillow now than for sex. "Does it? Hurt, I mean?"

"Until recently I almost always shared my night with Rhys, so with two of us in the bed there was more waiting between times. So no, it did not hurt. But if I had to go straight back to it, it might," he said.

"Doyle and Frost never complained," I said.

"I think pain is more useful for them in the bedroom than it is for me or Galen."

I thought about that for a second. "Maybe."

Galen's voice came soft. "Is the reason you want me this way that you don't want me to be your king?"

I started to say no, then hesitated. It wasn't my motive for the oral sex, but the last part was true enough, or had been.

"I want you like this because I want you," I said.

Nicca spoke with his head still pillowed on my thigh. "I've seen her do this with more than just Mistral. She does seem to enjoy it."

"Sage, you mean," Galen said, but still didn't sound happy. His face did what it almost always did: it showed his every emotion.

"Yes," I said, and wasn't sure what to do to reassure him. It wasn't like Galen to pout this much. This was more Frost's speed.

"Sage," he said again, "another who won't ever be your king."

I sighed. "We have a night of ecstasy in front of us, and you're spoiling it with hard questions, it's not like you."

"No, it's more like Frost."

He'd spoken exactly what I'd just finished thinking. He'd done that several times tonight.

He continued with, "You complain about his moods, but you seem to like him better and better. Maybe you like your men a little more complicated."

I didn't know what to say to that. Why do you love one man and not another? Why is it that one person's touch fills you with shivery heat, and the same touch from another leaves you cold? It is a mystery. But I could answer truthfully and still be comforting.

"I love you, Galen."

He just looked at me.

"Maybe I had forgotten just how much, but today. . when I saw you lying there..." My voice failed me, and I had to close my eyes to keep from seeing him lying in a pool of his own blood.

Nicca stroked my thigh, not for sex but to comfort.

"When I saw you there, like that, I thought I would die from grief. To never see your smile again." My eyes felt hot, and I couldn't decide if crying would make me feel better or worse.

He touched my face, and without opening my eyes, I knew it was his hand. His warm, gentle hand. I laid my cheek into that hand. I was reminded sharply of doing the same thing to Doyle only a few hours ago. Galen had failed me then, had not understood why Gillette's failing me had made me cry. But giving Galen into the hands of another woman who could give him his nights of gentle love was one thing; giving him up to death was another. That I could not bear.

I opened my eyes and gazed up at him. I met those green, green eyes.

"You're crying," he said, and the look on his face was one of wonderment.

"Not quite," I said, but my voice sounded it. I had to swallow hard to say the next part. "Maybe I have been pulling