Page 8

Silence fell. Benedict didn’t move. I braced myself, gripping the armrests of the throne, sitting up painfully straight with all my muscles rigid.

He still didn’t move.

When he spoke it made me jump, and all the breath I’d been holding whooshed out and dizzied me.

“I’m not sure what to do with you,” he said in a meditative tone that absolutely terrified me. He slid his hand under my robes again, tickling the tips of his fingers up the back of my leg to my knee, sending flickering sparks of sensation along all my overstrained nerves and making me twitch. My breath quickened. The muscles in my lower abdomen clenched almost painfully.

Benedict’s lips curved in a knowing smile. “It’s obvious enough what you want me to do with you, at any rate. And there’s the rub, Lucian. I can’t reward you by giving you what you want. After you slipped away without me, without the guards I’d assigned or even the guards you’d chosen for yourself? Do you understand how stupid that was?”

“I went from my private study, which your men were guarding, through a private passage and into private rooms only accessible through there or through the heavily guarded throne room!” I’d rehearsed my argument as I took that walk, knowing I’d need to defend myself later. “No one could possibly have—ow!”

Benedict’s hand had tightened around my knee, fingers digging in with startling force.

He lunged forward, eyes blazing, and even though he still sat at my feet I shrank back. “The same way no one could possibly have put poison in your wine? Damn it, Lucian, you have to take this seriously! If you won’t cooperate, I told you I can’t and won’t—”

“I can still feel you inside me, how much more fucking cooperation do you want?”

“—be bothered to—you can feel me—fucking gods, Lucian!”

Benedict rolled to his feet too quickly for me to react, leaning down and pinning my wrists to the armrests under his big hands. He blotted out the rest of the world and filled my vision. All of my senses, because his heat surrounded me and I breathed him in with every rough inhale.

“Don’t try to distract me,” he ground out. “That’s how you’re paying me for my efforts. That’s not the kind of cooperation I mean, and you know it. Every time you’re alone, you’re in danger. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“Because you apparently couldn’t be bothered after all. I only had a few minutes to try to eat. I’d been working all morning, after you, after we—I barely had the time to look over the day’s petitions before I went into court. Because of your orders to your men, I had to spend hours here without even a fucking cup of coffee, Benedict. And you know damn well if I’d been late Zettine would’ve made me look a fool, as he always does.” I hated admitting that aloud, but it wasn’t as if Benedict hadn’t noticed for himself. “You can’t expect me to neglect my duties while I wait for your convenience.”

Benedict tilted his head, examining me as if I’d been displayed solely for his perusal. “I was furious with you,” he said at last, and his grip on my wrists loosened. I blew out a long breath, wincing as my hands tingled. He sighed, his gaze softening into something like ruefulness. “But it took some of the wind out of my sails when you told that idiot that I spoke for you, right there in front of everyone.”

Maybe I’d discovered the secret, other than that cock of his, to Benedict’s odd power over all of the men he rotated in and out of his bed, because if he looked at all of them like this—with his entire attention, with that focused warmth—then of course they’d be eager for more of it.

Swallowing hard barely cleared the lump in my throat, and my voice came out almost a whisper. “You told them all that I dedicate every moment to Calatria’s welfare. Of course, you lied. I delayed my meetings this morning to satisfy your lust.”

He leaned in, close enough that I could see the faintest tracery of amber in his gray eyes. No wonder they shone like metal, with that hint of gold within silver.

His smile held more than a hint of mischief.

“No, it’s nothing but the truth. Satiating me does serve Calatria’s best interests, because my command of the army ensures Calatria’s welfare. And my magic deters dishonest winemakers, which is even more important for drunkards like me, as you—no, I know you were trying to irritate me, but it almost made me laugh out loud. I’m not angry about it, don’t get all agitated—”

“I’m not agitated! And you’re incredibly arrogant if you really believe—”

Benedict’s mouth cut off any further words and any possibility of rational thought. Firm, and demanding, and both softer and rougher than I would’ve imagined. My lips parted for him as if he’d used his magic, and when he teased into me with his tongue I let out a helpless, humiliating moan at how perfect it felt, that intimate entry, the way he took me as if he had every right to anything I had to give.

He let go of one wrist to wrap his hand in my hair, cradling my head and tipping it the way he wanted me, plundering my mouth, licking into me, biting at my lips and then thrusting his tongue inside to claim me. I’d been telling the truth when I said I could still feel him inside me—or rather, the echo of him, the hollowness he’d left when he withdrew. I clenched around nothing, aching for him to fill me everywhere he could, in my mouth and between my legs, deeper, more than anyone ever had.

Benedict hadn’t kissed me this morning. I’d thought he wouldn’t want to.

I’d thought I wouldn’t want to, would have vehemently asserted that there was nothing I’d want less, but when at last he drew back, sucking on my swollen lower lip, he left me cold and wanting. He tugged on my hair to hold me in place as I whimpered and tried to chase his mouth with mine.

“Fucking gods,” he said, voice hoarse and rough. I forced my eyelids open a crack and found him staring at me, eyes burning, his jaw tight with—anger? Why would he be angry, when I hadn’t fought him at all? “You have the sweetest mouth when you’re not using it to talk,” he bit out, and let me go so abruptly I had to catch myself before I hit my head.

