Page 35 of The Consort's Curse
From sucking my cock.
My breath came faster again. A sharp twinge arrowed through my lower belly and between my legs.
“I see,” Stefan said after glancing up and down my body. The frown smoothed out. And the warmth kindling in his eyes set off sparks inside me in places only he’d ever touched. Our eyes met again, his now dark and molten. “I think I understand.”
He did, gods preserve me, he did, I could see it in his expression and hear it in the timbre of his voice. Heknew, and my attempt at dissimulation had done nothing but make me look foolish.
“Remi, I already promised I wouldn’t use it against you.” He set a knee on the edge of the bed, leaning down slowly as if I might startle and break for cover like a hunted hare. “It’s all right. I understand why you wouldn’t want to tell me the truth, but I give you my word again. You’re safe with me.”
I bit my lip just in time to turn my bubbling laugh into a strange, strangledeep. Stefan raised his eyebrows. I forced out a cough. Oh, thank Ennolu after all. Or Dromos. Or one of the minor deities who hated them both, perhaps. Why in the world had I imagined Stefan could read my mind? I’d had such a clearer head when I’d been celibate.
Of course, I didn’t really need him to take me now. My curse had gone dormant. If Benedict’s assessment had been correct, and I saw no reason to doubt his expertise, my potion would work again well before I needed it next.
Stefanneverneeded to take me again, let alone now.
But how could I contradict his incorrect assumption without exposing myself? Figuratively, anyway. If literally exposing myself had been a ship, it’d not only have sailed, but been boarded by the Dire Pirate Kostas, burned, and sunk.
Maybe I could summon the smallest bit of dissimulation after all. “It’s hard for me to talk about,” I said, lowering my eyes demurely so as to hide the lie in them. “It’s improper. But I do believe you. It’s not that I’m afraid you’ll be cruel about it.”
That, at least, had the benefit of being true.You’re safe, as the pursuing wolf said to the hare…and yet I didn’t doubt his word.
“No, I won’t.” The motion in my peripheral vision resolved into Stefan’s shirt, fluttering through the air as he tossed it away. His shirt. Which meant he’d be…
He leaned down again, and I had to look, but I barely caught a glimpse of the expanse of his naked chest and shoulders before he slid a hand behind my head to hold it in place and covered my mouth with his.
Stefan broke the kiss long enough to murmur, “I won’t even be cruel enough to make you ask for what you need, Remi, let alone beg me for it.”
My hands had come up to grasp at him, fingers tracing ridges of muscle and smooth skin and curling into the hair on his chest and trailing down his stomach, and I had no idea what to touch first. Or next. Or how to touch him so that he’d enjoy it a tenth as much as I would.
“I wouldn’t even know what it was that I needed,” I gasped, reduced to abject honesty again by my lightheadedness. “I have no idea what to do.”
“Don’t worry.” He mouthed along my jaw, and I let my head fall back, hoping he’d suck on my throat again, and he did, and I moaned like a slut and didn’t even care. “I know exactly what to do with you. And your curse.”
My curse had nothing to do with it, but as long as he thought it did…I could be as much of a slut as I wanted, couldn’t I? He’d never know that it wasn’t irresistible, tainted magic prompting my encouraging whimper as he kissed down along my chest, or making me spread my legs in anticipation of his moving between them.
He’d never know thathewas the irresistible one, damn him, for some ineffable reason known only to those gods who’d chosen to make me their plaything.
And Stefan’s. Because as big hands slid under my shirt, pushing it up and off, need built inside me to the point that I didn’t even care what he saw. A thin chest, narrow shoulders, freckles scattered here and there on my redhead’s skin, nothing to inspire poetry or even lust. But I eagerly lifted my arms and let him strip me bare—and then gasped up at him, wide-eyed, as he wrapped the shirt around my wrists and tugged them up to extend my arms.
I lay before him as he knelt there gazing down at me, expression unreadable. His eyes moved from where he had my wrists pinned, down to my face, lingering for a moment and letting them meet mine. And then down again, over my heaving chest and the fine line of coppery hair that led to the thatch around my cock, which had gotten hard yet again and pointed up at his face.
My skin prickled under his regard. But at least I could finally stare at him as much as I wanted, taking in every curve and plane: the thick muscles of his arms, the broad expanse of his chest, the way the sunlight glinted on his pale skin and golden hair.
When he abruptly released my wrists, I let out a startled little cry.
He looked back up and met my eyes, his glittering. “Next time,” he muttered. “If there is one.”
Before I could respond, or even understand, he bent back down, burying his face between my legs and bypassing my cock entirely to pull my balls into his mouth.
The ceiling blurred as my lungs seized up and my body went as stiff as my cock.
Hot, and wet, and that was too sensitive, too soft, too, too, too—his tongue dipped under, lashing down between my cheeks, and he’d wrenched me open with his grip on my ass, and then helicked me—
My cry sounded more like pain than like the sharpest, most achingly shocking pleasure I could’ve imagined. Except that I never had imagined it, it hadn’t crossed my mind that any man, let alone a man like Stefan, would swirl his tongue around my needy hole and press inside, nibble at the rim while his fingers pulled me open, kiss the inner curves of my ass and nuzzle my overheated skin.
This might as well have been my curse after all for the feverish unreality of it, the way I had no control over my own body, arching up and pushing down toward him, the whole world narrowing to the twisting, frantic ache inside me, the emptiness that his clever tongue could tease so sweetly but never fill.
“Please,” I choked out, begging after all. “Please, Stefan, please!”
