RHYS MADE ME LIE ON MY STOMACH AND BEGAN TO BREATHE HIS way down my back. I would have said kiss, but it was too gentle for that. He caressed the skin with the barest touch of lips and breath. When he got low enough, he began to breathe and work those tiny, near-invisible hairs on the lower back, so that my body ran with goose bumps and involuntary shivers.

I raised my hips minutely from the bed in a silent invitation for him to do more.

He laughed, that laugh of his that was masculine pleasure and his own amusement. But for once there was nothing of self-mockery in it. He laid a more solid kiss against the small of my back. I writhed for him, letting him know without words how wonderful it was.

He laid his weight on top of me, resting the hard, long length of himself between the cheeks of my ass. The feel of it made me cry out.

He wrapped his arms around me, forced me enough off the bed so he could cup my breasts in his hands. He held me tightly and firmly in the strength of his body.

"If I truly loved you," he whispered, "I would do what Kitto has done. I would refuse to have intercourse with you. I would take myself out of the race for king. Kitto did it because he knows that neither court would ever let a half goblin sit as your king. They'd kill you both first."

He settled himself more firm against me, pushing his hips just a little. It made me writhe as much as the weight of him would allow, but the seriousness in his voice didn't match what his body was doing.

Rhys continued to whisper against my hair. "I know you love Doyle and Frost. Hell, you even love Galen more than you love me, even now when you've both realized what a political liability he would be as king."

"Sometimes we have just oral sex now when we are together."

Rhys tensed above me, and not in a sexual way, but as if he was thinking. "Has he taken himself out of the race for king?"

"Not completely, but sometimes we don't do anything to make babies. We just pleasure each other."

"Interesting," he said, and it wasn't a seductive whisper this time.

I tried to rise, but he kept me pressed to the bed with a squeeze of his arms, a flex of his hips. I spoke, trapped underneath him. "Why is it interesting?"

"Galen has taken himself out of the running for king because he knows he isn't strong enough to help keep you alive. But he loves you, utterly loves you. He loves you enough to give you up if that's what's best for you. Gallant Galen."

I hadn't thought about it that way, but Rhys was right. It was gallant and horribly brave. Galen still had a chance to be the father of my child, but the last few times we'd made love he had only used his chance for intercourse once. The rest had been amazingly fun, but nothing that would have made a baby.

Rhys wrapped those strong arms tight, so tight it was almost hard to breathe. He whispered against my ear, his breath hot. "If I truly loved you, I would take myself out of the running for king. I would help you get your heart's desire, which is Doyle and Frost. But I am too selfish, Merry. I cannot give you up without a fight."

I spoke in the voice that his grip allowed me, breathy. "It isn't a fight."

"Yes," he whispered fiercely. "Yes, it is. Not of strength of arms, maybe, but it is a battle. For some of us, the prize is to be king. But for most of us, Merry, we would want you as our prize even if there was no throne."

He shoved his body against mine hard and fierce until I cried out for him. Then he squeezed me even tighter until I thought I would have to ask him to stop so I could breathe. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss against my ear, so fierce, so full of emotion. "I want to win, Merry. I want you even if it breaks your heart. I am a selfish bastard, Merry. I won't give you up, not even to see you happy."

I lay underneath him and didn't know what to say.

He squeezed harder, and I finally had to protest, "Rhys, please..."

He eased the grip of his arms just enough so that I could draw a good breath, but his fingers squeezed my breasts hard and firm. The harshness of it drew small noises from me.

"You like sex rougher than I do. Things that are simply pain to me make you shiver with pleasure." His grip on my breasts eased. "The goblins will do worse than that tonight to you, and you will enjoy it, won't you?"

"I've negotiated for pleasure tonight, Rhys."

He rubbed his face against my hair. "I could give you up to Doyle, or Frost, or Galen, if I had to. It would kill something in me, but I could do it. But I could not bare to lose you to Ash and Holly. I could not bear to have my Merry married to goblins, fucking goblins every night."

A sound escaped him that was almost a sob.

"Rhys," I said, "I..."

"No, don't say it, whatever it is. Let me finish. I may never have the courage to say it all again."