Benedict stood up and immediately reached for the placket of his trousers, cursing again as the massive ridge of his erection interfered with undoing the buttons.

A bolt of heat shot down into the pit of my stomach, my balls drawing up, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut again and bite my tingling lips to keep in a moan. Just the thought of Benedict fucking me on my own throne shouldn’t nearly make me spend in my trousers like a slut, but the image flashed through my mind, unstoppable, and…

“You can’t, and your curse can’t possibly need it this soon after this morning,” I gasped, clutching desperately at any shred of rationality I could find in my spinning head. I opened my eyes again. He’d made progress with his buttons, and the flushed, thick head of his cock had emerged through the gap, the tip gleaming.

Kissing me. He’d gotten into that state from kissing me , pinning me to my throne and taking my mouth.

Taking my mouth…taking my mouth. Because he hadn’t made any move to undress me, or move me from where I sat, or tell me to do it myself, and that suggested…oh, no. No no no.

“Using me that way won’t do a damn thing for your curse,” I protested, as he tugged his trousers open to reveal more of his hard, straining cock. Did he really think I’d simply submit to him like that, with no practical reason for it at all? “That’s not a part of our agreement.”

Benedict kept working on his trousers, still held together at the top of the gap by his heavy sword belt. Fully clothed, booted and cloaked, his sword and knife to either side of the opening he’d made for only his cock, he looked like a soldier on duty who’d taken an illicit moment to be serviced by…by a stable boy, perhaps, or a kitchen maid.

Or his liege lord, the duke in his crown and robes.

A fresh wave of dizziness nearly carried me sideways as that image flashed through my mind: how we’d appear right now if anyone came into the room, Benedict standing over me with his cock out, starting to lean down and put it to my waiting lips.

No, not waiting. I wouldn’t do it.

“I won’t service you like this,” I insisted, trying and failing to sound decisive and commanding. “Let me up. This is absurd.”

He glanced up at last, raising his eyebrows. “What’s absurd is that you’re arguing with me. Our agreement is that I’ll have you whenever and however I want. And right now, I want to fuck your pretty mouth.”

“You said between my legs, servicing your curse! Take me…there’s no part of this that…” I stopped, thinking back, forcing myself to remember exactly what he’d said to me. Recalling precise wording was a skill I’d worked hard to develop over the years. “No,” I said, as it came back to me. “Fucking my—there’s no way you meant to include this in ‘and so on,’ Benedict!”

“You’ll never know whether I meant to or not, because it’s included if I say it is,” he said, and finally tugged the last button free, exposing his cock all the way down to the base.

Gods, it was thick. Not that it mattered. He’d choke me to death with his length before he got the whole thing into my mouth, anyway. Much better if he stuffed it into my hole, where he could force me open at his leisure without cutting off my breathing.

No, not better, not…oh, if I’d had time for lunch I wouldn’t be so lightheaded and strange. This was all Benedict’s fault. All of it. Maybe he had been the one to poison Fabian, just to maneuver me into this—but that thought fled as he braced one knee on the seat of my throne and one hand on the back of it, leaning in until his cock pointed directly at my mouth.

“It isn’t, and I won’t—let go of me!” He’d put his other hand around the nape of my neck, and I yanked away, flailing at his arm until he cursed, caught my wrists with both hands, and then pinned them over my head with only one, putting the other right back into my hair. This time he wrapped the strands around his fingers, holding me tightly enough that any attempted movement stung my scalp.

He pushed his hips forward, the tip of his cock brushing my lower lip, satiny and heavy. The scent of him hit me all at once: salt and bitterness, a faint note of soap, a hint of male sweat, heady and overwhelming.

“If you really want me to let go of you, I will,” he said, fingers clenching in my hair. “But your robes look like you’re smuggling a tentpole in them. You’re as pink as a peony, and I can see your heart beating in your throat. Come on and give it a lick, Lucian. Nothing but your tongue. Show me how much you want it.”

Closing my eyes made it worse. Now I only had pure sensation without the distraction of my vision. All of my concentration had narrowed down to my tongue, and on keeping it absolutely still.

I would absolutely not lick the head of his cock.

My mouth had started to water, and I’d need to swallow, and when I opened my eyes again and looked up—there was Benedict. For a long, long moment, he watched me watching him. I blinked first.

And then I couldn’t take it anymore, my heart beating in my throat precisely as Benedict had said, my wrists aching in his grip and the urge to writhe where I sat to try to relieve the need between my legs growing nearly overwhelming.

It was that or…I darted my tongue out and tasted him.

Salty, and faintly, sweetly bitter, and it always took me by surprise how something that felt so hard inside me could be so silky-smooth in my mouth.

Benedict’s eyes widened, his fingers dug into my scalp, and he thrust in, rubbing his cockhead over my tongue. “Lick, Lucian,” he growled, and I wriggled my tongue, my mouth already too stuffed for more.

