Page 12 of The Traitor's Curse
“Don’t finish that sentence,” he said softly, his words wrapping around me like drugged temple incense, his tone the same as it had been earlier when he’d spoken directly into my ear with magic from across the courtyard. He hemmed me in, his strong arms to either side of me as unbreakable as iron bars. “You’ll only need to break your oath later. You will do it. Or you can go back to your rooms, arrange Fabian’s body on your own, and take your bloody chances by yourself the next time someone comes to cut your throat. And I’ll go bend Clothurn over his bed and make him squeal, and forget all about you.”
A flash of something went through Benedict’s eyes. Not his magic this time…and I sucked in a breath, everything below my waist tightening up. And worse. My cock twitched. Gods. Fear or anger could rouse a man. I knew that. Iknewit. But I’d never experienced it before.
“You’re bluffing,” I whispered.
He leaned even closer, and the hair rose on the back of my neck. His mouth was only a whisper from my tingling lips, he’dtake my mouth, I’d have to fight him, and he’d win… “You don’t want to find out. I’m tempted. He has a much nicer ass than yours. Rounder. Yours is too flat.”
My eyes popped open. When had they half closed? And there was Benedict, eyes gleaming with mockery, lips curled in a matching smile.
“Fuck you, Benedict,” I hissed, past the point of forming intelligent rejoinders.
He shoved off the chair and up, putting his hands on his hips and perfectly displaying the breadth of his shoulders and chest and the endless length of his tree-trunk legs, the only part of him actually covered by fabric.
Well, not quite the only part. The bulge between his absurd legs had black cloth stretched across it, too, but that didn’t do much to hide either the size of it or the way it’d grown a bit in response to bullying and coercing me.
At least, I hoped it’d grown. I already knew he had the personality of a sea slug and the character of a rabid goat, so I wouldn’t be shocked if his sexual preferences were horrid. But if that was what it looked like completely soft…no wonder he expected to make Clothurn squeal.
“Yes,” Benedict said. “I will fuck you. Tonight, in fact. Once I send Clothurn a message to let him know our assignation is permanently canceled, and after we’ve taken care of the skull and the blood and the wine stains. Up and moving, Lucian. I’ll do most of the work, but I’m not leaving you here to have the vapors while I take care of all of it. I meant it when I said I’m keeping you in my pocket from now on.”
The vapors? Fuck him twice. When I pushed to my feet, my knees held me without shaking at all. Vapors, ha.
Benedict snatched a shirt off of another chair—and why the hell couldn’t he have put that on before now, the exhibitionist asshole?—and flung the door open.
“After you,” he said, and stuck his arms through the shirt.
Tonight. Fucking me. Surely he’d change his mind. It didn’t seem real, a nightmare that had begun with the sound of Fabian’s groan and from which I couldn’t seem to break free.
I turned and strode out, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see me trembling.
Chapter Five
It took more time than I’d expected to move Fabian and adjust the placement of the blood and wine. I’d assumed, foolishly, that Benedict would simply follow my instructions and assist.
But I should’ve known better. He examined the room first, much as I had done, while I stood shifting from chilled foot to chilled foot, finally giving up and going into my dressing room—which Benedict then rushed over and insisted on inspecting before I could go in, despite my protests that I’d already done that—to shed my damp dressing gown and pull on a pair of trousers and a wool tunic.
By the time I found my slippers, he’d knelt down by Fabian’s body, sniffing the wine goblet and frowning, leaning far closer to Fabian’s face than I’d have wanted to. He put a finger in the wine and went still, magic crackling around him.
“It is poisoned,” he said after a long moment.
“Yes, of course it is,” I snapped. “And Fabian looks just like—he did.”
Benedict glanced up sharply. “Like your father,” he said, in a tone I couldn’t begin to parse. “Is that what you mean? No. It’s not the same. I mean, I don’t think it is. Stop distracting me.”
Of course it was most likely to be the same—which confirmed, to my grim satisfaction, that Fabian had died due to his belief that I’d murdered my own father—and I’d argue with him about it later, but he’d gone back to his magic, laying a handon Fabian’s chest and concentrating.
Finally, finally he finished, and we got on with it, Benedict making himself scarce while I called out for the guards, saying that he wouldn’t go far.
As if that would reassure me, given his threats about his perquisites.
The court physician arrived to do his own examination, and the undertakers came to carry the body away. It dragged on and on, the wind whisking away the clouds and then the moon setting through their ragged remnants, leaving the dregs of the night as black as pitch.
I stood staring out at the darkness through the window beside my bed, affecting a ducal unconcern as the doctor followed the sheet-draped remains of my valet out of the room. Yawning would go far past stoicism and into callousness, though. My jaw ached with the effort, but I managed to refrain.
Despite my exhaustion, my body thrummed with tension, with sickening dread. Benedict would be back at any moment. Presumably he’d sent Clothurn a message, hopefully not mentioning that he meant to use me as his erstwhile lover’s replacement.
You’ll take my cock and my spend and my magic’s curse as often as I tell you to.A shiver ran down my spine, and that finally triggered the yawn I couldn’t suppress anymore, my teeth chattering. A chill had settled into my bones that had nothing to do with the thickness of my clothing. I wrapped my arms around my torso, giving in to weakness for a moment while I had no one to witness it.
“Doctor Serrano may have had his suspicions, but I think he’ll keep them to himself,” Benedict said from behind me, and I startled badly and banged into the window frame, spinning around with a curse on my lips.
