Page 33 of The Consort's Curse
Stefan moved down and latched onto my nipple through the thin linen of my shirt, mouth searing hot. My eyes rolled back in my head, and my muscles all clenched as I spent without more of a touch to my cock than the pressure of his weight on top of the blankets.
I shuddered and moaned, soaking my drawers, pleasure and humiliation combining to leave me feverish and sweaty and limp as my climax passed.
Stefan slowly released my nipple and lifted his head. My eyes wouldn’t open, but I could feel the intensity of his gaze as a tingling on my lips, on my burning cheeks.
“You’re going to give me an entirely too inflated estimation of my own prowess,” he said, with a rough note beneath the practiced irony of his tone that took my breathaway. My remaining breath. I didn’t seem to have much. “At this rate, I might become arrogant. Or even conceited.”
That gave me the strength to open my eyes. This close, and in the full daylight, he managed to be even more unnecessarily handsome than he had last night when he’d been all perfectly groomed and illuminated by soft candlelight.
“Becomearrogant and conceited? Not that you don’t have—”
His gaze flicked down to where I’d bitten my kiss-swollen lower lip to keep in the rest.
“Don’t have what?” He shifted his weight, nudging further between my thighs. My head swam.
“Some reason for your conceit,” I admitted.
“Pleasuring you would be enough to make any man think well of himself.”
“Don’t,” I ground out. “I’d prefer not to be treated like all of your—companions. I don’t enjoy silver-tongued lies, Stefan.”
The stirring of my cock suggested that part of me very much enjoyed flattering, silver-tongued lies, but the rest of me knew better.
He stared at me for a moment, brows furrowing. “I think you—” He shook his head. “Never mind. We don’t need to talk about it. Is your curse satisfied? Or ought I to continue pleasuring you? Last night wasn’t what you should’ve had. I know I can’t make up for it.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t poison me. You—I know you tried not to hurt me. You didn’t really hurt me. I already told you so last night.” Stefan’s frozen, tight-lipped expression didn’t encourage me much, but I soldiered on. He had plenty of things to feel guilty for, but the way he’d taken my virginity last night simply wasn’t one of them. “I spent when you were—”
“No!” The sharpness of his tone brought me to an open-mouthed, heart-pounding halt. “No,” he repeated, more quietly—but his eyes blazed. “If I hadn’t already believed you had no experience of sex or of life at all, I would now. Remi. If a man ever tries to convince you that your cock giving it up is sufficient proof that you enjoyed yourself and wanted what he did to you, throw him out of your bedchamber and find a better lover. Have you ever had a physician knock you on the knee to make your leg jump? Yes? Well, does that mean you enjoyed being knocked on the knee?”
“I just assumed,” I stammered. “That is, it did feel good. Last night.”
“The release felt good, and the relief from your curse probably felt incredible, but that didn’t have a lot to do with how I fucked you.” His voice deepened to a timbre that vibrated down into my core. “Perhaps you ought to have some basis for comparison, hmm?”
My hands had fallen from his shirt when I reached my climax, and now my fingers twitched against the blanket, desperate to be touching him. But I couldn’t make myself reach out.
Basis for comparison. I had no reason to say yes. That horrible malaise of earlier had passed, and I felt rather stronger.
But…not entirely myself. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to give my curse another couple of days of abeyance before I tried my potion again.
And it wouldn’t be giving in to my unwanted marriage, to the Lord Chancellor’s plans for me, to Stefan’s charisma and practiced seduction, if I allowed myself to enjoy it. Of course I’d enjoy it. Stefan’s well-honed technique would make it impossible not to.
I deserved to spend an hour being pleased by a practiced seducer if I wanted to, didn’t I? After everything I’d been through? Of course I did. And I could let go of any self-recrimination for my weakness, too, damn it.
“Perhaps I should,” I said. “It would be wise. Prudent, even.”
“You won’t be feeling very prudent when I’m done with you,” Stefan replied, grinning down at me like a wolf. My cock stirred in the damp, sticky confines of my drawers, and that heavy, needy ache had begun to gather again, suffusing everything between my knees and my navel. He moved down the bed, trying to pull the blanket and sheet with him. My breath caught, and I grasped at the edge to keep myself covered, mind suddenly whirling with panic. “Let go, Remi.”
My fingers tightened convulsively. Let go? Gods, no!
“You need something to hold on to?” he asked, voice gentler than I’d ever heard it…but with a low undertone to it that had the hair rising on the nape of my neck. “Reach up to the headboard, Remi. Wrap your hands around that carved bit above your head.”
The heavy, polished furniture in my bedroom boasted beautifully turned posts and finials, including a row of them inset into the headboard. Stefan waited. I held my breath, frozen with confusion and fear and anticipation.
And then I did what he told me as if I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, releasing the crumpled, sweaty blanket and lifting my arms, sliding my hands through the bars, wrapping my fingers around smooth wood, cool against my overheated skin.
“That’s good,” he said, eyes flicking up and down my body and going darker. When he pulled the covers off of me at last, I didn’t resist. I couldn’t resist even if I wanted to, because my hands were clutching onto the headboard’s carvings as if I meant to rip the furniture apart by main force.
Stefan tossed the blankets off the foot of the bed as carelessly as only a man who’d never had to clean up afterhimself would do, readjusting his position to kneel up between my bare, sprawled-out legs.
