Page 41 of The Traitor's Curse
The luxurious velvet of his doublet caressed the head of my cock, so soft, and the edge of a band of silver-thread embroidery caught on the ridge of my glans, not enough to hurt, but enough. More than enough.
I spent first, ruining his doublet and my own silk waistcoat.
He spent a moment later, ruining me, filling me so deeply I didn’t think I’d ever be free of him.
Benedict dropped his head onto the bed beside mine, shuddering with an aftershock of his pleasure. His cock twitched inside me. My little sigh sounded more like a sob.
“I’ll go start your bath running in a moment,” he said, muffled by the bedding. “One moment.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Horrid. Marrying him, spending the rest of our lives like this, would be horrid and impossible and awful, although we didn’t need to be married to spend every night—but no.
No.
Impossible. He’d said so.
And I wouldn’t start desperately rationalizing, arguing my way to a different conclusion to this, even inside my own mind, because if I did that I’d have to think about why I would even try in the first place.
“Lucian? Are you all right?”
Impossible.
“Yes,” I said.
No.
But I’d lost the game, and that was that.
Chapter Fourteen
The clatter of hooves, the shout of a groom, and then a booming laugh in the courtyard below shook me out of my concentration on my paperwork, and I lifted my head and blinked at the clock on my desk. Half past eleven. Government officials had been in and out, singly and in groups, the Surbini ambassador had dropped by to ambush me with more issues with the trade agreement—in the guise of thanking me for the party the night before, of course.
Other than that, Mattia had brought piles of paper and taken them away again, and nearly four hours had passed without my pausing to do more than refresh my cup of coffee.
Benedict had examined the pot, the cup, and the cream and sugar when he left me in my study shortly after eight, and had promised to be back before noon to see to my lunch. We hadn’t spoken except for brief, practical exchanges.
We’d been mostly quiet the night before, too, after we’d finished in bed. He’d run my bath for me, laid out the bathmat, and then made himself scarce in my sitting room, all without saying a word.
The silence had given me more time than I’d wanted to think. I’d always either done those things for myself or had a servant take care of them, and it had never even occurred to me how intimate they were.
As soon as ithadoccurred to me, I’d done my best to drive the thought out of my mind, which left a lovely vacancyinto which vivid recollections of dancing with Benedict, being all but carried out of the ballroom by Benedict, and being fucked within an inch of my life by Benedict could rush. Any remaining space in my mind was filled by the laughter of my courtiers. The result had been a mostly sleepless night, made all the more unbearable by the need to remain still and not draw Benedict’s attention to my restlessness.
Work had been something of an escape this morning, but now whoever had decided to cause this disruption had ruined that for me too, damn it.
That laugh broke out again as I approached the window, and this time I recognized it, though I could hardly believe my ears. I knew who I’d see before I looked out: my cousin Tavius dismounting from his horse, his servants and guards doing the same all around him, the courtyard swarming with palace staff coming out to get them settled.
Oh, gods. Tavius? Why in the world would he have come here? Now, of all times?
Fuck. Of course. It’d been twelve days since my liaison with Benedict had become public gossip, and in that time someone had written to Tavius. And of course he’d come at once, probably determined to protect me from Benedict, whom he’d always detested. He’d almost certainly made the same assumptions that I had at first: that Benedict meant to kill me, usurp the throne, fuck me into compliance, or use magic on me, in whatever sequence seemed most convenient to him.
Tavius would be furious with me for what he’d see as self-destructive weakness and folly.
My stomach sank with disappointment and dread, and then curdled with guilt an instant later.
I ought to have wanted to see him. I ought to have been thrilled! The sons of two close sisters, Tavius and I had grown up practically like brothers, as my mother had taken me onlong, frequent visits to Tavius’s parents’ estate throughout my childhood. Only a few months older than me, Tavius had always been bigger and stronger—but he’d never used it against me. Quite the contrary. We’d learned to swim together in a pond a quarter mile from the manor, and when I’d been out of my depth, Tavius had let me ride on his back until I gained the confidence to strike out on my own. I’d always trusted him to look out for me.
But his mother and mine had some kind of falling out when Tavius and I were adolescents. We’d seen little of each other for several years and then picked up a relationship again throughout our teens and early twenties after my mother had gone to the convent, with me visiting him fairly often at his hunting lodge—including three years ago, when I’d spent that disappointing night with his friend.
