A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

“Can you sit up?” I asked Galen.

“Yes, but I’m enjoying the attention.” He grinned up at me.

I bent over him, hugging him with all my body while he lay in my lap. I whispered against his skin, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

He rubbed his face against my breasts, since they were so conveniently placed. “Me, too.”

Galen sat up and I waited to make certain he was steady. Just seeing the blood painted on the back of his body tightened my chest all over again. I had to swallow past something hard and crushing in my throat.

I turned to Adair, still bleeding, still hurting, because I gave an order. I didn’t strike the blow, but I’d put him in harm’s way. I knelt in front of him, reached out to touch his face. He actually flinched, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched, or wasn’t sure if it would hurt. Knowing my aunt, I could understand that.

“You look sad,” I said. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

“I’m too hurt to do much, Princess.” His eyes were wide, showing too much white.

I shook my head. “Would she really offer you intercourse when you were this injured?”

He understood who “she” was. “She has before, not to me, but… others.”

Offer them sex after years of nothing, when they were too hurt to enjoy it, or too hurt to perform. Auntie Andais was a true sadist.

“A kiss, Adair, nothing more. Just a kiss, because you seem to need it.”

He gave me a puzzled look out of his triple yellow eyes. “Just because I need it. I don’t understand.”

“Are you lesser fey now, to give a kiss because someone needed it,” Kieran said. “It is not a sidhe custom.”

“No, it isn’t, because we’ve forgotten who we are,” I said, “what we are.”

“And what are we?” Kieran asked, his voice sneering.

I leaned in toward Adair. His eyes were still too wide. “The amount of power we raised earlier would hurt me now, Princess.” His voice was breathy, but he was against the wall, and there was nowhere else for him to go.

“No power, just touch.” I laid a soft, chaste press of lips against Adair’s mouth. He stopped breathing for a moment, and I tasted more fear than desire in him. I drew back from him to watch his face and saw the fear turn to puzzled wonderment.

“I don’t understand you, Princess.”

“Because she is not sidhe.”

“You asked what we are, Kieran.” I turned and looked at the kneeling man. “We are deities of nature.