Page 65 of The Traitor's Curse
So I writhed, and moaned, and the coverlet grew damp under my cheek from saliva and the tears leaking out of my eyes—and then he pulled out completely, abruptly enough that I cried out as his exit tugged on my flesh.
A thunk of something falling to the floor had me glancingover my shoulder to find him undressing at a speed that almost equaled his magic trick. A soldier’s skill, perhaps—or one cultivated over decades of fucking everything that moved and then leaving in a hurry.
“Turn over,” he said, voice a little muffled as his tunic whipped over his head.
The sword belt and sword had been the sound I’d heard, and he had one of his boots off and flying across the room before his upper garments had hit the floor. The other boot went next, Benedict’s trousers falling down unimpeded.
He stepped out of them and stood before me completely, gloriously nude, from his impossibly broad shoulders to the sparse black hair on his muscular chest to…my eyes caught, unable to go lower than his cock, all shiny with the oil he’d summoned from the gods knew where, framed by the vee of muscle above his hipbones.
“Do I need to do everything myself?” he said, and I startled, eyes snapping up to his face.
He stalked forward, intent on me, transformed into a looming shadow by the dim candlelight.
Benedict climbed onto the bed, rolling me to my back as he did, crouching over me. A burst of rain gusted against the window, and the candles dipped in the draft, sending warm flickers over Benedict’s bold nose and firm jaw. His silvery eyes and the ruby hanging from his ear caught sparks of gold.
He reached up and stroked my hair back from my forehead, sliding his hand down to cradle my jaw, and then lower, to wrap around my throat and cup my chin, gently forcing it up. My pulse hammered against his fingers.
“What would you have done if I had kissed you when I came home?” he asked. “Kissed you until you stopped trying to argue with me. Or maybe gotten down on my knees and kissed your hands, like a lover. So no one watching would’ve had anydoubt what it meant.”
“What I,” I stammered. “What I would’ve done?”
Spent in my trousers, possibly. Or run away screaming. Or tried to shove him down the stairs.
His slow smile had a wicked little quirk to it. “I think you would’ve turned red and threatened to put my head on a spike over the gate. You seem to like that as a deterrent for your nobles. Not that you ever follow through. I could’ve sucked on your fingers right there in front of everyone.”
Sucked on my…I choked on any words that might have come out, and Benedict’s smile widened as he leaned down, pressing his lips to mine, keeping me in place as he explored my mouth, as if he had all the time in the world. As if our still-hard cocks weren’t kissing too, brushing against each other in a way that had me arching up and whimpering.
Perhaps we did have all the time in the world.
It struck me with startling, eye-opening force: Benedict and I would have this for the rest of our lives. Every night, month after month, year after year, so long as we managed not to be assassinated—but we’d take precautions against that in any case.
Of course, we could both survive long enough for him to change his mind. If he found a way out of this magical bond Tavius had forced on us, I’d help him in any way within my power. Anything else would simply be wrong.
Even if it broke my heart if he decided to leave me once he had a choice.
Benedict nibbled at my lower lip, the sensation spiraling all the way down between my legs, and I squirmed in his grip, spreading for him, clutching at his upper arms and feeling his muscles flex as he held me down.
At last he let go of my throat and broke the kiss to settle between my thighs, cock nudging behind my balls and then sliding smoothly in to fill me, as if he’d created a space insidethat fit him perfectly. I pulled one knee up, allowing him room to go deeper, to rock into me, to give me that sweet, singing ache deep within. He lowered himself down and let me take his weight, pressing kisses to my hair and my ear and my neck, my cock trapped between our bodies.
My fingers dug into the sweat-slicked muscles of his back, surging under my hands. Candlelight danced on the silk canopy of my bed, barely visible past his bulging shoulder when I threw my head back on a moan. He moved in me like the tide, irresistibly powerful, and I turned my face into his arm, mouth open on his skin, squeezing my eyes shut as my back bowed and I shook with one wave, and then another, and then a last convulsion as I turned inside out and spilled everything between us.
The low, bitten-off groan that Benedict made as he filled me almost could’ve been pain, and it drew a fourth shivering spasm out of me.
My head dropped back onto the bed. I sucked in breath after breath, my body going limp. I mustered the energy to gently scrape my fingernails up his spine and stroke my hand through his hair, making his big body shudder, glad he’d rested his forehead next to my head and couldn’t see the stupid, sappy little smile that had taken over my face.
Benedict stirred at last, pushing up onto his elbows. His hair had tangled into a wild mane, sticking up at odd angles, and it had no right to be quite so endearing. My heart gave a pathetic flutter.
“I love you,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if he’d said it a thousand times before and meant to say it again a million more. His lips quirked in a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a relief to say it, anyway. Even if you don’t love hearing it.”
We gazed at each other in silence for a long, longmoment. The warmth of his body surrounded me, and there was something else, too. His magic, its touch so soft, tickling senses I hadn’t even known I possessed and winding around me like a friendly cat—or perhaps that tiger from the storybook, the one that remained friendly only so long as it suited him to be kept in luxury and fed from a golden bowl.
I could take control of it if I wanted. It beckoned to me, showing me the way if I only had the will to do it. Benedict would fight me, though. The potion’s bond might not even be strong enough to overcome his resistance. Cornering a tiger would only make it infinitely more dangerous.
“Do you really trust me not to take over your magic?” I asked him at last, softly, into the hush of the night.
He shifted his weight, reaching up to lay his hand against the side of my face, stroking my temple with his thumb, smoothing it over my eyebrow. Perhaps my mother had touched me that gently, twenty years ago or more. But no one had since. It’d been so long that I’d forgotten how it felt to be loved—not only in the killing-people-to-protect-me way, though I appreciated that too, but tenderly. As if I were cherished and precious.
“It doesn’t matter if I trust you,” he said. “I belong to you. And no, don’t look like that, not because of that fucking potion. It’s nothing to do with what happened tonight. I belonged to you from the minute you curled your lip at me when I bowed to you, when we met. You were so beautiful and so contemptuous, and I’d never wanted to bend anyone over and fuck him so much in my life.”
