Page 11 of The Captive's Curse
My life at home had been somewhat circumscribed and limited, and what traveling I’d done had been dull and safe. Until this moment, in short, my dream to compose the next song that would take the courts and taverns by storm and make my reputation had been on hold until I could do or see something worthy of being immortalized.
I’d probably never have another opportunity like this: to incorporate my own experiences into a new historical ballad.
And I’d be leaving by the end of the day, in all likelihood. Enzo had told me last night that he’d sent his ransom demand, and the messenger didn’t have far to travel, either there or back again.
I popped to my feet, all concerns about the stability of the wall or the possibility of plummeting to my death forgotten. Leander had refused to give me more than an infuriatingly tantalizing hint, but surely someone in this place had looser lips. And although there were people about, this castle would’ve held hundreds more in its heyday. It wasn’t exactly crowded. I could reconnoiter, get the general layout, and then sneak my way into whatever looked like the oldest part of the structure. If I found Vincenzo’s own chamber…some relic of his life…
Gods, my reputation would be made. I could go to Queen Lessandra’s court, put our family name on everyone’s lips, be lauded and petted by the court and the masses alike. If I really pleased the queen, perhaps she’d finally pay attention to Bruno’s petition regarding putting some royal funds into repairing parts of the pass where rocks had made the road treacherous and tricky.
My fingers itched for the strings of my lute, or for a pencil and a bit of paper to scrawl down the ideas that had begun to spring up in droves.
Humming the first few notes of my work in progress, I strode for the stairs, barreling through the doorway—and bouncing off of a hard chest with a yelp, flailing backward and landing squarely on my ass.
“Ow!” I glared up at Enzo accusingly as he stepped out of the stairwell, entirely composed and not even stumbling. Fuck, that hurt. My poor, bruised fundament hadn’t even had time to recover from my fall off Agnethe. The smarting pain of it rose up through my hips and spread down into my thighs. “You couldn’t have caught me?”
He shrugged. “I’d have tried if you were about to go down the stairs, but I didn’t think you’d fall over like a ninepin on level ground. How was I to know you’re as clumsy off a horse as on one?”
Crimson washed through my vision, nearly obscuring his raised eyebrows and the sardonic curl of his lips.
“I hate heights, and this miserable battlement hardly counts as level ground. Besides, how was I to know you’re as much of a huge fucking prick at home as you are kidnapping people in the woods?” I snarled back. “My ass hurts!”
Enzo opened his mouth, closed it again, and then quickly passed a hand over his face, pulling it away to reveal a composed expression but suspiciously glittering eyes.
“If your ass hurts,” he said, and his lips twitched. “If your—then you shouldn’t—keep your ass away from huge fucking pricks and it won’t hurt so much, fuck,” he finished in a rush, and then burst out laughing.
Oh, gods. I hadn’t said that. Except that I had! Fuck.
“Go to hell,” I choked out, torn between the helpless chuckle rising up in my own chest and pure, shining fury. “You—your prick’s probably tiny anyway. My ass wouldn’t even notice! I mean—damn it,” I said, as he doubled over, hands braced on his knees, practically howling, his mirth echoing out over the battlements and ringing through the mountains and probably carrying all the way to the fucking river, for all I knew. “That’s not what I meant! You know that’s not—stop laughing at me!”
“Oh, fuck,” he wheezed, finally pushing up off his knees and standing upright, his cheeks red and his eyes shining, white teeth flashing in a broad grin. “I haven’t laughed like that in—fuck.” He reached down a hand. “Come on, let’s get you off your painful ass.”
Struggling to get up without help, all bruised and stiff, wouldn’t be worth the satisfaction of refusing his hand. So I laid mine in it, and he drew me to my feet without any apparent effort at all. I blinked away the rush of blood to my head, and the world coalesced into a pair of deep, dark eyes fixed on mine. He still had my hand in his. I tugged, and he tightened his hold.
His hand wasn’t really all that much bigger than mine; I had long, clever fingers, my tendons stretched and strengthened through playing a lute for hours a day. But he had a swordsman’s muscles and grip. I wouldn’t escape without injury if I tried to fight to make him release me.
“You’re not actually that bruised, you know,” he said, his voice low and close. Intimate. His face was only a foot from mine. A chill breeze whistled over the battlements, but I could still feel the heat of him. “I got a pretty good look last night.”
Had Enzo leaned even nearer? I had to swallow to clear the heavy lump in my throat, but it did nothing at all about the tightness down low in my stomach.
Or the slight stir of my cock. Gods, that little bastard. He had no judgment at all.
He didn’t mind Enzo being my dangerous captor, or a sarcastic dick. And my cock and I both noticed the breadth ofEnzo’s shoulders, the coiled power in his stance, the faint, steel-and-salt scent of him. The way he loomed over me. It should’ve frightened or irritated me.
It didn’t.
“I thought you said you’d need to inspect it more closely to see if I had bruises,” I said, voice betrayingly husky—making my words sound like an invitation, rather than a retort. Damn it.
Silence fell for a long, poised moment, even the wind settling down and holding its breath as Enzo stared at me, his grip on my hand almost painfully hard.
And then he dropped it like it’d burned him, stepping back so quickly I almost stumbled and fell over again. He leaned casually against the wall, hands in his coat pockets, as if he’d been there all along. I hadn’t imagined the way he’d glanced down at my lips for a split second, had I? Surely I hadn’t. I shivered in the wind and tugged my own coat around myself more tightly.
“I also told you I didn’t have any interest in doing so,” he said coldly, and I couldn’t read anything at all in his tone or his face. He’d blanked his expression completely. “But you can ask our healer to take a look if you’re worried about it. Or whatever physician you see at home, because I think you’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
That drove every other thought out of my head. “A few minutes?” I demanded. My mind ran in frantic circles. I couldn’t precisely ask to come back to visit, could I? “Did your messenger return?”
“He’s on the road below. The lookout saw him. I came to fetch you so we could meet him together and get you on your way as quickly as possible. And what the hell are you doing up here, anyway?”
Damn it, did he know I’d been snooping?