I went still under him. I lay there with his body wrapped around me, and let him talk, if that was what he needed.

"I hate the thought of them with you tonight, Merry. I hate more that you are excited by the thought of them tying you up and fucking you. God, I hate that maybe most of all." His arms tightened around me once more. "See, I don't love you, not really. If I loved you, truly loved you, I'd want you to be happy. I'd want you to have the sex you enjoy, not just the sex I think you should have. But that's not what I want for you. I want you to be gentler than you are. I want you to want sex the way I make it. The way I like it. I hate that you want things that I think are pain and not pleasure. I hate knowing that though you enjoy sex with me, it's not everything you need, or want." He dug his fingers into my breasts again until I cried out again, and my body bucked under his.

He let go of me abruptly, pushing himself above my body so that his arms framed me on either side, but his hips were tighter against me.

"Because I hate the thought of the goblins with you tonight, because I want you with me more than I want you happy, because I am a selfish bastard, I'm going to fill your body with my seed, and I'm going to pray while I do it. I'm going to call power while I do it. I want you pregnant with my child, consort help me, but I do. Goddess help me, but I do. Not so we will all live. Not so Cel won't sit the throne, and divide us in civil war. No, nothing so noble, Merry. I want it, because I want you, even knowing you don't want me."

"I do want you," I said, and turned so I could look at him over my shoulder.

The look on his face was one that I would never forget. So fierce, so desperate, so wild, but not with sex or even lust or love. The look on his face was full of an awful loss. If I'd been sending him out to do battle with sword and shield, I wouldn't have let him go, because the look on his face was the look of a man who knew he wouldn't be coming back. The face of a man who knew he would lose this day, die this day. I would have held him back from the battle. I would have made him stay by my side, and kept him alive another day. But this was not a battlefield I could protect him from. It was my body and heart, and they had already chosen.

He shook his head. "No pity, Merry, at least save me that."

I turned away then, turned so he could not see the tears that shimmered in my eyes. It was the only way I could save him from my pity. I did love him, but not the way he needed me to love him. He was right, even our sexual appetites did not match.

He jerked my hips up off the bed. I tried to get up on all fours for him, but he forced my head down, so that my lower body was raised like an offering to him.

I felt the head of him pushing against me, but I was still too tight for the angle.

I said, "You'll need to use a finger to start. I'm too tight with no foreplay for this position."

He kept pushing at my body, harder, fiercer.

"You'll hurt yourself, Rhys," I said from where my face was almost buried against the pillows.

"I want it to hurt," he said. Then I felt him break the surface of me, find the barest part of himself inside me, and I stopped protesting. He forced himself inside me, fighting the tightness and the lack of wetness of my body. If I had been wired differently, it would have hurt. It wasn't that I couldn't be hurt, I could. Even intercourse for me could be done so it was only pain, but you had to work at it, you had to be bad at it. Bad in a way that Rhys was not.

I started screaming for him. My body orgasming simply from the feel of him forcing his way inside me. Not just one orgasm, but waves of them rolling over and over my body, making me writhe and push myself against the force and strength of him. The pleasure of it spilled out of my mouth in one ragged scream after another. I screamed, "Yes" and "God" and "Goddess" and finally at the end I screamed his name, over and over and over.

"Rhys, oh, god, Rhys!"

The dim room filled with the light of our bodies, glowing like twin moons of rising power. He made my skin run with light. He dug his hand into the shining garnet of my hair and jerked my throat backward as he rode me. The roughness of it made me scream again, but he let go of my hair as his body began to fight him for rhythm. His breathing changed and I knew he was close, close, and fighting to last that little bit longer, so that I would scream underneath him for just a little bit longer.

I was on all fours where his grip had moved me. My breasts hung down, slapping together from the fury of his sex. I screamed my pleasure, I filled the room with his name like a prayer to some angry god. Then his body made one last tremendous thrust so deep inside me that I knew it should have hurt, but there was too much pleasure for real pain.

His body shivered above me, thrusting again deep inside me. I felt him spill himself inside me in a hot wash of seed and power.

He'd said he would pray while he fucked me. He'd said he'd use his power to make me his. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't, I couldn't be afraid of Rhys.

