Page 66 of The Traitor's Curse
Oh. Well, then. Hopefully the flush left over from being thoroughly fucked after all would hide my fresh blush of pleasure.
“But Benedict—”
“Don’t ‘but Benedict’ me, Lucian. I also trust you. You’retoo honorable by half. That’s why I came back, and I know you’ve wondered.” I had, losing sleep over it nearly every night since. “You probably thought I was plotting against you. But it was making me sick thinking about you muddling along with no one there who’d be willing to kill for you, and it wasn’t like you’d actually mount any heads on spikes, even if they bloody well deserved it.”
“You really came home to protect me?” I couldn’t quite believe it. Everything I thought I’d known about him had been turned on its head, and not always for the best, but this particular claim strained my credulity to the breaking point. “You didn’t act like it.”
“I retook control of the army and kept an eye on your council and your enemies, and I’ve always been loyal to you, no matter what you thought. So yes, I did act like it. You simply didn’t believe it. You can’t blame me for your own misconceptions.”
“I can’t blame—you,” I sputtered, laughing in sheer disbelief at his extraordinary nerve. “You’ve always acted like you didn’t like me a whit more than I liked you. You’ve mocked and threatened me, Benedict! And for the gods’ sakes, when I did come to you for help, you fucking blackmailed me! You forced me to—to—”
“Take my cock any way I wanted to put it in you?” he suggested, blinking at me innocently, as if he meant to behelpful.
“I’ll show you taking your cock,” I hissed, and I bore down, squeezing my inner muscles in a way that would have made him slide out of me…if he hadn’t still been half hard. “Oh, gods, are you even human?”
And getting harder, as he grinned at me, rocking his hips, stirring my insides in a way that had me biting my lip and quivering under him, trying not to moan like a slut.
“Well, you can’t blame me for that, either,” he said, shrugging. “Look at you, you’re—I love you. I couldn’t resist the temptation to have you any way I could get you. Besides, I knew you were protesting too much, and if you’d really put up a convincing fight I’d have done whatever you wanted anyway.”
I stared up at him, frozen with outrage, as he started to fuck me again, nudging me up the bed, eyes fixed on my face with a look in them that—gods, he really did love me, didn’t he? And every thrust made an obscene squelching sound as he fucked his spend right back into me, and I’d gripped onto his arms and braced my feet to take him again, and—I’d been protesting far too much.
“I trust you too,” I said, because anything else would have to wait until I’d slept, and eaten, and slept again, and buried Tavius, and accepted that I loved the man who’d murdered the father who’d never loved me.
Benedict’s rhythm faltered, and for a moment he gazed down at me in shock, expression as open and vulnerable as I’d ever seen it.
“That’s all I can ask for,” he said.
I tugged him down into my arms and kissed him, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him closer, deeper, until I couldn’t feel where he ended and I began.
For tonight, there was nothing else I could ask for, either.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Benedict slipped out of bed in the morning before dawn had even managed to break through the rain clouds, when my bedroom still lay shrouded in the world’s most enervating gloom.
“Umph,” I managed, and curled into the warm spot he’d left behind.
He glanced over his bare shoulder from where he’d crouched by the fireplace, smiled at me, and went back to effortlessly lighting a new pile of kindling with a snap of his fingers. The flames crackled around the logs he set on top, throwing out enough light to limn all his muscles. Mmm. All right. That might be worth keeping my eyes open for a bit.
And he loved me.
Oh, that was strange, and it didn’t feel particularly real, either.
He’d killed Tavius, and my father. Yes, that would also take some getting used to. The stab of pain somewhere under my solar plexus might take much longer to get used to, or to fade, depending. My love for Tavius would almost certainly be more lasting than my anger at his betrayal, and I knew I’d wake with a sudden shock of grief for a long time, mourning what could’ve been. After my mother left, it’d been three years before it didn’t hurt every morning.
I rolled onto my back and winced as all my very, very well-used flesh tugged with the motion, and winced again asmore of Benedict’s spend seeped out of me.
That, at least, I’d enjoy getting used to.
Blinking at the canopy above me only made my eyes sting and my temples ache.
“Go back to sleep,” Benedict said quietly, and I blinked again to find him leaning over me. He bent and kissed me so quickly I couldn’t even kiss him back, and then was already rummaging on the floor for his clothes. “I’m going to get a report from Venet. Take a walk through the palace, down to the barracks. See if everything seems as it ought to be.” He cleared his throat. “Let you wake up in your own time.”
I should probably send word to Mattia. Or simply get out of bed, as a duke with endless responsibilities needed to do no matter how few hours of sleep he’d had the night before, or how many of his relatives he’d seen die.
Fuck it.
I nodded and closed my eyes, and a moment later Benedict shut the door softly behind him.
