Page 59 of The Traitor's Curse
“Please, Benedict, please, don’t do—oh gods,” and I broke off in a wail as he forced me back down again, every inch of him opening me up and stretching my insides to fit.
And again, and again, until I toppled forward and lay across his chest, holding on as best I could while he pounded up into me.
It didn’t take him long to finish, his guttural cry echoing off the rafters as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pinned me there to take everything he had to give. My face rested against his collar bone, and the prickly stubble on his chin brushed my forehead when I tried to move. My own cock had gotten hard as iron while he wrecked me, but I hadn’t spent. And my state of quivering need magnified all the little sensations of being sprawled across him, spread open over him, of each of his fingers where they pressed against my back, of his cock still thick and heavy inside me.
There was something else, too, something I couldn’t begin to define: a prickling awareness, as if someone had brushed a feather over my mind or my soul, a faint warmth and intoxicating texture.
It ratcheted me up to an almost unbearable level of clenching arousal, and I squeezed around him, rocking back, grinding the sweet little spot inside me against the thick base of his cock, my own cock trapped between our abdomens. The head rubbed almost too roughly against a fold of his shirt.
“Lucian?” Benedict sounded as if he’d come out of a trance, his voice stronger than before and more alert. His arms tightened. “Oh fuck, Lucian,” he breathed, and thrust once with his hips, his half-hard cock pressing up into me.
I whimpered into his chest, open mouth catching on the linen of his shirt, as everything in me drew up tight: my balls andmy hole and my stomach and my chest, my cock spreading wet heat between us.
And as I went limp, letting everything go and drifting, that awareness blossomed into a powerful sensation that teased the edges of my consciousness, like bright sunlight seeping in around the sides of a heavy velvet curtain, almost more blinding for being only the thinnest line of illumination.
Under me, Benedict went rigid, hands almost bruising on my back.
The light grew stronger, wrapping around me, drawn to me, and I knew without thinking that I could manipulate it—pull it, hold it, and most crucially, not allow it to flow back where it had come from.
Back to Benedict.
It was Benedict’s magic, and the power and beauty of it stunned and overwhelmed me. How could his physical body contain all this? How could he not dazzle even the nonmagical eyes of everyone around him?
“Lucian,” he said, and now my name wasn’t an endearment, the way it had been a moment ago, but a tense, wary plea.
It took an effort of will to open my eyes and return to the real world, letting his magic fade from my sight—not because I wanted to keep it from him, but because I wanted to bask in it.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and pushed up, leaning on his chest on my elbows. “But I promise, I don’t want it. You’ll have to help me learn how this works, it’s very strange. But I have no desire to control it, or you. Please believe me.”
His expression softened, and his hands gentled on my back. “I do, actually. Do you believe me when I tell you I’ve never wanted your throne and title?”
Did I believe him? Yes, because he’d proven it, and in the worst possible way.
All at once, I couldn’t stand to be in Benedict’s arms anymore, with his half-soft cock still filling my hole, an odd, constant pressure.
“Well, I suppose I must, because you’re surely the only man in the history of the world to kill a reigning monarch to avoid being his heir,” I said. “Let me up, if you would.”
Benedict flinched as if I’d struck him across the face, lips pressed tight. Without a word, he let me go.
It was far less satisfying than I’d thought it would be. The urge to apologize, kiss away his unhappiness, and spend the rest of the night wrapped around him with the rest of the world held at bay rose up nearly irresistibly.
Climbing off of him made my chest ache.
My knees ached, too, and the indignity of climbing awkwardly to my feet with twinges in all my joints made my mixed emotions, guilt and regret and anger, so much worse.
“I need to clean up, dress, and see Captain Venet,” I said, reaching for my filthy clothing. The fraught silence felt unbearably thick, pressing in on me from every direction. “Tavius’s men will need to be questioned. And Clothurn.”
Benedict sat up, running his hands through his hair and pushing it back with none of his usual insouciance, motions heavy and slow. My heart gave another painful squeeze.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “You don’t need to be there for this. Venet and I will take care of it, and I’ll give you a thorough report.”
The temptation to leave it to Benedict nearly overwhelmed me. I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted less than to dress to ducal perfection, put on my unmoved, unemotional mask, and question hostile, wounded prisoners—and that nasty little viper Clothurn.
How many times had I sworn I’d never become my father, jailing and interrogating my lords and councilors? Of course,Clothurn had committed treason in the real world, not only in my paranoid imagination.
He’d also tried to forcibly bond with Benedict, an infinitely worse crime—morally, if not legally. Anyone might try to overthrow a ruler for a variety of rational reasons, but it took a uniquely loathsome type of scum to take pleasure in enslaving a man to your will by torturing him to death if he didn’t want to fuck you.
“No,” I said, and pulled my trousers up. “I doubt he’ll have much to say that we don’t already know, but he is one of my councilors. I have to question him myself, and do it tonight. It’s my responsibility.”