I collapsed underneath him with his body still buried inside me. He lay on top of me, both of us too spent to move, our breathing a ragged sound, our hearts still in our throats. The glow of our bodies began to fade as our pulses slowed.

He finally rolled off, slowly. I lay where I was, too limp to move yet. He lay on his back, still breathing heavily. He spoke, in a voice still harsh from exertion. "The way you react to roughness urges a man on, Merry, even when you didn't think you'd like it."

"You were amazing," I whispered, my own voice a little rough from the screaming.

He smiled at me. "You really don't have any idea how good you are at this, do you?"

"I'm good, or so I'm told."

He shook his head. "No, Merry, no joke, you are amazing in bed, and on the floor, and on a sturdy table."

I laughed.

He smiled at me, and it was almost the old Rhys before he got so serious on me. Then that seriousness peeked out again. "I know that the goblins will have you tonight, and there is nothing I can do about it." His face, went from serious to angry. "But when they shove themselves inside you tonight they'll be shoving my seed farther in."

"Rhys..."

"No, it's all right. I know you're doing your duty as queen. We need the goblins as our allies, and this is the way to get the treaty lengthened. I know politically that it's a good idea, a great idea." He stared at me, and there was such pressure to that gaze that I had to fight to meet it. "But the idea of the two of them having you tonight - the way it's planned - excites you, doesn't it?"

I hesitated, then told the truth. "Yes."

"That is not Seelie Court. That is most definitely Unseelie Court. It's the part of you that I don't understand. It's the part that Doyle understands best, better even than Frost. He may be your Darkness, but he also holds your darkness as precious to him. I don't want your darkness, Merry. I want the light of you."

"You can't separate the light and the dark, Rhys. They're both a part of me."

He nodded. "I know, I know." He sat up and eased himself off the edge of the bed. "I'm going to go clean up."

"You were magnificent," I said.

"I'm already sore."

"I warned you, foreplay isn't just for my body's comfort."

"You did warn me." He gathered his clothes from the floor, but made no move to put them on.

"Enjoy your shower," I said.

"Want to join me?"

I smiled. "No, I need some actual sleep before tonight, I think."

"I tire you out?"

"Yes, but in a wonderful way." I curled on my side, pulling the sheet up.

Rhys went for the door. I heard him talking to someone outside. I heard him say, "Ask her yourself."

Kitto's voice came from the door. "May I come in?"

"Yes," I said.

He walked inside, the door closing behind him. He must have been sitting in the hallway the entire time. "Do you want to hold me while you sleep?" he asked.

I looked at his earnest face, so serious. He was always serious, our Kitto. "Yes," I said.

He smiled then, and it was a good smile. A smile that we'd only discovered he had in the last little bit. He crawled under the sheet and slid his body against the back of mine. He spooned his nakedness against my body, and it was simply comforting. I would have turned down almost any other man at the door in that moment.

Kitto knew he would not be king, so the sex wasn't such a press to him. But more than that he valued the gentle cuddling almost more than the sex. After all, he'd had sex before, but I wasn't certain he'd ever truly been loved just for himself. I did love him. I loved them all, but Rhys was right, I didn't love them equally.

The constitution of our country says that all men are created equal, but it's a lie. I'll never be able to make a jump shot like Magic Johnson, or drive a car like Mario Andretti, or paint like Picasso. We are not created equal in talent. But the place where we are least equal is the heart. You can work at a talent, take lessons, but love, love either works or it doesn't. You love someone or you don't. You can't change it. You can't undo it.

I lay there drifting on the warm edge of sleep with the wonderful edge of good sex coating my body. Kitto's warmth and clinging shape held me as I drifted off. I felt safe, loved, and content. I wished Rhys would feel as good about this afternoon as I did, but I knew that was a wish that wouldn't come true.

I was a faerie princess, but there were no faerie godmothers. There were only mothers and grandmothers, and there was no magic wand to wave over a person's heart and make it all better. The fairy tales lied. Rhys knew that. I knew that. The man who was breathing at my back as he began to fall deeper to sleep knew that.

Fucking brothers Grimm.