A Kiss Of Shadows   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Truthfully all I was seeing was the sex, but you're right—one of us is going to be king."

I glanced up at the grey sheet of webs. They were empty, but… "Should we be talking about this here with this above us?"

He looked up at the spiderwebs. "Good point." He offered me his arm. "May I escort you to the banquet, my lady?"

I slid my hand over his arm. "With pleasure."

He patted my hand. "I hope so, Merry, I certainly do hope so."

I laughed, and the sound echoed strangely in the hallway, making the cobwebs drift and float. It was almost as if the ceiling stretched far, far overhead into some vast darkness that only the spiderwebs hid from our view. My laughter faded, long before we stepped out from under the webs.

"Thank you, Rhys, for understanding why I'm afraid, instead of just concentrating on the fact that you may be about to end several hundred years of celibacy."

He pressed my left hand to his lips. "I live only to serve under you, or above you, or any way you want me."

I punched him in the shoulder. "Stop it."

He grinned.

"Rhys isn't the name of any known death god. I researched you in college, and you weren't there."

He was suddenly very busy staring down the ever-narrowing hallway. "Rhys is my name now, Merry. It doesn't matter who I was before."

"Of course it matters," I said.

"Why?" he asked, and suddenly he was all serious, asking a very grown-up question.

Watching him glow white and shining in the grey light, I didn't feel grownup. I felt tired. But there was a weight to his gaze, a demand in his face, that I had to answer.

"I just want to know who I'm dealing with, Rhys."

"You've known me all your life, Merry."

"Then tell me," I said.

"I don't want to talk about the long-ago days, Merry."

"What if I invited you into my bed? Would you tell me all your secrets then?"

He studied my face. "You're teasing me."

I touched the scarred edge of his face, tracing with my fingers from the roughened skin to pass a fingertip over the full softness of his lips. "No teasing, Rhys. You're beautiful. You've been a friend to me for years. You protected me when I was younger. It would be poor repayment if I left you celibate when I could put an end to it—besides the fact that running my mouth down that washboard stomach of yours has been a recurring sexual fantasy."

"Funny, I've had the same fantasy," he said. He wiggled his eyebrows at me and did a miserably bad Groucho Marx impression.