Page 55 of The Captive's Curse
And perhaps I would have, if I hadn’t had the irrepressible urge to demand answers from this infuriating, contradictory man who’d tossed me out of his castle like so much garbage while insulting me, and then apparently…sat in a tree in the rain for three days waiting for a glimpse of me over Montefime’s walls.
If I allowed that—or his stated intent to kill anyone else who fucked me—to soften me up…oh, too late for that, much as I hated to admit it, but I could at least pretend to have a spine.
“I thought I was a loose, incompetent dawn mage who’d put my tongue anywhere, and that it didn’t matter to you who fucked me, because I’m not your problem,” I said, the words losing a bit of their force from being murmured softly into the warmth of his chest as he held me close. “But here you are. Or do you not mind that I’m such a slut, as long as it’s for you?”
Had I imagined it, that he went subtly tense against me as I spoke? His silence went on long enough that I had time to notice the call of a bird, the brush of the wind through the pine needles above us, my own heartbeat.
“I didn’t say any of that,” he said at last, and then as I let out a scoffingHah!of protest, amended that to, “I didn’t say most of that. Fuck, I implied a lot of it, and I shouldn’t have. I don’t—Lord Cyril, I don’t think you’re a slut, because that’s not a word that anyone—you can fuck anyone you want. That doesn’t say anything about your character. It might apply if you’d suckedyour cousin’s fiancé’s cock on purpose, I guess. But the gods only know that blaming you for needing a cock when you’ll die without it, fuck, I’d never think that. Never.”
He paused to draw a deep breath, and for once I forced myself to bite my lip and wait for him to finish. If I interrupted him now, he might stop apologizing.
At last he said, “Beatrice was so angry with me for sending you home without giving her a chance to say farewell to you. Apparently you charmed everyone. Her son cried. I felt like a monster. I promised them I’d tell you—the whole place felt darker after you left. For them, I mean! For them. Anyway, everyone misses you.” He stopped abruptly.
Everyone?
“I miss them too,” I ventured, heart pounding—and not because of Beatrice. “You see? Some people like me. Is that why you’re really here, then? To pass on a message from your cook?”
“No,” he said, reluctantly, as if he wished he could remain silent, or lie. “I don’t know why I couldn’t control myself. Why I couldn’t stay away. But I had to come. The thought of you turning to another man to give you what you needed made me—I feel like you’ve put a spell on—damn it!”
Oh, how dare he!
I tipped my head back on his arm and glared up at—his chin, because he was staring out over my head and frowning like a thundercloud.
“How dare you,” I hissed. “Enzo, damn you, look at me!”
I poked him in the chest, hard. And then again, until he leaned back and met my eyes. Something wild gleamed in their black depths that spelled danger or…something else I couldn’t bring myself to try to define. Either way, I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, if I ever really had been. Annoyed and furious, yes. Afraid, no.
“How am I supposed to have put you under some evil spell when I’m such a terribly useless mage, hmm? You can’t have it both ways!” All at once, I remembered what Beatrice had told me about the Mad Lord and his imprecations against the woman who’d cursed him—for good reason, as far as I could tell. “You sound like that asshole ghost, Enzo, moaning about his bitch of a witch wife who used her magic to make him marry her. Well, she didn’t. He chose to marry her. And you chose to come here and fuck me. You can’t blame me for your actions!”
I’d expected Enzo to argue with me as he always did, or to make a rude remark about my magical skill.
But he didn’t say a word, although his mouth dropped open. I watched in fascination as all the color drained out of his face, his eyes gone wide with shock.
“I sound like…” he whispered at last, and swallowed hard, throat working. “I’m nothing like him. I’m—that’s—” He stammered into silence, and then abruptly let go of me, wrenching his arm out from under my head and rolling onto his back to stare up at the trees, leaving me cold and horribly confused.
Pushing up on an elbow and impatiently brushing my tangled hair out of my eyes gave me a better view of his face, but it didn’t help much with understanding what was going on in that stupid thick skull of his. Enzo’s jaw had set hard, and his eyes gave nothing away.
“That’s what?” I demanded irritably.
Of course no one would relish a comparison to Mad Lord Vincenzo, but his reaction seemed out of proportion to the cause. And his withdrawn silence irked me.
At last he sighed, shook his head, and met my eyes. Something had shifted in their depths, and settled in his expression: as if he’d made up his mind.
“I know you didn’t enchant me with magic,” he said. “You wouldn’t have bothered using it to seduce me. You’d have turned me into a goat.”
I sniffed and glared at him down my nose. “I don’t need magic to enchant or seduce anyone. And anyway, you’re the one who insisted on taking me to bed. I was going to sleep with Finn, thank you.”
“No, you weren’t.” His tone held absolute finality. “And also…no, you really don’t.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “That was my point. I shouldn’t have suggested otherwise, Your Very Naturally Enchanting Lordship.”
“Well, good,” I said, flustered and a bit nonplussed and feeling my cheeks going hot. No matter how true it was, I hadn’t expected him to admit it so frankly. But while I much preferred “very naturally enchanting” to the other mocking names he’d invented for me… “You could probably call me Cyril.”
“Oh, could I?” His eyes sparked with something that was, this time, most certainly danger. A moment later I found myself flat on my back, Enzo looming over me. “Could I really?”
Oh, the tone of his voice meant I was in trouble…I swallowed hard, my cock going even harder.
“Yes,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, though the slight tremor to my voice probably gave me away. “I think I’m willing to allow it. Although I may revoke the privile—”
Enzo cut me off by swooping down and pressing his mouth to mine, kissing any further words from my parted lips.
