SHOLTO LAY NAKED BEFORE ME. I'D NEVER SEEN HIM LIKE THAT, lying naked, and waiting, knowing that we didn't have to stop.

The first and only time I'd seen him completely nude he'd still had extras. But he had used his own personal magic then to make his stomach look like the perfect six-pack abs. Even to the touch, I hadn't been able to feel what I'd known was there. He was very good at personal glamour, but then he'd spent years hiding that bit of deformity.

Now he lay back, using his own pants as some small cushion against the stone. The Seelie had skinned him from just below his ribs to just above his groin. I'd seen the wound, but now it loomed larger. The pain must have been a fearsome thing.

He had laid the white spear and the bone knife to one side of him. I had set the chalice on the other side of him. We would make love between the chalice, symbol of the Goddess, and two symbols that were oh, so masculine.

The air above his body wavered, like heat off a road, and the next moment there was no wound. He was back to creating the illusion of that perfect six-pack. Of all my lovers, only Rhys had it for real. "You don't need to hide, Sholto," I said.

"The look on your face is not the look I want to see the first time we make love, Meredith."

"Take the glamour away, Sholto, let me truly see you."

"It is no more beautiful than what used to be there." His voice was sad.

I touched the smooth skin of his shoulder. "You were beautiful. You are beautiful."

He gave me a smile as sad as his tone. "Meredith, no lies, please."

I studied his face. He was as fair of face as Frost, who was one of the most perfect men I'd ever seen. I said out loud, "The queen once called you the most perfect sidhe body she had ever seen. You are wounded, you will heal; it has not changed the perfection of you."

"The queen said that it was a pity that one of the most perfect sidhe bodies she'd ever seen was ruined by such deformity."

Okay, maybe mentioning the queen's words hadn't been a good idea. I tried again. I crawled to his face and leaned over to touch his lips with mine. But it was a cold kiss, and he barely responded. I drew back. "What is wrong?"

"In Los Angeles, even the sight of you clothed hardened my body. Tonight I am weak."

I gazed down the long length of his body to find that he was still soft, and as small as he got. He was one of those men that wasn't truly small even when soft; a shower, not a grower.

I had magic in me that could bring a man to life, as it were, but it was Seelie magic. I wanted to use less Seelie magic in this union, not more. Although Sholto had made the decision to accept the risk, I feared for the sluagh. I feared them losing their identity as a people.

Of course, there were other ways to bring a man to life besides magic.

I crawled, carefully, on the bare rocks, until I knelt by his hip. "You aren't weak, Sholto, you're hurt. There is no shame in that."

"To see you nude and not to react is shameful."

I gave him the smile he needed and said, "I think we can fix that."

"Magic?" he said, staring down his body at me.

I shook my head. "No magic, Sholto, just this." I traced my hand over his thighs, reveling in the smooth skin. The fey didn't have much body hair, but I think the fact that he was part nightflyer - a creature that had no hair - made him utterly smooth. Smooth as a woman and so soft, yet terribly male from the bottoms of his feet to the top of his head. I traced along the inside of his thighs and he spread them for me, so that I could sweep upward and touch the silken skin between his legs. He was still soft and loose as I rolled those delicate balls in my hand.

The touch bowed his spine, sending his head back, eyes closed. But with the pleasure came a sound of pain. The movement had hurt the butchered skin across the middle of his body. What progress I'd made wilted in the face of such pain.

He threw his arm across his eyes and made a sound between a sob and a yell. "I will be useless to you tonight, Meredith. I will be useless to my people. I will not bring us back to life with death, and I cannot bring us back with life."

"I would wait until you were healed, Sholto, if I could. But this night is about bringing life back to faerie. Console yourself - we will have other nights, or days. Other times, after you are healed, to do what we want to do. Tonight, we do what we must."

He uncovered his eyes and gazed down at me. His face held such despair.

"I can't think of any intercourse position that isn't going to hurt you, and you don't like pain," I said.

"I did not say I did not like pain, but not this much."

I stored that away for future reference. "I know. There are limits for most of us beyond which pain is just pain."

"I am sorry, Meredith, but I fear I have reached that point with these wounds."

"We'll see," I said. I leaned back over his body until I could kiss the front of him. I drew him, gently, into my mouth. The only other time I'd had him in my mouth he had been long and hard, and eager. Tonight his body was quiet, loose, and still.

At first, I was almost impatient, but I let that go. This was not a moment for impatience, or hurrying - this was Sholto's first time with another sidhe. This was one of his most treasured dreams, and he was coming to it hurt, and not at his best. He'd probably fantasized this moment, and now none of his fantasies was coming true. Reality was a harsher mistress than imagination.

I let go of the impatience. I stopped wondering what Doyle and Frost and the others must be thinking. I let go the thought that my powers were growing and I had no idea what they would do next. I let all the worries go, and gave myself over to this moment. I gave myself over to the sensation of him in my mouth.