But I tried, because the heat in his eyes had me pinned more surely than his weight leaning against my wrists, and I’d almost started writhing after all. If he would only let one of my arms go so I could reach down and take myself in hand, then I might have some relief from the pressure mounting in me, but my restlessness had no other outlet than my mouth: licking him, sucking him—gods help me, doing precisely what he’d told me to and showing him how much I wanted it.

I moaned around him, my eyes already starting to water from the pressure against the back of my throat. Saliva pooled in the corners of my mouth as he thrust deeper still, and then it dripped down to trickle over my neck and dampen my velvet robes.

He’d already wrecked me, and at any moment someone could enter the throne room. Yes, I’d ordered everyone out, but that wouldn’t stop Gerfred if I were urgently needed elsewhere.

Moaning a protest around Benedict’s thick cock only seemed to encourage him, and he grunted and thrust deeper, bruising the back of my throat, bruising my wrists with his iron grip, my scalp stinging as he pulled my hair.

Now I’d started writhing no matter how hard I tried to stay still, squirming in my seat with everything below the waist throbbing, arms aching with tension. Benedict fucked my mouth, gods, my pretty mouth, not so pretty now all stretched and wet and shiny, nothing but another hole for his cock to fill.

From this angle I couldn’t see much but the wool of his tunic, and rolling my eyes back in my head gave me his stubbled chin, the tanned column of his neck. Everything jolted and bounced as he used me to chase his pleasure, and I gave up, letting my eyes slide shut, letting the thrust and drag of his heavy cock on my tongue light up every nerve in my body, choking slightly on his cockhead, which only made me shudder and draw as taut as a bowstring, both his cock and mine straining—

Benedict groaned and pulled back, cock stiffening and twitching as he flooded my mouth with his come instead of pumping it down my throat. It overflowed no matter how I tried to swallow, coating my chin and neck, salty and rich and somehow effervescent on my tongue, like champagne—or magic. Tingling.

I stayed suspended there, trembling, his cockhead still filling my mouth all thick and hot and his come soaking the front of my robes. It’d been a close-run thing, but thank the gods I hadn’t degraded myself by spending in my trousers and soaking the rest of me.

“Your mouth is even prettier when it’s dripping,” Benedict said.

That was it. My spine bowed, my eyes rolled back in my head, and I thrashed in Benedict’s grip as my balls pulled tight and I spent helplessly in my trousers, hot and wet.

Fuck. I’d need the whole no-doubt sleepless night to determine whom I hated more, Benedict or myself.

When he let go of my neck and my wrists at last, his cock slipping out of my slack mouth as he unwedged his knee from next to my leg, I slumped down into my throne, a damp, ruined mess. I swiped at my sloppy mouth and chin with one throbbing wrist, managing to smear Benedict’s come all over the rich embroidery on my sleeve in the process.

Damn it all.

“I wish I had some way to create an instant painting of you like this, but my magic doesn’t stretch that way,” Benedict said, and I glanced up to find him nearly put back together again, as infuriatingly quick to look not at all like he’d been fucking me a moment before as he had been earlier in the day. “I’d like to look at you longer, but I suppose I’ll need to clean you up a bit. We can’t have your robes of state all wet like that, and anyway, I don’t think there’s a laundress in the world who could get that much semen out of silk velvet. But my magic can.”

He leaned in and laid his hand on my knee, rubbing his fingers over the fabric there, and my robes—twitched slightly, as if they’d been given temporary life in the most disturbing way. I shuddered and shook him off, but his work was done: when I ran my hands over my robes, they’d been made pristine again.

Under them, however…

Benedict grinned down at me as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I didn’t clean anything under your robes,” he said, and tugged his sword belt into place in a sure, practiced motion that sent a tiny, horrible shiver into the pit of my stomach. Why did he need to be so effortlessly competent? In everything, even the smallest of actions? “You can take care of that the mundane way. And make sure you think about me while you do.”

“I’ll be thinking about how much I detest you,” I muttered, because I didn’t need the whole night to consider the matter after all, it turned out. I hated Benedict the most.

He shrugged, somehow elegantly settling his cloak around himself at the same time. “Up to you. The guards I selected are now waiting for you in your anteroom, by the way. I’ll escort you to them. If you please, Your Grace?”

“And if I prefer to remain here alone for a time?”

I really didn’t. I wanted a bath and the largest coffee tray in Calatria. But simply doing what he told me without any argument at all rankled unbearably.

“You’ll be alone with me if you do, because I’m not leaving you here where you could sneak off again or be murdered by someone sneaking in. And you never know, I might get hard again if I grow bored waiting for you.”

His light tone suggested a joke, but I knew better.

Resigning myself to my drawers chafing all the way back to my rooms, I rose with as much dignity as I could manage and descended the dais toward the antechamber.

Gerfred popped out of a chair and bowed as I opened the door, Benedict’s surly guards standing behind him as promised. Surely he wouldn’t notice anything amiss, not with Benedict’s magic and my ducal poise.

“Let me take your crown for you, Your Grace,” he said. “Somehow it’s gotten all crooked!”

Behind me, Benedict chuckled.

Damn it to hell. I gritted my teeth, silently vowing revenge.