I kissed his hand and used mine to move him so I could speak. “I am honored to have such a place in your heart, Sholto.”

“This sounds like the beginning of a ‘let’s just be friends’ speech.”

I laughed then, and he looked puzzled.

“Oh, Sholto, no, I do not want to friendzone you. I love what we have together. I love that we do things in the bedroom that no one else can do with me, because no one else has the diversity of your equipment.”

He laughed then, joyous and somehow masculine, that sound. I liked the tones of men laughing when they were happy enough not to worry how it sounded, or who heard them. Good that I did, since I was likely to be surrounded by men for the rest of my days.

“That you list my extras as part of what you love about me makes me love you even more.”

“Good, because I love that you want to take all the babies to see your kingdom. I love that you spend more time in the nursery helping with them than half the other men, even though you don’t live at the house all the time. I love watching your face when we’re alone and how many different expressions I get to see that I’d never seen at court, or when other people are with us. I love the look on your face when you hold the babies. I love how your arms feel when you hold me, and the sound of your heart when I press my cheek against your chest.”

“And this would be when Rhys or Galen says, ‘But you aren’t in love with me.’”

“But you aren’t in love with me, either,” I said.

“True,” he said, and he pulled me close again. “And they are, and it is always hard to love more than you are loved.”

I snuggled up against his body and said, “That sounds like experience talking.”

“It is. I had many a serious crush on noble ladies of both courts, but I was the Queen’s Perverse Creature, as Doyle was her Darkness, and Frost her Killing Frost. I feared someday that she would say, ‘Where is my Creature, bring me my Creature,’ when she wanted to send the sluagh out to frighten or kill her enemies.” He held me tight and said, “Before you came to me, Meredith, I feared I would simply become the Queen’s Creature.”

“Doyle is the Queen’s Darkness,” I said, softly.

“Yes, but it is frightening and romantic for the Queen to say, ‘Where is my Darkness, bring me my Darkness,’ and someone would bleed or die at his hand.”

“You and your host have made men lose their minds at the sight of all of you in full strength, and bled many, killed many.”

“What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.”

I hugged him as tight as I could. “I love you, Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, I love all of you, and would not have you any other way than you are.”

“Oh, Meredith, Meredith, Meredith, I do love you more and more.”

“I cannot offer you to make love yet, but I want to touch and be touched by you. I want to feel all those wonderful extras do the amazing things that only you can do. I want all of you, touching as much of me as possible.”

The shine in his tri-gold eyes brightened as if someone had set a match, and the golden-yellow flame was coming alive again. “Whatever my queen desires,” he said, and took me in his arms again, but this time the skintight shirt wasn’t flat against his body. Bumps and bulges stretched the fabric and began to move, pulsing and writhing under the shirt. It was still tucked into his pants so they couldn’t escape, and then the edge of the shirt appeared from his pants, and I realized that his extras were pulling the shirt loose from the inside. The first tentacle peeked out of the cloth, wriggling free like a snake spilled out of a bag. Once analogies like snakes in a bag had frightened me, made me not want to touch Sholto. Now, just the sight of the tentacles beginning to appear at the edge of his shirt and pants tightened things low in my body, anticipating the pleasure to come.

He let the thinner, lower tentacles roll the shirt up slowly, exposing his stomach below the belly button, which was smooth and showed that he’d been working out with the rest of my warriors, but above that round indentation that I’d licked more times than I could count now was the first fringe of thin tentacles that were as pearl white as the rest of his skin, but with darker red tips. I knew that those tips had tiny, delicate suction cups on them. The thought of what Sholto could do with them made me shiver with anticipation.

The shirt rolled up a little more to reveal the first grouping of longer, thinner tentacles that grew in groupings around his ribs and upper stomach. I knew that they were a hundred times more sensitive and flexible than any fingers. They helped roll the shirt up, but it was the larger, heavier tentacles at the far edge of his chest that did most of the lifting. The medium tentacles rolled the cloth, while the thicker ones lifted that roll upward, until they themselves were revealed in all their glory, thick and white with a marbling of gold along their lengths. They sat just below his ni**les, thick and heavy like leprosy-pale pythons, except they stretched and grew in size more like other body parts that were very sidhe, very human male. Once the tentacles had always been this real, and only his ability to use glamour and illusion had hidden them, but now unless he willed it they were like a very realistic tattoo. The Goddess and God, returning their grace to us, had manifested for each of us according to what we most needed, or what was most useful to them.