A Kiss Of Shadows   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Galen still had his hands over my wrists, and I realized he was holding pressure on my wounds.

I looked up at him. "Galen, it's all right." He kept his hands tight around my wrists. "Galen, please, let me go."

He stared down at me, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it and slowly moved his hands back from my wrists. His hands came away stained with my blood. But the pressure he'd applied had slowed the bleeding, or maybe it was just Galen's touch. Maybe it wasn't just my imagination that made his hands a cool, soothing presence.

He helped me to my feet. I had to push his hands away so I could stand alone. I spread my legs to get as good a balance on the heels as I could, and faced Kurag.

Standing, I came almost up to his sternum. His shoulders were nearly as wide as I was tall. Most of the sidhe were tall, but the larger goblins were truly bulky.

Fflur had moved to one side of me to join Galen, Doyle, and Rhys at my back. Frost stood to one side, with the little goblin dangling from his hands. There was a press of bodies all around us: sidhe, goblin, and others. But I had eyes only for the goblin king.

"Though I do offer you my apologies for my man's rudeness," Kurag said, "I cannot offer you my blood without gaining in return."

I held my right hand out to him, and my left hand to the red mouth on his chest. "Drink then, Kurag, Goblin King." I raised my right wrist as close to his main mouth as I could reach. Reaching so far above my head left me faintly dizzy. I pressed my left wrist to the open mouth on his chest, and it was those lips that closed around my wrist first, that tongue that worked over the wound to get it to bleed afresh. The tongue in that mouth felt soft and human, not at all like the little goblin's harsh cat tongue.

Kurag bowed his head over my wrist, careful not to use his hands to hold the wound close to him. To use his hands would have been rude and taken as a sexual overture. His tongue was rough like sandpaper, even rougher than the little goblin's had been. It abraded the wound and brought a soft gasp from my throat. The mouth in his chest had already formed a seal over the wounds, sucking like a baby with a bottle. Kurag's tongue lingered until the blood flowed fresh and easy. When he wrapped his lips around my wound, his mouth took in almost all of my wrist. His teeth pressed against my flesh painfully as the suction grew. The smaller mouth in his chest was much more polite.

Kurag's mouth worked at my wrist, lips in a tight seal. Just as I grew accustomed to his sucking, his teeth grazed the wound, his tongue flicking in a sharp painful movement.