Page 13 of The Traitor's Curse
“You could have knocked,” I snarled.
“The door was open,” Benedict said with a shrug, and prowled into the room, moving the way he did in the palace training yard when he circled his opponent, sword in hand, confident and focused.
I resisted the urge to edge away from him, even though my heart thudded against my ribs. All my nerves lit up, right down to my tingling fingertips. He’d catch me before I made it to the door. Besides, where would I go if I bolted?
The doctor had wanted light to examine the body, and three-branched candelabra blazed on the mantel and on the table by my bed. The fire Fabian had lit before he went for my wine added a flickering red to the mix, and Benedict’s eyes glinted unsettlingly as he moved closer.
Too close. Almost near enough to touch, as I stood there rooted to the floor, mute and with my head growing dangerously light.
Benedict had always looked at me like this: as if he could see something no one else could, the real man beneath the high rank and the fine silks and the arrogant dignity I clad myself in like armor every morning before I faced the world.
And he’d made it clear he thought that man amusing at best and contemptible the rest of the time. Not to mention in possession of a too-flat ass.
The very first time we’d met had been when he returned from a northern campaign, where he’d at the time been serving as a middle-rank officer, on the occasion of my father’s betrothal to Benedict’s mother. He’d stared at me for a long moment, smirked, and bowed not quite deeply enough, his pale eyes glittering like polished quartz in his bronzed face and his gaze never wavering from mine.
I know your secrets, his eyes had seemed to say.And I’m not impressed.
At twenty, I’d found battle-hardened twenty-six-year-oldBenedict intimidating in every possible way, and I’d resented that feeling, and him, with every fiber of my being. Eight long years of his mother trying to maneuver him onto my throne later, neither the resentment nor the fear that underlaid it had lessened in the slightest.
Benedict took a final step, bringing himself close enough to me that I could feel the heat of him and my eyes were level with his stubbled chin. My height had always been comfortably average, and I lived in the hopeful conviction that my willowy build made me look taller—but Benedict had always been able to make me feel small and vulnerable. That alone might have been enough to earn my wariness and dislike even if he hadn’t worked hard to ensure it.
When I forced myself to raise my eyes, I found his fixed on my face intently enough to make my breath catch.
If he hadn’t been close enough to prevent me from leaning forward, I might have doubled over from the sudden stabbing tightness in my abdomen.
I couldn’t do this. I simply couldn’t, no matter what I’d tacitly agreed to earlier in the evening. Benedict frightened me as a general and a councilor and a stepbrother, but as a man…he terrified me.
“It’s not too late to keep your assignation.” My voice quavered betrayingly, and I shoved my hands behind my back and balled them into fists to square my shoulders. “You don’t want me. You said so. There’s no pleasure here for either of us. Surely you’re honorable enough to do your duty without—this.”
Benedict shifted his weight, and an instant later his huge hands had slipped behind me and caught my wrists in their iron grip, pinning them at the small of my back. His expression didn’t change at all as he pulled down, tugging my shoulders far past square, forcing me to arch into him. Shifting my feet only put me off balance enough to stumble back and hit the wall.
I let out a gasp, and Benedict crowded into me, with the even harder wall of his body pressing against me in the front.
And getting harder still. He rolled his hips, and the impossibly thick bulge of his cock dug into my stomach.
“No. We’ve been over that,” he said, and squeezed my wrists, thumbs digging in, eyes flashing as I bit my lip and squirmed in his hold. The motion rubbed me against his erection and sent a new flash of heat through me.
Damn it.
“I didn’t mean to—I’m not trying to—”
“Climb on my cock like a needy little bitch?” Benedict put in smoothly, voice so low it vibrated in my chest. “Not to worry. I’ll let you.”
“Letme? You—let me go!”
To my utter shock, he did. The painful tug on my shoulders released as he stepped back and away, leaving my wrists stinging and me swaying against the wall.
Benedict crossed his arms, fingers flexing as if my skin had left the same burning mark on him that he had on me.
“I’m not going to force myself on you,” he gritted out, jaw tight. “But you know damn well I’m the only man in Calatria who can protect you. That’s why you came to my door. And I get something in return. That’s how this works.”
“Because you say so?” I demanded, fists clenched. “Because you’re going to chain me to my bed and rule through me the way you threatened you would before you went away?”
The words hung in the air between us, far more than I’d intended to say. Because if I’d remembered every word he’d spoken to me that morning, that might give him the impression that he mattered to me.
And he didn’t. Not as a man. Not as anything but a potential rival for my throne.
Slowly, ever so slowly, some of the tension that had beenrolling off of Benedict in nearly visible waves started to dissipate.