I had been denied the chance to give oral sex to most of my lovers. They didn't want to risk spilling their seed anywhere but between my legs, wasting a chance to father the next heir to the throne - a chance to make themselves king to my queen. I didn't blame them, but I loved oral sex, and I'd missed performing it. The few times I'd been able to persuade anyone, he had already been excited - big, hard, which was a pleasure all its own - but I liked the feel of a man when he was small. So much easier to take all of him in my mouth. No straining, no fighting all that length or width.

I rolled him in my mouth, sucking gently, at first. But I wanted to enjoy all the sensation I could while he remained small, so I increased in intensity. I could feel him moving in my mouth, the skin sliding, the meat of him so easy to work with. I sucked him fast and faster, until he cried out, "Enough, enough."

I moved to the loose roll of his balls, licking along the skin, sliding all that silkiness between my lips and tongue. I watched him grow larger as I played with his balls. I rolled one testicle, carefully, into my mouth so I could play with all of it. He was too big for me to try to take both in at the same time; it would be too easy to injure such tender parts. The last thing I wanted to do was cause him any new pain.

His eyes were wild as they looked down his body at me. The gold of his eyes started to glow - molten gold in the center, amber shot through with sun, then a pale yellow-gold like elm leaves in fall. One moment his eyes were all that glowed, and the next that light exploded down his body, as if white light were liquid running just under his skin. His skin glowed even underneath the red ruin, as if he were carved of rubies set in ivory, with the sun glowing through the white and red of his body.

I moved over his body, not with him inside, but with a knee on either side of his hips. I gazed down at him, wanting to remember the beauty of him the first time. The glow had spread to the tips of his hair, as if every strand were dipped in moonlight. He was a thing of light and magic, but as I used my hand to help slide him inside me, he was all silken skin, and muscle.

I slipped the head of him inside me, and found I was almost too tight. I'd performed all the foreplay on him, and received none for myself. I was wet from the pleasure, but tight, so very tight.

He managed to gasp out, "You're not open enough."

"Is it hurting you?" My own voice sounded whispery.

"No," he whispered.

"Then I want to feel you force your way into me. I want to feel each inch push inside while I'm this tight." I wriggled my hips a little lower, fighting for each delicious inch. I was so tight that he touched every bit of me, sliding heavy and slow over that spot inside me.

I meant to have him inside me as deep as he'd go before my release, but my body had other ideas. It was as if my body being so tight around his made his body press just right, just exactly right against that one spot. One moment I was trying to be so careful, easing him inside me, and the next I was screaming my orgasm, my body bucking around his, the movement forcing more of me down the shaft of him faster than I would have managed without it. And as long as I could keep pushing him inside me the orgasm kept going. It kept on as I shoved him inside me, and somewhere before the last inch of him went inside, he started helping to push.

I sat on top of him with our bodies wedded as close as man and woman could be, the orgasm dancing me above him. I was aware, vaguely, that my skin was glowing - a moon shine to match his own. The wind of my own power blew my hair around my face, garnets sparkling in fire. My eyes glowed so brightly that I could see the colored shadows of the green and gold of my own eyes at the edges of my vision. I screamed and writhed above him on wave after wave of pleasure. This had not been planned, or achieved with skill, but more by luck; a key sliding into a lock at the perfect moment. Our bodies took that moment and rode it.

I heard him scream my name, felt his body buck under mine, felt him drive himself home as hard and as fast as he could. He hit the end of me, and that orgasmed me again. I threw my head back and screamed his name to the heavens.

He went still underneath me, but I couldn't focus my eyes enough to see him, not really. My vision ran in streamers of colors. I collapsed forward, and forgot. Forgot that he was still hurt. Forgot that I was wearing the queen's ring on my right hand; the ring that had once belonged to a real fertility goddess.

I had a second to realize that the skin of his stomach under my hands was no longer raw, but felt smooth and perfect. I blinked down, fighting through pleasure's afterglow to see him. His stomach was as flat and perfect as his illusion once had been, but this was no illusion. He had his tentacles back, but as a tattoo so bright and life-like that a glance made them seem real. They were a picture, drawn upon his skin.

I saw all that in three blinks of an eye, but there was no next blink, for the ring suddenly came to life. It was like being plunged into water with an electric current in it. It was not enough to kill, but enough to hurt.

Sholto yelled under me, and not from pleasure.

I tried to take the ring away from his body, but my hand seemed glued to his newly decorated skin. The power blew out from us, as if the magic spilled away over the bare rock. I could breathe again.

Sholto gasped, "What was that?"

"The ring."

He gazed down his body at me, and my hand pressed to his abdomen. His fingers touched the tattoo, a look on his face of wonder, and of loss. It was as if he'd been given his dearest wish, and in the same moment experienced a loss that would haunt him forever.

I heard metal rolling along rock. The sound made me turn. The chalice was rolling toward us, though the ground was utterly flat. I looked to the other side and found the spear of bone rolling from the other side. They were going to touch us at the same time.

"Hold on," I said.

"To what?"

"To me."

He grabbed my arms, and my hand was freed from his stomach. I grabbed his arms without thinking, putting the ring against his bare skin, again. Sometimes Goddess pulls us by the hand down our path, and sometimes she gets behind us and pushes off the cliff edge.

We were about to be pushed.