Page 29 of The Traitor's Curse
It had been that kind of year, that kind of reign, that kind of life. Perhaps I’d pass out in my plate and find blessed, temporary oblivion before I could think any more about what it meant that Benedict had fucked me, that he’d forced his cock down my throat while I sat on my throne, that I’d spent like his whore while he used me, that I found him—
No. Wine. And both my half-formed revelations and the court knowing he and I were lovers would be a problem for future, hung over Lucian.
Wine. Much, much more wine. And if I did pass out, Benedict could fucking well carry me to bed and pour me into it.
Chapter Ten
“Stop wriggling,” Benedict said, and then grunted as I shifted sideways, my elbow knocking hard into his ribs. He tightened his grip and managed to dig his fingers into mine, and I yelped and flailed, knocking us both sideways.
The hallway spun dizzyingly around me, my feet slipping, and we stumbled through the door of my bedchamber together, Benedict steering us as I laughed and did my best to tumble onto the floor.
Instead I landed on my back with a soft thump, my head bouncing.
Oh, gods, too much wine. I squeezed my eyes closed until everything settled, from the universe around me to my stomach.
My bed. I’d made it to my bed.
Benedict had carried me here and poured me into it after all, despite my best efforts to send us both sprawling. Of course, he’d only gotten me as far as lying sideways with my legs hanging off, but I had to give him credit where it was due.
I blinked and found him staring down at me, gray eyes wide.
Not angry, the way I’d expected. But—open, wanting something—he shook his head and drew back, expression shuttering, but I reached up and caught him by the front of his shirt, clinging on for dear life.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I demanded, not even slurring my words. Well, maybe a tiny bit. “Who’s going to fightoff all the assassins if you leave me here alone?”
He stilled, leaning down over me with one hand braced on the bed and the other trapped under my waist. The candles in the branch by the bed had burned down to stubs while we ate, shedding only a faint flickering glow on the side of his face.
Candlelight flattered everyone, but it made Benedict look like the gorgeous subject of yet another modern artist’s experimental portraiture. The sharp line of his nose and the angle of his jaw, his firm lips fading into shadow, the golden gleam in his eye, all of it held me spellbound. His heart pounded away under my hand. Wine could do that, but probably not to a mage who could drink every soldier in Calatria under the table.
A warm, lazy, melting need unfurled inside me, between my legs, spreading through me like a drug. Perhaps I did need to indulge my appetites more often: for food, for wine, for being fucked within an inch of my life by my detestable stepbrother.
He didn’t seem so very detestable right at this moment, honestly, and I could quite happily blame the wine for that as well as for my loose-limbed sprawl.
I let go of his shirt with one hand and tried to smooth out the wrinkles I’d left in it, patting clumsily at his chest. Mmm, he had such a hard chest. Patting turned into…petting. And tracing the outlines of his pectoral muscles with my fingers.
Benedict let out a strange, choked sound, and he yanked his hand out from under me and reached up to catch my wrist, tugging my hand away from his chest.
“I’m not leaving you alone,” he said, voice rough with—probably annoyance at my drunken antics. Wine brought such slow, unpleasant clarity. I’d forgotten about that side-effect. My skin burned where he touched me. “I’m going to stir up the fire. Give you a chance to get under the covers and sleep it off.”
My detestable stepbrother. Not so detestable when he held my hand like that, one thumb stroking the back of it,sending little ripples of heat down my arm, into my chest. Lower.
And not so much a stepbrother, maybe?
“Are we still stepbrothers when my father’s dead?” The words came out without any volition of mine, another blasted effect of the blasted wine. “He’s not married to your mother anymore. Of course, he actually loved her, unlike mine, and they didn’t divorce, so I suppose in the eyes of the gods—”
“Stop!” I blinked at him, arrested by the unexpected harshness of his tone. His chest rose and fell visibly as he sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. If he hadn’t moved my hand, I’d have been able to feel it, the way I could feel his thighs pressing against my dangling legs where he leaned against me. “Yes, we’re still stepbrothers in the eyes of the gods and the law and everyone we know.”
He looked down and up to my face again, his eyes lingering for a moment. I followed his glance. My robe had come partially undone, and only one loosened tie holding a fold of it in place preserved my tenuous grip on modesty. Candlelight flattered me, too, gilding my pale skin in a way that those stupid painters might have enjoyed, turning my sparse body hair into sparks of spun gold.
“Lucian,” he said more gently. “I’m sure he loved your mother as much as mine. We didn’t even meet until we were both grown men. If it bothers you—look, if it makes you feel better, your parents didn’t get a divorce in the temple, did they? I thought the marriage was just considered dissolved when she went into the convent. So maybe in some way, we were never stepbrothers at all. I don’t know, I’m not a bloody priest!”
That sudden stinging in my eyes…that had to be an effect of the wine too. But it came back to me as if it had happened only yesterday, the twist to my father’s mouth and the look in his eyes as he told me—in his cups himself, not that it excused anything—how it had been the best thing that ever happened to him whenhis first wife took herself off to a convent on a western island, leaving him, and me, and Calatria, behind. Joining a religious order meant she had to be celibate. The act had legally dissolved their marriage, although I supposed the theology of it might be a bit shaky. I’d been fifteen when she left and seventeen when he told me how glad he was that she’d gone.
“He didn’t,” I whispered. “He told me so. He never loved m—her. He never loved her. He had to marry her, because he’d gotten her with child and he needed an heir, and she was high-born enough that it made sense.” The stinging had become full-on burning, and my breath hiccuped in my chest. “Maybe we should ask her if she knows, since she’s a bloody priestess now. Except that I can’t, because she doesn’t answer my lett—”
The next syllable wouldn’t come, stuck in my throat like a barb. I turned my head and tried not to sob, but holding it inhurt, and I shook, and the world had gone spinny again, the bed undulating beneath me like an ill-trained horse.
And then Benedict was there, lying down beside me and pulling me into his arms, pressing my face to his chest and holding me tight. The scent of him enveloped me, his hands cradled me, and I sucked in long, shuddering breaths, tears leaking out on the exhales and sticking his dampened shirt to my cheek.
