Page 19 of The Captive's Curse
Even if it did, I’d be putting some poor bastard at risk of getting hung from the wall by his toes.
“Finn didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, and quailed inwardly as Enzo started to frown again, eyes gleaming unsettlingly in the flickering torchlight. “I mean, maybe he did according to your absurd rules if your men aren’t supposed to—fraternize. But he certainly wasn’t coercing me.” Curiosity won over common sense. “Why did you think he was, anyway?”
“You looked like you were trying to get away from him,” Enzo said bluntly.
I blinked. I thought I’d hidden my discomfort perfectly. Finn certainly hadn’t seemed to detect my lack of enthusiasm,and I didn’t think he’d been overlooking it on purpose; he wasn’t an asshole. He simply hadn’t noticed.
But Enzo had. He’d been paying attention to me.
That horrid flutter had come back, only now it seemed to be growing, moving up into my throat, making it hard for me to speak without sounding all breathy and foolish. Gods, how could it be so warm in here? There wasn’t any source of heat.
“No,” I said, because I couldn’t possibly admit I’d been…waiting for a better offer. That taking Finn to bed had felt wrong, no matter how much I tried to deny it to myself. “I wasn’t. I was flirting with him, enjoying the company of an attractive man. Also, I’m a dawn mage. You know that. And it’s that time. I need to take someone to bed tonight, because my curse will probably take effect tomorrow, so whatever your problems are with ‘fraternizing,’ you’re going to have to make an exception.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Enzo said, taking a step forward that had me stumbling back. He stopped dead. “I’m not going to fucking—damn it.” He passed a hand over his face. “Hurt you. You already have my word. But you got thrown out of your family’s home for this kind of nonsense, and they won’t take you back, and now I’m stuck with you. I’m not going to put up with it here. I’m tempted to put you over my knee and teach you a lesson about behaving yourself in someone else’s castle.”
“Teach me,” I gasped, balling my hands into fists to resist the reflexive urge to cover my own ass with them and protect it from his depredations. “Over your—you’re out of your mind!”
He had such big hands. Each echoing slap would cover a whole cheek, if not more. His sword calluses would scrape my delicate skin. I’d be face down, kicking my feet, shoving futilely at the floor or…the bed, if he was sitting on the edge of a bed,hisbed, full of the scent of him…
My own low little moan startled me back out of my vivid fant—nightmare. My vivid, wakingnightmare, of being assaulted by my cruel captor, pinned in his lap, stripped bare.
Enzo’s mouth had dropped open and his eyes had turned to black, gleaming pools.
“You know what?” he said hoarsely. “I’ll apologize to Finn for biting his head off. Whatever was happening between you two, I believe you when you say it was your fault.”
My fault. My eyes stung. Gods, this simply wasn’t fair. I hadn’t said it was my fault! Because I hadn’t been doing anything wrong, no matter how uncomfortable I’d felt about it. Just like I hadn’t at home.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I whispered. “I didn’t know who was under that mask.”
“Finn wasn’t wearing a—” Enzo stopped abruptly, his face going blank, as he realized—at the same moment I did—that I hadn’t been talking about Finn at all. “You didn’t know about my rule,” he said evenly. Too evenly. Controlled with an effort. “But now you do. And no using your curse as an excuse. Take your potions and live with it while you’re here. I know twilight mages don’t like losing access to their magic, and I don’t blame you for feeling that way, but that’s how it’s going to be for now. And your…other needs are simply going to have to remain unsatisfied.”
“That’s the thing, I can’t take potions,” I said, choosing not to respond to the rest of it except by clenching my teeth.
Talking to Enzo was much easier when I ignored, or pretended to ignore, more than half of what came out of his mouth. For example, if I’d had the good sense to ignore the bit about putting me over his knee and teaching me a lesson, I might not be breathing quite so hard, my cock tucked uncomfortably to the side in my too-tight trousers and the rest of my lower torso gone all hot and molten.
“Bullshit,” he said flatly, jaw tight. “Leander saw you open the chest of your things. He said you were relieved when you found your potions inside, and that I wouldn’t need to worry about you falling ill.”
“I doubt you were worried in the first place,” I snapped. “And I have no idea how he got that idea. I don’t have any potions!”
“He was there, Lord Cyril! Don’t try to lie to me. He said you were glad you weren’t going to die, because your brother sent your potions. If you think you can get away with—”
It finally twigged. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I snarled, goaded past any vestige of patience. “My lute! I’d have died if Bruno hadn’t sent mylute! I was so relieved to see her. There aren’t any fucking potions, and you can search my things if you want to be an unbelievable ass about it, and then admit that you were wrong. But do it quickly, because I’m not sure when I’m going tofall ill, as you put it, and that’s really an oddly tactful way for the man who accused me of getting myself off with vegetables to describe writhing in pain and burning up from the inside out and begging any man who can hear me to—”
“Look, if he—”
“Fuck me up the ass!” I shouted, and the words echoed and echoed, round and round, in the little stone chamber. Enzo stared at me, seemingly struck dumb. Well, finally. Nothing else had accomplished the end of his continual interruptions. “There are no potions,” I said at a normal volume. “They make me sick. I haven’t been able to take them for years.”
Enzo’s expression morphed from anger, to shock, to something like anger again, and then finally to a stony-faced stillness I couldn’t read at all.
I couldn’t interpret his tone, either, when he said, “How often do you need—I know all twilight mages are different, aren’t you? You know what I mean.”
“About ten days?” I shrugged. “I don’t like to think about it. Counting down to it, living my life obsessing over it.” Some mages kept to a rigid schedule, planning everything in their lives around keeping track of their cycles down to the hour or even the minute. But I didn’t want to dedicate nearly that much energy to that one aspect of my existence. Ennolu had fucked me over at birth. I refused to give him the satisfaction of wasting my life fussing about it. “So I never let more than a few days go by without enjoying myself in a way that keeps the curse at bay.”
His mouth quirked up at one corner, but he didn’t relax at all; if anything, his shoulders seemed to tense even further, and one of his hands curled into a fist at his side.
“That’s an oddly tactful way to describe getting fucked up the ass for someone who just screamed ‘Fuck me up the ass’ loudly enough to be heard all the way in the great hall.”
I lifted my chin and did my damnedest to look down my nose at him despite our height difference not being at all in my favor. “I’m surprised they’re not beating down the door,” I said. “They should be so lucky.”
